Under Turnbull Government's new plan "38 out of 44 marine parks will be open to trawling, gillnetting and longlining, 33 will be open to mining, and 42 exposed to the construction of pipelines"

www.parksaustralia.gov.au

Canberra Times, 17 September 2017:

In the corridors of Parliament House that day, as I met MPs of every stripe, I felt a great sense of promise, even pride. And it seemed for a while such hope was not misplaced. In 2012, after an exhaustive scientific process and wide community consultation, Tony Burke declared a system of marine national parks, one of the biggest and best in the world, the most significant conservation gain in Australian history.

That took courage. Because it put science before politics, prudence ahead of expediency. And it was popular. But as soon as he came to power in 2013 Tony Abbott announced an immediate moratorium on these parks and instigated a review. The purpose was purely political. To delay implementation, corrode consensus and deny the science. A move straight out of the culture warrior's playbook.

After decades of forward-thinking leaders, the nation had fallen into the hands of a man whose loyalties were only to the past. It was a low moment. But Abbott's reign was as brief as it was fruitless. It was a relief to see him replaced in 2015 by a man who'd actually done things, who believed in the future. Malcolm Turnbull did not scorn science. He seemed to understand the value and fragility of our natural estate. So there was new hope the marine parks review would now be expedited and redirected towards real conservation outcomes. With coral reefs bleaching and miners pressing for even more coal ports and seabed to drill, the need for protection had only grown more urgent.

Well, that moment of promise is long gone. Turnbull's period in office has basically been a hostage drama. The bargain he made with powerbrokers rendered him captive to the party's most illiberal wing, and if his performance on climate, energy and marriage equality aren't evidence enough, last month's announcement that marine parks would be slashed beyond all recognition puts it beyond dispute.

The agents of inertia control his government. And what's worse he's looking like a hostage who's begun to identify with his captors. How else to explain his radical lurch backwards on parks? The draft management plans recently released for consultation by Josh Frydenberg don't just signify the gutting of the national system, they represent the largest removal of protection for Australian wildlife in our history. What the government is proposing is a nihilistic act of vandalism. Forty  million hectares of sanctuary will be ripped from the estate. That's like revoking every second national park on land. Under its new plan, 38 out of 44 marine parks will be open to trawling, gillnetting and longlining, 33 will be open to mining, and 42 exposed to the construction of pipelines. In total defiance of the scientific advice upon which the original system was designed, 16 marine parks will now have no sanctuary zones at all.

The science shows that partial or low-level protection simply doesn't work. What the government is putting forward will radically diminish protection of habitat. It will also undermine sustainable regional economic development. What began as a quest for excellence based on the best possible science is now so miserably degraded it's turned the greatest step forward in marine conservation into a regime that doesn't even aspire to be second-rate.

Draft management plans for Australian marine parks/reserves:

Coral Sea Commonwealth Marine Reserve draft management plan

                                                                         

North Commonwealth Marine Reserves draft management plan

North-west Commonwealth Marine Reserves draft management plan

Temperate East Commonwealth Marine Reserves management plan

South-west Commonwealth Marine Reserves draft management plan

As one South Australian voter put it after reading about the Turnbull Government's intentions; FFS ! These guys are proof that there are no time machines. Otherwise someone from the future would come back and mulch the pr*cks. (quote supplied)

Voters in NSW North Coast electorates should be aware that:

* Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan supported this review and to date has never voted against his party’s position in the House of Representatives. Therefore it is highly likely that he will vote for any government bill which will reduce marine park and marine reserve protections.

*Nationals MP for Cowper Luke Hartsuyker supported this review and to date has never voted against his party’s position in the House of Representatives. Therefore it is highly likely that he will vote for any government bill which will reduce marine park and marine reserve protections.

* Labor MP for Richmond Justine Elliot does not support a reduction in marine parks and marine reserve protections.

Brief background

The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 July 2017:

The Turnbull government has released draft management plans for the nation's marine parks that amount to an "unprecedented roll-back" of protections, a coalition of 25 environmental groups say.

