Crispin Hull

one of the tests of television’s capacity to educate is to ask someone who chants that David Attenborough-narrated nature documentaries are very educational – well what exactly did you learn. It does not get much beyond that the world is a wonderful green place full of amazing creatures that do very odd things.

Now we have the Blue Planet series. I have been transfixed by it. But all that had changed educationally is that the world is a wonderful BLUE place full of amazing creatures that do very odd things.

Well, The Blue Planet now has an educational supplement, the book of the series. It is packed with facts, explanations and analyses that cannot possibly be absorbed through the narration on the television series.
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The private sector is to come under the Privacy Act this month. The commercial elements have been much discussed – things like credit provision and junk-mail lists. Another more important debate is about the use of health data. For the first time, private health providers are to come under the provisions of the Commonwealth Privacy Act.

What is likely to happen? Well, the Act may provide an inkling because private health providers have been subject to an ACT law on privacy which has similar principle to the federal Act since 1998 under the Act Health Records (Privacy and Access) Act.

The critical national privacy principles when it comes to health records are that information should not be passed on without consent; that it should only be stored or used for the purpose for which it was gathered; and that people should have access to their health records.

Health Complaints Commissioner Ken Patterson says the Act is based on a simple idea.

“”Health information collected during the treatment of patients should be available to members of treating teams, so that they can treat people safely and effectively,” he says. “”Health records should also be accessible to the patients receiving treatment. Health information should not, as a rule, be available to anyone else.”
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From today the Privacy Act applies to the private sector. There has been plenty of warning, but as is the nature of human affairs, everything is left to the last minute.

The critical obligations are: collect only what is necessary; use fair and lawful means to collect it; get consent; tell them why you are collecting and who it might be passed on to; only disclose the information for the primary purpose (with exemptions for safety, health and law enforcement); make sure the information is accurate and secure; disclose to an individual the information you have on that individual; allow correction.

Conflict over privacy laws has taken a couple of forms. At one level, business is arguing that it is all too expensive and unnecessary. Besides having information about people helps business target customers in a way that better services customers – they get the sort of information that is relevant to them and it is far too costly to have to get permission to pass information on. It is far too costly to allow people to correct information. Pitted against them are people who assert their individual rights against capitalists who want to make money.

The other conflict is a bit more esoteric. It has people concerned with liberal democracy and human rights pitted against people concerned liberal democracy and human rights.

Let’s deal with that conflict first.

The right to privacy is a fundamental human right. The NSW privacy Commissioner, Chris Puplick, says privacy is a matter of a sense of self-identity, self-worth and autonomy. Privacy is related to what it is about ourselves that we wish other people to know, or perhaps more critically, what it is about ourselves that we do not want other people to know.
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Somewhere in the council “”office” on Murray Island is a typewritten piece of paper which may have some historic value.

I was reminded of it this week by the inclusion of the Mabo papers in the Memory of the World register set up by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.

Murray Island (the locals prefer the name Mer) is in the Torres Strait. It was here that the Mabo case started. Eddie Mabo resisted moves by the Queensland Government to takeover the island irrespective of generations of dwelling by the native people.

His case came to the High Court, initially in the early 1980s, coming to final judgment in 1992 in the now famous Mabo case which recognised native title in Australia.

When the case first came to the High Court, I was reporting the court, and with typical journalistic prescience pooh-poohed the case: it was obvious from earlier cases that native title was nonsense.

In 1992 I – like many of my colleagues – wrote much about the case from the comfort of a newspaper office.
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Prime Minister John Howard wants more workplace relations reform in his third term. He has long wanted to wind back union power. But despite being elected three times he still cannot get his way totally.

Labor has begrudgingly acknowledged that given the three Coalition wins it would be open to compromise on workplace relations, particularly the application of unfair-dismissal laws to small business. But it is unlikely to force secret ballots before strike action can be taken.

The impasse illustrates some of the defects in Australia’s constitutional set-up. On one hand, it seems a bit ridiculous and undemocratic that a Government returned three times cannot get its legislation through. On the other hand, do we want untrammelled power handed to whomever wins government every three years or so.

The essential trouble is that the Senate has too much power. It is more than a house of review, it is also the house of the perpetual block.

All legislation must go through the Senate. The only way around it is the heavy-handed and risky weapon of the double dissolution followed by a joint sitting of both houses.
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South Australian state MP Nick Xenophon has proposed legislation that would require MPs who resign before a general election to pay for the resulting by-election unless the District Court declared the early retirement was justified on compassionate or other reasonable grounds. The proposal has some superficial appeal.

Mr Xenophon was elected on an anti-poker-machine platform as a “”No Pokies” MP, so his proposal is in the form of a Private Members’ Bill. The major parties have not stated their attitude to the proposal, but they are both likely to be against the proposal – – self-interest being strong enough to overcome the enmity between them that usually prevents an identical stand on any given issue.

