Big business groups are already out attacking out our #ChangeTheRules campaign.— Australian Unions (@unionsaustralia) March 11, 2018
RT if you think workers need more secure jobs and a wage rise. #auspol pic.twitter.com/NPNIwAku86
Showing posts with label right wing politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label right wing politics. Show all posts
Tuesday 13 March 2018
FAIR GO 101: It's Time To Change The Rules
Sunday 4 March 2018
Was the Australian Minister for Screech bullied in Senate Estimates? You be the judge
This is a fairly typical mainstream media snap of Liberal Senator for Western Australia & Minister for Jobs and Innovation Michaelia Clare Cash.
On 1 March 2018 Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull rose to his feet in the House of Representatives to claim that Cash had been bullied during a Senate Estimates hearing on 28 February 2018.
"Mr TURNBULL (Wentworth—Prime Minister) (14:01): All of us should show respect to the staff in this building, and indeed we should show respect to each other—although, obviously, as we will see no doubt in the next 70 minutes, that principle can sometimes be challenged in practice. The honourable member refers to some remarks made by Senator Cash during a very heated exchange in Senate estimates, where she was being bullied and provoked by Senator Cameron......But Senator Cash was being bullied and provoked by Senator Cameron, who was making insinuations about staff." [Hansard, 1 March 2018]
This is the incident to which he is referring.
After the hearing suspension at 10:20am Minister Cash went on to repeat her threat to name individual parliamentary staff.There you go, watch again, who was trying to bully whom@TurnbullMalcolm @SenatorCash pic.twitter.com/RV3EbvOoIH— Finnigans 天有道地有道人无道 (@Thefinnigans) March 1, 2018
The full transcript of the Cash-Cameron exchange during the Senate Estimates Education and Employment Legislation Committee hearing on 28 February can be found here.
Readers may judge for themselves whether Minister Cash was bullied and insinuations made about her staff.
From where I am sitting it appears as though the only insinuations were made by the Minister herself as were the verbal threats.
Thursday 1 March 2018
No need to worry about the possibility that a Liberal-Nationals Federal Government will impose censorship on the free press in Australia
The
time to fret over the possibility of government censorship of the media is over
because in February 2018 it ceased being a distant possibility and became fact.
This
is what the Australian Press Council stated about the News Corp online article….
Australian Press Council (APC):
The
Press Council has considered whether its Standards of Practice were breached by
an article published in news.com.au on 31 May 2017, headed “Islamic State [IS]
terror guide encourages luring victims via Gumtree, eBay”.
The opening paragraph read: “ISLAMIC State has released a step-by-step guide on how to murder nonbelievers, which includes how to lure targets via fake ads on Gumtree and eBay”. The article proceeded to relay in detail how an article in “[t]he latest edition of the terror group’s English-language propaganda magazine … encourages would-be terrorists to advertise products on second-hand selling sites … to lure victims and assassinate them”. The article mostly comprised extracts from the source material describing the steps necessary to perform such acts.
The Council considered that the article did publish much of the source material from IS verbatim, with limited accompanying analysis or context, such as comments from experts and websites such as Gumtree. The Council accepted there was no intention to encourage or support terrorism, but considered that republishing content from terrorist entities in this manner can perpetuate the purpose of such propaganda and give publicity to its ideas and practices.
However, the Council accepted the public interest in alerting readers to potential risks to their safety. It considered that on balance, the public interest in alerting readers to the dangerous content of the terrorist propaganda and its instructional detail was greater than the risk to their safety posed by the effective republication of terrorist propaganda content. Given this, the Council concluded that the public interest justified publication of the article. Accordingly, the publication did not breach General Principle 6.
The Council noted that great care needs to be exercised by publications when reporting on terrorist propaganda to ensure that public safety is not compromised. In particular, effectively republishing source material comprising instructional detail in how to carry out particular terrorist acts could pose a risk to public safety, and reasonable steps should be taken to prevent such an outcome.
