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Tag Archives: Tony Abbott

Abbott blames the system. Bishop is its victim. Oh, that’s so funny

Prime Minister Tony Abbott today absolves his “political mother” Bronwyn Bishop from all wrong doing:

What has become apparent, particularly over the last few days, is that the problem is not any particular individual; the problem is the entitlement system more generally,” he said.

“We have a situation where spending is arguably inside the rules, but plainly outside of community expectations, and that’s what needs to be dealt with once and for all.

Surely it is not too much to expect that politicians will exercise ethical and moral judgement sufficient to contain their expenses within “community expectations,” aka the “sniff test?”

Obviously it is, as has been so spectacularly brought to our attention by the revelation of decades of indulgence and extravagance practiced by Bishop, who seems to be enchanted by the fantasy that she is a reincarnation of Marie Antoinette.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m over Tony Abbott’s sophistry, his constant use of specious and fallacious argument to deceive and obfuscate. If Bishop hasn’t done anything wrong, why has she resigned, and why has Abbott accepted her resignation? If Bishop is a victim of the system, as Abbott apparently alleges, why did she have to go?

And how can Abbott and his henchmen and women expect to escape charges of hypocrisy when the comparison is noted between the excuses made for Bishop, and the ruthless hounding of “particular individual” former Speaker Peter Slipper, over less than $1000 abuse of travel expenses? Slipper made a number of attempts to resolve his matter administratively, that is, to pay the money back, as does everybody else, but these attempts were thwarted and he found himself in court.

Will we see Bronwyn Bishop in court over her outrageous excesses? If not why not?

Abbott’s attempts to spin Bishop as a victim of a system that allows politicians far too much leeway is adding insult to injury as far as the electorate is concerned. Bishop’s sense of entitlement and privilege allowed her to abuse the system to such an extraordinary degree: she is not the system’s victim, she is a practised exploiter who would have continued her exploitative practices until the day she expired, if she hadn’t been caught.

Bronwyn Bishop loves the Australian people, she claims in her resignation statement. So why did she squander so much of the people’s money, and why has it taken her this long to express remorse, and sod off?

This article was first published as Abbott blames the system. Bishop is its victim. Ahahahahahahahahahahaha! That’s funny on No Place For Sheep.

 

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She’s Gone

image

She’s gone.

Barnaby Joyce (possibly our next deputy PM) described Bronwyn Bishop’s spending “as not unreasonable”. He might be correct. It’s not about what’s right, it’s about what you can REASONABLY get away with. It has to be remembered that those who defended her are also guilty by association. And that includes the Prime Minister. The fact that she has resigned does not change that. The Parliament will now be a better place without her. But only slightly. Until the Prime Minister can find it within himself to respect the conventions and institutions of our democracy our Parliament will remain, not a house of debate, but a house of division.

It remains debatable who was the worst offender. He or she.

Abbott the Dragon Slayer: The art of making scary mountains out of molehills

Unless you’ve been on a desert island or in a coma, you’ve heard Tony Abbott boast over and over and over again that:

“We’ve had a lot of really significant achievements over the last year: We stopped the boats. We scrapped the carbon tax. We scrapped the mining tax“

These three issues were a key part of Abbott’s 2013 election campaign. According to Abbott, the mining and carbon taxes were devastating the nation. And stopping asylum seekers was imperative to save lives and protect our borders. These were his top priorities – the dragons threatening our nation must be slain. On day one he would stop the boats and introduce legislation to repeal the carbon tax – to be followed by the mining tax within 100 days – thereby single-handedly saving us all.

Abbott obviously believes that the Australian people still value his dragon-slaying skills today – threatening a few weeks back:

“if Labor came back, the boats would be back; the mining tax would be back; and now we find out that if Labor were to come back, the carbon tax would be back”

It seems fairly clear that Tony Abbott is staking both the credibility and the value of his government around these three key actions, and that he believes they are the criteria by which we should judge his success for the next election. So let’s have a look at what he has really achieved – and who the real winners and losers are.

Axing the Taxes

In his interview with Leigh Sales on the 7:30 report last week, Tony Abbott promoted what his government has done in the last two years, saying:

“The carbon tax, gone. When was the last time a government abolished a tax? The mining tax gone. When was the last time a government abolished a tax?”

Slaying not just one tax dragon – but two! Certainly sounds good – and according to Tony Abbott, it’s a BIG win for the Australian people. But does that stand up to scrutiny?

Slaying the Mining Tax (Killer of investment and jobs)

“This tax is a great big cudgel that will blow the brains out of the West Australian economy if it goes ahead.” (Tony Abbott, July 2010)

The Mining Tax – a quick primer:
The Minerals Resources Rent Tax was a levy on ‘super profits’ from the mining of iron ore and coal. It was only applied to companies whose annual profits – profits, not revenue – were in excess of $75 million. It was introduced on 1 July 2012 by the Labor government and repealed by the Liberal government on 2 September 2014.

Abbott’s Claim: repealing the mining tax would lead to Australia being ‘open’ for investment again and more jobs . . .

Prior to ‘axing’ this particular tax, the Abbott government argued that the mining tax had to go because it destroyed foreign investment and cut jobs. Once repealed, Abbott stated that the “big flashing red light over investment in Australia” is now gone. So if Abbott was right, investment in Australia should both have dropped during the time of the mining tax, and picked up since it was repealed.

Not so much.

It turns out that this was just another piece of Abbott-Speak or ‘truthiness’ that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. In fact, as ABC business editor Ian Verrender argued recently, if the very similar Petroleum Resources Tax introduced over 25 years ago is anything to go by – which had minimal if any impact on jobs or investment – the Mineral Tax would also have had little or no impact on either investment in Australia or Australian jobs had it been left in place. The reality is that mining companies aren’t all that mobile in their location choices – unlike car companies who can manufacture anywhere, mining companies have to mine where the resources are.

So who are the real winners and losers from the repeal of the Mining Tax?

The winners: the LNP and Big Mining companies

Ironically, one of the biggest winners from the introduction of the mining tax was the Liberal Party themselves. Crikey reported in 2012 that ”the mining tax saw an extraordinary increase in donations to the Coalition that has opened up a huge funding resource for the Liberals” as shown in the following graph:

Crikey1

Data from Crikey article (2012)

The largess of the mining sector towards the LNP continued post 2012. There was over 1.8 million given to the Liberal and National parties in the 2013/2014 financial year from resource and energy companies. By way of contrast, around $450,000 was donated to the Labor party from the same sector over the same period.

And then, of course, the other obvious big winners from the repeal of the Mining Tax are big mining companies themselves. Certainly, if the level of their donations is anything to go by, there were a lot of mining companies (and related suppliers like marine dredging operators) out there who were very happy to see the LNP – with their commitment to the repeal of the mining tax – win the 2013 federal election.

The Losers: The real owners of the minerals (AKA The Australian People)

There is a fairly simple but often misunderstood fact about Australia’s mineral and resource wealth, and that is that with limited exceptions, mineral (and other) resources under the soil belong to the Australian people. They’re ours. Well technically they belong to ‘the crown’ (or in this case, the state governments) – but same thing.

Unlike in countries like the USA, where a gold nugget you dug up in your backyard would belong to you, in Australia, everything under the ground belongs to all of us. ‘We’ then licence the rights to mining companies – like Shenhua and Hancock Prospecting – to extract those minerals (or other resources).

This arguably makes taxing mining (and resources) profits different to taxing other companies, because they are making profits from something that belongs to us. It’s literally Australia’s family silver. Once it’s sold, it’s gone.

When you take that into account, you could argue that the mining tax is closer to a profit share arrangement than a tax – because it’s about what portion of profits made from our mineral wealth should go to mining companies (who are 83% foreign owned), and what portion should go to us. In 2001, the split was roughly 60/40 – 60% to the mining companies and 40% to us. But now, it’s closer to 80/20 – 80% to the mining companies and 20% to us. The mining tax sought to redress some of that imbalance – although arguably not as well as it could have, thanks to the watering down it got prior to its implementation – but that’s another story.

Conclusion: The Abbott government – with some help from the Mining companies themselves – demonised the Mining Tax. It was the economic terrorist that would kill investment and jobs according to Abbott, and he and his government promised to come in and save us from this terrible mountainous dragon of a tax.

But in the stark light of day, looked at this through the eyes of the average Aussie, the slaying of the mining tax is not something Abbott should be boasting about. It may have been a win for the LNP and some of their major donors, but for everyone else, we’re letting mining companies sell off the family silver without giving us our fair share.

Slaying the Carbon Tax (The tax that would devastate a nation)

“I say to Julia Gillard, what have you got against the people of Gladstone? Why are you trying to close down Gladstone with your mining tax and your carbon tax?”
(Tony Abbott, March 2011)

The Carbon Tax – a quick primer:
The Carbon Tax was introduced on 1 July 2012 as part of the Labor Government’s Clean Energy plan. It only impacted 260 large carbon emitters, who had to pay for their carbon emissions. The goal of the tax was to incentivise a reduction in carbon gas emissions – which it did. The tax was repealed on 17 July 2014.

Abbott’s claim: The sky was going to fall down

According to Abbott, the mining tax and the carbon tax were going to ruin life as we know it in Australia:

“There’s hardly a region in this country that wouldn’t have major communities devastated by the carbon tax if this goes ahead” (April, 2011)

Of course that didn’t happen – this was yet another piece of Truthiness. Abbott took the tiniest of molehills and created a massive mountain of fear about what the Carbon tax would do. Not only did Gladstone not close down, but there was even a great article in the Gladstone Observer in March this year entitled ‘Bring back the carbon tax’.

Leigh Sales questioned Abbott about this last week – asking him to comment on the fact that places like Gladstone, Whyalla and Geelong weren’t actually wiped off the map as he said they would be. In a rare moment of honesty, Abbott briefly conceded that Sales had a ‘gotcha’ moment, which seemed to shock even him briefly, as he then mumbled something about trying “to be as good as we possibly can be going forward”.

Moreover, not only did the carbon tax not cause wide-spread job loss and economic problems while it was in place – following its repeal, we have not seen the promised increase in investment or jobs. In fact the opposite has occurred. Unemployment has continued to climb and investment to drop. So if scrapping the carbon tax was to have fixed those problems, it has been spectacularly unsuccessful.

The winners: Every household gets $550 a year! Ok, not $550 – but nearly enough to buy an extra cup of coffee every week.

No longer able to link the repeal of the carbon tax to increased investment and employment growth, Abbott and his ministers now focus primarily on the savings to households and businesses created by the tax’s demise:

“We scrapped the carbon tax and that meant that every Australian household on average was $550 a year better off.” (Abbott, March 2015)

This is partially true. As a result of the repeal of the carbon tax, prices did drop, and households will have saved some money. However, according to ABC Fact check, the amount is only $280 per year in 2015/16 and $424 per year over three years. Now before you get too excited by these savings, remember that they are expressed ‘per household’. If you convert that to a saving ‘per person’ it is closer to $110 per year next year and $165 per year over three years – or around the price of a coffee once a week.

