Crispin Hull

The Secretary of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Allan Hawke, is right to say that improving women’s roles in the workplace is an economic issue more than a question of “”political correctness”. He argued that organisations, both public and private sector, benefit is their workers are able to meet their potential.

At present that does not appear to be happening, and there is passive acceptance of this state of affairs. Despite many initiatives in the Federal Public Service to enable women to achieve their full potential in the upper echelons it has not happened. Instead, women dominate the numbers at the lower levels and are scare in the upper levels. This has three adverse effects. Many women feel under-valued and that it is fruitless striving for higher positions. Many men get put under immense pressure juggling demands of a long working day and demands to be at home with spouse and children. The organisation does not get the best out of its workers and suffers accordingly.
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Last week Canberra lawyer Alan Stretton raised again the question of what is to happen as Canberra’s 99-year residential leases come to the end of their term. The first residential leases were auctioned in 1924, meaning they are due for renewal in 2023. Many leases were auctioned in the 1930s, meaning they have only 30 years to run. As Mr Stretton and others have pointed out, the issue is not so much renewal on expiry, but whether lenders are willing to accept mortgages on leases that will expire before the borrower would be expected to pay off the loan.

The ACT Government has a policy that all residential leases in the territory will be renewed without cost. The former Government had a similar policy, though it would charge a small administrative fee. The question is whether a lending institution would accept those promises as sufficient security. There is also the question of whether these governments have the right to give away the revenue opportunities of future governments. It is probably politically impossible now for either party to renege on those promises.
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For many years Canberrans have been presented with the fact that our health system, particularly Woden Valley Hospital, has been spending more than the national average to deliver services. The dollar amounts have been presented by the Commonwealth Grants Commission. The answer to the question of “”how much” has been well known. The answer to the question “”why so much” has been more elusive.

To its credit the Carnell Government embarked on that process and the result came this week in the report of the Booz, Allen and Hamilton report. The Government did this after promising before the election that it would do something about health. It promised to identify efficiencies, create the savings and plough the money back into health in two major ways … the non-hospital part of health and in reducing waiting lists. In short, it promised to redirect some of the spending under the Budget heading “”Health” from wastage to real health.
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A difference of opinion has developed over what is to be done about individual police officers in NSW exposed as corrupt. Royal Commissioner James Wood argues that demanding dismissal rather than allowing resignation will act as a deterrent against officers giving evidence to the commission, especially confessions of corruption … the more so if they lose financially. Police Minister Paul Whelan, with the support of Police Commissioner Tony Lauer, wants dismissals, saying there is a moral difference. Mr Whelan has argued that corrupt officers must be punished and seen to be punished with the loss of reputation that comes with dismissal. And Premier Bob Carr, in an attempt to resolve the issue, suggests that corrupt police should lose the government-contributed part of their superannuation.

Mr Whelan’s view appears out of context. He is looking at it from the perspective of individual morality. That perspective is fine if one were dealing with a generally clean police force and isolated incidents of corruption. But where there is widespread corruption, where it is the rule rather than the exception, the moral climate is slightly different. This is not to condone corruption, nor to excuse it, but to accept that for people in that environment the moral offence is slightly less than in an environment where officers fly in the face of an expressed and universally accepted proscription.
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There will be some unnecessary wringing of hands about this week’s figures that house prices are static or falling. The hand wringing is unnecessary. Lending institutions do not foreclose on existing mortgages provided the repayments are being met, even if the amount owing is a greater percentage of the market value of the asset than would be accepted at an at-scratch mortgage.

It may be in some cases that people are in homes whose market value is less than the mortgage. But once again, there will be no foreclosure provided the payments are being met. In short, no-one is being thrown into the gutter by the reduction in values of houses.

In fact reducing house prices present a considerable benefit and opportunity to many other Australians. Provided interest rates are stable, wages do not go down and employment rates go up, houses will be more affordable. More families will be able to move out of rental and accommodation into their own homes.
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The Carnell Government’s proposal to bring down a three year has merit, but it has risks. It will give business, community groups and government agencies a greater degree of certainty for planning. Some community groups, of course, have already been promised three-year funding. Business will take some comfort in the knowledge that no new imposts will be sprung upon them. The three-year plan will also be a demonstration that the Government is determined to get into genuine fiscal surplus by the end of the three years. The Government will be tested by the benchmark it sets itself, provided, of course, that it does not engage in figure massaging which has been a hallmark of Governments throughout Australia in the past decade.

The lack of government financing standards will result in a fair amount of political dispute about the underlying deficit and level of borrowing, but it appears the ACT has been chewing through reserves at an unsustainable rate and borrowing for recurrent spending.

The three-year proposal will help provide a better framework for the ACT to compete against other states to attract desirable business.
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Officials of the Australian Rugby League may not like it, but the Brisbane and Canberra sides do have the cream of games talent and when they met at the weekend provided as good a spectacle as you are likely to get in the game.

It is a pity that the permutations of the finals series exclude the possibility that they might meet in the grand final.

Perhaps one of the reasons for their success, particularly Canberra’s, has been the geographic base of the teams. It has resulted in a concentrated and heavy following in their home towns.
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When the National Gallery of Australia, with the approval of the then Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, bought Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles for $1.3 million in 1973, the Philistines yelped. Twenty-two years later, even on the Philistines’ own measure … money … it has been a success. It is now worth $30 million … a far better investment than most money-management funds.

Of more importance, though, the possession of Blue Poles is proving to be an entree card for Australia. It has been requested by the New York Museum of Modern Art to be part of a career retrospective on Pollock next year and the Gallery is giving the request serious consideration. The Tate Gallery in London has also sought access.

It means, of course, that if we lend the painting, Australian requests to borrow masterpieces from New York and London will be given more favourable treatment. The purchase of the painting helps put Australia on the world’s art map.
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This week’s ding dong in the arts community has provided a splendid practical illustration of the effect of last year’s High Court’s decision on freedom of communication.

It means you in Readerland get a better idea of what’s going on in the world. The decision has come in for a lot of bucketing. Some _ including journalists, lawyers and the intelligent lay reader _ haven’t yet grasped the large practical difference the decision will make.

On Wednesday, Roger Woodward, an internationally renowned Australian pianist, got stuck into the Australia Council in a speech to the National Press Club. The Australia Council dishes out public money to artists.
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