Crispin Hull

The ACT Government and Opposition and Australian Federal Police have jumped in too hastily to support a proposal by a Canberra licensee for on-the-spot fines for people caught fighting, urinating in public, or drinking alcohol-free zones. The very jumbling of very different sorts of offences shows the proposal is not well though out. It should not be acceptable in a liberal democracy that police have the power to be prosecutor, jury and judge in criminal matters as serious as assault. These matters are properly dealt with by courts.

The trouble with on-the-spot-fines is that they in effect reverse the onus of proof. It is no safeguard to say that if a defendant chooses he or she can contest the matter; the defendant walks into court with a ticket which is tantamount to a presumption of guilt.
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Churchill once said that once a committee had more than eight members it was a dead loss. Prime Minister-designate John Howard, who has said that Churchill was a hero of his, has opted for a Cabinet of 15 and a ministry of an addition 13. It has the advantage of being smaller than Labor’s Cabinet and Ministry, but is perhaps not small enough.

There have been some surprises in both the ministerial and public service appointments announced yesterday. Both teams need to be given a fair chance before judgment is cast. The fact that a person in Opposition has received a great deal of media limelight and public eye does not necessarily mean they will make excellent ministers, or that they would be best suited in the portfolio they carried in Opposition. Moreover, new people have come in to the Parliament which should change the make-up of the ministry.

Mr Howard has made it clear that he expects more of his ministers. He does not want them running to cabinet every time something difficult turns up. He wants them to make decisions themselves and if they make too many mistakes, he has warned he has many others to drawn from. He may regret taking that philosophy too far. The electorate rightly visits the sins of the individual minister upon the whole government.
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A great deal of heartache could face some couples in Canberra over surrogate motherhood … and some babies are on the way. The ACT has made it a crime to engage in commercial surrogacy, but has left open the field of altruistic surrogacy … where a woman agrees to carry the genetic child of another for nothing.

It is a case of the law not keeping up with medical technology. It is now possible for an egg to be fertilised by sperm externally and implanted into a woman. It provides for many combinations of biological and birth parenthood. As a general principle, however, the present law provides that the male who provides the sperm is father and the woman from whom the baby is delivered is the mother, even if the ovum was not hers. Maintenance duties and custody rights can flow from that.

So, at the end of the pregnancy the surrogate mother may be able to change her mind and keep the baby and the donor father may find himself liable for support. Moreover, even if the surrogate mother is happy to surrender to the other mother (who may have provided the ovum or may just be the wife of the man who provided the sperm using the surrogate’s ovum), there is no guarantee that a lawful adoption would follow. Adoption laws have been crafted without surrogacy in mind.
Continue reading “1996_03_march_leader08mar”

Enough is enough. Elections in Queensland, Mundingburra, Tasmania and nationwide in the space of a few months. And now Jeff Kennett is taking Victoria to the polls.

John Howard has promised a people’s constitutional convention to look at the republic and other constitutional issues. A major issue should be the number of election days in Australia. They are disruptive to business. They result in the unnecessary prolonging of the period of pork barrelling. They cause too much short-term decision-making with politicians’ eyes on the ballot box. The power of Premiers and Prime Ministers to pull the dates out of the hat adds to the uncertainty.

Mr Howard’s convention should look at a proposal to fix the terms of all federal, state and territory parliaments and have an election for the whole lot on one day, say, the first Saturday in December every three years. December elections have the advantage of allowing transitions in the silly season if there is a change of government.
Continue reading “1996_03_march_leader07mar”

Andrew Whitecross did not waste any time. The first business day after the federal election he moved decisively against Rosemary Follett and took the leadership of the ACT parliamentary Labor Party from her. It had been coming a long time. He could not, of course, have moved before the election because it would have looked bad of Labor. As it happened, it probably would not have made much difference; pebbles do not add much to landslides. In January, when the mutterings within the Labor Party became audible without, and this paper headlined that Ms Follett’s days were numbered, the official response from Mr Whitecross and Ms Follett was monomorphic: Rosemary has been the leader since self-government, she is the leader and she will remain leader. She has the total support of the parliamentary party.

