Crispin Hull

Crimenet – crime, criminals, paedophiles, missing persons, wanted and stolen property database

HUMANS love to trade and trading can be one of the most rewarding and insightful part of travel, tourism, holiday or vacation – – call it what you will.

The Trobriand Islands are off the north coast of the eastern tail of Papua New Guinea. I went there very briefly after some engaging tropical diving near Milne Bay — the scene of the first Japanese defeat of World War II.

The Trobriands were just one stop on an island hop back to Port Moresby. At the airport a large number of islanders gathered at the perimeter gate, about 30 metres from where the aircraft had come to a stop. They were displaying beautiful ebony carvings with inlaid pearl. Now I am a sucker for ethno junk, precisely because I it don’t believe that this craft is junk. Usually, it is an expression of culture as well as a way for local people to make money. And the cost per hour of work is good value anyway – – better than the average painting at a gallery in suburban Australia. But if there is nothing else to do, no other employment, why not work for hours for some rare cash to obtain things otherwise unobtainable.

I looked at the carvings and was then attracted by a very odd shaped bundle being held on a coconut string by a young man.
Continue reading “2000_05_may_crabs”

Business has cautiously welcomed the Budget, but expressed concern about the fragility of the surplus and welfare groups have welcomed some parts and slammed others.

Australian Council of Social Service president Michael Raper said the Government had failed to deliver for the two million Australians currently living in poverty.

“”Where are the big ticket items that would have really addressed their needs,” he said. “”Where are the increases in unemployment payments, where are the wage subsidy programs to help unemployed people get a share of the jobs, where are the extra childcare programs, where’s the help for Aboriginal communities?”

The government was incapable of balancing economic policy with social imperatives, Mr Raper said.

“”It’s a very thin surplus because of wasted expenditure, tax cuts on people earning $60,000 a year…which has meant they have no real capacity to address the needs of the 750,000 households living in poverty in Australia today,” he said.

The Council on the Aging said older Australians should have been given more money to combat unemployment. The council’s executive director Denys Correll told reporters the elderly had been only given minor attention.
Continue reading “2000_05_may_budgetreact”

Hey, big spender

The media releases issued with the Budget papers told the story. Every minister desperate to extract some voter mileage out of the Budget. It was a far cry from the Coalition’s message of 1996 when fiscal rectitude was a virtue, when the Beazley $10 billion black hole had to be filled in.

Last night they were glorifying in spending. It was Whitlamesque. Millions for this, a program for that, a boost for this and more for that.

Some Minister’s cheekily took credit for things already announced. Indeed, much of last night’s Budget was reannouncements of things Ministers and the Government had already taken credit for at politically pertinent times.

“”Wooldridge delivers largest ever country health Budget”, the Minister for Health’s media release said.

Bronwyn Bishop did not need to put herself in the headline. Her name is already in very large type in the media release masthead. “”$66m boost for older Australians,” it told us.

“Government doubles funding for remote air services,” John Anderson told us, and that the “”Budget delivers” $450.1 million for NSW roads” and a similarly worded one for every other state. Ian Macdonald took credit for the ACT’s road funding boost. He reannounced funding for a Federal Highway duplication construction of which is almost complete and he reannounced the funding for the Barton Highway duplication that was in last year’s Budget. At least it has not been built.

David Kemp had a $13.4m “”boost” and a 32.6 per cent increase. Jackie Kelly had “”$5m additional funding for elite sport”. (Sport is the only human endeavour one is allowed to be elite in in Australia.)

Spend, spend, spend. And all these Ministers taking credit for spending our money and their binge resulting in interest rate increases that we will have to pay for.

Such a far cry from when the Coalition came to office attacking the profligacy of its Labor’s predecessors. Orwell was right — pigs walking on two legs.

At a glance

Surplus $4.2m

Social capital program

Major refurbishment for Govt flats.

1700 blocks of land released

Canberra beautification program

$7000 for first-home buyers

$130m for road upgrades to unlock Gungahlin and Tuggeranong traffic jams.

$5.3m for cycleways over four years.

151 PS redundancies

Accelerated program to fund PS super

More police on the beat

GST fully passed on in govt charges

Brisbanites squealed when it was revealed that a sub-website of Virgin Airlines dared say that Brisbane was a dreary town. Well, Canberra cops it every day.

Canberra-bashing is a national sport while Queensland basks in the sunshine of Federal Government favouritism.

Or does it?

Well Tuesday’s Budget reveals something contrary to popular mythology. The ACT is doing very well from the Federal funding and Queensland is doing poorly.

It is exactly the opposite as in the early 1970s when then Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen blamed the evil Whitlam socialists in Canberra of cruelling Queensland while allowing Canberra fat cats to bask in cream. In fact, Joh had his hand out first of all the states to get the money from whatever social-engineering or quasi-nationalisation program the Whitlam Government had going.

