Crispin Hull

There will be some unnecessary wringing of hands about this week’s figures that house prices are static or falling. The hand wringing is unnecessary. Lending institutions do not foreclose on existing mortgages provided the repayments are being met, even if the amount owing is a greater percentage of the market value of the asset than would be accepted at an at-scratch mortgage.

It may be in some cases that people are in homes whose market value is less than the mortgage. But once again, there will be no foreclosure provided the payments are being met. In short, no-one is being thrown into the gutter by the reduction in values of houses.

In fact reducing house prices present a considerable benefit and opportunity to many other Australians. Provided interest rates are stable, wages do not go down and employment rates go up, houses will be more affordable. More families will be able to move out of rental and accommodation into their own homes.
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The Carnell Government’s proposal to bring down a three year has merit, but it has risks. It will give business, community groups and government agencies a greater degree of certainty for planning. Some community groups, of course, have already been promised three-year funding. Business will take some comfort in the knowledge that no new imposts will be sprung upon them. The three-year plan will also be a demonstration that the Government is determined to get into genuine fiscal surplus by the end of the three years. The Government will be tested by the benchmark it sets itself, provided, of course, that it does not engage in figure massaging which has been a hallmark of Governments throughout Australia in the past decade.

The lack of government financing standards will result in a fair amount of political dispute about the underlying deficit and level of borrowing, but it appears the ACT has been chewing through reserves at an unsustainable rate and borrowing for recurrent spending.

The three-year proposal will help provide a better framework for the ACT to compete against other states to attract desirable business.
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Officials of the Australian Rugby League may not like it, but the Brisbane and Canberra sides do have the cream of games talent and when they met at the weekend provided as good a spectacle as you are likely to get in the game.

It is a pity that the permutations of the finals series exclude the possibility that they might meet in the grand final.

Perhaps one of the reasons for their success, particularly Canberra’s, has been the geographic base of the teams. It has resulted in a concentrated and heavy following in their home towns.
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When the National Gallery of Australia, with the approval of the then Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, bought Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles for $1.3 million in 1973, the Philistines yelped. Twenty-two years later, even on the Philistines’ own measure … money … it has been a success. It is now worth $30 million … a far better investment than most money-management funds.

Of more importance, though, the possession of Blue Poles is proving to be an entree card for Australia. It has been requested by the New York Museum of Modern Art to be part of a career retrospective on Pollock next year and the Gallery is giving the request serious consideration. The Tate Gallery in London has also sought access.

It means, of course, that if we lend the painting, Australian requests to borrow masterpieces from New York and London will be given more favourable treatment. The purchase of the painting helps put Australia on the world’s art map.
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This week’s ding dong in the arts community has provided a splendid practical illustration of the effect of last year’s High Court’s decision on freedom of communication.

It means you in Readerland get a better idea of what’s going on in the world. The decision has come in for a lot of bucketing. Some _ including journalists, lawyers and the intelligent lay reader _ haven’t yet grasped the large practical difference the decision will make.

On Wednesday, Roger Woodward, an internationally renowned Australian pianist, got stuck into the Australia Council in a speech to the National Press Club. The Australia Council dishes out public money to artists.
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The Budget reveals a shift in grants to non-government community bodies and a greater empahsis on user pays.

Precisely which non-government grant recipients will lose and which will gain is not revealed. Under the let-the-managers-manage approach, it may be left to departments to deal with.

The losers are in the portfolios of arts and heritage (21 per cent or $1.2 million), government schools (38, $320,000), housing (17, $20,000) and conservation (2, $10,000).
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Pledge to live within three-year bottom line. Moving from $44m deficit this year to $21m surplus in three years.

ACTION: Subsidy down $6m. By third year down by $12m a year. Corporatised by July 1.

Payroll tax: Threshold rising to payroll of $800,000 by 1997. Business to benefit by $13.5m.

Tourism: $10m for promotion, including upgrade of information centre and new body called CanTrade.
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ACT residential leaseholders have more secure title to their land than freeholders in some states. Their title is as least as secure as freehold in other states. For practical purposes ACT residential leasehold is perpetual.

The reason is that under ACT law residential lessees have a right to renewal. That is granted by the ACT Land (Planning and Environment) Act (s172). It is subject to the payment of an administrative fee which must not be more than the administrative cost. It is subject also to the lease having less than 30 years to run. It is also subject to the Commonwealth or Territory not needing the land for a public purpose.

The grant of the right to renewal is a property right. It cannot be taken away without payment of just terms or compensation. The guarantee of just compensation lies in the ACT Acquisition Act, the Federal Self-Government Act and perhaps the Federal Constitution.
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I thought of writing to you when the woman in Grace Bros made her third attempt at getting the right box for the champagne glasses. Instead of taking the glasses to the room where the keep the empty boxes, she scurried back and forth selecting a box, unsuccessfully trying to pack the glasses in it, and going back for another try. Fred Hilmer, the oracle of efficiency would be interested in this, I thought. And as the glasses were for a prize for the squash raffle, I thought the IC might as well get a earful, too.

It was my turn to do the raffle … buy the prizes, sell the tickets on squash night, reimburse myself and hand over the profit to the treasurer.

Now you lot think you have turned over every stone in Australian society … culling inefficiency out of state government electricity generation; blowing the chill wind of competition through idle port authorities; rounding up slackness in government hospitals; sticking the needle into cosy lawyers’ and real-estate-agents’ monopolies; scything through unnecessarily detailed regulation … but you ain’t seen nothing as inefficient as raising 50 bucks in a raffle at ACT Masters Squash.
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