Crispin Hull

During the International Year of the Family a lot of discussion was generated about precisely what is a “”family”. On one hand, proponents of the traditional family argued that a heterosexual couple and children constituted “”family”. On the other hand, homosexual groups argued that a homosexual couple with or without children could constitute a “”family”. Other groups argued that various combinations of single parents, step-parents and children constituted “”families”. Again others took the view that its was, so to speak, sterile to debate the precise definition of “”family”; it was more important to work on how families could be helped _ by government, community groups, themselves and others. With the year ended two influential people with quite opposite views of what should be the definition of “”family” came out last week with their views. The Chief Judge of the Family Court, Justice Alistair Nicholson, called for homosexual couples and their children to be recognised as a family, under law and by society. The Leader of the National Party, Tim Fischer, said that if the homosexual agenda were taken to the extreme it would lead to a non-reproductive society. He said any change in the definition of family would lead to a denigration of the status of “”the true family”. Despite their opposing views, the view of both leaders make it clear that definitions in many respects are important. At the end of the Year of Family, for example, there seemed little point in having a raft of recommendations on (ital) how (end ital) government could help “”families” if no-one knows precisely (ital) who (end ital) is to be helped.

Moreover, even if the law does not have to define “”family” it does have to define various family relationships in order to determine various rights and duties that arise from those relationships. Mr Fischer made the pertinent point that “”it is for federal Parliament to define these matters in law”. He also made the impertinent and wrong point that it is not for judges to define these matters in law. In fact, both have the role of defining things. An enormous range of rights and duties depend on definitions of things like “”parent”, “”child”, “”husband”, “”wife”, “”child of the marriage”, “”father”, “”mother”, “”supporting parent” and “”surviving spouse”. The most important legal duties associated with these definitions is the duty to support dependants physically and financially.
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Recent increases in consumer-credit interest rates and increases in bank charges are hitting the people least able to afford it and people who are least able to rearrange their affairs so that they can reduce their exposure to the extra imposts. This week (ends Jan 7) the recently privatised State Bank of NSW fell in to line with other banks with transaction charges for people whose accounts fall below $500. Further, it offered no exemptions for low-income groups.

The four major banks and now the State Bank (which in NSW and the ACT rates with them in customer accessibility) have a hotchpotch of fees which depend on numbers of transaction a month, the balance in the account and whether the transactions are electronic or over the counter. But there is a consistent pattern: fees are reduced if there is $500 in the account and fees are lower for electronic than personal transactions. It is true that this reflects the costs to the banks of running those accounts, but that just happens to coincide with hitting those least able to bear or defray the cost. Welfare recipients, for example, invariably get their money paid directly into an account, so they have to have bank accounts. Welfare recipients are usually not the sort of people who can afford to have $500 constantly in the bank to avoid the fees banks have started to charge for maintaining such and account _ between $2 and $2.50 a month. So it seems that welfare recipients are having a compulsory levy of up to 2 per cent taken from their pensions. It seems only a little, but for most pensioners it is the equivalent of the Medicare charge for income earners.
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The economic recovery appears to be coming with a price on the road. As more people can afford to take holidays and as business activity increases more people are travelling. It appears that that may be resulting in more people dying or getting injured on the roads. But exactly why road tolls go up and down may be more complex than that. Fifty-seven people were killed on the road over Christmas-New Year and the 1994 toll in NSW was up 71 on the previous year. The ACT’s toll was up 30 per cent. In general, the statistics have shown a fairly continuous fall in road deaths in most parts of Australia over the past 10 years until very recently when it has been going up again. The notable exception has been Victoria whose toll in 1994 was 376, a record low and down 60 on the previous year. Victoria’s road toll is now less than 40 per cent of its high 25 years ago.

