Month: March 1995

Billy Wentworth, at 86 and 23 years after retiring from Federal politics, is re-entering the fray by standing in next week’s by-election in the seat named after his grandfather, the publisher and explorer. He entered Federal Parliament in 1949. Menzies never gave him a Ministry because he was always a maverick and seen as on the left of the Liberal Party. It was after Menzies and Holt that got a ministry _ Minister for Social Serives and Minister in Charge of Aboriginal Affairs in 1968. He held them until the Liberals lost office in 1972. The ministries’ names reflect the attitudes of the times _ some of which Wentworth has retained.

While agreeing in a discussion last week with H. C. Nugget Coombs on economic issues, they parted company on Aboriginal policy, in particular the need for a settlement. Wentworth is more assimilationist and Coombs more self-determinist. Coombs: “”The means are pretty clear now. We should either give it back to them or compensate them for having taken it.” Wentworth: “”I think the second is right. I’m very much in favour in giving the Aborigines a fair go, but I don’t think some of the later developments have been good either for Aboriginal or for Australia.” Coombs: “”They want the decisions to be their decisions not ours. That is the truth of the matter. The moment we are honest about ownership of the land we will see their demands are modest. They want a treaty. Some sort of negotiated settlement.” Wentworth: “”I’m worried about this treaty. There are two troubles. The first is you do not know who to negotiate with. Aboriginal people were divided before we came and are still divided.
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The Liberal-National Party coalition improved its position in all five seats surrounding the ACT. The Liberal Party won the South Coast following the retirement of Independent John Hatton. The other four surrounding seats are all safe coalition seats with two-party-preferred margins before the election as follows: Monaro 12.7; Burrinjuck 8.9; Bega 12.8; Southern Highlands 6.5. In Monaro, to the south-east, sitting National and long-time logging supporter Peter Cochran, increased the two-party preferred vote for the coaltion by between 2 and 3 per cent, taking 59 per cent of the primary vote. In Burrinjuck, to the west of the ACT, the Liberals’ Alby Schultz took his vote up, by something less than 1 per cent, to easily retain the seat with 59 per cent of the primary vote. In Bega, to the east and including Bateman’s Bay, Liberal Russell Smith, also with 59 per cent of primary vote, increased the two-party-preferred by something less than 1 per cent. In Southern Highlands, the Premier John Fahey, took the coalition’s two-party-preferred vote up by between three and four per cent. In all the local seats, except Burrinjuck, the Greens, who were not present or insignifant four years ago, took between 4.5 and 7.25 per cent of the vote _ mostly from Labor and Democrats. The Greens did not stand in Burrinjuck. They did nowhere near as well as in the Federal seat of Canberra at the weekend, but Federal Labor is seen in a worse light by the Greens than NSW Labor. In South Coast, Mr Hatton, a long-time corruption fighter, retired, leaving the way for the Liberals to capture the seat. Mr Hatton’s son, John, stood this time in his father’s place as an independent, but got only 18 per cent of the vote. His father held the seat with an 18 per cent margin.

The Internet boom in Australia may be too much of a good thing for leading modem maker NetComm. NetComm has announced it will scale down export-development activities to concentrate on meeting domestic demand. During the past six months the modem division had a 40 per cent revenue growth and 86 per cent volume. NetComm managing director Chris Howells said best returns in the immediate future would come from within Australia. Work in hand included the acquisition of Internet access provider Connect.Com.Au Pty Ltd; ISDN modems; and high-speed cable modems which, with more hybrid fibre-coax cable for telephone and pay TV, will help Australian users to be the first beneficiaries worldwide of 10 MBs/sec PC interconnection into the home. According to Howells, the $41 million ISDN market in Australia is restricted to larger corporate networking customers. He said there were indications that the total ISDN market in Australia would grow to over $200 million in 1997. Of this, about $50 million that should fall into the area of high volume commodity products.

Canberra is to put in a bid for a co-operative multi-media centre under the Federal Government’s “Creative Nation” statement. The interim chair of the ACT consortium, Neville Higgins, and the Minister for Business, Employment and Tourism, Tony De Domenico, made the announcement last week. Under Creative nation about $60 million over five years would be spent in six multi-media centres. It was likely that Sydney and Melbourne would get at least one each. Multi-media is combined graphics, sound, video and text usually on compact disc for computers, but also delivered on-line. Dr Higgins and Mr De Domenico said Canberra was ideally positioned to get one of the centres.

