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ScoMo no leader at all.

Capping a week of wacky stunts is Drug-test dole Bludgers a first episode in The Return of the Undead, a schlock-horror series in which the commonwealth is attacked by zombies; bad policy ideas the Coalition has already killed off. Twice. Or so we thought. Totally lacking policy or even vaguely useful ideas, the Morrison government digs up its dead, while dodging shocking reviews of its theatre of cruelty drama, Tamil Family.

Dole Bludgers helps deflect us from Did Treasury shrink the Economy? a Frydenberg-Lowe whodunnit playing centre stage, helped out by “Police State 2.0″ a cop-show sequel involving more raids on whistle-blowers’ homes.

Secrecy, mystery and shock are key to ScoMo’s Police State 2.0, which, like Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition, thrives on fear and surprise. All we see is a dawn raid. Cops haul black polythene bags. “As this is an ongoing matter, it would not be appropriate to comment further at this time,” an AFP “spokesperson” intones.

Weird? Normal procedure for the AFP, as veteran Canberra Times editor, Jack Waterford, observes, is to tip off selected journalists well in advance of any raid. Not so much better sound but great optics. Waterford notes,

“It is part of the AFP’s media modus operandi to claim that operational or sub judice considerations prevent it from discussing anything damaging to the force’s image. Such considerations never inhibit the AFP if it expects good publicity from trusted journalists.” Uncannily, ScoMo & Co follow much the same protocol.

This week, Home Affairs Minister Dutton and Morrison are free with all kinds of abuse to help their case, even though the Biloela family would normally be off limits as “an operational matter” or “an individual case”. By Friday, even though the case is before the Federal Court, Dutton tells Nine,

“I would like the family to accept that they are not refugees, they’re not owed protection by our country.”

Yet the same day, Federal Court judge, Justice Mordecai Bromberg, orders Immigration Minister, David Coleman, to provide more evidence to support claims the youngest child has no right to protection. This case returns to court for an interlocutory hearing, 18 September, but a full and final hearing will require extensive preparation. An increasingly out of control Dutton would do well to pull his head in; take a hint from his pals in the AFP.

Suddenly it’s clear that ScoMo has even less power over Dutton than Turnbull, who created Home Affairs just to appease Dutton and his monkey-pod cabal. His capitulation to the bullies, condemned by experts then, is an utter failure now. Above all if we’re going get Police State 2.0 right, the AFP, need to know which boss gives the orders.

The AFP has an unblemished record of being lapdog of the government of the day. Only once in thirty-eight years since its inception has it embarrassed a government. The exception is the case of the investigation and prosecution of Liberal renegade – and Labor-appointed speaker, Peter Slipper, which did not result in a conviction.

The AFP keeps mum on Wednesday’s raid of the Canberra home of a diplomat and defence adviser, Cameron Gill, reports the Canberra Times. But the optics are eloquent. Shots of a burly plain-clothes cop, carrying a couple of black garbage bags or loading the bags into the boot of a black car look ominous at least. “AFP cleans up democracy while trashing Gill’s reputation” is the main pictorial message implied on national news.

“Enacting laws in the name of national security without testing them can result in overreach and the erosion of basic freedoms,” warns Australian Law Council president, Arthur Moses, in his natter to the National Press Club.

Australia leads the free world in beefing up existing and creating world-class, new anti-terror and security laws. In the eighteen years since September 11, 2001, we have encumbered ourselves with no fewer than 54 new laws.

“There’s been a massive amount of legislation passed that prior to then (2011) would have been unthinkable”, Pauline Wright, President of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties says.There have been incursions into freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of movement, right to protest, all basic legal rights that underpin our democracy”. It’s almost as if she’s stumbled on the real point of the war on terror.

“Do not be quiet Australians. That is not your job,” warns Moses to the assembled hacks and flacks.

Moses is keen for reporters to “continue questioning” the Commonwealth’s growing national security powers, and “not just those that are threats to your freedoms”. Yet News Corp, from which all other media take their lead, has been actively encouraging the Coalition’s radical expansion of a police state in Australia in the last six years.

