Crispin Hull

I saw a rabbit the other day.

I was reminded of it, bizarrely, while reinstalling all the software on my computer after the motherboard was replaced.

Journalists like to highlight the unusual. And seeing a rabbit these days is unusual.

The ubiquitous rabbit has been almost wiped out by the calicivirus. Other animals (and plants) were not affected by the virus, but they have been able to thrive in the absence of rabbits.

Diseases caused by viruses can rip through a species. Viruses thrive in large populations of a single species.

Does the same thing happen with computer viruses? I think so.

Ever more virulent computer viruses are appearing. And they spread quickly throughout the world over the internet, just as their biological versions spread via jet aircraft.
Continue reading “2004_03_march_forum for saturday microsoft”

Hallo, hallo, hallo, what have we got here then? Just a cop drawing an obvious conclusion – the same conclusion being drawn by everyone else in Australia who has not got their head in the political quicksand.

Spain is one of the few countries in Western Europe with troops in Iraq. Spain like Australia backed President Bush and Prime Minister Blair’s position on Iraq. Australia took part in the earlier invasion of Iraq – only one of three nations to do so. Islamic extremists warned that those who helped the US would be targets, naming Britain, Israel, Australia and Spain among others. Then bombs killed 200 in Spain and the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack.

Now what follows is not very difficult. It is not even a first-year university Logic test. It is a Year 11 comprehension test.

Small wonder the top Australian cop (along with several million other Australians) drew the obvious conclusion: Australia is more likely to be a target of a terrorist attack directly because of its role in Iraq. It was just so obvious a conclusion that Federal Police Commissioner Mick Kelty did not think twice about stating it in public television without imagining there could be any fallout.

Sure, Australia would be middle-level target anyway, like all western democracies, but it is more likely to be a target (rather than, say, New Zealand, Canada or Austria) because it took part in Iraq. For example, Australia (and its overseas interests) might be now, say, 1 chance in 100 of being the target of the next terror attack instead of, say, 1 chance in 200 — purely because we took part in Iraq. Inescapable.
Continue reading “2004_03_march_forum for saturday iraq”

Labor would increase the size of the ACT Legislative Assembly from 17 to 25 if it attains majority government at the October election, Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said yesterday.

He also wants to increase the ministry to six or seven from the present five.

The Assembly has had 17 Members since its inception in 1989. It that time the ACT’s population has grown from 270,000 to 320,000.

“Increasing the size of the Assembly is about delivering good government,” Mr Stanhope said. “I am firmly committed to it. It is an issue I will pursue.

“There is a popular wisdom around that it is not good for a politician or anyone else to support the employment of more politicians,” he said. “But I am a strong advocate for an increased size of the Assembly. I think this is a very big issue for this territory.
Continue reading “2004_02_february_stanhope story”

Chief Minister Jon Stanhope acknowledges in this election year that his Government is travelling well.

He is a popular Labor leader, like Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, but there the similarity ends.

He did not suggest with false pretence against all the evidence – as Beattie did – that the election might be lost.

“I believe we will win the election,” he says. “But majority government will be difficult.”

And unlike Beattie and NSW Premier Bob Carr Stanhope says that he will refuse point blank to enter a law-and-order auction this election.

He takes comfort from the Canberra electorate being different from electorates elsewhere in Australia.

“Populist decisions are tempting in an election year,” he says.

In the week when the Opposition announced it would start work on a dam in Naas Valley the next day if it won the election, Stanhope did not even attempt to match it.

He acknowledged the anxiety about water, but said, “It is a difficult and complex question. It is important to be rigorous, prudent and scientific and look at all the options. . . .

“That is the attitude that I have in relation to most things. I will not be spooked. . . .

“I have always respected the way the Canberra community is connected to the political and decision-making processes. . . . I take comfort in the knowledge that people will recognise hard decisions and that the government is presented with a limited range of options.”
Continue reading “2004_02_february_stanhope for forum”

Chief Minister Jon Stanhope was right when he said a couple of weeks ago that “Canberra is booming”.

There are many reasons for that. It takes time for an economy to boom — and time for it to falter.

Canberra has had artificial booms in the past when the Federal Government has poured money in: Menzies in the 1950s and Whitlam in the early 1970s.

This boom has stronger foundations, but foundations that can be eaten away by profligate governments. And we are seeing some signs of that now. A good example is the long-service leave proposal. More of that anon.

Canberra’s boom had it seeds in the slash and burn of the early days of John Howard’s Prime Ministership. It was a micro example of Margaret Thatcher’s efforts in Britain: pretty ugly early on, but – as with a garden – responsible for some vibrant growth later.

It was helped by the ACT Liberal Government of the time getting the ACT Budget back into the black and ensuring taxes, charges and other burdens on business compared well with NSW.

Stanhope inherited an economy on an upward trajectory. No matter what he did, it was going to be good for several years.

