Month: December 2001

There is the very good news, and the not so good news. Last week, ACT schools were rated as the best in the world. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Program for International Student Assessment rated reading, mathematics and science skills of 265,000 15-year-olds across 32 nations in the developed world.

Australia was up with the best and the ACT was the best jurisdiction in Australia. Overall, it meant that the ACT was doing best.

In national comparisons, only Finland had significantly better reading literacy than Australia; only Japan had significantly better mathematical literacy and only Japan and Korea had significantly better scientific literacy. The ACT on its own outranked Finland in reading, Japan in mathematical literacy and both Japan and Korea in scientific literacy – putting it on top of the world.
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Planning Minister Simon Corbell has appropriately fulfilled an election promise to restrict dual-occupancy developments in Canberra to 5 per cent, or one block per 20 in any residential section. The restrictions will last until neighbourhood plans are in place. The first ones of these will be in place in the middle of next year.

These is a clear mandate for limiting dual occupancies. That was the overriding intent of the policy that Labor took to the election and Labor got a substantially higher vote than the Liberals who had no such proposals.

The real test for Labor and Mr Corbell, however, is to come – in the creation of the neighbourhood plans and the development that follows them. A delicate balance has to be struck between preserving streetscape and residential amenity and the need for urban renewal and housing choice.
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The Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, is likening the situation that Israel finds itself in with that in the United States – an innocent victim of terrorist attacks. In Israel’s case, it is the President of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, rather than Afghanistan’s Taliban, who is harbouring the terrorists, under the Sharon view of the world. It gives him the right to attack Mr Arafat and Palestinian strongholds in the West Bank and Gaza, just as the United States has attacked Afghanistan.

The argument may wash with the Jewish lobby in the United States, but not with many others outside the US. Surely, not even President George Bush would fall for this one, though there have been signs of it with his failure to urge restraint on Israel’s part.

The analogy simply breaks down. Even on the strongest anti-US view, the attack on New York and Washington were at the worst a response to US policy positions, not a response to some direct US military action. The appalling Palestinian suicide bomb attacks in Israel were a response to equally appalling Israel extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinians; killings of demonstrators, including children; frequent invasion and closing down of Palestinian towns and cities and the frequent destruction of Palestinian property.
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The Australian Labor Party is continuing to debate questions of how it should define itself and how it should portray itself to the voting public. Most recently, frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon, the spokesman on resources, called for a scrapping of the rule forcing ALP members to belong to a union.

Mr Fitzgibbon says the rule encouraged branch stacking and alienated middle Australia. He is right on both counts. He argues that if only members of a union can join the party, political aspirants facing a rank and file pre-selection process are forced to stack branches with trade unionists and pensioners (who are exempt from the union-membership rule). He called for wider reform than just the reform of the 60-40 rule under which union delegations get 60 per cent of the seats at party conferences.

The whole relationship between the party and the union movement is now open for debate. And about time, too. Union membership has declined to less than 25 per cent of the workforce, and less than 20 per cent of the private-sector workforce. It seems many people think union membership is irrelevant to their lives. And with Labor’s primary vote the lowest it has been in 70 years, more people are seeing the Labor party as irrelevant to their lives. The nature of the Australian economy and society have changed and the Labor Party has not moved with it. The party retained its influence beyond its support base from 1983 to 1996 because the preferential, single-member system of voting in the House of Representatives delivered it seat numbers far greater than its support. The position in the Senate reveals labor’s true support base – just 37 per cent of the seats.
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The Corowa People’s Conference which met at the weekend has recommended a long process towards another referendum on whether Australia should become a republic.

The process will necessarily be long and fairly complicated. In any event, no action will come from the Federal Government while John Howard is Prime Minister.

While opinion polls suggest that a majority of Australians would like to see the severing of the remaining constitutional ties with Britain, the stumbling point arrives when the question “what sort of republic” is asked. Some people are committed to having a direct election that they will campaign and against any other republican model. Other people are wary of a direction election for a new position in the Australian constitutional framework. Whichever model is proposed enough of one or other of these two groups of people will side with monarchists to form a majority in favour of no change – even though a majority would like a republic.
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The move by NSW, Victoria and Western Australia to set up an inquiry into federal-state financial relations should be dismissed for the political stunt that it is. The Treasurers of the three states met last week to announce their review. The three are net contributors to the equalisation process – called horizontal fiscal balance. Queensland and the ACT are about neutral, though just on the receiving side and the Northern Territory, South Australia and Tasmania receive the lion’s share of equalisation payments.

So this inquiry is a whinge about these three states having to shoulder their fair share of the responsibility of being part of the Australian federation.

The benefits of federation have been shared among all Australians for more than a century. They include the benefits of free trade, the efficiencies of more uniformity than if the six colonies had become separate nations, the benefits of being able to deal with the world as a larger block and the intangible benefits such a the pride of nationhood. These benefits outstrip the detriment suffered by the better off states in being called upon to make equalisation payments.
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the following is a quote about one of our political leaders:

“”The worst legacy of this man and of this government . . . . will be the extent to which it has divided the Australian community; the extent to which it has put one Australian against another; the extent to which it has presided over the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor; and the extent to which it has sought to play pressure group politics to the detriment of the interests of the mainstream Australian community. This man will wear the mark of dividing Australian society; of being a leader who has wounded and wrecked rather than healed and united; and of being a leader who has seen partisan political advantage in setting one group against another.”

The following is another quotes about the same leader: “”The other reason . . . that I believe the Prime Minister deserves to be censured by this House is his failure to uphold appropriate ministerial standards – his absolute failure to sack . . . . ”.
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one of the tests of television’s capacity to educate is to ask someone who chants that David Attenborough-narrated nature documentaries are very educational – well what exactly did you learn. It does not get much beyond that the world is a wonderful green place full of amazing creatures that do very odd things.

Now we have the Blue Planet series. I have been transfixed by it. But all that had changed educationally is that the world is a wonderful BLUE place full of amazing creatures that do very odd things.

Well, The Blue Planet now has an educational supplement, the book of the series. It is packed with facts, explanations and analyses that cannot possibly be absorbed through the narration on the television series.
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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.

Health Complaints Commissioner Ken Patterson says the Act is based on a simple idea.

“”Health information collected during the treatment of patients should be available to members of treating teams, so that they can treat people safely and effectively,” he says. “”Health records should also be accessible to the patients receiving treatment. Health information should not, as a rule, be available to anyone else.”
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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.

The other conflict is a bit more esoteric. It has people concerned with liberal democracy and human rights pitted against people concerned liberal democracy and human rights.

Let’s deal with that conflict first.

The right to privacy is a fundamental human right. The NSW privacy Commissioner, Chris Puplick, says privacy is a matter of a sense of self-identity, self-worth and autonomy. Privacy is related to what it is about ourselves that we wish other people to know, or perhaps more critically, what it is about ourselves that we do not want other people to know.
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