Crispin Hull

A 70-year-old woman from the suburb of Griffith rang this week.

She has lived in her house in Griffith for more than 40 years. Now the house nexxt door is to be bull-dozed and replaced with three three-bedroom, two-storey units.

Her house is on the southern side of the new units in Lefroy Street and even if the units themselves pass all the solar-efficiency tests, her house, in particular a special sunny spot in her garden, will be shaded.

She does not want to make her name public. She is fearful. However, she makes the point that she will have the option of making a private protest at the ACT election next February.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_infilfor”

E-mail has no body language. Body language can make a lot of difference. Try listening to the soundtrack of a musical you have never seen; it does not make much sense.

The words on their own can convey the wrong impression. People can sound grumpy, sharp or serious. Or sound flippant when they are being serious.

If you are too pompous, or if someone disagrees with you a heated response can come back _ it is called flaming.

Another Internet tradition, FYI, is abbreviating, BTW. IMHO (in my humble opinion) and PMJI (pardon me jumping in) are other examples.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_highway2”

My daughter bought a new car the other day and I took it for a test drive.

In an utterly unremarkable way I put the key in the ignition turned the engine on, put it in gear, flicked on the right indicator and took off. It was a bit warm so I hit the button for the electric window. Then I washed the front window. It was an ordinary Japanese Hondoyitshi car.

In 1961, my father bought a second-hand Morris 10. It was in fairly good condition. Even the manual was in the glove-box.

The manual showed you where to find the crank-handle and how to work it, if the starter motor did not work. It showed you how to wind down the windows and described the workings of clutch and gear lever.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_highway1”

The Bureau of Statistics would not like being compared to a British tabloid. But there is a similarity.

Both are publishers. Both have very labour-intensive methods of gathering the material they want to publish. I use word “”material” rather than “”facts” because we are talking about a British tabloid.

Further, they both produce in a way that the first copy sold is hellishly expensive but all subsequent copies are dirt cheap.

The Sun with virtually no classified-ads is quite thin compared to an Australian weekend paper, for example, and newsprint is very cheap.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_govtpub”

Students at Menai Primary School take part in an environmental-farming project using computers that link with other schools using Telstra Enhanced Services Keylink that links the schools to the Department of Conservation and Land Management.

It starts with children being told they have inherited a farm near Glenn Innes. The program runs over eight weeks, each fortnight representing a fortnight on the farm. The students have to deal with environmental and management problems that arise.

They upload their results via computer modem over the phone lines to Daniel Low at the department who gives each school regular feedback by downloading comments and results of their actions.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_envpic”

The ACT Liberal Party has a new director.

She is Dawn Crosby, of Farrer.

Mrs Crosby moved to Canberra six months ago when her husband, Lynton, was appointed deputy federal director of the party.

She said yesterday that it was an advantage to be fresh to Canberra because she could concentrate on organisational matters without being embroiled in policy.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_crosby”

The framers of copyright law are forever behind technological change. For 30 years or more the law has trailed virtually every major change in technology, usually allowing widespread theft of intellectual property with impunity or with remedies so cumbersome as to be useless. Audio tapes, photocopiers and VCRs were major examples. People copied without paying copyright and for years there was no sensible administrative means whereby they could pay copyright even if they wanted to until the law caught up by imposing tape levies and permitting sampling of educational and government photocopying.

Now another major technological change has happened and those who frame the law are working out what to do. As with previous technological changes, they are aware of the problem, but whether that awareness will be translated into law in the next half decade is another matter.

The technological change is convergence.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_copyrite”

The sharp differences between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition on the republic was making debate on other constitutional issues more difficult, according to the deputy chair of the Constitutional Centenary Foundation, Professor Cheryl Saunders.

She was in Canberra yesterday to launch an ACT chapter of the independent foundation, whose aim is to promote debate on Australian constitutional system.

She said that one of the troubles with constitutional debate in Australia was that it had been monopolised by the politicians. Their input was necessary and desirable, but it should not monopolise debate.

She said also that if the minimalist position on the republic was adopted other constitutional issues could get less prominence.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_constit”

Half a century ago a republican in Australia would have been an iconoclast _ someone who tilts at icons.

Now, the iconoclast is someone who tilts at the icon of the coming republic, which is increasingly seen as “”inevitable” and a Good Thing.

Next month will see the publication of a history of the common law, Barbarism to Verdict, by author and barrister Justin Fleming, who in an almost off-hand way joins these latter-day iconoclasts.

“”If a country can itself decide simple to remove royal authority, then it must already have independence, in which case the change of Head of State is a mere formality of no consequence which can in no way change the material quality or spirit of life,” he writes. “”It wouldn’t magically reduce the fantastic excess of prosecutions in a land where life is madly over-governed and lived out under the voracious appetite of almost every authority from parking inspectors to health authorities for court orders and penalties. The fact that there would be no royalty in Australia would not remove Australia’s dire need of a Magna Carta to address an intolerable level of official interference in liberty. The impression that change would be experienced is illusory.”
Continue reading “1994_07_july_commonlw”

They all share a belief in direct democracy and will play a central role at a conference on it on Thursday. The aim is to enable citizens who gather a threshold number of signatures to force a referendum on a law they are proposing or a law they want repealed.

Federally, this may be far-off fantasyland, but not so in the ACT. Some form of direct democracy is very likely very soon. The Liberals are to put a Bill to the next sitting and the Independents are very likely to support it.

Whenever I mention direct democracy I get a scornful reaction, usually along the lines that it will enable the far right to get up lunatic proposals, like castration for rapists, right to carry guns, capital punishment and so on.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_column26jul”