Drug test … is more than a government out of ideas. It blends ScoMo & Co’s yen for mindless cruelty, with its signature impracticality – as seen, for example, in its coal fetish. Blend in its shouty populist campaign to deprive the poor and vulnerable of any form of support, let alone compassion – and the drug test ploy may just upstage news that not only have ScoMo & Co given us the worst financial year since 1990-91, they have no plan.

“We have a plan – and only the Coalition has a plan” is Matthias Cormann’s mantra. But there is no plan. Greg Jericho calls on the government to wake up.

“It spent the entire election campaign telling us the economy was strong despite clear evidence that was not the case, and now in the light of some of the worst economic growth figures this century it would have us believe all is going to plan.”

Alan Austin notes “The increase in GDP for the June quarter, announced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday, was a miserable 0.48%. This brings annual GDP growth to just 1.44% for the year to the end of June if we use seasonally adjusted figures. Trend data, preferred by some, show even worse outcomes.

This is the lowest annual growth for a financial year since 2002-03, during the early 2000s global recession. Prior to that, the year with lower growth than now was back in 1991 during Paul Keating’s “recession we had to have”.

ScoMo calls on us to spend our way into prosperity. But what with? With frozen wages, lost penalty rates, rising utility and fuel costs, not to mention a steep hike in fruit and vegetable prices, given drought, flood and heat has cut supplies, means most households will use their meagre tax refund to pay down debt and on daily essentials.

But look over there! A drug test for Centrelink beneficiaries beckons.

Enter the trial drug testing of 5,000 new recipients of Newstart Allowance and Youth Allowance. Job-seekers would be tested for a range of illegal drugs in a two-year trial at three locations – Logan, Queensland, Canterbury-Bankstown, NSW and Mandurah, WA. Vital trial details are scarce in the news cycle.

The drug test idea is a neat way to scapegoat those trapped in a cycle of poverty. It recycles a farrago of Liberal lies: job-seekers are not only unsuccessful because they are high on drugs, they are also decadent. Unworthy – a popular slur also seen in refugee demonising. Un-Australian. Seeking pleasure instead of work?

The best form of welfare is a job, ScoMo crows. 722,000 Aussies struggled to get by on Newstart’s $278 per week or less than forty dollars a day in August. ABS figures show expenses, especially rising fuel prices – up 4.5% mean we are going backwards. Half a million of us haven’t worked for over 12 months. ScoMo’s “conservative compassion” means job-seekers just don’t eat; 84 percent of unemployed workers report skipping meals.

Implied in ScoMo’s slogan is a rebuke; neoliberalism’s favourite lie, there are plenty of jobs out there- all you have to do is try harder/re-skill/move to the regions/not be a job snob. It’s absurd but hurtful; cruel nonsense.

It’s not just that are far fewer jobs than job applicants, while jobs are increasingly casual, part time and wage theft and underemployment is rife, drug-testing of welfare recipients has failed everywhere it’s been tried. And the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison show knows it’s a failure, as Josh Butler in The Huffington Post pointed out in 2017.

Jurisdictions in Canada and the U.K. proposed then scrapped the idea. In the US, a few states gave up their trials as few as 0.01 percent of those tested actually returned positive drug tests. Above all, an Australian government-funded report from 2013 found there was “no evidence” of any positive effects in drug testing welfare clients, citing social, economic, legal and ethical concerns which meant such a scheme “ought not be considered”.

But “Just because something has been trialled elsewhere and has not worked does not mean it should not be tried again,” argues Senator Scott Ryan, for the Minister for Social Services. No. Just don’t expect it to work.

Drug-testing for welfare recipients was first proposed in the bizarre, 2014 Abbott-Credlin incarnation of the current government and again by the Turnbull iteration. It’s a great distraction from the imminent nation-wide trial of the Indue cashless debit card, a scam also known as “The Healthy Welfare Card” which is not a success in any trials. Still, it is a nifty business enterprise which could return $12,000 to the Liberal Party for each card issued.

Despite the dead cat on the table of the drug test (trial), ScoMo still cannot hide this week’s shocking GDP data.

Stalling Australia’s economic growth has taken six years of hard work. Morrison, in particular, can take a bow.

