Showing posts with label #TurnbullGovernmentFAIL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #TurnbullGovernmentFAIL. Show all posts
Wednesday 8 August 2018
Great Barrier Reef Foundation: waiting for the inevitable crash
Mainstream
media reports that Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Wentworth Malcolm Turnbull (former director Goldman
Sachs), Minister for Environment and Energy & Liberal MP for Kooyong Josh Frydenberg (former director Deutsche
Bank Australia) and Chair of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation & Member of
the Business Council of Australia John
Schubert (former chair Commonwealth Bank) met on 9 April 2018 to discuss the
allocation of a grant valued at in excess of AU$487.6 million to the
foundation.
It was also
reported that no
officials from the Department of the Environment and Energy were present at
that meeting when the grant offer was made and apparently accepted.
Less than ten weeks later the grant was formally approved
without meeting all relevant provisions in the Commonwealth
Grants Rules and Guidelines 2017.
The Great Barrier Reef
Foundation with a staff of only six full-time employees now has no more
than 6 financial years to spend this large sum, which represents est. 69.66 per cent of funds held in the federal government operated Reef Trust since 2014 and 97.52 per cent of additional funds received by the trust on 29 April 2018.
Leaving the Reef Trust with an unspecified amount to fulfil other commitments over the next six years.
Due to obvious time constraints, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation’s board and corporate 'advisers' need to have
a detailed financial and project action plan for 2018-19 immediately - if not
sooner.
I suspect that I am not alone in waiting for waste of resources, duplication of effort, poorly targeted projects, lack of verifiable outcomes and other instances of mismanagement to emerge over time, given the
slapdash way this grant was put together.
Australian Government, GrantConnect:
GA ID: GA9190
Agency: Department of the Environment and Energy
Approval Date: 20-Jun-2018
Publish Date: 12-Jul-2018
Category: Natural Resources - Conservation and Protection
Grant Term: 27-Jun-2018 to 30-Jun-2024
Value (AUD): $487,633,300.00 (GST inclusive where applicable)
Ad hoc/One-off: Yes
Aggregate Grant Award: No
PBS Program Name: DoTE 17/18 Program 1.1: Sustainable Management of
Natural Resources and the Environment
Grant Program: Reef Trust
Grant Activity: Reef Trust grant to the Great Barrier Reef
Foundation
Purpose: The project will deliver activities which are consistent
with the purposes of the Reef Trust Special Account Determination to achieve
the Reef Trust Objectives and assist to protect the Great Barrier Reef World
Heritage Area.
Internal Reference ID: 100000001841
Confidentiality - Contract: Yes
Confidentiality Reason(s) -
Contract: Other: Aspects of the
Co-Financing Plan and the Communication and Stakeholder Engagement Plan
Confidentiality - Outputs: No
Grant Recipient Details
Recipient Name: Great Barrier Reef Foundation
Recipient ABN: 82 090 616 443
Grant Recipient Location
Suburb: Brisbane
Town/City: Brisbane
Postcode: 4000
State/Territory: QLD
Country: AUSTRALIA
Grant Delivery Location
State/Territory: QLD
Country: AUSTRALIA
Australian Government, Department of the Environment
and Energy - Marine:
Third
Sector, 7
June 2018:
The Great Barrier Reef
Foundation (GBRF) has confirmed one of its board directors will step down as he
faces criminal charges for cartel conduct.
Stephen Roberts, an
investment banker and GBRF board director, has been charged by the Australian
Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) for allegedly playing a part of a
criminal cartel during a $2.5 billion deal.
ACCC Chairman, Rod Sims,
said: “These serious charges are the result of an ACCC investigation that has
been running for more than two years.”
The charges, which
included other banking chief executives and senior staff, were laid by the
Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions and will be determined in court.
Criminal
charges relating to an alleged cartel by Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and the ANZ
have been formally laid in relation to alleged cartel arrangements relating to
trading in ANZ shares following a $2.5 billion institutional share placement in
August 2015.
Sunday 5 August 2018
Tell me again why the Turnbull Government is insisting My Health Record will become mandatory by the end of October 2018?
It is not just ordinary health care consumers who have concerns about the My Health Record database, system design, privacy issues and ethical considerations.
