Month: May 1999

The wrong people are gambling on the wrong things. And the tax burden on the gambles are falling in the wrong places.

This week the ACT Budget increased the amount of tax on gambling. It will now raise put on some extra gambling taxes. Gambling taxes will rise to $54.8 million, or 9.8 per cent of ACT taxes, up from 9.2 per cent.

Forget the absurdity of the Budget at the same time allotting $0.5 million to research the social costs of gambling. We know; they are shocking. Gambling taxes will raise double the amount raised by land tax.
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The separation of powers and checks and balances are all very well, but political systems need a workable circuit breaker – as the GST fiasco is revealing.

Circuit breakers, you will recall live in the power box. When something ghastly happens in the electrical circuitry, like a big surge of power or some idiot jamming a screwdriver into the toaster, the circuit breaker trips. The circuit breaks so no-one gets electrified and so significant part of the circuit or appliance gets wrecked. When the ghastly happening stops it is a simple matter to retriever the circuit breaker. You don’t have to grovel under the house or into the walls to find out which bit of the cabling melted, or replace the very expensive thingummyjig in the refrigerator.

No we have a political circuit breaker in Australia for the sorts of occasions when Brian Harradine jambs a screwdriver into the toaster. It is called a double dissolution. But it is a very expensive and cumbersome circuit-breaker and it does not always work.
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Jack Waterford is away. I thought he might be silly enough to file from his hospital bed, given he has not missed a column since it began in (DATE), filing from Britain, Indonesia, various Australian capitals and his beloved plains of western NSW.

It appears Jack will be away for some weeks but we expect a full recovery. Perhaps it was nature or god’s warning to slow down on the job and a warning for some of us around him to share the load. Or perhaps a warning to Jack on lifestyle: less nicotine, caffeine and big lunches. More exercise. He is cheerful and doing well.

The pressures of being editor are immense. And it is a question of being editor rather than doing the job of editor. On a seven day a week newspaper the only peace is the few hours from the end of the print run till the early news and current affairs programs start.
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It is a question of perception.

Chief Minister Kate Carnell has been quite cross recently with our Assembly reporter Kirsten Lawson. Carnell feels that her message is not going through; that Lawson is biased and is beating up the Bruce Stadium issue; that Lawson is not presenting the Government’s case fairly.

The following day, former Carnell Liberal Minister and now Canberra United MLA Trevor Kaine chimed in.

He wrote, “”Kirsten Lawson in her article Bruce funding is the main game (CT, May 22, p.C3) refers to the revelations this week that it was Cabinet which approved the spending on Bruce, back in December 1997 while Kaine himself was still in Cabinet.

“”This is yet another case of the media picking up on the spin from Mrs Carnell’s office and repeating it as gospel and in some way relevant to the matter of unauthorised spending on Bruce Stadium.”

Delightful stuff. At once, Lawson is both the curse of the Chief Minister’s office and its mouthpiece for uncritically regurgitating its spin.
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The Budget lock-up of journalists has been an annual ritual for some decades.

It may have passed its used-by date.

Before Paul Keating deregulated the financial markets and before indexation became the vogue it might have had a point. In those days a sudden excise levy, devaluation of taxation change might have caused runs on money markets or even supermarkets. Perhaps that was why the Budget speech was done in the evening, so that no-one could go out a buy or sell. Now we have 24-hour money markets and 24-hour super-markets.

The journalists’ lock-up was primarily there to give journalists time to absorb the Budget papers and be ready to put the information out on air or to the press without enabling them to leak out crucial market information that would give an unfair disadvantage.
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The editor of the Northern Star in Lismore, Dean Gould, describes his readers as the poor, the old and the idle.

He was talking to a conference of editors and others organised by the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association last weekend.

Lismore has some unfortunate statistics. It has the highest unemployment rate, the highest rate of old people, the lowest income and the lowest education of anywhere in NSW.

Gould’s journos, though, are completely different. For a start they all have jobs. Most are young and all have well above the average income. Gould argued that the journalists were becoming too detached from their readers. Their talk of holidays in Europe and Thailand was alien to readers struggling to get a couple of weeks in the Evans Head Caravan Park.
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Inconsistency is still condemned in politics. It is a weapon for both journalists and other politicians. We had some entertaining examples this week with the deal between the Government and the Democrats over the GST.

Fear not, this column is not about the GST. Rather it is about consistency.

Labor said, “”Ha, ha, ha, you said a tax exemption for food was a Bad Thing a month ago. Now after dealing with the Democrats you say a tax exemption on food is the best thing since … er …. sliced bread.”

Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello squirmed.
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