As Treasurer, he did keep barking that we did not have a revenue problem. No? Now most households do. And we carry record debt. A tax cut won’t help us. We are in per capita recession even if the government insists on applying US Census boffin, Julius Shiskin’s, yard stick of two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

Former RBA Governor Glenn Stevens says it’s, “not very useful”. Proposed in December 1974 by Julius Shishkin, then head of the Economic Research and Analysis Division of the US Census Bureau which publishes the US national accounts, it’s not used to identify recessions in the US. Saul Eslake points out,

It takes no account of differences over time, or as between countries, in the rates of growth of either population or productivity – which are the key determinants of whether a given rate of economic growth is sufficient to prevent a sharp rise in unemployment. This is something which most people (other than economists) would use to delineate a recession.

In brief, we are fooling ourselves, or allowing ourselves to be fooled, by an esoteric measure of what a recession is. By most other measures, we would be calling what Morrison and Frydenberg have engineered, a recession, now. Calling for Frydenberg to resign. As The Guardian Australia‘s Paul Jericho reports,

The 2018-19 financial year had the lowest growth since 2000-01, and it was the eighth worst year out of the 60 since 1960. In the past 35 financial years, only five have seen worse per-capita growth, and in the past 40 only four have seen lower productivity growth.

Happily, there’s always a Liberal love-in happening somewhere to take the sting out of the hard going. ScoMo insults half the population in one gaffe as he addresses the faction-ridden boys’ club of the NSW Liberal Party’s State Council in NSW, weekend conference, its “most vicious” for twenty years. It’s in uproar over abortion.

It almost upstages Monday’s fuss when the PM, Communications minister Paul Fletcher, Birmo and Senator Jane Hume and sundry other Liberal MPs rock up to a function held by Channel Nine at its Willoughby studios.

Nothing to see here, says ScoMo, “I mean they were happy to host an event and I attended an event.” Prince Andrew could use the same defence of a photo of himself and a seventeen year old girl at a Jeffrey Epstein event.

Except it was a ten-thousand dollar a head Liberal Party fund-raiser which makes a mockery of Nine Newspapers, formerly Fairfax rags’ slogan “Independent Always”. Luckily, everything is OK, because, as CEO Marks explains, the shindig gave Nine time to voice its deep concern over press freedom while it raised money for the Liberals.

Michelle Grattan says it’s bizarre to engage with a government on press freedom, by raking in $100,000 in funds for it. Clearly she’s yet to get into the Trump-Morrison zeitgeist where the press is free to say whatever the government is OK with. This argument is made by Home Affairs Secretary, Mike Pezzullo in senate estimates.

Fortunately, by Saturday, the PM can change the agenda to gender. How Liberal ladies can step up to the plate.

Pro-lifers protest outside the International Convention Centre whilst inside, right-wing Liberals who wish to keep the current bad law, move a vote to allow debate on decriminalising abortion, a bid that threatens to de-rail the Berejiklian government’s bill to make abortion legal in NSW – as it is in all other states. The vote is lost 217-236.

The bill passed the NSW lower house 59 to 31, a month ago, but it created a split within the Liberals. 19 of the party’s 35 MPs voted against it. Veteran public ethicists, “barking” Barnaby Joyce and “two-bob” Tony Abbott also protest, support which Sydney lawyer, Michael Bradley, writing in Crikey claims, augurs well for the reformers,

“It was sexist paternalism and disrespect that made abortion a crime and has kept it thus for so long. It is this same instinct that seeks to delay and confuse the remediation of that wrong. But, whether because of or despite the Tony/Barnaby Effect, it will shortly lose this battle.”

Amendments proposed will be considered when the NSW Upper House votes on the bill 17 September. Many of these appear to be disingenuous delaying tactics, including fears that a woman will use abortion to select the sex of her baby, a phenomenon that has never occurred elsewhere in the world. So why would it happen here?

ScoMo’s keynote address is about merit. Up to a higher plane. “I want to see more women in our parliament and I want to see the NSW division work with me and my team to deliver that on merit, on merit, that’s the key.”

ScoMo alienates half his audience with his gaffe.

