If you detest Dan Andrews and want him gone, stop reading now. What follows will not please you.
As a citizen of Victoria I am incensed by the continual attacks on our premier. It’s not surprising that the State Opposition leader, the hapless Michael O’Brien, attacks Andrews in his usual censorious manner. But why are so many others targeting Andrews, who tries so earnestly, day after day, to do his best for us, the people of Victoria? Notwithstanding the mistakes he concedes he has made, who could doubt his sincerity, his earnestness, his diligence and his devotion to his job?
His attackers resemble a lynch mob, determined to string him up. Who are they?
I’m referring to people who work in the media. Journalists, news editors of print and electronic outlets, proprietors, and the moguls who control the media; you know who they are.
To get the anti-Andrews drift, you have only to read the newspaper headlines, watch the top stories on TV, or listen to the comments of the political elite.
But for a daily dose of political aggression and arrogance, listen to Andrews’ daily briefings on COVID-19. Without fail, he turns up to update us and to answer questions. He stays at the lectern until those present have exhausted their questions. It is not the number of questions that are directed to him that best characterise lynch mob behaviour; it is the tone of them, the arrogance they portray.
Many of his interrogators seem angry with him, keen to trip him up, eager to embarrass him, hell bent on making him uncomfortable. His calm, measured responses annoy them, so they up the ante with more assertive questions that cast doubts about the veracity of his answers. Words such as ‘surely’, ‘wouldn’t you agree’, ‘you must admit’ embellish their questions. Those who lead the lynch mob ask the same questions over and again, Now they are asking: ”Will you now resign?” Every time he offers them the same answer.
Those of you who have chooks will be familiar with the ‘pecked chook’ syndrome, where one chook is set upon by the others, who will peck it to death unless it is separated from them. They attack the head of the hapless chook until it bleeds. The blood evokes more frenzied pecking, and so on it goes until the poor animal is dead. The lynch mob displays such behaviour.
The same mob is there day after day. Andrews knows them by name. Watch them. Listen to their words. Observe the tone of their questions. Note their persistence with the same line of questioning. You can’t miss the pleasure they display as they peck away, hoping they can upstage their colleagues by drawing the first blood.
One inquisitor appears every day to lead the mob. Her questions are always acerbic, aggressive and accusatory.
Andrews often points out that his inquisitors have asked the same question time and again, and that his answer is the same. Clearly, he becomes frustrated, tired of the repetitive questions. But he patiently stays at the lectern until they run dry. And returns the next day for another round. His patience seems to have no bounds.
Recently, he has wisely exposed some of his team to the questioning ordeal. It has taken some heat off him, but has not tempered the questions.
Never willing to miss an opportunity, Morrison government ministers wait in the wings ready to take peck at him. Greg Hunt and Josh Frydenberg, and now Alan Tudge, acting immigration minister, have relished being a proxy for PM Morrison, who has chosen to keep his nose clean by hiding in the background. In the past few days, they have chosen to provoke Andrews by enabling arrivals in Victoria without notice. These people have simply appeared without proper documentation and some have on-travelled elsewhere, leaving Andrews astonished and angry. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that they were trying deliberately to provoke him.
Perhaps though, what has annoyed the lynch mob most is that Andrews’ strategy for controlling the spread of COVID-19 in Victoria has worked. The number of cases has been falling steadily. This past weekend, record low figures were achieved. As a result, restrictions have been eased, as promised, with more to come next weekend.
Whatever he does though, it will never be right, never enough for his detractors.
The painful reality for the lynch mob though is that Andrews has stared them down, and they don’t like it.
This daily inquisition is demeaning, unnecessary, unbecoming, and a pox on our politics. It must now stop.
Poor old gullible Gladys #koalakiller Berejiklian has all the emotional desires, so many of us have, and the demands of a taxing job that exacerbates her needs. She has always known she might have a lot to deal with, which explains why she has consolidated so many public departments. She just had to silence so many disparate voices making weekly demands of her, to lessen her obligations so that she could focus on matters of the heart. I mean, how many of us have not made the perfect choice of partners, that in later years reflectively ask, “WTF was I thinking?” Give her a break; it was a one-off mistake. “Princess” Gladys’s ruby complexion is a reflection of her private embarrassment. Her handling of public matters, although, has been exemplary – according to her liberal colleagues. I mean, it’s not like she makes a lot of mistakes as a public servant.
Speaking of the worst bushfires in NSW, wasn’t that a confusing time? Not helped by allegations that Gladys refused assistance by the Navy for fire-threatened south coast towns. Berejiklian pulled up short of suggesting our honourable prime minister was lying. Eliminating public service bloat is important – achieved by cutting rural fire service capital expenditure by 75% ($49.9M). These were efficiency dividends, and besides, they still had 25% of their funds. Such unneeded bloat was presumably why she needed to get rid of 26 out of the 36 specialist fire management officers responsible for doing hazard reduction? Ten officers are more than enough for a State area of over 80M hectares. Slashing 500 full-time positions from National Parks and Wildlife was just being economically rational, surely? She was just clearing the bush her own way, and who could have predicted climate change would result in more significant fires? Probably why she thought cutting $12.9M from the state’s Urban fire fighting budget was an act of foresight.
Blackened Home of Ash
Think of all the generous help she gave the federal government and irrigators by supporting the water trading of the Murray Darling Water Plan designed in 2012 whose Authority acted unlawfully when it “completely ignored” climate change projections for the determination of water allocations. Gladys did later begin to recant by considering new water-sharing plans for the Namoi River and water registries. This didn’t include the water registries of Helen Dalton’s Bill which would have listed MP’s water interests. That unsuitable Bill was allowed to lapse. Unlike the Broken Hill pipeline or profitable fracking at Narrabri that threatened water security, as they’d already been approved and one doesn’t want to antagonise donors by reversing decisions! So country towns in NSW ran out of water, Warragamba Dam got polluted, and we had to resort to the desalination plant in Kurnell that relies heavily on fossil fuels to run, making Sydney resident’s water bills to rise. Gladys Berejiklian’s degrees were in Arts and Commerce, so it is unfair to expect her to understand climate science and the causality of events that lead to droughts. It is no wonder she refused to meet with representatives of the Menindee Lakes. I mean, what did they expect her to do, raise the fish from the dead? Folks just expect too much from our Premiers who are far too busy meeting reputable donors or partaking in $950/ticket luncheons (a price just under the $1K disclosure guidelines) with dignitaries.
The implications of corruption implicit in this ICAC investigation are over the top, surely? It’s not like someone gave Gladys a bottle of Grange Hermitage that she forgot. Although memory failures featured significantly in her testimony to ICAC, but then who needs an excellent memory to run a State? It’s not like she was accustomed to maintaining a detailed memory with “meticulous focus on every minor policy detail“.
I mean has the shock, horror, scandal news rags of Murdoch said anything critical of Gladys other than she had been “falling for a bloke called Daryl“? Of course not, so honestly, there isn’t anything to be seen here. Just move along and don’t forget to vote them back in, on March 2023! Besides, who will remember any of her government’s small foibles by then?
Right now, here in Australia we are facing the biggest job crisis since at least the Great Depression of the early 1930s. The COVID-19 virus is the final straw that has broken the camel’s back. The ugly truth is that we have had three decades of rampant globalization via the weakening of import tariffs and the complete offshoring of manufacturing, and now even the service industry.
Try getting technical advice for an electrical product here in Australia. You have more chance of getting a job! (And that is saying something). Almost all technical advice comes from places as exotic as India, or as far away as Manila in the Philippines. These poor buggers get paid about one fifth of what an Australian worker would. Corporations love to exploit cheap labour!
This current morally bankrupt government has no intention of creating jobs. It suits their neoliberal dogma to keep the masses desperate for an ever-dwindling amount of jobs. This of course benefits their donor class. The millionaires and in some cases, billionaires need people desperate as this creates willingness to work for poor remuneration and increasingly precarious conditions.
The usual jackals in the media howl down any raise in Newstart for fear of upsetting their puppet master in New York, and the LNP`s grand plan for a brave new world. This author finds it unconscionable that in the middle of a near depression with nearly 14% out of work, or almost two million Australian adults jobless!
In the middle of a job’s crises to pair back the temporarily-raised Newstart and JobKeeper programme is economic suicide. The poorest tend to spend any money they are given, namely on rent, food and essential items. This money then goes straight back into the economy.
Instead, what do these reprobates do? They give more tax cuts to the upper-middle-class and the very rich. This money is unlikely to be put back into the economy. Rather, it will end up in shares, trust funds or some other investment.
The only way to get this country back on its feet economically is via a New Deal jobs programme and robust social safety nets for those who have fallen on hard times. In fact, even that bastion of capitalism, America embarked on their own ‘New Deal‘ under Roosevelt in 1933.
America was on the brink of collapse due to the stock market crash and the greed of the capitalist class of 1929.
Private capital had no stomach for creating jobs and large projects that benefitted the populace as there was no profit to be made in the short term, and they were unwilling to spend what was needed to kick-start the economy. History is now repeating throughout much of the Western world!
This new deal consists of three key goals: Relief from the harshness of unemployment and poverty, re-starting the economy, and reforming the corrupted financial system (which caused the depression in the first place).
Neoliberal capitalism was already failing badly before COVID-19. Now it has totally collapsed. Only the very rich and their cronies in media and government benefit from this hard-right dogma. Neoliberal capitalism is all about transferring public institutions into private, for profit hands. We have seen how disastrous this has been across a whole range of services.
One of the greatest failures is the bloated, for profit job agencies, which do bugger all to find people jobs while pocketing huge subsidies from the government. This system is financed to fail. Contrast this to the wonderful Commonwealth Employment Service which was run not for profit and was excellent at placing workers into jobs.
Under a New Deal we can create 100% employment and provide full-time jobs for all those who need it. There is plenty of work to be done! Infrastructure and community service is crying out for more help! Added to this is to create a robust social safety net to at least above the poverty line. $500 per week indexed to average wage increases would be a good figure.
Nobody needs to be in poverty in a country as rich as Australia. This is just a political decision to favour a small number of business scions and power brokers in the media. In fact, we had one of the best social security systems in the world in the 20th century, and we didn`t collapse into insolvency!
Which brings me to another great myth that needs to be smashed. The lie perpetuated by sock puppets in the mainstream media, and sadly even lately by the ABC! The bulldust that financing social programs and raising unemployment benefits will create more debt. This is garbage, and the politicians know this.
A sovereign nation that owns and controls its own public Federal Reserve cannot go into debt to itself. Money can be created and be allocated to where it is needed. Yes, it is true that we need to keep an eye on inflation, but this is what federal taxes are for. Taxes provide a break on runaway inflation by taking some money out of the system.
State taxes do operate on a different level to federal taxes however. Federal tax just takes this money out of the system… however state taxes are used to fund important public works such as infrastructure etc. I believe that Modern Monetary Theory is the way of the future and will free us from the ideological nonsense of neoliberal capitalism, which has proven to be an absolute basket case in every major Western nation!
In summing up, the only way out of poverty and joblessness is for the public sector to work again and to regulate the worst excesses of private capital… which even pre COVID-19 had driven us to the point of extreme hardship, transferring wealth to the very rich, while making it harder for every day folks to survive let alone thrive. Scandinavian countries are an excellent example of what could be achieved with the political will. So far, the only major party that has touched on creating a New deal is the Greens, who are advocating a Green New Deal.
Under this radical new approach, we could eliminate poverty, create an abundance of well-paying jobs, and in turn kick start a very moribund economy. Be bold and be visionary, people! We can do this if we embrace Modern Monetary Theory. Of course that would mean the wealthy job creators would have to compete with the public sector and provide decent wages, full-time jobs, and good conditions… which is exactly what they have been avoiding for the past 30 plus years!
Christian Marx is a political and social activist interested in making the world a fairer place. He has a Bachelor of Social Science and has a keen interest in sociology, politics and history. He was one of the organizers of the March in March rallies in Melbourne and is the founder of the progressive news and information site: Don`t Look At This Page.
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The controversial bill to outlaw phone use by refugees has been defeated, enabled by popular vote, advocates and a public poll.
A significant victory was claimed by the Australian campaign to uphold the rights of wrongly detained refugees in this country, when Senator Jacqui Lambie announced last Friday that she’ll be voting against depriving immigration detainees of contact with the outside world.
The outcome is noteworthy because Lambie didn’t make any backdoor political deals in coming to her decision. She threw her vote open to the public, asking what they thought. And of the over 100,000 people who got back, an overwhelming 96% asked her to vote against it.