This
is what the Turnbull Government did…….
News.com.au, 28 February 2018:
…the
article titled “Islamic State terror guide encourages luring victims via
Gumtree, eBay” no longer exists.
A
week after it was published on May 31, 2017, the Attorney-General’s office
contacted news.com.au to demand it be taken down, saying the Classification
Board had ruled it should be refused classification as it “directly or
indirectly” advocated terrorist acts.
It
appears to be the first time section 9A of the Classification (Publications,
Films and Computer Games) Act 1995 has been used to censor a news report, since
it was first added in 2007.
The
action has alarmed the publisher of news.com.au as Australian media in general
were not informed the Classification Board had the power to ban news stories or
that the eSafety Commissioner had the power to instigate investigations into
news articles.
“The
first news.com.au knew of this matter was when contacted by the
Attorney-General’s Department and advised of the Classification Board
decision,” news.com.au argued as part of a separate Press Council investigation
into the article.
“The
department, board and the eSafety Commissioner did not contact news.com.au
beforehand to advise of the investigation. Consequently, news.com.au was not
given the right to make submissions or a defence in regard to the article.”
News.com.au
removed the article as it was facing legal penalties from the Australian
Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) if it refused, including fines or
even civil or criminal legal action.
In
justifying its decision, the Classification Board noted the article contained
“detailed references and lengthy quotations from Rumiyah (Islamic
State’s propaganda magazine)” with limited author text to provide context.
News.com.au
asked the board why there was no opportunity for news organisations to defend
the article based on public interest grounds but a response provided by a
spokesman for the eSafety Commissioner did not directly address this.
The
spokesman said the board did consider whether the material could “reasonably be
considered to be done merely as part of public discussion or debate, or as
entertainment or satire” before making its decision.
He
also acknowledged this may have been the first time a news article had been
censored using this section.
However, as a government which to a man fails to grasp how the Internet works their well-laid plans seldom go off without a hitch and, the article that Turnbull & Co wish to erase from memory remains on national and international news sites as I write.
Wednesday 28 February 2018
The face of betrayal
Nationals New England MP Barnaby Joyce has been returned to the backbench and the Turnbull Government coverup has begun at the expense of an accountable parliamentary democracy......
Hansard, 26 February 2018
Shorter Michael McCormack Nationals MP for Riverina: turns up for work, never rebels
So who is the 53 year-old Nationals MP for Riverina Michael Francis McCormack, the new Leader of the National Party in federal parliament and Deputy Prime Minister of Australia?
Like Barnaby Joyce before him he was raised Catholic in a country New South Wales town.
Also like Joyce his professional career before entering politics was not associated with the land or farming.
After leaving school McCormack became a journalist at The Daily Advertiser in Wagga Wagga, went on to become a run of th mill editor before starting a small publishing firm, MSS Media Pty Ltd which appears to have produced very forgetable books.
Like many federal politicians he's a homeowner with an investment property, a working wife and children who are now adults.
Again, like many Liberal-Nationals politicians before him he failed to properly declare income derivied from this investment property - until it became certain that he would be putting his name forward for the deputy prime minister ballot.
Also like many other federal ministers he regularly attends major sporting events as the guest of big business.
According to They Vote For You McCormack, first as an ordinary backbencher and later as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister, Assistant Minister for Defence, Minister for Small Business, Minister for Defence Personnel, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC and Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, has never voted against the Coalition Government party line since he entered the House of Representatives in 2010.
He voted very
strongly for:
In other words the new Deputy Prime Minister is a typical National Party member.
In favour of: selling off government assets, raising the cost of health care, lowering the take-home pay of ordinary workers, making the lives of welfare recipients miserable; breaking international law in relation to the treatment of asylum seekers; upending state CSG mining moratoriums and hounding the unions.
