The evidence is damning: many outlets in the mainstream media worked in support of the former Coalition government’s establishment of its illegal Robodebt scheme, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.
Wealthy and privileged public servants and politicians all collaborated to demonise the poor and destroy people’s lives with the Robodebt scheme, writes Dr Jennifer Wilson.
Figures in last Tuesday’s Budget Papers show the Coalition has cost Australians more than 400 billion dollars in waste and rorts, as Alan Austin reports.
It is only fitting that, as well as senior bureaucrats who administered the scheme, the Royal Commission into the Robodebt disaster will likely call forth Scott Morrison, Alan Tudge, Stuart Robert, Christian Porter and Michael Keenan.
It is fitting because all of these men – two of whom still occupy parliamentary positions – oversaw the portfolio responsible for Robodebt. Each of them added to the pain and suffering of so many of Australia’s most vulnerable. And some of these men even added further muscle to an already drunk-with-power debt recovery scheme, wilfully creating deliberate fear among the populace and inciting hatred for the victims.
What this seems to indicate is back to the Rudd/Gillard future and that comprehensive Carbon Trading Scheme that Tony Abbott’s LNP set out to destroy by calling it a tax. The report echoes the fact that our Nation has lost 10 years of possible progress towards becoming a global leader rather than the number one laggard when tackling carbon emissions.
Climate Change Authority Media ReleaseReleased today, the Climate Change Authority’s Review of International Offsets finds the international carbon market is still evolving in response to the Paris Agreement and calls for publication of a National Carbon Market Strategy that makes the most of this opportunity for Australia to accelerate ambition on emissions reduction.The review finds that while carbon is priced and traded in Australia, the market is fragmented, inefficient and complicated.
Rex Patrick on Timor spying: Albanese government’s first secret trial after only 67 days – Michael West
If you thought the Attorney-General dropping charges against Bernard Collaery was a sign that secret trials in Australian courts and tribunals were a thing of the past, you would be wrong.
Today, in Melbourne, a secret hearing is taking place where the government is trying to prevent the public disclosure of 22-year-old cabinet documents relating to the Howard government’s plans to defraud the newly independent and impoverished nation of Timor-Leste of their oil and gas resources.
January 1 is the biggest day of the year for the National Archives. It’s the day they unveil cabinet papers from 20 years prior. Last year, among the documents named but not released was a year 2000 cabinet submission entitled “Timor Gap Negotiations”.
I put in a request to get access to it. The Archives is an organisation charged with safely storing and making available significant historical government documents. But their response was one of ‘‘sorry, no access’’.
When are Individuals are bigger than the Government a question not closed.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has dropped the prosecution of Bernard Collaery, the lawyer accused of revealing Australia had spied on Timor-Leste for profit.
The case has come to represent the treatment of whistleblowers.
Mr Collaery first had his home raided in 2013 after he was accused of conspiring to leak classified information bringing to light Australia’s intelligence gathering in Timor-Leste, whose people he previously represented.
In a long-delayed prosecution after that initial raid, he had faced some 50 hearings in a Canberra court over the matter over four years.
“Today, I have determined this prosecution should end,” Mr Dreyfus said on Thursday.
What’s worse Morrison and Dutton who have proved to be clowns in preparing Australia for war want us to become one of the world’s top arms manufacturers. Dealers in weapons of mass death and destruction while sponsoring ANZAC Day as a National Day of Remembrance.
What is wrong with this picture? Discuss … This week Guardian Australia revealed the memorial had sought a new funding deal from Lockheed Martin despite being inundated with opposition from many veterans, historians and retired memorial staff. So, on what should be a day of quiet reflection – one far removed from the politicians who send young people to die in their wars but never go themselves, far removed from the companies that obscenely profit from combat and from those who’d obscure its callous truths – it pays to think about whether the war memorial remains the appropriate place for national Anzac commemorations. I’m not alone in thinking that the money of weapons manufacturers has sullied the place as a stage for official commemoration of Australian war dead.
Whichever way the Federal Circuit Court decides, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews’ decision to cancel Novak Djokovic’s visa has made Australia an international laughing stock. It highlights the dangers of ministers and prime ministers becoming involved in individual visa decisions for purely political purposes. But how did it come to this?LNP
Lawyers for Attorney-General Michaelia Cash have warned of national security issues if the trial of Bernard Collaery continues in public, writes Dechlan Brennan.