Set to be voted down in the Senate this week, the Migration Amendment (Prohibiting Items in Immigration Detention Facilities) Bill 2020 was all about removing mobile phones from those in immigration detention, as well as expanding the search and seizure powers of officers.
Despite the usual nasty rhetoric coming from the department to justify why these people should be cut off from the rest of humanity, Lambie made clear that detainees aren’t organising “riots” on phones, but rather they’re texting “friends and family” and watching “YouTube videos about cats”.
Credit must also be extended to the hundreds of thousands in the community – the supporters, civil society groups and politicians of all persuasions – who ensured that all immigration detainees won’t be deprived of this vital lifeline, including the Medevac transferees hauled up in hotels.
A victory inside
“I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all the amazing people who voted no to what Jacqui Lambie created,” said 34-year-old Kurdish refugee Mostafa Azimitabar. “And I’d also like to thank Jacqui Lambie for supporting us on this and letting us have our phones.”
“I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all the amazing people who voted no to what Jacqui Lambie created,” said 34-year-old Kurdish refugee Mostafa Azimitabar. “And I’d also like to thank Jacqui Lambie for supporting us on this and letting us have our phones.”
“Sometimes I feel my phone is alive,” the long-term detainee continued. “I can be in touch with my family and friends, first of all. And also, I am in touch with my lawyer and some doctors,”
“I feel I am not alone. I don’t feel homesick. And it helps me not to give up.”
Peter Dutton tried to change our laws so he could take phones from our Biloela family & other innocent people he has trapped in detention. Today, @JacquiLambie listened to Australia and said 'no'. Other politicians should listen & bring Priya, Nades & girls #hometoBilopic.twitter.com/NZzw6g8evv
Mostafa, or Moz, is currently being held in Melbourne’s Mantra Hotel, along with around 60 other former offshore detainees, who came to Australia for treatment after two doctors assessed it as necessary, and the minister checked and then gave approval, under the now revoked Medevac laws.
Indeed, Moz and other rights advocates both inside and outside detention, ran a successful campaign on 1 September that involved calling the office of acting immigration minister Alan Tudge to tell him that confiscating refugees’ mobile phones wasn’t on.
“This is a small victory. It means that the power of the people is stronger than the politicians,” Moz told Sydney Criminal Lawyers. “And these people who wanted us to keep our phones, I am sure they want us to be free.”
Itching to deny them
Dressed up in the scare tactic rhetoric of minister Tudge’s second reading speech on it, and its numerous provisions, the Prohibiting Items in Immigration Detention Facilities Bill doesn’t overtly indicate that mobile phones and internet-capable devices are its main target.
But considered alongside what had come before, its aim is obvious.
Back in February 2017, then immigration minister Peter Dutton and the Australian Border Force launched a new policy that aimed to confiscate the mobile phones of everyone in immigration detention.
Prior to the enforcement of this prohibition, the National Justice Project obtained a temporary injunction, which the not-for-profit legal service followed up with a class action that culminated in the Federal Court ruling in June 2018 that the department couldn’t confiscate detainee’s property.
The Federal Court initially knocked back a Dutton-led challenge to the temporary injunction in August 2017, so the minister then went about introducing the first version of the prohibiting items legislation in September that year, which simply went on to lapse.
Then in May, when federal parliament met for three emergency sitting days to deal with legislation that couldn’t wait until after the pandemic, Dutton and Co made a renewed attempt to bring about laws to confiscate refugees’ phones.
Life-saving devices
“More than 150,000 voices from across Australia called on the Senate to take action, and today we congratulate the senators for listening,” said National Justice Project director George Newhouse, who successfully brought the class action against Dutton’s initial phone ban.
“Mobile phones save lives every day,” the legal service’s principal solicitor continued. “They are a legal, emotional, social, and cultural lifeline without which the government could silence and punish people seeking asylum with impunity.”
Newhouse explained that minister Dutton is trying to take away phones “from the innocent men, women, and children who he has detained.” And this would not only deprive them of vital communications with loved ones, but also cut them off from their legal representation.
“I believe that Priya, Nadesalingam and their two children would be in Sri Lanka today if they had not had their mobile phones with them on the night that the guards stormed their room in Villawood Immigration Centre,” Newhouse maintained.
Also known as the Biloela Tamil refugee family, Priya, Nadesalingam and their two Australian-born children were about to be covertly deported by plane last August, when they were able to contact supporters via their phone, which led to a last minute judicial reprieve.
Biloela Tamil refugee family (Image from themorningbulletin.com.au)
Release them into the community
The failed mobile phone confiscation bill appeared mid-pandemic at a time when there was a rising focus upon the former Manus Island and Nauru offshore refugees and asylum seekers who came to Australia under Medevac last year and are now being held in hotels.
The men at the Mantra Hotel and the other 120-odd detainees held at Brisbane’s Kangaroo Point Central Hotel weren’t – and still haven’t been – given any way to protect themselves against COVID-19.
There’s no room to keep social distance in these establishments. The guards don’t take virus protective measures. And one staff member has tested positive for COVID-19 whilst working at each of the hotels that are now deemed alternative places of detention (APODs).
The majority of the information about the plight of these men – who were brought here for medical assistance and then locked away during a health crisis to be given none – has been making its way out to the public via their mobile phones and internet-capable devices.
And as long-term refugee rights advocate Jane Salmon points out, now Lambie has seen this important victory over the line, it’s time to turn back to the greater campaign that involves seeing the Medevac refugees released into the community, so they can have their freedom after seven long years.
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.
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The release of the YouGov Poll for the Queensland government’s entry into caretaker mode on 5 October 2020: YouGov sampled opinions from 2,000 respondents covering Metro Brisbane, South East Queensland and Regional Queensland.
YouGov’s London based global polling networks with research centres worldwide rely on a new Panel Methodology to collect data for marketing, political polling and wider soundings of public opinion.
In progressive leadership hands this polling can keep corporate and community leaders in touch with the needs on constituents. In the wrong hands, such techniques can lead public opinion in Faustian directions to support involvement in foreign wars as in the Blair-Bush eras with the support of jingoistic drumbeats from both the tabloid and the communication of selective reasoning by elite media units.
Details of the extent to which these innovative sampling techniques are being applied here has been requested from YouGov as it is really important for readers to be aware of new techniques being applied to monitor our thoughts on public issues.
There is an ethical problem if opinion polling becomes so sophisticated that is can lead public opinion in less than democratic directions during times of economic recession, strategic challenges or the current COVID-19 challenges.
The Seductive Influences of Commitment to Corporate Ideology and Upper Income Welfare
The ideals of a state with minimal levels of taxation and with services delivered by corporations on a user pays basis casts a strong shadow over conservative politics at all levels of government across Australia and beyond. It has been like this for generations. Commitment to the Corporate State was popular in conservative ranks during the Inter-War Period (1919-39) when governments of the leading democracies were largely from the dry conservative right until the launch of Roosevelt’s New Deal Programmes (1932-45) which applied Keynesian economics in its most primitive forms but also edged the world’s superpower towards economic nationalism through higher tariff levels.
The federal LNP continues its tinkering with the Australian economy in the most recent budget. On offering are politically tempting tax rebates backdated to 1 July 2020 in the federal budget on 5 October 2020 which are being delivered with bipartisan support in the senate.
What is not always revealed in eyewitness news coverage is the extent to which wealthy families are able to minimize their incomes with the best advice available from legal consultants and tax minimization accounting firms. Some of the wealthiest Australians enjoy full pensions and youth allowances for their young adult family members at university while others receive the full discipline of current means test arrangements as installed by the federal LNP in 2017.
The limitations of this tax relief during a time of economic recession shows up in the delivery or inadequate Medicare rebates to clinics who offer bulk-billing services and in the delivery of much needed home-care packages for elderly and disabled people. ABC News (7 October 2020) offered this feedback on the consequences of the federal LNP’s commitment to upper income welfare from Linda Sharrock works at the coal face of aged care, managing KompleteCare Community and Home Care service in Adelaide:
“We are absolutely delighted that there are new packages coming in the system, [but] 23,000 really will not make that much of an impact, especially being over four years,” she said.
“There’s 100,000 people waiting for packages at present. So [it’s] really not going to touch the sides.”
To receive funding for entry-level care, the wait time is three to six months, but once a person needs funding for the higher levels of care — the kind that means avoiding going into a home — it blows out to over a year.
That’s 5,000 more lives than the number of additional home care packages announced in the budget.
Package
Care needs
Annual subsidy
1
Basic
$8,845
2
Low
$15,562
3
Intermediate
$33,866
4
High
$51,335
“The sad thing is that we’ve seen people that have passed away while waiting for their package, so they actually never get their package,” Ms Sharrock said.
“So over four years it’s likely that that could happen, that people will pass by waiting for support.”
The shadows of the federal LNP’s national economic policies affect states Queensland which receives about half of its total state revenue of approximately $60 billion in federal distribution of GST revenue which is always lowering during recessions and federal grants for the delivery of services like health and motorways. Policy detours by a state LNP government would wave on the conservative agendas during a time of economic stress and a regression towards user-pay principles for services like the use of motorways privatized by the previous LNP Government and sold off by Premier Campbell Newman to the Transurban Network from the Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC).
So how is Labor responding to the new conservative challenges from a combined Scott Morrison-Deb Frecklington Alliance with two LNP governments in control of state finances and a third LNP administration in control of the Brisbane City Council?
Day Two of the Queensland Election
The different priorities of the two major parties were reflected in their choice of major campaign venues during Day Two of Caretaker Mode.
Opposition Leader Frecklington visited Watkins Steel in the safe Labor electorate of Nudgee in Brisbane. Premier Palaszczuk campaigned in Mount Isa and headed off to Townsville from the safe Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) electorate of Traegar.
Opposition leader Deb Frecklington offered reduced power bills for companies large and small at a cost of almost $500 million while Premier Palaszczuk offered to extend the national electricity grid to North West Queensland at a cost of $1.8 billion (ABC News 6 October 2020).
Surprisingly, Caretaker Mode commenced with favourable YouGov polling results. A repeat of the bad polling results in late July would have been a very bad start.
Significantly, Labor’s primary vote has improved by 5 per cent to 37 per cent since the worst of soundings by YouGov on 7 June 2020. This translates to a 52-48 per cent result in favour of Labor after preferences (Images from PressReader Coverage of YouGov Polling):
This situation still translates into a tight election result as Labor support base has been eroded in some former heartland areas in Cairns, Townsville and parts of Outer Metro Brisbane.
Given the diversity of Queensland’s electoral regions, a 54-46 divide in favour of Labor is desirable with a Labor primary vote closer to 40 per cent is highly desirable. Despite the tailwinds assisting Premier Palaszczuk’s early campaigning efforts, there is always a possibility that polling could drift in Labor’s direction during the campaign (Images from PressReader of the YouGov Polling):
The maverick factor is of course possible damage from capital intensive campaigning on behalf of Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP) in those difficult regional and outer metropolitan seats with high levels of economic and social stresses. Constituents in difficulties are being encouraged to vote against their real interests in the service of dry corporate ideology by this style of campaigning.
Campaigning in Traeger
With its extraordinary margin in favour of Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) from the 2017 state election, winning the remote regional seat of Traeger is more than a simple campaigning challenge. Images of the Premier’s good reception from mining and community leaders in Mt. Isa rapport with enthusiastic constituents is transmitted statewide on eyewitness news network. The visit to Mount Isa talked up financial commitments to the copper smelter, new road works, the appeal of economic diversification through tourism and trade training courses as well as new high voltage links to the national power grid in Townsville.
Premier Campbell Newman’s government had promised to privatize the Mount Isa rail link to its export terminal in Townsville. These antics added the removal of sleeping cars and dining services on the twice weekly Inlander train service to Mount Isa.
The NW Queensland seat of Traeger is the state’s second largest electorate covering 428,911 square kilometres in the north of the state. It runs along the Flinders Highway from Charters Towers through Hughenden, Julia Creek, Cloncurry to Mt Isa and on to the Northern Territory border. It also includes Burketown, Normanton, Karumba and the Aboriginal community on Mornington Island in the gulf country, as well as the old mining towns around Georgetown.
Here are the voting patterns in Traeger from the 2017 Queensland elections:
These candidates (below) had nominated by 5 October 2020. Labor has chosen a candidate from Mount Isa with great regional appeal and communication traction across Traegar as shown by comparisons between the three leaders with an interest in this seat. A candidate from the UAP has yet to emerge through the spinifex:
Traegar is a sunny haven during the cooler months and should be attracting more tourists when state borders are re-opened. Exotic destinations include Lawn Hill Gorge (Boodjamulla), ghost towns in the Cloncurry-Mt. Isa District, historic Charters Towers and Ravenswood, the Doomadgee Community with its splendid facilities for indigenous people, Century Zinc Mine and the vast reservoirs near Mount Isa for water sports.
