Come down from your citadel Cardinal Pell and tell us what you knew

Vatican Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy Cardinal George Pell has always enjoyed due process in any Australian court case, state inquiry or royal commission concerning child sexual abuse at which he was a witness and, observation over time would lead an ordinary person to conclude that his various religious titles have afforded him what amounts to favoured treatment by both the police and legal profession.

Fair treatment was also afforded Pell in the 2002 internal Catholic Church inquiry into his past conduct as a seminarian in the early 1960s.

Given that barely a year after appearing before the Victorian Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and other Organisations Pell announced he was leaving Australia to reside permanently in the Vatican from 31 March 2014 and; after initial witness appearances on 24 & 26 March 2014 has now thrice refused to comeback to give evidence in person again at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (preferring to be questioned by video link on 21 August 2014 & this coming 29 February 2016); is it any wonder that in the face of his obvious sense of entitlement the mood has finally swung sharply against this man?

A new twist to Cardinal Pell's reluctance to return to Australia was revealed on the front page¹ of the Herald Sun on 20 February 2016:

These allegations concerning Pell seem to spring from information received by Victoria Police's Sano Task Force:

The new allegations (which Cardinal Pell denies) are likely to compound the community response which finally spilled over four days earlier.........

This song is for the survivors

Tim Minchin

https://youtu.be/EtHOmforqxk

ABC News, 16 February 2016:

Ballarat survivors of sexual abuse plan to travel to Rome to hear Cardinal George Pell give evidence to the royal commission into child sex abuse, as a result of a crowdfunding campaign.

Cardinal Pell will remain in Rome after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse accepted a doctor's report that said he was too sick to return to testify in Australia.

Comedian Meshel Laurie and television presenter Gorgi Coghlan started a GoFundMe page to send 15 people, including representatives from the City of Ballarat, survivors and support people to Rome for the hearing.

The campaign exceeded its target of $55,000 after the fundraising page was shared more than 3,100 times on Facebook and Twitter.

At midnight on Tuesday it was nearing $75,000 at 2.17pm on Wednesday it was over $100,000, at 11.07am on Thursday it was over $175,000, at 8am on Friday it was nearing $189,000 at 4.36pm on Saturday it was $202,210, including an anonymous donation of $10,000.

The campaign aimed to raise the funds before the hearing on February 29 and says "the opportunity to face Cardinal Pell is the least our community can do for these brave people who have bared their souls to ensure the world is a safer place for all children".

Abuse survivors like Stephen Woods want Cardinal Pell to give evidence in an "open" place like the Australian embassy where they can watch.

"It has to be somewhere where he's not in control, his lawyers are not in control and that way he will actually be pushed to give better answers than the usual 'I can't remember'," he said.

"We want to see a candidness that we haven't seen before with Cardinal Pell.

"We want to see honesty. We want to see a veracity, transparency.

"That will be really good to see face to face." [my updates in red]

ABC News, 17 February 2016:

Former New South Wales Labor premier and Catholic Kristina Keneally said she laughed when she first heard the song, but on second listening was brought to tears.

"It spoke really deeply to the abject failure of the Catholic Church to deal with the child sexual abuse crisis," Ms Keneally said.

"I have yet to see from the Vatican the type of frank, honest, acknowledgement of the damage that it has done and the recognition of the things that need to change in the Catholic Church to ensure this never happens again."

Tim Minchin's song peaked at number one on the Australian iTunes songs chart on Wednesday 17 February and reached 825,569 YouTube video views by the following Saturday.

Footnote

1. Apparently the Vatican, Cardinal Pell and senior clergy in Australia are more concerned with who leaked the latest sexual abuse allegations to the media rather than focusing on the possible suffering those allegations might represent. 
Having grown up in a predominately Catholic community, with one paedophile priest having free run of the local primary school and another frequently entertained in their homes by parents of young children, I understand the scale of such offending by men hiding behind the authority of black cassocks and birettas. 
In fact both these men appear to have gone to their graves unaccountable for their predatory behaviour and unremarked by the wider community. 
It is beyond belief that the Vatican still doesn't acknowledge the true historical scale of sexual abuse and fails to immediately request that named ordained priests (including cardinals) stand down pending the results of any such police investigations.

