Crispin Hull

Independent MLA Michael Moore has given notice of a Bill to repeal the law providing jail for public servants who leak documents.

He proposes also to introduce a whistle-blower protection law.

Mr Moore gave notice of his repeal Bill last week. It repeals section 10 and 11 of the Crimes (Offences against the Government) Act 1989.

Section 10 provides two years’ jail for ACT public servants who communicate official information to unauthorised people.
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Evidence would not be excluded because the media might give it undue emphasis, the ACT Coroner, John Burns, ruled yesterday.

He was inquring into the death of Brian Lankuts, aged five months, who died on November 21, 1990, after surgery to correct a skull abnormality which threatened to compress his brain.

He rejected a submission from Stuart Littlemore, acting for three doctors: neurosurgeon Dr Nadana Chandran, maxillary facial and oral surgeon Dr Peter Vickers and plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr Alan Ferguson.

Mr Littlemore, who presents the program Mediawatch on ABC television, submitted that certain evidence should be excluded because üThe Canberra Times would give it undue emphasis and because it would not assist the inquiry. He said it was public knowledge that several doctors were suing what he called the local paper over an article about Brian Lankuts.

Mr Burns allowed the evidence saying he would make decisions about admissibility on the relevance to the inquiry and the issues before it. How the media reported the evidence was not an issue. Anyone complaining about that could take action against the newspaper.

Dr Chandran and Dr Vickers are suing üThe Canberra Times along with two others who have not been mentioned in, and are not represented at, the inquest.

Counsel assisting, Steve Loomes, sought to tender the whole of a statement by Constable Paul McEwan. However, this course was objected to by three lawyers, including Mr Littlemore, representing six doctors, and counsel representing the ACT Board of Health, Pamela Coward.

Some evidence about Constable McEwan’s conclusions about witnesses state of mind was excluded, but other material objected to was allowed in.

The figures were in the annual report of the president of the ACT Law Society, Russell Miller, in the society’s latest Gazette.

The problems covered: crime, traffic, family, tenancy and other areas. 140 ACT solicitors gave their time free over the year. The bureau, at 21-23 London Circuit, is open 12.30pm to 2pm weekdays. Appointments to 2475700.

Non-grasping lawyers 2: The society gave $615,090 in grants to the ACT Legal Aid Commission and the Welfare Rights Centre for legal aid.
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Bettie McNee, of Freehills, was elected vice-president. Robert Clynes, of Minters, was re-elected vice-president. Joanne Rees, of Phillips Fox, was elected secretary and Brian Loftus, of Gallens, treasurer. Michael Phelps, of Phelps Reid, who was recently elected Treasurer of the Law Council of Australia, remains immediate past president.

It was a matinee performance of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde when Paul Keating addressed the National Press Club yesterday. No, Dr Hewson was not Dr Jekyll. True to Robert Louis Stevenson’s text, Paul Keating played both parts.

The first part was the prepared speech in which Keating played the mild-mannered Dr Jekyll. In this age of the 18-second grab, it is a role the public rarely sees. He put a carefully constructed argument with little rhetoric and lots of statistics and jargon from the Treasury.

“”30 per cent marginal income tax rate if business were to enjoy the $20 billion 70 per cent of households $25,000 each would be up to $25 a week worse off $90,000, they would find themselves up to $105 a week and up to $5460.”

Then I saw Rowan Atkinson. It was just like that skit where he falls asleep in church, slumps on the pew, and falls into a kneeling position without quite falling on the floor. Meanwhile, the sermon is droning in the background and you can’t quite make out any words, but the intonation is clearly that of a sermon.

Atkinson was two tables away. His eyes glazed over.small effects on output, the current account and employment analysis of the major elements negative effect on the economy . 10.1 per cent, 10.7 per cent.

Atkinson’s pupils rolled back. Yes, he was going to slump into the cheese just as 832,000 small businessmen were “”destined to become the new tax collectors for Dr Hewson”. The laughter jolted him, and his eyes darted around to see if anyone had seen him nodding.

