Crispin Hull

An instant, but wrong, response to last week’s announcement by Planning Minister Gary Humphries would be: “”Oh no, not another planning inquiry.” Mr Humphries says the ACT planning system is failing in its most important objective _ the creation of confidence among ordinary Canberrans in the quality of life in their city. It is a welcome change of perspective from the narrow to the broad. In the past five or six years planning has been focused on what can be built on particular parcels of land _ in short a land-use policy. It lacked a vision of what the city should look like in 30 or 40 years’ time and lacked integration with other policies: transport, employment, industry and population; insofar as those policies exist. In some respects Mr Humphries is reaching to an earlier _ pre self-government _ type of planning in Canberra which projected employment and population expectations and only then dealt with land use. That approach had a fair degree of success.

The original Territory Plan emphasised certainty. If you fitted certain footprint and other rules you were permitted to build. Similar rules applied virtually territory wide, irrespective of local sensitivities. In-fill and dual occupancies for profit were built on a scale unimaginable a few years before. It was more a developers’ blueprint than a coherent and comprehensive statement of how Canberra should be. Outrage and hard work by community groups resulted in the plan being changed little by little with inquiry after inquiry, and it is still not right. Victoria and NSW have rightly abandoned the infill-anywhere approach. Canberra must, too.
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When Australians take an almost prurient interest in what some silly economics magazine in Europe says of us, it is a cultural cringe. When Australians take the slightest notice of the opinions of the grossly inadequate British tabloid press, it is a cultural cringe. When, however, an internationally highly regarded magazine like Nature reflects upon Australia, it is worth taking notice: not because it is a British magazine, but because it is a publication of world stature. So what if our Treasurer is Treasurer of the Year according to some European magazine; so what if he is Lizard of Oz according to the gutter press of Britain. But when Nature magazine reflects upon Australian science it is worth taking notice.

The most recent edition painted a picture of Australian science far different from the view within. Nature points to projects of great merit; an embracing of the importance of science in wealth creation; much excellent science and a growing optimism within Australian science. It also points out, quite rightly, that there has been too much “”democratic inquisition” through which organisations have been “”repeatedly appraised often at the whim of a new minister or at the urging of parliamentary committee”. Even now the CSIRO is undergoing yet another review of management and structure with the usual round of threats about keeping it secret. The big difficulty for science is that its cycle of spending and results is very different from the political cycle. Politicians like a three- , or at the most, six-year cycle, whereby money goes in at one end and the warm, feel-good result comes out before the next election (or the one after at most).
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The move by the Jesuits to negotiate with the Murdoch-Telecom pay television group, Foxtel, to put 1000 hours a week of family programs is welcome and instructive. Pay television is in its infancy in Australia. It should have, of course, been on air for a long time by now, but the delay has been a consequence of government farnarkling rather than any technological short-coming. The delay, however, has given the impression, quite wrongly, that pay television is a costly thing to pipe into people’s homes. It is not. It can be done quite cheaply. The only reason it is expensive is the intangible costs. Those are twofold: the cost of obtaining a government licence to broadcast and the cost of some of the material to be broadcast. If the Government puts a very high price on the licence and if the copyright owners of various movies and sporting events put huge fees on their broadcast, then pay TV will be hugely expensive. If, however, the Government does not charge huge licence fees and the product is created cheaply, then households should receive it quite cheaply.

There is plenty of room on the pay spectrum, whether pay or satellite, for many channels. There is room for religious, cultural, community and sporting groups to put their fare to the people, provided the Government reserves some space for them or does not permit the main players to monopolise the space. It is perhaps unfortunate that the Jesuits have to pay homage to Mammon; that they have to go to Murdoch to get a piece of the broadcasting band. It would have been better if a good slice of the band had been reserved for non-profit groups.
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The Prices Surveillance Authority has caught three of the big four banks out. They have subtly changed the way they charge interest on credit cards. In doing so they have picked up an extra percentage point of earnings _ in effect a price rise of about 14 per cent on the price of using money. Immediately after deregulation of credit cards in 1993, competition brought a slight overall reduction in charges. It also brought a degree of choice. More recently, though, choice has meant confusion. As customers faced a choice between apples and pears it became impossible for many to see the real differences in outcomes. The banks appear to have taken advantage of this will subtle changes that have dragged the overall cost of credit up not down. Only the Commonwealth comes out as not having changed the ground rules on interest charging. The National, ANZ and Westpac have changed their rules. All have stated they have informed customers, and that is no doubt true. None the less, until the comparative detail and final result was published this week by the Price Surveillance Authority, very few customers would have been aware of the changes.

Few would have been aware which banks give the best deal. The changes to charging are so subtle as to be devious. Before deregulation, all bank credit cards had to give an interest-free period after which interest could only be charged on the outstanding balance. Banks had to give an interest-free period on new purchases even if the account had not been fully paid. Banks were not allowed to charge an annual fee. Upon deregulation, the banks painted an overall impression of saying to customers: if you want the interest free period you have to pay an annual fee. If you want to escape the annual fee you must pay interest on all purchases from the date of purchase. That impression was created because that was where the emphasis lay in publicity to entice new customers and in information to existing customers. The deviously subtle others changes were noted in the fine print.
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The Government appears to be in a bind about how to respond to the Republican Advisory report. The chair of the advisory committee, Malcolm Turnbull, pointed out this week that it took five months to create the report and the Government has taken 18 months not to respond to it. He fears the debate about the republic is going off the boil. Essentially the difficulty appears to be not whether Australia should be a republic or not; but what sort of republic should it be.

