IN MATES WE TRUST: that all too familiar stench begins to drift across Parliament Drive once more

Prime Minister John Howard with Bob Day then a Liberal donor and party figure

The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 September 2008

On 17 May 2017The Guardian reported on the matter of the eligibility of Family First’s Bob Day¹ to sit in the Australian Senate:

A majority of the court found that Day was ineligible from 26 February 2016. He was paid close to $130,000 between then and his November resignation.

Ryan said Day had been warned he was required to repay the salary and superannuation he earned as a senator, and similar letters had been sent to former One Nation senator Rod Culleton.

Barely eight days pass and then……

ABC News, 25 May 2017:

The Federal Government has agreed to waive debts owed by former senator Bob Day, after receiving advice that he may not be able to repay the money.

Special Minister of State senator Scott Ryan told a Senate estimates committee he decided to waive the debts in line with decisions made in similar cases in the past.

In April, the High Court ruled Mr Day was not validly elected to the Senate last year, due to a complex arrangement involving a building previously owned by Mr Day being leased by the Commonwealth.

It was recently revealed the Senate and Department of Finance were pursuing Mr Day and fellow disqualified senator Rod Culleton, seeking the repayment of their salaries and other allowances.

Both men received letters informing them of the situation, potentially owing hundreds of thousands of dollars between them.

Senator Ryan told the estimates hearing Mr Day took up an option to formally request the debt be waived.

The Minister said he was advised pursuing the debts may not be fair.

"It may be seen to be inequitable for the Commonwealth to recover the debt, given Mr Day performed his duties as a senator in good faith," he said.

"The [advisory] committee also noted Mr Day's personal financial circumstances."

Remembering of course that the Liberal Party and its financial backers have a history of propping up Mr. Day…….

The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 February 2017:

A wealthy fundraising body linked to the Liberal Party has quietly begun bankrolling the organisations behind two of the Coalition's biggest crossbench supporters in the finely balanced Senate.

The Cormack Foundation has donated more than $40 million to the Liberal Party over the last 18 years – including more than $3 million in 2015-16 – making it one of the party's biggest benefactors.

The foundation is an investment company and "associated entity" of the Liberals that donates dividends from its share portfolio. It has stakes in a number of blue-chip companies – including the big four banks, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Telstra and Wesfarmers – raising about $3.9 million last year.

But for the first time in its 30-year history, the foundation last year donated to parties other than the Liberals – giving $25,000 each to the conservative Family First and the libertarian Liberal Democrats, according to the Australian Election Commission annual returns released this week.

The foundation has eight listed shareholders, who are also the company's directors. They include Rupert Murdoch's brother-in-law John Calvert-Jones, former Reserve Bank board member and Business Council of Australia president Hugh Morgan and former ANZ chairman Charles Goode.

The donations came in a year that the Abbott and then Turnbull governments were highly reliant in the Senate on the votes of Family First's Bob Day and the Liberal Democrats' David Leyonhjelm….

It's believed to be the first occasion an "associated entity" has linked itself to more than one political party at a time.

ABC News, 2 November 2017:

The Abbott government ignored the advice of its own bureaucrats when it approved the lease agreement with former Family First senator Bob Day regarding his Adelaide electorate office in 2014.

Documents obtained under Freedom of Information reveal the Finance Department advised the Government not to allow Mr Day to relocate his electorate office from the Adelaide CBD to a building he owned in Kent Town, warning it had "concerns about how such a transaction might be perceived"……

Despite this advice, the then special minister of state, Michael Ronaldson, wrote to Mr Day in March 2014 telling him he was willing to consider the arrangement as long as the Kent Town property met Commonwealth standards and that no rent would be charged to the Commonwealth until the lease ended on the CBD office space.

Mr Day sold the building to Fullerton Investments and last December, the company entered into a lease agreement with the Commonwealth under which no rent would be paid……

Mr Day's company loaned Fullarton Investments money to make the purchase — and are ultimately liable for a National Australia Bank mortgage on the building.

Between 2004 and 2006 Bob Day’s company Homestead Homes donated $9,937 to the Liberal Party in South Australia. It is understood that the donation tally may be higher as Day owned more than one company and at least one trust which may have contributed to party coffers.

NOTES

1. Robert (Bob) John Day AO “was a long-time member of the Liberal Party of Australia (1987- 2008) occupying various roles including Federal Electorate Committee (FEC) President, Hewson for PM Campaign Committee (Industry) Chairman, Delegate to the Party's State Council and was a recipient of the Liberal Party's Meritorious Service Award in 2006.

