Month: August 1996

Recent moves by the High Court to imply rights and freedoms into the Constitution are likely to be abruptly stopped soon … maybe with profound consequences.

The implied freedom of political communication is about to be reversed and with it will go more than a decade of constitutional innovation.

A week ago, the High Court was hearing a case brought by an opponent of duck shooting, Laurie Levy. Levy was seeking to overturn Victorian regulations that prevented him and others from retrieving dead and wounded birds for television. He said the regulations infringed his constitutional freedom of political expression.

The Victorian Attorney-General sought to defend the regulations, but without arguing against the 1994 basic cases that first expressed the legal base for the freedom of political communication: Theophanous and Stephen. Justice Daryl Dawson said that those decisions were no longer agreed to by a majority of the court and suggested they be reopened.
Continue reading “1996_08_august_theothanous dies”

The Treasurer, Peter Costello, should abandon the idea of an exchange of letters between himself and the new Governor of the Reserve Bank setting low inflation as the primary target of bank policy because it would be in breach of the spirit of the Reserve Bank Act, if not its letter, and is bad in principle.

The Act provides that the board of the bank “”has power to determine the policy of the Bank” and the policy should be “”directed to the greatest advantage of the people of Australia” and be exercised in a way that “”will best contribute to: (a) the stability of the currency of Australia; (b) the maintenance of full employment in Australia; and (c) the economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia.”

There is nothing stated about inflation, or that inflation control is the way to full employment and prosperity. Indeed, most economists would argue that there is a delicate balancing act between inflation, employment and economic growth, and concentrating on inflation may at times adversely affect employment and growth.
Continue reading “1996_08_august_reserve and inflation”

Kerry Packer is poised yet again on the bank of a river, pondering how its course can be diverted. He wants to control the Fairfax river of gold. These are the classified advertisements which have brought so much wealth to the various owners of Fairfax over the years.

The river is about to change its character, but will still be a large wealth generator. The nature of that change is very significant for media players in Australia, but more of that anon.

Last week Packer consolidated his Fairfax shares into one vehicle, PBL. Before that his shares were spilt between PBL and Consolidated Press Holdings. He also reduced his holding to 15 per cent, the maximum allowed under cross-ownership rules. Before that he used a grandfathering clause to have a total holding of about 17 per cent.

The significance of the consolidation is that he can move much more quickly in the event of the Government changing the cross-ownership rules.
Continue reading “1996_08_august_packer stalking fairfax”

In 1993 New Zealanders voted 54-46 in favour of a new proportional representation voting system.

At the same time they voted in their last single-member simple majority system. In that election the Nationals 35 per cent of the vote and 50.5 per cent of the seats. Labour got 34.5 per cent of the vote and 45.5 per cent of the seats. The alliance got 18 per cent of the vote and 2 per cent of the seats. NZ First got 8.5 per cent of the vote and 2 per cent of the seats and others got the rest.

The system’s disadvantage was that a leftist majority of 52.5 per cent of the vote resulted in a rightist majority of seats. The advantage was a stable majority government.

The new system promises that in a 120 seat Parliament each party will get seats almost precisely in accordance with the percentage of its vote.

But it is a complicated system.
Continue reading “1996_08_august_nz voting system”

MEDICARE has been too good for its own good. That simple fact was not addressed in the Budget and it will inevitably mean more changes later. And because Medicare is such a political sacred cow, the changes are bound to be piecemeal.

The leak from private insurance is only a symptom of deeper troubles in health; it is not, as the Government imagines, the problem itself.

The number of people privately insured has fallen from nearly 70 per cent when Labor came to power in 1983. It was 45 per cent in 1990 and is now 33.6 per cent.

Very simply, Medicare has been so good that people have abandoned private cover. The structure of Medicare has been such that private insurers have been competing with an arm and a leg behind their back. Basically, they can only offer queue jumping for elective surgery and ancillaries not covered by Medicare, but have been forced to do it a price which has to cover in addition the basic hospital cover that people have already paid for with their Medicare levy.

Further, the Medicare levy of 1.5 per cent has never covered the true cost of the benefits it provides. It was always a raving bargain grossly subsidised by the Government.
Continue reading “1996_08_august_medicare budget”

Federal Administrative Services Minister David Jull has asserted that if you can find it in the Yellow Pages, then government should not be doing it. It appears that the ACT Government has taken the advice. It is to fillet the Department of Urban Services, sending 600 staff to Totalcare, a corporatised government-owned enterprise.

Maintenance, engineering, architectural, survey and car-fleet staff will more to the corporatised entity. Inexplicably, forests, landscape and publishing staff are to stay with the department.

