Australia has been fortunate through the COVID-19 pandemic. The infections and deaths due to COVID-19 have been far less than others by percentage of population, the economy is apparently returning to some form of normal and life is not greatly impacted for most Australians on a day-to-day basis. Recent history will suggest that the States have done most of the ‘heavy lifting’ in the response to the pandemic, even assuming responsibility for quarantine despite Section 51 of the Constitution specifically reserving that power to the ‘Commonwealth’. You could suggest that, just as in the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, we were lucky.
Prime Minister Morrison would probably claim that it was his Coalition Government’s inspired leadership that was responsible for our good fortune. It’s not. Morrison’s Government chose to directly manage two parts of the response to COVID-19, aged care as well as vaccine procurement and distribution. Both have been botched. The Federal Health Department records that out of the 910 deaths in Australia, 685 of them were in aged care homes funded and under the direction of the Federal Government. It is certainly the case that residents in aged care homes often have other medical issues that could have increased the mortality rate, however low wages, casualisation of employment and the need for multiple jobs across aged care providers (all apparently Coalition policy) certainly didn’t contain infections to one facility.
The states closed borders to contain the spreading of the virus, much to Morrison’s frustration, the level depending on the political colour of the Premier of the individual state and how close they were to an election. Despite this, Morrison selectively closed the international borders – if you were coming from Europe, the UK or USA when COVID 19 was running rampant in those areas, you were quarantined in facilities managed by the states for 14 days. If you were coming from India when COVID 19 was running rampant there, you were threatened with a large fine and jail if you tried to come to Australia.
The Federal Government also acknowledged its responsibility to source and distribute vaccines that would minimise or eliminate the effects of COVID-19. When the US (who ordered the vaccines during the Trump Presidency) has used over 302 million doses in 177 days, Australia’s 5 million doses in 107 days looks pretty woeful. (Figures used at the time of preparation of this article – for updates, look here). Australia also started vaccinations 70 days after the USA. So much for being at the ‘front of the queue’ as Morrison repeatedly claimed during 2020.
It’s not only the health of the population where Morrison’s Coalition Government falls down. The Morrison Government recently announced that Snowy Hydro (100% owned by the Federal Government) would build a $600million gas fired power station at Kurri Kurri in the Hunter Valley rated to produce 660 megawatts of electricity, and it will initially operate on diesel because it’s apparently nowhere near a gas pipeline. The plant, in the words of the Morrison Government, will go some of the way towards replacing the formerly NSW Government and now AGL owned Liddell coal fired generator. AGL announced Liddell would be closing in 2023 as it is uneconomical to operate or upgrade. The Morrison Government attempted to attract private investment to build and operate the new power station, which was a spectacular failure. Apart from the plan failing on the economics, as independent experts claim the plant will only be required 2% of the time, the International Energy Agency (IEA) also recently called for a complete ban on new fossil fuelled power generation infrastructure with the aim of ‘net zero by 2050’. Is this another ‘own goal’ by Morrison? After all, the Coalition Government back as far as Prime Minister Turnbull’s time have been stating that “the International Energy Agency still says there’ll be very large demand for coal into the future.”
The head of the IEA wouldn’t have woken up one morning and randomly decided to change from supporting fossil fuel to ‘net zero by 2050’ while having his corn flakes and coffee. There would have been considerable consultation with stakeholders, probably 1,000s of hours of ‘Zoom’ style meetings, multiple drafts of the proposed policy and a lot of relationship building to ensure that the policy was understood and broadly accepted by the Agency members and stakeholders before publicising the policy to the world. And Morrison announces a new government funded (because private financiers actually understand the term ‘stranded assets’) fossil fuelled power generator the same week as the IEA advised that renewables were the future. What was he thinking?
Katherine Murphy suggested an answer recently in The Guardian
So what the government is purchasing with Kurri Kurri isn’t cheaper reliable power. It is gold-plated insurance at your expense: a brand new, taxpayer-funded power plant that might never operate, or operate only very intermittently to firm renewables.
Regardless of your opinion on Morrison, he is apparently surviving on dumb luck. His management of a pandemic and climate change show a lack of foresight and a lot of marketing. Why would that be the case? We all know that Morrison’s career pre-politics was in tourism marketing, although his contracts to head both the Australian and New Zealand tourism bodies were terminated by the respective governments prior to the completion of the respective employment contracts. Regardless, Morrison would know that a lot of marketing is wasted. The advertisement for the fast-food franchise’s latest creation on the side of a bus won’t convince you to purchase if you routinely avoid ‘fast food’, so it is unlikely to be solely marketing that causes Morrison to make poor choices.
It is far more likely to be his religion. Morrison is an ‘out and proud’ Pentecostal Christian. While he is entitled to his beliefs, when he brings them ‘to work’ and doesn’t temper them with the advice of others who are paid to know more about the subject matter than Morrison does, it is a concerning problem for all of us.
The problem with Pentecostal Christians is they believe in two things that certainly don’t assist with the concept of thinking about others or making decisions that will affect the future of our nation.
‘Prosperity Theology’ is the belief that the greater the positive speech and donations to ‘the cause’, the greater the return in material wealth, which doesn’t help those who need a hand, such as aged care recipients, the unemployed, those who need the NDIS and so on. Remember Morrison admitting to ‘laying of hands’ when meeting Australians who had undergone misfortune, rather than supplying funding to assist.
Image from Facebook
There are numerous websites, including this one that popularise the other Pentecostal belief we should be worried about – the end of times. Effectively, a considerable number of people that share Morrison’s Pentecostal religious beliefs believe the world will have ended by 2050 so we never need to worry about what will happen in 29 years’ time. Why would we ‘cramp’ our lifestyle now to avert or manage the problem?
Can Australia’s management of the pandemic and the Federal Government’s apparent lack of concern over climate change be put down to Morrison’s (and some others around him) religious beliefs? It’s highly probable because marketing certainly doesn’t give a rational answer to the ‘why aren’t we preparing for the future’ question. And that is far more sinister than banking on luck to pull us through… again.
There are a lot of totally gormless, Murdoch-manipulated, ill-informed intellectual midgets out there who keep voting for the worst, most callously inhumane, ineffective and corrupt regime – the LNP – over and over again! Tragically, it is these unspeakably stupid fools who believe everything they inhale from the twisted, totally biased, lying Murdoch press who keep propping up cruel, totally inept, misogynistic, self-serving, smug and elitist politicians – like Abbott and the current totally inept, smirking dullard, Morrison, who has a long, notorious history of taking credit for the hard work, blood, sweat, toil and good ideas and achievements of other people! Sadly, it is likely to happen again until gormless LNP voters attempt to learn more and research the backgrounds of the notorious types of ruthless psychopaths they put into power. In my experience there are three sorts of people who vote for the LNP:
1) The Top 1% – totally corrupt, self-serving billionaires like the obscene Gina Rinehart, Gerry Harvey, Twiggy Forrest, Clive Palmer and other truly vile billionaires who don’t appear to give a shit about anyone or anything except themselves and the bottom line! Wealthy, selfish, slave-driving employers (like the despicably cruel Gerry Harvey) fit into this category!
2) Sad little people who (falsely) think they are upper-middle-class (eg tradesmen, working-class conservatives) who believe they are better than other people and who (tragically) believe the LNP cater to their needs when, in fact, the LNP only cater to the top 1%. These people are often misogynistic, racist and callously inhumane who target migrants, asylum seekers, women, anyone on welfare or anyone whom, they believe, is a “drain” on taxpayer funds when, in fact, the biggest parasites in the country are the corrupt, self-serving politicians that line the cabinet of the LNP!
3) Totally gormless, uneducated, Murdoch-manipulated fools who know nothing about politics! These serial-conservatives believe everything they foolishly inhale from the biased, right-wing-extremist pages of the Z-rated Murdoch rags! They know nothing about the type of sociopaths they put into power, could barely name more than one or two people in the cabinet of the LNP nor be able to name a single thing or any historical fact, act of corruption or increasing level of environmental vandalism perpetrated by the smug, sneering grubs they keep vote for! Worse than that, is that these morons do not even care how corrupt, how deceptive, how callously inhumane or how destructive the lying, conniving parasites in the LNP are anyway – they would still vote for them because it is what their gormless parents did, what their spouse does or what Murdoch tells them to do!
