The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 10

Page 10 Tuesday, April 15, 1986 WORDS 1 -KSOK NCA bowled for a duck jails from which they can still apparently negotiate and intimidate freely. Agnew, Henry Street, April 8 Waverley. figure not acting against corruption is, prima facie, for Acting against corruption does not mean speeches, "ersatz" quangos, "Clayton's" inquiries or highly publicised reorganisations of existing law-enforcement agencies. The public has had a gutful of posturing and imagery. Acting against corruption means relentless investigations which actually lead to prosecutions with convictions and heavy sentences.

Heavy sentences, that is, which are not remitted to a short holiday at Long Bay Remand Centre (or the prison hospital). Action, or inaction, will speak louder than words to the voters, and action must be taken now if it is to have any electoral credibility. We've heard the electoral promises and beat-ups before. As to the investigative journalists and the honest cops who at present appear to be the public's only allies against corruption, and who have to put up with a constant if subtle stream of harassment from ostensibly honest public figures, more power to them. M.J.

Quinn, Warraba Street, April 10 Como. A fair deal SIR: Congratulations on your four-page review of crime and corruption in NSW. When Mr Wran puts into operation his intention to confiscate all assets of proved drug dealers, etc, could we please give them constructive jobs such as tending fly-blown sheep and other animals, digging channels for irrigation schemes, tilling soil, fighting bushfires, etc, for our battling farmers? This would be a better means of reparation than spending public money for their board and clothing in ill IC it I UKE THIS fl HOLTMT I i to -me light on am auglb II wo cam see a sort- Jj i op A -sjm I I I Ir" quite apart from Mr Bowen's explanations, focused attention on several important matters. One is the practical question of whether such procedures as extradition applications should have been handled by the NCA or by the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. The office of the DPP is, after all, the Federal body primarily responsible for such matters.

And the NCA always has been more an investigatory than a prosecutorial body. Incidents such as the Cornwall episode should hasten a clarification of the division of responsibilities between the NCA and the Director of Public Prosecutions. More fundamentally, the time has probably come for the two governmental monitors of the NCA to take that part of their duties seriously. The legislation establishing the NCA also provided for the establishment of an Inter-Governmental Committee made up of Federal and State representatives, and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Crime Authority. A year and a half after the creation of the NCA, there is concern about its top-heavy structure (too many bureaucrats overseeing too few investigators).

And there are other organisational problems such as the slow development of good working relations between the authority's offices in Sydney and the remnants of the Costigan Royal Commission. The NCA chairman, Justice Stewart, has completed the Nugan Hand Royal Commission. Unfortunately for the NCA, his time continues to be divided between it and yet another royal commission into the NSW police tapes. The NCA's life is limited to five years. But that is not a reason for complacency about its performance in the time remaining to it.

OUTRAGE at the failure of the National Crime Authority to secure the extradition of the alleged drug smuggler Bruce Richard Cornwall was, it seems, premature and misplaced. The Attorney-General, Mr Bowen, called for and promptly received a report on what his Opposition counterpart Mr Spender had called "another episode in the Government's haphazard and mismanaged campaign against organised But what had every appearance of an outright bungle was, it seems, really a case of relying on poor advice from the UK Director of Public Prosecutions. Not that that completely excuses the NCA. With the memory of the Attorney-General's Department's mishandling of the attempt to extradite Robert Trimbole from Ireland fresh in the public mind, the NCA simply cannot afford mistakes of any kind. The benefit it enjoys from the political capital invested will evaporate if it fails to meet the high expectations that have been generated.

In some ways those expectations are unrealistic. But, fairly or not, the NCA is itself on trial. So far the NCA has not, in the public mind, achieved its potential. That is why its demands for wider powers have been met with scepticism. It also suffers, inevitably and to an extent unfairly, from the secrecy surrounding its operations.

The only way the public will learn about the good work of the NCA is from significant prosecutions, successfully pursued. Ironically, when the authority might have hoped to put some badly needed runs on the board, it has been bowled for a duck. Luckily for it, however, it is allowed another turn at the crease. The Cornwall episode has, Japan: welcome a new mt mme Corruption: the people want action SIR: Thank you for your excellent series on crime and corruption in NSW (Herald. April 8).

