Crispin Hull

Banks in Australia have suffered a very poor image over the past decade. Yesterday saw the release of a review of banking practice by Richard Viney. The review was set up by the banks themselves. Mr Viney called for more low-cost accounts, a three-month community consultation period before bank branches were closed and better ways of ensuring that banks only lend money to people who can afford to pay their debts. The report was welcomed by the Federal Government which urged the banks to adopt its recommendations voluntarily.

The banks are the first to admit that their image is poor. The poor image comes from change itself. The beneficiaries of change are at best luke-warm about it, or even fail to notice the benefits. Those, on the other hand, who suffer because of change are usually very noisy about it. Heavy competitive pressure in the banking industry in the past decade has resulted in banks ending cross-subsidies of services. For decades previously, people repaying home loans subsidised other banks users. Those with home loans paid higher interest rates than the market would otherwise dictate and they paid higher fees. Meanwhile, people using over-the-counter services at local branches we paying nowhere near the cost of those services. But once the banks started to charge the full cost of over-the-counter services, or just stop them by closing branches, those affected squealed loudly. Home-buyers, however, did not congratulate the banks for their excellent work. Rather they assumed the lower fees and lower interest rates were their birthright.
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The relentless march of globalisation was slowed somewhat last week. A national court held several multi-national companies to count for anti-competitive practices. The national court was the Australian Federal Court and the multi-national companies were three pharmaceutical giants and their Australian vitamin subsidiaries, Roche Vitamins Australia Pty Ltd, BASF Australia Ltd and Aventis Animal Nutrition Pty Ltd.

The three companies were fined a total of $26 million for price collusion. One company was fined $15 million, the highest single fine in Australian Trade Practices history. The companies were also restrained from meeting to discuss pricing matters for four years. If they break that order they will be up for criminal sanctions.

The case is highly significant because the Australian arms of these companies were acting under secret agreements made at the international level of their respective companies. It shows that multi-nationals are not above local law and that they cannot always ride roughshod over national considerations, contrary to the typical anti-globalisation mantra.

The other significance of the case is that globalisation is often seen as a concurrent evil with competition policy. In this instance, however, one (competition policy) was used as a sword against the other (globalisation).
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The Federal Government’s reaction to a United Nations committee’s rebuke over Australia’s mandatory sentencing laws resembled the classis response from undemocratic countries have appalling human rights records. Typically, they say that no-one has the right to interfere with internal matters, as the busily torture, jail or murder opponents or members of minorities. The Federal Government’s over-reaction has enable people to highlight the similarity of our response with that of some very unsavoury regimes. This is truly unfortunate because Australia’s record on human rights, liberty and democracy is by and large a very good one. But it is not perfect.

The UN monitors human rights of member countries under six treaties which Australia has signed: the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Convention the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (different from the covenant). The International Labour Organisation also looks a workplace rights.
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A large board looks down at a busy intersection in old Delhi. It reads 999,871,144.

This is the population of India. A billion people.

I am out of my depth here. I am on a bus with a group of travel writers with only a week or so to take it in. I haven’t done this before: go on an all-arranged tour with someone else organising top hotels and the full itinerary. We are going to all the BTIs (the big ticket items): the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort in Agra, the Jama Masjid, Safdarjang’s tomb, the Qutab Minar and the administrative buildings in New Delhi and the forts at Jaipur. But how does one admire the splendour of all this amid the poverty and squalor. And how does one take in the squalor when there are more people in India earning more than the Australian average weekly earnings than in Australia. That very day there was a story in the Times of India about a young man who had got a Master of Computing Science from a US university over the internet without leaving the country. He was offered a $100,000 a year job there. Meanwhile, there is teeming under-employment. An agent, a local guide, a travelling, a driver and a baggage handler travel with us. Everywhere jobs are being done by hand or by three people when one would do.

Then one of the travel writers says: “”No-one is allowed to write, “India is a land of contrasts’.”

Damn, I think, so much for that opening line.

What about, India is a melting pot. After all, look at all these Muslim and Hindu forts, tombs and temples happily coexisting. But that’s no good either. Something is missing. You see, there are signs in English everywhere, but there are no signs of the English.
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Enjoying the serenity of the Taj Mahal at sunset.

