Crispin Hull

The difference between a rational expectation of an ordered world and blind faith that the world is ordered is a very fine one.

Every few seconds I was swinging between the two.

It was at Vail, America’s largest and arguably best skiing resort. And I was not skiing. There were other things to do than the standard day of skiing. For a start it was night.

Imagine an ordinary bicycle. Imagine someone taking off the pedals and throwing them away and then replacing each wheel with a short ski. And there you have a ski-bike. The rider wears ski boots each with a 30cm ski attached and uses them and the bicycle handlebar to steer. There are no brakes. Let me repeat that. There are no brakes.

Instead the rider negotiates down the ski-slopes like a skier, using turns to slow down and to prevent catastrophic crashes into the firs and aspen forests.

I haven’t finished yet. You do this ski-biking at night, armed with a miner’s lamp. There are no lights illuminating the slopes.
Continue reading “2001_03_march_vail skibike”

The so-called master political tactician – John Howard – is making a hash of it again.

This week Labor maverick Mark Latham made a similar comment to one made in this column about a year ago – there is too much emphasis on “”the bush” and not enough on the outer suburbs of the major cities. Latham was representing his constituents in Gough Whitlam’s old seat of Werriwa in Sydney’s south west.

There are two aspects to whether enough or too much attention is being given to the bush or the outer suburbs.

One is whether the people there deserve the attention/neglect on the merits of their case. The other is whether the effort being put in by the political parties to the bush is the politically prudent thing to do – will it deliver the votes that count.

Latham’s very reasonable position is that the outer suburbs have too much unemployment, welfare dependency, infrastructure deficiency and so on and deserve better from the system. Moreover, they do not have organisations like the very influential National Farmers’ Federation to represent them to put the hard word on politicians so that they get attention.
Continue reading “2001_03_march_the bush”

ON THURSDAY the ACT code for planning comes into force.

Urban Services Minister Brendan Smyth says it will be “a giant step forward”. But the code is based on the latest version of the Australian Model Code for Residential Development (AMCORD) which might mean a small step forward for unplanned Australian cities suffering urban blight, but it will be a giant leap backwards for the planned bush capital.

The code runs to 103 pages. Moreover, to understand the likely effect of the code one has to compare it to the existing territory plan and the guidelines issued under it. That it doubles the quantity and complexity of the task.

The devil is in the detail.

The code declares the high-sounding intention “to provide safe, convenient, accessible and attractive neighbourhoods that meet the diverse and changing needs of the community .. . . promoting a sense of place through neighbourhood focal points and the creation of a distinctive identity which recognises and, where relevant, preserves the natural environment.”
Continue reading “2001_03_march_planning for foum”

Communications Minister Senator Richard Alston needs to undertake remedial classes in technology. Following his abysmal display over digital television he is now continuing to pursue his flawed policy agenda on internet gambling.

In May last year, Senator Alston pushed through a one-year moratorium on internet gambling. He now wants to make that moratorium permanent. The initial moratorium was a prohibition, backed by legal sanctions, against anyone in Australia operating an internet site for gambling. At the time it was widely thought that this was just another exercise in political grandstanding to appease a vociferous anti-gambling lobby. It was thought that once the one-year moratorium ended sanity would prevail.

Not so. Instead, the folly gets worse. Rather than a total prohibition the government proposes to allow Australian gambling sites to deal with overseas clients but not Australian clients and it will allow a Australians to gamble with overseas sites but not Australian sites. The policy is flawed both technologically and socially. It is obviously geared towards the continual appeasement of a vocal group who rightly sees that there is a significant gambling a problem in Australia, but it is dealing with it in an ineffective counter-productive way.
Continue reading “2001_03_march_leader29mar gambling”

The ACT Government proposes to gazette tomorrow (Thur 29) a draft variation of the Territory Plan. It will be one of the most significant changes to the plan since it came into force nearly a decade ago. It will take the form of the introduction of a new code called ACTCODE.

The new code addresses of both urban infill in established areas and at the creation of new suburbs in greenfields sites. The code is based on the latest version of the Australian model code for residential development and it is part of a national program to establish best practice in the planning and design of housing. Residents seeking it to preserve the amenity of existing suburbs and people seeking excellent urban design and planning and should not start applauding.

