Northern Rivers landowners can breathe a sigh of relief, council rates will not rise sharply this year

Northern Rivers local governments and landowners have had a reprieve - for now.

One increase in NSW Government charges on local councils will not go ahead and Clarence Valley Council will not have to find an additional $260,000 this financial year.

However, there is no guarantee that by July 2020 the emergency services levy hike will not again be back on the books and, there is also no guarantee that the Berejiklian Government's plan to abandon unimproved value as the baseline for land rate calculations is either dead, buried or cremated.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 August 2019:

The NSW government is backflipping on a controversial plan to force councils across the state to pay for a $14 million emergency services levy hike.

The Berejiklian government wanted the state's 128 councils to share the financial burden of the increase in the emergency services levy to fund reforms to workers’ compensation for firefighters suffering from work-related cancers.

The move follows a radical proposal to change the way NSW council rates are calculated, that would drive up costs for owners of expensive apartments, and steep increases in waste management fees in some council areas.

The emergency services levy hike was opposed by the local government sector, which voiced concerns that the increase, which varied in amounts between areas, would force councils to cut funds to services and facilities.

Local Government NSW president Linda Scott said that councils' share of the emergency services budget was embedded in council rates, with additional costs recovered through insurance premiums.....

In 2017, Premier Gladys Berejiklian's shelved plans for a new system to fund fire and emergency services in response to backlash over sharp increases in what some property owners would pay.

Labor's local government spokesman Greg Warren said the decision to grant NSW's councils a year-long reprieve from the levy increase was "little comfort to councils across the state".

"This is another backflip from the government on this issue, they've simply kicked the can down the road.....

Ms Hancock said the government would continue to "consult with local councils to better manage the impacts of the emergency services levy, especially on their annual budgeting cycles".

An as yet unconfirmed rumour about the Indue Cashless Welfare Card

Indue Limited (ABN 97 087 822 464) is a bank and Authorised Deposit-Taking Institution (“ADI”) that is regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority. Indue is owned by financial institutions, each of which is also an ADI. Indue provides transaction processing and settlement services to credit unions, building societies, church funds, mortgage originators, commercial clients and the Australian government.

via @CartwheelPrint

Facebook, The Say NO Seven, 9 August 2019:

🐦⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠ #LNP_CASHLESS_CARD_AGENDA 

Whistle blower testimony sent to the SNS has confirmed the LNP agenda for Indue Cards.

As long time members are aware, the SNS operates an encrypted mail service and drop box specifically for those people within the system to speak out in relative safety.

A rarely used resource, this week and we assume as a direct result of the the muzzling of certain sectors, we have received information from two independent sources attached to the department and public service that corroborate our concerns.

The LNP Agenda is clear. They are "confidant" that regardless of whether ALP support/do not support further expansions, that with Cross Bench support, they will reach this target prior to the next Federal election.

We do not send this notice to generate groundless fear. We send it to inform you and to inform those within our government who feel themselves above the law and the will of the people, that we *will* and will continue to resist.

We have deliberated deeply about presenting this information, which should come as no real surprise to those are literate in card matters and current political machinations.

We concluded it was necessary to post, despite being unable to provide documentation to you at this time, as has been our standard thus far and will continue to be. The risks are simply too great to not speak out now, while we still can, and are as great as the risks whistle blowers face if we provide any further detail.

We can confirm the sources are credible, reliable, are informed, and have been vetted.

⚠ We must reiterate that AT THIS TIME there are NO Bills before parliament that would permit ANY further roll out in ANY location nor are there any current Bills before parliament to expand payment captures to include aged pension aka under the Act as Mature Aged Payment. 

We must continue to remain steadfast and take one step at a time, and take each presentation to parliament as it comes.

Information sharing over several weeks along with these new posts has confirmed that four Bills concerning or including cashless cards are in progress and that these Bills may arrive as a single Omnibus Bill. We are informed that the writing of these Bills has been outsourced to partisan legal interests.

