Crispin Hull

Federal Attorney-general Daryl’s Williams’s further explanation and fortification of the Federal Government’s position on free speech and its intervention in the Theophanous case is most welcome. Mr Williams has been branded anti-free-speech for saying he rejects the constitutional basis for the Theophanous position, namely that the Constitution carries an implication that there must be freedom of political communication and that state defamation laws must be read down accordingly.

Mr Williams said defamation laws should be made by elected parliaments and said he would urge the states to reform their laws and make them uniform. Media commentators rightly scoffed that the states had been trying to do this for 20 years without success.

Mr Williams, in a response to this criticism published in The Canberra Times on Saturday, has now given strong hints that unless the states do something, he will look at Commonwealth legislation, within the limits of Commonwealth power, to ensure there is greater freedom of political discussion.
Continue reading “1996_11_november_leader26nov williams”

The suggestion by ACT Attorney-General Gary Humphries that there should be a minimum sentence for armed robbery may have some merit. However, the way he made the suggestion is regrettable. Mr Humphries made his statement after four robberies in Canberra in six days. It smacked of a knee-jerk reaction in a similar vein to statements made by NSW Premier Bob Carr every time there is a perceived, as distinct from real, rise in the rate of a particular crime.

The trouble with these sorts of responses is that they do little to prevent crime and nothing to catch criminals. They are financially cheap “”non-solutions”.

That said, Mr Humphries is entitled to express some exasperation at some of the sentencing practices for serious crime in the ACT Supreme Court. In a context in which the legislature has laid down a maximum penalty for armed robbery of 25 years’ imprisonment, the community would expect imprisonment of some kind even in the most mitigated circumstances. As it is a considerable number of people convicted of armed robbery get bonds.
Continue reading “1996_11_november_leader25nov robbers”

Pay television cables may not seem such a big issue, but it is certainly a symbolic one. They symbolise the ugly and stupid side of economic rationalism, the pursuit of competition for competition’s sake and the reduction of everything to dollar values.

Last week the Coalition backbench showed better sense than the leadership in dealing with the issue by defying Prime Minister John Howard and Communications Minister Richard Alston and continuing with a plan to levy phone calls to fund the placing of the cables underground.

That plan looks doomed following a compromise put by Senator Alston that will force Telstra and Optus to obey local planning laws, which will usually mean that they must go underground.

Over the past year or so the roll-out became vigorously competitive in the central areas of Sydney and Melbourne as both corporations saw the importance of grabbing market share early. It turned into a manic rush when Optus realised that it could deliver local phone services over these cables and erode Telstra’s monopoly in that area.
Continue reading “1996_11_november_leader25nov cables”

The structural tensions which have dogged the United Nations for all of its 50-year history are again surfacing with the lone move by the United States to veto a second term for UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The US cast the lone vote this week against Mr Boutros-Ghali in the opening round of a selection process that could take weeks, but needs to be finalised by December 31, when Mr Boutros-Ghali’s five-year term ends.

The structural tensions in the United Nations began almost at its inception. The victorious powers in World War II … the United States, Britain, France, the Soviet Union and China … assumed the dominant role with the five permanent Security Council votes, each carrying a veto. With the onset of the Cold War, the council became deadlocked against taking significant actions of world political leadership. Moreover the rise of the losers of World War II, Germany and Japan, as large economic powers and their continued exclusion from the Security Council meant that the UN could never become a body of significant economic leadership. Other international bodies, in which Germany and Japan had a more significant role, emerged.

The UN’s best work was done at the humanitarian level, but even here, the structural tensions emerged. The United States, and to a lesser extent Britain, often asserted that the UN’s humanitarian works were ideologically and politically slanted. They were also critical of General Assembly for the same reasons.
Continue reading “1996_11_november_leader22nov un sec-gen”

The resignation of the Federal Member for Fraser, John Langmore, to take up a position at the United Nations calls into question the method of replacing MPs who do not fill their full term and the propriety of MPs who having asked the electorate to elect them for a three-year term fail to fulfil the contract.

Far too much is made of the expense and inconvenience of a by-election. When to total sum is looked at … about $100,000 … it invites a gasp, but typically, elections cost between $1 and $2 per voter, which is a very small price for democratic rights. And voting takes no more time than going tot he bank or choosing a pair of shoes.

That said, politicians should as a general principle stay for the time they promises at the time of the election. There are obvious exceptions for illness, but there are also others. It is generally in the public interest that MPs are not precluded from public appointments to other national and international positions. Elevations to the judiciary, the governor-generalship, the diplomatic corps and to senior United Nations positions (as is the case for Mr Langmore). It is not acceptable, however, for MPs to leave Parliament just because their side of politics has lost an election and Opposition is unappealing or because an MP has lost a ministry or because an MP is just sick of it and wants to return to family life. Labor’s Ros Kelly was an example of the last two. The fact her conduct was unacceptable was shown by the voters at the subsequent by-election who delivered a record swing against her party, but who returned a Labor member at the next general election. True, there were other factors, but it is unlikely that Mr Langmore’s departure will be seen in the same way.
Continue reading “1996_11_november_leader21nov langmore by-election”

A by-election in a single seat is not an especially costly or inconvenient affair, but is it the most appropriate way of replacing a retiring of deceased MP?

