Showing posts with label Liberal Party of Australia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liberal Party of Australia. Show all posts

Tuesday 8 October 2019

Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan avoids questions about Coalition Government-Indue Limited's punitive cashless debit card for welfare recipients


Clarence Valley Independent, 2 October 2019:

The latest federal budget underwrote $128.8 million over four years, from 2019-20, to fund the trial rollout of the Cashless Debit Card (CDC), including the provision of “funding to expand the Cashless Debit Card to a fifth site”.
Test areas are located in the Ceduna region in South Australia (from March 2016) and the East Kimberley (from April 2016) and Goldfields (from March 2018) regions in Western Australia.
In January this year, a trial commenced in the Bundaberg / Hervey Bay region in Queensland – the Clarence Valley local government area is statistically much the same as Hervey Bay’s, according to the 2016 census, apart from the valley being home to a larger indigenous population.
“This proposal is expected to have a positive impact on regional Australia by reducing alcohol consumption, illegal drug use, and gambling in communities and providing improved technology for participants subject to welfare quarantining,” the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Cities and Regional Development website states.
Another Clarence Valley publication recently ran a headline with Page MP Kevin Hogan reportedly saying the implantation of the cashless welfare card is a “no brainer” an described his position as an “impassioned defence” of the CDC.
With the possible rollout of another trial area and the similarity of Clarence Valley LGA’s census data to the Hervey Bay area, the Independent sought Mr Hogan’s thoughts, preparing several questions (with context provided) and putting them in an email, along with an invitation to speak directly about the issue, which Mr Hogan declined.....
Read the full article here.

Australian Home Affairs Minister calls for welfare payments to be stopped for climate change protesters


The six-person protest in Creek Street, Brisbane
Image: Daily Mail
According to an interview with 2GB radio shock jock Ray Hadley, Australian Minister for Home Affairs & Liberal MP for Dickson Peter Dutton is not happy with six climate change protesters belonging to Extinction Rebellion blocking Creek Street, Brisbane, for one hour and forty minutes on Wednesday 2 October 2019.

He also took exception to the fact that the magistrate they appeared before did not record convictions after all six entered guilty pleas.

Of course in the end Dutton sheeted home the blame for this incident to Queensland Labor governments appointing magistrates who were too tolerant of civil disobedience – just as he did in 2016 after Magistrate Trevor Morgan said he would probably be proud if it were his daughter taking part in protest action.

It seems Dutton hasn’t forgotten those protesters who climbed on his electoral office roof in 2016.

The New Daily, 3 October 2019: 

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has called for climate change protesters to be “named and shamed”, jailed and have their welfare payments stopped. 

Warning protesters in Queensland are “putting lives at risk”, Mr Dutton said the fines are not good enough after the activist group Extinction Rebellion caused traffic chaos in Brisbane. 

“The community expectation is that these people are fined or jailed and they should be jailed until their behaviour changes because they are putting lives at risks. They are diverting police and emergency service resources from tasks they should be undertaking otherwise,” Mr Dutton said. 

Speaking on radio 2GB, Mr Dutton was then asked by host Ray Hadley if the protesters should have their welfare payments stopped because they are “bludgers sticking themselves to roads”. 

“Well, I agree, Ray,” he said….. 

Mr Dutton urged people to surveil the protesters and distribute their images. 

“People should take these names and the photos of these people and distribute them as far and wide as they can, so that we shame these people,” Mr Dutton said. 

“They are acting outside of the law. Let their families know what you think of their behaviour.” 

“They keep turning up week after week because a slap on the wrist is just not working.” 

Mr Dutton also called for mandatory sentencing of protesters disrupting traffic and shutting down cities….. 

“But you know raiding farms, climbing on to the roof of my electoral office and then get told by the magistrate he would be proud of her if it his daughter had done it.

The Saturday Paper, 4 October 2019:

A number of Liberal National Party MPs have supported Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s call to strip welfare payments from climate protesters and jail them. Employment Minister Michaelia Cash told The Australian ($): “Taxpayers should not be ­expected to subsidise the protests of others.” Other supporters include ($) Scott Buchholz, the assistant minister for road safety. Their backing comes after Dutton agreed with the 2GB radio host Ray Hadley that welfare payments of climate protesters should be cut and added: “they should be jailed until their behaviour changes”.  The Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, told the ABC that Dutton was starting to “sound more like a dictator than he is an elected politician. Because somebody says something that he doesn’t like, that he doesn’t support, he’s saying we’re going to strip away income support.” Some activists have taken leave from their jobs to protest against government inaction on climate change. The Morrison government is also seeking to require Newstart recipients who fail drug tests to use cashless welfare cards.