The Losers: The Planet and the Budget (AKA the Australian people. Again.)

Before you start celebrating, there’s two big things you traded your extra cup of coffee per week in for:

  1. We’ve no longer got a workable climate change policy to help keep us in clean air, dry land and livable weather.
  2. We’ve gone from collecting revenue from heavy carbon emitters to paying companies for possibly, maybe, doing something about reducing carbon emissions at some point in the future.

Australia’s world-first climate change policy – increase carbon emissions

It’s no secret that Abbott is at best sceptical about the need to do something about climate change. In 2009, he said that climate change was ‘crap’. In his autobiography, he indicates that he is a fan of Australian geologist Ian Plimer whose own book argues that ‘the climate has always changed‘ and that humans are not responsible for current global warming. Interestingly, Plimer is a director on the boards of several of Gina Rinehart’s mining companies. And even more interesting, it seems that Plimer is also a fan of Tony Abbott’s – having donated a total of $97,000 to various branches of the Liberal and National parties in 2013/2014.

Given Abbott’s philosophy on climate change, it’s no wonder that once elected, he set about implementing a world first – a climate change policy that actually resulted in a serious increase in carbon emissions. In fact, since the repeal of the Carbon Tax, Australia’s carbon emissions have been increasing at one of the highest rates since records started in 1990. This suggests that Abbott still doesn’t believe that cutting carbon emissions is a priority, despite the clear consensus amongst scientists that it should be. Some even think that it may already be game over.

Here’s a graph of data published by our Department of Environment earlier this year showing total Australian carbon emissions just prior to when the carbon tax was introduced along with projections through to 2020. The graph shows that there was a clear drop in carbon emissions following the introduction of the Carbon Tax (the green bars). This drop in emissions immediately reversed (the red bars) after the tax was repealed, and the stark increase in emissions is expected to continue through at least 2020.

AustraliasCarbonEmissions2015

Let’s stop raising revenue and start paying companies instead

The other thing that happened as a result of the carbon tax being repealed was that we went from a scheme which raised revenue by taking money from companies with high emissions via the carbon tax (some $6.6 billion in 2013), to one where we pay companies $2.5 billion via the Direct Action Scheme to commit to reducing their emissions. At some point in time. But not necessarily straight away. In fact, only 1.5% of companies who are currently participating in the Direct Action scheme are committing to reduce emissions in the next three to five years.

Scrapping the Carbon Tax and introducing Direct Action has left a $7.6 billion hole in budget revenue – which is going to have to be made up somewhere. So don’t spend that $110 too quickly.

Conclusion: Given Abbott’s historical position on climate change, and that his actions since being elected support increased rather than decreased carbon emissions, it’s difficult to believe his stated position last year, that he takes climate change ‘very seriously‘. Climate change is arguably the most important challenge facing our nation – and the whole world – right now. And yet our Prime Minister is making things worse and not better. The potential consequences of this, not just for future generations, but for current generations are staggering, and make the $280 per household savings seem insignificant. What use is money in the bank if the bank doesn’t have a planet to live on?

But instead of focusing on the very real problem of climate change, Tony Abbott created a mountain out of a carbon-tax-molehill to scare the Australian people into believing that Australia needed to be saved from the carbon-tax, rather than from the true foe – carbon emissions themselves. He convinced people that he was the man to slay the mythical carbon-tax dragon, and completely distracted people from the thing that we should really be afraid of – climate change.

Stopping the Boats – a quick look

Space prohibits me from doing justice to a discussion on the winners and losers from Abbott’s Stop the Boats policy. But just some quick points to consider when thinking about molehills, dragons and mountains:

The only winners I can see from the Abbott government’s Stop the Boats policy are politicians, who have turned the plight of a small number of asylum seekers coming here by boat into another mythical dragon to be slain for their own political ends. The biggest losers are of course the world’s most vulnerable – asylum seekers. Asylum seekers who have nowhere to go, or worse still – are stuck in the torturous hell-holes that are Manus island and Nauru. Or even worse, forcibly returned to the country they were fleeing persecution from – as happened this week.

Yet again the Abbott government has diverted billions of dollars into conquering a molehill that their spin doctors have turned into a dragon-shaped mountain.

Molehills aren’t mountains. Or Dragons. Mountains are mountains.

By @Fyfetoons

By @Fyfetoons

Abbott really does seem to specialise in terrorising the Australian people by making mountains out of molehills. He finds a small but ‘credibilish’ fear and uses rhetoric to fan it into fully fledged terror. He then portrays himself as the only possible saviour of the Australian people from this mountainous mythical dragon.

The three so-called ‘achievements’ discussed above are not the only ones Abbott has created dragons out of – look at the fear he has managed to generate around terrorist attacks.

It’s the ultimate political spin doctoring – create a mythical dragon, fight it, and claim to have saved us from it. And the thing with dragons is that they are far easier to slay – what with them not being real and all – than actual problems. It’s much simpler to be a dragon slayer than someone who actually rights real wrongs or solves real problems.

And let’s face it – it has worked. The good people of Aus have by and large been successfully hoodwinked into buying the myths. As have the media, who on the whole let Abbott’s talk of dragon slaying go largely – not wholly, but largely – unchallenged.

When you look at the winners and losers from the three policies that Abbott boasts so much about – the only consistent winner is the LNP. Abbott’s main achievement has been distracting the Australian people with insignificant dragon-shaped molehills so that we won’t look at the truly mountainous problems we should be focusing on.

This article was first published on Kate M’s blog Progressive Conversation.

Adam Goodes: Free Speech Vs the Moral Authority to Express a View

Our Constitution does not guarantee free speech. It only implies that we have it. That being said, we assume that anyone has a right to express a view. There are some, like Andrew Bolt, who despite us supposedly living in an enlightened society want to enshrine in law the right to hate each other.

What I am getting at here is that having an opinion about booing Adam Goodes has turned into a national pastime. However, all this week, despite the right to free speech, I have been questioning the moral right of some to do so.

Let me make it absolutely clear: I abhor racism with all the intellectual and moral righteousness that has been bequeathed to me by good people. Something unexplainable within me has its way when I am confronted by nefariousness and I speak out.

Adam Goodes is a victim of racism for two reasons. Firstly, because he was named Australian of the Year which obligated him, or gave him license to speak on issues concerning Aboriginality. Secondly, he confronted a young girl who called him an ape. This is the most rancid racist thing you can call any dark skinned person.

He was no longer a champion footballer. He had crossed the line that former Collingwood Football Club President Alan McAlister so ludicrously expressed so many years ago:

“… as long as they behave like white people, well, off the field, everyone will admire and respect them.”

Yes, people have a right to free speech but when there is an absence of truth, a distortion calculated to inflame or just common bigotry I unleash my right to question their motives. When there is a racist element in what they are saying I feel duty bound to question their moral authority to opine. Often it simply displays their hypocrisy so this is where I shall start.

Shane Warne in my view is the greatest bowler to ever roll his arm over. As an individual, throughout his career he has been involved in scandal after scandal displaying pathetic social behaviour. What sort of role model has he been? He even started a charity as a PR exercise at the height of his misconduct. You be the judge. Mine is that his comments show the intellectual depth of a flea. And that’s being kind.

“If the public don’t like a sportsman because of the way they play the game, they boo, if they like them they cheer, nothing to do re racism”.

Last September after a Swans game against Richmond, Warne said he was:

“shocked” Goodes had been named Australian of the Year.

Alan Jones, the sanctimonious self-righteous biased shock jock habitual liar from Sydney accused Goodes of ‘playing the victim’. Jones was once arrested in a London toilet and faced two charges of outrageous public indecency while behaving in an indecent manner, said he was affronted that Goodes would challenge a 13 year old girl. Jones completely ignored the facts of the events that unfolded, overlooked Goodes’ efforts to meet with and counsel the girl, and portrayed the girl as the victim. As for the girl’s obviously inherited morality from the mother, what can one say other than feel pity. I have two grandsons aged 9 and 11 who think the treatment of Goodes is terrible and fully understand that racism is inherently a bad thing. They have needed little instruction on the subject. Should I go on about Jones incitement of the Cronulla riots or his proven history of prostituting his ‘opinions’ and repeatedly disseminating falsehoods as well as having publicly endorsed the idea of murdering our then PM by drowning at sea?

You be the judge.

Andrew Bolt, convicted ‘racist’ and all round appalling paid for controversial opinion journalist – individual who demanded the PM give him more free speech to vilify without constraint also expressed his horror at Goodes confronting the girl:

“Singling out a girl for public humiliation, like that, I thought was wrong and if Adam Goodes said it was wrong, I think he’d be a superstar; all people from either sides would rush to embrace him.”

In doing so he too gave a completely false account of the events that took place. You be the judge. If it were my daughter I would embrace Goodes and say “thank you”. As for the mother’s contribution I can only say she needs a lesson or two in parenthood.

Tony Abbot, a leader with little capacity for it offers lukewarm “we should show more respect” support but when it suits his political needs displays racist overtones against Muslims.

Ross Greenwood, economics commentator, said about his booing of Goodes: “There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s got nothing to do with his race, it’s got nothing to do with me being racist”. He didn’t stop to consider that by contributing to the booing himself, he was legitimizing the real racists.

Sam Newman, the resident ageing buffoon and perpetual aficionado of crassness on the Footy Show; the man who bared his genitals on television and who has affronted many with his sexism and disgusting behavior. The man who painted his face black after Nicky Winmar didn’t appear on the show in 1999 opined that “People aren’t booing you [Goodes] because you’re Aboriginal, they’re booing you because you’re acting like a jerk”. (Only he would know).

He went on to state that Goodes’ celebration only served to provoke fans and should have been reprimanded by the AFL. Newman further said:

“As Australian of the year, you should know that- you should be trying to unite people instead of trying to divide them”. (Isn’t that what he has been doing by speaking about the problems facing Indigenous people?)

You be the judge but for me Newman and other white men like him who have made fortunes out of thoughtlessness have not the remotest capacity to understand the emotional torment that racial abuse might incur. He is one of those many men who have never really grown up and his antics prove it.

Jason Ackermanis, former champion and perennial bad boy of the Brisbane Lions parroted the remarks of Alan Jones and in doing so showed little empathy or understanding of the broader picture. He said that Goodes was “playing the victim”. Something that Akermanis made a career of doing. In 2010 he said that gay footy players should “stay in the closet”. In 2005 Akermanis sparked racial controversy when he used his radio program (the Aker and Macca Show) on Brisbane’s 98.9 FM to describe his employers as “monkeys”. It was an Aboriginal community owned station run by the legendary Tiga.

