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Showing posts from January, 1997

Why parties can't govern

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Edition 1SUN 19 JAN 1997, Page 049 Why parties can't govern By RICHARD FARMER   WESTERN Australia provides the latest example of a fundamental problem affecting the way this country is run. We have a parliamentary system predicated on there being two parties, one of which becomes the government and the other the Opposition. But parliaments are elected in a way which regularly gives third forces a balance of power. The result is governments that cannot govern. West Australian Premier Richard Court is in that position. He was returned to office last month after his Liberal-National coalition increased its majority in the Lower House, where the government is decided. It was a clear endorsement. But quite perversely, proportional representation resulted in minor parties and Labor ending up with as many members in the Upper House as the Government. There is an an element of rough justice in this. The Labor governments that preceded Mr Court's were always in the same predicament. I

Year ends on note of hope

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Edition 1SUN 05 JAN 1997, Page 048 Year ends on note of hope By RICHARD FARMER   THE two governments in Canberra, federal and local, ended 1996 in ways that give some hope of changes for the better in the way Australia is governed. Prime Minister John Howard's government managed to end up with a privatised Telstra and at least some changes to industrial-relations laws because of the creation of a second group of Senate power-holders. And Chief Minister Kate Carnell's minority ACT government defied all expectations by legislating to change land administration with the support of the Labor Opposition. The example from the junior Canberra legislature was perhaps the more significant, for here was a rare example of an Opposition acting in a way that was against its own immediate electoral interests. In the national capital, as elsewhere, people upset by a change are prone to alter the way they cast their next vote -and there are few things more controversial than changes to the r