Sunday 29 September 2019

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants parents to muzzle their children in 2019



Yes, that's right. Don't let your children think about the things they are living through during their childhood - increasingly intense floods, hurricanes, drought, bushfires, storm surges, coastline erosion and native animal extinctions. 

Don't let them become politically active by marching and demanding change. Teach them to be good little "Quiet Australians".

Thursday 26 September 2019

The world is increasingly seeing Australian PM Scott Morrison as running a climate denialist government


When a country is run by rightwing, anti-science, ideological ratbags this is what happens.......

The Guardian, 25 September 2019:

Scott Morrison is increasingly seen as running a “denialist government” that is not serious about finding a global climate solution and uses “greenwash” to meet its emissions commitments, analysts and former diplomats say.
Australian observers in New York said Morrison’s failure to attend a UN climate action summit on Monday despite being in the US, and his apparent rejection of the need for Australia to do more to address its rising greenhouse gas emissions, eroded goodwill for the country on the issue.
While representatives from about 60 nations spoke at the summit, Morrison gave a keynote speech at the Chicago Institute for Global Affairs in which he challenged China to do more heavy lifting on climate change and suggested it should be treated as a “newly developed” economy rather than a developing one.
He said country representatives at the summit were dismissive of Australia’s intentions. Bill Hare, the chief executive and senior scientist of Climate Analytics and a longtime adviser to countries at climate talks, said the UN summit had been “very disappointing” as most larger polluters, including Australia, had failed to meet the secretary general Antonio Guterres’ call to increase commitments, leaving ambitious strides to smaller nations.
“Diplomatic officials from countries that I speak with see Australia as a denialist government,” he said. “It’s just accepted that’s what it is. It is seen as doing its own promotion of coal and natural gas against the science.”
Hare said Morrison’s suggestion China should be doing more on climate, and be treated similarly to the most developed countries, while Australia’s emissions continued to increase year-on-year was a “ridiculous fake argument”.
He said China, the world’s most populous country and biggest annual polluter, was not doing anywhere near enough to tackle the crisis, but was doing more than Australia on many measures. It had national policies in a number of areas – boosting renewable energy, energy efficiency, electric vehicles and efficiency in industry – where Australia did not.
“Is that having enough of an effect in China? No. But will China peak its emissions by the end of the 2020s? Yes,” Hare said.
“Will Australia? There is no evidence that Australia will peak its emissions as far as I’ve seen in any projections that have been published.”.....
A report backed by the world’s major climate science bodies released on the eve of the summit found current plans would lead to a rise in average global temperatures of between 2.9C and 3.4C by 2100, a shift likely to bring catastrophic change across the globe......

Wednesday 25 September 2019

Meet the Indue Class Warfare Card


Think the Australian Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government is not seriously considering a national roll-out of the Indue Cashless Debit Card?

Do you think that living many hundreds of kilometres in any direction from current debit card trial sites proves that that the Liberal Party's head hater of the poor and vulnerable is not yet planning to specifically target you and your family?

Recently noticed that your bank's ATM now has a function icon which allows the limited use of these particular debit cards in order to facilitate a person's ability to access the paltry 20 per cent of a welfare payment which can be paid out in cash under this punitive income management scheme?



Thursday 12 September 2019

If you are a welfare recipient in any shape of form - be afraid, be very afraid



It appears in his profound ignorance and overwhelming arrogance Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison intends to privatize the welfare safety net....... 


Morrison has a very particular view of how welfare should be approached. On one level, it is a sort of neoliberal/austerity view, entirely at one with the direction of government policy since the 1980s.

But it is more complex that. Morrison seems to want to move to what we might call a post-neoliberal approach, with welfare built around financial instruments such as so-called Social Interest Bonds (SIBs)…..

To put it another way, there is no money in ending poverty, but there is profit to be had in meeting metrics that break 'the intergeneral cycle of poverty and disadvantage.'

Regardless, the whole approach ties in completely with Morrison's view that, 'welfare must become a good deal for investors' and that 'we must make it a good deal' (emphasis added).