Who better to lecture Liberals on merit and equity than ScoMo? His advocacy for women is now the stuff of Liberal Party legend. He’s got daughters, he says. Enough said. And, my, just look at the way he acted on serious allegations of a party culture of misogyny and bullying, which came to a head around last year’s spontaneous hands-free leadership spill that accidentally, led to ScoMo becoming PM – and without any plotting, lobbying or double-double-crossing. So he says. It caused at least one MP, Julia Banks to resign.

All packed off to an inquiry or review or report or something. And denial from Linda Reynolds who has now gone on to do a mighty job in Defence and Sarah Henderson, who is parachuted back into parliament into former Senator Mitch Fifield’s policy-free Victorian senate seat, this Sunday, despite smears and slurs from religious groups following her support of marriage equality.

Henderson’s not beaten Sophie Mirabella’s hubby, Greg, more of a conservative, but she’s battled vicious email. One accused her of being “a Malcolm Turnbull, gay marriage and abortion supporter”. Unholy Trinity.

Sunday, she wins a 234-197 a vote from five hundred Liberal Party delegates to the NSW conference. Despite intense lobbying from government MPs, the result still suggests as deep a division in Victoria between small ‘l’ liberal Liberals and the rip-roaring right as in NSW. In the end, however, ScoMo has one more token woman MP.

So it’s fitting the PM should be there. Not for the abortion vote – he’s pro-life – but as a father figure who can tell Liberal women they just need to improve their merit; lift their game and work on their CVs, their networking and interview skills. It’s an old lie but it helps explain why today there is the same number of women Liberal MPs as there was in 1996. At the end of the end of the day was it Henderson’s merit or ScoMo’s orchestrated lobbying?

Women everywhere will be chuffed to know that our current crop of mostly male Liberal MPs is a meritocracy.

Merit just shines out of Josh Frydenberg, this week, for one, as he tries to fudge the worst set of GDP figures this century, while blaming Treasury for not getting its forecasts right. And claiming he and his government did.

Merit is also the word that leaps to mind to describe the work of Stuart “Rolex” Robert whose business empire is in a big chill this week, according to reports that he and his partner may lose over $400,000 due to the tragic collapse of Cryo Australia, one of his cooler company investments which have attracted the interest of ASIC.

No inference is given nor suggestion made that Robert has done anything wrong in relation to Cryo Australia, which offered customers therapy sessions in a human-sized cooler. When it was working. Robert does seem dogged by business troubles, however, and it just bad luck given his cabinet role and his duties in charge of both government services and NDIS, two portfolios, which demand sound judgement and due diligence.

Liquidators are investigating whether crimes may have been committed by directors of the company, Cryo Australia, where Robert briefly sat on the board alongside rapist Neran De Silva, reports The Guardian Australia.

“Merit” Morrison himself, whose MPs snubbed rival contender for PM, Julie Bishop, because the blokes said she was a lightweight, won Cook in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire, fair and square with just a little bit of help from The Daily Telegraph’s, four article slander of Michael Towke, a Lebanese Christian Australian, who, in July 2011, was democratically pre-selected rival in Cook- until he was disendorsed by the Party after the articles were published.

Dazzled by the display of merit currently on show in the Liberal party room of our faux-Coalition, an unrepresentative secret agreement which includes a mandatory quota at its core, it’s difficult to tell whether the women members of the Liberal Party are laughing or crying. Just don’t expect a petticoat revolution just yet.

In the meantime, despite its diversions, the week exposes the Morrison government’s false claim to any economic expertise. It is just another Coalition government; hopeless with money, clueless about women or gender equity, run by the top end of town for the top end of town and increasingly keen to control us by drawing us into the politics of division, unreason and fear.

Helping this control is the apparatus of a police state developed under the aegis of a war on terror, which like the war on drugs, is another toxic US import which can only cause us harm – as it has caused that nation immeasurable suffering and created unimaginable death and destruction for millions of others it has illegally invaded.

The threatened deportation of the Biloela family is an act of gratuitous, if not shockingly sadistic, cruelty which demeans us all. If the Tamil family are returned to Sri Lanka, they will be imprisoned and tortured. Yet even if they were to escape this fate, repatriation would be immoral, illegal under international law preventing refoulement and egregiously wrong in its calculated lack of humanity.

What kind of monsters have we become when we seek to punish innocents, make an example of a traumatised family who have already endured unfathomable suffering whose only mistake is to throw themselves on our mercy and seek our compassion?