On an official visit to Italy in May 2015 Australian Attorney-General George Brandis secretly met with Royal Commission witness Cardinal George Pell in Rome and still refuses to explain himself

No wonder Labor’s Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus QC MP decided to take Attorney-General Senator George Brandis QC to court in order to see his official diary containing the weekly agenda between 18 September 2013 and 12 May 2014 – appears it’s not just about an alleged lack of consultation over environmental legal agency and arts funding cuts.

The following also suggests more than one motive may lie behind the Attorney-General currently using taxpayer funds to appeal the Administrative Appeals Tribunal decision in the Federal Court, in order to continue to block Dreyfus from seeing his ministerial diary.

This is a snapshot of a 4 May 2015 media release by the Attorney-General’s Department:

This is Ten News breaking the secret meeting story on 20 July 2015:

Brandis' secret meeting with Pell

Victims of child sexual abuse, being examined by the Royal Commission, have slammed Federal Attorney-General George Brandis over a secret meeting in Rome he had with Cardinal George Pell, who's long been accused of protecting paedophile priests.

https://youtu.be/BmaXYN9SilU

This meeting, between the Catholic Attorney-General and the Australian Cardinal-Prefect heading the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy, took place over a meal at the official residence of the Australian Ambassador to the Holy See John McCarthy QC. 

It is understood that it was in May 2015 that Cardinal Pell was privately informed that he was to be recalled to give evidence in late 2015 by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

On 25 May 2015 Pell responded by letter to the Royal Commission stating his intention to comply. As the cardinal well knows that anyone residing overseas cannot be summons to appear, the one quote from his letter found in the relevant media statement is rather too 'cute' for words

So it probably came as no surprise to avid followers of these hearings that, on 11 December, five days before he was to attend the Royal Commission, Cardinal Pell plead illness and refused to travel to Australia. 

His appearance in person has been rescheduled for February 2016 during a further Case Study 28 hearing.

Anyone holding their breath as they wait for George Pell to appear in person at the Royal Commission again needs to exhale now, as ceasing to breathe until the Last Judgement Day is necessarily fatal.

Seventy-nine thousand women in Australia will not be amused by Malcolm Bligh Turnbull's latest version of the paid parental leave scheme

Women falling pregnant or due to give birth after 30 June 2016 are not going to be amused when they realize exactly how much harder their lives might become under the Federal Coalition Government.

Especially when they realize that Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull was a successful barrister who inherited an est. $2 million in the same year his first child was born and, would have little to no understanding of the predicament in which he is placing many low-income families.

Set out below are excerpts from a recent analysis of Turnbull's latest version of the paid parental leave scheme.

University of Sydney Business School,  Women and Work Research Group, January 2016, Prof. Marian Baird & Dr. Andreea Constantin, Analysis Of The Impact Of The Government’s Myefo Cuts To Paid Parental Leave, excerpts:

The current paid parental leave (PPL) scheme commenced operation in January 2011, after the Productivity Commission recommended a system that combined government and employer leave. In making their recommendations, the Productivity Commission highlighted the importance of new parents attaining 26 weeks or more post-natal paid leave - a period considered important for health and welfare reasons for both a baby and new mother.

The current PPL system provides 18 weeks government pay at the minimum wage, to be used in combination with any leave in employment agreements or policies. It was specifically designed to enable more women to reach 26 weeks or more of paid parental leave by adding their employer paid leave on top of the 18 weeks of government provided pay.

Under the proposed cuts to this system announced in the Mid-year Economic and Financial Outlook (MYEFO), a new parent’s access to government provided PPL support would be cut where the new parent has also secured any employer provided leave, thus reducing the overall period of paid time at home that parents can access.

Approximately 160,000 families accessed PPL last year, and approximately 50 per cent of women receive some employer PPL. As 99% of those who currently access paid parental leave are women, we can then expect approximately 79,000 women would be adversely affected by this proposed cut.

