Crispin Hull

THE FINER points of Saudi Arabian jurisprudence had an immediate attraction one day last week. A brat broke into my car and knocked off the stereo.

Slicing off a couple of hands in Garema Place every Friday would do the trick, I thought with middle-class anger. It took at least half a day for the Saudi approach to be replaced with the boring old politically correct notion of giving the recession-deprived urchin just one more final chance with magisterial wag of the finger and yet another bond.

Anyway, this column is not about jurisprudence this week, but design: good and bad.
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A Federal Parliamentary committee stomped yesterday on ACT plans for a new six-storey magistrates court near City Hill and swept aside a grand plan to have other six-storey buildings around City Hill.

The Federal Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Capital brought down its report yesterday on the hill _ one of the corners of the Parliamentary Triangle.

It drew an immediate and angry response from ACT authorities.
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The writer-creator of the Labor In Power series has rejected the view of the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, that the frank and damning statements in the series “just slip into history”.

Philip Chubb also rejects Mr Keating’s statement that the reason politicians spoke so frankly was because they thought they were going to lose the election.

He said the main reason they were so frank was because they wanted to put a favourable light on their position in history.
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Australia could expect indigenous people’s bargaining power to be increased by judicial pronouncements, going on Canadian experience, according to a Canadian legal expert.

Professor Patrick Macklem, of the University of Toronto, was speaking at a conference in Canberra yesterday held by the Constitutional Centenary Foundation and the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation.

He said in a paper presented to the conference, “”In Canada, judicial delineation of legal rights of indigenous peoples has had a profound empowering effect on aboriginal people, with newly defined rights serving to enhance their bargaining power in their dealings with government … Victories in the legal sphere are quickly translated into political power, and political power in turn emboldens legal stances in the courts.”
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Labor MLA David Lamont has called for an end to what he called “vertical control” of ACT housing development.

He described it as “the situation where land developers have total control of building and land sales on their development sites”.

Mr Lamont said it “is uncompetitive and is artificially inflating the price of new homes in the ACT”.
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The southern electorate should be called Namadgi, not Brindabella, according to a submission to the ACT Electoral Commission.

Andrew Tatnell, of Ainslie, pointed out that 75 per cent of the Brindabella Range was in NSW.

Many ACT residents suffered a misconception about the Brindabellas. Most of the ranges seen from the ACT were in fact the Tidbinbilla and Bimberi Ranges, he said. The Bimberi Ranges contained the ACT’s highest mountain, Mount Bimberi.
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AFTER 20 years there is light. It has been 20 years since Labor introduced Medibank (now Medicare). The 20 years have been consumed by bitter ideological warfare over the provision of health care in Australia. The doctors and the Coalition on one side fought against the Labor Party on the other. Patients were in the confused middle.

This week saw a truce. Now two white flags have gone up and, with any luck, the people of Australia can see some constructive talking between the medical profession and the Government to improve Australia’s health system.

The white flags, indicating peace rather than surrender, came in the form of Senator Graham Richardson taking over the Health Ministry and the election of Dr Brendan Nelson as president of the AMA, succeeding Dr Bruce Shepherd.
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A takeover bid has been launched for the ACT’s biggest business. There is a lot at stake as the rival management groups vie for control of about $1.5 billion worth of assets (or about $3 billion using replacement cost accounting), about 1400 employees, a turnover of about $350 million, $31.1 million and at least 100,000 customer accounts.

The two managements have entirely different styles. The present management has introduced reforms and wants to push ahead with enterprise bargaining, new work practices and pricing structures. It is concerned that any change of management will result in this process slowing, customer service getting worse and prices going up.

The business, incidentally, is ACT Electricity and Water, and the takeover is threatened by the ACT Government’s Public Sector Management Bill.
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Women see themselves as better financial managers than men and the older women get the more likely they are to keep their own nestegg in case the man loses everything.

These are among the conclusions of an Australia-New Zealand study of women’s attitude to finances published by Mattingly and Partners, Australian Consolidated Press and Brian Sweeney and Associates.

It shows women have a greater control over household finances than men.

It shows also that women do not trust financial institutions to give them good advice; that they feel they are not taken seriously and they resent it.

The survey was conducted late last year across seven cities and included women of all ages.

The key issues for women were independence and security.

Ninety-eight per cent of the 1108 surveyed thought it important that women are capable of organising their own finances; 86 per cent said women should be financially independent; and 78 per cent said women should have their own accounts.

Mothers’ experiences of dependency influenced opinion. “”Mum never have any money of her own; I’m not going to be like that,” and “”When my Dad shot through Mum was left with nothing,” were two responses.

Older women learn from their own and their friends’ hard knocks. Thirty-six per cent of under 30-year-olds have their own nest egg rising to 57 per cent of those over 46.

Respondents commented: “”His decisions are not always right; I’ve signed papers in the past for deals that have gone wrong; now I would never trust him,” “”I’ve got some inheritances he doesn’t know about,” “”It’s your running-away money.”

Younger, blue collar women are more likely to have “”shooting through money” and not let him know about it. Other women have smaller amounts kept aside “”because he doesn’t look to the future”.

Women take the leading role in finances. 69 per cent prompt discussion of finances; 77 per cent do all the banking; 68 per cent manage the savings and 67 per cent pay all the bills and credit cards. Only 18 per cent had surrendered control over finances to their partner.

Many women do not have a high regard for their partner’s financial ability. 65 per cent sort out the junk mail “”before he sees it”. Respondents said: “”You get to know how to manipulate and read your man” and “”My husband comes up with the ideas; I just talk him out of them.”

And this gem, which provided the title of the report: “”We always discuss things, then I’ll make our minds up.”

The report, called When I’ve Made Our Minds Up, shows how women seek long-term control over finances. “”Plant the thought, let it develop”, “”Planting the seed is a lengthy process”, respondents said.

Eighty per cent thought that women control household spending better than men and 62 per cent thought they could strongly affect their partner’s spending.

More women thought women were better financial organisers and more responsible than men. And nearly a half thought “”men are just hopeless with household money matters”.

“”When they see something they want cost is not important,” a respondent said.

Major financial organisations are not well thought of by women. One respondent said: “”The trouble is most of these places are run by middle-aged men and they’ve no idea what a woman’s life is like.”

Their main concerns were trust, being exploited and being patronised. Women tended to put their trust in people rather than institutions. Eighty two per cent thought attitudes to women in the financial arena needed to improve. More than half thought financial institutions and sales people took them less seriously because they were women.

Ironically, the survey showed that while women had greater control over household finances and spending the institutions controlled by the middle-aged men were reluctant to believe that women could make financial decisions.

However, only 25 per cent said they would prefer a female financial adviser. “”Women can be just as patronising,” one respondent said.

The survey found that women’s views were remarkably similar either side of the Tasman. The cities surveyed were: Adelaide, Auckland, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney and Wellington.

Economic sexual inequality is still rife in Australia, but there is a pattern of improvement which appears likely to continue, as it must if equality is to be achieved.

Female earnings as a ratio of men’s earnings have risen steadily since 1973-74. In the past education has been the key to higher incomes. Now a higher percentage of girls that boys are completing high school and there are more women than men in higher education.

The trends are revealed in Women in Australia which was published yesterday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The 300-page book draws together a raft of statistics on the position of women compared to men in income, work, health, education, leisure, housing and families.
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