As predicted on this site the gun laws enacted after the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, Australia have been followed by a huge increase in kidnapping, armed robbery & assault.   (SMH, 26 February 1999, page 4) Armed robbery skyrocketed (by 44% from 6,256 in 1996 to 9,015 in 1997), while in the same period unarmed robbery rose (by 21% from 10,116 to 12,246).

• The politically correct members of the fourth estate immediately called for more restrictions on guns.
• This time lugubrious Prime Minister Howard did not rise to the bait.  He counselled no further restrictions on guns.  Perhaps he is beginning to understand that restricting guns causes an increase in violent crime which leads to higher taxes (to pay for the greater number of police required to control the increased crime).
• There is of course no arguing with the bdpc brain dead politically correct (bdpc).  To them an increase in armed crime requires further restrictions on guns, just as a decrease in armed crime would have called for further restrictions on guns.  The bdpc are not interested in liberty.  The bdpc are only interested in ordering the lives of the rest of us (for our own good, of course!)

NRMA SPIN

Gough's boy has cast the die that may put the National Road & Motorists Association (NRMA) on the block.

• When the Commonwealth bank was nationalized, we were told that it was unfair for a government owned company to compete with privately owned banks.  After the recent rises in bank rates, I begin to wonder at that story.
• Now the very profitable and trusted NRMA is to be demutualized.   To whose benefit?
• NRMA insurance provides competitive insurance for the motorists, and is the largest insurer in the country because it's users prefer to insure with a mutual society.
• It seems to me that NRMA insurance is efficient, and because it does not have to show a profit, is perhaps marginalizing & undercutting incorporated insurance companies.
• As a result I can understand that existing insurance corporations might prefer a demutualized NRMA, a corporation driven by the same profit motives as themselves.  A  corporation that was interested in having a good return on shareholder's capital.

TIMOR SPIN

It is nice to have Foreign minister Downer talking to Portugal about Timor.  The whole Timor affair must be a dreadful setback to those nameless mandarins in foreign affairs who had pretensions to being the invisible hand of power in international diplomacy.

I personally believe that the responsible officer(s) should be charged with murder.  If downer Downer wanted to restore public confidence in representative government he should work towards bringing those responsible to justice.

He won't, of course, and Australians will become impatient that little bit sooner of the fiasco we call "representative democracy", and be that much readier to accept new faces offering a new political alternative such as an elected president and/or direct democracy.