Month: March 2001

Three months ago the governor of the Reserve Bank, Ian Macfarlane, recommended to the major banks that they co-operate with an inquiry by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission into their system of charges for credit card use. The banks, it seems, rejected that very sensible advice and continued with their system of extracting huge sums of money from consumers, credit-card users and businesses that are virtually forced to accept credit cards.

Now the banks pretend to be all hurt and wounded when the commission threw up its hands in despair and called upon the Reserve Bank to use regulatory powers to pull the banks into line. It seems as if the banks have had long enough to show that market forces, self regulation and competition could deliver a more reasonable system of credit card charging. They have failed and deserve to have regulation imposed.
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Australia, and other interested international parties, running grave risk of misunderstanding cultural sensitivities in Papua New Guinea when dealing with rebellious combat by some troops in Port Moresby. About 100 low- ranking soldiers have seized weapons at the Murray Barracks near Port Moresby as part of a protest against proposed reforms of the Papua Guinea Defence Force. The reforms include a recommendations by the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group halves the force from about 4000 members to about 1900. Rank and file soldiers are upset. They presumably felt that only radical action could prevent such a drastic cut in the PNG Defence Force. Their action was fuelled by false rumours that Australian forces would be sent in to take control of the army headquarters.

Australia, understandably, has reacted with some alarm. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has warned that any threat to the democratically elected government of PNG would be met with strong international sanctions which he said would not be in the interests of the rebels.
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The leader of the ACT Opposition, Jon Stanhope, made a landmark speech last week on the structure and process of government in the territory. He made some pertinent observations about the way some of these processes had been ignored during the past five years. More importantly, he set a benchmark of governmental behaviour to which the Labor Party aspires if it attains government.

A lot of the promises were high-minded statements of principle with which few people could disagree. The test for Mr Stanhope and Labor will not be in the stating of these principles, but rather in the detailing of them and whether he can live up to them if he is elected.

Usually there is only a small window of opportunity for laws and structures to be put in place to make executive Government open and accountable. This is the period of honeymoon immediately after an election before the government has made significant mistakes which it wants to lie about or play down. Mr Stanhope has promised several worthwhile legal and structural changes. These include such things as overhauling the Freedom of Information Act and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, entrenching the fixed term, reviewing at the ministerial code of conduct and restoring the Public Accounts and Scrutiny of Bills Committees.

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The signs in Fiji for a return to democracy are looking very good. Developments in the past few days indicate that Fiji could return to democratic government under the 1997 Constitution quite quickly. Such a thought a month ago looked impossible. But earlier this month the Fiji Court of Appeal ruled that the coup of 19th May last year had been unsuccessful and that the Chaudhry Labour Government had been unlawfully dismissed. The court ruled also that the 1997 constitution was still in force. It seemed at the time that the court’s ruling might disappear as a meaningless piece of paper. Not so. In fact the Great Council of Chiefs and the interim administration that it had appointed took the Court of Appeal ruling seriously when they had the physical power to ignore it.

The interim administration headed by Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase resigned. However, President Ratu Josefa IloIlo rejected the resignation, calling on Mr Qarase to stay on in a caretaker role. In the meantime, the Great Council of Chiefs was left with the task of dealing with the Court of Appeal ruling. As a first step the chiefs confirmed Ratu Iloilo as President and then on Tuesday handed him a authority to deal with Fiji’s constitutional impasse. Apparently, the chiefs had been bitterly divided on what to do. The result however, is a good one because Ratu Iloilo has stated that the 1997 constitution should not be abrogated and should remain the fundamental law of Fiji.
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The ACT Legislative Assembly (as distinct from the ACT Govenrment) has served the commnity poorly on the subject of disabilitiy services. That was demonstrated this week by the childish spat by ACT coroner Michael Somes against the ead of the disability inquiry, former Supreme Court justice John Gallop.

Mr Somes is conducting a coronial inquiry into the deaths of three intellectually handicapped people. Mr Somes, mounted high on his horse, refused a request to release hospital records obtained for him by the police to ACT Community Care to use them at the inquiry being headed by Mr Gallop. Mr Somes said, “”The coronial inquiry must take precedence of any other inquiry.”

He was not prepared to give up the documents and they would remain with the Coroner’s Court until he had finished with them.

Oh dear, here we are in the 21 century and our 19th century courts have apparently not heard of the very useful 20th century invention called the photocopier.