Morrison must get Dutton to rescind his decision. Unless he can show the moral courage and the authority to act decisively on this, he is no leader at all.

21 comments

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  1. Jack Cade

    Scomo is no leader. But neither is Albo. The most competent Labor people are in the Senate, and they are women. Wong and Kenneally.

  2. Phil Pryor

    Since 1901, it seems lower than ever, government anuses in deliberate ignorant joy at being ignorant while enjoying re-election. Queensland voters, having sent back water thieves, liars, tax donors to the rich corporations, usually foreign, and policy vacuum inert dickheads, want help for fires and drought, despite having allowed the government to lie, reduce revenue, bullshit figures, suck up to media maggots and generally evade responsibility. Liars like Joyce the rural rorter, rooter, dealer, operator, loudmouth and drinker of any free beer, still prosper, with any brainless mumbling being amplified by media misfits and money hunters (cash for comment anyone??) Finally we have as P M a liar from a mythical shiar, a reborn turd, a fired up masturbatory microbe of no known decency. We are stuffed…

  3. Jaquix

    I agree with Jack !
    And Phil’s not wrong either !

  4. andy56

    Jack, and so this article was about Albo, no? Until somebody is in the position, how can you judge leadership?
    SNotty on the other hand, is so full of rightious hubris.

  5. Kitty

    Morrison labels calls to increase Newstart unfunded empathy but there is plenty of money to introduce punitive micromanagement on welfare recipients.

    Mandatory drug tests for welfare recipients could be rolled out under Government plan
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-06/welfare-recipients-drug-testing-new-bill/11483512

    Single parents forced to attend ‘story time’ or lose Centrelink payments
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/06/single-parents-forced-to-attend-story-time-or-lose-centrelink-payments

    Cashless debit card
    https://www.vinnies.org.au/page/Publications/National/Factsheets_and_policy_briefings/What_s_wrong_with_the_cashless_welfare_card/

    and of course the notorious robot debt process.

  6. Matters Not

    As always – a great article. Nevertheless, re the Indue cashless debit card – known sometimes as “The Healthy Welfare Card” and the ‘claim’ :

    Still, it is a nifty business enterprise which could return $12,000 to the Liberal Party for each card issued.

    Perhaps you have a link? To date, most of the ‘speculation’ re the alleged financial ripoff, focuses on the National Party and Larry Anthony’s (temporary) membership on the Board of Indue, so it’s interesting that the focus has now shifted from the Nats to the Libs. That the Libs and the Nats hate each other is widely known. But I do note you choose the word could.

    Personally, I am of the view, that if any political party is profiting from Indue (and there’s not a shred of evidence provided that I can find of any political donations) it’s likely to be the ALP, given Indue’s Chair (Dawson Petie) has been Labor luminary for many a long year. So I would be interested in your evidence. Thanks.

  7. Matters Not

    Thanks David for your response. First, (technically) the money is NOT paid by the taxpayer. It comes from the public purse or the government if you like. (Yes it once belonged to the taxpayer but under legal obligation it was then paid (not donated) to the government.) Second, I have no doubt that a trial like this costs significant dollars. Indue’s Annual Reports and audited balance sheets are available on the Net. Perhaps you aren’t aware that the trial was initially offered to all the major banks which rejected participation on the grounds that it wasn’t financially attractive? Hence a limited tender involving organisations that had technical capacity – like Indue.

    Just for the record, Indue is the child of Queensland Credit Unions (never had shareholders outside that boundary) and are aghast that they are accused of donating to any political party – let alone conservative ones.

    But I do know that once a urban myth is created, NOTHING will destroy it. Gets a life of its own.

  8. Kerri

    Morrison will not!
    Morrison is “leader” only because he believes it makes him a better person than everyone else.
    He clearly is not.
    Morrison’s version of “leader” is someone who everyone else a) follows and b) has blind faith in.
    Morrison does nothing for Australia and everything for Morrison.

