Month: January 2000

As economic conditions improve with the longest continuous period of economic growth in Australia since the 1950s, several disquieting factors emerge to upset the trend.

First, we suck imports which puts pressure on the currency and overheats the economy. The corrective action is the raise interest rates which slow things down, but carries the danger of causing the economy and employment to contract. Australia’s balance of trade during this boom remains is worrying, but judicious use of interest rate rises and care to ensure foreign capital continues to flow in can control things.

Secondly, we get a shortage of skilled labour and demands for higher wages. Coupled with this is unions flexing muscle because the boom makes them feel the spectre of unemployment is gone.

This is a more worrying trend. Higher wages, if paid by enterprises that can afford it because they are doing well in the boom, are to be welcomed. Higher standards of living is what economic policy should be about. The trouble arises, however, when wage claims are made across the board or when union muscle is flexed in boom times more in order to keep power than to increase pay.
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The ACT Government will publish its draft Budget tomorrow. The draft will go before committees of the Assembly which contain MLAs from the Opposition and cross benches as well as government members. The committees will be able to make recommendations for changes before the Budget is voted on by the whole House. It is an experiment in governance not undertaken anywhere else. The fact no other jurisdiction has approached budgets this way does not matter. There is nothing wrong with trying new things. However, this experiment so fundamentally alters the checks and balances of the Westminster system that its wisdom must be questioned. So, too, must the motive for it.

The normal Westminster model has the Executive or Government determined by a majority on the floor of the lower house of parliament, or in the case of the ACT, the only house of Parliament. Sometimes that can be a permanent majority locked in by party discipline. More commonly these days, the majority is not permanent or guaranteed. It is made up of a major party plus independents or members of minor parties. Or sometimes the majority is solid in the lower house but there is no majority in the upper house. In any event, a majority of the members of the legislature hand executive authority to a prime or chief minister. Executive authority is power to apply the laws of the legislature and to spend money in accordance with those laws.

Critical elements of executive authority are the power to make regulations under legislation so the legislation works in detail, the power to make appointments and the power to spend money to give effect to legislation. The executive must always abide by legislation. It must always abide by the law.
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Canberra might have lost CHOGM earlier this month, but this week it followed a commendable pattern of behaviour. Get kicked in the guts by the Federal Government, use your brains to do something about it, bounce back. The rest of Australia is mostly unaware of this attribute of Canberra. That is probably because Canberra is used too frequently as a synonym for the Federal Government. It is called metonymy

“”Canberra’s GST horror,” the headline runs. But we would not see headlines like “”Canberra takes CHOGM from Canberra” or “”Canberra hits back after Canberra takes GHOGM from Canberra”.

We have this blurred identity crisis which probably distracts the attention of some businesses outside Australia who see Canberra only as home of the Federal Government with business opportunities limited to supplying the Federal Government. Though this is slowly changing.

The loss of CHOGM (if indeed it was ever seriously contemplated that it would come here in the first place) is unfortunate as an immediate loss to our hospitality industry, but it is perhaps more unfortunate as a loss of opportunity to showcase Canberra to an international audience.
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The British Government has proffered to former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet something he and his regime did not proffer their victims in the 1970s and 1980s — the fair application of the rule of law.

Home Secretary Jack Straw appears to have acted fairly every step of the way. True, Britain would have preferred that Pinochet had never set foot in the country in the first place and this his presence was an embarrassment that could cause a rift in Chilean-British relations. However, it appears that politics did not enter into the decision to determine that Pinochet should not be extradited to Spain to face charges of torture and murder of Spanish citizens who were victims of the Pinochet regime. Pinochet has escaped charges in his native Chile as successive Governments, even democratic ones, have allowed him a form of immunity by granting him a life senatorship and allowing him to continue holding it.

