Month: June 2000

Today it is the last day of the Governor-Generalship of Sir William Deane. He has been, to borrow the words of Gilbert and Sullivan, the very model of a modern governor-general. He was like many of his predecessors, a man of law. The law, politics and the military have provided the vast majority of Australia’s Governors-General. Unlike most of his predecessors, he bought a great deal of humanity and spirit to the job.

In it his five-and-a-half years he went well beyond the official and ceremonial tasks that make up the bulk of the job specification of Governor-General. In a many ways he represented the national conscience. He was a champion of the disadvantaged. Without fuss he helped the homeless, the disadvantaged, indigenous people, the poor, sick children and a host of charities. He was at his best as representative of the nation in a time of tragedy. It was at his instigation — not the Government’s – – that the first memorial and grief service for the Port Arthur victims was held it in Canberra. He followed it by assuming the role of national chief mourner after the Black Hawk helicopter crash, the Thredbo landslide, the Childers backpacker hostel fire and in 1999 personally going to Interlaken in Switzerland for a ceremony for the Australians killed in the canyoning disaster. On that occasion he personally picked 14 it sprigs of wattle from his Yarralumla gardens to give it to relatives to throw into the Saxetenbach Gorge. When the two CARE Australia workers were jailed in Yugoslavia he tied yellow and green ribbons to the balustrade at Yarralumla.
Continue reading “2000_06_june_leader28jun deane”

Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid took considerable risks in coming into Australia. Mr Wahid faces an impeachment hearing in six weeks’ time. His political opponents in Indonesia have tried to get some mileage out of his absence from the country, arguing that he should be dealing with problems at home or rather than undertaking yet another of his many overseas trips – – particularly to Australia, the country that had so many troops in Timor in 1999.

It must be borne in mind also that the Australian that Prime Minister, John Howard, faces an election at the end of this year. In these circumstances it would be easy to dismiss President Wahid’s trip as merely symbolic and not of any lasting and value. However, it appears that the risk taken by Mr Wahid was worth taking because it is unlikely that the trip will affect the outcome of the hearing in any event and it appears that the trip has achieved quite a deal for both Australia and Indonesia.
Continue reading “2000_06_june_leader27jun wahid”

Prime Minister John Howard has been in the Parliament for 27 years. He knows better than anyone that the House of Representatives has been dominated by the two major parties for more than 70 years. Few independents ever get elected. At present at the House contains just one Member who was elected as an independent and one other member who was elected as a Labor Member and resigned from the party to become an independent. Mr Howard knows better than most that virtually every vote taken in the House of Representatives is taken with each of the major parties holding to a particular position and against which they will brook no dissent. He knows also that the major issues facing Australia today that are debated in the House are ones of broad national concern – – things like education, health, tax, the environment and interest rates.

It was perplexing then to hear him at the weekend talking about the Aston by-election scheduled for July 14th. He did not suggest that the electors of Aston should vote for the Coalition candidate because the Coalition offered the best program for Australia nationally. rather, he treated us, at the Coalition’s official launch of the Aston campaign, to an analysis which had more relevance to 18th century Britain than to modern Australian political reality.
Continue reading “2000_06_june_leader26jun locals”

This week the Federal Government will find itself squeezed between a Labor-Democrat majority in the Senate and the interests of the commercial television broadcasters, notably those of Australia’s richest man, Kerry Packer. The Government’s plan for digital television will go before the Senate. This plan, unlike the GST, is not part of any specific electoral mandate. Labor and the Democrats are well within their rights to propose amendments to the plan. It is a deeply flawed plan for the use of the vastly increased extra capacity that comes with digital broadcasting. Technically, it would enable the existing broadcasters to each put out several different program streams in place of the single one that each puts out now. It would also enable datacasting which would put permanent on-line internet facilities into the home which could include video on demand and live programs for a full range of educational and entertainment products.

The Government, however, proposes to restrict the existing five broadcasters (three commercials, the ABC and SBS) to a single stream of programming. They would use the extra digital facility to be taken up by high-definition broadcasts of the single program stream so good that people could have an image the size of a wall if they could afford the receiving set.

This suits the commercial broadcasters. They do not want any extra competition or erosion of market share. Nor do they want to waste money on extra programming streams if they can capture their advertising recipients in a single program stream.
Continue reading “2000_06_june_leader26jun digital”

Nato is treading a very fine line in Macedonia. It probably has to. Nonetheless its response this week carries as many dangers as solutions. It has agreed to send in a contingent of peacekeeping troops up to 5000 strong. However, the sending of the troops is conditional the secretary general of Nato, George Robinson said, “It will happen when, and only when, this is a durable ceasefire and an agreement between all of the party’s in the [Macedonian Government] coalition and indeed an agreement by the armed extremists that they will proceed towards disarmament.”

The Nato position was arrived at after a plea from Macedonia’s President Boris Trajkovski. Mr Trajkovski called for help in taking arms from those rebels who wanted to hand them over. Secretary General Robinson said, “This is not an armed intervention. It will be a force appropriate to the task in benign conditions.”

