Even when the rich and powerful fall out, the house – their wealth – always wins. Michael Sainsbury examines the latest goings on surrounding Sydney’s Crown Casino.
The grubby nexus between Australian business, politics and the mainstream media has been laid bare in a leaked series of explosive emails from James Packer to senior Nine Entertainment executives, journalists and chairman Peter Costello.
The emails alleged that Costello was paid as a secret Crown lobbyist in 2011 for a year, a claim he denies.
With facial recognition becoming increasingly sophisticated, it will soon be possible to monitor an entire population with minimal effort, discouraging people from participating in political protests and social movements, writes Manal al-Sharif.
Foreign gas giants Shell, Chevron, Exxon are enjoying an explosion in revenue while paying virtually no income tax and forking out just spare change in royalties. What’s the scam?
Rising profits levels among the Australian corporate sector have been identified as one of the key causes for increasing inflation levels across the country, a new report has shown.
If Australians knew the extent of the collection and abuse of their online activities and biometric information, they would be marching in the streets demanding decent regulations that protect them against such violations. Unfortunately, when it comes to tech, legislation is either uninformed, out of date, or just embarrassing. That left tech companies on their own to self-regulate, and it’s often in favour of the investors and shareholders. What’s worse, Australians are left in the dark and unprotected when it comes to their digital rights.
Across Australia, power prices are rising exponentially while corporations rake in billions. It’s not the product of shortages or instability but of a market designed to let for-profit companies hold the public ransom.
It’s good news for one brave individual who exposed an egregious act of Australian spying, but protections for other whistleblowers remain inadequate, writes Callum Foote.
As fossil fuel corporations reap fabulous profits at the expense of Australian gas and electricity customers, the gas lobby is running a propaganda campaign calling for Australia to power the world, help Ukraine, let “the market” do its thing. The reality is there is no properly functioning market and this is all a PR distraction to combat the obvious solution to the crisis, that the government needs to earmark gas supply for East Coast customers. Callum Foote fact-checks the finance press.
When Australia and China remain the best of enemies and will continue to be
China represents the largest market for Australian resource and energy exports, making up 42 per cent of all exports in 2020-21. The next highest share was Japan at 11 per cent.
In one of his last moves as a senator, Rex Patrick has advanced his battle against the National Archives to release important documents relating to John Howard and Alexander Downer’s undermining of Timor-Leste in the early 2000s. Callum Foote reports on the latest efforts to end the persecution and secret trials of whistleblower Bernard Collaery.
The Qantas board is offering staff an $87m bribe as it slashes real wages and conditions. As ever, shareholders and Qantas fat cats get the cream, writes Michael Sainsbury.
Prepare to subsidise fossil fuel plants indefinitely. That is the message this morning as, in the wake of Coalition dithering, the new government grooms Australian energy customers for more of the same energy policy. It’s the Richard Wilkins solution. Callum Foote and Michael West report.
Nine years of Coalition dithering on climate and energy have surely taken their toll. Way behind the eight-ball on transition to renewable energy, the new government is now grooming Australians to subsidise multinational fossil fuel corporations to keep their polluting coal and gas power stations running way into the future.
The public grooming comes via Murdoch and Nine media this morning to extend the life of fossil fuel plants and entrench the power of the very same corporations which have just extorted the energy market operator AEMO by threatening to pull supply out of the grid unless richly compensated.
Australia’s universities have been corporatised and compromised, and business schools are at the vanguard of academic capture. Jeanne Ryckmans investigates the rise and fall of the five-star travelling former professor who led the high-life on public grants.
We aren’t talking big business here but small working-class businesses. It’s always the case that the lobbyists for the top end of town throw cats among the pigeons in order to have Australia’s poor or lower 40% appear to be fighting among themselves so the media have something to amplify. Business has a united front, workers don’t given the LNP has reduced the Unions to a shadow of what they once were this century.
There is no talk of dropping the stage 3 tax cuts for the wealthy is there? Only a rise of wages, less than a packet of cigarettes, is what will send “Australia’s Businesses Broke”. A dollar an hour is the tipping point, a cup of coffee a day. Tony Abbott sent the whole fucking Car industry and allied services to the wall and got less of a response from the media. A whole sector of industry simply disappeared. The LNP gave QANTAS a bailout of billions to “keep its workers” and now we see it didn’t. Where did the money go?
Businesses could be “sent to the brink” of collapse by the size of the increase to the minimum wage, according to industry groups.
