Bill Shorten, Labor’s version of Angus Taylor, is doing nothing about the estimated $6 Billion being stolen from the NDIS. Why?
Kangaroo Court of Australia
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party need to act
The biggest threat to the Labor Party is themselves and if rusted on Labor Party supporters think turning a blind eye to Bill Shorten will work then they are wrong as those days are long past as the last federal election showed us.
If Labor thinks it’s their turn to govern and act accordingly then they will also lose seats to Community Independents at the next federal election.
The LNP made it harder to gain access by those that needed help but so much easier for systemic fraud to be conducted by providers. Labor’s Bill Shorten intends to reverse that fraud, not the access by the needy. We saw the same system occur in the provision of Education, Childminding, Employment, and Jobkeeper services. Frydenberg willingly increased x4 funds to Guide Dogs Australia $3-4 M for 35 dogs. He proved he needed one himself. Meanwhile, he and the LNP kept calling themselves the better managers.
Oh yes The ALP was accused of being much worse because of Pink Bats in comparison a relatively smaller issue.
Experts say scheme ‘not working well for everyone’ after Bill Shorten says Labor will target fraudsters
I found it impossible to imagine that the Australian people could be so gullible as to elect for a third term a government that has performed so miserably in the first two and has amongst its members some of the most devious, suspicious and corrupt men and women but they did. (John Lord)
Australia does not need a messiah, it needs a good politician.
Politics is, or should be, about building a better society. There is no greater vocation than trying to lead that and there are good and bad ideas, and people, in all parties. That is why the contest of ideas we are now in matters so much, and why it is a tragedy that so many have lost faith in politics to achieve anything meaningful.
Scott Morrison understands the importance of faith. He has also spent a lot of time thinking about trust in Australian politics and knows that the greatest weight he carries is his government’s breach of faith with the electorate.
After pledging in 2013 that the Coalition would put the “adults back in charge” it delivered as intemperate a bunch of toddlers that has ever been entrusted with the Treasury benches. All the Coalition had to do in its first term was to show that it was moderately competent and it could not manage even that.
Speaking to a captive audience of roughly evenly divided people who had firm opinions about him when they walked in I wondered how many might have changed their view after hearing him talk about basic wages, unemployment, apprenticeships, housing affordability, negative gearing, aged care, and power bills, and using economic fairness to make his points. Then he turned on the Turnbull Government’s association with big business and the big banks.
“This is more fair dinkum to me than half the rubbish we carry on with in Parliament,” he uttered as the curtain fell on a very revealing Q&A.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has accused the Turnbull government of reviving the “Pauline Hanson rhetoric of the past” following Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s controversial comments about “illiterate” and “innumerate” asylum seekers taking Australian jobs.
The trade union royal commission insists it meant no disrespect to Opposition Leader Bill Shorten by waiting until late on a Friday night to reveal it had effectively cleared him of wrongdoing.
Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek said Senator Cormann’s comments detracted from issues surrounding the budget.
“I think it is extraordinary that we have a PM who talks about shirtfronting the leader of [another] nation and we now have a Finance Minister who thinks he is Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Ms Plibersek said.
“What Mathias Cormann is missing is that this budget hurts vulnerable Australians.”
Labor’s trade spokeswoman Penny Wong told Sky News the phrase sends a worrying message to younger Australians.
“If we use girl as an insult what are we telling our sons and our daughters about being a girl? You’re saying it’s somehow less confident, weak, whatever the imputation,” Senator Wong said.
“I just don’t think that’s sensible. Imagine if we used any racial term in the way it was used. I think we would all be outraged for the same reasons.”
On Sunday the Finance Minister defended himself, saying that “‘economic girlie-men’ has come to adopt its own meaning”.
“It is not in any way intended as a reflection on girls, it is entirely intended as a reflection on Bill Shorten,” Senator Cormann said in a statement.
Tony Abbotts charm like Ebola is soooooo infectious.
