Showing posts with label right wing politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label right wing politics. Show all posts
Wednesday 3 April 2019
It is likely to be tears before bedtime for many regional communities as Berejiklian Government restructures government departments
Government
News, 2 April
2019:
The NSW government will abolish key
agencies including the Office of Local Government, the RMS and Jobs NSW under
sweeping changes to the structure of the NSW public service.
A memo from the Department of
Premier and Cabinet obtained by Government News says the Office of
Local Government, along with the Office of Environment and Heritage, will cease
to be independent entities and their functions will be absorbed by a Planning and
Industry Cluster.
The cluster will cover areas such as
long term planning, precincts, infrastructure, open space, the environment and
natural resources.
The RMS, coming under the Transport
Cluster, will also be scrapped as a separate agency and as will Jobs NSW, which
will be merged into the Treasury Cluster…..
Local Government NSW President Linda
Scott said the peak would be seeking assurances from the new local government
minister, Shelley Hancock, and the Premier, that local governments would be
appropriately resourced within the new cluster.
“We’d hope, for example, that the
inclusion into a larger cluster will facilitate real analysis of the massive
amounts of data collected by Government, which should be shared with the sector
to help them deliver great outcomes for the public good,” she told Government
News.
“Local governments welcome a new
opportunity to work with the State Government to set housing targets with
local governments, not for them – to rebalance planning powers by working in
partnership with councils and their neighbourhoods on planning decisions that
affect them.”
However she said the appointment of Ms
Hancock was a stand-alone Local Government Minister was welcomed and had long
been advocated for by LGNSW.....
The memo says the structure of the
public service will also incorporate the following clusters: Stronger
Communities, Customer Service, Health; Premier and Cabinet, Transport,
Treasury and Education.
The following clusters will cease to
exist by July 1: Finance, Services & Innovation; Industry; Planning
& Environment; Family and Communities; and Justice.
The Secretaries Board will be expanded
in members to accommodate more senior public servants to “effectively drive
implementation of the Government’s priorities”.
New appointments under the
restructure:
Michael Coutts-Trotter – Secretary,
Families & Community Services & Justice
Jim Betts – Secretary, Planning and
Industry
Glenn King – Secretary, Customer
Service
Simon Draper – Chief Executive, Infrastructure
Australia
NOTE:
The Grafton Loop of the Knitting Nannas Against Gas
and Greed will be holding a knit-in on Thursday 4 April 2019 at 1pm to peacefully
protest the abolition of the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. It will be
held outside the electoral office of Nationals MP for Clarence Chris Gulaptis
at 11 Prince Street, Grafton and interested people are welcome to attend.
Tuesday 2 April 2019
Morrison Government still refusing to tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions
The
Guardian, 31 March 2019:
Cuts to carbon emissions
from vehicle efficiency standards have been left out of government projections
for meeting Australia’s Paris climate commitments, indicating the policy has
been shelved.
The office of the
transport minister, Michael McCormack, said the government had not made a
decision on “how or when” standards to cut carbon pollution from vehicles might
be implemented.
After almost five years
of submissions a spokesman said the government “is not going to rush into a
regulatory solution” with regards to vehicle emissions.
New data shows
Australia’s emissions from transport are soaring and projected to be 82% higher
in 2030 than they were in 1990.
Australia lags behind
the rest of the world in setting vehicle efficiency standards, with most
countries in the OECD adopting policies to reduce emissions and improve the
efficiency of cars.
The ministerial forum on
vehicle emissions was set up under the Turnbull government in 2015, and
stakeholders are frustrated at the lack of progress.
Fact sheets produced by
the government that set out how it intends to reach Australia’s emissions
reduction targets under the Paris agreement suggest any policy on vehicle
emissions standards has been abandoned.
In 2015, the government
produced a
graph indicating it expected to achieve cuts of about 100m tonnes
between 2020 and 2030 through vehicle emissions standards.
The government’s latest
climate package contains no mention of this, and projects only about
10m tonnes of abatement through an electric vehicle strategy, with no reference
to vehicle emissions standards....
Friday 29 March 2019
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation sought US National Rifle Association support for a social media campaign during the 2019 federal election campaign and millions in political funding from gun lobby & Koch Brothers
Pauline Hanson's One Nation (PHON) political party currently only has two members in the Australian Parliament and they sit in the Senate.
PHON wants to hold the balance of power in the Australian Parliament after the May 2019 federal election.