You be the judge but have any of these people made the slightest attempt to comprehend emotionally what it must be like to be being booed by thousands of people every time you go near the ball and not comprehend why they are doing it or conversely believe they are doing it because of the colour of your skin? I can feel it as I write but I bet my feelings are unworthy of his. Does he hear in the raised hiss of intolerance the eco of the wounds from the racism he experienced as a child? Or does he hear in the booing crescendo a symphony of humiliation from the white bastards he seeks to befriend.

The problem here is that the people aforementioned have a common thread. They all are paid huge amounts to be controversial. They are all media tarts with dubious moral standards that brings into question their moral authority to make judgement on their fellow humans. Rather they are insisting on the right to tell them how to behave. And do so while theirs goes unquestioned. What two-faced hypocrisy it is.

These people aside the media generally speaking have made some worthwhile contributions to the issue of race in Australia.

As much as it offends my pride of country I have to admit that the tide of racism flows down the streets of our cities, and through the veins of our culture. And it waters the fields of our play.

As a citizen of the state of Queensland said:

“Let me get this straight … If Adam Goodes stands up against racism that makes him a racist? And if someone makes racial slurs towards him and he doesn’t just “cop it” like all the rednecks want him to, then he’s a sook and a troublemaker?”

These are my thoughts. You be the judge.

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Racist Australia? Of course.

The Adam Goodes booing saga has me shocked. I’m not shocked at the incident itself; as a lifelong AFL supporter I’ve seen a lot of booing in my time. I’m not shocked at the accusation of some of the booing being racist; clearly we can all acknowledge that even though many of the booers have no racist intent, some of them do and obviously all the booing of Goodes must stop. I’m not even shocked at the saturation media coverage of the story, and the fact that everyone who is anyone has weighed into the debate; social media has also been in a lather all week. This all comes as no surprise to me. The issue is rightly one that should be discussed and I welcome calls for a national focus on combatting racism and discrimination. What does however come as a huge shock to me is that the public seem shocked that racism exists in our country. Anyone who is surprised that in a crowd of around 30,000 members of the Australian public, there are a few hundred racist people, needs to take a closer look at their country. Because of course there are racists in Australia. Have you seen who our Prime Minister is?

I understand that it’s not a nice subject for many people to talk about because it doesn’t make them feel very good about Australia. But let’s take a good, long, hard look at ourselves and avoid the temptation to put our heads in the sands of denial. The election of Tony Abbott and the continued national acceptance of his strategies of using divisive, racist policies to turn Australians against minority groups is all the proof you need of a strong racist element that runs through our national veins.

Let’s not forget that racist attitudes gave birth to Pauline Hanson and her One Nation Party. Sure, this party hasn’t had any recent success. But it’s easy to forget that in the 1998 election, Hanson’s party received 9% of the vote. And then of course Abbott set up a slush fund to get rid of Hanson. Because his Liberal Party needed her voters. And his Liberal Party has been courting the votes of those people who supported Hanson’s racist views about indigenous Australians and opposition to multiculturalism ever since. How has this huge population of racist Australians whose votes are so important to the Liberal Party’s electoral success escaped the attention of people so completely shocked by the Adam Goode’s booing saga? This is not some niche success either; this is Abbott’s success at becoming Prime Minister.

Fear-mongering towards racists is at the heart of Abbott’s favourite vote-winning, or poll-lifting policies. Look at Abbott’s obsession with national security, including his reaction to the Sydney siege, which was automatically framed as part of the ‘Islamic fundamentalist terrorist’ threat facing Australia, rather than a mentally-ill-lone-nutter who just so happened to be of Muslim faith. Who do you think Abbott’s appealing to when he talks about ‘Team Australia’ and says ‘whose side are you on’? When he obsesses over taking away people’s passports? Yes, it’s the part of Australia who boos Goodes for racist reasons. And what about Abbott’s asylum seeker policies that block the world’s desperate displaced people from getting to Australia, or living here if they’ve arrived previously. Does Abbott stand up for the indigenous Australians living in poverty stricken remote communities by working to improve their access to healthcare, education and social services that would help to narrow the gap? Of course he doesn’t. Instead he makes racist statements about their ‘lifestyle choice’ after withdrawing Federal support, forcing the WA government to close over 100 communities down. Where was the outrage then?

More recently, Abbott has refused to ban one of his government MP’s from speaking at, and endorsing, a Reclaim Australia rally. These rallies were attended by Australians who hate a particular religious minority so much that they are willing to march in the streets to advertise their hatred. Does the site of these rallies not shock Australia? Do people waving Swastikas in our streets not warrant a national conversation about racist elements in our society? Apparently not.

The point is, Tony Abbott isn’t some bogan at the footy booing an Indigenous footballer. Tony Abbott is our Prime Minister. He was chosen by the country to represent us. He’s supposably the best leader we could find. And his entire political career is reliant on division, scare-campaigns and appeals to the racist element of Australia which people shocked by booing football fans appear to forget exists. So I’m glad that something has put racism on the agenda, even if it’s not the issue I expected to spark the debate. And now that we’re talking about racism, and we’re all determined to do something about it, can we have a look at the Prime Minister we’ve chosen and accept that if we’re going to be shocked that racism still exists in our community, we should be shocked, and ashamed, that Abbott and his government represents us.

 

My Thoughts on the Week That Was

w21 It’s difficult to criticise Labor’s proposal to impose the so called Buffet Tax on the rich when the Australian Taxation Office had found that in 2011-12 75 Australians earning more than $1 million a year had paid no tax at all. In fact combined annual incomes of those millionaires was $195 million, but through elaborate accounting tricks, the super-rich 75 had been required to stump up just $82 in total.

2 Research shows that Federal Coalition member’s annual expenses are on average $90,000 per head more than Labor MPs. Even allowing for the higher costs of incumbency it is an astonishing figure. No one doubts the validity of claiming expenses but this really has to be sorted out. Joe makes thirteen trips to his farm and Bronwyn attends Mirabella’s wedding all on the pretext that they were on government business. “The age of privilege is over” said Joe. “Crap” said Tony.

3 One of the regrets of my life is that in all probability Australia will not become a Republic in my lifetime. But Shorten is right to aim for 2025. And if you could make it sooner I would be immensely happy.

4 Bill Shorten is planning equal representation of the sexes in Parliament. Did he consult with the Minister for Women?

Sunday 26 August.

An observation:

“We exercise our involvement in our democracy every three years by voting. After that the vast majority takes very little interest. Why is it so?”

w51 Last week at the Premier’s retreat the PM appealed for a calm measured debate on the GST without any scaremongering. Sounds reasonable except he continued his scare campaigns on Asylum Seekers and Climate Change.

An example of this is Dutton’s announcement that if Labor won the next election hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers would invade our shores. We deserve better than these fools.

2 Australia remains the only developed country yet to announce what plan it will take to the global climate summit in Paris. So let’s not have any of these ridiculous scare campaigns. It should be pointed out that Labor has not actually announced a Climate policy and that despite criticising Labor for not modelling its policy-in-progress, the Coalition can’t point to any modelling of its own Direct Action policy because it has never done any – not when it was in opposition, nor when it was in government. During the last election, if I recall correctly, Abbott said he just wanted to have a crack

3 The cost advantage of non-polluting energy is rapidly increasing. Wind is already the cheapest, and solar PV [photovoltaic panels] will be cheaper than gas in around two years, in 2017. Wind will continue to decrease in cost but solar will become the dominant source in the longer term.

4 Speaking of leadership the latest Morgan survey reveals that Abbott is supported as Liberal Leader by only 13% and Shorten as ALP Leader by only 12%. The Libs prefer Turnbull by a whopping margin and Labor prefer Deputy ALP Leader Tanya Plibersek.

5 It just won’t go away. It has now been revealed that TAXPAYERS footed a more than $21,000 bill for Warren Truss to give a speech explaining the virtues of tightening the government belt and reducing expenditure after the controversial 2014 Federal Budget.

It’s our money, folks.

6 All things considered it’s been a good conference for the leader.

w6Monday 26 July

A poem on the theme of domestic violence.

Maria, I called

I awoke with a throaty dankness Of alcohol overindulged Detestable stupidity And unmitigated sorrow

The why of it deserted me Memories vague but real I had committed a sin Of unforgiving evil

Then my conscience Spoke with morose meaning I had hit her a coward’s punch Destroying her exquisite smile

Maria I called to the silence But it prevailed God I said as if to mock my Self hatred

I pissed and staggered Through my regrets To the kitchen The stench of myself hit me

Where was she and The noise that children make Regret insinuated itself On the absence of love

She had written with miseries ink Just three words “The last time” on pristine white I cursed the grog but

Pathetically I sought the Next bottle of my degeneracy And took it to bed Contemplating the me I used to be

John Lord

1 Last week the PM was full of praise for a debate, without scaremongering, on the issue of the GST. It seems however that scaremongering is ok on climate change and it has begun already. An ETS is a tax he insists with the same enthusiasm he had for a leg of lamb or wiping towns off the map before the last election.

We all might ask though just what it is they are using to fund their nonsensical Direct Action plan. Answer: YOUR TAXES.

Then yesterday afternoon Malcolm Turnbull cut through Abbott’s slogans and semantics dominating the climate policy debate – pointing out that all policies to push low-emission electricity generation come at a cost to households, including the ones the government supports, and that the cost of renewables is falling. He went on to correctly talk about the costs of whatever scheme is adopted. The Coalition has never revealed its costings beyond its present scheme.

I repeat: “We all incur a cost for the upkeep of our health. Why then should we not be liable for the cost of a healthy planet”.

Remember the “historic and ambitious” climate agreement between the US and China, when Tony Abbott was left out in the ‘coald’?

Asked where the deal left Australia’s climate change policy, the expert adviser to the former government Professor Ross Garnaut said: “Exactly where it was before the US-China announcement – up shit creek.”

2 I do wish someone amongst all those Labor supporters who so detest Bill Shorten and his Asylum Turn Back policy would show me their alternate so that I might gauge the difference. The question always arises. What would you do?

3 Morgan Poll: L-NP support has slumped 3% to 46% cf. ALP 54% (up 3%) on a two-party preferred basis as the travel expense ‘misconduct’ surrounding Parliamentary Speaker Bronwyn Bishop’s incorrect use of taxpayer entitlements continued to impact negatively on the Government.

Tuesday 28 July

1 Bronwyn Bishop’s office claims she has to keep secret her meetings in Albury on the weekend she claimed travel expenses to attend Sophie Mirabella’s wedding. Sniff test, lie detector test, pub test. Take your pick.

2 Goodness, all the talk yesterday about more women in the Coalition ranks. Don’t they realise they have a minister for women and he also happens to be the Prime Minister. Why isn’t he taking some action?

