Crispin Hull

The Minister for Sport, Wayne Berry, dismissed yesterday an Opposition attack on the Government’s appointment of Athol Williams as chair of the ACTTAB.

The appointment was gazetted in July.

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Tony de Domenico, noted that Mr Williams is president of the Tuggeranong sub-branch of Labor Party.

Mr Berry said Mr Williams has been associated with greyhound racing in the ACT for more than 10 years and had been a member of the former board of the ACTTAB before its reconstitution in July.

Mr Williams said he had been at various times vice-president of the greyhound association, an owner and trainer and steward and had been associated with horse-racing since his youth.

The ACTTAB was decorpratised by the Government earlier this year and brought back to public-service control. The move drew extensive criticism in the industry. Mr Berry said it had also drawn support.

Mr Berry said the board had recommended Mr Williams’s appointment as chair and he had agreed.

The Opposition attacked the Budget as a “”gutless”, “”no-jobs” Budget.

The Leader of the Opposition, Kate Carnell, said the Government had failed to make any of the tough decisions.

Despite cuts to public employment, the Government would spend $56 million more this year than last.

The 2 per cent cut across all departments would not work; it did not work last year when on 14 of 26 programs could not achieve the cuts.
Continue reading “1993_09_september_react”

Australia is to fall silent and still at 11am on November 11th this year, the 75th anniversary of the Armistice at the end of World War I, under a proposal put by the Prime Minister to the states.

The silence would coincide with the entombing of an unknown soldier at the Australian War Memorial.

The director of the Memorial, Brendon Kelson, said yesterday (friday) that the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, had written to the State Premiers calling for a two-minute silence at 11am. He called for their views on whether the silence should be at Eastern Summer time so the whole nation stopped at once coinciding with the entombment, or whether it should be at 11am local time in each state.

Observation of the two-minute silence at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11 month has fallen away. Its origins go back to an idea by an Australian journalist, Edward George Honey, according to Lest We Forget, a history of the Returned Services League, by Jacqueline Rees.
Continue reading “1993_09_september_silence”

Gary Humphries picked his audience well this week when he said that “”Son of Mabo” could threaten titles in Canberra. Canberrans are notoriously property-conscious.

Humphries was jumping on the Goss woomera that said existing leasehold and other less-than-freehold titles could be subject to Aboriginal claims. This theory is being posed by lawyers for the Wik people in Cape York. It is called “”Son of Mabo” because it takes the Mabo case a bit further.

Mabo essentially restricted indigenous claims to areas where no-one else had any title _ what was called Crown land. The judges said that freehold and long leasehold extinguished indigenous title.
Continue reading “1993_08_august_humpsend”

A report into the handling of a redundancy payment in the ACT Chief Minister’s Department revealed no fraud or criminal conduct, the head of the department, Bill Harris, has announced.

The case involved an officer who had allegedly helped arrange a large redundancy payment for a sick workmate. The workmate died for months later and the officer inherited the money.

Mr Harris said last week that the report recommended the officer should be counselled about the need to declare possible conflicts of interest. This had been done. The documents had been examined by the Director of Public Prosecutions who had come to the same conclusion.
Continue reading “1993_08_august_harris”

The Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, hopes get the Japanese more interested in ACT high-tech, tourism and education products when she visits in October-November, according to ACT Government officials yesterday.

She will lead a mainly private-sector delegation of about 10 people from October 23 to November 5. Projects she hopes to help are the sale of ACT-developed software for teaching English as a second-language; educational and industry exchanges related to the Fujitsu super-computer at ANU; the Anutech SHRIMP which looks at rock strata; and a dozen or so other private-sector projects.

She will also have talks with five major tourism wholesalers with the aim of convincing the Japanese that Sydney is not the capital of Australia, but Canberra is and should be on the tourist map.
Continue reading “1993_08_august_follett”

The ACT Opposition has discovered what journalists have known for some years: that the Freedom of Information Act should be renamed the Freedom FROM Information Act.

The Leader of the Opposition, Kate Carnell, said in the Assembly yesterday that a Government with a siege mentality could prevent information being disclosed through using high fees. She did not complain about an upfront flat fee of $20 or $30 to stop frivolous fees. By she did object to fees charged on a per-page or per-hour basis _ the processing fee.

ACT law permits an exemption on public interest grounds or grounds that the applicant cannot afford it.
Continue reading “1993_08_august_foi”

The ACT Attorney-General, Terry Connolly, said yesterday that he would withdraw the reference on euthanasia from the Community Law Reform Committee because the Legislative Assembly had since set up a wider inquiry.

His action follows the committee writing to him seeking wider terms of reference than it had been given. Some people on the committee thought the reference was restricted to passive euthanasia _ withdrawing or withholding medical treatment, and gave little or no scope for an inquiry on active euthanasia.

Mr Connolly said a parliamentary inquiry should take precedence over an executive inquiry. The committee was an executive advisory body. He thought it would silly to duplicate efforts and be unfortunate if the two inquiries came to different conclusions.
Continue reading “1993_08_august_euthanas”

Tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of pieces of paper have been delivered to the Copyright Agency Limited in the past year notifying it of each recorded instance of photocopying of copyright work in government departments.

The “”mind-blowing” amount of paper was due to an out-of-date provision in the Copyright Act, the chief executive of the agency, Michael Fraser, said yesterday,

He said his offices in Sydney were stacked to the ceiling with boxes full of the notifications which the Federal Government was required to provide to copyright owners under the Copyright Act for the approximately 20 million pages it copies each year.
Continue reading “1993_08_august_cright”

EFFICIENCY drives have been on for the past decade. Queues have been transferred from harassed bank tellers inside to machines outside. Tourist offices in Canberra can book you on a coach in Los Angeles. Leanness, customer service, delivery and efficiency are everywhere. Even Telecom smiles and connects phones in hours not months.

Super-markets have changed less noticeably, because visits are more frequent. Consider the cash register. No more keying in each amount and working out the change. Bar codes do the lot _ more efficiently and more accurately.

But down at the Magistrates’ Court, nothing much has changed. I had the displeasure to observed the court’s civil jurisdiction at “”work” one day last week.
Continue reading “1993_08_august_column30”