Crispin Hull

Plants have resisted attacks by animals to eat them in various ways. Most notably, they have grown thorns or thrown off toxic chemicals. It has taken millions of years through the processes of natural selection. But plants, like animals are still organic. They cannot produce chemicals of such toxicity that in killing animals they kill themselves. Thus they sometimes produce chemicals that will merely scare some animals off. Various chillies contains chemicals that result in sensible animals (non-Mexicans) not coming back for a second bite. Marijuana plants, poppies and the coca plant contain chemicals that cause animals that eat them some cause for not returning.

Some of the chemicals have different effects in different animals … poisonous to one, beneficial to another, toxic to tumour cells benign to other cells, inducing addictive euphoria in one species and having no effect on another.

They are there. They are part of the biological struggle between species on earth. It is difficult to see how they can ever be eradicated.
Continue reading “1995_10_october_column10oct”

There are statistics on victims of crime, reported crime and punished crime but no statistics on crime itself. This is _ obviously _ because a lot of crime goes unreported. As a result, people use statistics on reported crime and punished crime (convictions) as a substitute. It may seem reasonable, but it is not.

We know, for example, despite a surge in reports of sexual assault, that the underlying rate has not fluctuated much. General surveys of the population about whether people had been a victim of a crime indicate that. It is just that changes of attitude in police forces, the courts and society in general make reporting a less traumatic experience, so more victims are willing to report. Contrarily, as insurance companies lifted their excess, reportage of theft and malicious damage fell, but the underlying rate probably remained the same. In short, reporting figures are rubbery. Now it seems that conviction figures can also be as misrepresentative.
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In December last year The Canberra Times published an article by me expressing concern about the Merit Protection Review Agency’s investigation at the Australian War Memorial.

Essentially, that article said there was something irregular about the way the process was put in train. The minister in charge of the public service, Gary Johns, launched it without the knowledge of the Minister in charge of the memorial, Con Sciacca. It said the agency, normally a body that defends public servants subject of disciplinary procedures, was now put in a prosecutorial role to investigate harassment, but without the normal safeguards of fairness that prosecutors normally apply.

In short, the article said the process was flawed and had delivered an injustice to the director and deputy director of the memorial.
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Mad as he is, there was a cool logic in the demand by the Unabomber to have his 35,000-word manifesto in The Washington Post and the New York Times .

It has been described as a diatribe against industrial society. It is now available on the Internet. The Unabomber … as the FBI have named him … could have put it on the Internet himself and made it available to 30 million people, but it might have led to his discovery. Even so, it would not have been as satisfactory as getting it in The Washington Post and The New York Times. This is because there is a stamp of authority about these papers.

That authority in this instance was somewhat diluted by the fact that the papers were under some duress to publish. The Unabomber has killed half a dozen people … mostly scientists and industrialists with elaborate home-made bombs in the past decade. The duress arose because the Unabomber had agreed to stop his bombing campaign against people (but not property) if they did publish and continue it if they did not. None the less, the papers could still have refused.
Continue reading “1995_09_september_una”

The Leader of the Opposition, Michael Moore, has picked the key political weakness in the Budget … some fudging with education figures. He has played on it on the air waves and in the press. He will extract the maximum political advantage out of it so that come next election he will be able to tell a key component of his constituency that he delivered.

Like Lloyd George he is a leader without a party. Sorry, did I write “”Leader of the Opposition, Michael Moore”? I meant, of course, to write Independent Michael Moore. How did I make such a silly mistake?

On ABC Radio this morning, when backbenchers were each given a two-minute free kick, there were no Labor Members. A Green talked about vivisection (more interested in animal cuts than Budget cuts) and Paul Osborne … need I tell you … congratulated the two footfall teams on their heroic failures last weekend. Neither can be treated seriously.
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John Gorton thought he was on a winner. In 1970 he announced the abolition the accursed land rent, just before a Canberra by-election.

Under the then ACT leasehold system each leaseholder was required to pay 5 per cent of unimproved value of their lease every year in rent to the Government.

Imagine having to pay $3500 a year for the average block now in addition to having paid for the lease in the first place.
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The Federal Opposition will announce shortly before the election the removal of all impediments to ACT land-holders getting freehold land to replace leasehold.

Informed sources close to the Liberal Party said the announcement would be made close to the election in order to boost the chances of Liberal Brendan Smyth retaining the seat of Canberra which he won in the by-election in March when Ros Kelly resigned.

Just before the 1970 Canberra by-election Prime Minister John Gorton abolished the annual land rent that went with leasehold for all Canberra residential leases. It was a popular move, but Labor won the by-election.
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Opposition Leader John Howard could not resist capitalising on the anger of Sydney residents over aircraft noise. But any gains he has made in Sydney with a specific promise on the runway will have to be weighed against losses elsewhere caused by the Government painting it as blatant cynicism and inconsistency. Mr Howard says that the east-west runway should be reopened to share the noise around and that, until it is, he will block the Government’s plan to privatise Sydney Airport.

The Government seized on the comments. It is one of very few Opposition policies that the Government has been able to get its hands on. It dragged out comments by Mr Howard from previous years urging the construction of the third runway because the east-west runway was unsafe. It pointed to the inconsistency in Mr Howard … a noted proponent of privatisation … being willing to forsake privatisation for the sake of some votes in Sydney. In Mr Howard’s defence, it is one thing to say it is unsafe to have a two-runway airport where one runway is essentially cross-wind and large jets use both and quite another to assert that it is unsafe to open a third cross-wind runway for smaller aircraft in an essentially two-parallel-runway airport. Further, the coalition not said privatisation at any cost. It has usually put its privatisation push in a public-interest context … something Mr Howard is attempting here.
Continue reading “1995_09_september_leader30sep”

Under ABC television’s proposed new current affairs and news regime, the people of the ACT will continue to get four cents a day’s worth while everyone else in Australia is getting the full eight cents. We get good radio, but ABC television’s service is a disgrace.

It was announced this week that the 7.30 Report would go national with input from all states and the Northern Territory and that each state and the Northern Territory would get a new weekly current affairs program. There would be three new regional offices.

Unlike every other state and territory, the ACT is not to have its own television new or current affairs. It is not good enough. The ABC should realise that Canberra is not just the House on the Hill or a suburb of Sydney. It has its own elected government which affects the lives of people who live here and in the immediate region just as profoundly as the Tasmanian or Northern Territory Governments affect the lives of their citizens. That many people in Canberra are dissatisfied with the system of ACT government is the more reason for a stronger media presence.
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