On the other side of politics, the Liberals had been enjoying Ms Follett’s leadership. There was not much fire in it and it did not make for an effective opposition. They would not like a change. And thus, the Liberals pulled the rug from under one leg of a possible leadership challenge by Mr Whitecross with Terry Connolly as his deputy. Mr Connolly was offered and accepted a judicial post. Now the Liberals have to contend with a very much weakened Labor leadership team. Mr Connolly was by far Labor’s most articulate and intelligent MLA and most representative of moderate centrist government. But he came from the wrong faction; so there was no future for him.

Similarly, Bill Wood comes from the wrong faction, so there is no future for him. But though he represents a more palatable centrist political philosophy he obviously does not have the talent of a Terry Connolly to seek a better future elsewhere.
Continue reading “1996_03_march_leader06mar”

The resignation of the secretary of the ACTU, Bill Kelty, reveals a 1950s class-war, tribal mentality. His statement that “”I believe that my continued membership of the board may be inconsistent with my union responsibilities” is a curious one. Why is it inconsistent? Surely, both should serve the welfare of the Australian people, albeit in slightly different way. No, Mr Kelty believes that it is impossible for him, an ACTU official, to serve on a government economic body while the Coalition is in government because he thinks the union movement is at war with the Coalition and therefore at war with its economic instrument.

It seems that Mr Kelty has resigned from the Reserve Bank to free himself from economic responsibility so he can pursue any agenda he likes; so that he can put factional selfish aims of union power ahead of the general good.

Mr Kelty said his resignation had been prompted by the Coalition’s refusal to have an accord under which there were wage and social protections in return the Reserve Bank’s two to three per cent inflation target. But accord or not, that is a worthwhile economic and social target.
Continue reading “1996_03_march_leader05mar”

The convincing victory of the Liberal-National Party in yesterday’s election was more than a change for the sake of change. The Australian people have given clear endorsement to John Howard and the policies he articulated during the campaign.

Mr Howard is to be congratulated for marshalling a demoralised party after losing five elections in a row and suffering a leadership crisis in the first two years of the last term. In a little over a year he moved the party to the centre and held his nerve, refusing to be spooked by Paul Keating.

The result cannot reasonably be explained only as an expression of dissatisfaction with Mr Keating, though that was a significant part of the result.
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The ACT Government is none the wiser about what to do with suburban supermarkets after two inquiries. One inquiry recommended that market and social forces had resulted in irreversible trends away from the suburban supermarket and that there was not a lot government could do about it. The other inquiry sided with the suburban supermarkets and suggested a range of regulatory measures, particularly regulation of business hours for large shops which would save the local supermarkets from competition and provide a place for people without transport could shop.

The divergent opinions show the inquiry process is often a waste of time and money. The results of an inquiry are more often dependant on the predilections of the inquirer than the state of affairs being inquired into. Inquiries are so often cop-outs by elected governments which are too scared to make decisions.

Before either of these inquiries were launched it was obvious what the issues were and what the views of the various protagonists would be.
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We are lucky in Australia that our constitutional Achilles heel is not the right to bear arms, as it is in the United States, but industrial relations. At least people do not get killed because of it.

Both Constitutions have resulted in national black spots. In the US, people carry weapons with impunity and shoot each other far more often than in a society which could regulate gun possession. In Australia, we have had a reputation of unreliability and going on strike at the drop of a hat. True, the Accord period ameliorated that reputation but at huge economic cost.

To date, both nations have found it well nigh impossible to overcome these weakspots in their constitutional heritage. But it seems Australia is about to.
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There has been a lot of gloom around town since the change of Government.

Senior bureaucrats moped around the Turner exhibition bemoaning the sea change, oblivious in the works behind them of the wonders a real sea change can inspire. The gloom is generated by the belief that Labor was good for Canberra and the Coalition is not. But this is an enthymeme … an argument with some unstated premises.

The full argument would run something like: Labor believes the state should take a more active role; Labor is more centrist; the first requires more bureaucrats; the second requires that they be in Canberra; having more federal bureaucrats is good for Canberra. But saying that what is good for the bureaucracy is good for Canberra can be as mistaken as saying what is for General Motors is good for America. Witness the oil crisis.

Let’s look at the big ticket items. Hawke may have opened new Parliament House, but Fraser got the thing off the ground and ensured the project was an inspired one. Menzies made Canberra permanent. After depression and war, the thing could have been abandoned or let languish. Menzies had to force the bureaucracy to move from Melbourne; create the NCDC and make the lake.
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