I am horrified and appalled by the ever-growing mountain of evidence that "organised "colourful racing identities" and "Kings Cross businessmen" enjoy the patronage of powerful public servants (sic) and share the same ethical standards with prominent businessmen. These criminals in business suits are nothing but parasites on the misery of others and the nation. The state of law and order in NSW has sunk to such a low ebb that, I believe, any public Worn-out stories SIR: It is with great dismay that we read your front-page article "After Marcos, now for the Soeharto billions" (Herald, April 10), the more so since it was written by your Foreign Editor, David Jenkins, a senior journalist who one assumes would write articles of substance and not indulge in grotesque and unsubstantiated writings. The heading itself did not reflect the content of the article: on the one hand, the author praised President Soeharto for his impressive achievements in building his country; on the other, he just disclosed worn-out unsubstantiated stories about the President's family and relatives. It seems the author is running out of material to write about Indonesia and saw fit to dig out fabricated stories that appeared many years ago.

Futher-more, he was unable to reveal his sources), except to merely quote an Australian academic, Dr Richard Robison, who did a study of emerging business groups in Indonesia. Indonesia has a market-orientated economy. Hence, it offers opportunities to Indonesians and foreigners alike to help develop the untapped resources of the country. If, through the process of development, many people are becoming well-to-do, and some of them wealthy, it is but natural to find them in market economies. Indeed, it was with deep disappointment that a journalist of Mr Jenkins's calibre saw fit to write such a slanderous article.

Thaufick Salim, Indonesian Embassy, Darwin Avenue, April 10 Yamlumla (ACT). Hospital mess SIR: Working in the public-hospital system, I have long been puzzled by the public silence of hospital administrators, who have observed the progressive disintegration of their hospitals during the past seven years. This silence has been broken by Mr D. L. Howes officers owed a Letters, April 10).

The debt was not the main point of his letter. Every sentence contains a truth basic to the understanding of the hospital crisis. Two of his points deserve emphasis. He correctly observes that hospital budgets have an arbitrary rather than a rational basis. The deliberations of the Public Accounts Committee are therefore a futile exercise.

The other fundamental truth is that the Government and the Department of Health have made no serious attempt to seek advice from those who work in and administer the hospitals. No wonder our hospitals are in a mess. P.D. Edwards, Kitchen Parade, April 10 Bankstowa. Smark'sWho SIR: Amid all the violence, corruption and cynicism worldwide and State side which sickens our senses daily, Peter Smark's piece on the greatest Dr Who (Herald.

April 9) was like throwing an intergalactic to a drowning man 'on a paranoid planet: This was as great a piece of writing, which just happened to be journalism, as one could wish. I thank him most heartily for it. Leonard Herbert, Wigram Road, April 10 Glebe. 'Requests from our readers Poverty Point: these words, in Old English lettering, appeared until four years ago on the awning of a building on the north-east corner of Park and Pitt streets. I believe there was once a gathering place for entertainers in that area, and a "Palace Theatre" nearby.

Information and photos appreciated. Contact C. Gilbert, 235 Cambridge Street, Penshurst, 570 1666. Royal Aust Army Nursing Corps, formerly Aust Army Nursing Service: Former members, photos, diaries, etc, sought. Also, any war memorials which make special reference to Army nursing sisters.

Contact Dr R. Goodman, 35 Sixth Avenue, Brisbane, 4067. Garden Island Naval Dockyard Museum: official opening on October 4. Photos, prints or drawings of sailing warships of the 19th century which served in Australian waters sought. Items may be donated, or lent for Language just keeps rolling along ONE of the ABC's recent morning telephone callers was puzzled.

Her phone calls were being constantly cut off, she complained. How would this happen? "I haven't a clue," replied Margaret Throsby. It is a bit much to expect an outsider to penetrate the mysteries of Telecom. The phrase "haven't a clue" has for 40 years been a common way of disclaiming knowledge, but it is a metaphor Chaucer would have recognised. The concept dates back to ancient Crete at the time of the Greek hero Theseus.