[In 2008] Day resigned his membership of the Liberal Party citing '"manipulation of the pre-selection process to ensure the pre-selection of one particular candidate" over the other candidates. Day's allegations were backed up by other Liberal Party members.

Immediately following his resignation, Bob Day was invited to join Family First as its candidate in the Mayo by-election receiving 11.4% of the primary vote. Day was elected Party Chairman in November 2008 and in April 2009 was endorsed as Family First's Lead Senate Candidate for the 2010 Federal election. In 2013 he stood as the Party’s lead Senate candidate in the Federal election and was elected as a Senator for South Australia.”

In April 2017 it was announced that Family First has joined forces with former Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi, to boost his fledgling Australian Conservatives party.

Thank the gods! Senator Bob Day resigns

The Australian: Senator Bob Day at a home being built by his family firm in Broadview, Adelaide

Far-right politician and former Liberal Party member, Family First’s Senator Robert “Bob” Day, having run his building company into liquidation has resigned from the Australian Senate.

He had been a senator for just over 28 months and was the only member of the senate with a Facebook page dedicated to a financial disaster he oversaw.

During his time in office he strongly voted for:

Charging postgraduate research students fees

Decreasing ABC and SBS funding

Decreasing availability of welfare payments

Deregulating undergraduate university fees

Giving apprentices access to a $20,000 loan

Increasing indexation of HECS-HELP debts

Increasing restrictions on gambling

Live animal export

Regional processing of asylum seekers

Revoking citizenship of dual nationals involved with terrorism offences by the minister

Temporary protection visas

Voluntary student union fees

Putting welfare payments onto restricted debit cards

He voted against:

A fast transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy

A Royal Commission into banking

An emissions reduction fund

Ending immigration detention on Nauru

Increasing accessibility of government data and documents

Increasing freedom of political communication

Increasing investment in renewable energy

Increasing marine conservation

Increasing scrutiny of asylum seeker management

More scrutiny of intelligence services & police

Protecting whistleblowers

Requiring a warrant to access citizens’ telecommunications records

Speeding things along in Parliament (procedural)

Tighter means testing of family payments

Something not right?

Building Australia’s new submarine fleet in South Australia

Federal action on public housing

Increasing transparency of big business by making information public

Public transport

Restricting donations to political parties

Stopping tax avoidance or aggressive tax minimisation

Suspending the rules to allow a vote to happen (procedural)

Treating government action on climate change as a matter of urgency

Something not right?

A carbon price

A federal inquiry into Queensland government administration

A minerals resource rent tax

A publicly accessible foreign ownership register for agricultural land

Ending immigration detention on Manus Island

Greater public scrutiny of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations

Implementing refugee and protection conventions

Increasing fishing restrictions

Increasing protection of Australia's fresh water

Increasing support for community radio and TV

Increasing trade unions' powers in the workplace

Landholders' right to say no to mining and gas exploration

Letting environmental groups challenge the legality of certain government decisions

Maintaining or increasing CSIRO funding

Protecting the Great Barrier Reef

Putting a time limit on immigration detention

Removing children from immigration detention

Requiring Parliamentary approval of military deployments

Restricting foreign ownership

Senate electoral reform

The use of strong encryption technologies

See: https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/senate/sa/bob_day

Farewell, Bananaby & Uncle Steve

Steve Fielding is not the full bottle - Erica Abetz

The guy is a psycho chook - Bananaby

Farewell Bananaby and Uncle Steve,
Finally time for you to leave
Though you're both very small
You could scare us all.....

NOTE: A little bit of wishful thinking was going on here as
Senator Barnaby Joyce was re-elected at the last federal election
and is now
Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Water,
as well as Leader of The Nationals in the Senate

Branding foreheads for crimes & misdemeanours plus mistaken identity

This exchange in The Sydney Morning Herald letters column on 20 July 2010 was emailed to me this week:

List of never-to-be forgiven wrongs

There are three things I can never forgive:
1. The Greens voting with the Coalition against the emissions trading scheme.
2. The Labor Party giving in to the mining giants.
3. Mick Keelty and the Australian Federal Police letting Scott Rush get on that plane (''Rush writes as his last-ditch appeal is lodged'', July 17-18).

Kay Rocavert Drummoyne

I move, as an addendum to Kay Rocavert's crimes and misdemeanours motion (Letters, July 19), that the name Steve Fielding be indelibly marked in reverse print on the foreheads of all Labor Party machine personnel.