In order to gain the required seats in the House of Representatives, in September 2018 the party was secretly promising to subvert Australia's gun laws in an attempt to gain millions from the powerful US gun lobby to assist its federal election campaign.
Al Jazeera, YouTube, 25 March 2019:
A
three-year Al Jazeera investigation into the U.S. gun lobby has uncovered an
effort by an Australian political party to seek millions of dollars in
political funding while offering to soften strict, anti-gun laws in Australia.
Al
Jazeera’s Investigative Unit used concealed cameras to track ‘Pauline Hanson’s
One Nation’, a right-wing, anti-immigration party, as representatives travelled
to Washington, D.C. to hold meetings with the National Rifle Association and
other lobby groups, as well as the energy giant Koch Industries.
One
Nation’s Chief of Staff James Ashby was accompanied on the U.S. visit by Steve
Dickson, the party’s leader in the Australian state of Queensland and a
candidate in upcoming Australian elections. Ashby and Dickson were recorded
seeking up to $US20 million for their election war chest while promising to
soften laws, put in place following a massacre in Australia in 1996.
The
strict Australian gun laws have often been condemned by the NRA.
Al
Jazeera approached all the groups and individuals featured in this programme.
Despite there being a federal legislated ban on foreign political donations since November 2018 the Al Jazeera video footage clearly shows that just weeks after this ban was put in place Pauline Hanson and One Nation were still considering seeking support from the US gun lobby and the Koch Brothers.
Having been publicly exposed One Nation now denies it had any intention of watering down national gun laws.
However, it is clear from the Al Jazeera video that One Nation was promising to open doors for the National Rifle Association with the aim of assisting that exact purpose, because it believed that any significant increase in One Nation representation in the Australian Parliament after the next federal election meant it would have the government "by the balls".
The video also reveals that it was canvassing the possibility of concealing any funding it might receive from the US gun lobby by arranging for the NRA to create and pay for a social media campaign for One Nation's benefit in the lead up to the May 2019 federal election, as well as using the Koch Brothers' network of companies to hide the source of any donations they might make.
After initially pleading intoxicated bragging while in the US Pauline Hanson's Chief of Staff then had this to say.
"You're best buddies with Al Jazeera, ABC." and "You're a very rude man." James Ashby get aggro with the ABC. #qldpol #auspol pic.twitter.com/3SkB3JfiUk— David Marler (@Qldaah) March 26, 2019
Prior to these revelations Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP Scott Morrison had refused to rule out the Liberal Party preferencing Pauline Hanson's One Nation ahead of The Greens and Labor at the federal election.
He partially walked back from this position and announced that the Coalition will be placing PHON below Labor on how-to-vote cards in all states and territories except Queensland. However he would not commit to putting PHON last.
So it is looking as though One Nation may possibly get a third member into the Senate.
WARNING TO QUEENSLAND VOTERS
Note:
According to The Guardian on 7 March 2018 Australian gun lobby groups spent more than $500,000 helping minor right wing parties, including One Nation, win seats in the Queensland state election in 2017.
According to ABC News on 27 March 2019 the Australian gun lobby has donated $1.7 million to political parties since 2011 and now per capita spends as much on political donations and campaigns as the US National Rifle Association (NRA).
He partially walked back from this position and announced that the Coalition will be placing PHON below Labor on how-to-vote cards in all states and territories except Queensland. However he would not commit to putting PHON last.
So it is looking as though One Nation may possibly get a third member into the Senate.
WARNING TO QUEENSLAND VOTERS
Pauline
Hanson’s One Nation Queensland official and Senate candidate in 2019 Steve Dickson has a dream voters should
be aware of:
“I’m going to be in one
of those drug dealing mansions on the beach. I’ll hire it for a month. The ones
that are 25 rooms and the chef and everything. We’ll drink and shoot the s**t [out]
of everything down the water. Machine guns and everything. That’s my dream….And
we can protect ourselves just in case” [Steve
Dickson in How to Sell a Massacre Part
2, You Tube 27 March 2019]
According to The Guardian on 7 March 2018 Australian gun lobby groups spent more than $500,000 helping minor right wing parties, including One Nation, win seats in the Queensland state election in 2017.
According to ABC News on 27 March 2019 the Australian gun lobby has donated $1.7 million to political parties since 2011 and now per capita spends as much on political donations and campaigns as the US National Rifle Association (NRA).
