Month: June 1995

There is an underlying misconception by both the Federal Government and Opposition in their tussle this week over the “”battlers”. Both sides take as their misconception that the Federal Government is responsible for, and therefore can control, the totality of economic and social life in Australia. They assume that if anything is not going well, it is the Government’s fault and if anything is going well the Government can take the credit. The illogical leap here is that if the “”battlers” _ whoever they might be _ are doing badly, then the Federal Government is to blame.

The danger in both major parties adopting this assumption is that it engenders an attitude of dependency and almost helplessness. We must hope the leaders engage in a more sophisticated debate in the lead up to the election than: “”The “battlers’ are doing badly it’s the Government’s fault” vs “”Not true. The “battlers’ are being helped by the Government and have never had it so good.” In the past week both sides have engaged in idiotic accounting exercises that purport to show that people on average incomes are X dollars better or worse off than when Labor came to office in 1983. The calculations are meaningless and so are the reasons for doing them. A myriad of non-government factors help determine Australia’s economic performance and therefore the income of the “”battlers”. A more refined debate would isolate what precisely it has been about government policy and administration that have made Australian life better or worse _ both economically and socially. At present that exercise carries more danger for the Liberal Party than the Labor Party. The Labor Party can easily point to specific benefits its policies have given specific groups.
Continue reading “1995_06_june_leader03jun”

Canberra has no national cemetery similar to Arlington in Washington. It means that leading Australians are buried or their ashes scattered in various parts of Australia and, indeed, the world. Most notably, the bodies or ashes of Australia’s dead Prime Ministers are in graves in quite obscure places, if marked at all.

Some of the graves, especially that of Ben Chifley, are not in good condition. The epitaph on his grave has weathered beyond legibility. Clearly the family should have the final say on the type and place of a memorial. However, at present there is no national cemetery option; and there should be one. A starting point could well be a place with memorials to all the dead Prime Ministers with plaques telling something of their life, where they are buried, where their ashes or in Harold Holt’s case something about his disappearance in the surf. It is understandable that in the past families of Australian leaders did not want burials or memorials in Canberra. Canberra was a smaller place and somewhat remote. That is no longer the case. Further the creation of the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier in Canberra showed that Canberra, as the national capital, is the place for events, memorials, institutions and symbols of national significance.
Continue reading “1995_06_june_leader03jua”

The Prices Surveillance Authority is looking at several options on ensuring basic bank services remain accessible to all Australians. The banks, predictably enough, have cried foul. They say the authority’s intervention will amount to reregulation of the banks. The authority, quite rightly, points out that where market forces fail, regulation can correct the failures. Few would want a return to the highly regulated banking and financial markets of the 1970s. There have been great benefits to competition. Consumers have been presented with greater choice and businesses have been presented with cost savings. However, the banks have been fairly single-minded in their determination to make the users of bank services pay for what they use and to end the cross-subsidisation of small-account holders by large-account holders.

They say this is the way to greater efficiency. That is certainly true when looked at from a purely economic perspective and true when viewed from a narrow single-industry perspective. But banking is different from other industries. It has an important social dimension. This dimension is hard to quantify in financial terms, but history shows that a stable currency and stable financial system is a key ingredient to political stability and ultimately civil peace. No-one would suggest that there is any serious danger in Australia of financial or political collapse. None the less it is important that the banks are aware of the underlying social element to their business. That social element has strengthened in recent times with the decline of cash and easily negotiable cheques as principal means of paying wages and social security.
Continue reading “1995_06_june_leader01jun”

Gareth Evans has set us straight. It was the media reportage of the bugging of the Chinese Embassy that did all the damage to Australia’s international relations _ not the bugging itself. If only the media had not reported it, Australian Government agents could have happily continued to receive transmissions from the embassy and no-one would have been in the least bit embarrassed. International relations would not have been damaged. Evans is quite right, of course. Good international relations can be severely damaged by the truth. Evans has decided that the best way to stop a repeat performance is to make it a crime for the media and others to disclose security information _ whatever that is going to mean. The only defence would be that the security agents were acting illegally. There will be no over-riding public interest defence. The media should be grateful, though. In the three most notable recent cases of security disclosures the agents were probably acting illegally _ smashing into the Sheraton Hotel; mistreating ASIS employees; and bugging an embassy in contravention of the Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Act which embraces into Australian law the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

That convention binds the receiving state into not intruding upon the embassies of sending states and into ensuring free communications by the embassy. The Australian Government will have to convince Parliament to repeal parts of this law if it wants to continue bugging foreign embassies and retain the ability to prosecute those who dare disclose the fact. The spying game is such hypocrisy. If we goodies do it, it is “”in the national interest”. If those baddies do it, it is an outrage. Governments do not like disclosure of spying precisely because it exposes this hypocrisy. Bizarrely, Evans also wants to reinvigorate the co-operative voluntary D-notice system whereby the media agrees not to disclose certain security matters.
Continue reading “1995_06_june_gareth”

The Opposition and minor-party senators better have a good look at Gareth Evans’s proposed law to make it a crime for the media to disclose security information. There is a dangerous circularity about his plan that puts the Government above scrutiny. The law proposes that it be a crime to disclose “”security information”; that trials be held in secret and that the only defence be “”illegality under Australian law of an act the subject of a disclosure”. Under the ASIO Act “”security” is defined as the protection of the Australian people from espionage, sabotage, politically motivated violence, promotion of communal violence, attacks on the defence system and acts of foreign interference. Evans has not put forward his definition of security information, but presumably it will take a similar form. If so, it will embrace quite a wide field. This is in a package with secret trials and only one defence of illegality. It has the potential for significant breaches of civil liberties and for a government to hide a range of unsavoury, if not illegal, activity. It will also cause a deal of uncertainty. We saw that last week with the disclosure of the bugging of the Chinese Embassy.