Having served his apprenticeship in heroism by disposing of some notoriously brutal villains, Theseus turned his attention to the final solution of the Minotaur problem. The Minotaur was a monster, half man and half bull. How the creature came about we shall not examine too closely in deference to the sensitivities of its mother, Pasiphae, wife of Minos, King of Crete. It was locked away in the labyrinth, an underground maze. The Athenians had killed a son of Minos, so the king demanded seven youths and seven maidens from Athens every ninth year, or perhaps every yea.r there are two versions as part of the Minotaur's diet.

Theseus gallantly volunteered. Minos's daughter Ariadne thought this was a waste of good talent. How was he to find his way out of the labyrinth? He hadn't a clue, so Ariadne gave him one. It was a ball of thread which he unrolled as he went, and then followed back to the entrance when the Minotaur was dead. They all lived happily ever after except for Ariadne, who found that you can't trust anyone.

Theseus promised to take her home and marry her, and indeed they sailed away together on his ship. Theseus put in at the island of Dia, later called Naxos, and when he sailed again he left Ariadne behind. One story says the god Dionysus rescued and married her. Yes, but what about the clue? Well, a clue, or rather clew, was in Chaucer's time a ball of thread mentioned in myths and legends as the means of threading a way through a maze or labyrinth. In The Legend of Good Women, Chaucer tells of the direction-finding equipment Ariadne designed for Theseus: By a clewe of twyn as he hath gon the same weye he may return a-non.

A figurative sense, of something which guides through a difficulty or intricate investigation, was a natural extension. By the 18th century, with the literal sense obscured, the modern meaning of a line to follow towards a solution became dominant The word, variously spelt and originally gained from German and Dutch, had been developing since King Alfred's time, when it was a ball formed by coiling together or conglomeration. The clue spelling appeared in the 1 5th century, but was not frequent until the 1 7th. Words in which the same change occurred were blewblue, glewglue, rewrue and trewtrue. Fowler observes that clue is now established in the usual sense of an idea or fact that may lead to a discovery and that clew is retained in a nautical sense and in the old-fashioned sense of ball of yarn.

I don't see many people letting out a ball of wool behind them these days, but I shall offer probably the only travel hint you will ever get from this column. If you ever go to the Barbican, the musical and drama centre in the City of London, don't forget your clew. On the last day of the Sheffield Shield cricket final a Herald journalist heard a radio commentator refer to NSWs need of so many runs on a deteriorating wicket as "a big It was a great leap backwards. The earliest recorded use of ask as a noun occurred about 1000. A 1230 reference was "He failed of his askj." The usage is, of course, obsolete, but request and demand are still both nouns and verbs in good standing.

In the case of demand both forms came into use about 1290. Request began service as a noun as early as 1330, but as a verb not until 1565. Another journalist has pointed out the use in newspapers of nouns as verbs. Examples which caused her pain are to impact something to workshop a situation; to access something. I once heard on a radio program the formula: "when a car impacts against a utility In the ancient days when I came into newspapers we were forbidden to use contact as a verb.

Now the dictionaries proclaim its wide public usage. i True, I promised an end to the fiasco huntbut a letter has brought some persuasive evidence in support of the theory that glass-blowing gone wrong was the origin of the Italian phrase far fiasco (make a bottle) for failure in a performance. This is a footnote from Rossini(934. new edition 1954) by the English, musicologist Francis Toye: "Perhaps it should be explained to those unfamiliar with Italian life that a fiasco is a bulb-shaped 'glass flask, with straw around the bottom half, traditionally associated; with Chianti and other Italian Originally it was made from a bottle that had gone wrong in the blowing: hence the secondary meaning in both English and Italian." Toye says Rossini "was accustomed to inform his mother of his failures by the simple process of sending her a drawing of a The agony of the oil price fixer tKeep it hot SIR: Congratulations on your Crime and Justice supplement There was no need to apologise for laying its 20,000 words on your readers. Not one word of it was surplus; indeed, you may find it necessary to write 10 times as many before the whole rotten system and all those in it, big and small are fully exposed and brought under control.

Keep the heat on. I am sure you have the overwhelming support and approval of the community for your crusade. H.J. O'Regan, Henrietta Street, April 8 Double Bay. generation people from Germany come under the same scrutiny when they arrive in Australia: who queries their politics of 40 years ago? In case it be thought I have traitorous blood, I hasten to explain that my father served in the 4th Battalion, 1st AIF, and my husband was a Flight Lieutenant, RAAF, in World War II.