It is not just the Turnbull Government which has not sufficiently prepared public and private health care organisations for the nationwide rollout of mass personal and health information collection - the organisations themselves are not ready.
Lewis Ryan (Academic GP Registrar) |
* 65% of GP Registrars have never discussed My Health Record with a patient
* 78% of GP Registrars have never received training in how to use My Health Record
* 73% of GP Registrars say lack of training is a barrier to using My Health Record
* 71% of GP Registrars who have used the My Health Record system say that the user interface is a barrier
* Only 21% of GP Registrars believe privacy is well protected in the My Health Record system
In fact Australia-wide only 6,510 general practice organisations to date have registered to use My Health Record and these would only represent a fraction of the 35,982 GPs practicing across the country in 2016-17.
UPDATE
Healthcare
IT News, 3
August 2018:
The Federal Government’s Health Care Homes is
forcing patients to have a My Health Record to receive chronic care management
through the program, raising ethical questions and concerns about
discrimination.
The government’s Health Care Homes trial provides
coordinated care for those with chronic and complex diseases through more than
200 GP practices and Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services
nationally, and enrolment in the program requires patients to have a My
Health Record or be willing to get one.
But GP and former AMA president Dr Kerryn
Phelps claimed the demand for patients to sign up to the national health
database to access Health Care Homes support is unethical.
“I have massive ethical concerns about that,
particularly given the concerns around privacy and security of My Health
Record. It is discriminatory and it should be removed,” Phelps told Healthcare IT News Australia.
Under a two-year trial beginning in late 2017, up
to 65,000 people are eligible to become Health Care Homes patients as part of a
government-funded initiative to improve care for those with long-term
conditions including diabetes, arthritis, and heart and lung diseases.
Patients in the program receive coordinated care
from a team including their GP, specialists and allied health professionals and
according to the Department of Health: “All Health Care Homes’ patients need to
have a My Health Record. If you don’t have a My Health Record, your care
team will sign you up.”
Phelps said as such patients who don’t want a My
Health Record have been unable to access a health service they would otherwise
be entitled to.
“When you speak to doctors who are in involved in
the Heath Care Homes trial, their experience is that some patients are refusing
to sign up because they don’t want a My Health Record. So it is a
discriminatory requirement.”
It has also raised concerns about possible future
government efforts to compel Australians to have My Health Records.
“The general feedback I’m getting is that the
Health Care Homes trial is very disappointing to say the least but,
nonetheless, what this shows is that signing up to My Health Record could just
be made a prerequisite to sign up for other things like Centrelink payments or
workers compensation.”
Human rights lawyer and Digital Rights Watch board
member Lizzie O’Shea claims patients should have a right to choose whether they
are signed up to the government’s online medical record without it affecting
their healthcare.
“It is deeply concerning to see health services
force their patients to use what has clearly been shown to be a flawed and
invasive system. My Health Record has had sustained criticism from privacy
advocates, academics and health professionals, and questions still remain to be
answered on the privacy and security of how individual's data will be stored,
accessed and protected,” O’Shea said. [my yellow highlighting]
Wednesday 1 August 2018
Turnbull Government prepares an end run around the Australian electorate?
In 1986 the Federal
Government couldn’t get the national electorate to accept the Australia
Card, a national identity card to be carried by all citizens.
Likewise in 2007 the wider electorate rejected the proposed Access Card, a national identity card with a unique personal identification number, which was to be linked to a centralised database expected to contain an unprecedented amount of personal and other information.
Federal Government also failed to have everyone embrace the idea of MyGov, a data sharing, one-stop digital portal for access to government services created in 2013. To date only 11.5 million people out of a population of over 24.9 million hold an account with MyGov.
Likewise in 2007 the wider electorate rejected the proposed Access Card, a national identity card with a unique personal identification number, which was to be linked to a centralised database expected to contain an unprecedented amount of personal and other information.
Federal Government also failed to have everyone embrace the idea of MyGov, a data sharing, one-stop digital portal for access to government services created in 2013. To date only 11.5 million people out of a population of over 24.9 million hold an account with MyGov.
When after three and a half years the
populace did not register in sufficient numbers for the so-called Personally Controlled Electronic Health
Record (PCEHR), an intrusive opt-in data retention system, government
changed tack.
