Month: August 1999

The best thing to come out of the smoking examples in the Year 9 literary and numeracy test is the fact that there was outrage over them in the first place. The fact that year 9 students can write to The Canberra Times and raise the issue with their parents and education authorities indicates that something is going right with our education system. It is producing students with an ability to see issues and to articulate responses to them, rather than sit unquestioning.

Moreover, the issue was tangential to the matter in hand – a serious testing of literacy and numeracy. To that extent it showed admirable lateral thinking outside the box.
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In a rather unconventional departure from Westminster tradition yesterday, Chief Minister Kate Carnell chose to announce a new ministerial appointment to a gathering of invited guests and the media at the National Press Club. The normal procedure is to announce such things to the Parliament first.

The event was billed as an announcement about changes to the structure of government in the ACT. And some significant bureaucratic changes were announced.

Mrs Carnell predicated her announcement with a rundown of the ACT’s financial performance in the past four and a half years. In 1995 the ACT Budget had an operating loss of $344 million. This year it would be as good as balanced with a loss of a mere $6 million and into the black the following year.
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Prime Minister John Howard wants to keep the question on the republic referendum as it is. That is the question that his government put in the Bill to set the referendum in train. The question (in the form of the long title of the Bill) was drafted by the Government in consultation with no-one. It reads, “”A Bill for an Act to alter the Constitution to establish the Commonwealth of Australia as a republic with a President chosen by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Commonwealth Parliament.”

The joint parliamentary committee, on the other hand, has consulted widely among minimalist republicans, direct-elect republicans and constitutional monarchists. Apparently, a majority of that committee wants the question changed, though we will not know until Monday when the committee tables in report in Parliament. The committee is in a better position to put the question more fairly.

The question as it stands is incorrect, carries the wrong emphasis and is biased in favour of the No case.
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The Property Advisory Council of the ACT has just reported on dealings between the ACT Government and property developers. Its findings are welcome. The council’s members include property developers.

The report pours cold water on direct dealing, or secret deals between government and a particular developer. “”The starting point for negotiation between the public and private sector on property development proposals should be a preference for a competitive environment.”

It says there should only be direct dealing if there is considerable public benefit that can only be obtained from direct dealing.
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What makes some people healthy and others not?

It is a simple question with complex answers.

Doctors usually look at the individual. They look at symptoms like pain, swelling, discharges, the chemical composites and viral or bacterial invasions of blood and other fluids. They look at x-rays and other imaging. They open bodies up and look inside physically.

Then they make a diagnosis, prognosis and a treatment regime. The treatment leads to cure or the stabilising of the condition or it fails and leads to death.

That is one way of looking at health.
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Sometimes a mundane event in a journalist’s life puts a small light on matters of public moment.

A while ago I sold my house in North Canberra after it had been tenanted for a couple of years. The real-estate agent had no sooner hammered in the second post of the “”For Sale” sign than a buyer approached and a price was settled verbally. Sure, there was no binding contract, but clearly the buyer knew what he was after. He lived in the area. He knew the house quite well.

But what do we find. Meddling legislatures demanding that we get an energy efficiency rating before the house can be formally sold. The agent told me it would be about $200 and there was no escape.

I told him I wanted the cheapest possible EER he could possibly arrange and I didn’t care if it was rated minus 20 because the buyer wanted to buy and I wanted to sell and I didn’t see what business it was of government (or more correctly the legislature) to impose that extra cost, which one way or the other would fall on both of us. The buyer could be a landlord who one way or the other would try to pass the cost on to a stuggling tenant or a struggling first-home buyer.
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