Month: September 2001

It is perhaps not the best time to talk about travelling to the US, but it has been a pitiful season in the Australia skifields this year, so it is a good time to look at travelling to the US to get some good 2001 skiing in.

Australia’s season did not start until well into August and even now the snow is either ice or mush.

In the US, the Rocky Mountain resorts of Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone and Breckenridge got their first dusting of snow this weekend. The US season is more than twice as long as the typical Australian season – from November to April and smart skiers can get good prices early and late in the season.
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Once upon a time, the Commonwealth was a model litigant. It did not play mean and sneaky tricks. It acted properly. It acted in the public interest. It conducted litigation in the courts, whether suing or being sued, fairly.

Once upon a time, the Commonwealth Parliament legislated according to some fundamental principles of fairness to all and the public good.

We expect politicians to be selective with the truth, to exaggerate, to use artful point-scoring in debate, to squirm when caught and so on.
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Yesterday’s judgment is likely to have only limited application. It was the combination of many unique facts that led Justice North to conclude those rescued were unlawfully detained: no communication with the outside; presence of SAS troops; control of movement from the civil to the naval ship; closure of Christmas Island port and so on.

These facts would not always apply to an Australian naval vessel that rescued people on the high sea or even in Australian waters. If people voluntarily go aboard the rescuing vessel and the master of that vessel determines that the safest course is to go to Port Moresby, Indonesia or Nauru, then there will be no unlawful detention. Rescued people have to go where the ship goes. It was the added unusual elements in this case that made the detention unlawful.

Justice North agreed that a person has to hit land before they can apply for a protection visa or refugee status. Just getting to Australian waters is not enough. (But Australian criminal law and admiralty law applies on the ocean to deal with people smugglers and people who assault, kill or steal.)
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Two people are groaning at the decision of former Raiders star Mal Meninga not to run for politics: Chief Minister Gary Humphries and lobbyist Richard Farmer.

And two people must be smiling: Opposition Leader Jon Stanhope and Meninga’s wife, Debbie.

Meninga’s decision probably ends Humphries’s chance of holding on to the Chief Ministership. The Liberals realistically can only expect to hold two seats in each of the three electorates on October 20. To govern, they would need the support of three minor or independent candidates – one in each electorate. The only way they could do that would be for the re-election of Paul Osborne in Brindabella and Dave Rugendyke in Ginninderra and for the election of another police-football independent in Molonglo. And the only person who could have done that was Meninga. Last election, now ABC morning-show host Chris Uhlmann (a non-ex-footballer and non-ex-policeman) stood for the Osborne-Rugendyke police-football alliance and got just 2.2 percent of the vote. You have to have been a noted footballer or cop (or both) to play on that team. So Hilary Black – who will be running with the police-football team in Molonglo on October 20 — will not get a guernsey.
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The postponement of next week’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Brisbane is a small victory for terrorism and a major convenience for Prime Minister John Howard. The Queen will now not come to Australia until next year – if CHOGM is postponed until then. With the Queen in Australia convention demanded that an election campaign not be under way. Now the decks are cleared for Mr Howard to call the election any day now. Given the minimum notice of 33 days, it means the earliest practicable date world be November 10.

It is obvious that the meeting was postponed because the Prime Ministers Britain, Canada and India said they could not attend because of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11. Their decisions might have been as much about domestic reaction to having the leader on a trip to a distant part of the world in the face of security threats as dealing with the threats themselves. Either way, they decided not to come and that meant the end of CHOGM at least for now. If they decided not to come because of security fears in Australia, then CHOGM is perhaps permanently doomed, as are other great face-to-face talkfests of world leaders. Any meeting like that requires a lot of notice for participants which also means notice to any terrorist wanting to attack. We have already seen that the sort of notice given for these meetings has enabled protesters to garner numbers to put on demonstrations. The response has been to move the meetings to more remote places. But the more remote the places are, the more difficult it is for be sure of security for participants.

We may be seeing the end of big international meetings. This would be a shame because it is precisely these sort of meetings and international dialogue that can help solve the world problems that give rise to the terrorism in the first place and (if stable doors must be closed) help combat terrorism in a co-operative way. Video-conferencing is an artificial substitute. Human contact is what counts.
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It is almost depressing that the ACT Labor Party should hark back to the picket fence in road transport policy. Opposition transport spokesman John Hargreaves wants to go back to the system of regular vehicle roadworthy checks.

Checking cars every two years is a flawed policy on several grounds.

