Month: June 1997

British justice and the British legal system have rarely looked so foolish as last week at the end of the McLibel case.

And bear in mind Australian libel law is a virtual mirror of the British system.

Do we really need 314 days and $20 million in costs to know that McDonald’s serves ill-nutritious muck and that its appalling advertising results in adults around the world to be pestered by children to feed them this stuff when there are much more nutritious alternatives?
Continue reading “1997_06_june_mclibel”

The New Conquistadors have returned in force to Peru.

They come heavily armed — with cameras and US dollars. After more than two decades of timidity caused by terrorism, they come to re-live the romance of finding Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas, feeling more confident since President Fujimori’s recent decisive victory against the terrorists at the Japanese Embassy.

Now, the only things to be conquered are the altitude of the Andes, the length of the Inca trail, and the usual hazards of Third World travel: theft, robbery, sickness and unpredictable transport and communications.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_lima may 15”

The Minister for Small Business, Geoff Prosser, condemned himself out of his own mouth in Parliament this week. His statement to the House on Thursday read like a prosecutor’s summing up in every respect except the unsustainable conclusions. He should have been moved to another portfolio at the beginning of this episode. Now it is too late. He should have resigned as a minister or the Prime Minister should have removed him. Apparently that is not to be. Parliament has risen for the winter recess and Mr Prosser remains in the ministry.

Mr Prosser may have escaped for now. But Mr Howard has not. Nor has his Deputy and Acting Prime Minister, Tim Fischer. Mr Fischer looked ridiculous attempting to defend the impossible and Mr Howard’s election promise to lift ministerial and parliamentary standards must now be read as a non-core promise — in short, a broken promise. His code of ministerial standards is no longer a guide to conduct to be adhered to in substance, but rather like some technical law reduced by semantics to meaninglessness.

Mr Prosser outline four key points of the Howard code: Don’t engage in the daily work of any business; resign directorships of private companies if they are likely to conflict with ministerial duty; divest interests in businesses involved in area of portfolio responsibilities.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_leader28jun prosser”

On Tuesday night the Senate rejected the Government’s plan to have voluntary postal voting for the proposed constitutional convention. In doing so it set the first of several conditions for a double dissolution and delayed the convention by at least several months, if not indefinitely.

The detail of the double dissolution process is not well-understood. The Constitution provides several steps. The first step is for the House to pass a law and the to Senate reject it or fail to pass it or pass it with amendments to which the House will not agree.

That is what happened last night. The House passed the law about the convention and on June 18 the Senate passed the law but with crucial amendments about the voting system. The House then very quickly said it did not agree to those amendments and put the law back to the Senate which on Tuesday night stuck by its amendments.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_leader26jun double dissolution”

Some ACT residents receiving rates notices early in the next financial year will be pleased that their rates have dropped, but will be worried that that the reason for it is because the value of their property has fallen. Others, receiving increases in rates will wonder why they have to pay more for exactly the same range of services as those whose rates have fallen.

Unimproved capital value summaries made public last week reveal a continuing trend towards disparity between the different regions of Canberra. At the extreme, Belconnen values are tumbling and the inner south is booming. In a market of generally falling or stagnant prices with fewer sales overall, the few buyers around can be choosy, especially as housing finance is readily available. It results in a greater disparity of prices as some out-of-favour suburbs have great difficulty attracting buyers without radical reductions of price.

In the face of these changes the question is whether UCV is a suitable base for rates. It is only a very rough guide indeed to capacity to pay. Frequently elderly people on low incomes in inner suburbs are faced with large rates increases.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_leader23jun rates”

The ratepayers of the ACT have subsidised the public bus system to the tune of $40 million to $50 million a year for the best part of two decades. This has been done under the rationale that a subsidised public system will provide services not capable of being provided by an unsubsidised private system. The theory has been that the taxpayer ought to subsidise a public system for the benefit of people who cannot afford cars or to reduce the reliance on the private car, particularly at peak periods.

That is a fine theory. But now we learn that the public subsidisation of the bus service in the ACT has been in vain. The service is no better, indeed it is worse, than many unsubsidised private systems. A report by Roger Graham and Associates presented to the ACT Government last week paints an almost laughable picture of bungling, inefficiency, incompetence, red tape, union recalcitrance and management spinelessness. It would be laughable if it were someone else’s bus service.

