Crispin Hull

The Federal Government is peeved that meddling United Nations committees have dared to criticise Australia’s human-rights record. The Government is now threatening to wind down its commitment to the UN and its human rights effort and to some UN treaties. There is a good way out of this for Australia that would improve human rights, improve our human rights image and get around the “”foreign meddling” accusation.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has cited the discriminatory approach to law enforcement in Western Australia and the Northern Territory by mandatory sentencing and the International Labor Organisation has attacked Australia’s workplace-relations regime.

There will be more to come. There are six UN committees on human rights and Australia is due to be looked at by four of them in this Olympic year.

The Government has some reason for grievance, but its response is counter-productive.

The Government might question the credentials of other member states who have representatives on these committees. However, these people sit as individuals or as UN employees, not as representatives of their own countries. Sometimes, for example, you hear UN officials who are US nationals slamming the US over things like US arrears in subscriptions or the US death-penalty record.
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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.

But merit aside, a politically astute politician would see Latham’s point. Howard has ignored it, instead appealing to a mythical concept of the bush which is encapsulated in the term “”rural and regional Australia”. Howard has been pandering to it ever since he lost so much of the vote in the 1998 election. However, it has been a wasted effort. The bush or rural and regional Australia is a waste of time politically. There is little to be lost in ignoring it or to be gained by pandering to it.
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WHILE people around the world have fought wars and long campaigns to attain the right to govern themselves, the people of the ACT have resented it. They see it as having been foisted on them. Their resentment is probably misplaced.

The central cause of the resentment was probably its timing. It was handed to the ACT in 1989 by the Federal Parliament without an approving referendum. At that time Governments of all complexions around Australia were retreating. They were privatising, down-sizing and out-sourcing.

Before that time Canberra was boom-town. In the early 1950s when Prime Minister Robert Menzies started spending money on the city and moved public servants here to make it the centre of government as the Constitution envisaged. It was planned and grew. By 1989, however, governments were looking at all areas of spending. Canberra was due for severe cutbacks, no matter what. Indeed, the ACT had frequently been the guinea pig for whatever fad of government was flavour of the month. It was inevitably going to bear the down-sizing brunt. And the Federal Government at the time thought it would be a good idea to shift the blame.
Continue reading “2000_03_march_selfgovt history”

This will generate some predictable responses. Self-interested business people, particularly in housing, will call for more migrants. With their eye firmly on next quarter’s figures they see more people as the way to quick profit. Other businesses will call for more skilled migrants because they are too skint to train their own. And a lot of deep green zealots will demand zero population growth and zero immigration.

On this isolated occasion it would be far better if the Government did not listen.

Population policy demands thinking in time frames that are beyond most governments and business. Howard’s sudden interest in population is obviously knee-jerk. His immigration minister, Philip Ruddock, was apparently caught on the hop (as he was on Kosovo). Was Howard trying to appease the pro-immigration Murdoch monster? His comments first appeared in the Murdoch press.

Was Howard trying to prove he is beyond One Nation? Or was he suggesting that rural Australia could be repopulated with migrants? In any event, he has exposed his government to pressure for change that would have been better left alone.
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Friday Mar 30: leave Canberra 6.20am QF850

Sat/Sun April 1-2: Port Moresby. Markets. Harbour boat trip. Gregory’s place.

Mon/Tues/Wed April 2-3-4: Maybe daytrip dive out of Port Moresby with Timothy but staying at Gregory’s.

Thur Apr 5: Fly to Mt Hagen with Gregory and Timothy. Stay at Haus Poriman.

Friday Apr 6: Sepik River with Trans Nuigini Tours. Contact Reuben Waima email: travel@pngtours.com

Tuesday April 10: Back to Port Moresby.

Wednesday April 11-Sunday April 22: Fly to Alotau eastern PNG. Dive Charter with Cara, Timothy, Gregory, Gregory’s mate from Mexico, Cara’s boyfriend. Wayne and Lee Thompson (charterers) Contact: satellite phone from Australia ring 0145 117098 (good idea to ring around 2pm usually doing surface time and not on a dive then.

Sunday 22 Apr: Gregory, Cara and boyfriend leave for Australia.

Monday 23 Apr – Friday April 27: Climb Mount Wilhelm with Timothy.

Sat April 28 Port Moresby.
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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.”

But in the detail we see reduced requirements for open space, lower set-back requirements, higher plot ratios, higher roofs and generally more allowance for bricks and concrete and less requirement for greenery.
Continue reading “2000_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.
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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.
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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.
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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 “2000_03_march_leader23mar banks”