The long-awaited draft plans were released on Friday and propose changes to the 3.3 million square kilometres of Australia's protected offshore regions expanded in 2012 by the Gillard government.

The area of marine parks open to fishing would jump to 80 per cent from 64 per cent now, if the changes were to pass through parliament, WWF-Australia said.

"This is a huge step backwards for marine protection," Richard Leck, WWF's head of oceans, said. "Australia used to be seen as a global leader in marine conservation. That will no longer be the case if these proposals are implemented."

Other proposed changes would strip Shark and Vema reefs of  marine national park status, while Osprey reef - one of the world's premier dive sites - has lost more than half its protection, Tony Burke, Labor's environment spokesman said.

"Five years ago, Labor make the second largest conservation decision in history. Today the Turnbull Government announced the largest undoing of conservation ever," Mr Burke said….

Of particular concern to the green groups is the Coral Sea Marine Park, where a substantial area previously given the maximum protection had been reduced……

Ms Grady said the government had chosen to ignore the science contained in independent reviews that backed the original zones.

"All Australians will be justifiably distressed to know that science evidence supporting an increase in protections for marine life has been thrown out the window," Darren Kindleysides, director of the Australian Marine Conservation Society, said.

Centrelink sent out 19,980 incorrect debt notices in just eight months

Australian Parliament, PARLWORK, Question Details:

Question asked of the Minister for Human Services and Liberal MP for Aston Alan Tudge on 31 May 2017:

How many Centrelink clients who were notified of a debt or the likelihood of a debt with Centrelink through its Online Compliance Intervention system, have subsequently had their debt (a) reduced, and (b) cancelled completely.

Could he provide a breakdown of parts (1)(a) and (b) by (a) state and territory, and (b) postcode.

One hundred and three days later the Minister deigned to reply:

THE HON ALAN TUDGE MP - The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows:

1(a), 1(b) and 2(a) The number of debts reduced to zero and reduced but not to zero in total, by State and Territories as at 31 March 2017:

State	Debt Reduced to Zero1	Debt Reduced but not Zero1, 2
ACT	100	169
NSW	2,234	3,644
NT	40	79
QLD	1,665	2,718
SA	630	1,142
TAS	247	397
VIC	1,894	3,306
WA	646	1,069
Total	7,456	12,524

¹The month the change is reported is the month the reassessment or review of the debt was completed which may be different to the month the debt was raised.

2Debts can be reassessed multiple times. This is recorded each time as a reassessment in the appropriate month.

2(b) The breakdown by postcode is at Attachment A. To protect individuals’ privacy, cell sizes of less than five are represented as “<5”.

What it has taken the Turnbull Government so long to admit is that 37.31 per cent of the 19,980 incorrect debt notices sent out between 1 July 2016 and 31 March 2017 were manifestly false debts.

In the same period a further 62.68 per cent of the 19,980 incorrect debt notices had amounts owed reduced – sometimes to under $20.

What these figures do not reveal is the total number of people who received a debt notice over these eight months and the number who paid the original amount listed on the debt notice because they were afraid to challenge Centrelink even though they personally doubted that any money was owed.

Nor is there any indication of how many Centrelink clients were referred to aggressive private debt collectors by the department.

What is known was that 1,569,911 people were sent debt notices in the 2016 calendar year alone [Commonwealth Ombudsman—Department of Human Services: Centrelink’s automated debt raising and recovery system].

Of these 20 per cent were admitted by the Dept. of Social Services to be false debts and 80 per cent were recoded as debts against a Centrelink client resulting in $300 million repaid by welfare recipients over a six month period [Minister for Social Security and Liberal MP for Christian Porter, transcript, 4 January 2017].

A total of 216,000 debt notices were generated in the three months leading up to Christmas 2016 and 133,078 alleged debts were recovered.

The Turnbull Government expects to claw back a total of $4 billion from welfare recipients by 2021.

The number of suicides as a result of a Centrelink debt notice is also unknown to date, although at least one recorded death had Centrelink debt as a contributing factor.

Thousands of Queenslanders will have their Centrelink payments quarantined with a compulsory cashless welfare card in 2018

ABC News,

Thousands of Queenslanders will have their Centrelink payments quarantined when a compulsory cashless welfare card is brought in next year.

