Month: July 1996

It is difficult to see how a dole diary will contribute anything towards preventing fraud or towards creating jobs. People seeking unemployment benefits already have to fulfil requirements to show they are actively seeking work. The completion of a dairy to be signed by employers will just add to paperwork.

Moreover, the dairy portrays a fairly romantic idea of the job market. It assumes that all work-seekers get an interview; that employers will be willing to sign a document that a certifies that an unemployed person has applied for a job. Most employers only interview a tiny fraction of those who apply. Many do not respond at all to those who do not make the cut. At the lower-skills end, most employers take the first suitable person and tell all the rest the job has gone. These are tough times; employers have neither the time nor inclination to do the police work for the Commonwealth Employment Service.

The imposition of a diary requirement above existing work-search requirements level seems more like a piece of politicking to prove the conservative parties are tough on “”dole-bludgers” than a genuine attempt to cut fraud … especially as there is no evidence that a diary would stop fraud or that fraud is a major problem.
Continue reading “1996_07_july_leader16jul dole diary”

The ACT Government has been caught out. Its policy on forcing large-mall supermarkets to close early has already been condemned for inconveniencing thousands of Canberrans; costing many youngsters their job and being unlikely to achieve any of its stated aims of saving small businesses at suburban shopping centres. Now, however, it transpires that the ACT might be in breach of federal competition policy. If so, it faces the loss of large sums of federal money forming the compensation pool for states and territories that implement the Hilmer competition recommendations.

These demand that as far a possible uniform rules should apply to all market participants and that anti-competitive conduct is only acceptable in the public interest. It is true that the ACT has among liberal trading hours in Australia, but that is no excuse for going backwards. The regulation of mall-based supermarkets is discriminatory and it would be hard for the government to argue it is in the public interest, given the inconvenience, job losses and unproven outcomes.

Prima facie unequal treatment of business through government regulation should be discouraged. If good sense fails, then the threat of penalising the ACT through loss of Hilmer compensation might bring the ACT Government to its senses and it might repeal these obnoxious laws. Once one state or territory seeks exemptions for going backwards, others will follow and the fruits of competition policy will be lost.

The proposal by the Government to insist that all televisions be fitted with V-chips has as many drawbacks as it has advantages. The V-chip will enable parents to black out, say, R-rated programs, or MA-rated programs and higher and so on.

At present the chip works for cable but has not been tested for Australian free-to-air conditions or for Australian classifications. Even if parents want to use the V-chip, present classifications are unlikely to cater for the myriad of personal choices and strictures required. Objections to violence, erotica, language and so on vary among different parents. Some parents object more to violence, but less to some depiction of sexual conduct, for example. Other parents think the other way. Present classifications do distinguish between the two to some extent, but inevitably parents will either have to ban some material they do not mind their children seeing, or will allow some material they would object their children to seeing. This drawback alone is enough to show that the V-chip is not substitute for parental control, and that the opinions of the classifiers, as they will admit, can only be a guide.

The trouble with the V-chip is that it has the potential to make the classifiers guide become law in some households.

A further practical drawback is that, as most adults know, the first port of call in learning how to work any new technology is a teenager. Inevitably, they will work out ways of circumventing the chips. Then there is the practical question of what to do with existing TV sets.
Continue reading “1996_07_july_leader13jul vchip”

The ACTU has done a clever public-relations job with its new wage claim. It has been portrayed as a claim for the lowest-paid workers. Put in that light, the claim has merit. Australia, despite it economic woes, is by world standards a rich country. It is only proper that minimum adult wages in Australia are capable of sustaining a family. That was the standard set in the Harvester case in the early years of this century and the reasoning still carries weight. There is no point to economic reform, budgetary discipline and efficiency drives in both the public and private sector unless it bears fruit. That fruit must include rising living standards for Australians at the bottom of the income scale.

However, the latest ACTU wage claim, while asserting that the lowest paid should get more, goes beyond this. It says that the minimum wage should go up from $349 a week now to $456 a week in three years’ time … from $9 an hour to $12 an hour, but it also says that wages above this should go up proportionately. This element was given less publicity by the ACTU.

So the claim is not only one for lifting the bottom wage rate up, but one of lifting all wages up. The president of the ACTU, Jennie George, is right to say that all workers are entitled to a decent standard of living and a decent living wage. But she should tell the whole story of the wage claim.
Continue reading “1996_07_july_leader12jul wage claim”

Macbeth was right. If you are going to do an assassination then ” ’twere well it were done quickly”. The vice-president of the ACT Chamber of Commerce and Industry, John Louttit, did not quite have the eloquence of the Bard, but the sentiment he expressed about retrenching Canberra public servants equally as true as the sentiment Macbeth expressed about “”retrenching” Scottish aspirants to the throne. Do it quickly.

From the viewpoint of the people of Canberra the length of time it is taking to cut the public service to a size acceptable to the federal government is perhaps more damaging than the cuts themselves. While ever people are uncertain about job security they behave as if today is their last day at work. They do not spend. They do not plan. They go into a state of semi-hibernation. The result is as bad for business in Canberra than if they had lost their job. Indeed, it might be worse, for there is no retrenchment package and no renewal.

The statistics and the surveys from the chamber and the Advance Bank Trends publication show both a slump in business and a slump in business confidence in Canberra. Given the people of Australia voted for a new government committed to cutting the public sector, it was inevitable that Canberra would suffer economically. But it seems that the process is being drawn out unnecessarily and with that come uncertainty. Business requires confidence not uncertainty. If the public sector is to be cut, ’twere well it were done quickly. Only then will some confidence return to the city.

