Crispin Hull

Mad as he is, there was a cool logic in the demand by the Unabomber to have his 35,000-word manifesto in The Washington Post and the New York Times .

It has been described as a diatribe against industrial society. It is now available on the Internet. The Unabomber … as the FBI have named him … could have put it on the Internet himself and made it available to 30 million people, but it might have led to his discovery. Even so, it would not have been as satisfactory as getting it in The Washington Post and The New York Times. This is because there is a stamp of authority about these papers.

That authority in this instance was somewhat diluted by the fact that the papers were under some duress to publish. The Unabomber has killed half a dozen people … mostly scientists and industrialists with elaborate home-made bombs in the past decade. The duress arose because the Unabomber had agreed to stop his bombing campaign against people (but not property) if they did publish and continue it if they did not. None the less, the papers could still have refused.
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The Leader of the Opposition, Michael Moore, has picked the key political weakness in the Budget … some fudging with education figures. He has played on it on the air waves and in the press. He will extract the maximum political advantage out of it so that come next election he will be able to tell a key component of his constituency that he delivered.

Like Lloyd George he is a leader without a party. Sorry, did I write “”Leader of the Opposition, Michael Moore”? I meant, of course, to write Independent Michael Moore. How did I make such a silly mistake?

On ABC Radio this morning, when backbenchers were each given a two-minute free kick, there were no Labor Members. A Green talked about vivisection (more interested in animal cuts than Budget cuts) and Paul Osborne … need I tell you … congratulated the two footfall teams on their heroic failures last weekend. Neither can be treated seriously.
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John Gorton thought he was on a winner. In 1970 he announced the abolition the accursed land rent, just before a Canberra by-election.

Under the then ACT leasehold system each leaseholder was required to pay 5 per cent of unimproved value of their lease every year in rent to the Government.

Imagine having to pay $3500 a year for the average block now in addition to having paid for the lease in the first place.
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The Federal Opposition will announce shortly before the election the removal of all impediments to ACT land-holders getting freehold land to replace leasehold.

Informed sources close to the Liberal Party said the announcement would be made close to the election in order to boost the chances of Liberal Brendan Smyth retaining the seat of Canberra which he won in the by-election in March when Ros Kelly resigned.

Just before the 1970 Canberra by-election Prime Minister John Gorton abolished the annual land rent that went with leasehold for all Canberra residential leases. It was a popular move, but Labor won the by-election.
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Opposition Leader John Howard could not resist capitalising on the anger of Sydney residents over aircraft noise. But any gains he has made in Sydney with a specific promise on the runway will have to be weighed against losses elsewhere caused by the Government painting it as blatant cynicism and inconsistency. Mr Howard says that the east-west runway should be reopened to share the noise around and that, until it is, he will block the Government’s plan to privatise Sydney Airport.

The Government seized on the comments. It is one of very few Opposition policies that the Government has been able to get its hands on. It dragged out comments by Mr Howard from previous years urging the construction of the third runway because the east-west runway was unsafe. It pointed to the inconsistency in Mr Howard … a noted proponent of privatisation … being willing to forsake privatisation for the sake of some votes in Sydney. In Mr Howard’s defence, it is one thing to say it is unsafe to have a two-runway airport where one runway is essentially cross-wind and large jets use both and quite another to assert that it is unsafe to open a third cross-wind runway for smaller aircraft in an essentially two-parallel-runway airport. Further, the coalition not said privatisation at any cost. It has usually put its privatisation push in a public-interest context … something Mr Howard is attempting here.
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Under ABC television’s proposed new current affairs and news regime, the people of the ACT will continue to get four cents a day’s worth while everyone else in Australia is getting the full eight cents. We get good radio, but ABC television’s service is a disgrace.

It was announced this week that the 7.30 Report would go national with input from all states and the Northern Territory and that each state and the Northern Territory would get a new weekly current affairs program. There would be three new regional offices.

Unlike every other state and territory, the ACT is not to have its own television new or current affairs. It is not good enough. The ABC should realise that Canberra is not just the House on the Hill or a suburb of Sydney. It has its own elected government which affects the lives of people who live here and in the immediate region just as profoundly as the Tasmanian or Northern Territory Governments affect the lives of their citizens. That many people in Canberra are dissatisfied with the system of ACT government is the more reason for a stronger media presence.
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Many suburban shopping centres in Canberra are in crisis. It is too easy to say that re-regulation is the answer. It may well be true that when shopping hours were more stringently regulated, the suburban shops had a more prosperous time. In particular, the local supermarkets which stayed open late attracted more business because the large supermarkets were not permitted to open all hours, either because of union-imposed labour restrictions or because of regulation about what things could be sold when. Nowadays the large supermarkets stay open 24 hours or close to it. The competitive advantage of the local supermarket of being open longer was lost. And as the larger supermarkets have a price advantage gained through economies of scale, the small supermarket has only one or two advantages left … the convenience of geographic closeness and perhaps intimacy of service and size. They have not been enough in a lot of Canberra local shopping centres.

However, the 24-hour large supermarket did not arise only because of de-regulation. There were other factors: mixed families; two working parents; greater mobility; more shift workers; societal demands for more goods and services to be available over greater time spreads.

The 24-hour supermarkets have been very convenient for these mobile, working families. But the cost is now coming through. Small business is suffering and people who are not mobile are inconvenienced. Older people, people on lower incomes and others who rely on public transport cannot easily go to bigger centres to shop at the larger super-markets.
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Canberra Rugby League chief executive Kevin Neil has every right to be suspicious of the selection of the 25-man squad picked by Australian Rugby League selectors for next month’s World Cup in England.

The facts speak for themselves. Not one player who has signed up for the Super League was selected. Nor was any of the five star Canberra players who took the ARL to the NSW Industrial Court last week and won a ruling that they must been considered in the selection process. Nor was any Super League signee from the premiership Bulldogs side, yet all four ARL faithful in that side were.

The conclusion is obvious. Selection was made on allegiance, not merit. This selection was done in bad faith. It was a selection done by the dinosaurs of the ARL to stave off the onset of the effect of the meteoric Super League and the mammalian teams who will inevitably inherit the game when the Super League goes on to the world’s pastures.
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Once again, the Federal Government’s communications policy is shown to be fundamentally unsound. Last week’s announcements on televisions news services will result in less diversity, less competition and less public broadcasting.

It was revealed that Kerry Packer Nine Network and Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB would join forced to produce a 24-hour television news service for pay-television operators. The Seven Network has been asked to join as an equal partner. The joint venture has already signed up Australia’s two major cable operators … Optus Vision and, not surprisingly, Foxtel. Foxtel is jointly owned by Mr Murdoch’s News Limited and Telstra. Mr Murdoch also owns 14.9 per cent of Seven. Galaxy … the other major pay TV operator is also to be offered the 24-hour news service.

It means that the public broadcaster, the ABC, has no means of delivering its 24-hour news service which it was developing with Fairfax.
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The grand vision and concept of the Museum of Australia is suffering the death of a thousand cuts. The vision was for some low-level buildings in a very large natural setting that would reflect key features of the Australian experience. It was a vision that reflected the history, culture and aspiration of both Aboriginal Australians and those that came later.

Those that had the vision saw Yarramundi Reach as the place to fulfil it. That was in the 1970s. In 1980 the first major step to fulfilment was taken with the passing of the Museum of Australia Bill. Labor MP Barry Cohen, then in Opposition, presumably was speaking for his party when he told Parliament, “”We would like an assurance that the passage of the Bill will not just allow a great fanfare of publicity, followed after the election by the project being quietly shelved.” His suspicion was directed at the wrong side of the House.
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