Counsel assisting the coroner, Richard Refshauge, SC, raised the question of whether Mr Gallop’s inquiry might be in contempt of Mr Somes coronial inquest.
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So Independent MLA Dave Rugendyke wants the Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission to investigate petrol prices in the ACT. His call comes after Prime Minister John Howard agreed not to take the 1.5 cent a litre additional excise that would flow as a result of the inflation spike caused by the GST. Mr Howard went further and agreed to end indexation of petrol excise altogether. Both Mr Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello called on the states to follow the Federal example. They wanted the states to give back to the motorist some of the GST money they get under a formula that includes an amount to replace former state petrol taxes. A Liberal backbencher is going to introduce a private members’ Bill to that effect, but it will quietly die once all the fuss has died down.

There has been a huge amount of political grand-standing on petrol. Mr Howard resisted forsaking the excise for as long as he possibly could, but so much noise was being generated by talk-back radio and the newly victorious Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, that he eventually gave way – not because it would make any significant difference, but just to get the critics to change the subject. Alas, for Mr Howard they did change the subject – to his lack of credibility in saying one thing (petrol relief was impossible) one day and the opposite the next day (here is petrol relief).
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Life in Australia without the ABC would be unimaginable for a great many people – including nearly all its most trenchant critics.

The past couple of years has seen heightened fear that the Government wants to destroy the ABC, or at least reduce its influence or change what some have seen as its endemic left-wing pro-Labor bias. That fear was generated by key appointments to the ABC board of people seen to be close to the Howard Government most recently that of Jonathan Shier as managing director. That has been coupled with plans for more out-sourcing and the retrenchment or non-renewal of several key ABC figures and accusations that extra money has been spent on senior management at the expense of programs.

Mr Shier addressed the National Press Club yesterday. He certainly carved out a vision for the ABC – one that neither competes nor apes the commercials. Rather it was vision of the ABC playing a critical part in Australian national life in a new media world.
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Banks in Australia have suffered a very poor image over the past decade. Yesterday saw the release of a review of banking practice by Richard Viney. The review was set up by the banks themselves. Mr Viney called for more low-cost accounts, a three-month community consultation period before bank branches were closed and better ways of ensuring that banks only lend money to people who can afford to pay their debts. The report was welcomed by the Federal Government which urged the banks to adopt its recommendations voluntarily.

The banks are the first to admit that their image is poor. The poor image comes from change itself. The beneficiaries of change are at best luke-warm about it, or even fail to notice the benefits. Those, on the other hand, who suffer because of change are usually very noisy about it. Heavy competitive pressure in the banking industry in the past decade has resulted in banks ending cross-subsidies of services. For decades previously, people repaying home loans subsidised other banks users. Those with home loans paid higher interest rates than the market would otherwise dictate and they paid higher fees. Meanwhile, people using over-the-counter services at local branches we paying nowhere near the cost of those services. But once the banks started to charge the full cost of over-the-counter services, or just stop them by closing branches, those affected squealed loudly. Home-buyers, however, did not congratulate the banks for their excellent work. Rather they assumed the lower fees and lower interest rates were their birthright.
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The relentless march of globalisation was slowed somewhat last week. A national court held several multi-national companies to count for anti-competitive practices. The national court was the Australian Federal Court and the multi-national companies were three pharmaceutical giants and their Australian vitamin subsidiaries, Roche Vitamins Australia Pty Ltd, BASF Australia Ltd and Aventis Animal Nutrition Pty Ltd.

The three companies were fined a total of $26 million for price collusion. One company was fined $15 million, the highest single fine in Australian Trade Practices history. The companies were also restrained from meeting to discuss pricing matters for four years. If they break that order they will be up for criminal sanctions.

The case is highly significant because the Australian arms of these companies were acting under secret agreements made at the international level of their respective companies. It shows that multi-nationals are not above local law and that they cannot always ride roughshod over national considerations, contrary to the typical anti-globalisation mantra.
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In a week’s time John Howard will have been Prime Minister for five years. He is Australia’s seventh longest-serving Prime Minister.

A couple of months ago, it seemed as if he were heading for a third term. Now it looks more likely that he will not. But he has nine months to reverse that position.

The six longer serving Prime Ministers all won three or more elections in succession. (Menzies won seven.)

Much is made of the difficulty of winning a third term. History shows differently. Seven Prime Ministers have gone to an election for a third time. All but one — Gough Whitlam – won. (I’m counting Stanley Bruce as having won the 1992 election even though Billy Hughes led the party in to it.) And Whitlam can hardly be counted as going to the people three times. On the second and third occasions he was forced into it.
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