‘The more the authorities claim their secrecy is in the “national interest”, the less it’s likely that what they are up to is in the public interest.’
via Australia, 2018: Lies, cover-ups and suppression of free speech
Category: LNP Government
The government’s continued attacks on the ABC make it seem like it’s trying to avoid scrutiny
How popular is the ABC? So popular that the Australia Institute polled voters in the contested seat of Mayo and discovered 74% of respondents think the government should increase ABC funding. So popular that while not a single Liberal at their council meeting spoke against the motion to privatise, within 24 hours of a social media explosion, Josh Frydenberg – government minister – was a-hustle on Sky News, pledging: “It is not going to be sold and it can never be sold.”
Egged on by conservative think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs (of which Mitch Fifield just happens to be a member), the Liberal-National mania to destroy independent broadcasting has resulted in 800 job losses and 60% fewer hours of factual programming by the ABC since the Abbott came to power. There’s 20% less drama, 13.5% fewer documentaries. There is no popular will for this. Losing precious, job-creating Australian content is just collateral damage in a Liberal party crusade.
“We won’t privatise the ABC,” Mitch Fifield has now said. Of course, Liberal Senator James Patterson has been calling for the ABC to be privatised since 2014, and Senator James McGrath has demanded the same. Liberal MP Kevin Andrews is a member of a “privatise the ABC” Facebook group, started by Victorian Liberal MP, Bernie Finn. And in 2008, Fifield himself there was “merit” in privatisation proposals.
The reason parliament legislated the independence of the ABC back in 1947 was among post-war realisations that political processes must be transparent or democracy is compromised.
Voters trust the ABC. And the government looks afraid of it | Van Badham | Opinion | The Guardian
Desperately, the Turnbull government begs the ANU to take on The Ramsay Centre; confer ersatz academic legitimacy on a cheer squad for cultural supremacists. It woos the university for six months but is flatly rejected Thursday.
Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt BS Phys, BS Astro, AM Astro, PhD Astro is polite but firm as he lets Ramsay know it’s on the nose. ANU has “serious concerns about its autonomy”, he says. His objections expose The Ramsay Centre utterly. And by extension they are a trenchant criticism of a Coalition keen to undermine if not silence a free and open society.
Professor Schmidt tells Fairfax Media, Thursday, that the Ramsay Centre had “sought a level of influence over our curriculum and staffing that went beyond what any other donor has been granted, and was inconsistent with academic autonomy”. This would set a precedent that would completely undermine the integrity of the university,” he continues, noting the ANU had declined donations before and “will again”.
As a back-bencher, Turnbull had the guts to predict Direct Action would waste billions of taxpayers’ dollars paying farmers to plant trees so industry could freely pollute, a scam he denounced as “a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale”– akin to his current unfunded corporate tax cuts.
“F…get over it” could be The Liberal Party’s motto if it had one. So much better than “Our Plan will deliver a strong, prosperous economy and a safe, secure Australia.”
“F… get over it” would also be fair warning of the Libs’ abandoning any pretension to be a party of individual freedom when as coalition partner they constantly extend state power over us, be it beefing up surveillance, (Home Affairs plans to expand the Australian Signals Directorate to spy on all citizens), retaining data, censorship, human rights abuse, compulsory ID checks at airports for all, or violating our right to privacy.
The Turnbull government has hoovered up more than $2 billion in inactive superannuation accounts and claimed the revenue as its own, saying it does not trust the superannuation industry to reunite the accounts of millions of Australian workers.
via Super accounts used by Turnbull government to boost budget
As head of the Intelligence Committee Hastie has made himself a leaker untrustworthy in terms of sharing information as he’s blurted. Blurted thethe unspeakable like Mossad is spying on us or so is the USA and they are both withholding the sharing of information with us. Very unintelligent move by Captain Hastie. So yes it still makes sense this ultra conservative wanted to or was instructed to undermine Turnbull’s and Bishop’s efforts at reproachment. (ODT)
Curious, isn’t it? A parliamentarian gives a heads up to the spooks, but not to his own prime minister.
ask why a member of the government would want to sabotage the government’s own diplomatic efforts, you get a couple of theories.
1)The first one is obvious. Hastie runs with conservatives hostile to Turnbull and Bishop.
2) He sees the world in binary and black and white terms “absolutist”, a simplistic worldview which could explain the behaviour.
Andrew Hastie’s contribution to our China effort? Curious and curiouser | Katharine Murphy | Australia news | The Guardian
and
View from The Hill: Hastie and Turnbull – what you don’t know, you can’t stop
The protections of the refugee convention are only words, Ghezelbash argued, and their actual effectiveness is shaped with the actions of the states who implement it.
“The risk,” he said, “is we’ll see a race to the bottom as countries compete to deter asylum seekers. This competitive approach creates a vicious cycle, in which governments seek to outdo each other by implementing progressively more restrictive policies.