This was because: Canberra had a highly educated workforce and a higher percentage of it than elsewhere in information industries. Its existing multi-media industry was the largest per-capita in Australia. It had the project in Gungahlin to link 5000 homes with an interactive broadband network which could be used to pilot CD and other interactive product. Canberra had a huge proportion of Australia’s information base _ in government and national institutions. It had the resources of the National Library, the ANU, University of Canberra, CSIRO, National gallery, War Memorial and National Museum National Film and Sound Archives. It had the support of leading Australian world-wide publishers of interactive entertainment titles, such as Electronic Arts, Beam Software and others. Canberra had good education resources. Dr Higgins said the consortium included local multimedia firms, the ANU, UC the Canberra Institute of Technology, Telstra and the CSIRO.
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Independent MLA Michael Moore owes his seat to Labor preferences and Labor voters not expressing a preference, according to the final scrutiny sheets issued by the Electoral Commission at the weekend. And in the other two electorates, far more of the preferences of the excluded Moore Independent candidates went to Labor and the Greens than to the Liberals _ nearly 3 to 1, in fact.

The result adds to the argument put by the Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, that Mr Moore should vote for a Labor Government and her as Chief Minister when the vote is taken in the Assembly on Thursday. It is likely that Mr Moore will not make his intention known until the vote as he is a strong believer in the forum of the Assembly. None the less people close to Mr Moore suggest he does not like the idea of supporting a Chief Minister and party who have been rebuffed by the electorate, and despite some policy differences will support and change. The scrutiny sheets reveal that preferences from David Lamont (who had a fair collection from other excluded Labor candidates) flowed to Mr Moore rather than the Liberals and put him over the line to get the seventh and last seat ahead of the Liberals’ Lucinda Spier. About 3200 of Mr Lamont’s live ballots were exhausted (voters did not express a preference beyond Labor); 700 went to Mr Moore and 300 went to the Liberals. If there had been a significant drift of Mr Lamont’s preferences (including the exhausted ones) it would have been a different story, with a fourth Liberal elected.
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Independent Michael Moore would just as soon be out in the wilds of the Tamani desert or Cape York than weighing up whether Canberra is to be governed by a minority Liberal or minority Labor Government. He has none of the personal ambition that drives many politicians, but he has strong views and passions about certain subjects. They include euthanasia, drug-law reform, education, planning and to a lesser extent the role of the public sector. Superficially, one might think this would make it difficult for either major party to deal with him, but the major parties are lucky that one of Moore’s strong view is about open governance that makes concession-extraction unpalatable to him. In particular, he likes the Assembly _ the legislature _ to have a strong role, both as making the Executive accountable and in deciding key matters of public concern. On the accountability side, he has used his balance-of-power position with Liberal support to get machinery that exerts the Assembly’s power over the Executive. There are now a raft of provisions that make certain Executive acts “”disallowable instruments”. These include key statutory appointments and many actions by ministers. A minority Liberal Government may well rue the days in Opposition when it supported such measures. (And it now appears more likely than not that the Liberals will form minority government.) On the importance of the Assembly, he has a quaint 19th century view that debate on the floor matters and can actually persuade him to vote one way rather than the other.

This is infuriating for the deal-makers of the major parties, and, incidentally, the media who have to wait for the vote to know the outcome. Moore has made no bones about the fact that he regards personalities as very important in determining who should be Chief Minister. He said both before and after the election that the Hare-Clark system would result in people be elected on personal as much as party merit. He said also that his decision on who would be Chief Minister (and in effect it is now his decision) would be determined in part by who might take Ministries, as much as the stated policies of the parties. On this score, education and planning are crucial. Hypothesising for a moment, on the Labor side he might object, for example, to Bill Wood in either role because Wood tends to get driven by bureaucrats. On the Liberal side, he would object to Gary Humphries in education because of his school-closure history and would object to any “”white-shoe brigade” pro-development MLA in planning. That rules them all out bar Humphries, and perhaps the portfolio needs someone with a legal background given how ridden it is with process of one kind or another.
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The 9.5 million Medicare cards held by Australians are to be replaced. An advertising campaign will begin this week urging people to ensure their Medicare address is up to date. Medicare cards with magnetic strips were issued with magnetic strips in 1991 and have a life of five years when they must be replaced for security and wear and tear. The first of the cards will expire at the end of April. About 400,000 cards a month will be replaced in April, May and June and 320,000 a month thereafter. The cost will be about $2 million year and will take about two years. The Minister for Health, Carmen Lawrence, said that people who had made a recent claim and as a result provided a recent address would have a new card issued automatically. But bulk-billed patients and those who had not had a claim in the past six months would need to renew. A letter would be sent inviting renewals. People should check the expiry date of their card and if they did not get a letter, it meant Medicare did not have their address. Cardholders can check their address at any Medicare office or phoning 132011 for the cost of a local call. Dr Lawrence said some leeway would be given, but it was important to have a valid card. The first bulk-bill lodged after expiry would be paid, but subsequent claims would be rejected until the patient got a new card.

