Month: July 2003

Caption must credit archicentre and say more information and advice is available from www.archicentre.com.au

For the bushfire Recovery supplement I have filed 22 stories

Also provided:

Table of donors sorted alphabetically and privacy vetted

Table of insured

Five insurance tables showing how Canberra fares nationally. Plus captions

Organised house design illo; electricity pics; forestry recovery pics from outside.

Aside from standard interviews, two long meetings with large groups of Recovery bureaucrats — one including CT advertising people. Negotiations with privacy-paranoid appeal trustees. Many many phone calls liaising and passing on contact details and story ideas to other contributors and organising and teeing up photographs.

At $3000 plus $300 GST you have done very well considering quality, quantity and timeliness of filing.

Shall I send a tax invoice or will you treat in the ordinary way through contributors’ bureaucracy?

Continue reading “2003_07_july_bushfires_story list”

The High Court decided this week that a surgeon should pay the cost of the upkeep of a child after a failed sterilisation operation.

Reaction has been divided and passionate.

High Court goes mad on damages. Surgeon should pay for negligence. Etc etc.

Either way, there is a great deal of comfort for Australians in this judgment.

Damages for medical negligence is a divisive issue. Differences of opinion are almost inevitable. Some can easily say that the parents have a child bringing them joy, as they admitted in the case, so why sue for the upkeep — all healthy births are a blessing. Others can say that the mother and her husband have been burdened by the failed operation and should not be out of pocket.

The High Court similarly divided. Three Justices held one way and four held the other.

The great comfort for Australians, whether they agree with the outcome or not, is the reasoning presented by the seven Justices.

Chief Justice Murray Gleeson made a pertinent point last year. In lay language he said High Court Justices should cop criticism on the chin and that they should not expect to be immune from it. But they should be able to expect that before they copped amedia bucketing for a judgment that those doing the bucketing should at least read the judgments.
Continue reading “2003_07_july_sterilisation case”

Professor Penny Sackett was six months into her five-year term as director of the ANU’s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics when a conflagration – small by the standards of her science – hit planet Earth.

The January 18 fires raced through the research school’s Mount Stromlo Observatory, destroying buildings, telescopes and research work. The monetary damage alone was $40 million. The school also runs the Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran.

Sackett, originally from the United States, in a new job in a new country found she had to look at the recovery.

“I did remark to the Vice-Chancellor that this was not in the job description,” she said.

But much of the directing of the recovery has now been taken over by others and she can concentrate on astronomy.

One of her main tasks is the setting up of a planetary science institute at ANU.

Planets have been back in vogue in the past decade with the discovery of planets outside our solar system – first confirmed in 1995. Now more than 100 have been discovered.

“This opened up a field in astronomy which in many ways lay dormant,” Sackett says. “Our own solar system provides us with very detailed information. But if the only thing you study is your own system you can be led astray. It could be abnormal and we would never know.
Continue reading “2003_07_july_sackett”

Acting Prime Minister John Anderson attacked the High Court this week over its decision in Cattanach v Melchoir to award parents the cost of bringing up a child after a failed sterilization.

Anderson used the “child-is-a-joy” argument to say that damages should not be awarded.

Anderson’s attack and similar attacks on the court for this decision are inconsistent with his (and his political party’s) earlier attacks on the court over native title.

The National Party attacked the court over the Mabo and Wik decisions. They denounced the court’s judicial activism and adventurism.

Remember the then National leader, Tim Fischer, calling for the appointment of a “capital C Conservative” (whatever that means) to the bench – someone who would apply the law, not make the law?

In theory, he got his “capital C Conservative” in Ian Callinan. In practice, though, he got a judge. And in this week’s case the judgment of Justice Callinan was decisive in the 4-3 decision to award the parents the damages. He applied the law in a “capital C Conservative” way and refused to use “policy” grounds or engage in judicial adventurism to deny the claim. To him it was a standard tort case.

The surgeon’s negligence had caused foreseeable loss. Kerry Anne Melchoir and her husband had specifically gone to him so she could avoid pregnancy. He had a duty of care to her. He breached that duty. The loss was not only foreseeable, but obvious. It could be calculated.
Continue reading “2003_07_july_forum for saturday july 19 medical negligence.d”

Thank you Cedric Bryant. Thank you ActewAGL. No thank you Ted Quinlan.

I am pondering whether to install a rainwater tank. ActewAGL gets kudos for its splendid website. You can log on to your account and see how much water you have used every quarter for the past 10 years. I use about 400 kilolitres (400,000 litres) a year. The consumption for the summer quarters indicates that half my consumption goes on the garden. That is fairly typical in the ACT.

In the 1999-00 financial year, I installed an underground sprinkler system and was talking to Cedric Bryant about it. He told me I was grossly over-watering. That year’s consumption was 750 kilolitres – 350 kilolitres of which was wasted. Cedric has saved me a lot of money. You need only water one a week, particularly for a native garden.

So in the face of Stage Three water restrictions, is a rainwater tank worthwhile?

ActewAGL charges 43 cents a kilolitre for the first 175 kilolitres and $1.05 per kilolitre after that.