Tragically, I have met quite a few of the rusted-on slaves to cruel, elitist right-wing ideology – they are out there ready to poison our nation over and over again. Already, Australia has sunk back into oblivion with this government internationally condemned and recognises as one of the worst, most regressive, coal-loving climate-change-denying and corrupt governments in history!
When the Rudd/Gillard government were in power, Australia was held in international esteem as one of the few countries who managed to escape the ravages of the GFC. Now? Now we have sunk lower and lower into disgrace with the strutting, inarticulate misogynist, Abbott, embarrassing our nation on the world stage and, now, Morrison being widely and internationally criticised for his mind-numbing adherence to the filthy, polluting coal industry, the way Morrison goes AWOL at the first sign of a disaster (eg the devastating fires), his totally inept mismanagement of the vaccine roll-out, his unspeakably callous inhumanity (with the very likely chance that he may have blood on his hands if this poor little refugee, from Biloela, ends up dying an excruciatingly painful death from saeptecemia which, if this useless, totally depraved federal government did the right thing weeks ago, would have been absolutely preventable! There is no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker and the despicable, unspeakably inhumane LNP have gone out of their way to cruelly lock up this family (who were living in the Queensland town of Biloela) in terrible conditions in what amounts to an off-shore concentration camp, for more than three years! This is a callous act Morrison regime and can never ever be tolerated by any humane society!
Instead, we have Morrison once again, desperately seeking publicity and totally ignoring the plight of this little girl whose family should have been returned to the town of Biloela where they were welcomed and much-loved!
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Although the demands imposed by the Fair Work Commission (FWC) have replaced the excesses of the LNP’s old Work Choices experiments from the Howard era, Australia still has an appalling divide in take-home pay rates between a new generation of working poor and quite comfortably off fellow Australians.
The FWC is still quite upbeat about progress on the wages front in one of its latest news releases. The Labor Opposition can indeed afford to be more proactive in developing alternative wages policies. The web site of the Fair Work Ombudsman offers details of some key recent developments on the wages fronts.
National minimum wage – of $753.80 per week, calculated on the basis of a week of 38 ordinary hours, or $19.84 per hour.
Casual loading – of 25 per cent.
Special national minimum wage 1 – for employees with disability which does not affect their productivity: of $753.80 per week, calculated on the basis of a week of 38 ordinary hours, or $19.84 per hour in the case of an adult, (and who is not a junior employee, or an apprentice, or an employee to whom a training arrangement applies).
Special national minimum wage 2 – for employees with disability who are unable to perform the range of duties to the competence level required of an employee within the class of work for which the employee is engaged because of the effects of disability on their productive capacity, and who meet the impairment criteria for receipt of a Disability Support Pension (and who is not a junior employee, or an apprentice, or an employee to whom a training arrangement applies): a base rate of pay set in accordance with Schedule A to the National Minimum Wage Order.
Special national minimum wage 3 – for junior employees: to be based on a percentage of the national minimum wage.
Special national minimum wage 4 – for apprentices: to be based on the provisions in the Miscellaneous Award 2010 (clause 14) for apprentices (some transitional provisions apply see National Minimum Wage Order).
Special national minimum wage 5 – for trainees: to be based on the provisions set out in the Miscellaneous Award 2010 (Schedule E) for employees to whom training arrangements apply.
The federal LNP opposed a better wage deal for poorly paid workers in its submissions to the FWC (SBS News 6 April 2021):
The Morrison government has cautioned against a major increase in Australia’s minimum wage, citing concerns about job creation. In a submission to the Fair Work Commission’s annual review, the government notes a continuing uncertain global and domestic economic outlook.
“Higher labour costs during this challenging period could present a major constraint to small business recovery and may dampen employment in the sector,” the submission says. It urges a “cautious” approach that takes into account the importance of job creation and business viability through the economic recovery post-coronavirus.
Policy caution on the wages front by the Morrison Government in the FWC comes with cheers from neoconservative lobby groups such as the National Retail Association, the Restaurant and Catering Industry Association and the National Farmers’ Federation. The Australian Council of Trade Unions which is advocating a minimum wage of $26 an hour plus additional payments offered under current fair work requirements for overtime and casual rate loadings.
Low levels of wages growth are not in the interests of economic recovery. Wages growth indicators are the lowest since the 1930s as shown in March Quarter ABS data.
Low levels of wages growth have negative efforts on superannuation accumulation. For casual employees with less than 30 hours a week employment, there is no responsibility for superannuation commitments as noted by TWU Super:
Under Australia’s Superannuation Guarantee laws, employers are required to pay at least 9.5% super for casual staff who are over 18 years old and earn more than $450 per month, before tax and are not otherwise exempted from Superannuation Guarantee contributions.
These rules also apply to any casuals who do domestic or private work (i.e. not for a business) for more than 30 hours a week, such as nannies and paid carers.
There are additional criteria for those casual employees who are under age 18.
Superannuation must also be paid for any casual employee who is under 18 years of age, works at least 30 hours per week, earns at least $450 per month (before tax) and is not otherwise exempted. This means that employers must pay super for every week that an under-18 casual works 30 hours or more.
Corporate research by McCrindle reveals the consequences of wage suppression for the welfare of the working poor in Australia:
The gap between rich and poor
Income growth has been slow over the last decade. In the ten years leading up to 2017-18, the average weekly household income has only increased $44 to $1,062.
Yet wealth growth has been strong. Average household wealth has increased from $749,000 in 2005-06 up to today’s 1-million-dollar milestone; a rise of 37%.
The average household gross income is $116,584, however the top 20% of households earn 48% of all income. Twelve times more than the bottom 20% who are left with just 4% of Australia’s income. That leaves the middle classes, 60% of Australia’s population, with the other 48% of earnings.
The top 20% also owns just shy of two thirds of Australia’s wealth (63%). To put that into perspective, that’s 92 times more than the average wealth of those who find themselves in the bottom 20% of the population, who own just 1%.
The federal LNP contributes to this income divide by its largesse to comfortably off families by hastening the transition to Phase 3 tax reforms and quite legalized forms of tax avoidance through dividend imputations, writes off for negative gearing of property investments, superannuation top-ups and that those old anomalies associated with family trusts.
As the wealth divide increases, Australia’s nouveau riche has little respect for the FWC’s universal wage standards. Commonplace practices in the dark wage economy include:
Food deliveries at contractual rates by firms like Uber Eats where workers as contractors wait to accept orders at piecework rates.
Intrusion of piecework into cleaning services at motel units which return far below the minimum wage rate.
Prolonged periods of probationary employment including the employment of skilled applicants at assistant rates pending a review of their work productivity.
Failure to pay casual, weekend and shift loadings to casual part-time workers who are employed on verbal contracts.
Readers might be willing to share their own experiences with such dark workplace practices.
However, the Fair Work Ombudsman is quite upbeat about its capacity to address the depths of despair in the dark economy in wages and employment standards (Assistant Media Director at the Fair Work Ombudsman 4 June 2021):
Any worker seeking advice or information specific to their circumstances can obtain free advice and assistance from the Fair Work Ombudsman by visiting www.fairwork.gov.au or calling the Fair Work Infoline on 13 13 94. A free interpreter service is available by calling 13 14 50. Reports can also be made to the Fair Work Ombudsman anonymously in 16 languages, plus English. We encourage you to urge any relevant workers you speak with to contact us.
Feedback from one security company claimed that failure to pass on penalty rates for long shifts and weekend loadings were quite widespread in the night club security sector in Brisbane. This encourages a race to the bottom in the erosion of wages and employment standards in a very hazardous sector of employment.
The Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) will make workplace investigations of complaints about wage rates or breaches of working conditions which are covered by workplace contracts. Amendments to the Fair Work Act have indeed tightened the requirements in small business enterprises to notify workers of their rights in relation to casual employment:
As a preventative measure, employers could be directed to advise all workers of their right to contact the FWO in relation to perceived breaches of contractual arrangements in workplaces. This will place pressures on employers to stick adhere to contractual agreements.
Currently, Fair Work Inspectors (FWIs) can also initiate spot checks at employment sites in industries which are prone to fair work breaches. Enforcement operations can be compromised if workers are employed under verbal agreements through ad hoc arrangements between employees and their bosses or work supervisors.
