Thursday April 25, 2002
First published 1831 No. 51,363 $1.20 (incl GST)
Murcutt’s
Sydney
domain
DOMAIN LIFTOUT
Light hearted
Glenn Murcutt’
s Sydney
April 25 2002
Crunch
time for
Rose
Porteous
Remaking League’s
boys
Sydney’s bad
SPORT PAGE 38
icon PLUS
METROPOLITAN PAGE 12
INSIGHT
PAGE 8
GIANT
HOLIDAY
CROSSWORD
PAGE 14
He
was
only
16:
Gallipoli’s
last
man
standing
Price-fixing
executives
deserve jail,
says Fels
Laura Tingle
and Geesche Jacobsen
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
‘The
commission
thinks you
need the
fear in the
minds of
executives
that they
could go to
jail for this
law to work
properly.’
ALLAN FELS
PAGE 4
Whistleblower
mystery;
Michelle
Grattan
analysis
PAGE 21
Abacus
Executives should face criminal
charges and prison terms if they
collude to fix prices, the competition watchdog said yesterday in
the wake of its unprecedented
raid on oil companies.
The chairman of the Australian
Competition and Consumer
Commission, Allan Fels, said
‘‘secret price-fixing collusion that
constitutes a theft against the
public should be subject to criminal sanctions’’.
The comments came as ACCC
officers continued investigations
at three of the sites it raided on
Tuesday, including premises of
Caltex, Mobil and Shell.
The commission had received
a number of calls yesterday from
people offering further information on possible petrol price
collusion , he said.
The other big oil company, BP,
has not been implicated in the allegations made by an anonymous
whistleblower who worked for
one of the oil companies.
Professor Fels’s comments on
company executives have revived a politically explosive issue
for the Howard Government.
The Coalition promised a review of the Trade Practices Act
during last year’s election campaign to address small business
concerns about predatory pricing.
But the prospects of any radical
change are in doubt after the
Prime Minister, John Howard,
said the ACCC already had sufficient powers.
Asked on Melbourne ABC
radio if he agreed with the Opposition Leader, Simon Crean, that
Professor Fels needed more
power to stop predatory pricing,
Mr Howard said: ‘‘I think he’s got
very good powers. There’s no
evidence in front of me that he
doesn’t have adequate powers.’’
But speaking in Melbourne
yesterday, Professor Fels pushed
hard for much tougher sanctions
against companies and their
executives caught fixing prices.
‘‘It’s a form of theft, it’s a form
of fraud comparable to other
white-collar crimes that have
criminal penalties attached to
them. The commission itself
thinks that you need the fear in
the minds of big business executives that they could go to jail for
collusion for this law to work
properly.’’ Prison terms of one to
five years were ‘‘pretty normal’’
in other countries.
He said the commission had
not reached the conclusion that
there had been a breach of the
Trade Practices Act by the oil
companies that had been raided.
‘‘It’s reached the conclusion that
there is sufficient information before it to warrant a very serious
investigation.’’
Professor Fels said the ACCC
was focusing on a number of
company managers, with documents from the whistleblower
suggesting there may have been
contact between oil companies
about petrol prices – including
names of several ‘‘not junior, not
senior’’ managers.
The chief executive of the Service Station Association, Kevin
Hughes, said he doubted the
ACCC would find evidence of
collusion but was hopeful the action would be a ‘‘major wake-up
call’’ to the big oil companies.
The three oil companies raided
said they were co-operating with
the ACCC. Caltex said the allegation had come as a ‘‘complete surprise’’, Shell said it had a good
record and Mobil said it was
company policy ‘‘to comply fully’’
with the Trade Practices Act.
Earliest mammal found –
and it’s still got its fur
Hughes on pain, love and his magnificent crime
WEATHER Details Page 18
To look into the worn, sagging
face of Alec Campbell is to
marvel at the legion of Anzac
Days he has stacked up. Best not
to ponder the number of Anzac
Days he’s got left.
Alec Campbell is 103. He is our
last surviving Anzac, and maybe a
lot more. Historian Michael
McKernan believes Campbell
quite possibly is the last survivor
of the entire Gallipoli campaign,
lumping friend and foe together.
Alec Campbell has lost one eye,
is partially blind in the other and
has a serious hearing problem. He
spends most of his waking hours
in a wheelchair and last February
moved into a nursing home
because his ailing wife Kathleen,
79, could no longer look after
him. Alec does not complain
much except when his wife is not
with him. ‘‘Where’s Kate?’’ he
asks again and again.
The old soldier stopped marching on Anzac Day six years ago
when his body could take no
more. Today he will try an easier
way. In a wheelchair strapped
into a four-wheel drive vehicle,
he will take part in the 87th
Anzac Day march in his home
town of Hobart.
When Alec Campbell dies, his
passing will break the last human
link with a small, distant conflict
that mystically defined, and with
each new generation redefines,
Australia’s national character –
how we see ourselves. To those
with family ties to long-dead
Anzacs, it will be a wrenching,
personal loss.
It was only an illusion, of
course, but the older the Anzacs
got the more enduring they
became. Through the 1970s and
’80s they seemed to settle into a
remarkably long twilight, hitherto
reserved for gods.
There may be a warrant out for his arrest, but Robert Hughes reckons his traffic violation is
the least of his problems. He spoke to Caroline Overington in New York.
