Crispin Hull

The ACT has the highest gambling expenditure per head of all states and territories in Australia. The ACT gambling expenditure (net of prizes) is around $740 per person, according to a report on gambling in Australia and New Zealand in the March issue of International Wagering and Business. This is almost double the national average (close to $400).

However, the main social concern about gambling is not so much the absolute amount being spent, but its proportion of disposable income. The higher that is, the more likely the impact on spending on more important things, like family food, shelter and clothing. ACT residents have a higher income than the Australian average, more are in work and there is a lower proportion in retirement. It means the higher gambling expenditure is likely to have less affect on other things. People in the ACT are spending about 13 per cent of their disposable income on gambling, which is about the same a most other states and territories.
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During Law Week last week, Justice Paul Finn of the Federal Court delivered the Blackburn Lecture. It was a seminal essay on a significant change in the approach taken by Australian courts to the rights of individuals in the past decade or so. The law stands out in a fast-moving society as being quite slow moving, so it needs acute observation to detect trends. Justice Finn noted that the pervasiveness of state power was now so great that, in the relationship between the state and the citizen, the citizen was becoming far more vulnerable.

In this new relationship the question of individual rights is not so much one of ensuring that individuals can assert rights to do things, but to ensure that the state cannot oppress vulnerable individuals. He cited the case of the High Court ruling that the government must follow the spirit of international treaties it had signed and treat refugees with children in accordance with it. The case caused some controversy, with many commentators saying that Australia was being ruled by international bodies not elected by Australians. The court saw it differently. It thought that the government should not present one face to the international community yet deal with people on its own soil contrary to that.

Justice Finn pointed also to the courts requiring all government decision making to be done with procedural fairness as a matter of common law, rather than specific statute. And he pointed to several High Court cases demanding that police engage in proper procedures to protect people charged with offences against improper conviction. Once again, the courts are helping the vulnerable against the powerful. On one side is dependence, reliance and trust and on the other is position, aptitude or knowledge. Justice Finn sees the courts as becoming more protective of the vulnerable. In this he says that, while the law and morality are not synonymous, the law can evidence strong moral purpose and has been doing so with increasing vigour in the past decade or so.
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The suggestion by senior CSIRO scientist Doug Cocks last week that Australia may have enough or too many people deserves serious attention. Dr Cocks made his assertion in a book, People Policy: Australia’s Population Choices. He was driven to write the book after helping the 1994 inquiry by the Long Term Strategies Committee of the House of Representatives. That committee avoided making any recommendations about population and immigration policy.

Dr Cocks rightly points out that politicians from both sides make policies in isolation. In particular, immigration policy is not made with the best long-term interests of the nation as a whole but a s a short-term balancing act between the squeals of the ethnic lobby on one side and the environment lobby on the other. Dr Cocks rightly points out that that is no way to make worthwhile policy.
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The uranium policy of the former government was a bit like the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Everyone knew it had three parts, but no-one was sure quite how they fitted into a coherent whole. Labor’s three-mines policy had no philosophic base. All attempted rationalisations failed. It permitted uranium mining and exports and even acknowledged that some uranium atoms from Australia might find their way into nuclear-weapons testing. There was no complete ban on new mines because under the policy the Olympic Dam mine at Roxby Downs in South Australia was begun. That decision was based on the fact that uranium was a necessary by-product of mining other minerals. As it happened, at the time a state Labor Government needed some projects to boost its re-election chances.

On the other hand, Labor used economic arguments to oppose new mines where other factors were involved. Labor said, for example, that new mines in Western Australia and the Northern Territory would not be economically viable.

Perhaps the foundation of the trinity of mines policy under Labor could best be described as a balancing act of keeping both the intellectual and industrial supporters of Labor in the fold and of appeasing all factions.
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The agreement by the cigarette maker Liggett Group to settle a major class-action lawsuit that claims nicotine levels in cigarettes are manipulated to keep smokers hooked is a breakthrough in getting cigarette companies to pay for past wrong-doing and to change their conduct to restrict the harm their products do in the future.