Col Shephard Yamba

This also came from the same reader (Hat tip to R's Dad):

"Usually the first time people meet me they call me Tony Abbott. It gets a bit of a laugh, that's about it. Then I tell them I prefer Anthony.
"I voted Labor at the last election. I think I will be voting Liberal this time. But I'm fairly open-minded. I guess I could sway.
"Most elections come down to a jingle: it's time for change. And that's a bit old. I'd like to see more policies.
"I believe more in the Bill Gates effect than the labour effect. If you come up with the right idea, I can't understand why you shouldn't make a billion dollars. But Labor expect that money for the country.
"I'm not particularly racial at all but I think they should send the lot [of asylum seekers] back and get them to apply through the proper channels. If you let one in, or three in, you might as well let them all in."
[The Sydney Morning Herald 20 July 2010]

Senator Fielding proves once more that he is barking mad

Senator Steve Fielding, that born-again political nong from Victoria, appears to think that pregnant women on welfare payments would be eligible for paid parental leave from a full-time job that they don't actually have; similarly that drug addicts would deliberately get pregnant to get paid parental leave for which most would be ineligible anyway; women locked away at the pleasure of Her Maj are in full-time employment; that sex-workers are not entitled to benefits paid to other workers because of their job description; and that all late term abortions are obviously some form of fiscal fiddle.
Stevo's a good example for the argument that political candidates should prove mental competency before their names go on a ballot paper.
Mrs. Fielding - how about doing us all a favour and lock your boy in the back shed whenever Parliament is sitting.
Here's OpenAustralia record of the Senate second reading debate on 16th June 2010:
Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Hansard source
I believe we should be increasing the assistance we give to families with children, because having children is expensive and families need all the help they can get. But the Rudd government’s Paid Parental Leave scheme goes about doing this in the wrong way. The scheme is a long, long way from perfect. Instead of having a policy that benefits all families, such as the baby bonus, the government has come up with a scheme that discriminates against parents, depending on how they choose to raise their children. It is a scheme that places higher value on mothers who leave their children in child care, to quickly return to the workforce within a few months after having a baby, and devalues mothers who want to spend more time at home looking after their children. It is a policy that gives money to prisoners and prostitutes but ignores stay-at-home mums and the important unpaid work that they do. Mums who stay at home and look after their kids will be about $2,000 worse off because of the decision than those mums who rush back to the workforce.........
Another huge flaw in the bill is the fact that people who have late-term abortions would still be eligible to receive paid parental leave payments. That is right. Under this bill drug addicts and welfare cheats can rort the system and get paid parental leave money for nothing. Drug addicts and welfare cheats can get pregnant, then after 20 weeks have an abortion and still pocket the government’s cash. It is absolutely ridiculous and it makes you wonder whether the government is making policy on the run again.

Senator Steve Fielding gets personal on the Internet

Australian Senator Steve Fielding from Family First decided to become very personal at the expense of one individual who allegedly has a problem with alcohol.

Fielding mentioned the man by age and home town (mercifully mis-spelling same) on his own political website.
Having dropped any mention of "allegedly" which was contained in the online news article he also linked and pre-empting any court judgment, he sent out a press release which went on to say:
"This man is a disgrace and not only deserves to lose his licence for life, he should also be sent to jail where he can think about the danger he poses to the community."

He then tweeted about the man at senatorsteve so that no corner of the Australian Internet remained uninformed about this particular bloke.

Of course if you were to spend a little computer time on the subject it's possible that you would actually find the full identity of the person being railed about. Especially after Victorian magistrate court lists are published.

I can see Ol' Stevo being slapped with a writ if he keeps this up.

rod3000 sums up the Aussie attitude to Fielding quite well: "I really hope someone has pointed out to @senatorsteve just how much media attention you can get by sailing around the world by yourself"

A triumph of ego over substance: Steve Fielding once again demonstrates why he's such a lightweigt politician

It would appear that Family First's one and only federal senator, Steve 'I'm an engineer so I know about stuff' Fielding, is feeling slighted by the Australian public broadcaster, if his recent Senate estimates committee questions to the ABC's managing director are any indication.

A triumph of ego over substance and a waste of time at taxpayers expense:

Could you give us a handle on biases in The 7.30 Report, just generally? Are there some sorts of guidelines about keeping an eye on it?.........

Do you have any monitoring of the range of viewpoints by political parties that have actually been on The 7.30 Report?......

There are three parties sitting in the crossbenches with equal weighting and I thought those views would be interesting to hear on The 7.30 Report. I cannot recall the last time that Family First appeared on The 7.30 Report. I am just wondering: is something going on there?.......

But the Labor Party has been on there a lot, which is fine, and so has the Liberal Party and so have the Nationals and so have the others.

