Crispin Hull

We now know why John Hewson has been so determined on the goods-and-services tax. He has been to Damascus and back.

A biography of Dr Hewson by Christine Wallace published last week tells us how Dr Hewson arranged his tax affairs while a consultant in 1985.

Dr Hewson’s tax arrangements, though perfectly legal, were a bit more complicated than a straight real-estate investment with negative gearing.
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John Hewson has succumbed to the pressure of the opinion polls and his party colleagues and announced that he will make changes to the Coalition’s Fightback program. In doing so he treads a fine line between becoming “”just another politician”, bending like a reed in the face of the latest opinion polls and being seen as a responsive leader being flexible in the face of a changing political and economic climate. How he is ultimately seen at election time will depend very much on the extent and nature of the changes he makes to Fightback.

Fightback is a detailed policy, but it contains three essential elements: tax reform, industrial-relations reform and cutting public spending. The first of these present Dr Hewson with a greatest difficulty. The electorate has shown a remarkable lack of sophistication in its response to the Coalition’s tax reforms. It sees just a 15 per cent tax on the necessities of life. Full stop. Churches, welfare groups, people responding to polls, the Government and others have highlighted that single point, neglecting the other side of the equation. That is unfortunate, but it is the fact, and Dr Hewson would be wise to deal with it.
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The High Court has firmly and justifiably wrapped the Government over the knuckles for its shabby treatment of boat people held in detention. The treatment was shabby because the Government passed a law two days before the Federal Court was to resume hearing a case in which 37 Cambodians sought release from custody after up to two years in custody. The law attempted to prevent the court from hearing the case.

The calamity was the Government’s own making. Successive Governments have been caught in a dilemma. If they create rigid rules and apply them strictly they are accused of heartless inflexibility. If they allow more discretion they are accused of favouritism and permitting uncertainty. In the past 10 years, the Government has had disadvantage of both horns of the dilemma as its policy jumped from one to the other and then back, largely attempting to please ethnic lobbies on one hand and economic and union concerns on the other.
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Senator Graham has been a quiet man, publicly, since he resigned from the ministry in May. Last week, however, he gave a speech at the National Press Club to press gallery journalists. This is normally an off-the-record affair, but since Paul Keating used the same occasion to bucket his then leader, anyone speaking at it could reasonably expect their comments to be made public. Thus it was with Senator Richardson. His speech was less colourful and less personally directed, but its message was as important for the political survival of Paul Keating as Paul Keating’s was two year before. Essentially, Senator Richardson said it was not good enough for the Government to use negative scare tactics on the GST and industrial relations to win the next election. It must present a positive platform for a fifth term.

Senator Richardson is quite right. Though the polls indicate that Mr Keating has so far done well out of John Hewson’s messianic determination to lead his party across the Red Sea and into the promised land, it might not be enough. Voters, though mistrustful of Dr Hewson’s rigidity, his tax on the essentials of life and fearful of an industrial-relations climate where their jobs depend on a bosses whim, might still conclude next year that the messiah you don’t know is better than the devil you do. This is because economic conditions in Australia might get to such a pitiable state that desperate straws must be clutched at. In that environment scare tactics might not work because rational voters will conclude things cannot get any worse. Once negative scare tactics are removed the Government must look to presenting a positive program for a fifth term, because the alternative _ standing on its record _ is untenable for this Government.
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A Mr Informal of West Hobart has lodged a writ in the High Court seeking that Graeme Campbell, the Labor Member for Kalgoorlie, be disqualified from the House of Representatives.

Mr Informal asserts that Mr Campbell is a British citizen who has publicly announced he will not renounce it and as a result Mr Campbell is under “”acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience or adherence to a foreign power” in breach of Section 44 of the Constitution.

On November 25, the High Court declared that Phil Cleary, who has been putatively elected as the Member for Wills was ineligible to sit in the House of Representatives because he held an office of profit under the Crown contrary to Section 44 and that two of Mr Cleary’s opponents were disqualified because they were under acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience or adherence to a foreign power (Greece and Switzerland).
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Immigration, especially from Asia, is down and tourism and business trips (both into and out of Australia) are up, according to figures for the September quarter issued by the Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday.

The immigration decrease continues a downward trend since 1988, accelerating in the last six months. The number of permanent departures has increased from 1986 to 1990 and then started to fall. Permanent departures in September 92, at 6580, were 9 per cent down on September 91.

Permanent settler arrivals fell 26 per cent to 23,310 from the September 91 quarter to the September 92 quarter. The main decreases were from people born in Malaysia (58 per cent), Vietnam (50 per cent), Taiwan (49 per cent), Hong Kong (41 per cent), India (35 per cent), Philippines (34 per cent) and Britain (33 per cent). New Zealand settler arrivals were up 9 per cent. The former Soviet Union and Iraq increased, too.
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Stewart Ross is going broke. He grows vegetables in the black-soil flats at Pialligo, near the Molonglo River.

It’s not that he’s a bad farmer, or that his vegetables are not fresh. it’s just that he has nowhere to sell them. He, a dozen other ACT fruit and vegetable growers and dozens more from as far away as Orbost want to market directly their produce in Canberra. But the present marketing system won’t let them. They can only send their produce to Sydney.

On some occasions, Mr Ross has sent produce from his 20-hectare farm to Sydney only to find transport and agents’ fees are not covered by the price he has got. The result has been a bill, not a profit.
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Two MPs called on the Federal Government yesterday to make heroin and other opiates available on prescription to addicts.

The Member for Eden-Monaro, Jim Snow, and the Member for Perth, Ric Charlesworth, said urgent action was need to combat the organised crime and the health and social problems association with drugs.

Mr Snow told the House that prohibition had led to black markets, violence, greater spread of AIDS, enticement of young people into drugs, murder and crimes by addicts to support their addiction.
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The general population, drug users and service providers want a controlled trial in Canberra to give heroin to addicts, but the police are against it, according to survey results published in the latest issue of Criminology Australia.

The survey was done after a committee of the ACT Legislative Assembly recommended it.

It showed 66 per cent of the community was in favour and 27 per cent against with 7 per cent don’t knows. Service providers were 71-19-9 and drug users 76-14-10. Police, however, responded the other way with 31 in favour, 63 against and 7 don’t knows.
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The court always has been there to determine the limits of state and federal power, but this year it did it differently. In the past, the great majority of cases limiting federal and state power have centred around two sections of the Constitution: Section 51 and Section 92. Section 51 lists the powers of the Federal Parliament: powers such as coinage, light houses, corporations and external affairs. Section 92 says trade, commerce and intercourse between the state shall be absolutely free. Section 92 cases are about whether a state of Federal law are invalid because they offend the section. They usually take the form: does a Tasmanian law stopping the sale of all “”undersize” 25cm crayfish illegally prevent the interstate trade in 20cm South Australian crayfish imported into the Hobart seafood market? Does a Federal law requiring margarine to have a set level of preservative stop free interstate trade in free-range margarine. And so on.

This year, however, the five cases which gave rise to most comment, while still addressing the main questions of Federal and state power, did so from other parts of the Constitution, or were implied from the Constitution as a whole, or were radical reinterpretations of the common law. The five were: Mabo on indigenous title, Cleary on who can be an MP, the case on the right to legal representation, the free-political-speech case and the boat-people case. Here was brave new ground.
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