However, the latest annual report of the FWC dies show some progress with enforcement activities:
In 2019–20, as part of our compliance activities, we investigated 1432 workplaces and recovered $7,843,790 in unpaid wages.
Key compliance activities for the 2019–20 year included a series of compliance activities involving popular food precinct areas, including conducting surprise audits of a number of bars in Melbourne’s popular Chapel Street district, in response to allegations (including enquiries and anonymous reports) that workers at venues in the area were being underpaid and not receiving entitlements such as overtime and penalty rates.
The overall non-compliance rate for our audits for the year was 71%, with the most common contraventions relating to:
hourly rate underpayments (12%),
failure to provide payslips in their prescribed form (9%),
penalty rates for weekend work (9%).
The FWC is hardly awash with funding in the 2021-22 budget to address these workplace anomalies. Budget allocations to the FWC have not increased for 2021-22 under the new Attorney-General Michaelia Cash who is responsible for commitments to the FWC. Expenditure remains fixed at $127.4 million. A breakdown of trendlines in allocations for the Fair Work Ombudsman and the Fair Work Inspectorate has been requested and can be added as a footnote to this article if any reply is received.
I have yet to receive advice from the Fair Work Ombudsman about the status of verbal agreements for employment contracts as such arrangements can avoid a transparent paper trail of workplace agreements. Cash wages can also provide mechanisms for illegal tax avoidance of both state and federal taxes particularly in rural employment and small business activities.
Commitment to fair wages and working conditions made Australia a world leader in some categories of industrial relations prior to the Great War (1914-18). Such advances coincided with discrimination in indigenous employment and the misuse of Kanaka labour on the cane-fields of Queensland.
History is of course being re-written by the federal LNP to emphasize military commitments to the British Empire over selective advances in the welfare of working people who twice rejected Billy Hughes’ conscription proposals to the killing fields of Europe and the Middle East. Looks like times have not changed (Paul Daley in The Guardian 29 April 2021):
Lost, like the 125-year-old frontal lobe of Australia’s foreign war-fighting memory that compels some like Dutton (and should his job application succeed, Pezzullo) to focus on the next battlefield before we’ve vacated the last – Afghanistan.
The hawks have the drums of war beating inside their heads all right. And should they blow the whistle, it will be for others to go over the top – while they stay safe, a world away.
Denis Bright is a member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Denis is committed to citizen’s journalism from a critical structuralist perspective. Comments from insiders with a specialist knowledge of the topics covered are particularly welcome.
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We could provide you with dozens of individual examples of ministers from Tudge to Pitt, Fletcher and Tehan all lying openly in parliament and misleading parliament about the Cashless Debit Card (CDC) but we won’t. Instead, we will focus on what happened during the last CDC “bill process” in the Senate in December 2020 as it’s fresh in everyone’s minds and offers perhaps the clearest insight into just how little trust anyone can place in this policy, and in those who are promoting it.
First things first, please watch the video below as it provides context for this article.
People need to be aware that the CDC bill that was eventually voted on and passed in the Senate in December 2020, was an amended alternative mashup of the “Continuation Bill” that was originally sent to parliament. It was not the same bill that had been presented by LNP and put up for debate in the House of Representatives or Senate prior to this night’s vote. Amended so heavily as it was, what eventually passed was a resultant mess of amendment vote-buying and deal-brokering that completely altered key areas of the original bill.
Continuation Bill 2020 was itself a bill that was rushed out after LNP withdrew the original expansion and extension bill they wanted to present “Transition Bill 2019”, after campaigning raised enough community and political awareness that that bill was doomed to failure and we suspect, after Centre Alliance (CA) indicated they would not support it.
With me so far?
In any case, on this night of the final Senate vote and as you can see in the video, Senator McCarthy questioned the validity of the amendments being offered by Anne Ruston and the amendment’s impact on understandings agreed to by people who had been involved in the year long process until that time. She pointed out that the bill then before the chamber was completely different and asked the pertinent question about who Anne had consulted about the last-minute changes.
Anne then openly lied right to everyone’s faces, even using the opposition members themselves as ‘reasons’ and justification for her apparent ‘change her mind’ last minute in merely ‘offering’ a voluntary transition process via amendment after the second vote – a vote that ordinarily, would have been the end of proceedings.
Then something remarkable happened. Raw fact-sharing hit the chamber in the form of Senator Jacqui Lambie, who called out Anne Ruston for lying about the “hows” and “whys” and chastised her for her obfuscation and dishonesty. Sen. Lambie then further revealed that in fact no one had been consulted about the amendment changes made on the night and then told the Senate that the amendments had stemmed from a private deal, suspected and alluded to by Sen. Siewert and others earlier, that had been struck she states, 24hrs earlier in a senate chamber backroom moshup between LNP and Centre Alliance.
While Jacqui is certainly and absolutely to be commended for her own honesty, and for highlighting Anne Ruston’s lies and overall dishonesty, she also tried to paint CA in a positive light as somehow responsible for ‘rescuing’ people from the bulk compulsory transfer to CDC government wanted, by providing a ‘voluntary transfer’ amendment option to Anne Ruston.
This is not the case, however. In reality, had Stirling Griff (CA) simply voted NO in the Senate at the second vote, the cashless debit card trials would have ended right then and there, as the Centre Alliance vote WAS the deciding vote LNP needed to pass it.
No amendments were necessary had Centre Alliance genuinely planned to vote against the bill as they publicly stated they were going to.
Whatever deal was done, the inducements offered by LNP to gain the CA vote remain unknown to this day, and to our view, these inducements were clearly offered before the bill even made it to the House of Representatives (HoR) earlier in the week.
We can say this with some confidence, as in the HoR process earlier in the week, Rebekah Sharkie, Bridget Archer and Zali Steggall teamed up to block ALP amendments bought in by shadow social services minister Linda Burney that would have ensured the bill never made it to Senate at all.
Later, both Zali and Rebekah easily voted ‘no’ to the bill at the final HoR vote in order to save political face, as they were both by then fully aware that Archer’s much-publicised abstention would give the bill a one vote majority for LNP, and see it passed on to the Senate anyway.
Had Zali and Rebekah backed Linda Burney’s amendments, the bill would have been blocked then and there in the HoR, and CDC would have ended on schedule, Dec 31st, 2020.
Twice Centre Alliance formed unreported alliances with others and the LNP to affect the passage of this bill though both House and Senate.
The entire process surrounding Continuation Bill 2020 was crooked and a rot from the get-go, with CA promising people publicly and on record, that they would not vote for extension and expansion of cashless debit cards before seeing the evidence contained within the Adelaide University Evaluation Report (AUER) – a report that was due in June 2019, that was intentionally withheld by Anne Ruston until Jan 2021, after this vote had taken place.
It remains, that notone member of the HoR or Senate who voted for this bill ever saw that evaluation and so much as glimpsed the data that showed horrendous Domestic Violence and Child Welfare in the AUER.
Not one of them saw or knew, that for 85.4% of people forced onto the program there had been no positive result; even worse than the 77% NPI from the Orima report. None of the wider impacts or any of the plethora of embarrassing non-results the AUER revealed were taken into consideration, at all.
Yet they voted to extend and expand the CDC despite no forward estimate’s costings being available, and not for publication clauses on all spending.
They voted knowing full well that people were suffering, becoming homeless and even ending their lives as a result of the impact of this policy on their mental and financial health.
They voted it through anyway, and with not one shred of evidence of policy accountability or efficacy ever being sighted at all.
And along with a raft of other in legislation instrument changes and expansion measures, in doing so, they removed the last of independent oversight from the entire CDC process; they removed innocent people’s statutory rights, and removed the last of protections for vulnerable payment nominees and those who had been exempted due to weekly payment exemptions rules, meaning that for the first time, the most disadvantaged and acutely at risk people in the Australian community, are now open targets for predatory private enterprise.
That lie told by Anne Ruston on this night, about the deals she had made with CA with the LNP was not the only lie on the night though.
Anne Ruston earlier claimed in her testimony that the entire BasicsCard legislation would apply and come across to protect people in the NT if they chose to ‘transition’ across to CDC claiming that transition was all just ‘ a matter of a technology change’.
This is not true and, on many levels, the least of which is the glaringly obvious and fundamental difference between the two policies; that anyone transitioning across will be subject to unaccountable Indue Ltd income management and control, not under accountable government run income management.
