July 2004 Archives

Had an entertaining little flame war here. Young Yobbo thinks that the government should not fund broadcasting. Read it to get the gist.

Yobbo has a legitimate view and he has every right to it. It's just that I don't agree with him.

The ABC, in my opinion, fills a void in the media landscape which commercial media, being profit driven, can't deliver. Commercial media finds it difficult to take risks, is editorially influenced by the ambitions of its owners, and will always tend to cater to the lowest common denominator.

The ABC's charter protects it from the influence of government, hence, despite the ABC board being regularly stacked with friends of the government of the day, provides it with the means of providing much more interesting program lineups, and much more independent news services.

Keating hated the ABC, and the present mob have whinged mightily about it. Seems to me they must be straight down the middle if both sides can't stand them. The democratic process is strengthened by the ABC's existence.

Just rest assured, Yobbo, that the Boomer's of the world, many of whom vote conservative, will fight tooth and nail to prevent the ABC from falling into commercial hands. There's a lot of us, and we're going to be around for a while yet, so best get used to it.

The ACCC thinks Testra has an anti competitive hold on the market, asking it to divest itself of its holding in Foxtel.

The national competition regulator called on Telstra to divest its shareholding in Foxtel, arguing the company' dominance of the telecommunications market continues to retard effective competition.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) chairman Graeme Samuel said many aspects of the telecommunications market remained far from truly competitive.

"The continuing dominance of Telstra over virtually all aspects of the industry continues to retard effective competition, and industry initiatives to overcome this appear still to be concentrated in the central business districts," Mr Samuel told the Australian Council for Infrastructure Development in Sydney.

"Telstra owns two of the three major local access networks outside the CBDs or major cities, it owns the copper wire that connects virtually every household and business in Australia and it owns the largest cable network.

This is the problem with Telstra; it's a service company that also owns and controls the means of delivering the service. It's similar to having one trucking company owning all the roads. Makes competing against them rather difficult.

It's hard to see the remainder of Telstra being sold in the medium to long term. The company has a reputation for using its market advantage to stymie competition. This market power worries voters, particularly in the regions, who fear that they will miss out on obtaining new technology that is expensive to implement and which is not profitable for Telstra.

Politically, many of the National Party as well as Labor are opposed to the full privatisation. Then there's the Senate hurdle. Unless the government goes for a double dissolution election, it's unlikely that the Senate will agree to full privatisation for the forseeable future.

The sensible path is to break up the company into two divisions. One part delivers telephony services, the other maintains the exchanges and the network.

The first division, Telstra, would be made up of the 49% already in private hands, plus or minus the proportion of that part of the existing business.

The second part could remain in government hands or privatised with the restriction that it can't offer or have interests in service provision. By regulation, it would have obligations to provide infrastructure in the regions. Competition would be assured. For the organisation to be profitable, it would be to its advantage to make it as easy as possible for competing telcos to plug into and use its network.

Telstra's copper and cable network should be regarded and maintained as a national asset, to be used without restriction by competing service providers.

Today the Flood report inquiring into Australia's intelligence services is released, and, what a surprise! No evidence of government interference is found that would have effected the service's assessments on the likelyhood of WMDs in Iraq.

Like Bush and Blair before him, Howard admits the assessments were wrong, but it was nothing to do with the government 'heavying' the agencies. Fancy that!

To those who think that this whole exercise was to deliver the politically palatable result for the government should remember the first rule of having an enquiry as stipulated by the BBC's satirical sitcom 'Yes Minister.' You need to pick someone 'sound.' Sir Humphrey himself couldn't have picked better than Phillip Flood.

Mr Flood's recommendations also reflect his background as a former head of the ONA and a former head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Although there's no suggestion that Mr Flood did not conduct the enquiry openly or honestly, surely choosing someone a bit more independent of the organisations being investigated would have made the whole exercise more credible.

As it is, the enquiry doesn't mean much. I can't imagine anyone in the organisation and valuing their career and working relationships stating that political pressure was brought to bear on their analysis. It's not surprising that the enquiry found none.

What is more credible is that intelligence analyst Andrew Wilkie resigned from the organisation before the Iraq conflict started. He claimed the sort of interference that the Flood enquiry failed to find. Regarding the enquiry, he stated;

More than ever there is a desperate need for a detailed inquiry into the Government's relationship with the intelligence services and the misuse of intelligence material.

Fat chance! The government's got the findings and the headlines they wanted. They're counting on public apathy to bury the issue. Depressingly, they're probably got the effect they wanted.

This is a rare event. I have some sympathy regarding a John Howard policy position, after he stated last week that the government had dropped plans for a nuclear waste dump in South Australia. Obviously worried about some South Australian marginals, he buckled under to the objections of the South Australia state government.

The Commonwealth's view is that the states will now have to clean up their own mess when disposing of low level radio active waste, the type generated in hospitals and the like. What they're going do with the high level waste generated by the Lucas Heights reactor, a Commonwealth facility, is unclear.

