Crispin Hull

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 Catholic Church, particularly under the present Pope, has not been an organisation noted for moving with the times. That is seen by some as a weakness. By others, however, it is seen as a great strength of the Church.

Two thousand years after the birth of Christ and, depending on whose view you take, between 1600 and 2000 years after the foundation of the Roman Catholic Church, the present Pope, John Paul II, is in poor health, frail and probably finding the tasks of the papacy pushing the limits of his endurance.

The Pope, aged 79, is suffering from Parkinson’s disease. He also suffers from the after effects of an assassination attempt earlier in his pontificate. At times he is visibly unsteady on his feet.

His condition led to Bishop Karl Lehmann of Mainz, who serves as the chairman of Germany’s Bishops Conference, to say at the weekend, “”I personally trust that the Pope, if he were to have the feeling that he was simply no longer capable enough to lead the church, I believe he would have the strength and the courage to say, “I can no longer fulfil that which needs to be done.’ “”
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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.

Diplomatic immunity is laid down in the Vienna Convention which has been enacted into Australian law. And it is important that Australia respects the treaty.
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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 Government’s decision to clamp down on ultrasound tests for pregnant women will impose a burden on poorer women and their doctors.

At present women who have an ultrasound in the first 17 weeks of pregnancy qualify for an $85 Medicare rebate on an average fee of $150. Now the Government wants to limit the rebate in the first 17 weeks to women displaying one of 30 listed conditions and cut the subsidy to $65 for these woman and for women referred after 17 weeks. Women without one of the 30 conditions in the first 17 weeks would get no subsidy.

This will reduce costs to the public purse in the short-term. But those affected will be the poor or the doctors of the poor who charge at reduced rates. It will not immediately stop those who can afford it having ultrasound. It will add to inequity in the health system.

Inequality can never be eliminated. Some people will always pay over the top for every procedure going, but are there any grounds to deliberately add inequity?

Doctors are in the invidious position of being accused of over-servicing if they routinely order scans, or being sued if they have not ordered a scan and something goes wrong. This change will not help

But is there an agenda other than cost here? The restriction on the scans in the first 17 weeks is suspicious because that is precisely the time when an abortion would still be a reasonable option in cases of fetal abnormality. Could it be that the Government is responding to religious concerns by limiting ultrasounds so as to limit the resulting abortions. If so, it will only affect those who cannot afford the scan, compounding the inequity of this measure.

Routine ultrasound in early pregnancy has several benefits. Expected birth dates are predicted more accurately. This means doctors are less likely to order drug-induced births on the ground that birth is overdue. It means mothers do not carry on in the false knowledge that birth is a week away. Risks are reduced.

Ultrasound enables earlier detection of multiple pregnancies (and better preparation) and earlier detection fetal malformation at a time when termination of pregnancy is possible.

They are costly but the costs may be justified given the long-term costs of bring up deformed babies and the costs of induction other poor outcomes from poor prediction without ultrasound.

Against that is a small possibility of false negatives: where ultrasound indicates (it can never conclusively show) abnormality where there is none.

Costs are of concern, but the Government has chosen the wrong procedure in ultrasound to rein them in. Given some of the other things the Government spends money on, in this instance it would be better to err on the side of overservicing than inequitable underservicing.

When it comes to health, people are willing to pay more. The Medicare levy should be raised, rather than benefits cut. That the levy could be raised for Timor indicates that it was possible to raise it for health. After all that is what it is supposed to be for.

The Government is mindful that universal, subsidised medicine through Medicare is electorally very popular so it cannot dismantle Medicare and the pharmaceutical benefits scheme without the loss of many votes. But it appears to be willing to erode Medicare by stealth — by not keeping scheduled fees up with inflation, or even reducing them as in the case of ultrasound.

The Acting Prime Minister, John Anderson, was right to suggest that Australians should welcome the Queen and give her the respect of office. His prediction that the 45 per cent of people who voted for a republic would not use the visit from March 17 to April 2 as a focus for protest, however, was so obvious as to not be worth making.

Mr Anderson would be wrong to imagine that the welcome will be ecstatic, enthusiastic or especially warm. It will not excite the Australian population in the same way that the 1954 visit did.

The 45 per cent who voted for a republic, if affected at all by the visit, will look upon it much as a visit by any other head of state or head of government from another country. And many who voted No in the referendum will do likewise because they voted No to the republic on offer, but would otherwise have voted for a republic.

The Queen gets addition interest and respect for the fact that she is head of the Commonwealth of Nations of which Australia is part and she is head of state of the nation with whom Australia has very close ties of heritage, family and trade.

But those ties are becoming more diluted over time. Just after World War II the Anglo-Celtic share of the population was 90 per cent. By 1988 it had fallen to 74.5 per cent and in 1999 to 70 per cent, according to a study of ethic make-up of Australia by Charles Price published by Monash University last week.
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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.

Professor Pagan is the sole academic member of the board. The other members are three ex-officio members – the Governor and Deputy Governor of the bank and the Federal Treasurer — and six others, at least five of whom must not be on the staff of the bank. At present all six are from outside the bank, which is fine. But five of the six are from business people. With the departure of Professor Pagan, there will be no academic. There is no-one from outside business to widen the board’s perspective. There should be. The bank has a responsibility to the whole Australian community. What is good for business, might not be good for the whole community. Certainly, the Government should look very carefully at who should replace Professor Pagan. It should not be a business person, because there are five existing business people on the board and a diversity of opinion is needed. It should be another academic or someone from outside business. The replacement for the other retiring board member, Treasury Secretary Ted Evans, is another matter. His replacement must be judged by who is the best person for the job as Treasury Secretary.
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Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

If only the four major Churches which tendered and won large contracts to provide employment services to the unemployed had heeded the words of their own Saviour. But no, church bureaucracies have taken the running and church leaders have been unwilling or unable to intervene.

One of the hallmarks of bureaucracies is the desire for self-perpetuation, often not stopping to think why the organisation exists the first place. It is a rare day for a bureaucracy to announce that it has done its job and it should be wound up. To the contrary if one function is lost, they find another.

When the charitable agencies of the church tendered for contracts to provide the unemployed with help getting jobs, Church leaders failed to ask the fundamental question: what are we here for? Sure, the churches are there to help the poor, the dispossessed, the disabled and so on. Often that might include helping the unemployed. But it should not include entering into a formal contract with the government to provide expert job-searching services for the unemployed. That is an economic task, a task of government. It is not a charitable task. It is not a task done for love, but a task done for money.
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Democracy can be troublesome when it comes ot international diplomacy. It is proving troublesome in the negotiations between Israel (a democracy) and Syria (which has a totalitarian regime) with the United States (a democracy) as peacebroker.

President Assad of Syria has few restraints to what he might agree to during the present peace talsk with Israel in the United States. However, President Bill Clinton’s administration has to be wary of the Jewish vote, paticularly in New York. Though usually pro-Democrat, if Mr Clinton is seen as not supporting Israel enough, or is seen as agreeing with Israel to a sell-out, votes for Al Gore in the presidential race this year will be lost.

From the Israeli point of view, Prime Minister Ehud Barak has to content with die-hard ultra religious groups who do not want to surrender any of the Golan Heights which were captured from Syria in 1967. Unfortunately, for Mr Barak, his government is dependent on some ofthese groups for its majority in the Parliament. He has already given to blackmail by one religious party offering them millions of dollars for religious education in return for continued support.
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