Crispin Hull

The question seemed impertintent because Rob, in his late 20s, had just led us down the rapids of the Kawarau River on body boards. You know, those pieces of polystryrene that people people use in the surf. The water was 10 degrees. The river was, well, frightening.

But I wondered about the guides. They would have to leap into this river every day. They would have to give the same instructions, answer the same (mostly idiotic) questions, pack and unpack the same gear, drive down the same road, arrive at the same destination with the same cafe, every day there were takers for Mad Dog River Boarding, an adventure company in Queenstown in New Zealand’s South Island.

Queenstown, mostly known in Australia as a ski-ing resort, presents two radically different faces outside winter.
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In the 1970s the Spectator had a weekly column from mock Ugandan correspondent. In one column the correspondent described how he had been arrested under the What Dat White Boy Think He Doin Act of 1976.

He gave me a belly laugh, but it exemplifies a profound characteristic of the law that caused the five Law Lords some intellectual difficulty when deciding on the fate of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

On one hand, one can say he was a murdering sod who should be brought to account. That approach requires reliance on an appeal to indeterminate universal principles of common decency.
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The move to set up a committee to investigate the funding of ACT public-sector superannuation was little more than a ploy to delay the sale of the electricity element of Actew. Chief Minister Kate Carnell has linked the two, saying that the proceeds of the sale would be used to pay out the unfunded superannuation. The aim of the inquiry is to see if the superannuation can be paid another way.

Obviously it can; through debt or subsequent years’ budgeting. It is difficult to see how much can be achieved by the inquiry. Certainly no member of the major parties or Green Kerrie Tucker will be swayed from their fixed positions. Michael Moore is likely to vote with the Government. Trevor Kaine should vote for the sale if he sticks to his private-enterprise ethic, but his vote could go anywhere. In any event it will not be swayed by this inquiry. The two Osborne Independents are uneasy with the sale of Actew, so the inquiry will give them some breathing space and may help show the public the severity of the ACT’s future financial problems.

Unfortunately, the delay is only likely to erode the value of Actew. As it stands it has a good customer list that is slowly being eroded by the opening of a competitive market in electricity across Australia. For practical purposes it would be better to sell to a private operator which can engage in risk-taking not available to government.
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Legislation introduced this week by the ACT Legislation Assembly will shake up the system of criminal injuries compensation. It has drawn criticism from members of the legal profession and the ACT Law Society. However, it is supported by victims groups.

In 1996-97 $4.5 million was awarded to a total of 300 victims. Overall in the ACT there were 32,000 offences to property and 2200 offences to the person. A working party report on the existing law noted that a large amount of resources was going “”to such a small proportion of potential clients”. This observation was apparently made as a criticism of the present system. If so, it was not well directed. It is surely a good thing that the state-provided system is a safety-net only. There is little reason, for example, why a state criminal compensation system should give any compensation for property loss. Most property subjected to criminal attack is insured or ought to be. As to personal injury, it is better that the government scheme deal with the most serious cases, helping patch up lives that have been seriously disrupted by crime, rather than attempt to be the restitutor for every minor or even medium-range incident.

However, despite the working party’s observation, the current system still gives out money to too many victims and often gives it for the wrong things. The new Bill attempts to address some of that. Only the most gravely injured with be entitled to a solatium or payment for grief, pain and suffering. It will be limited to $30,000, instead of the present $50,000. Less severe cases will result in reimbursement for medical costs and lost earnings. Lost earnings are not available under the present scheme. It will mean a cut in direct payments from the present $4.5 million to about $2.7 million. But a further $600,000 will go to rehabilitation and professional services to crime victims.
Continue reading “1998_11_november_leader28nov crime victims”

The decision of the English House of Lords to allow the extradition proceedings against former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet will be welcomed around the world by people concerned with human rights. It means, at least as far a Britain is concerned, there is no longer immunity for former heads of state who commit gross crimes which are recognised as crimes by international law. There will be no rest for the wicked.

It may be true that humanity faces a dilemma in dealing with dictators and their henchmen. There may be some general interest in encouraging dictators who have engaged in murder, kidnappings and other breaches of human rights to voluntarily relinquish power. It may be that those dictators will only relinquish power if they feel they will be secure are they relinquish it. Otherwise they will cling to power causing a prolongation of the agony. That view suggest that it is better that one guilty dictator go free than democracy and the rule of law be postponed. There is some merit in this view. In South Africa, for example, it was made clear by the new African National Congress Government that it was more interested in truth and reconciliation than revenge and punishment. It set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as the vehicle to expunge the past without forgetting it, and in a way that allowed the acknowledgement of the evils of the past without necessarily punishing it. In the case of Chile, it was a case of never being able to remove military rule without a tacit agreement of immunity. In Chile their was an unwritten pact between the new forces of democracy and the rule of law on one hand and the military on the other. The pact was almost transgenerational. It meant that Chile could return to a form of democracy provided those that were responsible for atrocities in the 17-year military dictatorship were never brought to account. It meant that Chile could only become a democracy respecting the rule of law after all the criminals of the Pinochet regime died in their beds. It is easy to say that this was a contract with the Devil. But the alternative would inevitably have been a continuation of the dictatorship. Within Chile the pact may well have been worth it. Better an apprenticeship, egg-shell democracy for a decade or two than the continuation of the dictatorship.