The Government says that competition policy obliges it to open the provision of utility and municipal type services to competition and that if existing government employees are to have any chance of retaining their jobs they must move to a more flexible corporate arrangement where they can compete.
Continue reading “1996_08_august_leader31aug urban services”

The ACT Government has moved to surrogacy law in the ACT so that the genetic parents do not have to go through formal adoption arrangements of a baby born to a surrogate mother. It seems a sensible thing to do, but that does not mean that people should underestimate the complexity and messiness of surrogate motherhood arrangements. Nor should they expect legislation to provide a remedy or solution in every case.

Most states outlaw surrogate motherhood arrangements outright. The ACT, however, permits altruistic surrogacy. This is where a woman, presumably a relative or very close friend, carries the genetic material of another couple without payment.

Present law and administrative arrangements, however, make things very uncertain for a surrogate parenting agreement. If the woman who carries the child gives it up, there is no guarantee that the child must go to the genetic parents. It goes according to what authorities or the court decides is in the best interests of the child. Nor can the genetic parents just take the child because the law presumes the woman who carried the child is the mother and can insist her name goes on the birth certificate.
Continue reading “1996_08_august_leader29aug surrogates”

A perverse view of the Australian Bureau of Statistics proposal to abandon the monthly balance of payments figures would be “”thank heavens”. We seem to be bombarded with economic statistics over which economists and economic journalists pore like fortune tellers over tea leaves. As if the monthly figures themselves were not enough, we are inundated with what the market expectations of the figures are and whether the markets have already “”factored in” a good or bad result. Then we have the tail end of every ABC radio and television news or current affairs consumed by a battery of market indicators. Does the broad mass of the ABC audience care two hoots whether the Hang Seng index moved a point or two?

Maybe this is why the 1950s seem like a golden age to some of our politicians … when people were not oppressed with gloomy readings of economic indicators showing how badly we are doing.

There is an element of truth about this perverse view and it lends support to a more serious view … that too much reliance is made on some financial indicators, particularly monthly ones. As the Statistician, Bill McLennan, himself said, “”The trouble is if I keep publishing it, people keep believing it.”

Monthly figures are dubious because of high fluctuations and inaccuracies which frequently have to be corrected the following month. In the light of Budget cuts, the money might be better spent on other things. The current-account deficit is still a pressing economic problem, but it may be that accurate quarterly figures, which cannot be dismissed as a monthly aberration, might make us view the problem more seriously.

A discussion paper put out by the federal, state and territory attorneys-general leaves the way open for corporal punishment in schools. It says that if parents explicitly permit it, schools may use it.

It is bizarre that these same attorneys-general have had to deal with issues like domestic violence and gun control. It is important that leaders in society express the view that violence can never be a solution to problems. If the use of violence by people in positions of power is condoned by the state and seen as acceptable by institutions in society, it will set a poor example to young people. It can only encourage the view that solutions can be found with violence. As adults we know that violence perpetuates violence and it does not create long-term solutions to problems in human relations.

Independent MLA Michael Moore has argued that corporal punishment should be banned in government and independent schools by legislation. He says that reduced class sizes is the way to achieve better harmony in the classroom and to achieve non-violent solutions. That may or may not be the case, but he is certainly right in saying there means than inflicting violence to keep discipline in the class.
Continue reading “1996_08_august_leader28aug corporal”

The ACT Government is to be applauded for obtaining its joint venture agreement with the computer company Unisys. The agreement is expected to create about 1000 jobs in the ACT.

Attracting Unisys could not have happened at a more opportune time with the cuts to the Federal Public Service. These have thrown up some opportunities with government contracting out functions, but the ACT Government needed to rise the challenge to generate some new industry. It has been clear for some time (though some have not wanted to admit it) that the construction and land-development business was not the answer. Canberra’s private sector has to go beyond offices and dwelling and picking up easy bucks on increasing land values. Further, tourism, though important, was never going to be a sustainable base for the territory’s private sector. It can be a fickle master rather than a profitable servant.

So it is appropriate that the ACT Government has turned to the computing industry. Here, Canberra has a lot to offer. It has a highly educated workforce and many looking for work. So wages are competitive, compared to California or Japan. It has an excellent natural and urban environment … clean air and water, good infrastructure, good schools, low crime and cheap land. In short it is ideal to attract this sort of industry.

Unisys’s main initial project will be preparing computers for the change to the millennium because since the early days of computing the year field has only been two digits and much re-programming is needed to enter the necessary four-digit field to cope with the change. But once set up, more projects will follow.