The Federal Government has announced the controversial card will be rolled out across the Wide Bay region, including Bundaberg and Hervey Bay.

Under the scheme 80 per cent of a person's welfare income is quarantined on a debit-style card, which cannot be used on alcohol, gambling or to withdraw cash.

It will apply to people under the age of 35 who receive dole and parenting payments.

The Wide Bay region has an est. resident population of 144,098 people living across 4.5 million hectares, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The 2016 Census revealed that only 22 per cent of the population stated they had any formal further education after high school and 27.5 per cent stated that their gross weekly incomes were less than $650. Half of those 15 years of age and older had incomes below $500.

In July 2017 Wide Bay had an employment rate of 60.8 per cent, an overall unemployment rate of 8.7 per cent and a youth unemployment rate of 23.6 per cent, according to the Australian Government Labour Market Information Portal and the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office.

Last year in Queensland there were 6.1 unemployed people for every job vacancy.

The number of businesses operating in the Wide Bay region has been slowly declining for at least the last five years, with the largest industry clusters being agriculture, construction and retail. The last data published shows barely 21,451 businesses – many of which would be owner operated having no employees or only a small number of employees.

In the Wide Bay region this expansion of the Indue cashless debit card program will initially be imposed on est. 6,700 people in Hervey Bay.

Hervey Bay has a population of 56,678 residents, with only 24.8 per cent of the population having any formal further education after high school and half of the population having personal incomes of less than $478 per week.

Families with children make up 48.4 per cent of all family groups and youth unemployment in Hervey Bay mirrors the broader Wide Bay region.

Eventually the cashless debit card program is expected to directly affect up to est. 20,478  individuals as it is rolled out across the region in 2018 and, the flow-on effect will touch their families and local businesses.

A media release by the Minister for Human Services and the Member for Hinkler stated as a principal reason for introducing the cashless debit card into the Hervey Bay community:

The consultations also revealed significant problems with alcohol, drugs and gambling, particularly among young families.  Many community sector leaders were concerned that money meant for children was not being spent on them. The card will ensure that money meant for children will not be spent on alcohol, gambling or drugs.

However, I’m not quite sure that 2016-17 crime statistics for the Qld Police District of Wide Bay-Burnett actually reflects this view.

As it is the Turnbull Government’s intention (sometimes openly stated) to force people off Centrelink’s books by controlling how welfare recipients spend their benefits, I think I can safely say that by the end of 2018 the Liberal Member for Wide Bay Llew O'Brien may find that he was only a one-term wonder in federal parliament and the Nationals Member for Hinkler Keith Pitt may also find that two parliamentary terms is his limit.

"You can opt out of it [the card] by getting a job."

Minister  for Human Services and MP for Aston Alan Tudge

21 September 2017

What exactly is the point of this Indue Limited cashless debit card, Prime Minster Turnbull?

Dept. of Social Security and Dept. of Veteran's Affairs data reveals that by June 2017 there were est. 10.1 million Australians receiving some form of federal government assistance which involved regular or periodic cash transfers into their bank accounts.

The Turnbull Government intends to control how est. 7.5 million of these people spend these transfers by placing the money in cashless debit card accounts and restricting the availability of actual cash to 20 per cent of  the transfer amount.

This income management scheme is being rolled out nationally under the guise of an unrestricted 'trial'.

However the justification for this scheme is beginning to crumble under closer scrutiny.

News.com.au, 14 September 2017:

WELFARE recipients spend less on alcohol as a portion of their income than all other Australians, new figures show.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics this week released its household expenditure statistics report, breaking down how Australians spend their money.

And it’s managed to crush a few stereotypes with the data.

The report shows that Aussies overall spend more than half of their average weekly spend on goods and services on basics, covering things like housing, food, energy, health care and transport.

Aussies spend an average $846 of the weekly household spend of $1,425 on these items and service.

Included in these basics are food and non-alcoholic beverages, but booze is counted separately, and the results make for some interesting reading.