Even so, as we said, we must remain steadfast and take each presentation to parliament as it comes and not allow fear to dictate or determine *our* outcomes decisions or directions.

We send this to you for 'the grace of time' - for your emotional and mental preparation and for wider general awareness of what we are likely to be facing over the next three years.

We will post over the next week on just what this agenda, if successful, could mean for Australians and our nation and economy; on the utilization and role of religious groups as relates to LNP's social welfare policy as a whole; and we will also speak on issues of effective resistance.

Now we know. Time to wake the masses.

Heads up..eyes open..no fear. ✊

- SNS🌿

So is there an army of "Quiet Australians" backing the Morrison Coalition Government or is it just another political myth

The Morrison Coalition Government, its ministers, senators and MPs, have been making much of the notion that there is a large mass of citizens who quietly agree with them on every subject they discuss and every policy position they hold. 

This survey suggests that rather than there being a large number of head nodders in the community, these so-called 'quiet' Australians may broadly disagree with the Morrison Government on issues involving treatment of vulnerable people and low income households - especially when it comes to the Newstart Allowance level of payment. 

Essential Report, Australian survey, 8 August 2019 by clarencegirl on Scribd

  http://www.scribd.com/document/421336946/Essential-Report-Australian-survey-8-August-2019

Under Prime Minister Scott Morrison's own peculiar mix of politics & social engineering the 'haves' are relentlessly screwing the 'have nots' into the ground

ABC News, 2 August 2019: 

Whistleblowers are warning a $351 million Government program aimed at getting parents back to work is exploiting vulnerable single mothers, and even the homeless. 

Key points: 

ParentsNext is a $351 million scheme to get parents on welfare to meet work and study goals, then return to the workforce 

Employment service providers receive $600 for every client who is on ParentsNext 

Whistleblowers say service providers have kept parents in the scheme who should be exempt. 

At the centre of the controversy is ParentsNext, a program some people must take part in to receive parenting payments from Centrelink. 

It is also the first Australia-wide program to allow private employment service providers to decide who must participate. 

Background Briefing has interviewed current and former employees in Australia's lucrative employment services sector who claim some caseworkers are pressured to sign up and retain people who face significant personal crises, even though departmental guidelines stipulate they should be exempted. 

Homeless but signed up anyway Mel, 33, is one of more than 3,000 homeless Australians who've been signed up to the compulsory employment training program ParentsNext despite having no fixed address to take a shower or prepare a warm meal for her kids. 

A mother of four, Mel's spent more than two years on Tasmania's public housing waiting list. 

She was furious when she received a letter demanding she undergo an eligibility assessment for ParentsNext or else her parenting payments would be cut off. 

 "It's degrading, it's making us feel like we're lazy, like we're not doing nothing for our kids," said Mel, whose last name is being withheld for privacy reasons. Guidelines from the Department of Jobs specify Centrelink could have exempted her from participating on the grounds of her homelessness. 

Mel was instead referred to a local not-for-profit community provider, Workskills, which were paid a government fee just for her turning up. Under ParentsNext, employment service providers are paid $600 for each new recipient they take on. 

Mel was exempted at her first meeting with Workskills, but will be re-examined for eligibility in 12 months. She says she can't understand why the Department did not exempt her at the outset.

Despite being exempted from ParentsNext, last week Mel's parenting payment was cut off after she forgot to tick a box declaring her zero income to Centrelink.

ABC, Background Briefing, "Welfare to Worse", 2 August 2019 podcast here.

Morrison Government intends to go ahead with the drug testing of welfare recipients

"…the bill is not written like a research trial, it's written as policy by stealth…and if this is about introducing new policy, then…it misunderstands the nature of drug problems and drug dependence." [UNSW Professor Lisa Maher, Committee Hansard, 23 April 2018, p.18] 

According to data.gov.au, between January 2017 and and December 2018 there were 5.82 million Australian citizens receiving Newstart Allowance unemployment benefits for all or part of that period.