The reality today is that only those persons within the FRC controlled region of Cape York will have anything remotely like those pre-existing protections and obligations they had under BasicsCard legislation and no one else. Both NT and FRC’s Cape York region appear in the CDC legislation with no reference in that document to any BasicsCard legislation crossover or IM protections in place for the NT cohort who may choose to transfer between the two mandatory programs. This ‘hobson’s choice’ as Senator Wong aptly called it on the night, will leave transferee’s subject to a new and very different regime of compulsory income management than they have previously known.
The cashless debit card legislation, while being a compulsory third party income management program, is governed by independent legislation that is an express legislative exemption to the Social Security Act, making it a standalone program and not, to the best of our knowledge and research, included or even listed as being a program that falls within government’s overall Income Management ‘tree’ of programs and policies that BasicsCard does stem from. We know this, as under general IM and BasicsCard rules, there are several rules and obligations and limitations in place that are simply not offered to people on the “Indue card”.
These ongoing lies have already cost lives and they are the worst kind of lie because they are lies of omission that impact the innocent and most trusting and often, the least educated. As lies of omission they tell half truths, and leave out key details that completely alter the entire context of the information being given to people.
Omission lies are a truly deceptive, deceitful, and a dangerous political tactic that has been in place since the very beginning of the Cashless debit card process and you need only read the words of Ceduna “stakeholders” to see that for yourself, here.
If LNP and their allies now face a serious “trust” problem, and they clearly do, it is wholly because of the pre-existence of their “lie by omission” problem, proven through each heart-breaking CDC bill cycle in their tactics of desperation and their willingness to continue to deceive the Australia constituency and even their own party members and parliament colleagues. Perhaps like the boy who cried wolf, even if they are sincere in their recent protestant claims, no one remotely aware can trust them at their word. They are victims of their own deceptive ‘success’.
When the independent evaluation data clearly supports those who are speaking out and truth-telling, the thin veneer of lies presented to the press and public by this government is left with no leg to stand on and this naturally leaves LNP with an increasingly visible and obvious integrity problem.
Like most propaganda and forms of denial, lies of omission also have an end date, as more people even without effort on our part are beginning to see the same patterns and wake up to the facts and reality of what is really going on too.
Can we trust the LNP not to put age pensioners on cards?
This is a moot question and argument for the simple fact that people on Age pensions and people of pensionable age unable to get the Age pension (people with no birth certificates) are already on the mandatory cashless debit card in Cape York, right now, and they and all service pensioners, are also on the BasicsCards program right now too.
Further, people aged up to 67yrs are already on cards right now as well, in all current CDC “trial” zones except the Hinkler electorate zone. Only relatively recent changes to the age limit on Age pensions means they are not on that payment now.
Australian pensioners, like the rest of us, are just one bill, one backroom deal and one pen stroke away from being ‘captured’ by the card. And that is all it would take from here to advance inclusion of Age pension into the program in any location any time.
While having no desire at all, in fact a high resistance to creating a panic, we cannot and will not aid and abet LNP to allow anyone to avoid the reality of this risk, and in so doing, leave people sitting ducks, or idle in their comfortable bubbles of denial.
LNP have also cut the Age pension twice since coming into office and if you count indexation changes, they have already placed seniors travel concessions onto a cashless card with a company (Heritage) that is a Indue Ltd shareholder, and they have withheld the 900-page Audit commission report that recommended tightening seniors concessions even further. You don’t commission audit reports without intent.
Given the aged care sector was one of the first to be privatised (and see how that has turned out) we have no doubt this pattern of exploitation will continue with regards to Cashless debit cards.
Indeed, on the ground work to ‘encourage’ the elderly to sign up in current CDC trial sites is ongoing and indicative of their intention. We see the process of ‘inclusion’ as being already well underway.
In current trial sites, the same “reasoning” revealed just last week by LNP’s Dr Gillespie’s staff is being used right now and that is, that there are “no problems with the card” and it will be “good for their safety”.
You will note that no mention is ever made about why elders may be unsafe in their own communities in order to ‘need’ a card in the first place, so we view these pushes to get more pensioners volunteering now, as yet another LNP deflection from the impacts that cashless debit cards are having IN affected communities.
So the LNP clearly have a pattern of acting against the best interests of the elderly in this country and a pattern of using deceptive incremental tactics to fundamentally change pensioner rights and freedoms. They do not see our elders as a ‘protected’ group as much as some would like to think they do and that, if nothing else, is a reason for mistrust.
Can we trust Anne Ruston’s claim age pension won’t be included in any national roll out?
No. And for two reasons.
One, you need only ask Ceduna about their one year ‘targeted trial’ that is now six years long and a blanket measure imposed by force through deceit onto everyone without any assessment of individual needs to see what is said and what is done are two different animals.
LNP, lie. And they do it very well.
This entire policy has been rolled out in similar steamroll fashion to the Ceduna experience, and roll outs since 2016 show a practice of carefully crafted incrementalism is in place, that has seen mission creep after mission creep ‘justified’ and manipulated through the parliament in a series of backroom deals and sold to the ignorant public by Orwellian spin and extensive public money funded propaganda power.
The reality masked by LNP’s publicly funded propaganda is, that last two bills to pass the Senate expanding and extending this policy, passed only by one single vote, and solely due to the private deal making between single vote senators and the LNP. This policy has not passed on the programs merit, it has not passed on the evidence need or efficacy of the policy at all. Just backroom deals.
Secondly, Anne Ruston herself, though she’s not alone in LNP, is uniquely accustomed to and even fluent in lying by omission about this policy. So much so her heartbeat barely even raised a notch as she stood there and lied in Senate in December 2020, right in front of her colleagues that she claimed to respect and in front of the cameras feeding her lies to the Australian people.
A liar of such skill simply cannot be trusted to tell the truth to anyone, even herself.
While we don’t expect Age pension to end up in the next bill, it is fair to say that due to the temptation of the sums of money involved and LNP’s pattern of incremental mission creep on CDC, that we do genuinely feel it is only a matter of time they are included wider scale.
This is especially true if the LNP are re-elected, and that is a big IF we are each and all responsible for when the time comes. ALP say they will scrap it, LNP will expand it, those are the facts, and that is the simple choice we all have here and now.
It is highly unlikely no new CDC bills, including further Age pension expansion or not, will arrive before the next election. Unless that is, LNP do wish to commit political suicide which is a possibility as they appear tired and have created such a mess, they seem to want to be opposition again.
Given the push to change Medicare this week is something similar to what Howard did with Work Choices which he knew would see the end of their term then, it’s not a far fetch to assume LNP are done laying whatever groundwork they needed and want a rest now.
It is also entirely plausible that they will make some grand announcement excluding Age pensioners from the CDC as a whole, in attempt to curry the pensioner vote for the election, only to let that promise go at first opportunity as they have any mention of a ICAC.
We simply don’t know and we simply, can’t trust them either way.
What remains at the end of the day is the fact that under the Social Security Act governing this abusive policy, and under Vol2 Part 3D “Cashless Welfare Arrangements” Division 2 Section 124PD, “Definitions” of the Act, the Age Pension remains listed as a “restrictable payment” in the CDC legislation for the NT and Cape York. It is IN the Act as a mandatory payment.
While a caveat is in place for the NT (not Cape York) in their entry in the Act at this time, one that does remove age pensioners from the list of quarantined payment types there, if there was indeed no ongoing plan or intention to include any more age pensioners on the program as Anne has suggested this week, then the inclusion of Age Pension as a mandatory restrictable payment in the Act at all would simply not be necessary.
It would be far simpler and more genuine to have included special caveat for the FRC region/ Cape York under their proscribed entry in the Act and leave only voluntary participation clauses everywhere else. While this payment remains included as a mandatory restrictable payment in the legislation, Age pensioners everywhere remain at as much risk as we all are.
For now, at least, there is no immediate threat, to Age pensioners as there is no bill before Parliament at this time. Age pensioner concerns about what may come, especially given the legislation’s contents, are valid however, and ALP and Greens MP’s and Senators may have more insight into any impending risk than we do given our limited connections.
Until we see deliberate action from the LNP to move on CDC again, and one to include Age Pensions on cards more widely, we, as you, must simply remain on watch and we will all have to wait along with everyone else to see what their next moves are.
If we spot any advancement, we will post it. Be sure to check back with us and keep fighting this monstrous shameful racist classist policy everywhere you can.
