Crispin Hull

Two MPs called on the Federal Government yesterday to make heroin and other opiates available on prescription to addicts.

The Member for Eden-Monaro, Jim Snow, and the Member for Perth, Ric Charlesworth, said urgent action was need to combat the organised crime and the health and social problems association with drugs.

Mr Snow told the House that prohibition had led to black markets, violence, greater spread of AIDS, enticement of young people into drugs, murder and crimes by addicts to support their addiction.
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The general population, drug users and service providers want a controlled trial in Canberra to give heroin to addicts, but the police are against it, according to survey results published in the latest issue of Criminology Australia.

The survey was done after a committee of the ACT Legislative Assembly recommended it.

It showed 66 per cent of the community was in favour and 27 per cent against with 7 per cent don’t knows. Service providers were 71-19-9 and drug users 76-14-10. Police, however, responded the other way with 31 in favour, 63 against and 7 don’t knows.
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The court always has been there to determine the limits of state and federal power, but this year it did it differently. In the past, the great majority of cases limiting federal and state power have centred around two sections of the Constitution: Section 51 and Section 92. Section 51 lists the powers of the Federal Parliament: powers such as coinage, light houses, corporations and external affairs. Section 92 says trade, commerce and intercourse between the state shall be absolutely free. Section 92 cases are about whether a state of Federal law are invalid because they offend the section. They usually take the form: does a Tasmanian law stopping the sale of all “”undersize” 25cm crayfish illegally prevent the interstate trade in 20cm South Australian crayfish imported into the Hobart seafood market? Does a Federal law requiring margarine to have a set level of preservative stop free interstate trade in free-range margarine. And so on.

This year, however, the five cases which gave rise to most comment, while still addressing the main questions of Federal and state power, did so from other parts of the Constitution, or were implied from the Constitution as a whole, or were radical reinterpretations of the common law. The five were: Mabo on indigenous title, Cleary on who can be an MP, the case on the right to legal representation, the free-political-speech case and the boat-people case. Here was brave new ground.
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A COMPUTER program called Word 5 was marketed in the late 1980s. Most copies of it state “”Copyright 1989” when called up by a computer. This means that Microsoft, the creator of Word 5 will get copyright protection for the program until 2039, that is for 50 years after the program’s creation. Yet it is now impossible to buy a copy of Word 5 in a computer shop.

This is generally true of computer programs. Within 18 months they are upgraded and within three or four years at the outside they are simply unobtainable. Why should the law prevent the copying of something which is otherwise unavailable and therefore has no commercial value?

Last week the Prices Surveillance Authority commendably recommended that restrictions in the Copyright Act on the importing of computer software should be abolished. It said computer software companies and their licensed agents in Australian were charging Australian consumers too much. Under the Copyright Act licensed importers can stop people from importing software in commercial quantities even if they have paid full copyright fees in the overseas country, usually the US. The PSA rightly said if this restriction were abolished there would be greater competition and price of software in Australia would more reasonably reflect US price plus freight, not US price plus freight plus add-on for the cosy little restrictive practice protected by the Copyright Act.
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BARRY MacKenzie’s expressive simile “”dry as a crow’s armpit” jumped to mind last week as I skipped through the Centre for Independent Studies’ latest publication: The Economic Theory of Crime.

“”Dries” were those left over after Mrs Thatcher had wrung all the “”wets” from her Cabinet. Now the are on the retreat as politicians have discovered voters like a little humanity. It was therefore refreshing to discover that some people are still able to propound such unremittingly dry theories as The Economic Theory of Crime. It subjects crime to the rigours of economic cost-benefit analysis with graphs of supply and demand and comes up with some intelligent debunking of the no-fault theories that blame crime on society, upbringing, pathological compulsion and anything else other than the criminals deliberate decision to engage in crime.
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We have to protect the government’s revenue, the hard-earned money of the honest tax-payer. That is why we have to match up information in the Land Titles Office, the Companies Office, the Departments of Social Security and Health and the Tax Office to see who is cheating.

If you are honest, you have nothing to worry about.

Well, there is something to worry about. Government surveillance is a subtly increasing method of general control of the population with shuddering implications for our liberty. Author Simon Davies has done Australians a great service with the publication last month of üBig Brother@ (Simon and Schuster) pointing some of this out.
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The Far South Coast of NSW is under threat from the development of “”ribbon suburbs” between existing hamlets, according to a book launched in Canberra yesterday.

The book, Bush and Beach, by Richard Nott, says the area’s mostly rural identity with its natural coastline, isolated beaches and large reserved or public land is under threat from a lack of a clear government planning strategy.

“”Local and state authorities have served the interests of the developers,” it says
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The ACT is giving high priority to attacking the high incidence of cancer-related deaths among women, the Minister for Health, Wayne Berry, said yesterday.

Mr Berry was commenting on a report in The Canberra Times yesterday comparing ACT and national figures published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. They show that the ACT has the highest female cancer death rate in Australia and that a higher percentage of women die of cancer than of other causes in the ACT than nationally across all age groups.

Mr Berry said that in this year’s Budget funded a joint program with the Commonwealth for the early detection of breast cancer. The ACT and Commonwealth would each contribute $1.81 million over the next two years.
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The ACT has the highest rate of female cancer deaths in Australia, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures issued last week.

The percentage of cancer deaths among females in the ACT is significantly higher than in the rest of Australia.

The statistics show that through all age groups, the ACT has a significantly higher percentage of female cancer deaths than the rest of Australia. They show that the male rate, on the other hand is about the same, except of the 25-44 group. Shown the figures, a leading ACT oncologist, Dr Richard Pembrey, said the figures warranted investigation. He called for a compulsory ACT cancer registry.
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The Opposition accused the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, yesterday of breaching Cabinet rules on declarations of interests with respect to his interest in a piggery company.

The Opposition spokesman on the arts, Senator Michael Baume, said the Australian Securities Commission was inquiring into Mr Keating’s piggery group. Mr Keating had paid $430,00 for a half interest in the company. The company itself reported that that share was worth $4.2 million only six weeks later. He asked would the Government have an inquiry into “”Mr Keating’s blatant breach of Cabinet rules by not advising the then Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, that he had acquired a half interest in the piggery group on May 15, 1991 while he was still Treasurer” despite the rule that substantial alterations of interests should be reported.
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