Crispin Hull

Hydra was the monster in Greek legend with nine heads. Hercules, who was set the task of killing this monster, had some difficulty because every time he cut off a head, two would grow in its place. And thus Terry Connolly appears, sometimes twice or three times in a news bulletin and if you change channels, there is is again with two or three more heads on another bulletin.

The Deputy Chief Minister, Wayne Berry, on the other hand, is more like the Greek god Pluto: the god of the underground. He does not put his head up on the television anywhere near as much.

In other mainland states or territories or at the Federal level, this difference in style would not matter a great deal, but it will matter in the ACT, as we shall see.
Continue reading “1993_04_april_column19”

Instead of speaking to a mate about a ghost, he should have been lecturing Australia’s parliamentary drafters, or more pointedly, Australia’s Members of Parliament. Between them, they are responsible for the passing of legislation. And there is more and more of it each year. The trouble is the legislators and those advising them think that passing a law is the best way of dealing with a mischief.

When they pass a law they invariable try to think of every possible combination of events, people and places and make provision for them. They leave nothing to chance. The trend is to give precise meanings to words in the law and to define circumstances precisely, sot hat judges will know what to do. The laws get longer and longer. The ACT Motor Traffic Act, for example, is 250 pages long. It has a 53-word definition of “”headlamp”; and a 96-word definition of “”dipped”; and a 69-word definition of “”public place”.

Despite the length, however, we still come unstuck because, even leaving heaven out of it, there are more things on earth than dreamt of in the philosophy of those who draft the laws.

Thus is was that Justice Terence Higgins found in the ACT Supreme Court last week that an unlicensed man doing burn-outs in the car park of some flats in Lyons was not a breach of the law. The drafters, in their desire to define every thing had not thought of that one. The 69-word definition of “”public place” did not embrace the car park of the Lyons flats and so the man was acquitted of driving while disqualified and negligent driving.

Now anyone with an ounce of brain or morality knows that doing burn-outs in the car park of a block of flats is dangerous, wrong and should be punished. But the result of 250 pages of close-packed detailed definitions and descriptions of times, people and events results in the obvious being turned on its head. The judge is forced to say that this is not criminal conduct.

It is a very self-defeating way to go about making law. It is most noticeable in the corporate area.

In the past two years the Federal Parliament has passed about 1500 pages of corporate law. While everyone was carrying on about deregulating the labour market to create more efficiencies the capital and management markets were being stifled by regulation.

The result of all this regulatory detail has not been better corporate morality or more convictions for dishonesty. To the contrary. Detailed regulation in fact promotes dishonesty. Society now puts before managers and directors such detailed prescriptions of commercial conduct that it would be quite reasonable for them to conclude that conduct not proscribed is within the law and therefore within acceptable bounds of morality.

The corporations law has 33 pages devoted to duties of corporate officers and directors. It would be reasonable for a director to presume that this represented the totality of his or her obligations. Anything that fell outside such a detailed exposition would obviously be legal. Two thousand words are devoted to loans from a company to a director. Ah-ah, there is nothing about a company lending money to the trustee of a third cousin of the director’s father-in-law who has a company in the Hayman Islands. So that must be legal and right, even though if defeats the very purpose of the law.

How much easier to say: “”Directors will act honestly and diligently. Penalty five years.”

With that sort of law a lot of directors would think twice about seeking a company loan for cousin-in-law Alfonse to buy Hobie cats in the Hayman Islands.

The reason for not doing it this way has been that legislators in the past have been disappointed with some judges’ decisions. They have thought too many crooks have escaped through loopholes. So they tried to close the loopholes with massive regulation, only to create more loopholes. And even with this mass of regulation there is no evidence to suggest it catches more crooks (or once caught puts more crooks in jail) than the simpler laws of all. Indeed, the evidence points to the contrary.

The worst of it is that the vast majority of corporate office-holders are honest, but they are saddled with the regulations, too. They have to learn and fulfil a mass of reporting duties just so that a tiny few crooks might be caught. If they were actually caught there might be some justification for it.

This is creating mass inefficiency, just a the over-regulation of the labour market is.

It is also creating injustice and disrespect for the law as we see corporate crooks get off and disqualified drivers do burn outs in flats car parks with impunity. The new Parliament about to meet in Canberra has a great opportunity to fix it.

LAST week the chairman of the Press Council, Professor David Flint, called for an attack on the contempt law that fines and jails journalists for refusing to disclose confidential sources.

He thought the use of the implied freedom of political communication in the Constitution enunciated in the High Court last year should be used to this end. That freedom was used to strike out the Federal law restricting political advertisements in the electronic media at election time.