It relabelled
PCEHR as My Health Record (MHR) in 2016 and broadened the number of agencies
which could access an individual’s personal/health information. Decreeing it would become
a mandatory data collection system applied to the entire Australian population,
with only a short an opt-out period prior to full program implementation1.
However, it
seems that the Turnbull Federal Government expects around 1.9 million people to
opt-out of or cancel their My Heath
Record in the next two months. Possibly with more cancellations to occur in
the future, as privacy and personal safety become issues due to the inevitable
continuation of MHR data breaches and the occurrence of unanticipated software vulnerabilities/failures.
So Turnbull
and his Liberal and Nationals cronies have a backup in place in 2018 called the Data
Sharing and Release Bill, which Introduces legislation to improve the
use and reuse of public sector data within government and with private
corporations outside of government, as well as granting access to and the
sharing of data on individuals and businesses that is currently otherwise prohibited.
The bill
also allows for the sharing of transaction, usage and product data
with service competitors and comparison services. An as yet unrealised provision which is currently being wrapped up in a pretty bow and called a consumer right - but one that is likely to be abused by the banking, finance, insurance, electricity/gas industry sectors.
The bill appears to override the federal privacy act where provisions are incompatible.
The bill appears to override the federal privacy act where provisions are incompatible.
This is a
bill voters have yet to see, because the Turnbull Government has not seen fit
to publish the bill’s full text. Only an
issues paper is available at present.
Notes:
1. Federal Government may have succeeded in retaining the personal details of every person who filled in the 2016 Census by permanently retaining these details and linking this information to their future Census information in order to track people overtime for the rest of their lives, but this win for government as Big Brother was reliant on stealth in implementation and was limited in what it could achieve at the time.
Because not everyone ended up with a genuine unique identification key as an unknown number of individual citizens and permanent residents (possibly well in excess of half a million souls) as acts of civil disobedience deliberately filled in the national survey forms with falsified information or managed to evade filling in a form altogether.
Tuesday 31 July 2018
A trio of Great Barrier Reef Foundation directors decline to appear before a senate committee inquiry
On 19 June
2018, the Senate referred the 2018-19 Budget measure Great Barrier Reef 2050
Partnership Program to the Environment and Communications
References Committee for inquiry and report on 15 August 2018.
The Great Barrier Reef Foundation made a written submission on 2 July 2018.
Yesterday it sent one of it newest directors (who apparently joined the board in the second half of 2017) and its managing director to give evidence before the inquiry.
However, three directors are seeking to avoid attending this inquiry - John
M Schubert (Chair), Grant
King and Paul
Greenfield.
This unwillingness is likely to be less about scheduling problems and more about close associations with petroleum, gas, mining* and finance industries, the foundation's membership list as well as the identity of donors who gave over $1.4 million to the foundation in 2017.
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
27 July 2018:
Three directors of a
Great Barrier Reef charity entrusted with almost half a billion dollars in
public money have refused to give evidence to a Senate inquiry scrutinising the
controversial deal, raising the prospect they will be forced to appear.
Confidential Senate
committee documents seen by Fairfax Media show that despite being offered five
dates at which to attend the inquiry, the directors of the Great Barrier Reef
Foundation say they are unavailable for questioning, variously citing overseas
travel commitments, medical appointments, board meetings and other unspecified
engagements.
The inquiry was launched
following the Turnbull government’s decision to grant the small,
business-focused charity $443 million to help rescue the reef. The
foundation has previously said it would “fully co-operate” with the probe.
The contentious Great
Barrier Reef Foundation grant is to be spent on projects such as water quality
improvements.
The Senate committee had
specifically requested their attendance. The trio comprises the organisation’s
chair John Schubert and board members Grant King and Paul Greenfield. Mr King
is president of the Business Council of Australia and Dr Greenfield chairs the
foundation’s scientific committee.
The foundation has
advised that managing director Anna Marsden and another director, John Gunn,
will give evidence.
The grant was awarded
without a tender process and the government’s own expert agencies were not
invited to apply.
The foundation plans to
use the grant to leverage additional funds from the private sector.….
Fairfax Media
understands the committee will ask the directors to find suitable dates to give
evidence and advise them that the committee has the power to summon witnesses.