Air fares are quite affordable to Cairns which has a high frequency of flights even during COVID-19 times. It is a comparatively short distance from Cairns and Townsville Airport to the exotic locations further west during the cooler months.
Bus Queensland operates excellent regional bus services with state subsidies and these need to be extended to cover the Mount Isa to Normanton route which is currently served by Trans North Buses to Cairns. Bus Queensland offers a $250 pass for ten days of travel which can and should connect more smoothly with existing train and bus services.
If many Australians knew of the ecological treasures awaiting them in Northern and North West Queensland it would become a real alternative to overseas travel during this COVID-19 times.
One enthusiastic supporter of James Bambrick’s campaign in Trager decided to table some strategies to offer more affordable public transport to such exotic North Queensland tourist destinations at a Town Hall Meeting in Townsville on 8 October 2020.
Fans of regional economics and statistical databases should take a look at the Regional Database which has been developed by Queensland Treasury. This site will generate a full economic and social profile on the electorate of Traegar and any other state electorate in seconds with statewide comparisons or other regional or local authority areas. The data can only be as recent as the 2016 Australian census. However, the results challenge some stereotypes about the extent of disadvantage which is actually much higher on the outskirts of large Queensland urban areas:
Do take advantage of this incredible resource from Queensland Treasury which needs to be extended to other states and territories where this product is not available. It is a vital resource for teachers at secondary and tertiary levels. It is available through Queensland Regional Profiles.
For better political analysis, it should also be extended to federal electorates to challenge some of the rhetorical interpretations offered by both elected leaders and some of the trite data which is publicized in opinion polls as feedback from the community on social reality.
Mining had assisted in containing social disadvantage in North West Queensland when the resources boom was still in vogue at census time in 2016.
The election of the Palaszczuk Government saved the privatization of the Mount Isa to Townsville freight line.
Now Premier Palaszczuk has left Mount Isa with a commitment to the diversification of its resource and tourist base. There were promises of support for the Mount Isa smelter and the connection of Mount Isa to the National Power Grid.
Image: The North West Star 7 October 2020 – (L-R): ALP Traeger candidate James Bambrick, treasurer Cameron Dick, Incitec Pivot’s Peter Ware, premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Glencore’ Matt O’Neill.
These visits not only help good local candidates like James Bambrick of Mount Isa. The Premier’s heroic efforts are conveniently also transmitted by eyewitness news networks to more winnable seats across the length and breadth of Queensland.
Raising Labor’s profile with a primary vote of over 40 per cent requires big existential effort as the Premier moves to localities with highly marginal seats.
Anecdotes about the antics of one term LNP Governments are always helpful in reminding voters about the political detours which caused disasters under the LNP one-term governments of Premier Arthur Moore (1929-32) and Campbell Newman (2012-15).
Political rhetoric is not a valued commodity in regional and outer metropolitan areas under social and economic stresses. I saw the audience warming to old Queensland songs to cheer on a member of the Ryan family who was celebrating her 100th birthday at Caboolture in January 2020.
The Labor Police Minister Mark Ryan joined in the singing of Beautiful, Beautiful Queensland on behalf of Sheila Lynch who had lived with her family near that new Tinaroo falls Dam and Mareeba-Dimbulah Irrigation District in the early 1950s when Labor had a state-wide primary vote of 53.21 per cent at the 1953 election.
There is no shortage of music for Bluetooth sound systems at BBQs and speaker vans to revive the old Labor spirit at a time when 80 per cent of Queenslanders were members of trade unions.
I looked through the You Tube repertoire and picked out some other Queensland classics to add a touch of frivolity to a heavy article about life in difficult times
Diverse Musical Genres: Better than a Million Words of Campaign Rhetoric: All Accessible Through YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSgv3fYG8FY (Marching Back to Dusseldorf 1815 Version to the Tune of Marching Through Rochester and remarkably like the Waltzing Matilda Beat).
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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Today, Dan Andrews fronted the media for the 94th day in a row. But, while we expect him to show compassion and take the blame, are we asking too much?
In today’s political landscape, we force our politicians to be emotional: we want their compassion, we need to see them suffer as we do, we need to see them happy for our nation’s successes. So, what does this mean for Daniel Andrews?
What does it mean when we expect him to be civil, calm and collected when answering questions from a reporter for the 94th day in a row, when he knows they will publish yet another article asking him to take personal responsibility, or label him a dictator? How much can we ask of our leaders, emotionally, before it becomes too much?
Politicians, like waiters and retail staff, are service workers. Their employment depends upon their service to others: their role is to represent us. According tostudies, politicians experience emotional burnout and depersonalisation in their jobs, as much as any other service worker. The pain a waiter goes to when he smiles with a ‘customer’s always right’ attitude, is likened by academics to the burden on a politician to smile and respond graciously to a reporter who publishes attacking and victimising articles about them. When the currency of today’s crisis is emotion, be it the fear of contagion or frustration about being in lockdown, how much emotional outpour can we expect from our leaders?
I argue, we can’t possibly expect as much as we do.
A simple scroll down Daniel Andrews Instagram feed will find a plethora of abuse scattered in comments on family photos.
Admittedly, Andrews’ is likely posting photos of his family in an attempt to humanise himself to the public – reminders of ‘I’m suffering too’ and ‘we’re all in this together’. Yet, the act of posting a photo of your family, while expecting to be called a paedophile, a dictator and a villain, requires some emotional work in and of itself. Andrews is experiencing daily something called ‘emotional labour’.
Coined by an American sociologist, ‘emotional labour’ is the effort one endures to act out an expected emotion, while genuinely feeling an entirely different emotion. The classic example usually given is that of an air hostess smiling at her passengers, despite her inner exhaustion. Her employment requires her to smile, even when she really doesn’t feel like it. Though it may be onerous to feel sympathy for our leaders, it can be suggested that Daniel Andrews is suffering the same burden as the air hostess.
Rachel Baxendale, in particular, not only writes incredibly confrontational and scathing accounts of the MP, but is standing in front of him at every press conference with questions ready to be fired. These include hypotheticals that he couldn’t possibly be expected to realistically entertain.
Here, Andrews must maintain a calm and respectful manner, despite what could all well be his true feelings of anger or resentment towards her as a reporter. Statements, even from fellow politicians such as Tony Abbott, saying we are in the harshest lockdown in the world, arefound inaccurateby institutions such as Oxford University, who indicated that 13 other countries have achieved the maximum possible score for the overall severity of their lockdowns – Victoria is not alone. Yet, Andrews must keep it together in front of the press. This is a requirement of his job.
Otherstudiessuggest that the role of the politician is to personalise the political – to make his moral integrity and familial accountability political fodder. Leading in a time of crisis embeds you in Australian households – press conferences and decisions made by Andrews affect us in an unprecedented way.
His position on COVID is as much up for ridicule as his personal life. People feel justified in attacking his family on Instagram, because they feel as though Andrews has personally victimised them; as if our leader has personally locked their doors and thrown away the key. Yet, if we saw no photos of his family, if we saw him react with anger to a journalist, he would also be ridiculed.
His position on COVID is as much up for ridicule as his personal life. People feel justified in attacking his family on Instagram, because they feel as though Andrews has personally victimised them; as if our leader has personally locked their doors and thrown away the key.
What Andrews is confronted with as a service worker is indicative of a wider, systemic problem that neoliberalism confronts us with. Our personal lives now are our professional lives. Personal attributes, such as optimism and confidence, are now listed as requirements in job descriptions. Emotion is okay, only when it fits the company well.
For instance, the ill-conceived campaign #GiveDanTheBoot, escalated to boots being hung on Andrews’ father’s grave as a sign of discontentment with Andrews’ leadership. In response to this, Andrews commented “Shame, shame on him, shame”.
Given, shaming the man who hung the boots consequently shames the entire campaign. However, when The Agedeemed Andrews as ‘emotional’ in a headline, it was okay because it reflected the family values, we expect of him. Here we can see that he was allowed to be emotional because it served his party’s purpose. Again, the employer (us) set the rules for how and when he is allowed to respond emotionally to an ongoing string of events shaping his life.
If we are to hold Daniel Andrews personally accountable for every decision made during the COVID crisis, then we do not understand the complexity of working in politics.
This is not to argue that Andrews should be void of responsibility. Rather, he should be cut some slack, for prioritising the people over the economy, as opposed to Trump’s prioritisation of the economy over the people. And, to clear this up now, yes, if the economy collapses many people will suffer, but it is the people who sustain the economy. If we all die, so shall the economy.
Let’s give Andrews some credit for keeping us alive and undertaking the burdensome task of managing his emotions day-in-day-out.
Mikayla Chadwick is a Melbourne-based freelance writer, focused on human and legal rights, global affairs and popular culture. Mikayla holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree and is currently completing a research degree in sex work policy reform. To read more from Mikayla, check out her website: mikaylachadwick.com.
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Those that remember the dim dark distant days of the Global Financial Crisis, or GFC, would be aware that a lot of the financial pain was caused due to a number of financial institutions around the world who for a number of years had been lending large amounts of money to those that couldn’t necessarily afford the payments and relying on security that was in essence useless. To an extent, the Australian Government of the time, led by Kevin Rudd mitigated the effects of the GFC by injecting significant funding into the economy. The solution was more or less copied recently by the current Government during the current pandemic with a far larger (in percentage terms) injection despite the Coalition campaigning for the previous 10 years on the ‘reckless’ spending of the ALP.
One of the strategies Rudd employed to ensure that there was little chance of a subsequent Australian Financial Crisis was to legislate to require banks to actually assess if the borrower could realistically afford to repay the debt. That being said, all banks still have some level of default as they assess your ability to make the necessary repayments up to 30 years into the future based on your current circumstances. Sometimes the assessment is incorrect, sometimes circumstances change. That is a large part of the reason why banks charge a risk premium called interest for the borrowing of money over and above the cost of the bank finding the money to lend.
Prior to the introduction of the laws by the Rudd Government, the consumer was pretty much responsible for alerting the bank they couldn’t afford the repayments while applying for a loan. So, the borrower who has just signed on the dotted line for the shiny new car or the property that belongs in the pages of Home Beautiful was responsible for saying to the bank that I really want to make the purchase, please give me the money, but I can’t afford to repay it. Given that the voluntary full disclosure probably never happened, the legislation made it harder for people to get themselves into financial difficulty.
Recently the Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced he was considering winding back the legislated protections for those that take out a loan. Frydenberg claims the reforms will
increase the flow of credit to households and businesses. As Australia continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is more important than ever that there are no unnecessary barriers to the flow of credit to households and small businesses.
It seems a fair response to a significant lessening of demand for lending, and lending does assist the economy to recover from a recession. It is probably a good thing. But is there a lessening of demand which is the premise for the initiative? According to the ABC News article linked above – apparently not
The Commonwealth Bank recently said that the flow of credit is above pre-COVID levels and that lending is growing at a strong pace,” noted the Consumer Action Law Centre’s CEO Gerard Brody. And none of the big banks opposed the responsible lending laws at the recent House of Representatives Economics Committee hearings.
If you can’t recall the GFC, you probably have a better chance of remembering the Royal Commission into Financial Institutions conducted by the Hon. Kenneth Haynes. The final report was delivered to the government in 2019. The Commission was set up to demonstrate that ‘industry superannuation’ funds were suspect due to undue interference from unions; the outcome was somewhat different. The Coalition had forgotten the basic rule of an enquiry – don’t ask the question if you don’t know the answer.
His Honour was less than impressed with the Finance industry’s ethics and culture of sales above (almost) everything else as noted in the Interim Report Summary. If you really need something to do, the full report in three volumes is available here and is equally as damning. The report made 76 recommendations. None of them were calling for a reduction in regulation or removal of legislation.
Frydenberg wants to reduce regulation which is a ‘barrier to lending’, implying the banks can’t find people to lend to and fundamentally banks are trustworthy. According to others, banks are already providing credit at ‘better than pre-COVID’ levels. As recently as 2019, a Royal Commission found that the sales culture in banks was rampant. To top that off, Westpac was taken to court in 2018 by ASIC for failing to ensure customers had the ability to repay loans. Both Commonwealth Bank and Westpac have also been taken to task over industrial-scale money laundering. It seems Frydenberg’s theory doesn’t stack up.
