Crispin Hull

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?”
Continue reading “1993_02_february_educate”

“”There is no comfort for Jim in his 4.5 per cent; Eden-Monaro always goes with government.”

These are the confident words of the Liberal candidate Rob de Fegely. ÿ(subs: first e has an acute accent bottom left to top right)

For nearly a year he has crossed the electorate in his Pajero, talking to party members to get pre-selected and more recently to voters.

Paul Keating’s tactics on the election timing have hit their mark. Challenging candidates like de Fegely have to juggle work commitments with electoral ones, unlike the MPs they are challenging. While the big-picture watchers look at the effect on television advertising bookings and the machine behind the Coalition’s national campaign, the uncertainty over the date has had a more profound effect at the local level. De Fegely went back to work on Thursday after taking annual leave to criss-cross the electorate. Some of that work will get stale if the election is delayed much longer.
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The sole remaining academic on the board of the University Co-Operative Bookshop, Maurice Dunlevy, has resigned, citing petty intrigue and a distancing of the co-op from the campuses.

In resigning, Mr Dunlevy called for a public meeting of members and the turning out of the board and the election of a new one.

Mr Dunlevy’s resignation comes after the surprise sacking of the co-op’s three most senior executives last month at a special board meeting called at short notice. The composition of the board (a third of which is elected every year on rotation) has changed over the past two elections with the removal of members with academic, publishing and business experience to a younger group.

Very few of the 570,000 members of the co-op vote at elections for directors. The co-op has shops at virtually every Australian tertiary institution.

The new group wants to implement changes at the co-op through a new executive. The board has ordered a examination of the financial management of the co-op by Einfeld Symonds BDV. Co-op sources revealed that “”inside-job” cash thefts from co-op shops amounting to $200,000 had taken place over the past 10 years and the board says this points to lax security. Managers point out, however, that it is a large cash business.

Mr Dunlevy, a senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Canberra, said the sackings of the executives had affected, staff, suppliers and customers. he had be deluged with calls expressing disquiet. With nine years’ service, Mr Dunlevy was the longest serving board member.

In his letter of resignation to the chairman of the board, James Emerson, Mr Dunlevy said, “”I find that trying to work on a board which during 1992 was racked by pointless petty intrigues and misapplied administrative energies a thankless task.”

This year, meetings had been called at short notice and agenda and financial papers impossible to get. and financial statements impossible to get.

Since he had joined the board it had turned a $700,000 loss to a succession of impressive profits. Of more importance, the discount to customers had increased from 5 per cent to 15 per cent. The board had moved in library and school supply and had begun an efficient journal service.

“”As most directors over the past 10 years were academics and students, we had our roots firmly in the campuses where our customers are,” Mr Dunlevy said. “”We had the incentive to serve them well because we could see their reactions every day.”

Mr Emerson, who works with the Department of Social Security in Brisbane, was unavailable for comment yesterday.

Mr Dunlevy said he hoped the present board could chalk up an equally impressive record as that of the previous 10 years. However, he thought that when the customers saw what had happened tot he organisation that had served them so well, “”a movement will begin to win back the co-op for the campuses”.

He called for a meeting of members to elect an entirely new board.

The University Co-Operative Bookshop has appointed one of its directors, Ted Seng, to a senior position and appointed a new chief executive, John Oldmeadow.

The appointments follow the sacking last month of the three most senior executives.

Mr Oldmeadow was formerly general manager at Murdoch Magazines.

The sacking of the previous executive followed changes to the composition of the board after the past several elections, removing academics and people experienced in publishing. A third of the board is elected every three years on rotation.
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