Crispin Hull

People hate tax. They will attempt to avoid it.

And so thousands of Canberrans have forsaken pubs which have to pay full federal company taxes and full ACT rates and other levies and flocked to clubs which pay little federal or ACT tax and which serve cheap food and booze.

In theory a club is a group of people with a community of interest pursuing a worthy aim. Before poker machines, that was the case. They raised money from chook raffles and the like. Then poker machines were permitted in the ACT, largely because huge sums were going across the border to Queanbeyan.
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Impurities and inconsistencies abounded in ACT politics during the week.

The ACT is now the only jurisdiction in the world that supports shooting galleries and heroin on prescription, but makes it a criminal offence to put a flyer under a windscreen.

And the same man, Michael Moore, is the sponsor of both.

Also, we had the legislature performing the executive function of determining spending priorities by ordering that Downer Pre-School stay open.
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The extraordinary Abbott and Costello defamation case has done a lot in the past week to bring the law of defamation into the hatred, ridicule and contempt it so richly deserves.

It may even be a catalyst for reform.

Hatred ridicule and contempt, of course, is one of the tests for libel. Did the published imputations bring the plaintiff into hatred ridicule and contempt? There are others: were the imputations likely to cause right thinking people to shun the plaintiff. Was the plaintiff adversely affecting in his trade profession or calling and so on?
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Iam on the Very Slow Train from Canberra to Sydney.

Will it be discovered as an endangered industrial species, its habitat threatened by the Very Fast Train which has adapted to world of the nine-second sound grab and the mobile phone. It is being hunted to extinction by bus companies that offer a better price at $9 one way to Sydney and airlines that offer a 45-minute journey.

Can it, like the pygmy possum nibble a continued existence along the narrow corridor through Queanbeyan (7.16am), Bungendore (7.24am), Tarago (7.51am), Goulburn (a nice round 8.15am for a big city), Bundanoon, Mittagong, Bowral, Strathfield arriving at Central on time at 10.53am? Or will is sway like a brontosaurus to extinction?
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ACT Liberal Senator Margaret Reid is on a knife edge, according to a Canberra Times Datacol opinion poll.

The poll gives Democrat Rick Farley a chance of causing an upset by taking the second ACT Senate seat from the Coalition, but much will depend on preferences.

Since the territories got Senate representation in 1975 the Coalition and Labor have always had one Senate seat each in each of the territories. In the past six election, Senator Reid has only had to rely on preferences once, in 1984. Usually she gets the quota of 33.3 per cent in first preferences.
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Even presidents need privacy, we were reminded by President Clinton the other day. Professor Thomas Nagel of the New York University was quoted as saying, “”Each of our inner lives is such a jungle of thoughts, feelings, fantasies and impulses that civilisation would be impossible if we expressed them all, or if we could all read each other’s minds. Just as social life would be impossible if we expressed all our lustful, aggressive, greedy, anxious or self-obsessed feelings in ordinary public encounters, so would inner life be impossible if we tried to become wholly persons whose thoughts, feelings and private behaviour could be safely exposed to public view.”

Even Clinton, who is a public figure who sought public office and therefore the publicity that comes with it, should have some right to keep private those things which do not impinge on his public office.

But the law, at least in Australia, does not recognise this. There is no general right of privacy.
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We hear a lot of rhubarb about preferences. In 1996 and 1993 they did not matter much. Indeed, the usually do not matter much, and their importance grossly over-stated. This is largely because the very freak circumstances in the 1990 election have taken on mythical proportions.

Nonetheless, yesterday both leaders appealed for the preferences of those people intending to vote for One Nation, imagining that it could make all the difference.

But what is the history? Out of 148 seats contested at the last election only seven results were changed because of preferences.
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Apaper seeking comment on defamation law in the ACT is now before the public. In putting the paper, ACT Attorney-General, Gary Humphries lamented that 30 years’ effort by politicians, lawyers and media to agreed on a uniform reformed defamation law reform had come to nought. They have only ever agreed on one thing: the present system is grossly unsatisfactory and should be reformed.

Mr Humphries has rightly identified the core problems: the defamation law is so complex that only the very rich can afford to seek redress against bad journalism and that when they do seek redress the law tends to favour reputation against free speech and public information; that the remedy under present law is large damage awards years after the publication; that the courts have no power to give effect to the preferred remedy which is prompt correction and apology for bad publication. Mr Humphries further highlights another grave defect of the present law: that there is no remedy for breaches of privacy by an overly intrusive media.

It is one thing, however, to state the problem. It is another to get the solution right. Responsible media in Australia would have little problem with a new tort of breach of privacy provided it went hand in hand with significant reform of the defamation law reform. At present only those legally funded or those who are very rich can afford the risk of a defamation action. This is a damnation for media organisations. When the legally funded or very rich sue the courts and the law are invariably weighted in their favour. Invaribaly the media are put to the onus of proving the truth of what they publish. It sounds a reasonable test, but when one considers, for example, that the inquest into the hospital implosion has had 100 days of sitting to find the truth and is no closer than on Day One, it can be easily demonstrated that such a test is a prohibitively expensive lawyers’ field day that achieves very little for publisher or complainant and the costs of which are invariably passed on to the consumers and advertisers of media products.
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In two weeks’ time Australians will go to the polls. A lot has been compacted into the past three weeks of the official campaign and the earlier weeks of unofficial campaigning when the Government parties, with the resources of the Government began the phony campaign with the launch of their tax package.

In the next two weeks the eyes, hearts and brains of the people of Australia are gong to be increasingly focused on the election. People who take little interest in politics will begin to take an interest as the day draws when they must vote. The danger is that in this period isolated incidents which have little to do with the major policy differences between the parties can gain an importance out of all proportion tot heir real substance. Any minor mistake in the days close to polling day unfortunately gets exaggerated importance. Voters should try to avoid allowing them too much influence.

An example appeared this week with a very silly press statement by Labor’s shadow attorney-general Nick Bolkus. The statement attempted to lay a the feet of Prime Minister Howard blame for deaths through heroin overdoses. The argument ran that Mr Howard had cut funding to the Australian Federal Police and Customs who otherwise might have been able to prevent some heroin being imported. It asserted that the extra heroin had flooded the market and lowered the price. It was a very long bow indeed, verging on the absurd.
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One thing became very clear by the end of Sunday night’s debate between Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Kim Beazley: there should be another debate.

At a time of ever shorter sound and vision bites, it has been very difficult for viewers to get a good view of the two leaders. It is an enormous paradox that in the age of electronic broadcasting that fewer voters get a rounded view of their leaders than, perhaps, in the days of the public meeting and extensive press reports of the substance of what was said.

Perhaps only 10 or 20 per cent of voters are interested in a hour’s debate. That should not preclude it. Those 20 per cent probably contain a large proportion of swinging voters in whose hands the election result rests. If the commercial channels do not like the idea of taking a ratings bath, the debate can go to the ABC.
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