The House of Lords could view the matter with more legalism, greater purity, less pragmatism and without the fear of jackboots returning to the streets of the nation. Ironically, the reasons the Lords were in the position to do that was because of the extraordinary arrogant of Pinochet himself. He thought that the immunity he had granted himself in Chile by force of the threat to return the nation to military dictatorship would have extraterritorial force in Britain. How apposite was it that the rule of law should render such a view invalid. How apposite that the rule of law, applied dispassionately in a nation that has long upheld it, should render null the immoral contract between the Chilean military and its necessarily compromised democrats.
Continue reading “1998_11_november_leader27nov pinochet”

Two traditions went at once in Britain this week. Usually the Queen’s speech is heard in silence. But when the Queen announced that the Government would introduce a tradition-sweeping Bill to abolish the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords there was some jeering from the gathered lords and some cheering from the gathered Commons.

Since 1911 the power of the House of Lords has been greatly weakened. It was then it lost any effective veto on legislation. Since then, its powers have been reduced to delay only, and then to three months it the Government really wants to rush it.

None the less the lords can have a significant input into government in Britain through committee work and debate on Bills. It is difficult to see why anyone should now get such a role purely by accident of birth. Hereditary peers have sat and voted in the House for 600 years. In the evolution of government from feudal times they had a role to play. But now Prime Minister Tony Blair is right to take that evolution a step further: that government must be by the people, of the people and for the people.
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Whether the health-insurance rebate is passed in the Senate this week or not, ultimately the Government and the Parliament must face fundamental reform of the way health is financed in Australia.

Both Labor and the Coalition have allowed ideology to get in the way of the practical administration of one of the most important things goverment does: the delivery of health care.

Before the election of the Whitlam Goverment in 1972 the Coaltion allowed a system dominated by private insurance to rule the day. Under it, a large percentage of people could not or would not afford insurance and faced forgoing treatment or huge medical bills that could send them in to penury or bankruptcy. It was unsatisfactory. The Whitalm Govenrment introduced the Medibank universal insurance scheme. It ran for several years until it was unwound to the previous unsatisfactory regime by the Fraser Government. The Hawke Government re-introduced Medicare in 1983. It had the benefit of providing universal care at what seemed a reasonable cost. It took almost a decade until it became obvious that it was unsustainable. The Medicare levy of around 1.5 per cent, was never enough to sustain the benefits paid out. They had to be underwritten by government. Moreover, the system was further underwritten by people who retained private insurance. Private insurance was only of benefit to people with lesser illnesses to who it gave the benefit for queue jumping and treatment in a private hospital. Doctor of choice was an illusory benefit when so many people had no information about who was a good specialist. Serious illness and trauma were invariably better treated in the public system. Eventually more and more people saw the obvious and refused to pay for something the Government gave for nothing. As more people left the private system, the cost of premiums went up and the benefits went down. The surprising thing is that it took so long.
Continue reading “1998_11_november_leader25nov health rebate”

Once again, we see an unseemly barter between states to give tax breaks to industry to keep or attract economic activity. This time Victoria seems likely to match NSW’s reduction in the gambling tax for high rollers at its Sydney Star Casino. It is bad enough when states offer tax holidays to attract manufacturing and service industries, but a barter over attracting high-roller gamblers is worse.

The reduction in the tax is likely to come about after Kerry Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings revealed a list of claims on the Victorian Government and Victoria’s Crown Casino if his investment in the casino is to go ahead. Mr Packer has an option to buy half of Crown Casino for $425 million. At the time he put that option it looked like a rescue for Crown which had had a run of poor financial performances, some of which had been caused by successful high-roller gamblers. The trouble for Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett is that Crown employs 2000 people and attracts a large amount of tourism into Victoria. Mr Kennett gambled on the casino being capable of sustaining the employment, tourism and meeting its obligation to build substantial hotel facilities and a theatre. Mr Packer wants the obligation (which at present is enforceable by large contract penalties) to build a second hotel complex and the theatre to be removed. He also wants restrictions on table-to-machine ratios to be removed and an extension to the exclusive licence for Melbourne and Victoria.
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The union movement is on the warpath over unpaid overtime. Excessive works hours are undoubtedly contributing to a more stressful modern life. And that is also true of unemployment and under-employment. Society is being divided into the over-worked, under-worked or out-of-work.

The Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Training estimates that 19 million hours a week overtime is being worked in Australia, about 60 per cent of it unpaid. And the percentage of casual workers has increased from 15 per cent in the mid-1980s to about 25 per cent now. One in three women workers is casual.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions draws some erroneous conclusions from this research. It equates the overtime with jobs, suggesting that 500,000 jobs (or more than half the unemployed) could be created if only people would stop working overtime, particularly unpaid overtime. The ACTU would like to see a ceiling on the number of hours worked. In the long term it would like to see a reduction in the standard working week below the present 38-hour week.
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One Nation senator-elect Heather Hill should not find herself in her present predicament. She was born in England. She took out Australian citizenship, yet still there is doubt about whether she satisfies the eligibility provisions to take her seat in the Senate.

Some people may well be rubbing their hands at One Nation’s discomfiture, but this is a matter of principle that should transcend the party affiliation of the people elected.

It should not be beyond the wit of legislators (if necessary with a tidying referendum at the time of the next referendum if constitutional change is needed) to devise simple eligibility criteria for membership of the Australian Parliament. The criteria should be Australian citizenship, adulthood and not serving a term of imprisonment.
Continue reading “1998_11_november_leader23nov senate quals”