Month: May 2002

2002_05_may_land squabble

Sometimes the child will not leave home voluntarily and hangs around bludging off the parent. So it was with the ACT. The parent, the Commonwealth, had to make the ACT take control of itself and, more importantly, pay for itself.

So it forced the ACT to take self-government. When it did so, it handed to the new ACT body politic a debt-free territory and nearly all the land of the territory, though reserving some for its own purposes. The land kept back by the Commonwealth was all the obvious stuff – the big national institutions, the diplomatic quarters, the trunk and ceremonial routes, and government departments. But it also included some odd spots which the Commonwealth thought it might want to use later.

This last category is causing strife.
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2002_05_may_land rent gorton

Much has been written about the erratic style of former Prime Minister John Gorton in the past week. One of his more erratic decisions is still being felt in Canberra today.

Gorton who died last week has been accorded a state funeral – the same honour Gorton as Prime Minister accorded Jim Fraser the Federal Labor Member for the ACT who died in 1970. Fraser won 67.7 per cent of the vote at the 1969 election and was an enormously popular local member. Gorton, naively thought the Liberals could gain the seat at the ensuing by-election.

The Liberals put up Clarrie Hermes, a well-liked Canberra magistrate. Labor put up Kep Enderby.
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2002_05_may_gst trend

The GST will take $520 million more next financial year than what was estimated a year ago.

And the increases continue in future years. The Budget papers show that the GST is the growth tax, rising faster than the sum of other taxes and estimated growth through to 2004-05.

The Budget papers, though, religiously leave out the GST from formal Commonwealth financial statements, because the Commonwealth argues that it is not a Commonwealth tax, but one that goes automatically to the states.

If it were considered a Commonwealth tax it would represent 14.5 per cent of Commonwealth revenue.
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2002_05_may_generation budget

Forty years ago, the big prediction of economists was that people would not know what to do with increased leisure time as more labour-saving devices came on the market and employees negotiated ever shorter working weeks. Now the employed are spending ever more time at work.

Forty years ago, unemployment rates of more than 3 per cent were considered a social catastrophe – even in the 1961 recession – and no-one imagined that it would be a decades-long scourge from the 1970s on.

It is a brave economist or social engineer who attempts to look 40 years on. The Intergeneration Report (Budget Paper No 5) does precisely that. Like all economics, it is laced with assumptions. But it is better to do the projections on current trends than to remain in the dark.
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2002_05_may_crick euthanasia

In the contemplation of euthanasia, the laws of physics and biology are as important as the laws of the land.

Nancy Crick killed herself on Wednesday night. She had terminal cancer. The dilemma she faced was one that faces nearly all people with terminal illness. The choice is to do nothing and allow nature to take its course. Invariably that means horrible pain or drugs to ameliorate the pain. That means a slow decline to physical incapacity. If her drugged state or her disease takes her to the point where she is physically incapacitated, she would lose the capacity to take her own life. She would lose the capacity to choose the time of her dying with her friends and family around her. So if she wants to die with family and friends around her at a time (within the limited time available) of her own choosing, it follows that she must do it while she has some physical and mental capacity.
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