That is to say, to be a good deal for investors, various forms of control and discipline must be enacted upon welfare recipients in order to help ensure targets are met and profits are realised via instruments like SIBs.

Drug testing and cashless welfare cards are two ways of doing that, and that is why Scott Morrison is advocating them. He is laying the groundwork for the introduction of instruments such as SIBs.

In the meantime, he is more than happy for the State to be an 'enforcer' without them.

Monday 2 September 2019

The petty mind of Australian Prime Minister Morrison on display for all to see


US-China trade war affecting share price of Australian corporations, Australia helping to increase tensions in the Middle East, the national economy tanking, wages not keeping up with cost of living for low & middle income earners, home ownership falling, drought to last until end of year at least, inland towns starting to run out of drinking water, mass fish kills expected this summer and the Darling River dying - and the list goes on and on.

What is Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook, Scott Morrison, worried about? 

The signs on certain toilet doors.

Sunday 1 September 2019

Australian PM Scott Morrison gets a slap in the face from regional News Corp masthead


The Daily Examiner, 29 August 2019: 

OUR SAY 
BILL NORTH 
Editor 

Be sure to verify statements before you take them with a grain of salt – even when they’re delivered by our most trustworthy Prime Minister. It’s probably not a profound statement given today’s world leaders and proliferation of fake news. 

But once upon a time, you could trust your national leader to rise above the spin. Scott Morrison’s response to the GetUp campaign during the federal election – which succeeded in ousting colleague Tony Abbott, if little else – was to smear the activist group with nothing short of propoganda. 

He has accused GetUp of bullying and misogyny – two words more apt for describing some of the far-right politicians who were targeted not because of their political allegiance, but because they actively blocked progress on environmental and humanitarian issues that, in the eyes of GetUp, shouldn’t be political footballs. 

As an observant member of the media with no political allegiance, but an environmentally conscious soul, I was on the GetUp mailing list. 

In this age of ruthless political tactics, GetUp’s consistency to their cause using fact-based evidence in an articulate, respectful and considered tone gave them far more credibility in my mind than any political party. 

If all you know about GetUp is how they’ve been portrayed in the media, then please read a couple of their releases, before jumping on the bandwagon. 

You might not agree with their philosophies, but they do play clean and fair.

Wednesday 28 August 2019

NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC): the case of the $100,000 cash political donation


Sometime after 2 November 2015 the NSW Electoral Commission appears to have noticed that on 12 March 2015, around two weeks before a NSW state election, an organisation known as Chinese Friends of Labor raised $138,000 from an event held in a 750-seat Chinese restaurant in Haymarket, Sydney. 

What piqued the Electoral Commission's interest was that $100,000 of this money appears to have been raised by Chinese Friends of Labor as cash from 12 donors - five of whom were employees or former employees of a second 350-seat Haymarket restaurant usually described as being serving staff, two who were related to that restaurant's general manager and two who were associated with property development company Wu International Investments Pty Ltd.

The NSW Electoral Commission began to wonder if some of the named donors were perhaps 'straw men' for one or more property developers.

Property developers are of course prohibited by law from making political donations in New South Wales. 

As members of the NSW Liberal Party will recall if they think back on the 2016 NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) Operation Spicer investigation into political funding which found the Free Enterprise Foundation and "Raymond Carter, Andrew Cornwell, Garry Edwards, the Hon Michael Gallacher MLC, Nabil Gazal Jnr, Nicholas Gazal, Hilton Grugeon, Christopher Hartcher, Timothy Koelma, Jeffrey McCloy, Timothy Owen, Christopher Spence, Hugh Thomson and Darren Williams acted with the intention of evading laws under the Election Funding, Expenditure and Disclosures Act 1981 (the election funding laws) relating to the disclosure of political donations and the ban on donations from property developers. Messrs Grugeon, Hartcher, Koelma, McCloy, Owen, Thomson and Williams were also found to have acted with the intention of evading the election funding laws relating to caps on political donations. The Commission also found that Craig Baumann, Nicholas Di Girolamo, Troy Palmer and Darren Webber acted with the intention of evading the election funding laws relating to the disclosure of political donations and that Bart Bassett knowingly solicited a political donation from a property developer".

On 15 January 2018, after further investigation, the Electoral Commission referred the matter of Chinese Friends of Labor & Labor Party state campaign accounts to ICAC and on 26 August 2019 public hearings in Operation Aero began. 

