Month: October 1995

You can be either prince of print or queen of the screen, but you cannot be both, Paul Keating once boasted about Labor’s media policy. It was a policy to encourage diversity, prevent foreign ownership, encourage competition and to prevent cross-ownership of the Australian media. Well, there was further mud in the eye for Labor this week as the Prince of Print, Rupert Murdoch, swallowed Australis and became the dominant figure in the provision of pay television in Australia … a veritable Queen of the Screen. Australis delivers by MDS (line of sight land transmission) and satellite. Combined with Foxtel’s cable delivery it will give virtually saturation coverage in the major cities. (The smaller towns and rural areas have never counted in the Government’s or the corporate world’s view of pay TV.) As a result of the deal, Mr Murdoch is now the Prince of Print, Queen of Screen and king of Australian media policy.

As this happened, the powerless Minister for Communications, Michael Lee, Pilate-like washed the Government’s hands of insisting on any of the four key elements to a wholesome media policy. Mr Lee said that it was up to the regulatory authorities to determine if the merger … read takeover … would go ahead, as if media were equivalent to margarine production. This was less than a month after the same Minister impotently sat on his hands while the ABC’s pay television venture was cut out of the action by Mr Murdoch’s Foxtel and Kerry Packer’s Nine Network. It would not be proper for him to intervene in the level playing field to support the Government’s instrumentality, he argued.
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The strike at the Australian National University and the University of Canberra is showing that enterprise bargaining is not a very satisfactory method of industrial relations at non-profit, public institutions. It is a fall-out from government policies that have attempted to impose private-sector methods far too widely in the public sector. Efficiency drives in, and privatisation of, commercial elements of the public sector have been laudable … banks, airlines, telecommunications and so on. But to apply the methods of industry universally through the public sector, is ludicrous. Enterprise bargaining belongs in enterprises. A university is not an enterprise, despite the wishes of purist economic rationalists. Performance pay, user pays and productivity-based pay are also follies when applied to educational institutions. Some functions in society are better done in the public sector and applying the public-sector ethos of service and equity. Typically these functions require very large outlays and yield returns only in the very long term or yield returns that are not measurable in dollars. Or they are policy functions.

The universities have been put in an invidious position. They have virtually no control over their income and therefore nothing to bargain with. They are not like an enterprise which can increase prices. Enterprises can make a balanced commercial decision about the risk of passing on the costs of pay rises on to consumers, a university cannot.
Continue reading “1995_10_october_leader20oct”

It was folly for the Labor Party in the ACT to adopt euthanasia as part of its official policy in 1991, whatever one thinks of the ethics or merits of active euthanasia. It was folly because, once it is part of official policy, Labor MPs are bound by it. For many years the Labor Party has had various items on its official platforms … at state and national level … which it just does not bother to do anything about. Often they become policy as part of factional deals or feel-good motions at conferences. Official policies on uranium, public ownership and various moral issues have been made policy … usually while the party is in Opposition … and Labor Governments have just conveniently failed to get around to putting them into effect. Appeasing a party faction is one matter; alienating a portion of the electorate is another.

This strategy has worked well elsewhere. In the ACT, however, it is a time-bomb. Since self-government, the ACT Government has always been in minority or an unstable coalition. It is ripe for a minority or independent MLA to test the sincerity of a policy item of a major party through a Private Members’ Bill, especially when that policy item is dear to the independent. Michael Moore has done this with consummate skill over the past six years … embarrassing both the Labor and Liberal Party with their own policies.
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The question of kangaroo culling raises issues about governance in the ACT as much as whether or how kangaroos should be treated. Opinion is divided. Rural lessees want greater freedom to shoot kangaroos. Animal liberationists want no killing; just contraception and reflectors to divert kangaroos from roads; and conservationists seek a place for all species and a long-term solution to balance their numbers which may or may not include some culling. They also want reflectors.