For goodness sake, try to forget past atrocities. If we trade with Japan to our benefit, let's try to understand the people and be a bit more broad-minded. (Mrs) H. R. Bryant, Pacific Highway, April 9 Lindfield.

Interest trends SIR: Your article "West blames States for home loan interest rate imbalance" (April 10) quotes the Minister for Housing and Construction, Mr West, as saying that "the State Government had allowed societies to increase their home-lending interest rates out of line with the savings banks, which gave the societies an advantage in attracting deposits and contributed to the decline in bank The article also states that the NSW minister, Mr Walker, "has approved two increases totalling 1 per cent since the savings banks raised their loan rates to the 13.5 per cent ceiling in October First, building societies tend to follow market trends rather than act as market leaders in the setting of interest rates. Second, during 1985, the savings banks increased their interest rates on housing loans by 2 percentage points while building societies in NSW increased their rates by 1.5 percentage points, and have not increased rates in 1986. Without such increases, building societies would have been competitively disadvantaged vis-a-vis the savings banks. Such a position would ultimately have affected the provision of housing loans from building societies, which account for more than 30 per cent of the NSW housing-loan approval market. It can be seen, therefore, that the comments attributed to Mr West are somewhat out of context with the facts.

Chris Allen, Permanent Building Societies Assoc (NSW) Ltd, Pitt Street, April 10 Sydney. His Excellency the Governor received Associate Professor J.H. Loxton, President of the Royal Society of NSW, and Dr D.J. Swaine yesterday morning. His Excellency later received Mr S.

Samlioglu, President of the Turkish Supreme Court of Accounts and Mr A. Unluturk. Consul-Qenera! of Turkey. SIR: Hardly a week goes by when we don't read some form of criticism of the Japanese either the temporary residents, or the tourists. The most recent criticism comes from the Victorian RSL president, Mr Bruce Ruxton, with regard to tourist visa requirements (Herald, April 7).

To make his point, Mr Ruxton found it necessary to remind us of the atrocities of World War II, and did his best to stir up memories that should be forgotten after 40 years. The present generation of Japanese who are likely to come here are mostly children or grandchildren of the Japanese who took part in World War II. I have had a lot to do with Japanese Lucky empire SIR: What a good thing Britain has lost the Empire; the British were becoming so arrogant that it was ruining the national character. One is forced to this conclusion after viewing the ABC's excellent television series End of an Empire, especially the one on the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and Iran's efforts to gain control of its own oil fields. The arrogance of the British and their devious behaviour in this little contretemps were unbelievable.

Some of those who took part in these events, and are still alive, appear on the screen and are obviously unrepentant, even unaware of the enormity of what was done. The one redeeming thing is that a British company made this series. P. Haydon, Fairlawn Avenue, April 6 Turramurra. Oh, really? SIR: Anyone who has not been following the constant propaganda from the State Government may have copying.

Contact The Curator, PO Box 3, Garden Island, 2000. Dunganibba Public School: centenary celebrations during Easter, 1987. Names, addresses, stories, photos, etc, sought from anyone connected with the school. Contact the school (066) 82 8313. Woodstock CWA: diamond jubilee celebrations on May 28.

Contact M. Crossley before April 30 (063) 450 333. Weidner: family arrived in Australia in the 1850s from Germany. Reunion of decendants in Albury May 24-25. Contact G.

Quinn, 26 Drummond Street, Leeton, 2705, (069) 53 4058. Letters to the Editor should generally be no more than 200 words. Shorter letters will be given preference. Readers should give their full address and a daytime phone number. women over the past 10 years, helping them with English conversation during their stay here with husbands and families for business reasons (and for these same reasons our country makes quite a few dollars).

