Crispin Hull

Opposition Leader John Howard’s assertion that the people of Australia have loss faith the government carries some weight. Governments have got into the habit of dressing up an otherwise depressing picture in an attempt to make things look rosy. Voters are now getting wise to it. Unlike the boy who cries wolf, the politicians are crying nirvana.

Though the assertion came from Mr Howard, there is no guarantee that his side will be any different if it is ever in power for a long period. It seems to be the nature of modern communications that media manipulation and image creation goes hand-in-hand with politics.

The only way to improve things is if Oppositions before elections promise and if elected early in their term put into effect measures to ensure that accurate information about government conduct is available to the people.
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The falling trend in the road toll from the early nineties to the beginning of this year is now at an end. The figures for the first half of this year are higher than for the same time last year. Any self-congratulation about better and more temperate driving appears to be misplaced. It may be that the falling toll had more to do with lower road usage because of the recession; better medical treatment; tougher police action and better cars and roads than better driving.

There are no easy solutions. The aim of reducing the road toll has to be fought on many fronts. Changing driver behaviour is, of course, the most significant way to prevent road trauma. That can be done through both education and force.

This week the NRMA called for a reduction in the speed limit in residential areas from 60km/h to 50km/h. It said a survey in the ACT and NSW showed that about three-quarters of motorists agreed, provided it did not affect arterial roads in the city. The manager of traffic engineering for the NRMA, Andrew Macky, said. “It reinforces the position the NRMA has long held: that speed limits should be more flexible and set according to local conditions.”
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Western leaders, and indeed, the world in general might be relieved if Russian President Boris Yeltsin finds that his health does not permit him to return to office and that instead he retires to a long and pleasant retirement on the Black Sea.

Though the world is rightly grateful for Mr Yeltsin’s role in the overthrow of the communist regime; and the stubborn but effective resistance tot he 1991 communist coup attempt; and the installation of at least some rudimentary elements of democracy in Russia, he has passed his used-by date. On many occasions he has proved erratic and mendacious. Even with respect to his health he has attempted to give the Russian people a misleading picture, playing down the seriousness of his condition. At first he said it was a blood-supply problem, on later acknowledging it was a heart attack. Last week, the Kremlin issued a photograph purporting to be taken at the hospital but apparently taken three months ago while he was on holiday. The 64-year-old president now says he will be in hospital some time.
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Opposition Leader John Howard’s “”headland” speech identifies why Australia is in an economic bind. The nation was rightly opened up to international competition with deregulation of the financial and foreign-currency markets and the reduction in tariffs. However, without extensive reform in Australia, Australian industry would be left behind. There was some reform, but not enough. The major stumbling block was reform of the labour market. Mr Howard said yesterday that this was because the Keating Government was bound to look after its mates in the official positions in unions. It meant not only a failure to reform industrial relations but also a failure to reform critical parts of the transport system and public-sector utilities where unions were strong.

Mr Howard rightly points out that continued tariff reform which benefits consumers with cheaper prices cannot go ahead without commensurate reform in the labour market and transport system, otherwise the foreign debt would blow out further.
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Federal Labor feels bitter and cheated that a Government can be tipped out of office merely by a protest vote even when the Opposition has not developed a set of policies. It is not just the Queensland result that worries Federal Labor, but the resemblance to its own situation. The Federal Opposition, it argues, is like the Queensland coalition _ bereft of policies.

It appears to be asking a question in a way that suggests it has no answer: how can the voters elect a party with no policies over a party with policies? But the question does have an answer. People will vote for a party with no policies when the Government conduct and policies are so objectionable that they prefer the unknown to the devil they know.

Mr Keating imagines that voters will prefer his “”big picture” to the lack of vision and picture being presented by John Howard. Not so. If Queensland is any guide people do not care about big pictures if the detailed management is wrong _ if tollways are being built against community wishes; if interest rates rise; if special interest groups are given benefits through government spending over the broad interest; if economic management appears to allow one recession to drift into another with precious little time between them.
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The Prime Minister Paul Keating said virtually in the same breath yesterday that the Queensland election was not a rebuke to the Federal Government and yet there is no joy in lodging protest votes by voting for what he called no-policy parties. It sounded like whistling in the dark. Why did he argue there was no federal rebuke and then immediately drawn an analogy with the Federal situation _ that he might be thrown out of office purely on protest.

