Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?
Chief Minister Katy Gallagher’s been in the big chair for a year now.
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Katy Gallagher’s first year
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By all accounts last night in the Legislative Assembly was be all accounts bad tempered as the electoral laws were given a going over.
In the cold light of day Simon Corbell has announced what he thinks was passed.
Key features of the Electoral Amendment Bill 2012 include:
– A limit of $60,000 per candidate on expenditure per [...]

So starting from 13:15 to 14:00, as advertised last night is the Tweeter’s chance to Tweet about “how the ACT Self-Government Act operates and what changes they would like to see”.
Either search for @ACTSelfGovRev or enjoy the feed below:

new TWTR.Widget({
version: 2,
type: ‘search’,
search: ‘@ACTSelfGovRev’,
interval: 30000,
title: ‘ACT [...]

Twitter is so vogueish in the political classes that Shane Rattenbury advises he’d like your 140 character input over a short period of time as part of the Review of the ACT Self-Government Act.
From 1.15 – 2pm this Friday, 11 May 2012, Canberrans will have the chance to tell the Committee what they think about [...]

Just putting this up as a placeholder until 7.30pm when Swanny either lays waste to Canberra or shows he was just kidding.
Comments on your reading of the budget below thanks.

So here are the papers. Get cracking.

So working through the Budget Overview we find. $33.6 billion in savings.

The Canberra Times anticipates 17,000 job losses in Canberra [...]

Running a local news website really lets one know just how much people care about roads.
And let me tell you it’s more than they care about anything else.
So Zed Seselja’s probably onto a winner with a roads roads roads approach:
The Canberra Liberals will raise the state of ACT roads as a matter of public [...]

The ACT Taxation Review is now online as is the Government response.
Recommendations agreed or agreed in Principle are:
– Recommendation 1
Adopt taxation instruments and settings that deliver stable revenue growth proportionate with economic growth.
– Recommendation 2
With regards to long term structural reform, over a period of time that is adequate for appropriate transition:
a) abolish duty on [...]

Zed Seselja and Brendan Smyth are cracking a tin if not the bubbles over getting their long awaited cost of living statements mandated by the Legislative Assembly:
The Canberra Liberals today ensured Canberrans will receive cost of living statements with the ACT Government Budget, but ACT Labor and the Greens banded together to limit the information [...]

We’ve had this in from Andrew Barr’s office:
Issuing of Quinlan tax review
The ACT Labor Government will issue the Quinlan review into the ACT taxation system, and the in-principle Government response, on Monday, May 7.
The Government will host roundtable discussions with various groups about what is in the review and options for the Government on May [...]

The Liberals’ Brendan Smyth is taking no joy at all from new CommSec data on the dreaded cost of living:
The latest CommSec economic report confirms that the ACT has the lowest wage growth and the highest increase in consumer prices in the country, showing that Canberra is becoming an even more expensive place to [...]

On a day when it’s hard to criticize we have a rare Liberal policy, more money for Veterans groups:
ACT Opposition Leader Zed Seselja and ACT Shadow Veterans’ Affairs Minister Jeremy Hanson today announced that if elected, the Canberra Liberals will give veterans’ organisations access to grants totalling $400,000 over four years.
“The Canberra Liberals wholeheartedly support [...]

The FOI process has delivered up a moderately amusing bit of bitchiness after a Legislative Assembly cockup saw Liberal Leader overspending on staff and having to beg Chief Minister Gallagher for extra monies.
It’s not entirely clear why Zed waited three months before moving to fix it.

Chief Minister Gallagher has taken to wondering what she has to do to get an opposition in this town.
With 6 months to go until the next ACT Election the Canberra Liberals have been on an extended holiday, ACT Chief Minister Katy Gallagher said today.
“In all my time in the ACT Assembly I have never known [...]

In an article featured in Crikey today, the downfalls to the ‘efficiency dividend’ announced in December by Finance Minister Penny Wong are discussed. While the cuts were only from 1.5% to 4%, as the online questionnaire sent to 1000 Community and Public Sector Union delegates shows, a little goes a long way.
An online questionnaire [...]

Former Gallagher Chief of Staff Brendan Ryan has written into the Canberra Times to refute her claims of how she handled timesheet manipulation.
In her support for an ethics commissioner, Gallagher made some claims about a staffer wrongfully claiming time off in lieu (appropriately called TOIL).
The staffer is not happy, claiming that Gallagher is wrong.
Any politician [...]

The Monthly has a lengthy piece by the entertainer Rhys Muldoon on the demise of Kevin Rudd.
Once you get over the initial surprise at just how close to the inner wheel Muldoon was rotating it’s a pretty good look at how life on the hill works, and worked that fateful night.