Australia accuses the Taliban of being inhumane yet demands refugees perform acts of magic. Our Government’s harshness shames us. Thank you Minister Hawke recently promoted by Scott Morrison for his service.
0 Leave a comment Advertisement Thousands of Afghans married to Australians are in limbo after the federal government said they would still require health checks to finalise visa applications to exit the Taliban-controlled country.
One of the Morrison government’s first acts was to kill off Malcolm Turnbull’s plan for greater transparency about how lobbyists interact with the federal government, leaving in place a system widely regarded as ineffective, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
No matter how you look at it, this is a sorry saga of secrecy, deceit and manipulation by Scott Morrison and one that has become all too familiar domestically. Although, this is the first time the Prime Minister’s preferred methods of operation have been demonstrated on the world stage. It appears that the U.S. expected Morrison would advise the French in a timely manner of his change of plans. This is a reasonable expectation of a reasonable leader, but the Americans had not yet realised the duplicitous and, some would say, cowardly nature of the man they are working with.
The rumblings are getting louder that the Morrison government is being increasingly perceived as not fit for purpose. A compelling witness for the prosecution came forward on the weekend with a devastating contribution on Twitter. South Australian independent senator Rex Patrick, an important interlocutor for the government when it tries to marshal the numbers in the upper house, did not mince his words. He tweeted he was “done with ’em”. His anger up in lights, accusing the Prime Minister of “gifting hard-earned taxpayer money to his business mates & donors makes him the most shameless & unethical PM ever”. That was just a start.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne said today all Afghan citizens who were in Australia on a temporary basis would be supported by the government, adding no Afghan visa holder will be asked to return to Afghanistan at this stage. The words “at this stage” fall well short of Australia’s moral and legal obligations to Afghan refugees, and provide little comfort to temporary visa holders. With a range of options to expand protection for people at risk both within and outside Afghanistan, the Australian government must stop attaching qualifiers to its response, and start acting decisively and with humanity.
After 46 days cooped up at Kirribilli House and The Lodge, being pummelled with blame for endless lockdowns, a bruised Prime Minister emerged from isolation this week determined to shift the narrative. Armed with new vaccination targets and the promise of greater freedom, Scott Morrison is determined to focus debate on the future rather than the past. With his political fate now tied to achieving the 70 per cent and 80 per cent vaccination thresholds agreed “in principle” by National Cabinet, Morrison is trying to stir the nation to get a jab, any jab, as quickly as possible. But that doesn’t mean he’s necessarily willing to throw everything at it. There are limits, apparently, to how far the Prime Minister will go, as his reaction to Labor’s cash-for-jab idea revealed.
By 2029 public schools will be underfunded by $60 billion; private schools overfunded by $6 billion. In the decade to 2019, private schools received an extra $2,164 per student, public schools just $334 per student. The huge costs to society as a result of such disadvantage includes higher unemployment, poor health and low economic growth but Minister Alan Tudge claims the school funding wars over. Trevor Cobbold reports.
Independent Australia has reported on the unconscionable Robodebt fiasco from the outset and its toll continues to mount, despite the recent class action.
My thought for the day Have we reached the point in politics where TRUTH is something that politicians have persuaded us to believe is, “Like alternative facts” rather than TRUTH based on factual evidence, arguments and assertions? John Lord
My thoughts for the day Honesty isn’t popular anymore. It doesn’t carry the weight of society’s approval it once did. * * * 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)
The notion of a “common good” was denied after the 70’s and the idea of ‘we’ was thrown overboard for ‘me’ and we certainly have felt it today. The common good was increasingly stamped out smothered by the pollution of the idea that self interest is what improves the world we live in. I may have been a lucky one but at 74 that can’t be said of the majority of my generation and for the ones that came later. Luck, good or bad, merit good or bad had little to do with the patterns of institutional behaviours and so called irrational economic systems we created. Short term benefits maybe have been come about but long term pain a certainty when maintaining the SYSTEM. Today you will see massive money being bet on the stockmarket against Australia’s overvalued retail Malls not for them. Money against Private Aged Care and yet this government insists on privatising everything and handing the barbarians oligarchs the key to the nation.(ODT)
The Federal Government will continue to deny Australians the right to clean air as long as it stays partnered with the fossil fuel industry, writes Dr David Shearman.
