Crispin Hull

Some of the concerns about diversionary conferencing to deal with crime must be looked at by the ACT Attorney-General, Gary Humphries. Diversionary conferencing is a method of making criminals meet their vicitims. Its present application in the ACT is called the Re-Integrative Shaming Experiment. The experiment is well worth doing and appears to be more effective than standard methods of dealing with some crime.

It is apparent from the past 200 years of “”experiment” with dealing with crime in Australia that jail, hangings, whippings and prohibition have manifestly failed. Some lateral thinking is needed. Atavistic cries for revenge gets nowhere, and pandering to those cries by politicians like the NSW leaders John Fahey and Bob Carr is more heinous because the perpetrators know what they are doing and are doing it for purely selfish, political reasons. We may often bemoan the quality of our politicians in the ACT, but Mr Humphries and his Labor predecessor Terry Connolly did not engage in the cynical, pre-election auction of penalities that occurred in NSW. Research is showing that offenders who have to confront their victims and their victims’ families are less likely to re-offend than those who go through the court process. It seems particularly promising for young first offenders.
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The ACT constitutional position was canvassed obliquely a couple of times in the past week. One fanciful idea was that its boundaries could be extended to embrace Goulburn and perhaps other places in NSW who feel ill-served by NSW. The other more significant one was floated by the Leader of the Opposition, John Howard, who suggested that his people’s convention which would canvass the republic and other constitution could canvass the possibility of new states, particularly the Northern Territory. The only other possibility on the mainland is the ACT and off-shore island territories. The latter simply do not have the economic or population base to be considered. In any debate about the ACT’s boundaries or possibility of statehood, the historical position of the territory must take paramount place.

The territory was created because jealousies between Melbourne and Sydney caused them to rule each other out. The only way through the impasse was to create a separate capital. It was provided for in the Constitution. It was to be within the state of NSW, more than 100 miles (160 kilometres) from Sydney, 100 square miles or more in area and vested in the Commonwealth. The large area and the vesting in the Commonwealth were thought necessary to prevent land speculation. If the Commonwealth owned the land and could only lease it to holders and if there were enough of it, land speculators could not buy up the land around the new capital and make a killing. Beyond that, the ACT’s borders have no geographic, ethnic, linguistic or historic foundation. To use them as the basis for the creation of a separate state would be absurd. Mr Howard did not suggest this, but it is possible that others might pick up his words about new states to suggest the ACT might be a candidate.
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The ACT Government has agreed to set up an inquiry into how the ACT Department of Environment Land and Planning undercharged the Yowani Golf Club $1.5 million in betterment tax for a housing development. The Minister for Planning, Gary Humphries, initially expressed concerned that there would be another expensive inquiry which might find no more than a difference of legal opinion. Independent MLA Michael Moore, however, counters that the Yowani error might be symptomatic of a wider problem. If that is the case, the cost of an inquiry would be chicken feed. The Yowani matter is disturbing.

The general problem is that decades ago many bodies were given the use of a large tracts of Commonwealth land for sport, charity and club purposes. When the city grew, these clubs thought they could make a large profit by building houses or offices on the land. But the profit in the change of land use rightly belongs to the community and should be protected by the betterment tax system. When the land use is changed, the lessees should pay the difference in value to the community in the form of a tax, less perhaps a small percentage for margins of error in valuations; and incentive to develop to more efficient land uses as the city grows and for the administrative convenience in having the existing holder do the development _ say a discount of 10 to 20 per cent for existing lessees like Yowani to change land use from golf to housing. But the Yowani got a 50 per cent discount, which is an unjustifiable transfer of community assets to a few members of a golf club and a developer. The department initially agreed this was the rate. Later legal advice says this was an error and that Yowani should have paid an 80 per cent tax. Perhaps this indicates a mere clash of legal opinion.
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After 18 months of consideration, the Government is finally to respond tomorrow to the report of the Republic Advisory Committee which itself took five months to draft. The delay caused the chair of the committee, Malcolm Turnbull, to chastise the Government last month, saying that the debate was in danger of losing its momentum. If Prime Minister Paul Keating is to respond adequately to that criticism he must outline a solid government preference on some, if not all, of the key points of contention. It will not be enough merely to state that Australia should be a republic and that the Head of State should be an Australian.

