Pauline Hanson’s One Nation sought US National Rifle Association support for a social media campaign during the 2019 federal election campaign and millions in political funding from gun lobby & Koch Brothers

Pauline Hanson's One Nation (PHON) political party currently only has two members in the Australian Parliament and they sit in the Senate.

PHON wants to hold the balance of power in the Australian Parliament after the May 2019 federal election.

In order to gain the required seats in the House of Representatives, in September 2018 the party was secretly promising to subvert Australia's gun laws in an attempt to gain millions from the powerful US gun lobby to assist its federal election campaign.

https://youtu.be/QYyX7O02yOg

Al Jazeera, YouTube, 25 March 2019:

A three-year Al Jazeera investigation into the U.S. gun lobby has uncovered an effort by an Australian political party to seek millions of dollars in political funding while offering to soften strict, anti-gun laws in Australia.

Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit used concealed cameras to track ‘Pauline Hanson’s One Nation’, a right-wing, anti-immigration party, as representatives travelled to Washington, D.C. to hold meetings with the National Rifle Association and other lobby groups, as well as the energy giant Koch Industries.

One Nation’s Chief of Staff James Ashby was accompanied on the U.S. visit by Steve Dickson, the party’s leader in the Australian state of Queensland and a candidate in upcoming Australian elections. Ashby and Dickson were recorded seeking up to $US20 million for their election war chest while promising to soften laws, put in place following a massacre in Australia in 1996.

The strict Australian gun laws have often been condemned by the NRA.

Al Jazeera approached all the groups and individuals featured in this programme. 

https://youtu.be/_zIodf0o3T0

After meetings with the US gun lobby Ashby and Dickson met with a representative of the Koch Brothers. Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch, are the billionaire co-owners of Koch Industries - one of the largest privately-held companies in the world - who are known to support far-right political parties, movements and policies.

Despite there being a federal legislated ban on foreign political donations since November 2018 the Al Jazeera video footage clearly shows that just weeks after this ban was put in place Pauline Hanson and One Nation were still considering seeking support from the US gun lobby and the Koch Brothers.

Having been publicly exposed One Nation now denies it had any intention of watering down national gun laws. 

However, it is clear from the Al Jazeera video that One Nation was promising to open doors for the National Rifle Association with the aim of assisting that exact purpose, because it believed that any significant increase in One Nation representation in the Australian Parliament after the next federal election meant it would have the government "by the balls". 

The video also reveals that it was canvassing the possibility of concealing any funding it might receive from the US gun lobby by arranging for the NRA to create and pay for a social media campaign for One Nation's benefit in the lead up to the May 2019 federal election, as well as using the Koch Brothers' network of companies to hide the source of any donations they might make. 

After initially pleading intoxicated bragging while in the US Pauline Hanson's Chief of Staff then had this to say.

"You're best buddies with Al Jazeera, ABC." and "You're a very rude man." James Ashby get aggro with the ABC. #qldpol #auspol pic.twitter.com/3SkB3JfiUk

— David Marler (@Qldaah) March 26, 2019

Prior to these revelations Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP Scott Morrison had refused to rule out the Liberal Party preferencing Pauline Hanson's One Nation ahead of The Greens and Labor at the federal election.

He partially walked back from this position and announced that the Coalition will be placing PHON below Labor on how-to-vote cards in all states and territories except Queensland. However he would not commit to putting PHON last.

So it is looking as though One Nation may possibly get a third member into the Senate.

WARNING TO QUEENSLAND VOTERS

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Queensland official and Senate candidate in 2019 Steve Dickson has a dream voters should be aware of:

“I’m going to be in one of those drug dealing mansions on the beach. I’ll hire it for a month. The ones that are 25 rooms and the chef and everything. We’ll drink and shoot the s**t [out] of everything down the water. Machine guns and everything. That’s my dream….And we can protect ourselves just in case” [Steve Dickson in How to Sell a Massacre Part 2, You Tube 27 March 2019]

Note:

According to The Guardian on 7 March 2018 Australian gun lobby groups spent more than $500,000 helping minor right wing parties, including One Nation, win seats in the Queensland state election in 2017.

According to ABC News on 27 March 2019 the Australian gun lobby has donated $1.7 million to political parties since 2011 and now per capita spends as much on political donations and campaigns as the US National Rifle Association (NRA).