But not it seems Family First's favourite bottle imitator, to his obvious chagrin.

Photograph of Senator Fielding as a bottle from The Sydney Morning Herald

Senator Fielding accidentally produces a little light relief in the international climate change policy debate

I opened my browser yesterday morning to find the Herald-Sun giving a few online centimetres to this:

A CROSSBENCH senator who doubts the science of climate change says he may back an Australian Government plan to let developing countries propose their own cuts to carbon emissions.

Mirth immediately took over for several minutes.
What on earth is Steve Fielding talking about? Any idiot can tell that a matter of government foreign affairs policy which will not require legislation to implement does not need endorsement from the only Family First party member to make it into federal parliament.

The man and his constant need to be in the political limelight is a national embarrassment.
The only consolation is that published print versions of his opinions will quickly disappear into the recycler's maw or landfill, while digital versions on the Internet will eventually lead to data mining results like this from Personas which actually appear to reflect his lack of credibility:

TECHNORATI SEARCH: STEVE FIELDING IS A CREDULOUS DOPE STEVE FIELDING IS A VEXING SUBJECT
STEVE FIELDING IS JUST A MEDIA TORTE
STEVE FIELDING IS RENOWNED FOR HIS PUBLICITY STUNTS
WHETHER HE CAN SPELL OR NOT, STEVE FIELDING IS AN IDIOT

Will someone buy that senator a ticket - pleeeze!

I couldn't believe my ears. Reading between the lines it looks like Steve Fielding wants to go Afghanistan - just think of the headlines he could generate and the multiple spellings he could try out for the name of the country and monikers of leading war lords.
"The chamber would not know this, but I have been speaking to Minister Faulkner and the previous minister for defence about some sort of delegation going to Afghanistan. I am deadset serious about this because this is a good opportunity." is the exact quote according to Hansard on 7/8/09.
Can someone buy this unrepresentative, attention seeking, political simpleton a one-way ticket before the next election?
Maybe we can get his citizenship revoked while he's gone.

Upriver Bill
Northern Rivers

Guest Speak is a North Coast Voices segme allowing serious or satirical comment from NSW Northern Rivers residents.
Email ncvguestpeak at live dot com dot au to submit comment for consideration.

There always was a suspicion that Senator Fielding would eventually spin out into the troppo-sphere

Watching the nightly news this week and observing Senator Steve Fielding attempt to buttonhole Al Gore and then quickly pop up in front of a television camera, it was easy to see that this particular senator no longer had his feet planted firmly on the ground.

So it was hardly a surprise to find his website now featured this graph:

I'm sure people are becoming quite tired of pointing out to Steve Fielding that his use of surface temperature over so short a period is bound to be a trifle misleading.

Looking at near-surface temperatures over a longer period it is obvious that although global temperature may drop over a relatively short period there has been a pronounced rising trend for over a century and a half:

U.K. Met Office/Hadley Centre

It is hard to feel sympathy for Steve Fielding's alleged dilemma, when faced with data for May 2009:

U.K. Met Office/Hadley Centre

Perhaps this lone representative of the Family First Party (who only made it into parliament on the back of preference votes) needs to re-read a simple 2007 fact sheet from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Another alternative 'scientific' explanation for Senator Fielding to believe in

Image: I can haz cheezburger

Fielding unconvinced after climate change lesson

Fatal flaw in Turnbull's climate compromise

'Typhoid Mary' Fielding goes too far

Struth, there's yet another idiot pollie fronting the teev this week!
Family First's leader and one and only member of the Australian parliament Senator Steve Fielding apparently not only thinks man-made global warming doesn't exist, he thinks the principles of viral transmission don't apply to his august person.
The obviously lobotomised senator has someone in his household he says has been diagnosed with swine flu, but is determined that even if he might be infectious himself he "doesn't want to take a sickie".
Yeah, nice one Stevo - go trotting through an air-conditioned workplace (open to the general public) dominated by older, sedentary men who would probably be more vulnerable to swine flu.
Look! See how quickly Steve can bring Parliament to its knees!
See how powerful Family First is!
Did we really vote this drongo in?

So predictable that only Steve didn't see it coming......

Speaking from Washington, Senator Fielding said that asking the White House to explain why it is convinced global warming is linked to greenhouse emissions was part of "picking up the fight for the underdog".

He earlier attended a climate sceptics' conference run by free-market think tank the Heartland Institute — part of a trip to "hear both sides".