Why would Frydenberg believe that suddenly the banks have seen the light and will behave appropriately when demonstrably they haven’t always been ethical in the past? The probable response is that he is living up to his conservative ideology and attempting to reduce regulation, which usually disadvantages those who don’t have the resources to be treated equally at the bargaining table. You could also accuse Frydenberg of ignoring the elephants in the room, namely past history, the recent court cases and the Royal Commission that gave him, as the responsible Minister, a three-volume report in 2019 essentially suggesting that banks will chase the profits regardless of the consequences.
Consider this action in parallel with other actions taken by the Morrison Government in recent weeks to
reduce JobSeeker despite the current economic recession,
trash the environment through a ‘gas’ led industrial and energy policy,
argue over border closures with only one or two out of four jurisdictions using the practice to minimise COVID19 within their states,
continue to use refugees for political gain rather than treating all people humanly,
attempt to blame shift the aged care home COVID19 mess of the past six months away from the federal regulators
spin the massive backflip on the NBN fibre to the home rollout being 10 years late as a positive.
We’re not ‘all in this together’ – Morrison and his government are back to their ideological worst. And we had a chance to create a new and better normal.
In the absence of a high-profile opinion polling in the forthcoming Queensland election, I took the initiative of contacting YouGov in Sydney about the expected date of their next comprehensive opinion poll. It is a long time since the last opinion poll from Newspoll through YouGov in late July 2020.
This poll indicated a close result after preferences. The anticipated outcomes were closer than the margin of error in state-wide polling in a state with a very diverse demography. This adds to the potential margin of error in the polling results.
That Pox on Both Your Houses?
Research from the Electoral Commission Queensland (ECQ) in 2017, showed up other variables.
There was a high level of informal voting particularly in disadvantaged electorates on the outskirts of urban areas in South East Queensland. Informal voting was in excess of 6 per cent in eight electorates. Long before the COVID-19 problems in 2017, the apparent failure to vote was running in excess of 15 per cent in sixteen electorates. Still an unknown percentage of potential voters had not bothered with electoral enrolment obligations.
Electoral rolls are managed by the federal government through the AEC which is also responsible for publicity campaigns to encourage enrolments.
Many potential voters are turned off by formal politics and the shrill nature of political debate which is conducted through the media.
Then, there is the obscure role played by political public opinion polling. This is accepted as a social reality. Scoop public opinion polls assist with promotional efforts by print, online and electronic media outlets.
Australia suffers from a lack of diversity in its opinion polling networks compared with Britain and European countries. The Politico web site offers a consensus of polling results. Readers who are interested in public opinion in Britain and Europe will enjoy looking at the results on the Politico site which cover thirty countries plus elections of the EU itself.
Australia is increasingly locked into Newspolls administered by YouGov.
Newspoll was once an arm of News Corp Australia. However, News Corp allowed its political polling to be administered by Galaxy Research. This was taken over by YouGov:
YouGov set up its own Australian business two years ago, using data collected from its proprietary panel of members to provide syndicated data products and services. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
David Briggs, the founder and managing director of Galaxy, will lead the combined business and team of 11 employees in Australia, which will initially operate under the brand YouGov Galaxy.
Stephan Shakespeare, CEO of YouGov, said: “With its reputation for accuracy and an excellent roster of corporate market research clients, Galaxy was an obvious fit for the YouGov Group. This acquisition increases our presence in Australia which is a significant market and one which is strategically important to our international clients.”
Briggs, added: “Becoming part of YouGov gives Galaxy access to an enviable global profile, a high-quality proprietary panel and operating platform.”
By global corporate standards, YouGov is quite a small company but with massive strategic influence over world politics from its network of nine million panellists worldwide in UK, USA, Europe, the Nordics, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. Limited details are available of this network from the YouGov site. It has a network of one million panellists in the UK alone. This vast network of panellists can be randomly sampled on both political and marketing questions in a manner which could not be done by Newspoll itself within the global News Corp stable.
YouGov is an international research data and analytics group headquartered in London.
Our data-led offering supports and improves a wide spectrum of marketing activities of a customer-base including media owners, brands and media agencies. We work with some of the world’s most recognised brands.
Our suite of data solutions includes YouGov BrandIndex, YouGov Profiles, YouGov Omnibus and YouGov Custom Research.
With a proprietary panel of over 9+ million people globally and operations in the UK, North America, Mainland Europe, the Nordics, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, YouGov has one of the world’s largest research networks.
YouGov data is regularly referenced by the press worldwide and we are the most quoted market research source in the UK.
In Australia, YouGov has an association with the Murdoch Press and with other News Corporation television and print outlets worldwide. The precise nature of this association was the subject of my request for YouGov to assist in the preparation of this story line. Our readers might be able to better define this association. I offered YouGov a chance to offer block quotes for inclusion in my story line to ensure that the complex associations were precisely covered.
There can be no doubt of the power of marketing network in both politics and corporate life. Such links are not widely discussed in mainstream media networks. YouGov reveals something of its marketing approach to politics and even their assessment of elites in Britain.
Self-promotion works wonders as shown by the latest scoop from YouGov’s B&T Magazine. Images of Sydney’s 2GB King of Radio Breakfasts Ben Fordham are so larger than life that they are confusing the autopilots on Telsa cars:
“Sydney’s new king of breakfast radio Ben Fordham is stopping Sydney traffic and it has nothing to do with his ratings-hit 2GB show.
With his face plastered on the back of Sydney buses, Tesla cars have been thrown into disarray with its autopilot system confusing the radio host’s mug for a real person and automatically hitting the breaks.
Fordham talked about the strange incident earlier this week on his show.
He said: “What’s happening is that there’s a function in Tesla vehicles called autopilot. But the computer looks at what’s going on around and if it identifies what it believes to be a pedestrian, it will hit on the brakes,” Fordham said.
“[It] thinks that I’m a pedestrian as opposed to a poster!”
The Tesla autopilot issue was posted as a video to YouTube on September 27 by David Jones” (bandt.com.au).
Major shareholders in YouGov are BlackRock Inc, a major US global investment manager with assets of $US 7.4 trillion under management and the world’s largest shadow bank as well as Standard Life Aberdeen which is the largest asset manager in the UK.
In this Brand-New World, the strategic timing of irregularly placed political opinion polling can influence outcomes in close elections. Even quite ethically based polling works wonders for print and electronic network ratings. Voters like to be on a winner like the horse race punters of old who relished in accessing tips from racing insiders. The world has changed but our information bases for decision-making have become somewhat more sophisticated and more existential. The UAP is a specialist in political populism from the 2019 federal elections.
A strategically placed poll just when the Queensland Government is entering its caretaking period can have a big impact on the viability of a government with the slenderest majority of just one seat away from minority government from the 2017 state elections.
If the next opinion poll strongly supports the Palaszczuk Government, it will have little impact on election outcomes. However, it will be a different matter if the voting patterns from the July polling are repeated to slow a line-ball outcome after preferences from minor parties.
Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP) is on the scene again to stir up politics particularly in disadvantaged electorates.
The UAP’s flamboyant style of politics invites a protest-vote from the legions of Queenslanders who have little interest in formal politics (Ben Snee of The Guardian 3 October 2020). UAP preferences are directed against Labor with a vengeance.
“No analyst or pollster believes Palmer’s United Australia party – which is yet to announce candidates in 50 electorates – can win more than a minor share of the vote in any Queensland seat. So what does the state’s richest man hope to achieve by pouring more personal millions into his own political outfit?
“Up here there’s a saying: don’t listen to what a man says, watch what he does,” says Jen Sackley, a former official and candidate for Palmer’s United Australia Party.
“This is a Liberal man. He was a National and Liberal man most of his life. As far as I’m concerned, we were a lobby group for the Liberal party in yellow shirts.”
Sackley was the party’s north Queensland director and its regional campaign manager at the 2019 election. Palmer spent $83.6m on his garish “Make Australia Great” election advertising. In the final weeks, the businessman changed strategy and launched a series of attacks ads designed to damage and discredit Labor, rather than attempting to win seats for the United Australia party.”
During March the Electoral Commission reacted to the emerging health emergency by encouraging voters to make use of postal and pre-poll voting. It also broadened access to telephone voting, an option previously only available for blind and low vision voters. The new public health rules prevented the Electoral Commission from visiting retirement homes and hospitals, and also prevented the use of Electoral Visitor voting.
The effect of Coronavirus on turnout was less dramatic then the impact it had on how people voted. In the Brisbane City Council Lord Mayoral election, turnout fell from 84% in 2016 to 79.9%, a drop of only 4.1%. That is a remarkable turnout given the health concerns.
But using Brisbane ward election results, on the day voting fell from 66.0% in 2016 to only 26.5% in 2020. Pre-poll voting rose from 13.2% to 28.7%, postal voting from 12.2% to 23.9%, end telephone voting recorded 8,428 votes (1.4%) compared to only 151 votes in 2016.
Absent voting also leapt from 7.4% in 2016 to 18.3% in 2020. This figure hides some of the increase in pre-poll votes. In 2016 pre-poll votes recorded outside of a voter’s home ward were recorded as pre-poll votes. In 2020 outside of ward pre-polls were counted as absent votes.
In a community under stress from both public health and financial hardships, there is certain to be a big existential factor in this year’s Queensland elections.
Many will look to guidance from strategically timed opinion polling with claims from YouGov about is incredible track record. Delaying the major polling will enable the UAP to be registered in the two forthcoming major pre-election polls.
Stresses abound in 2020 during the worst recession since the 1930s and are certain to intensify if the LNP has chance to regain control of the policy levers at state and federal levels to impose that social and workplace discipline that the corporate sector craves in difficult times.
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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YOUR assistance is URGENTLY needed to stop the further roll out of the privatisation of Social Security via the forced income management of anyone who happens to receive some kind of Social Security payment.
On Wednesday a Bill is up for voting in Parliament in order to add a new ‘trial’ area as well as extend the existing ongoing years long ‘trials’ already happening in many places around Australia. The final plan is to impose this draconian scheme on anyone of any age on any kind of Social Security benefit or pension. This week’s Bill is to add in the WHOLE of the Northern Territory as a ‘trial area’.
Everyone on any kind of Social Security payment, not just job seekers but also carers, people on the Disability Support Pension, students, part-time or gig workers getting a Centrelink top up, single parents, struggling farmers, fledgling small businesses owners, veterans, family tax benefit recipients, ALL are considered by this Government to be financially incompetent (this judgement being based purely on source of income, nothing else) and in need of forced income management.
URGENT: Phone or Email the Crossbench to VOTE NO on ‘Transition Bill 2019’.
The Cashless Welfare Card forced income management scheme has been falsely promoted as only being there to stop people using Social Security benefits/pensions on alcohol, gambling products and drugs (let us not even start on how and why this assumption of ‘deviancy’ has been applied on a blanket basis to people just because they happen to be clients of Centrelink), but not to worry as everything else is business as usual.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It restricts so much more than that, it is not just like an ordinary debit card in any other way.
Stripping away people’s right to manage their own finances, making them second-class citizens, having to endure abuse and stigmatisation, being automatically branded as drug/alcohol abusers, being financially worse off due to extra fees and charges for using the card, plus penalties for when Indue fail to pay bills set up for direct debit is NOT OK.
Being denied opportunities to make ends meet by accessing cheaper options via markets, garage sales, eBay, buy/sell groups, many online stores, cash in hand sales/repairs etc, is NOT OK.
Many people don’t seem to realise that eBay, Gumtree, a large proportion of on-line businesses as well as many physical stores selling ordinary goods, plus local eating and entertainment places are on ‘Indue’s block list as you could potentially buy alcohol from them. Other excluded businesses have just not bothered to apply to be on Indue’s ‘Approved Merchants’ list. A number have even deliberately decided not to be on it in order to exclude people on Centrelink benefits from accessing their services. Some of these include motels and caravan parks. This has had devastating consequences for some people fleeing domestic violence situations. It is also pure discrimination.
Having to justify to Indue why you should be allowed to spend money (and how much) on items like e.g. specialty bras, some trade services, text books, spare parts, specialised medical equipment needs, school excursions, second hand cars, someone to mow your lawn, attending a school fete, cash needed for transport on regional buses, buying second-hand uniforms, emergency replacement of a second hand fridge or washing machine, emergency car repairs, etc (many being situations where cash is generally asked for) then having to wait days for approval (or not) after submitting an affidavit, photos and a letter that the vendor has to supply, all of that is NOT OK.
