Month: April 2000

Another scuba diver died last weekend. She was a German national who had been in Australia about six months. There seems to have been a spate of them. In February, a female British tourist died off Bondi and last December a female Japanese tourist died off Manly while diving with the same company as the British tourist and also last December a Sydney woman died after going missing on a dive trip in far north Queensland. In June last year a Japanese woman died during a night dive off Exmouth in Western Australia.

These incidents follow the famous case of the American couple left at sea after a scuba trip on the Barrier Reef in 1998.

Is there cause for grave alarm or are these cases the acceptable risk of an inherently risky undertaking? Two things stand out here: females and tourists are dying far out of proportion to their numbers among divers. I think also that Australia has a special problem, but more of that anon.

It is dispiriting because most scuba diving deaths are avoidable.

That said, scuba diving is a joyous sport. My feeling is one of privilege. Just a couple of generations ago, under the sea was a no-go area. Now, we can see the wonders and diversity of marine life. And in a world full of roads, power lines, McDonald’s wrappers, farms and almost blanket human meddling, the underwater is a wilderness, an Eden of natural purity. In any small patch of ocean reef there is an array of intricate subtlety – a crustacean with delicate feelers and legs, a nudibranch with colours from a Jackson Pollock palate, a graceful shark elegantly sliding along a gutter in a forest of yellow-orange kelp and a sea-horse that has taken on the shape and colour of the kelp itself. It is where God and Darwin co-exist.
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Short-sightedness again pervades Canberra’s development.

It is only because Burley Griffin’s design was so excellent that the city still feels good, despite the utter ignorance and small-mindedness of the people in charge of building things in it.

This week’s decision by Brendan Smyth to “”call-in” the development application for the Canberra Centre is just the latest in sorry 80 year history of bureaucrats and entrepreneurs trampling on the Burley Griffin legacy.

The “”call-in” means that the development will go ahead irrespective of public consultation. Many people are up set about that. They feel why have public consultation if the Minister will go ahead anyway. I am not so concerned about the truncation of the public consultation process. Rather I am concerned that the people who should be the public guardians of the Canberra vision just do not see they have a roll. They look at each individual development application in isolation. They don’t seem to relate developments to the overall plan of the city. Doing that is important.
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There was a little political cross-dressing in the Senate this week.

The Senate Select Committee on Information Technologies, chaired by Liberal Jeannie Ferris, brought down its report on Monitoring Australia’s Media. The report looked at how complaints about media performance are resolved.

The Government members — normally proponents of self-regulation funded by industry and letting industry and the private sector get on with it — proposed a statutory Media Complaints Commission, funded by the taxpayer.

The Labor Party members — normally the proponents of government intervention and busy-bodying — dissented saying industry self-regulation was working and there was no need for a Whitlamesque let’s-set-up-a-commission approach.

Is there a need for a complaints commission as set out by the committee (see panel for its findings)?

The extraordinary thing about the committee’s proposal is that it apparently received no public demand for it. It seems to be a creature of its own conception.

There is a fair amount wrong with the Australian media and changes can be made to the way complaints are dealt with, but a government commission seems a diversion of public money to deal with a problem that is not there, or at least is not very serious. The money would be better spent on health and education.

The committee concluded there is a lot of public disquiet about media conduct. That is probably right. Regular surveys suggest the public thinks journalists are scumbags on par with used-car sellers. However, lots of people still watch TV, listen to radio read newspapers and buy cars. There is also a lot a public apathy. There are avenues for complaint, but if there are thousands of aggrieved people out there, they complain only in their hundreds.
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The committee said it heard of numerous instances that question the success of the self-regulation by the information and communications industries, including breaches in the privacy, display of undesirable images, broadcasting of undesirable content and news broadcasts that are influenced by commercial arrangements.

