Crispin Hull

The innovation statement brought down by the Government this week has much to commend it. Australia’s performance in research and development has been getting worse for a decade. The percentage of GDP Australia spends on research and development is well below that of major Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development countries, and below even some countries emerging from the old Eastern Bloc, such as the Czech Republic. It has been causing a brain drain, as discouraged researchers left Australia to places where their talents were better recognised and those that had invented and discovered left to places which took a greater financial interest in developing.

In an increasingly globalised economy, Australia has been in danger of losing its position in the top rank of nations on the standard-of-living scale. In this environment, Australia could no longer rely on natural resources as the main component of wealth generation. The lesson of the past decade or so has been that brains and education generate wealth.

In an election year, it is easy to question the motives of a Government.
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As the ACT Legislative Assembly enters an election year, the Liberal Party will miss the dynamism of Kate Carnell. Even if some of her electoral appeal has worn off. Mrs Carnell’s replacement in the Assembly was decided this week on a count-back of Mrs Carnell’s 1998 vote. The winner was Liberal Jacqui Burke. The lack of depth in the Liberal line-up was made clear when Chief Minister Gary Humphries preferred to have a four-member ministry rather than risk giving back-bencher Harold Hird or the newcomer Mrs Burke a ministry, however junior, and increasing it to five, as it was when Mrs Carnell was in the Assembly.

Mr Hird at least will get some relief from his load of committee work. The Assembly has prohibited ministers from serving on committees. Hitherto if the Liberals wanted representation on a committee only Mr Hird or Speaker Greg Cornwell were available.

Now Mrs Burke will be able to sit on committees.
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The report last week of a dog suffering injuries after being run over on the cycle path a Tuggeranong highlights the ambiguous legal status of the paths and the people who use them. Something should be done to clarify the position.

The full details of the case at hand are unclear. Ron and Mary Dean were walking on the cycle path around Lake Tuggeranong. A cyclist came from behind and without ringing his or her bell hit their Maltese terrier. The matter could have been more serious – a person could have been seriously injured, either pedestrian or cyclist.

At present, cycleways have no distinct legal status. They are just like any other path, though the sign indicate they are definitely for cyclists. This poses a dilemma for pedestrians. It is too easy to say “”commonsense should prevail” because one pedestrian’s commonsense is another’s madness. On one hand, pedestrians could reasonably say that it is best to keep left, like all traffic. On the other hand, some pedestrians might argue that it would be better to keep right, facing the on-coming traffic, as one does on the road. There are arguments on either side, and therein lies the rub. There is no accepted practice. This means that cyclists have no way of predicting pedestrian behaviour. A pedestrian, or a group of them, using the centre of the path are as likely to leap left or right upon the approach of a cyclist from either direction. The very unpredictability is dangerous.
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The Australian Government’s tough response to the incident in Canberra where a diplomat’s son used immunity to prevent police action after an assault against a Canberra boy was the right approach. Australia made it clear that unless the diplomat’s son co-operated with the police investigation to the extent of being dealt with by the courts if necessary, then the diplomat would be declared persona non grata and would have to return home. As it happened, the diplomat’s sending state – Papua New Guinea – saw the writing on the wall and withdrew him before Australia had to take any action.

Diplomatic immunity is an important principle. There is an over-riding international public interest in ensuring accredited diplomats cannot be prosecuted under local law. If nations states were able to intimidate diplomats with trumped up criminal charges, diplomacy could not be undertaken. Messenger-shooting would make diplomacy impossible, and without diplomacy, peace and international co-operation for the benefit of the world’s citizens would also be impossible. And immunity cannot be a half-way house. It has to be total to be effective.
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Western Australians will go to the polls on February 10. The election will be a major test for Premier Richard Court, who is seeking his third term in office. At previous elections in 1993 and 1996 the Coalition could rely on the fall-out from the WA Inc Royal Commission which revealed corruption in Labor ranks. But in 2001, enough time has passed that Mr Court must be judged on his own record and what he projects for the future of Western Australia. Further, Labor has changed significantly since the days of Premier Brian Burke and “”picking winners”. Labor leader Geoff Gallop has renounced that approach, instead concentrating on health, education and crime. Further the Coalition has difficulties of its own in the mortgage brokers’ scandal. Fair Trading Minister Doug Shave is being blamed for failing to protect hundreds of mainly-elderly small investors who lost millions in dodgy pooled investments. There is no question of any government member being directly involved, rather just a failure to prevent the losses.