In Chile some regard Pinochet as the saviour of the nation by overthrowing the socialist Allende Government. Others regard him as a murderer and torturer, or at least as a man who encouraged murder and torture.
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The merger between internet service provider America Online and media and entertainment giant Time Warner and the takeover proposal by Telstra’s Bigpond of Ozemail are dramatic illustrations of converging technologies in the communications industry. Convergences of this kind will ultimately make government regulation of broadcasting toothless. They will make the Australian Government’s rules on cross-media ownership, foreign content and ownership and internet content irrelevant anachronisms.

Before widespread internet usage, governments had a significant say in what the public could see and who could publish it to them. That say was centred around the technology of broadcasting. Broadcasting has two elements that make regulation fairly easy. First, the same sound, vision and print being seen by masses of people at the same time (or in the case of print on the same day). Secondly, the sound and vision require access to wireless spectrum of which there is a limited amount.

It means that monitoring authorities can pick up and monitor whatever is broadcast. The public, too, can monitor it note the time it is broadcast and complain about it to authorities. It means also that the limited wireless spectrum can get allocated by government to parties who agree to abide by regulation.
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The report last week of a dog suffering injuries after being run over on the cycle path a Tuggeranong highlights the ambiguous legal status of the paths and the people who use them. Something should be done to clarify the position.

The full details of the case at hand are unclear. Ron and Mary Dean were walking on the cycle path around Lake Tuggeranong. A cyclist came from behind and without ringing his or her bell hit their Maltese terrier. The matter could have been more serious – a person could have been seriously injured, either pedestrian or cyclist.

At present, cycleways have no distinct legal status. They are just like any other path, though the sign indicate they are definitely for cyclists. This poses a dilemma for pedestrians. It is too easy to say “”commonsense should prevail” because one pedestrian’s commonsense is another’s madness. On one hand, pedestrians could reasonably say that it is best to keep left, like all traffic. On the other hand, some pedestrians might argue that it would be better to keep right, facing the on-coming traffic, as one does on the road. There are arguments on either side, and therein lies the rub. There is no accepted practice. This means that cyclists have no way of predicting pedestrian behaviour. A pedestrian, or a group of them, using the centre of the path are as likely to leap left or right upon the approach of a cyclist from either direction. The very unpredictability is dangerous.
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The Catholic Church, particularly under the present Pope, has not been an organisation noted for moving with the times. That is seen by some as a weakness. By others, however, it is seen as a great strength of the Church.

Two thousand years after the birth of Christ and, depending on whose view you take, between 1600 and 2000 years after the foundation of the Roman Catholic Church, the present Pope, John Paul II, is in poor health, frail and probably finding the tasks of the papacy pushing the limits of his endurance.

The Pope, aged 79, is suffering from Parkinson’s disease. He also suffers from the after effects of an assassination attempt earlier in his pontificate. At times he is visibly unsteady on his feet.

His condition led to Bishop Karl Lehmann of Mainz, who serves as the chairman of Germany’s Bishops Conference, to say at the weekend, “”I personally trust that the Pope, if he were to have the feeling that he was simply no longer capable enough to lead the church, I believe he would have the strength and the courage to say, “I can no longer fulfil that which needs to be done.’ “”
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The Australian Government’s tough response to the incident in Canberra where a diplomat’s son used immunity to prevent police action after an assault against a Canberra boy was the right approach. Australia made it clear that unless the diplomat’s son co-operated with the police investigation to the extent of being dealt with by the courts if necessary, then the diplomat would be declared persona non grata and would have to return home. As it happened, the diplomat’s sending state – Papua New Guinea – saw the writing on the wall and withdrew him before Australia had to take any action.

Diplomatic immunity is an important principle. There is an over-riding international public interest in ensuring accredited diplomats cannot be prosecuted under local law. If nations states were able to intimidate diplomats with trumped up criminal charges, diplomacy could not be undertaken. Messenger-shooting would make diplomacy impossible, and without diplomacy, peace and international co-operation for the benefit of the world’s citizens would also be impossible. And immunity cannot be a half-way house. It has to be total to be effective.