Improvements could be made to self-regulation, including: better and more proactive enforcement of the self-regulatory codes of practice; an increased awareness of and ability to complain about breaches of codes of practice by the information and communications industries; increased guidance on the self-regulatory codes of practice that protect an individual’s right to privacy.

The committee recommends the establishment of an independent statutory body, the Media Complaints Commission (MCC), which will be a one-stop-shop for all complaints and will assist to enforce standards established by self-regulation.
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A recent business survey in New Zealand has revealed that 80 per cent of businesses want to share a common currency with Australia. The business people see obvious advantages. With so much trade with Australia, they do much of their export business in Australian dollars. The Australian dollar is a much traded currency. Indeed, the volume of trade in the Australian dollar is far greater than the size the Australian economy would otherwise warrant. As a major world currency, New Zealand business would trade with third countries in the Australian dollar. How much more convenient it would be to have the same currency.

Since the early 1970s the Closer Economic Relationship pact between the two countries has resulted in a common market with no customs duties and very few restrictions on the movement of people. There is quarantine, but it is not as strict as between Australia and other countries. There are limits on claims by nationals of one country on the social security system of the other, but, once again, each country’s nationals get more favourable treatment in the other country than nationals of other countries.

New Zealand also joins most of the ministerial councils held among federal and state ministers. We have mutual recognition not only between the Australian states but also between the states and New Zealand on food and a range of other matters. Minsters are working towards more uniformity in things like commercial and corporate law.
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Prime Minister John Howard may have read too much into the indefinite postponement of the visit to Australia by Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid. Mr Howard said that after Australia’s intervention in East Timor Australia’s relations with Indonesia could never be the same. Well, that much is obvious. But Indonesia’s relations with other countries is changing, too. That is because Indonesia itself has changed politically in a major way. Indonesia now has an elected President. The army still has significant influence and the institutions that enable the rule of law have not fully developed, but Indonesia is now a democratic country. It would be a mistake to regard Indonesia as monolithic. It may well be that some people in the Indonesia Government and the Army carry a resentment against Australia for its role in East Timor, but Mr Wahid himself has shown no sign of that. Indeed, all his statements point to wanting good relations with both Australia and Timor. That was made clear yesterday when Mr Wahid said he would like a three-way meeting with Mr Howard and Timorese lead Xanana Gusmao in Australia or Indonesia soon.

That makes the earlier postponement very puzzling. Was it an over-reaction to the very minor spying scandal involving a junior officer in the Australian peace-keeping force in East Timor. Then there were the unsubstantiated allegations by Indonesian officials of Australian spy aircraft flying over Indonesia. These events run contrary to recent events indicating an improvement in Australian-Indonesian relations. Indonesia has made extra effort to rein in militia in West Timorese refugee camps, even if it is not enough to allow all refugees to feel free enough from intimidation to return home to the east if they wish. More importantly, we are seeing a change in Indonesia’s approach to illegal immigrants on their way to Australia. Instead of turning a blind eye, Indonesian authorities have arrested illegals before they could set sail.
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The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has struck a welcome blow against Telstra using its ownership of the telephone network in an anti-competitive way to the detriment of consumers. At the same time it has illustrated that the method of the partial privatising Telstra was misconceived and would have been done in a different way.

Telstra had proposed to charge the other carriers that use its network 2.3 cents per minute for 1999-00 and 2.0 cents per minute for 2000-01. The ACCC has slashed that to 1.8 cents per minute for 1999-00 and 1.5 cents for 2000-01. It is a significant which will result in long-distance prices falling by up to five per cent and saving the average consumer $25 a year, according to the ACCC’s chair, Professor Allan Fels. Telstra charges other carriers wholesale prices to use its network. These carriers, such as Optus and AAPT, then use this as a base to charge their retail prices to customers.

