Crispin Hull

The Opposition points to three alarming things about Labor’s budgetary strategy. Nothing is being done about the ACT’s expensive maladministration of health. Not enough is being done to wean ACTION off its disproportionate subsidies. And the large projected increases in debt.

The alarming thing for the Liberals, though, is that none of these things will cause much pain in the ACT before about 1997, some years after the next election. And politically it is not very satisfactory to say, “”We told you so from the Opposition benches.”

While Labor continues to flitter through the fiscal shopping arcade with a big Bankcard and continues to put the Bankcard bill in the 1997 file, the brats being clothed and fed are happy. While Labor happily spends in one year its unexpected $55 million gift from Uncle Paul, the brats will be contented. They would have yelled if Uncle Paul’s $55 million had been put into the bank for a rainy day.

The Budget papers show that the public-sector financing requirement in 1997-98 on present policies will be $107 million (about 8 per cent of revenue). That has to be borrowed. It cannot be taken from reserves because what little remains of ACT reserves will have been used up to help finance this year’s deficit.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_libsbud”

It is hard to tell what is going on behind the scenes with the ACT TAB. No doubt the racing industry is hoping that the public face of the NSW and ACT negotiations on setting up a new TAB link does not reflect the underlying reality.

In the face of the VITAB fiasco and Victoria giving notice that it will end the ACT’s link with its super-pool, ACTTAB stands to lose a great deal. Medium and large punters will avoid ACTTAB unless it is linked to a major state pool. On its own, the ACT pool is not enough to sustain reasonable odds on many small races. The input of a single medium or large punter could be enough to distort the pool on a given race. The result is erratic returns, often lower than those interstate. With 008 telephone numbers it means the ACT will lose customers.

The ACT now asked NSW to establish a link. NSW has rightly demanded that the ACT sever its arrangement with VITAB which presented the possibility that Australian customers would be wooed off-shore.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_leader23jun”

Privatisation continues to be a matter for argument rather than debate in Australia. The issue must be brought beyond the two-legs-good, four-legs-bad syndrome under which the right of the Labor party and the Coalition parties say privatisation is good and the left of the Labor Party say it is bad.

Both sides of politics at both state and federal level should look at the objectives of private and public ownership endeavour by endeavour rather than take a blanket approach. In the past couple of weeks several events had shown some of the pitfalls and benefits of both private and public ownership.

The telephone and post systems have been pivotal in the debate. They contain virtually all the elements of both side of the debate. They have been called natural monopolies because it is better for one organisation to lay and service the millions of kilometres of cable or to deliver letters over a vast continent than to have duplication. They have been required to meet two broad social-justice goals: to provide essential communications services at a reasonable coast for people of small means and to provide the same thing for people living in remote areas of Australia where otherwise cost would make it prohibitive even for the most wealthy. Twenty years ago, few people thought these tasks could be done in Australia other than through government monopolies.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_leader19jun”

The Deputy Chief Minister, David Lamont, was in a difficult situation. In his hands was report by Professor Dennis Pearce into the Vitab affair. Presumably, it was highly critical of the ACT TAB board and its chief executive. Presumably, it required some action. Mr Lamont says it required immediate action. So he got legal advice from the chief government solicitor as to how he could remove the board and chief executive and presumably followed it. However, the Assembly was not to sit until Tuesday (Budget day), so realistically, Wednesday was the first day the report could be tabled. Until it is made public, the public cannot judge his actions.

We do know, however, that the board requested that a copy of the Pearce report be made to it and its legal advisers and that Mr Lamont refused that request, saying he was unable to release the report before its tabling in the Assembly. Instead, he gave every member of the board the opportunity to read the report in his office and take whatever notes they wanted.

He then asked each member of the board if they had anything to say as to why they should not have their appointment terminated they should provide it by end of business that day (Friday). He then dismissed those members of the board who did not resign. Cabinet then appointed a new board on Saturday and Mr Lamont instructed it to dismiss the chief executive and appoint a new one.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_leader14jun”

Time is running out for the ACT Government’s self-imposed deadline for the separate ACT Government Service. The Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, is right in saying that the ACT cannot be truly self-governing without its own public service. Logically, that must eventually mean and end to automatic transfers of staff at the same level (Section 50 transfers), a point of some contention with public-sector unions.

When the two services separate after a time they will create different categories of staff and different levels. It would be absurd to allow automatic transfer between the two services at the level indefinitely. Before long the phrase will not have any meaning.

The amendments suggested by the Democrats and Liberals in the Senate is a reasonable compromise. The at-level transfers will be allowed for two years (provided the heads of the departments agree to each transfer). Thereafter all transferees from one service to the other will have to go through a selection-on-merit process.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_leader13jun”

Whenever statistics or budget figures come out, the Northern Territory always has the lowest or highest in any state or territory of whatever is being measured. So it was at the weekend when the conservative side of politics got a higher percentage of seats (80 per cent) than in any state or territory. The Northern Territory is unusual. It is different. The political swing at the weekend’s election in of little national moment and should not be extrapolated nationally.

Bizarrely, Labor actually picked up a swing of about one per cent but has lost as many as four of its nine seats. The old House had 14 Country Liberal Party, nine Labor and two independents. The new House is likely to have 20 CLP and five Labor.

One thing the election shows is how inappropriate the single-member system is in a small territory. Mercifully, the ACT does not have it. If it did, the ACT, too, would be swamped by a major party, in the ACT’s case, Labor.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_leader06jun”

The ACT Landlords Association has called for the introduction of quarterly assessment of land tax, saying the present system is unjust.

The president of the association, Peter Jansen, said yesterday that under the present system assessment for the whole year is determined according to the state of the dwelling on July 1.

So if a tenancy ended on July 2 and the owner moved back in, the owner would have to pay land tax for the whole year.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_landtax”

Rates will remain about the same in real terms under budgetary measures.

Residential rate payers are likely to pay slightly more in real terms and commercial rate-payers slightly less.

The average increase for residential rates will be $26. New properties would add 2.4 per cent to rates revenue.

The total value of land in the ACT rose 4.4 per cent, the value of existing properties rose by 2 per cent.

The land tax rate remains the same, but total revenue will increase with increased property values.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_land”

It is like the war with viruses and bacteria. Whenever the medicos come up with an antibiotic, the virus and bacteria mutate and build up an immunity. Stronger anti-biotics then have to be developed and so it goes on. Who will give up first the microbes or the chemists?

It is the same with hardware and software developers. As soon as the hardware gets faster and the hard disks larger, along comes a software writer to take up the extra capacity, pushing it to the edge. So hardware developers bring out even faster and larger capacities to handle the software.

No hard disk ever seems big enough.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_infinite”

The planners issues chocolate freckles to the community groups taking part in the planning of Gungahlin Town centre.

It was not a cynical sweetener along the lines: “”We’ll give you a few lollies and we’ll go away a do precisely what we like.” No; it was an analogy of the planning sought by most of the people involved.

Freckles are those little chocolate bits with hundreds and thousands on them. They are highly clustered with a high density of mixed use (green equals open space, yellow equals community facilities, orange equals residential, blue equals commercial, pink equals retail and white equals parking). The are on a human scale.

The contrast is with the other Town Centres: Belconnen, Woden and Tuggeranong, and to a lesser extent Civic.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_gungfeat”