Comments on: Rates up, comments unlocked

By: Pi

Pi — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 07:54:23 +0000

I should have said…

“no more than it should for Menzies or Whitlam”

By: Pi

Pi — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 07:53:14 +0000

Amber Dekstris Says:
August 10th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Admittedly Keating only had 5 years; the argument then becomes was his govt sufficiently different to Hawkeâ€™s.

Personally, I voted against Keating. While I recognize the value of what he achieved as treasurer, I also recognize the damage he did against Hewson, so much that now no opposition attempts to get into government on a policy platform. He’s the reason John Howard won in 1996 with no policies.

He was on the nose… and rightfully so. But it shouldn’t detract from his achievements, and more than it should from Menzies or Whitlam.

By: J-D

J-D — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 05:48:42 +0000

I have come round to favouring the Chartist program of annual elections.

By: Amber Dekstris

Amber Dekstris — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 05:00:03 +0000

Admittedly Keating only had 5 years; the argument then becomes was his govt sufficiently different to Hawke’s.

By: Amber Dekstris

Amber Dekstris — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 04:57:16 +0000

The advantages of incumbency are too great. I would like to see them reduced and fixed terms are one way of doing it. I’d like to see more frequent changes of govt — 11, 13 and 9 years are just too long in office.

By: Richard Jones

Richard Jones — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 02:27:54 +0000

I’m not sure. I’d have to go back and check the speeches in Hansard. It was nearly twenty years ago. I had thought that we had four year terms for the first time then, so I was wrong. I should have been aware of that!The terms usually only lasted about two or three years and that is why the Upper House terms had been fixed at three terms of the Lower House. When they fixed the terms to four years they deemed it far too long for Upper House members to sit there for twelve years and they were right of course.
Incidentally, the average terms of members of the Lower House when I last checked was seven years. That may have changed with the fixed term.
My thoughts about not fixing the number of Lower House members was that in the future flexibility would be needed, especially with increasing populations.
It might suit a Coalition government to increase the size of the Lower House to gain more country representatives. I guess we will see in future.
I think it would be a good idea to have four year fixed terms for the House of Representatives as well, rather than having the PM of the day opportunistically picking the right time. It would or should lead to more stable government in my view.

By: J-D

J-D — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 01:18:48 +0000

The _fixed_ four-year term was passed when you were in the Legislative Council, but the _maximum_ term had been _already_ been extended to four years before that (and before you were in Parliament). The Parliament elected in 1984 ran for four years: there was no election between March 1984 and March 1988. Greiner _could_ have waited until March 1992 to hold the election: he _chose_ to go early in May 1991.

As I said, check your sources. The election dates can be found online at the NSW Parliament website and on Wikipedia.

I accept, however, that you are right about the timing of the change to the Legislative Council. I was misled there.

Did the Greiner government want to fix Legislative Assembly numbers at 99? If so, your prevention of this, perhaps ironically, enabled the Carr government’s reduction to 93, with the consequence of larger country electorates. Still, this could hardly have been foreseen at the time. Every other change to the size of State Parliaments since Federation (I think) had been an increase: reductions are a more recent development.

By: Richard Jones

Richard Jones — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:35:03 +0000

I’m sorry J-D you are incorrect. I was in the Legislative Council from 1988 to 2003 and voted on the legislation to cut my own term from three terms of the lower house to two terms. The fixed four year term and a reduction in numbers of the LC was passed at the same time.
The Greiner government wanted to fix the numbers in the Legislative Assembly too but my vote prevented this. Sir Adrian Solomons, National Party, was pleased that I did that as it allowed for possible better representation for smaller country electorates in the future.

By: J-D

J-D — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 23:31:11 +0000

190
Glen Says:
August 9th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
The day the average punter genuinely thinks Labor can manage money pigs will flyâ€¦never

As I have pointed out previously, a majority of Australian voters voted Labor in 1969, 1972, 1974, 1983, 1984, 1987, 1993, and 1998.

Maybe you think those majorities included none of the ‘average punters’, all of whom were still voting for the Coalition. I don’t know what you mean by ‘average’, but that seems unlikely.

Or maybe you think that people voted Labor at those elections despite thinking that Labor can’t manage money. That also seems unlikely.

Or maybe you think that it will never _again_ happen that a majority of Australian voters will vote Labor. That too seems unlikely, but time will tell.

By: J-D

J-D — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 23:17:55 +0000

165
Richard Jones Says:
August 9th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
J-D Just a correction, Greiner did not go a year early in â€˜91. He had no option. It was a three year term then. It was four years fixed from then on.
LC members had their terms cut short from three terms of the lower house to two terms.

Check your sources again.

The change from a three-year term to a four-year term was made by Labor government in the 1980s (and the change for the Legislative Council was made at the same time). The first four-year term Parliament ran from the 1984 election to the 1988 election. Greiner came in with a four-year term in 1988 and could have run to 1992 if he had wanted to. Why he didn’t, I can’t imagine.

The change to a [I]fixed[/I] four-year term was forced on Greiner after the 1991 election as part of the price for the support he needed from the Independents.