Month: November 1997

You should have been here yesterday. We must have seen a dozen of them, breaching, playing. But they are not behaving themselves today.

This was the explanation of the skipper of True Blue, Merrimbula’s new whale watching boat.

With the 70-seat catamaran, the town can at last keep up with demand for whale watching.
Continue reading “1997_11_november_merrimbula”

The mouse has roared. Prime Minister John Howard has been shown up by the ACT Environment Minister Gary Humphries. Mr Humphries announced yesterday that the ACT would set its own greenhouse-gas targets. These targets in many ways are more stringent than those to be proposed by the European countries at next week’s Kyoto conference on greenhouse gases and climate change.

Mr Humphries is at odds with his federal Liberal colleagues. Prime Minister John Howard has, rather pre-emptorally, talked himself into a fixed position. Mr Howard does not accept the European position. Nor does he accept the idea of across-the-board percentage reductions of greenhouse gases. Once again, Mr Howard defines himself in the negative. We wants a regime of different goals for different countries without defining, even in the vaguest terms, what goal he would find acceptable for Australia.

Mr Humphries has defined his position. He wants ACT greenhouse-gas emissions in 2008 to be equal to or less than the 1990 level and to fall a further 20 per cent by 2018. Of course, that does not carry the same political risk as Mr Howard would have to carry by agreeing to the European position. The ACT does not have any heavy industry. Its emissions are increasing a higher-than-average national rates so are easier to curtail. It is now moving into a more steady-state economy with lower population growth after public-sector cutbacks so that there is a certain amount of no-effort natural reductions in store. And lastly, Mr Humphries’ targets are very long range. Politically, he can take the kudos now, when the issue is hot and an election is just around the corner without worrying too much about the distant future.
Continue reading “1997_11_november_leader29nov greenhouse”

When someone comes up with an excellent idea or design for the use of a public place, it can put government’s in a quandary. On one hand, governments should encourage innovation. On the other hand, they should deal with public assets openly.

This was the quandary faced by the ACT Government when a proposal was put to it to redevelop the Griffin Centre and the adjacent carpark, most of which is public land. No-one with bright ideas will put them to government if they fear their ideas will be expropriated and put out to the highest tender. No-one will work on developing an idea if it might be lost to others. But if the originator of the idea is to get exclusive development rights, other developers will rightly ask why couldn’t they put a bid in.

How is this quandary to be solved. In the case of the Civic development the ACT Government is considering a joint venture. It is the wrong response to this proposal. There seems to be very little public merit in giving one developer exclusivity in return for the development idea. This is because the idea is not very exceptional or innovative. The value of the innovation is not that great that any developer given half a chance couldn’t come up with something similar. And this is the very point. No other developer has been given half a chance. If the Government thought it worth developing that part of town, it should have invited expressions of interest, a design competition and ultimately tenders.
Continue reading “1997_11_november_leader14nov civic redevelopment”

The imminent demise of pay-TV company Australis is the legacy of a decade of appalling government handling of broadcasting in Australia.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has blocked a merger with Foxtel, which is jointly owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Telstra, on grounds that it would lessen competition. The ironic result is that Murdoch and Packer between them will control both the delivery of pay TV in Australia and its content. The only mitigating factor is how much ordinary TV purchasers are willing to pay for a pay TV service at all.

The essential problem with pay TV in Australia has been a governmental one. Both Labor and Coalition governments have failed to differentiate between the business of pay TV infrastructure and pay TV content. And they have both allowed the distant nirvana of coupling pay TV with the provision of cheap telephonic services to muddy the waters.
Continue reading “1997_11_november_leader12nov pay tv”

Events at the weekend should now make it clear that the time for wrangling, scare tactics, dissembling and populism is over and that the Keating-Howard model for a republic should be adopted. That is a change to a republic should be made so that Australia genuinely has an Australian, and only an Australian, as Head of State, and that that be done with the minimum change necessary to our system of Government. That should mean a President nominated by the Prime Minister and ratified by a two-thirds majority of a joint sitting of Federal Parliament and removable only by the same majority. The President would carry out the same functions as the present Governor-General.

Indeed, the most stabilising manifestation that this is to be a very important symbolic change rather than a change of system of government would be for the last Governor-General to be the first President — presumably Sir William Deane.

Mr Howard was right at the weekend when he said a popularly elected president would be “”a recipe for undermining the stability of the present system. If the majority of Australian people want a republic, I certainly don’t want a president chosen by popular vote. I think some kind of special parliamentary majority would be better.”
Continue reading “1997_11_november_leader11nov republic”

Coroner Shane Madden has warned explosives expert Rob McCracken that he should ensure that he is legally represented when the inquest into the death of Katie Bender resumes its preliminary hearings in December. He also has given only conditional approval for one lawyer to represent everyone connected with the ACT Government. He seems to want a separate lawyer for each element of the ACT Government (bureaucracy, politicians and corporations) just in case there is a conflict of interest.