Keating waded into payroll tax, so Atkinson was still not saved from the cheese plate. Tables of diplomats, retired and semi-active public servants, lawyers and political groupies barely stayed tuned. The matinee was a disappointment. It was well-argued case, but they had come for a performance. there is little difference between payroll tax and a tax on the value that is added to the products by labour. The economic effects of the payroll tax .

By now even Keating was getting bored with own prepared speech, like Jekyll bored with life. So he left out a great slab of it and Atkinson was saved from the cheese-plate.

Many in the audience had never seen a full performance of Keating as Jekyll: intelligent, softly spoken and well-reasoned. They had only seen him as Hyde, and only 18-second grabs of Hyde at that.

The ABC’s Jim Middleton, presiding, then administered the potion of transmogrification: “”We now move to questions.”

Dennis Grant of Channel Seven asked about pay television.

Immediately, the Treasury jargon was gone. Reason and politeness cast aside: “”You guys have given the GST a sleigh ride for a year now. And all we get is pay television.”

Grant persisted with a question about putting the ABC in the pay-television queue.

Keating: “”This question is not encouraging me to put Channel Seven in the queue.”

Keiren McLeonard from Network Radio was given an answer because of her colour co-ordination and red hair.

This was Hyde at his worse. Keating couldn’t help himself; he was charged by the drug of questions, and loving it. He was into humiliation and insults and colourful language. He insulted another journalist’s former publication and The Australian was just “”wrong”.

Atkinson, by now, was wide awake. However, there was not to be much more. Perhaps Keating, himself, like Jekyll, could see the danger. He cut the matinee short. There was the big performance to come on the Hill.

In that performance, Jekyll doesn’t get a role; it is all Hyde. It is, alas for Keating, the side that nearly all of the people only ever see him in.

And yesterday on the Hill he relished in it, saying to Dr Hewson with easily mustered vituperation that he would not call an early election: “”because I want to do you slowly, mate.”

One wonders, as more and more questions will be administered in the lead up to the next election, whether Dr Jekyll will ever be able to reassert himself at will.

THOSE who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. And I am talking about recent history. Remember the Murphy affair and more recently the Greiner affair. Much of the uncertainty and injustice done in the those cases resulted from the words in the Constitution and the ICAC Act, respectively, about judging the conduct of public officials.

The Judicial Commissions Bill has just been tabled in the ACT Legislative Assembly. It sets out the procedure for the removal of judicial officers for misbehaviour or incapacity. Yet it doing so it uses very similar words to those that caused so much controversy in the Greiner and Murphy cases.

To be fair, the Bill goes some way to address the difficulties that faced Parliament in the Murphy case, but not completely.
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The ACT Chief Justice, Justice Jeffrey Miles, says the ACT judiciary is not fully independent.

In the latest Australian Law Journal he has expressed concern that present legislative arrangements mean an ACT government could do an ACT Supreme Court judge what the Federal Government did to Justice Jim Staples.

Justice Staples was a member of the Arbitration Commission. Legislation abolished that commission, replacing it with the Industrial Relations Commission, but Justice Staples was not reappointed to the new body. No allegation of misconduct was ever made against him.
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The ACT health budget for this financial year will be cut and jobs and probably services will be affected.

The cut is 2.5 per cent. Health will receive $219.2 million from the Consolidated Fund in the 1992-93 ACT Budget to be brought down by the Chief Minister and Treasurer, Rosemary Follett, on September 15.

The information comes in a departmental document apparently prepared either for the Chief Minister or the Minister for Health.
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The ACT health system is too top-heavy, according to the Opposition spokeswoman on health, Kate Carnell.

She said yesterday that greater efficiencies were needed to overcome the budget problem.

“”We have sacrificed efficiency for industrial peace for too long,” she said.

Ms Carnell was commenting on a report in üThe Canberra Times@ yesterday giving an overview of the ACT health budget to be brought down by the ACT Government later this month. The details were contained in a departmental document obtained by üThe Canberra Times.@
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The ACT Public Service wants 25% of all job applicants to be women before short lists are drawn up.

Guidelines have been drawn up to help managers achieve the goal. They have been circulated in at least one ministry, Attorney-General’s, Housing and Community Services and Urban Services.

The head of the department, Chris Hunt, said yesterday, “”It is important to get women to apply in areas where they might think were male-dominated.”
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