He was further helped by the property boom which delivers money straight into state and territory coffers, and also by the GST arrangements. The Federal Government collects the GST and pays all of it to the states. The revenue has boomed in confluence with the credit blow-out as people pay GST on the goods and services that they buy with their new-found credit.
Continue reading “2004_02_february_saty forum labor’s costs”

Chief Minister Jon Stanhope today strongly rejected a call by the Liberal Opposition for the Federal Government to intervene in legislative affairs of the ACT.

Mr Stanhope was commenting on a move by the Liberal Shadow Attorney General to write to the Federal Attorney General, Phillip Ruddock, expressing concerns regarding the compatibility of the recently passed Parentage Bill with the Family Law Act and the Constitution.

“I am staggered that the Shadow Attorney General and a fellow Member of the Legislative Assembly would seek to have the Federal Government intervene in the legitimate affairs of the ACT.

“Mr Stefaniak’s so-called concerns are completely unfounded and were not raised by him through the scrutiny of bills process in the Assembly.

“I can only conclude that the local and federal Liberals are colluding in an attempt to overturn legislation passed by the democratically elected representatives of the people of the ACT.
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Prime Minister John Howard and the Commonwealth in general are quite within their constitutional, legal and democratic rights to look at the ACT law that allows gay couples to adopt children.

ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope and Howard are having a ding dong over the question. And there have been plenty of other Commonwealth-Territory ding dongs of a similar kind. So it is worth looking at the Commonwealth’s role and what an ACT Government can do in response. For example, Stanhope suggested that he might look at forcing an early election or otherwise act to make the Commonwealth’s position difficult

We should certainly get beyond the present position where the Prime Minister’s personal beliefs carry such huge weight.

The starting and end points with these things are usually the Constitution and the ACT Self-Government Act which is an Act of the Federal Parliament and is de facto the ACT’s Constitution.

The Commonwealth Constitution is fairly clear. Section 121 gives the Commonwealth Parliament power “to make laws for the government of any territory”.

Under that power it gave self-government to the ACT (in 1989) and to the Northern Territory (in 1978). So it can equally use that power to take away all or part of the self-government. It could render null any ACT law on gay couples adopting children, for example.
Continue reading “2004_02_february_forum for saturday marriage”

In this election year, ACT Opposition Leader Brendan Smyth is not in despair and he is not a defeatist.

The Legislative Assembly meets for its first 2004 session next week. He dismisses recent polling that puts him in the mid 20s and Chief Minister Jon Stanhope in the mid to high 70s with the cliché that there is only one poll that counts.

“The only poll that counts is the poll on the day and I have got eight months to prove that I can do it,” he said in an interview this weak.

He points out – quite pertinently – that there has been no independent polling, so who knows.

But any sane assessment must have him at very long odds up against a popular Chief Minister who in the eyes of the electorate has avoided any bungle or scandal. You feel like saying, “Brendan, the October election in the ACT is an abattoir for the Liberal Party; you are going to get slaughtered.”

The Liberals have got another problem: none of the three Liberals elected in the key central seat of Molonglo will still be in the race come October. Pleading to some high-profile prospects to stand has been met with little success. On the other hand, Labor in Molonglo has three fairly high profile Ministers. Where the Liberals are perhaps strongest, with two higher profile candidates – in Ginninderra – they face Jon Stanhope.
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One thing the British do not whinge about – unlike Australians — is their newspapers.

And why would they? The British Press is a wonderful beast, or should I say beasts. And there is another reason for the lack of whinge which will I explain anon.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been sampling the best and the worst of it. Some days, I am sure, I was the only person in Britain to have bought a copy of both The Times and the Daily Star – the opposite ends of the British national press.

Britain has 10 national dailies: five broadsheet, serious papers; two midbrow tabloids; and three red-top shocker tabloids.

The Daily Star, was called, by someone I knew who worked on it, the Daily Bonk. (He was a football writer.) The Bonk does not even have a veneer of news. Rather it has some splinters and chaff of news inside; the veneer is the smooth semi-clad woman on the front cover who sells the paper.

The bits of news inside give the Daily Star sufficient respectability for nearly a million people to buy it. If anyone wants porn there is any amount of it on the internet and in cling-wrapped magazines in newsagents. But that is a different market. There is still a very large market in “respectable”, soft porn bought under the guise of a daily paper which can be read – or ogled at – in public and in, at least some, family homes.
Continue reading “2004_01_january_saty forum uk papers”

Urban Services Minister Bill Wood is searching for “missing links” – not the ones that will prove the theory of evolution, but the “missing links” on the cycle-path network.

The idea is to find high-use paths (used by cyclists and pedestrians) that do not link up, so they can be given higher priority in the next capital works budget.

This is fine, but he should first ask how the paths were created with missing links in the first place. How can a planner or an engineer create a path that stops at a “missing link” and then resume some distance away? Why did they do that?

The answer is that the planners and engineers are motorists, not cyclists. The path system – like other systems – should have been designed from the user in, not from the creator out, if it is to be successful.

The designers need to get on the paths and cycle them, preferably accompanied by regular users.

I am not making some special plea for extra money and effort for cyclists. It is an appeal for a bit of intelligence in the spending of public money. If we are to have a system of cycle-pedestrian paths, let’s make it an excellent one; it does not cost very much more, maybe less.
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