Month: January 1999

Laureate Jose Ramos Horta has displayed significant tact and diplomacy in his response to the Australian Government’s change of position on East Timor. He welcomed the switch and acknowledged that it is impossible for a Government to make huge reversals of policy in one step.

The Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, announced this week “”that the long term prospects for reconciliation in East Timor would be best served by the holding of an act of self-determination at some future time, following a substantial period of autonomy”.

It would not alter Australia’s recognition of Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor.
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The latest allegations that Salt Lake City got the nod for the 2002 winter Olympics after bribery and sex-for-votes brings the whole structure of the International Olympic Committee into question.

An Australian member of the IOC, Phil Coles, has called for the matters to be cleared up very rapidly, so that the Sydney Olympics are not tainted. But it is not enough to get a few heads to roll over Salt Lake City and carry on as if nothing had happened. The trouble is that the Salt Lake City allegations are not the only ones. The Olympics has a long history of corruption.

Coles has asserted that the head of the IOC Juan Antonio Samaranch should not be one of the heads to roll just because some of his underlings engaged in bribery. He said prime ministers do not resign because one or two ministers are found wanting. But there is a fundamental difference between prime ministers and the head of the IOC. Prime ministers are ultimately accountable to an electorate. The trouble with the IOC is that its processes are not very democratic. Some IOC members are members for life; others are members to the age of 80. The IOC has huge power over location, selection and franchising of the games. The combination of power and unaccountability has been deadly.
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Without the slightest sense of irony, the International Cricket Council set up a commission on Monday to investigate allegations of breaches of the ICC’s code of conduct on the same day that Australian umpire Darrell Hair was charged with breaching the code for comments he made in a book.

The secrecy mentality of international cricket which led to Monday’s resolution has not changed. Hair’s crime — shock, horror — was to publish something that might bring the game into disrepute. It was his exposition of events surrounding the plentiful no-balling of Sri Lankan bowler Muttiah Muralitharan for having a crooked arm and therefore throwing. Oh gosh, nothing must be made public which might bring the international game of cricket into disrepute.

Yet it was the very sweeping under the carpet by the Australian Cricket Board of fines imposed on Mark Waugh and Shane Warne receiving payments from an Indian bookmaker for information about playing conditions that led to cricket’s present predicament. The ACB’s view was, “”Oh gosh, we better not let this messy business about taking money get out to the public. That might bring the game into disrepute.”
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The Monica Lewinsky affair has pushed the internet into a key position in the dissemination of information. It was the Drudge Report on the internet that broke the story after Newsweek pulled the details at the last minute.

Until now, Matt Druge had a fairly good record for accuracy. The mainstream media not only squirmed at his bad taste, but squirmed that he got and published the stories they did not have or did not dare publish that turned out to be true.

But now his revelation that President Bill Clinton fathered a child, now aged 13, through a black prostitute has proven to be false.
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Last week the retiring New Zealand Minister for Justice Douglas Graham suggested that New Zealand would become part of Australia — its seventh state — within the next 10 years. He argued that economic pressures would mean that New Zealand’s ability to remain independent would be a major issue.

“”If commodity prices that we’re so dependent on keep tumbling, that will push us closer to Australia,” he said.

There would be no huge difficulty in New Zealand becoming part of Australia. New Zealand already attends most of the federal-state ministerial councils and takes an active role in determining mutual recognition and uniformity in a lot of regulatory matters. But that is not the point. Mr Graham’s statement is based on a fallacy that economics drives nationhood. To the contrary. Language, religion and geographic are far greater determinants of nation-making and national pride than economics. There are many far poorer countries in the world than New Zealand which hold together as nations.
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The ACT Attorney-General, Gary Humphries, has ordered a review of assisted reproductive technology. It would look at which technology is not covered by law and which should be. In part the review was prompted by the case of a Canberra woman who got an order in the Victorian Supreme Court recently giving her permission to take sperm from her dead husband’s body in the hope that she might get pregnant from it later.

The case raises, according to Mr Humphries, urgent ethical questions.

Mr Humphries said, “”There is a great danger of the technology pushing us; that just because something is possible we may be compelled to go with it.”
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The Attorney-General, Gary Humphries, revealed his determination this week to push ahead with reform of the ACT’s defamation laws.

Mr Humphries is right to do so. He correctly points to 20 years of failed efforts to get a uniform reformed defamation law in Australia. Clearly there is no hope of such an achievement. Moreover, a glimmer of hope at reform through a change in the interpretation of the Constitution by the High Court in 1994 has been watered dawn to virtually nothing. So the situation is that we have a law more suited to the 19th century in the middle of the information age and as we head into the 21 century.

Mr Humphries pointed to faults in the present law: complexity, high cost, delay and the wrong remedy (high damages) being applied for damage to reputation. These he rightly points out have resulted in a law for wealthy plaintiffs, leaving the less well off powerless to do much to protect their reputation and privacy. Moreover, the ACT has become a favoured jurisdiction for many of these plaintiffs causing a drain on our public resources.
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Federal Opposition Leader Kim Beazley is playing silly politics in calling for Prime Minister John Howard to speed up the process of moving to a republic if it is approved by a referendum.

Mr Beazley said Australia had “”time to burn” to have a president of an Australian republic open the Sydney Olympics in September next year. Maybe so, but the Olympics is not a good basis for the timing of constitutional change. For a start, the Olympics were awarded to Sydney, not Australia. And they are only a sporting event. If there is to be a change it would be far better to time it in accordance with events in Australia’s constitutional history. Of course, the most significant date in that history was January 1, 1901. At the time it was stated that Australia should come into being as a nation on the first day of the new century. Using similar reasoning, the first day of the new century would be an appropriate time for Australia to sever the last constitutional ties with Britain. (Obviously, the substantial historic, emotional, economic and other ties with Britain and the British people would remain intact. Indeed, if Australia did become a republic it is likely they would strengthen because expression of affection for things British would no longer be seen as a cringe.)

Acting Prime Minister Tim Fischer was right to reject Mr Beazley’s suggestion and keep to the original timetable set down by Prime Minister John Howard. Mr Howard has been commendably consistent on the republic and has kept his promises on it.
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There is something different about the provision of medical services in the ACT compared to the rest of Australia. This much we know from figures issued this week by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. On the face of the figures, the ACT spends far more and has far more medical workers than the rest of Australia. That may not be such a bad thing. Perhaps we are delivering better and more services to more people resulting in better lives for residents of the ACT. Perhaps we look after ourselves better, seeking medical attention more often.

On the other hand, perhaps we are wasteful in the provision of medical services, spending too much for each service and providing too many unnecessary services.

Alternatively, the statistics might be the result of some aberration or some unaccounted-for factors and the reality underlying them might not be so much different from the rest of Australia.
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The Victorian Premier, Jeff Kennett, is right to call for changes in the national health system and for the system to be looked at comprehensively, but he is wrong to suggest that Medicare should be scrapped or that the system needs a complete overhaul. Rather it needs a few adjustments.

There are two elements to Medicare which have been a godsend to Australian health care. One is universal cover. No-one in Australia goes without necessary health care for lack of money, even if they have to wait according to medical need. The second is that Medicare has kept a lid on spirally health costs. That was verified again this week with the release of national health statistics which reveal Australia spends about 8.5 per cent of GDP on health, rising less than one percentage point since Medicare was introduced 15 years ago. That is a remarkable achievement against the US figure of more than 12 per cent and a system than leaves many facing penury or deprivation because of medical costs.
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