According to The Sydney Morning Herald on 27 March 2019 the number of firearms in Australia is dramatically higher than before the Port Arthur massacre that killed 35 people, raising fears the gun lobby’s efforts to relax national restrictions are bearing fruit. Pre-Port Arthur in 1996 there were est. 3.2 million firearms in Australia, the post-Port Arthur gun buyback under theAustralian National Firearms Agreement saw that number reduced to est, 2.5 million but by 2017 firearms held in the private hands had risen to 3.6 million.

Gun ownership per capita has fallen reportedly since the Port Arthur massacre, with gun number increases since 1997 reflecting the fact that multiple guns are now being held by individuals. The highest numbers of gun owners appear to be in rural/regional northern and central NSW. Grafton and environs is an area with 7,930 registered guns, spread across the collections of 2,043 owners, with one individual owning 91 registered firearms according to The Daily Examiner on 12 April 2016.

Despite the rise in gun possession since 1997 the number of homicide incidents involving a firearm decreased by 57 percent between 1989-90 and 2013-14. Firearms were used in 13 percent of homicide incidents (n=32) in 2013-14. In 1989-90 it was 24 percent (n=75) of incidents, according to Crime Statistics Australia.

By 2016 the overall number of firearm deaths from all causes in Australia stood at 247 for that year which was a firearm death rate of 1 in 100,000 down from a rate of 3.4 deaths per 100,000 in 1990.

Taking the xenophobic temperature of the NSW Northern Rivers region

These quotes below give an indication of what Pauline Hanson's One Nation political party (PHON) believes and acts upon.

Given the chance, Pauline Hanson's One Nation will initiate a referendum to amend this race based section of the Constitution. …We must rid ourselves of Native Title and just as laws are made by and for the people so can they be amended…. Under One Nation policy the issue of Aboriginality would no longer exist as benefits by virtue of race would no longer exist. [Pauline Hanson, Longreach Speech, 11 September 1988]

I and most Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed and that of multiculturalism abolished. I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians. [Pauline Hanson, First Speech in Australian Parliament, excerpt, 1996]

The indigenous population is experiencing boom growth in Australia. One only has to be recognised as an Aboriginal community to be accepted as an Aboriginal. Identifying as an Aboriginal has definite financial advantages, as Aboriginality allows them to claim a share of the booty of the native title scam as well as various other publicly funded perks not available to other Australians. [Pauline Hanson, Hansard, 2 June 1998]

Pauline Hanson has compared Islam to a disease Australians need to vaccinate themselves against….. "Let me put it in this analogy - we have a disease, we vaccinate ourselves against it," she said on Friday. [The Sydney Morning Herald, 24 March 2017]

The number of Muslims in Australia doubled in the decade from 2006 to 2016 through immigration and the high numbers of children born to Muslim families. If we do not draw a line in the sand against immigration from Islamic countries, the influence of Muslims in this country will continue to grow and Australia will continue down the path of Islamisation. [Pauline Hanson, Hansard, 17 August 2017]

Mark Latham could be forced to pay out more than $100,000 in legal costs and damages after agreeing to settle defamation proceedings brought against him by the ABC journalist Osman Faruqi. Faruqi, a former politics editor of pop culture site Junkee and a former Greens candidate, launched his libel action last year after the former leader of the Labor party accused him of “aiding and abetting Islamic terrorism” and fostering “anti-white racism in Australia”. The comments were made across Latham’s Outsiders webpage, YouTube, the Rebel Media webpage and a post on Facebook. [The Guardian, 26 November 2018]

One Nation NSW would force DNA tests on every person claiming Aboriginal heritage to qualify for government assistance. NSW One Nation Legislative Council candidate Mark Latham said the policy would weed out "the blond-haired, blue-eyed Aboriginal". [Mark Latham, 9 News, 12 March 2019]

Outlaw the new Left-wing discrimination against men, boys, Christians and white people… [Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, 10 Point Plan, March 2019]

We’re not even allowed to own guns in Australia for the self-protection of women….It’s insane. We’ve been importing all these Muslims into Australia….Some really dangerous people. They are just breaking into people's homes with baseball bats and killing people. Basically, stealing everything they own. Gangs. Our county's going into chaos. [Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Qld party official Steve Dickson, YouTube, 26 March 2019]

According to Prof.Kevin M. Dunn (UWS); Between 1996 and 1998, the Federal Government commissioned an inquiry into racism in Australia (see DIMA, 1998:1). The results of that inquiry are not publicly available, and purposefully so. I presume that the research found racism to widespread, and that it also found there to be geography to it.