‘‘It’s been a
bitch’’ . . .
Robert Hughes.
There are many things the art
critic Robert Hughes would like to
do. In particular, he would like to
‘‘wade through heavy rivers, in
search of salmon’’. He also
wouldn’t mind striding instead of
hobbling along with a cane.
It is an impossible dream:
Hughes’s legs were crushed like
garlic in an accident that nearly
killed him, on a remote highway
in Western Australia in 1999.
‘‘I’m in constant bloody pain,’’
he said from his home in lower
Manhattan, where he lives in a
converted loft with his new
bride Doris.
‘‘It’s been a bitch, I tell you.’’
Hughes’s protracted recovery
and unrelieved pain prevents him
from fishing (and that alone nearly
kills him). Moreover, as his lawyer
said after a Perth magistrates’ court
hearing on Tuesday, it prevents
him from returning to Australia to
face charges arising from the accident. The magistrate issued a warrant for Hughes’s arrest.
‘‘I have no intention of avoiding
trial,’’ Hughes said yesterday. ‘‘But
You won’t get a deal like this from ANY OTHER network!
ANYONE. ANYWHERE. ANY PHONE.
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it’s a matter of physical ability. My
doctor has told me that it would
be very unwise for me to travel.
But we mustn’t worry. We will get
to the bottom of this magnificent
crime, this event as great as the
Teapot Dome scandal. To the
great relief of the world, I’m sure,
it will be resolved.’’
(For those unfamiliar with political upheavals that rocked the US
Senate in the 1920s, Teapot Dome
was the popular name for a scandal during the administration of
President Warren Harding. It in-
volved the secret leasing of naval
oil reserve lands to private
companies. There were two Senate inquiries and civil and criminal
proceedings that lasted a decade.
A cabinet member went to jail.)
‘‘I firmly believe I am innocent
of any wrongdoing and so do my
lawyers,’’ Hughes said.
The case had cost him ‘‘half a
million dollars, but that’s as
nothing compared to the pain. I
have to face it every morning.
I’ve got this bloody cane. The
traffic violation is the least of it.’’
Hughes was charged with
dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm after a head-on
crash between his rental car and
Continued Page 2
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then fine 16°-27°
Tomorrow rain 16°-24°
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then fine 13°-28°
Tomorrow rain 14°-24°
Richmond Early fog,
then fine 13°-28°
Tomorrow rain 13°-24°
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Then and now
. . . Alec
Campbell at 16
before heading
off to Gallipoli
and this week at
his Hobart
nursing home.
Photo: Simon
Schluter
PAGE 4
March map
PAGE 10
Editorial
Newcastle Early fog,
then fine 14°-27°
Tomorrow rain 16°-26°
Wollongong Fine, NWNE winds 15°-26°
Tomorrow rain 15°-22°
Canberra Early fog,
then fine 5°-25°
Tomorrow rain 10°-20°
ISSN 0312-6315
Latin term reflecting the creature’s
apparent climbing ability, which
the team inferred from its bone
structure. ‘‘It’s a very small, agile
mammal, part of a revolutionary
era in evolution,’’ Dr Luo said.
Eomaia is an early ancestor of
placental mammals, which
nourish their young through a
placenta during an extended
pregnancy, Dr Luo and colleagues report in Nature. Most of
today’s mammals use a placenta,
but not marsupials like kangaroos
or monotremes like the platypus.
‘‘It’s the first branch of the entire
placental mammal tree.’’
AP
side of the peninsula, a vision
the Turks had denied them
during the ferocious eightmonth campaign. For the second
time in their lives these Anzacs
would leave Gallipoli convinced
the task they had been given was
impossible. On their first tour of
the battlefield where 7800 of
their comrades had died the
party discovered to their amazement that nobody could
recognise the jutting feature on a
sandstone cliff they had named
The Sphinx.
The wind coming hard off the
sea for 75 years had worn away
any likeness. The veterans could
take comfort they were wearing
Continued Page 4
9 770312 631049
Scientists say they have found
the earliest known ancestor of
most of today’s mammals – a
mouse-like creature that lived
125 million years ago during the
age of dinosaurs.
The fossil, found in northeastern China, is so well preserved it shows traces of fur.
‘‘For scientists studying early
evolution this is a dream come
true,’’ said Zhe-Xi Luo of the
Carnegie Museum of Natural
History in Pittsburgh, who led
the discovery team.
The team named the creature
Eomaia scansoria. Eomaia is Greek
for ‘‘dawn mother’’ and scansoria a
As recently as 1990, 58 Anzacs,
chosen from some 600 veterans,
were robust enough to make the
physically and emotionally wearing trip back to Gallipoli for the
75th anniversary of the landing.
One of the 58 was Alec Campbell, who discovered that just
stepping upon Gallipoli soil could
be dangerous, even in peacetime.
Believing he was close to the
trench he had briefly occupied he
went off by himself to find it, only
to crash through a screen of clinging brush into a hole. Declaring
he had found his long-lost trench,
Alec was dragged free by a nothappy guardian army officer.
The Anzac party was seeing
for the first time the Dardanelles
Lest we forget the last survivor of the Anzac campaign, writes Peter Bowers
FULL INDEX
Page 2
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