Month: August 2000

The ACT Legislative Assembly has decided against holding a referendum on the question of whether there should be a safe injecting room for heroin users and at whether there should be a trial to provide registered heroin addicts with heroin in a controlled environment.

The referendum and its subject matter have caused a great deal of heated debate. Indeed, the debate has been so heated and so bipolar that whatever the result, few would have changed their view.

The ACT Liberal Party has been accused of floating the referendum as a smokescreen during the election which would distract voters from the main issues of economic management, health, education, and accountability for public spending. More likely, it disguises the deep divisions within the party on heroin with a united approach on a no-risk referendum — a no-risk strategy to be seen to be doing something while having to actually do nothing. A No vote would have resulted in giving the incoming government – – whether Liberal or Labour – – an excuse to do nothing. A Yes vote would have still been met with enough resistance on the four of the Assembly and from the federal government to still result in no action.
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Suggestions that the Federal Parliament should take action on the goings-on in the ACT territory usually draw cries of foul or interference. The latest is the question of Gungahlin Drive.

On its face, it seems like a simple case of providing a road for the people of Gungahlin to get expeditiously to the other parts of Canberra. So why should the Federal Parliament or the Federal Capital Authority get involved?

Previously the Federal Parliament has got involved over the great moral issues of euthanasia and how to deal with the drug problem.

In the case of euthanasia, the Northern Territory and the ACT had much to be upset about. Having been granted self-government, the Federal Government singled them out for special treatment, using the territories power in the constitution. It did not attempt to ban euthanasia throughout Australia, presumably because it thought it did not have the constitutional power. That being the case, it was an unprincipled interference in local affairs based upon the personal moral predilections of the individual parliamentarians who voted for it.
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The genetically modified food industry has received a double boost in the past week or so. A Royal Commission in New Zealand brought down findings more favourable to the GM food industry than had been expected and a survey in Australia showed more people are supporting GM technology.

The New Zealand Royal Commission is significant because it was the first thorough judicial inquiry in the world on GM technology. The commission did not advocate a laissez-faire approach, but did not advocate an outright ban on the technology as was expected. The commission said a ban on GM technology would have an adverse effect on farmers, consumers, and in medicine. In the case of medicine, the commission said that a ban would mean that existing medical uses, especially the use of GM insulin by diabetics, would have to cease. The commission also expressed concern that with a ban on GM food in New Zealand there would be an exodus of scientists and other skilled people and the economy would contract.
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The Federal Government has had plenty of warning on the issue which is now causing such strife in the automotive industry.

About 300 workers of the TriStar steering and suspension company went on strike over the failure of the company to entertain negotiations over protecting employee entitlements during enterprise bargaining negotiations. The company supplies components to major manufacturers who have now stood down, or are about to stand down, 12,000 workers. It seems that that TriStar was the first company to be hit by a campaign by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union to set up a fund to protect employee entitlements.

The campaign arose after the failure last year of National Textiles, a company in which the Prime Minister’s brother, Stan Howard, was a key manager. About 300 employees stood to lose about $11 million in holiday, long service and other entitlements. However, the federal government bailed them out on a special-case basis. Since then, many other companies have failed, leaving employees in the lurch. Perhaps the largest was the case of OneTel in which 1400 employees were owed at total of $25 million.
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THE ACT needs to be careful. Tacit assumptions that we have the best educated, most caring society and are best able to deal with social questions of any jurisdiction in Australia are under threat.

The ACT still has a very low imprisonment rate compared to other states or territories, but if present trends continue that will not last much longer. Recent statistics put out by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Institute of Criminology reveal that the ACT is increasing its rate of jailing faster than all other jurisdictions and has among the worst jail rates for youth.

And, contrary to popular mythology, crime at rates are falling, not rising.

These figures come at a time when the ACT is proposing to build its own prison. Moreover, the Government’s preferred option, expressed as recently as last week, is for it to be run by the private sector. The plan is for up to 400 inmates. Compared to our population of 320,000, this would increase our jailing rate by 25 per cent unless we took a significant number of prisoners from NSW. On this sort of population base, Sydney would require more than 10 jails. The danger for the ACT will be that once we have a jail, there will be a tendency for the courts to fill it up.
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This week the Victorian Supreme Court brought out the red flags. It was the same red flag that legal authorities required to be waved by a walking person in front of the devilish new contraption called the automobile.

This week it was the Internet.

