Crispin Hull

ABOUT 10 pages in the middle of the S volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica in our school library were well-worn from much reading. When you closed the volume the tattered edges of those pages formed a thin brown line. The pages were, of course, the entries on sex. Teenagers will be teenagers. The librarian could hardly dismember (literally) the S volume after ruling that damaging books was a capital crime. Nor could he remove the whole volume, lest someone had an assignment on Scotland.

And that was before photocopiers would have made censorship attempts even more hopeless. Nowadays we not only have copiers, but the Net. There has been a fair amount of fear and loathing recently that teenagers will use the Net to get all sorts of smut. And the usual range of vote-trawling, knee-jerking politicians have demanded it stop.
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A gathering in Melbourne at the weekend gave tribute to Sir Anthony Mason’s eight years as Chief Justice of the High Court.

Mason and the majority of judges who have sided with him have come under a lot of public criticism, mainly from conservatives. They have accused the court of “”radical”, “”dangerously activist” things … like imply into the Constitution rights to freedom of speech; extract a principle of native title seemingly from thin air; require a right to legal representation; abolish centuries-old principles of property law; wipe out nine decade of Australian jurisprudence on free trade; and allow foreign treaties to govern Australian life. Tut, tut.

The detail may be new, but the broad approach is not. It is what much of the judiciary has done for a lot of the time. The approach has a long pedigree.
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I rather enjoyed Paul Keating’s speech in Parliament last week getting stuck into the Marks royal commission.

Before his speech it was not possible to write in this paper certain things without being cited for contempt. (The Canberra Times has a slight circulation in Western Australia.)

Now, as part of a commentary and reportage of parliamentary proceedings … which are protected … I can write that I agree with Keating’s summary that the commission is just a political witchhunt devised by a politician to destroy the career of another politician. But last week I could not write what Keating had said off my own bat. Silly isn’t it. It gets sillier.
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The commission also published its estimate of the two-party-preferred vote in the three ACT seats following the redistribution, based on the 1993 result, not the by-election vote, which the commission ignores for redistribution assessments.

Namadgi is 60.79 per cent ALP and 39.21 per cent Liberal; Fraser is 62.06-37.94 and Canberra is 60.81-39.19. In 1993 the figures were: Fraser 62.81-37.19 and Canberra 59.56-40.44. The ACT total in both cases is 61.19-38.81.
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President Bill Clinton’s pledge to veto the lifting of the arms embargo against the Muslin Bosnians typifies his whole policy over the former Yugoslavia: ill-judged, ineffectual and too late.

He has constantly vacillated while making bold statements, with the result that all parties (the Bosnian, Serbs, Muslims, his NATO allies and even the UN) have come to regard any constructive US role as hopeless.

The latest pledge is in the face of a 298-128 vote in the House and a 69-29 vote in the Senate _ both large enough to override a veto should Mr Clinton be silly enough to go ahead with it _ requiring Mr Clinton to end US support for the embargo after the withdrawal of the UN force or within 12 weeks of a request from the Bosnian Government, whichever comes first.
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The new draft code of ethics for journalists issued this week by a committee appointed by the Media, Arts and Entertainment has recognized the uncertainties of journalism and the need for judgment and assessment of degrees. It recognizes the grey areas and eschews absolutes. It talks of journalists “”striving” for accuracy; “”making efforts to” ensure people get a right of reply; that they should “”guard against” commercial considerations; “”aim to” attribute information to its source; ”exercise particular care for” the welfare of children.

The existing code, on the other hand, is prescriptive. It says journalists “”shall not” allow commercial considerations to influence them; “”shall” respect private grief and “”in all circumstances” respect all confidences.

The new approach is fine as a statement of high principle, but without strong, independent enforcement of principle rather than technicality, it could fail.
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There seems little point in an inquiry in whether the shop doors should be closed now the issue has well and truly bolted. Shops all pover the ACT have been selling the full range of goods and services at all hours for years. This is despite the fact it is against the law … a law that came into force in the 1960s with a 1960s maximum penalty of $200.

That law restricts the sorts of goods that can be sold outside six to six Monday to Thursday, six to nine on Friday and nine to noon Saturday. Nineteen categories of items can be sold outside hours, inclusing food, hardware and motoring items. But department stores and others routinely sell everything outside hours. The ACT community is clearly not suffering as a result of these breaches of the law. To the contrary people appear to enjoy full-range shopping over more hours.

What will an inquiry achieve? A number of groups with selfish interests will propose tightening up which will lessen competition and reduce choice of hours for consumers.
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The Commonwealth Bank should be suitably chastised by its retreat on increased banks fees. The rudeness of the rises was compounded by the cheek of the timing _ just after the Prices Surveillance Authority had handed in its report.

The Government has been quite right to hold the sword of regulation over the heads of the banks if they do not behave with some social conscience over small account-holders.

Economic rationalists and free marketeers have argued that the banks have a right to charge so that each service is fully paid for by customers. That may be a reasonable argument if banking in Australia was solely driven by market forces like, say, confectionery or used cars. It is not. The Federal Government gives an unwritten guarantee that none of the big five banks will go under.
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The state of the Australian National Line neatly illustrates several of the worse aspects of policy and administration by this Federal Government: failure to stand up to union power; paying Labor mates large amounts of money for consultancies; selling the national silver to meet profligate recurrent spending; dithering and postponing hard decisions if it faces any public backlash.

Having for years not stood up to the Australian Maritime Union, the Government has allowed ANL to become hopelessly uneconomic. It could hardly give it away. It then appointed former NSW Premier Neville Wran for a fee running to hundreds of thousands of dollars to work out what to do. It has now postponed any decision on whether to sell ANL because it fears maritime unions will strike, sending export and import industries into chaos and causing public disquiet a short time before an election.
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Government is not a business; if it were there would be no need for it. It is important for government not to be profligate, to run efficiently and to be innovative, but there is a broader public interest which overrides all that the public service does which of its nature results in “”inefficiencies” that the private sector would not tolerate. That public interest is hard to define, but it includes things like fairness, equity and diligent accounting for public funds.

The new head of the ACT Public Service, John Walker, in a speech this week gave such emphasis to the private-sector corporate ethos that there might be a danger that the overriding public interest might be overlooked.
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