Crispin Hull

The fate of three major planning hot spots in old Canberra will not be known before the election. The delay in one of the them, Old Red Hill, is affecting the marketing of the home of the Member for Canberra, Ros Kelly. Opposition Planning spokesman Greg Cornwell called last week for the ACT Government to announce its decisions on medium density proposals in Hunter Street, Yarralumla, and Lefroy Street, Griffith, before the election.

A further dispute over proposals for seven units in Wickham Crescent, Red Hill, is also unlikely to be resolved before the election. The Old Red Hill Preservation Society has called on all parties to clarify their position on redevelopment in the area before the election. Mr Cornwell also called on the Government to clarify what he called “”post-Landsdown confusion”. Planning Minister Bill Wood said it was not for him to make a political decision about the medium density proposals. They were in the middle of administrative processes. In Lefroy Street the ACT Planning Authority had refused the design and sitting application and the developer had appealed. The lease variation, however, had been approved and the third party residents had appealed. The result of the appeals is not yet decided. In Hunter Street the lease variation had been approved with conditions against which the developer had appealed and residents had appealed the variation. Mr Cornwell said people did not know whether to ground their appeals on the rules existing before the November 21 Landsdown report or on the new rules. He said the position on “”Cape Cod” extensions was unclear.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_plans”

Last night they came from “”the community sector”. The regular ACT Council of Social Service question the candidates night was held at Olim’s Ainslie Hotel and the words “”community sector” were articulated by ACTCOSS representatives and candidates alike. Now the “”community sector” is different from the community. The community is “”consulted” on every issue; the “”community sector” is consulted on only some issues _ because “”the community sector” is only part of the community. And last night the candidates opened themselves to questioning by this new-found euphemistic oxymoron. Indeed, last night “”the community sector” was broken down into other “”sectors”. We heard of the “”child-care sector”, the “”disabled sector” and so on. In all there were about 60 representatives of a dozen or so community-sector sectors. It was a different form of questioning than what has been seen in the past quarter century _ since television took over election campaigns and the public meeting became defunct.

ACTCOSS’s Ian De Landelles, who chaired the meeting, sagely pointed out, “”That’s the trouble with public meetings you never know what question you will get.” _ unlike a press conference full of journalists. For example, Trevor Kaine was not asked, “”Do you still hanker after the leadership like every thrown Liberal leader?” No; these questions were mundane and arcane. They were about “”12A long day-care centres”; tied Commonwealth grants for disabled people and the Griffin Centre.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_notes01”

The ACT Government said yesterday it would consider changing licensing laws in the suburbs after unruly behaviour in Manuka on New Year’s Eve.The Attorney-General, Terry Connolly, said that he was not surprised that behaviour was unruly in Manuka while crowds in Civic were well-behaved.

He said he would refer the Manuka situation to the Community Safety Committee headed by Ken Begg.

The committee’s work and its report Civic By Night had helped reduce problems in Civic with co-operation of licensees who had tightened up on underage drinking and serving intoxicated people. Extra police presence and late-night public transport had also helped.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_newyear”

The ACT wants its Aboriginal centre to be collocated with the Federal Government’s Gallery of Aboriginal Australia on Acton Peninsula. The Act Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, has written to the Prime Minister, seeking the collocation. Ms Follett said yesterday, “”The ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Council has indicated to me that it prefers a site on Acton Peninsula.” The $2.5 million ACT centre is to be funded from the $19 million tax raised from the Casino licence. The federal gallery _ part of the National Museum of Australia _ was announced in Mr Keating’s cultural statement last year.

At the time the ACT Government reacted favourably. Others saw it as the death knell to the museum’s preferred option of a full museum at Yarramundi Reach. This week ACT Opposition Leader Kate Carnell repeated a call for the Federal Government to go ahead with the full Museum at Yarramundi. The director of the museum, Margaret Coaldrake, is on leave, but the ACT Government has kept the museum informed.