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I’ll bang on about this until my last dying breath.
It is the abject failure of our Fourth Estate (the mainstream media) to fulfil its democratic role and hold government to account. Worse, on top of that they run a protection racket for their favoured horse in the race; the LNP.
There was an article on the The AIMN about the sin of omission which goes to the heart of the failure of our Fourth Estate. The omission of campaigning hard against this government on its corruption, on its mishandling of major issues and policy stuff ups such as failure to act or lead cohesively on climate change mitigation and its abrogation of its constitutional responsibility during the pandemic!
The Murdoch media, the worst of all, actively proselytises for its favoured horse in all electoral races; the LNP! It plays a game of omission and bias with utmost exigency.
The corporate media may not be as biased with its non-objective, advertorial news reporting like the Murdoch media, but it fully commits the sin of omission when holding a LNP Governments to account, either state or federally.
The Fourth Estate should have wrestled the Government to the ground over Robodebt. Remember how they advertised, supported and prosecuted the LNP’s campaign on “pink batts?”
You couldn’t have avoided it anywhere, over four deaths which was more of an industrial OH&S issue than a government failure. But the howling from the mainstream media backed in the LNP. So inevitably, once in power the LNP instigated a Royal Commission, purely out of self-interested motives and political advantage, for, the four unfortunate deaths.
What of the Fourth Estate’s duty of accountability for an alleged 2,000 deaths from Robodebt? Where was their moral outrage then? Where was the concerted accountability campaign for those 2,000? Where was the media howls, full of conscience, moral pain for the 2,000 alleged suicides of the sort that enraged them with pink batts where they lost all objectiveness in their demand for justice in the four deaths?
Apparently, deaths at the hand of government policy is only horrendous when it occurs under the stewardship of Labor.
The 2,000 alleged Robodebt suicide victims, were ‘untermensch’, drainers of the state coffers, hardly worth shedding a tear for, let alone accountability and justice, from the reigning cartel of welfare-hating pricks, running our decrepit democracy into the ground?
Wait for the next election. Will they start another fear campaign like the one scaring pensioners about franking credits, that 99% of pensioners don’t get? Will they lie or back up claims for their LNP buddies about bogans and their 4WD or utes being stolen from ‘under their noses’? Will they go along with the LNP lie that Labor is going to close all coal mines and throw all mining workers on the dole queues? And promote the Trumpianesque “big lie” that big coal and gas is here forever and anyone who says otherwise, is in a leftie conspiracy to deindustrialise Western civilisation?
Why yes, Dorothy, all the above and much, much more!
Just wait for LNP policy and electoral advisers to brainstorm with the Murdoch editors and Palmer in a phone hook-up to war game the next election for the LNP.
I am so sick of what passes for an alleged democratic Fourth Estate in this country. It’s a con, a Libertarian neo-CON.
If it wasn’t for online social media sites like The AIMN – and many others – we’d hardly know of the endless, imbroglios affairs, conflicts of interests, rorts and scandals that have occurred under eight years of this corrupt LNP Government.
It’s not the Australian voter’s fault. They’re drowning with online alt-right conspiracies, lies and alternate facts; a biased LNP supporting Fourth Estate.
The ALP has been rendered voiceless by a disinterested or antagonistic Fourth Estate, struck with profound deaf, dumb and blindness to LNP wrongdoing, prosecuting their democratic sin of omission on the Australian people in regard to ALP opposition voices.
I have little hope for an ALP victory unless the people finally suffer fatigue from the LNP chorus and our mainstream media. Palmer has finally jumped the shark… let’s hope the corporate media has overplayed its hand and does likewise.
Otherwise, I fear this vile coagulation of pus currently running this country will only win again and putrefy our democracy, yet more. If that’s even possible, can they get any worse?
Yes, naively pollyannaish of me, of course they can. Corruption knows no bound, until a united people get sick of it.
Oh how I pray fervently for that day.
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Why do I use the term ‘charade’? Because I believe representative government is “an absurd pretence intended to create a pleasant or respectable appearance” about the concept of government of the people, for the people, by the people. This piece is an attempt to convince you of this charade, if indeed you need convincing at all. Given the seIf-evident nature of its content, I expect many of you will wonder why I have bothered to write this piece at all! I’m beginning to wonder likewise!
Let’s start with the concept of the ‘electorate’.
There are numerous references that explain electorates and electoral systems. Rather than go over established facts, my purpose is to focus on the flaws that beset our electoral system. Ace – The Electoral Knowledge Network is a sound source of information to which you may wish to refer for detailed information. Here is an extract:
The Importance of Electoral Systems
Political institutions shape the rules of the game under which democracy is practised, and it is often argued that the easiest political institution to manipulate, for good or for bad, is the electoral system. In translating the votes cast in a general election into seats in the legislature, the choice of electoral system can effectively determine who is elected and which party gains power. While many aspects of a country’s political framework are often specified in the constitution and can thus be difficult to amend, electoral system change often only involves new legislation and can thus be subject to manipulation by an unscrupulous majority.
Even with each voter casting exactly the same vote and with exactly the same number of votes for each party, one electoral system may lead to a coalition government or a minority government while another may allow a single party to assume majority control.
Don’t we know that all too well!
Moreover, we have seen the allocation of preferences used in a way which has seen individuals elected who have received almost no votes at all.
Suppose we lived in Dickson, Peter Dutton’s electorate. Only LNP supporters would have voted for him. Yet he is there to represent everyone in Dickson. If we were able to have an appointment with him, and if we expressed our dismay that our federal government had no policy to reduce carbon emissions, that its leader expressly rejects the need to have a target to do so, and that we are seriously concerned about the effect of increasing emissions on global warming and its catastrophic potential for worldwide devastation, how would he respond?
Would he argue that climate science is flawed? Would he try to convince us that the ‘warmists’ are deluded, that they belong to a strange cult that is out of touch with reality? How could he represent us if his beliefs were diametrically opposed to ours?
Herein is the fundamental flaw in representative government. It always has been.
Indeed this is democracy’s fundamental flaw. As Winston Churchill famously said way back in November 1947: ”Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.
How then should we regard what we like to believe is representative government? All of us live under its spell. Your opinion forms part of what we know is a seriously complex system. Please let us have your opinion. Enrich our understanding.
CEDA Chief Economist Jarrod Ball says the 2021 New South Wales Intergenerational Report (IGR) is a stark reminder of the generational challenges confronting the state over the coming decades.
“Bold new policy ideas to address the state’s ageing population, climate change, geopolitical tensions and the uptake of technology are now critical.”
“As we emerge from the pandemic, governments must prioritise policies that address tax, housing, education and climate to secure higher incomes, better jobs and better services for citizens now and in coming decades.
“With demographic headwinds due to the ageing population, and the pandemic population freeze caused by closed borders, our future growth comes down to productivity – that is, how dynamic our economy is.
“The report is clear that boosting productivity requires reforms on a scale we have not been seen in the last decade at least, such as modernising the tax system and lifting school education outcomes.
“But the long-term dividends are worth it – the report finds lifting productivity by just 0.1 percentage points would deliver the equivalent of $11,000 more annual income per household and reduce the gap between shrinking revenues and growing spending pressures.
Migration/population
“By 2061, the NSW population is projected to be older and around half a million people smaller because of COVID-19 border closures. Migration will therefore be even more critical to lift the working-age population and support the rising costs and healthcare needs of the ageing population.
“Australia must boost its quarantine capacity and speed up the vaccination rollout so we can open our borders sooner than mid-2022.
“Globally, governments are using COVID-19 to reassess their approaches to migration to attract the best and the brightest in a post-pandemic world. Australia will fall behind if it doesn’t start re-calibrating. The fact we did well last year will count for little in the future. This report underlines the fiscal and economic importance of getting this right.
Climate
“This report highlights the need for a co-ordinated national effort to address climate change and meet a common goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, rather than the increasingly disparate approaches across states and territories. We hope to see more on this in the upcoming Federal IGR.
“The Federal Government should commit Australia to net-zero by 2050. Fully embracing that commitment as soon as possible, and announcing more ambitious policies to get us there, would build confidence and provide greater certainty to business and the broader community.
Housing
“The report shows NSW will need to pull every housing policy lever at its disposal to meet the projected demand of 1.7 million new homes by 2060 or 42,000 homes every year.