Because there is little hard information and, what exists is not readily available, it is notoriously difficult - if not impossible - to work out the number of people who hold xenophobic or racist world views in any given population.

However, the NSW Legislative Council election on 23 March 2019 does open a window on that part of the Northern Rivers population who are 18 years of age and older and registered to vote in state elections.

The window exists because although no candidate from the far right, nationalist, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation stood for election to the NSW Legislative Assembly (Lower House) in the four Northern Rivers state electorates, PHON had 17 candidates standing for election in the NSW Legislative Assembly (Upper House). 

State-wide PHON had received 220,847 votes or 5.93% of all 3.72 million Upper House ballots recorded as of 22:58 pm on 26 March 2019. [See: https://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/home]

So how did the Northern Rivers region fare in relation to the state percentage of voters who were willing to support xenophobic and racist ideology only eight days after an Australian was arrested for a murderous terrorist attack on worshippers in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand?

In the Ballina electorate 1,713 voters cast their first preference for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in the NSW Legislative Council – 3.66% of all Upper House ballots cast in that electorate.

While the Clarence electorate saw 3.441 voters cast their first preference for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in the NSW Legislative Council – 8.94% of all Upper House ballots cast in that electorate. 

And in the Lismore electorate 2,556 voters cast their first preference for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in the NSW Legislative Council – 5.69% of all Upper House ballots cast in that electorate.

At the same time in the Tweed electorate 1,933 voters cast their first preference for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in the NSW Legislative Council – 6.76% of all Upper House ballots cast in that electorate.

These figures appear to support the contention that there is a sub-population in the Northern Rivers region which is markedly ethnocentric and willing to vote for an openly racist political party.

This willingness has helped to elect former federal MP Mark William Latham as One Nation's first member of the NSW Parliament. He sits for a maximum term of eight years in the Upper House which will provide him with the protection of parliamentary privilege for some if not all of his frequently divisive nationalistic ideological statements.

Given that in past years a number of academic papers discussing the geography of racism have identified "Northern" NSW, the "North Coast", "Mid-North Coast" and "Richmond-Tweed" as having a relatively high number of markers for ethnocentrism and/or racism, one has to wonder if this current support for an openly racist political party represents more than just the ongoing existence of xenophobia and racism in Northern Rivers communities - that perhaps it might represent a widening acceptance and further entrenchment of such attitudes across the valleys.

Will Australian voters swallow Scott Morrison’s hypocritical volte-face?

In opposition or in government it didn't matter to Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison, he happily hammered home the message that boat people, asylum seekers and Muslims migrants were or could be a threat to the nation and to every Australian. 

This self-confessed admirer of Donald Trump began his faux election campaign the day he took office shortly after the palace coup removed then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and, almost from the start there has been speculation that he was hoping that his rhetoric would goad someone into committing a violent act of terrorism.

These snapshots below are taken from 15 March 2019 televised remarks by Morrison barely hiding his glee that he finally had the pre-federal election terrorist attack he had been dog whistling for - even if the fact that this muderous attack was made on people at prayer in two New Zealand mosques allegedly at the hands of an Australian meant he had to do a 360 turn on who he could blame.

Snapshots by @sarah_jade_ 

 Mainstream media has noted the change the change of campaign tactics .......

The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 March 2019:

Something the Prime Minister said on Friday has been gnawing at me. For the most part, his statements in the immediate aftermath of the obscenity in New Zealand were admirably clear. He identified the victims: those of Islamic faith. He also clearly labelled the attack for what it was, a “vicious and callous right-wing extremist attack”…..

But another of the Prime Minister’s comments warrants attention. Speaking of the Australian gunman, he said: “These people don't deserve names. Names imply some sort of humanity and I struggle to find how anyone who would engage in this sort of behaviour and violence … He’s not human. He doesn't deserve a name."

I can well understand Morrison’s reaction. Watching him respond, it was clear he was moved, and disgusted. And of course I share that disgust.