One might well ask that if the situation in Macedonia got to a state that it fulfilled all of Nato’s conditions whether there would be any need for a Nato force to go in at all. To satisfy the Nato conditions, there would have to be a durable ceasefire based on an agreement that embraced a constitutional and political settlement between it the ethnic Albanian minority and at the Slav majority. In those conditions, who would need anyone to go around and pick up a few surrendered weapons?
Continue reading “2000_06_june_leader22jun macedonia”

It is easy to feel sympathy for Netball Australia. The organisation feels it that it is under legal siege. It feels that it is a damned if it does and damned if it does not. If it does nothing to prevent pregnant women from playing netball in matches that it organises, and as a result a fetus is born with injuries, Netball Australia could be held liable for damages. On the other hand, if it bans pregnant women from playing, it will be found to be in breach of the Sex Discrimination Act.

This week, Netball Australia decided that it would be less costly to be in breach of the Sex Discrimination Act than to be liable for injuries to a fetus. It therefore decided to ban pregnant women from playing in games that it organised. Netball Australia argued that it was not possible for a woman to indemnify Netball Australia against injury to a fetus because, once born, the fetus is a separate legal entity which can sue in its own right. Netball Australia and also argued that immediate action was needed.

The decision has caused outrage among the players, the medical profession and it human rights groups.
Continue reading “2000_06_june_leader21jun netball”

The Australian government’s policy on the detention of refugees is a disgrace verging on the inhuman. This week an all-party parliamentary committee reported on the policy. They found some asylum seekers are cooped up in filthy cells with overflowing toilets. They found asylum-seekers spending months in detention centres with nothing to do. They were left wandering aimlessly through the camp. At night they were checked by torchlight. At Port Hedland the committee said conditions were, “horrendous” and “disgraceful”. Detention centre staff had even tried to prevent MPs from seeing one block – – clearly they had something to hide.

These are not the findings of some of politically motivated group. Nor are they the findings of some pro-migrant or pro-refugee organisation. Rather, they are the findings of a parliamentary committee containing both Government and Opposition MPs. The recommendations and findings they made were unanimous.
Continue reading “2000_06_june_leader20jun refos”

The Coalition majority on the parliamentary committee on electoral matters has a recommended tightening of enrolment procedures for the electoral roll. It says people enrolling or changing enrolment details (like address) should provide some from of identification. That recommendation – like a lot of new regulation – will impose a burden on the many because of the malfeasance of a few.

Prime Minister John Howard argued that one has to provide identification in order to hire a video, so why not to enrol to vote? However, the analogy soon falls down. The main reason videos stores require identification is because without it so many videos would be stolen. Similarly with underage drinking; without ID those under 18 would obtain alcohol. But that is not the case with respect to the Australian voting system. Evidence given to the committee by the Australian Electoral Commission stated that there was no case in Australian electoral history where an election of any individual member was affected by impersonation or fraudulent enrolment. In short, there is no mischief or malfeasance to be attended to (unlike the video-store or underage drinking situations). There is simply no need to impose a system of identification.
Continue reading “2000_06_june_leader19jun electoral roll”

The decision by the High Court this week to uphold the constitutionality of the Workplace Relations Act has been greeted with a lot more enthusiasm on one side and disappointment on the other than the case warrants. Workplace Relations Minister Peter Reith described it as a “”crushing blow” for the unions. Opposition Industrial Relations spokesman Arch Bevis said the real losers “”are the lowest-paid workers”. Neither proposition is right. The decision affected only some clauses in some awards.

In 1997 the Workplace Relations Act provided for a list of allowable matters to be included in future awards. In the future the Industrial Relations Commission would not be able to make award provisions for anything outside those core matters. It provided also that anything outside those matters in existing awards would lapse automatically after a period of 18 months. It was taken as read that the Commonwealth Parliament’s constitutional power allowed it to reduce awards to a limited list of conditions for all future cases. It could also cancel all existing awards if it were so minded. The only question at stake was its power to excise some clauses and not others of existing awards. Four judges ruled that it could. Three judges ruled that it could not.
Continue reading “2000_06_june_leader17jun ir”

Britain has always been ambivalent about one of the greatest geopolitical experiments in human history – – namely the drawing together of diverse European states into a unified structure that would ensure that dialogue and agreement would it replace war and conquest as the means of dispute resolution. The experiment arose out of the ruins and ashes left over after World War II. It was consummated in the treaty of Rome in 1956. But Britain remained aloof from that treaty which was between France, Italy, Germany and the Benelux countries. Britain at the time cited its obligations to the Commonwealth as the primary reason for not signing that initial common market treaty.

However, Britain’s reluctance to engage with, let alone lead, the move to European unity runs far deeper than any residual affection for its former empire. Successive British governments and many British people have had long-term suspicion of Europe. That suspicion has ranged from fear of aggression to a xenophobic aversion to funny foreign foods and habits. Much of that could perhaps be put down to the fact that Britain is an island separated from Europe by the English Channel. Other European countries share land borders with each other which makes interaction far easier and more commonplace. And with interaction comes understanding and appreciation of other people’s different ways.
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