Month: January 2002

Many Canberrans would say that one of the most pleasing parts of this year’s Summernats was they were contained within Exhibition Park in Canberra – unseen and unheard. Also, the crowds were well-behaved, with very few traffic offences or offensive behaviour, according to police. This latter point would not matter to many Canberrans who would not care two hoots what the patrons of Summernats did to each other, provided they did it within the confines of EPIC – among consenting adults in private, as it were.

One of the main reasons for the good behaviour, according to police and organisers, was the ban on alcohol. Indeed, about the only incident of violence arose while a man tried to smuggle some alcohol in. Alcohol had to be purchased on site. It was expensive and was opened and poured into plastic cups at time of purchase – this reduced consumption considerably. Organisers said, however, the alcohol ban had resulted in lower attendance. Attendance was down 20,000 to 95,000, but 95,000 well-behaved patrons was better than 115,000 unruly ones.

In some respects, this motoring apartheid is unfortunate. One does not want to see a return to the unruly days of the early 1990s when Summernats was synonymous with raucous, drunken behaviour, burn-outs on public streets, violence, roadside camping with destruction of trees, pollution and littering. However, Canberra is graced with some stupendous pieces of motoring machinery in the week of Summernats. Given the good behaviour this year, surely it is time for the restoration of the street parade for the Summernats entrants. Moreover, there would be no harm in having the parade go down Northbourne Avenue, say, around 6.30pm while it is still light. Suitable detours could be made for other traffic.
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A row has broken out over the state of the Federal Government’s accounts. Labor’s Treasury spokesman, Bob McMullan, accused the Government this week of trying to cover up the fact that it is the highest taxing government in Australia’s history by not including the GST as a federal tax. He said it was not some mere technicality, “”this is the Auditor-General conducting the official audit of the Commonwealth’s books and saying they don’t meet the proper accounting standards”. He demanded that Treasurer Peter Costello return from holiday to clarify the state of the nation’s books.

The auditor may have a technical point, but it is only that. Mr McMullan’s call for Mr Costello to return from holidays was a hyperbolic absurdity. The Auditor-General brought down his report on December 21 – before the holiday began. It seems that the Opposition (and the media) were on holiday and missed the report and its significance, if there was any. The nation rolled on. It was an opportunistic politicians’ grandstand.

Whether the GST is put under the column of state revenue or federal revenue is not of huge moment. The Federal Government has argued that because legislation guarantees that all GST revenue goes to the states it should be counted as a state tax. That argument has some merit, in the same way that the taxes for tobacco, alcohol and petrol have been collected by the Commonwealth on behalf of the states ever since the High Court ruled that under the Constitution they were excises – a form of tax over which the Constitution grants the Commonwealth exclusive jurisdiction – and not “”licence fees” as the states had pretended.
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The Leader of the National Party, John Anderson, has signaled that he will reform his party by taking it from a “”collection of state-based parties” to a party that must accept more federal direction. “”We have to operate as a focused, co-ordinated, federally-oriented federal team.” He said that the specifics of his proposals were a matter for the party internally, but they would be about funds management, the federal directorship, and strategies for individual electorates and pre-selecting appropriate candidates.

There is something seriously missing here. Policy.

The National Party lost two seats to the Liberal Party – one of them the seat vacated by the former leader Tim Fischer – and one to an independent – former National MP Bob Katter. The National Party is down to 13 Members of the House of Representatives. The loss to Mr Katter symbolises the National Party’s fundamental difficulty – that while in Government with the Liberals it has to juggle loyalties between a Coalition partner which is economically dry, on one hand, and its grass-roots constituency which is economically interventionist, on the other. Typical rural constituents likes Government to provide subsidies for telecommunications, uneconomic roads and railways and for the wherewithal of agricultural production. They want agricultural marketing arrangements that offend the rules of competition. These are an anathema to the philosophy of the Liberal Party. The only two economic policies the Nationals and the Liberals share are labour-market reform and free external trade, and even then many Nationals only support free export trade and would happily see an end to the influence of globalisation that makes inefficient rural non-exporting industry unviable.
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The power of the computer has caught up with hundreds of thousands of people who were illegally claiming welfare payments. Data from the Australian Taxation Office, Centrelink and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs was matched over the past three years. The data-matching identified 210,921 welfare cheats who then had payments reduced or cancelled. Many had to repay.

The total amount saved was $550 million.

It is a fairly impressive saving since the data-matching law came into force three years ago. There has been some concern about welfare-bashing and privacy, but these concerns should not deter the continuation of data-matching.
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The Australian Government appears determined to press on with its policy of putting Air Marshals aboard Australian domestic flights. This is despite an apparent change of heart in Britain, where the Government and the airlines have opted for greater security on the ground to ensure that dangerous items do not get on the aircraft in the first place.

The Australian Government would be well-advised to revisit the scheme in light of what is being done in Britain. The chief executive Britain’s Air transport Users Council, Simon Evans, said, “”Sky marshals are impracticable. There are 460,000 flights from Heathrow alone each year.” Similarly, there are tens of thousands of flights in and out of Sydney, yet Australia has plans for just 111 marshals, just 22 scheduled to begin duty soon.

