Crispin Hull

The popular view was that Howard did not want Paul Keating to do what he did with John Hewson’s very detailed Fightback policy … use it as sustenance for a successful negative campaign. The theory was that denied a specific target, Keating would have nothing to shoot down. However, Keating has now used the absence of a target as the target itself.

Initially, Howard’s strategy appeared to be sensible and working until the past month or so. Then Keating’s attacks that the Opposition lacks policies started to bite, more in polls on preferred Prime Minister than on overall party preference.

This slight change in public opinion about leaders (but not parties) has resulted in much commentary that the Keating demolition magic is beginning to work on Howard as it has worked on John Hewson and Alexander Downer. Much of that commentary suggested that Howard has blundered and fallen into a Keating trap. But there has been no trap. It is just that Keating is a masterful opportunist. It would not matter what Howard did, Keating would seize upon some aspect of it and make bricks out of straw. In this case he has made an issue out of no issues. You have to admire the resourcefulness.
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The award of $32 million to actor Jon Blake last week reveals again some of the defects in the systems of compensating people for traffic-accident injuries in Australia.

Blake was made a quadriplegic in December 1986 when he crashed after swerving to miss a car parked on the wrong side of the road with its lights off near Port Augusta. The judge awarded him $29 million for future economic loss.

There’s a fistful of defects. First, it has taken nine years for the case to be decided and there will be further delay pending appeals. Second, the accident happened in South Australia, yet the case was decided in NSW. Third, this is a huge amount of money … well beyond the costs of nursing a quadriplegic for life. Fourth, compensation was in a lump.
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The fall-out from last week’s decision by the Court of Disputed Returns in Queensland to order a by-election in the seat of Mundingburra illustrates that the Executive has too much power over the electoral process.

The court declared invalid the 16-vote win by Labor Ken Davies at the general election earlier in the year, but it had no power to set the date for the by-election. That power is in the hands of Queensland Premier Wayne Goss, and he is expected to exercise it today.

In theory, he will select a date purely on the basis of convenience for the people of the electorate and to give fairness all round. But there was nothing to stop him letting the looming federal election influence his decision. Nor was there anything to stop him telling the Labor candidate of the date in advance of the public announcement, thereby giving him an advantage.
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The issuing last week of the All Indicators Index by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed a weak economy and that the Government would have to get the election over before the next quarter’s figure on March 20. But I know differently, and I’ll tell you why later.

One would have thought the markets would have taken a much greater dive once the All Inds figure was published, but the markets had “”factored in” a bad result. The real test of these sorts of figures is not their actual level, but whether or not they are greater or lower than market expectations. Last week’s 5.4 figure, for example, was within market expectations of, say, 5.2 to 5.8. The bureau was thinking of putting out an All Inds Market Expectation Index, but abandoned the idea after having trouble getting raw data.

The All Inds, like most indicators, has been seasonally adjusted to take account of Christmas spending, school-leavers, end-of-financial-year hiatuses and the like. But the bureau is now worried that some of the seasonal factors change with intensity from year to year and so from next quarter the seasonal adjustment is to be adjusted.
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Blocklines: 1. The residential freeway through inner Canberra that later NCDC designers would have avoided. 2. Kaleen . . . residents blessed with no direct traffic thoroughfare.

Subsequent bureaucrats have been damned for messing up the Burley Griffin plan. But Saint Walter was not infallible. He did not have the planning solution for everything in Canberra. Indeed his design has created some problems.

The subsequent bureaucrats did mess up the Triangle and cut the city from the lake with the ghastly Parkes Way, but they also created two special features of Canberra … the town centres and the clustered suburb. Both have reduced the blight of the car that has wrecked other cities.
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I wondered whether E stood for anything, like Edward or Evan. It was only later I found out why E was called E. There I was aged 16 on my first day at Tully’s cherry orchard just outside Beechworth. Mr Tully drove us up from the town in his ute. He was very much “”Mr Tully” to us. Sheer heaven. Cherries everywhere and you could eat as many as you wanted.

E pointed me to a large tree with branches dripping cherries. He left me three large wooden cases (the size of a banana box) and a metal bucket with some leather straps to put around my neck, and drove slowly off in the ute with the rest of the pickers in the back.

I picked and ate furiously. The metal bucket filled and I tipped it into the wooden box. Soon the case was full. We were paid a dollar a case. (And a 1967 dollar was worth, say, $15).
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There has been a vigorous debate, much of it behind closed doors, about what sort of person should be director of the Australian War Memorial. Should it be someone with military experience, someone with professional qualifications in history and or museum administration or a professional public-service manager capably of running anything?

Military people tend to be can-do type but can get themselves into strife when the crash through becomes crash, as exemplified by former director Air Vice-Marshal Jim Fleming.

The history-museum person can lose out by not having the political nous to extract money from the Government. For example, one of the leading runners for the job was former Museum of Australia director Margaret Coaldrake who could not overcome government pusillanimity to get that project off the ground in a coherent way at Yarramundi.
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Independent MLA Paul Osborne has expressed concerns about there being no legal prohibition against people under 18 serving alcohol to adult purchasers. Fortunately, his concern has been dismissed by the Attorney-General, Gary Humphries, for the wowserish, knee-jerk attempt at vote-catching it is.

There is nothing wrong with 15 to 18-year-olds serving alcohol in sealed containers in supermarkets and other outlets. Indeed, there is some merit in it. Those aged 15 to 18 have a far better idea of young people’s ages than middle aged people. The young people are better equipped to catch underage people buying alcohol.

Mr Osborne suggested that the young people would be under peer pressure to sell to their underage mates. It is an untested suspicion. Moreover, given that most supermarket sales are made in public and that under-18-year-old workers are usually under closer supervision by employers, it is unlikely.
Continue reading “1995_09_september_leader01sep”

The Isle of Dogs is sleeping a little easier. They naively imagine that, with the closure this week of the down-market leftish tabloid (ital) Today (end ital), the newspaper war is over.

(Incidentally, the watchdogs of democracy in Britain were formerly known by the collective noun “”Fleet Street”, but now many have moved both editorial and presses to the eastern docklands, in and near the Isle of Dogs, that is perhaps a better collective noun to describe them, though they have not put it into print themselves.)

The war began about a year ago when Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Times began to cut cover prices. And it has resulted in the man who started it closing one of his own newspapers, Today, which he bought from founder Eddy Shah in 1987. But save the tears. (Ital) Today (end ital) was no loss, either to Murdoch, or indeed to journalism. It was a tabloid with nominally centre-left views, articulated in the crass way of British tabloids. It had collected about $280 million in losses.
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In London last night, Britain and Australia launched a major “”New Images” campaign to change the stereotypical images the people of each nation have of each other.

New Images will be a series of about 150 cultural, business and sporting projects, mostly in Australia, in 1997, the 50th anniversary of the presence of the British Council in Australia. It will be the largest event of its kind ever mounted by Britain.

The British Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, said at a function at Australia House, “”People do not understand the extent of the deep economic and cultural links between the two nations.”
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