Crispin Hull

Aside from wanting to conquer the world before he is thirty-something, the Attorney-General, Michael Lavarch, has something else in common with Napoleon.

He wants to simplify the law and have it available to all in a pocket-book.

Well, it may have to be a notebook computer, but the principle is the same.

Last week, the Access to Justice report called for greater access to legislation, simpler legislation and cheaper legislation. Much of that is in hand at the Commonwealth level.

Earlier this month tenders were sought for a program to make the laws of the Commonwealth available cheaply to the public on computer. The project will be done in stages. The first stage is to make the Attorney-General’s Department’s present electronic law database, called SCALE, available at all AGPS bookshops by July 1. And it will be free. At least to browse. It you want print-outs you will pay.
Continue reading “1994_05_may_lawcoms”

ACT Opposition Leader Kate Carnell has called for a two-part referendum on the republic.

The first part would have the simple question: “”Do you want the present constitutional monarchy or change to a federal republic?”

The second part, if there were a majority for change would ask how people wanted the Head of State chosen: popular election, two-thirds of a Federal joint sitting or two-thirds of a join federal and state parliamentary sitting.

She said the real test for proponents of a republic was whether it would give citizens an extra say.
Continue reading “1994_05_may_katerep”

A series of radical changes to legal and court practice were recommended yesterday by the Access to Justice Advisory Committee.

It said high lawyers’ fees were preventing people from asserting their rights and that governments and courts could do more to improve the cost, speed and access to justice. however, there was no single, simple solution.

Among its recommendations were: contingency fees (no-win, no-fee); lawyers to freely advertise everything, including fees; abolition of scale fees and a requirement that lawyers tell clients the fees beforehand; an complaints body independent of the legal profession; televising of some court proceedings; abolition of wigs and gowns; more and better directed legal aid; more alternative dispute resolution; more court-controlled case management; a review of court fees which should not be user-pays; simpler legislation; cheaper electronic access to legislation on database; better harmony of the laws of the states.

The committee said, “”We think the plan we have proposed offers an unparalleled opportunity for the Australian Government in particular to improve access to justice for all Australians.”
Continue reading “1994_05_may_justice”

A design for an extra nine holes for Royal Canberra Golf course is to go before the club’s board this week.

However, a small land swap with the ACT Government will be needed before construction can go ahead.

The club’s board would meet on Thursday to discuss the plan, a club spokesman said. It would then seek the Government’s view on the land swap before putting the development to members.

The bulk of the development is to be constructed on the club’s lease on Lees Paddock between the Scrivener Dam Road and Dunrossil Drive (the road to Government House).
Continue reading “1994_05_may_golf”

A defamation action has closed five years after publication with a policeman plaintiff paying The Canberra Times the last instalment of $22,500 in costs over his unsuccessful action.

The policeman, Daniel Peter Edwards, sued over the publication in April, 1989, of a report of court proceedings in which he gave evidence. Mr Edwards won in the Magistrates Court, but the Supreme Court ruled the magistrate had erred. Justice Gallop said the report was fair and accurate and gave a correct impression that Mr Edward did not recall or did not know the answer to questions asked of him.

Evidence in the Magistrates Court suggested that most of Mr Edwards’s costs were being borne by the ACT Police Association.
Continue reading “1994_05_may_defodan”

The man who in 1988 ran one of the most successful “No” campaigns in Australian constitutional history, Peter Reith, wants to run a successful “”Yes” campaign.

The change he wants is direct democracy, or citizen’s initiative.

Under it, the people would get a direct say to propose a law or repeal an existing law in a referendum provide a threshold of signatures has been collected.

Reith, opposition spokesman on defence, is the first to acknowledge he does not have wide support among his parliamentary colleagues. They see it as a threat, or at minimum a signal that they might not be doing such a good job. However, he thinks that if they see widespread public support for it, they will support it.
Continue reading “1994_05_may_ddoped”

They unerringly go for the jugular.

The one scene in a Steinbeck novel that stands out above all else, indeed, it stands out in American literature as a whole, is the scene in the Grapes of Wrath where Rose of Sharon gives her breast to a man dying of starvation.

Steinbeck’s publisher wrote: “”Taken as the finale of such a book with all its vastness and surge, it struck us on reflection as being all too abrupt. It seems to us that the last few pages need building up.” The publisher suggested that the starving man, a stranger, needed some introduction.

Of course, Steinbeck’s very point was that he was a stranger, that Sharon of Rose brought the stranger (and all of humankind) into the Joad family.
Continue reading “1994_05_may_cuts6”

Sometimes I also get a piece from Charles Wright (Lost Clusters), but it has been rather haphazard in its arrival and he’s just about impossible to contact.

Mike Carrol will probably send in stories, as will Bill Olson. Olson’s stories are pretty good generally but they need translating (changing) into useable English.

I also will be sending in stories. The first won’t arrive until next Sunday or Monday, obviously too late for Monday 23’s paper. Phylly also will send in advenure page section. She is joining me in UK at end of May but she will send enough stories to keep you covered until she gets back in Mid June.
Continue reading “1994_05_may_compute”

Voice recognition: Speak and it shall be written. Speech Systems Inc and Timeworks will unveil their speech recognition system for Windows this week at the Comdex/Windows World exhibition in Atlanta, Georgia.

With these systems, you talk into a microphone and the words appear in text on the screen. Be warned: they are in their infancy, which means plenty of glitches and farnarkling. Just as clippers beat the first motor-mowers and horses beat the first cars, I’d back a good typist against the first voice-recognition programs, but eventually the voice recognition technology will threaten the key-boarders’ job.

IBM already has a voice-recognition system on the market. It runs on OS/2 (because IBM hates Windows). But IBM will be forced to make a Windows version before long because the market will demand it. I saw it work at PC94 in Sydney recently. With all these systems you have to train the computer by reading a set text for a couple of hours. It then learns as you correct mistakes.

The IBM version ran at 70 words a minute, but by the time you cut and paste it into a word-processor and fix up the errors, you would be hard pushed to beat a 30- or 40-word-a-minute rough key-as-you-think writer. You would beat a 100-word-a-minute shorthand plus 90-word-a-minute keyboarder translating voice to text the old way.
Continue reading “1994_05_may_comp23”

Access to Justice report which came down last week acknowledges there is no single, easy solution. It suggests about 100 small to large changes that can help bring costs of courts and lawyers down without draining the public coffers: increasing competition, forcing lawyers to tell clients about costs, getting courts to manage cases and so on.

Good, let’s do all of them. But let’s go further. The first is to question whether the adversarial system is always doing the job. Two lawyers slugging it out before an impassive and impartial judge is not the best way to solve all disputes. Someone is bound to get hurt. One side wins and the other side loses.

Moreover, the lawyers are not interested in a just result, or a true result. They are only interested in the best result for their client. In taxation and commercial law this results in an endless battle between loophole-searching lawyers and patch-up legislatures. The corporations, taxation and bankruptcy laws of Australia are an unreadable, purposeless, inconvenient, chaotic, inefficient mess (and there’s more on that in today’s computer pages).

The convoluted laws are the legacy of the adversary system.
Continue reading “1994_05_may_column30may”