Labor must win 11 seats to govern it its own right, more than any party has done in Western Australian history. At present the lower House has 57 members: 29 Liberal, six Nationals, 18 Labor MPs, two Liberal-aligned independents and two Labor-aligned independents. It is likely Mr Court will lose at least some seats, after gaining a very high 55.2 per cent of the two-party preferred vote in 1996. It may well be that the independents get the balance of power. That would be no bad thing in a climate of increasing scepticism of the major parties and their propensity to abuse their power.
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The ACT Government is on the right track with its road-safety program for young drivers, but it is a moot point whether the details of the program are well-directed. At present, people getting a driver’s licence (usually young people) at first get a provisional licence for three years. They also have a near-zero alcohol limit and lose their licence after four (rather than the usual 12) demerit points, putting their licence in greater jeopardy. For the first year they have to wear a P plate. But from August, provisional drivers will have to wear their P plates for three years.

Under the road-safety program young drivers will get a chance to remove their P plates up to 30 months early and increase to eight the number of demerit points required before they lose their licence. After six months on the road they can, for $60, undertake a three-hour discussion group on road-safety attitude and risks.

The course is a sensible idea and so is its timing. At six months, according to Urban Services road safety manager, Robin Anderson, drivers are becoming over-confident, complacent and had learnt bad habits from other drivers. All this is true enough. It is also sensible to provide a reward for doing the course. The question is the nature of the reward, and its timing.
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The board of the Reserve Bank meets every month. The critical item on the agenda each month is interest rates. Upon this decision lies the financial fate of lenders and borrowers across the nation, including mortgagors, self-funded retirees and business lenders and borrowers. The decision-making process is a fairly secret one. No minutes are kept. No reasons given publicly. There is just a result: either up, down or stay the same.

This week an outgoing member of the board, Adrian Pagan, called for reform so that board members could spend more time on monetary policy, especially interest rates. He called for higher pay so people with expertise and time would be attracted to the board members.
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The Howard Government has done much to change the $3.9 billion nursing home industry in Australia. This week saw the end of a 14-month accreditation period for federally funded nursing homes. The theory was that unless nursing homes met standards they would not get federal funding and presumably would be driven out. The result would be higher standards of care. The Government also did more to ensure that the cost of aged care is not borne solely by the taxpayer if the aged person had assets and income that could be used to help contribute to their own care. Before 1996 it seemed that the cost of nursing homes for the aged was getting out of hand with the aging population. Further, the standard of homes was not being effectively monitored. Something had to be done.

At the end of the 14-month accreditation period all but one of the 2950 nursing homes had been given accreditation and therefore funding. It sounds too good to be true. Surely, there were more bad homes in that number?
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The Government will have to think seriously about revisiting its appalling legislation on digital television before too long. It was obvious at the time the legislation imposed unnecessary restrictions on digital television technology and now that digital has arrived it is apparent that consumers are voting with their wallets.

The Government’s mistakes were to impose high definition television on the three commercial and two public networks; to prevent any significant multi-channelling which the technology is ideally suited to and to restrict the way datacasting can be used, even though the technology would allow huge datacasting innovation.

The requirement for high-definition, rather than standard-definition, digital was at the behest of the three commercial networks. With high-definition, only one program can be transmitted at the time, with some minor enhancements. It means the commercial networks could concentrate their production costs and their advertising revenue. The Government obviously did not want to offend the commercial networks. If standard definition had been chosen, the five networks could each have delivered four or five different programs at the same time – increasing choice and diversity.
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The decision by President Clinton to sign a treaty to establish a permanent international war crimes tribunal under the United nations was a good one, even if its timing suggests that there were ulterior motives. Mr Clinton obviously wanted to get a few achievements on the board given his presidency ends this month. Further he would like to get up the nose of his Republican opponents who oppose the treaty.

He left the decision to the last possible day upon which the treaty could be signed as an originating nation. The pity is that the US did not sign it earlier. It would have given a very worthwhile cause great impetus. That impetus was illustrated by the decision of Israel to immediately change its mind after the US decision from being opposed to the treaty to being in favour.

Hitherto, the US objection was based on a Catch-22. It was opposed to signing a treaty which would subject soldiers and nationals of non-signing nations to it – it was opposed to extraterritoriality applying to its troops. But if it signed, then that objection would disappear. US troops would be subject to the treaty without breaching US sovereignty because the US would have agreed to US troops being subject to an international tribunal by force of it ratifying the treaty and incorporating it into its own domestic law.
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