The British Government was right on Sunday to refuse permission for Protestant “”loyalist” marchers to march through Catholic areas of Portadown in Northern Ireland, despite the stand-off that has ensued. The marchers assert that they have been marching that route for many decades and therefore should continue to do so. But past bad practice is no justification for its continuation. The aim of the marchers is plain. They want to assert Protestant domination over a Catholic minority. They want to remind the Catholic minority of who is in control, as they have done every year since the Battle of Boyne in 1690 when the Catholic king James II was defeated by the Protestant William III. In short, the Protestant marches at this time year (the Boyne was fought on July 12) are deliberately antagonistic and are an atavistic expression of religious bigotry. All they do is perpetuate hatred and division.

And those divisions, created by such a small portion of a population that generally wants peace, are driving the British and Irish Governments and moderate in Northern Ireland to despair. To that extent the marchers have achieved their aim. They desire hatred, fear and domination and the march is a symbol of those desires.

The British Government is in a difficult position. If it allows all or some of the marchers through, it will inevitably give rise to violence in the immediate area. If it holds firm, it will inevitably give rise the incidents of violence by Protestants against Catholics elsewhere in the province. And then there might be further escalation and probably a return to full-scale “”troubles” that have plagued the province for all but two of the past 27 years. But by holding firm, the British Government may at least gain credibility among Catholics as a protective force … as it was viewed when the trouble began in 1969.
Continue reading “1996_07_july_leader10jul irish”

There are alarming signs that the Indonesia Government is not reading the mood of its people correctly and that its failure to do so will result in increasing unrest and violence. As Indonesia enjoys greater foreign investment and greater wealth from economic development, its people will rightly demand greater participation in the way they are governed and in the way that the rewards of economic development are distributed.

This week Indonesian police detained 14 labour and student activists after workers demanding higher wages clashed with police in the country’s second-largest city of Surabaya. They face charges carrying up to life imprisonment. This action follows the recent infiltration and illicit take-over of the main opposition party by forces loyal to the Suharto Government.

The Suharto Government is rightly concerned about unrest jeopardising economic development and causing disunity in a nation of many ethnic and religious groups. However, it must realise that repression of dissent and legitimate demands for greater participation in how economic growth is distributed is much more likely to exacerbate the frightening of investors than to encourage them.
Continue reading “1996_07_july_leader10jul indon unrest”

The federal government has proposed to give migrants who want to settle outside Sydney and Melbourne easier entry, but their settlement would be enforced by a bond of up to $30,000 repayable only when the migrant has bought a house or business outside the main capitals. The proposal has some major difficulties. However, the government should not be condemned for floating the idea … there is far too much timidity in discussing and debating ideas in the political arena. The best ideas only bear fruition after considered debate.

With this proposal, the government will face the difficulty of treating migrants differently from others. Aside from the human rights aspects, this may raise constitutional difficulties because the Constitution gives freedom of movement between the states and demands that residents of each state be treated the same in other states.

Enforcement will also be a problem. Inevitably there will be court action to prevent bond forfeiture in cases where administrative discretion comes down against the migrant.
Continue reading “1996_07_july_leader09jul migrant bond”

It is unfortunate that John Howard felt it necessary before the election to promise not to put up present taxes nor introduce any new ones. That promise combined with his determination to get rid of the structural deficit in the federal budget has, after the election, locked the government into a strategy of cutting government spending.

On Friday, the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Bernie Fraser, gave strong support to one leg of the Government’s fiscal strategy … that of reducing the deficit … but rejected the idea that it could only be achieved through cuts in spending. He urged that the Government also consider raising some taxes. There is merit to the argument. For a start the Howard Government has broken, or at least severely bent, several promises already, on things like immigration, and has threatened to bend or break promises in other areas, so a slight bending of the no-new-taxes promises will not make that much difference, provided voters can see good reason behind it. And in this case there is, just as there was with immigration. The changes to immigration have not met with sustained or widespread criticism; though those expected to oppose have done so.

However, tax is not like immigration. It is highly visible and measurable. None the less, some of the spending cuts are going too far, both in terms of the electoral pain and, more importantly, long-term national interest in doing some things that only government can do. Avoiding some of those cuts with a little more activity on the revenue side would not go amiss.

Those Ministers for Health who voted down the ACT heroin trial last week are certainly not leaders. They are not even followers of public opinion, for a majority of people are in favour of it. Rather they are slaves to a body of ill-informed or scare-mongering opinion. The NSW Minister, Andrew Refshauge was the weakest of the lot. He did not appear to state and justify his view. Rather he sent his top bureaucrat to recite a terse statement that NSW would only support the trial if all the other jurisdictions were in favour. That was an especially spineless piece of politics. Mr Refshauge was so nervous of public opinion that he needed the safety requirement of going with all the rest. It was also a completely brainless way to go about policy making, that can only be explained because at the mention of the word “”heroin” rationality goes out the window. Can anyone seriously imagine a state minister for anything making policy about anything along the lines: “”I’ll only do it if all other states and territories do it”? It is an abrogation of ministerial responsibility.

The Ministers from Western Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory and Queensland were also opposed, but not in the spineless way that Mr Refshauge was. They did not insist on everyone else agreeing before they agreed.

Only Victoria, South Australia and the ACT wanted to see the trial go ahead.
Continue reading “1996_07_july_leader07jul heroin trial”