Month: July 1996

Faced with two evils, Russians chose Boris Yeltsin. He got 53.7 per cent of the vote in the run-off presidential election against 40.41 per cent for his communist party-nationalist opponent Gennady Zyuganov. A mere 5 per cent exercised the option of voting against both candidates, though they could be excused for doing so.

Mr Yeltsin has made a remarkable come back from single-figure popularity less than a year ago to retake the presidency in Russia’s first free election. But after the champagne of victory, Mr Yeltsin must awaken to a hangover of problems.

The first is a minor one: that his opponents challenge the legitimacy of his election. Mr Zyuganov asserts that Mr Yeltsin blatantly misused the government’s control of the media for his own advantage. There is much truth in this. A fairer media would have made much more of Mr Yeltsin’s health and his role in the war in Chechnya, tot he extent that it might have changed the result. But the charge is an ephemeral one. All outside observers report that the carriage of the voting and counting was fair.
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The changes to the immigration program announced by the Government this week are more symbolic than real. A reduction of 10,000 places is not especially large, and there is nothing wrong with a government fine tuning the immigration intake to account for economic or other circumstances. Too much appears to have been made of the overall cut by 10 per cent to 86,000 places. Viewed in context, however, the new intake is more in keeping with the long-term immigration trend. Set against the aberration of the Hawke Government’s huge boost to immigration up to 1988-89, it might seem like a slash. Seen against Australia’s long term trend after the immediate post-war period, however, the new figure should be seen as a normal level, not a departure from it.

That also holds true for the nature of the mix of migrants. In the latter half of the 1980s, Australia substantially increased the family-reunion portion of the intake and left the skills intake alone … so the overall number went up. In the early 1990s, however, when economic and political conditions demanded a reduction in overall numbers, the skills intake was cut at a much greater rate than the family rate, resulting in an aberration in the mix. It became weighted, in historic terms, far more towards family reunion. All that this week’s announcement has done is correct that balance to more closely fit the mix that pertained before the Hawke surge. It is an assertion that the government determines who comes in, and that there is no “”right” of family reunion beyond spouse and dependant children.

Aside from these trends, the humanitarian trend has rightly fluctuated quite markedly. This is only proper because the humanitarian intake should go up and down in response to quite unpredictable flaring of overseas troublespots.
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People of the ACT should not be the least concerned that they will be paying, through the increased Medicare levy, about $10 million towards the gun-resumption fund but far less than that … perhaps only $3 million … will be spent in the ACT compensating owners of resumed guns.

People in the ACT, and indeed the whole Australia should take a national perspective on the matter. Because the new gun laws are to be uniform nationwide, and because the compensation package is to be financed by a nationwide levy, the flow of funds has to be viewed nationally with the levy coming in greater portion from where the most income is earned and the compensation going in greater portion to where the most guns are.

The argument about the ACT paying too much could also be made across the rural-city divide. Rural areas have lower per-capita incomes and are likely therefore to pay less in levy. But they have more guns and will receive more compensation. It does not matter.
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The proposal by the Greens that all dwellings being sold of rented have an energy-star rating has some superficial appeal because it adds to the very worthy requirement that new dwellings reach a four-star energy rating before being approved. However, when viewed more closely, the proposal is a case of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

The energy requirement for new houses is soundly based. As a general principle, builders catering for the first-home market will respond to the most significant factor in purchasers’ decision making … price. They will put up dwellings with the minimum acceptable standards for the minimum price. Unless they are forced to meet certain standards, price will dominate the way they build. This has huge long-term costs for the community. It is far more costly, or impossible, after construction to install top-range insulation; to orient a house to take maximum advantage of winter sun; to double glaze; to have effective-width eaves; and to have concrete-slab heat-absorbing floors. Unless these sorts of things are done at construction, the whole community suffers as resources … such a power-generation … are needlessly squandered on the energy needed to heat and cool them. There is a public interest in insisting on energy-efficient housing.

However, that public interest does not extend to the existing stock of dwellings. Owners of dwellings are in the best position to decide when energy costs are so high that energy-saving construction changes … such a double glazing or wall insulation are worthwhile. Further buyers and renters are in the best position to determine what is right for them. Buyers and renters do not need an official energy-rating certificate to help them make up their minds whether to buy or rent. There are so many personal factors involved in buying and renting, that the individuals involved should be left to decide themselves.
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The Labor Opposition will have to temper some of its criticism of the Government’s handling of the economy, particularly employment and the balance of payments. The Government has made it quite clear from the before the election campaign that it saw a return to Budget surplus and industrial relations reform as fundamental to repairing both employment and the balance of payments problem. However, as long as the Opposition joins the Democrats and the Greens in blocking industrial relations reform and obstructing cuts and revenue measures in the Senate its attack on the Government will be compromised and the Government will be entitled to use the argument that the Opposition is contributing to the continuation of policies that stultify employment and export growth.

It may well be that the Government is wrong and that these two factors are not as important as made out and that they could be implemented more gradually, but while the Opposition does not permit the Government to enact its clear mandate, it provides the Government with a ready-made legitimate excuse for future poor economic performance. It should do what Paul Keating promised to do before the 1993 election if there were a new government … to allow the GST through the Senate and let the new Government stand or fall on it.

In the meantime, we will not know how significant industrial relations and the deficit are in the economic fabric and while we wait other … perhaps more important reform, like tax … will be off the agenda.