According to The Sydney Morning Herald on 27 March 2019 the number of firearms in Australia is
dramatically higher than before the Port Arthur massacre that killed 35 people,
raising fears the gun lobby’s efforts to relax national restrictions are
bearing fruit. Pre-Port Arthur in 1996 there were est. 3.2 million firearms in
Australia, the post-Port Arthur gun buyback under theAustralian
National Firearms Agreement saw that number reduced to est, 2.5
million but by 2017 firearms held in the private hands had risen to 3.6 million.
Gun ownership
per capita has fallen reportedly since the Port Arthur massacre, with gun
number increases since 1997 reflecting the fact that multiple guns are now being
held by individuals. The highest numbers of gun owners appear to be in rural/regional northern
and central NSW. Grafton and environs is an area with 7,930 registered guns, spread across the collections of 2,043 owners, with
one individual owning 91 registered firearms according to The Daily Examiner on 12 April 2016.
Despite the
rise in gun possession since 1997 the number
of homicide incidents involving a firearm decreased by 57 percent between
1989-90 and 2013-14. Firearms were used in 13 percent of homicide incidents
(n=32) in 2013-14. In 1989-90 it was 24 percent (n=75) of incidents,
according to Crime
Statistics Australia.
By
2016 the overall number of firearm deaths from all causes in Australia stood at 247 for that year which was
a firearm death rate of 1 in 100,000 down from a rate of 3.4 deaths per 100,000 in
1990.
Wednesday 27 March 2019
Taking the xenophobic temperature of the NSW Northern Rivers region
These quotes below give an indication of what Pauline Hanson's One Nation political party (PHON) believes and acts upon.
Given the chance,
Pauline Hanson's One Nation will initiate a referendum to amend this race based
section of the Constitution. …We must rid ourselves of Native Title and just as
laws are made by and for the people so can they be amended…. Under One Nation
policy the issue of Aboriginality would no longer exist as benefits by virtue
of race would no longer exist. [Pauline Hanson, Longreach Speech,
11 September 1988]
I and most Australians
want our immigration policy radically reviewed and that of multiculturalism
abolished. I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians. [Pauline
Hanson, First Speech in Australian Parliament, excerpt, 1996]
The indigenous
population is experiencing boom growth in Australia. One only has to be
recognised as an Aboriginal community to be accepted as an Aboriginal.
Identifying as an Aboriginal has definite financial advantages, as
Aboriginality allows them to claim a share of the booty of the native title
scam as well as various other publicly funded perks not available to other
Australians. [Pauline
Hanson, Hansard, 2 June 1998]
Pauline Hanson has
compared Islam to a disease Australians need to vaccinate themselves against…..
"Let me put it in this analogy - we have a disease, we vaccinate ourselves against
it," she said on Friday. [The
Sydney Morning Herald, 24 March 2017]
The number of Muslims in
Australia doubled in the decade from 2006 to 2016 through immigration and the high
numbers of children born to Muslim families. If we do not draw a line
in the sand against immigration from Islamic countries, the influence of
Muslims in this country will continue to grow and Australia will continue down
the path of Islamisation. [Pauline
Hanson, Hansard,
17 August 2017]
Mark Latham could
be forced to pay out more than $100,000 in legal costs and damages after
agreeing to settle defamation proceedings brought against him by the ABC
journalist Osman Faruqi. Faruqi, a former politics editor of pop culture site
Junkee and a former Greens candidate, launched his libel action last year after
the former leader of the Labor party accused him of “aiding and
abetting Islamic terrorism” and fostering “anti-white racism in Australia”. The
comments were made across Latham’s Outsiders webpage, YouTube, the Rebel Media
webpage and a post on Facebook.
[The
Guardian, 26 November 2018]
One Nation NSW would force DNA tests on every
person claiming Aboriginal heritage to qualify for government assistance. NSW One Nation
Legislative Council candidate Mark Latham said the policy would weed
out "the blond-haired, blue-eyed Aboriginal". [Mark
Latham, 9
News, 12 March 2019]
Outlaw the new Left-wing
discrimination against men, boys, Christians and white people… [Pauline
Hanson’s One Nation, 10 Point Plan,
March 2019]
We’re not even allowed
to own guns in Australia for the self-protection of women….It’s insane. We’ve
been importing all these Muslims into Australia….Some really dangerous people. They are just breaking into people's homes with baseball bats and killing people. Basically, stealing everything they own. Gangs. Our county's going into chaos. [Pauline
Hanson’s One Nation Qld party official Steve
Dickson, YouTube, 26 March 2019]
Because there is little hard information and, what exists is not readily available, it is notoriously difficult - if not impossible - to work out the number of people who hold xenophobic or racist world views in any given population.
