Month: December 2000

The Federal Government’s response to the McClure report on social welfare grasps the problem, but its solution is not smart enough. Since it was elected in 1996, the Government has grasped both popular sentiment and good sense in turning around welfare culture. Welfare, whether it be based upon unemployment, parenthood, age or disability is not an automatic right. The taxpaying community has a right to insist that those who get government benefits have to show not only instant need but a willingness to take steps to get themselves out of a situation of need and into self-support. Sure, if that is not possible, then the welfare benefits continue, but if there is no willingness to try to come out of welfare dependency, then benefits should, after appropriate warning, dry up. Few have an argument with that approach.

Secondly, the Government has rightly approached the question of welfare on the basis that throwing money at it is not the best approach and will not help either taxpayers or recipients in the long run.

Thirdly, the Government, or at least Treasurer Peter Costello, has recognised that the present welfare system often acts as a disincentive to move from welfare to work. This is because the different in family take home income can be as little as a dollar an hour after moving from welfare to work – and that is without taking into account the costs of going to work such as clothes. Transport and the lost opportunity of using the time for cost-saving by working at home to produce clothing, food, child-care and maintenance of shelter. In short, some families are worse off when they go to work. The tax system, the deductions from welfare payments and the costs of working militate against people moving from work to welfare.
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It was eerie, indeed, to swim silently along the deck railing and up a stairwell where once sailors ran. And then to drift in through a window in the bridge and float around the main compass like a ghost where once naval captains with binoculars bellowed orders to the other ranks elsewhere on the ship.

The navigator’s chair is still there, though coral is slowly building up. An angelfish glides by taking a cursory interest in what was once a proud part of the Australian Navy. Now HMAS Swan it is sunk in 32 metres of water off the coast of Dunsborough, 200kms south of Perth.

It makes a brilliant dive. You can peer in where once sailor slept. You can see rusting machinery and look into the black hold where once munitions were stored. The warship grey is hardly visible now, after three years of coral growth. The 112-metre-long ship also provides a home for a huge range of fish. When I dived it a school of pufferfish had congregated around the bow. I had never seen them school before.
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The private sector is to come under the Privacy Act this month. The commercial elements have been much discussed – things like credit provision and junk-mail lists. Another more important debate is about the use of health data. For the first time, private health providers are to come under the provisions of the Commonwealth Privacy Act.

What is likely to happen? Well, the Act may provide an inkling because private health providers have been subject to an ACT law on privacy which has similar principle to the federal Act since 1998 under the Act Health Records (Privacy and Access) Act.

The critical national privacy principles when it comes to health records are that information should not be passed on without consent; that it should only be stored or used for the purpose for which it was gathered; and that people should have access to their health records.
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From today the Privacy Act applies to the private sector. There has been plenty of warning, but as is the nature of human affairs, everything is left to the last minute.

The critical obligations are: collect only what is necessary; use fair and lawful means to collect it; get consent; tell them why you are collecting and who it might be passed on to; only disclose the information for the primary purpose (with exemptions for safety, health and law enforcement); make sure the information is accurate and secure; disclose to an individual the information you have on that individual; allow correction.

Conflict over privacy laws has taken a couple of forms. At one level, business is arguing that it is all too expensive and unnecessary. Besides having information about people helps business target customers in a way that better services customers – they get the sort of information that is relevant to them and it is far too costly to have to get permission to pass information on. It is far too costly to allow people to correct information. Pitted against them are people who assert their individual rights against capitalists who want to make money.
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Somewhere in the council “”office” on Murray Island is a typewritten piece of paper which may have some historic value.

I was reminded of it this week by the inclusion of the Mabo papers in the Memory of the World register set up by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.

Murray Island (the locals prefer the name Mer) is in the Torres Strait. It was here that the Mabo case started. Eddie Mabo resisted moves by the Queensland Government to takeover the island irrespective of generations of dwelling by the native people.
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Prime Minister John Howard wants more workplace relations reform in his third term. He has long wanted to wind back union power. But despite being elected three times he still cannot get his way totally.