Bhupendra Singh Chauhan with his one-year-old reverse engineered 1950s model Enfield motorcycle.

The camel guard at the Maharajah’s Palace in Jaipur. The Maharajahs were stripped of all remaining power and position by Prime Minister Gandhi in 1975 and became ordinary citizens. They retained some palaces as private property and others became public monuments.

The arches within the Red Fort in Agra

A Hindu family return from a visit to Safdarjang’s tomb in Delhi.

A Muslim woman near Safdarjang’s tomb.

In a week’s time John Howard will have been Prime Minister for five years. He is Australia’s seventh longest-serving Prime Minister.

A couple of months ago, it seemed as if he were heading for a third term. Now it looks more likely that he will not. But he has nine months to reverse that position.

The six longer serving Prime Ministers all won three or more elections in succession. (Menzies won seven.)

Much is made of the difficulty of winning a third term. History shows differently. Seven Prime Ministers have gone to an election for a third time. All but one — Gough Whitlam – won. (I’m counting Stanley Bruce as having won the 1992 election even though Billy Hughes led the party in to it.) And Whitlam can hardly be counted as going to the people three times. On the second and third occasions he was forced into it.

So if Howard wins this election, it will not be some exceptional feat. He should – like Hughes, Bruce, Joseph Lyons, Menzies, Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke – be a third-time winner. That is the normal pattern in Australian federal politics for those of merely average quality. It fact, once you have won the second term, you would have to be a bit of a political klutz not to win a third term in Australian Federal politics. The Australian people sus someone out quickly and chuck them out or they are given the classic Australian fair go.
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The wheels began falling off some critical policy initiatives of the Howard government this week.

The moratorium against internet gambling has mostly failed but still the government presses on. Tax reform is in a quagmire. And the policy on health insurance is not working as intended.

After five years of Coalition Ggovernment it is worthwhile assessing the outcome of the policy initiatives against what was intended. It is a dismal comparison.

Let’s start with the health insurance. The Government’s policy of a 30 per cent rebate for private insurance premiums and penalties for older people joining health funds late had a worthwhile aim. The aim was to reduce the pressure on public hospitals. But for what has happened? This week we learnt that the profits of private health funds have gone up by a $340 million, that is a 172 per cent increase on the pre-rebates situation. And still the pressures remain on public hospitals. Conclusion: policy failure.
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A technological development reported in the US yesterday is likely to technologically damn the Government’s digital television regime.

The US Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory has announced that it can squeeze a high-definition digital television signal into a standard six megahertz band. And standard analog TV receivers will be able to receive the broadcast as usual.

The announcement was reported in TechWeb an on-line technology newsletter.

The squeezing was done by an encoding algorithm that uses the nooks and crannies of the old channel, much the way colour was squeezed into the old black and white space.

The development has three implications for the Australian digital regime which began on January 1.

Digitisation meant digital signals could be sent using existing spectrum between the analog signals. In effect additional space was created. The question was how to use it.
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Vail resorts runs Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone resorts in Colorado.

A typical skiing – and associated activities – package is:

Keystone Resort from $3,257 per person, twin share. Cost includes return airfares from Sydney to Denver flying Air New Zealand and transfers to Keystone. Seven nights’ accommodation at The Inn at Keystone, six-day ski pass.

For bookings call toll free 1 300 130 754.

Major airlines fly from Australia to New Delhi daily.

Best times to travel. Avoid June to September throughout out India. It is either unbearably hot or unbearably wet, or both. April-May is getting hot and humid, but the rains usually do not hit till June. Inland north gets cold at night (7 degree C) mid-November to mid-January.

Unless you take great joy in haggling with red tape, enjoy the frustration of delayed ground transport and like the romance of pot luck accommodation with no chance for redress, book in Australia. I travelled with India Nepal Travel Centre 02 92338600 himalaya@loom.net.au without a glitch.

Contact your own doctor or the Travel Doctor 62577156. Care without paranoia is essential for a good trip. Vaccination is not a requirement going into or coming out of India, but vaccination for the major diseases is highly recommended.

You must stay in Agra overnight to get a decent view of the Taj – dawn and/or dusk.
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