Tony Abbott praises Labor on Iraq, distancing himself from Joe Hockey
The prime minister,Tony Abbott, has praised Labor’s support for military intervention in Iraq, distancing himself from his treasurer, Joe Hockey, who questioned the value of bipartisanship on the issue when the opposition would not pass the budget.
As Australia carried out its first air strike on an Islamic State target in Iraq, Hockey demanded that the federal opposition pass the budget in order to allow the government to meet the costs of the conflict, expected to run to hundreds of millions.
But during a morning radio interview, and at a press conference later on Thursday, Abbott declined to endorse Hockey’s remarks, pointing instead to co-operation between the major parties on the Middle East conflict to date.
Labor however moved to capitalise on Hockey’s untidy intervention. The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, said the prime minister should “correct his treasurer”.
“Joe Hockey probably thought he was being clever, creating this political issue. Well it’s not,” Shorten said in Melbourne. “Every time Joe Hockey opens his mouth now he says something silly.”
“Australians will see through this political game. Under no circumstances should our intervention in Iraq be used as a source to justify hurting Australian people through this unfair budget – and the cuts and raised taxes which flow from it.”
Shorten went to a matter of policy contention within the Coalition: declaring that if the government needed additional resources to fund Australia’s military operations, it should dump the prime minister’s signature paid parental leave scheme.
Coalition MPs have continued to speak out against the generous scheme – arguing the money would better be directed elsewhere.
“Why don’t they actually go after the multinationals they’ve gone soft on?” Shorten said “There are plenty of measures that this government could do if it really is the crisis that Joe Hockey says it is.”
Hockey had told reporters in Washington that the costs associated with Australia’s military intervention were another reason Labor should “immediately pass the remaining measures in the budget”.
“Everything comes at a cost and if Bill Shorten truly is honest about his commitment to deliver bipartisan support in relation to our defence efforts in the Middle East he’ll provide bipartisan support to pay for it,” he said.
Earlier in the week, the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, declined to rule out raising taxes to pay for the conflict, but the prime minister stepped in on Tuesday to do so.
Abbott, speaking on Fairfax Radio on Thursday, would not link passing the budget and paying for the Iraq contribution, despite being given several opportunities to do so by his host, Neil Mitchell.
Abbott said Shorten had been a “patriot” on Iraq, and had been concerned to address the threats posed by Islamic State.
On the subject of the budget, the prime minister said it remained incumbent on Labor to suggest alternative savings or revenue measures to ensure long-term fiscal sustainability if the opposition did not like the government’s approach. Abbott also accused Labor of playing politics on unpopular measures such as the GP co-payment.
At a media event later in the day, Abbott said: “What is important is that the opposition continues to support our mission in Iraq and the Middle East.”
“Obviously there’s a lot of things that the government and the opposition disagree [about] but when it comes to national security it’s good that we stand shoulder to shoulder together.”
Like many things our prime minister says, it is simply a convenient lie.These are not good laws. They are not even laws to make Australia safer.These are cynical, opportunistic laws. Laws barrelled through under the spurious guise of protecting us against a fanatical foreign Islamic beheading cult with apparent links to Muslims in this country.
They are appalling laws, built on a lie.
There has never been an act of domestic terror in Australia. And no, a lone teenager committing a seemingly unplanned act of violence is neither a terror attack nor a retrospective justification for foreign military intervention and ramped up “counter-terrorism” powers.The so-called Islamic State ‒ a ragtag bunch of rebels occupying a chunk of land about the size of Tasmania half a world away, is hardly a threat to anyone — except if you happen to live in Iraq or Syria. American Homeland Security are quite clear on that
Yes, there may indeed be 50 or 60 Australians fighting with them, but that doesn’t make them a threat here in Australia — particularly after ASIO summarily cancelled their passports. Any supporters these foreign fighters have in this country ‒ a miniscule number at most ‒ are surely able to be easily monitored using existing laws and, if they commit a criminal act, arrested and prosecuted under the existing criminal law.
The real reason for these new powers has got nothing to do with Islamic State, or ISIL, or ISIS ‒ or whatever they are called this week ‒ but they are to do with closing down scrutiny of Australia’s spies and the Government unpublicised activities.
