Month: February 2000

In the long history of our democracy (and it is very long on world standards) there has been an ebb and flow of power.

In colonial times power resided mainly in the colonial (state) capitals. London was too far away. Then in 1901 there was a shift of power to the central government (then in Melbourne). Then in 1925 the High Court stopped than trend and power moved back to the states. In 1942 under threat of Japanese invasion power moved back to the centre, where it has stayed by and large until now. In 1942, the states were forced to give up income tax, which the Commonwealth has kept ever since. I suspect things are about to change and some power is about to move back to the states.

This is due to the way the GST has been framed.

In an article on Wednesday I crunched a lot of figures which should not be repeated here. There is some argument of the detail but the central thesis remains. Prime Minister John Howard, in his eagerness to get the GST up gave away too much. He gave away all the GST revenue to the states.
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The ACT has long urged for the widest among of DNA sampling at meetings of federal and state ministers. There is some merit in this but there are legitimate concerns.

In Britain the DNA database contains the DNA records of more than 400,000 people. It has helped solve a lot of crime and helped exonerate a lot of victims. In the US, DNA testing is being used decades later to bring people to justice and to exonerated convicted people. In one case of poetic justice, a man has been charged with the murder of a DNA researcher Helena Greenwood. Ms Greenwood scratched at her attacker and pieces of skin under her fingernails were kept after her death and later DNA tested. Police allege a match with a prime suspect, 24 years later.

The criminal justice concerns do not centre around the testing itself. Everyone agrees on the science. If you have two samples of bodily matter – one taken from the accused and one from the crime scene — scientists can DNA test each one to obtain an identifying bar code. If the bar codes match there is no rational doubt that the bodily samples come from the same person (unless they are identical twins).

But getting an exact match, does not of itself prove the person did the crime.

Other questions must be satisfied.

Did Sample B come from the crime scene? It could have been planted.
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Labor’s move this week to amend digital television and datacasting laws is worse than closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Because Labor provided the bullet to shoot the horse.

The horse is the fantastic opportunities that should have been available to Australians with the digital tweaking of the available spectrum. It could have, and should have, provided for five networks (the ABC, SBS and the three commercials) to have up to four programming signals each of standard digital definition, and perhaps half a dozen datacasters to provide (over the airwaves) super Internet services which would have included video quality services.

But no, the Government bowed to commcerial television interests. It canned the idea of any of the present networks offering four standard definition programs and instead ordered that all five netowrks must burn up all their spectrum in offering one high-definition signal (with a few add-ons so you can see the same sport from several angles and some extra text searching). This is good for the commercials because all their audience is concentrated, as now, into one programming and one advertising stream which is much cheaper and easier to deliver than four program streams of standard definition.
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It was sad to see a whole nation prostrate itself in adulation of a man who could hit a round piece of leather with a piece of wood.

Sure, he hit it very well. Better than anyone else, no doubt. But really, is this good cause for using phrases like “”the greatest Australian”, for stopping the national Parliament, for devoting more than half the night’s television news bulletins, for wrapping every newspaper in the country with pages and pages of tributes and so on?

And in all these hectares of words, there were precious few from the man himself. He did not contribute much to the great debates, at least publicly.

The adulation is puzzling. It is more than 50 years since he played a test match. That was pre-television, so there is not much vision of his performance. Sure, Bradman lifted the spirits of a few people during the Depression with his sporting prowess. Circuses and dance halls did the same thing.

Did he significantly improve the standard of living or quality of life of Australians through scientific discovery like: Florey, Braggs, Macfarlane Burnet, Eccles, Comforth or Doherty. Did he create and inspire like Lawson, Paterson, Gibbs, Carey, White, Roberts, Heysen or Whiteley. Did he chronicle like Bean? What of our film-makers? Did he explore like Sturt, Forrest, Stuart, Hume and Hovell?
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Bollards at Dairy flat.

Mid path bars on unlit path.. dings in every one of them. Then put reflector tape on them – more or less acknowledging they are a danger.

Path runs out.

Hospice.

Shclich Street maze. Too busy negotiating the maze to see traffic.

Crossing to boat shores – all should be zebra crossings with give way to pedestrians and cyclists. (it is not holding up traffic cos going to lake shore 25kms anyway and the danger is acknowledged by humps.