Australians whose main source of income was from government pensions and allowances, were found to spend an average of $12.14 out of their $677.19 on alcoholic drinks, or 1.8 per cent.

Overall, Australian households on average were found to spend $31.95 of their $1425.03 weekly spend on alcohol — a total of 2.2 per cent.

Those whose main source of household income came from their employer, or their own business, were each found to spend 2.5 per cent of their weekly household spend on booze, and those whose income fitted into the “other” category indulged 2.5 per cent of their weekly budget.

The findings come amid a government push for a cashless welfare card that quarantines a large chunk of Centrelink payments and can’t be used to pay for alcohol, cigarettes, or gambling.

It seems Turnbull, Abbott and Co have just lost the excuse that welfare recipients as a group are heavy boozers.

Well, I hear you say; then it must be that they need their incomes managed because they all smoke like chimneys. Except tobacco sales have been falling for years and its’s not as easy to find a low-income or unemployed smoker of any age as it once was.

Or if they don’t have the first two ‘vices’, then it must be all those lottery tickets they purchase that show a need to control their finances. But the facts set out in Australian Gambling Statistics 32nd Edition (p.93) show that households in Australia might have spent as much as 0.002% of their disposable income each year on Lotto or the like. Hardly a national scandal.

But what about those ubiquitous poker machines? Well again according to Australian Gambling Statistics 32nd Edition (p.152) households really go overboard there - they actual spend per capita around 1.057% of their annual disposable income on this form of gambling and in the last 20 years on record this figure has never climbed higher than 1.808% annually. In dollar terms this means that welfare recipients are probably spending between $0 and $5 per week on electronic gambling.

So if most people receiving welfare payments don’t constantly have a drink in their hand and a fag on their lips while they look up the Lotto results and if they're not all hunched over poker machines on a daily basis – what exactly is the point of this universal cashless debit card?

Of course! It has to be because most of these 7.5 million welfare recipients are relatively poor - which is an obvious character defect requiring punishment coercive correction according to those financially comfortable right-wing politicians in Canberra and their fellow travellers.

Cashless Welfare Card: a denizen of Mount Olympus pontificates on the ignorant masses below

This was Dr Jeremy Sammut (left) from the Centre for Independent Studies giving his views on the ignorant underclass, Friday, 8 September 2017:

It’s a libertarian fantasy that the problem of welfare dependence can be addressed without using the power of the state to compel responsible personal behaviour.

State compulsion, for example, is essential to enforce mutual obligation requirements and force the unemployed to actively seek a job, instead of continuing to loaf on the dole.

My research on the nation’s child protection crisis has sharply revealed the social damage wreaked by unrestricted welfare and parental bad behaviour among an underclass of dysfunctional families.

I therefore have no problem with the idea that welfare recipients could be compelled to take better care of children by being forced to spend their benefits on food and other essentials, rather than on drink, drugs, and gambling.

This is how we should view the debate about the federal government’s plan to expand the trial of the ‘cashless welfare card’ — as a means of addressing the intergenerational transfer of dysfunction and dependence within families.

In philosophical terms, the cashless welfare card is an example of ‘small government conservatism‘: a socially conservative approach to social policy which — contrary to the conventional political wisdom — utilises state intervention to reduce the size of government.

This position may be difficult to accept for economic liberals who place a premium on individual freedom and freedom from government control.

However, it is impossible to deal with the issue of welfare dependence by simply applying the first principle that government should always do less.

As former Labor Minister and social commentator Gary Johns has argued, it is crucial to continue to make the economic case for freedom from state intervention.

But as he has also rightly argued, this is insufficient to address the social problems that have driven growth in the size of government.

Addressing welfare dependence will require more, not less, state intervention through policies such as mutual obligation and cashless welfare.

Yes, according to Dr Sammut (blessed with an expensive private education and a PhD in  Australian political and social history) it’s all about the children and the chronically welfare dependent underclass.

Except the Turnbull Government intends to roll the cashless debit card out nationally for individuals without children, people with significant disabilities, full-time carers of elderly parents, even those who have been on unemployment benefits for less than less than a month, as well as individuals who have regular employment but receive Family Tax Benefit.