So what has changed? The ACT got self-government not because of some outbreak of democratic spirit, but because the Feds wanted us to pay our own way and have someone else cop the blame. Remember the Whitlam Government lost one of the traditionally Labor ACT seats. The Hawke Government did not want the same thing to happen. The ACT was to be funded like a state. There were some transitional arrangements, but by 1993 the ACT had become part of what is called the Commonwealth Grants Commissions Relativities.
Continue reading “2000_05_may_act budget”

Another scuba diver died last weekend. She was a German national who had been in Australia about six months. There seems to have been a spate of them. In February, a female British tourist died off Bondi and last December a female Japanese tourist died off Manly while diving with the same company as the British tourist and also last December a Sydney woman died after going missing on a dive trip in far north Queensland. In June last year a Japanese woman died during a night dive off Exmouth in Western Australia.

These incidents follow the famous case of the American couple left at sea after a scuba trip on the Barrier Reef in 1998.

Is there cause for grave alarm or are these cases the acceptable risk of an inherently risky undertaking? Two things stand out here: females and tourists are dying far out of proportion to their numbers among divers. I think also that Australia has a special problem, but more of that anon.

It is dispiriting because most scuba diving deaths are avoidable.

That said, scuba diving is a joyous sport. My feeling is one of privilege. Just a couple of generations ago, under the sea was a no-go area. Now, we can see the wonders and diversity of marine life. And in a world full of roads, power lines, McDonald’s wrappers, farms and almost blanket human meddling, the underwater is a wilderness, an Eden of natural purity. In any small patch of ocean reef there is an array of intricate subtlety – a crustacean with delicate feelers and legs, a nudibranch with colours from a Jackson Pollock palate, a graceful shark elegantly sliding along a gutter in a forest of yellow-orange kelp and a sea-horse that has taken on the shape and colour of the kelp itself. It is where God and Darwin co-exist.
Continue reading “2000_04_april_scuba”

Short-sightedness again pervades Canberra’s development.

It is only because Burley Griffin’s design was so excellent that the city still feels good, despite the utter ignorance and small-mindedness of the people in charge of building things in it.

This week’s decision by Brendan Smyth to “”call-in” the development application for the Canberra Centre is just the latest in sorry 80 year history of bureaucrats and entrepreneurs trampling on the Burley Griffin legacy.

The “”call-in” means that the development will go ahead irrespective of public consultation. Many people are up set about that. They feel why have public consultation if the Minister will go ahead anyway. I am not so concerned about the truncation of the public consultation process. Rather I am concerned that the people who should be the public guardians of the Canberra vision just do not see they have a roll. They look at each individual development application in isolation. They don’t seem to relate developments to the overall plan of the city. Doing that is important.
Continue reading “2000_04_april_planning axes”

There was a little political cross-dressing in the Senate this week.

The Senate Select Committee on Information Technologies, chaired by Liberal Jeannie Ferris, brought down its report on Monitoring Australia’s Media. The report looked at how complaints about media performance are resolved.

The Government members — normally proponents of self-regulation funded by industry and letting industry and the private sector get on with it — proposed a statutory Media Complaints Commission, funded by the taxpayer.

The Labor Party members — normally the proponents of government intervention and busy-bodying — dissented saying industry self-regulation was working and there was no need for a Whitlamesque let’s-set-up-a-commission approach.

Is there a need for a complaints commission as set out by the committee (see panel for its findings)?

The extraordinary thing about the committee’s proposal is that it apparently received no public demand for it. It seems to be a creature of its own conception.

There is a fair amount wrong with the Australian media and changes can be made to the way complaints are dealt with, but a government commission seems a diversion of public money to deal with a problem that is not there, or at least is not very serious. The money would be better spent on health and education.

The committee concluded there is a lot of public disquiet about media conduct. That is probably right. Regular surveys suggest the public thinks journalists are scumbags on par with used-car sellers. However, lots of people still watch TV, listen to radio read newspapers and buy cars. There is also a lot a public apathy. There are avenues for complaint, but if there are thousands of aggrieved people out there, they complain only in their hundreds.
Continue reading “2000_04_april_media watchdog”

The committee said it heard of numerous instances that question the success of the self-regulation by the information and communications industries, including breaches in the privacy, display of undesirable images, broadcasting of undesirable content and news broadcasts that are influenced by commercial arrangements.

Improvements could be made to self-regulation, including: better and more proactive enforcement of the self-regulatory codes of practice; an increased awareness of and ability to complain about breaches of codes of practice by the information and communications industries; increased guidance on the self-regulatory codes of practice that protect an individual’s right to privacy.

The committee recommends the establishment of an independent statutory body, the Media Complaints Commission (MCC), which will be a one-stop-shop for all complaints and will assist to enforce standards established by self-regulation.
Continue reading “2000_04_april_media summary”