Crispin Hull

The ACT Legislative Assembly rejected yesterday a motion by Gary Humphries (Lib) that no public money be spent to subsidise a private abortion clinic in the ACT.

The Assembly voted on party lines with the Independents voting with the Government (Dennis Stevenson was absent).

Mr Humphries acknowledged that a majority of the Assembly thought a woman had a right to chose so did not want to canvas the moral issue. However, he thought other health issues should have priority. Abortions could be obtained in Sydney or in ACT public hospitals.
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Canberra would still be a bush capital in 2020, the Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, said yesterday.
At that time, Australia would be a republic and the states abolished, she said, partially tongue in cheek. In their place would be 25 regional governments, and this region would be a model for the rest of the country.

She stressed that if the region were to have a utopian future, it would have to be worked at; it would not just happen. She emphasised the region because Canberra would straddle the ACT border in the next century. (Indeed to some extent it does now.)
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The ACT Opposition accused Labor’s recent appointee as head of the ACT Tourism Commission, Charles Wright, yesterday of being a bagman for disgraced former Western Australian Premier Brian Burke.

The Leader of the Opposition, Kate Carnell, asked whether the Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, had been aware that Mr Wright had been named in the WA Inc Royal Commission as a bagman at the time of his appointment. She asked whether the appointment was an example of the Labor Party helping one of its mates.

Ms Follett described it as a disgraceful slur on a man who had an excellent record and was well-respected in the ACT community who had done an excellent job in promoting ACT tourism.
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Employees of a company in liquidation of which Charles Wright is a director are owed more than $20,000, mainly in annual leave, according to the liquidator.

Mr Wright is the chairman of the ACT Tourism Advisory Board. His appointment came under fire by the Opposition in the ACT Legislative Assembly this week.

The company Canberra Mail and Print Pty Ltd went into liquidation the month before the Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, appointed him. On Thursday she cited his “”excellent reputation as a businessman” as one of the reasons for the appointment.
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The chairman of the ACT Tourism Advisory Board, Charles Wright, was the director of a company that went into liquidation the month before his appointment, according to publicly available company records.

The Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, was asked in the Legislative Assembly by Gary Humphries (Lib) if it was true that Mr Wright was a director Canberra Publishing and Printing and Canberra Mail and Print Pty Ltd which went into liquidation owing the ACT Government hundreds of thousands of dollars and had those companies not paid group tax.

Mr Humphries quoted a statement made by Ms Follett on Wednesday that she had appointed Mr Wright to the tourism board because of his “”excellent reputation as a businessman”.
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An indoor sports stadium for Tuggeranong and a neighbourhood centre for Gungahlin are among projects that never made it from the 1992-93 forward design list to the capital works list of 1993-94, according to Independent MLA Helen Szuty. Ms Szuty compared the forward design list the capital works listed recently published for 1993-94.

She called last week for an explanation from the Government as to why the following forward designs of 1992-93 will not become bricks and mortar in 1993-94: The Tuggeranong stadium and the Gungahlin centre, weatherproofing at Belconnen bus interchange, a roundabout at the Cotter Road-McCulloch Street intersection, extensions to the Belconnen fire station and a community arts access workshop.

She says the 1993-94 forward-design list comprises 17 projects. She wonders how many of them will make it to the capital works for 1994-95. These include a high school for Gungahlin, Nicholls pre-school and primary school and the refurbishment of the City police station.
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Federal Government could find itself in a worse legal mire than the first Mabo case if it legislates to prevent the Wik people from suing for breach of trust or indigenous title.

At present the Wik breach-of-trust claim, according to most legal advice, is very tenuous. Other Mabo claims on the mainland are also tenuous, but not tenuous as Wik. The original case, remember, applied indigenous title to an agricultural society on a Torres Strait island where land-holdings were well defined.

However, no matter how tenuous, indigenous people have a right to sue; many believe they have good prospects of winning and they do in fact have some chance of winning.
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The Leader of the Opposition, Kate Carnell, predicted yesterday that the ACT Government would be hit by a Federal Government Budget plan to axe the exemption for local government for wholesale tax.

She said the ACT might lose as much as $15 million this year alone. She wondered whether the ACT had factored this in its Budget which was to be brought down next month.

The Watson Community Association filed an application in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal yesterday seeking an order to make the Department of the Environment Land and Planning comply with a Freedom of Information Act request on Better Cities money.

The association asserts the department has not complied with a request within the statutory 30 days. The request seeks information about the ACT Government’s action on its agreement with the Federal Government on Better Cities funding for ACT projects.
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Payments to visiting medical officers in the ACT came under attack by the Auditor-General in a report tabled in the Legislative Assembly yesterday.

The Auditor found:

1. Evidence of (visiting) doctors charging for babies delivered by another (resident) doctor.

2. There are no procedures for verifying that VMOs actually provided the services claimed.

3. Allegations about obstetrics patients being asked to pay the VMO “”booking fees” of up to $500, where patients were booked in as public and treated by the VMO as private.

4. There were financial incentives for VMOs to make patients public patients at cost to the ACT.

5. VMOs are generally paid more than their counterparts in the states.

6. Only limited information for control and budget of VMO payments was available.

7. Papers on VMO contract negotiations in 1987 and 1990 could not be found.
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