3 This week’s Essential Poll and Survey sees Labor back on 53% and the Coalition on 47%. What can be read into it? Well this far out from the next election so many things can happen that you cannot view it as an indication of how people will vote. It’s only an insight into how people are thinking at the moment. It is a measure of this Governments unpopularity though that they have never headed the Opposition since the election.

This is what they thought of Bronwyn Bishop and the expenses saga.

25% think she should stand down while her expenses are being investigated, 19% think she should resign as Speaker and 24% think she should resign from Parliament.

34% of Liberal/National voters think she should remain as Speaker – 25% think she should resign as Speaker or from Parliament. A majority of Labor voters (59%) and Greens voters (55%) think she should resign as Speaker or from Parliament.

On Electricity costs

51% think their electricity bill over the last 12 months has increased, 33% think it has stayed about the same and 9% think it has decreased.

There were not substantial differences by voting intention or demographics – although Labor voters (58%) were a little more likely to think it had increased.

On the impact of the Carbon Tax.

More than 60% of voters think the former Labor government’s carbon price had no effect, or only a small effect, on electricity bills. Just as Abbott tries to rerun a cost of living scare campaign against Labor’s pledge to re-introduce an emissions trading scheme.

On Tax Reform

There was strong majority support for forcing multinational companies to pay a minimum tax rate on Australian earnings (79%), increasing income tax rate for high earners (63%) and removing superannuation tax concessions for high earners (59%).

There was strong majority opposition to increasing the GST (65%).

Wednesday 29 July

Posted my piece Where Did all his Readers Go?

1 Alan Jones opining about the character of Aussie rules player Adam Goodes. You have to put it in perspective of course. Goods is a champion player, champion human being who does a lot to further indigenous culture and represent his race. He is an ‘’Australian of the Year’’ and a fine one. On the other hand Alan Jones is a detestable human who delights in demining people. And he accepts paid millions to do so. How someone of such little character can judge someone with so much stretches my intellect somewhat.

2 Senior ministers, it seems, are ‘ropeable’ over the Bronwyn Bishop’s scandal saying it is damaging the Government.

Some charity should suggest an admission charge to the public gallery for the next Question Time to raise funds. Pressure is mounting on Bishop to resign but she won’t. Abbott is unlikely to force her instead relishing an all in brawl with the Opposition. In the meantime we can all sit and ponder just how it is we are being governed.

It would not surprise if today she says the dog ate her expenses homework-twice.

Who tweeted this?

After 2 interesting tram trips last night now on the 109 on Collins St to Sth Cross to get the train to Geelong to visit . . .

An observation:

“The simplest way to turn the profession of politics on its head would be to demand they tell the truth”

3 There is something cringe worthy about politicians delaying the inevitable. Abbott is doing everything possible to delay a vote on gay marriage. It’s not like it’s something new that requires more debate. The public has let the public know their feelings and they should act accordingly. All he is doing is making his Government more disliked than it already is.

Thursday 30 July

Bronwyn Bishop’s gratuitous empty apology to the Australian people on the Alan Jones (where else) program was too little too late. It does nothing for the public’s perception that politicians are openly rorting the system. She has further demeaned the position of speaker if indeed that is possible. Her bias as speaker is acknowledged by both sides of the political spectrum, as does all sections of the media. Her behaviour has reflected on all members of parliament and the Prime Ministers failure to dismiss her is yet another example of his lack of qualities as a leader.

Her credibility is now so tainted that she could not possible command the respect of the Parliament and its members.

The Leader of the House, Christopher Pyne, may well seek to protect her, particularly in question time, but an already tarnished, childish excuse for a demonstration of democracy will be further diminished.

There was a time when our Parliament exhibited some collective dignity and personal integrity. Abbott seems to have so trashed the conventions and principles of our Parliament that it no longer conforms to the traditions of the Westminster system.

A midday thought:

Less informed voters unfortunately outnumber the more politically aware. Therefore, conservatives feed them all the bullshit they need. And the menu generally contains a fair portion of untruths”.

Friday 31 July

1 Has Mike Baird become our de facto PM. Firstly he makes the running on a debate for an increase on the GST. Something you would expect an incumbent PM to do. And yesterday he took on a plea for people to stop booing footballer Adam Goodes. In the meantime the leader of the nation remains silent on the issue.

Midday thoughts

1 Two issues dominated the week. Firstly the Adam Goodes’ saga occupied all genres of the media and many morally unqualified commentators opined their ignorance. It will be the subject of my next piece for THE AIMN.

2 Bronwyn Bishop continued to dominate the headlines and this morning Gerard Henderson was on News24 defending her. The point is this. Her performance as Speaker on any level of judgement has been abysmal. The expenses issue is simple the catalyst in calling for her resignation.

My view hasn’t changed. Bishop should resign and write her memoirs. I’m sure somebody MIGHT be interested.

Even today the PM said this:

“She is obviously deeply remorseful, anyone who saw her on television yesterday would know that she is a very, very chastened person indeed”.

Can someone tell me the medical term for delayed reaction?

And this is the week that was.

Malcolm Turnbull had the last word without saying a thing.

w10

 

Bishop stays. Goodes goes. Abbott is silent. What is wrong with this picture?

In case you are still in any doubt about what matters and what doesn’t to the Anglo-Saxon hegemony think on this: white Speaker of the House of Representatives and Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s personal pick Bronwyn Bishop remains in charge of the House, in spite of decades of financial abuse of taxpayer funds, the obscene details of which are unfolding daily before our disbelieving eyes. The only thing that keeps her in her job is Abbott’s support, because while the Prime Minister cannot actually sack a Speaker, there’s little doubt that if Abbott pressured her to get on her bike, she’d be mad not to obey.

On the other hand, Indigenous football star and Australian of the Year Adam Goodes has been driven from his sport and public life by unrelenting racist attacks every time he shows his face. Goodes’ reaction to a thirteen-year-old girl calling him an ape has been held up by the racist commentariat such as Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt as being the reason footy crowds have taken such a set against him. However, it seems to have escaped the commentators’ collective memory that it was in fact the illustrious Eddie Maguire who at the same time called Goodes “King Kong.”

What also seems to have escaped their racist filter is that Goodes did not know at the time that a young girl was responsible for calling him an ape, and when he did become aware of this he handled the situation admirably, meeting with the girl and her mother, and engaging them in conversation about the wounding and divisive nature of racist insults.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott, normally a man with an opinion on everything no matter how irrelevant, remains conspicuously silent on both matters. Ms Bishop’s shenanigans with helicopters and luxury limos have left rotten egg splattered all over Tony’s face, an ungracious response on her part to the man who, when he won government, rewarded her with the prestigious job of Speaker. Getting rid of Bronwyn will cause Tony to lose egg-splattered face, as it will be an admission of his lack of judgement of a woman he’s known for decades, and indeed, has been heard to refer to as his “political mother.”

But as Freud would have it, an adult man must at some point cut ties with his mother, and this could be Tony’s moment to sever the umbilical cord.

Abbott apparently can’t say anything on the Goodes’ matter either, given his demographic is fundamentally xenophobic and racist, and he can’t risk alienating them. While the country engages in a national conversation about racism, our leader remains unacceptably silent, missing in action. While the indignation and outrage at Bishop’s fraudulent behaviour escalates, our leader remains silent, missing in action. The number of topics Abbott can publicly engage with seems to be shrinking daily: he certainly seems incapable of entering into the energetic debates that will shape and reshape our nation in a most concrete fashion. In other words, he’s useless.

Ideology can do that to a man. Render him useless.

This article was first published on No Place For Sheep.

 

With all that is wrong with Australia, all we hear about is boats

I truly detest how this country is treating asylum seekers and I detest the policies of both the Coalition and Labor – none of which remotely consider the onshore processing of refugees who arrive or attempt to arrive by boat.

I also detest how the asylum seeker issue is thrust front and centre by the government as the issue which will most likely decide who wins the next federal election. With nothing else to take to the election, naturally it’s all that the government wants us to be focused on.

And of course, the compliant Murdoch media is an active agent in promoting the discourse in our popular consciousness that we need to keep our borders safe from ‘boat people’.

I live in hope that one day (soon, I hope) that we witness an Australian government adopt both a heart and a humane policy on ‘boat people’ and I would like to see it embraced by most Australians. The latter, of course, would require an absolute turnaround to our popular consciousness.

End of story.

I don’t want to talk about ‘boat people’ any more. With all that is wrong with Australia, all we hear about is boats.

Instead of the government and the Murdoch media telling us what the important issues are, we should be turning it back onto them.

Take away the blather and the bravado about our ‘right to be tough’ towards asylum seekers and dig into the core of what really is important to us and this is what you’ll find:

As at June 2015 over 753,000 Australians were unemployed. In September 2013 – the month of the federal election – the number was just over 706,000. So since the election 47,000 more people are out of work. What is the government doing about the trend? Nothing. What is the media saying about it? Nothing.

Are there more people unemployed in Australia than the number of asylum seekers attempting to come here by boat? Yes.

Housing affordability has gone through the roof (excuse the pun) as have house prices themselves. The median house price in Sydney – our most populated city – is expected to hit $1,000,000 by the end of the year while Australia wide it sits at $660,000. Young people are now struggling more than ever to enter the housing market as the “Australian dream” of home ownership is under threat. But not according to our Treasurer Joe Hockey who insists that houses in Sydney are not unaffordable while the Prime Minister says he wants house prices to rise. That’s right. Rise. With young people struggling to buy a house at today’s prices our Prime Minister wants them to pay even more, despite the fact that housing affordability already represents a long-term structural problem that has been neglected for decades. So, what then can I assume our government is doing about housing affordability? Well based on the attitude of our Treasurer and Prime Minister, nothing. It’s not a problem apparently.

I wonder, are there more people in Australia struggling to or unable to buy a house than the number of asylum seekers attempting to come here by boat? Yes.

Over two and a half million Australians, including over 600,000 children live below the poverty line. That number represents almost 14% of our population. Welfare recipients are most at risk of living in poverty, yet these are the people most likely to be adversely affected by this government’s budgetary measures. So is the government doing anything to reduce the level of poverty in Australia? No.

Are there more people living below the poverty line in Australia than the number of asylum seekers attempting to come here by boat? Yes.

On any given night there are 105,000 homeless Australians with 42 per cent of these being under 25. We do not hear the media talk about this as a damning blight of our society and neither do we hear the government offering any solution to it. But can we expect them to when Tony Abbott says that homelessness is a ‘choice‘?

And by the way, are there more homeless people in Australia than the number of asylum seekers attempting to come here by boat? Yes.

Around one in five women in Australia have experienced some form of domestic violence. These are “epidemic proportions” to the point that domestic violence has now become a national emergency. As has the number of women killed by a violent partner: with at least one women murdered every week. What is the government doing about it? Not much by the look of it.

Are there more people in Australia experiencing domestic violence than the number of asylum seekers attempting to come here by boat? Yes.

