Month: March 2003

It makes a ripper yarn in Western Australia.

Western Australia is being ripped off, according to WA Treasurer, Eric Ripper.

In a colourful statement this week he called for “a complete overhaul of the system for distributing Commonwealth grants to the States’’.

“It is a crazy system that sees WA subsidising the Volvo driving, latte set of the Australian Capital Territory who have the highest per capita income of all Australians,’’ he said. “WA deserves greater recognition of the wealth it generates for the nation. The irony is that with a fairer funding system, WA could generate even greater wealth for the nation.”

This jingoistic tripe is dished out regularly by one state premier or another whenever they see a financial disadvantage to their state or see that a bit of good old Canberra bashing will attract a few votes.

Remember in 1998, NSW Premier Bob Carr put out a newspaper advertisement stating, , “If you never never go, you’ll never never know where $540m of NSW taxes get snapped up every year.” Under a picture of a crocodile it explained, “The shores of Lake Burley Griffin has a more formidable predator than the salt-water crocodile. It’s called the Commonwealth State Grant system and it costs the NSW taxpayer and arm and a leg. Last year, for example, the combined demands of the Northern Territory, South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania put the bite on NSW for a staggering $1.5 billion.”

Ripper spun the same yarn. The grants system “fleeced Western Australians of $374 million this year’’, he said.

Ripper got himself into a big non sequitur. He said all those latte-drinking, Volvo-driving Canberrans had “the highest per capita income of all Australians’’ and so did not need the extra Commonwealth funding.

He misses the very point of federation. The “fairness’’ of the distribution of Commonwealth grants cuts both ways if viewed in Ripper’s simplistic way. On the distribution side, one might argue that the money should be distributed according to population. But what about the revenue side? Surely, if a state or territory contributes a give portion of revenue it should get the same portion back in distribution. Now, as Ripper states, the ACT has the highest per capita income in Australia and the highest gross sate product per head. That means it contributes more to Commonwealth revenue per head in income tax and GST. So surely, it should get a commensurately greater share back.

On the population equation, the ACT has 1.63 per cent of the population yet gets 1.86 per cent of the funding projected under the current Budget. Shock, horror. Subsidy to latte-drinking, Volvo drivers.
Continue reading “2003_03_march_state finances”

It stands for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus – SCUBA. It is a ticket to another world – a world of nature with little or no human despoliation. A world where there is no gravity, just buoyancy. It is a slow and silent world full of weird and wonderful life. It is a privilege to be in – a privilege only available to the ordinary citizen in the past few decades.

Before then, even the most experienced traveller on the sea was just that – a traveller on the sea who could only wonder at what was beneath.

Canberra, Australia’s only inland capital – and a cold one at that – does not seem a likely base for a scuba-diving industry. Scuba is usually associated with warm tropical waters and summer holidays.

In fact, Canberra has at least five scuba schools and there are dozens more in easy reach on the South Coast. And the South Coast of NSW – Canberra’s coastal doorstep – has some exquisite diving on world standards. The sea grasses at Jervis Bay, the seals and grey nurse sharks at Montague Island and the weird bubble cave at Black Rock off Malua Bay rate among the best.

This is the time to begin. Mid to late autumn is the best time to scuba or to learn scuba in this part of the world. It is all to do with currents and the difference in temperature between the ocean and the air.
Continue reading “2003_03_march_scuba for ct mag”

The NSW election result was a catastrophic one – not just for the Coalition, but also for psephologist Associate Professor Malcolm Mackerras.

In The Canberra Times the Sunday before the election Mackerras made – on my count – 19 predictions. He got five right. The other 14 were wrong – not just wrong, but hopelessly off the mark.

And a lot of the reasoning behind the predictions was off the mark, but that is a matter of opinion. Let’s stick to the facts first.

Prediction 1. “Significant Labor losses”. Wrong both Labor’s vote and seat count increased – by 1 per cent and 1 seat.