But think for a moment about the implications of such rhetoric. This man is not even human, the Prime Minister tells us. He is alien, almost literally another species, and therefore illegible to us, the humans. He is not like us.

Perhaps, at the moment he fired the gun, that became true. But what about just before that moment - was he human then, and inhuman afterwards? Did he go from being comprehensible to incomprehensible in the blink of an eye? Of course the implication of Morrison’s words is that he was always different: never one of us, always already separate.

But this is a fairytale – and like most fairytales, it is there to comfort, with its suggestion that such violence must have nothing to do with the rest of us. The Prime Minister meant well. But what he said was absolute rot.

The point has been made elsewhere that anti-Islamic sentiment is rife in our politics, and that violence is its logical endpoint. It is a crucial point, it can’t be made enough,…. But right now I want to briefly examine another dominant strand of Australian politics.

A few weeks ago, the political world was aflutter with a single question: was this Scott Morrison’s Tampa moment? And we know, because Morrison told us, that he wanted it to be: “Australians will be deciding once again - as they did in 2013, as they did in 2001 - about whether they want the stronger border protection policies of…” and you can guess the rest.

The phrase "strong borders" is heard often in our political debate, but much of the time, especially when you live on an island, borders are abstractions – imaginary lines drawn on literally shifting seas. The vague and nonsense phrase is of course a euphemism, meaning "we are very good at keeping people out". And when is this an important skill? When the people to be kept out pose some threat. The beauty of "strong borders" is that it says all of that in two words.

The same goes for "Tampa moment", which in fact includes three separate events: Tampa, then September 11, then children overboard. Howard’s election campaign blended these events into one overarching narrative. The demonisation of refugees as ruthless people who would kill their own children and who might kill you was not a side-effect of the strategy, it was the strategy.

Howard argues that he would have won without Tampa. But it doesn’t really matter, because the real damage was not done at that election. As people like Peter Brent have argued, the real damage is the lingering belief that this is how elections are won. Emphasise strong borders, emphasise the threat.

Morrison’s absorption of that lesson is there for anyone to see. It was there in his comments in 2012 that asylum seekers might cause a typhoid outbreak. It was there last week when he warned that asylum seekers might be paedophiles or murderers or rapists, and when he backed Peter Dutton’s assertion that they would take housing and hospital spots from Australians. And it was there in his recent security speech, when he introduced the section on terrorism with reference to just one, specific type: “radical extremist Islamist terrorism.”

If our political leaders remain intent on depicting a world in which people from other countries bring disease, hatred, and violence to our shores, can they really be so shocked when it turns out that is precisely the world some people believe in?

[my yellow highlighting]

The Guardian, 17 March 2019:

There’s been less reflection on the fact that any 28-year-old in Australia has grown up in a period when racism, xenophobia and a hostility to Muslims in particular, were quickly ratcheting up in the country’s public culture. 

In the period of the country’s enthusiastic participation in the War on Terror, Islam and Muslims have frequently been treated as public enemies, and hate speech against them has inexorably been normalised.

Australian racism did not of course begin in 2001. The country was settled by means of a genocidal frontier war, and commenced its independent existence with the exclusion of non-white migrants. White nationalism was practically Australia’s founding doctrine.

But a succession of events in the first year of the millennium led to Islamophobia being practically enshrined as public policy.

First, the so-called Tampa Affair saw a conservative government refuse to admit refugees who had been rescued at sea. It was a naked bid to win an election by whipping up xenophobia and border panic. It worked.

In the years since, despite its obvious brutality, and despite repeated condemnations from international bodies, the mandatory offshore detention of boat-borne refugees in third countries has become bipartisan policy. (The centre-left Labor party sacrificed principle in order to neutralise an issue that they thought was costing them elections.)

The majority of the refugees thus imprisoned have been Muslim. It has often been suggested by politicians that detaining them is a matter of safety – some of them might be terrorists.

Second, the 9/11 attacks drew Australia into the War on Terror in support of its closest ally, and geopolitical sponsor, the United States.

Australian troops spent long periods in Afghanistan and Iraq, fighting and killing Muslims in their own countries. The consequences of this endless war have included the targeting of Australians in Jihadi terror attacks and plots, both at home and abroad.