Despite the concerns of well meaning objectors, a waste facility could be safely placed in any of the larger states. Australia is one of the most sparsely populated and geologically stable continents in the world. It's an ideal place to safely store low grade nuclear waste, particulary the small amounts we produce. Stored in remote, stable geological strata deep below the surface, this type of waste would pose no threat to the environment.

Even higher level waste could be stored quite safely deep underground. As long as the waste was contained properly, the regions geological stablility would ensure it could be stored away from the biosphere for the thousands of years.

The environmental lobby would do us all a favour by supporting practical solutions for this problem. Having the Commonwealth back down when they feel vulnerable is not a win. The election will be over before the end of the year, but the waste, stored above ground and close to urban areas, will remain.

A work colleague and I had a standing joke when the situation in Iraq started going pear shaped after President Bush's notorious "Mission Accomplished" message. We imagined the Bush chairing the US cabinet, lots of serious faces arranged around a large table, all looking grim after the latest atrocity.

After some discussion about what to do, a voice pipes up; "What we need is a strong man to bang heads together and keep all the factions in line! Someone, well, like, 'what's his name?'"

Clicks his fingers as he remembers. "Saddam! That's the type of guy we need!" he says.

How little we thought that the parody may turn into truth. The story of , if true, is a disaster for the new Iraqi state. It means a continuation of western sponsored authoritarian governments that have been a feature of the region for over a century.

Life must be getting tough for the 'no win no pay' suburban litigation solicitor when their legal brothers on the bench won't play the game.

The slip and fall case - once a staple of the personal injuries lawyer and the bane of local councils - has been virtually wiped from the litigation landscape.

At least eight verdicts in favour of plaintiffs have been reversed on appeal in the past year as judges adopt tougher lines on what constitutes negligence.

With the majority of parliamentarians coming from a legal background, it's devilishly hard to reform legal practices that directly effects the income of the legal profession. NSW Premier Carr (a non lawyer) deserves a lot of credit for legal reform, firstly in the area of property conveyancing, and in tort reform.

Another article, this time in the business section of the Sydney Morning Herald illustrates what's wrong with adversarial litigation.

Shareholders of James Hardie Industries would be better off donating funds to asbestos victims because of the uncertainty of future law suits, the company said yesterday.

James Hardie (JH), a company that used to manufacture asbestos building materials, is under fire because it's alledged they restructured the business to avoid liability for asbestos related injury.

The approach of just paying out compensation to the victims rather than go through the courts benefits everyone except the lawyers. It would be cheaper for JH, saving on their legal costs and by providing smaller payouts, as the victims could settle for less and be no worse off because they wouldn't lose half the proceeds to pay their legal reps. The victims and families wouldn't have to go through the protracted stress of lengthy court proceedings.

The answer to this whole litigation mess is to have a national no fault insurance scheme that minimises the layers' roles except in extreme cases of criminal negligence.

The ALP is softening its stand over Iraq. One can surmise that Labor's internal polling is showing this issue holds a substantial degree of danger to their re-election chances.

The first move, announced this morning, is that Kim Beazley is rejoining the shadow front bench.

Opposition leader Mark Latham today announced Mr Beazley would return from the backbenches to become the party's new defence spokesman.

Beazley is a strong supporter of the US alliance and is regarded as one of the better Defence Ministers of the recent era. During his time, Beazley forged close connections with the US defence administration, and his appointment will strengthen the perception that Labor is not about to tear up the ANZUS treaty if they regain office.

The second move, announced tonight, is a commitment to help rebuild Iraq but not provide any more troops.

In a major foreign policy speech, Mr Latham said the ALP would leave security for Australia's diplomatic mission in Baghdad, and would leave Australian warships and RAAF Orion aircraft in the Persian Gulf.

But the remainder of Australia's 850 personnel in Iraq would be brought home by the end of the year.

In their place, Mr Latham promised to send customs officers, health workers and administrative staff to help the new Iraqi administration secure its borders and improve its health system.

This is a common sense policy move by the ALP. In addition to providing sensible humanitarian aid to Iraq, it largely negates Labor's Iraq policy from being an election issue. I'm guessing that this will neutralise Howard's oft used statement that Australians aren't 'quitters.'

Seems like the government doesn't like this development ...

"It still seems to be a policy of cutting and running," Defence Minister Robert Hill said.

It will be harder to convince the electorate of this after tonight.

I happen to live in the Prime Minister's electorate of Bennelong. The upside of this is that I can directly vote against the PM; the downside is that we receive mail from him every so often.

Last Friday we got a glossy brochure with a military theme. Lots of army stuff and words about not quitting. A cursory glance and in the recycle bin it went.

Today I readin the Sun Herald 'Be on alert for more terror ads - Anti-Terror Watch':

The resurrection of the "Be alert, not alarmed" campaign was prompted by a need to reinforce the National Security Hotline number "because people weren't remembering it", a Government source said.

They're going to make sure we don't forget it; aided by $15 million worth of reminding. They will hope that pulling out of Iraq equates with an increased risk of terrorism in the mind of voters.

