Crispin Hull

IIn announcing an election for March 13, Paul Keating has shown again his fundamental political style. Attack is the best form of defence, and surprise is the best form of attack.

Having allowed mutterings about a pre-Christmas poll to keep the Opposition needlessly on its toes, he then allowed everyone to relax a while by saying that Parliament would sit as scheduled on February 23. This made everyone think that an April or May election was most likely.

Mr Keating gave the minimum notice and made his announcement on a Sunday, catching everyone on the hop. It is a Prime Minister’s prerogative under the Westminster system to select the date, and Mr Keating got the maximum advantage of that power. He has toyed with the election date like a cat with a mouse. And now he has sprung, quickly and decisively.

Tactically, the Opposition is slightly on the back foot. Though prepared policy-wise, organisationally its national machine has to now crank itself up to book advertising time, arrange meetings and co-ordinate shadow Ministers’ appearances. On the ground, non-sitting challengers in individual seats who have been sweating on a pre-Christmas poll and then a February poll have now to quickly re-ignite enthusiasm among their teams of volunteers who a week ago had assumed they could rest until April or May.
Continue reading “1993_02_february_polldate”

The piggery companies of the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, made a total of $3.2 million in losses last financial year, according to returns lodged with the Australian Securities Commission.

The losses follow $1 million in losses the previous financial year.

The piggery companies are now worth minus $2.3 million compared to an estimated $1.36 million in 1991. Audits of the 1991 accounts for the companies said they relied on the continued support of the company’s bankers, the Commonwealth, and on shareholders for their continued existence. It would be fair to say that given the 1992 profit that situation continues.

However, the losses and consequent reductions in shareholders’ equity do not seem to translate into Mr Keating’s family company, Pleuron Pty Ltd.

The piggery group has the following companies: Brown and Hatton Group, Brown and Hatton Wholesale, Brown and Hatton Rural, Jensay, Labvac and Olympia Sales. The main business is a piggery in Scone NSW and refrigeration equipment. The companies are in an $80 million joint venture with a Danish company, Danpork. The joint venture hopes to employ some 200 people and sell pork into Asia, using Danish capital and Australian cheaper feed and land.

Above the piggery companies sits Euphron Pty Ltd which is half owned by Pleuron Pty Ltd, the Keating family company.

Pleuron shows its loss for the year at $1072. The company is worth $473,366, according to the annual return, but it is difficult to see how that can be anything but a paper amount given the losses and negative shareholders’ equity of the subsidiary piggery companies.

This financial year the companies were exempt proprietary companies for the whole year. This means that auditor does not have to be appointed. It also means the accounts are much less detailed.

The accounts show that there has been some straightening out since the companies came under fire last year in the Senate and in the press. Last year the accounts and company reports were revised and then audited and revised again. They showed different amounts in different way at different times, especially a debt to former Minister for Tourism John Brown. That amount is not shown in the 1992 accounts, because that amount of detail is not required.

The accounts have corrected the bizarre situation in Euphron whose shareholders’ equity jumped from about $800,000 to $8.4 million in 1991, meaning that the Keating family share was some $4.2 million on paper. The equity for Euphron is now put at $861650.

The best performer in the group was Brown and Hatton Rural which turned in a profit of $1.9 million. However, that was eclipsed by losses elsewhere in the group.

The Leader of the Opposition, John Hewson, questioned last night whether the governmental actions of the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, had given Mr Keating a personal advantage.

Dr Hewson was responding to a question on the ABC’s ü7.30 Report about the Opposition’s attack in the Senate in the past eight months on Mr Keating’s investment in a piggery.

Mr Keating’s office issued a statement after Dr Hewson’s remarks saying: “”The allegations tonight by Dr Hewson that I have corruptly benefited personally from government decisions is an unsustainable and outrageous slur. Dr Hewson who last week claimed factual revelations about his tax minimisation was gutter politics has tonight made a highly defamatory statement which he knows he cannot back up. He should withdraw it and apologise immediately.”
Continue reading “1993_02_february_pigs4a”

A company once owned by former Minister for Tourism John Brown to which the Keating piggery companies once owed up to $4 million has been dissolved.

There are no answers as to whether the piggery companies still owe any money to Mr Brown.

Mr Brown is head of the privately funded Tourism Task Force, one of whose aims is to lobby the Federal Government in the interests of the tourism industry. It has claimed much success in generating more tourism business to Australia.

The Prime Minister, Paul Keating, and his family are the half owners of the piggery companies through his family company Pleuron which half owns Euphron which in turn owns Brown and Hatton Group Pty Ltd (BH Group).
Continue reading “1993_02_february_pigs4”

The legal profession has abused the privilege of self-regulation and is incapable of dealing with complaints and setting its own fees, according a dissenting report on the cost of justice in Australia.

The report was published yesterday by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs.

The main recommendations included one for the Bureau of Statistics to collate information about the profession and its costs.

