Crispin Hull

Where is the threat? At present the Department of Defence has several big procurements of quesitonable value in sight. It has got one fiasco in the making in hand. And it has several under its belt which can only be decribed as monumental wastes of money. Meanwhile, refugee boats arrive on our shore undetected.

The fiasco in the making is the six new Collins class submarines that will replace the Australian Navy’s long-serving Oberons. The Collins has major problems — an incomplete combat system and excessive noise. These will cost more than $1 billion to fix, perhaps as much at $2.5 billion. That would bring the total cost to $7.5 billion. For that we could have bought twice the number of the British Upholder-class submarines. The British submarines have the same theoretical capability as the Collins with none of the practical problems.

Some questions must be answered about the original order which was made in 1987, during the Hawke Government while the present Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley, was Minister for Defence.
Continue reading “1999_06_june_leader02jun columnlins”

“”The media will get you in the end, comrade.”

The words of the Great Gough.

Kate Carnell is probably thinking along similar lines now, though she is probably slightly more optimistic.

Nothing excites political journalists more than the prospect of a ministerial (or prime ministerial or chief ministerial) scalp. A leadership challenge comes a very close second (or even equal first) and an early election comes a third.

It is as true on the big house on the hill as the little house in London Circuit as it is in the shire council in Pearl Bay. It cannot be put down to the Australian cut-down-the-tall-poppy syndrome. It happens in the UK and the US, too. And it goes back a long way. Witness the Prufumo (chk sp) scandal in Britain in 1963.

More recently, witness the pursuit of ministers in the Howard Government.
Continue reading “1999_06_june_kate oped”

The High Court has been flexing its judicial muscle recently, most recently this week.

So what’s new? Courts are supposed to flex judicial muscle.

The newness in the approach of the late 1990s is an insistence on constitutional purity, almost to hell with the consequences, and a more rigorous view of the separation of powers with a more powerful role for the High Court.

On constitutional purity we have had the recent cross-vesting case and the states’ excise cases. On judicial power we have had this week’s case on One Nation’s Senate seat and we are about to get a ruling on David Eastman’s challenge to the appointment of the judge who tried his case. Earlier we had some immigration cases.
Continue reading “1999_06_june_high court forum”

In the High Court in 1980 an “”arid jurisdictional dispute” was unfolding. Those were the words of Justice Anthony Mason, later Chief Justice.

It was not an arid dispute for me, reporting. To the contrary, it was quite a juicy little number.

It was a family-law custody matter. A husband, wife and a child. The husband was determined to keep the matter in the Family Court. The wife wanted it removed to the state Supreme Court of NSW.
Continue reading “1999_06_june_federal jurisdiction forum”

Warren Entsch and the Government will not like yesterday’s High Court ruling.

On June 10, the Attorney-General Daryl Williams moved in the House of Representatives that “”The House determines that the member for Leichhardt [Entsch] does not have any direct or indirect pecuniary interest with the Public Service of the Commonwealth within the meaning of Section 44(v) of the Constitution by reason of any contract entered into by Cape York Concrete Pty Ltd since 3 October 1998, and the member for Leichhardt is therefore not incapable of sitting as a member of this House.”

It was an attempt to oust the possibility of a Labor High Court challenge to Mr Entsch’s continued sitting in the House.

Mr Williams was relying on Section 47 of the Constitution. It says that “”until the Parliament otherwise provides” the House can determine any question about the qualification or disputed return of a member of the House.
Continue reading “1999_06_june_entsch to court”

The word embargo came into the language in the late 16th century. It meant a ban on foreign ships coming into port or a ban on English ships going to the ports of certain foreign countries. Usually embargoes were imposed just before wars. There was an embargo on Spanish ships for some time after the war with Spain.

Nowadays the word applies to prohibitions of virtually any sort, but it has a special meaning for newspapers. Newspapers get material under embargo all the time.

The embargo is a co-operative arrangement between the supplier of the information and the newspaper. It enables the newspaper to get the material early to prepare it for publication so it can be published at the same time as the official announcement, but to the broad public.
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It started a couple of weeks ago with Ian Warden saying the Letters column should be abandoned. He argued that the scribblings of the readership were often ill-informed, not witty, poorly argued, show little insight and so on.

He then added a provocative bit that the Letters column was taking precious space from paid journalists whose work was of far better quality.

John Cleland of Latham responded in his inimitable way. He “”agreed” with Warden. Tongue firmly in cheek he denounced the ramblings of the letter writers. In these days of information overload, why couldn’t the editor run a quick summary of the opinions? The column should be abolished, said the inveterate veteran of the column.
Continue reading “1999_06_june_add26”

Next month everyone over 35 will remember where we were 30 years ago when we watched the first man on the moon. Younger people have similar reference points long ago in their lives.

Try thinking 25 years ago. A career, a marriage, an education, a score of holidays here and overseas, a couple of homes, a half dozen cars, bad things done, good things done, regrets, lost hopes, found opportunities, a great chunk of a lifetime.

More than half his lifetime ago John Lewthwaite committed a ghastly crime. He murdered a five-year-old girl. He ruined lives. He acknowledges that. He has been in jail for that 25 years.
Continue reading “1999_06_june_add19 pryor”

I sometimes see Geoff Pryor in the early morning walking near the frost-covered school oval. To the casual observer he is walking his dog. But I know he is at work. He is wearing headphones listening to AM. He can be seen in the office later in the day with the same headphones, listening to Question Time.

And then he trawls the office and works the phone. He talks to colleagues and contacts. He comes into news conference. He tosses ideas about.

Most people imagine that the difficult part of Pryor’s day is drawing the cartoon. Not so. For him it is the easy part. The hard parts are selecting the topic and picking an angle. In that respect his job is similar to editorial writing. The churning out of the 700 words is the lesser part of the task. The
selection of topic and picking the angle is far more difficult. Once you have done that the writing (or in Pryor’s case the drawing) is like winding up a rubber band and letting it go.
Continue reading “1999_05_may_selfgovt forum”

This week we have been marking the 10th anniversary of self-government for the ACT.

I say marking, rather than celebrating, because there has been the usual bout of outcry along the lines: “”We voted against self-government in a referendum and the past 10 years have been hell.”

But we were in for hell anyway.

Not many people took notice of what the Federal Minister for Finance, Peter Walsh, said about ACT financing on February 28, 1988, a year before self-government:

“”Funding will continue at present level for two years, then be cut back progressively for the next two years until it has same funding arrangements as the states.”
Continue reading “1999_05_may_self-govt blurb”