  9. Kaye Lee

    Is there any record of individual LNP members owning direct shares in Indue LTD?
    NO.
    Was Larry Anthony, current sitting Nationals president a Director of Indue?
    YES.
    Do the Anthony Family Trust linked companys subcontract with Indue?
    YES.
    Do Anthony Family Trust own one third of the SAS GROUP Lobbying firm? ( Look who else they lobby for! :http://lobbyists.pmc.gov.au/register/view_agency.cfm?id=227 )
    YES.
    Does Larry Anthony sit as current director of Unidap Solutions Pty Ltd?
    YES.
    Do Unidap Solutions provide IT and Smart phone App/Tech support for Indue ltd AND The Australian Government ?
    YES.
    Does Illalangi Pty Ltd as trustee for the Anthony Family Trust subcontract to Indue LTD?
    YES.
    Do SAS Group have Indue as a primary customer?
    YES.
    Does this all mean Larry Anthony has a fully invested financial stake in cashless card roll outs? YOU BETCHA

  10. David Tyler

    Eddy Jokovich writes well on the Indue scandal:
    https://newpolitics.com.au/2019/08/28/indue-and-the-small-matter-of-political-corruption/

    During the welfare card trials, Indue has received between $4,000 to $10,000 for each participant in the trial, even though the Newstart allowance is less than $14,000 per year. Certainly, there are start-up costs involved in servicing this type of program, but up to $10,000 for a private company to manage an account only worth up to $14,000 annually raises questions of whether the Indue company is the most cost-effective option for this scheme. It also raises the question of why Indue was chosen in the first instance, especially when the expertise and experience provided by the National Australia Bank, Commonwealth Bank, Westpac or ANZ would have been far superior.

    Up to June 2018, the amount received by Indue was at least $8.8 million and, reportedly, up to $21.9 million as at August 2019. If the roll-out of the cashless welfare card is extended on a widespread basis – as many Liberal and National MPs are now calling for – the value of the Indue company, and the shares held by Anthony and other Liberal and National party operatives will increase exponentially.

  11. Kaye Lee

    David,

    They don’t have shares in Indue which, as MN pointed out, is owned by a conglomerate of financial institutions. But they DO have contracts with Indue. Regardless, it is a ridiculous waste of money for no ostensible result.

    This group are following it.

    https://www.thesaynoseven.com/reports-and-articles/

  12. Matters Not

    Re Indue – no individual has ever owned shares in Indue. Was and is a creature of Queensland Credit Unions. Anthony ceased to be an Indue Board Member circa 2012.

    Re SAS. Santoro – ex Liberal Senator and ex QLD MLA. Anthony – National Party. Sciacca – original Chair of SAS – now deceased.

    Former Keating government minister and veteran of the Labor Right Con Sciacca was remembered as “one of the greatest numbers men in Australian politics”, astute businessman, political mentor and a dedicated family man at his state funeral in Brisbane on Friday.

    The loyalty of Mr Sciacca’s friendships across the political divide – and before and after his retirement from politics in 2004 – was on display as a cast of Labor luminaries, including former prime minister Paul Keating, former leader Kim Beazley and current leader Bill Shorten,

    https://www.afr.com/politics/labor-veteran-with-a-big-heart-con-sciacca-farewelled-20170630-gx1qbi

    Eulogy delivered by Santoro.

    Much more to come.

  13. Matters Not

    Re Unidap Solutions – chaired by Anthony. However, Secretary of the Board is:

    Sandra Christine Nori … was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly representing the electoral districts of McKell (1988–1991) and Port Jackson (1991–2007) for the Labor Party. She served in a range of ministerial portfolios between 1999 and 2007.

    https://dukeofed.com.au/about-us-2/governance/friends-board/

    Another member of the Unidap Board is Tom Mould with long-term Labor and Union connections. Hardly a politically partisan outfit.

  14. Kaye Lee

    I am not sure of the point you are trying to make MN. Do you think spending $10,000 to administer a card that has $14,000 annual income is a wise way to spend public money? Do you think because the various firms benefiting financially from this employ or are owned by lots of ex-politicians from different parties makes it ok?

  15. Matters Not

    Indue chaired by Dawson Petie:

    Board Experience . .

