What the nation s newspapers are saying today, December 23

AAP General News (Australia)
12-23-1998
What the nation s newspapers are saying today, December 23

SYDNEY, Dec 23 AAP - The Australian Financial Review says editorially today that in global
economic history, 1998 "may well go down as the year of the near miss".

"Contrary to fears earlier in the year, it seems increasingly that Australia, and the
world, will avoid a recession as a result of the crisis in Asia," it says, adding that "1999
will not be a year for governments - or business - to rest on their oars".

The Australian says trade unionism is declining not only because of changes in the labour
market but because the union movement has made itself increasingly irrelevant to employees.

It says ACTU secretary Bill Kelty has been with the ACTU for 20 years and has chalked up
some significant achievements - including helping to bring the concept of the social wage to
Australia - but "the industrial world has changed more quickly than Mr Kelty and he should
make room for a successor".

The Sydney Morning Herald agrees, saying the legacy of Mr Kelty now "is a trade union
movement that is locked into the past.

But in its main editorial, the SMH says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be
remembered for compromise and failure in bringing peace to the Middle East - mainly because he
is "captive to a small but powerful minority of zealots committed to preserving the territory
of biblical Israel".

With elections looming in Israel, The Canberra Times takes up the same theme, saying Mr
Netanyahu has no long-term vision or commitment to peace and "the chameleon has been exposed".

And it cautions that Israel's new electoral system - with a popularly-elected leader -
gives less guarantee for stability than having the prime minister emerge from the
parliamentary majority.

" ... Israelis and the Palestinians deserve a better prime minister - committed to peace,
not a chameleon who plays with a peace process in order to stay in power," it says.

The Daily Telegraph in Sydney says in its editorial today that the time has come for the
introduction to serious criminal trials of verdicts reached by a majority of jurors, rather
than unanimous decisions.

"This change should be based on the logical notion that the decisions of 10 or 11 jurors
should not be outweighed by the decision of one or two," it says.

"The prime aim should be to make jury decisions fairer and more effective, less subject to
strong individuals and personal foibles."

The Age says suggestions by the Australian Private Hospitals Association that some people
be able to opt out of the Medicare system ignore the wide popularity of Medicare with the
electorate.

"That system has served this country far more effectively than its critics allow," the
paper says.

Australia provides universal health cover by spending 8.4 per cent of its gross demestic
product, compared to 14 per cent in the US, where 30 per cent of the population have no health
insurance and therefore no access to affordable health care.

Cricket diehards would cry foul at news the International Cricket Council was threatening
to downgrade the importance of the England-Australia Ashes series, the Herald Sun said in its
editorial.

The paper says a move to reduce the Ashes series to three or four tests may be seen as a
"British fix" to the problem that England was constantly being trounced by Australia.

But it says the proposed changes would see a greater variety of cricketing nations playing
a world championship series of tests in Australia.

The Courier-Mail in Brisbane focuses on the decision of the Federal Court to reject a
native title claim by the Yorta Yorta people to an area of more than 113,000 hectares of
publicly-owned land and water in Victoria and New South Wales.

The paper says that over the past year or two, much of the political debate about native
title has been based on fantastic scenarios which conjured up a picture of more than half the
country being taken over by a small number of Aboriginal people.

But the paper says Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett's call for people to be tolerant and
magnanimous about the court decision and offer to have discussions about reconciliation with
the claimants is "commendable."

AAP kr

KEYWORD: EDITORIALS TUESDAY, Dec 23 1998

1998 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.