However, the NSW Legislative Council election on 23 March 2019 does open a window on that part of the Northern Rivers population who are 18 years of age and older and registered to vote in state elections.
The window exists because although no candidate from the far right, nationalist, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation stood for election to the NSW Legislative Assembly (Lower House) in the four Northern Rivers state electorates, PHON had 17 candidates standing for election in the NSW Legislative Assembly (Upper House).
State-wide PHON had received 220,847 votes or 5.93% of all 3.72 million Upper House ballots recorded as of 22:58 pm on 26 March 2019. [See: https://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/home]
So how did the Northern Rivers region fare in relation to the state percentage of voters who
were willing to support xenophobic and racist ideology only eight days after an
Australian was arrested for a murderous terrorist attack on worshippers in two
mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand?
In the Ballina electorate 1,713 voters
cast their first preference for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in the NSW
Legislative Council – 3.66% of all Upper House ballots cast in that
electorate.
While the Clarence electorate saw 3.441 voters
cast their first preference for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in the NSW
Legislative Council – 8.94% of all Upper House ballots cast in that
electorate.
And in the Lismore electorate 2,556 voters
cast their first preference for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in the NSW
Legislative Council – 5.69% of all Upper House ballots cast in that
electorate.
At the same time in the Tweed electorate 1,933 voters
cast their first preference for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in the NSW
Legislative Council – 6.76% of all Upper House ballots cast in that
electorate.
These figures appear to support the contention that there is a sub-population in the Northern Rivers region which is markedly ethnocentric and willing to vote for an openly racist political party.
This willingness has helped to elect former federal MP Mark William Latham as One Nation's first member of the NSW Parliament. He sits for a maximum term of eight years in the Upper House which will provide him with the protection of parliamentary privilege for some if not all of his frequently divisive nationalistic ideological statements.
Given that in past years a number of academic papers discussing the geography of racism have identified "Northern" NSW, the "North Coast", "Mid-North Coast" and "Richmond-Tweed" as having a relatively high number of markers for ethnocentrism and/or racism, one has to wonder if this current support for an openly racist political party represents more than just the ongoing existence of xenophobia and racism in Northern Rivers communities - that perhaps it might represent a widening acceptance and further entrenchment of such attitudes across the valleys.
This willingness has helped to elect former federal MP Mark William Latham as One Nation's first member of the NSW Parliament. He sits for a maximum term of eight years in the Upper House which will provide him with the protection of parliamentary privilege for some if not all of his frequently divisive nationalistic ideological statements.
Given that in past years a number of academic papers discussing the geography of racism have identified "Northern" NSW, the "North Coast", "Mid-North Coast" and "Richmond-Tweed" as having a relatively high number of markers for ethnocentrism and/or racism, one has to wonder if this current support for an openly racist political party represents more than just the ongoing existence of xenophobia and racism in Northern Rivers communities - that perhaps it might represent a widening acceptance and further entrenchment of such attitudes across the valleys.
Thursday 21 March 2019
Will Australian voters swallow Scott Morrison’s hypocritical volte-face?
In opposition or in government it didn't matter to Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison, he happily hammered home the message that boat people, asylum seekers and Muslims migrants were or could be a threat to the nation and to every Australian.
This self-confessed admirer of Donald Trump began his faux election campaign the day he took office shortly after the palace coup removed then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and, almost from the start there has been speculation that he was hoping that his rhetoric would goad someone into committing a violent act of terrorism.
These snapshots below are taken from 15 March 2019 televised remarks by Morrison barely hiding his glee that he finally had the pre-federal election terrorist attack he had been dog whistling for - even if the fact that this muderous attack was made on people at prayer in two New Zealand mosques allegedly at the hands of an Australian meant he had to do a 360 turn on who he could blame.
Snapshots by @sarah_jade_ |
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
17 March 2019:
Something the Prime
Minister said
on Friday has been gnawing at me. For the most part, his statements in
the immediate aftermath of the obscenity in New Zealand were admirably clear.
He identified the victims: those of Islamic faith. He also clearly labelled the
attack for what it was, a “vicious and callous right-wing extremist attack”…..