They are quiet, polite, intelligent and generous people: we can learn a great deal from them. Their culture, customs and language could never be fully understood by people in this young country, but they are doing their best to try to understand us and after all, why should they regard us as lilywhite? Were we not the Allies who participated in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? It would be interesting to know if accepted Laurie Brereton's statement on the monorail (Herald, April 7) as being fair comment I almost fell off my chair. Mr Brereton tells us that trams are unacceptable because "they would have involved slinging wires across the streets of Does this mean he finds it much more acceptable to have tonnes of concrete and steel suspended above the streets of Sydney supported by concrete columns every 30 metres or so? He goes on to say that trams would jam an already-congested city. I agree the city is congested but by private vehicles. To suggest that we cannot add public transport to city streets because it would interfere with the flow of private transport shows the absurdity of Mr Brereton's thinking on transport management.

It is ridiculous to suggest that trams would have involved "hundreds of Trams are no more accident-prone than buses or trains, and I am yet to be convinced that a monorail would not become a fire trap or that support columns along the streets of Sydney are to be considered Gary Gibbs, Hanover Street, April 9 Rozelle. A. Hall and Co: furniture manufacturers and importers at 561-567 George Street from 1890s to 1920s. Information sought. Contact G.

Smith, Metz Road, via Taree, 2430. Homebush Boys' High: Historical exhibition and archives display planned for golden jubilee open day on May 23-34. Many school records lost in fire three years ago. Photos, etc, sought. Contact G.

Ostling or M. Christison at the school, 764 3611. Aust Women's Army Service (NSW): 45th anniversary lunch at The Carvery, Town Hall Square, on April 25. Contact Marie Lyne (477 2406) by April 18. Reedy: family reunion on May 1 1 at Wilberforce.

Contact N. Reedy, 635 0544. Pen pals: the Herald receives requests from many countries for Australian pen pals. Any organisations which can pass on names please phone 282 2107. were appalled.

When further falls in the world oil price led the Government to seek another (although more modest) cut in petrol prices, the refiners threatened to defy the Prices Surveillance Authority. "There is a limit to how much they can extract from any one industry," said Mr Ted Harris, the managing director of Ampol. Well, what's fair? Should the refiners be allowed to increase their prices to try to recover the cost of their stocks? Or should the Prices Surveillance Authority bow to the Government and cut petrol prices? The argument about what's fair boils down to what would have happened if there had been no regulation. The price of Australian oil would have fallen much more quickly, but the refiners would have been caught with some expensive oil. According to the Government, the industry's losses (after allowing for the compensation for the February purchases) are in line with those made by refiners in other parts of the world.

But, of course, no one really knows what the industry would have ended up losing in the absence of regulation. It may have paid less for the oil it bought before February, but competition from imports of refined petrol may have pushed the retail price down, faster. And the opportunity for the refiners to recover their losses by pushing prices up now could be reduced by competition from overseas refineries. Import competition, if it were not actively discouraged by the Government, could be fierce. Singapore, for example, is said to have enough spare refining capacity to supply about two-thirds of the Australian market.

But of course, the poor Prices Surveillance Authority, can only guess at what might have happened. And what it will guess is anyone's guess. DON'T be surprised if this week the Prices Surveillance Authority agrees to let the price of petrol rise because the price of oil has fallen. But do ask yourself how the people who regulate our oil industry got themselves in such a knot, and whether it might not be better if we dispensed with the regulators altogether. To the second question the answer is yes, it would be better.

And, 12 months ago, we almost did. Unfortunately, Ampol and Cal-tex, two of the oil companies now demanding compensation for the unfair effects of regulation, loudly opposed any attempt to deregulate the industry. To the first question, the answer is that regulators nearly always do get themselves or the interests of those they are supposed to protect in a knot. Often, one regulation just leads to another. In this case the one regulation that led to everything else was the requirement that local refiners take Australian crude oil.

That has been something of an imposition lately because the government-set price for Australian crude has been much higher than the world price. The price of local oil has been adjusted to take account of the drop in international oil prices, but the periodic adjustments have not kept up with the world market. When the Government did adjust the price of local oil, it naturally was anxious to see the drop passed on to motorists. That, however, proved to be very costly for the oil refiners. All through January and February they had been taking expensive Australian crude; now the companies were to have hundreds of millions of dollars wiped off the value of their stocks by the cut in petrol prices.

The Government agreed that the companies should be compensated, but only for the local oil they were required to buy in February. The refiners.