Senator Fielding said he found that Dr Aldy and other Obama Administration officials were not interested in discussing the legitimacy of climate science. [The Age,6 June 2009]

A little light beginning to illuminate the scene yet, Senator Fielding? That's right - thinking people know that the junk science is not coming from IPCC.

Of course Obama's aides might also have seen this:
















Fielding's bottle imitation from ABC News online

UPDATE 8.06.09:
On ABC News Radio this morning an excerpt from AM was played in which Steve Fielding stated he wants the solar flare theory investigated before the Rudd Government's national carbon emissions trading scheme comes up for a Senate vote.
Senator Fielding also calls for an open debate on the science. If he was serious about this call he would have published on his own website those Heartland Institute conference graphs he keeps citing as evidence for legitimate doubt concerning climate change cause and effect.

Political incompetence in the Senate: surely it is no coincidence............

Heartland Institute scale of fees

The Senate seats of Bill Heffernan, Barnaby Joyce, Stephen Conroy and Steve Fielding all expire on 30 June 2011.

Surely this is heaven's way of giving Australia the chance of a brief respite from over-the-top political incompetence.

Senator Fielding in particular is excelling himself on the subject of global warming as first this statement showed:

We've all bought this idea that man is the problem with carbon emission and therefore man has to change what they do with carbon emissions. That's where we're at the moment. But there are some questions now being asked: is man the problem? And if not, then what are we doing?

And then this exchange revealed on ABC TV Lateline on 4 June 2009 after the senator had attended a Heartland Institute conference:

STEVE FIELDING: ......And I'll be coming back to Australia to sit down with the - Senator Wong and the Rudd Government to share with them and to just to see what their thoughts are and what I've heard from here. Now, what they did say yesterday, the scientists - and, look, I'm not saying that they're right, but they've actually put a very big question about the link between carbon emissions and global warming. Now, what they put forward yesterday was that in fact over the last 10 years, carbon emissions have gone up, but and global - or the temperatures, global temperatures have not gone up. Now, that obviously ...

TONY JONES: Well, I mean, yes, that is their claim, that since 1998, when there was a peak in temperatures, it hasn't gone up. But you'd be aware of the other evidence on that, wouldn't you, I dare say? That Britain's Hadley Centre, ...

STEVE FIELDING: Yes.

TONY JONES: ... which is one of the most respected organisations involved in measuring global temperature has data for global mean temperatures that says 1998 was the hottest year on record; 2005 the second hottest year on record; the third hottest, 2003; the fourth, 2002; the fifth hottest, 2004 and the sixth hottest, 2006. They're saying they're the hottest temperatures ever measured since temperatures were first taken in 1880.

STEVE FIELDING: And so that puts a question on it. But, Tony, you know, you've got to actually look at the facts and figures, which you've put forward a case. I'll need to (inaudible) just to make sure that what I heard yesterday, what are the arguments against it. You've put them forward, but I need to check today with the Obama administration, and I may even check with the Bradley area as well and just to make sure because this is too big an issue to get wrong. And what's worst, if we make the wrong decision, what's worse than that is if we make the right decision too late. And so the issue is that if you look at the graphs, if you look at the temperatures over the last 10 years, yes, they've gone up and down, but they've actually, if you look at the average, it stayed reasonably level, and CO2 emission over that time have gone up drastically. So, the whole idea about that there's a direct link between CO2 ...

If we make the wrong decision, what's worse than that is if we make the right decision too late - no Senator, the wrong decision or the right decision too late are equally disastrous for Australia and I rather suspect from the aforementioned exchange that you have entered the essentially 'anti-science' la-la land inhabited by Heartland members and backers.

What is worse, Senator Fielding, is that the right-wing free market advocate Heartland Institute (partly funded by coal, oil, nuclear energy companies and a water privatisation and big tobacco apologist) obviously targeted you as a gullible fool long before it extended its invitation.

This is what the Heartland Institute says about its relationship with donors and the targets it picks:

The Heartland Institute has discovered a way to get the attention of busy elected officials. We package research and commentary on public policy issues as news, in the form of monthly public policy newspapers.

As a courtesy to donors, we share with them advance copies of the studies they helped fund, and we often solicit their advice on what audiences to target during promotional campaigns.

Steve Fielding could have saved himself those overseas travel costs by either: a) allowing his mouse to do the walking on the Internet and so easily acquire the type of information he is allegedly seeking; b) requesting the Parliamentary Library provide him with research; c) arranging to meet with the CSIRO which might objectively give him an insight into global warming science; or d) visiting communities on the NSW North Coast where coastal erosion and seawater inundation is not a maybe but a very real occurrence for some families.