But another of the Prime
Minister’s comments warrants attention. Speaking of the Australian gunman, he
said: “These people don't deserve names. Names imply some sort of humanity and
I struggle to find how anyone who would engage in this sort of behaviour and
violence … He’s not human. He doesn't deserve a name."
I can well understand
Morrison’s reaction. Watching him respond, it was clear he was moved, and
disgusted. And of course I share that disgust.
But think for a moment
about the implications of such rhetoric. This man is not even human, the Prime
Minister tells us. He is alien, almost literally another species, and therefore
illegible to us, the humans. He is not like us.
Perhaps, at the moment
he fired the gun, that became true. But what about just before that moment -
was he human then, and inhuman afterwards? Did he go from being comprehensible
to incomprehensible in the blink of an eye? Of course the implication of Morrison’s
words is that he was always different: never one of us, always already
separate.
But this is a fairytale
– and like most fairytales, it is there to comfort, with its suggestion that
such violence must have nothing to do with the rest of us. The Prime Minister
meant well. But what he said was absolute rot.
The point has been made
elsewhere that anti-Islamic sentiment is rife in our politics, and that
violence is its logical endpoint. It is a crucial point, it can’t be made
enough,…. But right now I want to briefly examine another dominant strand of
Australian politics.
A few weeks ago, the
political world was aflutter with a single question: was this Scott Morrison’s
Tampa moment? And we know, because Morrison told
us, that he wanted it to be: “Australians will be deciding once again - as
they did in 2013, as they did in 2001 - about whether they want the stronger
border protection policies of…” and you can guess the rest.
The phrase "strong borders"
is heard often in our political debate, but much of the time, especially when
you live on an island, borders are abstractions – imaginary lines drawn on
literally shifting seas. The vague and nonsense phrase is of course a
euphemism, meaning "we are very good at keeping people out". And when
is this an important skill? When the people to be kept out pose some threat.
The beauty of "strong borders" is that it says all of that in two
words.
The same goes for
"Tampa moment", which in fact includes three separate events: Tampa,
then September 11, then children overboard. Howard’s election campaign blended
these events into one overarching
narrative. The demonisation of refugees as ruthless people who would kill
their own children and who might kill you was not a side-effect of the
strategy, it was the strategy.
Howard argues that he
would have won without Tampa. But it doesn’t really matter, because the real
damage was not done at that election. As people like Peter Brent have argued, the
real damage is the lingering belief that this is how elections are won.
Emphasise strong borders, emphasise the threat.
Morrison’s absorption of
that lesson is there for anyone to see. It was there in his comments in 2012
that asylum seekers might
cause a typhoid outbreak. It was there last week when he warned that asylum
seekers might be paedophiles
or murderers or rapists, and when he
backed Peter Dutton’s assertion that they would take housing and
hospital spots from Australians. And it was there in his recent security
speech, when he introduced the section on terrorism with reference to just
one, specific type: “radical extremist Islamist terrorism.”
If our political leaders
remain intent on depicting a world in which people from other countries bring
disease, hatred, and violence to our shores, can they really be so shocked when
it turns out that is precisely the world some people believe in?
[my yellow highlighting]
There’s been less
reflection on the fact that any 28-year-old in Australia has grown up in a
period when racism, xenophobia and a hostility to Muslims in particular, were
quickly ratcheting up in the country’s public culture.
In the period of the country’s enthusiastic participation in the War on Terror, Islam and Muslims have frequently been treated as public enemies, and hate speech against them has inexorably been normalised.
Australian racism did not of course begin in 2001. The country was settled by means of a genocidal frontier war, and commenced its independent existence with the exclusion of non-white migrants. White nationalism was practically Australia’s founding doctrine.
In the period of the country’s enthusiastic participation in the War on Terror, Islam and Muslims have frequently been treated as public enemies, and hate speech against them has inexorably been normalised.
Australian racism did not of course begin in 2001. The country was settled by means of a genocidal frontier war, and commenced its independent existence with the exclusion of non-white migrants. White nationalism was practically Australia’s founding doctrine.
But a succession of
events in the first year of the millennium led to Islamophobia being
practically enshrined as public policy.
First, the so-called Tampa Affair saw a conservative government refuse to admit refugees who had been rescued at sea. It was a naked bid to win an election by whipping up xenophobia and border panic. It worked.