Others included an on-going reference to the committee to monitor the profession; that courts and other legal bodies report annually on costs and that there be an annual public legal forum.
Continue reading “1993_02_february_legalfee”

There was something missing from the Prime Minister’s promise this week to cut company tax and to provide cash rebates for child care. Where was the independent inquiry? Where was the reference to the parliamentary committee? Where was the inter-departmental committee? Where were the public submissions?

Why is it that on some occasions, our politicians can virtually click their fingers and announce major legislative and policy changes, yet on other occasions we get a raft of inquiries and submissions and nothing ever gets done. üYes Minister’s@ Sir Humphrey is right, if you don’t want to do something, have an inquiry. And thus is was with the inquiry by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal Constitutional Affairs into the cost of justice. In effect, it recommended further inquiry. Further inquiry is not needed. The community knows that justice is too costly and is invariably delayed. In other words jusstice is denied.

It is now no longer a question of cost overruns in a fews cases, or a few people not being able to afford access to the legal system. Australia is now at the stage where only the very wealthy and the desperately poor with legal aid can go to court. And the blame for this state of affairs must be squarely laid at the legal profession.
Continue reading “1993_02_february_leaderr11”

The ABC was given the site decades ago for nothing for the purposes of broadcasting. It was a worthy, community cause and the Government at the time thought they should get the lease. The long-term aim was to put the ABC’s national headquarters there and to house radio and television reporting teams for Parliament and the national capital. Some of those aims have changed. The ABC has substantial studios at Parliament and will never bring its headquarters here. Further, it has dropped its local television news, so it no longer requires a spacious TV studio at Northbourne Avenue.

Thus the ABC has come up with the idea that a developer could come in and use part of the site for commercial purposes or medium-density housing and on the rest of the site build the ABC a shiny new radio studio for nothing. The Uniting Church did the same thing in the 1980s on a Civic site it had been given for nothing decades before. The old church in town was knocked over. Two-thirds of the site went to commercial offices and the church got a shiny new place of worship and some new offices for itself.

The practice must stop. The ABC was given the site for broadcasting, not for commercial development. If the site is too big, the ABC should hand it back and ask for a smaller, more suitable site elsewhere. The ACT community can understand the ABC’s difficulty. It has a huge site and buildings which cost $300,000 a year to maintain. A smaller site would cost half that to maintain.
Continue reading “1993_02_february_leader26”

Some quite understandable movements have gained hold in public life in Australia seeking to change attitudes and to change priorities in public funding. Broadly, they seek a better deal for groups of people who have been repressed or marginalised. Some have sought changes to they way Australian authorities approach foreign policy, foreign aid, public health and legal aid. Often, those groups have sought and received most succour from the people within Australia’s universities. The universities, for long the haven of dissent and challenge in society, promoted, joined in and welcomed the the changes.

Now the universities find that the very changes people within the universities supported are being turned on the universities themselves. Equalitiy, non-discrimination and gender-equity are suddenly being applied to education. Suddenly, we had a clash of ideology among people who otherwise were allied in favour of change. The underlying culture of universities was under challenge by new political correctness. Equality of outcome had no place in a culture of pursuit of excellence. Positive discrimination had no place in a culture of judgment on merit. Study of ephemeral phenonema had no place in a culture of academic discipline. Worse still, pursuit of knowledge had no place in a political culture that worshipped mediocrity.

The early 1990s has seen the social idealism of the 1970s implode. The radicalism of the 1970s that sought great changes in government is now faced with the consequences of its own folly on the the campuses in the 1990s.
Continue reading “1993_02_february_leader14”

The $350,000 awarded to Andrew Ettingshausen is plainly over the top. Under NSW law, juries determine damages for defamation under guidance from the judge. The judge did his best, and even warned the jury that an impossibly high verdict would only be turned over on appeal. However, the jury apparently wanted to make a statement about the intrusive press and to vindicate Ettingshausen. Whatever the merit in its motives, the vehicle for expressing them _ huge damages _ was inappropriate and in the long run will achieve nothing. Ettingshausen will now have to await the inevitable appeal process, maybe years, before he sees any money.

The $350,000 will only further jaundice people’s view of the legal system. The public will be as cynical as they were over Leo McLeay’s $65,000 for falling off a bike. At least Mr McLeay suffered some permanent injury. To get $350,000 in a personal-injury case, one would have to lose a leg or suffer some very major permanent injury. The maximum amount for pain and suffering in personal injury (as distinct from loss of earnings) in NSW is about $100,000. How can the pain and suffering of a paraplegic after a car accident be compared to that of a fit man seeing a picture of himself naked? The law, however, does not permit judges or lawyers to inform juries about going rates for personal-injuries claims.

The awarding of damages must be taken out of the hands of juries and be made by judges. Juries are equally capable of awarding ridiculously low amounts. The trouble is that, in defamation in particular, they appear to respond to prejudice and personal feeling. Footballers do better than politicians. If judges award damages they can do so with accompanying words. They can express disquiet about press behaviour and a plaintiff’s good conduct in words without resort to huge damages, which is the only weapon of a jury. Huge damages awards will only result in inequities that cause the public to view the law as an ass or a lottery.
Continue reading “1993_02_february_leader12”

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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