It is absurd to thinks that potential hijackers would abandon their plans on the basis of the remote chance of running into one of the marshals. More likely, they would continue, but perhaps be more wary and more dangerous.
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The resignation of the Italian Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero has been unfortunate, coming as it does such a short time after the otherwise triumphant introduction of the euro common currency in 12 of the 15 EU member countries. Mr Ruggiero, a former head of the World Trade Organisation, was the most pro-European minister in Italy’s centre-right Government.

Mr Ruggiero resigned after several anti-euro comments by other Government Ministers. These in turn followed several anti-Europe decisions. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi side-lined Mr Ruggiero from any part in deciding whether Italy should join a multi-Euro plan to develop the Airbus military transport aircraft and as a result Italy backed out of the deal. Mr Berlusconi tried to block an agreement to put in place a cross-Europe arrest warrant, before backing down. And Mr Berlusconi introduced a law which would make it harder for magistrates to track money involved in financial crime.

It may be that these events can be seen merely as Mr Berlusconi returning what he saw as a cold-shoulder treatment by other European countries when he came to power. Most European Governments are left of centre and even those from the right are much more European and internationalist than Mr Berlusconi.
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The South African Development Community last week refused to impose sanctions against Zimbabwe. The decision will give Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe an element of legitimacy he does not deserve. Moreover, most of the 14 nations who make up the community are being somewhat hypocritical. These were the nations who pressed for sanctions against South Africa in the apartheid years in order to change a regime that was undemocratic, racist, illegitimate and a serial breacher of human rights – just like Mr Mugabe’s Government.

Malawi’s Foreign Minister, Lillian Patel, explained the community’s opposition to sanctions by saying they would only hurt the poor. It was a lame excuse. Already people are starving the Zimbabwe. Mr Mugabe’s corrupt and arrogant Government refuses to acknowledge this. He refuses to allow foreign aid teams in to help feed the poor. At this stage the poor have little to lose and everything to gain by whatever pressure the international community can bring to bear to force a change of ways by Mr Mugabe to see him out of office. Mr Mugabe’s policies have destroyed the country’s capacity to feed the poor and to earn foreign exchange for people to get a better life.
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ACT Pedal Power has called for the end to bullbars on cars on ACT roads. Pedal Power, the cycling lobby group, argues that bullbars are illegal under the Australian design rule that states, “”No vehicle shall be equipped with any object or fitting, not technically essential, with protrudes from any part of the vehicle that it is likely to increase the risk of bodily injury to any person.” The ACT Government’s view is different. Urban Services Minister Bill Wood says that his advice is that the design rules do not make bullbars illegal and that if the rules were to be changed to preclude bullbars, it would have to come from the Commonwealth.”

The two positions raise some major issues about traffic regulation in Australia. Technically, road rules are matters fro the states and territories, but a large amount of work has been done in the past 10 years towards increased uniformity and greater recognition of each other’s demerit points and licence suspensions. That work should not be undone lightly. With increased mobility, more people drive interstate so there is a public and safety interest in uniformity. Different rules invite confusion and more accidents. A difference in vehicle specifications invites inconvenience. If there were to be a ban on bullbars in the ACT, would interstate drivers have to remove them at the border.
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The Minister for Workplace Relations, Tony Abbott, made a thoughtful appeal yesterday for Australians to feel better about Australia. In doing so he quite rightly pointed to many things about Australian society that were worth celebrating and admiring. He also attacked doomsayers, the intelligentsia who portray Australia as the “”arse end of the earth” and “”fairly loathsome”, and those who have a “”legitimacy anxiety” and “”chronic defeatism”.

Mr Abbott – speaking to the Young Liberal federal convention — quite rightly pointed to Australia as being one of the freest, fairest and most prosperous nations on earth – a nation with clean streets, clean environment, a volunteer spirit and where people can get to know each other. And he points out that in many ways Australia is getting better – the rich have got richer at about the same rate as the poor have become richer. We have more jobs, higher wages, lower taxes and fewer strikes than a decade ago. The suicide rate is down. We have run a large, non-discriminatory immigration program based on merit and humanitarian principles. We did an excellent job in East Timor, upholding principles of self-determination and helping a desperate neighbour in need.
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Australia faces the prospect of both under- and over-reaction to the recent bushfires. On the criminal-justice front, NSW Premier Bob Carr and ACT shadow attorney-general Bill Stefaniak have been quick to grandstand. As they have in past with spates of criminality they have happily grandstanded to call for tougher penalties. But as the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdrey has pointed out, present law provides for an adequate range of penalties and juvenile programs to deal with the arsonists. They have committed terrible crimes, but political grandstanding about rubbing noses in ashes and higher penalties will not bring the lost houses, bushland and farmland back, not will they do any more to deter future arsonists. It is just easy talk. And it will make any difference to fires not caused by arsonists.

On the science and technology front, there is talk of considering the purchase of some new helitankers and talk about reconsidering funding research into how fire behaves and how best to fight it – but no commitment. There has been some talk about putting powerlines underground, which would end fires caused by sparks that spray when powerlines touch in high winds – but no action.
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