Crispin Hull

THE Industry and Trade Practices Commissions have conducted half a dozen major inquiries over the past few years. Nearly all of them have been into the people we love to hate: oil companies, real-estate agents and lawyers for example.

(Journalists, among those Stuart Littlemore and others love to hate, incidentally, have rightly escaped their attention, for we have a fairly open profession. Ring-ins like John Howard and Bill Mandle are permitted.)

The commissions is out to get monopolies. They hate laws which give the professions exclusive practice rights, high entry requirements and expensive in-club practices.

Indeed, it is now at a stage that I cannot see why the commissions should bother with expensive inquiries inthe future. You can be reasonably confident of what their findings will be on any topic well beforehand: repeal all special laws pertaining to that industry or profession, allow others in to do at least some of the work, lower professional entry standards, insist on uniform professional standards across the states, allow practitioners to move between states without hassle and to rely on general trade-practices provisions to ensure competition, truthful advertising and consumer protection.
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The Building Owners and Managers Association condemned the ACT Government yesterday for failing to have a policy on renewal of commercial leases.

BOMA’s ACT president, Tony Hedley, said the automatic-renewal policy of 99-year residential leases was a good one, but there was no policy on what would happen when a commercial lease ran out. This was worrying for owners and financiers.

Financiers did not understand the ACT’s leasehold system very well and it made the ACT less competitive for development over the states.

He told a BOMA lunch that he had invited the Minister for Environment, Land and Planning, Bill Wood, to put the Government’s position at the lunch.
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He ACT Liberals have done Labor a big favour.

They lanced the boil and got rid of one of Labor’s liabilities, or at least a potential liability.

It was ironic that Wayne Berry should have gone down on his administration of the Sport portfolio and not Health where he should have been more vulnerable.

It happened perhaps because all eyes were on health, whereas few had any interest in racing or the TAB. It was true, too, in the media. The electronics had a hard time explaining the background. In print, journalists had a hard time getting features and news editors interested. The major explanatory articles usually went well back.

Within the Government, too, there was little interest in racing and the TAB. Berry was allowed to get on with it. Moreover, his chief minder was away when the faeces hit the mechanical air-conditioner and the Opposition started to stalk him. Basically, he had no-one to rely on to tell him what to do, and he faltered.
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The Federal Highway would gross about $20 million a year, which would just about service the debt on the $220 million to construct it.

The road would never be paid off and there would be no provision for collection costs.

It could only partially fund the road. To fully fund it with a normal private-sector repayment schedule, you might be looking at a toll greater than $10. At that level, market forces start attracting cars down the byways.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_avoid”

POINT TO FORUM PIECE BY ME PLEASE

“”Job for the mates” would cease in the ACT, Independent Michael Moore said yesterday.

Mr Moore was commenting on the Assembly approving in principle his Bill to make all appointments to statutory bodies through an Assembly committee and to be disallowable by the Assembly. At present nearly all appointments to statutory bodies are made by Ministers.

The Bill was opposed by the Labor Party, but agreed to by the Liberals.
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The ACT’s new planning appeals body has no power to enforce its decisions.

If they were ignored people would have to go to court to get enforcement.

This was confirmed by the ACT Attorney-General in response to a Kaleen woman who won part of an appeal against her neighbour over an extension that she said invaded her privacy because a balcony overlooked her garden and people could see right into the house.

The woman, Claire Lintern, said the decision had not been complied with. She said yesterday that she is powerless to do anything because the threat of court costs closed that avenue.
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Disciplinary procedures in the new ACT Public Service have been codified and streamlined under the Bill to set up a separate ACT Public Service introduced to the Assembly yesterday.

The Bill was introduced despite lack of agreement with the Commonwealth on mobility between the Federal and ACT Public Services.

The Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, said negotiations were continuing. Ms Follett said she had agreed with the Prime Minister in 1992 that there would be mobility on merit.

(Mobility on merit means the ACT public servants could apply for Commonwealth jobs as “”insiders” and vice versa. It does not mean they can demand they be found a job at their current level in the other service.)
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Some of the old National Capital Development Commission hands must be smiling.

During the week, Liberal planning spokesman Greg Cornwell looked back and the pre-self-government NCDC as the good old days when the community knew what was going on and had time to have a say. He fondly recalled the large billboards dotted about the town saying: “”NCDC Site for Community Facility” or whatever.

He was bemoaning the way residents had to find out from construction workers about the construction of Optus mobile communications towers. (The towers don’t actually move; they are for mobile telephones.)

In the good old NCDC days a sign would have been placed at the site months before saying “”Site for Towers”, Cornwell’s theory goes.
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The ACT is likely to have abortion on demand both legally and practically later this year, under a move foreshadowed yesterday.

Former ACT Health Minister Wayne Berry has sought drafting instructions for a Bill to clarify that the seeking of abortion or performing an abortion in the ACT is not a crime, his office confirmed.

As Minister, Mr Berry steered through changes that would prevent the need for Canberra women to go to Sydney for abortions. In 1992 the Termination of Pregnancy Act, which required a woman seeking an abortion to go before an ethics committee in a public hospital, was repealed. And money was made available last Budget for the upgrading of a Canberra facility to enable abortions to be done in Canberra.

However, earlier this week, the NSW Supreme Court, in a civil matter, said that it was still against the law in NSW to seek or perform an abortion.
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The Labor Member for Fraser, John Langmore, denounced yesterday a plan to construct a tollway on the Lake George section saying it would divert private-sector funds from other projects.

However, the NSW National Party Member for Monaro, Peter Cochran, said tollways were the best way to get infrastructure improvements the Government could not do.

Mr Langmore the said it was a mistake to divert private investment to traditionally public-funded infrastructure investment, especially at a time when private sector investment was low.

He called for the road to be publicly funded. He said he would seek a meeting with the Minister for Transport, Laurie Brereton, about the road.
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