1993_01_january_neggear

Half of Australia’s business is taxation. Most wage slaves rarely consider that once you hit about $38,000, 47c in every dollar goes in income tax. Passed on sales taxes, petrol, booze and tobacco taxes and wholesale taxes make up the rest.

Companies pay similar amounts. People on $50,000 or more pay slightly more (48{ per cent after the Medicare tax). In theory. A recent survey of people earning more than $1 million a year, however, showed they paid an average of 26 per cent of the their income in tax. Huh? With a marginal rate of 48{ per cent, shouldn’t they be paying a little more? No. They use tricks to minimise their tax. These tricks can legitimately be used by non-millionaires, like you an me. The main one is negative gearing, usually on real estate. This is how and why it works.

It is based on the assumption that governments will behave stupidly. If governments behaved intelligently, negative gearing on real estate would go out the window in Australia and savings and investment would be chanelled to better things.
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1993_01_january_medicare

Australians going overseas cannot claim Medicare benefits, yet must pay the Medicare levy, and if they go for work purposes cannot claim any private insurance as a tax deduction, according to official advice to a Canberra academic.

Professor Hans Kuhn, emeritus professor of Germanic languages at ANU, has been trying to get an answer to his Medicare query for several months. He got a reply last week.

Professor Kuhn was away in Europe in 1991 and again last year for six months. He was advised to take private medical insurance, because Medicare no longer automatically paid the equivalent of Australian benefits for overseas medical costs (except in a limited number of countries where there is an exchange agreement).
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1993_01_january_mcleay

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Leo McLeay, has had mixed fortune since his bicycle accident at Parliament House on April 25, 1990.

The events that followed certainly caused a lot of public comment, some of it quite misguided. It is an interesting case because it highlights the lottery of seeking damages for personal injuries in Australia.

At first sight the case was bound to cause outrage. It had an essential ingredient that gets up the nose of the ordinary Australian: the appearance of one rule for those in positions of power and another for the ordinary citizen. But that is appearance; the reality is different.
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1993_01_january_marginal

An ominous comparison can be made between the Keating Government facing the 1993 election and the Fraser Government facing defeat in 1983.

It comes down to the number of marginal seats.

Labor has a majority of nine seats (assuming Wills is Labor and North Shore anti-Labor). An even swing of 0.9 per cent will tip five seats to the Coalition, giving it a majority.
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1993_01_january_leader30

There is something seriously wrong when core crime-fighting police services are being cut in preference to other things. It is a matter for the Government to look for cuts in aras outside the police budget and for police to look at less harmful cuts within the police budget. There is no reason why the ACT cannot have police services of the same or better standard than those of other states for the same cost per head.

As the minister responsible, Terry Connolly, has said, Canberra is a safe city. True. Therefore our costs should be lower. Canberra does not have the difficulties of inner city areas of lawlessness to the same degree as Sydney’s Redfern or Melbourne’s inner area. It does not have the tyranny of distance like Western Australia or Queensland. It has a lower crime rate than other states. It is a more middle-class, law-abiding territory than many other places in Australia. Policing should be easier. Moreover, Canberra should have specialist in bureaucratic skills that should enable us to administer things more efficiently.

Apparently not. As soon as the ACT has police budget has problems, the first response is to cut operational areas. It is not good enough.
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1993_01_january_leader25

The founding fathers, in their jealousy and wisdom, thought that the national capital should be at least 100 miles from Sydney. It was a question of influence. Melbourne was to house the national parliament until the new capital was founded. In return it was agreed that the new capital territory would be within the state of NSW, but sufficiently far from Sydney that it would not be a de-facto part of Sydney. Little did they think that the power of telecommunications 90 years later might mean that 100 miles (160 kilometres) would not be enough. Little did they think that the quaint words giving the Federal Parliament power to make laws with respect to “”postal, telegraphic, telephonic and other like services” would result in the creation of a publicly owned service that could project images into the homes of every Australian. Little did they think that the citizens of the new capital would one day be subsumed electronically by this service into the ambit of Sydney.

Well, it has happened. In August, 1991, the ABC decided to discontinue its separate television news service into Canberra. Instead the Sydney service would be beamed into Canberra homes. At the time we were assured that local Canberra news would still be covered with one reporter and a crew. And this week we find that this reporter has been moved to Parliament House. We have been assured that ABC resources at Parliament House would cover Canberra until a replacement is found.

Every other capital has its own ABC television news service, even Darwin and Hobart with lower populations. Excellent as the ABC’s international and national coverage are, the people of Canberra do not want their main television news bulletin determined on the imperatives of Sydney news values. A fire in Balmain, a car prang in Manly and the election of the Sydney City Council are no substitutes for stories about cuts in the AFP budget, flooding in Tuggeranong and the election of the ACT Legislative Assembly.
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1993_01_january_leader23

The agreement between the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, and the Leader of the Opposition, John Hewson, to have two debates during the election campaign is most welcome. It should become a regular pattern for all Federal elections. In recent Australian history, head-to-head television debates during the campaign have been the exception rather than the rule. A notable exception was the debate during the 1984 campaign between the then Leader of the Opposition, Andrew Peacock, and the then Prime Minister, Bob Hawke. Mr Hawke was riding on a wave of popularity. Mr Peacock was the underdog. The debate, which consisted of questions from a panel of journalists, transformed the Peacock campaign and image. It was widely thought Mr Peacock had performed better than expected in that campaign and the debate played an important part in that. The sad upshot was that Mr Hawke shied away from debates where he would be grilled by a panel. In the 1990 campaign there was one tedious debate where each leader made a statement and replied to other.