“The plan to abolish stamp duty in NSW will help people move into new housing faster, but local councils will need to lift their game on planning approvals and housing density to boost supply.
Commonwealth-state relations
“The report reinforces that federal and state governments’ fiscal destinies are intertwined – both face growing budget gaps and can only close those gaps and boost the tax base by working together.
“The NSW Government expects to rely more and more on tied federal funding for critical services like health. It will become exceedingly difficult to provide the services the community expects sustainably into the future with the strings attached to tied funding agreements, which inhibit innovation and improved service delivery.
“CEDA has previously recommended abolishing tied funding agreements and replacing them with agreements linking funding to outcomes achieved, rather than inputs or specific processes.
“Australia should also move to a whole-of-federation intergenerational report for National Cabinet. We need an authoritative baseline to examine future spending and revenue trends, and the size of the task for Commonwealth-state tax reform.
“A combined report would also provide a fuller picture of the challenges we face in the decades to come. Having that picture would make the opportunities for reform in areas such as tax more clear.”
About CEDA
CEDA – the Committee for Economic Development of Australia – is an independent, membership-based think tank.
CEDA’s purpose is to identify policy issues that matter for Australia’s future and pursue solutions that deliver better economic and social outcomes for the greater good.
CEDA has almost 700 members including leading Australian businesses, community organisations, government departments and academic institutions. Our cross-sector membership spans every state and territory.
CEDA was founded in 1960 by leading economist Sir Douglas Copland. His legacy of applying economic analysis to practical problems to aid the development of Australia continues to drive our work today.
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As Australia officially enters winter, UniSA ecologists are urging coastal communities to embrace all that the season brings, including the sometimes-unwelcome deposits of brown seaweed that can accumulate on the southern shores.
While tidal seaweed (or sea wrack) may seem unsightly – especially at beach-side tourist destinations – new research from the University of South Australia shows that it plays a vital role for many migratory seabirds and should be protected.
In the first study of its kind, UniSA researchers show that beach-cast seaweed provides shelter, and a range of microclimates, in addition to food, that ensure the survival of many shore-bird species.
Specifically, sea wrack acts like a reverse-cycle air conditioner creating cooler conditions when the weather is hot and warmer conditions when it is cold, helping seabirds regulate their body temperatures.
UniSA researchers, Tim Davis and Associate Professor Gunnar Keppel, say that councils, residents and tourists must be educated about the ecological role of sea wrack and how removing it from beaches can have a significant impact on the environment and the survival of bird species.
“Australian beaches are renowned for stretches of golden sand – it’s one of the main drawcards for tourists – so it’s not altogether surprising that beachside destinations tend to favour a seaweed-free coastline,” Davis says.
“The challenge is, however, that while people may see beach-cast sea wrack as an eye-sore, it actually has an ecological role to fulfill, particularly for migratory shorebirds.
“Our research shows that sea wrack provides important microclimates to help seabirds regulate their body temperatures – they mostly forage, rest and roost in the older, dryer wrack, which is warm throughout most of the day. However, they also seek refuge among fresh wrack in the early mornings when it is the warmest habitat available.
“Shore birds move between the different wrack types depending on the prevalent weather conditions. This helps them conserve and build sufficient energy stores for successful migration and reproduction in overseas breeding grounds.
“When sea wrack is removed, then so too are the habitats of these sea birds, and this can have a devastating impact on their populations.”
Globally, beach-cast wrack is removed from many beaches worldwide, either for aesthetic reasons to increase tourism, for fertilisers, or to extract alginate for applications in the food and beverage industry, and the biomedical and bioengineering fields.
Currently, Australian has no guidelines for harvesting wrack.
“Sustainable management of all aspects of coastal environments is essential if we are to conserve the livelihoods of the species that rely upon them,” Davis says.
“Until a code of practice is established, our coastal ecosystems will remain under threat.”
This study was undertaken at Danger Point in South Australia, an important non-breeding ground for migratory shorebirds such as the Double-banded Plover (which migrates to New Zealand) and the Red-necked Stint (which migrates to Siberia).
Using COVID-19 as an excuse, we’ve witnessed repeated instances of the police going too far. Today, we have another one.
In conversation with the ABC, traveller Daniel Gibbs said the way he was treated by Queensland Police was “horrendous, rude and vile” and that he was made to feel as though he was lying. Gibbs was flying home from Victoria when he was met by officers at Sunshine Coast Airport.
“‘Where else have you been? Why have you been there? You can really tell me where you’ve been. I don’t believe you. Show me your Google Maps so I can see exactly where you’ve been,’” Mr Gibbs recalled the officers saying.
Gibbs also recalled the police “badgering” numerous passengers as they debarked.
Later in the article, the ABC noted that “Queensland Police Superintendent Craig Hawkins said the passengers’ experiences were ‘really unfortunate’, but police had a job to do under the directive of the Chief Health Officer.”
Which might not be exactly true. According to a Ballina resident, what he experienced during the Avalon cluster was entirely different. As he recalls, he flew into Ballina from Sydney during the height of the Northern Beaches lockdown, and was met in the terminal by NSW Health workers.
Apparently, they politely checked his licence to confirm his address and asked if he had been to the Northern Beaches. After handing him a pamphlet on symptoms to be aware of, he was informed of the local testing areas and was sent his way.
Unfortunately, the above is yet another example of over-policing during the COVID crisis.
Choked into resistance
The nadir of the behaviour is the lasting image of a Victoria police officer choking a woman in Collingwood as she wasn’t wearing a mask that appeared online. Although hard to believe at first, the footage shows the older man dragging the young woman along by the throat, before tripping her over and kneeling down on her.
The video reveals an officer emboldened by the recent broadening of police powers, as he enjoys the use of excessive force a little too much. Then the police had the gall to stick the woman in a van, drive her down to the station and charge her with resisting arrest and assaulting police.
The assault charge was in relation to her having kicked out at another officer whilst she was being choked by the first for breaking the mandatory mask rule. Mind you, her doctor had provided her with a certificate explaining that she couldn’t wear one for medical reasons.
The initial policing of enhanced pandemic laws in Victoria was so overbearing that a coalition of community legal centres established the COVID Policing website in April. It was monitoring the “inconsistent and sometimes arbitrary way” officers were enforcing extreme confinement laws.
But, the most disturbing instance of over-policing in Victoria occurred in July when 500 officers were deployed to ensure 3,000 public housing tower residents remained in their flats in hard lockdown. Officers were stationed on every floor, while instructions were barked out over loudspeakers.
NSW: The Premier Police State
“The continuity of a legal regime requires the reiteration of the binding character of law, and to the extent that police or military powers assert the law,” writes American philosopher Judith Butler, “they not only recapitulate the founding gesture… but also preserve the law.”
Butler makes the comments in her 2020 book The Force of Non-Violence in reference to the work of early twentieth-century German thinker Walter Benjamin. She adds that “the law thus depends on the police or the military to assert and preserve the law”.
The act of affirming and maintaining new laws has been played out by state police forces repeatedly across the country since the pandemic began, as officers went trigger happy issuing COVID-19 fines, which not only enforced the lockdown, but also a new prominence in the role of law enforcement.
This has now transpired into the application of chokeholds for the non-wearing of facemasks in public.
In NSW, Premier Gladys Berejiklian took the escalation in policing one step further by placing NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller in charge of the state’s COVID response, which provided him with far-reaching control over not just his troops, but border force, defence force and health personnel.
“I don’t think anyone doubts that there will be an essential element for the police as we seek to enforce elements of a lockdown in response to a pandemic,” NSW Greens MLC David Shoebridge recently remarked. “But that role should always be very much subservient to the role of NSW Health.”
And the gifting of this intensified control over the NSW citizenry to the leader of one of the largest police forces on the globe is quite concerning, especially when considering that prior to the onset of the pandemic, he was already making sniffer dogs and strip searches an everyday part of civilian life.
Paul Gregoire is a Sydney-based journalist and writer. He has a focus on civil rights, drug law reform, gender and Indigenous issues. Along with Sydney Criminal Lawyers, he writes for VICE and is the former news editor at Sydney’s City Hub.
This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.
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This week, Victoria’s health minister openly mocked the COVIDSafe app. With the program still costing $100,000 a month, the joke is on us.
