1993_02_february_column29

Commonwealth Parliament has been at it again. Late last year it passed a law preventing people from urging others to vote informal.

The section says (in English) that during an election campaign a person shall not encourage other people to vote informal.

Penalty: imprisonment for six months.

Is the Parliament serious? How on earth was this section allowed through. Six months is the maximum penalty for drink driving and is the actual penalty (after trendy remissions and parole) imposed upon armed robbers and rapists. (Indeed, a child rapist, albeit 75-years-old, got a bond in NSW last week).
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1993_02_february_column22

A year ago an episode of üA Country Practice I chanced to watch had the Friends of Tree Park chaining themselves to a huge tree in protest at plans to develop the park.

I think now that the image is entirely out of date: noisy, selfish NIMBYs chaining themselves to a tree to prevent reasonable town-planning objectives being pursued in the broad public interest.

I shall be offering the producers an updated script which shows a changed role for both sides, set in Wandin Valley.

The futile protest is out. Chaining yourself to a tree does no-one any good. The network of “”friends” does not exist among the people opposed to development. The people opposed to development are quite disparate. Only some are selfish opponents of the vacant block next door being developed. Nearly all of them are idealists. Many of them don’t mind some development, but they want some intelligence applied to it. They want it done in the broad public interest to improve the lives of the people who live in Wandin Valley.
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1993_02_february_column12

Section 10(c) of the Workers Compensation Act. Refer back to Section 10(1) multiply it out. Yep. That’s the result. If a worker, in an accident at work, losses the lot, both testicles and his penis, he gets a maximum of. wait for it. $41,860.46. So, what’s all this about a footballer in Sydney getting $350,000 last week for just having a photograph of his vital parts in a magazine? They weren’t chopped off or anything. Just a photograph of them.

There’s something seriously wrong here. A worker with his vitals gone forever gets $41,860 yet a star football player with just a photograph of his in a magazine which virtually nobody had heard of until this case gets $350,000.

The law is an ass and a lottery. It’s enough to turn anyone into a socialist: one law for the workers and another for the famous football stars. And it’s not as if the footballer has to go to any great deal of proof to get his damages. He only has to prove publication (hold up the magazine or ask the publisher how many copies he sold) and suggest the publication hurt his reputation. He does not have to prove it actually did hurt his reputation. Indeed, many people came along to court say what a jollly chap he was.
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1993_02_february_column8

A patient is in desperate agony. He had a terminal disease of the blood, can hardly breathe and cannot keep any food down. Pneumonia is about to set in.

Dr Priest takes one look at him and called in the nurses. “”Quick, put him on a respirator,” he said. “”Give him some anti-biotics to prevent the pneumonia. Connect him to a dialysis machine to clear his blood. Give him some morphine for the pain and connect a drip to his arm to feed him.”

The man lives on in a daze or pain with the help of medical technology.

Some days later Dr Priest goes on leave and is replaced by Dr Levite. Dr Levite disconnects the respirator and the dialysis machine and stops the anti-biotics and the drip feed. He continues the morphine, and the patient continues to go from daze to pain. But Dr Levite thinks it will not be long now _ now that the machines have been disconnected.
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1993_02_february_cities

The Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning, Bill Wood, had no difficulty with the chairman of ACT Electricity and Water, Peter Phillips, being a shareholder in a North Canberra urban-renewal development, Mr Wood said yesterday.

Mr Wood said he was aware of Mr Phillips’s shareholding in a joint development with the ACT Housing Trust in Braddon.

Mr Phillips has defended his investment saying he was proud to be a joint investor in providing a public-private housing mix.

North Canberra development has been mentioned in the Better Cities program.
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1993_02_february_child

The T-shirts carried the slogan: “”My Daddy loves me because I’m a tax deduction”.

Though tongue in cheek, the slogan expressed the stereotype. Slobby man not taking much interest in the kids education and care, but just in the money.

This week’s child-care cash rebate, might not change the attitude of fathers (other social changes will do that), but it is certainly a big change in government and bureaucratic thinking.

