Crispin Hull

Cities in the developed world had a multiplier effect that could threaten the biosphere, according to the winning entry in the Jerrabomberra ideas competition announced yesterday.

“”What happens, or fails to happen, in the urban areas of the technologically developed countries may well be decisive for the future of the biosphere,” it said. “”there is the direct impact that the urban areas themselves make on the environment [and] there is the massive multiplier effect that occurs through the leadership role model they provide for the burgeoning urbanisation processes in the less developed countries.”

The winners of the $50,000 competition were announced by the Minister for Environment Land and Planning, Bill Wood, at Exhibition Park in Canberra.
Continue reading “1994_08_august_jerra”

A Canberra businessman was given a 99-year lease over Ginninderra Village by the Department of Environment, Land and Planning for tens of thousands of dollars under its present market value, according to documents received by The Canberra Times.

The lease was converted from a 50-year lease under which rent is paid. At the time the businessman owed back-rent of more than $100,000.

The businessman, Mike St Clair, got the 99-year lease for $70,000, yet three sub-leases of businesses at the site show a return $75,000 a year.

Mr St Clair said yesterday that he had had a verbal understanding in 1982 with the then Minister for Territories, Michael Hodgman, that if he took up a short-term lease with rent on Ginninderra Village he would get a rent-free 99-year lease (like the standard residential lease) at market value the following year.
Continue reading “1994_08_august_ginnin”

All applications for lease variations and subsequent approvals will be tabled in the Assembly quarterly, the Minister for Environment, Land and Planning, Bill Wood, announced yesterday.The announcement comes after revelations in The Canberra Times this week that a 99-year lease had been granted to a Canberra businessman over Ginninderra Schoolhouse and surrounds for $70,000 even though there were sub-leases bringing in $75,000 a year.

Mr Wood said, however, that that lease variation had been handled correctly and in the best interests of the Territory.

Mr Wood had approved of the Ginninderra lease after a departmental submission that argued the businessman, Mike St Claire, had been led to believe he would get the lease in 1984 and therefore should have it at 1984 valuation and that good administration and encouragement of private enterprise had led to similar conversions in the past.
Continue reading “1994_08_august_ginnin18”

ACT TAB dividends went into a tizz yesterday after the Federal Court’s injunction that resulted in the link with the Victorian superpool.

It is early days, but there is some pattern, and in the longer term, it may be that the small mug punter is better off under the new arrangements.

In all, though, the system should suit the mug, small-time punter.
Continue reading “1994_08_august_divs”

This will test the states’ role in that grey area between public good, privacy and censorship.

And there could be some interesting unintended consequences with the proposal by the Federal Attorney-General, Michael Lavarch, to provide a federal-law privacy shield against state and territory criminal prosecution over things done in the home.

The difficulty for the states is that the creation of the erotic or violent material occurs within the home. Before it hits the home computer, it is merely electronic bleeps. Before it is transmogrified in the home, it is stored as a computer file of a series of ones and zeroes.

Computer bulletin boards will make regulators think about what they are doing and why they are doing it. Bulletin boards are fundamentally different from earlier forms of distribution. And the difference pushes their use closer to private acts which in recent times (Tasmania excepted) the state has turned a blind eye and away from the more public acts of sale and hire that the state has taken some interest in.
Continue reading “1994_08_august_column30aug”

The ACT Assembly and Government are bound by both.

It is worth revisiting these for several reasons. Last week a respected authority on land tenure in the ACT, Justice Rae Else-Mitchell, called for freehold to replace leasehold in the ACT; the Minister for Land, Environment and Planning, Bill Wood, has suggested perpetual leasehold as one of several for commercial sites the ACT, and there are three inquiries into the Territory Plan.

Justice Rae Else-Mitchell’s radical conclusion indicates a belief that the present land tenure system has gone off the rails. However, the federal Constitution prohibits it.

Section 125 provides that the territory containing the seat of government “”shall be vested in and belong to the Commonwealth”. That means the freehold shall be retained by the Commonwealth and cannot be assigned to someone else.
Continue reading “1994_08_august_column23aug”

The farmer was sick of people knocking off his petrol. The petrol was in a tank on his land. He had tried expensive locks and elaborate wiring to no avail. He asked the police for help. They said they needed some better identification of the thief or his car. In frustration, the farmer, George Shaw, decided to stake out the petrol tank, armed with a .22 rifle and a shotgun.

On the night of December 10, a man named Cox in a stolen car entered the farm, turned off this headlights and went for the petrol. Cox had his 16-year-old girlfriend with him. She had no idea the car was stolen or that Cox was on the farm to steal petrol.q/l

They got to the tank and got out of the car.

The farmer shot at the car. The girl hid behind the front seat. Cox tried to escape. The farmer shot at the car, first with the rifle, then the shotgun. He blew out a window, but Cox escaped.
Continue reading “1994_08_august_column15aug”

When you have high-density populations you have to have elaborate social systems to stop people behaving in anti-social ways.

When I was there several years ago we came across a dozen or more people building a house. The whole business of constructing dwellings is a very social event. Everyone is involved in the allocation of land, the size of the dwelling and in the construction itself.

I was reminded of this the other day by the outrage caused in the outer Canberra suburb of Banks. It was caused by the combination of increasing population density and no community involvement in the construction of dwellings.
Continue reading “1994_08_august_column09aug”

The retirement incomes of many Australians depended on efficient cities, the president of the Building Owners and Managers Association, Brian Pollock, told a conference a Parliament House yesterday.

He said many large institutions invested in non-residential property _ about $30 billion held on behalf of seven million Australians.

It was important that control systems were streamlined and looked at the long-term.

The warring tribes in the city-planning debate must be replaced by co-operation, he said.
Continue reading “1994_08_august_city”

In the week that Kate Carnell introduced her Community Referendum Bill, those in favour of citizens’ initiated referendums must be indebted to National Party Leader Tim Fischer. Fischer is opposed to CIR, but in arguing against it he exposed some sound reasons why it would be good for Australia.

In classic John Cleese style he mentioned the war. Fischer, a Vietnam Vet, said that if Australia had had citizens’ initiated referendums at the time of Vietnam, who knows what might have happened? Precisely. There probably would have been a citizens’ initiated referendum in about 1970 to extricate Australia from that folly.

Fischer argued that government was done better by representatives alone. The people elected them as a package for three years, and they got on with the job.
Continue reading “1994_08_august_cir26”