The new code has quite a few good things to commend it with respect to the building of new suburbs. Most likely it will provide a higher standard of residential amenity, environmental sustainability, road widths and provision of private and public open space than is provided a in some of Canberra’s newer suburbs. It would not be difficult. The standards of those newer suburbs were probably below the national average so any application of a new national standard is likely to create improvement in Canberra. However, that cannot be said with respect to infill developments in older suburbs. The new code provides for lower standards on setbacks, higher building plot ratios and lower standards for private open space than exist at present. It may well be that the new standard would provide better in-fill rules in places like Sydney and Melbourne, for Canberra it would be a step backwards for residential amenity, ecological sustainability and private and public open space. And that is in comparison to the rather inadequate existing rules. In short, their new code is likely to tip the balance further in favour of developers and against the maintenance of the Bush capital.
Continue reading “2001_03_march_leader27mar planning”

The deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Stephen Grenville, caused something of a stir late last week when he began to explain the causes of the current economic slowdown. He was at pains to point out that the Reserve Bank’s actions of 18 months ago to increase interest rates could not possibly have caused the downturn. He pointed out that interest rate changes, particularly those coming off a very low base, could not have had such a large effect. More controversially, he mentioned the GST in the same breath as the word slowdown.

Dr Grenville said that business confidence had been affected by a several sources of pressure on business costs and cash flow: the GST, exchange rates and oil. He said also that the transition to the GST had affected business confidence adversely on two counts: first, the general bureaucratic requirements and accounting changes and secondly the rescheduling of construction activity in the economy. Many individuals and businesses brought forward construction activity in late 1999 and early 2000 in the knowledge that the GST was pending. This meant a commensurate downturn in late 2000 and early 2001.
Continue reading “2001_03_march_leader26mar”

Three months ago the governor of the Reserve Bank, Ian Macfarlane, recommended to the major banks that they co-operate with an inquiry by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission into their system of charges for credit card use. The banks, it seems, rejected that very sensible advice and continued with their system of extracting huge sums of money from consumers, credit-card users and businesses that are virtually forced to accept credit cards.

Now the banks pretend to be all hurt and wounded when the commission threw up its hands in despair and called upon the Reserve Bank to use regulatory powers to pull the banks into line. It seems as if the banks have had long enough to show that market forces, self regulation and competition could deliver a more reasonable system of credit card charging. They have failed and deserve to have regulation imposed.
Continue reading “2001_03_march_leader23mar banks”

Australia, and other interested international parties, running grave risk of misunderstanding cultural sensitivities in Papua New Guinea when dealing with rebellious combat by some troops in Port Moresby. About 100 low- ranking soldiers have seized weapons at the Murray Barracks near Port Moresby as part of a protest against proposed reforms of the Papua Guinea Defence Force. The reforms include a recommendations by the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group halves the force from about 4000 members to about 1900. Rank and file soldiers are upset. They presumably felt that only radical action could prevent such a drastic cut in the PNG Defence Force. Their action was fuelled by false rumours that Australian forces would be sent in to take control of the army headquarters.

Australia, understandably, has reacted with some alarm. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has warned that any threat to the democratically elected government of PNG would be met with strong international sanctions which he said would not be in the interests of the rebels.
Continue reading “2001_03_march_leader21mar png”

The leader of the ACT Opposition, Jon Stanhope, made a landmark speech last week on the structure and process of government in the territory. He made some pertinent observations about the way some of these processes had been ignored during the past five years. More importantly, he set a benchmark of governmental behaviour to which the Labor Party aspires if it attains government.

A lot of the promises were high-minded statements of principle with which few people could disagree. The test for Mr Stanhope and Labor will not be in the stating of these principles, but rather in the detailing of them and whether he can live up to them if he is elected.

Usually there is only a small window of opportunity for laws and structures to be put in place to make executive Government open and accountable. This is the period of honeymoon immediately after an election before the government has made significant mistakes which it wants to lie about or play down. Mr Stanhope has promised several worthwhile legal and structural changes. These include such things as overhauling the Freedom of Information Act and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, entrenching the fixed term, reviewing at the ministerial code of conduct and restoring the Public Accounts and Scrutiny of Bills Committees.

Continue reading “2001_03_march_leader19mar stanhope”