It is likely that sometime in the future the Turnbull Government will announce that this cashless welfare card will also be imposed on age pensioners.

It will come as no surprise that Sammut is also in favour of the Australian health system being shifted away from reliance on the taxpayer-funded Medicare system towards a self-funded Health Savings Account-based health financing system. 

In addition Dr Sammut espouses the theory that:

The real explanation for poverty is that different social outcomes reflect the different behaviours of different groups in society. Social disparities are explained by the fact that those on the higher rungs of society have internalised the set of social norms around education, work, and family life that are the building blocks of success and prosperity, as compared to many of those on the lowest rungs of society.

Yes, you are reading that sentence correctly. According to this man individuals and families have only themselves to blame for their poverty or disadvantage – end of story.

Jeremy Sammut is the type of commentator that the Liberal Party dreams about having on side.

On his Facebook page Sammut lists the following among his favourites:

Alan Tudge MP, Australian Institute for Progress, The Spectator, Scott Morrison MP - ScoMo, Adam Giles, Ramsay Health Care, Senator Dean Smith, The Centre for Independent Studies, Matthew Guy, Commonwealth Bank, Senator Scott Ryan, Menzies Research Centre, Dominic Perrottet MP, Andrew Southcott MP, Asher Judah - Liberal for Bentleigh and more

No prizes for spotting the preponderance of right-wing politicians.

Last year Sammut was telling the world it was an exciting time to be an Australian conservative – a category into which he obviously placed himself.

After reading a bit about the man and his attitude, all I can say is that if this attitude continues to hold sway at federal policy level I don’t think it going to be an exciting time to be an Australian who is receiving welfare benefits of any type, is in a low-skilled, low income job, a single parent raising a child or an indigenous family.

Because to people like Jeremy Sammut literally millions of Australian citizens are part of an undeserving, dysfunctional underclass that is to be barely tolerated.

Laughing at Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison

Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison exposed as a confirmed time traveller by Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell.  

Zipping back and forth to 1920 at will, in order to extract tax from my long-gone grandparents even before there were Medicare health and medical services to attract a levy.

How does he do it?

The Turnbull Government's profoundly ignorant ideology will eventually drive hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians to despair

In its drive to keep widening the application of cashless welfare payments to more and more people who receive some form of welfare support, the Turnbull Coalition Government is knowingly misleading the general public concerning the efficacy of rigidly controlling the lawful income of these people.

Take the federal government’s spurious assertion that crime rates have dropped across the board in Cashless Debit Card trial sites in Western Australia and South Australia.

A more honest picture of the situation on the ground............

The West, 17 August 2017:

Rates of theft, property crime, threatening behaviour and non-aggravated robbery have increased in Kununurra since the Federal Government’s cashless welfare card was rolled out in the East Kimberley.

WA Police figures provided to State Parliament show 277 theft offences in the North-West town in the year to May, up from 195 in the year leading up to the card’s introduction in April last year. The number of property offences rose to 965, up from 805, while there were 59 more incidents of threatening behaviour and seven more cases of non-aggravated robbery.

Crime rates were slightly down in the smaller community of Wyndham, which is also part of the East Kimberley trial.

In South Australia a similar picture emerges….

North Coast Voices,  26 April 2017  :

Uniting Communities, formerly UnitingCare Wesley Adelaide and the Adelaide Central Mission, observed on 14 March 2017:

The Report states a decrease in overall crime in the Ceduna trial site. However, the statistics for a range of crimes, as provided by SAPOL for the Eyre Western LSA over the past 12 months when compared to the previous year, indicate an increase in offences against property and against the person. Most notably, there was a 111% increase in robbery and related offences, and a 400% increase in non-aggravated robbery.

Schrapel says, ‘It’s alarming to note that the Minister for Human Services has indicated in an interview today with ABC News that the crime figures in the Report were “preliminary and not conclusive” and yet this very same crime data has been used to validate the extension of the Cashless Card. Surely we need a more rigorous assessment of such evidence before it is used to justify a major policy announcement’.

Because DSS frequently relied on broader SLA statistics perhaps local media can be useful in fleshing the situation on the ground out a little more.