Australia is now the most expensive country to live in and Australians are “struggling to cope as the cost of living pressures bite“. An estimated one in three Australians cannot meet their cost of living expenses on their current incomes. What is the government doing about it? Nothing. What is the media saying about it? Nothing.

Are there more people in Australia struggling with the cost of living than the number of asylum seekers attempting to come here by boat? Yes.

Our economy is “grinding into stagnation” and rather than the three or so per cent growth each year we’ve come to expect, we might have to get used to 2 per cent GDP growth. And as a result, lower living standards can be expected while “everything here is going to be much tougher than before and compared to the rest of the world”. So what is the government doing about it (apart from blaming Labor)? Nothing. “The government neither has no idea – let along any proposal, plan or program – for how to boost Australian growth back up to three or four per cent per year“. They’re not even talking about it. Meanwhile, some of our largest and most potentially-innovative sectors are held back by the Abbott Government’s bureaucracy and regulation.

And will more Australians be affected by a stagnant economy and lower living standards than the number of asylum seekers attempting to come here by boat? Yes.

Oh how I could go on. I only wish the media would too. I wish the media would tell us not only the truth about the Abbott Government but question their appalling attitude towards climate change, the environment, job security, racism, Indigenous Australians, human rights … take a pick!

And how about our spiraling debt?

And how about Tony Abbott’s record of lies and broken promises?

Yet, with all that is wrong with Australia, all we hear about is boats.

 

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Leadership, scandal, and the political process

When sitting Liberal Prime Minister John Howard lost his seat in the 2007 Federal election, three people raised their hand for the leadership of the party the next day. By Wednesday, one of them, Tony Abbott, had withdrawn due to lack of numbers, leaving Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull to contest the leadership ballot the next day.

That night, November 28 2007, Abbott appeared on Lateline with Tony Jones.

He blamed, in part, his close relationship with John Howard as a reason he did not have support for the leadership.

“I think it is true just at the moment, the Party thinks that it is important to move on from the Howard era. And I obviously have always been very closely associated with John Howard. I think history will judge him very well. But just at the moment, the Party is devastated understandably by the loss and wants to distance itself from the recent past.”

But Tony said he had “staked a claim”.

TONY ABBOTT: This time does not suit me. Who knows what the future might hold…. I’m certainly not guaranteeing that I won’t in the future challenge for the leadership.

TONY JONES: You mean during the next term? Because, we know what conservative governments in defeat were like in Britain: revolving doors for leaders.

TONY ABBOTT: And let us hope that that doesn’t happen to this conservative opposition.

Brendan Nelson won the leadership ballot. Less than 10 months later, he was rolled by Malcolm Turnbull. Fifteen months on, Turnbull was rolled by Abbott.

Jones went on to ask Abbott about Turnbull’s proposed ‘symbolic changes’: “an Australian Republic, sorry to the stolen generation, ratify Kyoto, he is sympathetic to the gay agenda and he now rejects WorkChoices outright.”

When asked if he accepted the symbolism of saying sorry to Indigenous Australians, Abbott replied

“Look, I think John Howard successfully moved us beyond that. And frankly, if Kevin Rudd wants to get into that quagmire, I think he is making a big mistake.”

Tony had just attended a lunch at the Lodge, the last hosted by Howard for his government colleagues. When asked why Peter Costello and his wife were not at the lunch, he had no answer.

Jones then asked about Howard’s state of mind, did he think the loss was his fault.

“He knows that there were many decisions that he made in the last term that will inevitably be called into question. And maybe he got some of those calls wrong… I think that he has come to the conclusion that it wasn’t really him. It was the fact that the government was 11.5 years old.”

They then went on to discuss one of the lowest examples of Liberal gutter politics, something that derailed the dying days of the Howard campaign – the Lindsay pamphlet scandal.

Liberal Party volunteers, including the husbands of retiring member Jackie Kelly and Liberal candidate Karen Chijoff, distributed fake election pamphlets alleged to have been printed at taxpayers’ expense in Kelly’s office in the western suburbs seat of Lindsay. Knowledge of the stunt allegedly went right up the chain to the state executive.

The pamphlet claimed to be from “The Islamic Australia Federation”, a non-existent organisation. It strongly urged support for the Labor party in the upcoming federal election and went on to praise the ALP on a number of divisive issues, including:

  • [forgiving] our Muslim brothers who have been unjustly sentenced to death for the Bali bombings, referring to the Labor party’s opposition to the death penalty (in particular Robert McClelland’s comments) and the Liberals’ argument that this policy supports the Bali bombers themselves
  • Supporting the construction of a new mosque, as well as the opening of a new mosque in St Marys with the help of local and state government funding
  • Support for controversial former Grand Mufti Sheik Taj El-Din Hilaly (spelt “Al-Hilaly”)

The pamphlet also misspelt Allahu Akbar as “Ala Akba”, with the ALP logo on either side. The logo used was an obsolete one that had been retired after the previous election in 2004. There was also no authorising statement, which all political advertising is required to include.

Interestingly, it was Luke Foley, current NSW Labor leader who was then assistant secretary of the ALP, who, acting on a tip off from an anonymous member of the Liberal Party, organised a sting operation which caught the miscreants red-handed.

Jackie Kelly, who Abbott described as “my best friend in the Parliament”, spoke about it on radio on 22 November in spite of a party directive not to do so. She said her first instinct when she saw the pamphlet was to laugh because it was a parody of some things that had occurred during the election campaign and compared it to a prank by the satirical comedy team The Chaser.

“When I first read it I had to laugh … pretty much everyone who has read (it) chuckles, in terms of the parody it does make of various things that have happened during the campaign. My view is that it’s a bit of Chaser-style prank.”

The police disagreed and five men were charged with distribution of unauthorised electoral material resulting in three of them being issued with small fines.

Abbott admitted he had spoken to Kelly before she gave what was described as the worst interview ever done by a member of parliament and there was some suggestion that the Chaser defence had been his idea.

The Sydney-based chairman of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, Ikebal Patel, said falsification of election material created a further rift between mainstream community and Muslims. The Mufti of Australia, Fehmi Naji, said “When people read stuff like that, they say ‘why are we putting up with Muslims?’ We want to stop that thought, and show that we can live together and carry out our duty to our country together.”

Whipping up fear about Muslims is not a new sport for the Liberals.

The Lateline interview concluded with Jones thanking Abbott.

TONY JONES: Tony Abbott, we thank you once again. A hard day at the office. I’ve got to say, you always come in on hard days – some of the hardest days – to talk about it. That is one thing to be admired about you and we thank you very much for coming in once again.

TONY ABBOTT: Part of the political process and democratic accountability, Tony.

Sadly, under a Credlin led government, democratic accountability is no longer part of the political process.

 

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My Thoughts on the Week That Was

Saturday July 18

This is not going to go away. The revelation that Bishop wasn’t prepared to pay back the money for her helicopter flight until the Prime Minister intervened is particular damming.

BRONWWN

There is still the question of the $88,000 two week trip to Europe. Even if she can justify it under the existing rules she is still guilty of extravagance that should not be tolerated. If it cannot be justified, her position is untenable.

And of course she still has to explain how she thought the trip was consistent with her duties as Speaker, an office that requires detachment from partisan politics.

Sunday July 19

PHILIP

Prince Philip is back in the headlines with another “gaffe”. This time, he asked a group of East End women: “Who do you sponge off?” People just dismiss it as another regrettable thought from a man of few redeeming features. If fact a man who has sponged of the public purse all his life. A snob in the true meaning of the word. (Look it up).

Bronwyn Bishop sponges of the taxpayer by using a helicopter to attend a fundraiser for her own her own party and thinks she has done nothing wrong. She will repay the money, reluctantly, under the Minchin protocol which is nothing more than a mechanism to get away with cheating and will probably continue to treat Members of the House of Reps as her subservient beings and humiliate as many of them as possible.

George Christenson will address a Reclaim Australia rally proclaiming his racist white superiority whilst being cheered on by the Prime Minister under the guise of free speech.

Although isolated these three instances have one thing in common. They are each born of a deep sense of establishment where the incumbents believe that a certain right of entitlement has been bestowed upon them and that all others are beneath or subservient to those of privilege.

Monday July 20

If as the Prime Minister says the pursuit of Bishop is a beat up. What was his pursuit of Slipper? A beating?

1 As a well-read lover of language and its power to persuade I intently dislike those who prostitute its meaning. Watching Greg Hunt on Insiders yesterday was an agonising exercise in the destruction of the English language. By that I mean this, when lies are used so blatantly to construct the basis of what seems a reasoned truth and sentences mangled to the point where they become deliberately indecipherable I am appalled. Such was the case yesterday. I said to my wife after the interview. “Do you have any idea what he was talking about? She answered “Why? did you?”

ENGLISH

2 And on the same program Gerrard Henderson’s feeble, flippant attempt to dismiss Speaker Bishop’s misdemeanors as uneventful and unworthy of serious discussion were so typical of someone so biased as to not be able to see the wood from the trees.

To quote John Hewson:

“I just think its pretty bad short-term politics and it’ll end in tears for a lot of people.”

And Peter Costello says:

“Bronwyn Bishop’s interpretation of her parliamentary entitlements, arguing the Speaker can claim taxpayer benefits for attending any function where she speaks about parliament is wrong.”

Who said this I wonder:

“I love her but her bias as a Speaker has made Parliament almost unworkable” one backbench MP said.

3 And before anyone accuses me of bias let me say that in my many years of following politics we have never had a worse bunch morons who seemingly don’t want to govern for the common good. Only for themselves. All of them.

4 An example of 3. Tony Abbott thinks Bronwyn is doing a really good job. That proves it.

5 Organisers of the Reclaim Australia event in Brisbane have announced their split from the organisation to join an explicitly anti-Islam group. That’s what they really are so I salute their honesty if nothing else.

reclaim

A Midday thought

I don’t think anyone has ever uttered words like these that better describe everything that is bad and wrong about the governance of our nation. We have a rotten government and a rotten leader in Prime Minister Abbott. Who else would react to a great wrong by a rotten Speaker by saying this?

“She has been a strong Speaker…she has been a strong servant of our country, she has been a good servant of the Coalition and so she does have my confidence but like everyone who has done something like this, inevitably, for a period of time, they are on probation.

Tuesday July 21

PROBATION

The Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Parliament of Australia is ON PROBATION. I really struggle to get my head around the implication of that. Has any other Speaker in Australia’s history ever been “ON PROBATION?

Let me repeat this less the ramification of the statement escapes you. The Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Parliament of Australia is ON PROBATION.

Could the PM tell the public the duration of the PROBATION, its conditions, the consequences of the Speaker breaching any of the conditions of the PROBATION, how any breaches of the PROBATION will be reported to the Australian public and how the status of the PROBATION could be affected by any investigation conducted by the Department of Finance or indeed the Federal Police.