Friday 23 February 2018
NATS Spill? Monday 26 February 2018
According to Junkee on 22 February 2018:
Nationals MP Andrew Broad has publicly called on Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce to resign from the leadership of the National Party, firing the starting gun on a leadership challenge.
Nationals MP Andrew Broad has publicly called on Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce to resign from the leadership of the National Party, firing the starting gun on a leadership challenge.
In an interview on ABC
radio this afternoon Broad said his local Nationals branch had called on
Joyce to resign and that he would represent that view to the Nationals party
room meeting in Canberra next Monday. He called on Joyce to resign as party leader
and go to the back bench.
Are we about to see......
Monday 12 February 2018
AUSTRALIA CARD MARK II: no national digital ID number will mean no access to any Australian federal government services
“When signing
up to the platform for the first time, users will be asked to provide their
name, email address, and phone number, and verify their details via email or
SMS. They will then be asked to provide information from three identity
documents, which goes through the exchange to the identity provider for verification.
The exchange receives encrypted details back which it passes on to the
government service the user wants to reach, which then grants the user access.” [IT News, 20 March 2015]
IT
News, 8
February 2018:
The Department of Human
Services looks set to become the federal government's exclusive manager of
digital identities after being selected to build the identity provider solution
that will be used for the Govpass platform.
The Govpass framework is
a decentralised identity model that allows individuals
to choose their identity provider - an organisation that issues identity
documents, like Australia Post or the ATO - and access a range of public and
private sector services through a single digital identity credential.
There is no limit on the
number of identity providers outside of the Commonwealth that can be accredited
for Govpass; Australia Post has already indicated it will seek to become
the first non-government identity provider, using its Digital iD platform.
Several state and
territory government agencies and private sector entities are also expected to
become identity providers over time.
However, the federal
government last year made the decision that only one
identity provider would operate for the entire Commonwealth.
The Digital
Transformation Agency revealed the decision following meetings with existing
Commonwealth identity service providers, DHS and the ATO. Its rationale for the
move was to focus security efforts in one place and avoid complex
administrative structures.
iTnews revealed in
October that the DTA was yet to make up its mind up on which of the two
agencies would serve as the federal government’s sole identity provider for
GovPass, even as testing
of the new platform was taking place with the ATO’s new online tax
file number application service.
Instead the DTA said it
was working closely with the ATO and DHS on the “next steps” for the platform.
But in response to
questions on notice from recent estimates hearings, DHS revealed it had been
instructed to develop the federal government’s single identity provider
platform, to be known as myGov IdP.
“The department was
commissioned by the DTA to build the identity provider (IdP) for the
whole-of-government,” it said.
“The myGov IdP will
enable citizens to verify their identity online and use it to apply for
government services.”
iTnews has made
several attempts to clarify the statements with the DTA and DHS, but
both refused to comment on the build and DHS’ apparent position as the
single government identity provider.
The ATO similarly
redirected questions about its involvement with Govpass, including whether it
had also been asked by the DTA to build an identity provider solution, to the
DTA.
Selecting DHS as the
sole government identity provider would be an obvious choice for the DTA -
the agency is the government’s current defacto whole-of-gov identity provider
through the myGov digital services platform.
A private beta release
of myGov IdP is currently planned for later this month.
Identity providers on
Govpass will use the DTA-built identity exchange – and in turn the document
verification service (DVS) and facial verification service (FVS) – to verify an
individual’s credentials without revealing their identity to service providers.
[my yellow bolding]Note: The Face Identification Service (FIS) is a one-to-many, image-based identification service that can match a photo of an unknown person against multiple government records to help establish their identity. FIS is also available to police, security services, Dept. of Immigration and Dept. of Foreign Affairs. [Australian Attorney-General's Department, October 2017]
Thursday 8 February 2018
The Liberal Party of Australia's inability to avoid adding more rigthwing hardliners to its ranks is disturbing
“Plus ça change,
plus c'est la même
chose”
Having failed to be elected at the last federal election he came to the Senate after the High Court of Australia ruled Susan Nash was ineligible to continue sitting in the Senate due to holding dual citizenship.
