Crispin Hull

What we are seeing in the Australian economy can be better explained by psychologists than economists.

The mass of foreign debt gets bigger. There have been two months of uncertainty over the Budget and several more over Mabo. The Government’s industrial-relations “”reforms” amount to next to nothing. The mass of jobless remains constant. (I refrain from calling it a jobless queue, because a queue presumes that one’s turn will come and a bus will arrive or fish and chips will be served.) And the dollar behaves like a broken yo-yo _ it only goes down. These things would normally add up to business gloom.

Yet the share market has been on a steady climb for nearly a year. At the end of 1992 it was at a post Gulf War nadir of 1400 points. It has now busted 2000 and keeps on climbing.

It must have more to do with the forces of greed and fear than the forces of supply and demand. Or more correctly, the irrational, erratic forces of greed and fear are driving supply and demand.
Continue reading “1993_11_november_column1”

HERE is a profound line, surprisingly, in the film Crocodile Dundee. Dundee is asked by the American girl, “”Who owns this land?” He points at a rock and says words to the effect, “”Who owns the rock, when you die or I die, the rock will still be there?”

Richard Court is like the American girl. To him the land has to be owned. People have to have title so they can buy and sell land as an economic item. It is a mindset prevalent in North America and in Western Australia. And it explains (in so far as it can be explained) Court’s latest proposal to overturn the effect of the Mabo judgment that recognised native title in Australia.

Court wants to extinguish native title and replace it with a statutory right to traditional usage of the land. He says that if the use of the land is taken away from Aboriginal people (say through a grant of a mining or pastoral lease or through a grant of freehold) compensation will be paid. Existing titles (other than native title, of course) would be validated. He says the High Court never gave indigenous people freehold title so what he is doing is consistent with the High Court judgment. Like the High Court’s native-title ruling his new statutory right would give indigenous people the right to use the land in their traditional ways.
Continue reading “1993_11_november_column8”

Smirk on my face at the news that Derryn Hinch was to be removed from Channel 10 quickly turned to a frown.

I naively thought that Hinch was being fired for being appalling. Alas, we find he was fired because he was not appalling enough. His replacement is to be Alan Jones, a man denounced as a plagiarist in 1990 and denounced for making racist comments on radio. Hinch may have been a sanctimonious prig, but at least he was an honest sanctimonious prig.

Channel Ten is to take the time slot from the sidewalk into the debris trap of the stormwater drain. Will the other two commercial channels resist the temptation to join it?

The phenomenon of the competing television market is the nearest thing Australia has to the English tabloid market _ the sort of market that resulted in last week’s keyhole journalism by the Mirror group which published pictures taken by a hidden camera of Princess Diana in a gymnasium.
Continue reading “1993_11_november_column15”

Tasmanian Government is playing an artful numbers game.

Given that our own little polity is to have an almost identical voting system to Tasmania, the game is instructive.

The present Tasmanian Lower House was elected by the Hare-Clark system. There are seven Members of Parliament for each of five electorates. The five State electorates are identical to the five Federal electorates _ drawn independently and fairly by the Australian Electoral Commission.

Under the present system of seven MPs in each seat, it requires 12.5 per cent of the vote plus one for a candidate to be assured of winning a seat _ that is one eighth of the vote plus one vote. In practice, it can mean less than this, especially in the scramble for the last seat when the vote is split among the lower-end candidates and preferences are being allocated.
Continue reading “1993_11_november_column22”

Had a drawing teacher called Betty Edwards. I never met Ms Edwards, other than through a book, but she was a pretty classy teacher. Not that I was much of a student, but at least she took me from stick figures to something that was at least recognisably human.

