Month: May 2000

From about 1995, the major newspapers in Australia began storing everything they published in electronic form.

The Canberra Times began electronic storage in late 1996. The electronic databases can be accessed (for a fee) via Ausinet and Reuters Business Briefing and other database companies.

Storing newspapers is nothing new. Every copy of The Canberra Times going back to 1926 is in the National Library. Every copy of The Sydney Morning Herald going back 150 years is in the Mitchell Library. The libraries of these newspapers have clippings sorting into subject matters going back decades. Storing information is not new.

But storing electronically makes a huge difference, as events this week have revealed.

The paper clippings in The Canberra Times library are pasted on coloured A4 paper and put under subject headings in a compactus. Some of the headings are: Armed Robbery, Arson, Rape, Drink Driving and so on.

For me to find in that file the name of someone – Bill Bloggs — convicted of one of those offences would require a tedious search and detailed reading of pages and pages of clippings.

With an electronic database, however, I do not have to wade through the clippings. I can search for “”Bill Bloggs” or “”Bloggs” and up pop the articles. Convicted of drink driving in 1998. Acquitted of armed robbery in 1999. Nominated by to the Canberrans for a Free Floriade Committee in 1998 and so on.
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THIRTY years ago, at a meeting of the parliamentary Liberal Party Keven Cairns asked a question of then Prime Minister John Gorton.

Gorton was under pressure from his own party and from an increas� ingly confident Labor Party. Gorton was facing a no-confidence motion as a result of his secretiveness and dis� loyal treatment of potential leader and young bull Malcolm Fraser, who was then Defence Minister.

Even though the Calition had a majority there was no guarantee that it would survive because a critical number of Liberal Party MPs were fed up with Gorton’s leadership.

Cairns’s question was: what would Gorton do if he lost — call an election or resign as Liberal leader and Prime Minister and ask the Governor-General to get the new Liberal leader to form a government?

The difference was crucial, Cairns explained, because he had a large family and no resources. If Gorton opted for a general election, Cairns, sitting in a marginal seat, would be out of Parliament and without an income within six weeks.

Cairns’s practical concern is no doubt, it is engaging in the minds of many Coalition MPs right to now. Such MPs want to give themselves the best chance of winning, and a critical part of that is the leadership.
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At a glance:

Car rego cut $58 per car

Free school buses

Extra police for Gungahlin

$12m surplus

Kindergarten class sizes cut

$214 capital works:

> Civic revitalising

> Shops upgrades
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ACTEW has started to get tough against people wanting to build under power lines. Even a minor extension to a garage under a power line is being knocked back.

This is probably a very wise move by ACTEW because before long an objector is going to test the law on the matter and we will all find that ACTEW is on very shaky ground indeed.

The basic common law position is that a landowner can do whatever they like on their own land. From there, the absolute right is whittled away by legislation and reservations of various kinds stamped on the title. Leaseholders in the ACT get all the common-law rights of freeholders subject to the lease. So the onus in ACTEW to prove they have the right, not on the landholder to prove that ACTEW is in the wrong.
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In the worst sort of Orwellian double-speak, Communications Minister Richard Alston told Parliament this week, “”Australians will have greater choice in their television viewing and the types of services they can get through their televisions sets as a result of the Government’s digital television and datacasting legislation introduced to Parliament today.”

Utter misleading rubbish.

The legislation is designed from beginning to end to restrict the television choices Australians could otherwise have through digital technology, all in the interests of the big three commercial networks.

There is greater choice. You will get the choice of four different ways of seeing the same five programs you see now. You can have your same TV Guide of five streams of programs in either analogue (as now), or analogue set with digital receiving box to improve the picture so it has no ghosting or snowing, or buy a $1500 standard definition digital set which will give wide format and really excellent reception without ghosting or snowing, or buy a $4500 high-definition set which will give you cinema quality viewing.
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This week a committee of the ACT Legislative Assembly rejected government proposals for reform of the defamation laws. The Government had proposed a new defence for publishers. If a publisher could show that it had not acted negligently then it could not be successfully be it sued for defamation.

It would mean that that a publisher would have to show — in the case of the media — that the journalist had given the plaintiff a reasonable opportunity to respond to any allegations and that after the response that the journalist still had an honest areasonable belief in the truth of the allegations.

