Crispin Hull

Two independents and the Leader of the Opposition, Kate Carnell, issued yesterday a joint statement calling for the immediate release of the report by Professor Dennis Pearce into the Vitab affair.

“”We are concenred that you have permitted your staff or senior bureaucrats to selectively leak information to the media about Professor Pearce’s findings,” they said.

The inquiry was publicly funded and the people of Canberra are entitled to its early release.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_vitab07”

At the heart of the VITAB affair is a question. Was this proposal a genuine foray into the Asian betting market by ACTTAB after receiving a proposal from a company that had secured a betting licence in Vanuatu? Or was the VITAB proposal totally underwritten by a couple of Australian syndicates of big smart punters sick of having to beat the 15 per cent government take before it can make a profit? Why not go off-shore where the government take and overhead costs are lower and the returns higher?

Pearce shows ACTTAB was naive, too enthusiastic and starry-eyed at the presence of the Great Punter Bob Hawke. He shows, too, that the VITAB directors were smart in insisting on a confidentiality agreement which would cut off some of its and the department’s avenues of inquiry.

But why did they fall for it? Because they were bureaucratic babes in a commercial wood. Why did VITAB go for it? Because the prize was big: access to wealth generated by government monopoly and prohibition that would not otherwise be there.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_compearc”

After years of fighting in the courts and paying lawyers millions of dollars, Microsoft and Stac have agreed to kiss and make up.

The story so far: Stac Electronics clever programmers worked out a way to get a personal computer to shrink files to less than half their size for storage on the hard disk and explode them to normal on use. This included program files.

It meant that with this program people could store twice as much on their hard disk, thus postponing the expensive day of replacing the hard-disk with a bigger on.

Microsoft thought it was so good that it ought to have such a program on its next version of DOS to give users an extra reason to upgrade. For many people the program was the only reason to upgrade. A new version of DOS at $99 is cheaper than a new hard disk at $400.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_upgrad27”

The opposition to the ugly mobile-phone telecommunications towers continues. Now Queanbeyan Council is seeking legal advice about what can be done to make the telecommunications companies less gung-ho.

After Canberra protests about the towers, Planning Minister Bill Wood approached the Federal Government to see what could be done. It was generally thought that nothing could be done because Commonwealth telecommunications law broadly said that the companies could put their towers where they liked irrespective of territory or state planning law.

However, the ACT unlike anywhere else in Australia has some Commonwealth Planning law called the Australian Capital Territory Planning and Land Management Act. This sets up the National Capital Planning Authority which has drawn up a plan which has been approved by Parliament and has the force of law.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_comp20”

Banasonic has launched a gadget to display three-dimensional things on a video screen. It is good for displaying small items of medical apparatus, electronic gadgets, tools or any product at all to large audiences. It has the advantage over displaying photographic images of an item because you can move your product around during your presentation.

You can swing the unit’s cameras around to take images off the wall. ($6399 02 9867569).

The information super-highway is like the Holy Roman Empire, which was described as not being an empire, hardly at all Roman and certainly not holy.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_upgrad20”

The Opposition accused the Government of presenting an election Budget and doing nothing to reduce over-spending in areas noted by the Grants Commission.

It said the deficit was really $64 million, to be funded by reserves $28 million and borrowings of $36 million. The Government was now committed to borrow $212 million over five years.

Revenue was up $11 million this financial year, though the Government had said it would fall.

The Opposition finance spokesman, Trevor Kaine, said the program of 2 per cent across the board “”efficiencies” had been mindless. It was better to target cuts.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_comment”

I AM glad that lawyer Jack Pappas has volunteered to break my arm and watch “”bear the pain and suffering like a man”, because it gives me a chance to revisit the third-party motor insurance debate.

For a change, I was basically supportive of the Law Society’s position that it would be a mistake to replace common-law damages with a capped, part-administrative scheme as in many states. Such schemes invariably are worse for the catastrophically injured, especially those on medium and high incomes with families to support (yes, they have rights, too).

Something has to give in the third-party equation. The reserves will be chewed up soon, so either premiums will have to rise, or benefits fall. Politicians, being politicians, will avoid inflicting broad-based pain like increased premiums when they can inflict pian on a disparate, nebulous group like those who might be injured in future car accidents.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_column28jun”

An upfront, precise fee for legal advice is brought to us by Telecom.

Many people are too scared to walk in to a solicitors’ office because they do not know how much it will cost them and they are too afraid to ask.

Perhaps lawyers, like restaurants, should be compelled to put their menus on the window outside their offices: Conveyancing (buyer) $820; Conveyancing (seller) $540; Wills $140; Divorce (no kids or property) $670; Divorce (full-scale brawl) $56,000, plus your house. And so on.

In its absence Telecom has announced a service called InfoCall. Service providers (including lawyers) can provide recorded or live information service.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_upgrad13”

The 34 telecommunications towers planned for Canberra, mainly on the hills, will now not go ahead without going through full-scale planning procedures, including community consultation and the possibility of ministerial or parliamentary disallowance.

The Minister for Housing and Regional Development, Brian Howe, said yesterday that he had received legal advice through the National Capital Planning Authority that any major expansion of the telecommunications network in the ACT was subject to the National Capital Plan which required a plan to be worked out by the NCPA and ACT Governments in consultation with the telecommunications industry.

The NCPA had advised it would move quickly to do this and that the plan would provide the basis for the consideration of future towers.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_towers”

Every now and then I am blessed with a harmless reminder that I am not destined to win anything substantial at gambling. More out of social duty than anything else I put my name in for a $5 sweep for the World Cup. And drew Saudi Arabia.

In Melbourne Cup sweeps my horse never wins. Indeed, it never even comes last, because there is often a booby prize for the last horse. Mine comes second last.

So I am lucky, very lucky indeed. My reminders are very cheap. Others who win every now and then get what they describe as a euphoria and a odd feeling that somehow they have contributed to the win or been clever or artful. They like that feeling so they gamble again until they lose.

However, some people always win at gambling. These people are called the government. Last week’s ACT Budget figures revealed the startling extent to which Canberrans gamble and that about 10 per cent of ACT tax comes from it.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_column21jun”