Crispin Hull

HALF a decade ago Nicholas Carson wrote to the chief editorial executive of The Sydney Morning Herald and said, “”I have no wish to sue your company for defamation.”

Carson ended up suing, and his case was ruled upon in the High Court last week. He was upset over an article written by John Slee over some complicated litigation by Leszek Rajski involving some computer wizardry. Slee quoted Rajski’s accusation against Carson that Carson used some underhand legal tactics to undermine Rajski’s legal action.

Slee made a fundamental error of not giving Carson a decent right of explanation, and any solicitor reading Slee’s column would have thought that Carson was a bit of a sleaze for acting the way he did, when in fact there was no foundation for that.
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IT WAS either 1971 or 1972. I was in a lift at (old) Parliament House, running messages. It was packed with journalists, including Alan Reid, then perhaps in his late 50s. I forget what the issue was, perhaps the Commonwealth’s grab for the seabed or something like it. Reid was in a pontificating mood. “”Barring natural disasters,” he said. “”All the best stories come out of the Constitution.”

This was pre-Whitlam, pre-1975, pre-Tasmanian Dams; pre-Darwin cyclone and, of course, pre-Mabo. Reid was no doubt thinking of the bank-nationalisation case, the uniform-tax case or petrol rationing, but his words have held up well.

Mabo is essentially a constitutional case. The finding of native title was one matter; of greater import was finding its constitutional underpinning that would make it enforceable: the requirement that the Federal Government can only take property on “”just terms” and the finding that the Racial Discrimination Act was a valid exercise of the foreign-affairs power, so the states could not extinguish native title because it would also inevitably breach that Act.
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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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