That much is obvious, and, indeed, inevitable. The main issues include: the method of selecting a president; the powers of the president; Supply; and the timing of a referendum to implement the change. It seems fairly apparent that matters like the flag, a Bill of Rights and changes to the Commonwealth-state balance are, quite rightly, not part of the republican agenda. The Republic Advisory Committee set out the issues and a key conumdrum in the debate. On the method of selecting it canvassed popular election and election by a special majority of Parliament. Opinion it canvassed and opinion polls show the former to be preferred by the people. Paradoxically, though, the people want a non-partasan president who is a symbol. However, that is more likely to come out of an election by Parliament where the special majority (say, two-thirds) would result in the major parties vetoing each other’s candidate.
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There is an underlying misconception by both the Federal Government and Opposition in their tussle this week over the “”battlers”. Both sides take as their misconception that the Federal Government is responsible for, and therefore can control, the totality of economic and social life in Australia. They assume that if anything is not going well, it is the Government’s fault and if anything is going well the Government can take the credit. The illogical leap here is that if the “”battlers” _ whoever they might be _ are doing badly, then the Federal Government is to blame.

The danger in both major parties adopting this assumption is that it engenders an attitude of dependency and almost helplessness. We must hope the leaders engage in a more sophisticated debate in the lead up to the election than: “”The “battlers’ are doing badly it’s the Government’s fault” vs “”Not true. The “battlers’ are being helped by the Government and have never had it so good.” In the past week both sides have engaged in idiotic accounting exercises that purport to show that people on average incomes are X dollars better or worse off than when Labor came to office in 1983. The calculations are meaningless and so are the reasons for doing them. A myriad of non-government factors help determine Australia’s economic performance and therefore the income of the “”battlers”. A more refined debate would isolate what precisely it has been about government policy and administration that have made Australian life better or worse _ both economically and socially. At present that exercise carries more danger for the Liberal Party than the Labor Party. The Labor Party can easily point to specific benefits its policies have given specific groups.
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Canberra has no national cemetery similar to Arlington in Washington. It means that leading Australians are buried or their ashes scattered in various parts of Australia and, indeed, the world. Most notably, the bodies or ashes of Australia’s dead Prime Ministers are in graves in quite obscure places, if marked at all.

Some of the graves, especially that of Ben Chifley, are not in good condition. The epitaph on his grave has weathered beyond legibility. Clearly the family should have the final say on the type and place of a memorial. However, at present there is no national cemetery option; and there should be one. A starting point could well be a place with memorials to all the dead Prime Ministers with plaques telling something of their life, where they are buried, where their ashes or in Harold Holt’s case something about his disappearance in the surf. It is understandable that in the past families of Australian leaders did not want burials or memorials in Canberra. Canberra was a smaller place and somewhat remote. That is no longer the case. Further the creation of the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier in Canberra showed that Canberra, as the national capital, is the place for events, memorials, institutions and symbols of national significance.
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The Prices Surveillance Authority is looking at several options on ensuring basic bank services remain accessible to all Australians. The banks, predictably enough, have cried foul. They say the authority’s intervention will amount to reregulation of the banks. The authority, quite rightly, points out that where market forces fail, regulation can correct the failures. Few would want a return to the highly regulated banking and financial markets of the 1970s. There have been great benefits to competition. Consumers have been presented with greater choice and businesses have been presented with cost savings. However, the banks have been fairly single-minded in their determination to make the users of bank services pay for what they use and to end the cross-subsidisation of small-account holders by large-account holders.