The questions of what sort of republic boils down to two fundamental questions: how should the president be elected and what powers should the president have. On the first point, the options are between a direct election by the people and an indirect election by the Parliament. Opinion polls show that the broad mass of Australians feel they should elect the president directly. They say also that they do not want a recycled politician or political hack to be president. Of course, the two are inconsistent. People naively imagine that if they elect the president directly, they will get their wish. Not so. If there is a direct election, there will be a Labor candidate and a Liberal candidate and a raft of also-rans. Inevitably, one or other of the Liberal or Labor candidates will be elected. If, however, there is an indirect election, that is an election by the members of Federal Parliament at a joint sitting requiring a two-thirds majority, the Liberals can block a Labor hack and the Labor members can block a Liberal hack.
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Employers and employees must be hoping that the stand-off at Mount Isa Mines is not a sign of things to come under enterprise bargaining in a climate of falling unemployment. To date the new industrial relations regime has not had much of a test run in a climate of level or falling unemployment. Employees facing the dole queue tend to be more ruly than those in a more buoyant economy. It is true that the Mount Isa dispute arose over an enterprise-bargaining offer. However, the dispute is by no means confined to that issue.

It appears that a power struggle between unions is as much a cause of the stand-off as a power struggle between employer and union. An enterprise deal with MIM was brokered by the Australian Workers Union and the Australian Metal Workers Union. However, key members of the workforce who are members of the rival Construction, Forestry and Mining Employees’ Union rejected the deal. This led to the company imposing a lock-out. There are some other elements to the dispute. Workers at Mount Isa see the better pay and conditions at coalfields elsewhere in Queensland for less dangerous work and want more for themselves. Further, unions and management are playing out the dispute, at least in part, hundreds of kilometres away in Brisbane. The dispute is showing that all the old bogies of Australian industrial relations are still with us. Demarcation, relativities, quick resort to strike and lock-out, attempts by national or state-based unions to deal with a local dispute from afar, bloody-mindedness and a failure of some employees to recognise that the company’s economic health and their own co-incide.
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The overseas aid organisation Care Australia has prided itself on being administratively lean. It prided itself on getting the maximum percentage of the money that was entrusted to it by the Australian people to the people overseas for whom it was intended. It expressed this pride in terms of what a low percentage of its total funds went in administration. Alas, it seems the low percentage was a false economy. An audit this week showed several severe deficiencies in the way Care Australia dealt with its funds. As a result Care has been forced to repay $238,000 to the Federal Government.

In comparing the effectiveness of various overseas-aid bodies, one has to look behind raw percentage figures on the percentage of funds going on administration. It may well be that, up to a point, a higher percentage spent on administration means that the rest of the money is better accounted for and better directed, and therefore overall better accounted for and therefore the organisation is more effective. Care Australia’s chair, former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, said the problems in the audit related to events before 1991 and the organisation had systems in place to rectify the problems _ presumably at some administrative cost. The Minister for Development Cooperation, Gordon Bilney, says a follow-up audit will be conducted in six months. Australians will be rightly concerned about deficiencies in the way their donations have been spent.
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This year’s Budget has revealed both a major flaw in the Budget process itself and a continued unsettling dishonesty in the wider political process which can only increase cynicism and alienation among the electorate. This year the Government used the Budget to initiate two major policy changes: the sale of the Commonwealth Bank and a new way to finance retirement incomes. In a decade when “”consultation” has become the buzz word it is inconsistent to launch major policy changes in the Budget.

The Budget process is essentially a secretive one and it is presented as a fait accompli. A comparison with the native-title issue is instructive. In that process, the Government prided itself on effecting a major policy, consulting all affected parties and getting a good result. On the Budget, the Prime Minister prided himself on a major policy initiative. But where was the consultation and is the result a good one? There was some secret consultation with the ACTU, which has had a special place in the ear of the government even though it represents fewer than 35 per cent of the Australian workforce.
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The Leader of the Opposition, John Howard, will have to engage in a delicate balancing act over the next few months. A merely negative campaign against the Government is not likely to be enough to defeat the Government. On the other hand, the danger of presenting a detailed program upon which the Coalition would fight an election was made quite apparent in the 1993 election. It is going to take great political skill to avoid being painted as carping or only negative while at the same time delivering enough policy upon which to base a campaign without being accused of being too scant on detail. There are enough holes, broken promises, unreliable promises and dishonesty in the Budget to provide some ammunition against the Government, but that is not enough. Nor is it enough to merely say the Coalition will cut back the public sector and hand back the wealth to individuals.

Treasurer Ralph Willis has often repeated that public spending cannot be contracted any more without cutting programs. Leaving aside the Government’s hypocrisy in stating this yet still providing for a 1.4 per cent public-service-wide cut, there is some truth in this. There are no more substantial gains to be made by salami-slicing. Merely plucking an “”efficiency dividend” figure will leave Mr Howard open to the question: where will the cuts be made? Which programs will be cut? And if he answers with any detail, it will result in self-interested groups kicking up an electorally damaging noise. To date the Opposition has revamped in general terms four major policy areas.
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The decision of the ACT Government to introduce weekend detention is to be welcomed, but with caution. Weekend detention adds to the armoury of sentencing options to the courts. It means fewer people will be sent to jail in NSW. This will be less disruptive for families. More importantly, it will enable some offenders to keep their jobs in Canberra. Further, it will save the high economic and social cost of full-time imprisonment. The scheme will require the refurbishment of the old Quamby youth centre. It is important that this scheme does not become the first step to an ACT jail. It is also important that the scheme does not result in people who otherwise would get community-service orders getting custodial sentences. The legislation has some safeguards to prevent that. The essential danger of the ACT getting its own prison is that it will tempt the courts to fill it up. The Attorney-General, Gary Humphries, appears to have had a welcome change of heart on a full-time jail and opted for the weekend jail instead.