A Bill of Rights for the A.C.T.?

The Clark Center has again been affiliated with a democratic deliberative poll in Australia.  Working with Dr. Pam Ryan, a research associate of the Center, and her Issues Australia organization, the Center helped to mount two highly visible earlier polls, on the Republic Referendum in October 1999, and on Aboriginal Reconciliation in February 2001.  This fall Rhonda Evans Case, a Ph.D. student at UT-Austin who had been involved in both earlier polls, traveled to Canberra to represent the Center at a poll deliberating on a Bill of Rights for the A.C.T.

Deliberative polls are the invention of Prof. James Fishkin, in the Dept. of Government at UT-Austin.  They entail telephone interviews with a large random sample of a national population about some controversial set of issues, then assembling a statistically accurate cross-section of those interviewed in a single place for two days of small-group and plenary discussions of the issues, at the end of which those assembled are asked the same questions as over the telephone several weeks earlier.  In all instances to date, the opportunity to participate in face-to-face deliberations on issues and to have issue experts questions has produced major changes of opinions.  Because the process is based on national random samples of voting age citizens, it is plausible to claim that the opinion changes produced by deliberative polls are those that would occur amoung all voting age citizens if they had the same opportunity to deliberate on the issues in question. 

Interested in how voters in the A.C.T. assess the need for a Bill of Rights that could be enacted by statute, the ACT Government contracted with Pam Ryan's organization to conduct a deliberative poll on the issues a Bill of Rights poses.  The resulting poll took place the end of November in Old Parliament House, where the Republic Referendum and Aboriginal Reconciliation polls also occurred.  Some 230 ACT voters took part and deliberated for two days on the folloing issues: 1) Why have a Bill of Rights and what form should it take? 2) What effect a Bill would have on the exercise of executive and judicial powers? 3) What rights should be protected by an ACT Bill of Rights?

As with the earlier deliberative polls, this one was co-chaired by the Hon. Ian Sinclair, former Speaker of the House, and Barry Jones, former President of the ALP.  A third co-chair for the ACT poll was Sir William Deane, former Govenor-General of Australia.  A dozen eminent legal scholars and jurists were present to answer questions that the cross section of citizens uncovered during their face-to-face deliberations.

The earlier telephone poll of a random ACT sample showed that 53 percent favored a Bill of Rights being enacted.  After two days of deliberation at Old Parliament House, asking the same question revealed that citizen sentiment had become 59 percent for a Bill with 38 percent against it.

 

Two watershed events this fall bring relations between Australia and the United States into the sharpest possible focus.  I refer to the tragic anti-US cum anti-Western bombing in Bali during October, when nearly 200 innocent Australians perished, and the mid-November announcement in Sydney by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick that negotitations for a Free Trade Agreement between Australia and the U.S. will begin early in 2003.  These events are certain to make relations between the two countries a heated topic during 2003. 

The greatly increased attention to Australia-U.S. relations will make the centers and organizations that foster Australian studies even more significant vehicles for trans-Pacific interchanges.  The Clark Center and the Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies at Georgetown University are exploring ways in which they can help to illuminate the security and trade issues that will now dominate the bilateral political agenda.  When it meets at Arcadia University in late February, the Australian and New Zealand Studies Association of North America (ANZSANA) will devote a large part of its program to airing the issues posed by this fall's events.

Although it did not suffer the grievous losses of Australia, New Zealand's shock over what happened in Bali was also great and the bombing's effect on NZ security policy will surely be large.  There, too, the pros and cons of close relations with the U.S. will constitute major issues in the months ahead.  New Zealand's exclusion, at least for now, from Free Trade negotiations with the U.S. will also give rise to much debate.

It may not be too much to say that those of us engaged in Australian and New Zealand Studies are entering a quite different era in our trans-Pacific discourse.  A period in which the central issue was how to amplify democracy along a wide array of artistic, economic, ethnic, gender, racial, and other dimensions is now probably ending.  The era we are entering will be dominated by the question of how democracies like Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S. can respond to extremist challenges without subverting their own foundations.

 

John Higley

Frank Moorhouse Lectures at UT-Austin

The well-known Australian novelist, Frank Moorhouse, has been teaching writing courses in UT-Austin's Dept. of English and while in residence at the James Michener Center for Writers this fall.  Having established himself in the early 1970s as a writer of note with "The Americans, Baby", which Hollywood later rendered as "The Coca-Cola Kid", Moorhouse has won numerous awards for his two historically-based novels that use the League of Nations as a backdrop for the fusuion of public and private lives in Australia and Europe during the 1920s and 1930s: Grand Days (1993) and Dark Palace (2000).

In early November, Moorhouse entertained UT-Austin's illustrious Faculty Seminar on British Studies (where many Australians before him have appeared) with a graceful and witty discussion about the trials and tribulations that novels dealing with historical realities create.

 

ANU Law Professor Accept UT Law Appointment

The Law School at UT-Austin recently announced the hiring of Professor Jane Stapleton, who is a leading authority on tort law and products liability in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University.  Although she will continue as Professor of Law at the A.N.U., Stapleton will henceforth also be the Ernest E. Smith Professor of Law at UT-Austin.

Professor Stapleton's scholarship centers on the private law of obligations, liability and compensation systems, and it ranges from comparative product liability to the philosophical foundations of common law concepts like causation, duty, and good faith.  Among her many publications are Disease and the Compensation Debate (1986), and The Law of Obligations (1998).  She is finishing a book tentatively titled <i>Unpacking Causation in Law.  She is also at present a consultatnt to Australia's largest class action suit, the multi-billion dollar claim against Esso/Exxon for economic losses arising fromt he disruption of gas supply.

Starting in January 2003, Professor Stapleton will teach a course at UT-Austin on Products Liability and a seminar on Causation & Scope of Liability in Torts.  As the following story shows, Professor Stapleton will hear her share of "G'days" when walking down the corridors of the UT Law School.

Four Australian law students are in residence at UT-Austin to further their legal studies this year: Naveen Ahluwalia from A.N.U. and Ramanugrah Pandey, Rebecca Robinson and John Williams from Univ. of Sydney.  Rebecca Robinson reports that, though she was surprised to find neither cowboys nor cactuses in Austin, she still finds everything in Texas very grand and larger than life.  As does Rebecca, John Williams says that he enjoys the Texas heat.  Naveen Ahluwalia applauds the agreement between A.N.U. and UT-Austin that enables her, as a fourth-year undergraduate in Canberra to study at the postgraduate level in Austin where she finds "there is a bit more focus on teaching policy rather than black letter law."

Jason Pierce, who was closely associated with the Clark Center during his years as a Ph.D. student in Government, is now Assistant Professor at the University of Dayton, having received his Ph.D. last August.  The many in Australian Studies who know and like Jason will be pleased to hear that he is starting an Australian concentration at Dayton.  This spring Jason will teach an Honors seminar on Australia and in May he will take students from the seminar to Canberra for several weeks of intensive research on matters pertaining to the High Court's role, which was the focus of Jason's strong doctoral dissertation.  Jason plans to be at the ANZSANA meeting in February and may well bring some of his Dayton students with him.

Please note that the Center now has its own email address: yacker@www.utexas.edu  This address will be used by anyone browsing the website.  The ffcushing@mail.utexas.edu e-mail address is still current for all other business.

YACKER

Is published in the fall & spring by The Edward A. Clark Center for Australian & New Zealand Studies,
Harry Ransom Center 3.362
The University of Texas, Austin, TX 78713-7219
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