Crispin Hull

The anger at the appalling statement recently by Collingwood president Allan McAlister that as long as Aborigines “”conduct themselves like white people, well, off the field, everyone will admire them” should now be channelled into constructive change.

The reason for the poor record of Australian rules is a combination of its Melbourne base and the nature of psychological warfare in sport.

Psychological warfare has always been part of sport. Undermining your opponent through taunts and muttering is part of the sport from the highest to the lowest. Often the crowd joins in, and the crowd can be worse than opponents.
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Canberra is joining in. The Legislative Assembly commissioned a study of what Canberra would and should be like in 2020, using a pun on twenty-twenty vision.

It is to issue the third of four quarterly reports on Monday. The first was a quick demographic projection. The second was some 300 pages on recycled paper. Third will perhaps be as long and will come down a few days after a information technology academic, UC’s Professor Mary O’Kane, called for more government data to be available electronically.

IT is the bore-word for Canberra’s future, along with tourism. If that is the case it is a shame that history is becoming so easily disgraced. It is a shame it is being replaced by sociology and “”communications” and other mumbo-jumbo, because history can tell us so much about the future.
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Self-government for indigenous people would help stop the drain on the federal treasury and help stop welfare dependence, according to a visiting Canadian expert.

Professor Thomas Courchene, who has spent a lot of time in the past two years helping the 14 First Nations of Canada’s Yukon draw up self-government agreements, said yesterday that neither Canada nor Australia could be proud of its treatment of their first peoples.

In Canada per capita spending on Indians resident on reserves was roughly $10,000 per person.

“”Something must be very wrong at the policy level when spending of this magnitude does not achieve meaningful results,” he said. The policy failure was a major reason why Canadians were sympathetic to First Nations self-government.
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Some Aborigines are seeking independence with international recognition, others are joining the Federal Government’s reconciliation process and others still want a treaty.

In Canberra this week a visiting Canadian professor put up a model for Canadian Indians which is different from all of these. He thought the Canadian First Nations could become a province of Canada, the equivalent of an Australian state.

The professor, Tom Courchene, said at the outset that his model was purely Canadian and he did not want to give it an Australian application.

None the less, the idea of Australia’s indigenous people becoming a state is not as looney as it sounds.
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When the Labor Party was socialist, in its pre-Whitlam days, conservation was a largely a matter for political conservatives.

Heritage and environment had to be protected from Stakhanovite socialists who would industrialise everything in the name of giving the workers a higher standard of living.

Now conservation values have to be protected against capitalists in the form of pastoralists and miners and against a spreading population that demands more and more water.

Early this century in NSW, conservative politicians sought to protect tracts of Crown land by creating what they called primitive areas and national parks.

One was Mark Morton, elected to the NSW Parliament in 1901. Morton National Park, between here and the coast, was named after him.
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Three leading community groups have condemned a north Canberra redevelopment project which has attracted federal Better Cities funding so it can be a model for urban-renewal.

The Royal Institute of Architects, the National Trust and the Conservation Council of Canberra called on the Minister for Environment, Land and Planning, Bill Wood, seeking the inquiry into a joint ACT Housing Trust-private redevelopment on Section 22, Braddon.

Mr Wood said yesterday that as this was the first urban renewal under the new planning laws it was inevitable that it was attract attention.

He was prepared to demonstrate the integrity of the legislation and process. He would discuss them with the department and taking options to Government.
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The Liberal and Labor Parties and Independent Michael Moore are in broad agreement over the ACT’s new electoral boundaries, according submissions made public yesterday.

They all recommended a chunk of south Woden would have to go into the Tuggeranong electorate to make up the numbers.

They all addressed the problem of how to create two five-member and one seven-member electorates out of Canberra’s townships using natural boundaries and at the same time getting the right number of voters in each electorate so each vote is of equal value.

All acknowledged that at least some part of one natural community would have to be hived off to another to get the numbers right.
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People in the community should have a right to appeal against planning decisions, according to the chair of the ACT Legislative Assembly’s planning and infrastructure committee, David Lamont.

But a leading Canberra developer said Canberrs should get away from urban guerilla war on a block-by-block basis.

Mr Lamont said last week (week ends april 24) he was personally in favour of granting third-party appeal rights in planning cases, but it was a matter for the committee.

The committee is looking at the Draft Territory Plan. At present only parties directly affected can appeal against design and siting applications. Third-party appeal rights are restricted to lease-purpose appeals.
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The transition from print to the electronics has been made more successfully by journalists than the trip the other way.

Chris Anderson is about to find out whether that holds true for journalism management as well as its practice. The former Fairfax executive has been appointed to the new position as head of Information Services Television at the ABC. He takes up the job in mid-May and will oversee the ABC’s television news, current affairs, international TV service into Asia and eventually pay-TV.

He said this week that the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, was “”absolutely right” with his push into Asia.

“”I’m a great advocate of the region. I used to chip Malcolm Fraser when he was Prime Minister when I was on the üHerald that he should push the role of government into Japan and the tiger economies.
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In the previous ACT shadow ministry Trevor Kaine, as well as being leader, was spokesman for the aging and disabled and Tony de Domenico was spokesman for urban services and rural matters.

Each was also spokesman for himself.

Kaine would have been 67 at the next election and 70 at the end of the next term. He was therefore disabled.

On the other hand, de Domenico thought that the urban and rural portfolios, logically, embraced all. If it wasn’t rural it must be urban and if it wasn’t urban it must be rural. And so, therefore, he was spokesman for everything.

And he spoke on everything; about everyone; to anyone; especially about how he would be leader.
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