Month: June 1995

The British Prime Minister, John Major, has told Conservative dissidents to put up or shut up by declaring the leadership vacant and re-standing for the position. It is, however, a naive attempt to pre-empt a successful leadership challenge before the next election. It is apparent that no-one in the party has the numbers now to depose him. But that does not mean that even if he retains the leadership (challenged or unchallenged) next week that he will retain it until the next election. The history of leadership challenges in Westminster democracies shows the contrary. Invariably, the first vote is but a first round in a wider contest and a repeat bout becomes inevitable. The phenomenon is almost akin to boxing or the challenge of a buck deer. If anything the first encounter encourages a second rather than pre-empting it.

At first blush it might seem that the Euro-sceptics are at the bottom of John Major’s woes. This growing group of MPs _ now numbering almost 60 out of the Conservatives 340 or so MPs _ are concerned about what they see as Britain’s surrender of sovereignty to European bureaucrats in Brussels. Britain’s relationships in Europe have been contentious in both major parties for 25 years. MPs on both sides have taken views contrary to the their leadership either from conviction or opportunism. However, Europe is not the issue. Ultimately Britain must embrace Europe, even if that means a surrender of some sovereignty in the name of uniformity. Economically, it can only be to Britain’s benefit. Politically and socially there will be swings and roundabouts which will be the excuse for some MPs to tilt at the leadership.
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The Organisation for Economic Growth and Development which groups the main industrialised countries issued grim news for Australia this week.It used usual economic jargon to portray the bad news. It said the tightening of monetary and fiscal policy would not be enough to contain inflationary pressures and the current account deficit. In simple terms, we have lived on the international credit card too long and the steps the Government has taken are not enough to fix the problem. In the past, Australian Governments have frequently blamed international conditions for economic maladies at home. This time it cannot. The OECD says nearly all other nations are doing well. It might be slightly galling for some Australians to see New Zealand doing better than Australia at the Rugby World Cup, but it is of greater hurt to see that that Australian Governments did not have the fortitude of New Zealand Governments to make the hard decisions in the past decade that now enable New Zealanders to say they are doing better economically than Australia _ having cut their overseas debt and reduced unemployment at the same time keeping inflation reasonably low. Australia has kept inflation low, but foreign debt remains dangerously high. It was this element of Australian economy that caused the OECD to sound the alarm bell.

The Minister for Trade, Senator Bob McMullan, has rightly warned that the foreign debt cannot be turned around quickly; that investment decisions take time to come through; that capital imports are needed to give rise to import replacement. However, this is all the more reason to get good policy in place quickly so those slow processes can begin.
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The Federal Government got into a constitutional hole with its unfair dismissal legislation and the result has been costly for employers. The Australian Chamber of Commerce published a survey last week showing that employers were s concerned about the costs of the legislation that they were reluctant to hire full-time employees, preferring to hire part-timers and casuals.

In earlier times, a worker’s remedy for unfair dismissal largely depended on whether he or she was in a union. If so, industrial muscle could be used to get a reinstatement. If not, the worker was largely at the boss’s mercy. Thoughts by various state governments to apply a uniform law irrespective of union membership, until recently, fell on barren ground because it was thought such laws would play into the hands of already-too-strong unions. Several states have some unfair-dismissal provisions. Others do not.
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The president of the ACTU, Martin Ferguson, drew a very long bow indeed in attempting to link the gross civil rights abuses against unionists in Indonesia with the fairly modest changes, on world standards, made to industrial law in Victoria and Western Australia. Victoria and Western Australia rated small mentions in the annual survey of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. The report said that following changes to the law many workers had migrated to the Federal system. This is hardly surprising given the Federal Government’s favourable treatment of the union movement. However, mere movement of a large number of unionists to a regime which positively discriminates in their favour is no indication that the regimes they migrated from were engaged in active repression and civil rights abuses or, indeed, were involved in anything untoward at all.

The changes in Western Australia and Victoria merely took away some of the quite over-bearing power of unions and union officials in those states. To make comparisons with deplorable violence and discrimination against unions in other countries does the union movement in Australia no credit.

When judging the position of the industrial-relations laws in Victoria and Western Australia, the important test is the position of individuals.
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Federal Treasurer Ralph Willis has described the Australian Democrats’ decision to block the Budget’s building hardware tax as “populist and opportunist”. There is some truth in that; the Senate minor parties do not have to concern themselves with the overall fiscal picture. There is also some truth in the statement by Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot that the tax is unfair. It is also inefficient and hypocritical. Of itself, it is not large _ raising between $200 and $250 million a year. However, it exemplifies several major defects in the political landscape. The first is that the Budget process is not an especially good one for dealing with changes of policy, even the detail of fiscal policy. The secrecy that surrounds it may have been acceptable and workable 20 or 30 years ago. However, as government and society get more complex, more consultation is required to make better policy.

Secondly, the question of the Senate’s power over money Bills, not just Supply, is still not satisfactory. Raising taxes and spending money are the fundamentals of government. If the Senate flexes itself in the fiscal field, Australia will go down the American road of Budgets by compromise. The Senate is a fine general checking chamber (it has long lost its role of protecting states’ rights), but this should not run to major items of raising and spending money.
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The Legislative Assembly’s Planning and Environment Committee has shut the sheep pen door four months after the dipped sheep got away. Earlier this week the committee heard from two toxicologists that the health of residents living near former sheep dip sites had not suffered anything from abnormal levels of arsenic in the soil.