The claims by (mainly) women to get some sort of equality and justice in the tax system go back a long way.
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1993_02_february_cantax

There is a superficial similarity, but some crucial differences between the Canadian goods and services tax and the GST proposed by the Opposition.

The similarity is that the tax burden is shifted from income to consumption and that the tax replaces wholesale taxes. This means that exports are no longer taxed, and in theory it encourages saving.

Canada introduced a 7 per cent GST in January, 1991. The Coalition’s tax is set at 15 per cent.

The essential differences are that Canada’s tax is administratively more clumsy on two counts and is easy to avoid on two counts.
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1993_02_february_bworth

A fire destroyed a demountable classroom at Beechworth Primary School in 1960. It was one of several temporary classrooms most of which were still there when I was last in Beechworth some thirty years later.

Anyway, Grade 4 spent half the year in the Congregational Church Hall where Mr Bernaldo struggled away with long division, üThe Pioneers by Frank Hudson from the Victorian Education Department’s üA Fourth Reader, and what was called the Cursive Script.

It was called “”Grade 4”, note.
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1993_01_january_dowling

The retiring Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn, Owen Dowling, was married yesterday to Gloria Goodwin at St Paul’s, Manuka.

It was, and it was not, St Paul’s day.

It is St Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians that is cited by those opposing the ordination of women.

The Reverend Vicky Cullen, ordained by Bishop Dowling last month, celebrated the Eurcharist at the service. She was the first woman to do so in St Paul’s. She said it was a privilege and joyous occasion.

The marriage was celebrated by the Reverend Keith McCollim who took St Paul’s letter to the Colossians as the starting point for his address.

And the same letter by St Paul was chosen as the reading.

St Paul’s was packed with nearly 300 people who listened to the celebrants and the couple’s children, Natalie and Gavin Oliver and Matthew and Mary Dowling, lead prayers and the readings.

The couple would not say where they will spend their honeymoon, though “”it will be somewhere quiet,” according to the bride.

Bishop Dowling has had a difficult year in his struggle for the ordination of women. An ordination service planned at the beginning of the year was blocked by the courts. Later the General Synod cleared the way for their ordination and the first women to be ordained in Canberra-Goulburn were admitted to the priesthood by him last month.

Yesterday was the first full day of Bishop Dowling’s retirement. He said after the service, “”We can spend a whole new life together; it’s wonderful.”

The Dowlings will not live in Canberra, though he has been bishop nine years and 27 years in the ministry in the diocese.

Bishop Dowling went on extensive sick leave earlier in the year after charges laid by Victorian police over an alleged incident in Bendigo. These were dropped by the Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions who said they were trivial and victimless and not in the public interest given the probable effect on the bishop’s health.

In his address at the service, the Reverend McCollim quoted St Paul: “”Love does not gloss over the past.”

He said there were three dimensions of love to be considered: the past, the present and the future.

“”Any love that cannot face all three does not merit our consideration today, or for that matter any day,” he said. “”In any marriage, let alone a remarriage, love encounters those darker times of bygone events where failure, selfishness or weakness may well have been experienced. St Paul reminds us that “love keeps no score of wrongs. does not gloat over others’ sins.”

On present love he said the “”now generation” had resulted in too high expectations of marraige that could almost ensure disappointment and disillusionment. But “”true love will neither founder on the rocks of past failure, nor invest all it’s capital in the present experience. There is always more to come”.

He said “”Gloria and Owen now find themselves at a new beginning.”

After the service, Owen Dowling stepped out into the blinding sunshine with his bride for photographs and greet well-wishers on the lawns outside St Paul’s.

1993_01_january_column25

There is an enormous commotion with television cameras whirring and a tussle between the thugs, the security guards and the musician. Finally, two burly New York cops arrive. The KGB men immediately say the musician is Russian, he must go with them to the airport back to Moscow.

At which, one of the cops says: “”This is New York. The man can go where he likes.”

It was an earthy expression of the presumption of freedom _ a presumption that is being sadly eroded in Australia.
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