Obviously, statistics from individual states comparing specific years can be misleading, but there has now been a consistent theme that Victoria has done better than other places in Australia. Can the rest of Australia learn from this? The answer to that question is probably yes, provided law-makers, law-enforcers and road-users come to the question with open minds. The first points to make are that there is no simple answer and that Victoria does not have a magic trick that other states do not. But the Victorian approach over the past 20 years has had three elements not consistently present elsewhere: a willingness to innovate; constant attention to the problem and a recognition that results are best obtained by attacking the problem in many different ways at the same time.
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The proposals announced yesterday by the ACT Attorney-General, Terry Connolly, to streamline legal claims below $5000 are welcome. They may go a small way to changing the view that the law in Australia is only for the very rich who can afford lawyers or the very poor who have legal aid. The proposal is to force people with claims under $5000 into the Small Claims Court, to be renamed the Small Claims Tribunal. Previously, plaintiffs had an option: to go to Small Claims or go to the Magistrates Court. The critical difference is that the Magistrates Court can award costs. The Magistrates Court also applies the rules of evidence and other procedures more strictly than the Small Claims Court.

Mr Connolly pointed out that corporations and big organisations, including the ACT Government, tended to use lawyers and the Magistrates Court, whereas ordinary people tended to pursue their claims in the Small Claims Court. To the Government’s credit it will be bound by its own rules. Under the new system all under-$5000 claims will go to the Small Claims Tribunal. It will deal with cases more quickly. The tribunal head will be able to be more active and questioning in the search for a resolution. Given the small amounts of money involved it seems that more importance should be given to quick and cheap resolution of disputes and less to procedural fairness and technicality.
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Every so often the ACT Liberal spokesman on emergency services Gary Humphries comes out with a ritual cry that Canberra should have a full-time emergency helicopter. He usually hangs his call upon some instant emergency involving injury or threat to life. He was at it against last week with the release of the year’s road toll figures, conjuring up images of an ACT helicopter beating out to remote regional roads plucking up injured ACT residents and whisking them back to the safety of Woden Valley Hospital.

The idea has a certain instant appeal. Helicopters can be visualised as quick and effective. Injured people get better treatment earlier because they get to hospital quicker and because helicopters can carry doctors. It has a superficial financial appeal because people treated earlier spend less time in hospital.

However, helicopters are expensive to buy and expensive to run. A bottom-end helicopter would cost at least $1 million and a further $600,000 a year to run. It would probably not do the job well. The ACT would more likely be looking at $5 million to $10 million. The money has to come from somewhere _ usually somewhere else in the same budgetary area. It means other emergency, rescue and health services would have to be cut. It might mean that on balance more people got delayed treatment because of service cuts to support a helicopter than got expedited treatment because the helicopter were in service.
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The ACT Government has a careful balancing act ahead of it in controlling unruly behaviour. The problem is not confined to New Year’s Eve, though that event seems to bring out the worst in some people. This New Year’s Eve the trouble seemed to migrate from Civic to Manuka _ and there are some lessons in that.

Some of the unruly conduct and violence in Civic has been contained by a co-operative and multi-point approach: more police, more responsible conduct by licensees, better late-night public transport, no-alcohol zones, bans on drinking with 20 metres of a shop and police power to pour away drinks of offenders without arresting them.

The difficulty faced by the Government is that it might not have the resources to engage in this approach throughout Canberra if troublesome people move from place to place. It may be tempted to deal with the problem by turning off the alcohol tap late at night in the suburbs, leaving 24-hour trading in Civic where it has the resources to police it better.The Attorney-General, Terry Connolly, suggested this was an option yesterday.
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Ros Kelly announced yesterday that she will leave Federal politics; she will remain in the Australian public perception as the Minister for Sports Rorts _ the Minister who had the “”great big whiteboard”. That may seem unfair from her point of view, but in six years in the Federal Ministry there are few achievements to outshine or mitigate the Sports Rorts Affair _ not her work to boost private-sector development in Canberra nor her tireless work to help the aged and young families in her constituency. Indeed, the affair appeared to diminish her two most abundant political talents: self-promotion and survival. Ros Kelly had an extraordinary talent for getting herself in the right place at the right time _ photographically. When Hawke fended off Keating she was near Hawke as he came out of the party room. When Keating won, there she was walking purposefully next to him down the corridor towards the waiting media.

