Month: August 1995

Izzy Asper’s Can West Global Communications appear to have rebutted assertions that they are in breach of Australian Broadcasting regulations after they and the Ten Network won a major legal victory over Charles Curran and his Capital Television Holdings.

Mr Curran failed this week to pursue a case he mounted in the NSW Supreme Court against Mr Asper’s Can West, Ten Network and others and agreed to them pay costs of about $1 million.

Mr Curran had sued asserting the defendants had conspired to deprive him and Capital Television Holdings from buying Northern Rivers Television last year. (Capital Television Holdings has no connection with the Canberra Capital station.)
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The Great Oxymoronic Confluence is more likely to be next year than this year. Several things have caused the postponement _ a skiing holiday and some resulting upper-leg pain, a new job with a later finishing time, the change of date of the oxymoron itself, and more pertinently the regrettably conflicting desires of wanting to be an athlete in the morning and a consumer of fine wine, food and good company in the evening.

What was the name of the dumb philosopher could not understand the distinction between the mind and body? The Great Oxymoronic Confluence is almost inevitable, but not this year.

It will occur when I run the 10 kilometres of The Canberra Times Fun Run in the same number of minutes as my age in years _ 44 by Fun Run day. It is an elegant equation, and I’m sure there is a quick physiology PhD in it for someone.
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Who’s Who is not going on CD and has no intention of doing so. Their bread and butter depends on it. The reason is privacy. Ego aside, people give their names to Who Who’s so other people can look them up. In the computer speak, the entry point into the database is the name, surname first.

If the book came out electronically, the commercially minded could extract sub-databases according to sports and other interests from the 10,000 top Australians. Thus a list of wine-lovers or golfers could be constructed and a very targeted mailing list constructed. Thus, Who’s Who, not wanting to offend its clientele, does not publish electronically.

Most electronic phonebook products do not allow reverse searching _ that is from address or number back to the person.
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Doctor organisations have responded predictably to the ACT Government’s plan to give a patients access to their records. They did not like it. Their fear is twofold: an avalanche of litigation and a feeling that patients could easily misinterpret their records, leading to unnecessary anxiety.

The ACT legislation is prospective; it will not apply to existing records. However, a case is before the High Court about the status of existing records. If that goes in favour of patients it will affect all previous records.

The avalanche of litigation is a misguided fear; patients have had access to public-hospital records for about a decade under freedom-of-information legislation in various states and territories. There has been no avalanche.
Continue reading “1995_08_august_column22aug”

I did not contribute much to Australia’s gross domestic product or gross domestic consumption on Saturday.

As days go _ according to the measures of economists _ I had a pretty miserable day. My standard of living was equivalent to _ well, not quite a Bangladeshi _ but certainly no higher than an Egyptian, Thai or Peruvian.

Let me add it up. One home-made salmon sandwich. The bought ingredients must have put 80 cents on the national account.
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It’s official _ lawyerisation continues apace. The legal profession is growing, getting richer and more male-dominated.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics put out a report last week on the legal-services industry showing a modest increase in employment of 14 per cent between June 1988 and June 1993 (against a five per cent increase in total Australian employment).

But the figure disguises an even greater increase in the number of practising lawyers and a large increase in their incomes.
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It would not have happened a year ago. Gary Sturgess would not have been able to get published in a leading daily _ The Sydney Morning Herald _ a detailed article carrying the clear imputation that the NSW Police Commissioner, Tony Lauer, is incompetent and should be sacked.

Gary Sturgess was an adviser to the Greiner Government and helped frame the legislation on the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Sturgess argued yesterday that, though he had no concerns about Lauer’s integrity, he thought he should go because he was warned about systemic corruption in the NSW force and did nothing about it.
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There is one rule for Carmen Lawrence and another for everyone else. Dr Lawrence was given legal aid by the Federal Government to fund her challenge in the Western Australian Supreme Court against a state Royal Commission inquiring into her conduct as state Premier. Brendan Kelson and Michael McKernan have not been so lucky.

A year ago a federal body, the Merit Protection Review Agency, inquired into the Australian War Memorial, of which they were director and assistant director at the time. The Minister responsible for the Public Service, Gary Johns, gave the MPRA a two-paragraph brief:

“”Recently I have had brought to my attention matters relating to staff management at the Australian War Memorial. I understand that there have been allegations made by staff at the Australian War Memorial of various types of workplace harassment over a considerable period.
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The NSW Royal commission shows how corruption starts small and gets worse. It shows the importance of nipping bad police practices in the bud, before they become entrenched and systemic.

The key reason the commission was successful was that it refused to use any NSW police at all in its investigation. Past inquiries failed because inquiring police tipped off their mates. Instead the commission used the Australian Federal Police.

The top brass in the AFP have a fair idea of the need to cull out bad police very early, but they are facing some difficulty.
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