Ceduna Local Government Area has an estimated resident population of 3,716 people and The West Coast Sentinel  covers local news in the region.

Here are some of the crime reports in this newspaper during the cashless debit card trial period as of 22 April 2017:

18 April 2017:

Two Ceduna businesses were broken into early last Thursday morning. Items were stolen from Spry's Newsagency and Mitre 10, while the Ceduna Sailing Club was also damaged. Police are investigating the incidents, with electrical items and cigarettes stolen from the newsagency. Eleven mobile phones, including Samsung, ZTE and HTC brands and a Telstra Essentials black tablet were stolen along with a number of packets of ciagrettes.

3 April 2017:

A man was arrested after being caught drink driving at Koonibba on Sunday morning. Police stopped the vehicle just after 1am and requested the driver submit to a breath test.

He was directed to attend the Ceduna Police Station for further testing but became agitated and attempted to walk away.

He was arrested for refusing to obey reasonable police direction, driving under the influence with an alleged reading of 0.162 and resisting police. He was issued a 12-month loss of licence.

30 March 2017:

Four drink drivers were caught at Ceduna and Streaky Bay late last week including a driver detected during a school drop-off.

2 March 2017:

Police stopped the car and found three women and three children aged 9, 8 and 4 all not wearing seatbelts.

The 32-year-old driver was breath tested and returned a blood alcohol reading of 0.120 per cent.

Further checks revealed she only held a learner's permit.

The Ceduna woman was reported for a number of traffic offences including drink driving, breaching learner's permit conditions, failing to ensure passengers were wearing seatbelts and driving with unrestrained children in the car.

The car was also defected and impounded for 28 days and the woman was issued with a six-month instant loss of licence.

The adult passengers were also fined with failing to wear a seatbelt.

2 February 2017:

A MAN had his licence suspended for a year after he was caught drink driving in Ceduna last Thursday.

Police stopped a Ford station wagon on Denial Bay Road at about 4.30pm and breath tested the male driver who returned a positive reading of 0.165 per cent.

Just before 8pm, police stopped the woman as she was driving a Holden sedan along Poynton Street for a mobile screening test.

The 31-year-old Ceduna woman provided a positive preliminary breath test and later returned a breath test result of 0.134 per cent.

She lost her licence for six months and will be summoned to appear in court at a later date.

12 January 2017:

TWO youths were arrested following a police pursuit with a stolen van at Ceduna last week.

8 December 2016:

POLICE reported a man for speeding and drink driving in Ceduna last Thursday.

Police were conducting speed detection duties along the Eyre Highway west of Ceduna when they detected a car travelling at 124 kilometres an hour in a 110km/h speed zone.

Police breath tested the driver who allegedly produced a blood alcohol reading of 0.114 per cent.

The 46-year-old was issued with a six-month instant loss of licence and had his car impounded.

27 October 2016:

A WEST Coast man was arrested following a domestic disturbance in Ceduna last Tuesday night.

Police were called to Goode Road following reports that a woman had been stabbed. She was found adjacent to the Eyre Highway with a stab wound to the leg and taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital in a serious condition.

A 54-year-old man was charged with aggravated assault causing serious harm. He was refused police bail and appeared at Ceduna Magistrates' Court the following day.

28 August 2016:

A DRIVER was reported for traffic offences after rolling his car near Penong on Saturday… It seems the driver had taken evasive action to avoid an echidna that was crossing the road.

The 59-year-old Yalata man was reported for drink driving and failing to immediately report the crash to police. He recorded a blood alcohol reading of 0.261 - more than five times the legal limit.

10 July 2016:

POLICE have arrested a woman following a domestic disturbance near Ceduna on Friday night.

Police were called to a house west of Ceduna just after 11pm, July 8, following reports that a man had been stabbed.

When patrols arrived, they located a 25-year-old man with stab wounds to his leg. He was taken to the Ceduna Hospital in a serious condition and will be airlifted to the Flinders Medical Centre on Saturday morning.

A woman was arrested at the scene and was also treated for minor injuries at the hospital.

