Month: June 1997

The Government has put the Labor Party and Democrats on the spot over the proposed constitutional convention. The Bill to set up the convention will be debated in Parliament next week and needs speedy passage if the convention is to meet at the end of year as planned.

The difficulty for Labor and Democrats is that if they quibble about details and block parts of the legislation in the Senate, then the convention will be delayed or, indeed, abandoned. The Government can then accuse Labor and the Democrats of wrecking constitutional reform and not being serious about a republic.

In particular, Labor, Democrats, the Greens and perhaps the independents object to the non-compulsory postal voting system proposed for convention delegates. Further, Labor wanted retire Chief Justice Anthony Mason to chair the convention, rather than a politician; whereas the Government has appointed National Party veteran Ian Sinclair as chair and former Labor Science Minister Barry Jones as his deputy.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_leader14jun repub convention”

Prime Minister John Howard is right to call for major tax reform, including a goods and services tax. Opposition Leader Kim Beazley does not do himself or his party any good by locking himself in so early to oppose it, as he appeared to do at the weekend.

That said Mr Beazley is right to point out that a GST could be an unfair burden on some groups. But that can be overcome by compensatory measures. More importantly, the present tax system is more unfair to more people than a GST could possibly be. The need for reform is unquestionable and gets more urgent as time goes on.

The question of how much the government sector takes can be left aside in this debate. Some will argue that society needs greater government intervention and more government services; others will argue that smaller government and more reliance on the private sector is better for the nation. Whatever one’s view on that, it should be beyond question that the present method and mix of taxation is unsatisfactory.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_leader12jun gst”

J/span>ohn Elliott’s campaign against the National Crime Authority back-fired this week and in doing so did not put either Elliott or the courts in a good light.

Elliott has accused the NCA of running a political smear campaign and a witchhunt against him; that it was an arm of the then Labor Government out to discredit him because he was federal president of the Liberal Party.

The basis of his assertion is his acquittal in August last year of charges of fraud over a foreign-exchange deal in December 1993. That prosecution arose after a NCA inquiry into a takeover bid for Elders IXL by Elliott’s company Harlin.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_elliott forum”

The legal base for native titles claims in the ACT is very doubtful.

There may be good moral arguments for giving control over land in the ACT to Aborigines, such as joint management of Namadgi National Park, but the legal necessity is doubtful.

Native title, as explained in the Mabo case, exists at common law unless it has been extinguished by some inconsistent act by the executive or legislature that goes beyond the mere assertion of sovereignty by the Crown. The High Court says, for example, that freehold is inconsistent with native title. Residential leases, roads and public works are almost certainly inconsistent. Some pastoral leases are not, according to the Wik decision.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_comment on native title”

The Blue Hole off the coast of Belize in Central America has become known by scuba divers as one of the world’s most unusual dives.

The hole is about two-kilometres across and is in fact the collapsed roof of a massive limestone cave system that millions of years ago either subsided into the ocean or was flooded as ocean levels rose.

The lip of the hole is 12m down in blue, clear water when the sea bed is of sand and coral. As you descend you can peer over into the seemingly bottomless black deep of hole. And then you drop down the face of the hole, silence only broken by scuba bubbles. A further 15 metres to 20 metres down the hole widens to a huge cavern with giant stalactites, as thick as a person and up to 10 metres long.

At that point something described by the divemaster 15 minutes earlier began.

The divemaster, like many Belizeans a descendant of black slaves brought to log mahogany early last century with a heavy Creole accent, explained that this was a deep dive.

“”A hundred and thirty, maybe a hundred and forty feet, man,” he said. “”That’s 40 metres for you metres folk. Maybe 45.”

That would make it my deepest dive. But here the visibility was astonishing and the water temperature was a constant 30 degrees.

“”We’re gunna do two decompression stops, man,” the divemaster continued.

He explained the timing on the way down and the stops on the way up.

You see, the trouble with diving is that the deeper you go the greater the pressure and the greater the pressure the more nitrogen gets absorbed into your blood. If you come up too quickly the nitrogen behaves a bit like the carbon dioxide in a lemonade bottle which has the top ripped off too quickly. The gas comes out of solution and forms bubbles. Bubbles of nitrogen can be fatal in blood in the brain or in the joints it gets stuck restricting movement — hence the bends.

The other side-effect of two much nitrogen in the blood is nitrogen narcosis or the narcs. In mild form causes light-headedness and a general feeling of well-being.

It was about this our divemaster began his stern warning: “”When you get down among those amazing stalactites, man, you’re gunna be very deep. You’re gunna get a feel fuzzy feeling, man. And we have some important advice here.”

At this is white teeth gleamed as he broke into a smile.

“”We say just dive back and enjoy it, man.”