Based on the New Zealand experience of widespread drug testing, it is highly likely that just one year into any Australian scheme which regularly drug tests Newstart recipients running costs would not be less than $3.27 billion.

When you add those receiving Youth Allowance,  then drug testing and intervention costs would run even higher.

Even the limited trial currently proposed by the Morrison Government would in all probability cost somewhere in the vicinity of $20 million in its first year.

In the health care sector there is almost universal condemnation of the Morrison Government's drug testing bill as being either unworkable in practice as a reliable drug detection scheme or ineffective as a method of medical intervention.

Indeed, it is reported that Clinical Associate Professor Adrian Reynolds, an expert in addiction medicine, has stated that the drug testing trial is 'unlikely to bring about any sustained changes in patients' drug use behaviours and may even be counterproductive.'

Nor does it appear that there is any solid evidence that such a testing regime actually assists unemployed people to either find work or successfully access treatment. 

Given how many drug or alcohol dependent individuals currently cannot get a timely appointment or find a inpatient bed in the est. 952 publicly funded drug & alcohol agencies across Australia and the fact that the majority of both private and publicly funded agencies are in large metropolitan areas, this lack of evidence comes as no surprise.

Here is just one submission made to the Senate Inquiry into the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Drug Testing Trial) Bill 2018 in April 2018 by the peak medical practitioners organisation.

Social Services Legislation Amendment (Drug Testing Trial) Bill 2018 (Australian Parliament) by clarencegirl on Scribd

http://www.scribd.com/document/420530854/Social-Services-Legislation-Amendment-Drug-Testing-Trial-Bill-2018-Australian-Parliament

Every journalist,political commentator, blogger & tweeter who has ever been critical of government - be afraid, be very afraid

The Mercury, 29 July 2019: 

Last week the rise of authoritarian government was confirmed with the Morrison Government, aided by the as usual spineless Labor Party, passing legislation which would allow the Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton to block any Australian from returning to this country for up to two years on the grounds they are associated with terrorism, even in the most tangential way. And as Crikey, a news site, revealed last week, the Morrison Government revealed its complete contempt for the rule of law and independent scrutiny of the power Mr Dutton now has vested in him. 

While the Counter-Terrorism (Temporary Exclusion Orders) Act, to give the law its formal name, is designed to stop Australians who have fought in Syria, Iraq or elsewhere for organisations deemed to be terrorist, from returning to this country, one section in the Act appears so broadly drafted it could be used to prevent whistleblowers, journalists and others who reveal the secrets of the US, Australia and other allies in the so-called war on terror from re-entering Australia. 

Section 10 of the Act gives Mr Dutton the power to prevent a person, aged 14 or over, from coming back to Australia for up to two years at a time on a number of grounds. 

One of those grounds is that “the person has been assessed by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation to be directly or indirectly a risk to security … for reasons related to politically motivated violence.” This provision is extraordinarily broad. How might ASIO think that a person is “directly or indirectly a risk to security” because of some link to terrorism, which is what politically motivated violence means. 

Does it include a whistleblower who reveals US and Australian misconduct in the context of the ongoing military operations in Afghanistan or Iraq? 

Or what about a journalist and publisher who lets the world see cables, emails and other forms of communication to and from Australian security and defence agencies and which relate to terrorist activity? 

The answer is yes, it could apply in both cases. When whistleblowers, media organisations and journalists have published material such as in the case of WikiLeaks, the Iraq War Logs, or the trove of materials that former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden smuggled out in 2013 such exercises have been labelled as irresponsible and assisting terrorism…... 

If ASIO answers yes, and of course its reasons for the assessment cannot be challenged because they are secret, then the loose wording of section 10 suggests that Mr Dutton would be prepared to issue an order preventing those individuals from entering Australia for up to two years. 