The senator from Royalla near Queanbeyan NSW has created a new
Facebook page now he has been
sworn-in, however the original
page still exists. As does his Twitter account where he has a tendency to retweet praise of himself.
A right-wing warrior with an imperfect understanding of human rights, a controversial war record and an apparent antipathy to est. 2.6 per cent of the Australian population is now a member of the Turnbull Coalition Government.
This is how the mainstream media saw him on the day........
This is how the mainstream media saw him on the day........
ABC News, 5 February 2018:
Newly-elected Liberal senator and retired senior Army officer Jim Molan is defending his decision to share anti-Muslim videos posted by far-right UK group Britain First on Facebook.
In March last year Mr Molan, who was sworn in as a senator this morning, shared posts from the group on his personal, public Facebook page.
One of the Britain First videos purports to show Muslim men attacking a police car in France, while the other purports to show Muslim men harassing and assaulting young women in France and the Netherlands.
The second video has been discredited by online fact-checkers.
Today Senator Molan said he did not remember sharing the videos, but upon watching them again, was shocked by the violence within them.
He said the videos were not inflammatory, and not racist.
"I have no apologies, I have no regrets," he said.
Senator Molan said he rejected any suggestion he was racist……..
Britain First shot to global attention when US President Donald Trump shared anti-Muslim videos from the group in November last year.
It prompted outrage in Britain, and he was criticised by UK Prime Minister Theresa May.
Last week Mr Trump apologised for re-tweeting the posts, saying he knew nothing about the group.
Senator Molan has also shared posts made by far-right figure Milo Yiannopolous and controversial cartoonist Larry Pickering.
Those posts were not anti-Muslim in nature.
A spokesman for Senator Molan said the senator shared content online to provoke debate, and was not endorsing anything.
"The senator often posts material in order to generate debate," he said.
"The sharing of any post does not indicate endorsement."
Senator Molan has not posted commentary with the more controversial posts, and does not regularly respond to comments made on the posts.
But he did respond to a comment on one Britain First post, which read: "Charming. And we're meant to be tolerant, accepting and welcoming of this 'breed' in our country."
Senator Molan replied "Unbelievable".
Wednesday 7 February 2018
CENTRELINK ROBO-DEBT: the nightmare continues
Given that the Turnbull Government continues to
apply a faulty algorithm to Centrelink
debt collection in 2018, private debt collectors remain financially incentivised
to aggressively chase debts which may not actually exist, former welfare
recipients may still receive debt recovery fee demands and government intends
to expand collection to other groups/forms of declared income, while Minister for Human Services Alan Tudge
is yet to fix the problems with ‘phone wait times, perhaps a reminder of what
the title Online Compliance Intervention actually
hides and what the alternative term robo-debt describes……..
Cory Doctorow writing in Boing
Boing, 1 February 2018:
In
a textbook example of the use of big data to create a digital poorhouse, as
described in Virginia Eubanks's excellent new book Automating
Inequality, the Australian government created an algorithmic,
semi-privatised system to mine the financial records of people receiving
means-tested benefits and accuse them of fraud on the basis of its findings,
bringing in private contractors to build and maintain the system and collect
the penalties it ascribed, paying them a commission on the basis of how much
money they extracted from poor Australians.
The
result was a predictable kafkaesque nightmare in which an unaccountable black
box accused poor people, students, pensioners, disabled people and others
receiving benefits of owing huge sums, sending abusive, threatening debt
collectors after them, and placing all information about the accusations of
fraud at the other end of a bureaucratic nightmare system of overseas phone-bank
operators with insane wait-times.