There has been a litany of problems with the Government’s app, leading many to question whether the millions of taxpayer dollars spent has been worth it.
Then there were the hoax messages that the Australian Federal Police were called to investigate after many users reported receiving a text when they were further than 20 kilometres from home.
Other documents show that the government was aware in early May 2020 of a range of issues with the Bluetooth beacons, which are used in the app to record close contacts.
These beacons were also interfering with other applications, including glucose monitors for people with diabetes.
The Federal Government maintained that the app has been widely successful, and around 7 million people have downloaded it, meeting the original target of 40% of the population.
Yet as researchers from the University of Melbourne have pointed out, “…by May last year, only 44% of those surveyed had actually downloaded it. Plenty on social media are now saying they’ve all but abandoned COVIDSafe in favour of the QR code check-ins done via, for example, the Victorian government app or the Service NSW app. And when Victoria’s health minister Martin Foley was asked this week whether the COVIDSafe app had been used in responding to the latest outbreak, he said: ‘No. Not to my knowledge, and I’m sure in such a rare event it would have been brought to my attention’.”
Last month, former Labor leader Bill Shorten totted up the cost to the taxpayer, estimating that the program has cost $7,753,863, suggesting that the program will continue to cost $100,000 a month to maintain.
In October last year, AAP took a sterner tone, believing that the app cost the taxpayer a million dollars per each case the app discovered. “$5.2 million has been spent on operational costs and almost $7 million on advertising, taking the total price tag to roughly $16 million. The app has only helped find 17 contacts not found by manual tracers,” they wrote.
A policy paper from the Auckland University of Technology, the University of Queensland, the University of Auckland and Massey University, released in June, CovidSafe is unlikely to help prevent the spread of the virus because its effectiveness is “extremely limited.”
So far, this appears to ring true. Despite what appears to be a handful of small ‘wins’, the app seems to be yet another example of a government-led national technology implementation that has nowhere near lived up to expectations.
This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.
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Media release from Janine Kitson, Independent candidate for Bradfield
Ian Dunlop will speak on the climate emergency at a Bradfield Can Do Better zoom event, hosted by Janine Kitson, on Thursday 3rd June, 2021 from 6-7pm.
Ian Dunlop, one of Australia’s most respected climate experts, continues to speak out about the crisis of climate.
“Climate change is an unprecedented, existential security threat,” warns Ian Dunlop.
Janine Kitson has said she will stand in the next Federal election as an Independent candidate for Bradfield.
“As a former teacher I have a responsibility to step up and take action on climate, for the sake of the children I have taught, over my many years of teaching. Politicians are failing our children. They still refuse to acknowledge just how dangerous the climate future is becoming. Nor are they being honest about just how serious the biodiversity extinction crisis is,” argued Janine Kitson.
Ian Dunlop agrees that “climate change must be the Federal Government’s number one priority. We need to drastically reduce our carbon emissions, before it is too late.”
Ian Dunlop, resident of Gordon, is a member of Australian Security Leaders Climate Group, as well as being a former Chair of the Australian Coal Association.
Janine Kitson is a former Ku-ring-gai Councillor and teacher. In 2010 she was awarded the North Shore Times Community Medal for Conservation and the Environment.
The event is free, but registration is essential at www.bradfieldcandobetter.org.
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An unfortunate fact of life in Australian politics since the early 1800s has been the racist dog whistle. Consider the evidence of mass executions of first nations peoples that lived in Australia for thousands of years before Dirk Hartog (the first European to leave an artefact on the Australian continent in 1616) to the ‘White Australia Policy’ and Coalition Prime Minister John Howard’s 2001 election speech where he claimed “But we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come,” and continuing today with the policy of both major political parties of not allowing refugees to settle in Australia (but only if they came by boat – not a plane), we really are racist.
Current Coalition Prime Minister Morrison has become an adept player of the racist dog whistle when there is a perceived need to increase his ratings in the political polls. Morrison is the one that proudly shows off the ‘I stopped these’ fishing boat trophy in his office.
Morrison’s latest demonstration of dog whistling is his apparent refusal to accept travellers from India due to the horrific numbers of people diagnosed with COVID-19 and the subsequent death toll. Not only did Morrison shut the gate on people from India (regardless if they are Australian citizens or not), the announcement was apparently the first mention on the penalties for breaching the relevant legislation – despite the legislation being in place for 14 months. Morrison’s claim was the numbers of people with the virus in India was probably under-reported – apparently true – and the infection rate and death toll was horrific – again apparently true – leading to potential quarantine breaches in Australia should travellers from India be quarantined in Australia – certainly a potential outcome.
When the UK and Europe were undergoing a new wave of COVID-19 infections (from a version of the virus that is highly contagious), did Morrison slam the borders shut to those from the UK and Europe? Nope. Neither has he introduced a travel ban for those from South Africa where a different and highly infectious version of COVID-19 has been identified, or Brazil or the US. As The New Daily observes
The US has had more than 590,000 deaths from the coronavirus – the highest in the world and more than double that of India.
But even as wave after wave of fresh cases ravaged the country, the Morrison government never stopped people flying here from the US. Quite the opposite.
During the pandemic, Australia emerged as a top destination for American celebrities seeking to escape coronavirus restrictions at home.
Among others, Zac Efron and Melissa McCarthy have been spotted in Byron Bay, while Natalie Portman and Idris Elba have spent time in Sydney.
To give Karl Stefanovic from Channel 9’s Today Show his due, he questioned Morrison on the policy to fine and imprison Australians returning from India (but not from the US or UK) on Tuesday 4 May – the day after the policy was announced
“Jailing and fining returning Aussies, I mean, as a sitting prime minister, it is incredibly heartless,” Stefanovic said.
Mr Morrison said the likelihood of those penalties was “pretty much zero.”
“You’re saying no one will go to jail or be fined, is that right?” Stefanovic clarified.
“I think it’s highly unlikely,” Mr Morrison said.
The backdown had started – or as Crikey elegantly put it ‘Panicked PM tries to reverse a dog whistle amid quarantine incompetence’ (paywalled). Don’t believe that the claims of racism are only made by the ‘woke lefties’ who write on this blog site, “Even Andrew Bolt wrote in his column that the travel ban “stinks of racism.”
Which brings us to the two issues here. Racism and quarantine management.
Morrison didn’t impose a ‘no arrival’ policy on the US or UK during the middle and latter half of 2020, while he did criticise Queensland and Western Australia repeatedly (both ALP state governments who were scheduled to face elections) for closing borders in an attempt to stop the spread of COVID-19. Morrison did put out a press release and ‘do the media’ when imposing a ‘no arrival’ policy on people planning to return to Australia from India in May 2021. While the infection and death tolls in India were horrific, they were less than the same tolls in the UK and US. The only real difference in the process here is the colour of people’s skin – and making a decision on that basis is racism.
As Morrison was quick to point out when state governments closed borders, it does interrupt trade and society. While Morrison’s attitude to Tasmania and South Australia closing borders was ‘nothing to see here’ (probably due to being Coalition state governments), he was highly critical of Queensland and Western Australia. However it seems that quarantine is an effective form of management of a viral health crisis which is accepted (if not appreciated) by communities that are ‘protected’ by the measure. For evidence look at the recent state elections around Australia – those that implemented effective controls seem to have been repaid with another term in office.
Despite quarantine being a federal issue, Morrison was quick to handball it to the states in March 2020. The states introduced a number of variations on the theme – some more successful than others and some states chose not to participate at all. Katherine Murphy noted recently in The Guardian
As the former bureaucrat Jane Halton noted months ago in a review of hotel quarantine, “pressure to increase travel to and from Australia is growing.” Furthermore: “Existing models of quarantine are unlikely to be able to expand significantly above current levels and new approaches that manage risk are needed – an ability to add scale through surge capacity should be considered.”
Both Queensland and Victoria even offered to assist in the construction of additional secure quarantine facilities, only to be rebuffed by the Morrison’s Government.
So after months of criticising states for quarantining rather than ‘tracking and tracing’, Morrison is now committing the same ‘crime’ by closing the border selectively. Rather than improving the quarantine system and assisting Australians back into their own country, Morrison is looking for others to blame for his lack of management – he had Jane Halton’s report months ago.