I listen to the ABC news and comment programs and note that they employ an increasing number of conservatives including former politicians, like Amanda Vanstone.
Yet conservatives as a whole continue to accuse the ABC of left-wing bias!
And because it is so obvious that the ABC is not offering exclusively left wing opinions, those who are firmly left-wing in their personal beliefs, see the ABC now as becoming right-wing!
It is a crazy situation when each side of politics demands balance in their national broadcaster, and, when they get it, interpret it as bias!
It is worse than crazy, it is dangerous, when that results in the government effectively introducing strong right-wing bias into media, by cutting funds to the ABC and giving funds to blatantly right-wing Murdoch media outlets.
You have to ask yourself – how, in a democracy, can this be seen as legitimate? – particularly when that same government is passing increasingly dictatorial legislation which reduces our freedoms.
Not a good look from a government with so slim a majority!
No wonder they do not want Parliament to be sitting and discussing the government’s flawed program!
Morrison is sitting pretty – at least until the next election – with a more than adequate income, a roof over his family’s heads, ability to take a holiday and enjoy life for brief spells, so he appears to be one of two things: the first is – someone totally lacking in empathy and compassion – which is bad enough – while the second is – an out and out sadist, getting pleasure from other people’s pain!
This is a fair assumption, too, considering for 100 years every new generation of Australians has moved out of their parents’ house with a good wage and started the climb up an ever-growing job ladder.
Mike Seccombe: ‘ It sounds like a marketing slogan, almost a cliché: in times of national crisis, Australians turn to the national broadcaster. But over the past six months or so, it has proved profoundly true.First came the bushfire crisis, when the ABC’s network of regional reporters distinguished themselves not just in reporting the disaster as it unfolded but also warning those in harm’s way. Then came the current coronavirus crisis….Continue Reading
Take the Nielsen Digital Content Ratings, which measure online interaction. In December last year, on the back of its bushfire coverage, the broadcaster surged into second place with a “unique audience” of more than 10 million – passing Nine and just behind news.com.au, which both fell.
By January, the ABC was No. 1 in the country, with an audience of 11.2 million, well ahead of the Murdoch news site. The most recent figures, for March, showed its audience up to 15.2 million, a 53 per cent gain in a single month, and almost three million ahead of its closest rival.
In one sense, this is unsurprising. Innumerable surveys over the decades have shown the ABC to be the most trusted media outlet, and one of the most trusted institutions in the country.
On another level, though, it is remarkable that the ABC has done so well during these particular crises – given that it has been working while grievously wounded. Since the current government came to power in 2014, the broadcaster has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and about 1000 jobs.
Staff members reveal the significant pressure they are under as the public broadcaster continues to face budget cuts of more than $100 million a year.
We don’t need people with small minds who long for the days of coal, copper and austerity. We need people with imagination about the opportunities of where we are headed and the foresight to start preparing now.
After active opposition to action on climate change, rorting on a grand scale in water management, no long term national drought strategy, and a woeful response to the bushfires, ScottyFromMarketing (SFM) is now positioning himself as some sort of crisis leader.
In actual fact, he is finally being led by advice from experts, and luckily able to share the burden with the Premiers, or pass the buck where necessary.
Will the conservatives when they have done with the philosophical ideals of the left once again take on the mantle of the capitalistic rights of the individual over the collective?
The way I see it at the moment is that all they are doing is governing for the common good and I have to salute that.
The philosophical arguments will come later.
My thought for the day
It’s difficult to caste yourself in a new light when you’re coming out of the darkness.
Under the Coalition’s “responsible budget management”, net debt has increased from $161,253 million at 31 August 2013, a week before the election, to $424,164 million at the end of February this year.
Still stuck in slogan land, Coalition language is changing.
We have gone from a “targeted, modest and scalable” response to “targeted, measured and scalable” and now Frydenberg is calling for “quick, strong and co-ordinated action” from the G20 countries.
The self-satisfied smirks, the ridiculing of the idea of well-being, and the draconian persecution of the unemployed have disappeared.
After more than a decade of their bullshit, all of a sudden, “we are all in this together”.
olddogthoughts 