According to the Parliament website, Senate committees rarely need to exercise
such powers as witnesses are “normally very willing to place their views and
the information they possess before the Senate to assist in an understanding of
issues”…..
details of the deal show
the foundation will receive almost $45 million to cover administration costs
incurred by disbursing the funds. Fairfax Media previously
reported the foundation would receive an upfront payment of $22.5
million plus interest. The recently published grant agreement shows the
interest will be capped at $22 million, and any additional interest will be
spent on reef projects.
The agreement also shows
many aspects of the deal will remain confidential, including the strategy used
by the foundation to attract private sector funds.
Greens oceans spokesman
Peter Whish-Wilson criticised the secrecy and questioned the influence
businesses would exert over how the grant was spent.
“How much of it is going
to be used to promote the companies and essentially greenwash some of these
businesses that are key polluters?” he said.
Businesses involved in
the foundation include heavy polluters such as AGL, Peabody Energy, Shell, Rio
Tinto and Qantas.
In a statement, the
department said it accepted that the foundation “does not wish information
about who it might approach or the strategies it might employ in its
fundraising to be made public”.
The administration costs
were “ reasonable given the scale of the grant” and any entity, including a
government agency, would need adequate funds for such purposes, it said.
The department said the
attendance at Senate hearings "is a matter for the foundation".
* The Great Barrier Reef Foundation classes Rio Tinto's RTFM Wakmatha (a Post Panamax bulk carrier on the Weipa to Gladstone run) as the foundation's research vessel in its so-called mission to save the reef.
UPDATE
As of 7.35pm 31 July 2018 the transcript of yesterday's public hearing has not been published.
However, mainstream media is reporting that Ms. Marsden gave evidence that in April 2018 Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull and Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg met privately with the Chair of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, John Schubert.
At this meeting an unsolicited and unscrutinised offer of over $45 million as a lump sum grant was made to Schubert as chair of the foundation.
This private meeting goes a long way towards explaining Schubert's reluctance to be questioned during this Senate inquiry.
Three former bankers meeting to carve out a large chunk of taxpayer dollars, probably felt comfortable enough to speak freely on a number of subjects.
UPDATE
As of 7.35pm 31 July 2018 the transcript of yesterday's public hearing has not been published.
However, mainstream media is reporting that Ms. Marsden gave evidence that in April 2018 Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull and Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg met privately with the Chair of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, John Schubert.
At this meeting an unsolicited and unscrutinised offer of over $45 million as a lump sum grant was made to Schubert as chair of the foundation.
This private meeting goes a long way towards explaining Schubert's reluctance to be questioned during this Senate inquiry.
Three former bankers meeting to carve out a large chunk of taxpayer dollars, probably felt comfortable enough to speak freely on a number of subjects.
Thursday 26 July 2018
Australia 2018: the Coal War continues
It should come as no surprise that in the Coal War being conducted by right-wing ideologues and climate change deniers consumers are predicted to be the losers under the Turnbull Government's National Energy Agreement (NEG) and, that Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is offering the same illusory $550 per annum saving on electricity costs per household promised but not delived by his predecessor Tony Abbott.
A COAG Energy Council Ministers meeting on August 2018 will reveal the final NEG design - a design which won't be published until after this meeting.
What is already broadly known about the NEG design appears to support allegations that the aim of this agreement is to cement the dominant position of fossil fuels in the national energy mix at the expense of renewable energy technologies.
REneweconomy, 20 July 2018:
As pressure mounts for
Australia’s states and territories to finalise their position on the National Energy
Guarantee, a new report has warned the federal government’s policy would fail
to achieve its most basic and important function: to lower energy costs for
consumers.
The report, commissioned
by Greenpeace Australia Pacific, says the Coalition’s NEG would in fact do the
opposite – raise electricity prices; as well as bringing investment in
large-scale renewables to a halt, and do nothing to combat climate change.
Based on analysis
conducted by energy and environment analysts RepuTex, the report models the
impact of the NEG under the government’s 26 per cent emissions reduction
target, compared to a more ambitious 45 percent target.
In both scenarios, as
shown in Figure 17 above, electricity prices are forecast to fall through to
2020 as more than 6GW of renewable energy enters the NEM under large-scale
renewable energy target (LRET).