What a joke the government is congratulating itself for having paid out $5.4 mill in 2 weeks. That’s like the banks saying “but it was only one mistake repeated 57,000 times and we have nipped it in the bud”. Simon Birmingham shouldn’t be sacked for not knowing but simply for congratulating his department and treating the Australian electorate like idiots. (ODT)
The group allegedly backdated the children’s care by four months to a single day in March, claimed they were cared for up to 14 hours a day, five days a week, and received $5.7 million in government rebates and benefits over two weeks.
“The message today is that greed on this scale will not be tolerated by authorities,” acting AFP commander Kate Ferry said after the arrests on Thursday.
On Friday, Education Minister Simon Birmingham congratulated officers in his department for their role in monitoring non-compliance.
“The Turnbull government continues to crack down on rorters, and actions like this should send a further message to people who try to rip off the child care system,” Mr Birmingham said.
via Sisters arrested in $5.4 million day care fraud case free on bail
Matthew the Mafia Guy’s Man delivered on a Liberal Roll
A Liberal Party figure appointed by Opposition leader Matthew Guy to lead the state’s property development agency personally promoted the alleged head of the Calabrian Mafia in Australia to a prominent business body.
Tony De Domenico used his position last October as president of the Italian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Melbourne to make alleged mafia boss Tony Madafferi, a chamber member.
via Liberal figure promoted alleged mafia don to Italian business chamber
What Abbot’s “No Mining Tax” has cost us
An Oxford University expert says Australia would be $90 billion better off if it adopted European-style resource tax policies and argues the Turnbull government has given up on collecting a meaningful amount of revenue from some of its most valuable resources.
In one of a suite of new submissions to a Senate inquiry, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies academic Juan Carlos Boué warned unless Australia “radically overhauled its fiscal regime” it would have the second lowest share of government revenue from oil and gas in the world.
Australia is on track to eclipse Qatar as the largest exporter of gas by 2020, but is expected to only earn $600 million in 2018 – the same amount of revenue the government earns in beer tax every year – compared to Qatar’s $26.6 billion.
The government would not make a decision on ending discrimination in marriage laws. They made us do it and have since formed a committee to fight for the rights of wedding retailers to turn customers away. One wonders how many of them actually want less business.
The government will not make a decision on Aboriginal recognition. They made our Indigenous People go through a lengthy and extensive consultation process to make recommendations and then threw them out without a second glance. They slashed over $500 million from Indigenous funding and then wondered why we aren’t closing the gap.
MICHAELIA CASH’S SLUT SHAMING threat of young women in Bill Shorten’s office was well out of order.
In yet another of the almost hourly unedifying exhibitions of perverted “metooism” by politicians, the Minister for Jobs and Innovation clearly needs to attend a careers night to find a job for which she is more suitable, where she can be truly innovative. Cleaning sewers, perhaps. Those of her own making.
Parliament is fast becoming a cesspit.
Her performance before yesterday’s Senate Estimates hea
via Michaelia Cash slut shames young women: Jobs minister bully — go now!
When you force the ABC to take down an article that questions your logic you know something is wrong. Since when has Turnbull taken on the role of ABC editor?
On Friday, the ABC took down Alberici’s analysis, citing that it did not conform to the broadcaster’s editorial standards. Frankly, the article – which has been republished on John Menadue’s blog, is not all that different in focus from analyses by Ian Verrender published by the ABC last year, The Age’s Peter Martin and various others, including myself.
Arguing that company tax cuts may not have the impact that the beneficiaries say will result is hardly controversial.
As I noted in January, Moody’s credit rating agency said of the US company tax rate cut from 35% to 21% (compared with a reduction from 30% to 25% proposed here) that “we do not expect corporate tax cuts to lead to a meaningful boost in business investment”.
But given most people don’t get excited by business investment (or increased business profits), companies here have followed the lead of their US counterparts, and are saying a tax cut is needed to increase wages.
It’s all a bit of smoke and mirrors.
He observed “powerful elements of right-wing politics” had abandoned the liberal tradition in favour of “a belligerent, intolerant populism which shows no respect for either the rights of individual citizens or the traditional institutions which protect them”.
Senator Brandis did not name Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton in his speech, but delivered a pointed barb at Mr Dutton’s recent disparaging of “un-Australian” lawyers and “weak” judges.
“I have not disguised my concern at attacks upon the institutions of the law – the courts and those who practice in them,” he said. “To attack those institutions is to attack the rule of law itself.”
via George Brandis takes a swipe at Peter Dutton and ‘right wing politics’ in farewell speech
Australia’s fixed broadband is below Kazakhstan on a global ranking of internet speeds, with performance continuing to be below the global average.
The Ookla Speed Test Global Index ranked Australia as 55th in the world for fixed broadband in December, with an average download speed of 25.88 Mbps.