[ 19 April, 2012; 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm. ] Join the ACT Fabians and ANU Associate Professor Frank Bongiorno in
discussing whether Blue Labour offers any lessons for Australia.

The Liberals’ Brendan Smyth has swooped on new ABS stats like a seagull upon a chip to show we really are highly taxed:
Canberrans pay more in tax than anywhere else in the country, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data released today. ACT Shadow Treasurer Brendan Smyth said this is a shocking burden placed on [...]

The Liberals Brendan Smyth is laying the blame for the decline of tourism to the ACT at the feet of Tourism Minister Andrew Barr.
Tourism everywhere in this country is in trouble due to the sky high Australian dollar.
Frankly as a nation I’d rather our children earn a crust building railways to carry iron ore trains [...]

Chief Minister Katy Gallagher has announced her plans for an integrity framework for the ACT Government and Public Service:
A refreshed and modern Ministerial Code of Conduct has been developed, following recent reforms on this front in other jurisdictions, along with a new Code of Conduct for Ministerial Staff which has been released in draft form [...]

[ 17 April, 2012; 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm. ] All Belconnen residents are invited to the Belconnen Community Council’s April Public Meeting.

This months public forum will focus on sources of revenue in the ACT and land sales, particularly in Belconnen.

Speakers for this meeting will be from the ACT Treasury and the Land Development Agency (LDA).

The initial presentation from ACT Treasury will [...]

Chief Minister Gallagher is letting us know about her presentation to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) today, which we’re sure the State Premiers will really appreciate.
The Chief Minister will today, present a case study in trans-border cooperation, telling the nation’s leaders at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting that Canberra’s role as [...]

The Australian National University has announced Dr Ken Henry (formerly of Treasury) is going to be the go-to guy for public policy at ANU:
In a major new boost to ANU’s longstanding role in national public policy research, teaching and outreach, Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Young announced today that a renamed and expanded Crawford School of Public [...]

Obviously feeling vindicated by the Mcleod Report into his timesheets Zed Seselja is now carrying on about the administration of Katy Gallagher’s staff:
Katy Gallagher today revealed that she was involved in an Industrial Relations Commission case because of timesheet issues in her office. Her most senior staff member tried to claim 800 hours of [...]

Shane Rattenbury’s office has sent over a media cleared copy of the “Report of the independent workplace audit of staffing arrangements in the office of the Leader of the Opposition for the period 2009 to 2012″.
Last night Liberal Leader Zed Seselja was expressing considerable satisfaction from the findings.
Now you can judge.

Liberal Leader Zed Seselja has announced his take on the audit into his office’s timesheets, and he says it’s good news for him:
A detailed audit by a former Royal Commissioner into the office of ACT Opposition Leader Zed Seselja has found ‘no member of staff received any unintended payment or benefit to which they were [...]

The Liberals’ Vicki Dunne is huffing and puffing to the ABC about the results of her epic FOI haul into correspondence between the Human Rights Commission and The Greens:
Liberal MLA Vicki Dunne says emails, released under freedom of information, show the Greens sought advise from the Human Rights Commission on questions to ask during parliamentary [...]

After taking a little break in March this afternoon we’ve had two Summaries of Cabinet Outcomes released. One for 12 March and the other for 19 March.
I particularly liked this bit for 12 March:
Two meetings of the Budget Committee of Cabinet were held. Treasury officials joined with Ministers to discuss matters of fiscal [...]

So what do we have here? A Friday afternoon FOI dump.
– Documents in relation to contested, inappropriate and/or queried expense claims
– Documents in relation to deliberations and discussions on FOI requests received during the 7th Assembly
– Interest declarations generated during the 7th Assembly
– Discussions and deliberations on changes to Administrative Orders and [...]

Earlier this month, the ACT Greens announced their 2012 election line up. Among the candidates, 20 year old University of Canberra student, real estate agent, drag queen and comic Johnathan Davis. By his own admission he’s scraping by, living at home, dividing his time between studies, part time work and his, various and colourful extra [...]

The Liberals’s Zed Seselja and Brendan Smyth are proudly announcing they’ve got the Assembly on board for their Financial Management (Cost of Living) Amendment Bill 2012:
ACT Deputy Opposition Leader Brendan Smyth, who introduced the Bill, said it is disappointing it took legislation for the government to take notice of the cost of living problems they’ve [...]

Chief MInister Gallagher’s blogging flirtation has taken a strange new turn as she shows herself off in slick videos locked down on Vimeo, the video buff’s preferred platform over YouTube (particularly when they don’t want something going viral).
Someone’s paid quite a bit of money to make things very few people are going to see, and [...]