Month: April 1995

A cop car is often parked on the verge hidden behind some trees on my way to work. Indeed, I saw the cop and the car again yesterday after a hard morning rush hour making the roads safer for me to drive on. But yesterday was different. The cop actually drove over the space next to a yellow-post bus stop, demounted the gutter and drove off. Yesterday was also different because the day before the High Court had just brought down a decision throwing out a heroin-trafficking conviction because the evidence under-pinning it had been collected illegally. Hello, I thought at 60km-h, this cop has driven over a verge illegally and parked illegally in order to collect evidence to prosecute people for speeding.

I wonder if all the good middle-class easy defendants would form an orderly queue at the High Court to get their fines refunded. Obviously not, but there would be a certain outrage among them that the heroin trafficker goes free. The cases have obvious differences. Mounting kerbs is not in the same league as cops actually importing heroin themselves in order to set up a trap. Moreover, it is probably legal for traffic cops to break the road rules to pursue errant motorists. They also have similarities and pose the question: under what circumstances do you allow the cops to break the law to catch crooks. The answer might be never. The ultimate solution should be to make lawful conduct that would otherwise be unlawful. Someone should authorise police under-cover work that might otherwise be illegal _ because that might be the only way to catch the crims. It’s a problem, though, on a couple of counts.
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1. Rinzin Sherpa 2. Marit Kleppa 3. Sherpa child watches a porters carry trekkers’ packs at Lukla. 4. Tibetan trader who has come to the Nepalese village of Namche Bazar (correct) to sell his wares. 5. Trekkers tents pitched on what was a potato patch at Namche Bazar. Inthe background is Khumbila (5761). 6. Dr Peter Penev (“”Dr Igor”), left, Joe Pilaar, centre, with Peter Aghar who has come out of the Gamow Bag with pulse oximeter attached to his finger. 7. (In news file in the system nuber 4179…… The Gamow Bag with Peter Aghar inside). 8. A Buddhist chorten. Walkers should walk to the left and they are deemed to have said all the prayers on the rock and flags. 9. Trader at Namche Bazar (correct). 10. Our porters, Mora Sata Basad, left, and Tika Ram Nirauia. Behind them is Mount Khumbila (5761m). 11. Sherpa woman and child on the track between Monjo and Nache Bazar in the Everest region.

The Nepalese village of Namche Bazar (subs correct) is filled with incessant clinking of metal against stone _ it is a sign of change. There is no rhythm to it. The clinks are an irregular background noise _ like a movie scene of prisoners in a quarry. But it is not made by prisoners, rather by the stonemasons of Namche Bazar _ a trading village in the Himalayan foothills, just below Mount Everest. It has been a trading centre for centuries as people have come and gone with their yaks through the Himalayan passes from Tibet bringing wool and carpets in return for butter and leather. Three events in the past 100 years have profoundly changed the village (and indeed the whole of the Sherpa highground) _ the last of which has caused all the clinking of stone. The first was the coming of the potato in the mid-nineteenth century which caused a doubling of the population because the potato has a far higher yield than the traditional buckwheat. The second was the subjugation of Tibet by China in the 1950s and the effective closing of the Nepal-Tibet border.

By doing it, the Chinese applied a religious tourniquet to the Sherpas of Nepal, cutting off the Buddhist Nepalese Sherpas from the great Buddhist monasteries to the north. It also caused a partial economic blockade. But the Sherpas are an patient, adaptable people. The passes to Tibet have been at least partially re-opened, even if Chinese repression in Tibet continues, and the Sherpas have taken economic advantage of the third change even if it has come at a cultural price. The third change began in earnest on May 29, 1953, when Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa climbed Mount Everest. Of more immediate import than the conquest was what came in its wake _ a desire by many non-mountaineers to merely to see the mountain close up and a desire by others to climb both Everest and the other major peaks. The Hillary and subsequent expeditions brought with them large support crews, some locally engaged and some from abroad.
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Canadian climber Peter Aghar struggled out of the Gamow Bag and said: “”That feels great.” It was the opposite of the rapture of hypoxia. The bag had been used to re-oxygenate his blood. The Gamow Bag is a tubular pump-up bag a bit bigger that a body and is used to give climbers precious time against altitude sickness. Altitude sickness is quite random. It can strike the fittest, youngest and healthiest while smokers, older people and those who succumb to the slightest head cold seem immune. There is only one cure _ to go down. And even then it can bee too late. The first symptom is headache, then nausea, disorientation and finally coma and death. Not a great deal is known about why it strikes some and not others. For example, Fabian Sada Sherpa (the guide on our Peregrine trek in the Himalayas) told of a marathon runner who has succumbed at 3400 metres.