More BS from the LNP declaring 25mbs “is all Australian’s ever wanted for the Money” 2018 sees the LNP lying on the NBN, Housing, Climate, and Youth Crime. (Old Dog)
We find a Government lying through it’s back teeth on everything and that’s what Tony Abbott did to secure a win
The Turnbull government’s climate change policy review would have you believe we are well on our way to reaching our international commitment of a 26-28 per cent reduction by 2030.
Only problem is we are not.
Cooking the books on climate change policy
Previously confidential Treasury advice to the Turnbull government found Labor’s negative gearing and capital gains tax policies would likely have a “small” impact on property prices.
Treasury advice says Labor’s negative gearing policy would have a ‘small’ impact on house prices
Also on Turnbull’s wish-list is the departure of Tony Abbott. While there is no material sign of this happening, there was a sense at year’s end, after his emphatic same-sex reversal – at the hands of the Australian people – and another reshuffle in which he was not even discussed, that his era had truly passed.
via Tony Abbott to quit in 2018, and other Malcolm Turnbull dreams
A man with severe disabilities who has been in state care since 1999, was ordered by Centrelink to prove his eligibility for a disability pension.
Source: In care for 17 years, Centrelink still told Andrew to prove he deserved pension
Did it really never dawn on Canberra’s brains trust that the royal commission should include an Aboriginal leader? George Brandis has been left looking foolish
One of Malcolm Turnbull’s strongest supporters has hit out at people unhappy with the PM’s performance.
Source: Election 2016 results: Christopher Pyne condemns ‘cowardly’ anonymous leakers
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has claimed victory in the federal election, as the Coalition edges towards a slim majority in federal parliament.
The Turnbull Government’s hasty moves to scrap the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal puts truck drivers and the public at serious risk.
Source: Truck off! Scrapping Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal endangers us all
The government’s $70m budget for border protection propaganda is the latest in a long line of taxpayer-funded “messaging” exercises.
Source: The taxpayer’s billions spent on government advertising | The Saturday Paper
Timing is, of course, everything. If you are in government, and a problem emerges, the very best time for it to occur is in a non-parliamentary week. That way, you control the timing of your responses. If the prime minister does not want to face up to questions, either because he’s still working on finding out the answers or because it’s just a plain bad look, he doesn’t have to.
I re-watched Whiplash the other day. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a terrific, morally indefensible movie about a music teacher who pushes a young jazz drummer to greatness. Its unusual central message is that abuse works. Bigoted insults, physical assault, even driving a student to suicide are all justified, if these tactics produce one Buddy Rich clone 50 years past its use-by-date.
I
t’s time to vote with our hearts and use our vote to stamp out the greed and austerity that underpins the destruction of a fair go in Australia by the Abbott-Turnbull Government.…
Source: Join the Protest to Re-elect Turnbull – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Wednesday January 13 2016 1 Tony Abbott came to the Prime Ministership with a mixture of negative malevolence, callous misogyny, lying, cheating and creating crisis when none existed. With the support of Rupert Murdoch he successfully deceived the Australian public into believing that the country would be better in his hands. The evidence of his…
The prime minister should look for new talent on the backbench rather than allow Mal Brough to cast a shadow over the government in an election year
A six to eight per cent swing in the North Sydney by-election is now inevitable as Brough, Pyne and Roy smirch the Turnbull Government with their “Ashbygate” involvement, says Bob Ellis.
Source: All the Prime Minister’s men
Lyn Bender examines the recent re-branding of Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison and finds only “lovely lies” and the same old hard-hearted cruelty.
Call me naïve, but I can’t see why Malcolm Turnbull would rush to an election early next year after flagging he will go full term.
Source: The government is considering whether to scrap or delay its tax green paper
For the new prime minister, it’s time to keep his enemies close and the conservatives closer.
Source: Malcolm Turnbull versus the Coalition’s social conservatives | The Saturday Paper
The grandmaster of hyperbole, Moncrief MP Steven Ciobo, has called the Parramatta shooting by a 15-year-old ‘cold-blooded murder’. Bob Elllis says, ‘give me a break’.
When Malcolm Turnbull told the New South Wales Liberal Conference that the party was not run by factions, there was mirth, derision and incredulity: the delegates knew bloody well that it is, and for their prime minister to deny it was, perhaps, his idea of a joke. But Tony Abbott, within the audience, was not laughing; after all, it was his faction that had been splintered and defeated. A breakaway group within the conservative majority in the federal party room on whom he had relied for so long had been forced by the necessity of sheer survival to overcome ideology.
An analysis of legislation passed shows the Abbott administration was less productive than any Australian government since John Gorton
Source: Revealed: how Tony Abbott’s government was the least productive since 1971 | News | The Guardian
Source: ‘We’re sticking with the plan’
What with nice Nazis, and the East Coast Twitterati on a jihad to bring down the Government, it’s been a busy week in Australian politics. Managing editor Dave Donovan hyperventilates.
Source: Hey, hysterical East Coast Twitterati — give the Liberals a fair go
Border Force is the contrivance of a knot of ambitious bureaucrats whose aim is to militarise Immigration.
olddogthoughts 
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