CITIC the Chinese coal mining juggernaut churns out $8bn in revenue from its suite of Australian coal mines, gets government subsidies, but pays almost no tax and actually faxes in its one financial report to regulators. What’s the scam?
Labor is back in power. It is a rare gift. The ALP has held the reins of government for less than a third of the time in Australia’s history. And the party seems doomed to get the call from the electorate just as trouble is brewing.
Labor has won a working parliamentary majority in a sullen, angry country. Perhaps more by pure luck than design, Australia has avoided a hung parliament. That’s the good news. But for this Labor government to do us proud, it will have to do something humble. Call the Greens into its fold. There is no alternative in the long term, writes Mark Sawyer.
Australia’s Shame – AG Michaela Cash took lessons from the Steve Bannon playbook. Control the Bureaucracy. Wasn’t that Lenin’s playbook?
Just before ousted Prime Minister Scott Morrison called the election, his Attorney-General Michaelia Cash stacked the Administrative Appeals Tribunal with a host of Liberal Party mates. Political appointments are out of control and the AAT needs to be killed off, writes Greg Barns SC.
Scott Morrison is rightly being flayed for the last ignominious act of his campaign. On Saturday he announced that an asylum seeker boat had been intercepted on its way to Australia from Sri Lanka.
The Liberal Party followed this up with a text message mailout. Unforgivably, the Operation Sovereign Borders Commander was dragged into a political campaign. Alas such shenanigans have happened before and will happen again. Australian campaigns are littered with last-minute scare campaigns that went wrong. Generally sprung by the flailing side in the last few days, they are the Aussie equivalent of the ”October Surprise” of US presidential campaign
In the week after the 2019 election, everyone was talking about Queensland. If not for the Sunshine State, Bill Shorten would have been elected prime minister and Anthony Albanese would be a mid-tier minister. Now, perhaps not enough people are talking about Queensland, at least outside Queensland.
I do believe Mark Sawyer underestimates the loathing all States have for Peter Dutton outside of Qld and then add Barnaby Joyce to the mix.
It might only take the Coalition adopting a new climate target to get back into the game. Dutton, who must know he’ll get only one election, will decide that winning is more important than pleasing the far right. And winning is something he does.
Albanese will have a small majority. Smart leaders govern as if they wield a huge majority anyway. But Labor can’t be credible at its current level of support. Labor and the Greens need to stop being the best of frenemies. Anthony and Adam, it’s time to make it legal.
Hating Barnaby Hating Scott Hating Barnaby Hating….
In campaign debates, in radio stations, television studios, people to people encounters all over the nation, the name Barnaby Joyce comes up as the biggest brake on Australia making a greater commitment to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. Does the leader of the National Party deserve the brickbats? Maybe we should look to our backyards, writes Mark Sawyer.
Around this time in the 2019 campaign, the confidence that was bubbling throughout the Labor camp burst out into full hubristic glory.
One leading daily posed the ALP team in chiaroscuro, looking one part Sopranos cast, one part corporate raiders. Bristling with purpose, they looked. The new crew. The mean machine. The none-too subtle message: Bill Shorten’s team is ready, ready to rule.
Meanwhile Chris Bowen’s Facebook page featured himself and four sober-suited colleagues in an impersonation of a high-end law firm: himself, deputy leader Tanya Plibersek, a chin-stroking Shorten, Jim Chalmers and Penny Wong.
When the serious quintet’s big play went unstuck, one user commented: ”All dressed up and nowhere to go.”
Contrast all that with Campaign ’22. Yes, Albo has modeled some groovy threads to go with his trimmer physique. But the group photoshoot has gone the way of Shorten’s jibes about the big end of town. No more moody magnificence.
Labor candidates emphasise how rare it is for their party to win from opposition. The years it has happened since the war are cited like bingo numbers: 72, 83, 07. It’s the talk of the poker player holding a straight flush.
What lessons have been learnt in the wake of the funding rorts that have embroiled the Morrison government? Rosie Williams finds that the problem is worse than the most pessimistic assumptions.
Since 2010, the self-styled ‘’global provider of guaranteed, innovative and tailored healthcare solutions’’ has received $1.8 billion in federal government tenders. Of that, $1.3 billion came from a single tender for face masks made in 2020. In 2020, Aspen Medical was given a $1.3 billion contract to supply face masks to the Federal Government despite having no experience in large-scale procurement reports the ABC. Until then, the most the company earnt in federal government contracts in a year was $124 million in 2014, with most years showing a max of $30 million.
