Crispin Hull

The leader of the ACT Opposition, John Stanhope, has announced that his party is opposed to the Government’s $27 million free school bus plan. That is a reasonable policy decision to make. Labor had obviously come to the conclusion that a free bus scheme that applied to children travelling more than a certain distance after-school favoured people going to private schools because by and large those going to government schools tend to attend the closest government school and therefore do not qualify for the free bus. Further, Labor argues that the money would be better spent more directly on education, on such things as reducing class sizes, increasing school facilities and providing textbooks and the like.

Leaving aside for the moment Mr Stanhope’s earlier statement that he would not make any new policy statements until closer to the election, Labor’s promise to scrap the free bus scheme if it comes to office is a sensible position to put at the next election.

However, to go the next step and state that the party will attempt to prevent the scheme getting off the ground when the Budget comes before the Legislative Assembly is another matter. That step would require an amendment to the Appropriation Bill, specifically prohibiting spending on a free buses and that would get the Opposition and crossbenchers into logical and legislative difficulties. Then might even be forced to legislate for compulsory bus fares as it is difficult to see how they can legislate to prohibit the Government from providing a free service.
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TWO phrases — “innocent until proved guilty” and “trial by media” — have been used frequently in discussion about allegations of sexual assault against the chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Geoff Clark.

Unfortunately, the phrases have distorted rather than to clarified.

At the outset, I should make clear that I am making no judgment about the veracity of the allegations. Readers should look at and the original article in the Age, Melbourne, last Saturday and make their own judgment. Rather, I make general comment.

One way to clarify the questions is to look at the way the burden of proof applies. The phrase “innocent until proved guilty” should apply only to the criminal law. The presumption of innocence puts a high burden on those who seek a criminal conviction. They have to unprove your innocence by convincing a judge, magistrate or jury beyond reasonable doubt that you are guilty. Upon that proof you are convicted and face a penalty, including imprisonment. Conviction and imprisonment are dire consequences and therefore require this very heavy burden of proof before they are imposed.
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Last week Liberal Party MP Christopher Pyne was warmly congratulated by a his colleagues after delivering his kick in the guts for the Labor Party through the report into the integrity of the electoral roll.

In the long term, though, the Liberals might rue the day.

The setting up of the inquiry by the joint parliamentary committee on electoral matters was from the outset and exercise in embarrassing Labor. The inquiry was spawned by an earlier inquiry by Tom Shepherdson, QC, in Queensland. Shepherdson looked at Labor’s pre-selection rorts. Labor had been caught because it had earlier attempted to clean up branch-stacking by using the Commonwealth electoral roll as a new “clean” verification procedure for people voting in party pre-selection ballots to ensure they lived in the electorate. Alas for Labor, it did not anticipate the determination of rorters who then put outside people on the Commonwealth electoral roll fraudulently so that they could still rig pre-selection ballots. The Shepherdson inquiry exposed them.

This in turn led the federal government to opportunistically set-up of the inquiry that was headed by Mr Pyne. The Pyne inquiry would keep the matter of a Labour Party electoral skulduggery in the public eye for as long as possible. The coalition had not got much mileage out of the Shepherdson inquiry at the time because of the politically astute dealing with it by Queensland Premier Peter Beattie.
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Australian defamation law has been held up to a fair amount of a hatred ridicule and contempt this month. Ten days ago the chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Geoff Clark, announced that he would not sue the Fairfax newspapers over very detailed allegations they published asserting that he had sexually assaulted four women in the 1970s and 1980s. He said it that his legal advice was that the trial would take between 12 and 18 months in preparation and take between four and eight weeks in court.

“I am that further advised it would be unwise for me to immediately retaliate to the gross libel by issuing legal proceedings unless I am prepared to suffer the considerable financial consequences of a legal war of attrition,” he said.

The Age reporter Andrew Rule responded by saying, “I think it’s code for I’m not going to sue because it’s too risky to do so. We here regard it as confirming our case.”
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This week saw the great tax spat. It began with the Labor Party in difficulty over the merest hint of a slight suggestion that it could it possibly leave itself open to looking at increasing some taxes at some it indeterminate period in the future. This was followed by an utter denial by Labour leader Kim Beazley that Labor would increase any tax ever. And that was followed by Prime Minister John Howard matching the promise with one of his own that the coalition would never increase taxes – – to be later qualified, it would seem, as not increasing any core taxes. This was accompanied with that the bombastic claims by Howard that his tax cuts that came with the GST were greater as a percentage of GDP than those given by President Bush in the United States.

It was only so much humbug by two political parties that over the past several decades have engaged in a charade of allowing inflation to silently increase taxes for them and then to grandstand with false generosity by making much of winding back the silent tax rises by calling them tax cuts.

The present government has engaged in even worse humbug by imposing higher indirect taxes in the form of a GST and pretending to more than compensate by giving “cuts” in income taxes. However, the figures presented in the Budget papers and other figures give the lie to this pseudo-generosity.
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Communication Minimiser Richard Alston: We can’t run the company’s business for it. It would be I think the most chilling effect on competition and the operation of the marketplace if you were to go in there and second guess the business and say, you should not buy this; you should not sell that; or you should do something else. I mean that’s just not real life. What we do is we provide subsidies such as the customer service guarantee arrangement, such as the universal service obligation, such as price caps. In a whole range of areas we apply community standards to telephone services. But we don’t try and tell businesses how to run particular parts of the operation.