“The increase in low
cost solar and wind generation will see the electricity supply steadily become
more competitive, with average prices less influenced by high priced gas, and
subsequently falling toward $60 MWh in 2020,” the report says.
But under the NEG, new
investment in renewables falls off a cliff after 2020, while the impact of the
reliability guarantee drives an increase in gas generation, prolongs the
phase-out of coal, and makes it harder for key new technologies, like battery
storage and demand management to compete.
“The result is the
continuation of a coal-dominated market with a fairly static picture for
large-scale renewables investment, with gas providing flexibility to meet
evening ramp ups,” the report says.
“As a result wholesale
prices rise above $70 per MWh after the closure of Liddell, and $80 per MWh
after the expected retirement of Yallourn in 2028.”
A more ambitious
emissions reduction target, however, of 45 per cent, would provide a signal for
investment in more solar and wind, driving prices down by around $20/MWh.
“The competitive
pressure from higher solar and wind energy is modelled to push wholesale prices
lower, eventually resulting in the closure of excess coal capacity” – around
9GW, in total, by 2030 RepuTex says.
Published
on Jul 23, 2018
The
crucial make or break meeting of State Energy Ministers is on 10 August. So if
we want block Turnbull's dirty energy plan, we need to move right now.
Tuesday 24 July 2018
Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt is not being truthful about My Health Record and he knows it
On 16 July 2018 the Australian Minister for Health and Liberal MP for Flinders, Gregory Andrew 'Greg' Hunt, characterised My Health Record as a "secure summary" of an individual's key health information.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) tells a rather different story.
One where at least 242 individual My Health Records have been part of mandatory data breach reports in 2015-16 to 2016-17, with nine of the 51 reported breach events involving "the unauthorised access of a healthcare
recipient’s My Health Record by a third party".
A story which also involves at least 96 instances of Medicare uploading data to the wrong digital health records and also uploading claim information to another 123 My Health Records apparently without the knowledge or consent of the persons in whose names these My Health Records had been created.
There were other instances where MyGov
accounts held by healthcare recipients were incorrectly linked to the My
Health Records of other healthcare recipients.
Prior to the database name change and system change from opt-in to opt-out there had been another 9 data breaches of an unspecified nature reported, involving an unknown number of what are now called My Health Records.
More instances are now being aired in mainstream and social media where My Health Records were created by DHS Medicare Repository Services or other agents/agencies without the knowledge or consent of the individual in whose name the record had been created.
Prior to the database name change and system change from opt-in to opt-out there had been another 9 data breaches of an unspecified nature reported, involving an unknown number of what are now called My Health Records.
More instances are now being aired in mainstream and social media where My Health Records were created by DHS Medicare Repository Services or other agents/agencies without the knowledge or consent of the individual in whose name the record had been created.
Healthcare IT News 16 July 2018 |
If this is how the national e-health database was officially functioning malfunctioning by 30 June 2017, how on earth is the system going to cope when it attempts to create millions of new My Health Records after 15 October 2018?
On the first day of the 60 day opt-out period about 20,000 people refused to have a My Health Record automatically created for them and at least one Liberal MP has also opted out, the Member for Goldstein and member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport Tim Wilson.
Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull has stated his view that mass withdrawals will not kill the national digital health records system - perhaps because he and his government are possibly contemplating adopting the following three coercive recommendations found amongst the thirty-one recommendations included in the Siggins Miller November 2016 Evaluation of the Participation Trials for the My Health Record: Final Report:
NOTES
OAIC annual reports:
On the first day of the 60 day opt-out period about 20,000 people refused to have a My Health Record automatically created for them and at least one Liberal MP has also opted out, the Member for Goldstein and member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport Tim Wilson.
Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull has stated his view that mass withdrawals will not kill the national digital health records system - perhaps because he and his government are possibly contemplating adopting the following three coercive recommendations found amongst the thirty-one recommendations included in the Siggins Miller November 2016 Evaluation of the Participation Trials for the My Health Record: Final Report:
20. Use all mechanisms
available in commissioning and funding health services as vehicles to require
the use of the My Health Record to obtain funds where practical.
