Crispin Hull

A glimmer of rationality has appeared on the question of funding public hospitals. ACT Chief Minster Kate Carnell has suggested that the one-off 0.2 per cent extra Medicare levy raised to buy back weapons continue in force to fund public hospitals.

It may result in cynicism about broken promises, but the fact is public hospitals need extra money. There is a limit to the effectiveness of efficiency dividends, privatisations, corporatisations and the like. After a time it is necessary to put real dollars into public health if we are to maintain high standards of health (world’s best practice, as the management gurus say) in Australia in the face of an aging population and better and more expensive medical technology.

One of the reasons we seek a better economic performance must surely be so that we can have better health care.
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Independent MLA Paul Osborne has called for a more open system of freedom of information. He says he has been trying to get a redraft of the Freedom of Information Act before the Assembly since 1995. Under the present system, he says, getting information out of the ACT Government is like trying to track down an X File.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of truth in what Mr Osborne says, not only in the ACT, but also federally and in the other states. Freedom of information Acts have become more costly and difficult to use. The trouble is that legislative change may not help much. The ease of extracting information from government is as more a test of bureaucratic and political attitude than legal provision. If bureaucrats and government politicians do not want information to go out, they will stretch the exemptions granted under the law to their utmost, fighting requests in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and the courts if necessary.

If, on the other hand, a bureaucrat wants information to come out, they will be very helpful. Indeed, the FOI Act is often used as a legal means for whistle-blowing bureaucrats to get information into the public domain. They do not have to leak the document in question; just leak the fact that it is there and that an FOI request would not be resisted.
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He hails from Snowy River, up by Kosh-choosh-ko’s side . . .

And down by Kosh-choosh-ko, where the pine clad ridges raise . . .

Paterson would turn in his grave at the proposal by the NSW Geographical Names Board to revert to the “”correct” Polish spelling and pronunciation of Polish patriot General Tadeusz Kosciuszko, with an acute accent over the first s, for the name of Australia’s highest mountain.
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The writ of venditioni exponas is a blot on the jurisprudence of the ACT. It a weapon of injustice and should be expunged.

As with all Latin phrases, there is an English translation. Venditioni exponas means expose for sale. It is a writ taken out against people with debts to sell their property. It was taken out against a Canberra couple recently for payment of a $4600 debt. Their $250,000 house was exposed for sale and fetched $75,000 at an “”auction”.

The outrage by the couple who house was sold resulted in a scene of anger and violence and resulted last week in the conviction of the woman for resisting arrest.
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Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer wants a capital C conservative to be the next Chief Justice of the High Court. In politics where people are strait-jacketed into political parties it may be possible to categorise people and predict their voting behaviour and opinion on most matters. But the trouble for Mr Fischer is that it certainly does not always work that way with the judiciary.

In 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower wanted a capital C conservative to be Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Einsenhower won the presidency after 20 years of Democrat rule and a belief by Republicans that the court had been stacked. Einsenhower’s capital C conservative was Earl Warren, conservative Republican Attorney-General and later Governor of California.

Warren became one of the greatest civil libertarian judges in US history. He damned racial segregation in schools saying “”separate education facilities are inherently unequal”. He damned gerrymanders saying, “”legislators represent people, not acres or trees”. He upheld the right of silence for suspects and witnesses in criminal trials and before congressional committees and had the wisdom to recognise that Senator Eugene McCarthy’s anti-communism inquiry posed a far greater threat to American liberty than the witches it was hunting.
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Yesterday Federal Capital Press, publisher of The Canberra Times, The Chronicle and Valley View, began a new publishing venture _ publication on the Internet at the address www.canberratimes.com. It is a twofold venture. It publishes to the people of Canberra in a form different from the print medium which they have hitherto been used to. At the same time it publishes The Canberra Times, The Chronicle and Valley View nationwide and worldwide.

Not, of course, that New Yorkers or Londoners are waiting breathless for the latest snippets from The Canberra Times, but many Canberrans and other Australians living or travelling overseas will be. And nationally, The Canberra Times publishes many things of national interest which hitherto had been limited in their circulation because of print. Now much of it will be available for small cost.

But it is in Canberra and region that the new form of publication carries most significance. This venture is not just a print version on the Net. It is different in several significant ways. Interactivity is perhaps the most important of them. canberratimes.com provides a vehicle for Canberrans to be more selective; to hit information more accurately and efficiently; to contribute to community debate about major issues in a more instantaneous way and to for them provide information about what they are doing to a wider audience.
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The journalists’ union published a proposed new code of ethics this week. It is longer than the previous one, but is a great improvement on it.

But whatever code the union publishes, it will suffer from the fact that not all journalists are members. This is because the union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, has two roles: an industrial one and a professional one. It is in the latter role that it attends to ethics issues. This drawback should be overcome. More of that anon.

The new code has four elements which should get greater public approval and one which retreats from a strong stand in an earlier draft. (The full text of the code was published in The Canberra Times on Wednesday.)
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Representatives of the public should sit on panels to hear ethics complaints against journalists, according to an independent report prepared for the journalists’ union published yesterday.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the union which embraces journalism issued the report which was commissioned in 1993.

The first code was adopted by the union in 1944 and revised in 1984.
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Well the obvious truth has finally come out of a Minister’s mouth.

“”The Medicare levy has really got nothing to do with health. It’s a way of collecting revenue”, Health Minister Michael Wooldridge finally admits.

He is using this as a justification not to apply the revenue raised from the high-income surcharge on Medicare to health, as everyone would expect. Instead it will go to general deficit reduction.
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The passing of the Andrews Bill to overturn the Northern Territory’s euthanasia law brought out most of the worst in elements in Australian politics and only a little of the best.

This is about the conduct of MPs, irrespective of the merits of the case for or against euthanasia (about which too much has been said already).

Most of the worst elements are linked. They start with the refusal of MPs to represent. Virtually every opinion poll on euthanasia has shown between 70 per cent and 80 per cent in favour of euthanasia. Sure, every opinion poll ever conducted is open to attack for loaded questions, sampling size etc etc. But the euthanasia pattern has been too consistent to be credibly attacked.
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