So I am paying roughly $100 a year to water the garden with 200 kilolitres of water a year – that is for a four-hour soaking a week.

So we could collect the water from the roof into a tank and via a pump through the in-ground sprinkler system on to the garden and save $100 a year?
Continue reading “2003_07_july_forum for saturday july 10 water”

Mark Twain said, “Buy land young man they are not making any more of it.” Some years later he also filed for bankruptcy.

That happens with booms heading to busts. One sign is the emergence of crazy financing schemes. Remember the inter-generational loans during the Japanese property boom of late 1980s – just before it crashed.

So those who have missed out on the most recent property boom should be wary of the new scheme publicised this week by Wizard, Australia’s largest non-bank lender — not just because it might be harbinger of a crash, but because it might not be a good investment.

There may not be a crash. Normally, people pay a deposit and borrow around 80 per cent of value. The lending institution holds a mortgage (from the old French meaning dead hand). You cannot sell without paying the money back.

It is safe for the bank. It can always put a for-sale sign up and sell for 80 per cent of value within a few days.

But with rising prices, people cannot afford the deposit or repayments. So Wizard comes to the rescue. People need only 70 per cent of the usually deposit and 70 per cent of the repayments. In return, Wizard takes 30 per cent of the ownership (or equity). When the house is sold, however, Wizard takes 60 per cent of the capital gain. Note, not 30 per cent which would match their equity share.

Continue reading “2003_07_july_forum for saturday home loans 5 july”

This week the Chief Judge in Equity in New South Wales, Justice Peter Young, warned lawyers about running up huge costs in Family Provision cases.

These are cases where family members contest a will. Each state and territory has its own laws, but they follow a similar pattern. A family member who has not been adequately provided for in the will can apply for a court order to get extra money out of the estate.

It is happening more frequently these days. The increase has been caused by higher divorce rates; more de-facto partners; and more ex-wives with children from the first marriage competing against new wives with children of the second and third marriages.

In the past, it was more the practice to take the costs out the will than it is now. This just encouraged people to challenge the will and encouraged lawyers to egg them on. These days the costs come out of the estate less frequently. So people challenging a will without good cause and people resisting a challenger who has a good cause better watch out.

Often costs come out of the estate when there are arguments over a badly expressed will, but in a recent ACT case, Chief Justice Jeffrey Miles said that in family-provision cases, the loser should ordinarily pay the winner’s basic legal costs, which cost most but not all the costs. Further, if someone refuses an offer greater than what the court ultimately awards, the costs are awarded against them at a higher rate than the basic rate.

Justice Young was probably whistling in the wind in warning against costs. The very day his article in the NSW Law Society Journal became public, a judgment in yet another family-provision case came down with horrific legal costs.
Continue reading “2003_07_july_forum for saturday estates wills etc”

As time goes on fewer people are determined to rebuild and live where they did before the fires.

The decline coincides with what psychologists say happens after a disaster. Initially there is a great community bond, then reality sets in. Cleavages occur in the community. Also, under insurance means a third of those not rebuilding say they cannot afford to rebuild as they initially had hoped. Another third just want closure. And the remaining third found the rebuilding process too complex.

Research by Market Attitude Research commissioned by the Recovery Task Force shows that in the month after the fire two-thirds of those affected intended to rebuild. By five months after the fire that had shrunk to a half.

The aim of the research was to help the taskforce meet housing needs.

After seven months fewer than 75 development applications have been approved. Of these about 60 have had building applications approved. Of these only two or three have had final certificates of completion issued so people can occupy their new homes.

The survey is fairly conclusive. Researchers interviewed people from 403 of the 500 affected families. If anything it might under-represent those who decide not to rebuild – because they would be harder to contact or refuse to be interviewed because they wanted the fires out of their lives.
Continue reading “2003_07_july_bushfires_who is moving who is staying”

So why all the fuss? If someone on the northside lost their house in an accidental fire, they would not get the level of support that the Duffy, Chapman and other residents who lost their houses. No government hand-outs for them. No special bushfire appeal or one-stop shop to fix all for them.

Besides, all but six of the destroyed houses and all but four of the damaged houses were insured. Most of the people lived in an affluent suburb with high incomes by Australian standards, all why the need for all this help months after the event? Isn’t it a bit overdone?

I put these questions to the manager of the ACT Bushfire Recovery Centre, Di Butcher.

“Yes, the loss is high for an individual who loses their house in a one-off fire. But if you look at a city which has got 500 people in the same situation plus all of the other people whose homes are damages you are looking at a city which could have huge problems for years to come. Unless we get those people up and well and moving you can imagine what would happen to Canberra. Four thousand people stayed at the evacuation centres – it is a lot of families it is a lot of schoolkids. It is a lot of people who may not be able to work if you look at stress and post-traumatic stress syndrome. . . . You are looking at an extremely vulnerable set of people long-term.”

In a single fire, neighbours around help a lot. But when 500 homes burn, the social fabric is burnt too.

“You have to try to replace that social fabric,” she said.
Continue reading “2003_07_july_bushfires_what is the fuss about”