Crispin Hull

Interest rates continue to bounce (mostly up); starter loans with early fixed interest are offered to new customers so banks can get market share; and a range of fees, interest and abilities to pay early are all on offer. How does one compare apples with pears? The Windows version of Compare the Banks is now out. Given that insurance companies and specialist home-loan companies have also joined the fray, perhaps the program could be renamed. Compare Banks is a software package which helps select the best loan by calculating and comparing loan comparison rates. Loan comparison rates are designed to combine the effects of all fees and charges, initial short-period interest rates, and payment period options, resulting in a single effective annual rate which can be used to compare loans.

Comparison rates are based on the lender’s Internal Rate of Return, a measure of the return the lender receives on the money loaned. So, the smaller the loan comparison rate, the better for the borrower. The concept of comparison rates is applicable to all types of loans, and the software package caters for principal-and-interest loans, as well as the more business- and investment-oriented interest-only loans. Compare the Banks also calculates periodic payments, total fees, total interest and the overall cost of the loan. Early termination and associated early exit fees are also accounted for. The software can be used to compare an existing loan to loan products currently on the market, so it can help people to decide whether to re-finance.

Police are expected to lay charges soon against two people for allegedly hacking into the ANU’s computer system. The university has undertaken major computer-security reviews, and while it cannot ever guarantee there can be no successful hacking, it is sure it has the problem under control. The Pro-Vice-Chancelor, Philip Selth, said yesterday that the message to hackers was: “”If you are caught, we will call in the police.” Hackers gave information anonymously to The Canberra Times last week which suggested a detailed knowledge of the ANU computer system. They said they could get into private e-mail, change library fines, book records in the libraries, gain access to the computer that controlled swipe-card access to buildings, and gain access to exam papers.

The hackers said, “”The recent publicity concerning the “hacker’ problem at the University of Canberra is amusing in the context of general computer security on all of Australia’s university campuses.” They could have done hundreds of thousands of dollars damage, but did not. They were certain they went unnoticed until they had deliberately left footprints. There concern was that other groups with superior skills could get in and do damage. Mr Selth said hacking presented a difficulty for an open learning institution like the ANU. The university had to balance the requirements of academic research and open information with the need for financial and other security.
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The ACT Government is on the Internet and it is part of a much wider cultural picture. The Australian Computer Society has created a “”homepage” on the World Wide Web for the Chief Minister’s Department at http://acslink.net.au/???tomw/actgov.html. Subs please replace the three question marks with one tilde _ that is the squiggly hyphen).

For those who know nothing about the Internet that long string of characters is what you key in to get the home page. After that it is all point and click. People can get in to it (usually with a local call) from anywhere in the world. The start has been a modest one, according to the society’s Tom Worthington. At present there are entries for the Chief Minister’s Department and the Tourism Commission. The latter also links to up-coming School of Music concerts and School of Art exhibitions as well as details of major up-coming events in Canberra, such as the Science Festival and Folk Festival. The School of Art’s entry contains details of exhibiting artists with thumbnail samples of work which can be expanded to full screen. This should entice people to see the real thing, in the same way that televising football (initially thought of as a crowd-shrinker) has contributed to interest and a desire to see the real thing. The Tourism Commission’s entry includes an electronic version of “”The Story of Canberra” prepared as part of the Australian Computer Society’s “”Australia This Minute” community multi-media project.
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The ACT has a proportionately higher share of the Australian computer services industry than any other state or territory _ largely because of the Federal Government’s presence. Latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures put the ACT’s share of the Australian computing-service industry income at 4.1 per cent _ compared to its population share of 1.7 per cent. In absolute terms the ACT’s share was bigger than the Northern Territory’s and bigger than the more populous states of Tasmania South Australia and almost as big as Western Australia. The industry brings $166 million income to the Act out of an Australian total of $4032 million. NSW has 54 per cent of the Australian total income. In terms of people employed in the industry, the ACT has a tad under 5 per cent _ more than all but NSW, Victoria and Queensland. The ACT has 261 of Australia’s 4827 computer-services businesses.

Legal costs are threatening to stymie the ACT’s new planning appeal system which was supposed to be affordable and lawyer-free, according a group of Yarralumla residents. The fear legal costs will prevent them from defending a victory they had last month over a developer who wants to build three units on a site that previously contained one house. The Department of Environment, Land and Planning approved a lease variation to allow the three units and the residents successfully appealed to the Land, Planning and Appeals Board.