Five witnesses are to be called this week: Kenrick Cheah (NSW Labor community relations director), Steve Tong (former employee Wu International Investments), Kaila Murnain (General Secretary of NSW Labor)Ernest Wong (former NSW Labor MLC) and Sam Dastyari (former Federal Labor senator).

It has been alleged that Chinese billionaire property developer Huang Xiangmo was the source of the $100,000 cash donation. 

Readers might remember that this particular billionaire was the subject of allegations that he paid a five-figure sum in order to have a private lunch with Minister for Home Affairs and Liberal MP for Dickson Peter Dutton during the period he was seeking Australian citizenship.

Political tragics can follow the hearings here.

Monday 26 August 2019

Morrison Government's understanding of human rights and aged care appears flawed


"Restrictive practices can elicit concern for a number of reasons. Fundamentally, they impact on the liberty and dignity of the care recipient. In circumstances where they are not absolutely necessary, their use is likely to sit uncomfortably for many. Their use without lawful consent may infringe the resident’s legal rights and constitute a civil or criminal offence, such as assault or false imprisonment, although there are very few cases in Australia where a criminal or civil complaint has been pursued to challenge the use of a restraint in an aged care setting. Physical and chemical restraint can have significant adverse effects on a resident, both physically and psychologically. There are also fundamental questions about their effectiveness."  [Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, Background Paper 4, May 2019]

9 News, 20 August 2019: 

The Commonwealth government recently introduced changes aimed at limiting the use of restraints in residential facilities. 

But experts believe the regulations have created many more problems than they solved. 

They are urging the Commonwealth to scrap the regulations and start again from scratch. 

Queensland's public guardian Natalie Siegel-Brown said the changes placed her agency and the community in a "really compromising" position. 

"Unfortunately in their current form, the principles actually regress the recognition of human rights of people living in aged care, particularly with respect to chemical restraints," she told the committee in Sydney on Tuesday. 

"But the entire suite itself lacks any monitoring, enforcement or oversight in any event, and this can lead to greater problems." 

Colleen Pearce, from the Victorian Office of the Public Advocate, said aspects of the regulations were flawed and ambiguous. 

"We consider the principles are inconsistent with people's human rights (and) would preferably be contained in legislation," 

Dr Pearce told the committee. "(The principles) introduce, in the case of physical restraints, a new flawed and ambiguous substitute decision-making regime, provide virtually no regulation of chemical restraint usage, and lack the safeguards of other restrictive practices regulatory schemes." 

Joseph Ibrahim, the head of the Health Law and Ageing Research Unit at Melbourne's Monash University, described the regulations as stupid. 

"There is no monitoring mechanism, there are no sanctions associated, there is no way of implementing or making sure the law comes into effect," Professor Ibrahim said. 

A group of advocates believe the government should be prohibiting the misuse of restraints and over-medication, rather than regulating them. 

They argue medication should only be used for therapeutic practices and be administered with a patient's free and informed consent. 

The group includes Aged and Disability Advocacy Australia (ADA) and Human Rights Watch, both of which addressed the hearing on Tuesday. 

"Older people in nursing homes are at serious risk of harm if this new aged care regulation is allowed to stand as is," ADA chief executive Geoff Rowe said. 

"Australia's parliament should act urgently to ensure that everyone, including older people, is free from the threat of chemical restraint.".....

The Canberra Times, 21 August 2019:

New rules on the use of restraints in aged care could lead to more elderly residents being sedated, a parliamentary inquiry has heard. 

The regulation is also unenforceable, and does nothing to relief the staffing pressures that have led to the use of restraints, expert witnesses have said..... 

Professor Joe Ibrahim from Monash University's Health Law and Ageing Research Unit said the regulation also did not recognise the pressures within aged care that forced staff to use restraints. 

"Staff restrain residents to get through their day because they don't have enough hands to get through what's needed or they don't have the skills, knowledge, ability to assess why a person has responsive behaviours or unmet needs to address that," Professor Ibrahim said. 

"A law that isn't monitored, has no sanctions, no way of checking, it will drive practice underground." 

Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union professional officer Jamie Shepherd said he knew of a case where one registered nurse had to administer medication to 166 residents on night shift, and management resisted rostering on an enrolled nurse to help until the RN threatened to call an ambulance each night to assist. 

Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation federal professional officer Julie Reeves said through a recent member survey, she learnt of an aged care home where there were just six staff rostered on overnight to look after 420 residents. 

