Category: Uncategorized

Elephants, lions and rhino do not carry passports. Nor do they have the wherewithal to open locked gates or climb over fences.

The trouble is that in the history of southern Africa boundaries between nations and boundaries between private and public lands have been marked out and fenced, not according to patterns of animal migration, but according to the need, greed and wants of humans.

This is changing – to the benefit of the animals and the humans. And the change is coming despite political instability and poverty in many of the nations affected.
Continue reading “2001_11_november_african parks”

Last week, the ACT Parliament, in the last sitting before the October election, did an extraordinary thing. The two major parties and most of the independents joined to pass the most radical reform of defamation law in Australian jurisdiction since 1788 – and I am not one for exaggeration.

When the law comes into effect on July 1, 2002, the ACT will be the only free-speech jurisdiction in Australia.

Maybe very few people are interested in defamation law, but indirectly the whole community is profoundly affected by what the media publish because that is fundamentally affected by defamation law.
Continue reading “2001_09_september_act defo”

Communications Minister Senator Richard Alston needs to undertake remedial classes in technology. Following his abysmal display over digital television he is now continuing to pursue his flawed policy agenda on internet gambling.

In May last year, Senator Alston pushed through a one-year moratorium on internet gambling. He now wants to make that moratorium permanent. The initial moratorium was a prohibition, backed by legal sanctions, against anyone in Australia operating an internet site for gambling. At the time it was widely thought that this was just another exercise in political grandstanding to appease a vociferous anti-gambling lobby. It was thought that once the one-year moratorium ended sanity would prevail.

Not so. Instead, the folly gets worse. Rather than a total prohibition the government proposes to allow Australian gambling sites to deal with overseas clients but not Australian clients and it will allow a Australians to gamble with overseas sites but not Australian sites. The policy is flawed both technologically and socially. It is obviously geared towards the continual appeasement of a vocal group who rightly sees that there is a significant gambling a problem in Australia, but it is dealing with it in an ineffective counter-productive way.
Continue reading “2001_03_march_leader29mar gambling”

Communications Minister Senator Richard Alston needs to undertake remedial classes in technology. Following his abysmal display over digital television he is now continuing to pursue his flawed policy agenda on internet gambling.

In May last year, Senator Alston pushed through a one-year moratorium on internet gambling. He now wants to make that moratorium permanent. The initial moratorium was a prohibition, backed by legal sanctions, against anyone in Australia operating an internet site for gambling. At the time it was widely thought that this was just another exercise in political grandstanding to appease a vociferous anti-gambling lobby. It was thought that once the one-year moratorium ended sanity would prevail. Continue reading “2001_03_march_leader29mar gambling”

There have been some encouraging trends in the Australian Public Service over the representation of women in its higher echelons, but there is still a way to go in some departments.

The Public Service Commissioner’s Workplace Diversity Report 2000-01 revealed that the percentage of women in the Senior Executive Service in Defence has risen from 10.6 per cent in 1999-00 to 15.5 per cent in 2000-01. That is an impressive result, but it is off a low base, and Defence has the greatest gender imbalance in the SES. Treasury went backwards from 25.6 per cent to 17.5 and the Australian Bureau of Statistics went from 14.3 per cent to 17.5 per cent. These remain the poorest performing departments.

Women are much better represented in Education, Training and Youth Affairs and Health and Aged Care, both in terms of absolute numbers and the increase over the year.
Continue reading “2000_11_november_leader23nov ps women”

Elephants, lions and rhino do not carry passports. Nor do they have the wherewithal to open locked gates or climb over fences.

The trouble is that in the history of southern Africa boundaries between nations and boundaries between private and public lands have been marked out and fenced, not according to patterns of animal migration, but according to the need, greed and wants of humans.

This is changing – to the benefit of the animals and the humans. And the change is coming despite political instability and poverty in many of the nations affected.
Continue reading “2000_11_november_african parks”

After several days of counting, it now appears that indigenous Fijian parties will have a majority in Fiji’s 71-seat parliament.