The latest Coalition climate catastrophe, Senator Matt Canavan declaring national net zero policy “dead,” rings alarm bells for what’s ahead if the Morrison government is returned to office. Meanwhile, our new rival in the Pacific region, China, is seizing the mantle of climate leadership. Blair Palese reports on Australia’s greatest failure as a nation.
It’s time. Time to consider the unthinkable – another term in opposition for Labor. What would it look like? Mark Sawyer looks at a post-Albanese era as if one were fated to begin on May 22.
The Morrison government has slashed renewables funding and stacked Australia’s renewable energy agencies with fossil fuel executives, leaving the likes of ARENA, CEFC and Snowy Hydro controlled by potentially regressive political appointees for years. Callum Foote reports.
From Murdoch whose organization was busted bugging the phones of dead girls, celebrities, and politicians comes an Easter Gift. Yes, Murdoch who pretended to be old, without memory, sick, and frail like Alan Bond trying not to be jailed. That same sleezy Murdoch who sacrificed his staff and a major paper to flee to America. Today’s Murdoch Putin’s ally in Russia and the enemy of Democracy in the US. Is now playing the 5th columnist in Australia’s 2022 election despite despite the fact that Scott Morrison is a leader he doesn’t like because he can rid us of him later.
For most, Easter is a time for rest and renewal. For Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp it is a time to keep shaking the pom-poms for the Coalition and thrashing Labor. At least Nine’s mastheads SMH and Age ran on the Coalition’s mega-pork this morning; some $55bn in public money being spayed about to buy votes. For their Murdoch peers in the media duopoly, there was no such attempt at balance; they were still pinning their ears back with inflated claims, “Labor’s jobs plan to cost billions”. Like their fallacious Darwin Port and Tasmanian loggers coverage this week, the fear-mongering over jobs was not based on any substance. Substance is not their strongest suit. Going into week two of the campaign, Albo’s starts again with the large handicap of a Coalition-subservient media cheering on incumbent Scott Morrison.
Lovely! the SMH, AFR, The Australian, Age and the Murdoch tabloids are all running with a story about Scott Morrison forking out $220m in grants to chop down trees. 73,000 jobs they reckon!
You know who I am I’m forever blowing bubbles Morrison
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has “let her rip” on the pristine native forests of Tasmania today. It was his “This is coal” moment for another dying industry. Former Greens leader, farmer and 40 year logging activist Christine Milne explores the government’s latest bizarre and destructive pork barrel.
Sales, a veteran ABC interviewer, did not lay a glove on the marketing maestro and the interview ended with Sales smiling, “Thank you Prime Minister”: the sort of sardonic smile which – in the land of Insiderville which is the Canberra Press Gallery, denotes a doff of the cap, an acknowledgment that yes, okay, you sure can spin the proverbial PM. “You’re good, a bit too good”. There was also the obligatory whine that the PM should come on more often. But why would he when he has the cheesily fawning Paul Murray on Sky, or 2GB, or fan-man Chris Uhlmann on Nine as his go-to?
To get to the point, Labor may be streets ahead in the polls but Scott Morrison is now in his element. His government is a shambles but, with the three major media houses backing him, and the ABC and others truckling to their daily news agendas, Anthony Albanese will have to win this thing, not wait for Morrison to lose it. The propagandists of News Corp will run hard for Morrison. Already, according to their questionable Newspoll, the gap has narrowed sharply. Sure, they want a contest, it sells their propaganda sheets, but given all the subsidies and favors which Rupert Murdoch, Nine Entertainment, and Seven have wrung out of the Coalition they will surely be barracking for the Coalition and bagging Labor till the cows come home.
Minerals giant Rio Tinto has counted the $769 million in tax paid by its employees in Australia in its tally of tax paid by itself in 2021. The minerals and fossil fuel industry frequently engage in PR attempts to bolster its image of contributing to the economy, securing its social license to operate. Chief among these efforts is spruiking the amount of taxes and royalties paid. In 2021, Rio claims $11.1 billion in taxes and royalties have been paid in Australia alone. The first point is that royalties and taxes are not equivalent payments. Royalties are the cost of purchasing commodities from the Australian people. The second point is that Rio has claimed the taxes paid by its employees as its own.
