Crispin Hull

When the US calls, Australia usually snaps to attention. This was certainly the case with Vietnam and the Gulf War when Australia snapped to attention a little too smartly. Yet on the occasion of the US asking for Australian troops for Somalia we have dithered. On this occasion Australia should have responded to with alacrity. The former Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, virtually asked the US to ask us to send troops to the Gulf where they would be engaged in a war. Yet now, when Australian troops are needed to ensure food gets to starving Somalians we are dithering.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Gareth Evans, told the Senate last week that the US had asked Australia to contribute. “”The Government is considering various options in this respect and decisions will be taken shortly. I’m not in a position, however, to indicate right now what our reaction will be,” he said. He said the disarmament part of operation would be difficult, dangerous and perhaps protracted. The famine relief part should be over within two or three months.
Continue reading “1992_12_december_leader15”

At last an Australian Prime Minister has recognised who was responsible for the act of dispossession of the Aboriginal people. The statement by Paul Keating this week was a leap not taken by the two of his predecessors who did more than other Prime Ministers for Aboriginal people: Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser. Whitlam recognised the appalling plight of Aborigines in Australia: their lower standards of health, education and housing. He poured money in to rectify it, but with sadly little effect. Fraser recognised the need for Aboriginal possession of land and passed the Land Rights Act. Sadly, it was restricted to the Northern Territory.

Me Keating has gone a leap further in recognising who did the dispossessing and the destruction of traditional lifestyle and therefore who has the moral responsibility to do the repairing. He said, “”We brought the diseases and the alcohol. We committed the murder. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion.” Mr Keating quite rightly cautioned against the destructive emotion of guilt.
Continue reading “1992_12_december_leader12”

There was no proof that violence on television or videos caused acts of violence in the community, but community attitudes should determine the issue, according to the Australian Chief Censor, John Dickie.

This was the view of the National Committee of Violence and that of the Australian Institute of Criminology.

“”The cause of violence are complex,” Mr Dickie said. The included family factors, drug abuse, biological factors, mental illness and cultural matters. The media (including film) were at the bottom of the list. However, they could not be taken out of the picture.
Continue reading “1992_11_november_violent”

The ACT has the lowest road toll and the greatest fall of fatal road accidents of any state or territory, according to statistics issued this week.

The ACT has 0.62 deaths per 100 million kilometres travelled, half the Australian average of 1.34. The next best state is Victoria with 1.02 and the worse is the Northern Territory with 3.14.

The statistics were issued by the Department of Transport and Communications.
Continue reading “1992_11_november_roadstat”

Some of the Members of the ACT House of Assembly may have felt slightly nervous in their seats as the Electoral Bill came before them last night. For some, it could spell doom.

As approved in the referendum, the Bill provides for three electorates. One will have seven members and the other two will have five.

From now on we can expect the 17 MLAs to regionalise themselves, taking greater interest in “”their area” to identify themselves among the electors of it.
Continue reading “1992_11_november_poll”

This is the prediction of John Connolly, of Creditline in Sydney. Credit Line, an off-shoot of Lifeline. He said last week that all the international and Australian experience with new casinos is that pawn-broking shops open near casinos within six months to a year.

So there is money to be made from the casino, he says with irony, preying on the victims.

Mr Connolly says Canberrans can expect an increase in the call on welfare services. However, they will be slow to recognise it as a gambling problem. Gamblers hide their problem, and welfare people might not have the experience to identify it. The right questions won’t be asked.
Continue reading “1992_11_november_pawn”

The director of the Nolan Gallery at Lanyon, Angela Philp, said yesterday that of 300 works at the gallery, about 100 had been lent by Nolan. The rest had been given by him.

“”He loved Lanyon,” Ms Philp said. “”We wanted to be buried here under a tree.”

Ms Philp hopes the lent works will remain with the others at the gallery.

Nolan gave a foundation collection of 24 works to the nation in 1975. Because he loved Lanyon so much, they were housed at the Lanyon homestead, just south of what is now Tuggeranong. The gallery was built in 1980 and it housed the growing collection. The collection includes the first painting in the Ned Kelly series among many in the Kelly series. It has works from the Rimbaud Cezanne series and For the Term of his Natural Life series, among others, and a Burke and Wills painting.
Continue reading “1992_11_november_nolan1”

It was suggested last week that Canberra be nominated for world-heritage listing. The suggestion is ill-founded in both logic and common-sense.

Let us draw and analogy. The English common law has as one of its many elements some principles of property law. It recognises several estates in land, two of which are estates in fee simple and entail.

Estates in fee enable the owner to do what he likes. Estates entail enable the owner to enjoy the profits of the estate and to live on it, but require its maintenance and its passing to the eldest son indefinitely down the family line. The estate entail was aimed at preserving the family lands for the family, down the male line, indefinitely.
Continue reading “1992_11_november_leader30”

An experiment with drugs has been going on in Australia for ninety years. Those doing the experiment have added more and more ingredients over the years, applied more and more potency to the catalysts, and poured greater amounts of money into it. But no matter, the experiment is not coming out the way its designers thought. In fact, the experiement is coming up with results exactly opposite from those intended.

The drug-prohibition experiment is not working and has never worked. An experiement designed to reduce drug use and to reduce the detriment it has on society is having exactly the opposite effect. Drug use is continuing and increasing. Worse, the prohibition policy means we now have two problems instead of one: not just a health problem from drug misuse, but a crime problem caused directly by the prohibition experiment.

Some misguided, naive parliamentarians imagined that if they made the possession of drugs illegal, they could change people’s behaviour. Moreover, they congratulated themselves in a self-validating way by saying they were stamping out an evil which obviously was an evil because it was against the law.
Continue reading “1992_11_november_leader25”

John Bannon’s resignation as Premier of South Australia last September can now be seen for what is was: not a man putting party and colleagues before self, but a quick exit before the curtain inevitably came down on a saga on ineptitude. The findings brought down yesterday by the Jacobs Royal Commission into the State Bank of South Australia do not reveal rottenness on the scale of WA Inc, but they reveal some appalling commercial blunders and profound structural weaknesses in the relationship between the bank and the politicians. Put simply, if John Bannon had tried to tough it out in September he would have had to resign yesterday. He earlier resignation will not remove the taint on his colleagues which will have its inevitably effect at the election next year. South Australians will realise, as surely as Victorians did, that financial mismanagement of that scale is inexcusable.

The new Premier, Lynn Arnold, attempted to distance his government from the bank’s $3.15 billion losses. He said the commissioner Samuel Jacobs, QC, had not discovered an SA Inc and that there was no deliberate cover-up by Mr Bannon or any other member of the Government. Even accepting Mr Arnold’s view of commission’s findings, that only shows the Government was not dishonest. It was still incompetent, and incompetent on a grand scale. Mr Arnold attempted to sheet blame on to the bank’s chief executive, Tim Marcus Clarke. This is untenable.
Continue reading “1992_11_november_leader18”