Mr Keating’s view was also a very self-centred view of what happened in Queensland. Perhaps Mr Keating imagines that because he took no part in the campaign that the election was divorced totally from Federal politics. Not so. Opposition Leader John Howard campaigned there extensively.

Of course, much can be read into any election result. It would be silly to claim a “clear message” arising from more than a million votes. Many factors were at work. Among them, perhaps, was that some voters were not going to vote Labor because of the performance of the Keating Government. Others, perhaps, did not like Mr Goss or the performance of his Government. Others may have thought the unity of the Coalition deserved credit; that the days of the corrupt National Government of the 1980s were gone for good; that the Liberals had asserted themselves, particularly in the south-east, to a point where they were a viable choice whereas in the past those who could not bring themselves to vote National voted Labor; and still others might have imagined Mr Goss was getting to self-assured and that though he ought to win he should not win by too much.
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It is tragic that in this 50th anniversary year of the founding of the United Nations that it should have failed so comprehensively in the former Yugoslavia. It now seems that the UN safe zones for Bosnian Muslims in the east of Bosnia are not such thing. Bosnian Serbs have been allowed to move in to the most significant of them _ Srebrenica _ and forcibly take away all male Muslims aged between six and about sixty and force the remaining population out to the north. The aim is clear. It is “ethnic cleansing” of pockets of Muslim territory which are surrounded by Serbia areas. The aim is clearly a Greater Serbia, created by force. Worse, it is being created at the expense of the Muslim population in flagrant disregard of human rights and UN principles while supposedly powerful nations seem helpless to do anything about it.

From the Bosnian Muslim point of view the UN and NATO role has been doubly cruel. On one hand the UN and NATO have failed to provide protection yet on the other hand they have enforced an arms embargo precluding the Muslims from defending themselves.

It is not that the UN and NATO should have stayed out and allowed the Serbs and Muslims to fight it out. Rather, having decided to go in, they should have done a thorough job.
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The tiff between Opposition Leader John Howard and Reserve Bank Governor Bernie Fraser highlights the need for a closer look at the role of the Reserve Bank in Australia. Mr Howard has accused Mr Fraser of showing poitical bias towards the Government because he has endorsed the Accord and generally supported the Government’s economic direction. Mr Fraser, in turn, has dismissed Mr Howard’s comments that Australia is enjoying only five minutes of economic sunshine as a hollow-sounding throwaway in the face of five years of economic growth. Mr Howard says the bank is not independent enough.

The Reserve Bank and its Governor are in a unique position in the Federal public sector. Some statutory authorities and government businesses are almost completely independent. Other bodies like the Auditor-General’s Office and the Australian Bureau of Statistics are not responsible to the Government but to the Parliament, though the Government appoints their heads.
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Senator Bob Mc Mullan’s proposed move to the House of Representatives is a welcome one. It shows that, since the March by-election, the Labor Party has recognised that the ACT cannot be taken for granted.

Hitherto, Labor had won every election and by-election for all ACT seats since their creation bar three (in 1949 when the first ACT seat was created and won by an Independent, and for the seat of Canberra in the extraordinarily anti-Labor elections of 1975 and 1977.)

At the March by-election in the seat of Canberra Labor was severely shaken by a 17 per cent swing. It lost one of its safest seats. The loss could be put down to several factors: general by-election trends against governments; fear of interest rate rises in a mortgage-belt seat; an anti-Paul Keating sentiment; and a general feeling of a tired government. However, another factor stood out above these _ the selection by Labor of a person, Sue Robinson, who was seen _ rightly or wrongly _ as a far-left candidate more interested in factionalism in the party than in the people she was to represent. The Liberal Party, on the other hand, in Brendan Smyth, chose someone quintessentially of the Tuggeranong mortgage belt.
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NSW Premier Bob Carr and Queensland Premier Wayne Goss have recycled the regular calls from state premiers for an overhaul of the federal system, including moves to make the Senate more relevant and changes to federal-state financial relations.

On financial relations the states have shown a foolish reluctance to take up income tax which they were forced to abandon in World War II. Their idea of reform usually involves more money from the Federal Government with no electoral accountability for levying it. Without an independent tax base, the states’ power will inevitably wane further.
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