Month: April 1998

Does it follow? Does it follow that if Victoria and NSW privatise and deregulate certain industries that the ACT must follow suit? We can expect a new round in the privatisation debate in the ACT in the next few months. With the election over, there are no voters to scare, so the issues can be more fearless canvassed by the Government. Moreover the balance in the Assembly has changed a little with the Government requiring only the Osborne independents to vote with it to get its way. Indeed, at present the Government can privatise without separate legislation, but any instance is subject to new legislative veto if a majority in the Assembly agreed.

One of the troubles with the privatisation debate is that is easy to point to benefits individuals might get from government ownership, regulation or subsidy, but it is hard to quantify the benefits to the community as a whole from lower taxes and more efficient use of resources.

It is easy to argue for regular bus routes with subsidised fares. The harder argument is that in favour of getting rid of mostly empty buses, burning fuel on uneconomic bus routes.

It is nice to have the lower prices from subsidised milk, water and electricity, but it is neither environmentally or economically efficient. And should the state profit from promoting gambling through the TAB? Also, is it fair to private operators in a field to have to compete against a subsidised public operator, as in the case with Ecowise, Actew’s fully owned electrical contracting company.
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It is a pity that only NSW adopted the approach of the ACT Attorney-General, Gary Humphries, in agreeing to let the Commonwealth enact uniform defamation laws. Because the other states and territory insisted on keeping their own laws, the proposal for a uniform law has now been abandoned. A 30-year objective is now still a long way.

Mr Humphries said he would now turn his attention to separate reform in the ACT. This would be most welcome. But the course of reform of defamation law has never been a smooth one. The meeting of the standing committee of attorneys-general in Perth last week which rejected the uniformity proposal was just another example of that. The prime reason for it, of course, is that the politicians in whose hands reform lies are among the greatest beneficiaries of restrictive defamation laws.

So we will continue to have the absurd situation where material published in one state will be actionable, but just across the border in another state it will not be. With national television networks and radio broadcasts and newspapers circulating throughout the country, it is ridiculous.
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So, the extreme Protestant unionists and the extreme elements of the IRA appear to agree on something for a change. They both agree that last week’s peace accord — the best hope for peace in Northern Ireland for more than 30 years — should be sabotaged. They share some other things, too: a dislike of peace; a dislike of prosperity for the general population; and a love of violence and power. But, if all goes well, they now they irrelevance.

Due to the courage and intelligence of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, an agreement has been worked out that will go to a referendum next month. If approved, it will pull the rug out from extremist positions. Both sides will have to accept responsibilities in a power-sharing government. The unionists will have to accept that southern Ireland will have a say, albeit a limited one, in the governance of the six northern counties that constitute Northern Ireland. The republicans will have to accept there can be no united Ireland, at least for now and in any event not until a majority in the north agree to it. Republicans south of the border will have to accept a change to their Constitution to convert the formal claim of sovereignty over the north to an aspiration for a united Ireland.

Putting the accord to a referendum has its risks. Failure could see a return to large-scale violence almost immediately. But it is a risk worth taking. If successful, the referendum result would be a clear message to that the people want peace and co-operative self-government. It will undermine any legitimacy claimed by extremists from both sides. If they say they speak for this community or that community, it will be a hollow assertion.
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The Chief Justice of the Family Court, Alistair Nicholson, and the Federal Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, have engaged in an ironic adversary slanging match over the use of mediation as an alternative to litigation in the Family Court.

Last week Mr Williams called on the Family Court to recognise mediation as a “”genuine alternative to litigation . . . not as an inferior compromise.” He accused the court of hiding its mediation services, saying, “”A Family Court client might be lucky to find information at Family Court registries about community-based mediators.”

Mr Williams drew immediate fire from Justice Nicholson who pointed out that the court introduced mediation services in an unfunded initiative in 1991. The lack of funding for it meant that it had never been able to reach its full potential.

Mr Williams, it appears, has got the right idea, but he picked a poor example. Indeed, it appears that both of these legal luminaries have valid points, but their adversary approach to the question has disguised the true picture.
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Prime Minister John Howard has been talking election talk. He knows that if he wants his Wik legislation through he must have a double dissolution election between July 4 and October 24 the only practicable and permissible time frame, under constitutional requirments that cry out for reform.

The Constitution will not permit a double dissolution within six months of an ordinary election being due which itself is three years from the first sitting of the House of Rpresentatives after the previous election (April 30). After a double dissolution, the Constitution backdates senators terms to the previous July 1, so the election must be after this July 1 if the senators are not to lose almost a year of their term and then force the subsequent House term to truncated by almost a year if it is to be held in conjunction with the next half senate election. And under electoral law elections must be held on a Saturday.

