The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 17

WEDNESDAY 13 APRIL 1994 TH1 API- IT, Opinion-Analysis tsri Ample reason to get Editorial Opinion That is enough it is time to let John Bell rest Wednesday 13 April 1994 on with neighbors lluetratton: SARAH COOK Local government and the future tr "4 MOIRA RAYNER A FTER a gestation that seemed to be longer and more anguished for the onlookers JEL than for the parent, the Local Government Board has given birth to its report on the future of Melbourne's inner-suburban councils. To almost no one's surprise, the board recommended redistribution and amalgamation that will result in 18 councils coalescing into just nine "super" councils. The murmurs of dissent that formed something akin to background music throughout the report's compilation period swelled to a roar when it was released last week. The underlying theme of the dissidents, before and after the birth, remained unchanged. Enlargement of council areas would dilute the traditionally democratic character of local government.

The extent of savings as a result of amalgamations had been overstated by the advocates of change. And the contribution that experienced councillors and council officers could make to local government reform was being ignored. Many, including this newspaper, have acknowledged some justification in these complaints and expressed sympathy for the complainants, especially those who have contributed long and honorably to municipal life. Their ly surfacing as concern for the effects of amalgamation on such-ideals as grassroots democracy, local identity and provision of social services. In most cases, the board politely but firmly puts these objections to rest with a combination of fact and logic.

Consider the grassroots democracy argument. The key to this, it says, lies in distinguishing between quantity and quality in municipal representation. Are the ratepayers of Camberwell, it asks, who get by with only one councillor for every 5985 voters, at a democratic disadvantage when compared to the citizens of Port Melbourne, who enjoy the luxury of one councillor to every 846 voters? Such a comparison might well make the citizens of Camberwell, at least by the Prime Minister's notorious definition, undemocratic swill but they still enjoy the last laugh because, as the report also makes clear, the bigger the council, the lower its costs. This is not because larger councils provide fewer services but because costs can be slashed when fixed costs and overheads are spread across a large population. The figures it produces are startling.

In 1991-92, Victorian councils with populations below 20,000 spent an average of $830 a head while those with populations above 60,000 spent only a IOURNAL1ST knows about defamation law: if you spread a J. lying story about someone which, if people believed it, would bring them into hatred, ridicule or contempt, you are liable for damages. This is a constraint on freedom of speech to protect reputation, because what people think of you matters. This law benefits two classes of people: those who have the money to pay for Supreme Court proceedings, and the living. The poor or the dead do not, the law tells us, have a reputation to worry about.

In this instance the law is a hooved quadruped with long ears and a distinctive braying call. Let me explain why. The first example is personal. John Bryce, my great-great-great-grandfather, was Native Minister in New Zealand over a century ago. A chap called Rusden wrote a history of New Zealand which recorded the Maori oral tradition that the honorable minister as a young man, personally slaughtered Maori women and children during a skirmish in the "Maori waged over land rights, in 1868.

Old lohn Bryce sued for libel, and won. Generously, he did not collect the damages awarded, just the costs, having vindicated his reputation, or so he thought. He was wrong. The old story has gone forth and multiplied. One famous New Zealand artist even paints the face of lohn Bryce into many of his works as an icon of evil, an image of immense folk-mythological power, as instantly recognisable as Nolan's Ned Kelly.

There's nothing Bryce's descendants can do about it, but It infuriates them to hear the old lie repeated a century on. This has not ruined my life. I find it much more embarrassing that the old man was responsible for the second wave of wars over possession of Maori land and for the imprisonment of a Gandhi-like Maori prophet, Te Whiti, many years later. But the folk history is untrue. I am not the great-great-great-grand-daughter of a gung-ho killer: I'm the descendant of a conservative politician who loved "his" Maoris but did the reprehensible things that politicians do well, some of them.

Another myth closer to home comes from the media stories about the life and tragic death of John Bell, founder ml businessmen' but also care about, homeless kids and the and social justice, they're hypocrites. There was no evidence for the vicious gossip. Six months later it still hasn't stopped: even last week before the.v inquest began the ABC's 7.30 Report', recycled the tabloid tales by asking a.tr. young man who Bell had found a job for whether he had made sexual ad- vances to him: no, and no again. The police are now offended, and 0, yesterday suggested they would test" against the finding.

How sensi-tive, but only to criticism: how in- appropriate to demand vindication of their own opinion. Can we stop now? Gossip is If John Bell had been alive, c. 'The 7.30 Report' might have been libellous. Is it any less obnoxious be-u'. cause he's dead? In both examples of "defamation" John Bryce last centu- ry, lohn Bell last week courts tested the rumors and found no evidence to support suspicions of murder in the Bryce case, suicide and infamous conduct in Bell's but in neither case have these findings yet made popular history.

Don't those who make legends -v have a responsibility to get them right? Has Derryn apologised yet? Or the 'Na- tional Enquirer', or 'Who', or 'Truth', or the radio stations or television chart-nels? This is what I think is the truth about lohn Bell's life, and death. I him. This is what his friends, acquaintances, employees, colleagues, family, the kids he worked with and and the coroner said, and let them make his history. lohn Bell was a good man who worked hard; liked the good things that" $511. Indeed, if all inner Melbourne councils spent money at the same rate as the biggest council, total 15 SB.