    Indue Ltd

    Board Member (2008-current)

    Chairman

    Chair, Remuneration Committee

    Chair, Nominations Committee

    UnitingCare Queensland

    Board Member (2007-2018)

    Deputy Chairman

    Community Services Industry Alliance

    Board Member (2015-2016)

    Queensland Rail

    Director (1991-1992, 1999-2013)

    Chair, Remuneration & Succession Committee

    Chair, Freight Business Strategy Committee

    Chair, National Logistics Alliance

    Chair, Network Committee

    Uniting Church Super

    Director (2009-2013)

    Manidis Roberts

    Director (2009-2012)

    Teachers’ Health Queensland

    Chairman (2004-2009)

    Queensland Investment Corporaton (QIC)

    Director (1992-1995)

    Sunsuper

    Director (1992-1995)

    Foodbank Queensland Ltd

    Director (1995-1999)

    CUBE Financial Services Group

    Chairman (1983-1987)

    Director (1972-1991)

    Treasurer

    2KY Radio Sydney

    Director (1983-1987)

    A couple of things to note. Petie had extensive Union. ALP experience. First Board appointment was to 2KY when it was owned by Labor. His connection to QLD Rail ended with the rise of Campbell Newman who sacked him because he was the wrong political colour.

    Does he look like a Chair who’s going to fund the Conservatives? Laughable.

  16. Matters Not

    Further:

    When Guardian Australia queried the tender process earlier this month, the Department of Social Services said it had awarded contracts to Indue after sounding out banks and other financial institutions about their interest in providing the cashless welfare card.

    “DSS conducted thorough consultations with major banks, finance and retail institutions about the potential provision of services for the cashless debit card. These consultations indicated a lack of commercial interest in delivering a small scale trial of this nature,” the department said.

    “Independent probity advice to DSS confirms that the procurement process was conducted in accordance with the commonwealth procurement rules, relevant legislation, policies and probity principles.”

    As I said above, DSS approached the ‘big boys’ who were not interested – a lack of commercial interest in delivering a small scale trial of this nature.

    The department’s version was later confirmed by Westpac, which said: “Over a number of years the government has sought feedback on the card. We indicated to the government it was not something we are interested in delivering.”

    Indue said Anthony held no shares in the company at any point in its history.

    “Indue is wholly owned by financial institutions, all of which have their heritage in the mutual and credit union sector,” the company told Guardian Australia earlier this month.

    “At no time has any individual (or through any controlled entities) owned shares in Indue Ltd or any of its subsidiaries.”

    “At no time has MP Larry Anthony or any entities he controls owned shares in Indue Ltd or any of its subsidiaries.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/sep/30/larry-anthony-calls-for-investigation-of-national-party-presidents-lobbying-firm

  17. Kaye Lee

    You have not addressed the fact that Larry Anthony, and others, benefit financially from the contracts. As for it not being commercially attractive, the consulting contracts attached to it are. And why could it not be administered by Centrelink?

  18. Matters Not

    For those who think that Indue is making donations to political organisations, can I suggest you contact the Australian Electoral Commission which is charged to oversee such activities. To date, as I understand it, Indue is not recorded as giving and no political party admits receiving. Liars across the board?

    When Griffin made his allegations I was outraged. Particularly when the ALP ignored same. So I dug. The allegations were largely groundless – hence their relative inaction. But the ‘fake news’ is out and about and simply won’t go away.

    Should stress I have grave concerns about the Cashless Welfare Card and particularly the administration of same. But that’s a separate issue.

    PS, KL having some experience with paying for technological innovation, outrageous costs are nothing new.

    Why not use government departments to deliver? Because it conflicts with the prevailing ideology! Private – good! Public – bad! Very, very bad!!

  19. Kaye Lee

    Fair enough. I agree there were problems with the Griffin article.

  20. Matters Not

    The opening paragraph of that article claimed – in part.

    Indue Pty Ltd, the corporation awarded the contract to manage the Welfare Card programme and to operate its underlying systems, is a corporation owned by Liberal and National Party members and that donates to various Liberal and National Party branches around Australia. The former chairman of Indue is none other than former LNP MP Larry Anthony …

    May I suggest, there were many, many problems with that article and subsequent efforts. Must admit, I was initially impressed. Then outraged at my own naivety. Hopefully – never again.

    Here’s a link to those who know something untoward re donations.

    https://www.aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/financial_disclosure/index.htm

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