Crispin Hull

Last week the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at ANU , Professor Paul Thom, wrote a letter to the editor pleading the case for students to take Arts courses.

He bemoaned that there was a foolish impression about that subjects taught in Arts degrees were useless. And it is foolish. As it happens, I was taught Philopophy and Logic by Thom and have used his teachings every day of my working life (though some correspondents to the same letters column have frequently asserted that there has been a distinct absence of logic in some of my writings).

Thom’s letter marks a terrible trend in Australian universities. For a start, it has got to such a sorry stage that the Dean of the Faculty of Arts has to engage in what amounts to advertising for students. It is not quite the McArts degree, but governments have economically rationalised universities to the extent that courses which do not lead directly to a job qualification become unattractive.
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President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia has been playing the international community for a fool for too long. But the horrific situation in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo has been allowed by the international community, particularly NATO, because if it had the political will it certainly had the military power to stop the killing of innocent people.

The West has several difficulties, one of them caused by the niceties of international law that justify massive intervention when, say, Kuwait, is invaded but do not strictly justify intervention in Kosovo. The trouble is that Kosovo is a province of Yugoslavia and as such an integral part of Yugoslavia, even if 90 per cent of its inhabitants are ethnic Albanians. If a nation state is invaded, articles of the United Nations allow response.

A further problem is that some NATO Governments are worried that if Kosovo became independent it could stir conflict in Macedonia and Montenegro, which also have ethnic Albanian minorities.
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The quality of teaching and research at Australian universities are under threat according to the president of the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee, Professor John Niland.

The reason is that the universities are entering the third round of enterprise bargaining with no extra money from the Government, other than the tiny safety-net adjustment. The results will be drastic for Australian universities. Some universities will be faced with the prospect of reducing staff to pay for the higher salaries of those that remain. Other universities will offer smaller pay rises with the result that they will lose quality staff, tragically many staff will be tempted to overseas to seek more reasonable pay.

It is a foolish false economy to squeeze the universities this way. A brain drain from Australia in the long-run will be far more costly than giving adequate public support to the universities. People who have been educated in Australia at great cost will leave and people with much to offer Australia will leave unless rewards in Australia — both pay and research opportunity — are at reasonable levels.
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The decision by Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (check) to reject Telstra’s charging regime to access to its cable network by other carriers is a welcome one. The commission wants Telstra to halve its fees from $400 million to $200 million. That should mostly flow through to consumers. Some of it will get siphoned off on the way to the shareholders of the other carriers but competition will ensure that that is kept in check.

The commission’s decision goes some way to repairing what was a flawed model for telecommunications in Australia in the first place. When Telstra was privatised it was always a mistake to allow it to be both a monopoly owner of the network and a carrier. A better model would have been to split Telstra into its carrier and retail arm on one hand and its monopoly over the cable network on the other. The former was an obvious candidate for full privatisation and the latter could have been partially or fully privatised or kept in public ownership.

The split model would have prevented misuse of monopoly power. It would have prevented Telstra’s cable arm giving unfair advantage to its carrier arm.
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The fact that England has been thrown out of this season’s rugby Five Nations championship is of little moment in itself. But it exemplifies a grubby approach to modern sport. The reason England has been thrown out is not because its team is not good enough or that some or all of the players have been shown to be guilty of some significant sporting transgression. No, the reason is a row over television revenue.

Italy is now poised to take England’s place. It may be that the expulsion is just a ploy to put pressure on the English Rugby Union to agree to the way the television spoils are divided and that England will ultimately play. Even so, it still reveals the unacceptable approach to sport in the modern era.

No longer do sportspeople compete in events to which people may or may not come to watch and for which sponsors might chip in or television might seek rights if the standard is high enough and audience interest there. Sport is there for the televison, not television for the sport.
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The Minister for Employment Services, Tony Abbott, fell flat on his face twice at the weekend.

He wondered why any Cabinet Minister would come out actively in favour of the republic when the party’s leader, John Howard, is against a republic and in any event, in his view, the republic is a lost cause. He accused republicans, including presumably some of his ministerial colleagues, of treating Australians as constitutional simpletons and members of the chattering classes who regard Australia as “”the arse end of the earth” and of seeking a constitutional Viagra pill.

If his speech was designed to warn off republicans in the ministry from speaking out, it has exactly the opposite effect. Environment Minister Senator Robert Hill and Finance Minister John Fahey responded quickly. Senator Hill made two very pertinent points. First, he said, “”Asking Australians on the even of the millennium to vote for a British monarch to be head of state is the ultimate vote of no confidence in out own political maturity.” That was an astute and more polite way of saying, that is it the constitutional monarchists, not the republicans, who have the derogatory view of Australia.
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ACTION obviously cannot please all of its customers all the time. Yesterday it introduced its new timetable at the same time instituting a new workplace agreement with its employees. The new timetable has been greeted with much grumbling. Of course, all those whose route has been made longer, less regular or more expensive complained bitterly, while those who benefited by a shorter, more regular or cheaper route remain quietly pleased. They think that is their entitlement.

ACTION has reduced its costs to the taxpayers in the past five years, but it is still at between $40 million and $45 million a year, depending on whose view of the figures you take. That is about $150 per head. There is plan to more than halve that loss. Part will come from the workplace agreement and part from hoped-for increased patronage as a result of the new timetables.

There may be more optimism than reality here. The patronage will need close monitoring, judging by the complaints. Whether the workplace agreement meets expectation is also problematical in a climate of hostility to change and entrenchment of conditions.
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The Ernst and Young review of the ACT’s Planning and Land Management misses the point. It talks about customers, clients and stakeholders. It talks about efficiency and being customer-focused. There is a brief reference to sustainable development, but the whole tone of the report is to get PALM to bang out development applications as quickly as possible with as little fuss as possible and with a few people and as little expenditure of money as possible. And the Government has committed itself to this approach.

And who are these clients, customers and stakeholders? There seems to be precious little reference to existing and future residents or to the Australian public who own the capital.

The report stresses meeting customers’ needs and maintaining close relationships with clients (ie, developers). This is precisely what the public does NOT want in a planning and land management body. The public wants distance and impartiality and an eye to the public interest.
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The NSW Auditor-General, Tony Harris, has thrown some financial cold water on the Sydney Olympics. A report he published yesterday says that net cost to the NSW Government of hosting the 2000 Olympics would be $2.3 billion. Direct costs were estimated at $5.9 billion with direct revenues of $3.6 billion, leaving a net cost to the government of $2.3 billion. That is $700 million higher than the $1.6 billion estimated by the NSW government last year.

The people of NSW must therefore look at the Games in a different light. They must think of it as paying for a $370 ticket each, for a seat outside the stadium.

The audit admits that it is a difficult task to add up all the costs and all the revenue to conclude whether having the Games is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing financially. And like all audits, that does not include the non-economic matters. It may well be that the feel-good factor is so strong that the $370 per head non-stadium ticket is worth every cent. The people of Sydney might be getting such a buzz out of the Games that the net cost of $2.3 billion is of little moment. That is a fair view.

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Laureate Jose Ramos Horta has displayed significant tact and diplomacy in his response to the Australian Government’s change of position on East Timor. He welcomed the switch and acknowledged that it is impossible for a Government to make huge reversals of policy in one step.

The Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, announced this week “”that the long term prospects for reconciliation in East Timor would be best served by the holding of an act of self-determination at some future time, following a substantial period of autonomy”.

It would not alter Australia’s recognition of Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor.
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