Crispin Hull

Canberra should be industrialised and made into a typical Australian city, according to former Liberal Minister Fred Chaney. Mr Chaney said, “”It is a disaster for Australia for Canberra to be a model city because it made its bureaucracy out of touch with Australian reality. He was speaking in Perth at one of a series of seminars held by the National Capital Planning Authority to find out what Australians wanted from their capital. However, the Public Service Commissioner, Denis Ives, responded yesterday by saying that the public sector was less than half the Canberra workforce and when you took away the ACT public-sector _ which was very much a service deliverer _ a quite low percentage were Federal public servants and even lower percentage were involved in policy.

Canberra had developed into a light-industrial and service provider for the region. Mr Chaney rejected the view cited by NCPA chair Evan Walker from NCPA surveys that Australians did not want Canberra to be a microcosm of Australia. “”I think it poses an enormous problem that we have a bureaucracy which is largely living in city which is so atypical of Australia,” he said at the NCPA seminar last week.

“”One of the reasons the bureaucracy is so out of touch with Australian reality is because it does not live in a microcosm of Australia. It lives in a town with higher per capita incomes. I find many of the attitudes totally unrealistic and indeed wrong.” He gave an example. As Minister for Social Security he had said at a Canberra meeting that the primary obligation for care and nurture of children was with parents. He had been booed and hissed. Yet he had been merely quoting from the first page of the United Nations declaration of the rights of child. “”I just found in so many areas total dissociation from Australian reality,” Mr Chaney said.
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The local factors in the Canberra by-election are being diluted one by one and it may surprisingly come down to much more a test of national Labor and Liberal standing than first thought. That said, by-elections are a bit like the balance of payments figures, though less regular: it is not the actual result that counts but whether it is above or below market expectation. When Rose Kelly quit, market expectation was that Canberra is dyed-in-the-wool Labor so there was no point in the Liberals even fielding a candidate in the March 25 by-election.

Four things have changed that. The former Liberal Member for Canberra John Haslem reminded people that the Liberals have held the seat and he would have another crack at it; Alexander Downer lost the leadership; psephologist Malcolm Mackerras reminded people that big by-election swings happened when sitting members swanned off to swank jobs; and lastly Kate Carnell proved Labor does not have a mortgage over the ACT. Market expectation is that the 9.6 percent swing needed to win is difficult but not impossible. The local or unusual factors that might be claimed by either side after the vent to excuse a performance outside market expectations include: actions by the Greens (which might be different from a general election); the personality factors of both the retiring Ros Kelly and Labor’s candidate Sue Robinson; and the Canberra is different from the rest of Australia. Kate Carnell put paid to the last factor and the push-polling incident has meant that from here on in, the campaign will focus on issues and not personalities.
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The Ros Kelly saga will end on whiteboard on Saturday night when the results of the Canberra by-election come in. The Australian Electoral Commission does not set up a formal tally room for by-election, rather it faxes results to media organisations and for the public posts results during the evening on a whiteboard at the divisional office in Penrhyn House, Bowes Street, Woden.

The by-election has been caused by the resignation from Parliament of Labor’s Ros Kelly. Mrs Kelly has earlier been forced to resign from Cabinet as Environment Minister after the sports rorts affair during which she said that sports grants had been decided after information had been posted on a “”great big whiteboard” in her office. Was there any irony in the post of the by-election results? _ a firm no comment from the commission. The commission will be counting the votes of those of the 99,295 electors who cast their ballot on Saturday. The seat is held by Labor by 9.6 per cent. The table shows the two-party-preferred history of the seat since the 1977 election when it was just held by the Liberals. It ran to preferences in 1990, but it has none the less been a comfortable Labor seat for 16 years. There are no boundary changes since the 1993 election in the 421 sq km electorate. It takes in the following suburbs and the rural south of the ACT: Banks, Bonython, Calwell, Chapman, Chifley, Chisholm, Conder, Curtin, Deakin, Duffy, Fadden, Farrer, Fisher, Forrest, Fyshwick, Garran, Gilmore, Gordon, Gowrie, Greenway, Harman, Holder, Hughes, Hume, Isaacs, Isabella Plains, Kambah, Lyons, MacArthur, Mawson, Monash, Mt Stromlo, Oaks Estate, Oxley, Pearce, Phillip, Richardson, Rivett, Royalla, Stirling, Swinger Hill, Symonston, Tharwa, Theodore, Torrens, Uriarra, Wanniassa, Waramanga, Weston and Woden.
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Labor won only four of the 37 polling booths in Saturday’s Canberra by-election _ and two of them were the tiny booths of Urriara and Norfolk Island. The other two were Conder and Lyons where Labor’s Sue Robinson got 51 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote in each. In the two smaller booths she got better than 60 per cent. Otherwise it was a Liberal clean sweep. The Liberals’ Brendan Smyth did best in Fadden 65.5 per cent; Farrer 65 per cent; and Chapman 64.5 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. These figures are subject to correction and a fuller version of the booth-by-booth results will be published after the official count is completed.

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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