Liggett, the maker of Chesterfield and Eve cigarettes said, without admitting wrongdoing, that it would pay a portion of what it earns over the next 25 years to be used for quit programs. If the settlement is approved by the federal court, it would be the first time a tobacco company paid anything to settle a smoking lawsuit.

Liggett’s action shows the untenable position of the other four larger defendants, R.J. Reynolds, the American Tobacco Co, Lorillard, and Philip Morris. Further, Liggett in settlement talks with the attorneys-general of five states who are trying to get the tobacco companies to pay for the states’ costs under Medicaid programs of treating smoking-related illnesses.
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It is quite insulting workers to be told that they are incapable of negotiating with their employers without a union. The message from the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union to employees at the Tweed Valley Fruit Processing Company is that the employees are to stupid or ignorant to negotiate a deal with the company in their own best interests. The employees disagree. They have traded off some of their sick pay for extra wages. It is notorious that some people in the workforce use all their sick leave, whether sick or not. Having a smaller entitlement might reduce sick days taken and therefore reduce costs to the company. This can be passed on in higher wages.

Some employees might be prepared to wear the loss if they use more than the new lower allowance, or they might want to insure against catastrophic illness. They do not need a union to tell them of the risks and benefits. If they want a union to represent them, fine. If they don’t, then there is no role for the union.
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The industrial strife in the ACT has reached a stage of high farce. Unionists have imposed bans which severely affect government revenue. The Industrial Relations Commission bizarrely says that the ACT Government must negotiate while the bans are still on. It implies that the commission ultimately can order not only the amount of pay rise but how it is paid, that is, out of the Budget. So we have the ludicrous situation that an industrial relations commissioner determines elements of the Budget of the ACT, not the elected Parliament and Government.

The unionists who have imposed the bans and their leaders are just laughing. Bizarrely, they are still being paid while refusing to collect bus fares, mow lawns and do other work which is essential to their employment. In these circumstances, why would they move a millimetre until all their demands are met?

This is cuckoo-land. Imagine if the employees of a department store in town said, “”Yes; we are willing to come into work and serve customers, but we won’t collect money for goods.” And then the industrial relations commission told the store it had to negotiate under those circumstances.
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It was predictable enough. The new government has announced the cupboard is bare. That will be greeted with some cynicism. But the cynicism has to be tempered with fact. Labor’s projected deficits for 1995-96 and 1996-97 were way off the mark. The 1996-97 position is an underlying deficit of $7.64 billion, compared to Labor’s forecast of a surplus of $3.4 billion.

It meant the election campaign was fought on a bad premise. One side (Labor) knew it and the other side (the Coalition) suspected it, but it suited the Coalition not to acknowledge its suspicion lest it be accused of creating sand-castles of promises which would be swept away when the fiscal tide came in. Worse, when pressed the Coalition said it would put promises before the deficit.

This has put the Coalition in a bind. It promised no new taxes and some new spending. That means it must either not take the deficit seriously or attack areas of government spending that were not quarantined by election tomfoolery. Treasurer Peter Costello made it clear that the Government would do the later, cutting recurrent spending by $4 billion in each of the next two years. That is the responsible course. He said this was needed to reduce pressure on interest rates, because a rise in rates would hit employment.
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So much for business confidence being boosted by the election of a Howard Government. The Australian share market had its biggest one-day fall in four years yesterday with a 3.5 per cent fall. It was proof that events in the US affect the Australian economy as much as what the Australian Government does. The shock fall came after Friday’s fall on Wall Street which was the third-largest on record.

The reaction perhaps shows an underlying weakness in Australia’s financial position in that it is very susceptible to overseas changes and there is uncertainty about how or whether the new Government will deal with the raft of new wage demands. A more robust Australian would weather changes elsewhere better.
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