Labor has begrudgingly acknowledged that given the three Coalition wins it would be open to compromise on workplace relations, particularly the application of unfair-dismissal laws to small business. But it is unlikely to force secret ballots before strike action can be taken.

The impasse illustrates some of the defects in Australia’s constitutional set-up. On one hand, it seems a bit ridiculous and undemocratic that a Government returned three times cannot get its legislation through. On the other hand, do we want untrammelled power handed to whomever wins government every three years or so.
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Labor’s foreign affairs spokesman, Laurie Brereton, has again raised the topic of reserved Aboriginal seats in Parliament. This week, former Labor Premier of Victoria Joan Kirner called for a quota of female Labor candidates for safe seats.

The two calls are well-meaning, no doubt. Aborigines and women have been under-represented in the Federal Parliament. Since the 1970s there has been at best one Aboriginal member of parliament, amount to about half of one percent, whereas Aborigines comprise 1.5 per cent of the population. Women, who comprise half the population, are lucky to get a quarter of the seats. As for higher levels of Government, there is only one woman in Cabinet.

It is interesting that the calls come from the Labor side of politics. Labor is strong on espousing the causes of minorities and the disadvantaged, such as the causes of women and Aborigines, but when it comes to filling its own ranks, words rate higher than action. Labor is still dominated by men. Aborigines do not get a show. And when it comes to grabbing safe seats, men tend to dominate. More significantly, seat allocations is determined by factional alliance rather than merit or gender.
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South Australian state MP Nick Xenophon has proposed legislation that would require MPs who resign before a general election to pay for the resulting by-election unless the District Court declared the early retirement was justified on compassionate or other reasonable grounds. The proposal has some superficial appeal.

Mr Xenophon was elected on an anti-poker-machine platform as a “”No Pokies” MP, so his proposal is in the form of a Private Members’ Bill. The major parties have not stated their attitude to the proposal, but they are both likely to be against the proposal – – self-interest being strong enough to overcome the enmity between them that usually prevents an identical stand on any given issue.

Nonetheless, Mr Xenophon’s proposal gives rise to some interesting issues. It would cause some consternation among MPs if instituted in the Federal sphere. Soon after this year’s election, for example, Federal Labor frontbencher, Duncan Kerr, announced that he would leave federal politics and enter state politics. Mr Kerr, who was Minister for Justice in the Keating Government, said he had gone into public life to make decisions, implement policy and shape events. He therefore thought it better to be in the Tasmania Parliament where Labor governs than languishing on the Opposition benches federally. He has a point.
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THE PEOPLE of Serbia are rejoicing in the election of a new Government to be headed by Prime Minister-elect Zoran Djindjic and hoping he will lead them to a place in Europe and the world. But the world will be watching circumspectly.

The new Government will come 10 weeks after Slobodan Milosevic was driven from power. Mr Milosevic foolishly thought that he could win an election for President because the Opposition was divided. He lost (de� spite attempts to rig the result) to Vojislav Kostunica who in turn organised this week’s parliamentary election which has taken any remaining power from Mr Milosevic’s Socialist Party.

Power now lies with Mr Djindjic whose intial statements about the fate of Mr Milosevic spell trouble for Serbia. He has appeased the nationalists in DOS at the expense of reconciliation with neighbours and approval by Europe.
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The Minister for Immigration, Philip Ruddock, has ordered a suspension of assessment of asylum seekers from Afghanistan and has ruled out granting visas to about 1600 asylum seekers from East Timor, some of whom arrived up to eight years ago.

Mr Ruddock’s decision has caused consternation among refugees support groups, civil libertarians, migration lawyers and others. It is almost as if the man can do nothing right and that whatever he does must be condemned outright.

This newspaper has been a stern critic of the Government’s mandatory-detention policy and the policy of attempting to divert asylum seekers who arrive in small boats to Pacific islands for processing, rather than bringing them to Australia. Mandatory detention is unnecessary and expensive. Detention in remote camps – particularly of children – for indefinite periods is inhumane. Diverting people to poor Pacific nations is corrupting and unnecessarily expensive.
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