ASIO have been caught with their pants down on two majorly embarrassing occasions since the Abbott Government took power last year.
The first occurred when the ABC and Guardian Australia published leaks from former U.S. intelligence operative whistleblower Edward Snowden that our spies had tapped then Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s mobile phone for 15 days in 2009. These revelations caused a major rift with Indonesia and is still a lingering source of tension.
It was not long after this event, on January 28, that Abbott first used his famous “team” epithet, while denouncing the ABC in an interview with on 2GB with his friend, right wing Sydney shock jock Ray Hadley [IA emphasis]:
“It dismays Australians when the national broadcaster appears to take everyone’s side but our own and I think it is a problem.
“You would like the national broadcaster to have a rigorous commitment to truth and at least some basic affection for the home team, so to speak.”
Abbott went on to call Snowden a “traitor”, saying the ABC “seemed to delight” in publishing his information:
“And of course, the ABC didn’t just report what he said, they took the lead in advertising what he said. That was a deep concern.”
Abbott reaffirmed his position in a subsequent doorstep, going on to condemn the ABC for working with the Guardian, or as he put it:
“… touting for a left wing British newspaper.”
There were no surprises when the vindictive Abbott left it for his broken former rival Malcolm Turnbull to announce an efficiency review of the ABC a couple of days later. This review has now called for the ABC’s budget to be slashed with some important investigative news programs, such as Lateline, in the firing line. Turnbull has also flagged cutting $200 million from as ABC budget already cut deeply in the May Budget, blatantly breaking a clear election promise.
These terror laws will stop whistleblowers exposing the Government’s undercover operations through the media.
The problem with this is that the Coalition ‒ under Tony Abbott, avowedly “open for business” ‒ is seemingly not above using the security services in an improper way to assist private individuals and corporations. Under the new laws, any whistleblower seeking to expose the security services, for instance, helping an Australian big business on the behest of a cabinet minister looking for a cosy post-parliamentary sinecure will now be shut down and any journalists assisting locked up for a long time.
These security laws, therefore, can be seen as the next stage in the Abbott programme to hamstring the ABC as an effective source of scrutiny of Government activities.
But, even more importantly, they will make Australian journalism generally reluctant to expose the Government’s undercover activities, as this could lead to them being sent to prison for a decade.
Australia’s spy network was again in the spotlight in December last year after Attorney General George Brandis ordered ASIO to raid the Canberra offices and home of barrister Bernard Colleary, a former ACT deputy chief minister, who was representing East Timor against Australia at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague.
This is not democracy. No wonder they don’t want a Federal ICAC.
The Islamic State is a mirage as far as we are concerned here in Australia. It is not an existential threat to us. The grave threat, in truth, is new security laws that stifle freedom of speech, remove privacy protections, gaol journalists and serve, in the end, to limit scrutiny of the Government and its operatives.
Moreover, providing new powers to secret agents, which also provides them with civil and criminal immunity is an outright danger and threat to us as citizens. It makes these shadowy figures immune to prosecution and therefore, effectively, unaccountable for their actions. Under these laws, frankly, spies can kill us and fear no recourse.
Under these laws, there is no-one to watch the watchers. Now that is truly terrifying.
In truth, we probably expect our extreme right wing Government to implement these sorts of outrageous and unwarranted laws; certainly we can see why they are doing so. It is, however, the weak acquiescence by their so-called Opposition that is most criminal part of this affaor.
We know the ALP under Bill Shorten do not want not a cigarette paper between themselves and the Government on immigration and security matters. This is the exact small target strategy using so brilliantly and effectively by former Opposition leader Kim Beazley during such events as the Tampa Affair and Children Overboard.
However, politicians who unnecessarily sacrifice the rights of the people in the interests of popularity and power show themselves up as unsuitable for high office.
By supporting these so-called “anti-terror” laws ‒ which have nothing to do with preventing terrorism ‒ the ALP, under their current milquetoast leader, have followed the Coalition so far to the right, they are no longer truly a progressive Opposition.