In Parliament she sat near the dispatch box and was thus seen frequently on television. As a local member, before her days in the Ministry she was always in the right spot for the camera-person’s eye. Her children, too, were frequently used in the public domain. She proudly used her children as illustrations for political messages. Her detractors said she used her sex, her hair, her friends and even her dog in successful self-promotion. It is a skill not to be under-estimated, especially in politics where perception is more important than reality. Not only did she get herself into the right place at the right time photographically, but also politically. In 1987 Bob Hawke wanted three women in his ministry. Kelly had had the nous to align herself to the ascending Hawke. Kelly was appointed Minister for Defence Science and Personnel. She had displayed no pre-predilection for such a task. To her credit, however, she launched herself into improving the soldiers’ lot _ especially housing. However, she showed early signs of a perennial weakness: failure to brief herself of policy and departmental details. She proudly announced as new some leave allowances for transferring soldiers which had been in place some time.
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While everyone is carrying on about the information super-highway, a quieter revolution is taking place in information technology which may have just as a profound influence on humans as social animals. This is the gathering together of information about people from dozens of different public sources and putting it on easily accessible CD-ROMs. In the 1960s we talked about the global village because of the telephone and air-transport. The gathering of personal information on CD-ROM makes the nation a village _ in the sense that the village is a hot bed of gossip and a marketplace. The amount of public information about individuals is astounding. In disparate form it is of no moment. Collected, it is valuable and perhaps dangerous.

A Melbourne company, Oracle Library Service, is already doing this and has 2.5 million Australians on its biographical list. Oracle keeps personal and credit information separate and does not give it out without permission. However, the computer technology is getting so good that there is nothing stopping other companies from building up databases of personal, public information. Some examples. Names in newspaper articles. Several major papers are on CD now anyway, so the collection is even easier. Royal commission reports are easily scanned in. Searching names in the book form is hopeless; searching for names in CD form is a breeze. Other include: professional body disciplinary proceedings, criminal and civil court reports, bankruptcies, ICAC, Queensland’s Criminal Justice Commission, the Australian Securities Commission companies database, Who’s Who (only available in book form) could easily be scanned in, electoral rolls, phone books, the Commonwealth and State Directories of the several thousand senior and middle-rank public servants, dictionaries of biography, authors from bibliographies, press releases, Vice-Regal notices. And so it goes on. As time goes on more information is stored electronically and searching capacity improves. It will not be long before huge range of people will have access to very detailed information about millions of Australians. Debt-collectors, marketers, politicians, journalists, lawyers, recruiting agencies, credit providers and police will be able to get information very quickly which previously required memory. “”Wasn’t he named adversely in the Stuart Royal Commission?” “”Didn’t he go bust a while ago?” It may not seem to matter much. So what if someone can access huge amounts of detail quickly? Indeed, there may be a bonus that the electronically archived material is more accurate than memory.
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The ACT Government has built part of a pilot storm-water recycling plant over land designated in the National Capital Plan as an extension of Ginninderra Drive. Federal law requires the ACT not to do anything inconsistent with the National Capital Plan which is administered under Federal law. Moore Independent candidate for Molonglo said the ACT Government was using stealth closing off the Ginninderra extension which would help ease traffic in North Canberra suburbs The Minister for Planning, Bill Wood, said yesterday that the joint parliamentary committee on the ACT had recommended against the extension in 1991 and the Federal Government had accepted that, even though the plan had not formally been changed. Mr Dunstone accused the Government of using stealth instead of public processes. Also the housing development at Yowani would make it more difficult to extend Ginninderra Drive from where it presently ends at Mouat Street through to Northbourne Avenue. He thought this a better option than permitting Belconnen traffic to go along Mouat Street and other residential streets. Traffic claming measures were band-aids, often creating problems and noise for residents as heavy traffic tried to negotiate S-bends, roundabouts and humps. Mr Wood said that the 1991 recommendation was made as part of the Gungahlin External Transport Study which had received 60 submissions and had engaged in public hearings. The committee recommended that traffic calming begin immediately and the Federal Government supported that but noted it was an ACT responsibility. Four years later no traffic calming has been constructed in affected streets in adjacent Lyneham and O’Connor. Residents groups have complained to the ACT Government about it.

The Federal Government said also in its response that it would seek an amendment to the National Capital Plan, which requires a public consultation process. Four years later, no steps have been taken.