In jszczi I expenditure would TfMnB1 I droD bv $96 million. sense of injury is understandable. But life moves fast and, as the board's report points out, Victoria must move, too, if we are to consider ourselves part of, and competitive in, the world market. Noses jolted temporarily out of joint are part of the price of progress. But the good news is that after regular but uni-formly ill-fated attempts at local-government reform dur TIM COLEBATCH ECONOMICS EDITOR THE URUGUAY round trade negotiations are not quite as old as Marrakesh, the ancient Moroccan citadel where they will end this week.

They just feel that way. But as one historic chapter in the intemationalisation of Australia's economy ends in Marrakesh, with the signing of the Uruguay round agreement opening the door to a boom in export opportunities, the Prime Minister, Mr Keating, has started drafting the next chapter: a campaign to link Australia and New Zealand to the future ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA). If he succeeds, it could be not only the next chapter in Australia's trade story, but the next chapter for many other nations too. In the post-Uruguay round era, the driving force in a world hooked on institutional change appears to be a search for wider, larger regional trading alliances. Before flying to Marrakesh, the Trade Minister, Senator McMullan, told 'The Age' his main job now was not to win another multilateral negotiation after the Uruguay round, but to develop regional trade links within the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group (APEC).

"APEC is the most important trade initiative for Australia in the next two years APEC and things happening under the APEC umbrella, including relations with AFTA," Senator McMullan said, adding: "But it's not our view that everything done under APEC need be done by everybody at the same time." To seek partners, of course, is not necessarily to find them. However long the Uruguay round took, once it started it never looked like failing. At this early stage, the odds against Mr Keating's latest initiative seem far more formidable. Malaysia's Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir, swiftly rejected the idea when it was first suggested in Melbourne last November by a Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand, Dr Supachai. In Indonesia, President Suharto has warned against developing APEC rapidly, and backed the ambitious plans of his Industry Minister, Dr Habibie, to develop high-tech industries in Indonesia.

AFTA itself is a modest agreement. It proposes only to reduce tariffs on manufactured exports between ASEAN members to five per cent by 2010. Countries may exclude sensitive items, and most farm produce is excluded. For Australia and New Zealand, the benefits of joining the neighbors are obvious. ASEAN is a potential market of 340 million people, mostly enjoying rapid growth, with a real output already four times our own, and protected by high tariffs and other barriers.

An Australia with free entry inside ASEAN's walls would be far more desirable as an investment location. For ASEAN countries, however, the benefits of linking up with Australia are far less obvious. The tariff cuts now in train will ensure that by 1996, all except Singapore will have free entry to Australian markets anyway, a few product areas aside. or 38 per cent. In fact, the correlation between size and efficiency is the recurring theme of the report.

The ratepayers of minuscule Port Melbourne, for example, employ one municipal worker for Ei1 the journos took off from there and told us what we wanted to hear: ol Esprit in Australia, who died sudden- lv last September. Because of the coro- I And would Australia really abolish tariffs on clothing imports from Indonesia, yet keep them on imports from China? Indeed, if Mr Keating's new campaign succeeds, it may well be because the spread of regional trading arrangements convinces Indonesia and Malaysia that they stand to lose more by spurning the trend than by joining it. For example: In Europe, the European Union is not only preparing to welcome neighbors like Norway, Sweden and Austria to its ranks, but is realising that it must open its doors, one way or another, to the battered economies of Eastern Europe, possibly even to Russia itself. The EU of 2004 could be veiy large. In Latin America, the Mercosur agreement has helped create a new wave of growth and confidence in Brazil, Argentina and their neighbors.

The six nations of Central America are attempting a similar negotiation. But these very nations are also queueing up to follow Mexico into the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada. George Bush's goal of a free trade agreement stretching from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego is fast gaining legs. Chile is the next in line, but by 1 July President Clinton is due to present Congress with a fuuher list of suitable candidates for free trade agreements. 'The Age' Washington correspondent, Pilita Clark, reports that trade insiders in Washington expect most Latin American countries to be on that list.

Moreover, senior administration officials told Clark it would be wrong to assume that only American countries will be on the list. Australia has long been seen in Washington as a potential fret-trade partner; so are New Zealand and Singapore. And if the world's largest market woos more and more partners into a web of alliances, how many would find it in their interests to stay out? Australia's foi'mer ambassador to GATT, Mi Aiiiii Oxlcy, of the Melbourne consulting firm International Tiade Strategies, argues that we could even see the unthinkable: a free Hade agreement between Japan and the US. "Isn't it likely thai at some point the US and Japan might decide that the best way to solve the friction between them is to set up some sort of free trade arrangement?" he asks. "There is already very substantial cross-investment between them.