GillianTerzis writing in Logic,
a magazine about technology, 2017:
Automation
is dehumanizing in a literal sense: it removes human experience from the
equation. In the case of the robo-debt scandal, automation also stripped humans
of their narrative power. The algorithm that generated these debt notices
presented welfare recipients with contrasting stories: the recipients claimed
they’d followed the rules, but the computer said otherwise.
There
were few official ways to explain one’s circumstances: twenty-nine million
calls to Centrelink went unanswered in 2016, and Centrelink’s Twitter account
seems explicitly designed to discourage conversational exchange. One source of
narrative resistance is notmydebt.com.au, a website run entirely by volunteers
that gathers false debt stories from ordinary Australians so that the “scandal
can't be plausibly minimised or denied.”
Over
time it was revealed that many of these debts were miscalculated or, in some
cases, non-existent. One man I’d read about was on a government pension and
saddled with a $4,500 bill, which was revised down months later to $65. Another
recipient, who was on disability as a result of mental illness, had a debt
notice of $80,000 that was later recalled. A small proportion of recipients
were exclusively in contact with private debt collectors and received no
official notice from Centrelink at all.
Soon
it emerged that social services were a lucrative avenue for corporate
interests: this year’s Senate inquiry revealed that some private agencies
tasked with recouping debts were working on a commission basis, pocketing a
percentage of the debts they had recovered for the government regardless of
their validity. (All debt notices issued by private agencies were eventually
rescinded after government review in February 2017.)
The
methodology of the algorithm itself was riddled with flaws. It calculates the
average of an individual’s annual income reported to the Australian Tax Office …..and
compares it with the fortnightly earnings reported to Centrelink by the welfare
recipient. All welfare recipients are required to declare their gross earnings
(income accrued before tax and other deductions) within this fourteen-day
period. Any discrepancy between the two figures is interpreted by the algorithm
as proof of undeclared or underreported income, from which a notice of debt is
automatically generated.
Previously,
these inconsistencies would be handled by Centrelink staff, who would call up
your employer, confirm the amount you received in fortnightly payments, and
cross-index that figure with the one calculated in the system. But the
automation of the debt recovery process has outsourced authority from humans to
the algorithm itself.
It’s
certainly efficient: it takes the algorithm one week to generate 20,000 debt
notices, a process that would take up to a year if done manually. But it’s not
a reliable method of fraud detection. It’s blunt, unwieldy, and error-prone. It
assumes that variations in the data sets are deliberate, and that recipients
have received more than what they are entitled to. What’s more, the onus is on
the welfare recipient to prove their income has been reported correctly and
that the entitlements they have received are commensurate within twenty-one
days.
Yet,
as many critics have noted, this income-averaging method is porous. It fails to
accurately account for the fluctuating fortunes of casual or contract workers,
which often results in variations between the two figures. There’s also no way
for the algorithm to correct for basic errors in the system’s database. It
cannot yet discern whether an employer’s legal name has been used instead of
its various business names—it treats them as separate entities, and therefore
separate sources of income—or whether conflicting reports are caused by basic
mistakes, such as spelling errors or typos. These seemingly small distinctions
are ones that only a human could make. It’s no wonder, then, that conservative
estimates of its error rate hover at 20 percent……
Yet
the irony of stigmatizing welfare recipients is that better-off Australians are
major beneficiaries of social spending. The Australian writer Tim Winton notes
that the country’s middle class has “an increasing sense of entitlement to
welfare,” which is “duly disbursed largely at the expense of the poor, the
sick, and the unemployed.” These include tax concessions on contributions to
“superannuation,” which are funds designed to help Australians save for their
retirement. Such concessions are distortionary: they’re levied at a flat rate
of 15 percent, rather than at a progressive rate according to one’s income,
which means their benefits are reaped overwhelmingly by the rich.
The
Australian Bureau of Statistics calculates that nearly one third of these concessions
are claimed by the top 10 percent of income earners in Australia. Then there
are policies like negative gearing, a tax concession that allows you to claim a
deduction against your wage income for losses generated by any rental
properties you own. (Australia and New Zealand are the only countries in the
world to hold such a policy.) In addition, Australian homeowners are entitled
to a capital gains tax discount of 50 percent once the property is sold.