In short, a double dissolution election must be an early election. Its only advantage from Mr Howard’s point of view is that after it (if he wins) he can put his Wik legislation to a joint sitting of both Houses where it presumably will be passed because his extra numbers in the House of Representationves will presumably more than off-set any deficit he has in the Senate.
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Last financial year 9.8 million taxpayers lodged a tax return. Of them 78 per cent claimed work-related expenses, totalling $6 billion, or about $600 each.

The Australian Society of Certified Practising Accountants estimates that the paperwork costs about $700 million, though at $70 a return that seems on the high side. The society suggests that there would be considerable saving if work-related expenses were abolished altogether or abolished and the savings and the value of the claims averaged through reduced tax rates.

There is some merit in the idea. But the savings have to be calculated fairly carefully. Even if work-related expenses were abandoned, many taxpayers would still need to put in a return. The Australian Tax Office says 42 per cent of taxpayers claim charitable gifts and 24 per cent claim investment income. These would have to be dealt with if the office wanted a large reduction in the number of tax returns it processes.
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The draft guidelines on commercial-in-confidence issued by the ACT Government last week are welcome. It is more welcome that they are draft guidelines and that the public has six weeks to comment on them. Development of the guidelines was requested by Chief Minister Kate Carnell in December last year.

The best part of the guidelines is that they reverse the onus on the question of commercial confidentiality. It is now up to the business to show it will be adversely affected before confidentiality will be granted. There is to be no automatic commercial in confidence just because a matter is a commercial dealing; the commercial entity must show that disclosure will give rise to inappropriate commercial loss or gain. The Government is not to enter confidentiality agreements where non-disclosure is against the public interest.

Under the guidelines the Government will have to abide by a commitment to as full disclosure as possible. The Government will be obliged to disclose information wherever possible, including information relating to its commercial dealings, to the people on whose behalf it is acting.
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Far too much stake was put on the High Court’s Hindmarsh Bridge decision before it was brought down. It was regarded as a pointer to what the High Court might do in any constitutional challenge to the Government’s Wik legislation that is now before Parliament. The Labor Party painted it that way and got it wrong. Now the decision has been brought down the Government has painted it that way, and again it is no such thing.

Indeed, the Government greeted the decision like the final siren in a football match. A note indicating the result was passed to Prime Minister John Howard while Parliament was sitting. The body language of the front bench was like that of football supporters. Bridge Builders 1 Aborigines 0, the score read. And they were going to win next week’s match, too, no doubt.

But they had not read the reasons for the decision.

The two political sides thought the challenge to the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Act was about whether the Commonwealth Parliament has the power to enact special laws for the detriment of Aboriginal people under the 1967 amendment to the Constitution, as well as the obvious power to enact laws for their benefit.
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Jaws dropped when the High Court’s Hindmarsh Bridge decisions came down this.

The politicians and the press gallery were hoping to get a sign whether the Government’s Wik legislation is constitutionally valid. Instead, they thought, the High Court copped out and ruled on a technicality, leaving the Wik question still in the air.

But it seems to me that this week’s Bridge decision gives a huge constitutional boost to the Wik legislation.

The major political parties and the political journalists thought the court would rule on whether the Commonwealth had power to make laws which are nasty to Aborigines as well as laws which are nice to them.

The Hindmarsh Bridge Act allows a bridge to be built on land Aborigines regard as sacred, so it is a law that is nasty to Aborigines, they thought. If the High Court struck it down, it meant Wik (a law also nasty to Aborigines on this reasoning) would be struck down with it. If the High Court allowed the Bridge Act, it meant Wik would be allowed.

But it is not that simple.

The High Court dodged the question on whether the Commonwealth has power to make nasty laws as well as the more obvious power to make laws that are helpful to Aborigines.
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The top two thirds of the Black Mountain Tower are to be dismantled following the introduction of digital television and radio.

The new technology makes the aerials on the top part of the tower unnecessary and they would become unused as digital is phased in between 2001 and 2004.

A spokesman for Telstra said it would certainly be an economic proposition to dismantle the red-and-white lattice work which forms the top 63m of the 195m tower, because maintenance costs over just a few years would out-strip the costs of dismantling.

The question of demolishing the 66m concrete stem that sits above the viewing platform and restaurant would be more marginal, but was more likely than not.

The erection of the tower caused widespread controversy in the early 1970s. Environmentalists and town planners said it was contrary to the Burley Griffin vision of having no buildings breaking the skyline on the hills. It was opposed by the National Capital Development Corporation at the time. Citizen objectors successfully obtained an injunction in the ACT Supreme Court in November 1974 and work was temporarily suspended until a government appeal to the Federal Court which ruled that federal communications regulations overrode planning laws. The tower was opened in May 1980.

The Telstra spokesman rejected any idea of demolishing the whole tower and replacing it with a simple 30m lattice because “”the viewing platform and restaurant are good money-spinners” and it would cost too much to relocate the three floor of equipment rooms, even though the digital technology meant they could be located anywhere in the city.
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