Since federation, Members of the House of Representatives who either die or retire have been replaced by a by-election. Senators, on the other hand, have been replaced by appointment by the state Governor after approval by the state Parliament, or in the case of territory senators by a joint sitting of federal parliament. This is because at the time of federation, the Senate was designed as a House to which the states sent representatives to pursue state interests, so it was thought that casual vacancies should be filled by the state. Given the great expense of a state-wide by-election, the next best thing was that the people’s representatives in the state parliament would chose the successor.

But within a very short time, however, the Senate became, and remains, a House where members are foremost party representatives, like the House of Representatives. Moreover, since the 1977 constitutional amendment, Senate vacancies must be filled by a person from the same political party as the senator being replaced. Any idea that the Senate is a states house has gone out the window.
Continue reading “1996_11_november_leader21nov by-election method”

The foray into the ACT by Call to Australia Party leader Fred Nile will put an interesting complexion on the next ACT election which is due in 15 months.

The ACT has often been described as fairly socially and economically homogeneous, because unlike other states and territories it does not have significant urban-rural split, nor does it have an elite class of the very wealthy nor a pool of the very poor in the way that other states do, though this is now changing. However, the ACT is by no means politically homogeneous. In the three decades in which there have been full-time elected representatives for a legislative body, the people of the ACT have never given either of the major parties a majority and always elected a significant number of representatives from outside the mainstream. They have included people of various persuasions: environmental, moralist, independent, centrists and resident-oriented.

The Christian right, which roughly describes Mr Nile’s group, has frequently had representation in ACT Assemblies, under various different hats. At present Independent Paul Osborne fits that description. As Mr Nile says, “”Paul could work under our umbrella without compromising anything, but we realise he may have broader support as an independent.” It is likely, therefore, that the Call to Australia would leave Brindabella, where Mr Osborne has his seat, alone and concentrate on the other two seats. Mr Osborne would probably like to get the best of both worlds by staying an independent … picking up both the football and the Christian vote.
Continue reading “1996_11_november_leader20nov fred nile”

Federal Attorney-General Daryl Williams has put form over substance on the question of freedom of speech. Last week he committed the Commonwealth Government to intervening in a case before the High Court to argue that the court’s historic 1994 decision on freedom of speech should be overturned. That decision gave much greater freedom for discussion of political matters without the fear of an expensive defamation action. Mr Williams said the Commonwealth agreed with the practical result of the decision, but did not agree with the legal and constitutional basis of the decision … namely that it arose out of an implication in the Constitution that for a representative democracy to work political communication must be freed of the burden of the requirements of state defamation law that the defendant prove the truth of everything he or she says. Mr Williams argues that defamation laws are properly matters for state parliaments and the common law rather than for the High Court to extract out of the Constitution. He said he would urge the standing committee of state and federal attorneys-general to take up the question of defamation law reform, in particular uniformity.

That idea is a cop out. Every attempt at getting uniformity in the past two decades has failed. Every attempt at putting even a scintilla of balance into the law in favour of greater freedom of speech in the past two decades has failed. Mr Williams is wasting his time in urging his state colleagues to do anything about defamation law reform. Self-interested politicians, who are among the greatest beneficiaries of strict defamation laws, will not change the law. They benefit from it because it shields them against tough criticism and because it provides them with monetary pay-outs if a media organisation oversteps the mark.
Continue reading “1996_11_november_leader18nov williams on defo”

Middle-income earners must be perplexed at the response of Treasurer Peter Costello to this week’s cut in interest rates. Mr Costello urged people to spend up for Christmas given they would be saving on mortgages and be getting a tax cut in the new year. Is this the same treasurer who has be bemoaning for several years now Australia’s low rate of saving?

Sensible Australians will not heed the Treasurer’s advice. They will not gear themselves into higher spending habits on such a fickle basis. Sensible people will use both amounts to pay the mortgage off a little faster to leave a bit of padding for the inevitable day when interest rates rise again and tax cuts are eroded by stealth. Moreover the parsimony of the banks has meant that the great majority of people will not see any money from the interest rate cut until well into January. So if they want to follow the Treasurer’s advice, they would have to use their credit cards. But the banks, again with typical parsimony, have not reduce the interest rates on credit cards, largely because, unlike the housing-loan market, their conduct has not been subjected to the stiff wind of vigorous local competition.

Those people who do not pay off their mortgages a little quicker will, if they are sensible, save their extra cash for durables and necessities rather than squander money on consumer junk at Christmas just to make retail sales figures good for the Treasurer.
Continue reading “1996_11_november_leader10nov economics”

It was very foolish of the non-governing parties in the Senate to over-turn the Government’s immigration regulations. It was foolish in terms of the national good and in terms of their own credibility.

The aim of the regulations was to enable the Minister for Immigration to swing the composition of the migrant intake away from family reunion and towards skills. It would have meant a greater emphasis on English-language skills which have been the key determinant of the success of migrants in getting jobs in Australia.

The Labor Party substantially increased immigration during the term of the Hawke Government. There was no economic or social imperative to do so. The earlier numbers of the Fraser Government of around 70,000 a year were quite adequate to meet economic needs and the social needs of family reunion and moral duty to refugees. The increase by the Hawke Government, which had an unhealthy element of vote buying in it, has put a strain on public support for the migration program. Opinion polls are consistently showing majority support for reduced immigration. A wise Government would do something about this, and a wise Opposition would let it do something about it. If the immigration is seen to be too high or not to have a sufficient skills basis, support for it will erode. But worse than this, we are seeing that being exploited by those who oppose racial tolerance and multi-culturalism. This will be a great tragedy for Australia.
Continue reading “1996_11_november_leader09nov immigration”