Critics
have argued that the combination of these two policies only serves to fuel
investor speculation, entrench housing unaffordability, and lock first-time
home buyers out of the market. But it’s easier to attack the poor than to tax
the rich.
Commonwealth Ombudsman, Centrelink’s
Automated Debt Raising And Recovery System: A Report About The Department Of Human
Services’ Online Compliance Intervention System For Debt Raising And Recovery, April 2017:
EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
In
July 2016 the Department of Human Services (DHS) - Centrelink launched a new
online compliance intervention (OCI) system for raising and recovering debts.
The OCI matches the earnings recorded on a customer’s Centrelink record with
historical employer-reported income data from the Australian Taxation Office
(ATO). Parts of the debt raising process previously done manually by compliance
officers within DHS are now done using this automated process. Customers are
asked to confirm or update their income using the online system. If the
customer does not engage with DHS either online or in person, or if there are
gaps in the information provided by the customer, the system will fill the gaps
with a fortnightly income figure derived from the ATO income data for the
relevant employment period (‘averaged’ data).
Since the initial rollout of the
OCI, the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s office has received many complaints from
people who have incurred debts under the OCI. This report examines our concerns
with the implementation of the OCI, using complaints we investigated as case
study examples.
We acknowledge the changes DHS has made to the OCI since its
initial rollout. The changes have been positive and have improved the usability
and accessibility of the system. However, we consider there are several areas
where further improvements could be made, particularly before use of the OCI is
expanded. We have made several recommendations to address these areas......
Planning
and risk management
In
our view, many of the OCI’s implementation problems could have been mitigated
through better project planning and risk management at the outset. This includes
more rigorous user testing with customers and service delivery staff, a more
incremental rollout, and better communication to staff and stakeholders. DHS’
project planning did not ensure all relevant external stakeholders were
consulted during key planning stages and after the full rollout of the OCI.
This is evidenced by the extent of confusion and inaccuracy in public
statements made by key non-government stakeholders, journalists and
individuals.
A
key lesson for agencies and policy makers when proposing to rollout large scale
measures which require people to engage in a new way with new digital channels,
is for agencies to engage with stakeholders and provide resources for adequate
manual support during transition periods. We have recommended DHS undertake a
comprehensive evaluation of the OCI in its current form before it is
implemented further and any future rollout should be done incrementally.
Centrelink website, 5 February 2018:
If you don’t pay your
debt by the due date, we may ask the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to send
us your tax refund. If we do we’ll send you a Recovery of your Centrelink debt
letter.
If you aren’t repaying
your debt over time or if we haven’t agreed to extend the payment time, we may
also:
* add an interest charge
to your debt
* refer your debt to an
external collection agency
* reduce your income
support payments to help pay the amount owing
* recover the amount
from your wages, other income and assets, including money you may hold in a
bank account
* refer your case to our
solicitors for legal action
* issue a Departure
Prohibition Order to stop you from travelling overseas....
The rate of interest we apply to your
debt is consistent with the current rate applied by the ATO to tax debts.
Thursday 1 February 2018
A lesson in political repression courtesy of the Turnbull Government
On 7 December
2017 the Turnbull Coalition Government introduced a bill called the Electoral
Legislation Amendment (Electoral Funding and Disclosure Reform) Bill 2017.
It is
currently before the Senate and the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters which reports to
Parliament on 2 March 2018.
