Month: October 1999

The Eyre Highway is one of Australia’s great road journeys. It is named after the explorer, Edward John Eyre, who in 1841 barely survived thirst, hunger and treachery by guides to make the first East-West crossing of the continent.

The entire length of the highway is bitumen and is extremely well signposted, with indications of the distance to the next town with petrol and other services.

The trip begins properly at Port Augusta, 330km north-east of Adelaide at the head of Spencer Gulf, a provincial city that services a vast area of semi-arid grazing and wheat growing country.

The Highway meets the sea at Ceduna, a small modern town on picturesque Murat Bay. On the outskirts of Ceduna is a warning sign about the last reliable water. This marks the end of cultivated country and the beginning of the deserted, almost treeless land that creeps towards the Nullarbor Plain. The highway stays close to the coast and there is always a little scrub and other vegetation on the plains or on the sand dunes that lie between the Highway and the ocean.
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The Prime Minister has missed the point entirely. The best that can be said about his case for voting No is that it is earnest and honest.

The referendum is not about the system of government. It is about changing a symbol that is patently no longer appropriate for Australia. If the person who is monarch of Great Britain continued to be an appropriate sovereign for Australia, the Queen would be invited to open the Olympic Games and the majority of Australians would be comfortable with that. If the symbolism in having the monarch of Great Britain has the monarch of Australia was still appropriate, the majority of Australians would have been quite comfortable with President Clinton toasting “”Her Majesty the Queen” when he visited Australia.

Nearly all of what John Howard said in his No case was perfectly true. Australia is independent. Our role in East Timor revealed that. The mechanics of our present system have served us well and worked well. The Queen has no role in our governance.
Continue reading “1999_10_october_leader28oct howard republic”

It is just as well the ACT has introduced speed cameras. This week the fifth annual crash index was published by the insurance group AAMI. Speeding seems to be the one black spot for Canberra drivers. They are the least likely to break minor road rules; the least likely to engage in road rage; had the highest support for police and was among the highest for support for drink-driving punishment. But Canberrans were more likely to speed than drivers from everywhere but Sydney.

The popular perception is that the speed cameras are just revenue raisers. However, the experience in other states where they have been introduced is that they result in motorists slowing down. That means fewer accidents and therefore fewer deaths, injuries and property damage and lower insurance premiums, both for property and third-party insurance. Speed cameras cut the crash rate by up to 20 per cent.
Continue reading “1999_10_october_leader27oct road toll”

The Productivity Commission’s report on broadcasting should be the catalyst to clean up the mess created by both major political parties. The history of Australian broadcasting law over the past two decades has been a litany of sycophancy, favouritism and fear. The major parties have lived in dread of offending the big media players, lest they be savaged in political coverage. The result has been mogul-specific laws rather than laws based on broad public-interest principles. The only time any balance has entered the policy debate is when the two big players have had such divergent interests that the major parties, out of fear of offending either, have favoured neither.

The result has been a highly concentrated media with a high degree of foreign ownership — the antithesis of the stated policy aims of both major parties and the broadcasting law itself.
Continue reading “1999_10_october_leader25oct broadcasting”

Last week saw the publication of some encouraging figures on employment in the ACT. The Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that ACT private sector employment grew at 22 per cent last year, four times the national average. The main areas of growth were hotels, restaurants and tourism. The projections for next year were also good — only 3.3 per cent of businesses predicted cutting staff and 17 per cent predicted expansion.

But the message in the figures must be tempered by a couple of other factors. Public-sector employment fell by 3 per cent. Further, ACT employment growth is coming off a comparatively low base after substantially reductions in employment of previous years. And a fair amount of the high growth must be discounted by the structural change in the ACT which has seen huge cuts in the federal public service transmogrify into private-sector jobs through out-sourcing. That is no bad thing, but it cannot be counted as all new growth.

The figures are further confirmation that the ACT has changed permanently from a public-sector dominated economy to one in which the private sector has the major role.
Continue reading “1999_10_october_leader24oct act jobs”

There was a lot of misplaced hand-wringing and consternation over the float of the second tranche of Telstra on Monday. Investors felt disappointed at best and cheated at worse. Too bad. Investors had obviously thought that the second tranche would be a repeat of the first tranche two years ago when a third of Telstra was floated and the share price doubled in a year. That first float was widely praised as “”successful”. In fact it was a dismal failure because a public asset had been grossly undersold. Taxpayers and the public in general lost. They lost not only to small “”mums and dads” investors but also to large institutional and foreign investors.

This time, however, the Government has by sheer chance got it right. The value of one-third of Telstra was set at $16 billion which came out at $7.40 per full share or $4.50 for the first instalment for personal investors. The market put the price at $7.37 a share on Monday. In short, this time the Government sold Telstra for a respectable market price. It did not flog of a valuable public asset below value. That result is more due to good luck than good management. Markets in general dropped dramatically on Monday. That drop followed an earlier fall of Telstra stocks from a high of $9.20 in January.
Continue reading “1999_10_october_leader20oct telstra”

On August 27 this year the sun rose at 6.30am and set at 5.40pm.

Next year it will be Olympic Games time. For some reason the Games organisers thought it would be a Good Thing to have daylight saving during the Olympics.

NSW, Victoria, the ACT and Tasmania have agreed to this absurdity.

It will not be daylight saving so much as a foolish and premature winding on of the clocks by one hour.

The sun will rise at 7.30am. It means everyone getting up to go to work and school will be doing so in darkness and will have to turn on lights to eat breakfast and read the newspaper.
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Flights:

Most airlines will fly to any major city in Europe, via whatever hub they use.

Check with your travel agent or airline about carrying bikes or other sporting equipment. Some airlines have extra fees. I have carried kayaks, bikes and skis all over the place with no fuss or damage on any occasion.

This time it was Thai and Lufthansa. The travel agent said Lufthansa would charge extra, but they didn’t, and their chap at Venice gave excellent service. (Pity about the leg room in economy, though).

Bike facts.
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Licensed clubs in the ACT were put on notice more than a year ago. They were warned that they should be doing more for charity and sport in the ACT in light of the significant tax benefits and near-monopoly over poker machines they enjoy. Nothing much has changed. A year ago the Commissioner for ACT Revenue reported precise details on how much of net poker machine profits went to sport and charity. Precious little, it was revealed. A year later the commissioner has now published a second annual report as required by the Gaming Machine Act. Again it is revealed that the clubs are giving precious little to sport and charity from net poker machine profits. Out of a total of net poker machine profits of $92.6 million, sport and charity are getting a pitiful 3.6 per cent, only a tad up from last year’s 3.4 per cent from $86.8 million. Added to the latest 3.6 per cent is a further 1.3 per cent given in kind.

In all, though, out of more than $1 billion that goes through pokies every year in the ACT, charities and sport are getting just $4.6 million.
Continue reading “1999_10_october_clubs and pokies”