So close to perfection – why not make it so.

Would have been no cost – indeed less cost of done well…Public is paying for obstacles to be put on cycle paths. Dangerous obstacles which have caused costly prangs – us can see the marks.

Kerbs …

White line runs out.

In September 1998 I wrote a column saying, “”Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has trouble with language. And it could cost him the election.”

Last week’s events show that I should be able to recycle that column. Last week Beazley was confronted with his waffly language. He said people would just have to get used to him being prolix. The Macquarie defines prolix as “”speaking or writing at great or tedious length.”

Beazley’s defence is that the nation faces serious issues and he does not want to be glib. The defence is not satisfactory. You can be economical with language without being glib.

Beazley and Prime Minister John Howard approach the politician’s dilemma from opposite ends. The dilemma is that if you state something clearly and circumstances later change you can be accused of breaking promises. On the other hand, if you do not state something clearly you are accused of being devious or of leaving a way out.
Continue reading “2000_02_february_beazley’s speaking”

When the planners first sited Canberra Airport in the mid-1920s, they did a good job. The airport is at once close to the city and Parliament, but away from residential areas. The good planning then, is having some fall-out now, because the proximity to the city increases the site’s development value.

There will be some winners and some losers. They will be jockeying for position in the next few weeks because the National Cpaital Authority has just issued a Draft Amendment to the National Capital Plan for the airport. It will be open for public comment for eight weeks. After that the joint parlaimentary committee responsible for the territory might look at it.

The saga began in 1996 with the Federal Government’s $700 million plan to sell the major airports. Canberra was sold to Capital Airport Group for $66.5 million in 1998. Federal authorities wanted a competitive airline industry. That’s fine as far as it goes, but airports are more than places where aircraft land and takeoff. Huge numbers of people go through them and work at them. There are about two million passenger movements a year through Canberra, for example. That is a large potential market for lots of non-air-travel things: hotels, hair-dressers, books, indeed a large shopping mall and perhaps some IT light industry. If there is a very fast train hub at the airport, Capital Airport Group estimates there will be seven million passsenger movements a year.
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Plane crash (in Canberra) kills four”, the banner headline read in 27mm-high type on Monday. Underneath was a piocture that ran across the page. In the bottom right in type 4mm high rant he headline, “”Indian quake toll rises to 15,000”.

It invites the comment that The Canberra Times thinks that one dead Canberrans is equal to about 4000 dead Indians. But, for a change, we were not innundated with that comment.

I hope it is not because readers have given up caring to make comments about the paper. I suspect not because readers were quick to point out the misspelling of practice (noun), the “”your” instead of “”you’re” in the cartoon and so on.

Rather, I hope that the conclusion was not drawn because it was not warranted. For a start the tragic Indian earthquake had been the main article on Page 1 on Saturday, the biggest circulation day, when the death toll was still in the hundreds. So the samller items on Sunday and Monday were follow-ups, up-dating the toll. However horrible an event, as time goes on, its impact lessens. It is not as newsworthy so gets less prominence.
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Mal Meninga’s entrance into the local political fray invites a look at what might happen at the election due in October and some unintended weakness of the ACT’s version of the Hare-Clarke electoral system.

The ACT has three electorates: Molonglo (in the centre) with seven members; Brindabella (based on Tuggernaong) with 5 and Ginninderra (based on Belconnen) with 5.

The seven-member seat has a quota of 12.5 per cent (one-eighth of the vote). It means if you get 1.5 per cent of the first preference vote you get elected. Meninga is standing in Molonglo. In the two five-member seats the quota is 16.6 per cent one sixth of the vote). It means if you get 16.6 per cent of the first preference vote you get a seat.

In fact, minor-party candidates and independents rarely get a quota on first preference votes. Successful minor candidates (by minors I mena independents and minor parties) usually require preferences from eliminated candidates – both minors and major-party canidates. Bear in mind the majors always stand a full complement of five or seven in each seat and only two or three are successful.

A lot of the focus in the ACT is on the minor candidates — which ones of them will pick up enough vote to get a seat and hold the balance of power.

But when you look at the prospects for the major parties, you can see the Territory is at least two-thirds in a gridlock.
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