Crispin Hull

Maybe the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games will be another example of there being only one thing worse than not getting what you want – that’s getting it.

Well, that’s at least what it might turn out to be for the Chinese totalitarian leadership.

I got an inkling of this a week ago when I gave a talk on media law to a group of 20 officers from the Beijing Public Security Bureau – or police force.

They were from the media-management section and are in Australia to learn the ways of western media so that they might make their Games run more smoothly.

When you talk to an Australian audience about media law, most of the interest is the relationship between the private citizen and the media, particularly defamation, privacy and other complaints about media behaviour.

The Chinese were much more interested in the relationship between the arms of government and the media.

A huge amount of foreign and local private investment is pouring into Chinese industries, with one notable exception – the media.

A couple of months ago the Chinese Government issued a clarifying statement about earlier statements encouraging foreign and local private investment in cultural industries. Many thought the earlier statement would pave the way for foreign Chinese-language magazines, the establishment of local privately owned newspapers, more freedom for the internet and foreign and local shareholding in newspapers and television stations.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 19 November beijing”

Thirty years ago the trouble was that the Government did not have majority in the Senate.

The trouble now is that it does. At least from a Labor perspective.

The past week’s outpourings in the lead up to the 30th anniversary of the dismissal divided along predictable lines: republican-Labor saying that Governor-General John Kerr acted unconstitutionally – in effect exercising a coup – and constitutional monarchist-conservatives saying what he did was perfectly legal and within the Constitution Coalition.

There is some difficulty with the Labor-republican view. If Kerr did sack Whitlam unconstitutionally, redress presumably could have been sought in the High Court, the upholder of constitutional legality. But it was not and could not have been, because the words of the Constitution are as plain as day – the Governor-General appoints the ministers of the Government. And the Governor-General is appointed by the Monarch, who holds office under the principles of hereditary and divine right.

Nearly all the time, the Governor-General appoints ministers according to the advice of the leader of the party that can muster a majority in the House or Representatives.
Continue reading “forum for 12 Nov 2005 the dismissal”

Anyone awakened before 5am day after day is bound to be grumpy.

The world has strife and inconvenience enough on it own accord without us deliberately making it more inconvenient.

I am a really grumpy old man this week. Bird flu, the Pakistan earthquake and terrorism are natural visitations or the visitations of the irrational, and so inescapable. But why do supposed sophisticated, intelligent, cutting-edge, service-focused, design-oriented organisations and governments make life a misery – turning cultivated, educated, pleasant, unassuming people like me into raving, mouth-frothing, grumpy old men?

Grump 1 is daylight saving. Why, in the name of civil government, do the vast majority of south-eastern and south-western urban dwellers in Australia have to be dictated to by the rural rump? Throughout October we are awakened at 4.52am (on average) as the sun rises. If we can tolerate the sun rising in late March at 6.53am why can’t we do the same in spring and have the daylight at the end of the day?

There is a solution. We must convince John Howard and the state Premiers that terrorists are using the early daylight hours in spring to plot acts of violence, so it will necessary in the interests of national security to institute a sensible daylight saving regime. Forget state boundaries. Daylight saving will begin on the first weekend in October in an area from south-east Queensland through the eastern half of NSW, all of Victoria and Tasmania and the south-east of South Australia and the south-west of Western Australia. It will end on the last week of March.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 29 oct 2006 daylight”

The code of ethics of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (the journalists’ union) says, “Where confidences are accepted, respect them in all circumstances.”

Maybe the MEAA code goes too far. I cannot see why confidences should be kept in ALL circumstances. Someone might tell you of a threatened act of violence or breach of the law. You might then have a duty to disclose the source if that was the only to prevent the violence.

But, in general, confidences should be kept because it is in the public interest that journalists keep confidences. If they do not, sources will dry up and so will the flow of information.

Chief Minister Jon Stanhope is not a journalist, but confidentiality principles apply to politicians as well.

Important flows of information – particularly between levels of government — will dry up if politicians do not respect confidences.

So was Stanhope wrong to put the draft terrorism law on his website?

Well, it depends on the timing and nature of the confidence and the over-riding public interest.

Timing is important. To be binding you need to extract the agreement on confidentiality before handing over the information. You cannot impose a confidence upon someone after you give the information. When information is given verbally, you have a sequence: a request for confidence; an acceptance that the confidence will be respected; and the giving of the information.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 22 oct 2005 stanhope’s confidence”

This week the footnote comes first, because it is more important than the argument on voluntary voting.

Australia describes itself as a compassionate, tolerant and generous society. Rubbish. At a time when compassion to Muslim communities might seem especially important, what has our response been to the Pakistan earthquake? — $10 million from the Government. It sounds big. And less than $300,000 from individuals. In all, just 51.5 cent each and just 1.5 cents each from individuals — all those people who wallow into McDonalds and Harvey Norman buying junk they don’t need – including the very widescreen television sets which have so graphically displayed the suffering. Can’t we do better than 1.5 cents each or 51.5 cents each as a society?

The compassion, tolerance and generosity go no deeper than the hemline on the hip pocket.

Try visiting http://www.redcross.org.au, or call 1800 811 700 toll free, or send a cheque to GPO Box 9949 Canberra City. If not, we must substitute the words “selfish, intolerant and mean” for the words “compassionate, tolerant and generous”. 1.5 cents per person is utterly shameful.

End of footnote.

Voluntary voting was raised again this week – this time the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into the 2004 election said it should be looked at. It recommended also that four-year terms should be put to a referendum; that electronic voting should be introduced and funding procedures should be tightened because some candidates were profiteering by getting more in electoral funding than they were spending.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 15 October voting”

Just after Zimbabwe became independent in 1980, the Zimbabwean Government had an ingenious method of assessing land tax on the then fairly wealthy white farmers.