Prediction 2. The losses would be “not enough to cause a Carr crash’’. (Right, just – never mind the tired pun if it was intended).

3. “. . . an absolute majority of Labor of just three seats, down from 17”. Wrong. Labor’s majority has increased by at least one.

4. Overall “Liberal gains”. Wrong they lost 0.1 per cent of their vote and four seats.

5. “I predict Tamworth will stay National”. No, an Independent won the seat with a two-party-preferred vote of 54.5 to 45.5. (All percentages in the rest of this article will be two-party-preferred from the State Electoral Office website.)
Continue reading “2003_03_march_mackerras wrong”

The Sydney Harbour Bridge is one of the great travel icons of the world, as well as being the key traffic link between the main and business centre and at the suburbs and beaches to the north.

The 1149-metre-long bridge carries 50 million vehicles a year. But it also carries something else. At any time between just before sunrise and just after sunset on any day of the year a careful observer can see what appears at first to be some bubbles on the edges of the southern side of the span. A closer look at the bubbles reveals that they are moving. And that they are in fact human beings. They are all dressed in similar camouflaging grey jumpsuits and most are wearing baseball hats. Are they a maintenance crew? Are they a painting crew? Or are they engineers? No; they are simple tourists like you and I.

Every day about 500 of these tourists emerge from a tower on the eastern side of the southern end of the bridge and crawl like ants up the span. It is, of course, a cliche to say that little creatures or little humans are like ants when seen from a distance in the context of a very large structure. However, in this instance the cliche is apt. This is because each person is shackled to a steel wire that goes up the eastern side of the southern end of the coat hanger arc, across the top, and down the western side of the southern end. They cannot change their path nor change their order on it. They move like ants in a defined route.
Continue reading “2003_03_march_harbour bridge climb”

Let’s hope it is a short war and that the US does not mess up the peace.

Well, it is not a question of the US messing up the peace. The question is whether the US President of the day messes up the peace.

After World War I, President Woodrow Wilson almost made it a good peace. He took the US into the war on the basis of 14 points to make the world safer for democracy and to establish a league of nations after the war. Alas, Congress refused to ratify the treaty and the US was not part of the League of Nations. A chance to prevent World War II was lost.

President Harry S Truman made the best of the peace after World War II. With the Marshall Plan and the Japanese occupation, the vanquished were given a chance to rebuild democracies. The United Nations was set up. In short, the US engaged in the world. Peace had a better chance, but for the fact that during the Cold War the US made the mistake of using poor means to justify worthwhile ends. The US propped up loathsome dictators as anti-communist bulwarks and mistook democratic leftist movements as potential communist tyrannies.

After this war, President George W. Bush has some great contradictions to sort out if he is to win the peace.
Continue reading “2003_03_march_forum for saturday the peace”

Now if you got run over by a bus . . . what would happen to X?

Being run over by a bus is a polite expression for unexpected death used by people discussing wills or succession at work and so on.

In that context, people do not get run over by a train.

The train-death examples usually have people throw themselves under a train or some fiendish cad tying someone over the railway lines in the sure knowledge that a train will come and cut them in two.

This difference is instructive.

Buses are the vehicles of randomness. Trains have an element of certainty. The human has to get on to the train’s tracks to be hit and if you do get tied to the tracks, you will certainly be hit.

Where is all this leading us? Well, we are, er, on track for an argument about light rail.

Planning Minister Simon Corbell articulated (right, that’s the last pun) his view earlier this month about a light rail system that would enable workers from Civic to pop across to Manuka for lunch.

But why would or should a government invest huge amounts of public money in a light system for Canberra when everyone detests public transport, as witnessed by empty buses and the $50 million annual loss on them? Canberrans will always travel by car, the argument goes.
Continue reading “2003_03_march_forum for saturday light rail”

It would serve the Real Estate Institute right is the ACT Legislative Assembly moved in to legislate against gazumping.

The institute says that gazumping is not a problem in the ACT. Ho Ho.

