1998_01_january_viet finn

It was perhaps his smallest audience for nearly two decades.

On November 23 last year Neil Finn played in the Crowded House farewell concert at the Opera House before 250,000 people.

This month it was different. Finn’s audience was not even 250, barely 25. He was sitting outside hut in the tiny village of Bhu My near Da Nang, Vietnam, playing to a bunch of children. But the two concerts had something in common. Both were charitable. In November it was a children’s hospital and blood bank. Bhu My village was also being visited by people from the Fred Hollows Foundation, monitoring work done to restore sight to people with cataract blindness. Finn is a member of the foundation in New Zealand — something he does not sing about.

Earlier, Finn played at the largest Australia Day celebration outside Australia — in Ho Chi Minh City, along with Mark Seymour of Hunters and Collectors, Finn’s son Liam, aged 14, doing his first major gig (drums), some quickly cobbled together local backing and a couple of ring-in Australians, Mark Bowyer (guitar) and Neil Lawrence (harmonica). The 3000 people enjoyed some gutsy and mellow numbers in the benefit concert for the foundation.
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1998_01_january_viet break out

The Fred Hollows Foundation hopes to give sight to 500,000 people worldwide by 2000. It is ahead of target. But the task is more than just raising the money.

The foundation began its work in Eritrea, one of the poorest countries on earth, beset by famine caused by civil war with Ethiopia. Now the war is over and Eritrea is independent. The foundation’s work in Eritrea has resulted in Ethiopian-trained ophthalmologists using lens made in an Eritrean factory to restore sight to people blinded by cataract.

The foundation has done similar work in Nepal and now hopes to expand its work in Vietnam.

Fred Hollows visited Vietnam in 1992 and saw similar tragedies as in Eritrea and Nepal — people unnecessarily blind.

In Vietnam about 750,000 people are unnecessarily blind. A comparatively simple operation to remove the opaque lens and replace it with a plastic one costing $10 can give them sight.
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1998_01_january_social security for forum

Social welfare has gone the wrong way over the past two decades. For the very best of reasons, governments, particularly Labor, have targeted welfare to the most needy.

It has meant that only those on lower incomes get help from the government. Very admirable. But it has had a debilitating side-effect. It needs looking at in the up-coming tax debate, because it is perhaps as important as a GST. And it probably needs some radical surgery to fix.

Typical means tests for social welfare benefits work on a sliding scale so the benefits gradually decreases as your income rises. The scale is usually about 50 cents of lost benefit for every dollar earned over a certain amount until the benefit disappears at an income level the government thinks is enough for people to live on without help.

The means tests apply to age, unemployment, education, sickness and child-rearing payments.

Usually the people affected are on incomes under $600 a week, or about $30,000 a year. Those on between more than about $100 a week and $400 a week (excluding their social welfare benefit) are paying income tax on every extra bit of income of 21.5 per cent. Those between $400 and $600 are paying tax 35.5 per cent on every extra bit of income.
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1998_01_january_scuba for forum

A pontoon on the Great Barrier Reef

Divers being counted in by a divemaster

Queensland has one of the safest diving records in the world. Yet this week two American scuba divers apparently died in Queensland waters in bizarre circumstances.

They were apparently left behind when the diving boat returned to shore.

Give me a shark or faulty gear to deal with any day.

Good diving and boating practice should preclude such an event. Boat operators should know that one of the dangers of tourist diving is that so many couples go on day diving trips. Frequently they know no-one else on board. So it is hopeless yelling out, “”Is everyone here? Okay, let’s go.” One couple still in the water could be missed. A lone dive going on such a trip knowing no-one else is better off because no-one every dives alone, so you are always paired up. Someone might say, “”Hang on, where’s that chap I was diving with.”

Given those possibilities it is standard boating and diving practice to count heads going in to a boat and to count heads again when the dive is over before leaving the dive sight.

I have done about 30 dives on the Great Barrier Reef and about 150 all up, including dives in Malaysia, Belize, Turkey and Mexico. On most boats you give your name to the divemaster. In most boats you give your name to the divemaster who writes it down. That is the almost invariable practice in Australia and in Belize (another great reef-diving country). I cannot remember an occasion when it was not done.b
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1998_01_january_leader31jan land development

The Labor Party appears to have had a change of heart on land development. There must be an election soon. Labor MLA Simon Corbell said this week that if Labor won government it would restore the responsibility for land development to the public sector.

Land development was originally privatised by the federal government just before self-government. Labor had plenty of chances to privatise it while in government, but did not do so. Labor’s Minister for Planning, Bill Wood, said he was in favour of public control of land development, but never managed it.

Irrespective of the ephemeral nature of Labor’s position, there is some merit in changing the present system. Gungahlin is a testament to some of the worst aspects of private-sector land development. Block sizes are much smaller than other parts of Canberra; roads are narrower; and infrastructure has lagged well behind residential development if it is done at all.