In the years since, despite its obvious brutality, and despite repeated condemnations from international bodies, the mandatory offshore detention of boat-borne refugees in third countries has become bipartisan policy. (The centre-left Labor party sacrificed principle in order to neutralise an issue that they thought was costing them elections.)
The majority of the refugees thus imprisoned have been Muslim. It has often been suggested by politicians that detaining them is a matter of safety – some of them might be terrorists.
Second, the 9/11 attacks drew Australia into the War on Terror in support of its closest ally, and geopolitical sponsor, the United States.
Australian troops spent long periods in Afghanistan and Iraq, fighting and killing Muslims in their own countries. The consequences of this endless war have included the targeting of Australians in Jihadi terror attacks and plots, both at home and abroad.
The wars began with a deluge of propaganda. Later, the terror threat was leveraged to massively enhance surveillance by Australia’s national security state. Muslim Australians have frequently been defined by arms of their own government as a source of danger.
Two years after the war in Iraq commenced, the campaign of Islamophobia culminated in the country’s most serious modern race riots, on Cronulla Beach in December 2005, when young white men spent a summer afternoon beating and throwing bottles at whichever brown people they could find.
First, the so-called Tampa Affair saw a conservative government refuse to admit refugees who had been rescued at sea. It was a naked bid to win an election by whipping up xenophobia and border panic. It worked.
In the years since, despite its obvious brutality, and despite repeated condemnations from international bodies, the mandatory offshore detention of boat-borne refugees in third countries has become bipartisan policy. (The centre-left Labor party sacrificed principle in order to neutralise an issue that they thought was costing them elections.)
The majority of the refugees thus imprisoned have been Muslim. It has often been suggested by politicians that detaining them is a matter of safety – some of them might be terrorists.
Second, the 9/11 attacks drew Australia into the War on Terror in support of its closest ally, and geopolitical sponsor, the United States.
Australian troops spent long periods in Afghanistan and Iraq, fighting and killing Muslims in their own countries. The consequences of this endless war have included the targeting of Australians in Jihadi terror attacks and plots, both at home and abroad.
The wars began with a deluge of propaganda. Later, the terror threat was leveraged to massively enhance surveillance by Australia’s national security state. Muslim Australians have frequently been defined by arms of their own government as a source of danger.
Two years after the war in Iraq commenced, the campaign of Islamophobia culminated in the country’s most serious modern race riots, on Cronulla Beach in December 2005, when young white men spent a summer afternoon beating and throwing bottles at whichever brown people they could find.
Cronulla was a milestone
in the development of a more forthright, ugly public nationalism in Australia.
Now young men wear flags as capes on Australia Day, a date which is seen as a
calculated insult by many Indigenous people. Anzac Day, which commemorates a
failed invasion of Turkey, was once a far more ambivalent occasion. In recent
years it has moved closer to becoming an open celebration of militarism and
imperialism.
Every step of the way, this process has not been hindered by outlets owned by News Corp, which dominates Australia’s media market in a way which citizens of other Anglophone democracies can find difficult to comprehend.
News Corp has the biggest-selling newspapers in the majority of metropolitan media markets, monopolies in many regional markets, the only general-readership national daily, and the only cable news channel. Its influence on the national news agenda remains decisive. And too often it has used this influence to demonise Muslims.
[my yellow highlighting]
Every step of the way, this process has not been hindered by outlets owned by News Corp, which dominates Australia’s media market in a way which citizens of other Anglophone democracies can find difficult to comprehend.
News Corp has the biggest-selling newspapers in the majority of metropolitan media markets, monopolies in many regional markets, the only general-readership national daily, and the only cable news channel. Its influence on the national news agenda remains decisive. And too often it has used this influence to demonise Muslims.
[my yellow highlighting]
BACKGROUND
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
9 February 2011:
SCOTT Morrison, the
Liberal frontbencher who this week distinguished himself as the greatest grub
in the federal Parliament, is the classic case of the politician who is so
immersed in the game of politics that he has lost touch with the real world
outside it…..
The point of this story?
Morrison is a cheap populist, with form. On that occasion, he was being
irresponsible with the national economy. For him it's just about clever lines.
Morrison was powerless
to influence the bank, of course. John Howard and Peter Costello gave the
Reserve Bank independence to free it from people like Morrison.
The bank raised
rates three days after Morrison's comment.
This week it was race.