Like his actions on so many other issues, Morrison is sniffing the breeze and working out which way he should jump (after all he has to win an election in the next 12 months to retain power). It seems fence sitting and blaming others is far easier than accepting responsibility or making a decision. And it seems he is convinced that blowing the racist dog whistle regularly doesn’t seem to hurt.
Today we discovered that no-one knows how many aged care workers have been vaccinated.
It seems that we do not know how many aged care workers had been vaccinated, as there seems to be no-one keeping track of who has received the vaccine, and who hasn’t. According to the Department of Health, work is now “underway” to survey aged care workers at the nation’s facilities (read: literally counting heads).
The question, of course, is who is responsible for this monumental cock up. According to Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck, it’s not him. Fronting a senate committee this morning, Colbeck was asked by Senator Katy Gallagher whether he thought he was responsible, yes or no. Colbeck proclaimed that it wasn’t “a yes or no answer.”
Elsewhere, Premier of New South Wales Gladys Berejiklian said she did not know how many aged care workers in NSW has been vaccinated against COVID-19, as such information would be kept by the federal government.
Fronting the media this morning, Simon Birmingham toldABC News Breakfast; “I do accept that it has not gone as we would have hoped.”
However, Birmingham was quick to shift blame, stating that the rollout was primarily hampered by the availability of vaccines.
Simon Birmingham has admitted the federal government’s vaccine rollout has not gone as the Commonwealth had hoped, but says the rollout continues to be hampered by international availability of vaccines. The took it further, claiming that the reason why 600 aged care facilities haven’t been vaccinated was primarily down the 12 weeks period between jabs with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Yet, prior to the rollout, residents and workers in aged and disability care were told that they’d receive the vaccine within the first six weeks.
“… a key area of responsibility for the federal government is vaccinating aged care staff and residents who are both in the highest priority group for vaccinations – phase 1a. Initially, the government said it had planned to complete phase 1a within roughly six weeks of the program’s commencement on 22 February. That included vaccinating 190,000 aged and disability care residents and 318,000 aged care and disability staff.”
With a week to go until that deadline, the government explained that they’d vaccinated 99,000 residents, but failed to explain how many staff received the jab.
“We know we aren’t where we want to be but we don’t know where we are,” Gerard Hayes, secretary of the Health Services Union in NSW, said of record-keeping in the sector’s “haphazard” rollout.
In early April, Health Minister Greg Hunt said that the program was “accelerating as intended” and “We were conservative in our estimates.”
Hunt also mentioned that; “… we remain on track to complete first doses for all Australians who seek it by the end of October.”
As The Big Smoke reported:
“Pre-rollout, Prime Minister Scott Morrison suggested the rollout capacity will start at around 80,000 doses per week and increase from there. That’s 16,000 a day (over five-day weeks), well short of the required 200,000 a day. The planned peak capacity hasn’t been announced, but even back-of-the-beer-mat calculation would suggest a minimum of 167,000 vaccines per day to give two doses each to 20 million Australians in the eight months between March and October 2021. The longer it takes to reach such capacity, the higher that daily number will get – or we will not reach the target vaccination percentage this year.”
In conversation with The Guardian, The Council on the Ageing chief executive, Ian Yates, claimed that the government overpromised, and now, clearly underdelivered the vaccine. Yates also highlighted the lack of a plan for vaccinating aged care workers a month into the rollout.
“My sense is that, by and large, although there are patches, the vaccination of residents is now proceeding. But there’s no clarity around the timetable and process for the vaccination of aged care workers, and that is of concern… vaccination of the staff is really important to the Covid security of residents, and we are concerned that the vaccination of staff doesn’t seem to have a clear strategy at this point,” Yates said.
“… unions representing aged care workers in Australia believe fewer than 15 per cent of the national workforce could be vaccinated. Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus said the survey proposal highlighted ‘how poorly planned this rollout is’, adding that requiring aged care workers to find their own vaccinations rather than providing them at their workplace could be acting as a deterrent.”
This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.
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It’s all very well for us to say how much we deplore the arrogance of our Prime Minister, but as Aussies who live under his ‘rule’ we can’t avoid the awkward fact that those who live elsewhere may see us as tarred with the same brush! How easy would it be for them to believe arrogance is an Australian characteristic? His behaviour taints us all.
So when he represents us in international fora, what he says, and the attitude he exhibits, reflect on all of us. Just as does the behaviour of a religious leader whom we might follow, or the top person in a club to which we belong. They not only represent us; their persona also has an impact upon us.
How many of you were embarrassed by PM Morrison’s response to the Biden-sponsored forum on climate change involving 40 world leaders? I certainly was. Any of you who wish to peruse the details of the forum can find them here.
In introducing the summit, Biden said: “The signs are unmistakable. The science is undeniable. But the cost of inaction keeps mounting.
Did that impact upon our PM? No! Did he make you as uncomfortable as he did me by telling the world that he will run his own race irrespective of other countries and their opinions?
In announcing Australia’s response, with characteristic arrogance, he refused to bow to pressure from the US to use the summit to announce an increased target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He told an astonished summit: “We are well on the way to meet our Paris commitments,” thereby laying bare the gulf between Australia and many of its key allies in how best to tackle the climate crisis. He added: “We’ll update our long-term emissions reduction strategy in time for the Glasgow COP26 climate action conference” scheduled for November.
What do you think? Those of you who believe they have a fix on Morrison’s nature and intentions may be living in fantasy land. While there is bound to be a diversity of opinion, who can avoid the conclusion that his unbridled arrogance is obvious? And that it is dangerous?
The Uyghur people of north-west China are now the most persecuted group on the planet with one million people locked up in “re-education” camps and numerous atrocities occurring daily.
The U.S. government, the parliaments of the U.K., Canada and The Netherlands now all say it is clearly genocide.
The brutal regime of Xi Jinping is trying to eradicate Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims.
And while there’s been an avalanche of bad publicity in recent years for the Chinese government it continues to deny its actions and presses on with inhumane policies.
In recent weeks New Zealand stood up against the regime with a unanimous parliamentary vote condemning what it called “severe human rights abuses.”
The resolution was put forward by ACT Party MP Brooke van Velden:
“Our conscience requires that we support this motion,” she said.
“Genocide does not require a war, it does not need to be sudden, it can be slow and deliberate and that is what is happening here.”
But worldwide criticism alone will not save my brothers and sisters in East Turkistan (Xinjiang).
One measure that could put serious pressure on Beijing is the so called “Magnitsky Act”. This legislation is designed to punish individual members of a government who are inflicting human rights abuses.
The law, which is being implemented in several countries, is named after a Russian citizen, Sergei Magnitsky, who was a tax advisor who exposed Kremlin corruption back in the early 2000’s.
For his whistleblowing he was jailed for 358 days. While in prison he developed pancreatitis and a blocked gall bladder, and was denied medical care. An investigation found that he had been physically assaulted shortly before his death.
Now his former colleague Bill Browder has travelled the globe promoting the Magnitsky Act which can be used to freeze the assets of human rights abusers and deny visas for international travel.
A form of the Magnitsky act is now before the Australian Parliament and has the backing of a multi-party committee.
But so far the Prime Minister Scott Morrison has not supported the legislation.
So now four Australian based Uyghur organisation have written to the PM urging him to support the bill and get it passed by the parliament.
In part our letter to Scott Morrison says:
Uyghurs in East Turkistan, Xinjiang China are suffering horrific human rights abuses, which a number of countries have determined to be genocide.
It is not just Uyghurs who are being abused. Tibetans, Hong Kongers, and others are being subjected to outrageous crimes against humanity and democracy by the CCP.
The legislation you are considering provides hope for thousands who have escaped persecution to call Australia home.
If Australia is serious about stopping the blatant abuse of Uyghur Muslims it must take stronger action against the Chinese government.
Passing Magnitsky legislation is one important way it could do that.
Almost very Australian Uyghur has family and friends still in Xinjiang, and it has been extremely distressing not to have communication, or finding out they have been sentenced to imprisonment or taken to work in labour camps.
Some would say making the Magnitsky Act part of Australian law is the least we can do.
We often boast of how important our democratic ideals are. Now is the time to truly live up to those ideals.
Bahtiyar Bora, Australian Uyghur Association
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Paul Gregoire is a Sydney-based journalist and writer. He has a focus on civil rights, drug law reform, gender and Indigenous issues. Along with Sydney Criminal Lawyers, he writes for VICE and is the former news editor at Sydney’s City Hub.