Dangerous drugs, cash and assets handling at Melba Health Centre have been attacked by an internal audit prompted by an employee’s whistle-blowing.

A copy of the audit, by Coopers and Lybrand, obtained by The Canberra Times revealed that many of the employee’s allegations about sloppy cash and drug handling procedures and missing assets were correct.

No procedures to ensure all cash received is receipted and banked. No procedures to ensure Medicare bulk-billing reflected the nature of the consultation provided. Nearly half the items on the assets register could not be found at the centre.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_melba”

ACT Opposition Leader Kate Carnell called yesterday for an urgent review of all seven government-run health centres following defects found in procedures at the Melba centre by an independent audit. She said the audit had revealed lack of security over cash; no monitoring of assets; missing assets; drugs not secured in accordance with the Dangerous Drugs Act; purchase irregularities; flextime and leave irregularities. The Government had had the report by Coopers and Lybrand for nearly a month and had not made it public. “”Concerns about practices at Melba Health Centre have been expressed by former staff members for more than a year,” she said.

“”The Government has ignored these concerns and has allowed some fairly dubious practices to continue unchecked.” There was a need for a review across the system, she said. The Minister for Health, Terry Connolly, said the Government took allegations by employees of malpractice seriously and that was why it had commissioned the independent audit. It would deal with the specific findings about Melba and any systemic faults found by the audit would be looked at across all the health centres. All centres were subject to regular departmental review and review by the Auditor-General.

The “”whistle-blower” who drew attention to irregularities at Melba Health Centre last year says she has been victimised and her career ruined as a result. An independent audit by Coopers and Lybrand confirmed her assertions of irregularities over the procedures for handling of petty cash, drugs and assets at the centre, but could not come to any conclusion about other assertions about misuse of cars and phones. The “”whistle-blower”, a practitioner nurse, said yesterday that she had been rewarded with an “”inefficiency action” _ which can lead to dismissal or transfer. The nurse did not want to be named for fear of reprisals and did not want specific staff or doctors at the centre named for fear of defamation actions. She said that some of the staff and doctors were not involved in the irregularities or the victimisation.

The Minister for Health, Terry Connolly, said her allegations had been taken seriously. An independent audit had been sought. The efficiency matter was separate and being looked at by the Merit Protection Review Agency, so he could not comment on that. The acting chief executive of the Department of Health, Heidi Ramsay, said the employee had not been victimised and there was no link between the her allegations and the inefficiency procedures. The nurse said that when she had started work at the centre in January 1993 she had noticed drugs not being kept in accordance with the Dangerous Drugs Act, that staff were misusing petty cash and other irregularities. She had tried to fix things by setting an example. “”I moved the drug trolley out of the public foyer many times into my room,” she said. “”I had to fit my own lock to the drugs cupboard in my room.” She would not join the “”so-what” attitude about drugs and petty cash. She got the impression that as a result the staff, with rare exception, did not like her.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_melb19”

The stark figure of $2.5 million in rent and maintenance arrears being written off by the ACT Housing Trust smacks of mismanagement. True, it represents more than just the past year’s unpaid rent. In fact it is several year’s arrears. That may lessen the overall annual amount, however, it also indicated that the problem must have gone on longer than what should have been acceptable. The amount has to be put in context. There are some 100,000 dwellings in ACT, 12.5 per cent are Housing Trust dwellings. It means there are about 12,500 Housing Trust dwellings in the ACT. The $2.5 million, therefore, is on average $200 a dwelling. That is about one a half week’s rent per dwelling. It is difficult to imagine the private sector being caught out in such a way. No-one wants the Housing Trust to behave totally like the private sector. The private sector is in the housing sector purely for profit. The Housing Trust has social obligations. The trust’s tenants are typically people with children, without jobs and without much cash _ the very people shunned by private-sector landlords and the very people unable to post bonds that could obviate the possibility of tenants leaving with unpaid rent. There are some signs that this write-off is an attempt to clean the slate and begin with a new regime. Now is a good time for that. To some extent Canberra’s public-housing administration has been a victim of the recession. While other states slumped in the recession and had long public-housing waiting lists, Canberra was seen as a place of higher employment and opportunity and shorter public-housing lists. It attracted interstate tenants. With the recession ended, some tenants and left _ and left unpaid bills behind them.