Have a look at the letters to The Canberra Times of anguished buyers who have shelled out for searches, building reports and the like only to find that the seller turns around to a higher bidder at the last moment. Have a listen to two Members of the Legislative Assembly – one from each side: Liberal Bill Stefaniak and Labor’s John Hargreaves. They say constituents often complain.

Perhaps the Real Estate Institute does not get complaints because people feel they will not get a result.

Precious little has changed in conveyancing practice in the ACT for 20 years – other than a bit of technology. Meanwhile, in NSW the pernicious practice of gazumping has been acted upon, but at the cost of a lot of paperwork beforehand.

This is not a rich vs poor issue, or legislation to deal with unequal contractors. People who buy OR sell dwellings can be rich investors or struggling families with hefty mortgages.

The fundamental flaw in the ACT’s system of conveyancing is that the time is too long between notional offer to buy and acceptance of the price and the enforceable legal reality of an exchanged contract.
Continue reading “2003_03_march_forum for 8-3 gazump”

The first people to inhabit the Limestone Plains, upon which modern Canberra is built, were the Ngunnawal (or Ngunawal) people. They hunted, gathered, followed the paths of the Bogong moth from the coast to the highlands, marked their sacred sites — some of which remain to this day — lived where Canberra now stands and continue to live in Canberra now, contributing and adding to the city’s cultural life.

Radio-carbon dating establishes the occupation of Aboriginal people back at least 21,000 years. Many Aboriginal names have survived, including Molonglo, Ginninderra, Tuggeranong, Weetangera, Narrabundah, and, of course, Canberra itself.

European settlement disrupted Aboriginal patterns of land use and movement. Many died from diseases brought by Europeans like influenza, smallpox and tuberculosis.

The extent of the dispossession was described at the opening of the Tharwa Bridge across the Murrumbidgee River south of Canberra in 1895. The guest of honour was a Ngunnawal woman, Nellie Hamilton. She was quoted as saying, “”I no tink much of your law. You come here and take my land, kill my possum, my kangaroo; leave me starve. Only gib me rotten blanket. Me take calf or sheep, you been shoot me, or put me in jail. You bring your bad sickness ‘mong us.”
Continue reading “2003_03_march_canberra_historyup to 1913”

January’s bushfires questioned the nature of Canberra as a bush capital.

They could cause major changes in the way the city develops even if people realise that they are a one in 100 year event and should be only one factor and not the basis of planning the Canberra of the future.

On a smaller scale, the need to replace 500 houses has brought attention to benefits of quality design and building. Those burnt out will get greater exposure to the value of quality design than the usual one-off renovation or new house because architects, energy-efficiency experts, governments and others have seen a concentration of recipients for their message and they have directed it accordingly.

The rebuilding of the burnt areas will have a lot of publicity, so if done well it will provide a great community education project in the value of banging up houses on the cheap all facing the street irrespective of solar orientation.
Continue reading “2003_03_march_canberra_historycanberra after the fires”

The following is a potted history of governance in Canberra.

1890s: Constitutional conventions compromise on a separate capital in a federal territory within NSW but greater than 100 miles (160km) from Sydney.

1900: Constitution of Australia Act passes the British Parliament. Section 125 says the federal territory shall be greater than 100 square miles and shall be “”vested in the Commonwealth”. Section 120 gives the Commonwealth parliament power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of territories.

1911: Seat of Government Act creates the territory. All existing NSW law is brought over as at that date. New law is created by Ordinances approved by the Minister for Territories with the formal stamp of the Governor-General.

1930: Advisory Council set up: three department heads; three elected members and civic administrator.

1949: Cole report suggests municipal government for Canberra. ACT gets seat in Federal House of Representatives, initially only to have vote on ACT matters.

1958: National Capital Development Commission set up — anecdotally “”rules” Canberra through leasing and planning requirements.
Continue reading “2003_03_march_canberra_historyact chrono”