It was a contest for the most Machiavellian conduct in the ACT Legislative Assembly yesterday. Was Rosemary Follett, who first raised the name of Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), right in awarding the prize to Michael Moore? She did this because Moore’s proposal for a new committee system _ with himself as chair of the most important one _ had the numbers in the Assembly. Or should the prize go to the Greens voting for a Liberal Government _ on purely local issues, of course, but none the less sending a clear message to Federal Labor that Labor does not have a Gaia-given right to Green preferences or votes? Or should it go to Kate Carnell who within an hour of taking government announced the cupboard is bare, the revenue is down, we will have to tighten the belt? Or should it go to Rosemary Follett herself who _ silent about the sexual harassment charge hanging over the head of a Liberal MLA throughout the whole campaign _ suddenly started talking yesterday about a code of ethics for MLAs? Was is parliamentary privilege that enabled her to talk so freely or is there some new circumstance in her parliamentary party that now makes it possible for her side to be so self-righteous without being charged with hypocrisy? L-plates Only Paul Osborne _ with, as Ms Follett said, L-plates on _ is ineligible.

The prize can be judged on two levels _ one in the true sense of the much-maligned Machiavelli and the other in the popular sense meaning scheming evil-doer. The advice Machiavelli gave to princes (or these days politicians) was to be practical for the greater virtue of the stability of the state. He had seen Italian principalities torn apart through the virtuous but incompetent rulers _ to the great suffering of the people. So his advice was: don’t worry about small virtues if the practice of them will ruin you and make your subjects miserable. On the latter test, Moore would argue he is entitled to forget the virtue of modesty and say that for the good of the ACT he should chair the planning and environment committee because the Greens will have us living in small boxes next to a light-rail station; the Liberals will sell the lot to developers and Labor will flip between residents and developers so no-one will know where they are.
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The Napoleonic dream of fitting the law of the land into one’s pocket comes closer _ but slowly. It is not a question of simplifying the law into one paper book as Napoleon wanted; rather a question of packing the ever-expanding amount of law into an ever smaller electronic space. Recent developments include: The joint publication last week of a CD by the Law Book Company and Aunty Abha of the Commonwealth Acts, Regulations and annotations and NSW Acts and regulations. A new CD by CCH Australia of its 30,000-page Tax Library. It includes all the tax legislation, rulings and explanations. Continuing improvements of case law and statute law by Computer Law Services (DiskROM Australia Ph 2496888) and a continuing push into government departments with its complete consolidation of Commonwealth law and some states’ law.

A promise by the Attorney-General’s Department to get its consolidation of Commonwealth and some states’ law on CD and available to the public in Apple and Windows formats. The Attorney-General, Michael Lavarch, has promised last year that his department would produce the laws of the Commonwealth consolidated in user-friendly electronic format for public access a very low prices. He said that regulations not available electronically would not be enforceable. The promise is taking a lot of time and a lot of money _ to do what the commercial firms say they have already done. Perhaps the Expenditure Review Committee should have a look at this one. The Attorney-General’s Department says it has completed the consolidation of the legislation and regulations on an electronic database.
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The courtroom drama holds a large place in Anglo-Saxon culture. Other countries do not have anything quite like it. The French have their dramas with crimes of high passion, but there is a presumption that the ends will be tidied up in a matter-of-fact way by the judicial system. In continental Europe, the drama ends before the courtroom door; in Anglo-Saxon countries the drama is set there.

The Anglo-Saxon courtroom provides drama’s most important ingredient _ uncertainty. What will happen? “”How to you find the accused? Guilty or Not Guilty.” “”Do you find for the plaintiff or the defendant?” The dramatic tension comes because the audience knows the case can equally go one way or the other. And whole plot lines have been very easily built around courtroom verdicts because the truth can just as easily be something quite different from the verdict or can coincide with it. There would be no dramatic point if verdicts are routinely right. Anglo-Saxon law, therefore provides plenty of material for both the writer or film-maker of fiction and non-fiction.

All this dramatic material and entertainment would be lost if we were silly enough to change the fundamentals of our law so that it was more predictable and that verdicts coincided with the truth more often. Have no fear, when the Federal Government brings down its response this month (MARCH) to the report of the Access to Justice advisory committee, there is no danger it will do anything to take away this fruitful source of dramatic material. The masterful public-relations con job that the common law has perpetrated on Anglo-Saxon societies for more than 100 years has been far too effective for that. The greater the lie and the more often you repeat it the more likely it is to be believed. Under “”our system” it is better that 10 guilty go free than one innocent person gets convicted.
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