Month: February 1996

The recent rulings of the Tax Office on child care which came to light this week demand the immediate attention of whichever party forms government after March 2.

A lot of the complexities of the tax law have grown up in the past two decades because of the incessant game played between government and business over maximising and minimising the tax. Every trick played by business and every loophlole exploited results in complex legislation to overcome them. The complex and detailed fringe benefits and capital gains taxes are good examples of governmental responses to business and highly paid employees overcoming income tax.

While the tax game centres around company cars, obscure off-shore trusts, deferred dividends and the like, one can bemoan the inefficiency of it, but essentially business (collectively) has brought a lot of it one its own head. However, when one is dealing with imposing fringe-benefits tax on some child-care provided by employers (even as salary sacrifice), the argument takes on a different character.
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It must be a frustrating time for scientists and pure mathematicians. They, like the rest of us, will be bombarded with election material for the next five weeks. But they will, perhaps, be more anguished by it. They will have to listen to the nation’s leaders utterly focused on a time scale of five short weeks. They will hear extravagant promises. They will hear about money being dealt out for the peripheral and ephemeral. It will be money for programs for bureaucrats and consultants to listen and report. They will hear of the budgetary deficit and the current account deficit, of interest rates and the lack of savings and investment. They will hear of glib solutions and vote-catching slogans. They will hear of artificial training programs to keep young people off the official dole queue.

But they will hear nothing of Australia’s scientific, research and engineering base. They will hear nothing of Australia’s fragile place in the world’s scientific and research community. None of these critical matters will sound in a vote in five weeks, so who cares? What does it matter what happens five or ten years away when one can be thrown out of political office in five weeks?

Yet Australian science and research is at a crucial point. If our total research effort, whether government or privately funded, falls below a critical mass, Australian scientists will get shut out of a lot of the international intercourse in science and research. If we do not contribute significant research, international science will ignore us. We will not be pulling our weight. At present our percentage contribution to world research … somewhere between 1 and 2 per cent in most significant fields … earns us an international place. It means we get far more than we put in.
Continue reading “1996_02_february_leader01feb”

John Howard’s policy of matching Labor’s bribe and don’t frighten the horses on Medicare may neutralise health as an election issue, but it will surely fail as a long-term solution to Australia’s health problems.

It fails to understand Medicare’s weaknesses and therefore fails to do anything about them. And without those weaknesses being fixed, Medicare fundamental strength will be eroded.

The strength of Medicare is its universality and its safety-net security. Howard got it right in acknowledging that. He joins about 90 per cent of Australians and even 68 per cent of doctors who approve of Medicare.
Continue reading “1996_02_february_health”

What a shame the great debate went out on CNN so the whole world (or at least the 0.0001 per cent of it that watches CNN) could see one of the worst examples of public-affairs television in Australia’s recent history.

Ray Martin should never have been allowed to chair the debate. He is a pleasant, good-looking entertainer; not a current-affairs journalist. Midday and 60-Minutes shows are precisely that … shows. They entertain people for ratings and advertising.

On Sunday night, Martin put on a 60-Minutes performance, but without the slick editing. Like 60-Minutes, much of it was stolen from America.
Continue reading “1996_02_february_column27feb”

The task of keeping the bastards honest is becoming easier.

Well, perhaps it is impossible to keep the bastards honest, but at least the task of pulling them up for dishonesty, inconsistency and broken promises is getting easier. We no longer have to rely on the Democrats or memory. Electronic databases are making it far easier for journalists and political opponents to drag up precisely what was said in the past.

The electronic versions of Hansard and newspapers are especially valuable in dragging out what was said in the past to see if what is being said now or done now is consistent.
Continue reading “1996_02_february_column20feb”

It was a masterstroke.

The appointment of Labor MLA Terry Connolly as Master of the ACT Supreme Court by the Liberal Government would have made Machiavelli proud.

Sure, Connolly is well-qualified for the job, at least in an academic legal sense. Also his term at Attorney-General has made him very familiar with the minutiae of ACT legislation. He’ll need to burn some midnight oil brushing up on the rules of practice and procedure of the Supreme Court and perhaps revisit his Evidence I textbook.
Continue reading “1996_02_february_column13feb”

Cheryl Kernot and Liz Cunningham should engage in some deals.

Kernot’s Democrats are likely to hold the balance of power in the Senate (or at least part of it) after March 2 and Cunningham is an Independent who will hold the balance of power in Queensland after the Mundingburra by-election result is declared.

Some things are worth making deals over. While Telstra and environment packages come and go, institutional reform tends to endure and is worth trading off some transient advantage for.
Continue reading “1996_02_february_column06feb”

Twenty-three per cent of people changed their voting intention in the past two weeks, according to polling in the set of Namadgi.

Canberra Times-Datacol polled the same sample twice, once two weeks ago and again this week. The second poll returned to the same people who were polled in the first poll, rather than taking a sample. Datacol says this is a more accurate way of gauging trends in voting intention.

The overall undecided vote fell 10 percentage points with Labor gaining 7 percentage points, and the Liberals 3. But those raw figures disguise a far more volatile electorate.
Continue reading “1996_02_february_churn”

Poll Conducted : Sat 10 Feb 1996 to Tues 13 Feb 1996

Sample Size : 542 registered ACT voters in the Division of Namadgi

Sample Method : Simple Random Sample of 1995 Telecom White Pages

Survey Method : CATI Telephone survey of telephone connected dwellings
Continue reading “1996_02_february_abtpoll”