Crispin Hull

The ACT Attorney-General, Terry Connolly, said yesterday that he would withdraw the reference on euthanasia from the Community Law Reform Committee because the Legislative Assembly had since set up a wider inquiry.

His action follows the committee writing to him seeking wider terms of reference than it had been given. Some people on the committee thought the reference was restricted to passive euthanasia _ withdrawing or withholding medical treatment, and gave little or no scope for an inquiry on active euthanasia.

Mr Connolly said a parliamentary inquiry should take precedence over an executive inquiry. The committee was an executive advisory body. He thought it would silly to duplicate efforts and be unfortunate if the two inquiries came to different conclusions.
Continue reading “1993_08_august_euthanas”

Tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of pieces of paper have been delivered to the Copyright Agency Limited in the past year notifying it of each recorded instance of photocopying of copyright work in government departments.

The “”mind-blowing” amount of paper was due to an out-of-date provision in the Copyright Act, the chief executive of the agency, Michael Fraser, said yesterday,

He said his offices in Sydney were stacked to the ceiling with boxes full of the notifications which the Federal Government was required to provide to copyright owners under the Copyright Act for the approximately 20 million pages it copies each year.
Continue reading “1993_08_august_cright”

EFFICIENCY drives have been on for the past decade. Queues have been transferred from harassed bank tellers inside to machines outside. Tourist offices in Canberra can book you on a coach in Los Angeles. Leanness, customer service, delivery and efficiency are everywhere. Even Telecom smiles and connects phones in hours not months.

Super-markets have changed less noticeably, because visits are more frequent. Consider the cash register. No more keying in each amount and working out the change. Bar codes do the lot _ more efficiently and more accurately.

But down at the Magistrates’ Court, nothing much has changed. I had the displeasure to observed the court’s civil jurisdiction at “”work” one day last week.
Continue reading “1993_08_august_column30”

THE response to the Budget should put an end to the minimalist approach to the Republic. By minimalist, Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating meant only changing enough of the Constitution to replace the hereditary Head of State and her delegate with an Australian. By whatever way that is done (and minimalism embraces them all), it will surely mean that the Prime Minister will lose the power to sack the Head of State as he effectively sack the Governor-General now by a call to the palace.

Once John Kerr sacked Gough Whitlam, the element of surprise in future constitutional crises was gone. We now have the unseemly situation of whether the PM can get to the Palace to sack the GG before the GG can sack the PM. Take away the palace, though, and the equation changes in unpredictable ways.
Continue reading “1993_08_august_column23”

ANY win by a defendant in a defamation action is usually only a pyrrhic one. Three years ago a former public servant turned consultant, Paul Thistlewaite, threatened to sue The Canberra Times over what seemed like a straightforward report arising out of proceedings by the Senate Estimates Committee. He wanted an apology and reserved his rights for damages.

He asserted the article contained the imputation that he had taken advantage of his position of specialist knowledge in the Public Service to obtain a consultancy doing the same work for more money _ what is now known as the revolving-door syndrome. The Canberra Times said if the imputation arose it was out of parliamentary proceedings.

(Those readers wanting to further information can look at the Hansard of Senate Estimates Committee A from late August to November of 1989 and articles in the computers section of The Canberra Times articles on September 4, October 2 and November 30 of 1989 available in the National Library.)
Continue reading “1993_08_august_column17”

HECTOR Kinloch died last week. Hector was a great teacher because he stirred the conscience of his students. He did not have the intellectual depth of a Manning Clark, nor his literary style. He was not a performer in the P. S. Atiyah style. He did not nag his students like Leslie Zines. Nor did he lecture with the Victorian certainty of John Ritchie. He had a peculiar human style: his human weakness was manifest. And that was his strength.

The troubled ex-gambler suddenly game into the public eye in Canberra when he opposed the casino, just before ACT self-government in 1989. Suddenly he found himself drafted into the Residents’ Rally and elected a Member of the Legislative Assembly. The man who had taught generations of students about the great period of American independence suddenly found himself elected in the nascent Assembly of this tiny polity.
Continue reading “1993_08_august_column9a”

The Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, condemned yesterday an idea floated by the Opposition to abandon Westminster system in the ACT Legislative Assembly.

The Leader of the Opposition, Kate Carnell, said earlier that the people of Canberra did not like the hierarchical system of Ministers and the adversary Westminster system in the Assembly. She proposed that a system of committees replace Ministers and the rigid party structure.

Ms Follett said the democratic principles of responsibility and accountability to the community disappear.
Continue reading “1993_08_august_carnell”

A leading Canberra auctioneer called yesterday for an open, advertised tender for the position of authorised government auctioneer for the ACT.

The call from Matt Campbell came after the previous authorised auctioneer went into receivership and Department of Administrative Services sources said last week that the department was approaching the replacement process very carefully and expected a contract to be signed for the vehicle auctions in the next few weeks and one for miscellaneous goods shortly thereafter.

Mr Campbell asked yesterday, “”If they are that close, where are the advertisements for the tender?”
Continue reading “1993_08_august_campbell”

Two buses have gone past my suburban window in the past three minutes. (In different directions.) Both were virtually empty.

What were they doing? Knitting the social fabric of Canberra together. Without them the carless would have little trade, commerce or social intercourse with the rest of Canberra. They might not be able to get to the polling booth on voting day, for example.

It has ever been thus: empty buses all day; packed ones at peak-hour; and a huge government subsidy. How bad or good is it? How efficient, or inefficient? Until this week we could only rely on the evidence of our eyes. Now we are blessed with the report of the “”Steering Committee of National Performance” on “”Government Trading Enterprises Performance Indicators”.
Continue reading “1993_08_august_buses”

He said last week that he would be making a ministerial statement yesterday about betterment. Yesterday he said a further announcement would be made in September, but he would take the opportunity to clarify issues after “”inaccurate or malicious” statements in the media.

Betterment is the charge levied against a leaseholder in return for a change of purpose in the lease in recognition of its changed value from the old use to the new. Under present law a remission of up to 50 per cent is available depending on the age of the old lease.

Mr Wood acknowledged that a greater return could be made if when assessing betterment the old value did not include an element for potential redevelopment.
Continue reading “1993_08_august_better”