The wars began with a deluge of propaganda. Later, the terror threat was leveraged to massively enhance surveillance by Australia’s national security state. Muslim Australians have frequently been defined by arms of their own government as a source of danger.

Two years after the war in Iraq commenced, the campaign of Islamophobia culminated in the country’s most serious modern race riots, on Cronulla Beach in December 2005, when young white men spent a summer afternoon beating and throwing bottles at whichever brown people they could find.

Cronulla was a milestone in the development of a more forthright, ugly public nationalism in Australia. Now young men wear flags as capes on Australia Day, a date which is seen as a calculated insult by many Indigenous people. Anzac Day, which commemorates a failed invasion of Turkey, was once a far more ambivalent occasion. In recent years it has moved closer to becoming an open celebration of militarism and imperialism.

Every step of the way, this process has not been hindered by outlets owned by News Corp, which dominates Australia’s media market in a way which citizens of other Anglophone democracies can find difficult to comprehend.

News Corp has the biggest-selling newspapers in the majority of metropolitan media markets, monopolies in many regional markets, the only general-readership national daily, and the only cable news channel. Its influence on the national news agenda remains decisive. And too often it has used this influence to demonise Muslims.
[my yellow highlighting]

BACKGROUND

The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 February 2011:

SCOTT Morrison, the Liberal frontbencher who this week distinguished himself as the greatest grub in the federal Parliament, is the classic case of the politician who is so immersed in the game of politics that he has lost touch with the real world outside it…..

The point of this story? Morrison is a cheap populist, with form. On that occasion, he was being irresponsible with the national economy. For him it's just about clever lines.

Morrison was powerless to influence the bank, of course. John Howard and Peter Costello gave the Reserve Bank independence to free it from people like Morrison. 

The bank raised rates three days after Morrison's comment.

This week it was race. Morrison decided to see if he could win some political points by inflaming racism and resentment. More specifically, he zeroed in on some of the most vulnerable people in the country for political advantage. Indeed, is there anyone more vulnerable than a traumatised, orphaned child unable to speak English, held in detention on a remote island?

Morrison publicly raised objections to the government's decision to pay for air fares for some of the survivors of the Christmas Island boat wreck to travel to Sydney for the funerals of their relatives.

Some were Christian funerals, others were Muslim. But all of them were foreigners, all of them were boat people, all of them were dark-skinned, and to Morrison that made them all fair game. Unable to tell the difference between the Coalition mantra of "we will stop the boats" and his emerging position that "we will vindictively pursue boat people suffering tragedy" he went on radio.

As the survivors were gathering to mourn their dead, Morrison said that with the government paying for the 22 air fares, "I don't think it is reasonable. The government had the option of having these services on Christmas Island. If relatives of those who were involved wanted to go to Christmas Island, like any other Australian who wanted to attend a funeral service in another part of the country, they would have made their own arrangements to be there."

All of them were dark-skinned, and to Morrison that made them all fair game

Again, for Morrison it's just a tricky game of politics and clever lines. A former director of the NSW Liberal Party, he inhabits a world where consequences for himself and his political party are all that matter. There is no other reality. He didn't care about the boat people, and - being as charitable to him as possible - he mightn't even have stopped to think about the consequences.

And again, there is a national interest at stake. Forty-four per cent of Australians were born overseas or have at least one parent who was born overseas. Australia is an immigrant society. Australia is a multicultural country. That is a simple fact. To foment ethnic, racial or religious frictions or resentments is deeply harmful to the national interest.

Kevin Dunn, professor of geography and urban studies at the University of Western Sydney, who next week is to publish a study on racism in Australia, says: "Research has shown convincingly that geopolitical events, political events and political statements don't affect Australian attitudes on race very quickly, but they do affect behaviour. People with a grudge feel more empowered to act on it." Racist abuse and discrimination follow. So again, Morrison was toying with a deep national interest, but this time, his remarks could carry real force. The Reserve Bank governor knows his business and ignores Morrison, but the vindictive and the vicious may feel emboldened to act on their hurtful urges. Who does this help?....

Morrison next day conceded that his timing was insensitive, but didn't retract his complaint. He denied that he had been influenced by One Nation, even though One Nation had been busily emailing and lobbying politicians on the matter.