They say this is the way to greater efficiency. That is certainly true when looked at from a purely economic perspective and true when viewed from a narrow single-industry perspective. But banking is different from other industries. It has an important social dimension. This dimension is hard to quantify in financial terms, but history shows that a stable currency and stable financial system is a key ingredient to political stability and ultimately civil peace. No-one would suggest that there is any serious danger in Australia of financial or political collapse. None the less it is important that the banks are aware of the underlying social element to their business. That social element has strengthened in recent times with the decline of cash and easily negotiable cheques as principal means of paying wages and social security.
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Gareth Evans has set us straight. It was the media reportage of the bugging of the Chinese Embassy that did all the damage to Australia’s international relations _ not the bugging itself. If only the media had not reported it, Australian Government agents could have happily continued to receive transmissions from the embassy and no-one would have been in the least bit embarrassed. International relations would not have been damaged. Evans is quite right, of course. Good international relations can be severely damaged by the truth. Evans has decided that the best way to stop a repeat performance is to make it a crime for the media and others to disclose security information _ whatever that is going to mean. The only defence would be that the security agents were acting illegally. There will be no over-riding public interest defence. The media should be grateful, though. In the three most notable recent cases of security disclosures the agents were probably acting illegally _ smashing into the Sheraton Hotel; mistreating ASIS employees; and bugging an embassy in contravention of the Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Act which embraces into Australian law the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

That convention binds the receiving state into not intruding upon the embassies of sending states and into ensuring free communications by the embassy. The Australian Government will have to convince Parliament to repeal parts of this law if it wants to continue bugging foreign embassies and retain the ability to prosecute those who dare disclose the fact. The spying game is such hypocrisy. If we goodies do it, it is “”in the national interest”. If those baddies do it, it is an outrage. Governments do not like disclosure of spying precisely because it exposes this hypocrisy. Bizarrely, Evans also wants to reinvigorate the co-operative voluntary D-notice system whereby the media agrees not to disclose certain security matters.
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The Opposition and minor-party senators better have a good look at Gareth Evans’s proposed law to make it a crime for the media to disclose security information. There is a dangerous circularity about his plan that puts the Government above scrutiny. The law proposes that it be a crime to disclose “”security information”; that trials be held in secret and that the only defence be “”illegality under Australian law of an act the subject of a disclosure”. Under the ASIO Act “”security” is defined as the protection of the Australian people from espionage, sabotage, politically motivated violence, promotion of communal violence, attacks on the defence system and acts of foreign interference. Evans has not put forward his definition of security information, but presumably it will take a similar form. If so, it will embrace quite a wide field. This is in a package with secret trials and only one defence of illegality. It has the potential for significant breaches of civil liberties and for a government to hide a range of unsavoury, if not illegal, activity. It will also cause a deal of uncertainty. We saw that last week with the disclosure of the bugging of the Chinese Embassy.

The Government clearly did not want that disclosed. Under Evans new law, a media organisation might be able to defend itself on the ground that bugging the Chinese Embassy is illegal because the Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Act embraces into Australian law the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and that convention says the premises of a mission shall be inviolable. But what was Evan’s approach to that argument? He suggested that the bugs (if there were any!) were legal because they had been obtained under warrant. The ASIO Act has a convoluted double negative to support Evans’s proposition. It says listening devices are illegal unless you get consent or a warrant from the Minister (not a court). There are still arguments that support the view that the Diplomatic Act might over-ride that, but that is a side issue. The real issue is Evans’s thinking. It suggests he will frame his new gagging law that way. It would mean the mere issuing of a warrant by the Minister to install listening devices would be enough to make the bugging legal. Drawing the analogy with present law, the same would apply to search warrants and phone tapping. And, perhaps, ministerial warrant could make legal a host of activities that might otherwise be illegal.
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Many are called to the deputy leadership, but few are chosen.On the post-war record Kim Beazley has about one chance in five of becoming Prime Minister and about one chance in three of becoming Leader of the Opposition without being Prime Minister.

The deputy leadership of one of the two major political parties in Australia is not part of a natural progression to the Prime Ministership.

Since 1945 only three deputies went smoothly to party leader and at the time or later election to the Prime Ministership. And all held the Prime Ministership only a short time. They were Harold Holt, Billy McMahon and Gough Whitlam.
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