Crispin Hull

There are no substitutes for trust and people doing the decent thing, as a recent NSW Court of Appeal case reveals. The court will not do the decent thing for you. And there are some strong lessons about making effective wills and making sure your loved ones have made effective wills.

The facts of the case are brief. Derek and Gwendoline McDonnell, husband and wife in their late 60s, decided in 1986, to make their wills. Each had two children by previous marriages. It is a fairly common set-up these days. Lots of people find themselves dealing with children of previous marriages and are forever balancing the rights and expectations of children with the rights and expectations of the new spouse. It is one of the reasons for so much tension between step-children and new spouse.

Anyway, Derek and Gwendoline attempted to resolve the tension through their wills. Each left everything to the other, provided the other survived them by 30 days. (That is a common clause that avoids difficulties arising from people dying together in some catastrophe.) The next clause said something like, “”If my spouse predeceases me, then I leave everything to the four children (of the previous marriages) in equal shares.”
Continue reading “2000_10_october_wills forum”

List all your property.

List all potential beneficiaries.

Do a rough matching.

Ask and answer as many what if questions as you can think of, both about the people and property. What if various people die in various orders before you? What if you dispose of property? What if you acquire more?
Continue reading “2000_10_october_will tips”

Why do people vote the way they do? And do they even know why they vote that way?

These questions have arisen from some work done by Datacol, The Canberra Times pollster, along with the polling for the ACT Legislative Assembly and the Federal ACT seats.

The answers have been made more interesting and paradoxical now the vote is in.

Some of the paradoxes to emerge are:
Continue reading “2000_10_october_why people vote”

It is perhaps not the best time to talk about travelling to the US, but it has been a pitiful season in the Australia skifields this year, so it is a good time to look at travelling to the US to get some good 2001 skiing in.

Australia’s season did not start until well into August and even now the snow is either ice or mush.

In the US, the Rocky Mountain resorts of Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone and Breckenridge got their first dusting of snow this weekend. The US season is more than twice as long as the typical Australian season – from November to April and smart skiers can get good prices early and late in the season.

A lot of people are put off by the fear of high prices with the poor Australian dollar, without even bothering to inquire. But the US is such a competitive, efficient place that prices are still pretty good. A good trick is to book in Australia; you’ll get better lift-ticket prices than at the resort window in the US. And prices are lower than lift tickets in Australia.

There are some 7-night, six-ski-day packages with flights from $2525 per person. Ski Express is on 1300 657767. The Vail website is www.vail.snow.com.
Continue reading “2000_09_september_usski”

An enormous amount of fuss has been generated over the call-out-the troops legislation that passed Federal Parliament on Thursday night. The fuss has been directed the wrong way. Those opposing the legislation (the Democrats, Greens and One Nation and civil liberties groups) have grounded their objections along the lines that the legislation allows the Commonwealth Government too much power in calling out the troops. They have presented strong imagery. They have expressed fears that the Commonwealth will call out the troops to suppress innocent and peaceful demonstrators and use troops to break strikes and use force against strikers. The One Nation fears have been tinged with US-style hatred of Government.

Most of those fears are fanciful, but even if they were real, they are misdirected. The legislation passed last week adds virtually nothing to powers already existing in the Constitution.

On a legal and constitutional level, the Commonwealth has quite awesome power and the law that passed this week was largely unnecessary. Section 61 of the Constitution provides, “”the executive power of the Commonwealth is vested in the Queen and is exercisable by the Governor-general as the Queen’s representative, and extends to the execution and maintenance of this Constitutional and of the laws of the Commonwealth”.
Continue reading “2000_09_september_troops out”

Once upon a time, the Commonwealth was a model litigant. It did not play mean and sneaky tricks. It acted properly. It acted in the public interest. It conducted litigation in the courts, whether suing or being sued, fairly.

Once upon a time, the Commonwealth Parliament legislated according to some fundamental principles of fairness to all and the public good.

We expect politicians to be selective with the truth, to exaggerate, to use artful point-scoring in debate, to squirm when caught and so on.

But we do not expect the Commonwealth Government as litigant and the Commonwealth Parliament as legislator to engage in unprincipled conduct more suited of a stand-over merchant or a child who screams, lies, morally blackmails and otherwise misbehaves to get his way.