21. Consider ways to
require the use of the My Health Record system by all healthcare providers and
how to best use the Government’s purchasing power directly (e.g. in the aged
care sector), via new initiatives as they arise (such the Health Care Home
initiative) or via PHNs commissioning clinical services (e.g. require use of
the My Health Record system in all clinical and aged care services that receive
Commonwealth funds). Such requirements should have a timeframe within which
healthcare providers need to become compliant.
22. Explore with health
insurers how they could encourage preferred suppliers and clients to use the My
Health Record system as part of their push for preventive care and cost
containment.
That the My Health Record is not about improving health service delivery for individual patients is indicated by the fact that a My Health Record is retained by the National Repositories Service for between 30 and up to 130 years after death and, even during an individual's lifetime can be accessed by the courts, police, other government agencies and private corporations listed as research organisations requiring medical/lifestyle information for what is essentially commercial gain, at the discretion of the Secretary of the Department of Health or the Digital Health Agency Systems Operator. See: My Health Records Act 2012 (20 September 2017), Subdivision B - s63 to s70
To put it bluntly, this national database will allow federal government to monitor the personal lives of Australian citizens more closely, enforce civil & criminal law, monetise collated data for its own benefit and, weaponize the personal information collected anytime it feels threatened by dissenting opinion.
NOTES
OAIC annual reports:
The Guardian, 22 July 2018:
Australia’s impending My
Health Record system is “identical” to a failed
system in England that was cancelled after it was found to be selling
patient data to drug and insurance companies, a British privacy expert has
said.
My Health Record is a
digital medical record that stores
medical data and shares it between medical providers. In the UK, a similar
system called care.data was announced in 2014, but cancelled in 2016 after an
investigation found that drug and insurance companies were able to buy
information on patients’ mental health conditions, diseases and smoking habits.
The man in charge of
implementing My Health Record
in Australia, Tim Kelsey, was also in charge of setting up care.data.
Phil Booth, the
coordinator of British privacy group Medconfidential, said the similarities
were “extraordinary” and he expected the same privacy breaches to occur.
“The parallels are
incredible,” he said. “It looks like it is repeating itself, almost like a
rewind or a replay. The context has changed but what is plainly obvious to us
from the other side of the planet, is that this system seems to be the 2018
replica of the 2014 care.data.” [my yellow highlighting]
North Coast
Voices , 22 July 2018, Former
Murdoch journalist in charge of MyHealth records –what could possibly go wrong?
UPDATE
Australian
Parliamentary Library, Flagpost,
23 July 2018:
Section 70 of the My Health Records Act
2012 enables the System Operator (ADHA) to ‘use or disclose
health information’ contained in an individual’s My Health Record if the ADHA
‘reasonably believes that the use or disclosure is reasonably necessary’ to,
among other things, prevent, detect, investigate or prosecute any criminal
offence, breaches of a law imposing a penalty or sanction or breaches of a
prescribed law; protect the public revenue; or prevent, detect, investigate or
remedy ‘seriously improper conduct’. Although ‘protection of the public
revenue’ is not explained, it is reasonable to assume that this might include
investigations into potential fraud and other financial offences involving
agencies such as Centrelink, Medicare, or the Australian Tax Office. The
general wording of section 70 is a fairly standard formulation common to
various legislation—such as the Telecommunications
Act 1997—which appears to provide broad access to a wide range of agencies
for a wide range of purposes.
While this should mean
that requests for data by police, Home Affairs and other authorities will be
individually assessed, and that any disclosure will be limited to the minimum
necessary to satisfy the request, it represents a significant reduction in the
legal threshold for the release of private medical information to law
enforcement. Currently, unless a patient consents to the release of their
medical records, or disclosure is required to meet a doctor’s mandatory
reporting obligations (e.g. in cases of suspected child sexual abuse), law
enforcement agencies can only access a person’s records (via their doctor) with
a warrant, subpoena or court order....
It seems unlikely that
this level of protection and obligation afforded to medical records by the
doctor-patient relationship will be maintained, or that a doctor’s judgement
will be accommodated, once a patient’s medical record is uploaded to My Health
Record and subject to section 70 of the My Health Records Act 2012. The
AMA’s Guide
to Medical Practitioners on the use of the Personally Controlled Electronic
Health Record System (from 2012) does not clarify the situation.
