Crispin Hull

There is some justification to the assertion by Irish republicans that Britain is guilty of double standards in releasing convicted murderer Private Lee Clegg yet not releasing republicans caught up in the 16 years of violence in Northern Ireland. Clegg was released after two years of a life term for shooting a joy-rider in a stolen car speeding through a west Belfast war zone. Prime Minister John Major has asserted that Clegg’s case is different because it was not an “intentional” murder. That view is debatable, and, after all, Clegg was convicted of murder which requires if not a premeditated intention to kill, at least a reckless indifference to human life or an intention to commit grievous bodily harm.

In any event, it is not helpful to engage in artificial comparisons of individual culpability in a situation like that in Northern Ireland. The sad truth is that many young people _ soldiers and Catholic and Protestant militants _ were caught up in, or even born, into a cycle of violence that mitigates individual culpability even if it does not excuse it. Sure, some of those convicted are the sort of thug who would engage in thuggery in any society, but many of those convicted of violence might well have led blameless lives if brought up in a different country.
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The terms of reference for the inquiry into the ACT’s leasehold system should be wide enough to satisfy all parties involved in the ACT’s lease and planning system. It is important for public confidence to be restored in the system of land tenure and planning in the ACT. That has not been evident for some time. The inquiry will be a chance to see what has gone wrong in the past and what might be done in the future.

When a new federal capital of Australia was originally propounded, as a compromise between the competing claims of Sydney and Melbourne, some principles of land tenure were established with the aim of preventing land speculation.

The capital territory was to be large enough to prevent people buying up the land to sell at windfall profits and all the land was to be vested in the Commonwealth, which meant leasehold was to be the highest form of land tenure. The aim was to ensure that windfall profits were not made by changes to land use as the population grew.
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A won its World Court case on East Timor on a legal technicality. The underlying moral question of the Timor Gap treaty and Australia’s recognition of Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor remains unaddressed. Portugal brought the case against Australia, saying that Australia’s signing of the Timor Gap treaty would result in an illegal exploitation of oil and other resources which properly remain the property of the East Timorese people and was contrary to UN resolutions that East Timor is a non-self-governing territory and the East Timorese should have an act of self-determination.

The court ruled 14-2 that to rule on Portugal’s case against Australia would require the determination of questions about the Indonesian invasion and annexation of East Timor in 1975. That would necessitate making judgment about Indonesia. The court said it could not do that without Indonesia appearing before it and submitting itself to the World Court’s jurisdiction.
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The clinical school at Woden Valley Hospital is not out of the woods yet. At the end of the Health Ministers’ conference in Alice Springs in the middle of last month, the clear impression was the Federal Government would put on hold for a year its plan to cut the number of medical graduates from 1200 a year to 1000. It meant that Sydney University would therefore be able to continue servicing the 30 places at Woden. It now appears that that is not the case. The Federal Government is to press ahead with its plans while a committee looks at doctor supply. The political fall-out has been a spat between the Federal Health Minister Carmen Lawrence and her ACT counterpart Kate Carnell. They have traded accusations about who said what to whom and when and what were the precise terms of the agreement between the state and federal ministers. The head of the ACT’s Department of the Health, Greg Fraser, and the South Australian Minister, Michael Armitage, say they got the impression that the plan to cut back graduates was on hold for a year. Dr Lawrence says to the contrary. Dr Lawrence allowed the impression that the cuts were off for a year to remain with the public for two weeks before putting her interpretation.

The spat aside, it seems pointless and silly to review an issue when the Federal Government is pushing ahead with its conclusion anyway. The real issues are whether cutting back medical graduates will benefit health care in Australia or even achieve its stated aim of cutting Medicare costs and what effect will cutting back medical schools have on smaller schools, in particular the ACT clinical school.
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Henry George still has a following in Australia. Every so often letters to the editor come in marked “The Henry George League”. Another prolific letter writer, Bill Mason, wrote Georgist theories, but never attributed them.George founded the San Francisco Daily Evening Post which folded in the 1870s depression. It inspired him to write Progress and Poverty published in 1879. Because of its history, his theories still have some relevance in Canberra, especially in light of the new inquiry into land tenure.

George argued that the raw value of land rose because of the growth of the economy in general, not through individual effort. Idle landowners were reaping the benefit of other people’s toil and therefore the state should tax the whole of the increase in unimproved value.

Such a tax would reap such a large amount that no other tax would be necessary. This would stimulate construction and economic growth and be administratively simple to apply.
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Martin Ferguson’s move to the “”feral govment in Cambra”, the plight of the “fat bloke from WA” (as he was so succinctly identified in a recent opinion poll), the Queensland election and the fate of Janine Haines show how poorly we are served by the electoral system.

Kim Beazley is much more likely to lose his seat in the next election than a dozen or more drones in the Labor and Liberal Parties.

Members with talent often find themselves in marginal seats and get swept aside with the slightest swing against their party, while drones in safe seats get returned. Aside from being unfair, it means that an incoming Opposition has to regroup from the drones in safe seats while its best talent has been voted out.
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Our school soccer referee brought an unorthodox sense of balance to friendly matches. If one side got too far ahead, he joined in, taking possession of the ball, racing up the field and passing to a player near the goal, his referee’s whistle silent in his mouth as the clearly off-side receiving player dropped the ball into the goal.

The other extreme is totally unrefereed games _ like backyard cricket. Unrefereed games are fine if the rules, otherwise they degenerate into boycotts and violence.

So to is Westminster politics. Suddenly something unexpected happens and someone says it is “”tippity runs” or “”over the fence is six and out”. Pandemonium breaks out.
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Let me tell you about the Indian Step Ladder. It is a bit like the Indian Rope Trick.It comes to mind because the newly appointed Air Services Australia board has come under immediate fire because none of its members know anything about electronics. Electronics is the key to air traffic control, which is the board’s main concern.

It is not new for government board appointments to come under fire for knowing little or nothing about the things they are supposed to be supervising. It happened for a long time and happens at the state and territory level, too.

I am not picking on the ASA. The new board members probably have all sorts of other skills that make each appointment respectable, worthwhile and defendable, but the most of the Acts of Parliament that create boards and authorities and give Ministers the power to make appointments to them are very short on qualifications and process to ensure appointments are good ones.
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One of the great esoteric philosophic debates of the millennium … almost on par with the mind-body distinction … rudely intruded into the modern world of realpolitik last week. The debate is between natural law and what is called legal positivism.

Despite its name, legal positivism is not some trendy New Age drivel. Rather, it is the philosophy that says law is a human-made thing and law is only that which is generally enforceable or consented to. The natural lawyers, on the other hand, say there is a higher law, some innate principles of human conduct that can transcend the immediate human-made rules. New Age drivel, if you like, but with a longer pedigree.

Natural law waned a bit with the onset of the scientific age, rationalism and the decline of religion. But it made a bit of a comeback immediately after World War II. This was because you could not have a lot of legal positivist ex-Nazis wandering about saying that the law of Germany at the time said they could kill and torture so they were not answerable to some higher law.
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Despite the hype of the March Federal by-election, Labor has to be favoured to win all three ACT seats.It is not only because of Bob McMullan’s announcement this week. There are other factors.Let’s take the Liberals’ candidate for Namadgi, Brendan Smyth.

The trouble for Brendan Smyth is that he was pre-selected by the Liberal Party for the by-election because he was very electable.

The Liberals did a lot of profile polling _ finding out what sort of person the good voters of Tuggeranong would elect. Someone like us, they replied. Between 30 and 40, married with kids, a PAYE taxpayer and living in Tuggeranong.
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