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has once again played the international community for a fool. Karadzic handed a document to international mediator Carl Bildt purporting to accede to the international community’s demand that he relinquish all power. The document was a purported resignation as president of Srpska, the Serbs’ self-proclaimed state in Bosnia, and the transfer of power to his deputy, Biljana Plavsic. Aside from the fact that Ms Plavsic is as hardline as Karadzic himself, the document was riddled with holes and enabled Ms Plavsic to virtually disown it by saying that Mr Karadzic cannot stop being president until elections in September.

It is an humiliation for Mr Bildt who accepted the document a proof that Karadzic had relinquished power and publicly announced that Karadzic had stepped aside. The essential point is that Karadzic has been twice indicted for war crimes. The international position, therefore, must be that he cannot be dealt with as a national leader until that indictment has been answered. This is as important for the settlement of the Bosnian crisis and even more important for the long-term credibility of the international war crimes tribunal.

Mr Bildt tried to put on a brave face. He said the Karadzic was “”losing one little battle after another. He pops his head up, he gets hit and he ducks down again but there can be no doubt that he is on his way out.” That sentiment has been expressed by western and international leaders for some time. A more realistic appraisal of the situation is that Karadzic will not be removed from power and influence unless force is applied to him personally. Mr Bildt’s threat of sanctions against both Serbian-held parts of Bosnia and the Serb Republic unless Karadzic stands down appears to hold little water as far as the Bosnian Serbs are concerned.
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People in the US must be asking once again why their troops are in the Middle East after last week’s bomb at a US base in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. About 200,000 troops are in the Gulf, 5000 of them in Saudi Arabia. The presence has been maintained since the Gulf War, but it cannot have anything to do with protecting human rights or democracy because Saudi Arabia is almost medieval in its political institutions. No; the presence can only be to secure the flow of oil to the US and other western nations and Japan.

Is the presence worth it, or likely to be effective in the long-run? The main trouble for the US is that the Saudi regime that it is supporting is not a very palatable one. It shows a face of strict Islam by imposing strict Islamic law. But the rapid modernisation; the personal behaviour of some members of the royal family; and the family’s invitation to US troops has upset many strict Muslims, apparently to the extent of using violence.

It has glaring similarities with the situation in Iran before the fall of the Shah and the creation of an Islamic state very hostile to the US. If that happened to oil-rich Saudi Arabia, it would be a catastrophe for the US. The presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia is more likely to bring on that change than prevent it.
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Weekend detention is supposed to be a way of punishing people for crime without imposing some of the destructive elements of full-time imprisonment. Full-time imprisonment inevitably means loss of job and great suffering for the family of the prisoner. It also means greater cost to society in both the imprisonment and in attempting to rehabilitate prisoners. And society benefits from the community work done by the prisoners. Weekend detention, therefore, is a worthwhile scheme. It satisfies society’s desire to see punishment. It can also serve as a dire warning to an offender as a taste of the real thing and a warning that the real thing is next if any further offence takes place.

However, the practice in the ACT appears not to be living up to the ideal in all cases. A quarter of those sentenced for weekend, have had their sentences cancelled for disciplinary problems. This, on its face would not indicate a collapse of the scheme. To the contrary it might show the scheme working: retribution for those who do not live up to their end of the bargain. But digging a little deeper, we find that of the 14 who comprise the recidivist quarter, eight are at large but subject to arrest warrants. Three have been jailed and three are being processed by the courts. So of 51 people sentenced to weekend detention, about 15 per cent are at large. The few are spoiling it for the many.

Police say that many offenders are turning up for detention with drugs, or not turning up at all, or giving a medical certificate and being found wandering around Civic.
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The ACT Electoral Commission makes a solid case for changing the date of the ACT’s fixed-term election. At present, under federal law, it is held on the third Saturday in February every third year. This puts the election campaign through the long summer holiday period. Further it means electoral rolls close in mid to late January when many people are out of the territory. And if the election results in a change of government, the new government has little time to settle in before it must produce a budget if that budget is to be as early in the new financial year as possible. Indeed, the Carnell Government felt it had to postpone its first budget.

In short, the electoral commission says the present date is bad for electoral administration, inconvenient for voters and bad for government.

How was such an inconvenient date set? Surely, the federal parliamentarians establishing self-government thought carefully about the clauses of the self-government bills and must have had a reason for setting such a date?
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Last week some figures were published from the professional standards director of the ACT Law Society, Tony Kidney, on complaints about lawyers.

They were contained in the society’s Gazette and republished in The Canberra Times. It showed there were 156 complaints to the society against lawyers in 1995.

Guess what? Not one complaint was upheld. Are we to conclude that all the lawyers in town are beyond reproach and the 156 complainants are whingers with no cause? Or is the complaints system a ground for complaint? What confidence would any ordinary member of the ACT public dealing with lawyers have in a system that yields a 156-to-0 result.

True, four lawyers were dealt with by the Supreme Court in 1995 for cases arising in previous years. Two of those arose from a complaint by another lawyer that his fees were not paid in a timely or proper way. One arose out of a criminal fraud charge and another arose out of a taxation case. Not come arose from a complaint by an ordinary member of the public.

I don’t think that the people responsible for the administration of the system are at fault. The trouble is the rules they work under and the fact that the ACT Law Society has managed to prevent significant change to the system and the ACT Assembly is too spineless to take it up.
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