Farmers could value their land however the liked. The lower the value, the less land tax. But the catch was that the self-assessed value became the value for compulsory acquisition, according to a Canberra Times journalist who travelled there and reported on it at the time. The system was a surefire way to prevent low tax assessment.

That was in the days before Mugabe became a tyrant and just stole the land, destroying the economy in doing so.

I was reminded of this earlier in the week when the NSW Ombudsman, Bruce Barbour, brought down his report into land tax in NSW. As land tax systems go, the Zimbabwean one was effective and efficient.

The NSW system, on the other hand, is – pardon the epithet used for African hellholes – a basket case.

Barbour concluded that the system used by the NSW Valuer-General resulted in “an unacceptable risk of error in a considerable number of valuations”.

More than a third of valuations were outside the acceptable margin of error of 15 per cent.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 8 oct land tax”

Jon Stanhope was the last Australian head-of-government standing up for the principles of liberal democracy, the rule of law and the separation of powers. Now he, too, has capitulated. The mouse that roared now squeaks.

He was sucked into the false importance of the private briefing. He was made to feel that he now “knows”. He “knows” what the voters cannot be told, now that the intelligence services have told him that we are in danger and why we are in danger.

These, by the way, are the same intelligence services who advised us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that we were in danger from them.

So, we are to have laws that enable people to be detained for up to 14 days without charge or trial. We are to have laws under which people who have not been charged can be subjected to a restraining order for up to a year – restraining them within their homes (house arrest), within a suburb or a town, or preventing them from associating with certain people.

What does that remind you of? It reminds me of the banning orders in apartheid South Africa. It reminds me of what the military government in Burma is doing to Aung San Suu Kyi.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 1 October 2005 terror laws”

The Income Tax Assessment Act now comprises 1,376,875 words.

The Act, for example, has a Section 82KZBB(1)(a)(iii)(B). The section deals with record keeping for travel expenses and the like – things ordinary taxpayers have to deal with. The whole section is 1346 words long and utterly unreadable.

About the only thing holding it together is the diligence of the Australian Tax Office which puts out English translations of the Act in the form of the Tax Guide and other information sheets. It also provides the wonderful E-tax computer program which was used by more than a million taxpayers last year. Without it, the accounting profession would make even fatter gains from the unwieldy law.

The law is so bad that even the Tax Office says forget the law, you can rely on our translations.

Still, why should the system be so complicated that so many Australians need a special computer program or an expensive accountant to do our tax returns?

Last weekend parties offering tax reform in New Zealand and Germany got increased support. In Europe economists point to the higher growth rates in places with simple tax systems – mainly in Eastern Europe.

In Australia this week the new National Party federal president David Russell called for a flat tax system. Usually flat-tax proposals state that there should be no deductions. That makes them simple and appealing.

Flat tax has it difficulties. It is unfair to people whose method of earning an income requires a lot of inputs which would otherwise be deductions.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 24 September 2005 tax”

The public interest took the back seat over the coronial inquiry into the 2003 bushfire while political and individual interests attempted avoid scrutiny. Nearly three years later the public is waiting for answers.

Let’s hope the same thing does not happen with the Clea Rose case.

Clea was hit by a car in the bus interchange in Civic in the early hours of July 30 and died some days later in hospital. The car, allegedly stolen and speeding, was being driven by a juvenile. Earlier the car had been spotted by police who had given chase with lights flashing.

Charges have been laid against the driver. Police are continuing their investigation into that. They are also conducting an internal inquiry into the conduct of the police officers – an inquiry by the Professional Standards Unit.

The big problem here is that major elements of both of these hearings will not be open to the public.

The public has a major interest in this case, as obviously does the family.

The police inquiry will be closed. There will be no advocate for the public interest at it. The police say they will make their findings public – whether any blame has been attached, punishment imposed of changes to procedures recommended. For example, earlier this year they made their findings in weapon-firing case in Wanniassa public.

But they cite privacy reasons for not making the whole process public. Privacy is a spurious ground in these cases. This event happened in a public place. If you are worried about privacy, stay at home.

It is reasonable and valuable for any organisation to have internal inquiries into incidents which might indicate failings, so the organisation can improve. And no doubt those conducting the inquiry will do so thoroughly and diligently, but it will always be with a police eye.
Continue reading “forum for saturday 17 sep 2005 clea rose case”

In the mid-1970s reporters on The Canberra Times produced used not merely a single carbon copy, but five – hammered out on upright Remington typewriters.

There were no photocopiers, you see. The original went to the Chief Sub-Editor – for publication or the spike. One copy went to the Chief of Reporting Staff. And the remaining four went from The Canberra Times office in Mort Street to CTC- Television, Radio 2CA, Radio 2XL in Cooma and Radio 2GN. There was only one television and one commercial radio station in Canberra. Fairfax owned both, and the two rural stations.

We thought nothing of it. The broadcasters just added The Canberra Times material to whatever else they had. Without it, their audiences would have been the poorer.

Discussion about media ownership in the past week or so reminded me old system.

Before television came to Australia in 1956, a Royal Commission was held. It said a broadcast licence was a public trust and recommended that only existing newspaper companies could be given that trust. So Fairfax, Herald and Weekly Times and Consolidated Press were handed the lion’s share of the television licences very cheaply.

However, in 1956 they were perhaps the only ones with the money and experience to do anything with the new technology.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 10 sep 2005 cross media”