"We cannot always effectively manage challenging behaviour issues for dementia residents while at the same time caring for others who have very complex health issues. 

We receive little to no support from management when things don't go as planned," she quoted the member as saying. 

Australian Human Rights Commission president, Emeritus Professor Rosalind Croucher said while parts of the regulation had merit, it should not be allowed to proceed unless there was a mechanism for independent oversight. "If it's a choice of it or nothing, nothing might be better than it as it is," Professor Croucher said....

Physical restraining devices currently allowed in Commonwealth-funded aged care facilities are:

Bed rails
Chairs with locked tables
Seat belts other than those used during active transport
Safety vests
Shackles
Manacles
[my yellow highlighting]


Chemical restraint is any medication or chemical substance used for the purpose of affecting a person's behaviour, other than medication prescribed for the treatment of, or to enable treatment of, a diagnosed mental disorder, a physical illness or a physical condition. 

Use of chemical restraint is specifically excluded from assessment in the National Aged Care Mandatory Quality Indicator Program. [See p.15]


BACKGROUND:

 Quality of Care Amendment (Minimising the Use of Restraints) Principles 2019

Tuesday 20 August 2019

The extreme far-right in Australian politics is on the march and hopes to capture the Liberal and Nationals' party machines


In October 2018 Australian mainstream media reported that a far right group had attempted to infiltrate the NSW National Party.

The Guardian, 15 October 2018:

The New South Wales Young Nationals has expelled one member and suspended two others after revelations the group had been infiltrated by members of Australia’s alt-right movement. 


On Sunday the ABC’s Background Briefing revealed that members of the NSW Young Nationals were members of the Lads Society, a far-right fight club whose leaders include the prominent alt-right figure Blair Cottrell. 

The Young Nationals – including one member of the party executive – were or had also been members of a Facebook group called the New Guard, whose followers include self-described fascists. 

Membership to the party’s youth organisation has also been temporarily suspended. 

On Monday the deputy premier and leader of the NSW Nationals, John Barilaro, admitted his party may have been an “easy target” for members of the far-right seeking to influence mainstream politics. 

“We are a grassroots party that is brought together by geography so I think we are probably an easy target,” he told ABC radio. 

“If you want to become a member and then start bringing more members in, we are a small party so a small number of members joining can actually change the structure of a branch or an electorate council as we call them.

“So maybe it’s because we are an easy target for individuals to infiltrate.”

Barilaro admitted the reports were “worrying”, saying there was a “question mark” over how influential the members identified by the ABC had been in developing policy within the party’s youth wing. 

He downplayed the significance of the group on the wider party. 

Earlier in 2018 media was reporting on a religious right attempt to infiltrate the Liberal Party at Victorian state level

The Guardian, 19 May 2018: 

It’s one of those dilemmas politicians like to call wicked problems. Politicians, at least the folks still on the planet, know that it’s important to build a political movement from the ground up, but such movements can sometimes produce outcomes that are uncomfortable for people in power. 

One of these case studies exists presently with the Liberal party in Victoria, where Malcolm Turnbull has been used as a recruitment tool, and not in a positive way. Conservative forces in the Victorian branch have used the rolling of Tony Abbott and Turnbull’s alleged progressivity as a rallying cry to recruit new members. 

An army is being raised in Melbourne’s outer-eastern suburbs with the objective of taking the Liberal party back from the Costello clique – the group that rose to a position of influence when Peter Costello was the most significant centre-right political figure in Victoria. 

The grassroots recruitment drive has been active amongst conservative church groups looking for a home after the collapse of the Christian micro-party Family First.

The Age, 3 June 2018:

An Age investigation has confirmed with senior church sources that at least 10 of the 78 people elected to the Liberals’ administrative bodies at the party’s April state council are Mormons.

This amounts to nearly 13 per cent of all those now in key positions within the Liberals’ organisational wing, compared to just 0.3 per cent of all Australians who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Combined with conservative Catholics, evangelical Christians from churches such as Victory Faith Centre and City Builders, the religious right-wing now has unprecedented sway in Liberal Party politics.

West Australian Liberal Party members were going public with their concerns at the beginning of 2019.

The West Australian, 15 January 2019:

Any political party trying to win the majority of voters at the silent centre of noisy left/right politics understands why religious zealotry is a turn off. 

