Month: May 1995

Queensland’s halving of stamp duty on shares is likely to be another poisonous apple in the fools’ paradise of competitive federalism.It is similar to the abolition of death duties by the ageing Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen in the 1970s. Other states felt forced to follow. But the stamp-duty move is likely to spread more quickly. This is because to take advantage of Queensland’s death-duty abolition, you had to pay the price of dying in Queensland _ which meant, of course, that you had to pay the (perhaps greater) price of living there beforehand.Similarly, when the states compete with each other over who can offer the lowest payroll tax, you have to move your workers to that state to take advantage of it.

However, the stamp duty on share transactions is different. Most shares are held electronically and all are transferred electronically. It is easy enough for stockbrokers to set up an agency in Queensland and do all of the transfers there. At present the market turns over $128 billion a year. At the present tax rate of 0.6 per cent, the total stamp duty would be $768 million, less about $155 million lost to overseas transactions. NSW and Victoria raise about $250 million each. The ACT gets $12 million. Leaving $100 million shared by the rest. Queensland is likely to take a very hefty slice of the NSW and Victoria share. Initially, it may find that by reducing the duty from 0.6 per cent to 0.3 per cent, it will pick up more than enough extra volume of transactions to make up for the loss in percentage taken from each transaction. Unless, the other states fall into line and reduce their tax. If this happens, the usually wealthy shareholders of Australia will gain about $384 million a year at the expense of state revenues which usually go to schools, hospitals and roads.
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Senator Bob McMullan has reassured us that any bugging of the Chinese Embassy would not result in a trade disadvantage. He said about the allegations _ that the Foreign Minister would neither confirm nor deny _ that Chinese officials would talk about trade inside the building to Australians, so the Americans _ who got first bite at the intelligence _ would not have got an advantage. Sounds like McMullan is acknowledging the truth of the bugging allegation _ that the embassy was laced with fibre optics during its construction.

The Attorney-General’s Department was pretty hot on the allegations, too. They desperately attempted to suppress them and even suppress the fact that the department was trying to suppress the allegations. The sinister nature of suppressing the fact of suppression was illustrated with an exchange with The Canberra Times. When told by a departmental officer that the Government would seek suppression of the act of suppression itself, The Canberra Times representative (who has wide knowledge in this field) said something like: “”This is unprecendented!” To which the departmental officer replied sagely: “”No; it’s not.” Of course, only he and his department would know. Anyway, McMullan’s comments and the vigour with which the government attempted to suppress the story indicate it is true. The media have been chastised, implicitly, for not acting “”in the national interest” by blowing this story when they should have voluntarily suppressed it. It is a view that does not sit well with the law _ a law passed by the Australian Parliament. The Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Act embraces into Australian law the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Section 7 says: “”Articles 1, 22 to 24 (inclusive) and 27 to 40 (inclusive) of the Convention have the force of law in Australia and in every external Territory.” Article 22 says: “”1. The premises of the mission shall be inviolable.
Continue reading “1995_05_may_columnmay30”

The cry is out for Tony De Domenico to stand down pending an inquiry by the Act Human Rights Office into allegations by a former member of his staff into allegations of sexual harassment. Mr De Domenico should stand his ground and the Chief Minister, Kate Carnell, should resist the cries. The reason is because of the nature of the process of investigation into sexual harassment in the ACT and indeed in the rest of Australia.

The Discrimination Act is at great pains to provide as informal process as possible. It works under the assumption that the sexual harassed and others in society likely to be discriminated against are likely to be intimidated by formality and unnecessarily complex processes to instigate an investigation. And so the Act provides that all a complainant need do is put the complaint in writing and name the alleged perpetrator. From there, the Act Human Rights Office takes over the case.

Once it does, it is given very wide discretionary powers about gather evidence and the way it will conduct its inquiry. Informality is all the rage. This is very unlike the process of criminal investigation. A criminal investigation usually begins with a complaint to the police _ not to the person or organisation that will conduct the inquiry. The police then scurry off digging up more evidence and then present it to the Director of Public Prosecutions or some other prosecuting arm. The prosecutor then decides if there is enough evidence to press charges, usually determined according to whether there is a reasonable prospect of securing a conviction.
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Someone must have designed the roads near the Erindale Centre very carefully. Every time I go there I get lost. At the weekend, someone else was driving. He assumed the semi-automaton state of a driver who can’t find something. I was developing a small architectural and landscaping thesis about Canberra which began with Erindale Centre, but it was totally lost on him, so I thought it should go to a wider audience. Erindale does not have an entrance.

