Crispin Hull

On Thursday evening I did a phone interview from London with Edward de Bono after reading his new book, Parallel Thinking.

I am now fairly sure that we have to be wary of gurus.

They can come in with some new method of thinking, some panacea, some way of changing previous thought patterns and society can get into all sorts of strife. They can be dogmatic and destructive.

The trouble is their ideas can be addictive, especially to the young and gullible and thing can catch on. Before you know where you are you have thousands of adherents, indeed whole nations and political systems based on the new method of thinking.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_bono”

The new third ACT Federal electorate is to be called Namadgi, the ACT redistribution committee proposed yesterday.

The seat will take in the whole of Tuggeranong, the Woden suburbs of Chifley, Farrer, Isaacs, Mawson, Pearce and Torrens and rural ACT to the south.

Canberra became entitled to a third seat shortly after the last election. It went into the election with the two largest federal seats, Canberra and Fraser. Fraser remains the northern seat. Canberra is now the central seat.

Fraser embraces the whole of Belconnen, Gungahlin, Hall and Jervis Bay.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_seats”

After several years of promises (from both sides) and trials, the Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, committed the Government to introducing Budget has agreed to introduce weekly garbage collections with 160 litre wheeled plastic garbage bins and a further fortnightly collection of recyclables in a 180-litre bin.

Trial began in Kaleen more than a year ago and then in two more suburbs.

Under the new system residents will be able to put clean paper and cardboard, glass and PET plastic into the recycling bin and their other garbage in the weekly collection.

Contracts for the bins are in the process of being let.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_bins”

Either the ACT Government is badly advised, or it does not have any imagination or it is behaving artfully artful. Or perhaps all three.

The Deputy Chief Minister, David Lamont, said he had to dismiss the ACT TAB board immediately because of what was in the Pearce report into Vitab.

He got legal advice saying he could do this.

An exchange of letters received by The Canberra Times, however, reveals that he did not let the board members could not take away a copy of the report to discuss with their lawyers.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_sackcomm”

Corporate Australia is expanding too quickly. There are now 800,000 companies in Australia and the Australian Securities Commission has to keep tabs on all of them.

Its computer, an IBM MVS-based mainframe housed in the Attorney-General’s Department’s Belconnen computer section, is expected to run out of capacity in June, 1995. The ASC had projected this more than a year ago and continued its lease on the equipment till then. It thought it would be a good opportunity to move to open systems.

With open systems you do not pay a huge software fee for the operating system, but you do pay more for the dozens of different applications that are used on the terminals that hang off it. Hardware maintenance costs are also far cheaper because it is an open system and anyone’s hardware can hang off it, so you get the benefit of competition.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_asc”

The Budget missed an opportunity to curb the drain on public money to land speculation, according to the Canberra Conservation Council.

Its president, Jacqui Rees, said yesterday that the Budget should have abolished the 50 per cent concessional rate of betterment tax for residential redevelopment.

It should have corrected the anomaly that some dual and multi-occupancies where the title is not divided pay only one set of rates for two or more sets of services.

“”The ACT cannot afford this extravagance when basic public services are being run down for lack of funds,” she said.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_reesbud”

The monumental gave way to projects with “”humility and humanity” in this year’s prestigious Royal Australian Institute of Architects (ACT chapter) awards announced last night.

The three Canberra medallions went to the Therapeutic Goods Administration building near Mount Mugga, the Ainslie Village redevelopment, and the Ainslie Fire station. All were designed by Canberra firms: Australian Construction Services; Collard Clarke Jackson; Mitchell Giurgola Thorpe, respectively.

Certificates of merit went to the Tuggeranong Pool and Recreation Centre (Daryl Jackson Alastair Swayn) and the Weston Creek Retirement Village (Freeman Collett).
Continue reading “1994_06_june_archnews”

The voluntary redundancy program in the ACT Government Service is to be nearly three times the size predicted this time last year.

The main reason is that many more people opted for redundancies last year than there were funds to accommodate them and so there will be a spill-over.

In the past financial year about 482 took up redundancy averaging $36,000 each with a total cost of $17.2 million. Only $6 million was projected this year and now the Budget has increased this to $17 million. About 430 people are expected to take the option averaging $40,000 each.
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Architecture in Canberra is coming to the people; or the people are coming to it.

For 80 years Canberra has been a city for architects. It was designed by one and is a place where other architects could place the monuments and symbols of the nation. It is still the city of architectural symbols of nationhood, but now the ordinary people who live here are the inheritors of an architectural standard not available, perhaps, in any other city in the world of comparable size.

That was epitomised on Friday night when an architectural firm, now with a home in Canberra and responsible for the design of the nation’s most important symbol of democracy (Parliament House) won an award.

The award was for the design of . . . wait for it . . . the refurbishment of the Ainslie Fire Station.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_archfeat”

The association said yesterday that all ratepayers received the same services so the cost should be the same. The only variation should be to reward conservation, as with the new water charges.

The president of the association, Peter Jansen, said, “”By and large the lower-income households are concentrated in the inner areas, yet the government is hitting them the hardest because land values in these areas are rising faster.”

The Government should look at other ways of charging. In parts of Queensland, for example, people paid rates according to the value at the time of purchase. Eurobodalla charged a flat rate for everyone based on a $65,000 unimproved value and added a small amount for values beyond that.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_ratescam”