Crispin Hull

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.
Continue reading “1995_05_may_leader15may”

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.
Continue reading “1995_05_may_leader14may”

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.
Continue reading “1995_05_may_leader13may”

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.

Science is having a hard time. Politicians are demanding instant results and relevance to industry. Non-scientists are finding science harder to understand. Scientists want to get on with their research and are frustrated that the rest of society cannot see the self-evident worth of what they are doing and fund them for doing it no questions asked. But they face competition for the public and private dollar from a myriad of less deserving pursuits.

Yet the economic well-being of society and Australia’s international competitiveness are becoming more and more dependent on science and technology. And for Canberra, science and technology presents the best hope for a solid economic base to provide jobs for our youth and a high standard of living. Canberra in the past fortnight has seen a shining example of both the problem and what can be done about it. Canberra has held _ overlapping _ the Australian Science Festival Forum and Autumnfest. It makes one wonder whether Canberra is “”festivalled out”. We have Floriade, Autumnfest, the Canberra Festival, a theatre festival, arts festivals of various kinds and the science festival. The ACT Government gives various amounts of money and support to each of them, and indeed controls some of them. Autumnfest and Floriade, while perhaps attractive to many Australians outside Canberra, are derivative, artificial festivals.
Continue reading “1995_05_may_leader12may”

If Premier Richard Court must have an inquiry into the Easton affair, the proper place is the Western Australian Parliament. Instead he has opted for a Royal commission to be headed by a retired Victorian Supreme Court judge. At issue is whether in November 1992 the then Western Australian Premier and now Federal Health Minister Carmen Lawrence knew the details beforehand of a petition to be tabled in the Western Australian Parliament.

The petition was presented by a Labor backbencher. It falsely asserted that the then Leader of the Opposition now Premier, Richard Court, had improperly given material to Perth lawyer Penny Easton about the commercial dealings of her estranged husband Brian Easton and that Mrs Easton had perjured herself in a Family Law matter. Mrs Easton committed suicide four days later. If she had not there would have been no fuss. The whole thing would have been put down as another little political game to make the other side look sleazy. But she did commit suicide. So the back-fire has had wider repercussions.
Continue reading “1995_05_may_leader11may”

The Prime Minister has done it again. He has juggled the figures to create a telling psychological point. This time he and a couple of close Cabinet colleagues decided to throw in the Commonwealth Bank at the last minute to balance the books. In doing so, he has thrown out the window the second part of the One Nation L-A-W tax cuts and thrown out earlier statements that it was essential for the Federal Government to keep a controlling interest in the Commonwealth Bank. In throwing out the One Nation tax cuts and replacing them with a superannuation dollar-for-dollar subsidy, the Government has one again made upper-middle-income earners bear the brunt of the fiscal burden in favour of lower-income Labor heartland voters on whom it will rely to return it to government. In selling the remnant of the Commonwealth Bank, it has juggled the books in a dishonest way. Treasurer Ralph Willis argued last night that it was all above board. The estimates were on the books for all to see. True, but that is not the point.

The dishonesty lies in the way he, Mr Keating and one or two others made the decision at the last minute in an attempt to get the psychological jump on the markets, the public, the Labor Caucus and, indeed, the full Cabinet. It is now a fait accompli. In an election year, unity is vital and back-bench opponents will be silenced by a sense of self-preservation. There was also some book juggling with Telstra, but at $250 million at a lesser scale. That said, there is nothing wrong with assets sales. In particular, there is no reason why the Government should be running a retail-trading bank; it’s role is well-encompassed by the Reserve Bank.
Continue reading “1995_05_may_leader10may”

Conservative Governments in Europe have welcomed the victory of Jacques Chirac in the French presidential election. Leftist Governments in Europe sent polite congratulations. The reaction on this side of the world has been more uniform. Conservatives, centrist and left political leaders alike have expressed concern at Mr Chirac’s promise that he would resume nuclear testing in the Pacific. It is a justifiable concern. Mr Chirac’s predecessor, Francois Mitterrand, ended testing in 1992.

The Cold War had ended. There was no appreciably nuclear threat to France or anywhere else that required further nuclear-weapons testing. That is true today. The only possible nuclear threat is from nascent nuclear powers or from terrorists with very low-grade weapons. Neither of these threats can be met any more effectively with improved weapons. They cannot be met with present stocks and they cannot be met with more sophisticated stocks. Indeed, the way to security from nuclear weapons lies in all nuclear nations reducing and eliminating their stocks and in preventing their spread to other nations.
Continue reading “1995_05_may_leader08may”

The Leader of the Opposition, John Howard, was this week forced to rule out a goods and services tax forever. Mr Howard made the innocuous observation that while a GST would not be policy at the next election, no-one could predict future circumstances and economic needs. This was beaten up out of all proportion.

The Labor Party’s scare tactics were dusted off again and Mr Howard was forced to rule out a GST forever. This is an appalling result for Australia. It means the nation is locked into it present inefficient tax system for many years to come, perhaps forever. At most, a government can tinker at the edges. Most business people and economists understand the need for major tax reform along the lines of a GST. Many ordinary voters, however, fear that a GST will be imposed in addition to present taxes. That fear has some justification judging on past taxation experience: the tax take seems to get bigger and bigger. It is unfortunate, though, that Labor has managed to play on that fear so that a tax-neutral or even tax-reducing reform is now impossible if it involves a GST component in whatever form. The trouble is that without tax reform, Australia will be a less efficient society and the whole nation suffers. Australia will be less internationally competitive without reform. Some pain and adjustment is needed, but it appears to be worth it in the long run.
Continue reading “1995_05_may_leader04may”

The tobacco industry has launched a multi-million dollars advertising campaign centred on personal rights following the Federal Government’s watering down legislation that had earlier prevented them from engaging in any advertising whatever _ even to the extent of advertising a safety recall of a cigarette lighter that contained a cigarette brand name. The new law takes account of the High Court’s recent ruling that the Constitution contained an implied freedom of political communication.

The gist of the tobacco industry’s advertisements will be that governments affect personal rights too much and they are affecting smokers “”rights” too much. The Canberra Times disagrees with what they are saying, but will defend their right to say it. Indeed, the final result will probably be worthwhile. Vigorous testing of ideas in an open society is one of the best ways for the truth to emerge. A similar result emerged from the earlier health argument about tobacco. For a long time, the tobacco industry asserted that smoking was not injurious to health or failing that it asserted that the case had not been proven. As a result health researchers had to continually re-test the ground against the onslaught of misleading counter-propaganda. The result is now that if there is no other epidemiological link more soundly demonstrated than that between tobacco and ill-health.
Continue reading “1995_05_may_leader02may”