Crispin Hull

The Bureau of Statistics would not like being compared to a British tabloid. But there is a similarity.

Both are publishers. Both have very labour-intensive methods of gathering the material they want to publish. I use word “”material” rather than “”facts” because we are talking about a British tabloid.

Further, they both produce in a way that the first copy sold is hellishly expensive but all subsequent copies are dirt cheap.

The Sun with virtually no classified-ads is quite thin compared to an Australian weekend paper, for example, and newsprint is very cheap.
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Students at Menai Primary School take part in an environmental-farming project using computers that link with other schools using Telstra Enhanced Services Keylink that links the schools to the Department of Conservation and Land Management.

It starts with children being told they have inherited a farm near Glenn Innes. The program runs over eight weeks, each fortnight representing a fortnight on the farm. The students have to deal with environmental and management problems that arise.

They upload their results via computer modem over the phone lines to Daniel Low at the department who gives each school regular feedback by downloading comments and results of their actions.
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The ACT Liberal Party has a new director.

She is Dawn Crosby, of Farrer.

Mrs Crosby moved to Canberra six months ago when her husband, Lynton, was appointed deputy federal director of the party.

She said yesterday that it was an advantage to be fresh to Canberra because she could concentrate on organisational matters without being embroiled in policy.
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The framers of copyright law are forever behind technological change. For 30 years or more the law has trailed virtually every major change in technology, usually allowing widespread theft of intellectual property with impunity or with remedies so cumbersome as to be useless. Audio tapes, photocopiers and VCRs were major examples. People copied without paying copyright and for years there was no sensible administrative means whereby they could pay copyright even if they wanted to until the law caught up by imposing tape levies and permitting sampling of educational and government photocopying.

Now another major technological change has happened and those who frame the law are working out what to do. As with previous technological changes, they are aware of the problem, but whether that awareness will be translated into law in the next half decade is another matter.

The technological change is convergence.
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The sharp differences between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition on the republic was making debate on other constitutional issues more difficult, according to the deputy chair of the Constitutional Centenary Foundation, Professor Cheryl Saunders.

She was in Canberra yesterday to launch an ACT chapter of the independent foundation, whose aim is to promote debate on Australian constitutional system.

She said that one of the troubles with constitutional debate in Australia was that it had been monopolised by the politicians. Their input was necessary and desirable, but it should not monopolise debate.

She said also that if the minimalist position on the republic was adopted other constitutional issues could get less prominence.
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Half a century ago a republican in Australia would have been an iconoclast _ someone who tilts at icons.

Now, the iconoclast is someone who tilts at the icon of the coming republic, which is increasingly seen as “”inevitable” and a Good Thing.

Next month will see the publication of a history of the common law, Barbarism to Verdict, by author and barrister Justin Fleming, who in an almost off-hand way joins these latter-day iconoclasts.

“”If a country can itself decide simple to remove royal authority, then it must already have independence, in which case the change of Head of State is a mere formality of no consequence which can in no way change the material quality or spirit of life,” he writes. “”It wouldn’t magically reduce the fantastic excess of prosecutions in a land where life is madly over-governed and lived out under the voracious appetite of almost every authority from parking inspectors to health authorities for court orders and penalties. The fact that there would be no royalty in Australia would not remove Australia’s dire need of a Magna Carta to address an intolerable level of official interference in liberty. The impression that change would be experienced is illusory.”
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They all share a belief in direct democracy and will play a central role at a conference on it on Thursday. The aim is to enable citizens who gather a threshold number of signatures to force a referendum on a law they are proposing or a law they want repealed.

Federally, this may be far-off fantasyland, but not so in the ACT. Some form of direct democracy is very likely very soon. The Liberals are to put a Bill to the next sitting and the Independents are very likely to support it.

Whenever I mention direct democracy I get a scornful reaction, usually along the lines that it will enable the far right to get up lunatic proposals, like castration for rapists, right to carry guns, capital punishment and so on.
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At present copyright subsists in “”works” and copyright is the exclusive right to copy or perform the “”work”. The right includes a right to go to court to stop others copying or performing the work, to deliver up any profits made and damages.

Works are broadly categorised as literary (anything written, not necessarily of literary merit); artistic, musical, photographic and cinematographic. Copyright will also protect three dimensional things in sculpture and architecture.

Notice, there are two essential elements: copying and works.

In the past three decades, copyright law has belatedly dealt with easy copying of records on to audio tape; copying of paper by photocopiers and of film through video tape. More recently it has dealt with copying of computer programs in business, but household piracy is still rampant.
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The longest section in Australia’s Consitution, by far, is Section 15 on replacing dead and resigning senators. It came into the Constitution after a referendum in 1977 when Malcolm Fraser was still trying to prove he was a decent chap after all and would never do what awful Joh did by appointing someone not of the dead senators’ party.

It was passed at a time of unprecedented mistrust of politicians of each other. All t’s had to be crossed and all i’s dotted.

The one section takes up more space than the whole list of powers of the Commonwealth Parliament. It rabbits on attempting to answer all the sceptics’ and politicians’ “”what ifs?”

The section should have read: “”A senator elected as a member of a political party who resigns or dies will be replaced by a person from that party.”
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This is not the same as the American system, where the lawyer takes a percentage of the winnings. Rather it is a no-win, no-fee system. The client does not pay his own lawyer if he loses, but would still be up for the fees of the other side.

The Melbourne firm’s action follows a recommendation in the Access to Justice report that came out in May, but it is not especially new. In Canberra, for example, firms have been quietly doing the right thing by poor clients for decades. It would be fair to say that in personal injuries cases in Canberra, no-one with a reasonable case would be denied legal representation just because they did not have enough money. The trouble is, lawyers have either not trumpeted their good works, or the rules about advertising have prevented them from making the practice more widely known.

The practice varies. Some say they will only charge if they win. Others say they will not require payment until the outcome is known (maybe years later), but clients will be required to pay if they lose. Also, the practice varies on disbursements (doctors’ reports and other out-of-pocket expenses). Barristers, too, often work on a no-win, no-fee basis.
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