Further, the analysis of impacts on different workers outlined below shows that, among others, we can expect that nurses, teachers, ambulance service workers and retail workers will be hit hard by the proposed changes. Under the government’s proposed cuts, the families modelled in the below scenarios would be left with just 7 – 13 weeks of living costs covered by the Government system. That’s less than half of the 26 weeks experts recommend.

The financial loss suffered by these families would range from $3,942 to $10,512. Given this modelling and based on what we know about how women in Australia use paid parental leave, we expect the changes will:

* prevent more women from spending critical time at home with their newborn baby;

* lead to financial duress;

* reduce the number of women able to afford to stay at home for 26 weeks and thus adversely impact on the health and welfare outcomes of new babies and mothers; and

* increase demand for childcare for the very young, in a system that is already struggling to keep up with demand.

As a result of the cuts to their income which will occur if these changes to the Paid Parental Leave system are introduced, we can also anticipate negative flow on impacts for new families and the communities in which they live.

Under the proposed changes announced - unexpectedly and without consultation - in the Mid-year Economic and Financial Outlook (MYEFO), for eligible workers whose children are born or adopted on or after 1 July 2016, the number of weeks of PPL entitlements paid under the Commonwealth Paid Parental Leave model will be cut where a parent also receives employer provided paid leave.

The number of weeks of any paid leave provided by the employer will be deducted from the Government’s 18 weeks.

The main difference between this new proposed cut, and the cut previously proposed by Treasurer Joe Hockey and former Prime Minister Abbott, is that this new proposed cut is calculated on the basis of weeks of government paid parental leave (capped to 18 weeks of income), rather than the dollar amount of income received (capped to the equivalent of 18 weeks income at the national minimum wage).

Under the government’s proposed changes to the PPL model, the eligibility rule for a break in work will also be changed - from 8 to 12 weeks, allowing some women who are currently ineligible for paid parental leave because they have breaks in work longer than 8 weeks, to access the government parental leave pay, for example jockeys. The proposed changes will also affect income assessed for Family Tax Benefits, potentially further reducing the family income. According to MYEFO, the Government plans to save $105 million over 4 years in Family Tax Benefits, or just over $26 million per year. Thus somewhere between 4,000 to 6,000 families are likely to have their benefits reduced.

The first Scenario models the expected impact of the government’s proposed changes on the situation of a retail worker. She works as a cashier for Woolworths and is expecting her first child.

The second Scenario models the impact of the government’s changes on a part-time teacher who works 3 days a week.

The third Scenario models the impact of the government’s proposed changes on a mother working full-time as an ambulance service worker in Queensland. She lives with her partner, their 5 year old daughter and their newborn baby.

The fourth Scenario models the impact of the government’s proposed cuts on a mother who works part-time (3 eight-hour shifts a week) as a nurse. She lives with her partner and their newborn in Victoria.

Conclusion

The Federal Government’s proposed changes will result in fewer weeks of paid parental leave for women who receive some PPL from their employer. The more weeks of paid parental leave a new mother receives from their employer, the less they will receive from the government.

The outcome is regressive and the analysis shows it will have a negative impact on lower paid women. Women who are in normal, but low paid jobs or part-time work with slight benefits from employers will lose government financial support, and therefore their ability to afford to spend time with their newborns in these critical first months will be compromised.

These scenarios show that the loss to women in these critical jobs ranges from 6 weeks to 16 weeks of income and amounts to a range of $3,942 and $10,512. This represents a significant loss of resources to the primary carer and their family during this key time when they will already be financially under-pressure.

A reduction in available paid parental leave can be expected to increase the costs and time pressures on women, and this in turn may be expected to force more women to return to work earlier than desired and to seek childcare for their babies in a system that is already failing to meet demand amongst infants.

As a result of the cuts to their income which will occur if these changes to the Paid Parental Leave model are introduced, we can also anticipate negative flow on impacts for new families and the communities in which they live.