The Government clearly did not want that disclosed. Under Evans new law, a media organisation might be able to defend itself on the ground that bugging the Chinese Embassy is illegal because the Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Act embraces into Australian law the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and that convention says the premises of a mission shall be inviolable. But what was Evan’s approach to that argument? He suggested that the bugs (if there were any!) were legal because they had been obtained under warrant. The ASIO Act has a convoluted double negative to support Evans’s proposition. It says listening devices are illegal unless you get consent or a warrant from the Minister (not a court). There are still arguments that support the view that the Diplomatic Act might over-ride that, but that is a side issue. The real issue is Evans’s thinking. It suggests he will frame his new gagging law that way. It would mean the mere issuing of a warrant by the Minister to install listening devices would be enough to make the bugging legal. Drawing the analogy with present law, the same would apply to search warrants and phone tapping. And, perhaps, ministerial warrant could make legal a host of activities that might otherwise be illegal.
Continue reading “1995_06_june_forum03”

Many are called to the deputy leadership, but few are chosen.On the post-war record Kim Beazley has about one chance in five of becoming Prime Minister and about one chance in three of becoming Leader of the Opposition without being Prime Minister.

The deputy leadership of one of the two major political parties in Australia is not part of a natural progression to the Prime Ministership.

Since 1945 only three deputies went smoothly to party leader and at the time or later election to the Prime Ministership. And all held the Prime Ministership only a short time. They were Harold Holt, Billy McMahon and Gough Whitlam.
Continue reading “1995_06_june_deputy”

Rather than selecting their judges from the ranks of long-practising lawyers, they train them specially for a judicial role virtually from the moment they leave law school. Combined with the investigative method in courtrooms, it tends to get to the truth of cases more surely, quickly and cheaply than our adversary system. European judges ask a lot of questions of witnesses and even call witnesses, unlike Anglo-Saxon ones who leave it to the lawyers to put their case and sit mute while critical questions go unasked, usually for tactical purposes which are detrimental to the search for the truth.

It may be all right when both sides have equal legal strength, either from their own or the state’s resources. If not, the outcome is likely to be unfair.

This is one of the troubling things about Gary Humphries’ proposal to bring back lawyers into the planning appeals process, by attaching the Land and Planning Appeals Board to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The previous Government set up a lawyer-free system where each party came and presented its own case to the appeals board. Lawyers were not permitted represent parties. The trouble was that the bench was virtually lawyer-free, too. It meant appeals were heard devoid of legal input; injustice, inconsistency and procedural unfairness were inevitable.
Continue reading “1995_06_june_column27jun”

The ACT Government squibbed it with compulsory third-party car insurance. Rather than look at how the scheme works, it merely passed on the extra costs to motorists. They amount to $74 a year _ a 40 per cent increase.

The Law Society calls the action “responsible”. Perhaps that is because its members have so much to gain by the present system.

Under the present scheme everyone pays a $252 premium to insure themselves against legal liability from injuring someone on the roads. That liability flows from proof of fault and proof of damage. Establishing that proof is done by lawyers either by negotiation or in court.
Continue reading “1995_06_june_column20jun”

Here’s three chairs for tall young women Second-last par cuts. Make sure last par stays column ex CRISPIN HULL Thank heavens for all those very tall, young women in their early 20s. It means I can put aside earlier thoughts of lodging a complaint for sexual and disability discrimination. It sounds a bit weird, but let me explain. My disability is having exceptionally long thigh bones and generally being taller than most people. It has meant that for years I have rarely been able to find a comfortable chair.

At work there has been little difficulty. The glories of the computer revolution and occuptational-health-and-safety committees with nothing else to do has meant workplaces have been armed (pardon the pun) with chairs that ride up and down on ozone-depleting gas with backs and arms that would make a contortionist comfortable. At home, however, it is different. Lounge furniture is impossible. I have sat on a thousand lounge chairs in a hundred shops in the past two decades and not one has been comfortable. About 10 years ago, though, I found a lounge suite in a furniture-maker’s shop with a huge base. But the back was impossibly low, so I got him to make one of the chairs with a very high back for me. Bliss. But it was a nightmare for various short guests who disappeared into the back of the lounge along with old biros, two-dollar coins, remote-control duvalackeys and the ever-lost spare set of keys. These guests’ legs dangled like Humpty Dumpty’s.
Continue reading “1995_06_june_column13jun”