Crispin Hull

The National Capital Planning Authority has a new chair _ Professor Evan Walker. The appointment was announced yesterday by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Housing and Regional Development, Brian Howe. Professor Walker is Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Melbourne and was a Minister in the Victorian Government from 1982 to 1990.

He takes up the role immediately.

The appointment comes at a critical time for the organisation which has several major matters on its plate:

First, a recommendation last month by the Federal Government Urban Design Task Force that the Federal Government take a greater role in the renewal and development of Australian cities and that expertise for that role be provided by a greater role for the NCPA.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_ncpa”

For a long time New Zealand appeared to be substantially ahead and better than Australia at dealing with those occupying the land before European settlement. That changed last week with the offer by the New Zealand Government to settle all outstanding Maori claims for $NZ1 billion ($A825 million). The offer contained a fundamental inconsistency.

The New Zealand Minister for Justice, Doug Graham, said on one hand that the Government wanted a “”full and final” and “”honourable” settlement. On the other hand, he said it was a “”take-it-or-leave-it” package.

But surelu, a settlement can hardly be honourable if it is not negotiated and genuinely consented to by both sides. A settlement can hardly be “”full” if one side has pre-determined its upper limit.

Until the Mabo case in 1992, Australia’s treatment of prior occupiers’ land claims was way behind New Zealand. Very simply, despite the overwhelming moral and legal force of the 1967 referendum result, successive federal Governments did nothing to deal with Aboriginal claims for land rights, with the exception of the Fraser Government’s grant of land rights in the Northern Territory.
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Welcome aboard. There is no stopping light rail for Canberra now. The feasibility study by Booz-Allen and Hamilton issued during the week predictably enough said light rail is a goer for Canberra and we should move on to engineering, environmental and detailed costing study.

It fits a pattern of feasibility studies. Yes it is feasible. Let’s have some more studies.

The Government that runs a bus service propped up by a huge subsidy will move headlong into a $400 million light-rail and commit rate-payers’ money for 20 years. It will be the lowest population city in the world to have such a system.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_light”

Independent MLA Michael Moore accused the Government yesterday of underplaying a detailed report which he said had come out against light rail.

He wants the $500,000 extra study on light rail delayed pending an Assembly committee study of the detailed six-volume report. He said the Government had prevented people making an informed judgment about light rail by underplaying the DJA Maunsell and Partners report and making much public noise about reports which favoured light rail.

Mr Moore wrote to the Minister for Urban Services, David Lamont, yesterday asking that the DJA Maunsell and Partners report be made more publicly accessible and that it be more carefully considered before $500,000 were committed to studying the next step.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_light30”

The ACT Government will face some critical transport decisions in the next few years. Some will be pressing and localised. Some with be of a broader nature. This week the Government issued the Public Transport Options Study _ Stage 3 which concluded that a light-rail system is feasible for Canberra and that the Territory should move to the next stage _ engineering, environmental and detailed costing studies. The Government has made a lot of approving noises about light rail, and perhaps is not showing the degree of detactment and scepticism that it should for such a huge project. Several state-level governments (and their long suffering tax-payers) have had their fingers badly burned by public debt run up by public transport.

It may well be that light rail offers some solutions to Canberra’s public transport needs, but a Government would have to be very confident before it started to sink $400 million of taxpayers money into it.

The Government is clearly right to be looking at transport options and is right to be looking in detail at public-transport solutions. Canberra does suffer somewhat from the blight of car parks and over-reliance on the car. But it should not jump easily from that step to say that light rail is the answer to its prayers. It has many things going against it. It requires large capital costs to start; unlike buses its route is fixed; it can only serve the main trunk routes; it will take much of its clientele from existing bus customers. In the Canberra context it would be a bold experiment indeed. No other city of this size has tried it and others of larger populations have tried light rail and found it an expensive option.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_leader23dec”

There is a simplicity about Charles Bean’s view of the Australian War Memorial. Bean, the official historian of Australia’s role in World War I, spent several months immediately after the war collecting artefacts for the memorial.

“”The conception of that memorial is that is should impress the visitor with the feeling: here is their spirit, in the heart of the land they loved; and here we guard the record which they themselves made,” he wrote.

The memorial is now in a state of transition. There is a danger the memorial role, expressed by Bean, could be eroded. Certainly the RSL sees that danger.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_kelson”

After 18 months of negotiations, a little rationality is beginning to appear in government purchases of information technology. A revised set of government IT conditions has been prepared by the industry and government. It is already being used by NSW and Victoria and will be used by the Commonwealth starting in the next round of purchases in March.

To date doing business with government has been an ache in the posterior, especially for small and medium businesses.

Previously, doing IT business with government was a pain, especially for small and medium Australian businesses with smaller contracts. There was too much costly farnarkling and risk for the profit involved.
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The Australian summer is here and insects are buzzing on the screen in Windows and there are bugs in the computer. Yes, the CSIRO’s acclaimed Insects CD now comes in a Windows version ($99, 03 4187333). It came out earlier on Apple (coddling moths all over the place).

It is an exquisite use of multi-media. Watch the dung beetle roll up precious bits of dung. Listen to the female mosquito without reaching for the Aeroguard. Zoom in on the eye of a moth with an electron microscope.

In the increasing array of junk games for kids in the CD range, the CSIRO’s Insects is an educational joy.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_insects”

As a reporter versed in the law and politics, I was sent to cover a science conference. Newspapers are like that. I interviewed a scientist who had a story to tell. Reporters are like that. He told me how he set out to prove that wearing a copper bracelet to give relief for arthritis was nonsense, witchcraft and an old husbands’ tale. How could a common, raw, unsynthesised thing relieve pain? Treatments came in little white discs in little brown bottles with labels on them saying: “”Take one tablet every four hours.”

How could he disprove this copper nonsense? He had people sweating over the task _ literally. They ran on the spot in large basins and the scientist harvested their sweat. He mixed it with copper. He applied the mixture to arthritis sufferers who did not wear copper bracelets. And, lo, a goodly portion reported relief.

Further research, undertaken with all the controls and safeguards of a clinical trial revealed that the sweat chemically combined with copper to form a substance that was infused in the skin to relieve arthritis. Apparently research is continuing to formulate this compound to get more precise relief. But still many people prefer the copper bracelet.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_dope”

Canberra will be a better host to visitors over the summer holidays with a program launched yesterday by the new chair of the National Capital Planning Authority, Professor Evan Walker.

The Discover Your National Capital program will enable visitors to the National Capital Exhibition at Regatta Point to get a free showbag with $100 worth of discounts to 29 major Canberra attractions.
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