Morrison decided to see if he could win some political points by inflaming
racism and resentment. More specifically, he zeroed in on some of the most
vulnerable people in the country for political advantage. Indeed, is there
anyone more vulnerable than a traumatised, orphaned child unable to speak
English, held in detention on a remote island?
Morrison publicly raised
objections to the government's decision to pay for air fares for some of the
survivors of the Christmas Island boat wreck to travel to Sydney for the funerals
of their relatives.
Some were Christian
funerals, others were Muslim. But all of them were foreigners, all of them were
boat people, all of them were dark-skinned, and to Morrison that made them all
fair game. Unable to tell the difference between the Coalition mantra of
"we will stop the boats" and his emerging position that "we will
vindictively pursue boat people suffering tragedy" he went on radio.
As the survivors were
gathering to mourn their dead, Morrison said that with the government paying for
the 22 air fares, "I don't think it is reasonable. The government had the
option of having these services on Christmas Island. If relatives of those who
were involved wanted to go to Christmas Island, like any other Australian who
wanted to attend a funeral service in another part of the country, they would
have made their own arrangements to be there."
All of them were
dark-skinned, and to Morrison that made them all fair game
Again, for Morrison it's
just a tricky game of politics and clever lines. A former director of the NSW
Liberal Party, he inhabits a world where consequences for himself and his
political party are all that matter. There is no other reality. He didn't care
about the boat people, and - being as charitable to him as possible - he mightn't
even have stopped to think about the consequences.
And again, there is a
national interest at stake. Forty-four per cent of Australians were born
overseas or have at least one parent who was born overseas. Australia is an
immigrant society. Australia is a multicultural country. That is a simple fact.
To foment ethnic, racial or religious frictions or resentments is deeply
harmful to the national interest.
Kevin Dunn, professor of
geography and urban studies at the University of Western Sydney, who next week
is to publish a study on racism in Australia, says: "Research has shown
convincingly that geopolitical events, political events and political
statements don't affect Australian attitudes on race very quickly, but they do
affect behaviour. People with a grudge feel more empowered to act on it."
Racist abuse and discrimination follow. So again, Morrison was toying with a
deep national interest, but this time, his remarks could carry real force. The
Reserve Bank governor knows his business and ignores Morrison, but the
vindictive and the vicious may feel emboldened to act on their hurtful urges.
Who does this help?....
Morrison next day
conceded that his timing was insensitive, but didn't retract his complaint. He
denied that he had been influenced by One Nation, even though One Nation had
been busily emailing and lobbying politicians on the matter.
[my yellow highlighting]
Tuesday 26 February 2019
Sad statistics are generated by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's war on the poor & vulnerable
Liberal MP for Cook Scott John Morrison has been a
Cabinet Minister since 18.9.2013, was Minister for Social Services from
23.12.2014 to 21.9.2015, then Treasurer from 21.9.2015 to 26.8.2018 and now Prime
Minister of Australia since 24.8.2018 – these are the sad statistics he leaves
in his wake.
The Australian, 21 February 2019:
As Department of Human
Services secretary Renee Leon faced heated questioning about the controversial
“robodebt” program — which averages reported income and generates debts to
current and former welfare recipients — she said it is not known whether people
have taken their own lives due to the program.
“There is not an
elevated death rate among the cohort who have received a debt notice. It’s not
to say we are not troubled that people die,” Ms Leon said…
Greens Senator Rachel
Siewert said the numbers are particularly troubling because 663 people out of
the 2030 had “vulnerability indicators” attached.
Of the 2,030 people who died after receiving a Centrelink
Online
Compliance Intervention letter (‘robodebt’ ) which was generated sometime
between July 2016 to October 2018:
102 were aged
16-25 years;
327 were aged
26-35 years;
347 were aged
36-45 years;
466 were aged
46-55 years;
536 were aged
56-65 years;
251 were aged
66-80 years; and
1 was aged 81-100
years.
By gender 637 of these welfare recipients were Female and 1,393 Male.
“If death rates remained
similar throughout the period July 2016 - October 2018 ... approximately 6% of
all deaths of 16-35 year olds in Australia occurred for people who were subject
to Centrelink #robodebt compliance.” [Dr Ben Eltham on Twitter,
22 February 2019]
BACKGROUND
Gilbert Sullivan QC weiting in the Herald
Sun, 21 February 2019:
The Model Litigant
Policy of the Commonwealth is a direction issued by the Attorney-General under
the Judiciary Act.