In short, and defamation or would become like other areas of the law where the plaintiff has to prove the that the defendant was negligent and that the negligence caused damage. This is what plaintiffs have to show if they sue a doctor for a medical mishap or a driver for road injury, for example.

At present, defamation is different. All the onus is upon the publishing defendant. The law presumes that everything published is false until it is proved to be true. And the law presumes that everything published a is damaging. Plaintiffs can sue over any statement that would cause ordinary people in the community to think less of them – which gives them a lot of scope.
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Crimenet – crime, criminals, paedophiles, missing persons, wanted and stolen property database

HUMANS love to trade and trading can be one of the most rewarding and insightful part of travel, tourism, holiday or vacation – – call it what you will.

The Trobriand Islands are off the north coast of the eastern tail of Papua New Guinea. I went there very briefly after some engaging tropical diving near Milne Bay — the scene of the first Japanese defeat of World War II.

The Trobriands were just one stop on an island hop back to Port Moresby. At the airport a large number of islanders gathered at the perimeter gate, about 30 metres from where the aircraft had come to a stop. They were displaying beautiful ebony carvings with inlaid pearl. Now I am a sucker for ethno junk, precisely because I it don’t believe that this craft is junk. Usually, it is an expression of culture as well as a way for local people to make money. And the cost per hour of work is good value anyway – – better than the average painting at a gallery in suburban Australia. But if there is nothing else to do, no other employment, why not work for hours for some rare cash to obtain things otherwise unobtainable.

I looked at the carvings and was then attracted by a very odd shaped bundle being held on a coconut string by a young man.
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Business has cautiously welcomed the Budget, but expressed concern about the fragility of the surplus and welfare groups have welcomed some parts and slammed others.

Australian Council of Social Service president Michael Raper said the Government had failed to deliver for the two million Australians currently living in poverty.

“”Where are the big ticket items that would have really addressed their needs,” he said. “”Where are the increases in unemployment payments, where are the wage subsidy programs to help unemployed people get a share of the jobs, where are the extra childcare programs, where’s the help for Aboriginal communities?”

The government was incapable of balancing economic policy with social imperatives, Mr Raper said.

“”It’s a very thin surplus because of wasted expenditure, tax cuts on people earning $60,000 a year…which has meant they have no real capacity to address the needs of the 750,000 households living in poverty in Australia today,” he said.

The Council on the Aging said older Australians should have been given more money to combat unemployment. The council’s executive director Denys Correll told reporters the elderly had been only given minor attention.
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Hey, big spender

The media releases issued with the Budget papers told the story. Every minister desperate to extract some voter mileage out of the Budget. It was a far cry from the Coalition’s message of 1996 when fiscal rectitude was a virtue, when the Beazley $10 billion black hole had to be filled in.

Last night they were glorifying in spending. It was Whitlamesque. Millions for this, a program for that, a boost for this and more for that.

Some Minister’s cheekily took credit for things already announced. Indeed, much of last night’s Budget was reannouncements of things Ministers and the Government had already taken credit for at politically pertinent times.

“”Wooldridge delivers largest ever country health Budget”, the Minister for Health’s media release said.

Bronwyn Bishop did not need to put herself in the headline. Her name is already in very large type in the media release masthead. “”$66m boost for older Australians,” it told us.

“Government doubles funding for remote air services,” John Anderson told us, and that the “”Budget delivers” $450.1 million for NSW roads” and a similarly worded one for every other state. Ian Macdonald took credit for the ACT’s road funding boost. He reannounced funding for a Federal Highway duplication construction of which is almost complete and he reannounced the funding for the Barton Highway duplication that was in last year’s Budget. At least it has not been built.

David Kemp had a $13.4m “”boost” and a 32.6 per cent increase. Jackie Kelly had “”$5m additional funding for elite sport”. (Sport is the only human endeavour one is allowed to be elite in in Australia.)

Spend, spend, spend. And all these Ministers taking credit for spending our money and their binge resulting in interest rate increases that we will have to pay for.

Such a far cry from when the Coalition came to office attacking the profligacy of its Labor’s predecessors. Orwell was right — pigs walking on two legs.