Sparke Helmore Lawyers, who the government used to conduct the investigation into potential sexual misconduct in the Australian Parliament prayer room by Liberal MPs, has received more than $162 million from the Morrison government.
Two days on, deafening silence. Not a word from the corporate media and the national broadcasters. Despite the creeping visions now planted in so many brains, despite the high public interest in this story.Allegations of senior Liberal party figures cavorting in the Parliament prayer room with prostitutes. Allegations sourced directly from a document, an investigation by the government-aligned law firm Sparke Helmore.Yet another raid by the police on a whistleblower. Still silence.The document from the law firm Sparke Helmore was leaked to YouTube investigator Jordan Shanks, aka FriendlyJordies, who published it and produced a compelling Youtube video on the scandal which had clearly been vetted by lawyers.
Tucked away in the maelstrom of Budget announcements is a measure which turns private pension funds into the financial equivalent of a magic pudding; valuable, inexhaustible and sheltered from tax until ready to be passed on to the next generation. Harry Chemay unveils the quadrella of self-managed superannuation lurks which favour wealthy retirees. While many Australians were looking for relief from cost of living pressures, wealthy retirees had another reason to celebrate the recently delivered Budget. It continues a measure that turns their private pension funds into the financial equivalent of a magic pudding; valuable, inexhaustible and sheltered from tax until ready to be passed on to the next generation.
Anthony Albanese’s aged care push is smart policy. It’s the right thing to do too, but it does not address the fundamental problem of a privatised system and its profit-takers. The Morrison government tossed some money at the problem, much went to the middlemen. The Opposition, to its credit, is having a go. But is Labor leader Anthony Albanese on the right track? Wherever you look, the failures of privatisation are myriad, often spectacular. Billions wasted on JobActive the privatised jobs service, gold-plating in electricity, privatised prisons, the gutting of the bureaucracy in favour of consultants, the sale of Sydney Airport, Transurban’s taxing toll-road monopolies, profiteers in the home care scheme.
How often do we see on the news “500 people are hiding in X theater” only to see it bombed by the enemy. Or, “we are going to Syria to bomb the mother fuckers”. Governments may hold some secrets but they sure as hell more often than not telegraph their punches for domestic currency to the enemy. It makes you wonder whose side their on.
Currently, Peter Dutton is sending promised “armored vehicles” to Ukraine. In reality reality “Peter Dutton doesn’t know how to get promised armored vehicles to Ukraine.” The government announced it was sending 70k tons of coal to Ukraine. It might get there sometime next year if they can find a ship. However, Poland exports coal and is Ukraine’s neighbor and could get it tomorrow. Dumb is what Morrison is but always the ad man selling pet rocks, or cans of fresh air and advertising “fake news”
For decades, minor parties in Australia have introduced bills seeking to give parliament greater control over military deployments. In the debates and inquiries that have followed, a wide range of objections have been raised. We are told that, as military deployments are often made on the basis of confidential information, this information cannot be publicly disclosed to the parliament. Another common objection is that parliamentary decision-making would reduce the flexibility and speed needed to carry out military operations safely and effectively. Most of the opposition to war powers reform, received as part of Michael West Media’s ongoing survey of politicians, follows similar lines. You can see myriad responses here. However, some experts think there might be another reason — one that Australian pollies may be uncomfortable acknowledging.
This week on Q&A Barnaby Joyce said “we are a government who only spends money where we see a return on investment and growth in GDP”. Well we know that!! So little has been devoted to Age-Care, flood disasters, pensioners, job seekers yet debt blew out 400% above 2013 levels. It went from 10% of GDP to over 40% and is heading to 50%. So where did the money go and why doesn’t it matter now? It mattered ever so badly when the ALP were in government. The LNP are currently screaming taxes taxes will go up under the ALP yet they have constantly been the highest under the LNP.
The scam is that flood and fire victims and other ordinary Australians don’t have lobbyists and don’t pay political parties. What are they thinking, that politicians will just help them because …?
Cruelling somewhat the Budget pitch euphoria in corporate media today, The Australia Institute has sallied forth with its annual analysis of hand-outs to coal and gas multinationals, state and federal, finding they cost the public $11.6b in 2021-22, or $22k per minute.
It’s a $1.3b (12%) increase on last year thanks to the feds. Across all budgets there is $55b committed, which is 11 times the balance of Australia’s Emergency Response Fund ($4.8b in Dec 2021), while $11.6b in 2021-22 is 56 times the budget of the National Recovery and Resilience Agency.