It seems an unnecessary expansion of the role of lawyers and perhaps the role of the coroner. The coroner has no power to convict anyone of an offence or order anyone to pay compensation. The coroner is there to determine the how, when, where and cause of death. Having done that it is up to the courts to try cases for criminal or civil liability. The coroner may charge someone with an indictable offence, but it is still up to a court to try the case. And evidence given during the coronial inquest cannot be used at subsequent trial. The coroner has very wide powers to summon and examine witnesses and does not have to follow the usual rules of evidence and procedure.

In other words the aim of a coronial inquest is to quickly establish the cause of death (or the cause of a fire) in order to allay public concern. Speed is important. Because speed is important the coroner can cut corners and be an inquisitor with wide powers to get to the bottom of things quickly and can employ the assistance of legal counsel to help examine witnesses. But to protect people’s rights, the corollary is that the coroner with all those powers cannot decide people’s rights.

The coroner is in danger of compromising his main public function — the speedy allay of public concern — if he suggests or insists upon a large array of lawyers representing every party and cross-examining every witness.

There has been too much delay already. The main hearing will not start until March, after the ACT election.

Mr McCracken and others should not have to go to the trouble and expense of legal representation for a coroner’s inquest. They should attend and answer the questions. The coroner should get on with it.

If anyone is charged or sued for compensation later, obviously they will need proper legal representation. Until then no-one’s rights are compromised, except the public’s who have now waited four months with no answers.

The state and territory health ministers are to present the federal government this week with demands for an automatic reimbursement for the extra costs they have had to pick up following the decline of private health insurance. Each 1 per cent decline in private cover equals about $30 million extra burden on the public system in NSW. In 1993 41 per cent of people were privately insured; now it is 32 per cent. The states have not had compensation for the past 4 percentage points of drop.

Of course, if the federal government were confident that the changes it has made to give incentives for people to take up or stay in private health cover would work, it should have no hesitation in agreeing to a formula that gave the states a guaranteed amount for further falls in private cover. But the federal government will not be so cocky. Indeed, all the evidence suggests that the incentives and penalties introduced by the Howard Government to boost private cover are failing.

At present it seems that the policy of the federal government is to destroy Medicare by stealth. It cannot do it openly because it knows from opinion polls that a huge majority of Australians support the principles of Medicare. Instead, the government refuses to fund the public system adequately; what money it does have goes in a large subsidy to the private funds under the guise of a sweetener to individuals; it refuses to increase Medicare schedule fees thereby driving doctors away from bulk-billing; it refuses to allow the private funds to have any control over the costs of the services they are insuring against. In short it is trying to appease everyone by not making any decisions which might upset any of the stake-holders. But in the long-run it will displease all. Its failure to make decisions could result in the collapse of Medicare and the arrival of a US-style system which has the double disadvantage of huge costs (more than 12 per cent of GDP) without universal coverage.
Continue reading “1997_11_november_leader05nov medicare”

Many in Australia’s republic debate had looked to Ireland’s Mary Robinson as a successful example of having a directly elected President. Here was an independent woman who had huge popular support and who stood for the people of Ireland in a symbolic, rather than political, way. Despite being directly elected she carved out a role of national representation above politics.

Well, events at the weekend show that to be an aberration. Ireland has reverted to the normal pattern of direct presidential election. That pattern is usually a head to head battle between the nominees of the major parties with one or other winning after a few shrapnel candidates dropped out. And that would be the pattern in Australia if we were so foolish as to have a directly elected president.

Mary Robinson was a fluke. At the 1990 election she only managed to get up from being in a position as a token left-wing candidate after the government party’s candidate, a sacked Cabinet Minister, became discredited and unelectable. And even then she only just scraped in with a majority of a few per cent.
Continue reading “1997_11_november_leader04nov irish president”

The case of Noa Nadruku has stirred much debate and passion. The way his case was dealt with by both the courts and his rugby league club have inspired a groundswell of opposition. Broad opinion was that the law was an ass and the court should have convicted him of assault and that the Raiders club had been unduly influenced by the public opposition to the acquittal and had balanced the book by sacking him.

The Raiders decision is under review. It seems odd that they waited for the court case and then acted on an acquittal. If the court’s finding meant nothing, why didn’t they act at the time of the alleged assaults?

As to the law, popular opinion seems to be that no drunkenness defence should be permitted. The Federal Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, agrees saying those jurisdictions that have it, such as the ACT, should abolish it. But there would be danger in this course. A better view of the Nadruku case might be that the magistrate got the law right but misapplied the facts.
Continue reading “1997_11_november_leader01nov nadruku”