Having your financial/credit rating destroyed by Indue whenever they fail to pay your rent or bills in time or fail to process them at all, is NOT OK. Becoming homeless because of this, having your rental history destroyed and real estate agents blacklisting you for non or late rental payments, and/or at the very least, once again continually incurring financial penalties and extra fees and charges is NOT OK.
All of this horror occurring supposedly in the name of ‘supporting’ (punishing actually) those few broken people who may ‘waste’ some of their Social Security benefit on alcohol or drugs. It is worth noting that people identified as having addiction issues already have a support option available in the Centrelink system via being able to be given their payments weekly rather than fortnightly. Ironically, people on this program are EXEMPT from being forced onto the Cashless Welfare Card’s income management scheme.
The lived experience of current ‘Trial Participants’:
Increased depression, social isolation and despair.
Reports of increased schoolyard ‘poverty’ bullying of kids whose parents have been forced onto this scheme.
Direct debit and BPAY Payments not being met on time or honoured, money regularly going missing from Indue accounts.
Reports from participants of increased inability to emotionally and physically cope with every day budget management given the complexity of split incomes. Not only between your own bank account and the Indue Cashless Welfare Card account, but the fact that the Indue account is further split into various spending categories that somehow you are meant to keep track of and divide all of your bills, expenses and spending into. Woe betide you if one week you might want to spend more than what has been ‘allocated’ to the grocery category or on unexpected bills. Doesn’t matter if you have more than enough money in ‘your’ account, it has to be in the ‘correct’ category for you to be allowed to spend it.
Increases in anger, frustration, desperation.
Ongoing stigma and harassment online, in media, in parliament, and socially.
Couples experiencing difficulties with no joint access, they must ‘financially divorce’ to continue to receive payments and pay bills.
The impact of daily media poverty shaming.
Ongoing impacts of economic segregation/social exclusion from every day cash-only family outings.
NDIS: People are reporting difficulties with being on Indue Cards and negotiating with NDIS service providers for travel expenses.
Increases in Domestic Violence.
The bullying, stalking, and active ‘trolling’ of anti-card dissenters by Ministers, paid political activists and a specific group of LNP allied members of the general public (one of whom had to be reported to area police for offline and online stalking of a No Card Hinkler group member).
Frequent failure of Indue card technology.
Landlords not signing up to CentrePay for rental accommodation.
Ongoing cash and third-party renter issues.
Experiences of bullying and ‘strong arming’ of local shop owners, service groups and businesses by the Department in trial regions and targeted regions.
Inconsistency: Indue LTD staff at shop fronts in trial locations saying one thing to CDC participants and the Department saying another.
Loss of dignity and equality.
Complaints Job Search Australia and Parents Next staff members using the existence of the cashless debit card as a threat and tool for compliance and bullying.
Increases in successful suicides, attempted suicide and self-injury that have not been investigated or openly addressed.
No monitoring of ‘at risk’ participants and a lack of reporting processes in place to address critical and cumulative mental health concerns of compulsory CDCT participants.
Families reporting a lack of food / going hungry due to random card declines, also an increased need to access food banks and charities.
Indue Ltd is not consistently meeting Direct debit and BPAY payments.
Families of trial participants reporting they are having to cover expenses and provide needed cash for necessities in order to make up cash shortfalls whenever and wherever the Indue card is not an accepted form of payment.
Indue Ltd not making loan, credit card and childcare payments on time (multiple reports).
Indue systems failures leaving people stranded.
Loss of income by way of increased bank fees and $10 ‘inbound fees’ that are being applied to some participant cash and emergency transfers.
Additional transaction fees and in store card user fees.
Legitimate Banks are not recognising more than the 20% cash component as lawful recipient income. They won’t recognise the 80% Indue component as income when people apply for loans or credit.
Inability of domestic violence victims to flee family violence.
Inability to engage in every day cultural and social practices.
Minimum spends at local shops impacting cash portion and quarantined portions of income.
Indue Ltd has not been investigating lost payments or late payments.
People are unable to pay council rates, school fees, childcare costs.
Hunger strikes.
Miscarriage.
Marriage and kinship group breakdown.
Homelessness, evictions, landlords unwilling to access CentrePay or wanting to rent to people who are on the cashless welfare card.
Inability to access basic shopping services such as Woolworths and Coles online, eBay, PayPal and Australia Post.
The refusal of some people to activate cashless debit cards leaving the most vulnerable in extreme and abject poverty, off grid entirely.
I ask everyone to please URGENTLY email or phone the above-mentioned cross benchers to implore them to vote AGAINST this Bill in Parliament on Wednesday. I also ask that you please share this article as far and wide as you possibly can. People MUST be allowed to know the truth about this nefarious and discriminatory scheme, whose only real purpose is the privatisation of Social Security so that a private company can make a huge profit of around $12,000 per person forced on to the card. (What a joke talking about Social Security recipients ‘wasting’ taxpayers’ money.
The Cashless Welfare Card is nothing but financial apartheid and forced social segregation of a group of your fellow community members and Australians.
Acknowledgements:
No Cashless Welfare Debit Card Australia, The Say NO Seven, Kathy Strickland, Kerri Shannon, Kathryn Wilkes for additional information and supplied picture.
“Social Security (Administration) Amendment (Income Management and Cashless Welfare) Bill 2019.”
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In the next 12 to 18 months there are a number of elections coming up across Australia. Presumably, in amongst the cries of ‘you’re on mute’ in the socially distanced meetings called by all the political parties to plan and strategise their marketing, they are trying to work out how to convince you that their candidate is the shining light of goodness and rationality in the competition and their opponents are the devil incarnate.
To those who don’t belong to political parties, it can seem at times that candidates are picked by some arcane processes similar to inspecting chicken entrails, consulting oracles and reading the tea leaves. Regardless of what really happens, the preselections by a ‘representation’ of the party faithful sometimes seem to produce people that would be far better off in some other field of endeavour. The scary thing for the people paid by the political parties to convince you and me that we should vote for their particular side of the political fence is that the candidates that do get elected choose the ‘leaders’ of the party.
The leader then relies on the support of these elected candidates, something that can probably be demonstrated by Morrison shutting down criticism of Liberal Party backbencher Craig Kelly despite statements promoting the use of the discredited drug hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment, which was subsequently shared online by former TV chef and current conspiracy theory promoter Pete Evans. We have no evidence to suggest Morrison called Kelly and effectively told him to keep his opinions to himself as he has no relevant medical experience or qualifications (and by the way, neither does Pete Evans).
Most people, let alone politicians, will claim they want to improve the circumstances they and those around them live in. The advertising executives hired by the political operatives will be ‘creating’ marketing statements such a ‘A strong economy, a better life’, to convince you and me that that even though the local candidate might be a complete tosser, the ‘leader’ is worth voting for. The slogans are pure drivel and tell us nothing. Motherhood statements involving the words ‘stronger’, ‘better’, ‘security’, ‘great’, ‘supporting’, ‘making’ generally imply a lot but really tell us nothing. And in real life, the train that’s going to run the country down is at the stop before yours.
If you think about it rationally for a minute, the expectation that anyone can guarantee exactly what they will do in the next three years is delusional. A perfect example is Morrison going to the last federal election promising strong economic management — even to Federal Treasurer Frydenberg announcing the budget was already back in the black a year before it was scheduled to happen. COVID-19 put paid to that aspiration. This century alone, we have had a global financial crisis appear out of nowhere to derail most of the aspirational targets promised by Kevin Rudd in the 2007 election campaign and a pandemic doing the same to Morrison’s 2019 campaign.
That’s the problem. Life is full of unfulfilled promises. It’s far easier to tear down a political opponent by latching onto some detail and make the case that the opponent should not be elected because of a flaw in their targets or aspirations than to develop, publicise and argue for alternative policies. It was far easier for Morrison to suggest Bill Shorten was ‘the Bill you can’t afford’ than to discuss his and his team’s vision for Australia’s future should the Coalition be re-elected.
A number of years ago on The Political Sword, we discussed that the only ‘industry’ that could get away with blatantly untrue advertising in Australian media is politics. Regretfully, the situation hasn’t changed and there is still nothing wrong in the eyes of the law with Morrison implying Shorten would introduce excessive taxes with ‘the Bill you can’t afford’ or the ALP claiming at the previous election that the Coalition might scrap Medicare. What the political parties are doing is telling us why we shouldn’t vote for their opponents, leaving a vacuum in policy development in this country and arguably all of us are poorer because it’s safer politically to promise nothing and deliver likewise.
It’s about time that political parties determined that most of us do have two brain cells to rub together and we are actually interested in a discussion around why we should vote for your party, rather than why we shouldn’t vote for the other parties. There is a good reason that most businesses in Australia aren’t using negative advertising to detract from their competition — it’s either illegal or breaches advertising standards. Negative political advertising demonstrates two things — they either have targets they don’t want to talk about should they win the election or they are desperate. Either way, the political parties that employ the ‘strategy’ should be questioned on how they would do it better.
Even Nostradamus himself might be hesitant about predicting the final outcomes of the Queensland state election on 31 October 2020. Opinion polls to date have been of scant assistance. This article can only promote discussion about some of the new variables in this year’s contest. These are strange times with lots of added social and financial tensions during the COVID-19 era.
The last Queensland Newspoll administered by YouGov was conducted between 23-29 July 2020 from a sample of one thousand voters. That seems like generations ago.
Despite Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s high personal ratings in that polling (64 per cent and +5 per cent since the previous poll, a close result can still be expected. The Palaszczuk Government has the slenderest of majorities. It was a minority government between 2015-17.
Conservative media networks will of course strive to take advantage of any future major opinion poll showing any substantial swing to the LNP, even if the state-wide results are quite meaningless. Queensland’s decentralized regional character and the sheer vastness of urban sprawl on the outskirts of cities across South East Queensland will always raise the margin of error in even the best opinion polls.
Key marginal seat polling will always need to be used to accompany the generalized state-wide voting projections. Even in some electorates like Ipswich West, Mirani (Mackay District), Keppel (Capricorn Coast) and Hervey Bay, there is great internal diversity in social demography.
Opinion polling was once used to call early opportunistic elections. This opportunism is now controlled by a fixed election date every four years unless there are extraordinary circumstances requiring the governor to intervene in setting an unexpected election date.
Premier Campbell Newman took Queenslanders to an early poll on 31 January 2015. This folly for the LNP brought on a 14 per cent swing to Labor after preferences and a 10.81 per cent on primary votes.
The Electoral Commission Queensland (ECQ) has a decisive role to play to maintain the momentum of post-Fitzgerald election reforms under the new four-year parliamentary term arrangements and greater contemporary demands for election accountability.
Legitimate calls by the ECQ will have a decisive influence on this year’s election processes and even final outcomes in marginal seats. Political parties of all persuasions will also be proactive about reacting to any perceived loopholes.
Queensland’s ECQ and the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) need to be highly proactive in testing these loopholes. Any laxity in their vigilance can bring a regression to the Joh era.
ECQ’s Responsibilities During COVID-19 Times
The ECQ is of course an independent body which can makes its own calls on issues such as the protocols for postal vote applications, pre-polling procedures and that final election day anti-climax in this COVID-19 era.
The comments from political analyst Anthony Green on the Brisbane City Council (BCC) elections on 28 March 2020 are of great significance. I have not seen any comprehensive reports on the electoral practices in the 72 other local authorities in Queensland. Time does not allow me the luxury of making independent investigations from the ECQ data available on local government elections which is quite abundant.
“When the Notice of Election for Queensland’s local government elections was published on 22 February, no one imagined that by election day the state would be under lockdown and voting and counting would be restricted by social distancing rules.
During March the Electoral Commission reacted to the emerging health emergency by encouraging voters to make use of postal and pre-poll voting. It also broadened access to telephone voting, an option previously only available for blind and low vision voters. The new public health rules prevented the Electoral Commission from visiting retirement homes and hospitals, and also prevented the use of Electoral Visitor voting.
The effect of Coronavirus on turnout was less dramatic then the impact it had on how people voted. In the Brisbane City Council Lord Mayoral election, turnout fell from 84% in 2016 to 79.9%, a drop of only 4.1%. That is a remarkable turnout given the health concerns.
But using Brisbane ward election results, on the day voting fell from 66.0% in 2016 to only 26.5% in 2020. Pre-poll voting rose from 13.2% to 28.7%, postal voting from 12.2% to 23.9%, end telephone voting recorded 8,428 votes (1.4%) compared to only 151 votes in 2016.
Absent voting also leapt from 7.4% in 2016 to 18.3% in 2020. This figure hides some of the increase in pre-poll votes. In 2016 pre-poll votes recorded outside of a voter’s home ward were recorded as pre-poll votes. In 2020 outside of ward pre-polls were counted as absent votes.”