Hopefully I'm wrong, but I think they're onto something. In my opion, Labor's Iraq stance is their biggest impediment to winning government. The Government parties used the same tactics in the 60s and 70s regarding Labor's Vietnam policy to stay in power. They think it will work again.

The thought of Australia pulling out of Iraq will disturb a lot of voters. Howard knows this. We'll hear a lot more of it over the coming months.

The bloggers lament: Not enough time! Caught between work, family and social obligations, the blog lapses.

Still, it's been an interesting week.

No election in August. Not surprising given the polls and the incumbent's lack of 'ticker.' My guess is 23 October. Howard won't risk going without George, who's on the block in November. Not much use pushing the scare line of risking the alliance with Labor if there's a new US president.

Speaking of the US, full marks to Latham for telling the US busybodies to keep their noses out of our domestic politics. You'd think they'd have enough problems of their own without worrying about ours, too.

Howard's policy speech in Adelaide tells us nothing new. Are we surprised? Not really. He serves up a lot of motherhood statements, and not much else.

All governments have a 'use by' date. Three terms seems to be the magic number. Once exceeded, the ruling party lacks ideas and drive, to be replaced by a born to rule arrogance. Unfortunately, some governments have to be elected for one term too many before it becomes obvious to the electorate. (NSW may be a current example.) Let's hope that doesn't happen before the end of the year.

Tonight the ABC TV aired 'Australian Story,' I was dismayed at the subject matter.

It's not often that I speak badly of the ABC. What would be worth watching without it? (And SBS, for that matter.) I usually leave the criticism of the ABC to those Houses of Snark, the legions of right wing bloggers who deliriously believe that the commercial media could fill the void if the ABC ceased to exist.

'Australian Story' is usually about Australians who have had extraordinary lives, or who have overcome some adversity of the magnitude that leaves you wondering how they ever survived.

Two previous shows stick in my mind. The first was about a young rural woman who had a shocking accident, becoming entangled in farm machinery. She lost an arm and suffered other appalling injuries. 'Australian Story' told how she miraculously survived, and the struggle to rehabilitate from her injuries.

The second was about a surgeon (orthopedic, I think) who was hit by a car, suffering injuries that should have ended his career. By self admission he was an arrogant sod before the accident, but during his struggle to overcome his injuries and convince skeptical colleagues that he could perform his former surgical duties, became a more easy going and likeable person.

'Australian Story' tonight was about the Rivkins. As most Australians would know, Rene Rivkin, a brash and successful Sydney stockbroker, was convicted of insider trading and sentenced to nine months of weekend detention.

The story was about the effect of Rene's behaviour on his family before, during and after the trial.

I don't doubt that Rene's relatives had a hard time coping his antics and the media attention. It's just that I wonder if people of the Rivkins' family standing need this kind of exposure funded by the Australian taxpayer.

What influence did Rivkin himself have on the show? His doctor was openly talking about his illnesses. I doubt if he could do that without Rivkin's permission. Rivkin is under investigation regarding other business dealings. Is it right that the ABC seems to suggest it's all because he's mentally unstable?

There are many Australian families in similar situations. Due to mental illness, drugs, alcohol or gambling problems they have to cope without the financial security of the Rivkins, and without the media support that the Rivkins have received courtesy of the ABC.

'Australian Story' should stick to describing the plight and triumphs of ordinary Australians, not the privileged who are quite capable of doing it themselves.

Just watched Australia defeat the combined Pacific Islands rugby team. The Islanders were playing as a combined team in their first ever test match.

Even thought the Aussies won, I was impressed by the opposition. They were very physical, and at times took the game right up to the Australians. The Australians sustained a lot of injuries and looked very worse for wear by the end of the game.

Have to say the Islanders looked far better than England did a week earlier.

The Islanders play as individuals in competitions around the world, but don't have the depth to field competitive test teams from their own countries.

The captain, in an interview after the game, summed up by saying that this sort of match is a step up from what they're used to in Super 12s. Well, after they've played a few time together at test match level, I reckon they could be a new and welcome force in world rugby.

A police officer is undergoing a committal hearing after being charged with maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent and three counts of discharging a firearm likely to endanger the safety of another person.

In a committal hearing at Downing Centre Local Court, Sergeant Shane Cribb faced four charges over the shooting of Shannon Johnston, a career criminal, in a car park in Abbotsford on January 2, 2001, while he was an undercover detective at Burwood.

I imagine the talk back lines on Sydney radio are running hot on this issue at the moment. Particularly as a known criminal is the potential beneficiary if the police officer is convicted.

I have sympathy for the policeman who had to make a split second decision in a stressful situation, and hope the case will end with his aquittal.

The officers parked their unmarked car across the exit ramp of the block of units and, as the men drove towards it, Cribb shouted for them to stop. But they scraped past the car and escaped, the court heard.

Cribb later told police that the car "came straight at me. I couldn't get out of the way quick enough so I drew my revolver and fired a couple of shots".

Hopefully, this court matter will reinforce the rules that guide police in the situations where it is acceptable to discharge their firearms in a public place. I am a firm believer that legally condoned force should be proportional to the threat posed on the enforcer.