Crispin Hull

On one hand, the former Treasurer, John Dawkins, told and Advance Bank Trends lunch that the transition to self-government in the ACT “”had been handled with aplomb”. On the other hand, the March edition of the Trends magazine itself (launched at the lunch) pointed to several areas of public spending in the ACT which were higher and less efficient than state counterparts. It said “”There is little evidence of any substantial progress in using the opportunity afforded by the separation [from the Commonwealth Public Service] to increase the productivity of the ACT public service.”

The Advance Bank is to be commended to its commitment to the free flow of ideas and comment, but the conflicting messages leave the average ACT voter somewhat confused.

Mr Dawkins said that some members of the Hawke Government were opposed to ACT self-government because they thought the ACT would never make the required decisive cuts to government spending. But he had thought the discipline could be imposed on the ACT to reduce spending without disruption to the delivery of services and that the ACT had done it with aplomb.
Continue reading “1994_03_march_leader29mar”

Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, did the only sensible thing possible yesterday: order an inquiry into Vitab (under Professor Dennis Pearce). She said she did so to give the Liberals the opportunity to put up or shut up. The issue, however, goes wider than an exercise in political point-scoring. There are wider questions of public administration.

Briefly, the ACTTAB signed a contract with the Vanuatu-based Vitab. ACTTAB provided computer links and access to the super-pool of TAB funds from four states and two territories, about 5 billion a year so that bets taken by Vitab go into the pool and dividends come out of it.

Vitab pays between 1 and 2 per cent of turnover to ACT for this service.
Continue reading “1994_03_march_leader25mar”

Call this week by the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jim Bolger, for New Zealand to become a republic by 2000 has drawn far less heat than a similar call last year by his Australian counterpart, Paul Keating.

From this side of the Tasman, that might seem odd, considering the popular myth in Australia that New Zealand is more English than England and the manifestation of that in the clinging to the imperial honours system and appeals to the Privy Council — thing which have been discarded in Australia as anachronisms. Who would have predicted that the green and (to a minor extent) scepter’d isles of New Zealand might be a republic before Australia?

There are several reasons for the less heated response in New Zealand.

For a start, like a good All Black, Jim Bolger has positioned himself in a place where there is no-one to out-flank him. He is already out on the right wing. Anyone further to the right is off-field, is an old huffer and buffer not in the play. If the call for a republic comes from the leader of the conservative ranks, the natural monarchist constituency has been undermined. In Australia, however, the call came from midfield or slightly left of midfield. A swath of the paddock was left open for monarchists to come charging in.
Continue reading “1994_03_march_leader19maa”

It involves the ACT revenue and major issues of public administration which affect the whole ACT community, and to some extent the revenue base of nearly all Australian states and territories.

On Tuesday it was announced that the Victorian TAB was withdrawing its pooling arrangement with the ACT. Under that arrangement bets from the ACT, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory are put in one pool, the super pool. Winning dividends are declared from the large pool. For every $100 bet on a race $85 is returned to the punters, and 15 per cent goes to state and territory governments, the racing industry and operating costs.

About $5 billion a year goes into the pool.
Continue reading “1994_03_march_leader17mar”

The major arguments raised against having a Bill of Rights in the Australian Constitution is that it would be handing over a legislative function to the unelected High Court. Unelected judges would be carving out new areas of law that properly belong in the elected legislature, the argument runs.

This is an essentially English view of the world; one in which Parliament is supreme. The American view is to have checks and balances between the three heads of power: the executive, the legislative and the judicial, so that the judges can interpret the limits imposed upon the Congress by the Constitution. And they are wide. They prohibit the Congress from abridging freedoms like speech, religion and assembly. The Australian constitutional lies between the two. Our Constitution provides some limited checks on Parliament’s power. One of them is that Parliament may not take away people’s property without paying just compensation.

This week the High Court brought down four judgments on this very point. They were difficult and complex cases involving many millions of dollars and perhaps the livelihood of many people.
Continue reading “1994_03_march_leader11mar”

The departure of the chief executive of ACTION will be a major loss for the ACT. It will be a loss of opportunity. The flatness of his departure is instructive. He said, “There is nothing to say you have to finish the contract.”” And there was no statement from the Government that it would continue the contract. The result is that Mr Wasworth will take up a better offer from Perth.