Since Tony Abbott became leader of the Liberal Party and in turn the Prime Minister of Australia he has been responsible for the disintegration of many of the institutions and standards of conduct that used to cement our democracy. He is a disgrace to the very principles that we once thought were necessary for robust, transparent, open and truthful government.

Wednesday 22 July

Posted my short story Confession of an Honest Conservative.

1 This week’s Essential Poll again has Labor in the lead, 52/48.

2 Today in Sydney the PM is having a retreat with the State Premiers to discuss the vexed issue of tax. The premiers will rule out anything that is detrimental to their own state. In the meantime the Federal Government is conducting a tax inquiry but has ruled out any major tax reforms (those that could make any difference) because it might affect its chances of reelection.

Then he says: “We are doing what’s best for all Australians”

Bullshit.

Or to borrow a comment by Stephen Tardrew:

“We are meeting to discuss what we are not going to do just to make it look like we are doing something about nothing. Brilliant act of circular escapism.”

Thursday 23 July

1 Renewable energy: Labor puts forward 50 per cent target by 2030; pledges to introduce emissions trading scheme. This will give the voter a stark contrast from which to choose. It could be described as bold and visionary. The difference is simply that one party is for the future and one the past or that one believes the science and one doesn’t.

2 During the “Copter Crisis” Mrs Bishop said that as Speaker: “I speak to community groups, I’ll speak to Liberal groups, I’ll even speak to Labor groups”.

Well it seems one Labor Branch has taken her at her word and issued an official invitation to speak at a seminar.

“We would like to invite you to be our guest speaker on the topic ‘what role will the Westminster system play in an Australian Republic?”

3 The bye election for Don Randall’s seat will be an interesting test for the Abbott Government particularly as it is in WA. The seat was won by the Liberal Party 52.2 to Labor 47.8. The earliest date it could be held is 29 July. The average swing is 5%.

4 It seems our Speaker has been ripping off the taxpayer for years. Fairfax has disclosed that the taxpayer has even funded her trips to the Opera. I’m guessing she would have seen Call Me Madam, Orpheus in the Underworld, The Beggars Opera, Madam Butterfly, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Taming of the Screw and Carmen of course.

5 Just a reminder to those familiar with the life and work of the person known as Jesus. Yes he was the world’s first socialist.

6 A rarity for me to agree with Janet Albrechtsen but she is correct. “MPs can’t hope to end the age of entitlement and exempt themselves.”

7 “It’s astonishing that the Liberal party can campaign against a carbon tax because it raises the cost of living – and then advocate a tax, the GST, that literally raises the cost of living.”

Friday 24 July

INTERNET

I found myself without any Internet for most of Thursday and it wasn’t reconnected until around midday today. Even in that short space of time I was reminded of just how much the internet had become part of my life. It is somewhat of a shock when the instantaneousness of information (and many other things) is taken away. I recalled the time when of habit I would venture to the front gate to collect the daily newspaper. The Melbourne Age was my source of news. It had sustained me all my life.

Now at 6am every morning I go on line and suck in the news of the day from as many and varied outlets as time allows. Surely the advent of the internet and social media sites has changed the way we communicate and opine our thoughts irreversibly. Take Facebook for example.

Social media of course receives its share of criticism but I have found it rewarding in the sense that it has given me the opportunity to express my thoughts in a forum that is at times robustly disagreeable but always enlightening. It makes you dive into humanity, hear things you do not want to hear, and defend what you have to say .It is for those with opinions or for those without the courage to share them. And fence-sitters of course. It attracts the reasoned the unreasoned the civil and the uncivil. The biased and the unbiased. It is for people with ideas and sadly those without any. It whispers or shouts dissent. But mostly it’s a society of our own creation. It is also a technology that has given licence to the nutters of society or conversely you could say that it has identified and exposed them.

2 We have had the usual post Premier’s self-praise of their retreat and without wishing to sound negative they made what, in a flourishing progressive democracy should be normal and ongoing attention to reform, sound like for the first time in human history, they had discovered the benefits of civil discourse.

Recommend you read Kaye Lee’s article on this subject.

3 Bill Shorten addressed the issue of that most vexed issue of Asylum Seekers at the National Conference.

John Kelly restated the obvious in his piece for The AIMN.

“The Liberal party hit upon a winner with John Howard sensing and playing to the national mood with the Tampa affair back in 2001. It was never in the national interest to refuse to help destitute people seeking asylum. But he did it anyway.”

“The decision he made on the Tampa was very much in the interest of his party winning the next election. That’s why that he acted the way he did. And suddenly we learned that wedging was the new political game in town.”

Then Philip Ruddock started calling them illegals and Tony Abbott disgracefully demonized them in order to wedge Labor. Clever politics but morally sick. But that’s our Prime Minister.

A pox on both your houses.

And this is the week that was.

Oh, and by the way we did find out that Joe had charged the taxpayer $20,000 dollars to visit his farm 13 times. The expenses saga came and went and by the end of the week we were back to normal.

Was our Democracy advanced? No, not one iota.

 

“Where is your spine, Mr Shorten?”

Dear Mr Shorten,

I don’t actually know why I afford you the respect of addressing you by title, since you clearly have no respect for the Australian people. You demonstrably have no respect for humanity.

Have you lost your mind?

Do you really think that turning back the boats saves lives? Are you so ridiculously naive that you can’t see what Abbott is doing? I understand that you’re nervous about Abbott leveraging popularity off your own dull and uncharismatic public persona. But why would you betray your party and the Australians who were hanging onto the last hope that at least the ALP would not be sending desperate people back to certain death for the sake of appeasing the lowest common denominator?

Where is your spine, Mr Shorten?

Yes, I afforded you once against a smidgen of respect that you clearly don’t deserve. But I will not lower myself to your own level of weakness and gutter politics by publicly expressing just how I feel about your monstrous anti-humanitarian backflip.

Let’s just look at the ALP principles.

“Labor is for being a good global citizen”.

Sure. Sure it is, Mr Shorten. Maybe when you weren’t in charge.

Being a good global citizen does not mean renouncing your international obligations in favour of a petty, vindictive and nasty war with Abbott on who can be the cruelest to the most vulnerable people in the international community.

“Labor has a proud tradition of standing up for the freedom and rights of others in the world.”

Has? It had. Before you were in charge, Mr Shorten. Or should I say before your predecessor, Kevin Rudd tried to out-Abbott Abbott and adopt the harshest of asylum seeker policies in an attempt to win the unlosable election in 2013.

Have you forgotten just how that turned out, Mr Shorten?

Or perhaps you blame the messy and completely undignified leadership spill for Labor’s destruction.

The stench of your involvement in that sordid affair tainted your reputation long before you showed yourself to be the lily-livered weakling of a leader that you have so obviously revealed yourself to be. Not only were you involved, but you lied about your involvement.

Lied.

Do you think that because the Australian public are mocking Abbott for his lies that it’s acceptable for you to act without integrity? For all those loudly screaming at the damage Abbott is doing to Australia’s international reputation, there are thousands more quietly seething.

There is one thing the ALP absolutely is to blame for. Abbott being Prime Minister.

And now your pitiful and completely unbelievable excuse for adopting Abbott’s vile boat turnback policy is that you’re motivated to see fair treatment of refugees.

“All of the people in this debate, in the Labor party, are motivated by wanting to see fair treatment of refugees.”

Some of the people are, Mr Shorten. But not you. The ALP members who have not discarded their morals, sense of justice and compassion.

“I want to see us do our fair share to help refugees and help the challenges people face when displaced from their own countries.”

What nonsense you speak. You do not even believe your own words.

“But I also think we have an obligation to make sure that people are safe.”

Because turning back boats makes people safe? All it does, Mr Shorten, is stop those desperate people landing on Australian shores or drowning in Australian waters. But you don’t care what happens to them elsewhere, do you, Mr Shorten. As long as you can pretend to be tough. Pretend. Even Abbott and Dutton don’t believe you.

I understand the ALP National Conference is this weekend. I sincerely hope your colleagues remind you of your position. I hope the ALP can stand up for its traditional principles of fairness.

I hope you finally show strength, courage and integrity, Mr Shorten, and resign.

Sincerely,

Eva Cripps

 

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Shark Survives Attack By Surfer! Bishop Survives Attack By Left!

So we have a shark swimming by and all of a sudden this surfer, Mick Fanning, sees it and decides to punch it, in spite of not seeing “any teeth”.

Yeah, all right, it sounds silly, but I’m thinking of applying for a job with the Murdoch empire and I’m just practising different ways of framing a story. In fact, I’m rather surprised that they didn’t run with:

“LABOR FAILS TO NOTICE EXCESSIVE EXPENSES FROM BISHOP”

or

“CARBON TAX ADDED TO COST OF HELICOPTER FLIGHT”

But enough about Bronhilda. When even Paul Sheahan and Andrew Bolt are criticising her, we know that she’s done for.

No, we have more important fish to fry. Apparently the impenetrable border has been penetrated.

Yes, in spite of all the safeguards and measures taken on Border Protection, some information has somehow found a way through, and it’s being reported that an asylum seeker boat has been sighted off the coast of Western Australia.

This report from our Canberra Man:

A spokesman for the Minister for Saying Nothing, Mr Peter Dutton, told the media that it remains government policy not to tell us about anything that they don’t want us to know, and when it comes to on-water matters, there is nothing they want us to know, apart from the fact that they’ve stopped the boats. When asked about the reported sighting, the spokesman reminded everybody that until recently Mr Dutton been Minister for Saying Almost Nothing About Health, and it would take him some time to catch up with all the aspects of his new portfolio, although any dual citizens better think very careful before they ask questions or report on boats that may or may not have been sighted by people who may or may not be in ASIO’s custody until they are sure that they didn’t see any so-called boats.

Greens Senator, Sarah Hanson-Young again made a fool of herself by suggesting that the Australian Government should stop keeping Australians in the dark, completely ignoring the fact that the Liberal’s 1975 election slogan was “Turn On The Lights” and that has remained their policy at all times, including during Earth Hour. Ms. Hanson-Young who recently sounded rather paranoid when she argued that Transurban staff were following her, just because one of them got lost and found himself in her hotel closet, has regularly shown her hypocrisy on asylum seekers by suggesting that children somehow have more rights than their adult parents, who according to the results of several elections, have no rights at all.

Attempting to contact DFAT for confirmation, we were told by the person answering the phone said that they couldn’t tell us anything as merely identifying them as a public servant in Canberra was enough information for every to realise that they were the only one left who actually answered phones because the others had all been made redundant. “I’ve been told that if I just lay low, it may be several weeks before anyone realises that I still have a job and I’m replaced by a consulting firm with links to the Liberal Party,” she whispered before the phone went dead.