Diplomatic immunity is laid down in the Vienna Convention which has been enacted into Australian law. And it is important that Australia respects the treaty.
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Western Australians will go to the polls on February 10. The election will be a major test for Premier Richard Court, who is seeking his third term in office. At previous elections in 1993 and 1996 the Coalition could rely on the fall-out from the WA Inc Royal Commission which revealed corruption in Labor ranks. But in 2001, enough time has passed that Mr Court must be judged on his own record and what he projects for the future of Western Australia. Further, Labor has changed significantly since the days of Premier Brian Burke and “”picking winners”. Labor leader Geoff Gallop has renounced that approach, instead concentrating on health, education and crime. Further the Coalition has difficulties of its own in the mortgage brokers’ scandal. Fair Trading Minister Doug Shave is being blamed for failing to protect hundreds of mainly-elderly small investors who lost millions in dodgy pooled investments. There is no question of any government member being directly involved, rather just a failure to prevent the losses.

Labor must win 11 seats to govern it its own right, more than any party has done in Western Australian history. At present the lower House has 57 members: 29 Liberal, six Nationals, 18 Labor MPs, two Liberal-aligned independents and two Labor-aligned independents. It is likely Mr Court will lose at least some seats, after gaining a very high 55.2 per cent of the two-party preferred vote in 1996. It may well be that the independents get the balance of power. That would be no bad thing in a climate of increasing scepticism of the major parties and their propensity to abuse their power.
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The Government’s decision to clamp down on ultrasound tests for pregnant women will impose a burden on poorer women and their doctors.

At present women who have an ultrasound in the first 17 weeks of pregnancy qualify for an $85 Medicare rebate on an average fee of $150. Now the Government wants to limit the rebate in the first 17 weeks to women displaying one of 30 listed conditions and cut the subsidy to $65 for these woman and for women referred after 17 weeks. Women without one of the 30 conditions in the first 17 weeks would get no subsidy.

This will reduce costs to the public purse in the short-term. But those affected will be the poor or the doctors of the poor who charge at reduced rates. It will not immediately stop those who can afford it having ultrasound. It will add to inequity in the health system.

Inequality can never be eliminated. Some people will always pay over the top for every procedure going, but are there any grounds to deliberately add inequity?

Doctors are in the invidious position of being accused of over-servicing if they routinely order scans, or being sued if they have not ordered a scan and something goes wrong. This change will not help

But is there an agenda other than cost here? The restriction on the scans in the first 17 weeks is suspicious because that is precisely the time when an abortion would still be a reasonable option in cases of fetal abnormality. Could it be that the Government is responding to religious concerns by limiting ultrasounds so as to limit the resulting abortions. If so, it will only affect those who cannot afford the scan, compounding the inequity of this measure.

Routine ultrasound in early pregnancy has several benefits. Expected birth dates are predicted more accurately. This means doctors are less likely to order drug-induced births on the ground that birth is overdue. It means mothers do not carry on in the false knowledge that birth is a week away. Risks are reduced.

Ultrasound enables earlier detection of multiple pregnancies (and better preparation) and earlier detection fetal malformation at a time when termination of pregnancy is possible.

They are costly but the costs may be justified given the long-term costs of bring up deformed babies and the costs of induction other poor outcomes from poor prediction without ultrasound.

Against that is a small possibility of false negatives: where ultrasound indicates (it can never conclusively show) abnormality where there is none.

Costs are of concern, but the Government has chosen the wrong procedure in ultrasound to rein them in. Given some of the other things the Government spends money on, in this instance it would be better to err on the side of overservicing than inequitable underservicing.

When it comes to health, people are willing to pay more. The Medicare levy should be raised, rather than benefits cut. That the levy could be raised for Timor indicates that it was possible to raise it for health. After all that is what it is supposed to be for.

The Government is mindful that universal, subsidised medicine through Medicare is electorally very popular so it cannot dismantle Medicare and the pharmaceutical benefits scheme without the loss of many votes. But it appears to be willing to erode Medicare by stealth — by not keeping scheduled fees up with inflation, or even reducing them as in the case of ultrasound.