Crispin Hull

St Augustine himself could not have made a more open confession than yesterday’s announcement of a third concurrent inquiry into planning in Canberra. It is an admission that the Government has made a complete hash of planning, especially in the past 18 moths. A lot of the responsibility for that lays at the feet of the Minister, Bill Wood.

The policy failure has been severalfold.

First, in the lead up to the draft Territory Plan, the Government listened to the developers and gave them open slather on residential development.
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A telephone call from the Central Australian desert to Canberra yesterday marked the opening of Optus’s new Australia-wide satellite mobile telephone service, MobileSat.

The call was put through to the Minister for Communications, Michael Lee, from a phone in a car near Uluru (Ayers Rock). The signal was bounced off an Optus satellite 36,000 kilometres above the earth to a ground receiving station and into the general network.

The service is the first of its kind in the world and was designed and built in Australia. Present satellite phone services use stop-point-and-setup technology and are much more expensive. Present radio-based services are less reliable and can be intercepted easily.
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I like to glance through people’s bookcases. Some people have books tucked away, but usually the main reference books are in the loungeroom _ a dictionary or two, an atlas, an encyclopedia and perhaps some hobby reference books, like Marine Invertebrates, Birds of Australia or the Joys of Chainsaw Sculpture.

But the computer is tucked away in an study or kid’s bedroom.

More reference books are going to CD-ROM _ the little silver disk that can hold the words in books that would take six-metres of bookshelf.

We have a problem here. The computer is in the study but the reference book is needed in the lounge.
Continue reading “1994_08_august_oed”

The Noise Act will be reviewed following a complaint by a Canberra pub owner that he has been hit retrospectively by its provisions.

the Noise Act.

The licensee of Sails Waterfront Pub, Toni Sarri, says that when he bought the lease, there were no residences nor any residences proposed within 150 metres of the pub.

He therefore thought that when he built the pub, on Emu Bank in the Belconnen Town Centre, he would be able to run disc-jockey music without falling foul of the Noise Act.
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1964: ACTTAB set up as a separate entity to take off-course bets on horse races. It runs a totalisator scheme: bets on a race are totalled and dividends calculated so 85 per cent of takings are returned as winnings. The remaining 15 per cent to go to administration, government and the racing industry.

July 2, 1985: Northern Territory TAB starts. ACTTAB runs computer services and pooling operations, collecting 0.5 per cent of turnover.

1991: ACTTAB made a territory-owned corporation.

Late June 1993: Meetings between ACTTAB representatives and Vitab principals and former Prime Minister Bob Hawke, a Vitab shareholder. Vanuatu-based Vitab says it has got the second betting licence in Vanuatu and proposes that ACTTAB provide computer and technical services and access to the superpool in return for a percentage of turnover.
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The ACT TAB has agreed in principle with the Victorian TAB to continue present arrangements for pooling for the next two weeks when it would finalised a contract with the new privatised Victorian TAB, the Minister for Sport, David Lamont, said yesterday.

Six months ago, Victoria gave notice that it would terminate the agreement on July 31. At the time the Victorian Minister, Tom Reynolds, cited the ACT’s contract with the Vanuatu-based Vitab Limited as the reason.

Mr Lamont said he was in no position to comment on the situation with Vitab.
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The ACT TAB will not link with NSW, but has made a new pooling arrangement with the Victorian superpool in the wash up of the Vitab affair, according to racing sources.

The new link is contingent on the ACT Government breaking its contract with Vitab Ltd, which will leave it open to being sued or having to pay out a commercial settlement. The costs of that are unknown. However, when Victoria broke a TAB link with the owner of the other Vanuatu-based TAB operator, Chung Corporation, Chung sued for $10 million. But Vitab is a smaller outfit with a smaller turnover.

The Victorian TAB gave the required six months notice in January that it would end the ACT’s access to the superpool it controls of Victorian, South Australia, Western Australian and Tasmanian TAB money.

That link ends at midnight on Sunday.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_vitab27”

The ACT is to have a no-win, no-fee system soon, the president of the Law Society, Robert Clynes, said yesterday.

The system would enable people who otherwise could not afford it to pursue a legal action.

Mr Clynes said the society had agreed to the system. It did not require legislation, just a change to the profession’s rules of conduct. It would not apply to criminal or family law.

The system would enable lawyers to charge an amount on top of the normal fee if the client won the case, he said. This was for taking the risk of a loss, in which case the lawyer would not get paid, and in lieu of interest.

This is called an uplift fee. Present rules prevent the charging of an uplift fee.

Mr Clynes’s statement comes after a Melbourne firm, Slater and Gordon, announced it was taking cases on a no-win, no-fee basis. However, it would not be able to charge an uplift fee.

Mr Clynes said the ACT would permit an uplift fee of up to 100 per cent of the scale fee set by the court. It would not be the American system of the lawyer taking a percentage of the winnings.
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An Australian company, Boomerang Imaging Supplies, has launched Swap Shops to recycle the thousands of used laser-printer cartridges which are now dumped.

About 1000 tonnes of spent cartridges from Australia’s 300,000 laser printers now go into landfill each year.

Boomerang is setting up vending machines in commercial buildings and retail outlets that will accept the used cartridge (paying a refund for it) and supply a new one and receipt using automatic telling machine (ATM) technology.
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It’s quarterly report time for many US computer majors. Why US corporations law puts US companies through the quarterly hoop is an economic mystery. Politically, it would be like annual elections.

Anyway, if you look hard enough into the quarterly accounts there is always some good news, a bit like newspaper circulation figures.

Microsoft reported an increase in reserves of 24 percent over its fiscal 1993 result. And revenues were up 24 per cent to $US1.29 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 1994. Net income was up 20 per cent to $1.15 billion.
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