The appalling thing is that this story is not especially new. When Labor was in office, the picture was similar. There was a little tinkering around the edges. There were some painfully drawn out concessions to slightly modify some bad work practices. The public subsidy was reduce from the palpably ridiculous to the merely unacceptably high.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_leader21jun buses”

One of the fundamental problems with the Australian Constitution is that the Federal Government has a monopoly on proposing amendments to it. The actual referendum process requiring a vote of a majority of people in a majority of states is fine. The trouble is that the only way a proposal can get to a referendum is if the Government of the day puts it up. Technically, the Constitution says that before a proposal goes to the people it must pass both Houses or be passed by one House rejected by the other and passed by the first again and then approved by the Governor-General. In effect that means the Government must initiate all referendum proposals.

The history of referendums shows that most of the time Governments put up unacceptable proposals. It is perhaps this, rate than any innate conservatism of the Australian public that has caused so many rejected referendums. Governments, of course, are far more interested in retaining power, increasing power and getting re-elected than sensible constitutional reform. Few proposals go forward that reduce the power of the executive or prime minister. Constitutional change is always given back seat to temporary political advantage of the government of the day.

And so it is with the republic.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_leader20jun repub referendum”

European leaders are struggling to keep plans for a single European currency on track. France, with its recently elected Socialist Government, has changed its tune. It now insists that moves to a single currency be linked to a European jobs program. Given France has an unemployment rate of 12.8 per cent that argument has some superficial appeal. However, it fails to take account of one of the reasons for chronic unemployment in many western nations is chronic overspending by governments.

It has been one of the great defects of western democracy in the past 25 years or so that governments have succumbed to the temptation constantly to spend their way out of economic trouble and to bribe voters with increased spending before elections, rather than adjusting budgets to surplus in a responsible way in boom times so there is money available to stimulate the economy in slumps.

Make-job schemes through increased public spending have rarely been successful, and there is little chance of a European scheme bucking the trend. The French priorities are sadly misguided. French unemployment is more likely to be reduced and French prosperity increased if France embraces the single currency and submits to the requirements of a central bank rather than squandering precious resources on make-work schemes.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_leader18jun euro”

POLITICAL parties frequently underestimate their likely performance at the next election. They do not like to be seen by the electorate as cocky and perhaps they like to keep their own side on their toes. Even so, the ACT branch secretary of the Labor Party, Doug Thompson, painted a fairly grim picture of Labor’s electoral prospects at the party’s annual conference at the weekend. He said that if an ACT election were held now Labor would not win. Mr Thompson pointed to the attacks on Canberra by the Howard Liberal Government, but said people did not yet see Labor locally as an alternative, even though they voted Labor in federal elections. Mr Thompson asserted that the branch was more united than ever and had completed a comprehensive review of policies, but the community felt Labor had nothing new to offer, he said, even though that was not the case.

With this background it is pertinent to ask how this state of affairs has come about. One would have thought that the treatment meted out by the Howard Government on Canberra that Labor should be waiting for government at the territory to fall into its lap.

There are several reasons why not. Obviously, the electoral system makes it difficult, if not impossible, for either side to win majority government in Canberra. Further, sitting independents and sitting minor-party candidates tend to do reasonably well at all levels of government, even if they find it difficult to get elected in the first place. Mr Thompson correctly identified these as being a significant obstacle to a Labor Government.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_leader17jun alp election”

The ACT Labor Party’s commitment at its weekend conference to the creation of an ACT Court of Appeal is more a cosmetic change than a real one, but there is some merit in a formal change. At present appeals from a single judge of the ACT go to a panel of three judges in the Federal Court, one of whom is almost invariably one of the ACT resident Supreme Court judges, all of whom are also members of the Federal Court.

Under Labor’s plan there would be a fourth resident Supreme Court judge, and with the increased workload there is now a case for having one. Appeals would go to the ACT Court of Appeal of three judges. Federal Court judges, all of whom are also appointed non-resident judges of the ACT Supreme Court, would continue to sit on these appeals. Indeed, it is likely they would be held in the same courtrooms as now and much the same composition of judges would sit. The only difference would be the formal name.

There is some merit in the ACT mirroring the formal court structure of other states and territories and the ACT having control over the practice and procedure of the appeal court. However, the small size of the jurisdiction and the fact that it would have only four resident judges, makes the need for continued extensive use of Federal Court judges essential. They obviate the need to have more than one resident judge tied up with appeal work at any one time. They also bring expertise and extra judicial strength to the building up of a body of ACT law.
Continue reading “1997_06_june_leader17bjun supreme court”