Crispin Hull

Four billion dollars is a lot of money. This is the amount Australia hopes to give annually in foreign aid by 2010, doubling the present $2 billion, according to the white paper of foreign aid issued this week.

Doubling our aid is in line with the Millennium Project under which Europe promised to double aid to Africa by 2010 and in line with the recent European Union pledge to increase aid to 0.56 per cent of GNI by 2010.

But let’s not get too self-congratulatory. A few comparisons will put the amount into perspective.

We now give 0.25 per cent of gross national income in foreign aid – that is just 25 cents in each $100 we earn. It is just $150 out of an average income of $60,000. But that $150 can make such a big impact — five months’ income for some of the poorest people in Asia.
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A small suggestion from Tasmania this week seemed a beacon of good sense in a sea of inertia on tax and inter-government relations in general.

The Royal Automobile Club of Tasmania called for a national driver’s licence to replace the eight licences we have now.

The primary aim was to standardise driver training and improve road safety, but the idea also has obvious merit on the grounds of administrative efficiency and convenience for people moving interstate.

Novice drivers in Tasmania do a minimum of 60 hours driving before they can sit for their full licence. In Victoria it is 120 hours and in Queensland zero. In the ACT the learner has an option of a government test or a training course with an accredited instructor.
Continue reading “Forum for saty 22 apr 2006 interstate rivalry”

The law continues to struggle to keep up with technology, particularly the internet.

We now have a shiny new uniform Defamation Act. It came into force on January 1 throughout Australia.

It resolved, at last, a great hang-up between the states left over from convict heritage, but meanwhile, information continues to travel fast and furious from destinations unknown to recipients unknown over the net, and the law is having difficulty catching up.

This week the NSW Supreme Court produced a couple of judgments showing how difficult it is to fit the restrictive English view of publication into a modern world.
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I N FEBRUARY, 2002, the then ACT Minister for Housing Bill Wood set up the ACT Affordable Housing Taskforce. It reported and the Government responded. The Government promised: an expanded land release program; broader eligibility for stamp duty concessions; and more money for community housing organisations to provide affordable housing. Nonetheless, the median price of a dwelling in the ACT went up. Property taxes went up. Rents as a proportion of income went up. Then in 2004 the taskforce had another crack at it with a ”final report” titled ”strategies for action”. The Government responded. The response was full of blather such as: ”Safe, appropriate and affordable housing helps to provide dignity and the opportunity to develop a sense of belonging to a community. Without appropriate and affordable housing, communities are not sustainable.” Still, the medium price of a dwelling went up. And property taxes went up. And so did rents.

This week the ACT Government responded to the report of the Affordable Housing Steering Group which reported to the Government (but not publicly) in March. It promised (again): an expanded land release program; broader eligibility for stamp duty concessions; and more money for community housing organisations to provide affordable housing. It promised two other schemes it thinks will help. My guess is the median price of a dwelling will go up. Property taxes will go up (beyond CPI or any other sensible measure). And rents will still go up. The all new shinny 2007 affordability report made no mention of the failed 2003 and 2004 reports. It seems the government and its advisers simply do not understand. They are not the solution to the problem; they are the problem. Not just the ACT Government, but the Federal Government as well.
Continue reading “Forum for 14 April 2007 housing”

The Canberra Times is looking for a new editor. The previous editor, Michael Stevens, resigned after nearly five years in the job. He said that five years was enough. That is very understandable. It is a gruelling task, especially on a seven-days-a-week publication.

Most people imagine that the editor is the boss of a newspaper. Whatever the editor says goes. Not quite.

As an editor of The Times, London, once said to a British Prime Minister who complained about a journalist: “Being editor of a newspaper is like being head of a circus. You can hire the animals, but you cannot make them perform.”

I have some understanding of how both those editors felt. I was editor of The Canberra Times from 1985 to 1992 under three owners: Fairfax, Kerry Packer and Kerry Stokes.
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Walls don’t work, at least not in the long run. And if anyone should know it, it would be the Israelis.

The walls of Jericho did not save the Canaanites against Joshua. The Biblical story of Joshua’s trumpets causing the walls to collapse is obviously not literally true. The walls of Jericho ( now a city in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank), were probably destroyed by earthquake. Nonetheless, the general point about the ineffectiveness of walls remains.

The Great Wall of China did not keep out the Mongol hordes. Billy Connolly speaks (a form) of English – not ancient Gaelic as Emperor Hadrian would have had it under his policy of keeping the barbarian Scots out of Roman-conquered Britain through the construction of the now-ruined Hadrian’s Wall.
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The city of Innisfail, where Cyclone Larry struck hardest, is in the seat of Kennedy held by former National Party MP and now Independent Bob Katter.

Katter won the seat in 2004 while standing as an Independent. The Nationals would dearly love to have it back.. The nearby seats of Leichhardt, Herbert and Dawson, although reasonably comfortable Coalition seats now, have all been held by Labor at times and have been hotly contested.

The seat of Canberra, on the other hand, is rock-solid Labor. It has only strayed to the Coalition (after the Whitlam debacle) and is unlikely to go that way again in out lifetimes.

So, there was Prime Minister John Howard out with the chequebook immediately after the cyclone hit with very generous measures for those affected by the cyclone. Fair enough, Australians should be generous in times of disaster, up to a point.
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The queens of screen no longer want to be princes of print and the princes of print no longer want to be queens of screen.

Rather they both want to be nobles of the net.

It is now nearly 20 years since the last major change to media ownership laws. The Howard Government has made a couple of moves to relax the rules since it came to office in 1996 but they have fallen foul of the Senate and opposition by one or other media proprietor who felt hard done by.

Now Communications Minister Helen Coonan is about to release a discussion paper on changing the rules. Her office would not give a precise timing, indicating that there is more tinkering to be done or that the Prime Minister’s office is yet to give it the final tick.
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The trend in Australian housing over the past 10 years looks pretty grim.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics put out a special this week on housing occupancy and costs. The ideal of getting a home early, raising a family and slowly paying it off, and retiring with it wholly owned is being achieved by fewer Australians.

The survey was done between 1994-95 and 2003-04 – roughly since the Howard Government took over. But we must bear in mind that Labor was in office in all or nearly all the states during this time and housing is mostly a state matter.

You would think that with a booming economy, the housing position would have improved. Not so – on nearly all measures: a lot more more private renters; slightly fewer public renters; a major fall in outright owners; fewer people per dwelling; housing costs rising by more than CPI or wages; greater difficulty for first-home buyers.
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