The ACCC ruled that Telstra’s wholesale price was too high because it should have charged at cost level only and not put any margin on. That reasoning is stands up. The only possible way that effective competition in the telephone market can be sustained is to have the retail service deliverers operating from a level base. If Telstra were to charge its competitors a profit premium on their wholesale rates for access to the network, it would have an unfair advantage, because presumably Telstra itself would be getting access to the network for base cost.
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The 28 deaths and perhaps 300 injuries in the Easter disaster in Australia did not get the attention they deserve. If the disaster had been a ferry sinking on Sydney harbour, a cyclone, the collapse of a football stadium, an adventure trip gone wrong, a landslide taking out a mountain lodge or some other single event, the nation would have stopped in its tracks. There would have been memorial services, dramatic television pictures, inquiries and much commentary. As it was, the 28 people died in the disaster that is Australia’s road toll.

Police point the finger at speed, alcohol and fatigue. They frequently target speed and alcohol with blitzes. At holiday periods, Governments impose double demerit points. Still the people die. True, road deaths have fallen from two decades ago, both in relation to the number of cars on the road and kilometres travelled, but more impressively in absolute numbers. In the past two decades the trend has been for fewer people to die despite more cars and people on the road. But in the past couple of years the toll that trend has ceased. The toll was an horrific 3321 in 1981. With some blips it fell steadily to 1768 in 1997. The trend now is for it to be stuck around this level.

A fair amount of research is needed for precise conclusions, but it is fairly apparent that seat belts, random breath testing, radar and speed cameras have contributed a lot, so have improved roads and better cars. But can we now conclude that these factors have run their course in reducing the toll, though they are still necessary to keep it at its present level.
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A peaceful handover of six-year-old Elian Gonzalez to his Cuban father was an unlikely prospect. Elian had been with his relatives in Miami since his mother drowned while they were fleeing Cuba for the US five months ago. Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who was separated from Elian’s mother, had stayed in Cuba. He is loyal to the Castro regime. Elian became a pawn in a political war between Mr Gonzalez and Cuban exiles in the US, including many relatives of Elian on his mother’s side. Mr Gonzalez came to the US to pick up his son, but the maternal relatives had virtually kept Elian boy kidnapped. In any event Elian was under virtual siege by the media. Large television trucks and batteries for photographers surrounded the house where he was staying and followed him wherever he went.

Ultimately, the US Government had little choice but to use force to uphold the rule of law. That is the final element in the rule of law: the parties do not abide by the result the Government uses whatever force necessary to achieve the result. Hence last week’s armed police invasion of the relatives’ house to take the boy into custody so he could be returned to his father. Blame for any trauma suffered by the boy must lie with the relatives who have behaved with recalcitrance and near hysteria since Elian arrived in the US. The relatives have behaved with near religious zeal in saying that Elian should remain in the free US rather than go back to communist Cuba. In taking that line they have ignored the much more important consideration that a child should be with parents, or parent if only one is alive, wherever possible. There has been nothing to suggest that Mr Gonzalez is other than a loving capable father. That his politics are pro-Castro is irrelevant when considering his fitness as a father.
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Suggestions that Anzac Day should become Australia’s national day are completely ill-founded. There may well be objections to January 26 being the national day, with the solution being another day. But Anzac Day is not that day. The national day is one of broader perspective and would need to celebrate things – like achievements in the arts and sciences — that would be irrelevant to the things marked on Anzac Day. If Anzac Day were to become the national day either the Anzac element would be diminished or elements of the celebration of national achievement would go unmarked. The Anzac element of honouring the service and sacrifice of the armed services in war and more recently in peace-keeping operations, which also have their dangers, must be marked on its own day and not become part of a national day. Conversely, a national day would celebrate in a wider context than what is encapsulated in the Anzac spirit.

The idea was put this year by the Anglican Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn, George Browning. It has been put by others in the past. Bishop Browning went further. He called for a memorial place on Anzac Parade to recognise the pain and suffering of indigenous people and said, “”Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Anzac Day was for it to truly embrace the spirit of reconciliation with Australia’s indigenous people.”
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