Community Alliance Party Launch Event - 7:30pm Thursday 12 June 2008

You are absolutely right, and I am not supporting Stanhope’s government here. I am just saying that it is my belief that strong leadership can only happen with a majority government. Rightly or wrongly, the best chance of that happening is with one of the mainstream parties, and those interested in running for local government would better serve the city hooking up with one of them.

Hardly fantasy land, wouldn’t you think?

“One strong and focused party in charge is the best way to go… “

In 20 years of self government in Canberra that has never happened. The Stanhope government presents itself as strong, but it’s really just arrogance. We’ve never had an ACT Government with focus.

Get out of fantasy land.

And further to that, the opposition can then do what it should do … Oppose!!!

CB, the committee system stinks!

The type of government that relies on cross party committees and/or dealmaking with other parties will ultimately lead to half-arsed weak and compromised policies.

Minority governments sound good in theory but ultimately are bureaucratic nightmares. One strong and focused party in charge is the best way to go… and if you don’t like what they do, you get a chance to sack them every four years.

I can just imagine this motley collection of community do-gooders getting a couple of seats and throwing a well intentioned spanner into every work.

I thought he said he didn’t want to be a party pollie . . . ?

@Crikey:

Indeed.
They admitted it in ShittyNews a week or so ago.

Is this the mob that Frank Pangallo pleaded to run with but they didn’t want him?

VicePope,

Here is a suggestion for change to the style of ACT government that would make things better than they are now, and we don’t need any legislative change.

Actually use the committee system.

Committees are cross-party groups that can spend a lot of time consulting and researching to provide a decent report for the Assembly to act on. Lots of input, lots of discussion, and outcomes that benefit the majority of Canberrans.

Committees also give the opposition members something to do. The current government has 4 ministers who do most of the “work” and 5 back benchers who do the rest. The opposition just “opposes”. Let’s make all 17 of them do some work.

Also, if we take away the power of majority government we might get some open discussion before decisions are made, rather than a government that tells you what they have decided afterwards. But that’s something for the voters to do.

Miz – but (a) what is the standard for judging a policy “good” or “bad”? In any policy formulation process, there will be some winners and some losers. For example, if the community needs a power station, it’s got to be somewhere; if we are heading to having more schools and teachers than students, we have to close some schools; if we have $X to spend on health, some things get done and some don’t. Macro policy is deciding that it needs to be done; micro policy is allocating who bears any pain and who gets any advantage. And it’s in the area of micro policy that community needs get bushwacked by nimbyism and naked populism.

So, they want the fabric of self-government unpicked and the concept recast. So would many other people (like me) – the question is how is it to be replaced. The present situation is, in many ways, a good one for the Commonwealth – where is the incentive for it to agree to make any changes? As a thought (which I’m not advocating at present), would we do better to move the seat of government from the ACT to the Parliamentary Triangle as an exclusively Commonwealth fiefdom, and put the rest of the ACT back into NSW?

I went – they will support any GOOD policy, whether from their own team, another party or any other source.

They are particularly keen on getting the local govt working creatively – eg, they will look at getting a new self-govt agreement with the Cth, to update and properly balance the outdated 1988 one that clearly was just a federal handwashing exercise. They aim to turn Canberra around, away from the decrepit state it’s in, by reducing the majority and getting rid of the ‘we are in charge, not you’ govt attitude.

They are keen to focusing on LOCAL issues (roads, rates, rubbish etc), and get taxes/charges etc on par with Qbn’s so Canberra is not disadvantaged. They also expressed respect for the neighbourhood design of the city, which has recently been gutted by school closures and undermined by awful new suburb (slum) design. They have promised that some schools would re-open (Flynn was one).

[Personal rant: I hope they unpick the stupid and contrived ‘amalgamation’ of Caroline Chisholm High (amalgamated with one of its four feeder primary schools – see, already it’s dumb! What about the other primaries??). This amalgamation has foisted a daft, yankee ‘middle school’ artifice on Caroline Chisholm High despite that school already having a superb and acclaimed sub-school system. ]

CAP intend to listen and not be heartless (unlike this current mob, who have put people who value and preserve ACT heritage on the street, and try to set great stinking noisy power stations near Canberra homes. Let’s face it, some things should never be privatised, and utilities are some of those things.

Personally, there’s been so many bad policies lately I think a change would be a breath of fresh air.

EL – even if one person does, that’s a wasted vote.

It doesn’t matter, VicePope.

No one will vote for them.

This mob has no policies. Candidates who are marginally less anonymous than store dummies. An express interest in ending ALP government (per ABC radio, this afternoon). It sounds just a bit like a Lib front to me. A conspiracy theorist might assume the breakaway business alliance gets the conservative vote and this lot get the clueless populists and together they get the Zedsters and their dynamic slate of candidates (such as Pratt, Dunne and Burke) over the line.

Who gets their preferences (to the extent that they can allocate)? Who would they support if they had the balance of power? Do they stand for anything other than exercising power and stopping others from exercising it? An election is only a few months away, and it is cynical to be at this stage without either a political record or a clear statement of what one intends.

Are they announcing any policies, or do we have to BYO?

Groups like this come and go at every election.

Music, but no interpretative dance? What kind of political party is this?

launching the party but still no policies, the mind boggles

Who?

“Launch song”: mwah ha ha ha!

Sorry folks that should be 19:30 NOT 17:30