Just before the last election, though, the Government offered to buy the houses of several residents in Theodore for well over market values, and in at least one case the offer was accepted. Given that people had lived on these sites for some years _ and for several decades in another site in Lyneham _ without ill effect, ratepayers might well conder why the toxicologists were not consulted before the buy-out offers, rather than after it. But then perhaps there was not a great deal of time between the time the arsenic issue arose and the election. Elections tend to have this effect.

Perhaps it was inevitable that arsenic, residences and children would give rise to an emotive cocktail and that in these circumstances no government, government department is likely to win.
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Some of the concerns about diversionary conferencing to deal with crime must be looked at by the ACT Attorney-General, Gary Humphries. Diversionary conferencing is a method of making criminals meet their vicitims. Its present application in the ACT is called the Re-Integrative Shaming Experiment. The experiment is well worth doing and appears to be more effective than standard methods of dealing with some crime.

It is apparent from the past 200 years of “”experiment” with dealing with crime in Australia that jail, hangings, whippings and prohibition have manifestly failed. Some lateral thinking is needed. Atavistic cries for revenge gets nowhere, and pandering to those cries by politicians like the NSW leaders John Fahey and Bob Carr is more heinous because the perpetrators know what they are doing and are doing it for purely selfish, political reasons. We may often bemoan the quality of our politicians in the ACT, but Mr Humphries and his Labor predecessor Terry Connolly did not engage in the cynical, pre-election auction of penalities that occurred in NSW. Research is showing that offenders who have to confront their victims and their victims’ families are less likely to re-offend than those who go through the court process. It seems particularly promising for young first offenders.
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The ACT constitutional position was canvassed obliquely a couple of times in the past week. One fanciful idea was that its boundaries could be extended to embrace Goulburn and perhaps other places in NSW who feel ill-served by NSW. The other more significant one was floated by the Leader of the Opposition, John Howard, who suggested that his people’s convention which would canvass the republic and other constitution could canvass the possibility of new states, particularly the Northern Territory. The only other possibility on the mainland is the ACT and off-shore island territories. The latter simply do not have the economic or population base to be considered. In any debate about the ACT’s boundaries or possibility of statehood, the historical position of the territory must take paramount place.

The territory was created because jealousies between Melbourne and Sydney caused them to rule each other out. The only way through the impasse was to create a separate capital. It was provided for in the Constitution. It was to be within the state of NSW, more than 100 miles (160 kilometres) from Sydney, 100 square miles or more in area and vested in the Commonwealth. The large area and the vesting in the Commonwealth were thought necessary to prevent land speculation. If the Commonwealth owned the land and could only lease it to holders and if there were enough of it, land speculators could not buy up the land around the new capital and make a killing. Beyond that, the ACT’s borders have no geographic, ethnic, linguistic or historic foundation. To use them as the basis for the creation of a separate state would be absurd. Mr Howard did not suggest this, but it is possible that others might pick up his words about new states to suggest the ACT might be a candidate.
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The ACT Government has agreed to set up an inquiry into how the ACT Department of Environment Land and Planning undercharged the Yowani Golf Club $1.5 million in betterment tax for a housing development. The Minister for Planning, Gary Humphries, initially expressed concerned that there would be another expensive inquiry which might find no more than a difference of legal opinion. Independent MLA Michael Moore, however, counters that the Yowani error might be symptomatic of a wider problem. If that is the case, the cost of an inquiry would be chicken feed. The Yowani matter is disturbing.

The general problem is that decades ago many bodies were given the use of a large tracts of Commonwealth land for sport, charity and club purposes. When the city grew, these clubs thought they could make a large profit by building houses or offices on the land. But the profit in the change of land use rightly belongs to the community and should be protected by the betterment tax system. When the land use is changed, the lessees should pay the difference in value to the community in the form of a tax, less perhaps a small percentage for margins of error in valuations; and incentive to develop to more efficient land uses as the city grows and for the administrative convenience in having the existing holder do the development _ say a discount of 10 to 20 per cent for existing lessees like Yowani to change land use from golf to housing. But the Yowani got a 50 per cent discount, which is an unjustifiable transfer of community assets to a few members of a golf club and a developer. The department initially agreed this was the rate. Later legal advice says this was an error and that Yowani should have paid an 80 per cent tax. Perhaps this indicates a mere clash of legal opinion.
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After 18 months of consideration, the Government is finally to respond tomorrow to the report of the Republic Advisory Committee which itself took five months to draft. The delay caused the chair of the committee, Malcolm Turnbull, to chastise the Government last month, saying that the debate was in danger of losing its momentum. If Prime Minister Paul Keating is to respond adequately to that criticism he must outline a solid government preference on some, if not all, of the key points of contention. It will not be enough merely to state that Australia should be a republic and that the Head of State should be an Australian.

That much is obvious, and, indeed, inevitable. The main issues include: the method of selecting a president; the powers of the president; Supply; and the timing of a referendum to implement the change. It seems fairly apparent that matters like the flag, a Bill of Rights and changes to the Commonwealth-state balance are, quite rightly, not part of the republican agenda. The Republic Advisory Committee set out the issues and a key conumdrum in the debate. On the method of selecting it canvassed popular election and election by a special majority of Parliament. Opinion it canvassed and opinion polls show the former to be preferred by the people. Paradoxically, though, the people want a non-partasan president who is a symbol. However, that is more likely to come out of an election by Parliament where the special majority (say, two-thirds) would result in the major parties vetoing each other’s candidate.
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