Nor does it have a decent sign to say what it is. And there are precious few signs pointing the way to it. Buildings throughout Canberra suffer from lack of entrance and good signage. Take the National Gallery of Australia, for example. The sign outside is pitiful. You wouldn’t know you were there unless you had a map. The gallery doesn’t seem to know whether it’s address is King Edward Terrace or the lake shore. So it tucks its entrance at the side. The National Science and Technology is the same. You drive down King Edward Terrace and you see what looks like the grand front entrance, but it turns out to be fake.
Continue reading “1995_05_may_column16may”

Late at night, just before deadline some drunk would ring the sports desk. With slurred words he would ask: “”Me and me mate wuz just having a bet, see. We wanna know which horse came last in the 1953 Melbourne Cup.” On another night it would football. Rarely cricket. That was a decade and a half ago, when people still went to pubs and made obscure sporting bets. Now the obscure sporting bet is under threat from another source and a story will illustrate the point. In Nepal last month, miles from the nearest phone or newspaper sports desk, several Australian and English trekkers bizarrely starting talking about the FA Cup.

I told them about the time I went to an FA Cup final. I was in England in 1983 on one of those onerous journalists’ fact-finding missions and the organisers had arranged for us to go to Wembley Stadium on a quiet Monday, just after the weekend’s final. But the final had been a draw and had to be replayed that Wednesday night. Would we like tickets? And thus I went to the Manchester United vs Brighton final, I told my fellow trekkers. “”Brighton!” the Englishman scoffed. “”Brighton has never been in an FA Cup final. It’s in the bottom of the fourth division.” “”I’m pretty sure it was Brighton,” I replied _ taken aback at being accused of being on a fact-finding mission and not finding the critical fact of the team names of the competing finalists who played before my own eyes. “”It was Brighton,” I repeated.
Continue reading “1995_05_may_column09may”

Last year when Neighbourhood Watch ill-advised people to resist intruders with “”utmost force”, I made the reluctant observation that whatever the law said in theory, “”as a rule of thumb, police do not charge people with assault, manslaughter or murder when an intruder with proven guilty intent is set upon by householder.” And so it was last week that police in Queensland did not charge a man who shot dead a 16-year-old intruder. It was a bit of shame because it would have given a more balanced view of the risks facing householders and a more balanced view of their rights. There are not many cases on issue. This may seem surprising, but it is a natural consequence of the rarity of householders having to confront intruders in Australia. Burglars go to extraordinary lengths to ensure the occupiers of the houses they burgle are out. The rarity of cases is also due to the unfortunate tendency by police not to charge house-holders who shoot, kill or maim intruders.

I take this perverse view, not in defence of criminals who break into houses, but of the householders themselves and to defend the principle of the rule of law (even if it is so often unsatisfactorily applied in Australia these days). On defending householders themselves, much has been correctly written about how a gun in the house is much more likely to be used to kill or maim someone in the household than an intruder. Suicide, accidental shootings and shootings of innocent intruders are more common than the shooting of criminal intruders. Guns put the householder and family at risk. Also the householder can be sued for shooting innocents. That aside, the reasoning for householders to arm themselves does not stand up. The actual threat of being assaulted by an intruder is virtually non-existent and there are better means than guns to minimise it further.
Continue reading “1995_05_may_column02may”

The anarchic freedom of the Internet, nurtured if not conceived in Australia in the best academic tradition of free flow of knowledge, has been flogged off at a steal to Telstra (Telecom’s commercial name). The Australian Academic Research Network (AARNet) is the Australian gateway to the Internet _ which itself was generated 25 years ago in the US as a lose connection between universities for transmission of academic matter. With the invention of the cheap PC and modem greater numbers of people have connected by phone to hub “”sites” through AARNet to the Internet.

The sites with 10 or more phone lines and a large computer are run by companies and non-profit groups. They pass messages to the 20 million users connected to the net. They provide access to information stored at other sites. They store material in their own sites which is available to all. And they provide different rules and rates for access competitively. There are several hundred of them in Australia. Telstra has bought that client base. There are thousands of sites throughout the world. They and the users who connect to them are the Internet _ no-one has overall control. Academics are fearful because Telstra has a deal with Microsoft for a separate information network called On Australia. Telstra says it will be separate. Some academics are fearful that the Chinese wall will disappear and Microsoft will end up in control.
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