Although it has
been reported that
the ADHA’s ‘operating policy is to release information only where the request
is subject to judicial oversight’, the My Health Records Act 2012 does
not mandate this and it does not appear that the ADHA’s operating policy is
supported by any rule or regulation. As legislation would normally take
precedence over an agency’s ‘operating policy’, this means that unless the ADHA
has deemed a request unreasonable, it cannot routinely require a law
enforcement body to get a warrant, and its operating policy can be ignored or
changed at any time.
The Health
Minister’s assertions that no one’s data can be used to ‘criminalise’
them and that ‘the Digital Health Agency has again reaffirmed today that
material … can only be accessed with a court order’ seem at odds with the
legislation which only requires a reasonable belief that disclosure of a
person’s data is reasonably necessary to prevent, detect, investigate or
prosecute a criminal offence…..
Although the disclosure
provisions of different agencies may be more or less strict than those of the
ADHA and the My Health Records Act 2012, the problem with the MHR system
is the nature of the data itself. As the Law Council of Australia notes,
‘the information held on a healthcare recipient’s My Health Record is regarded
by many individuals as highly sensitive and intimate’. The National Association
of People with HIV Australia has
suggested that ‘the department needs to ensure that an individual’s My
Health Record is bound to similar privacy protections as existing laws relating
to the privacy of health records’. Arguably, therefore, an alternative to the
approach of the current scheme would be for medical records registered in the
MHR system to be legally protected from access by law enforcement agencies to
at least the same degree as records held by a doctor.
Sunday 8 July 2018
Australia 2018: just when registered jobseekers thought it couldn’t get any worse
The
Guardian, 2
July 2018:
All across the country
unemployed Australians are today bracing themselves for more stress and
suffering, as the Coalition unleashes its new needlessly cruel benefit
sanctions regime.
Starting 1 July, the
Turnbull government is granting job agencies new, unprecedented powers to
punish Newstart recipients for failing to comply with gruelling compliance
demands.
Under this new “demerit
point” system, agencies will now impose payment suspensions if (they believe)
jobseekers are behaving inappropriately, or failing to attend appointments and
activities like Work for the Dole without a“reasonable
excuse”.
Alarmingly,
jobseekers currently battling drug or alcohol related illnesses are now no
longer (“reasonably”) exempt from activities, nor safe from financial
punishment.
Until 1 July 2018,
Centrelink has been able to overturn any job agency penalties if it deems that
they’re unfair or will lead to “extreme poverty”. It will lose much of this
power. Now, job agencies will be able to punish their unemployed clients
without government regulation or oversight.
Unemployed workers will
also lose significant powers of appeal. They will have to passively accept many
of the decisions ordered against them. In short, privately owned job agencies –
many of which are for-profit private companies – will wield unlimited,
unchecked power over the unemployed.
Under this system,
unemployed workers can be completely cut off Newstart if they refuse to attend
unsafe work for the dole activities. Even though 64%
of sites are failing to meet basic safety standards, jobseekers will be
forced to accept any dangerous, hostile conditions they’re met with.
Given that government
funding to job agencies is tied to outcomes, such as placing participants into
work for the dole, there is little incentive for job agencies to treat
unemployed workers fairly. On the contrary – there are significant financial
incentives to abuse unemployed workers.
Already this abuse has reached crisis proportions.
In 2015-16, job agencies
imposed a record 2m financial penalties on the unemployed.
As noted by the
National Welfare Rights Network, roughly half of these penalties were found
to be unfair and were rejected by Centrelink. This means that in 2015-16,
more than 1 million unemployed people had their payments cut off when they did
nothing wrong.
This kind of error rate
is staggering – in any other sector, it would surely result in a royal
commission. Earlier this year, a suspected 5%
error rate at the Australian Tax Office resulted in an immediate government
investigation.
Clearly, a culture of
lawlessness and unaccountability already pervades the employment services
sector. Under the new “demerit point’”scheme, this $10bn industry will enjoy
even more freedom to run riot. The 800,000 unemployed workers attending job
agencies will be left to fend for themselves.....
The author of
this article is Jeremy Poxon, media officer for the Australian Unemployed
Workers Union.
Saturday 7 July 2018
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