And hence, at 42 metres down drifting among the giant stalactites and peering down into the black gloom of the great hole, I started reciting Coleridge’s Kubla Khan through the scuba bubbles:

(Ital)Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

(end Ital)

We had nine minutes amid the stalactites before the nitrogen demanded our ascent. And then we hovered around the splendid coral allowing the nitrogen to escape harmlessly from our blood.

Alas, it is virtually unphotographable. The scale is too large and light to poor from the distance needed to take it all in. It is usually photographed from the air for postcards.

The Blue Hole is perhaps a reason to go half way around the world to dive the world’s second largest barrier reef when the largest barrier reef is right here in Australia?

There are other reasons: the dancing nurse sharks of Ambergris Caye; the astonishing tube coral; and the nearby Mayan ruins.

The sharks (not to be confused with the larger grey nurse sharks of Australia) at Ambergris are much more lively, inquisitive and aggressive than sharks I have dived with in Australia. But their diet is one of small fish, not large humans and so it is safe to dive among them. Indeed, it is better to be free of dive gear and snorkel among them as the picture of my brother, Gregory, stroking a shark shows. But to photograph them I found it better to be on scuba just above the sea-grass bottom.

At the time I was hounded by a giant sting ray which kept nudging me with its abrasive grey skin. It was a sort of David Attenborough figure imposing itself between the camera and the subject wildlife, but unlike David it could not talk under water.

Ambergris Caye is a few kilometres offshore, but it would be silly not to spend a few days on the mainland. Belize must be on the cutest nations on earth. Population 220,000. It has its own Governor-General and a Parliament of 21. It has no defamation law to speak of so the newspapers carry delightful swags of vicious political scandal and personal slurs, but they carry no sexual smut. The highest building in the nation is a Mayan pyramid built some 900 years ago and the second-highest building in the nation is another Mayan pyramid. Most buildings are Queensland-style weatherboard. It is very laid-back. The largest city is Belize City of about 80,000, but the capital is Belmopan, a village of 7000 with two hopelessly outsized government buildings. It was begun in the 1960s after a hurricane all but destroyed Belize City in the 1960s.

In Belize City you can stay at the mahogany- and history-rich Fort George (part of the Radisson chain) or one of dozens of elegant weatherboard guesthouses.

I booked flights through Flight Centre. They say quote Canberra-LA-Belize from $XXXXXX.

I dived the Blue Hole with the Blue Hole Diving Centre (www.ambergriscaye.com/bluehole). They were competent and reliable. The town of San Pedro in Ambergris Caye has oodles of accommodation from hammocks to four star with prices accordingly. I stayed at the Belize Yacht Club right on the water _ admittedly spoiling myself, but then I was just diving back and enjoying myself, man.

The method of mugging in Latin America appears to be dictated by the language barrier.

The typical young Peruvian knows little English and the typical tourist does not understand much Spanish, especially that spoken by street gangs.

The tourist is not likely to respond to “”hand over all your money” is Spanish.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_alone travel”

We can expect a lot more huffing a puffing about a double dissolution in the next year, despite this week’s back-down by the Labor Party over the work-for-the-dole scheme.

But don’t expect it to happen, because there are some fine balances in the decision whether Labor and the Democrats should provide the Government with the necessary trigger by knocking back legislation twice, and whether the Government, given the trigger, should pull it and have a double dissolution in the next 14 months or have an ordinary election with an ordinary half-Senate election in 20 months’ time.

In all the mutterings about an obstructive Senate, the face remains that the Senate has passed all the Government’s legislation.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_senate votes”

In the early 1970s one of the nasty chores for junior journalists at The Canberra Times was to “”do the radio news”.

It meant writing radio bulletins for several of the stations in the region. In those days there was no cross-media ownership rules. Fairfax owned radio, TV and newspapers in several markets, including Canberra. Indeed, in the early days of TV, it was encouraged on the grounds that only established, responsible newspaper companies would be capable of fulfilling the public trust required in owning a TV licence.

Nowadays, in the interests of diversity, the newspaper proprietor is not allowed to own television or radio in the same market. So what happens? In many markets, a large amount of radio and television news comes either as straight rip and read from the newspaper or as slightly jazzed up or developed versions of newspaper articles. Most talk-back and current affairs radio (including the ABC), most regional radio news bulletins (perhaps excepting the ABC), and much of what constitutes commercial television news has its origin in newspaper work.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_media ownership”

The Media and Entertainment Alliance (the journalists’ union) has argued that greater concentration of media ownership is a key reason for tightening up the enforcement of the journalists’ ethics.

It has suggested that ethics standards for journalists be tempered by why what it sees as an uneven balance of power in newsrooms between journalists wanting to behave ethically and wanting to correct errors and proprietors who put commercial and other interests first.

The union and others have been conducting seminars around the country this month to get feedback from the draft code of ethics brought down in March. The draft was the result of the work of a committee headed by ethicist Father Frank Brennan SJ and included a judge, novelist, journalists and a philosopher.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_media ethics”