Crispin Hull

The Mystic Economist. Clive Hamilton. 203pp. Willow Park Press $16.50. Green and Gold. Peter Hancock. 277pp. The Australian National University Press. Price

Review Crispin Hull

Economic rationalism covers a multitude of sins these days. Every economist is being branded with its excesses. There is an extreme form of economic rationalism. It argues that humans act with rational and intelligent self-interest. That they will chose between various products, services and outcomes by paying a price either in money or in foregone income. An extreme economic rationalist, for example, would argue that people will have more leisure or have a national park after consciously deciding to forgo the income that could otherwise be obtained.

Further, they suggest that this free choice should not be interfered with by governments. Free markets provide the best outcome, they say.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_review”

One of the first things that Wayne Berry did as Minister after Labor won government in 1992 was to repeal the Termination of Pregnancy Act.

That Act required that women wanting an abortion could only have one in a public hospital and that she, or her doctors, would have to persuade an ethics committee that it was necessary to protect her physical or mental health.

That Act was made law in the ACT before self-government, by the Fraser Federal Government.

Odd that. The Liberals, champions of choice, free enterprise and individualism against the state, bureaucracy and the public sector demanding that women go before a state-appointed Big Brother committee and if Big Brother said yes, to then only be permitted to have the abortion in a public hospital.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_polscolumn”

An urban design advisory committee has been set up to advice the Minister Environment, Land and Planning, Bill Wood, on urban design matters.

Mr Wood announced the committee yesterday. It comes as one of a string of initiatives on the planning front after a year or more of community concern over the Territory Plan, in-fill and urban consolidation.

Mr Wood said the committee “”will provide the Minister and the ACT Planning Authority with advice relating to even higher quality urban and residential design in the ACT. UDAC would also consider other design matters referred to it by the Minister”.

Its members are: Pam Berg, art historian and director of Mitchell Giurgola and Thorp (who did the Legislative Assembly and Parliament); Clem Cummings, heritage architect; Catherine Keirnan, who has her own landscape architecture and interior design practice; and Jan Martin, a town planner and architect with Argyle Consultants, one of Bob Winnel’s development companies; Tom Kean, long-time Canberra architect with his own practice who did the Times Square project and others while with Woods Bagot.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_planctee”

New planning guidelines will be drawn up for multi-unit residential redevelopment in Canberra suburbs, the Minister for Environment, Land and Planning, Bill Wood, announced yesterday.

The guidelines would supplement those already prepared for redevelopment in the central spine in North Canberra (the B1 area); Kingston-Griffith and the Forrest-Red Hill historic area.

The move comes after sustained residential and community-group objection to dual occupancy developments.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_plan22”

People in any kind of domestic relationship will be able to get property from the people they had been living with for looking after them or their children, under a Bill introduced in the Legislative Assembly yesterday.

The Bill, a first in Australia, is likely to get majority support.

People who give up career prospects to care for someone they live with (whether de-facto spouse, same-sex partner, relative, including, say, elderly parent, or friend) or that person’s child will be able to seek a Magistrates’ Court order for compensation for supporting that person and/or that person’s child.

The Attorney-General, Terry Connolly, said the question of whether there was a sexual relationship between the parties was irrelevant.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_otherass”

A McKellar woman says the ACT Planning Authority has not carried out a decision of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal about a dual occupancy next door.

The woman, Heather Filmalter, has objected to plans for the conversion of an open carport to a dual-occupancy one-bedroom flat, the corner of which is 70cm from her boundary.

She says the authority lost her original objection and approved the plan. The authority acknowledged losing the objection, but the authority said it could not revoke the approval.

She appealed to the tribunal which set aside the approval of the plan. It said an amended plan could be approved provided the fibre-plank construction were replaced with brick matching the house and that a suitable privacy wall be constructed.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_mckellar”

Around 1976 a publisher sent me a book for review. It is the only book I have reviewed without first reading.

It was called “”The Wit and Wisdom of Malcolm Fraser”. His picture was on the front cover, but when you opened it, it was full of blank pages.

Not only vicious, but unfair. Malcolm Fraser, of course, gave us those two gems: “”Life was not meant to be easy” and “”There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

Or perhaps he was not responsible for them, but they were misattributed by some generous sole who had seen the “Wit and Wisdom” book and thought Malcolm at least ought to have a couple of snappy sayings.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_lunch”

The Lake George tollway plan stood out like St Matthew in the sycamore tree.

It took two paragraphs of a 15-page speech by Transport Minister Laurie Brereton outlining his national transport agenda.

Most of Brereton’s proposals made good sense and seemed to have been backed with some study of detail. The plan for the Lake George section of the Federal Highway, however, looked like a throwaway line with no attention to consequences or detail.

Brereton was talking about an efficient, integrated national transport system and is able to do so from a better bureaucratic platform than his predecessors. Previously the portfolio had been linked to Communications or split into the several modes of transport: Land, Shipping and Aviation, each squabbling for power and funds.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_lgeorge”

Just when we thought commonsense was to replace politics and ideology as the main ingredient of the administration of health in ACT, our hopes are dashed. Terry Connolly made such a good start. He sat with the doctors and talked. He made all the right noises about giving a greater say to health professionals and giving more money to the cutting edge (figuratively and literally) as less for administration. He announced the superfluous public-relations section was to go. And so on. The confrontationist, ideological days of his predecessor, Wayne Berry, were gone. Pragmatism and delivery (figuratively and literally) were to take precedence over the public-private guerilla war.

It was too good to be true. On Tuesday, Terry Connolly, announced the ACT was going ahead urgently with the $2.8 million refurbishment of the old Royal Canberra Hospital isolation ward on Acton Peninsula as a hospice. And further he was looking at whether the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital for nursing mothers should be located at Acton, too.

The hospice at Acton was pushed relentlessly by Mr Berry, despite its obvious cost and convenience drawbacks because the Labor Party, capitalising on the unpopularity of the Liberal-dominated Alliance Government’s decision to close Royal Canberra, had promised that Acton Peninsula would be used for health and community facilities.

Surely, that promise has no relevance now. It has been overtaken by both local and national events. Its breach would be welcomed by the great majority of Canberrans, including people who have been pushing for a hospice for years. They would rather a hospice on Acton than no hospice, but their first preference it in a new building near one of the main hospitals. Staff-sharing, pharmacy sharing and proximity of medical help make location near Calvary or Woden more sensible.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_leader29apr”

The Federal Attorney-General, Michael Lavarch, has taken an appropriately restrained view of Tasmania’s unenforced law making it a crime to commit homosexual acts (even in private) punishable by up to life imprisonment.

The law is unacceptable and in breach of international and Australian standards of human rights. However, a heavy-handed Commonwealth approach is likely to be counter-productive.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee, at the behest of the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group, is about to adjudicate on whether Tasmania’s law breaches the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, to which Australia is a party. It seems fairly clear that it is a breach.

There has been a lot of macho, homophobic political posturing on the issue in Tasmania. The Premier, Ray Groom, and others in his ministry have asserted that they went to the people at the last election with a policy of not changing the law, they were elected, and so they will not change the law. This is an acknowledged abdication of political responsibility to lead public opinion rather than be a siphon for it or a slave to it.
Continue reading “1994_04_april_leader09apr”