The developer has appealed to the Supreme Court on a point of law with the residents and the departmental delegate named as respondents. And a directions hearing is scheduled for today. An appeal is allowed on a point of law. One of the residents, Les Landau, said the government should defend the actions of its appeal board and not leave it to residents who could be up for thousands of dollars to defend their residential amenity. If the government did not defend the board’s decision it would give a message to developers that if they did not like a board decision all they needed to do was appeal to the Supreme Court and the residents would fold because of costs and they would get their way.
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Canberra’s urban design should shun artifice, posturing and the non-genuine because that is the nature of Australians, according to the chair of the National Capital Planning Authority, Evan Walker. Professor Walker said yesterday that recent research showed that Australians outside Canberra thought that in time Canberra would acquire its own history and be itself; that there was no need for it to become a microcosm of the rest of the country.

People thought the city should not be filled with artificial symbolism. In an address to the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Canberra he said the media had focused on the findings that Canberra was “”beautiful but boring”, however, the Australian public were very thoughtful about their capital; that they did not want development for its own sake and that the capital should develop at its own pace. None the less it should show the best Australia could do. Professor Walker said good urban design “”does not depend on universal principles or national codes but is grounded in local characteristics and needs, so much so that when it is well-managed, it is often hard to notice”. This should be true of Canberra’s development. That was reinforced by the ideas competition for Jerrabomberra which showed the quality of life in cities “”is dependent on a complex response rooted in the unique circumstances of each and every individual city”.
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The tables show the final order of election of the candidates in the February 18 ACT election. Under Hare-Clark there are no final voting figures. This is because the system ultimately makes every preference of every voter count towards and elected candidate unless the ballot is exhausted through not expressing enough preferences to stay “”live”. Those above the line were elected each with a quota of around 8400 votes, depending on constituency. All votes above that were distributed down. Those below the line were excluded from the bottom up and their preferences distributed to “”live” candidates above them, so they end with zero votes. Less than a hundred votes separated candidates at various exclusions _ the lesson for voters being to mark a full ballot paper of preferences, because every preference counts.

It appears that ACT voters expressed more preferences in a more disparate way than has been the general experience in Tasmania. In Molonglo, for example, less than 5000 ballots (7.5 per cent) were exhausted without contributing in some way to electing one of the candidates. Molonglo took 85 counts and the other two electorates between 20 and 30. The first count involving some 190,000 ballots in total and subsequent counts in each electorate typically involving several thousand ballots. The referendum, having been determined on Saturday night, was given a lower priority and the final figures are not expected until probably next week.

In the Molonglo table the elimination of the bottom eight candidates was done in one hit. They were (with first preference in brackets): Middleton 56, Weston 156, Dellit 191, De Luca 259, Slazenger, 329, Zamora (Lab) 436, Boland 244, and Dunstone (MI) 555. Where a candidate is shown as “”out” in the left column, the preferences are distributed along that row, with a new total in the next row down. Where a candidate is elected at a new row that is noted. About a score of votes in each electorate were lost through fractions when over-quota votes were distributed. Exhausted votes are those that show no live preferences at that count. The quotas for each electorate were Molonglo 8430, Brindabella 8317 and Ginninderra 7990. The quota is obtained by dividing the number of formal votes by one more than the number of seats and adding one. In Molonglo that is one-eighth of the vote plus one. (If seven candidates got exactly this many it would be impossible for an eighth candidate to get more than them.)

Pay television and entertainment have hijacked the debate about the information superhighway, against the national interest, according to media proprietor Kerry Stokes. The information side was running a poor second, he told an ABC Four Corners program devoted to the information highway last night. He said questions of national sovereignty needed to be asked about Australian corporations and defence bodies being dependent on software codes resident under lock and key in the US.

While he admired the head of Microsoft, Bill Gates, “”I just think our nation is a sovereign nation and it shouldn’t be a subsidiary of Microsoft.” Mr Stokes, who is chairman of The Canberra Times, listed major concerns about the direction Australia is going with the information highway: DOT Unnecessary duplication of hardware and delivery platforms such as Optus and Telecom laying duplicate cable. DOT Concentration on delivery of services to high-profit centres to Sydney and Melbourne, to the detriment of regional Australia.
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Professor David Sless, executive director of the Canberra-based Communication Research Institute of Australia, has been appointed director of studies for 1995’s most important international meeting on information design for multimedia.

The world’s peak body for information design _ the International Institute of Information Design (IIID) _ will meet in Austria in July and August this year, under the auspices of UNESCO, to hold a symposium and advanced course in designing multimedia information. The Vision Plus: Designing for Electronic Communication Symposium and Course will attract the world’s leading information designers and post-graduate students.
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