A Liberal backbencher agreed to be quoted so long as it was off the record and we bought him a drink, saying that if these people wanted to come to Australia they should do it the proper way under the 457 slavery scheme, which was the prefered method of some employers because Australians had chosen not to work by rejecting WorkChoices. Two drinks later he suggested that the election would be held later this year, but the timing depended on when Turnbull looked like getting the numbers, which he assured us Malcolm wasn’t actively seeking because he had others doing it on his behalf. “Once Turnbull has more than ten votes, Abbott’ll be forced to call an election to stop the potential challenge. If I could just convince Malcolm not to do his best work in front of a mirror, we’d have the leadership by now.” Three drinks later, the MP appeared share his thoughts on helicopters by spinning a straw above his head and jumping from table to table, shouting “I’m a Speaker – do you f*ckers expect me to walk?”

Mr Abbott is expected to hold a press conference later this morning to announce an investigation into who leaked the reports of the alleged boat, and whether or not this fell under the definition of sedition under the new guidelines. Mr Abbott is believed to have privately told his closest allies that even if it didn’t, then heads would roll anyway, because the government can always expand the definition to include helping people smugglers by reporting on their existence, but this was said in the strictest confidence and they were all sworn to secrecy, so it was very difficult getting more than one person present to confirm of the leak. Someone at the meeting raised the dilemma of how they were going to justify talking about an increase in the GST, when they’d gone so hard on Labor being the party of taxation and the Carbon tax being a big new tax on everything, to which Mr Abbott is alleged to have assured the member that people forget things easily, and that by the next election people will have forgotten that you were ever a minister if you don’t stop bringing up difficult points.

Christopher Pyne contacted me to tell me that it was all a beat-up, would I please write something about his denial of anything at all, as he hadn’t been in the news lately and how else was he going to be thought of when they’re looking for a new Speaker, if he wasn’t the sort of high profile person that they need.

 

How do you starve a region of jobs? Just vote LNP!

Most Australians want a good quality of life and a good standard of living. To achieve this, the availability of jobs in any region is essential. The Liberal National Coalition Government always, always claim to be the Party to look up to when it comes to jobs and business.

We see the main stream media support this claim with positive spin after positive spin in favour of the LNP or derogatory headlines and stories about Labor. I often wonder if there is a statue of Tony Abbott in the foyer of The Australian or a statue of Campbell Newman and Joh Bjelke-Petersen in the foyer of The Courier Mail; where journalists begin their day by bowing to these statues and vowing to serve them through the course of their duties. Then there are those in the voting public who believe what the Liberal National Coalition say about how they understand business and are great for jobs and repeat it without question.

If you are creating a wealth of jobs, jobseekers must be just lazy…right?

When the LNP believe that they indeed are the best party for jobs and business, it then leads to a false dichotomy that those on unemployment must simply be lazy and that they simply don’t try enough. Obviously the LNP are in charge, so of course there are plenty of jobs to apply for!

Based on this false dichotomy, the LNP’s approach to assisting the unemployed jobs is to starve community programs of funding and punish the hell out of jobseekers by implementing the worst jobseeker support program in Australia’s history “Job Active.” Commentary on social media welfare sites from program participants, suggests that Job Active agencies are more focused on who they can get to pull out weeds for free under Abbott’s work for the dole program, than any real constructive assistance.

Commentary and anecdotes on social media also point to a system where there is no money to assist jobseekers find real work and assistance for study is not supported (unless it is pointless in-house training). With the Newman Government’s changes to vocational education over the last three years coupled with the Abbott Government’s punitive Job Active program, Jobseekers living well below the poverty line must pay out of their own pocket up front costs or pay the course off, as there is no HECS or HELP deferral scheme for many vocational education courses. Those on welfare need to weigh up their options between being able to afford food and housing or an education. As an Australian, I find this absolutely abhorrent and 100% unacceptable and this destroys this our way of life.

The Palaszczuk Labor Government has just delivered their first budget by Treasurer Curtis Pitt and have invested 34 Million to begin the repair of our vocational sector and TAFE, to provide real training options for jobseekers. I hope that this will be extended to ensure affordable access for everyone who has the right to an education, including those on welfare payments.

Sadly, also on social media you read the stories of many jobseekers who are anxious, depressed, frustrated, upset and at times indirectly or directly discussing suicide or ‘not living anymore’ as an option. This is how they are feeling as jobseekers under the Job Active program. Some of the comments I have read and the stories collected by the Australian Unemployment Union are absolutely heart-breaking.

Nothing like a bit of stigma to get those jobseekers moving…

To degrade the unemployed even further, in some towns like mine you are given a Basic’s card. Welfare recipients are given a cashless card and a small amount of cash. This leaves the jobseeker with very little real money to make purchasing decisions with. The Basics Card also seeks to stigmatise the jobseeker by giving them their own identifier which allows every shop assistant and member of the public at the checkout know that they are on welfare.

Couple this with the rhetoric that comes from the agenda of stigmatisation from the Liberal Government such as backbencher Ewen Jones who said: “look there’s your dole, go home, eat Cheezels, get on the Xbox, kiss you goodbye and we will never see you again’?” Add the sensationalisation of welfare recipients on television and so called ‘current affairs shows’; welfare recipients using a basic card, will be seen automatically by some as no good, lazy, bludging welfare thieves. Terminology used by many avid Liberal supporters which places those on welfare in a criminal category. Welfare recipients are not often seen as human beings who desperately want and actively seek work.

There is absolutely no option for those on welfare to blend in or not stand out as a recipient of welfare. This completely undermines the right to dignity and respect without judgement for so many Australians. Under the LNP their reasoning is to shame you into finding a job every time you stand at the checkout. The other misunderstanding about the Basic’s card, is that it is available everywhere. There are only a small number of shops and services which allow purchase with a basics card. This often forces the jobseeker, living below the poverty line, to spend money at more expensive stores. In some towns, they have no options at all. This places pressure on their already meagre budget.

So lets see… who should really be punished. Is it the jobseeker or the Government? I have completed an analysis of job vacancies in my local area of Central Queensland to find out.

Where have all the jobs gone… Long time passing

The availability of jobs is essential to a productive economy and enables the unemployed to actively apply for employment. Plentiful job vacancies also enable career development for the employed looking for jobs to advance their career. This opens up lower level jobs for others to apply for. In many cases, highly skilled workers are stuck at the lower end of their professions and not moving on as there are no jobs available to apply for. This puts a constraint on jobseekers seeking entry level jobs. It also puts a constraint on highly skilled jobseekers who also find themselves in the employment queue and now find themselves pulling weeds under work for the dole.

The graph below is job vacancy data for Central Queensland from March, 2012 to January 2015 of the Newman LNP Government and the new Labor Government from Feb 2015 to May 2015. This is where the data availability ceases. There is no data available after May, 2015, but I will be providing follow ups as it comes to hand. (you can click the photo to enlarge). I have completed an analysis on Central Queensland for two reasons. One is, it is the area I live in and I am very passionate about Central Queensland and the second is to bring some truth to light about how the Newman Govt affected regional areas. Many believe that due to the Public Service cuts and media around protests, it was mainly Brisbane which had felt the impact. This is not so.

 

job vacancy growth decline blog

Some Interesting Facts that may get the way of a good LNP Yarn.

Interesting Fact Number 1.

An analysis of job vacancy data for the period of the LNP Newman Government shows a dramatic decline of job vacancies for Central Queensland. Data available up until May, 2015 shows that in the first four months of the LNP Newman Government, Central Queensland Job vacancies declined by 378 vacancies. After one year of the Newman Government, there were 1781.7 less job vacancies for Central Queenslanders to apply for. By the end of the Newman Government, there were 2198 less job vacancies advertised in CQ than when the LNP took office.

By comparison, in the first five months of the Palaszczuk Labor Government, Job vacancies have turned around and job vacancies have increased by 218 jobs for the CQ region in this short time.

Interesting Fact Number 2.

The sharpest decline in job vacancies for any month-to-month period was the period of November to December 2012, which saw a 16% decline in one month for Job Vacancies for CQ jobseekers, under the LNP.

In comparison, the Palaszczuk Labor Government has achieved the highest increase of job vacancies for any month-to-month period for the CQ Region, over the last three years. For the period from February to March 2015, Job Vacancies in Central Queensland saw a sharp increase of 16%. This is the highest job vacancy increase for any month-to-month period, since March 2012. In a few short months, the Labor Government has achieved what the Newman Government could not achieve in their entire period in office. That is, “to understand business and create jobs.” This is an absolute positive and speaks volumes of the quality of MPs within the Palaszczuk Government. The graph below shows only job classifications with an increase of 20 job vacancies or more. This is not an exhaustive list.

 

increase Labor feb march

 

Interesting Fact Number 3

During the period of the LNP Campbell Newman Government, job vacancies in Central Queensland declined by 56%. To put this in real terms, that is 2198 job vacancies not open for Central Queenslanders to apply for under the LNP. The graph below demonstrates the top 15 job classifications which experienced a decline in job vacancies over the period of the Newman LNP Government. The only job classification which experienced an increase in job vacancies under the Newman Government were: Farmers and Farm manager (0.9 increase); Carers and Aides (9.2) Education Professionals (12.2 increase) and Medical Practitioners and Nurses (12.8 increase) These figures are raw numbers, not percentages. If we look at the success of the Newman Government for Central Queensland, their achievement is basically an increase of 35 job vacancies across four job classifications, and a decline in all other job vacancies for their entire period in Government.

 

job vacancy decline newman

 

 

Interesting Fact Number 4

In the first four months of the Newman Govt, job vacancies in Central Queensland fell by 10%. In the first four months of the Palaszczuk Govt Jobs vacancies in central QLD increased by 13%

Are Jobseekers as Lazy as the LNP Claim them to be and should they be punished?

The term LNP has been used interchangeably throughout this post, meaning the Liberal National Coalition State and Federal. The LNP use a synthesis of blame and stigma to take the focus off their failings. The LNP repeat the misguided rhetoric that they are ‘good for jobs’ without question and place blame on everyone else, including the unemployed. As the data analysis of Job Vacancies for one area in Queensland show, the Abbott Government’s punitive approach is completely uncalled for. The harsh welfare measures implemented do nothing but feed into the Abbott Government’s agenda of Stigmatisation of those on welfare. Why? Because there are no better votes for the LNP those those created out of hate, disgust and fear.

My Conclusion? If you want to starve a region of jobs. Want to punish the unemployed unnecessarily – Just vote for a Liberal National Government!

Stay tuned for more analysis drilled down on specific classifications and other nerd-filled data excitement!

