Crispin Hull

More than half of Australians (53 per cent) were opposed to the ACT Government’s scheme for compensating the fire victims.

Under the scheme, uninsured home owners who lost their homes were paid $10,000 but insured home owners got $5000.

More than a third (35 per cent) supported the scheme and the rest had no opinion, according to a survey done by AAMI insurance. Nearly a half of Canberrans (46 per cent) supported the scheme.

People who objected to the scheme generally thought it was unfair that the payments were not uniform and that the scheme discriminated against people who were insured.

Reasons for supporting the scheme ranged from “It helps people to recover – they still need help” to “Not everyone can afford insurance”.

A few weeks before the January fires, ActewAGL conducted a simulation exercise involving a truck crashing into a main water-supply dam.

This exercise tested matters like water contamination, how to respond and deal with the threat to the water supply.

Low and behold, on January 13, five days before the fires hit Canberra, a helicopter fighting fires crashed into Bendora Dam, one of the ACT’s major water storages. It created potential health concerns over aviation fuel in the drinking water.

The real test was to come.

ActewAGL continuously looks at its engineering, environmental management, innovation, contingency planning, safety and management of infrastructure restoration.

It looks at risk assessment and mitigation, regular crisis simulation and extensive emergency response training. It has a specialist risk management engineer.

Before January 18, ActewAGL had identified both bushfires and water supply contamination as high operational risks.
Continue reading “2003_07_july_bushfires_be prepared”

Australia’s devastating summer bushfires have made householders more aware of fire safety around the home, according to the 2003 AAMI Firescreen.

“Almost one-quarter of Australians have taken extra fire precautions, as a result of the recent bushfires,” Mr Hughes said.

“Fifteen per cent of householders responded by clearing gutters and 14 per cent responded by clearing trees and branches around the house.

“They have also taken measures such as developing an escape plan in the event of a fire, removing rubbish from around the house and purchasing fire equipment, including fire extinguishers and smoke alarms.

“We found residents in bushfire-prone areas reacted most strongly to the fires. More than three out of every five residents in bushfire-prone areas have taken extra fire precautions since the January bushfire disaster.”

Almost one in four Australians (23 per cent) has adopted extra fire precautions as a result of the recent devastating bushfires.

One in seven Australians (15 per cent) consider their home to be in a bushfire-prone area.

More than one in five Australians (22 per cent) have experienced a fire in their home.

According to AAMI’s claims data, Saturday evening is the riskiest time of the week for a fire.

Cooking is the single biggest cause of fires in the home: 55 per cent of home fires start in the kitchen.

Almost nine in ten Australians (87 per cent) have some kind of fire prevention equipment in their home, including smoke alarms (84 per cent) and fire extinguishers (34 per cent).

The average Australian home has 1.9 smoke alarms.
Continue reading “2003_07_july_bushfires_aami research”

Fire and gardens

Gardens can help or hinder bushfire threat.

Choosing the right plants, eliminating the build-up of combustible material, appropriate landscaping materials and sprinkler systems can cut fire risk.

Plant trees at a good distance from the house to ensure that limbs and branches do not touch or overhang the roof and that gutters do not fill up with dead leaves.

Shrubs and ground covers should not be planted against the house – maintain a clear area and use non-flammable surface materials such as paving, pebble mulch or irrigated lawn.

Plant fire resistant trees and shrubs as hedges to provide a windbreak on the side from where the worst fires can be expected. This cuts wind, the fire intensity, radiant heat and rate of spread and it intercepts burning embers. The crowns of trees shouldn’t touch each other.
Continue reading “2003_07_july_bushfires_gardens and fire”

The destruction wrought by the fires will add to the ACT’s economic growth.

Economists do not measure human suffering or the destruction of property, but economic activity. Also, the bulk of the money for the reconstruction will come from outside the ACT. It will come in the form of $350 million in insurance money and in the form of Federal Government special disaster grants and other aid promised at the time.

Added to the reconstruction will be a boost in retail as people replace housing contents.

The construction and retail boost will have a multiplier effect through the ACT economy.

But perhaps a further $100 million will be sourced within the ACT. Part of that will be people replacing uninsured and under-insured contents and buildings. The rate of non-insurance of buildings was extremely low. Just six out of the 500 destroyed houses and a further four of the damaged houses.

So the lion’s share of reconstruction will come from without, but even the internally financed reconstruction adds to economic activity.