The Government cannot please all. Initially avoided the wrath of any group by setting up an advisory committee. It was fortunate to have one of Australia’s leading marsupial experts, Professor John Rodger, to chair it.
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Childish Anti-Europe xenophobia is breaking out in the British Conservative Party again. Defence Secretary Michael Portillo … perhaps with an eye to the leadership … has pandered to base nationalism by saying he would never allow the European Union to control Britain’s defence policy nor allow any British soldiers to fight in a single European army. “”Don’t mess with Britain,” he said. The statement was nonsense, in any event. The EU has no plan for a unified army, nor is it involved with military decision-making. However, the statement gives fuel to misguided opinion in Britain that blame for any woe in Britain can be sheeted home to the EU. The facts, of course, are different. The European Union, and its predecessors, have been responsible for an unprecedented period of economic prosperity and peace in Europe.

It has been far too easy for some politicians in Britain to further their short-term ends by blaming Brussels. The EU has had a difficult task in assimilating individual national regulatory regimes into single European codes which protect consumers and promote free trade and competition. It is too easy to point to the occasional odd or inconvenient regulation or change from a familiar British way while ignoring the benefits to all EU members that have been brought through the unified market.
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The battle for the battlers in the phoney election campaign continues. The battle highlights some significant differences in the two major parties, despite the popular view that the ideological divide has narrowed. The narrowing has been exemplified by the end of the cold war, extensive privatisations and support by both sides for user pays and competition policy. In the past year it is also manifesting itself in the Coalition softening some policies that cost it the 1993 election … notably in industrial relations.

None the less, the fundamental philosophic differences remain and Opposition Leader John Howard’s headland speeches, if anything, highlight them largely because of their absence of specific detail. The Coalition still stresses the importance of the individual. Labor still emphasises the importance of collectivity and a greater role for the state. Nothing that Mr Howard has said in his headland speeches, including his speech on social security yesterday, indicate a change of philosophy.
Continue reading “1995_10_october_leader14oct”

For all the deserved criticism our legal system gets from time to time, Australians can count their blessings when they look at recent events in China and the Gulf. The appalling treatment given to Australian national James Peng and the inhuman treatment given to women, especially foreign maids, in some Gulf countries reveal an absence of civilised behaviour.

Australia and other western countries are frequently attacked for meddling in internal affairs or not understanding cultural differences when they criticise human-rights breaches in other countries.

But there are certain values that transcend culture and breach of them by nations is of international concern. Paramount is the rule of law. A sub-set of that is no retrospectivity, a right to representation, to know the case against you and have a proper chance to test it by calling witnesses and testing prosecution witnesses, no double jeopardy no arbitrary arrest, no personal influence, and so on. Other human values include no capital punishment (especially for juveniles) or cruel or unusual punishment.
Continue reading “1995_10_october_leader13oct”

The ACT is caught in the bind of competitive federalism. State and territory governments are competing for businesses. They think that by attracting new businesses, their states will benefit by providing employment and taxes. To some extent that is true. The trouble is the competition has got harder, especially since Jeff Kennett became Premier in Victoria and began a jingoistic campaign to attact events and businesses to his state.

Businesses are now not only asking the receiving government for an incentive to move, they are putting their hand out to their home government with a threat of moving unless they get tax breaks and other advantages. This happened this week in the ACT with Australian Optic Fibre Research and the Rally of Canberra.

None of this is good for the nation. Uprooting a business from one state to another is costly for the business, and for the staff, too, both emotionally and financially … whether they move too, or stay. There may, however, be an argument for engaging in competition for overseas businesses.
Continue reading “1995_10_october_leader12oct”

A healthy debate is under way. On one side, several urologists and prostate cancer patients are arguing for routine screening for prostate cancer among men over, say, 55. They say that if caught early, the cancer is quite treatable and the spreading of the cancer to other vital organs can be prevented. On the other side, some public-health doctors are pointing to the downside of routine testing. They say the test is relatively unreliable. Depending on where the cut-off point is set, it gives too many false positives and too many false negatives, both with unfortunate effects. Some men might be put on unnecessarily debilitating treatments like surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy when if left alone they would most likely die from some cause other than the cancer. Conversely, some men might go away with the false knowledge that they are free from cancer.

This debate can be quite constructive. Viewed sensibly, it indicates that more research is needed. It will require greater investment (and nearly all medical research should be seen as investment rather than just funding).
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