[my yellow highlighting]

Sad statistics are generated by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's war on the poor & vulnerable

Liberal MP for Cook Scott John Morrison has been a Cabinet Minister since 18.9.2013, was Minister for Social Services from 23.12.2014 to 21.9.2015, then Treasurer from 21.9.2015 to 26.8.2018 and now Prime Minister of Australia since 24.8.2018 – these are the sad statistics he leaves in his wake.

The Australian, 21 February 2019:

As Department of Human Services secretary Renee Leon faced heated questioning about the controversial “robodebt” program — which averages reported income and generates debts to current and former welfare recipients — she said it is not known whether people have taken their own lives due to the program.

“There is not an elevated death rate among the cohort who have received a debt notice. It’s not to say we are not troubled that people die,” Ms Leon said…

Greens Senator Rachel Siewert said the numbers are particularly troubling because 663 people out of the 2030 had “vulnerability indicators” attached.

Of the 2,030 people who died after receiving a Centrelink Online Compliance Intervention letter (‘robodebt’ ) which was generated sometime between July 2016 to October 2018:

102 were aged 16-25 years;

327 were aged 26-35 years;

347 were aged 36-45 years;

466 were aged 46-55 years;

536 were aged 56-65 years;

251 were aged 66-80 years; and

1 was aged 81-100 years.

By gender 637 of these welfare recipients were Female and 1,393 Male.

“If death rates remained similar throughout the period July 2016 - October 2018 ... approximately 6% of all deaths of 16-35 year olds in Australia occurred for people who were subject to Centrelink #robodebt compliance.” [Dr Ben Eltham on Twitter, 22 February 2019]

BACKGROUND

Gilbert Sullivan QC weiting in the Herald Sun, 21 February 2019:

The Model Litigant Policy of the Commonwealth is a direction issued by the Attorney-General under the Judiciary Act.

The claims reported to have been made by Centrelink are said to target 1.5 million people and aim to claw back $4.6 billion in what are alleged to be overpayments of welfare.

The claims date back to 2010 and Centrelink demands the repayment of what it alleges to be overpayments caused by the understatement of income; but it knows very well that it is unable to prove these claims.

Centrelink has destroyed its records and is entirely dependent on information obtained from the Australian Taxation Office. It divides the gross annual income obtained in this way by 26 to calculate what it terms an “apportioned actual income”.

It then proceeds to claim the difference between the fortnightly income declared by the payee and the apportioned actual income as an understatement by the recipient which it then claims as a debt.

It is only by sighting pay-slips or bank statements that the accuracy of the declared fortnightly income can be verified. Centrelink’s claims rest on it proving that the fortnightly income was falsely declared.

It can only succeed if it can prove this on the balance of probabilities. The ATO information on its own is worthless and needs a point of comparison in the form of contemporaneous records. Annual income does not translate into fortnightly income.

The absurdity of this methodology is obvious.

A full-time student in 2010 on a youth allowance may well have had a part-time job to support their studies. Some weeks they may have earned, say $150, other weeks nothing.

They may have entered the work force full-time in the last two months of the financial year and earned say, $8000.

Dividing the yearly income by 26 cannot establish a dishonest understatement for the weeks the student earned $150 or nothing. Without the contemporary records, no understatement can be proved.

This methodology is in breach of model litigant obligations in a number of respects.

First, the mathematical basis underpinning it is invalid and known to be so by Centrelink; and the maintenance of a claim known to be invalid is a fundamental breach of the obligation to act as a model litigant.

Second, to imagine that casual employees retain pay slips from 2010 is ludicrous; many of the employers from that time no longer exist and it is inconceivable that anyone can produce pay-slips.

Further, while some bank records are obtainable, they are archived and expensive to obtain. Placing the onus on a recipient to procure bank statements is yet a further breach of model litigant obligations.

There is no reason why Centrelink could not obtain these records by subpoena or otherwise. Furthermore, the actions of Centrelink reverse the onus of proof which, of itself, is a breach of model litigant obligations.

MammaMia, 21 February 2019:

“It was demeaning, embarrassing, and if it wasn’t for my son… I considered suicide.”

“It was dehumanising. I had only lost my husband months before… I was grieving.”

These two sentences represent how two women, from two different walks of life, in separate states felt – when they received a Centrelink debt notice.