This is what the Government – with the connivance of the Labor party in the Parliament – has done over the Tampa refugee affair. They have perverted the meaning of the rule of law. They have perverted the law into a weapon of a bully.

What have they done? The Border Protection (Validation and Powers) Bill – which is set to pass Parliament on Monday with the help of the Labor Party – offends a number of long-standing principles.

First. It is retrospective. It seeks to make lawful what was unlawful at the time it was done. (“”Clause 6 – All action to which the Part applies is taken for all purposes to have been lawful when it occurred”. Among the actions being validated is the armed invasion of a ship and the prevention of people from leaving it).
Continue reading “2000_09_september_tampa law”

Yesterday’s judgment is likely to have only limited application. It was the combination of many unique facts that led Justice North to conclude those rescued were unlawfully detained: no communication with the outside; presence of SAS troops; control of movement from the civil to the naval ship; closure of Christmas Island port and so on.

These facts would not always apply to an Australian naval vessel that rescued people on the high sea or even in Australian waters. If people voluntarily go aboard the rescuing vessel and the master of that vessel determines that the safest course is to go to Port Moresby, Indonesia or Nauru, then there will be no unlawful detention. Rescued people have to go where the ship goes. It was the added unusual elements in this case that made the detention unlawful.

Justice North agreed that a person has to hit land before they can apply for a protection visa or refugee status. Just getting to Australian waters is not enough. (But Australian criminal law and admiralty law applies on the ocean to deal with people smugglers and people who assault, kill or steal.)
Continue reading “2000_09_september_refos legal”

Fact file

Qantas flies from Sydney into Port Moresby most days and Air Niugini flies from Cairns into Port Moresby several times a week. Air Niugini flies to Alotau daily.

For details about chartering Marlin see http://www.png-diveboat.com

1. Women in their outrigger canoes come out to trade fruit and vegetables with dive boats arriving at their village in Milne Bay.

2. Even the very youngest feel at home on outrigger canoes in PNG.

3. Headman Andrew in the rainforest near his village.

4. Ancestor worship is still alive in PNG. A villager tends to the skulls of 17 ancestors near a village in Milne Bay. A huge Spanish mackerel caught by John using a teaspoon as a spinnaker.

It is scarcely imaginable, in this time of jumbo jets disgorging thousands on scheduled holidays. And so close to Australia. There was Andrew, teeth stained red with beetlenut dye. Andrew is the headman of a small village on the northern side of Milne Bay which lies at the tip of PNG’s tail. “”Village” is perhaps too grand a title. It is a collection of five or six grass huts. There is no road. The only access is by dug-out canoe. Unless you are (comparatively) very rich and white. And then you can arrive by a dive charter boat with a large motor. Andrew’s village is not completely Stone Age. It is not utterly National Geographic. It is too genuine for that. Andrew, for example wears a grey T-shirt advertising Kentucky whiskey. He has never been to Kentucky. Indeed, he had never been to Port Moresby. In fact, he has only once or twice been to Alotau, population 402, just 30kms away.

But Andrew has two assets in addition to the traditional subsistence garden that most villagers in PNG have. He has Deacon’s reef and a waterfall in the rainforest. He also has a skull cave, but that is not so much an asset as a necessity.
Continue reading “2000_09_september_png dive travel”

The Olympic Games opens in Canberra tonight, and from tomorrow, The Canberra Times will begin its most comprehensive and exciting Olympics coverage we have ever done.

Canberra Times sports writers Robert Messenger, Jamie Nicholson, Karl de Kroo, David Kirkpatrick and Gary Scholes, colour writer Jenna Price and photographers Graham Tidy, Gary Schafer and Kym Smith will join an array of skilled sports writers from an alliance of newspapers that That Canberra Times has joined to bring the best possible Olympics coverage to Canberra. We will produce a 24-page tabloid Olympic supplement every day of the Olympics, joined forces with Fairfax papers The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and its regionals and the Rural Press regionals and the West Australian. We will also have our usual access to Australian Associated Press..
Continue reading “2000_09_september_oylmpic puff”