Month: June 1994

The ACT Government has condemned the National Capital Planning Authority’s proposals for the Central National Area as “”very narrow”.

The ACT Minister for Environment, Land and Planning, Bill Wood, said, “”Canberra is also home to 300,000 Australians. The Commonwealth must take into consideration the impacts on the community of its planning proposals”.

The NCPA launched a range of long-term design ideas for the city last Friday. They included the upgrading of Constitution Avenue, the completion of the Triangle at Russell which would become the entry point to the city from the Federal Highway via a road around the back of Mount Ainslie. Parkes Way was to be downgraded. More residential and commercial uses were to be made of land between the city and the lake.
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Some radical ideas for Canberra, including the relocation of the Prime Minister’s Lodge, Government House and the gateway from Sydney, Melbourne and the airport, were unveiled by the National Capital Planning Authority yesterday.

The ideas were presented in the context of the lead up to the centenary of federation and beyond and were looking at the city as a symbol of democracy and nationhood.

None was set in concrete.

However, the ideas have some general themes, the most significant being the redefinition and restatement of the Triangle as a functioning symbol of democracy much as Walter Burley Griffin intended it.
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A mortgage tax to cost ACT homebuyers an extra $350 is being considered by the ACT Government, according to the Opposition.

Opposition Leader Kate Carnell called on the Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, yesterday to confirm or deny the new tax.

The ACT is the only state or territory without stamp duty on mortgages and other home and business securities. Elsewhere they add about $350 to the purchase cost of a typical home.

A spokesperson for Ms Follett said, “”The Chief Minister has declined all Budget comment to date, so I don’t think she will be responding on this one either.”
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The professional engineers union in ACT Electricity and Water is to step up its campaign this week against ACTEW coming under the ACT Government Service.

It is part of growing opposition to the structure of the proposed separate ACT service. The service is to start on July 1, if Federal and ACT legislation is passed in time. The plan is meeting resistance from unions, lawyers, the Opposition and Independents.

Government sources say that if the July 1 deadline is missed, it may be postponed a full year because of the Federal legislative program and the ACT election.

The president of the ACT branch of the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers Australia, Col Miller, said yesterday that bringing ACTEW under the public service umbrella would prevent good enterprise bargaining and other efficiencies. Every management-workforce arrangement would be subject to “”precedent paranoia” because the Treasury would worry about its effect throughout the service.
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It is a walk of only 25 metres to courage, according to Senator Robert Ray.

He was quoted on this page yesterday by Senator Stephen Loosley referring to MPs using parliamentary privilege instead of walking 25 metres and making their statements outside where they could be sued for libel.

Loosley argued that the smearing of former Senator Graham Richardson under parliamentary privilege showed a need to curb the excesses of parliamentary privilege and the abuse of what has been called the coward’s castle.

In his argument he laid down some very worthwhile and pertinent tests about when privilege should apply, but applied them to the wrong group of people. Let me explain.
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The banks make it as hard as possible for borrowers (business, home and personal). They have different up-front fees, different interest rates, different penalties for early payouts, some have fixed lower rates for the initial period and so on.

How is one to compare the Bank of Apples with the Bank of Pears? Rough guesses? Relying on loans officers at banks?

Which is cheaper: a $80,000 15-year loan fixed at 6.5 per cent for the first year, then to the variable rate of 8.75 per cent with no up-front fees and monthly payments or a $80,000 15-year loan on the variable rate of 8.5 with fortnightly payments and $500 in up-front fees?
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The Opposition points to three alarming things about Labor’s budgetary strategy. Nothing is being done about the ACT’s expensive maladministration of health. Not enough is being done to wean ACTION off its disproportionate subsidies. And the large projected increases in debt.

The alarming thing for the Liberals, though, is that none of these things will cause much pain in the ACT before about 1997, some years after the next election. And politically it is not very satisfactory to say, “”We told you so from the Opposition benches.”

While Labor continues to flitter through the fiscal shopping arcade with a big Bankcard and continues to put the Bankcard bill in the 1997 file, the brats being clothed and fed are happy. While Labor happily spends in one year its unexpected $55 million gift from Uncle Paul, the brats will be contented. They would have yelled if Uncle Paul’s $55 million had been put into the bank for a rainy day.

The Budget papers show that the public-sector financing requirement in 1997-98 on present policies will be $107 million (about 8 per cent of revenue). That has to be borrowed. It cannot be taken from reserves because what little remains of ACT reserves will have been used up to help finance this year’s deficit.
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It is hard to tell what is going on behind the scenes with the ACT TAB. No doubt the racing industry is hoping that the public face of the NSW and ACT negotiations on setting up a new TAB link does not reflect the underlying reality.

In the face of the VITAB fiasco and Victoria giving notice that it will end the ACT’s link with its super-pool, ACTTAB stands to lose a great deal. Medium and large punters will avoid ACTTAB unless it is linked to a major state pool. On its own, the ACT pool is not enough to sustain reasonable odds on many small races. The input of a single medium or large punter could be enough to distort the pool on a given race. The result is erratic returns, often lower than those interstate. With 008 telephone numbers it means the ACT will lose customers.

The ACT now asked NSW to establish a link. NSW has rightly demanded that the ACT sever its arrangement with VITAB which presented the possibility that Australian customers would be wooed off-shore.
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Privatisation continues to be a matter for argument rather than debate in Australia. The issue must be brought beyond the two-legs-good, four-legs-bad syndrome under which the right of the Labor party and the Coalition parties say privatisation is good and the left of the Labor Party say it is bad.

Both sides of politics at both state and federal level should look at the objectives of private and public ownership endeavour by endeavour rather than take a blanket approach. In the past couple of weeks several events had shown some of the pitfalls and benefits of both private and public ownership.

The telephone and post systems have been pivotal in the debate. They contain virtually all the elements of both side of the debate. They have been called natural monopolies because it is better for one organisation to lay and service the millions of kilometres of cable or to deliver letters over a vast continent than to have duplication. They have been required to meet two broad social-justice goals: to provide essential communications services at a reasonable coast for people of small means and to provide the same thing for people living in remote areas of Australia where otherwise cost would make it prohibitive even for the most wealthy. Twenty years ago, few people thought these tasks could be done in Australia other than through government monopolies.
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The Deputy Chief Minister, David Lamont, was in a difficult situation. In his hands was report by Professor Dennis Pearce into the Vitab affair. Presumably, it was highly critical of the ACT TAB board and its chief executive. Presumably, it required some action. Mr Lamont says it required immediate action. So he got legal advice from the chief government solicitor as to how he could remove the board and chief executive and presumably followed it. However, the Assembly was not to sit until Tuesday (Budget day), so realistically, Wednesday was the first day the report could be tabled. Until it is made public, the public cannot judge his actions.

We do know, however, that the board requested that a copy of the Pearce report be made to it and its legal advisers and that Mr Lamont refused that request, saying he was unable to release the report before its tabling in the Assembly. Instead, he gave every member of the board the opportunity to read the report in his office and take whatever notes they wanted.

He then asked each member of the board if they had anything to say as to why they should not have their appointment terminated they should provide it by end of business that day (Friday). He then dismissed those members of the board who did not resign. Cabinet then appointed a new board on Saturday and Mr Lamont instructed it to dismiss the chief executive and appoint a new one.
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