At the time the case came down, commentators thought it would be used in other cases to expand the right of free speech. It was fairly clear, however, that it could not be used to attack defamation laws because they provide, albeit in a very limited form, defences that enable free political communication. They strike a balance between an individual’s right to reputation against the public right to know, even if cogent arguments could be made that the balance is too heavily weighted in favour of the former. Further, communication is not prohibited before the event, it merely has to be justified afterwards.
Continue reading “1993_04_april_column5”

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission is to be revamped and made fully elected, the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Robert Tickner, announced yesterday.

Mr Tickner said it was part of greater management of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders of their own affairs. Under the changes, which would require legislation, the Minister would no longer appoint the chairperson and two commissioners.

(subs: next par is me backgrounding; it is not Tickner speaking, so leave it in existing tenses)

ATSIC was created in 1990, taking over many of the functions of the old Department of Aboriginal Affairs and some other bodies. It has a budget of about $600 million and a staff of more than 1000, 900 of whom are permanent and 420 of whom are Aboriginal or Islander. About $84 million of its budget is spent on administration and the rest on programs. ATSIC’s main functions are to devise and supervise government programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and give policy advice to the Government.
Continue reading “1993_04_april_atsic”

An appeal against the first order made under the lease-purpose section of the ACT’s new planning law was adjourned in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on Friday until next month.

The order was to come into effect on April 30, it will be stayed. The Department of Environment, Land and Planning issued the order against a business in the Hume industrial area, asserting it was retailing.

The Returned and Services League of Australia called on the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, to promote the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Senator John Faulkner, into Cabinet.

The RSL’s National President, Digger James, said he would be pleased if speculation that Senator Faulkner was to be promoted to Cabinet, while retaining Veterans’ Affairs, was correct.

He said Senator Faulkner had been responsive and able to make up his own mind independently of advisers, departmental officers and vested interests.
Continue reading “1994_03_march_vets1”

Canberrans are the highest users of water among the temperate capitals in Australia. Our water is the among the costliest to supply and yet is charged at the cheapest rate.

In fact, those three elements are closely linked.

We use a lot of water because it is cheap. It is expensive to supply because the city is spread out. Because the city is so spread out we have big gardens, so we use a lot of water.

If we continue to use water a present rates an expensive new dam will have to be built by 2002, given population trends. Something has got to give.

The ACTEW has put out an issues paper prepared by the CSIRO asking Canberrans for their comments on what is to be done.
Continue reading “1993_03_march_water”

It will be two hours into the count on election night before the polls close in Western Australia, given the difference in time zones. Usually Western Australians can tune into the box minutes after voting booths close and find out the result of the election Australia-wide. Unless it is close, that is.

With some polls now showing the Coalition only one point ahead on first preferences or dead level on the two-party preferred vote, it may well be that the election will be too close to call without seeing what happens in the West.

There is no joy in Western Australia for Labor. Realistically, Labor can only lose seats in the West; there are none to gain. The Liberals most vulnerable seat is Moore on 7 per cent. Moreover, Labor is defending a very favourable result in 1990 which was produced with a distributional quirk that is unlikely to be repeated.

Labor holds four seats by tiny margins and two others with moderate margins. There are two safe Labor seats and six safe Liberal seats.
Continue reading “1993_03_march_wamarg”

University classes started yesterday after last week’s Orientation Week, during which first-year students worked out where they are and where they are going.

However, it is more like Orientation Yearfor everyone on campus. In Chinese terms, universities are living in interesting times. For universities, it would be easy to lapse into a swag of cliches about “”crossroads”, “”the most important election since the war”, “”revolutionary change” and so on. The trouble is, most of these cliches are at least partly true.

Changes of government usually bring big changes, but not always so. There were no big changes immediately after the 1975 or 1983 elections. However, if a radical Opposition takes power (like this one or that of Gough Whitlam in 1972), then big changes follow.

In this instance, moreover, big change is due whichever side wins in 12 days’ time. The Liberal change is promised; the Labor change has been legislated.
Continue reading “1993_03_march_uniop”

The residents of a cul-de-sac in the Tuggeranong suburb of Conder are angry at a proposed medium-density development which they say will destroy the very reason for moving into a quiet street.

The residents of Darebin Place have put in a formal objection over a lease variation over what used to be six blocks and its now one to permit medium density development. Previously, it was low-density with a ümaximum of six dwellings.

A notice went up on the land saying that LAND Corp would seek a change to permit a üminimum@ of six dwellings.

Tony and Judith Day, who live opposite, say the development could result in more cars and noise and danger for children, blocking of views, destruction of old trees and lowering of their property value.
Continue reading “1993_03_march_tuggers”