This bill
purports to amend the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 to:
establish public registers for key non-party political actors; require
non-financial particulars, such as senior staff and discretionary government
benefits, to be reported; prohibit donations from foreign governments and
state-owned enterprises being used to finance public debate; require wholly
political actors to verify that donations over $250 come from an organisation
incorporated in Australia, or with its head office or principal place of
activity in Australia, or an Australian citizen or Commonwealth elector;
prohibit other regulated political actors from using donations from foreign sources
to fund reportable political expenditure; limit public election funding to
demonstrated electoral spending; amend the enforcement and compliance regime
for political finance regulation; and enable the Electoral Commissioner to
prescribe certain matters by legislative instrument; and Referendum
(Machinery Provisions) Act 1984 to make consequential amendments.
The
bill contains these clauses in relation to not only donations made to political parties but also to donations made to advocacy groups and charities which lobby government:
# 287AA Meaning of allowable donor
(1) A person or entity is an
allowable donor if:
(a) for an individual who makes a gift—the individual:
(i) is an elector;
or
(ii) is an
Australian citizen; or
(iii) is an
Australian resident, unless a determination is in force under subsection
(2) determining that Australian residents are not allowable donors;
or
(b) for an entity that makes a gift:
(i) the entity is incorporated
in Australia; or
(ii) for an entity
that is not incorporated—the entity’s head
office or principal place of activity is in Australia; or
(c) for a person or entity that is a trustee of an unincorporated trust
fund or unincorporated foundation, out of which a gift is made—the person or
entity is an allowable donor within the meaning of paragraph (a), (b) or (d);
or
(d) the person or entity is in a class of persons or entities prescribed
by the regulations for the purposes of this paragraph. Australian residents
(2) For the purposes of subparagraph (1)(a)(iii), the Minister may,
by legislative instrument, determine
that Australian residents are not allowable donors.
# 302P Information relating to allowable donor status
(1) A person (the first person) obtains appropriate donor
information from another person establishing that the other person is an allowable
donor if:
(a) the first person
obtains a statutory declaration from the other person declaring that the other
person is an allowable donor (unless subsection (2) applies); or
(b) if the
regulations determine information that the first person may seek from the other
person in order to establish that the other person is an allowable donor—the
first person obtains 11 that information from the other person.
(2) For the purposes of paragraph (1)(b), the regulations may (but
are not required to) determine that a statutory declaration that a person is an
allowable donor is not appropriate donor information.
Note: A person who
obtains appropriate donor information may not commit an offence or contravene a
civil penalty provision in this Division (see 17 subsection 287(9) and section
302M).
It should be
noted that approved witnesses to a Commonwealth
statutory declaration come from specific occupational pools and only
justices of the peace are prohibited from charging a fee to act as a witness.
It should be further noted that these clauses are in addition to the bill's amending of the definition of an associated entity which GetUp! asserts threatens its independence.
It should be further noted that these clauses are in addition to the bill's amending of the definition of an associated entity which GetUp! asserts threatens its independence.
GetUp! had this to say on the subject:
Our lawyers just
uncovered a killer clause in the Turnbull Government's new anti-democratic
legislation that would decimate GetUp's ability to fundraise.Can you
dig deep to help establish a GetUp Survival War Chest -- while we still can?
If passed, this killer
clause would force then anyone who contributes as little as $4.80 a week to the
GetUp movement to provide a signed and witnessed statutory
declaration.
The impossibility of collecting thousands upon thousands of these documents would spell the end of people-powered fundrasing as we know it.
Of course, we're going to fight tooth and nail to stop this legislation in its tracks. But to prepare for the worst, we're creating a GetUp Survival War Chest, to ensure we run can keep our campaigns thriving no matter what.
Can you dig deep now (while we still can) as an act of defiance against this effort to choke off our people powered impact?
The impossibility of collecting thousands upon thousands of these documents would spell the end of people-powered fundrasing as we know it.
Of course, we're going to fight tooth and nail to stop this legislation in its tracks. But to prepare for the worst, we're creating a GetUp Survival War Chest, to ensure we run can keep our campaigns thriving no matter what.
Can you dig deep now (while we still can) as an act of defiance against this effort to choke off our people powered impact?
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