Nonetheless, Mr Xenophon’s proposal gives rise to some interesting issues. It would cause some consternation among MPs if instituted in the Federal sphere. Soon after this year’s election, for example, Federal Labor frontbencher, Duncan Kerr, announced that he would leave federal politics and enter state politics. Mr Kerr, who was Minister for Justice in the Keating Government, said he had gone into public life to make decisions, implement policy and shape events. He therefore thought it better to be in the Tasmania Parliament where Labor governs than languishing on the Opposition benches federally. He has a point.
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The Minister for Immigration, Philip Ruddock, has ordered a suspension of assessment of asylum seekers from Afghanistan and has ruled out granting visas to about 1600 asylum seekers from East Timor, some of whom arrived up to eight years ago.

Mr Ruddock’s decision has caused consternation among refugees support groups, civil libertarians, migration lawyers and others. It is almost as if the man can do nothing right and that whatever he does must be condemned outright.

This newspaper has been a stern critic of the Government’s mandatory-detention policy and the policy of attempting to divert asylum seekers who arrive in small boats to Pacific islands for processing, rather than bringing them to Australia. Mandatory detention is unnecessary and expensive. Detention in remote camps – particularly of children – for indefinite periods is inhumane. Diverting people to poor Pacific nations is corrupting and unnecessarily expensive.

That Mr Ruddock and the Government are misguided on these questions, however, does not mean they are misguided on every decision they make with respect to asylum seekers. The decisions made this week with respect to Afghan and Timorese asylum seekers make good sense – at least up to a point.
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Over the past few decades the spiritual side of Christmas has had a harder task getting heard over the commercial side. It was not so much the secularization of the festival of itself that caused widespread dismay, provided the festival retained its emphasis on families getting together and peace and goodwill, though many Christians would have preferred the religious element of the festival to retain prominence No, the dismay has been caused by the secularisation of Christmas leading to the festival being more about buying, giving and receiving presents and about indulging in food and drink to excess.

And now a new phenomenon has further degraded the original Christmas spirit. Not only are people succumbing to the commercial pressures to buy and over-indulge, they are now doing it more and more on credit. So not only do they wake up after Christmas with a hang-over, but also with large credit-card bills that they cannot hope to pay off in minimum time, resulting in large fees for the banks. The burden is falling disproportionately on those who can least afford it.

The average outstanding balance will go over the $2000 mark, that is up 16 per cent on the same time last year. The growth in credit-card transactions has been alarming. After the Christmas binge total credit card debt will hit $20 billion. It has doubled over the past three years. It would not matter if the transactions could be put down to people preferring the safety and convenience of electronic transactions to cash one, but the evidence it pointing to people being sucked in to running up greater bills than they can pay for – particularly if unexpected expenditure arises the following month.
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The injunction granted by the ACT Supreme Court against Chief Minister Jon Stanhope over the Gallop inquiry into disability services in the ACT seems to have been cast far too widely. Justice Ken Crispin granted the injunction on the application of four senior ACT bureaucrats who feel their reputations might be adversely affected by the publication of the report.

Mr Gallop, QC, himself a former Supreme Court judge held an extensive inquiry over several months following the death of three disabled people. One of the reasons for the inquiry, instituted by the previous Government, was the rising public disquiet over the deaths. There has also been or continuing several coronial inquests.

Mr Gallop’s inquiry and the coronial inquests do not define rights – they are not empowered to fine or jail people or award damages. Their task is to come to conclusions fairly quickly about the circumstances of the deaths and whether there are systemic deficiencies that need to be addressed quickly. There is a great public interest in these inquiries. The public has a right to know if disability services are running properly or if there are any circumstances surrounding the deaths that warrant prosecution or police inquiry. That public interest is defeated if reporting by the inquirer is frustrated by the courts.
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The case of Daniel Heiss presents a great difficulty for not only ACT authorities but the prison system Australia-wide. Heiss was sentenced to life imprisonment 10 years ago in the Northern Territory. He was found guilty of a particularly gruesome murder in the Northern Territory and is serving his sentence in Alice Springs. The bulk of his family, however, live in the ACT.

If rehabilitation is to have any place in the criminal justice system, it would be better if criminals were jailed at a place reasonably close to their families. Even in the case of the most heinous offences, the system should not give up on criminals but aim for their rehabilitation one day. The question is – how is that day determined.

The Northern Territory has a minimum term of 20 years for those sentenced to life imprisonment. It is not a minimum mandatory sentence – it is a period sent from those who have already been sentenced. In an ideal world, it would be better if each case could be reviewed regularly, rather than have blanket minimums. It may be that one person can reform more quickly than others and be returned to society to perform a useful role more quickly than others. However, the elected parliament of the Northern Territory has set its minimum for people sentenced to life – for the worst sort of crimes. Heiss’s crime fits that category.
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