Mr Corbell tells us he is witnessing this first-hand. Footpaths, playgrounds and landscaping lags behind.
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1998_01_january_leader30jan work for dole

The Howard Government has expanded the work for the dole scheme, making it mandatory for all people aged 18 to 24 who have been unemployed for more than six months. The move have fairly widespread support among voters, and that is perhaps why the Government has done it. The plan also includes $383 million over four years to provide programs to help young people. They include a literacy and numeracy program and a program to help young people forced back in to education. On its face that spending, especially on numeracy and literacy, seems quite worthwhile. So the Government has appealed to some immediate concerns on a superficial way and will get applauded for it. It is almost the nature of government these days: the quick fix and appeal to populist ideas.

Looking a bit deeper, though, Mr Howard’s announcement this week has the danger of becoming a sad pattern. In its first Budget it cut spending on labour-market programs and education, just as it cut spending on the Australian Federal Police and just as it cut information staff in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Less than a year later, Mr Howard has to make a series of spending “”initiatives” that in effect are patch-up jobs to repair some of the short-term damage the original spending cuts did.

The Government appears now to be spending on labour-market programs and on education in numeracy and literacy. It has also restored some of the AFP’s Budget as part of its drugs initiative in the face of the Government’s pitiful blocking of the ACT heroin trial after screams in the Murdoch press. On a lesser scale, but still fitting the pattern, the Government decided on an information program in Asia to counteract the Hanson factor, shortly after it had cut DFAT’s information section out — a section that was devoted to giving Australia a positive image overseas. And on this score it did not learn. It cut the Radio Australia transmitter in northern Australia. How long will it be before some other program will have to initiated to repair that damage to our image and trade in Asia?
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1998_01_january_leader30jan kingston

The Interim Kingston Foreshore Development Authority has taken advantage of the economic downturn to take the long view of what to do with its bailiwick without having some major developer breathing down its neck.

Too often such projects get driven and warped by the pressure of an early big-ticket item like a casino, fun park, major hotel, or public institution, or as soon as the single driving development is complete everyone forgets about long term planning elements and development by expediency takes over.

One of the good points of the winning plan is that some of the key design elements can be locked in fairly early, such as shaping the lake shore and extending Giles, Eyre and Dawe street. It is important to remember that this is a 10- to 15-year project. It is of major importance to Canberra because it will provide a counterpoint to the national attractions and institutions which at present comprise the essence of the city in the minds of many visitors and indeed, may residents. An imaginatively developed Kingston site will show that Canberra is a city of people as well as institutions. The winning design carries the virtue of not competing with other attractions, but complementing them.
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1998_01_january_leader29jan cpi

The inflation, or more correctly, deflation, figure published yesterday is generally good economic news for Australia, but there is no room for complacency. It is the second successive deflation figure in the annual consumer price index measure of inflation, but on a quarter-by-quarter basis the CPI rose 0.3 per cent.

Even though this means an annual rise of 1.4 per cent which is well below the Reserve Bank’s target of between 2 and 3 per cent, the trend is slightly up. Inflation can spiral quite quickly once expectations of price rises build up and people seek pay rises to match them.

Further, yesterday’s figure is somewhat of a false one. Much of the deflation is a result of decreases in mortgage payments following interest rate cuts. It means to the cost of other things are rising commensurately higher, notably hospital and medical services, furniture and fuel prices and private rents. People seeing these price rises will not be convinced that inflation is under control and will seek pay rises to compensate.
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1998_01_january_leader28jan ps changes

Given that 1998 has all the appearance of being an election year, those who run the Australian Public Service would be wise to err on the side of caution when dealing with suggestions for change. A too enthusiastic embracing of the Government’s political philosophy might see them in an embarrassing position should there be a change of government.

It is one thing for a top public servant to implement government policy with effectiveness and even enthusiasm; it is another to abandon the essential role of a neutral public service to side with a government’s political philosophy and to abandon critical roles of providing fearless advice and warning of potential pitfalls in a government’s plans.

As the Commonwealth bureaucracy and the Government emerge from the relative torpor of the Christmas-New Year period at least half a dozen departments and agencies will find themselves adjusting to new bosses.

Not only are departments such as Defence, Social Security, Primary Industries, and Attorney-Generals now settling into the reality of new bosses, they are also settling into the reality of new industrial relations and personnel relations arrangements which will have long-term implications for the broader APS.
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1998_01_january_leader28jan flag

Australia Day inevitably draws out the question of whether Australia should keep its present flag. Indigenous people say the flag is a symbol of oppression and would like to see it changed. Others say Australia is a multi-cultural country and that the Union Jack, which is Britain’s flag, should not occupy such a significant part of the flag.

Others, particularly people who have served in the armed forces under the existing flag do not want to see it changed.

This Australian Day the independent organisation Ausflag launched an exhibition of 100 winners from 2500 entries in a preliminary design competition for a new flag. That there are so many designs indicates that whatever the strength of opinion about the existing flag, there is no popular momentum towards a new flag. No design has captured enough people’s imagination. This is in stark contrast with the growing opinion in favour of a change to a republic.

It may be, of course, that a change to a republic might lessen people’s desire for a new flag. The again, it might raise it. We should wait to see rather than setting the Olympics or 2000 as a goal.