Police advise that both parties were known to each other and this was not a random incident. 

                                                                                                                                                                                        

16 May 2016:

A 27-year-old man was arrested after leaving his ID at the scene of a break-in at Ceduna on Saturday, May 14.

Just after 5am, neighbours of an elderly resident in Collins Street, Ceduna, woke to the sound of smashing glass.

The neighbours, including an off-duty police officer, investigated the scene and startled the two offenders, who ran off.

One of the suspects left his bank card at the scene and was subsequently arrested and charged with two counts of aggravated serious criminal trespass, two counts of illegal interference, property damage and theft.

It will also be alleged the 27-year-old Koonibba man stole a number of items from a shed.

21 March 2016:

THREE Ceduna men were taken into police custody and were charged with aggravated counts of robbery and serious criminal trespass after cars were stolen and a service station broken into last Wednesday night.

At about 8.45pm, a Ceduna man was allegedly assaulted by three men and had his Holden sedan stolen. Police will allege the trio then drove to Streaky Bay and broke into a service station before continuing to Port Kenny. Once there it is alleged they stole another vehicle which was later located by police near Streaky Bay. The three men were found walking along the highway the following morning and were arrested by Ceduna detectives. They were charged with aggravated robbery, serious criminal trespass and illegal use, and appeared at the Ceduna Magistrates' Court on Thursday.

To an outsider looking in it doesn’t seem like much has changed for the better in relation to criminal activity since Indue's cashless debit card has been in use.

Perhaps ministers Tudge and Porter might like to comment further?

So you held out a hope that the Turnbull Government's use of the SSM postal survey results would be straightforward?

The forthcoming Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey will contain one clearly worded question: “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?”

This question can be answered “Yes” or “No” by those Australian citizens on the Commonwealth Electoral Roll who choose to participate.

The Turnbull Government has stated that a simple majority survey result will mean that legislation legalising same-sex marriage will be introduced in the federal parliament.

However, the vote of government senators and MPs will not be bound by the results of this survey – their vote on this legislation is a ‘free’ vote.

Almost sounds kosher, doesn’t it?

Ah, but this is a government full of far-right warriors determined to protect a ‘superior’ white Christian culture which has only ever really existed in their own minds and the minds of their fellow travellers.

So the Australian Bureau of Statistics website carries this information concerning the postal survey:

Readers will notice that survey results will be broken down by age and gender and, more importantly, by state or territory and federal electorates.

Call me cynical, but these demographic groupings will allow both the Turnbull Cabinet and all government senators and MPs to decide if survey participation in their own Liberal and National Party seats was either high enough or low enough for them to risk voting against same-sex marriage legislation and yet still have a chance of retaining their Senate or House of Representatives seats (as well as those generous parliamentary incomes & entitlements) in 2018.

So for those living in the federal electorates of Aston, Banks, Barker, Bennelong, Berowra, Bonner, Boothby, Bowman, Bradfield, Brisbane, Calare, Canning, Capricornia, Casey, Chisholm, Cook, Corangamite, Cowper, Curtin, Dawson, Deakin, Dickson, Dunkley, Durack, Fadden, Fairfax, Farrer, Fisher, Flinders, Flynn, Forde, Forrest, Gilmore, Gippsland, Goldstein, Grey, Groom, Hasluck, Higgins, Hinkler, Hughes, Hume, Kooyong, La Trobe, Leichardt, Lyne, Mackellar, Mallee, Maranoa, McMillan, McPherson, Menzies, Mitchell, Moncrieff, Moore, Murray, New England, North Sydney, O’Connor, Page, Parkes, Pearce, Petrie, Reid, Riverina, Robertson, Ryan, Stirling, Stuart, Swan, Tangney, Wannon, Warringah, Wentworth, Wide Bay, and Wright – your “Yes” or “No”  is probably going to count much more to these 76 Coalition MPs than those of everyone else.

Because the likes of Tony Abbott MP for Warringah, Kevin Andrews MP for Menzies and Andrew Hastie MP for Canning are only going to be swayed by what they perceive as their own self-interest.

For them it has never been about an individual's dignity, human rights or equality.