Or more exactly what happened when they tried to deal with the fallout of a Centrelink debt notice……

The Centrelink letters are sent out through an automated system. In the old system, it equated to about 20,000 a year, but thanks to a new system in 2016 – it’s generating 20,000 letters a week.

Gabriella* received one of those letters just last year.

She received it when she was trying to come to terms with the death of her husband who had died in a boating accident a few months before.

She was left with two young children trying to work out how to move on with life.

She had never received anything from Centrelink, she hadn’t needed to. But Centrelink had sent her $13,000 in weekly increments, and they wanted their money back.

“The stress… I was already dealing with enough… I knew I didn’t owe them money,” she told Mamamia.

Turns out Centrelink had been sending her money that she hadn’t applied for – which had been bouncing back for months.

“I made a phone call first, they realised they’d made a mistake. But she [the person on the phone] couldn’t fix it.”

She was given a different number.

“I spent hours on the telephone waiting for them to answer [to help]. It’s impossible to get through,” explained Gabriella.

So instead, she was forced to take a day off work and go into the Centrelink office itself.

“She looked at me like I was lying,” Gabriella told Mamamia, of the moment she explained her story – yet again.

Gabriella is most frustrated at the time and effort she had to put in to fix this wrong. A wrong that was made by an automated letter, and which cost her a days’ wage, and almost cost her $13,000.

“I am grieving, but I am pretty stable… my head is pretty OK. But there are people who get these letters and they are not OK,” said a teary Gabriella.

“I am actually in the mental health industry, so I am probably more equipped than a lot at noticing triggers in myself. But what if I wasn’t?

“My situation never should have happened, if there had been a human being looking at my account they would have realised it was bouncing back.”

“It was dismay. It was a shock to the system. It is scaremongering, they don’t explain anything, and it’s very… dehumanising,” she said of her experience..........

The lies Liberals tell on the subject of aged care

The Australian, 7 February 2019:

Aged Care Minister Ken Wyatt was handed a departmental briefing report showing the “winners and losers” from the Coalition’s $2 billion savings drive in the aged-care sector shortly after Scott Morrison announced a royal commission and denied funding cuts.

Documents obtained by The Australian under Freedom of Information laws show the proportion of “losers” almost tripled to 53 per cent following the budget savings revealed in late 2015.

In the three-year period to 2018, aged-care services that had been classified as “winners” almost halved to 47 per cent, according to the brief sent to Mr Wyatt.

A series of “hot issue briefs, question time briefs and general briefs” sent to Mr Wyatt last year acknowledged the budget hit to the Aged Care Funding Instrument — which is the basic taxpayer care subsidy paid to all nursing homes — together with “increasing cost pressures will be putting pressure on the sector”.

Mr Wyatt was also made aware of reports of “cut backs to staffing”. At a press conference announcing the royal commission into aged care in September, the Prime Minister was questioned about two cuts to the ACFI in the 2015 mid-year economic update and the 2016 budget but denied any had been made.

“No, no, the Labor Party said that. I don’t accept that,” he said. Two days later, a question time brief prepared for Mr Wyatt offered advice on what to say if asked about funding cuts to ACFI.

The ministerial brief also contains a breakdown of funding changes by domain, revealing that average annual taxpayer subsidies per resident increased by just $400 between 2016-17 and 2017-18 despite the growing frailty and complexity of Australians as they enter residential aged care older than ever before.

For the first time, funding for the two areas that provide extra boosts for nursing home residents with significant behavioural problems and complex healthcare requirements went backwards by $300 a person.

The peak body for aged-care providers, ahead of the April 2 budget, has urged the Coalition to include an additional payment of almost $700 million each year.

“This estimate reflects a range of factors, including the value of foregone indexation (through ACFI),” Leading Age Services Australia (LASA) says in its pre-budget submission, seen by The Australian. “This is approximately a 5.2 per cent increase in residential care funding in 2019-20, noting that this is difficult to calculate as forward estimates for residential and home care are no longer separately reported.” LASA said it considered the money to be a “down payment” and a notably larger funding boost might be needed following the findings of the royal ­commission.” The commission, which is due to release its interim report in Oct­ober and the final version by the end of April 2020, has already highlighted the widespread industry practice of “doping” nursing home residents, which doctors, nurses and consumer groups attribute to overworked staff. [my yellow highlighting]