And now more than ever, as the Government shuts down scrutiny and proposes gaoling journalists, Australia needs a progressive Opposition
AMANDA VANSTONE 7:34am The media response seems to be rather different for Bill Shorten.
Once an idiot always an idiot. Amanda Vanstone’s article on Bill Shorten is proof positive of Vanstone’s disregard for truth. She begins with not knowing Shorten’s age. He was born in 1967 Amanda you either failed math or you just make it up as you go along. He is not 44!!!
Shorten was far from kidding himself and very wise raising the issue before your mob could savage it like the mongrels you are. Unlike you kidding yourself that that you can bring any new incite to the story other than keep it running. Get a life your a lazy commentator Amanda Vanstone. Shorten was fully aware what you media trolls could do with it. Particularly those of the Newscorp and the 2GB variety. He came out first and removed the pounce you would all have done banging heads in the hope to run with it.
What saints you all were running your personal little jihads of restraint
‘there has been a good deal of restraint excercised by both the media and members of parliament in the lead up to and since.’
There is no comparison with Tony Abbott as there were witnesses to the fact that he scared the shit out of Barbara Ramjan. If you deny that you might just be asked to make a court enforced public apology as did Andrew Bolt,Michael Kroger and Alan Jones when they tried to deny that it was truth. So go ahead Amanda deny it publicly please.
If a similar complaint were made against Abbott with his track record of abuse and violence maybe it wouldn’t be held back. There is a clear history of misogynist behaviour by Abbott not by Shorten. However we know for sure if it was Tony you,Newscorp or 2GB would not have said a peep. Would the ABC and Fairfax the leftist media you work for break the news? Do they have your over blown sense of integrity?
What a load of speculative lazy codswallop you write. You have plagiarised idea from Andrew Bolt’s self aggrandisement on the Bolt Report That was his excuse for not breaking it. You are the Australian journalist that Frank Sinatra once failed to compliment. I’ll say no more and show restraint b***h.
You all weren’t fast enough nor were politicians. Why don’t you name and shame those investigative journalists those trolls with no morals you allude to in your commentary? Wouldn’t it be sweet revenge for catching you out for taking $$$$ to change a known Mafia persons immigration status and allowing him to remain in this country on compassionate grounds. Another moment of personal jihad was it Amanda Vanstone?
Bolt Report 24/8/14: Andrew Bolt & Piers Ackerman sang “the Moral Way is the Murdoch Way” on Sunday……… Halalujia
Im
“The power to conceal or reveal sensitive personal information turns out to be just like the power of the bully in the school playground. The bully need only batter one or two children for the fact of his power to be established: fear will then ensure that the others do all they can to placate him.”
Whether in response to the prelude to an attack or to prevent the threat of future attack, Shorten has opted to attempt to short-circuit the issue by coming out, unexpectedly, and on his own terms, to discuss it. But it’s a high-risk play in that it elevates what until now has amounted to social media abuse into a mainstream media issue that can be openly discussed. Bolt is certainly pissed his media team didn’t get to it first don’t for a moment think he wouldn’t have used it accompanied with the word ‘alleged’. Instead he was running down the media straight last yelling ‘I’m Galahad of the press’ Shorten had ‘Bolted’ and has made it the subject of public debate.
But it also undermines the threat from Murdoch on the issue: his papers can still run a smear campaign against Shorten, but he has got on the front foot and ensured it can’t be used to blackmail him. A direct attack designed to destroy Shorten, who has proved unexpectedly competitive against a government that has spent a year stumbling from error to error, may not have been the only thing playing on Labor minds. One of the key elements of Rupert Murdoch’s success, according to The Guardian’s Nick Davies, is his ability to blackmail key figures based on the threat that they will be punished via personal attack in his newspapers. As Davies wrote in July:
ious 
AMANDA VANSTONE 7:34am The media response seems to be rather different for Bill Shorten.
olddogthoughts 
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