To give a minister such enormous power to interfere with the right to freedom of speech and free movement is indicative of a mindset that cares nothing for the rule of law or democracy. 

Even the parliamentary committee which looks at security legislation, and which is chaired by a Liberal MP Andrew Hastie and includes Tasmanian Liberal senator Eric Abetz, was ignored by the Morrison Government in this case. 

The committee in question, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, is a highly regarded bipartisan committee that routinely looks at security legislation and whose recommendations are adopted by government because of its expertise. 

Bernard Keane writing in Crikey last Thursday revealed that the committee had recommended that an independent person be given the role of considering banning returning citizens. 

But Mr Dutton justified ignoring the committee’s recommendation in what can only be described as an exercise in gross manipulation of the facts….. 

The Morrison Government would only accept the bipartisan committee’s recommendation if “it was in the national interest” to do so. 

In other words, Mr Dutton and the Morrison Government generally do not believe in a fundamental premise of the rule of law. It is anathema to democracy for ministers to have unbridled power when it comes to dealing with people’s lives. 

Another bad week for Australian democracy. [my yellow highlighting]

Australia attempts to "erase the science" on climate change at UN talks in Bonn?

BBC News, 27 June 2019:

Oil producing countries are trying to "erase the science" on keeping the world's temperatures below 1.5C, say some delegates at UN talks in Bonn.

The chair of the Alliance of Small Island States said Saudi Arabia and others were trying to pretend a key scientific report didn't exist.

Small island states believe keeping temperatures below 1.5C this century is critical to their survival.

A key report in October said this was possible.

But huge emissions cuts would be needed in the short term.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on 1.5C was commissioned by the UN back in 2015.

But when it was presented to climate negotiators in December in Poland, four countries including the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait refused to "welcome" it.

The simmering battle over the report has re-emerged here at this meeting in Bonn.

There has been a serious battle over a text that would include reference to the scientists' conclusion that carbon emissions would have to be reduced by 45% by 2030.

Saudi Arabia has been at the fore in wanting to include text that underlined the uncertainties in the report.

For the group of around 40 small island states, this has proved inflammatory.

"The report came out in in October of 2018 and now we see this move at the negotiations to try and have it almost erased from existence, which is impossible to do," Lois Young, the ambassador from Belize, who is chairing the group, told the BBC.

"There's this move to pretend as though it's not there, to not to refer to it in documents. And it's been ongoing since we got here."

The Saudis have gained some support in their arguments from an unlikely alliance of countries, including the US, Australia and Iran.

"The countries that are trying to downplay the importance of the document, erase it from the records, not all of them are showing their faces," said Ambassador Young.

"It's unreal, it's as though they're resigning our Aosis states to collateral damage, I mean, it's like we have no importance doesn't matter." [my yellow highlighting]

Read the full article here.

Cartoons of the Week

David Rowe

Alan Moir

Yet more opinions that the 46th Australian Government - the Morrison Government - will not end well for the nation

The Australian: Morrison Government Ministry 2019

The Monthly, 9 July 2019:

As Australia’s economy falters, the government’s fiscal heart is hardening, not softening. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s determination to deliver his much-vaunted budget surplus for 2019–20 and retain Australia’s AAA credit rating – which is hardly in danger – is of a piece with junior minister Luke Howarth telling the homeless to look on the bright side. In prospect is more of the same punishing austerity towards anyone doing it tough; it’s the flipside of celebrating those who aspire and get ahead, and who are rewarded with taxpayer largesse through subsidies and tax loopholes. Last week’s $158 billion tax-cut package is going to accelerate the trend to an increasingly unequal Australia, which has resulted from the Coalition’s agenda since it was elected in 2013. As former treasurer Joe Hockey said when defending his first budget, the worst-received in living memory: “Governments have never been able to achieve equality of outcomes … It is not the role of government to use the taxation and welfare system as a tool to ‘level the playing field’”.