There are some pleasing aspects to the proposal for this campaign: there will be more than one debate; they are likely to involve a panel of questioners; they will be 90 minutes long; they will be on the ABC and offered to the commercials; they will not have a studio audience; they will be live; they will be spaced one at the beginning and one at the end of the campaign and they are restricted to the two potential prime ministers. The debates need to be fairly long. One of the most galling things about television coverage of political events is the quick grab. During the last US presidential campaign, for example, grabs averaged under nine seconds on the commercial news. No-one has been patient enough to do the research in Australia, but no doubt the position is similar. Politicians play to this environment; they have to. Given the sad fact that a large proportion of the electorate gets news only from the box, the result is mass ignorance of issues and political judgments being formed around image rather than substance. It may well be, of course, that many will not bother with two 90-minute debates, none the less the opportunity will be there and at least some will take it. The absence of commercials and a booing or cheering audience is welcome because it will enable people to judge the protagonists’ handling of the issues free from distraction. The live debate is important, too. The electors will see the leaders as they are; not after important elements of what they say is left on the cutting-room floor.

These debates could be a turning point in the evolution of the way election campaigns take place in Australia. Up to, say, 1975, the public meeting was the key campaigning tool. Since then, alas, demonstrators and wreckers have made public meetings impossible. The launch before hand-picked audiences and the National Press Club address by each leader became the critical elements. How much better to have head-to-head debates as the main campaign element! Debates provide a direct and immediate comparison, enabling the audience to make a better judgment.
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1993_01_january_leader17

AAustralians should not get too upset or defensive about the report (released last week 50 years after the event) by the Allied Commander-in-Chief for the South-West Pacific, General Sir Archibald Wavell, on the behaviour of Australian troops in the lead up to the fall of Singapore. The autobiographies, memos and reports of politicians and military “”leaders” are full of self-justifications and scapegoats. Indeed, the episode teaches us more about leadership (from the both the Australian and British perspective) than about a national traits of valour or cowardice. Would Montgomery have said similar things about the Australian Rats of Trobruk, whether true or false? Of course not. Montgomery was a leader. Let’s also bear in mind that Wavell was üAllied@ Commander-in-Chief. If he accuses Australian troops of cowardice, insubordination, rape and drunkenness, then it is an admission that troops under his command misbehaved. What does that say for his leadership? More likely, however, he was seeking a scapegoat for the Singapore fiasco. In doing that, it may have been as a result of having been put in an impossible position in the first place.

Clearly, the British High Command underestimated the likelihood of Japan entering the war and its strength once it had. Those on the receiving end in Singapore could hardly report back to their political and military bosses in London that those bosses were to blame. How much easier to blame those below, especially those of another nation, even if an ally, especially if that nation has a larrikin image anyway. Once again, it tells us more about Wavell’s lack of leadership than any national characteristics. The leadership failure was not solely within the British forces. The commander of the Australian troops in Singapore, Major-General Gordon Bennett does not come out unscathed. Questions will always remain about why he did not stay with his troops. Other commanders have been shot for less.

You wouldn’t see Montgomery or Monash behaving like Wavell or Bennett. Once again, a leadership question, not a question of nationality.
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1993_01_january_leader8

The proposal by the Minister for Sport, Wayne Berry, to change the ACT TAB from its present status as a Territory-owned corporation to a statutory authority seems without rhyme nor reason. He has stated it will make the body more accountable, but it is already accountable through the Territory-owned corporations legislation which gives the Chief Minister and relevant Minister one share each, the only shares. That status should be enough to ensure accountability.

Mr Berry has said it is ALP policy to bring some corporations under government control. If so, its application to the TAB a bad policy. Mr Berry surely cannot argue that the TAB will run more efficiently or profitably as a statutory authority. In its outing as a corporatisation it has performed exceptionally well, especially in the past year. In the past year its turnover went up 2.6 per cent and in the six months to December 31 it went up 7 per cent on the same period the previous years. Clearly the TAB is on a winning streak, and it would be dumb to change owners or trainers now. These are impressive figures in a recession, and they were made against stiff competition for the gambling dollar with the opening of the casino. It is inconceivable that bringing the TAB under more direct government control could improve this, the more so if it came under Mr Berry’s control. Mr Berry has not had an outstanding success in dealing with financial matters, as his form in hospital administration bears out.

One could only therefore speculate as to Mr Berry’s real motives. As a corporation, appointments to the board and the executive must be made on business merit. As a statutory authority Mr Berry would have a wider class of people to chose from _ namely anyone. Once before, Mr Berry made an appointment to a body that caused considerable unease among the professionals involved. That was an appointment to the Pharmacy Board. With that track record, people in the racing industry are rightly fearful of appointments Mr Berry might make to a TAB constituted as a statutory authority.
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1993_01_january_keatsue

The Prime Minister, Paul Keating, has issued a defamation writ against the Opposition spokesman for the arts, Senator Michael Baume, over statements made on Melbourne radio.

The statements were concerning Mr Keating’s half share in the Brown and Hatton piggery.

The writ led the shadow attorney-general, Peter Costello, to say: “”Paul Keating has opened his election campaign with a stop writ.”
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