The ECQ is not a law into itself. The Guardian (17 May 2018) covered the forced resignation of a previous electoral commissioner that year. I am using block quotes from published sources and do not seek to make defamatory imputations in promoting public discussion on some very vital issues.
“Queensland’s former electoral commissioner was drunk and using drugs at work, bullied staff and was caught in a sexual act with a temporary employee, an investigation has found.
Walter van der Merwe, 56, resigned from his senior public service role in February after being suspended over seven allegations levelled against him.
The attorney general, Yvette D’Ath, on Thursday confirmed in state parliament that a number of those accusations were substantiated by the Crime and Corruption Commission.
They include Van der Merwe being caught in a sexual act with a staff member, being intoxicated at work, failing to show up to work without a reasonable excuse and directing senior officials not to discipline staff he was friends with.”
ABC News (18 April 2018) covered the involvement of the CCC in criminal charges relating to the previous ECQ Commissioner:
“Queensland’s former electoral commissioner is expected to front court after being charged with dangerous drug possession.
At the time, Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath did not confirm the nature of the allegations other than stating they were related to “misbehaviour” under the Electoral Act but “do not suggest inappropriate interference in the outcome of elections”.
Today he was issued with a Notice to Appear on one count of possession of steroids after an investigation by the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC).
Ms D’Ath said the charge is “of a very serious nature and must be dealt with through the court process”.
“In February, I suspended the former Electorate Commissioner due to a number of serious allegations that went to inappropriate conduct in the workplace,” Ms D’Ath said in a statement released today.
“Immediately after the suspension, I referred the allegations to the CCC for investigation.
‘I am aware that the CCC has released a statement today advising of a charge of a former senior state government employee on the charge of possession of a dangerous drug.
“I will await a formal report from the CCC before finalising the investigation into the original allegations received.”
Mr van der Merwe is expected to face the Holland Park Magistrates Court on May 1.
Dermot Tiernan remains the acting electoral commissioner while a recruitment process to permanently fill the position is underway.”
The Mandarin (18 May 2018) noted the outcomes of the hearing at the Holland Park Magistrates Court:
Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath tabled a letter from the corruption watchdog yesterday, summarising its findings in relation to seven serious accusations. The CCC found two of these — claims of travel rorts and rumours about specific cases of nepotism — were baseless.
Allegations that were upheld by the CCC investigation include bullying, skipping work, being drunk on the job, and an incident where the commissioner was found in “a compromising position” of a sexual nature with a temporary staff member.
Van der Merwe allegedly favoured particular employees and “overruled reasonable management decisions of senior managers” to benefit them. Another allegation related to possession of steroids, which were found by CCC investigators inside locked containers in his office. Van de Merwe pled guilty to this in court and accepted a $600 fine, with no conviction recorded.
“It is suspected that Van der Merwe used drugs in the workplace,” according to the CCC’s summary of that allegation.
The corruption watchdog included seven recommendations arising from its investigation in the letter to D’Ath, which can be found published on Queensland’s parliamentary website.
Now Patrick Vidgen PSM as Electoral Commissioner can bring a fresh approach to his heavy responsibilities in maintaining the momentum of integrity relating to elections in the post-Fitzgerald era.
Permit me to introduce a discussion of some important issues affecting this year’s Queensland state election in these COVID-19 times.
The Challenges Posed by Postal Vote Applications Through PVA Centres
The state LNP is clearly aware of new opportunities to influence political outcomes through its emphasis on the harvesting of postal vote applications. The LNP would not be alone in making the most of these opportunities. Postal votes accounted for almost a quarter of all votes in the BCC election on 28 March 2020.
LNP resources have been thrown into expensive mail-outs to encourage postal vote applications as part of a How to Vote Safe Strategy.
Attractive envelopes with blue-green graphics give no hint of party affiliations. Constituents who decide to open the envelopes will find a letter from the local LNP candidate. Some envelopes in swing seats like Maiwar in Brisbane’s Inner West are personally addressed. Bringing this seat back into the LNP fold is surely a prized objective.
What is intriguing about the Vote Safe Strategy is the use of a reply-paid envelopes for the enclosed postal vote applications which are being directed to a PVA centre at PO Box 960, Archerfield 4108 before the applications are sent off in bulk to the ECQ. This is a costly step in a well-resourced statewide campaign from the LNP.
At least Labor is more forthright about its own postal vote requests to constituents. In Ferny Grove electorate for example, sitting member Mark Furner makes no secret about just where the enclosed postal vote applications are going:
From Mark Furner MP in Ferny Grove Electorate
Enclosed with this letter are two postal vote application forms. If you can’t make it to a prepoll booth or vote on election day, simply complete the forms and return it in the reply-paid envelope.
Image from reddit.com
This is returned to Mark Furner’s office without the need for the pretentious use of the PVA Centre.
The LNP’s more assertive style of canvassing for postal vote applications was given a good trial before the BCC council elections on 28 March 2018. I had not noticed this practice mainly because I give very little attention to junk mail.
At the BCC elections, postal vote applications were returned in a reply-paid envelope to a PVA Centre in Spring Hill. This was ambiguously addressed as Brisbane City Council, PVA Centre, Spring Hill as the graphics clearly show.
I forwarded inquiries to the LNP by phone and to the Coorparoo Ward office by email for an explanation of the nature of PVA centres.
The LNP does not need to explain its actions in setting up PVA centres but I encourage interested voters to keep asking questions about the integrity of such entities.
Should I get more than an automated reply from the Coorparoo Ward, I will soon pass on the details to readers in a postscript to this article.
It is conventionally accepted that the use of a PVA address as used at the BCC elections is probably legal but still highly irregular if postal votes now represent almost a quarter of all votes during the COVID-19 era. My two enquiries at the ECQ with follow-up phone calls do suggest that the use of the PVA centres has not been considered as illegal.
An unnamed CCC complaint adviser, claimed that the use of the PVA centres does not come within the scope of The Crime and Corruption Act 2001 possibly until a complaint has been filed and processed by the ECQ itself or at the Court of Disputed Returns. I was surprised that officers of the CCC in Fortitude Valley can only release their first name which may or may not be fictitious.
If this practice of allowing PVA centres to operate in the past, has been cleared by the ECQ, surely the transparency of these considerations should be public knowledge. If there is no authorization, there is perhaps a role for the ECQ to investigate this matter.
In the post-Fitzgerald era, expenditures on PVA centres should be declared either in returns from LNP candidates or from the state-offices of the LNP. It would be interesting to find out what declarations of expenditure were made in the BCC elections and any prior elections where these practices were in use.
Other legitimate calls by the ECQ can be expected to have a big indirect impact on election outcomes. The authority for this decision-making is not controversial and within the scope of the Electoral Act 1992 and its amendments. However, there is no doubt that even legitimate calls might affect election outcomes in key marginal seats.
Polling Booth Protocols in a Stressful COVID-19 Era
As early voting centres are scheduled to open on 19 October 2020, they will be operating for eleven days just two weeks prior to polling day, the ECQ must make a call on the administrative arrangements at these booths for the distribution of How to Vote Cards by volunteers from competing political parties. The early voting centres will operate for eleven days as they are also operational on Saturday 24 October. At the BCC elections, the early voting centres attracted 28.7 per cent of all votes.
Hopefully, there will be no need to exchange How to Vote Cards between volunteer party volunteers and constituents. Voters can decide if they need How to Vote Cards from containers of fresh cards under the supervision of helpful ECQ staff members.
The Chief Health Officer in Queensland and the ECQ and their senior staff members can be expected to make the final call on pre-polling and other polling booth protocols to avoid the possibilities of community transfers of COVID-19 at polling stations.
The ECQ has published a complete list of early voting centres in communities large and small. Some city booths have only one or two early voting centres. More remote electorates like Warrego have several centres which are largely neutral venues beyond the influence of local storeowners.
The need for the distribution of How to Vote Cards at these centres by volunteers is highly questionable if the ECQ maintains additional staff members for added security with protocols to report incidents and voting anomalies to local police stations.
It might surely be a waste of campaign energies if volunteers from local political parties were expected to distribute how to vote cards to just a couple of voters every hour over eleven days of at these early voting centres.
Let’s hope that commitment to the post-Fitzgerald reform processes is maintained after 31 October 2020 with more reforms to those blind spots in electoral laws relating to canvassing of postal vote applications, greater scrutiny of campaign expenses and a review of the role for canvassing of votes at early voting centres which now operate between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. on four occasions in some quite remote locations.
Changes in voting practices state-wide can be confusing at a time of concerns about public health and financial stresses on voters which might have scarred perceptions about politics and public issues in a representative democracy. Once errors are made in allowable campaigning and voting practices, the outcomes are difficult to resolve.
Before the full onset of the Great Depression, Queenslanders went to the polls on 11 May 1929. The election ushered in the only conservative government in Queensland between 1915 and 1957 under the Premiership of Arthur Moore, then under the banner of a Country-National Government.
As with the Campbell Newman Government (2012-15), the Moore Government lasted for only one term. It would be an interesting project for a keen student to investigate this single term of government as a case study in disaster management through the application of debt reduction and market ideology in a fragile economy.
The conservative press generally welcomed the election of the Moore Government . Even The Truth (Brisbane Sunday paper) welcomed the arrival of a new Premier from the Dalby based electorate of Aubigny. This paper was indeed popular with Labor voters who liked its populist style of reporting.
The election of Premier Moore raised the hopes of conservatives across Australia.
The Burnie Advocate in far-off Tasmania gave its endorsement of the need for a change of government in Queensland just two days before the state election date (9 May 1929 with text from Trove to offer some historical authenticity):
Tasmanian conservatives did not have to give up the reins of government to Labor until 1934. The LNP presided over the worst years of the Great Depression.
Tasmanians did not seek another change of government until 1982 when Liberal Premier Robin Gray ran a state rights campaign to continue construction of the two Franklin River Dams. The Tasmanian and Queensland governments funded the legal challenge to this decision in the High Court.
As always, the mainstream media would endorse the nostalgia associated with conservative populism.
Interested readers might like to check out my previous AIM Network article on the consequences of the defeat of state Labor government in Queensland for my own family perspective. Such older articles are difficult to retrieve so I am adding the web address from 8 May 2020.
Perhaps only the horrors of an avoidable war with our chief trading partner could be more devastating to the lives of Australians in contemporary times than a return to regressive styles of market ideology at all levels of government.
Meanwhile, in the old traditions of that eulogy to Premier Arthur Moore, I am sure that television eyewitness news networks will have similar scripts ready on the life and times of Premier Deb Frecklington just in case those political shadows from 11 May 1929 are relevant again.
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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The Panama Papers could have been a massive moment in history. However, the culture of tax havens, loopholes and our richest paying zero tax continues unabated.
An Oxfam report released on January 20 revealed that last year 26 billionaires owned the same amount of wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people around the globe. This was down from 43 individuals the year before. And this extreme wealth disparity is accelerating every year.
As has been exposed over recent times, some amongst the richest portion of society has a habit of avoiding paying taxes. There was the Panama Papers leaked in 2015. And then there was the largest ever leak of financial information – the Paradise Papers—that came to light in late 2017.
The Paradise Papers consist of 13.4 million pages that reveal the global rich avoiding tax payments by using offshore tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions. German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung obtained and shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
And according to the ICIJ’s Gerard Ryle, what was important about this leak is “it’s the high end of town”, whereas its Panama counterpart dealt with “rogue players”. So, with the Panama Papers you’re talking Facebook, Amazon, Queen Elizabeth II and Donald Trump’s son-in-law.
Despite the magnitude of what’s exposed, for the most part, people looked the other way. However, if you dig deep into the documents, as St Louis tax accountant Ken Boyd recently did, what you find is the perfect how-to guide on tax avoidance.
A tax accountant’s take
“Most striking to me was the sheer scale of the leak,” Mr Boyd told Sydney Criminal Lawyers. “And the speed with which these documents were perused and reported upon once released.” And he also pointed to the exposed “connection between Trump’s administration and wealthy Russians”.
In his report, Tax Avoidance By The Numbers: The Paradise Papers, the accountant explains that the majority of the documents – 7 million – were from Appleby, one of the world’s largest offshore law firms, with its headquarters in Bermuda. It’s been in business for over 125 years.
Half a million documents came from AsiaCiti: a wealth protection company in Singapore. And the rest were from corporate registries in secrecy jurisdictions, which are countries that allow entities to avoid tax regulations in a way that’s not made public. These include the Cook Islands and Samoa.
