Month: December 1993

Was hardly enough room at the Bar table in No 1 courtroom at the High Court that day.

It was in 1982 or perhaps 1983. Every state, the Commonwealth and the plaintiff was represented by a QC and a junior, all in silk, stuff and horsehair. On the Bench six of the seven judges wore gowns and wigs. Justice Murphy, sensibly did not wear one. In all, there were nearly two dozen players in full theatrical costume, enough to put on a Shakespearean comedy _ Much Ado About Nothing would have been appropriate for what was about to unfold.

In measured tones, the tobacco company’s QC began his attack on what he called unconstitutional taxes on tobacco products by state governments.

At that stage state governments had been imposing taxes in various guises on alcohol for a quarter of a century and taxes on tobacco and petrol for some time.
Continue reading “1993_12_december_column7”

Are colonising more and more occupations. At first they dealt only with scientific data, then big-scale data, then words and then small accounts.

In 1979 the first visual display terminals came to The Canberra Times. Within a short time computers killed off one profession and colonised another. There are now virtually no typesetters and no typing pools. That occupation is killed off, and another occupation, the journalists who create the words, are colonised. Much the same thing has happened in accounting. Once there were those who repetitively keyed in figures and on the other hand those who manipulated and interpreted those figures. Now those two groups have been fused. Those who solely practised the repetitive task have been killed off (occupationally) and the rest have been colonised.

Lawyers firms, too, are being taken. Government departments have succumbed, though more slowly. And nearly all of academia has been colonised by the beige boxes. Many meetings have been replaced by electronic mail.
Continue reading “1993_12_december_column13”

It may prod people into being more active about territorial affairs.

The addition of party voting to the Robson-Hare-Clark system approved in last year’s referendum is a bit like adding an office block to a wilderness so people have a wider choice of scenery. Great office block. Pity about the wilderness.

However, it may be a blessing. Let me explain. The eight other Australian polities (six states, the Commonwealth and the Northern Territory) only have to deal with apathy. The ACT has to deal with not only apathy, but a more corrosive political snobbery. In the other polities a large mass of people are content to measure out their lives in soap operas and sport. But those polities at least have a stratum of professionals, socially active people, academics and the like who do care about government and get involved.

Not so in the ACT. From the earliest days of self-government the cream of Canberra professionally and intellectually took great pride in professing ignorance of and disdain for affairs of the local Assembly. They kept their eyes on national affairs.
Continue reading “1993_12_december_column20”

My last day of a three-month stint at the National Capital Planning Authority a pleasant young man from Personnel came to give me a summary of my final payout.

The young man said he was sorry the statement was so late, but it had taken a long time to work out, especially the tax. The tax calculation had taken one and a half pages.

I asked whether he had a program to do it for him.

“A bloke I know in Finance has got one on Excel, and I’m going to get it from him,” he replied.

This was pretty wry stuff, I thought. The tax laws are so distorted that it takes hours for a small organisation to work out what should be a simple pay-out after a three-month stint, unless, of course, one is blessed with a program produced by someone in the Department of Finance. What about the storekeeper in Gilgandra hiring a casual over the holidays?
Continue reading “1993_12_december_column27”

The boring old marketing presentation has come a long way.

Travelling sellers no longer need struggle inarticulately without graphic tools. Of course, they can still struggle inarticulately withgraphic tools, but computer graphics that explain things better have been around some time.

Colour slides, overheads and videos are an essential part of the sales presentation. Not only in sales. Executives of all sorts are coming to rely on graphics to cliche their message across.

Corporate-structure diagrams, sales targets, production schedules, performance indicators and quality-assurance plans are finding their way on to slides and overheads to explain to middle management, clients and customers why they are being downsized, outsized, growthed, negatively growthed or projected into a dynamic new phase.
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