The subsidies cost the Federal government more than it spent on public schools in the same year ($9.7b). Now *that’s* a scam … and we are yet to see the Budget.
After two weeks, two long weeks of fawning Budget coverage, leak after leak, story after story brown-nosing the Coalition, reciting Treasurer Frydenberg’s talking points; after all that free publicity, what do they do? They miss the story. Michael West reports.
Like Trump, there is a trail of NDAs set in place to prevent us from knowing his past history. Why would that be? There are no such barriers to Anthony Albanese
”Clearly not within scope,” said the department when Jommy Tee went on a Freedom of Information hunt for reasons a future prime minister’s first Australian government job ended in acrimony. Our correspondent found that while the Prime Minister seeks inquiries into the conduct of others, information about his departure from Tourism Australia is kept out of sight.
But we won’t be opting for an improvement in wages, pensions or welfare in the long term and will keep a tight grip on any public sector union growth by privatizing and outsourcing and shrinking it in order to keep better worker conditions from rising. We will appoint politically biased department heads of our choosing along with government advisers and spin doctors at the highest wage levels to ensure our desired outcomes are met. The problem is Australians expect too much government action in their favor when 50% don’t even vote for us.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says his fourth budget will provide practical measures to ease cost of living pressures, as the government gears up for a federal election in May. While he was light on detail in a series of television interviews on Sunday, Mr Frydenberg said Tuesday’s budget will contain responsible and practical measures, and he does not expect it will add to prevailing inflation pressures. “There will be a number of measures in the budget that go to the heart of the cost of living issue,” Mr Frydenberg told ABC television.
Why Victoria is Progressive not because of Greg Hunt
“When Jack the Ripper died he saved the lives of women across London,” Bernie Dowling, Twitter.
So it was that Health Minister Greg Hunt threw a presser today in which Greg was in no arguing mood when his colleague the Member for Moncrieff Angie Bell praised him for saving 40,000 lives.
Only the most hardened cynic would decry the appearance of Jenny Morrison in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph helping her husband Scott announce $58 million in funding for endometriosis. This debilitating illness affects 11% of Australian women and girls, of which Jenny is one.
It’s worth noting, however, that Mrs M did not come forward with her story when Health Minister Greg Hunt announced $20 million for endometriosis funding as a part of the $353.9 million in women’s health funding in the budget last year. Though of course, that was a full year away from an election.
The Tele spread is certainly another insight into the turbocharged media machine at the PM’s disposal as he chases every last vote.
On what grounds do we put boots on the ground? Australian politicians have been mostly unwilling to cede control of declarations of war to parliament. When it comes to committing troops, our closest security partners have moved towards parliamentary votes, but in most cases the leadership reserves the final say, writes Zacharias Szumer.
Another way confectionary and processed food manufacturers circumvent disclosures on sugar content is by listing a multitude of confusing ingredients which, in fact, are all different forms of sugar, they include: dextrose, maltose, glucose, fructose, corn sweetener, honey, corn syrup, sucrose, sorghum syrup, sorbitol, lactose, molasses, syrup, fruit juice concentrate and high-fructose corn syrup. All of these compounds have the exact same effect on the human body as pure sugar, some would argue worse because they are being consumed by people who do not realise they are ingesting excess sugar. Even Harvard University has moved ahead from its shaky 1960s position, now finding, “Beverage companies spend billions of dollars marketing sugary drinks, yet generally rebuffs suggestions that its products and marketing tactics play any role in the obesity epidemic.”
The Australian Greens had the environmental vote sewn up. But the 2022 election may be the one where the tide went out for the party after 40 years of passion and picketing and manoeuvring. It may be the election where parliamentary activism on clean energy is entrusted instead to a breed of reassuring, female ‘’climate leaders’’ who better reflect the aspirations of middle Australia, writes Mark Sawyer.
Murdoch couldn’t save the LNP in South Australia the State that gave birth to his propagandist empire
The ABC had a choice this week: amplify Murdoch’s toxic “Mean Girls” coverage, or expose News Corp for exploiting the death of Kimberley Kitching for political purposes. It made the wrong choice. New management is in order. Michael West reports. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is the story, not the sad, sudden death of Senator Kimberly Kitching. And certainly not the grotesque narrative being peddled by News Corp’s rabid propagandists. Manslaughter, that is, manslaughter by Labor senators Penny Wong, Katy Gallagher and Kristina Keneally.
olddogthoughts 
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