Many will be pleased because if Indian-dominated parties had won the election and Mahendra Chaudhry returned to the Prime ministership it would almost certainly have led to communal violence . But it would be a far too optimistic to assume a that Fiji is out of trouble.

The election followed a coup in May last year led by a George Speight against the mostly ethnic Indian Fijian Labour Party led by Mr Chaudhry and ultimately a caretaker government being installed by the military and led by Laisenia Qarase.

Mr Qarase’s party has won the most of any indigenous party, but does not have a majority in its own right. It will need support from the Conservative Alliance which is formally led by Ratu Raicuitta Vakalalabure. However, the driving force behind the alliance is Mr Speight, who is awaiting trial for treason.
Continue reading “2000_09_september_leader07sep fiji”

Last week, the ACT Parliament, in the last sitting before the October election, did an extraordinary thing. The two major parties and most of the independents joined to pass the most radical reform of defamation law in Australian jurisdiction since 1788 – and I am not one for exaggeration.

When the law comes into effect on July 1, 2002, the ACT will be the only free-speech jurisdiction in Australia.

Maybe very few people are interested in defamation law, but indirectly the whole community is profoundly affected by what the media publish because that is fundamentally affected by defamation law.

The initiative to change the law came her from Gary Humphries before he it was Chief Minister. Independents Paul Osborne and Michael Moore were also keen for change. Green’s MLA Kerrie Tucker was also keen to see more freedom of speech especially for people protesting against large corporate power. To his credit, Labor leader, Jon Stanhope, saw the importance of allowing the media a freer hand in reporting matters of public importance.

To explain the sea change, it is perhaps best to start with a description of the existing law.
Continue reading “2000_09_september_act defo”

It takes a long time to turn public opinion and understanding even on obvious things. It has taken 500 years for almost everyone to understand that the world is round and goes around the sun. After more than 150 years perhaps a bare majority understands the basics of evolution. But turn it does.

After 20 years in America, opinion is slowly turning on crime and punishment. In England, they learnt 150 years ago that hanging people for petty theft did not reduce crime rates. Now in America people are realising that jailing people for non-violent drug offences does not help the drug problem. And some are even starting to realise that state killing of murderers does not reduce violent crime.

There are now two million people in jail in America. The jail population rose by about 820,000 people in the 1990s. The huge increase came as politicians pandered to what they saw as a public demand to get tough. A very bleak picture of the US justice system is painted by the Justice Policy Institute of the US. But it also contains some glimmer of hope as American realised that the filling of more and more jails is doing nothing about the drugs and crime problems of the country and is costing a huge amount of money that could be spent of better things, including education that might help increase employment and reduce crime.
Continue reading “2000_08_augustl_prisons”

The Israeli people want peace. They just don’t seem to know who to get it. The trouble is they want peace on their terms. Every opinion poll suggests a yearning for peace and a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians. But every time an Israeli leader goes into negotiation, usually in the US, he has to worry about voter backlash. Inevitably, obvious and reasonable concessions to the Palestinians are not made. The Palestinians despair. Their leaders, too, worry about their political support. Violence erupts. Israelis and Palestinians on the street become more hard-line and peace, so close, becomes even further away.

It seems that every time Israelis elect a new leader the hawk of the election campaign becomes more dovish at the negotiating table and the dove of the election campaign becomes more hawkish as he realizes the prospect of electoral back-lash at re-election time. But either way, hawk or dove, no Israeli leader has been able to secure a complete peace agreement that sticks. Ultimately, the Israeli people are too fearful of the concessions it would take: acceptance of a Palestinian state; of a shared Jerusalem; of access to holy sites for all religions; and some concession about returnees.

The election of Ariel Sharon yesterday (Australian time) is unlikely to be a mould-breaker.
Continue reading “2000_02_february_leader08feb israel”