Month: February 2002

ActewAGL is a strange organisation. It has been set up on business principles, yet it must be one of the few businesses on earth that urged people NOT to consume its product.

It actively campaigns for us to use LESS water, when every other business is saying, “”buy, buy, buy” – more cars, more Mars bars, more Coke etc.

After weeks of no rain and now a deluge in which every creek and banker ran and dams filled over top is ActewAGL being alarmist in saying we’ll all be “rooned” if we keep consuming its product? Surely, in a land of drought and flooding rains we can always expect rain in God’s good time and not have to worry. Surely ActewAGL should be out there flogging its wares to make more profit for the ACT Government, for us. Isn’t that what corporatisation is all about.
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Our wicket was a fruit case. And there were three stumps at the bowler’s end of the pitch. The original batman’s-end three stumps were lost after my sisters borrowed them for rounders (a bizarre hybrid between cricket and softball).

The fruit case – “”taken” from an apple orchard – was put at the batsman’s end because I and my younger brother were not very good bowlers and to have any hope of getting my brother out we had to have a fairly wide wicket. Moreover, there was no lbw in our backyard cricket. But then again, we did not have pads, so if one were willing to sacrifice shins for wicket – go ahead.
Continue reading “2002_02_february_not cricket”

Early in the week, before the asylum-seekers took centre stage, media ownership was firmly on the Government’s agenda. No doubt it will return there.

Prime Minister John Howard explained the main aims: “” You’d get rid of the prohibition whereby a newspaper owner can’t own a television station or vice versa and you would relax the restriction on foreign investment in the media.”
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Peter Hollingworth is bound to cop demonstrations, as least for a while. It is likely new assertions will be made about sexual abuse and how his diocese responded to it. It is likely the media will seize upon this. He may well – unlike Kerr — resist it.

It has been, and will continue to be, a trial by media. This is because the Constitution provides no other way. As events showed yesterday, the fate of the Governor-General lies in the hands of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is bound by no-one and no rules in deciding whether a Governor-General stays in office. On this occasion, Prime Minister John Howard decided that he should stay. He had done nothing in office to warrant dismissal and he had done nothing in previous offices that amounted to criminal conduct.
Continue reading “2002_02_february_media gets gg”

The Federal Government denied a report last week that it had decided to ban embryonic stem cell research, though a decision must be made before too long. Stem-cell research is the use of cells which can grow into cells of virtually any sort of human organ. Cells from human embryos in nature ultimately divide to form cells that develop into the whole range of human organs. The mimicking of this in the laboratory raises hopes of finding new treatments for the who range of degenerative diseases, particularly Parkinson’s disease, motor-neurone disease and dementia.

Some adult cells – found in bone marrow can also be used as stem cells, but more research is needed to see if they will provide the same results as embryonic cells. Embryonic cells are taken from embryos left over from IVF programs.

Three states – Victoria, South Australian and Western Australia – have banned the research. If the Federal Government decides against a ban, those states should seriously consider removing their bans.
Continue reading “2002_02_february_leader28feb stem cells”

The increases in private health insurance premiums approved by the Federal Government yesterday show just how fragile and foolish the Coalition’s policies on health have been. Since coming to office in 1996, the Howard Government has pursued a policy of private is good-public is bad – irrespective of the evidence. It has introduced massive subsidies for private health insurance after the number of Australians covered fell below the dangerously low 30 per cent mark. Too many young people were seeing no value in health insurance as premiums went up and Medicare and the public hospital system covered them against catastrophic injury. With young people leaving, premiums went up further, so more people left – leaving the funds with all the hard cases.

The Government introduced a penalty Medicare rate for high-income earners of up to 1 per cent of income, making private cover irresistible. Still the uptake did not change significantly. Then it introduced a 30 per cent tax rebate at a cost of some $2 billion a year. There was a most increase in private insurance rates. Then it introduced lifetime cover, which meant premiums for people over 30 taking out insurance would increase with every year of age they did not have private cover. This turned the trend. The number of people with insurance bottomed out at 30 per cent and moved towards 35 per cent.
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The ACT Treasurer, Ted Quinlan, has said the ACT Government would not object to Totalcare withdrawing from its 50 per cent stake in the Williamsdale Quarry. He said that any ACT Government enterprise that could not provide some return or a wider benefit to the community would need to justify itself. He said that he would review all government enterprises.

That is a sensible approach for a new Government, though his statement of principle needs some refinement. He might also review all substantial subsidies that the Government gives to some enterprises.

The quarry is a classic example of a business the Government should not be in. There were other suppliers of stone available. There was no need for Government intervention to ensure the supply of a necessity. Even if the quarry made a profit, there would be little to justify government involvement. It should put its money where business cannot or will not put it.
Continue reading “2002_02_february_leader26feb quarry”

The Member for Fraser, Bob McMullan, has called for a third seat for the ACT. Mr McMullan represents the most populous electorate in the nation. The next most populous is the other ACT seat, Canberra, represented by Labor’s Annette Ellis. These two seats have an average of 109,000 voters. The Australian average is around 86,000. The ACT got just above the population mark for a third seat between 1996 and 1998 when the seat of Namadgi was created. Since then Australia’s average population growth has been higher than the ACT’s, so the ACT’s comparative population sits at a point just under the qualification for a third seat. The Northern Territory, on the other hand, has just got over the population mark for a second seat. Its two seats average just 55,000. The five Tasmanian seats have an average of 65,000 voters.

The result seems unfair – giving demonstrably unequal representation to ACT voters on one hand and Northern Territory and Tasmanian voters on the other.
Continue reading “2002_02_february_leader24feb act seats”

The Australian Institute of Sport has emerged too late in the piece over the question of the route for the Gungahlin Drive extension. After years of debate and an ACT election in which the question played a prominent part, the institute only now raises its head to object to the western route. And only then because it was asked about it in estimates committee in Federal Parliament.

It was made quite clear by Labor in the election campaign that if it came to power it would not put the road through O’Connor Ridge and that it would go via the western option.
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The plea of guilty to treason by George Speight and the death sentence commuted to life imprisonment will do little to resolve political difficulties in Fiji posed by the bitter racial divide on the islands. That divide arises because the descendants of indentured labourers brought by the British colonialists from India to work the sugar industry form about 45 per cent of the population. They have dominated commerce on in the island to the resentment of indigenous Fijians.

Speight is the scapegoat. He agreed to plead guilty to the high charge of treason ostensibly in a plea bargain so that half a dozen of his co-offenders would be allowed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of detaining hostages which carries a seven-year sentence rather than the death penalty. But many in Fiji, including its leading newspapers, suspect that the bargain runs higher, wider and deeper than that. There is a reasonable suspicion that Speight was not the leader nor the main instigator of the coup of May 2000 in which Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry his Cabinet and other MPs were held hostage for 56 days. Behind the scenes, some rich and powerful indigenous Fijians gave tacit support and others gave active support or even helped plan the coup, according to both Mr Chaudhry and reports in the Fijian press. They must now be sighing with relief at the end of the prospect of a full trial – with the possibility that a blame-throwing defence might point fingers higher and wider than just the accused.
Continue reading “2002_02_february_leader20feb fiji”