Tax avoidance by numbers
“The techniques exposed by the Paradise Papers operate in a somewhat grey area that’s arguably within the letter of the law,” Mr Boyd explained. “Often, the tax avoidance employed will involve convoluted business structures, with extensive use of offshore tax havens.”
The most common way to do this is by setting up a shell company, which are businesses that hold funds and manage the financial transactions of other entities. There aren’t any employees. And they don’t trade on exchanges. Shell companies are perfect places to hide wealth.
The advantage of setting up such a company in a tax haven is these jurisdictions’ tax rates are extremely low or non-existent. And as these areas don’t report tax information, individuals and companies can place money in offshore accounts without their own government’s realising.
Indeed, one of the most popular places to carry out this practice is a five storey office block called Ugland House in the Cayman Islands. Around 20,000 companies are registered to this premises, whilst another 80,000 companies are registered throughout this British Overseas Territory.
These practices are becoming less acceptable however, according to Boyd, as the public reaction to the recent leaks has shown. “Even when high-profile individuals and companies are complying with the letter of the law,” he went on, “they’re seen to be flouting the spirit of it.”
Some of the main offenders
As set out in the report, the Duchy of Lancaster, the private estate of Queen Elizabeth II, invested in the UK household goods company BrightHouse. But, instead of directly investing, the Duchy avoided paying taxes by directing the money through a private equity company in the Cayman Islands.
Colombian pop singer Shakira funnelled $31 million worth of intellectual property rights into a company she owned called Tournesol in Malta, which is a well-known secrecy jurisdiction. Following the leak, the Spanish government investigated her for tax evasion.
And former Turkish prime minister Binali Yıldırım and his sons were found to be stashing cash in a Maltese shell company. However, exposing this caused dire problems for one Turkish journalist. Pelin Ünker was sentenced to 13 months’ gaol time last month for writing about the dodgy dealings.
But why should we care?
While these offshore investments aren’t illegal, they do harm the communities where the wealth is being siphoned from. Tax revenue is used to fund infrastructure, healthcare and public education. But, with a lack of it, these institutions suffer, and so too does the public that relies on them.
And in the meantime, the uber-rich are avoiding paying the taxes required by the law of the jurisdictions in which they live, whilst at the same time, they reap the benefits of the tax-funded services their society offers them.
As Mr Boyd points out, 366 of the Fortune 500 companies hold US$2.6 trillion in offshore tax havens, which would amount to US$752 billion in back taxes, while Berkeley professor Gabriel Zucman estimates that 8% of global wealth – or US$7.6 trillion – is held offshore.
The accountant further outlined that “the world’s most valuable public company” Apple stashes most of its non-US earnings in offshore havens, whilst Nike has US$6.6 billion in cash being taxed at just 3% in Bermuda.
The avoidance continues
“At the time the story broke in November 2017, it made some waves,” Boyd recalls. And there was talk of creating legislation to tighten it up. But, he admits that considering the size of the scandal, the media paid little attention.
Mr Boyd puts this down to two things. Firstly, “tax affairs – particularly those involving complex offshore arrangements – can seem rather impenetrable to the general public”. And secondly, the financial practices that were leaked were more of an ethical problem, than a legal one.
And as for Appleby, it’s business as usual. After it tried to sue the Guardian and the BBC for exposing the documents, the offshore legal firm came to an agreement with the media companies, after it was found that the majority of the leaked documents were no longer owned by Appleby.
“The practices exposed were arguably legal,” Mr Boyd concluded. “Had the Paradise Papers exposed instances of outright tax evasion, that would have been far bigger news.”
This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.
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.
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Despite women facing the wage gap, eventual poverty and possible homelessness, the government is quite happy to blame us for our fate.
As soon as the Federal Government understood that millions of Australians were likely to find themselves living on unemployment benefits for the foreseeable future, they realised just how politically untenable the previous rate actually was. They clearly couldn’t care less when it was just a bunch of old women and other marginalised people forced to eke out an existence on $40 a day, but millions more who had become unemployed through, as our politicians love to put it, ‘no fault of their own’ was a bridge too far.
So, in their self-interest and embarrassment (sorry, I can’t call it generosity), they added the $550 Coronavirus supplement to the usual Newstart rate, now called ‘JobSeeker’.
On the 25th of September, this supplement will drop to $250 a fortnight. This will be a blow for the newly unemployed – particularly as it is meant to drive them back into jobs that don’t exist. Nevertheless, even halved, the supplement remains a bonus for the long-term unemployed, most of whom are older and many of whom are women.
In that way, (as long as they don’t catch the virus and die, of course) the advent of COVID-19 has actually made the lives of many older women easier. The extraordinary dark irony of that fact seems to have passed most of our leaders and commentators by.
The terrible penalty we exact on women as they age in this wealthy country is horrifying. According to a report released in March this year by think tank Per Capita ‘Measure for Measure. Gender Equality in Australia’ 34% of single women (divorced, widowed or never married) are living in poverty by the age of 60. That number rises to 50% of them once they are living on the aged pension. These figures are pre-COVID.
The most galling part of these figures is the reasons why so many women in our society find themselves facing poverty as they age. There are too many to enumerate here, suffice to say it is directly a result of the sexist and misogynistic assumptions that dog women from the cradle to the grave. They include the fact that women – despite outperforming men and boys in all levels of education – are paid less from the minute they enter the workforce. They include the high cost of childcare, the tax disincentives deliberately designed to make it hard for mothers to return to full-time work, the gender-segregated nature of the Australian workforce, the assumption that women will do the lion’s share of unpaid work including domestic and caring duties, and the resulting over-representation of women in part-time, casual and low-paid jobs. And let’s not mention sexual harassment in the workplace or domestic violence and the thousand and one other things that can conspire to fling women into penury.
As a result of all this, women retire with an average of half the super of men (and men don’t have enough) and fully one-third of women retire with no super at all. (The same third who end up facing poverty at the age of 60, I wonder?)
Despite decades of feminism, all of these circumstances remain intractable, which is why me and my contemporaries (I am 63) are watching in horror as yet another generation of women race headlong towards the same abyss, especially if they remain or become single. For as long as I can remember, women have been told that a man is not a financial plan, but when I look at my contemporaries and who is secure and who is at risk, it seems that is a big fat lie.
The current generations of younger women – especially those just entering the workforce – are actually in the scariest place of all. We know this pandemic has disproportionately affected women. They have lost the most jobs, they have lost the most income and they have shouldered even more of the domestic, caring and home learning duties. Their super will be disproportionately affected. Our government in its infinite lack of wisdom has actually helped people access their super balances early to tide them through a contracting economy. The costs of this in later life will be huge, especially for women, who will never make good the loss.
The job stimulus packages offered by our government are so entirely focussed on male-dominated industries that it almost feels like they are trolling us. They even keep being referred to as ‘shovel-ready’ jobs. To absolutely rub women’s noses in it, the first group of workers removed from JobKeeper were childcare workers – overwhelmingly underpaid women. No one has been able to explain the logic of singling them out.
The confusion around childcare (ours is already one of the most expensive systems in the world) has forced many families to throw their hands up in despair and decide that – you guessed it – mum will have to give up her job. The message is clear: ‘go home ladies and help us make the unemployment stats look more politically palatable.’ At least, if they are young they may still have a home to go to. In a couple of decades, they may not. The fastest-growing group among homeless is women over 55, leaping up by a terrifying 31% between 2011 and 2016.
And what has been the Federal Government’s response to the pressure being brought to bear about the fate of half the Australian population – the best-educated half, by the way? Apart from some vague promises about plans to do something about the super gap, it’s all the stuff beloved by neo-liberals: an ‘economic security pack’ whatever that is, more parental leave flexibility, scholarships for women in economics and finance, specialist DV units (at least they mentioned it) and a female entrepreneur’s program. All well and good, if vague on detail, but where’s the social housing? Where’s the paying people’s super whenever they take time out of paid work to care for others? Where’s the free fucking childcare available to every family?
But the bit that really infuriated me about Assistant Minister for Financial Services Jane Hume’s package was the potted lecture she gave women and the super industry about the need to improve women’s financial literacy. The implied blame in that suggestion is at best tone-deaf and at worst utterly cynical. Once again, we blame women for their own fate. We turn our faces away from the very real barriers, biases and prejudices that hobble women at every turn and tell them they are poor because they are stupid and lazy about money.
In fact, women are poor as a direct result of doing what they are constantly told is their duty and putting the needs of others ahead of their own right to earn an income.
As I have said before, in today’s Australia we tell older women; ‘look, its lovely you put the needs of your kids, elderly relatives and anyone else in need of care ahead of yourself, thanks for that. Now, can you just go and live in your car?’
This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.
Jane Caro has a low boredom threshold and so wears many hats; including author, novelist, lecturer, mentor, social commentator, columnist, workshop facilitator, speaker, broadcaster and award winning advertising writer.
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A little over two weeks have passed since I listened intently to the presenter of the ABC’s Statewide Drive program, Nicole Chvastek interview the owner of a popular Kyneton restaurant to get his opinion of the COVID-19 Roadmap aimed at taking Victoria out of lockdown that Premier Andrews announced the previous day.
With an open mind, and my humanitarian instincts fully engaged, I listened to the restauranteur voice his understandable dismay at the toll COVID-19 has taken on his small business and his staff. However, when he expressed his displeasure with Daniel Andrews simply because he expected the Premier would announce on the day how much financial support business owners can expect to receive from the Victorian government, my critical faculties kicked in.
Perhaps the Premier may have been able to placate the restauranteur had he stipulated that the Roadmap he laid out was the public route, and all secondary roads on the map would be outlined in due course. Then again, bearing in mind no matter what size the business, good old hubris is rife in the mindset of the business community. That being said, I somehow doubt there would be any circumstances under which business owners would abide secondary status in the realm of political considerations.
To be fair, at the beginning of the interview as I listened to this restauranteur expressing not only his concerns for his business but also for the economic hardship his staff were under; I judged him to be somewhat empathetic. Nevertheless, as he went on about the Premier not announcing on the day any offer of financial support for business, his solicitude for his staffs’ financial stresses soon waned. In truth, there would need to be more than a soupçon of empathy to assuage my ire at his and all business owners hypocritical bleating for social handouts.
The question is, why should governments provide financial support to business in a capitalist free-market economy? From my perspective, this fundamental contradiction in terms warrants serious debate. Accordingly, as is my wont, living up to the integrity of the allegorical meaning of my name being Lioness. I thought it high-time to put the cat amongst the pigeons. It was on that basis that I decided to ring the ABC to express my views during the talkback segment.
While I cannot recall verbatim the entirety of what I said, I remember beginning with words to the effect that it is important to take stock of the fact that one of the main reasons people are motivated to go into business is to make lots more money while being top dog with no-one looking down on them telling them what to do. And that is fine. But in the process of making a profit off the skills, time, and labour of workers, to then expect the rest of society – the majority of whom are workers – to pick up the tab for the profit-takers in hard times is a bit rich. Especially coming from people who think themselves morally superior to their employees. These are the people who begrudge paying taxes, and who hate having to comply with red tape despite the social and environmental safeguards that red tape affords our society.
There are common threads in the discourse of business owners worth noting. For example, whenever anyone dares challenge people in business to justify the way they go about deriving profits, it is reasonable to assume by the mechanical uniformity of their responses that collectively, all have learnt the Capitalist Handbook 101 by rote. This is more than evident in the obvious lack of deviation in their language when they assert themselves to be deserving of lucrative returns because they work hard and take all the risk.
Incredible as it sounds, I am yet to hear any business owner say my employees work as hard as me, if not harder. And they also face any number of workplace risks. So they too deserve to profit just as handsomely from the product of their labour.
The resentment that runs through the veins of the filthy penny-pinching rich is echoed in the attitudes of all the wannabes (otherwise known as aspirationals) in the ranks of the upwardly mobile sole traders in small to medium businesses. United in their jaundiced view of humankind they are predictably hostile when it comes to debating questions relative to the equitable distribution of wealth. Likewise, they are typically vitriolic in their condemnation of socially-conscious empathetic lefties who argue strongly for increasing our nation’s social safety net that for too long has failed abysmally to provide reasonable financial support for the less well-off in our society.
That being the case, I thought the irony of the restauranteur’s expectation for a hand-out was particularly pertinent in context to the presupposed benefits to Australia as a profit-oriented free-market economy. Why the lie? If the material benefits of market economics were tangible and evenly spread, then there would be no need for governments to apply socialist interventions in markets whatsoever.
