Crispin Hull

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.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_appeal”

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.)
Continue reading “1994_04_april_actps”

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.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_actpol30”

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.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_abort”

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.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_xoll19”

It was more a trial than a debate. There was one accused, Wayne Berry, a dozen lawyers and a cross bench of Michael Moore, Helen Szuty and Dennis Stevenson whose judgment would determine the fate of the accused.

Kate Carnell read the indictment of some five charges of misleading the Assembly: that he misnamed the directors of Vitab; that it was a public Australian company; that there was a great deal of competition among Australian TABs for the Vitab deal; that the deal was safe for the ACT and that no Australian punter would be enticed away to Vanuatu by inducements; that the bona fides of the principals of Vitab had been properly checked out.

The indictment carried two other charges: that the accused did not table in the Assembly a direction he had given the ACT TAB that it could sign the Vitab contract as required by law and that the accused did not tell the Assembly for eight weeks that the Victorian TAB had given notice that it was pulling out of its super-pool arrangement with the ACT.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_vitabcom”

Lawyers pursuing claims with no merit are clogging the repatriation system, absorbing costs that should go to genuine veterans and dependants, according to the author of a history of the repatriation system launched yesterday.

Canberra author Jacqui Rees said, “”Legalism has so skewed the system that in the last financial year, for example, the cost of only 1696 repatriation appeals to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal was $27 million. . . . The Veterans’ Review Board, which does not involve lawyers cost $6.5 million for the same time and dealt with 7500 appellants.”

She is co-author with journalism academic Clem Lloyd of (ital) The Last Shilling (end ital) which was launched by the Governor-General, Bill Hayden at the Australian War Memorial.

She said it might be understandable if the tribunal were delivering justice in the face of a hostile Department of Veterans’ Affairs, but this was not the case. Rather it was giving benefits where they were not deserved.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_vets”

The notorious Lake George section of the Federal Highway is to be duplicated under a plan announced yesterday by the Minister for Transport, Laurie Brereton.

But the plan has a sting: it is for a tollway, not a freeway.

Mr Brereton said expressions of interest would be sought “”for the construction of a tollway which will partially fund the duplication of the Lake George section of the Federal Highway”.

The section was the last major non-duplicated stretch of the highway between Sydney and Canberra, he said.

The announcement drew immediate criticism from the ACT Government and NRMA.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_tollway”

With a TAB, all the money bet on a race goes into a pool. The computer quickly calculates how many winning tickets there are and declares a dividend that will result in 85 per cent of the pool being paid out to punters. So the TAB cannot lose. The other 15 per cent goes to government taxes, the racing industry and operating costs.

The more money that goes through, the more the TAB gets. So the TAB wants as much money bet as possible. It does not care whether that money comes from very skilled punters who win more than they lose. The TAB just passes its losses to those punters on to the mugs. A bookie on the other hand does not want the custom of the smart big punter. The bookie determines the odds before the race irrespective of his pool and therefore the bookie has to bear the loss.

So it is important for state TABs to attract and keep big punters even though big punters can and do take more out of the TAB than they put in. Sounds bizarre, but it is logical.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_tabs”

The Mystic Economist. Clive Hamilton. 203pp. Willow Park Press $16.50. Green and Gold. Peter Hancock. 277pp. The Australian National University Press. Price

Review Crispin Hull

Economic rationalism covers a multitude of sins these days. Every economist is being branded with its excesses. There is an extreme form of economic rationalism. It argues that humans act with rational and intelligent self-interest. That they will chose between various products, services and outcomes by paying a price either in money or in foregone income. An extreme economic rationalist, for example, would argue that people will have more leisure or have a national park after consciously deciding to forgo the income that could otherwise be obtained.

Further, they suggest that this free choice should not be interfered with by governments. Free markets provide the best outcome, they say.
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