We are now in a policy environment where the idea of other trading arrangements is loose, and every country is looking at which one could produce the benefits for it." Mr Oxley argues that Australia too should pursue its own interest. "The most important strategic interest for Australia in the next 20 years is to lock its economy into the Asian economy," he says. "That is so important to us that we should look at any instrument to achieve it." Mr Keating's proposal to link AFTA to our own Closer Economic Relations agreement with New Zealand is one such instrument. Mr Oxley suggests we also seek free trade agreements with South Korea and Taiwan, developed economies with strengths complementing our own. and which, like us, tend to be left out of others' groups.

The East Asia think-tank of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is about to release a report endorsing the idea of linking CER and AFTA. Officials agree that other APEC countries, including lapan and the US, would probably follow in our footsteps, bul see that as a welcome development towards an APEC free trade zone. And while free traders traditionally have seen regional trade agreements as the enemy of their ultimate goal of global free trade, analysts point out that the new generation of trade blocs are different. Far from raising barriers to outsiders, they have sought to lower them in the Uruguay round. To blue sky thinkers, indeed, large regional free trade zones could be the final step towards global free trade.

It is exciting, visionary stuff to dream of. But lakarta and Kuala Lumpur have different dreams, not easily reconciled with our own. Senator McMullan concedes it is early days; the job now, he says, is to put ideas on the table, explore them, and see what happens. Alan Stockdale (see letters page) is wiong. To have a gaud word for Joan Kirner does not make me an uncritical supporter of Lubor's fiscal record.

Nor do I selectively quote statistics; those I cited were the key figures on Victoria put out by the Grants Commission and the Bureau of Statistics. lid veiunt uic uuum now Kiiuwa mm John Bell didn't have or even think he that the SUCCessjul are might have aids; wasn't gay; didiVt secretly miserable. sexually exploit young people; hadn given up because his girlfriend money buys but in middle life won- dered about their real value and even felt a bit guilty about having loved surfing and being fit and the that he was good-looking and attractive to younger women; liked being photo- graphed with famous people; deeply about other people and the community, and (unusually) who inte grated his work, recreational and spirt ing the past three decades, Victoria at last appears to have struck the right conjunction: a Government anxious and able to act and a sound philosophical and practical blueprint for action. That is what the Local Government Board's report is. It makes a compelling case not only for the amalgamations it proposes but for a vigorous and comprehensive program of administrative reform.

Written in refreshingly plain language, it sets out the board's beliefs about the nature and importance of local government as well as the evidence submitted by councils in its reference area and the reasoning behind its amalgamation proposals. Despite continuing claims to the contrary by its detractors, the board comes down firmly in favor of balance. Great scope exists for improved efficiency, it says, but local government must be kept It seems likely that many opponents of the proposals are already involved in municipal affairs, either as councillors or council employees. They apparently believe that amalgamations would lessen their power and prestige, in the case of councillors, or affect hem financially, in the case of employees. Understandably, their arguments are couched in less revealing terms, usual- every 48 ot their number whereas efficient Essendon manages just as well with only one council worker for every 123 residents.

Disgruntled councillors often attempt to explain such discrepancies by pleading high levels of socio-economic disadvantage within their municipalities. Again, the report has a convincing reply. Why, it asks, did St Kilda and Footscray councils spend only $750 per resident in 1991-92 when councils of similar social make-up, like Colling-wood, Port Melbourne and South Melbourne, spent $1300? These are thought-provoking questions. But the report does not stop there. It calls also for the introduction of several measures designed to place municipal affairs on a similar footing to private enterprise.

These include the expansion of compulsory tendering to all services, the introduction of fixed-term, performance-based contracts for all senior staff and regular publication of key budgetary and financial planning details. It is the absence of these, rather than the provision of more and better services, that explains why Victorians pay 20 per cent more in municipal rates than residents in other states. And that is why the board's report should be implemented. lual interests within one passionate and creative life. He died because good men die young, for inexplicable reasons.

Not every mystery can be solved, wouldn't marry him or because of an affair; hadn't been pressured by colleagues overseas into dropping his work for street kids and the unemployed; and Esprit's business wasn't going bust, and we know that he did not kill himself. He wasn't even filthy rich: he left a modest estate, which nobody is squabbling over. No scandal, just a sad little mystery. Oh dear me, this wasn't what we were led to believe, from the moment Bell was found "naked" the TV presenters offered, "boiling like a lobster" in his own spa dead. To be fair, they may have been reacting to a certain lack of judgment or experience in the young cops who were first called in.

They seem to have assumed a dead bloke with a "dear John" message from his girl on the answer-phone and a detailed diary about sad feelings must have knoiked himself off, and said so. But the juuinos took off from there and told us what we wanted to hear: that the rich and successful are secretly miserable. I'm not proud that we like to believe that people who do good things are really exploitative bastards: that if they are in touch with their feelings they're unstable, that if they're success- nor conceals a secret shame. Sir Christopher Wren is buried beneath London's St Paul's Cathedral, which he designed, under a plain stone whose Latin inscription reads, roughly, that "if you are looking for this monu-ment, look around John Bell's memorial is the self- esteem of hundreds of disadvantaged kids, the example he gave modern business, and the social conscience, and activism he inspired in anyone who heard him speak or knew what he did. He founded it on a business named How apt.

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