Perhaps the lack of knowledge is due to altitude sickness _ which is invariably self-induced _ quite rightly not being high on the list of world public-health priorities. To get greater knowledge a Canadian group from Canadian Himalayan Expeditions with a couple of doctors was in the Himalayas earlier this month with a couple of gadgets to record what happens to human bodies of various shapes, sizes and fitness. I was lucky to catch up with them at Namche Bazar at 3446 metres and again a couple of days later at Thyangboche (3875m). For those who will never measure height above sea level in anything by feet, that is 11,306 feet and 12,713 feet, respectively. They were going to climb Island Peak (6360m, 21,000ft), recording data on what was happening to their bodies.

They had two critical gadgets: the Gamow Bag, or portable hyperbaric bag, and the pulse oximeter. The pulse oximeter is a very neat piece of work. It is about the size of a large portable phone. Attached to it by wire cord is an enclosed finger slot about half the size of a match box. You put you finger in the slot and the machine reads both your pulse and the percentage saturation of oxygen in the blood. At sea level it should be a tad under 100 per cent. The two readings are related. The heavier you breathe to compensate for the thin oxygen, the higher your pulse and the better your oxygen saturation. In the long term (several months) people at high altitudes produces a higher proportion of haemoglobin _ the oxygen bearing red cells in the blood. It works by a small infra-red beam measuring the redness of the blood which is an indicator of oxygen saturation. Dr Peter Penev of Toronto explained that of the percentage of oxygen saturation drops suddenly you are in trouble.
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The Victorian Government has come under increasing pressure in the past week to have an inquiry into the lead up to the resignation late last year of the Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions, Bernard Bongiorno, and more particularly into the role in that of the Victorian Attorney-General, Virginia Wade. Allegations have been made in the ABC program Four Corners and elsewhere that Mrs Wade attempted to undermine Mr Bongiorno, by attempting to force him out by cutting his legislative powers.

The allegations were that she did this because Mr Bongiorno had played a key role in the prosecution of former Liberal federal president John Elliott and because he had mooted the prosecution of the Premier, Jeff Kennett, for contempt over comments he had made about the arrest of a serial killer. Essentially, the allegations involve the undermining of an independent quasi-judicial officer for political reasons. They are serious allegations and warrant inquiry. It is folly to dismiss the allegations by asserting an elected government has a right to rearrange the legislative base of the office of the DPP as it sees fit because the office, though a fairly recent one, has now attained an almost quasi-constitutional status, somewhat equivalent to the judiciary. England has had an independent Director of Public Prosecutions for more than three decades.
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What is the alternative? Well, the National Association for the Prevention of Child Abuse has come up with 101 alternatives to smacking children. Ore accurately, children themselves have come up with the 101 alternatives. The association asked children to come up with suitable alternatives to corporal punishment and published the results this week. Interestingly, the children did not come up with ludicrous ideas of being fed ice-cream or being sentenced to watch the next 20 episodes of the Simpsons. They took the thing seriously and put forward reasonable suggestions about non-violent punishment.

One can sympathise with the stressed parent in the super-market, the stressed parent arbitrating insoluble disputes about which television channel should be watched or dividing the small remnant of disposal income among vigorously disputing children. Too often, however, the solution is an instant resort to violence, to the smack. Surprisingly, when the children grow bigger, big enough to strike back, suddenly parents find that violence as a disciplinary mechanism is no longer available. Then they have to resort to other means, such as denying the car keys or refusing to budge on Saturday night to make way for a party. Of course, the fact that parents of older children have to resort to non-violent tactics once the physical balance with their children tilts the other way shows the bankruptcy of the earlier violent tactics. In short, violence against a weaker human being is morally inexcusable, even if it might be understandable in the context of the pressures of modern society. That being the case, the production of (ital) 101 Alternatives to Whacking a Child (end ital) is commendable and welcome. Violence begets violence. If children at an impressionable age are given the impression that it is acceptable and normal to resort to violence, they will tend to follow that pattern in their own adulthood.
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It is unfortunate that the very desirable fixed parliamentary terms in the ACT and NSW end with elections in February and March, rather than in December. It has meant that with the change of governments in both places a financial hiatus that would have been better dealt in the quieter summer months than in April, just before the Federal Budget. The result has been the postponing of both places’ Budgets. Ideally, it would have been better for Budgets to have been brought down just before the end of the financial year.

