Crispin Hull

According to a report last week put out by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, it appears the ACT has the highest level of crimes against the person in Australia. The crime and safety report put the prevalence of assault in the ACT at 6.9 per cent, the highest in Australia. Next was the Northern Territory on 6.3 per cent and the lowest was Victoria on 3.8 per cent.

However, we should be careful about jumping to conclusions. It would be quite wrong to make broad conclusions from the figures that suggest people in the ACT are more likely to be criminal assaulters, or that the police are not doing as good a job as in Victoria or NSW. It is very likely that the ACT figure is not a true reflection of its overall criminal propensity compared to other jurisdictions. There are several reasons for this.

Crime is generally more prevalent in cities than in rural areas or small towns. The ACT has a far higher proportion of city dwellers than any other state or territory. It could well be that on a comparison between, say, Newcastle, Wollongong or Geelong against Canberra, that the prevalence of assault in Canberra was about the same or even lower.
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It is a pity John Howard did not, or could not, go that one step further — beyond “”regret” towards “”sorry”.

The motion in the House of Representatives this week was: “”The House expresses its deep and sincere regret that that indigenous Australians suffered injustices under practices of past generations, and for the hurt and trauma that many indigenous people continue to feel as a consequence of those practices.”

The motion committed the Government to reconciliation and to address economic and social disadvantage.

It was fine as far as it went. It had the support of significant Aboriginal leaders. But, equally, it did not have the support of other significant Aboriginal leaders. Further, it did not go as far in meeting Aboriginal hopes as motions in every other Parliament in Australia bar that of the Northern Territory. The national Parliament should have been equally or more generous in its gesture to reconciliation as state and territory parliaments.
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Telstra’s decision to charge business and mobile phone users for directory assistance has caused outrage among some business groups and fear among consumers that the next step is to charge residential users for the service.

The outrage and fear about the end of the “”free” service are misplaced. At the end of the financial year nothing is “”free”. At best there is a bit of cross-subsidisation where one group of users pay for the services given to other groups of users. But worse than that, if something is notionally charged as “”free” consumers flock to it, over-use it and abuse it.
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Last week saw further confirmation that federal-state taxation is a mess with a ruling in the ACT Supreme Court that struck down the ACT’s stamp duty on used cars. The ruling is likely to be challenged with other states intervening. In total about $500 million a year is raised by state and territory governments in Australia. If those taxes can no longer be raised, some remedial steps must be taken if states and territories are to obtain the finances necessary to run health, education and other services.

To add to the worry, other taxes might also be subject to similar challenge. The tax on new cars is an example.

The essential difficulty is that the Constitution gives the Commonwealth Government the exclusive right to levy excise duties. The definition of excise duties has been the subject of much legal debate and court rulings in the past century. Broadly an excise is a tax on production. A simple test has been that if the tax goes up with the value or quantity of the goods, it will be an excise. In the past 25 years, the states have got around this by charging licence fees on trading in things like alcohol, petrol and tobacco, which went up according to the value or quantity of goods in the previous year. For a long time the High Court allowed this sophistry, but earlier this year it struck all these taxes out. The Commonwealth had to come to the rescue using its exclusive power to levy excise duties to levy the hitherto state and territory licence fees. It then remitted them to the states.
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On November 6 Australians will be asked whether they approve of a law “”to establish the Commonwealth as a republic with the Queen and Governor-General begin replaced by a president appointed by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Commonwealth Parliament”? And whether they approve of a preamble to the Constitution which includes key elements of “”hope in God”; rule of law; recognition of sacrifices of those “”who defended our country”; “”honouring Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders for their deep kinship with their lands”; recognition of immigrants; and responsibility for the environment.

The preamble question is of far less moment than the republic question. It will not matter a great deal whether it is passed or not. It will not alter Australia” perception of itself or the world’s perception of Australia. In that regard, the republic question is critical.

It would have been better if it had been done a different way. The debate should have been in two stages. The first question should have been, “”Do you want a republic with an Australian head of state replacing the Queen and Governor-General”. If Yes, there could have been a second question on how the new head of state was to be chosen.
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The best thing to come out of the smoking examples in the Year 9 literary and numeracy test is the fact that there was outrage over them in the first place. The fact that year 9 students can write to The Canberra Times and raise the issue with their parents and education authorities indicates that something is going right with our education system. It is producing students with an ability to see issues and to articulate responses to them, rather than sit unquestioning.

Moreover, the issue was tangential to the matter in hand – a serious testing of literacy and numeracy. To that extent it showed admirable lateral thinking outside the box.
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In a rather unconventional departure from Westminster tradition yesterday, Chief Minister Kate Carnell chose to announce a new ministerial appointment to a gathering of invited guests and the media at the National Press Club. The normal procedure is to announce such things to the Parliament first.

The event was billed as an announcement about changes to the structure of government in the ACT. And some significant bureaucratic changes were announced.

Mrs Carnell predicated her announcement with a rundown of the ACT’s financial performance in the past four and a half years. In 1995 the ACT Budget had an operating loss of $344 million. This year it would be as good as balanced with a loss of a mere $6 million and into the black the following year.
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Prime Minister John Howard wants to keep the question on the republic referendum as it is. That is the question that his government put in the Bill to set the referendum in train. The question (in the form of the long title of the Bill) was drafted by the Government in consultation with no-one. It reads, “”A Bill for an Act to alter the Constitution to establish the Commonwealth of Australia as a republic with a President chosen by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Commonwealth Parliament.”

The joint parliamentary committee, on the other hand, has consulted widely among minimalist republicans, direct-elect republicans and constitutional monarchists. Apparently, a majority of that committee wants the question changed, though we will not know until Monday when the committee tables in report in Parliament. The committee is in a better position to put the question more fairly.

The question as it stands is incorrect, carries the wrong emphasis and is biased in favour of the No case.
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The Property Advisory Council of the ACT has just reported on dealings between the ACT Government and property developers. Its findings are welcome. The council’s members include property developers.

The report pours cold water on direct dealing, or secret deals between government and a particular developer. “”The starting point for negotiation between the public and private sector on property development proposals should be a preference for a competitive environment.”

It says there should only be direct dealing if there is considerable public benefit that can only be obtained from direct dealing.
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What makes some people healthy and others not?

It is a simple question with complex answers.

Doctors usually look at the individual. They look at symptoms like pain, swelling, discharges, the chemical composites and viral or bacterial invasions of blood and other fluids. They look at x-rays and other imaging. They open bodies up and look inside physically.

Then they make a diagnosis, prognosis and a treatment regime. The treatment leads to cure or the stabilising of the condition or it fails and leads to death.

That is one way of looking at health.
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