Month: July 1993

It might sound like astral travelling, but when the members of the Republic Advisory Committee flew across the ACT border yesterday they entered a body politic under the Crown.

We know this because it says so in Section 7 of the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act. For all intents and purposes that Act is the Constitution of the ACT.

The ACT’s Constitution could provide a very useful model for the committee as it looks for options for an Australian republic. The reason is that the ACT Constitution avoids nearly all of the ephemeral and uncertain elements that imbue the Federal Constitution.
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People paying in full by August 15 will get a 4 per cent discount. The first of four instalments is due anyway by August 15. Failure to pay it results in the whole lot becoming due, accruing a monthly penalty of 20 per cent if it is not paid.

The Commissioner for ACT Revenue, Gordon Faichney, said that people finding it difficult to pay should contact the ACT Revenue Office to see if they are eligible for assistance or to work out a better payment schedule.

Land tax (on properties not owner-occupied) will be payable by instalments this year for the first time. Payment by instalments will result in an administrative charge of 4 per cent of the assessment.
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John Guilliatt was messing about with his kayak at the back of Jadine’s Motel on Thursday Island. He seemed like just the bloke to tell me about the abandoned and decaying dug-out outrigger canoes on the beach.

They conjured romantic images of Thursday Islanders going fishing before the Mercury or Yahama outboard wrecked traditional ways.

Wrong. More prosaically, they had been towed there from Papua New Guinea by the Australian Customs Service which had caught their occupants fishing illegally. The Thursday Islanders thought they should not be burnt, but left of the beach as a reminder of bygone days.
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A group of the 56 Chinese refugees who arrived on the Isabella in north-west Australia had just got their visas to stay in Australia for four year.

Several of them will live in Canberra and continue to study English, others will return to Melbourne to work. It has been a long bureaucratic battle with authorities, fought on their behalf by Marion Le and others.

The group were in the Port Hedland detention centre for more than a year before the Government recognised the refugee status of some of them. Mrs Le points out the seemingly arbitrary nature of the process. Some with seemingly identical circumstances get different status. The cases of the remaining Chinese from the Isabella and some Cambodians who came by boat are still going through the courts.
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The Minister for the Arts, Bob McMullan, is confident that the Government pre-election promise on the National Museum would be met, despite specualtion that it will come under fire at the Expenditure Review Committee.

On February 28, the Government promised $26 million towards the $65 million Stage 1 of the museum on the Yarramundi Reach site. A further $13 million in infrastructure (roads sewerage, water electricity) was to come from the ACT and the private sector was to provide $26 million.

A spokesperson for Senator McMullan said the promise was looking strong, but “”the Minister cannot make any formal announcement in the pre-Budget context”.
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Father David Passi calls it black man’s science _ a malevolent force on the island or Mer in the Torres Strait.

“”Oh yes, Malo has an evil side,” he said. “”And I know its power.”

He spoke of gardens poisoned by sorcery and people killed by it. His grandfather refused to teach it to him because it was evil.

“”It is such a destructive force economically,” he said. “”Why plant a garden up there if it will be poisoned by a man sitting on the beach.”
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Ninety per cent of Australians would be concerned if employment opportunities were reduced by the Mabo decision, according to a national survey conducted by the Australian Mining Industry Council.

However, it found 41 per cent thought Aborigines should be compensated if land cannot be handed back because it is being used by others. But 56 per cent said they should not be.

The survey showed very high awareness of the decision and very high levels of concern about it, but also widespread ignorance of related matters.
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Life was looking grim for Leng Diep in 1980. He, his wife, Pheap, and child were in a refugee camp on the Thai border.

Thirteen years later is the owner of a Canberra-based computer company employing 16 people (Australian-born and Cambodia) and turning over $3 million a year.

Marion Le calls him one of the many success stories.
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PUBLIC debate has been stirred again about land title. It has been stirred nationally about the Mabo decision. In the ACT it has been stirred about betterment tax. Oddly enough, the matters are similar. It is a question of who gets the occupation and use of certain tracts of land and what use can they put the land to.

In the ACT debate has widened about land tax. As the ACT Government faces harder times with less money coming form the Federal Government it has to either spend less or pick up revenue from other places. In that environment of economic pressure, a debate has ensued about revenue available from land, more especially about revenue gained from variations in lease purpose clauses, or to use the nomenclature of the states, changes in zoning.
Continue reading “1993_07_july_leader30”

WHEN the Founding Fathers gave the Commonwealth Parliament power to make law with respect to “”postal, telegraphic and other like services”, they recognised, even in the 1890s, the national importance of communications, and that communications was not like other commodities. Since then, successive Federal Parliaments have regulated the provision of communication services, recognising there is a community element to such things as postal and telephone services, especially in a country like Australia where distances as so vast.

The regulation has usually taken the form of cross-subsidies so that people in remote areas do not have to pay the crippling actual cost of the provision of services, but could get them at reasonable costs like their city cousins. Thus, it cost as much to post a letter from Cooma South to Perth as from Cooma South to Cooma North. In telephone services, the cross-subsidy took the form of provide comparatively cheap installation in the bush. And people in their own communities could ring each other for a set fee, irrespective of the time of the call. Long-distance calls, through necessity, remained distance-charged.
Continue reading “1993_07_july_leader16”