Ms Edwards made a bizarre but very intelligent observation. She said too many sketchers attempt to draw things. This, she opined, was completely the wrong way to go about it. It was better, she said, to draw the spaces around and between the things rather than the things themselves. The paces between, of course, are odd, so the brain sees them as pure shape, allowing the hand to draw them as pure shape. Whereas if you try to draw the thing itself, your brain does a lot of unnecessary overtime and says, “”I know what that is. It is a man. And a man has two long arms, two long legs a round head and an oblong body.” And so you end up with an unrealistic stick figure. In reality, one of the man’s arms might be shorter than his hand because it is stretched out towards the viewer with the hand in a stop gesture.

Ms Edwards came to mind the other day in a little town down at the coast. I was looking at some new houses and some others under construction. It had nothing to do with drawing, but I was thinking about Ms Edwards’s view about the spaces between things.
Continue reading “1993_11_november_column29”

Law in Australia is like a mirage in the desert. A caravan of legislative drafters and government copyright lawyers arrive at the oasis of sunshine a light only to find that the water has moved again to the distant horizon.

Last week’s case which revealed a loophole enabling the bootlegging of live-to-air performances of major pop stars was but a small sample of a quarter of a century of legislation being unable to catch up with technology. Moreover, when its belated attempts finally hit the statute book, the result has invariably been a miasma of detail through which lawyers can wade to find unintended loopholes. And thus a small Adelaide company is able to produce CDs of live performances of overseas stars without paying royalties or a fair return to the artists.

This loophole can probably be closed quite quickly, especially as major recording studios (with their legal and financial clout) are involved. However, a more serious piece of oasis movement is about to happen.
Continue reading “1993_10_october_column04oxt”

And lawyers both earn a living searching for the truth, but they do it in different ways.

Lawyers do it in a rigidly controlled environment of rules, regulations and conventions. They have special privileges bestowed upon them by society. They are granted a special monopoly by law and the courts enable them to collect their fees more easily because they become part of the judgment debt.

Moreover, the lawyer-client relationship is granted special status by law. The courts will not prise open the confidentiality of that relationship. Further, a lawyer’s utterances in court (no matter how untrue or malicious) are protected from defamation actions.

In return, however, lawyers are subjected to rules of professional discipline both immediately in court and more generally by the professional body.
Continue reading “1993_10_october_column11oct”

Use of Sir Humphrey’s Fourth Argument Against Changing Anything at All (it will cost too much) was inevitable.

Thus the opponents of citizens’ initiative condemned the idea when it was floated last week. It would cost $1 million per referendum, they said.

However, it is just as easy to see citizens’ initiative as an investment through which citizens will stop governments doing foolish and expensive things.

There are several kinds. All require a certain percentage of voters’ signatures which force a binding referendum on the legislature. Some are limited to vetoing existing laws. Others allow referendums to propose laws, provided they do not require more than a certain level of spending or are limited to major constitutional matters. And others allow open slather.
Continue reading “1993_10_october_column18oct”

Was good at sewing. She did repairs and made clothes on a Singer.

Stefan played the mouth-organ and spoke five languages. On good days, well directed, he could clip a hedge. Henry was better. He was a man of fewer words, but he had a sense about gardening and usually didn’t need direction.

George sat at the bus shelter and did the Melbourne Herald crossword. It was one of those crosswords where each clue gave three obvious answers, making half a million combinations. The prize kept jackpotting. It hit 3000 pounds once, which was a lot of money in 1965. George posted his entry every day at Beechworth Post Office before going back Up Top.
Continue reading “1993_10_october_column25oct”

First the firemen came. They arrived in their big yellow truck armed with tape measures.

They measured the inside floor area of Tilley’s Devine Cafe Gallery in Lyneham. They measured the bar, the stage and the fixed seating, and left.

Then came the officious letter.

“”Your premises has recently been assessed by the Safety Officers from the ACT Fire Brigade and in accordance with provisions of Section 24B of the Liquor Act 1975 I have determined the occupancy loadings for each relevant public area in conformity with that assessment. The loadings are detailed below: Area A. Bar and Bistro 136 persons. Area B Outdoor Cafe 231 persons.
Continue reading “1993_09_september_tilleys”