Crispin Hull

Clearly none of the six majority senators of the committee on legal and constitutional affairs have had much to do with the victims of courts and the law in Australia.

Judging by the recommendations they brought down last week, they have been either subverted by the legal profession or they are blind. Their findings are contradictory and their suggested remedies will only make the situation worse.

On Page 5 they say: “”The committee believes that Australia has a basically sound legal system which nevertheless is in urgent need of substantial reform. The disrepair is of such a degree that is will require continual attention who share the responsibility for the situation and who, through that responsibility, have an opportunity to contribute to making the system what it should be.”
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Here’s some speculation about land in the ACT, in the light of the push to medium-density development.

Have you ever wondered why the ACT is so large? Why do we need 2359 sq km just to house the national capital?

The answer goes back to the great constitutional debates of 1890s. Political and regional jealousy among the delegates ensured that neither Sydney nor Melbourne could be the capital, so a new one would have to be created. The compromise was that Melbourne would house the national Parliament until a new capital was founded. When founded it would be somewhere in NSW, but at least 160km from Sydney.
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The losses are made clear in company returns on the public register at the Australian Securities Commission.

It is the closest Australia comes to the American system under which the President makes his tax return public each year.

Dr Hewson has two family companies, Brintmar Holdings Pty Ltd and Tobazo Pty Ltd.

Last year Tobazo lost $12,165 and Brintmar lost $4380. The companies are now worth $292,778 and $27,294 respectively, totalling $320,072. The 1991 financial year was better for the companies with profits totalling $56,717.
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The Australian Labor Party made a fundamental change yesterday. With the statement of the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, the Labor Party invested its hopes of change in society, and its hopes for re-election, in small and medium companies.

The change was accompanied by both rhetoric and practical policy.

For the first time in Labor Party history, the principal vehicle of modern industrial capitalism _ the limited liability company _ has been promoted by the Labor Party as the leading positive force of social and economic change that will benefit soceity and Labor’s principal constituents in particular.

In the past, Labor had seen companies as a force of exploitation of its constituents, to be met by counter-acting organisations, namely unions. More recently they have been seen as a merely neutral force or a necessary evil. In the past, companies were capital’s collective and unions were labour’s collective. It was different yesterday.
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A leading education adviser to both Liberal and Labor Governments has attacked the trend under Labor to amalgamation and centralised control of universities.

Professor Peter Karmel said, “”A reversal of recent trends is essential in the long term interests of Australia.”

He rejected the cult of bigness which had little merit for undergraduate teaching. He said the present system would “”steer universities towards a centrally determined set of values and priorities”.

Professor Karmel, chairman of the board of the Institute of Arts at ANU and former vice-chancellor of the ANU, has been on numerous government educational and economic advisory committees since the 1960s. He was giving a speech to a conference for student organisations interested in education policy in Melbourne a copy of which was made available last week.
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The annual return of the company owned by the family of the Leader of the Opposition, John Hewson, has not been filed on its due date, according to the publicly available record.

A search of the Australian Securities Commission record yesterday revealed that the annual return of Brintmar Holdings Pty Ltd, the Hewson family company, was due to be filed on January 31, but had not been filed by yesterday, according to the public record. This is a minor breach of the Corporations Law.

To be in time, the company should have filed the return on Friday. It is possible that the return has been filed, but not yet put on the public register.
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The National Front had had a very successful recruitment campaign in Canberra, a spokesman for the front said yesterday.

“”We now have hundreds of people here,” he said. “”They range from Members of Parliament, to executive officers to bricklayers and garbage collectors.”

The front put an advertisement in üThe Canberra Times last Saturday seeking membership.

The front would not be standing candidates in the next election, the spokesman said. It was more a movement than a political party. It had what he called some idealistic views. It did not believe in mixing the races. When asked whether this meant laws against mixed marriages and laws on separation in housing and the workforce, he said that when the front came to power it would not be a dictatorship. There would be no laws, but persuasion.
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The euthanasia Bill proposed by Michael Moore stands to be defeated following moves in the ACT Labor Party to change Labor policy, which presently supports some forms of euthanasia.

Labor’s policy is almost certain to be reviewed and amended before Mr Moore’s Bill is presented to the Legislative Assembly later this year.

Prominent Labor Party member Peter Conway is to move a review of the policy at the Curtin branch on Monday week.

Mr Conway said yesterday that the law was not keeping up with medical technology.

At present, Labor policy says an ACT Labor Government would introduce legislation to allow for “”internventional medical treatment to be refused by a patient”.
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It was 36 degrees in Braidwood. The tar was melting on the Kings Highway. But a change was coming. The giant cumulonimbus clouds were building up in the west. Big splotches of rain were about to drop in callous randomness across the Monaro.

Some farms crying for it would miss out. Others, with dams full would get yet more. The great grey clouds could throw rain uselessly down the stormwater drains of Queanbeyan but leave the sheep farmers at Bombala in brown destitution. Sleet can lash the side of Kosciusko while bathers bask in the South Coast sun.

Welcome to the electorate of Eden-Monaro _ for the past 21 years Australia’s political barometer. When the Government changes, it changes.
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The Opposition promised yesterday to “”give universities their autonomy back” by repealing the Government’s university funding model passed late last year.

Under the Government’s new model each university has to provide the Minister (in this case Peter Baldwin) with an educational profile. Based on that and the total appropriated for all 34 universities, the Minister decides how much money each university gets and the Minister can ensure the university follows its educational profile.

The Opposition spokesman on education, Dr David Kemp, said this Dawkins model (largely framed by the former Minister, John Dawkins) made universities subservient to ministerial will.

“”Universities cannot be independent if the Government controls the purse strings,” he said. “”But the question is how do you provide a Commonwealth subsidy without control?”
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