The claims reported to
have been made by Centrelink are said to target 1.5 million people and aim to
claw back $4.6 billion in what are alleged to be overpayments of welfare.
The claims date back to
2010 and Centrelink demands the repayment of what it alleges to be overpayments
caused by the understatement of income; but it knows very well that it is
unable to prove these claims.
Centrelink has destroyed
its records and is entirely dependent on information obtained from the
Australian Taxation Office. It divides the gross annual income obtained in this
way by 26 to calculate what it terms an “apportioned actual income”.
It then proceeds to claim
the difference between the fortnightly income declared by the payee and the
apportioned actual income as an understatement by the recipient which it then
claims as a debt.
It is only by sighting
pay-slips or bank statements that the accuracy of the declared fortnightly
income can be verified. Centrelink’s claims rest on it proving that the
fortnightly income was falsely declared.
It can only succeed if
it can prove this on the balance of probabilities. The ATO information on its
own is worthless and needs a point of comparison in the form of contemporaneous
records. Annual income does not translate into fortnightly income.
The absurdity of this
methodology is obvious.
A full-time student in
2010 on a youth allowance may well have had a part-time job to support their
studies. Some weeks they may have earned, say $150, other weeks nothing.
They may have entered
the work force full-time in the last two months of the financial year and
earned say, $8000.
Dividing the yearly
income by 26 cannot establish a dishonest understatement for the weeks the
student earned $150 or nothing. Without the contemporary records, no
understatement can be proved.
This methodology is in
breach of model litigant obligations in a number of respects.
First, the mathematical
basis underpinning it is invalid and known to be so by Centrelink; and the
maintenance of a claim known to be invalid is a fundamental breach of the
obligation to act as a model litigant.
Second, to imagine that
casual employees retain pay slips from 2010 is ludicrous; many of the employers
from that time no longer exist and it is inconceivable that anyone can produce
pay-slips.
Further, while some bank
records are obtainable, they are archived and expensive to obtain. Placing the
onus on a recipient to procure bank statements is yet a further breach of model
litigant obligations.
There is no reason why
Centrelink could not obtain these records by subpoena or otherwise.
Furthermore, the actions of Centrelink reverse the onus of proof which, of
itself, is a breach of model litigant obligations.
MammaMia, 21 February 2019:
“It was demeaning,
embarrassing, and if it wasn’t for my son… I considered suicide.”
“It was dehumanising. I
had only lost my husband months before… I was grieving.”
These two sentences
represent how two women, from two different walks of life, in separate states
felt – when they received a Centrelink
debt notice.
Or more exactly what
happened when they tried to deal with the fallout of a
Centrelink debt notice……
The Centrelink letters
are sent out through an automated system. In the old system, it equated to
about 20,000 a year, but thanks to a new system in 2016 – it’s generating
20,000 letters a week.
Gabriella* received one
of those letters just last year.
She received it when she
was trying to come to terms with the death of her husband who had died in a
boating accident a few months before.
She was left with two
young children trying to work out how to move on with life.
She had never received
anything from Centrelink, she hadn’t needed to. But Centrelink had sent her
$13,000 in weekly increments, and they wanted their money back.
“The stress… I was
already dealing with enough… I knew I didn’t owe them money,” she told Mamamia.
Turns out Centrelink had
been sending her money that she hadn’t applied for – which had been bouncing
back for months.
“I made a phone call
first, they realised they’d made a mistake. But she [the person on the phone]
couldn’t fix it.”
She was given a
different number.
“I spent hours on the
telephone waiting for them to answer [to help]. It’s impossible to get
through,” explained Gabriella.
So instead, she was
forced to take a day off work and go into the Centrelink office itself.
“She looked at me like I
was lying,” Gabriella told Mamamia, of the moment she explained her
story – yet again.
Gabriella is most
frustrated at the time and effort she had to put in to fix this wrong. A wrong
that was made by an automated letter, and which cost her a days’ wage, and
almost cost her $13,000.
“I am grieving, but I am
pretty stable… my head is pretty OK. But there are people who get these letters
and they are not OK,” said a teary Gabriella.
“I am actually in the
mental health industry, so I am probably more equipped than a lot at noticing
triggers in myself. But what if I wasn’t?
“My situation never
should have happened, if there had been a human being looking at my account
they would have realised it was bouncing back.”
“It was dismay. It was a
shock to the system. It is scaremongering, they don’t explain anything, and
it’s very… dehumanising,” she said of her experience..........
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