Crispin Hull

Better screening of existing telecommunications towers and avoidance of silhouetted towers on major view corridors are likely to be the result of bringing telecommunications structures within planning laws, according to Planning Minister Bill Wood.

Mr Wood said after a meeting yesterday with the National Capital Planning Authority and senior representatives of Telecom, Optus and Vodafone (the three mobile phone carriers); “”I’m sure we can achieve the companies’ objectives and at the same time respect the unique landscape character of Canberra’s hills.”

Mr Wood said a plan was better than the ad-hoc arrangements elsewhere in Australia.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_tower08”

In an ideal world sporting and charitable bodies would be made to surrender that part of their lease they did not want. It would then be publicly auctioned for some other purpose, like housing.

If those leasehold principles had been observed from 1913, the public coffers would be better off and land administration (historically a great source of corruption) would be done in the open.

However, it is not an ideal world. Yowani would rather keep the land it apparently does not want for golf than surrender it, and now the city has grown it would be an inefficient use and to the community’s detriment.

Former Commonwealth Grants Commissioner Rae Else-Mitchell correctly pointed out on this page on Saturday that under Yowani’s and like leases, the Government can force a surrender if the land is needed for a public purpose and he chided me for suggesting that this would result in an expensive wrangle over constitutional rights to just compensation.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_column13jun”

The ACT is a vulnerable little polity. And to do well in this grim competitive Federation our government has to be smart. If it is dumb, the citizens pay.

The TAB fiasco shows how vulnerable the ACT is in the face of the big states. This week another fiscal Achilles heel has been revealed: compulsory third-party car insurance. This insurance covers drivers at fault who are sued for causing personal injury.

This week’s announced $18-a-week increase to apply from July 8 is a trivial inconvenience compared to what might happen in the future.

The increase brings premiums to $178 per car per year. The NRMA says the real cost is $266. The balance is being paid by eating into reserves. That sounds like a typical ACT Government policy in the face of a looming February election: don’t upset the natives with a bit of fiscal responsibility. To the Government’s credit, however, it has put out an issues paper on what should be done. To the community’s discredit, the response has been negligible.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_thirdpty”

THE police did not arrive at The Canberra Times with a search warrant at the weekend.

Odd that, because on Page 1 of Saturday’s paper was an article about the as yet unpublished Vitab report leaked from a “”government source”.

Now, two years ago when someone leaked some health budget material which The Canberra Times published, the government got a search warrant and a couple of cops turned over a desk or two and found nothing.

Why no police this time? Could it be because the “”government source” was doing the government’s bidding in putting the government in a good light.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_column04jun”

There are only 14 shopping days until the end of the financial year.

Should you buy a new computer or upgrade your existing one, or its software?

To maximise your tax advantage it is a good time to upgrade _ just before the financial year. This is particularly true this year because the investment allowance cuts out at the end of this financial year.

That is the swing. What about the roundabout? Well, everyone is upgrading or buying now. So it is a sellers’ market and there are fewer crazy deals around. In Canberra it is worse. All those Government Departments are looking for ways to off-load any spare cash at the end of the financial year lest the Department of Finance takes it off them or gives them less next year. What better way to waste the taxpayers’ money than buying a whole lot of computer junk?
Continue reading “1994_06_june_taxcomp”

It is to be business as usual for one of Canberra’s leading building and land-development companies, Consolidated Builders Ltd, after the election of a new five-person board of directors, which included two from the old board.

The company’s solicitor, Bernard Collaery, said yesterday that shareholders had agreed on Thursday night to have a five-member board of directors, rather than four, as recommended by a committee of inquiry into the company.

The committee had criticised three of four former directors for administrative irregularities and for buying land for themselves in Queensland near land they had bought on behalf of the company.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_build3”

The Deputy Chief Minister and Minister for Sport, David Lamont, said yesterday that it would have been remiss of him as a minister not to have dismissed the ACT TAB board last Friday.

The Canberra Times has copies of letters between him and the board’s chair, Athol Williams, showing Mr Lamont refused to give the board collectively or its legal advisers copies of the Pearce report into the Vitab affair upon which the dismissals were based.

Mr Lamont said that after receiving the report he had got advice from the Chief Government Solicitor. If he had not acted he would have left himself open to the allegation that he had not acted responsibly.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_tabsack”

At one stage it nearly hit $60 million, but has been steadily reduced since self-government. Last year it was $44.7 million and this year it will be $39.8 million.

However, $250,000 of that can be put down to the deferral of the bus replacement program. That deferral will save $10.6 million on the capital account.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_budtran”

An the ACT TAB become the mouse that roared. With the end of the arrangement with pooling arrangement with Victoria looming, the ACT appears it will have to grovel to NSW to get a pooling arrangement. But the ACT is not without some ammunition, albeit highly risky stuff.

Without a pooling arrangement ACTTAB, according to Professor Dennis Pearce’s report, will not be viable under present circumstances.

First to background.

TABs in Australia turn over nearly $9 billion a year (a little under the defence budget). State Governments take about $900 million or 10 per cent, handing some of that to the racing industry. About $450 million (5 per cent) goes in overheads. The remaining 85 per cent goes back to punters. The betting pool on each race is divided this way and the return to punters is calculated (italic) after (end italic) each race is run (unlike bookies).
Continue reading “1994_06_june_taboped”

If you do not have the money for pet projects you have to beg, borrow or steal it. The ACT is trying to do all three. It has successfully begged from the Federal Government and it is going to borrow, which is tantamount to stealing from future generations.

Begging is a fairly public event, but the stealing from future generations has to be covered up or at least disguised. And that is precisely what has happened.

This year’s and last year’s Budget papers are quite open on the begging issue and reveal how successful the ACT Government has been at it. Last year it predicted Commonwealth payments to the ACT would be $533. As it happened the Commonwealth came up with an extra $41 million. Perhaps the ACT does matter after all, especially in the context of Federal Labor having six our of eight second-tier governments held by their conservative opponents and an election in February for Federal Labor’s most friendly face around the COAG table.

(Incidentally, I have been trying to come up with a shorthand for state and territory governments without ignoring the territories. Better suggestions than second-tier will be gratefully received and fed into the Australian language through these columns.)
Continue reading “1994_06_june_budforum”