Naturally, in an election environment, the issue has become a political one. Opposition housing spokesman Greg Cornwell is rightly appalled at the writing off of such an amount with the stroke of a pen. On the other hand, the Minister for Housing, David Lamont, said the bad debts had been one of the reasons for a review of the ACT Housing Trust. Whether that review solves the problem is another matter. It will be impossible to eliminate arrears in public housing. If rent is behind it is very difficult to throw children into the street because of the misdeeds of parents. However, some steps have been taken by the Act Housing Trust to help. A scheme to take rent directly from pay and social welfare payments has been introduced after some soul-searching. It seemed a little patronising. However, many tenants, especially those with dependant children, were no doubt pleased to see the rent come out of wages or welfare payments before their spouse could spend it on other things. It is this sort of lateral-thinking, educative approach that will marry the social aims of public housing with the administrative aims of getting the rent in.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_leader30jan”

The Senate inquiry into ABC operations is providing a useful public questioning of the role of the ABC _ in particular whether it should engage in pay television. More generally, other questions arise. What is the rationale of even having a public broadcaster? How should it be funded? What should be its programming philosophy? In the early days of television a fairly cumbersome system of user-pays through licences was in place. The theory was that the fees paid for government provded television infrastructure and the ABC.

Not everyone had television so why should non-users subsidise users. Before long, however, virtually everyone got television and licences were scrapped. The ABC became totally taxpayer dependent. As a result, in the 1980s, it ran into the same fiscal pressure as every other publicly funded body in the nation. In the ABC’s case, questions were asked about user-pays. The vast bulk of viewers tuned to commercial channels; why should they subsidise the very few (usually from high socio-economic groups) who watched the ABC? Questions were asked about the ABC’s efficiency and range of functions. What was it doing financing orchestras? And the ABC was pushed to become more commercial by raising more of its own money. In its defence, the ABC develped an expertise in self-promotion and self-preservation. The unfortuate consequence has been, however, that it has to some extent encouraged judgment of its functions in purely dollar terms. The famous eight-cents-a-day campaign comes to mind. The message was “”high quality service for trivial cost”. It may have had some public impact, but it did not fool government decision-makers who could quickly multiply the eight cents, the days and viewers and arrive at the $500 milllion a year bottom line _ a big ticket Budget item in any department’s language. The call for justification continued. Clearly, the ABC cannot justify itself in purely financial or technical terms. Despite a decade of debacles on the commercial side, no-one seriously challenges the proposition that the Australian private sector is technically and financially capable of putting to air (or cable) several television services, and that without the ABC Australia would still have financially viable and technically sound television services. So the subsidy has to be justified on other terms.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_leader29jan”

The NSW Minister for Education, Virginia Chadwick, launched some controversial guidelines on teacher performance this week and ACT educators will be looking across the border with some interest. The aim of the guidelines is sound: ensuring teachers perform and that those who do not should be given the chance to improve and failing that be out.

Parents have a right to expect their children are not taught by unsatisfactory teachers. Precisely how to test the performance of teachers, however, is a more difficult issue. In other fields of human endeavour, measurement of performance is far easy: profit figures, production figures, client assessments and assessments by managers are usually good indicators. Such measurements in the classroom, especially primary and lower secondary classes, are meaningless in the present public education environment. In public schools, profit is not a motive and in any event is not a sound base for educational standards. In the absence of external exams or other objective outcomes testing throughout the education system, the production approach is impossible. As a general rule, children are not in a position to measure the performance of teachers. And assessments by managers _ in this case school principals _ has its difficulties.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_leader26jan”