The above quotation is taken from Senator Alston on the ABC programme AM yesterday morning. It is an explanation of why it is not the Government’s fault that telecommunications company One.Tel appears to have gone belly up. One its own it might be a perfectly reasonable statement of Government policy. In the context of what the Government has been doing in the telecommunications portfolio in the past six years, it is a damning piece of inconsistency. Indeed, it encapsulates all the worst elements of this Government’s communications policy.

Senator Alston was defending the Government’s decision to do nothing in the face of the collapse of One.Tel. Oh gosh, he protested, it is not for the government to lay down detailed rules about how a telecom business should conduct itself.
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Fraser a Gorton supporter (like costello to Howard) esp over significant policy Cw state rels seabed legislation (made after 69 election without mention during campaign) …. But critic quietly about Gorton brow-beating brash way esp unilateral decision to go ahead without states even though Min for Nat Dev, David faribairn todl states cw wd not move without further consultation. 1970.

Feb 2, 1971, challenge by sen Ian Wood (grassroots queenslander) no seconder. March 10, 1971, he was out.

Harry Turner (noth shore seat)… told party meeting Gorton was secretive and offhand in formulating policies. Instead of white paper public and party comment method.

5 pre-war

Gorton turning on Fraser.

Fisher tipped out by Hughes 27.20.15

Gorton by McMahon 10.3.71 (21 mnths)
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The question of voluntary voting was raised again this week. This time it was the case of a Canberra man, Maxwell Smithies, who was prosecuted by the Australian Electoral Commission for failing that to vote in the 1999 referendum. He was fined $50 in the ACT Magistrates’ Court and ordered to pay $350 in costs. Mr Smithies is a crusader against compulsory voting, arguing that it was against his conscience to vote under such a regime.

The commission was rather stupid to rise to Mr Smithies’ bait, though the commission is in somewhat or bind. If it allows people who say their conscience is offended by compulsory voting to escape prosecution, anyone could use that excuse and de-facto voting would become voluntary, defeating the philosophy and purpose of he law requiring compulsory voting.

In fact, it would not matter too much if the commission allowed the odd case of conscientious objection to slip through. It would hardly open up a floodgate because, by and large, Australians are law-abiding. The commission has fallen into Mr Smithies’ trap, namely, to make a martyr of himself and to bring the question of compulsory voting into public debate.
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One of the more ridiculous arguments put up by the Australian Medical Association against giving patients access to medical records was that doctors have kept their patients information confidential for more than 6000 years. The federal vice-president of the association, Trevor Mudge, argued that many people could be harmed by looking at their own records, such as psychiatric patients, children and adolescents.

The comments came after the federal privacy commissioner, Malcolm Crompton, published draft health privacy guidelines which, subject to a consultation process, will come into force in December. Under the guidelines, people’s medical records, including doctors’ written opinions, would be made available to patients for free within a month of a personal request. Doctors are resisting. In doing so, they are putting forward quite a few spurious arguments which are just a decoy for what is probably their real concern: that their diagnoses and treatment prescriptions might be exposed to questioning, either informally or through formal complaints or legal avenues. The President of the National Council for Civil Liberties, Terry O’Gorman, made a pertinent point when he said, “It is those doctors who practise on a pedestal and look down their noses at patients, as it not being entitled to any information, who have something to fear from these proposals.””

Fortunately, the AMA does not stand for all doctors. Very good doctors – – those that have excellent relationships with patients, take good records, make good diagnoses and prescribe best-practice treatment – – have no difficulty with giving patients access to their records.
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The minister for veterans affairs, Bruce Scott, has indicated that the Federal government it is about to consider a report by the Department of Defence that recommends that women should be able to serve in front-line military combat duties. The suggestion has drawn immediate fire from the Returned Services League which objects strongly to the idea of women serving in that frontline combat positions. A leading at feminist academic, either Cox, on the other hand has applauded the suggestion.

Already, 95 per cent of positions in the Australian armed forces are open to women. In theory, it would be possible for a woman to be Chief of the Defence Force or chief of any of the three armed services. However, while women remain excluded from some combat roles, they will always be at a disadvantage when it comes to promotion at the higher echelons of the Australian Defence Force. And there is every reason why women’s ills should be used there. After all, Queen Boadicea, with modest forces, cut the Roman ninth legion to bits in defending her homeland in the first century.

On a superficial level, there are practical difficulties for women at serving in front line combat positions. Some of them relate to questions of physical strength, in particular, the capacity to carry large amounts of weaponry and gear, and others relate to – – to put it euphemistically – – the special hygiene requirements of women. However, it would be a mistake to make too much of these things. It would be a mistake to take a war-movie view of the role of the defence forces. Sure, in the past, Australian troops have had to engage in a horrific fighting conditions – – conditions which strained the physical capacity of the strongest men. But all war is hell, whether it engages only men or whether it engages women girls and boys as well.
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