Justice Hedigan was hearing a case brought by the Melbourne businessman and flamboyant owner of the Melbourne Football Club, Joseph Gutnick. Gutnick was suing for defamation over an article published in the Wall Street Journal. In normal circumstances, he would have no action in Victoria because the Wall Street Journal is not published there. However, the Wall Street Journal and its investment advisory magazine, Barrons, is published on the internet — some free and some by subscription.

Mr Gutnick argued that the availability of the publication on the internet meant it that it was published in Victoria and so he could sue in the Victorian Supreme Court and avail himself of at the Victorian defamation law.

The publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones and Company, argued that it did not publish in Victoria but that its publication was made in New Jersey where its web server was situated. To the extent there was any publication in Victoria that was an act of publication by the people who downloaded the material via the internet the Web server, Dow argued.
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There, before 600 or 700 people in at the Great Hall of Parliament House and the nation itself was the unstated corollary.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, was addressing a National Press Club lunch which had been moved up the hill to Parliament house because of a double booking at the club itself. Howard was extolling the virtues of his first two terms and explaining why a he should get a third.

He concentrated, as he has done in nearly three decades of public life, on economic matters. In particular, he talked about taxation. However, to the extent that his speech contained an element of social concern it was for and about the ageing population.

The ageing population contains a lot of votes. But beware the unstated corollary.

Howard referred to the retiring baby-boomers as “”gold-collar” workers. I think we’re going to hear a lot of this phrase in the lead-up to election. Howard thought they should benefit from flexible working arrangements that suited their quasi retirement. He painted a picture of a rigid, union-driven Labor Party that would deny them the flexibility of making it their own arrangements with their own employers.
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Prime Minister John Howard says he is listening. However, when it comes to the drug problem it seems that he is only listening to what he wants it to here. If there is a squawking pressure group which is threatening to cost the Coalition some votes then Mr Howard is happy to throw some money at them to shore up his electoral support. However, if there is a really difficult policy decision which requires courage and leadership he turns a deaf ear.

Last week the head of the National Crime Authority, Gary Crooke, said governments should consider treating heroin addiction as a medical problem and should consider supplying heroin from a government-controlled repository to registered addicts. Mr Crooke cited damning statistics about heroin in Australia under prohibitionist policies. In the mid-1980s there were an estimated 34,000 heroin addicts consuming about three tonnes a year of heroin. Now, an estimated 74,000 people were addicted to the drug and they were using about at 6.7 tonnes of heroin a year. Authorities had seized just 734 kilograms of heroin in the past year, less than 12 per cent of the amount being used. The number of heroin users was up from an estimated 0.4 per cent of the adult population in 1995 to 0.7 per cent in 1998 and overdose deaths had gone from 302 in 1989 to 958 in 1999.

Mr Crooke came to the obvious conclusion that present policies are not working.

Mr Cooke could have gone further and said that present policies actually contributing to the heroin problem because prohibition is creating a black market that caused pushers to induce other people to take heroin in order to turn them into hooked customers who could help provide money to help feed the original pusher’s habit.
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A friend of mine at Law School had a Fiat. It was one of those tiny Fiat Bambinos which she said she could park anywhere. Indeed she was known to park it nose to the kerb squeezing between two cars in a parallel-parking street and climb out the sun roof.

Fiat also has another meaning. It is an authority given by the Attorney-General into a person or organisation to engage in court proceedings that they otherwise might be excluded because they had no standing in the eyes of the court.

This week, the Federal Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, granted a fiat to the Australian Episcopal Conference of the Roman Catholic Church to give the bishops standing to challenge a Federal Court decision over in-vitro fertilisation. Some might say it was just like my friend’s Fiat — poking its nose into places where it had no business to go. Others might argue that if you have to get out of a tight spot a Fiat can be very handy.

The granting of the fiat by Williams has given the church a special place which has not been granted to other bodies who hold a contrary view.
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Often our elected representatives set out to do something and end up doing precisely the opposite.

They proclaim that they are acting to achieve a result that is in our best interests. They then pass a law which is it put into effect often at large cost. And they use feel-good phrases, like “world’s best practice” and “”think globally, act locally”, to make us think that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Some examples are the Government’s policies on outsourcing. The aim was for greater efficiency and cost savings and we now learn that the Federal Government will lose millions in excess rent costs of buildings it so foolishly sold at under value. Governments prohibit the use of a heroin with the aim of eliminating the drug from society, and their policy has the reverse effect – – it causes an increase in heroin use.

A government funds a car race in order to promote economic activity and greater wealth in the territory. And at the result is money going from ACT taxpayers to interstate concerns diverting precious funds from a hospital which is needlessly in “crisis” when there is no war, epidemic or other health scourge.
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