First, mechanical defects have proven to be a very minor factor in causation of road death and injury. Nearly all road death and injury is caused by bad driving: alcohol, speed and fatigue. A small amount is caused by bad roads, though most of that can be put down to drivers failing to change driving speed to conditions. And then there are some very rare accidents caused by poor breaks and other mechanical difficulties. Even then, a lot of these are made worse by high speed.
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The setting of the date for the election must be uppermost in the mind of Prime Minister John Howard. The over-riding consideration will be to maximise the chances of the Coalition retaining Government. Survival is a base instinct and it tends to be put at the forefront. The Government would happily cancel the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and send troops immediately to the Middle East if it thought that this meant the difference between winning and losing the election. Never mind the inconvenience to those attending and organising CHOGM. The convenience of the Government capacity to capitalise on the short-term visceral fear generated by a combination of the terrorist attack in the US and the Tampa refugee affair comes before everything else.

It is not a satisfactory situation. Parliament is also left to a guessing game. It is rushing through legislation on the presumption that this is the last sitting week, but it would be possible, though unlikely, for the Government to hold off until later in the year and for there to be another sitting. Businesses and people throughout the country are left in a state of uncertainty while the Government at its secret convenience determines when to have the election. It also maximises its advantage over the Opposition by knowing the date before the Opposition does so it can organise its policy announcements while the Opposition is left with an uncertain timetable.

Events this electoral cycle have highlighted some of the unfortunate consequences of leaving in the hands of the Prime Minister the virtually unfettered power to nominate the election date. Truce, the Governor-General must formally approve the date, but in effect the Governor-General would rubber-stamp the decision unless it was so radically early as to be democratically unjustified.
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Inequality is increasing in Australia, according to the latest study by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling at the University of Canberra.

But before there is a lot of hand-wringing and calls for Government to tax the rich more, the results need to be looked at more closely and the question must be asked: is equality a valuable outcome?

The study said there was strong evidence that inequality of income increased between the late 1980s and mid-1990s and some evidence to suggest it was continuing to increase. The increase was driven by a decline in the income share of the bottom 10 per cent, a small decline of income share in the middle and an increase in income share of the top 10 per cent.
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The decision by its former Raiders football star Mal Meninga not to stand for the seat of Molonglo at the October 20 Legislative Assembly election was obviously unscripted. It was apparent that when Meninga was being interviewed by ABC Morning Show host Chris Uhlmann yesterday that at first he ready to continue with the prepared script – the political spin. Then suddenly he reverted to his true self and said, “”I’m buggered. I’m sorry. I have to resign.” He walked out of the studio and returned a few minutes later, saying he that had decided on the spur of the moment he could not stomach a political career. He had tried to convince himself that politics was the way, but it was not.

He then said, “”Hopefully, I haven’t made a fool of myself. But I think I’ve done the right thing. I feel comfortable now . . . this feels right, definitely.”

Well, very few people in Canberra would say that Mr Meninga had made a fool of himself. To the contrary, they would be thinking that here was a man being true to himself and honestly assessing that he was not suited to the job. It is telling that he feels comfortable and right about his decision. The people now not feeling comfortable about the whole affair must be those who attempted to persuade him to enter politics, knowing that he had a very strong chance of election because of his well-justified popularity as a footballer, rather than administrative, organisational or other political abilities. Indeed, Mr Meninga’s career reveals a much greater talent for individual sporting prowess than ability to administer or coach a team. Those urging him to stand obviously hoped to translate the football prowess into a political number, dress it up as they might otherwise.
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Former Victorian Premier Joan Kirner came to Canberra this week with the laudable aim of redressing the gender balance in at the ACT Legislative Assembly. She came equipped with some money from a fund called Emily’s List to support female Labor candidate for the October 20 election. Alas, she also came with a sad ignorance about the ACT electoral system.

Mrs Kirner described the ACT’s Hare-Clark system of voting as “an amazing system” as if it were some sort of biological freak. She admitted that she was still trying to understand it. Moreover, she gave ridiculous advice to the very voters whose hearts and minds she was hoping to influence. She told them to vote 1 with no preferences. Besides offending the requirement to express five or seven preferences (one fore each seat), it is through the full expression of preferences that voters can best influence gender balance.

Mrs Kirner’s basic premise was sound. The ACT Parliament has an unhealthy gender imbalance. Only two of the 17 MLAs are women. In previous Assemblies there were more than double that and at one stage the ACT was unique among state federal and territory parliaments when at the Leaders of the Government and Opposition and the Speaker were all female
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