The general manager of Woden Valley Hospital, Sue Belsham, also resigned last week, adding to the recent resignation of the head of ACT Health, Gillian Biscoe.

All have been circumspect about why they have taken up other offers. They have clouded the reasons with cliches about new challenges, moving on, done all they could do in the ACT etc. None has been willing to tell of real reasons from the heart — they cannot work with this ideologically driven government.

The malaise goes beyond the buses and the health system. ACT Electricity and Water and the TAB have similar difficulties. The heads of those bodies will not admit it publicly, in the best bureaucratic tradition, but they, too, are peeved for the same reason as Wadworth, Belsham and Biscoe. The essential problem is an ideologically driven government will not permit heads of government service providers to do their job.
Continue reading “1994_03_march_leader05mar”

An $80,000 apheresis machine used in the treatment of cancer sits idle at Woden Valley Hospital. It cannot be used until another $40,000 liquid-nitrogen freezer machine is bought and more money provided for staff to use both machines. The hospital’s clinical director, Dr John O’Donnell said the hospital had asked for the extra money, but it would not be considered until the next Budget. In the meantime patients have to travel interstate. It is a sorry tale and it fits a pattern of health bungles in the ACT which end with the same bottom line: patients having to go interstate. A dispute with the visiting medical officers which should never have been allowed to boil over; idiotic biases against private clinics; an odd law on abortion; and delays in replacing radiology equipment are other examples with the same bottom line: patients going interstate.

One of the major reasons for the closing of Royal Canberra Hospital was medical inefficiency. The idea was to have one major hospital in Canberra at Woden that could be fully equipped to serve the whole community and beyond into NSW for the whole range of human ailments with perhaps only one or two exceptions at the high cutting edge of medical technology (heart and lung transplants, for example). Canberra has been through the pain of the closure of Royal Canberra and is almost through the inconvenience of the major rebuilding at Woden. It is time to live up to that ideal.

Finance is not an excuse. The Grants Commission has agreed that the ACT should get an equalisation grant because we treat many NSW patients in the ACT. If the ACT cannot provide that top-quality treatment, we do not deserve the payment. Moreover, the latest failure is precisely in the area where people come to Canberra from the surrounding district _ hi-tech treatment requiring costly equipment.
Continue reading “1994_03_march_leader01mar”

The legal profession in Australia should travel under a “”standard gauge”, so that a lawyer admitted in one state could practice in the others without further formality, the Law Council of Australia has decided.

Its president John Mansfield, QC, said yesterday that each state and territory professional body would approach their respective Attorneys-General to make the legislative changes necessary.

At present, state and territory law requires separate admission formalities, which can cost thousands of dollars for someone seeking admission in all eight jurisdictions.

The Law Council said, “”All lawyers in the nation should be “Australian’ lawyers rather than lawyers belonging to a particular state of territory and they should see themselves as members of a profession operating in a national legal services market under uniform or harmonious rules.
Continue reading “1994_03_march_lawyers”

A design competition for Canberra’s fifth town, Jerrabomberra, was announced yesterday.

The Minister for Environment, Land and Planning, Bill Wood, said the ACT Government and the National Capital Planning Authority would jointly sponsor the project which would bring forward ideas for the new town.

The chief executive of the National Capital Planning Authority, Gary Prattley, said prizes totalling $50,000 would be offered to successful entrants.

“”The competition is investigative in nature and precedes any decision to develop the Jerrabomberra area,” he said.
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The Opposition spokesman on industrial relations, John Howard, said yesterday that he was puzzled and at a complete loss at Opposition Leader John Hewson’s attack on him over immigration.

“”I’m just at a complete loss to understand why the immigration thing should be dragged up in such a gratuitous way,” he said.

He was responding to comments made by Dr Hewson in an interview in The Canberra Times published yesterday.

In the interview, Dr Hewson attacked Mr Howard’s 1988 questioning of the level and mix of immigration; rejected his proposals to tax the family as one unit as “”too late”; and attacked the Howard-supporter-dominated Lyons Forum’s position on the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
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