Month: June 2001

The plight of employees of the failed OneTel company illustrates the need for action by the Federal Governments to improve the state of corporate governance in Australia. It is unacceptable that quite low-paid workers should have to queue up with a large-scale trade creditors in order to get some of their entitlements in the winding up of the company.

It is made more unacceptable by the fact that this is not an isolated incident. Last year when National Textiles went belly up with 300 employees owed about $11 million, politicians from all sides acknowledged the need to reform corporations law and to set up under government schemes to ensure there was no repeat. In that that case, the Federal and NSW Governments did a one-off bale out. As it happened, the Prime Minister’s brother, Stan Howard, was a key figure in at the management of National Textiles. On a charitable interpretation, the Federal Government showed concern for national textiles employees by organising the bale-out. Given the conduct of the Federal Government since then, it seems that its concern for employees was short lived. There have been several other company collapses with employees owed substantial sums of money and the government has done little.
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The leader of the ACT Opposition, John Stanhope, has announced that his party is opposed to the Government’s $27 million free school bus plan. That is a reasonable policy decision to make. Labor had obviously come to the conclusion that a free bus scheme that applied to children travelling more than a certain distance after-school favoured people going to private schools because by and large those going to government schools tend to attend the closest government school and therefore do not qualify for the free bus. Further, Labor argues that the money would be better spent more directly on education, on such things as reducing class sizes, increasing school facilities and providing textbooks and the like.

Leaving aside for the moment Mr Stanhope’s earlier statement that he would not make any new policy statements until closer to the election, Labor’s promise to scrap the free bus scheme if it comes to office is a sensible position to put at the next election.

However, to go the next step and state that the party will attempt to prevent the scheme getting off the ground when the Budget comes before the Legislative Assembly is another matter. That step would require an amendment to the Appropriation Bill, specifically prohibiting spending on a free buses and that would get the Opposition and crossbenchers into logical and legislative difficulties. Then might even be forced to legislate for compulsory bus fares as it is difficult to see how they can legislate to prohibit the Government from providing a free service.
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TWO phrases — “innocent until proved guilty” and “trial by media” — have been used frequently in discussion about allegations of sexual assault against the chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Geoff Clark.

Unfortunately, the phrases have distorted rather than to clarified.

At the outset, I should make clear that I am making no judgment about the veracity of the allegations. Readers should look at and the original article in the Age, Melbourne, last Saturday and make their own judgment. Rather, I make general comment.

One way to clarify the questions is to look at the way the burden of proof applies. The phrase “innocent until proved guilty” should apply only to the criminal law. The presumption of innocence puts a high burden on those who seek a criminal conviction. They have to unprove your innocence by convincing a judge, magistrate or jury beyond reasonable doubt that you are guilty. Upon that proof you are convicted and face a penalty, including imprisonment. Conviction and imprisonment are dire consequences and therefore require this very heavy burden of proof before they are imposed.
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Last week Liberal Party MP Christopher Pyne was warmly congratulated by a his colleagues after delivering his kick in the guts for the Labor Party through the report into the integrity of the electoral roll.

In the long term, though, the Liberals might rue the day.

The setting up of the inquiry by the joint parliamentary committee on electoral matters was from the outset and exercise in embarrassing Labor. The inquiry was spawned by an earlier inquiry by Tom Shepherdson, QC, in Queensland. Shepherdson looked at Labor’s pre-selection rorts. Labor had been caught because it had earlier attempted to clean up branch-stacking by using the Commonwealth electoral roll as a new “clean” verification procedure for people voting in party pre-selection ballots to ensure they lived in the electorate. Alas for Labor, it did not anticipate the determination of rorters who then put outside people on the Commonwealth electoral roll fraudulently so that they could still rig pre-selection ballots. The Shepherdson inquiry exposed them.

This in turn led the federal government to opportunistically set-up of the inquiry that was headed by Mr Pyne. The Pyne inquiry would keep the matter of a Labour Party electoral skulduggery in the public eye for as long as possible. The coalition had not got much mileage out of the Shepherdson inquiry at the time because of the politically astute dealing with it by Queensland Premier Peter Beattie.
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Australian defamation law has been held up to a fair amount of a hatred ridicule and contempt this month. Ten days ago the chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Geoff Clark, announced that he would not sue the Fairfax newspapers over very detailed allegations they published asserting that he had sexually assaulted four women in the 1970s and 1980s. He said it that his legal advice was that the trial would take between 12 and 18 months in preparation and take between four and eight weeks in court.

“I am that further advised it would be unwise for me to immediately retaliate to the gross libel by issuing legal proceedings unless I am prepared to suffer the considerable financial consequences of a legal war of attrition,” he said.

The Age reporter Andrew Rule responded by saying, “I think it’s code for I’m not going to sue because it’s too risky to do so. We here regard it as confirming our case.”
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