Paradoxically we have COVID-19 to thank for exposing to the air the lies that journalists in the employ of this country’s self-serving commercial news media outlets have been complicit in suppressing. While they leave misconceptions and blatant untruths to fester like a puss-filled carbuncle on the bum of our society, the pandemic has laid bare the inherent defects in capitalist economics and the copious flaws that exist in globalised market economics. Importantly, Rona has brought into public view just how much business owners expect the freedom to capitalise their profits while in the cycle of economic downturns. They are reliant on governments enabling them to socialise their losses. Ergo, one must ask the question; if businesses rely so heavily on governments to bail them out in a crisis, what is their risk?
Truth be known, other than failing in business arising from their own mismanagement, the risk to the restauranteur and other small business owners comes from the people they typically vote into government.
Behind closed doors, government ministers beholden to monopoly capitalists cherry-pick which industry sectors get the most hand-outs. Take for example the unscrupulous extraction industry receiving fuel subsidies and a raft of other tax-breaks designed to offset the operational costs of doing business. While the working class suffer the financial burden that comes from the inequity of a 10% regressive goods and services tax, rent-seekers and other capitalists benefit handsomely from government wilfully leaving gaping loopholes in the tax system.
What is it with our political class? Is it nest-feathering, seeking a soft landing post-politics? Is it political careerist geared only to serving their self-interest? Or is it sheer unadulterated venality?
Perhaps it is all of the above that holds leaders in government so captive to rent-seekers that they allow billions in profits from raping this country of its precious resources to be channelled offshore tax-free? The only thing that is free about trade in this country is how our nation’s government facilitates its donors in big business to unceremoniously screw Australians over freely by making billions in untaxed profits while we pay the price.
Which brings me to another lie lifted straight out of the capitalist handbook. Out of all the people who erroneously claim that taxing businesses cost jobs, it is the rent-seekers who take the most but return nothing of any value to society that rail the loudest against paying company tax. No matter how one looks at it, rent-seeking is a protection racket and the fact that our so-called elected representatives entertain these racketeers dressed up in thousand-dollar suits designed to convey a veneer of respectability, is beyond contempt.
Overall, monopoly capitalism predetermines who wins and who loses. Big business leverage governments with the prospect of more jobs and political donations shape government budgets. Corporate wholesale shareholders engineer movements in markets. And this goes to the lie of there being a hidden hand of competition in markets as it proves market systems are never impartial.
If we are invested intellectually in the 17th Century philosopher Adam Smith’s microeconomic theory on supply and demand, in which he warned that equilibrium in markets can only be achieved through the hidden hand of competition. And that competition is driven by demand. How can politicians call Australia a free market economy based on supply and demand when government intervenes to serve the interests of monopoly capitalists dominating the supply side of the ledger? This is but one of many questions that should be raised concerning the efficacy of capitalism and to the social and environmental probity of deregulated supply-side market economics.
Not to put to finer point on the fact that 48 years have passed since the last political leader was fearless enough to introduce meaningful socioeconomic policy changes for the betterment of our society. It is fair to say courage is not the forte of today’s political class. Nevertheless, I contend that at this juncture in time, with our international borders closed, dampening the power of outside economic forces. The pandemic provides the political class with the perfect opportunity to show some mettle and test my long-held view that business owners are analogous of shark’s teeth – when one fails another pops up immediately to replace it.
Of course, that is just my pie-in-the-sky idealism sneaking out. Sadly, they won’t take the risk because they truly are cowards. They fear not being able to rely on aspirational mercenary capitalists starting in a business having the moolah readily available to line the right pockets in time to fund their Party’s election campaign. That is absolutely the domain of well-established capitalist class elites, here and abroad.
The likes of Murdoch, Rinehart, Forrest, Triguboff et al, understand only too well the raison d’être of political parties is winning power for power’s sake, and as a consequence politicians will go to extraordinary lengths to protect their benefactors. The capitalist class also know that contrary to the core tenets of representative democracy, governments first and foremost govern for them. This is evidenced by the fact that whenever governing in their best interest clashes with governing in the best interest of the electorate. There is no question of who wins and who loses.
While it is certainly true that not all business owners exploit workers or the environment and the tax system by setting up family trusts to dodge paying their fair share of taxes, it is also true that not all business owners begrudge government red tape because they know that it is red tape that safeguards Australia’s high standards. They understand the added time it takes to meet those requirements is a cost-benefit they pay in the social good. On the other hand, given the capitalist system encourages greed, it is equally true that capitalists including aspirational capitalists in small business are inherently monopolistic. Thus, it is an inexorable truth albeit, in varying degrees, business owners who exploit workers, society, the natural environment and the tax system are most definitely in the majority.
Which brings me to the source of my disgust. Every time the dyed-in-the-wool marketing man Scott Morrison smugly gives voices to one of his favourite right-wing shibboleths; “if you have a go, you’ll get ago”, I am reminded of how slimy capitalist puppets operate. The lie is evident in the subtext of Morrison’s typically pious mantra that all men are created equal. When in truth, he knows all too well that monopoly capitalism guarantees all men and women are not born equal.
Despite being media savvy, the marketing man’s glib façade of aspirational “if you have a go, you’ll get ago” rhetoric, cannot conceal his smug countenance. Morrison’s smirk betrays his lies, including his particular penchant for proselytising the farcical idea that the self-made man is a common occurrence in capitalist economies. This is another lie he and his ilk use as a means of harnessing deference to capitalist ideals. Make no mistake, this nation’s Prime Minister invests a great deal of religious fervour in conveying the cock-and-bull narrative that life is conducted on a level playing field.
To that end, there are days when I despair over the wretched credulity of the great majority of Australians who in their apathy and ignorance give sustenance to the biggest lie of all. Contrary to the narrative propagated by the mainstream media, social media is not responsible for the great majority of Australians buying into the lie that capitalist growth must be allowed to flourish unfettered by taxation and regulations. Social media is not to blame for the level of political illiteracy in Australia. Indeed, social media is not to blame for the impediments to the democratic process that comes from political illiteracy and indifference. That failure must be laid at the feet of mediocre leadership.
The mean-spirited state of politics in this country is testament to the public sphere being dominated for more than 40 years by right-wing politicians in both Liberal and Labor. It is testament to the dominance of misanthropic right-wing neoliberal leadership that a media landscape was created that gave a select few monopolistic media owners more power to foster witless passivity to ensure a culture in which Australians would unthinkingly give deference to capital. And to that extent, the general public’s predisposition for self-sabotage evident in how economic artifices of debt and deficits that allow the government to shirk their responsibilities go unquestioned. Is to be expected.
Yet despite all the lies, as oxymoronic as it sounds, this melancholy optimist continues to live in hope that the penny will drop before Mother Earth’s patient indulgence of our stupidity that is already showing frightening signs of being worn thin, runs out completely. As a socialist, I fight on in the belief that the multitudes will soon wake up from their political slumber to discover there are no second chances.
Doubtless to say, my position is clear and that for the sake of my grandchildren and all living creatures on this planet; I and we have no other choice than to keep raising our voices to awareness in the public good the cavernous pitfalls that come from buying into the lies told by Morrison and his ministers. To be perfectly frank, I cannot conceive of any finer aspiration than being a valid contributor in the quest of safeguarding the future by sounding the alarm that if heeded will ensure Morrison and his capitalist cronies in politics and business will be listed as a breed on the threshold of extinction.
This article was originally published on Connecting the Dots.
Leonie Saunders is benevolent dictator of Connecting the Dots, proud lefty feminist. Adores children and animals. Despises greedy union-bashing, power-abusing corporate polluters.
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The headlines may have shocked the world, but the forced sterilisation of immigrants in detention centres is not new, nor should it be surprising.
The Irwin Country Detention Center (ICDC), a prison facility that detains immigrants in Georgia, has been subject to complaints about human rights violations for many years. This month, whistleblower Dawn Wooten, a former nurse at ICDC, has made allegations of improper medical treatment, detailed in a report by Project South. According to Ms Wooten, hysterectomies are being performed on unwilling women at ICDC, who have no access to translation services and did not give their consent to the sterilisation procedure.
“Only God is taking care of us here”, reported a detained migrant at ICDC. The unidentified complainant’s statement was verified by another detainee who asserted “The medical unit is not helpful at all, even if you are dying”, after being subjected to improper medical care and neglectful treatment upon requesting medical care for her breast cancer four times and waiting more than two weeks without seeing a doctor. According to Ms Wooten, “it was common practice for the sick call nurse to shred medical request forms from detained immigrants”, condemning them to weather their illness, no matter how severe.
Explanations ranged from “a small twenty-minute procedure done drilling three small holes in her stomach to drain the cyst” to “receiving a hysterectomy to have her womb removed”.
Lorelei Williams, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative, stated to The Intercept that ICDC appears to “fail to provide basic medical care, necessary lifesaving treatments, and the resources needed to protect detained migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic”. The failure to care for people locked in immigration prisons is depressingly becoming a global trend. This trend is contextualised by historical medical neglect towards ‘othered’ Americans.
Many examples of women being subjected to heinous treatment were littered throughout Wooten’s testimony. A terrifying example is of one detained immigrant who reported to Project South that she experienced a near-miss of the doctor now termed “The Uterus Collector”. The woman “felt like they were trying to mess with my body”, after being transferred between the unit, an ambulance, the hospital and back to the detention centre, receiving three different accounts of what procedure was scheduled to be performed on her body. Explanations ranged from “a small twenty-minute procedure done drilling three small holes in her stomach to drain the cyst” to “receiving a hysterectomy to have her womb removed”. After receiving a positive COVID-19 test result, the woman had no operations performed.
“The Uterus Collector” has been identified by Prism as gynaecologist Mahendra Amin. Dr Amin is based in Douglas, Georgia and affiliated with Coffee Regional Medical Center and Irwin County Hospital in Georgia. Wooten, who did not identify Amin by name in her report, stated: “I’ve had several inmates tell me that they’ve been to see the doctor and they’ve had hysterectomies and they don’t know why they went or why they’re going.”
Wooten also told Project South the despondent story of an inmate who fell victim to Dr Amin. The woman “was supposed to get her left ovary removed because it had a cyst on the left ovary; he took out the right one. She was upset. She had to go back to take out the left and she wound up with a total hysterectomy. She still wanted children—so she has to go back home now and tell her husband that she can’t bear kids”.
Forced hysterectomies and a neglect of the duty of care to inmates must be contextualised within a broad and alarming history of forced sterilisation within America. According to journalist Moira Donegan, “everything the Nazis knew about eugenics, they learned from the United States”. In her report, Donegan detailed a series of engineered mass sterilisations of African American women, ignited by the Buck v Bell supreme court case in 1927.
Further, in the 1960s and 1970s, medical officials in the U.S. “decided that approximately a quarter of Native American women were unfit to have children, and sterilized them”. North Carolina’s eugenics program victimised 7,600 women, subjecting them to forced sterilisation until 1977.
I have my own story of medical practitioners neglecting their patients, proving the same mindset is not strictly an American problem. Last year, I had pains in my stomach on a holiday at the beach. I returned to Melbourne, panicked, and immediately saw a GP. They told me to go into the emergency room, where I waited six hours to see a doctor. In those six hours, I was vomiting from severe pain. I was repeatedly told I had appendicitis. I wanted to wait for an ultrasound to confirm this diagnosis but was told that ultrasounds are not available over the weekend. Two days later I was pressured into surgery to remove my appendix, and the last thing I said before losing consciousness on the operating table, was “this is not my appendix, it’s my ovaries.” I waited three months to find out that it was not my appendix that was causing me pain, but a burst cyst on my ovary. I sat in the follow-up room and cried, realising they had operated on me to remove my appendix unnecessarily, and a feeling of grief washed over me while I processed the fact that I had been right all along.
Female autonomy in the medical landscape is undermined in public hospitals in Australia, and Immigration Detention Centres in America. What is concerning, is that a detained woman has even fewer rights to speak for herself and cannot decide what she consents to when the information given to her is not in her own language. Prism claims that every woman they spoke to in ICDC had not been appointed a translator when being consulted for medical treatment.
We like to believe that we have come a long way from enslavement and Nazi medical experiments, yet it takes the strength of a whistleblower like Dawn Wooten to remind us that we have not.
This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.
Mikayla Chadwick is a Melbourne-based freelance writer, focused on human and legal rights, global affairs and popular culture. Mikayla holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree and is currently completing a research degree in sex work policy reform. To read more from Mikayla, check out her website: mikaylachadwick.com.
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