The consulting firm Access Economics says that the ACT is likely to retain the position of having the lowest unemployment in the nation for some yet because of the fires.
Continue reading “2003_07_july_bushfires_economic outlook”

John Howard made a few accurate and pertinent statements about the Senate at the weekend conference of the Liberal Party.

His points were:

The Senate has too much power.

It is no longer a states house.

It is no longer a house of review but house of obstruction.

Neither major party, for practical purposes, can get a majority in their own right in Senate.

It would be unfair and undemocratic for the Coalition to do a deal with the Labor Party to alter the Senate voting system to make it harder for minor parties to win seats.

The present constitutional provision of a double dissolution to resolve deadlocks between the Houses is relatively unworkable and rarely used.

Double dissolutions usually result in a worse result for the Government because they result in more minor-party senators in the Senate because the quota is lower when 12 rather than six senators are elected from each state.

That the non-government majority in the Senate has a permanent veto on the aspirations mandated at earlier elections of the serving government.

Referendums to change the Constitution are notoriously difficult but we need a “moderate and non-threatening” change to resolve the deadlocks, so you do not have to have a premature and expensive double dissolution to get important Bills through.
Continue reading “2003_06_june_howard on senate impasse”

The ACT Government’s good intentions on gazumping should be tempered with a bit of market reality.

Gazumping is where a seller agrees verbally to sell a home for a certain price, but before contracts can be exchanged to create legal obligations, the seller sells to someone else for a higher price. As a result, the first buyer is out of pocket for searches and building inspections.

The practice is regarded as unethical, but it is not illegal. The new law will not make it a crime, but hopes to reduce the opportunity for gazumping by forcing sellers to have a contract ready at the time the property is advertised. It will have to include: a copy of a search; approval status of the original building and any improvements or new structures; a building inspection for defects; and a pest report.

With that material a contract should be able to be signed almost immediately.

Buyers will get a five-day cooling off period, but will have to pay 0.25 per cent of the purchase price if they opt out. Buyers can waive the cooling off period if they get legal advice.

Buyers can get costs if they rely on the information and it proves false.
Continue reading “2003_06_june_gazumping for op-ed”

Simon Corbell has a lot of skittles in the air at the moment.

Corbell is the Minister for the Where and How We Live (Planning) and the Minister for Whether We Live (Health).

That in itself is an argument for a bigger assembly and more ministries. Even people in foreign aid these days recognise that extra money spent on administration is better than sending the wrong trucks with the wrong sort of food to places where people are well-fed.

But health and the size of the ministry aside, a huge amount is going on in planning which will directly affect the way people in Canberra live.

A week ago we had the workshop on Canberra’s Spatial Plan – fancy words for where the next batch of development will go. This is the macro stuff.

A few days ago the most radical change to the Territory Plan came into force – Variation 200. This sets the rules on the size, shape and placing of dwellings you can build.

A month ago a new requirement for building approval came into force called High Quality Sustainable Development.

And in the past year, the Government has been slowly getting back into the land development business.
Continue reading “2003_06_june_forum21 planning”

Two mightily fallen capitalists – Rene Rivkin and John Elliott – face disgrace and financial ruin.

Yet capitalism itself booms, particularly in Australia. Unemployment, inflation and interest rate figures look good. The share market might be a bit bleak and the property market a bit over-heated, but there is no hyper-inflation of the 1920s nor recession of the 1930s. Nor do we have the evils of the exploited, starving workforce of the 19th century. In short, capitalism is looking pretty good even if we have a few failed capitalists.

Karl Marx got it wrong, or at least only partly right. He thought there were inherent contradictions in capitalism and that ultimately it would collapse in on itself to be replaced by a workers’ paradise where each worked according to his or her ability and took according to need. But too many humans are too selfish too often for that. The lesson from Elliott and Rivkin is not that capitalism overall is self-destroying, but that some individual capitalists are self-destroying, and that when they fail the system does not fail, but rather repairs itself or those within it repair it.

In a way, both Rivkin and Elliott have been caught by the perpetual repair activity that capitalism undergoes to ensure the system’s survival.

Between them they committed the two deadly sins of early 21st century capitalism – allowing a company to trade while insolvent (Elliott) and insider trading (Rivkin).
Continue reading “2003_06_june_forum for saturday jun 13 capital”