The dates of the fixed terms are unlikely to be changed, however. Besides, the ACT has a greater problem of a steadily mounting fiscal imbalance. The Chief Minister, Kate Carnell, says that a full range of reform measures cannot be ready by the earlier Budget date of June 20, so the full Budget is to be put off until September rather than locking in a lesser range of measures for a year from June 20. There is some merit in that approach. It is almost routine for incoming governments to declare the fiscal cupboard bare and that the poor management of the previous government calls for drastic financial measures. Usually there is some truth in it because governments that have been in power a while have a natural tendency towards financial optimism. In the case of the ACT, the former government has been accused of indulging in a $10 million off-Budget spending spree and the ACT Treasury has estimated that without spending cuts the ACT will have a debt of $275 million by the end of the decade.
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The High Court’s judgment last week to free a heroin trafficker because evidence used to convict him had been obtained illegally has been condemned more than it has been praised. Police had engaged in the controlled import of heroin in order to get the conviction. The court rejected a defence of entrapment, but said the illegality of the evidence-gathering was of such a grave nature that public policy demanded the exercise of judicial discretion to exclude the evidence. The result would be an acquittal. The High Court was between the devil and the deep blue sea. On one hand, it faced condoning the illegal conduct of the police. On the other, it faced freeing someone who was obviously a heroin trafficker. The six majority judges preferred the latter. The lone dissenter said the conviction could be upheld while condemning the police conduct, even suggesting they be prosecuted. The majority judges, however, thought that mere judicial statements condemning police conduct would be hollow. There is some truth in that.

They thought that as the police had engaged in the very conduct that the law in this case had been designed to prevent, namely the import of heroin. It is unfortunate that this has resulted in a quashed conviction of someone otherwise guilty, but that may be the price to get the whole issue fixed. One of the case’s leading critics has been Justice Minister, Duncan Kerr. He is proposing to legalise some police controlled activity that would otherwise be illegal. This sounds all right. But there are no easy answers. The history of Australian policing _ with corruption, at times, leading to the highest levels _ gives no cause for complete faith in the police to control the their own use of crime to catch criminals.
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After half a decade, some sanity has prevailed on Acton Peninsula and Kingston foreshore. Only by historical accident did the ACT get jurisdiction over Acton, and then only partial jurisdiction. That accident was that a hospital happened to be on the site and the Federal Government, in the lead-up to self government in 1989 was determined that health be a territory matter. In a word _ Acton came with the territory.

Once the hospital went, there was no need for the ACT to retain control. Similarly with Kingston. Once a new home could be found for the Federal government printer, there was no need for the Federal Government to have the site. Current land use was a silly determinant what should be “”national” land and what should be “”territory” land. A better determinant is natural geography and proximity to national institutions.
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The committee reviewing Australia’s honours system has found widespread dissatisfaction that the system is rewarding too many public servants, politicians, judges, doctors and academics and not enough people who do voluntary community work and women and people from ethnic groups. The committee has received submissions from around Australia and is to report to the Government later in the year. People did not like people getting honours for just doing their job or merely for long service. There is merit in those views.

It often seems that the honours list is in inverse proportion to degree of effort. Some appear to get a top honour for working in business or the public service where they are well paid and get status and respect from the job anyway, while voluntary community workers, especially in rural areas, get the lower awards. That said, the system permits anyone in the community to nominate someone. True, the more highly educated are more likely to know the system, none the less, with broader knowledge of the system, more voluntary workers, women and people from ethnic communities should get nominated. Whether they get the top awards, however, is another matter.
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