Crispin Hull

The ACT Government should not go ahead with the legislation for separate public service in its present form, an Assembly committee said yesterday.

It should also abandon its July 1 deadline and seek more consultation with those affected.

It said the witnesses it had heard made it clear that to go ahead would be “”ill-advised”.

The committee, in a majority report, said the Government should also drop its plans to embrace ACT Electricity and Water from the centralised service and should look at changes to increase the independence of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Legal Aid Commission. It should also have separate whistle-blower legislation with wider coverage.
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The design study has come up with about 20 major concepts for the Central National Area.

1. The completion of the Russell corner. It would be a new gateway as the entry point from Sydney, Melbourne and the airport. And would be an exchange with bus and rail terminal.

2. Constitution Avenue would be a high street, an avenue of commerce and apartments.

3. An indigenous park between Kings Avenue and Commonwealth park, contrasting with the formal Commonwealth Park.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_points”

Australians are to be asked what to they want from their capital under a project launched yesterday by the National Capital Planning Authority.

The authority says it is “”time to reassess the vision of Canberra to take the National Capital into the next century.

That would be done through the central national area design study, the acting chief executive of the NCPA, Gary Prattley, said yesterday.

It would be the third major vision step in the continuous development of the capital. The first was the gazettal of the Griffin Plan in 1925 and the second of was the adoption of the Holford Plan in 1958.
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The old rules said that the telecommunications companies could ignore “”state and territory” planning laws, which meant they could build mobile-phone towers wherever they wanted in any state or the Northern Territory, but not the ACT.

The ACT is unique in Australia because it contains the National Capital and has Commonwealth planning laws. A Federal Act of Parliament called the Australian Capital Territory (Planning and Land Management) Act puts in train the National Capital Plan which has the force of law, and because it is specific over-rides the general telecommunications provisions. The National Capital Plan requires that before major telecommunications facilities can be built in the ACT a plan must be drawn up by the National Capital Planning Authority jointly with the ACT Government and the in consultation with telecommunications industry.

That process is now in train. The ACT Minister for Planning, Bill Wood, met senior telecommunications executives a week ago to set the process in motion.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_addtele”

The Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, reopened the way for Wayne Berry to return to the Ministry after the next election yesterday, following the tabling of the Pearce report into the Vitab affair.

The report put the bulk of the blame over the Vitab affair on the ACT TAB, and the ACT Government has responded by ordering a Cabinet process for future important decisions by statutory authorities.

Professor Pearce found that the then Sports Minister, Wayne Berry, his advisers and TAB and department officers had all acted in good faith.

He also found that the involvement of former Prime Minister Bob Hawke in VITAB had made ACTTAB feel less need to check out the VITAB principals.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_pearce”

The ACT TAB would be barred from a link with NSW unless it met several conditions, the NSW Minister for Sport, Chris Downy, said yesterday.

“”Any prospect of a link between ACTTAB and NSW is simply not on at this stage,” he said.

The ACT would have to met at least four conditions: to demonstrate that all link with the controversial Vanuatu-based VITAB were severed; controls to ensure ACTTAB did not induce NSW punters away from the NSW TAB; to ensure the interests of surrounding NSW race clubs were protected; and to ensure controls were in place to protect the integrity of the NSW computer system.

The ACT Minister for Sport, David Lamont, said he would met Mr Downy on Tuesday and he was sure the remaining issues could be sorted out and a NSW link put in place.

Mr Downy was responsibly looking after the interests of NSW punters, “”just as I am looking after the interests of ACT punters”.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_nswtab”

The separate ACT Government Service will come into effect on July 1 after legislation was passed in a special sitting of the ACT Legislative Assembly last night.

The special sitting dealt with some 250 amendments to the original Bill. A move by the Opposition to postpone the Bill for more consideration was defeated when the Independents voted with the Government.

The Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, said extra rights and equity would be granted to 14,000 ACT public-sector employees who to date had not been given the status of “”officer” in the Commonwealth service.

The new Act brings virtually all public-sector employees into the service as “”officers”, unlike the Commonwealth which excluded many blue-collar employees and employees in business enterprises.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_actps”

The ACT TAB would go it alone and if necessary undercut other TABs if it could not get a link with NSW, the Minister for Sport, David Lamont, said yesterday.

Mr Lamont was reporting on discussions he had the day before with the NSW Minister for Sport, Chris Downy, and responding to a press statement put out by Mr Downy headed “”NSW TAB door stays shut”.

Mr Lamont said it would be best for the ACT, NSW and the racing industry in both places if a pooling arrangement could be established following Victoria giving notice to the ACT that the ACT could no longer share in its TAB pool which is also linked with South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_nswtab23”

The ACT is the big loser from the VITAB affair, as the statements from the NSW Minister for Sport, Chris Downy, yesterday and last week show.

It shows that the NSW TAB has the ACT over the barrel. It can drive a very hard bargain because the ACT has nowhere else to turn.

The ACT must severe the VITAB link, leaving it open to a claim for damages or ugly retrospective legislation. It is already open to a damages claim from former ACTATB chief executive Philip Neck.

The NSW action shows also how concerned NSW is to cut off any possibility of an off-shore leak of clients of the Australian TAB monopoly, after all VITAB presented a golden opportunity for big NSW punters to use Asian agents to bet through the Vanuatu-based VITAB and get better returns because VITAB’s overheads and government taxes and levies come to about seven per cent of turnover, whereas the Australian equivalent is 15 per cent. The TAB computers would not show the returns in dividends, which would be the same as everywhere else, but they can be paid in other ways.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_nswcomm”