Month: September 2001

Governments in Australia must realise that the mere attaining of a majority in one house of parliament does not give them the right to rule as a dictatorship. In a liberal democracy there are checks and balances which should it make governments accountable during the period of governance in addition to the ultimate accountability at election time.

This week, we have had examples at both Territory and national level of governments withdrawing from their duties of disclosure.

At the federal level, the clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans, has highlighted how the second term of the Howard government has been more secretive than most of its predecessors. In the latest edition of Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice, Mr Evans noted that in the second term of the Howard Government one in five orders for government documents had been refused, a greater rate than previous governments.
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The Act Government is now officially in caretaker mode and the election campaign for the October 20 poll is officially under way.

Almost immediately, the Liberal leader and Chief Minister, Gary Humphries, sought to distance himself from the approach of his predecessor, Kate Carnell. In particular, he sought to distance himself from chasing big-ticket items – like Bruce Stadium and the V8 race – and he sought to emphasise all the Liberal candidates and what they can do for their electorates, making himself less presidential.

On the presidential front, Mr Humphries does not have to do anything to be less presidential. It is difficult to imagine an Australian party leader less presidential than Mr Humphries – with perhaps the exception of his Labor counterpart, Jon Stanhope. There is nothing wrong with being less presidential, provided the team members are up to it and do not require the leader to repair damage created from within.
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The Federal Government has made the correct decision not to bail out Ansett, but rather let it fall into receivership. The situation is difficult for the 16,500 staff, but that should be a temporary affair for most of them. As one staff member said, Ansett is a great airline, but it has been let down by bad management. It means that a buyer is likely to be found for the airline’s aircraft, on-ground infra-structure, rights of access to airports and what remains of its goodwill. If that happens, it is likely that shareholders will lose a considerable amount of money. But there is always an element of risk in the purchase of shares. The risks range from poor dividends because of poor profits or outright loss of capital because the venture fails.

In the case of Ansett, it is likely that that the administrators will be able to sell the airline as a going concern and save many of the jobs. The return to shareholders will be small.

The Government’s duty is not to pick winners, or in this case pick which losers it will bail out. Rather its job is to set reasonable regulations for safety, administer laws to prevent anti-competitive conduct and ensure employee rights are protected.
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The Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley, is in danger of looking faintly ridiculous when he talks about Labor’s policy on the GST. For nearly two years, he has been talking about GST roll-back. Until this week, the details of that were unclear. Hitherto, Mr Beazley has spoken only of making the GST simpler and of making its impact fairer.

On the question of fairness, it seems that all Labor has got to offer is speaking about one or two motherhood goods or services and removing the tax on them. Labor had already mentioned sanitary items, caravan park site fees and charities. This week it was funeral expenses.

“Imposing a GST on funeral expenses is an unfair burden on Australian families, especially the elderly,” Mr Beazley said. “It is the equivalent of a death tax.”
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Unfortunately, it may be far too close to an election for Australian taxpayers to come out unscathed from the Ansett debacle.

The crisis has been triggered by two major factors. First, Ansett itself is losing more than $1.3 million a day, largely due to past poor management, in particular an inability to update its fleet. Secondly, its parent, Air New Zealand is also in strife. Air New Zealand’s strife has continued because Singapore Airlines withdrew from an earlier proposal to increase its stake from 25 per cent to 49 per cent. This increase in the capital would have flowed through to Ansett.

Ansett’s position has been made worse after comments from Air New Zealand’s acting chairman, Jim Farmer, that the future of Ansett was essentially in the hands of the Australian Government. That statement was at odds with the commercial reality that Ansett is the subsidiary of a New Zealand company.
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The trial of two Australians and six Arab foreign aid workers detained in Afghanistan on charges of preaching Christianity is causing justifiable international disquiet.

Much of that disquiet arises from the unpredictability of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the absence of the rule of law independent from the Government, and the huge disparity in possible sentencing, form a few days’ jail to public execution.

Further disquiet is caused by the fact that the offence they have been charged with has no equivalent in Australian law, and in Australia their conduct would be completely lawful. The Taliban law prohibiting freedom of religious expression is offensive and conflicts with Australian ideas about basic freedoms.
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After several days of counting, it now appears that indigenous Fijian parties will have a majority in Fiji’s 71-seat parliament.