Originally posted on Polyfeministix

 

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Aliens, Allegiance to Australia and 1984

What do aliens, allegiance to Australia and 1984 have in common? Surprisingly, not George Orwell’s spookily accurate prediction of life under the Abbott Government in 2015; albeit 30 years later than anticipated. The plot of Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-four, is scarily similar to the current political regime; an authoritarian government controlled by the privileged and elite, a climate of perpetual war, mass surveillance, public manipulation through media control, and the persecution of dissenters. While there are no aliens in Orwell’s fictional masterpiece, aliens are certainly relevant to Abbott’s utopian concept of Team Australia in an increasingly dystopian nation. And crucial to the notion of allegiance to Australia.

Abbott is obsessed with national security. He has strengthened anti-terror laws, passed legislation to mandate data retention, enacted draconian measures to deter refugees seeking asylum in Australia, threatened jail for doctors and teachers and nurses speaking out about abuse in detention centres, and undermined the independence of the national broadcaster.

Most recently he has proposed stripping dual nationals (and sole nationals if Abbott has his way), of citizenship. This builds on the existing and fervently applied law used to deport non-citizens who do not pass a so-called ‘character test’. According to existing law from the leading case of Shaw v MIMA [2003], the Government has free reign to deport non-citizens, even if a person has spent decades living in the country.

There is no doubt that the Parliament can enact laws for the purpose of national security and take steps to protect Australia’s borders. The Constitution in section 51 gives the Federal Government powers to enact laws ‘for the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth’ in areas such as naval and military defence, naturalisation and aliens, immigration and emigration, the influx of criminals and external affairs.

While Abbot’s dual citizenship plan and concept of Allegiance to Australia is arguably unconstitutional, how does it relate to the deportation of permanent residents, which at the moment appears to be perfectly lawful?

It comes down to the concept of aliens.

In the ordinary sense, an alien is a person of a foreign country. And the Government, according to the Constitution, has the powers to make laws on aliens. The long title of the Migration Act 1958 states that it is: ‘An Act relating to the entry into, and presence in, Australia of aliens, and the departure or deportation from Australia of aliens and certain other persons’.

The power for the Minister to cancel the visa of an Australian resident is found in section 501 of the Migration Act. Visas can be cancelled for a range of reasons, including failure to pass strict ‘character tests’, being a threat to national security, or where a person has a substantial criminal record. In some cases there is no right to natural justice, and no right to see any of the evidence on which the Minister based his decision.

In the past year alone, the Minister has cancelled over 600 visas. Many of the people deported or facing deportation are classed as British subjects, are eligible to vote and have lived in Australia since childhood. This is significant.

But what of aliens?

While Australians have referred to themselves as such for the best part of a century, up until 1973 they swore allegiance to the Queen of the United Kingdom, and they had the status of British subjects until 1987. In fact, in the 1971 census, 12,033286 of 12,755638 Australians reported that they were British. There was no option to report as an Australian Citizen despite the Nationality and Citizenship Act creating the concept of the Australian citizen in 1948. As late as 1967, Australian passports still bore the words, ‘British Passport’. It wasn’t until changes to the Citizenship Act in 1969 that Australians became citizens first and British subjects second.

In 1973, the title of Queen of Australia was created by statute, replacing the Queen of the United Kingdom for the purposes of allegiance.

The question must be asked:

Did Australians, born as British subjects and under allegiance to the Queen of the United Kingdom, individually and formally swear allegiance to the new Queen of Australia in 1973? Did all those Australians, born in Australia before 1973 renounce their allegiance to the Queen of the United Kingdom? Of course not.

In 1973, the residents of Australia, whether or not born on Australian soil, became subjects of the Queen of Australia, by way of being resident in Australia at that time. They still remained British subjects.

And until 1987, an alien was defined as a person who did not have the status of British subject.

This is where it gets confusing.

The Migration Act, while purporting in the long title to be about aliens, now refers to non-citizens rather than aliens.

And just like that, with the change of a couple of words in a statute, British subjects who were not naturalised, but who until that time had been lawfully living, working, voting and participating in public life in Australia, become subject to the Migration Act, were classed as statutory aliens and liable for deportation.

The Australian Constitution does not mention citizens. It refers to people of the Commonwealth, and people and residents of the States. The Members of the House of Representative and Senators are elected by the people of the Commonwealth and the people of the States who are eligible to vote. The Constitution also states in section 41, that where a person has the right to vote, they cannot be prevented from voting. Before 1973, the status of Australian residents was clear. They were British subjects. Citizenship was irrelevant to their capacity to participate in public life. And the status of Australians after 1987 is also clear. Australians must now be citizens to participate in public life and have security of domicile. Before 1987, but after 1948, those born in Australia were both Australian citizens and British subjects. However, something has clearly gone wrong for non-naturalised British subjects who became subjects of the Queen of Australia in 1973 and are for all other purposes Australian.

But why is 1984 relevant?

The Government has previously recognised the unique status of non-naturalised British subjects in Australia. Those who were not citizens, but were on the Commonwealth electoral roll on 25 January 1984, retained the right to vote and participate in both state and federal elections. Not only did they have the right to vote, they were legally obliged to.

So the question must be asked:

How is it that a person, previously afforded full rights, protections and responsibilities by their status as a British subject, lose those same rights on the whim of a government who has changed the statutory definition of who is entitled to remain in Australia?

How can a British subject who migrated to Australia before 1973, when all Australian’s were classed as British subjects and under allegiance to the Queen of the United Kingdom, and who became a subject of the Queen of Australia in 1973 by way of residence, suddenly become classed as an alien?

At what point, did a British subject, not only permanently residing in Australia, but eligible to vote and elect the Members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, become considered an alien?

At what point did a government minister, elected by the votes of the people of the Commonwealth including those British subjects eligible to vote, gain the power to deport those same people who by fulfilling their legal obligation to vote, helped elect said Minister?

At what point, did the same British subject, eligible to vote in a referendum – the mechanism by which the Constitution may be changed, lose the right to permanently live in Australia and be liable for deportation?

Can the Government even change the constitutional meaning of an alien, to make unlawful a person previously lawful, without a referendum?

It does not make sense that a person should be legally obliged to vote in a referendum, when the desired outcome is to enable the mechanism to deport that same person. It would be akin to signing their own deportation orders.

And in the same way, it does not make sense that the Government can change the status of Australians, so that those Australians, albeit not naturalised, lose the rights to domicile and vote, when that Government was elected by and to represent those same people now at risk of deportation.

In 1993, the Federal Government created an invisible type of visa for every person permanently resident in Australian but not naturalised. It did not matter if this person arrived before 1973, or if they were eligible to vote or stand for public office. Each and every one of these people was issued with an invisible visa. It is this invisible visa, created by statute and applying retrospectively, that the Minister is cancelling in accordance with section 501 of the Migration Act. And this means that of any one of the 162,928 British subjects on the Australian electoral roll in 2008 could be deported.

The ramifications of the proposed Allegiance to Australia Bill emerge. If the Government can change lawful residents into aliens by virtue of legislation – lawful residents who had the same rights and legal status as citizens, can it change the status of Australian citizens and turn them into aliens too? Could a person, born in Australia and having lived in Australia all their life, suddenly be declared an alien and deported, on the whim of the reigning Government? Could legislation be enacted and apply retrospectively, depriving an Australian of the only home they have ever known?

The concept of the Australian Citizen is found in legislation. It did not exist before 1948. And somewhere between 1973, when all Australians were classed as British subjects, and 1987, when the Australia Act came into effect, those British subjects who were not born in Australia lost the protection and certainty of domicile.

A team of Tasmanian lawyers are challenging the notion of what it means to be an alien. Led by Barristers, Mr Greg Melick SC and Mr Ray Broomhall, an application has just been filed in the High Court of Australia to argue that the Migration Act 1958 does not apply to a British subject, resident in Australia before 1973 and enrolled to vote in 1984. The Applicant, Mr Cayzer, is challenging his deportation on the basis that the Minister cannot cancel the visa of a person who until recently, had exactly the same rights and responsibilities of an Australian citizen. Mr Cazyer asserts that the Minister simply cannot redefine what it means to be an alien by legislation then retrospectively apply that definition to people who have always called Australia home.

In the leading case of Shaw, Mr Shaw, a British subject, arrived in Australia after 1973, so did not have allegiance to the Queen of Australia. He was not eligible to vote. Mr Cayzer’s case can be distinguished from this by the fact he actively and lawfully participated in public life in Australia. Mr Cayzer was a British subject who arrived in Australia in 1965. He has voted as a person of the Commonwealth to elect representatives in the federal parliament. And those representatives are now seeking to strip him of his right of domicile and right to vote.

The High Court has never before been asked to differentiate between a non-citizen resident in Australia before 1973 and who has the right to vote, and one who arrived after that time. While Mr Shaw was found to be an alien for the purposes of the Migration Act, Mr Cayzer alleges he became a subject of Australia in 1973.

There is no guarantee that the High Court will accept the application and answer the questions. But if it does, it will be an important case. It will redefine what it means to be Australian.

And it will have serious implications for Abbott’s concept of allegiance to Australia.

 

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He really is off his rocker. Or he’s a nut case.

Who else but a leader of dubious mental capacity would say something like this?

“This government doesn’t get enough credit, Australia doesn’t get enough credit, for the emissions reduction work that we have already done’’.

A statement like this is hardly plausible in light of the fact that there is not one economist who has come out in support of Direct Action. No one with any expertise in the field thinks it will work even for a 5% emissions cut let alone for a higher percent to be submitted for the Paris agreement.

The independent Climate Change Authority has urged Australia to adopt an emissions reduction target of 30 per cent on 2000 levels by 2025, equating to a 36 per cent reduction on 2005 levels. Following on from his ludicrous comparison of groceries with the Greek debt crisis our Prime Minister for undoing comes up with another captain’s call calculated to offend anyone who believes in the science of climate change.

And as a storm raged over the government’s directive to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to no longer back wind energy projects, it emerged that it has also put a stop to solar investments other than the largest industrial-scale projects.

“Oh no”, I thought. “It’s not just wind turbines”. The Abbott government has opened up another front in its war on renewable energy by pulling the plug on investments in the most common form of alternative energy, rooftop and small-scale solar.

What Luddites they really are. They say they believe in the science of Global Warming but their every action is contrary to that belief. It seems the combined advancement in battery and solar technology has escaped them.

And now the Prime Minister for Coal Mining says that our emissions target for Paris won’t be revealed until after a party room debate. The fact is it will only be as high as the hard-right conservatives in his party will let it be.

Honestly the luddite who gives Turnbull credit for inventing the internet is a fool of the highest order.

He has to come up with a figure high enough to satisfy Paris against a revolt from his backbench, let alone reveal to the Australian public how he intends to pay for it within a budget framework that is already under extreme pressure.

Good luck with that. Do I need to remind you that the Carbon Tax was already doing the job?

We are under pressure internationally to pull our weight because concerns have been expressed about the Abbott’s government’s domestic climate policies.

In other words, they don’t trust him. But then again who does?

Turnbull En