Crispin Hull

The saga over the Government’s attempt to deal with the loss-making Australian National Line is a vignette of the wider sorry picture of industrial life in Australia. The Government had planned to sell ANL to the British-based shipping company P&O, but announced last week that it would retain it in public ownership until it had been restructured and turned into a viable commercial enterprise.

The decision will temporarily head off strife with the waterfront unions, the main stumbling block to a sale. The unions had threatened strikes unless it got guarantees on Australian crews, jobs and conditions.

Treasurer Ralph Willis says it is difficult to sell a enterprise that is making losses and has high debt. Wrong. Such enterprises can be sold if the buyer sees potential in them. But there will never be potential in ANL or any Australian-based shipping line while the mill-stone of expensive, inefficient, unjustifiable union-enforced work practices remain.
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Northern Ireland moved closer to a state of permanent peace last week. The catalyst was the visit of US President Bill Clinton. It was not that Mr Clinton himself did anything. Rather the thought of him just being there was enough to garner the British and Irish Prime Ministers to move the peace process one step … any step … further. The exact nature of the step was of much less importance than the fact it was taken. It means that the peace-seekers have obtained a little more of the most precious element in achieving lasting peace in Northern Ireland … time.

After 25 years of bloodshed, it is a difficult task to change a society from a state of virtual war. In that time enormous suspicion, fear and hatred can build up. The underlying causes of the violence … economic discrimination against minority Catholics, especially in low socio-economic groups … remains as a significant fear even if less as a reality. Further, in the 25 years of violence, many people have a vested interest in the status quo. Some make their living from the abnormally violent society, whether they are glaziers, counsellors, funeral directors or weapons brokers or power-brokers in the para-military organisations on both sides. There are many with a keen interest in continued violence; whereas those who dearly want peace are sceptical or at best luke-warm in support of the various proposals put forward to achieve it.
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One cannot imagine him giving up his role as public speaker on a wide range of topics, yet many of us expect our judges to be silent ciphers of a mystical law written in stone tablets in the sky that only those versed in the law are permitted to read.

We do not have a free-speech ethos in Australia. We are shocked when the Governor-General says something other than obvious platitudes. We do not like our judges saying things out of court and conversely judges do not say things out of court, except rarely.

Only recently have doctors and lawyers, for example, come out of their silly “”professional” rules of not being named in public comment. We have an Australian ethos of “”It’s not for me to say”.
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The unexpressed third role of the High Court is becoming more important. Justice Michael Kirby’s appointment can only reinforce it. The text books and the words of the Constitution tell us that the High Court has two roles: to interpret the Constitution and to be the highest court of appeal in the land.

The former usually requires arbitration between the Commonwealth and the states; the latter between citizens of Australia.

In the first 25 years of federation, the court gave the states supremacy, arguing that they had reserve rights to which the Commonwealth must bow. This was the states rights phase of the High Court.
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Will they never let up? The extreme sides of the planning debate have both launched such intemperate attacks on the Stein report that they leave themselves open for intemperate replies.

Paul Whalan, former Labor Deputy Chief Minister and now a BMW-driving convert to developer-driven capitalism, referred to the report as the “”stain” report. (Converts proselytise far more vociferously than originals). He said “”you will find quite a strong Marxist flavour running right through it”. I can hear the rumblings at Highgate cemetery from here.

Whalan would like to see freehold land, fewer planning controls, and less or no betterment tax for developers wanting to put up higher density housing or convert to commercial leases. Noel Mc Cann, a property valuer, said he preferred Stein Lager rather than Stein logic.
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The popular view was that Howard did not want Paul Keating to do what he did with John Hewson’s very detailed Fightback policy … use it as sustenance for a successful negative campaign. The theory was that denied a specific target, Keating would have nothing to shoot down. However, Keating has now used the absence of a target as the target itself.

Initially, Howard’s strategy appeared to be sensible and working until the past month or so. Then Keating’s attacks that the Opposition lacks policies started to bite, more in polls on preferred Prime Minister than on overall party preference.

This slight change in public opinion about leaders (but not parties) has resulted in much commentary that the Keating demolition magic is beginning to work on Howard as it has worked on John Hewson and Alexander Downer. Much of that commentary suggested that Howard has blundered and fallen into a Keating trap. But there has been no trap. It is just that Keating is a masterful opportunist. It would not matter what Howard did, Keating would seize upon some aspect of it and make bricks out of straw. In this case he has made an issue out of no issues. You have to admire the resourcefulness.
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The award of $32 million to actor Jon Blake last week reveals again some of the defects in the systems of compensating people for traffic-accident injuries in Australia.

Blake was made a quadriplegic in December 1986 when he crashed after swerving to miss a car parked on the wrong side of the road with its lights off near Port Augusta. The judge awarded him $29 million for future economic loss.

There’s a fistful of defects. First, it has taken nine years for the case to be decided and there will be further delay pending appeals. Second, the accident happened in South Australia, yet the case was decided in NSW. Third, this is a huge amount of money … well beyond the costs of nursing a quadriplegic for life. Fourth, compensation was in a lump.
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The fall-out from last week’s decision by the Court of Disputed Returns in Queensland to order a by-election in the seat of Mundingburra illustrates that the Executive has too much power over the electoral process.

The court declared invalid the 16-vote win by Labor Ken Davies at the general election earlier in the year, but it had no power to set the date for the by-election. That power is in the hands of Queensland Premier Wayne Goss, and he is expected to exercise it today.

In theory, he will select a date purely on the basis of convenience for the people of the electorate and to give fairness all round. But there was nothing to stop him letting the looming federal election influence his decision. Nor was there anything to stop him telling the Labor candidate of the date in advance of the public announcement, thereby giving him an advantage.
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The issuing last week of the All Indicators Index by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed a weak economy and that the Government would have to get the election over before the next quarter’s figure on March 20. But I know differently, and I’ll tell you why later.

One would have thought the markets would have taken a much greater dive once the All Inds figure was published, but the markets had “”factored in” a bad result. The real test of these sorts of figures is not their actual level, but whether or not they are greater or lower than market expectations. Last week’s 5.4 figure, for example, was within market expectations of, say, 5.2 to 5.8. The bureau was thinking of putting out an All Inds Market Expectation Index, but abandoned the idea after having trouble getting raw data.

The All Inds, like most indicators, has been seasonally adjusted to take account of Christmas spending, school-leavers, end-of-financial-year hiatuses and the like. But the bureau is now worried that some of the seasonal factors change with intensity from year to year and so from next quarter the seasonal adjustment is to be adjusted.
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Blocklines: 1. The residential freeway through inner Canberra that later NCDC designers would have avoided. 2. Kaleen . . . residents blessed with no direct traffic thoroughfare.

Subsequent bureaucrats have been damned for messing up the Burley Griffin plan. But Saint Walter was not infallible. He did not have the planning solution for everything in Canberra. Indeed his design has created some problems.

The subsequent bureaucrats did mess up the Triangle and cut the city from the lake with the ghastly Parkes Way, but they also created two special features of Canberra … the town centres and the clustered suburb. Both have reduced the blight of the car that has wrecked other cities.
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