Depending on who you talk to, given most people in politics are motivated by self-interest, the Liberals are either approaching a crossroads over the evangelical push for influence in the northern and southern suburbs branches, or they are already past the tipping point.

Plenty of party players will offer background on the battles being fought inside Liberal branches and divisions, but few want to go public for fear of the powerbrokers who control the numbers.

Long-standing Liberal Party member Deidre Willmott has been a chief of staff at the highest levels of government, was chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry until recently, is a proud Anglican and is not one for sensationalism.

Therefore, her view that evangelical forces were gaining control of the party should matter in Liberal land and party leaders, like Mike Nahan, and other stalwarts should take note. Willmott talked freely about “those people” from the religious right “getting the numbers”.

“The party runs the risk that a narrow-based agenda will be the priority of the party and make it irrelevant to the broad base it has represented,” she said. “I have no problem with Christians, I am one myself, but I just don’t think a socially conservative agenda is part of a mainstream Liberal Party.”

Following on from weekend news about members of another evangelical church, True North, nominating for control of the party’s Sorrento-Duncraig branch, there was much chatter on social media about the so-called “alliance” of Liberal powerbrokers.

Perhaps, given the topic, southern suburbs Christian warrior and Upper House Liberal Nick Goiran, his northern suburbs parliamentary colleague Peter Collier and Federal Liberal minister Mathias Cormann should be dubbed the Holy Trinity. 

Highly placed Liberals insist they control the party’s dominant faction and do so with the help of scores of members from Pentecostal and Baptist churches.

Federal Liberal MP Ian Goodenough is one politician who does not shy away from confirming the support he receives from the evangelical community, including Globalheart and True North churches. 


But he will not concede that the systematic approach Globalheart members have taken to winning key positions in Liberal branches differs greatly from other followers of religions getting involved in the party.

Now we are hearing that mid-2019 the Queensland Liberal-National Party had to shore up its barricades. 

The Courier Mail, 18 August 2019: 

QUEENSLAND’s Liberal National Party changed it rules last month in a bid to thwart an ultra conservative takeover of the party. 

Now it can be revealed the party has launched a widened investigation into who was behind the alleged “religious right” takeover push and what methods they were using in their bid. 

The investigation is an extension of a probe launched earlier this year into allegations attempts were being made to woo far-right extremists into the fold and use their networks trawl for new recruits. 

It is understood there are three to four people of interest to the investigation with the focus on stacking efforts witnessed at two party unit AGMs – the Metro South AGM and the Metro North AGM – where officer bearer positions that also have a vote on the LNP’s powerful state executive were up for grabs. 

It was the Metro North AGM – where more than 100 new faces arrived including some who allegedly were bussed in – that was the catalyst for the rule change brought in last month. 

Now new members must wait a year before voting on office bearer elections just as they have to for MP preselections.

And once more New South Wales is in the news, but this time it's the NSW Liberals, not the Nationals, who are being targeted.


The Sydney Morning Herald, 8 August 2019:


A group promoting religious freedom is working to recruit 5000 Christian conservatives to the NSW Liberals as part of an ambitious scheme aimed at taking "control" of the state division of the party.

Leaked documents obtained by the Herald, which contain metadata leading back to Federal and NSW parliaments, reveal the NSW Reformers group hopes to recruit thousands of members across Sydney.


A 900-word document titled ‘NSW Reformers - Taking Back Our Nation Through Good Government’ lays out the group's intentions to exert influence on politicians by joining Liberal branches and gaining pre-selection votes.


“If we recruit 5000 Christian conservatives we will control the NSW division of the Liberal Party,” it reads.


“We will organise information sessions for local coordinators as to how the intricate parts of the party work ...


Politicians are far more receptive to people and causes if they directly impact their chances of being in Parliament.” 


The group believes greater control of state and federal preselection in NSW would ensure a strong "conservative representation in Parliament".

The document’s metadata suggests it was written by a staff member in a federal ministerial office last year. The staffer did not return calls or text messages....


Other documents show names, addresses and contact details of hundreds of constituents were collated from a series of petitions advertised on the NSW Reformers' page.


The petitions that netted the data of hundreds of constituents refers to "gender ideology", “gay surrogacy”, religious freedom and Zoe’s Law legislation, which would make it a crime to cause death to a fetus.


The spreadsheets also contain lists of dozens of churches across Sydney to be targeted in the recruitment drive.