Many will be pleased because if Indian-dominated parties had won the election and Mahendra Chaudhry returned to the Prime ministership it would almost certainly have led to communal violence . But it would be a far too optimistic to assume a that Fiji is out of trouble.

The election followed a coup in May last year led by a George Speight against the mostly ethnic Indian Fijian Labour Party led by Mr Chaudhry and ultimately a caretaker government being installed by the military and led by Laisenia Qarase.
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Australians are working too long, according to a study published yesterday by the Australian Council of Trade Unions. It may well be that the study will be used for self-serving ends when the ACTU puts it in a submission to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in a test case on work hours due to be heard in November. Nevertheless, the study points to some alarming trends. Moreover, it was conducted by Sydney University and Adelaide University’s Centre for Labour Research, so it has an element of independence about it which gives it credibility demanding attention.

The study found that more than a third of full-time employees in Australia work more than 48 hours a week, which it would be illegal in Europe. Australians have the second-longest average working week of any developed nation, and is one of the few countries where hours are increasing. The study showed that employees’ lives were becoming narrow as they gave up hobbies and sport, spent less time with friends and family, and were too tired or simply did not have enough time for sex. The long working week was causing rocky marriages or marital breakdowns, health problems and fatigue-related accidents at work. It seems that the long working week is not due to the pursuit of money because 60 per cent of overtime goes unpaid. Much of the overtime appears to be done because of employees’ commitment to the job, under-staffing and fears of reprisals or loss of employment.

It seems that the pendulum has swung it too far. In the 1960s and 1970s Australia had a reputation of having a lazy workforce plagued by industrial strife, powerful unions and an attitude of us and them. It may well be that the great power of the unions caused a reaction that has resulted in a diminution of the quality of employees’ lives. The reaction against union power came in the form of legislation, structural changes in the economy and employees turning away from what they saw as unresponsive self-serving organisations. It now appears that many employers have taken advantage of the weaker position that employees find themselves in.
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As the 438 asylum-seekers are transferred from the Norwegian freighter Tampa, which rescued them, to the Australian naval vessel HMAS Manoora, questions arise as to why the government is engaging this expensive and humiliating operation.

Yesterday, Federal Court judge Tony North lifted a temporary injunction that would have prevented a transfer of the asylum seekers from Australian waters. He did so after the Commonwealth government gave an undertaking that it would abide by any court ruling when the case is fully heard during this week. The Victorian Council for Civil Liberties and others are seeking court orders to have the asylum seekers brought to Australia for processing. The Government’s position is that they should not be brought on to Australian soil.

Instead, the government proposes to use its naval vessel to take the asylum seekers on a 10-day day voyage to Port Moresby. From there some will be sent to Nauru and others to New Zealand for determination of their refugee status. Whatever happens, the Government must abide by its undertaking to the court. If the court orders the asylum-seekers back to Christmas Island, they should be turned around. It may well be that many of the asylum-seekers will ultimately end in Australia if that they are found to be refugees. The question arises why does Australia not just bring them on to shore immediately and process them as if they had landed on Australian soil in the first place.
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Out of the blue last week, the Minister for Communications, Senator Richard Alston, announced that the Government was prepared to consider an overhaul of the media-ownership laws. He said he was in favour of a comprehensive review of the laws which at present prohibit the owner of a newspaper to own a broadcasting licence in the same city and which restrict foreign ownership in newspapers, television and radio.

There is quite a lot wrong with the present legal regime for media ownership. It is obvious that it has failed dismally in its primary objectives of retaining Australian ownership of major media assets and of having a diversity of media ownership. For a start, one foreign citizen controls the major circulating newspaper in five Australian capitals and the leading national newspaper. For a time, another foreign citizen in effect controlled the Fairfax group, which dominates the classified advertisement market in both Sydney and Melbourne.

But this does not mean that we should applaud it Senator Alston’s new stand. The timing is appalling. It is only a couple of months before a federal election. There would not be sensible consideration of any proposals. The highly charged atmosphere just before an election is not an appropriate time for such a debate. It seems that Senator Alston’s move was a naïve attempt to curry favour with the major media owners in the hope of more favourable coverage for the Coalition during the campaign. If so, it will not work. The Coalition made a similar promise in 1996, but after attaining government did not deliver. The Government did not do enough to ensure Opposition or Democrat support for a new regime. Given the acknowledged failure of the present regime, that should not be impossible. But playing stunts like last week’s announcement is not the way to go about it.
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