Month: April 1996

There has been a welcome breakthrough in the past week for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Serbia handed over two critical witnesses to the slaughter of unarmed Muslims and the Croatian Government said Bosnian Croat militia general Tihomir Blaskic would turn himself in to the tribunal. The tribunal has now indicted 57 people: 46 Serbs, eight Croats and 3 Muslims. Alas, only two are in custody.

It is now 50 years since the Nuremberg war-crimes trial. Since then, despite all the war, killings and breaches of human rights, there has been very little accounting. And when there is any accounting it is usually in the form of national courts, or special courts to deal with specific conflicts.

The horrific events in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, however, seem at last to be pricking the consciences of world leaders, and the United Nations is closer to taking a step which should have been taken at its foundation … the establishment of a permanent international criminal court with its own criminal code. Such a court would have a general jurisdiction to deal with cases arising from any conflict past or future.
Continue reading “1996_04_april_leader04apr”

The allegations that ultra-sound facilities have been used at Woden Valley Hospital to treat pet dogs have resulted in a justifiable sense of outrage among Canberrans, particularly those on hospital waiting lists.

Initially it seemed that only one case was involved … a case of an animal in suffering with no vet available. That might have been treated with leniency as a one-off lapse of judgment and taste made with good, if misguided, intentions. However, it appears that the practice runs to more than one case. If so it shows an unacceptable contempt for patients who are waiting to use the facilities.
Continue reading “1996_04_april_leader03apr”

Before some Watson residents whip themselves up into too much hysteria over the finding of arsenic-contamination in the soil of suburban gardens, as they appeared to be doing at the weekend, they should consider several points. Arsenic is a naturally occurring substance and unless you eat quite a lot of soil, there is no danger to health; it does not even transmit to vegetables grown in contaminated soil. Last year the Legislative Assembly’s Planning and Environment 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. None was found in urine tests and it is an easily testable substance. That position still holds.

One of the troubles is that in a pre-election climate 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. That has unfortunately become the benchmark. It might have been better if the toxicologists had been brought in before the pay-outs.
Continue reading “1996_04_april_leader02apr”

Victorians returned Premier Jeff Kennett and his Coalition Government resoundingly at the weekend. The result can be seen in many ways: approval for all or most of Mr Kennett’s policies; approval for his government’s style; disapproval of what the Opposition has to offer; fear by the electorate of a return to the days of the Cain and Kirner Governments.

Mr Kennett, of course, would like to put greater weight on the first two. But that is not tenable, especially as he made so much of the spectre of returning to the bad days of the Guilty Party.

None the less, Mr Kennett, can claim an endorsement of his tough economic policy. In the past three and a half years the Coalition has dug Victoria out of the economic hole left by the Kirner and Cain Labor Governments. Those Governments went on ill-disciplined spending and borrowing sprees that were exacerbated by the recession. Someone had to do some drastic work to rein in government spending and to restore the revenue base. The Coalition did it. Mr Kennett was fortunate in having the help of Alan Stockdale, his Treasurer. Mr Kennett has restored government finances and restored the economic capacity of the state, though much of the later would have happened with improved economic conditions anyway.
Continue reading “1996_04_april_leader01apr”

The mayor of Manly, Sue Sacker, and other local government representatives in Sydney are right to oppose the ludicrous roll-out of overhead cable by Optus for pay-TV. Telstra-Foxtel can use Telstra underground conduit. The other reason for Optus’s roll-out, of course, is that Optus wants to build its own local telephone network and deliver data and other on-line services.

But there is no need, and never will be a need to have two sets of cables. Telstra fibre optic network coupled with coaxial from the street to the home is enough to carry a hundred or more television channels, plus voice and data … more than any human could possibly want or need.

The laying out of two cable networks is inefficient and inexcusable given other more pressing national needs.
Continue reading “1996_04_april_leader01apa”

A letter has come in from Peter van Schaik joining the debate about bicycle helmets. Mr van Schaik has used statistics from the ACT Department of Health to show that since bicycle helmets have been made compulsory the number of injuries sustained by cyclists has gone up and the injured cyclists were staying longer in hospital.

He argues that helmets result in people riding faster or more recklessly because they have been lulled into a false sense of security.

At first blush it might seem that helmets give greater protection and therefore injuries should fall. But the world is more complex than that. An American academic, Gerald Wilde, lends support to Mr van Schaik. He has developed what he called Risk Homeostatis Theory.
Continue reading “1996_04_april_column30apr risk theory”

Gerald Wilde has an interesting theory. He thinks we are not dealing with injury and death on the road very well at all. At lot of official action to reduce the road toll is having no effect. And he has put forward a theory to explain what is happening.

the The weekend road toll made two paragraphs in The Canberra Times yesterday.

did not make the CT or SMH today, iother things did.

The argument over advertisements on the ABC might be largely academic.

Section 31 of the Australian Broadcasting Act provides, very simply: “”The Corporation shall not broadcast advertisements.”

There are exceptions for self-promotion, and we see enough of them, but without a change in the law there can be no advertisements, even of the staid SBS variety where they are restricted to the top and tail of programs SBS.

And a change in the law requires Senate approval. The chances of the Democrats and Greens agreeing are nil. One might think the same for Labor, unless it allows the change through on the you-voted-for-the-bastards principle. That principle was put forward by Paul Keating in the 1993 campaign when he said that Labor would not block a GST in the Senate if John Hewson won the election. On that occasion, Keating wanted people to know that people could not vote for Hewson and avoid the GST. Now, Labor may apply the principle differently. It may allow some non-critical laws through, so that it can hit the Government around the head with them down the track. A theme of the 1999 election, for example, might be that it was the nasty Coalition that put advertisements on the ABC.
Continue reading “1996_04_april_column23apa”

Industrial relations aside, the two big-ticket items since the change of government have been Telstra and Aboriginal affairs. Perhaps it was coincidence, but the legislation for each reveals a change of, what sociologists call, the dynamic between the legislature and the executive.

In the days when the executive usually controlled the legislature in Australian federal and state parliaments … from about 1942 to 1972 … large slabs of the legislative function were delegated … without a right of parliamentary veto … to the executive. Typically, this meant legislation along the following lines:

“”This is an Act to do XYZ. . . . It will come into effect on a date the Minister sees fit. The Minister may make regulations not inconsistent with this Act to do whatever he wants with respect to XYZ.”
Continue reading “1996_04_april_column16apr”

The Canberra Times library has cancelled its subscription to the ACT legislation series. This is not in a huff after taking offence at a small part of the contents (as some CT readers do), but rather to get the same material in a different form … on CD-ROM.

We have at last achieved the desire expressed by Napoleon 200 years ago to have the laws of the land being able to fit in the pocket of its citizens.

The technological and intellectual achievement (culminating in the first issue last week) is undoubted, but I am not sure it is such a good thing.

Two decades ago, when I dare say the ACT was as well governed as today, the laws of the ACT fitted into three volumes. Now they stretch to three metres of shelf; I estimate some 25,000 pages.
Continue reading “1996_04_april_column09apr”