Crispin Hull

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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Making Tuggeranong Homestead a Charles Bean centre of the Australian War Memorial was an attractive idea, but the memorial did not have the money for it, the director of the memorial, Brendon Kelson, said yesterday.

The ACT Government and the ACT House of Assembly Committee on Conservation, Heritage and Environment have been looking at the fate of the historic homestead over the past few weeks.

Charles Bean, war correspondent and author of The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18, wrote at least four volumes of the 12-volume work at the homestead between 1919 and 1924, including The Story of Anzac. The history tells the story of war from the perspective of ordinary soldiers in the field, rather than the top brass, and made an essential contribution to the awakening of a national pride through the achievements of Australian soldiers.
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As the recession bites harder elsewhere, the inflow of interstate migrants to the ACT is increasing. Figures issued by the Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday show that in 1991, interstate migration formed 45 per cent of the ACT’s population growth. In 1988 it was only 21 per cent. The natural increase fell from 64 per cent of the total in 1988 to 47 per cent of it in 1991. Overseas migration, which forms the balance fell from 32 per cent of total in 1988 to 12 per cent in 1991.

The ACT has been seen as a city of immigrants from the rest of Australia since its founding. That image was beginning to change as it was thought natural increase was making up a higher proportion of the total population increase. Yesterday’s statistics, however, show that the trend is the other way. They show that since 1988, Canberra had become even more a town of immigrants.
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Australia has become a surveillance society without virtually no public debate, according to author Simon Davies.

Mr Davies said yesterday that with present government surveillance, “”we already have the Australia Card, and worse. It is more sophisticated and efficient that the Australia Card could ever have been. We don’t have a card itself but we have data matching between departmental computers putting thousands of innocent people under suspicion and investigation.”

Mr Davies, a lecturer in law at the University of NSW, argues that Australians are far too complacent about invasions of privacy. He thinks the word privacy has become a dirty word and prefers to call a spade and spade. He refers to the collection of information by government as surveillance.
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The Prime Minister, Paul Keating, has one thing going for him that John Hewson has not. Mr Keating can chose the date of the election. And true to his general style he is squeezing the juice of his advantage to maximum effect.

An odd hint in November of an early poll threw the Opposition into a mild panic, perhaps it was the final straw that scared it into putting retreads on Fightback.

The uncertainty causes greater damage to the Opposition, despite all the huffing and puffing that they are ready for an election any time. Gearing up for an election is a costly business, requiring great organisation. Volunteers have to be roped in, casual staff hired, television and radio advertisements booked (print media can just add pages any time someone puts up the dough; the electronics have only a finite amount of advertising time) and so on. How much better it would be if the Opposition knew the date.
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We haven’t heard too much from the Government about John Hewson’s Ferrari recently. Nor will we between now and the election. The Prime Minister, Paul Keating, likes to be the champion of the battler, the worker, the down and out. He has portrayed the Labor Government as the helper of those who cannot help himself.

Until four months ago, Mr Keating made much of Dr Hewson’s wealth, especially his Ferrari. He can no longer do that because Mr Keating is himself a millionaire, four times over. At least on paper. So the moment he makes a personal attack about Dr Hewson’s wealth, he will invite an attack in response. That will not stop colourful personal references of other kinds, because they are an important part of Mr Keating’s political armoury, and he is very good at it. His line this week that Dr Hewson, the “”flim-flam” man, only “”discovered his heart when he discovered fear in it” was a gem.

But there was no contrasting the Ferrari-owning of the Opposition Leader with the plight of the clients of the Australian Council of Social Service. That would be dangerous ground.
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The piggery group half owned by the Keating family has begun to make corrections to earlier reports lodged with the Australian Securities Commission.

A search last week revealed that a return of Euphron Pty Ltd, half owned by the Keatings, has been amended. The Keatings’ half share in Euphron is held through 100 shares owned by Mr Keating himself and 10,000 shares owned by the Keating family company, Pleuron Pty Ltd, which they have owned since December, 1989.

The original 1991 annual return of Euphron said that when the Keatings bought their half share they had paid $43,100. The search last week revealed that that has now been amended to $430,100.
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Brown and Hatton Group Pty Ltd, the piggery company half-owned by the Prime Minister’s family company, had still not filed group audited accounts as required by the Australian Securities Commission, the Opposition spokesman on the arts, Senator Michael Baume, said yesterday.

It has, however, filed separate audited accounts for the parent company and the subsidiaries.

Senator Baume said that these showed a $1.9 million worsening in the overall position from the previous unaudited accounts. They showed also that overall losses in 1989-90 and 1990-91 were understated in the unaudited accounts by $1.7 million.
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Audited accounts for the piggery half-owned by the Prime Minister’s family company show it to be worth $8 million less than stated in the originally lodged unaudited accounts.

The original unaudited reports for Brown and Hatton Group Ltd were lodged with the Australian Securities Commission in June. The ASC required them to be audited. The audited accounts were lodged last week and became publicly available yesterday.

The unaudited accounts put total shareholders’ equity at the end of 1990-91 at $7.5 million. The audited accounts put it at a deficiency of $528,000.
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The Government was asked two questions in the Senate yesterday on whether the Prime Minsiter, Paul Keating, had a conflict of interest over a piggery half owned by his family company.

Senator Brian Archer, (Lib Tas) referred to an article in üThe Canberra Times@ yesterday dealing with corrected accounts of the Brown and Hatton Group Pty Ltd. He asked if the company having a contingent liability of $4 million to a former Minister of the Crown, John Brown, was a conflict of interest. The Leader of the Government in the Senate, John Button, said he would not comment on private affairs of individuals and that the matter was not in his portfolio area. He said the Liberals were reluctant to pursue the matter where they ought to, in the House of Representatives. The Leader of the Opposition, John Hewson, wanted to be Mr Clean and let the Mr Dirtys in Senate do his dirty work for him.
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