Flanked by his assistant minister, Michael Sukkar, and the tax commissioner, Chris Jordan, Frydenberg today announced [$] that more than 810,000 Australians had already filed their 2018–19 tax returns and could be receiving their rebates of up to $1080 by the weekend. But, resisting calls from the Reserve Bank governor, Philip Lowe, he stressed that there would be no further stimulus, citing the “non-negotiable” imperative of reaching a budget surplus this year, and saying that the government would be focused on reducing debt….

Doing the same thing over and over while hoping for a different result is clearly not working. Today’s NAB business confidence survey showed that the post-election bounce has been short-lived, and the first of the RBA’s two recent rate cuts has failed to improve conditions. A small uptick in employment growth is positive, but NAB’s chief economist, Alan Oster, says the overall decrease in business conditions has been “relatively broad-based across states and industries – suggesting that there has been sector-wide loss of momentum over the past year”. The share market is jumpy, selling off sharply today as APRA, in a sign of nervousness, lowered its capital requirements for banks, and bond markets are reportedly “screaming economic downturn”…..

The Saturday Paper, editorial, 6 July 2019:

And so it passes, the greatest assault on the safety net from which Australian life is built. Scott Morrison’s tax cuts are through and the revenue base that provides for health and education and social welfare is shredded. The legacy of the 46th parliament is there in its very first week: the destruction of the social compact that made this country stable.

On analysis by the Grattan Institute, to pay for these cuts at least $40 billion a year will need to be trimmed from government spending by 2030. The Coalition argues it will not cut services. It says jobs growth will reduce spending on welfare. A surplus will mean less interest paid on debt.

The assumptions are heroic and unsustainable. They show an extraordinary indifference to reality. More than that, they are indifferent to need. People will be worse off under these cuts. They will face greater hardship, have less access to health and to quality education. The people worst affected did not vote for Scott Morrison. Half the country didn’t. The damage done is near irreversible. It is infinitely easier to cut taxes than to raise them. This is a triumph of greed and political cowardice. The Labor Party waved it through.

The principles of this policy were first written on a paper napkin in 1974, when the conservative economist Arthur Laffer sketched out his famous tax curve for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. That serviette is one of the most pernicious documents in modern politics. It made the case for what became trickle-down economics. It became the lie through which governments gave money to the rich and pretended they were helping the poor.

The year Scott Morrison became treasurer, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry brought Laffer to Australia for a speaking tour. He met with Josh Frydenberg. His doctrine has its most explicit contemporary expression in the cuts passed this week…...

In his first major speech as prime minister, Morrison said he didn’t believe people should be taxed more to improve the lives of others. He said people had to work for it: they had to have a go. “I think that’s what fairness means in this country,” he said. “It’s not about everybody getting the same thing. If you put in, you get to take out, and you get to keep more of what you earn.”

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of taxation. You don’t pay tax in exchange for services. You pay tax for a society. Under Morrison, you pay less tax and you have less society. The obliterating self-interest of this week will be felt for generations. Morrison’s victory is a huge, huge loss.

No you weren't imagining it - wages are stagnating in Australia

Whenever the Fair Work Commission reviews the minimum wage, one of those making a submission* to keep any increase in the minimum wage a modest one will be the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government.

By way of example:

https://www.fwc.gov.au/documents/sites/wagereview2014/submissions/ausgovt_sub_awr1314.pdf

First 5 points in a 12 point statement of Australian Government's position
https://www.fwc.gov.au/documents/sites/wagereview2015/submissions/austgov_sub_awr1415.pdf

This is the result.......

The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 July, p.9:

As the asset-driven wealth gap has widened, incomes generated by employment have failed to keep up.

Average weekly disposable household incomes have grown just $44 over the past decade. In the four years to 2007-08, average weekly household incomes grew by $220. They dipped in the immediate wake of the global financial crisis before reaching $1067 in the 2013-14 survey. They fell in the next survey and rose $8 a week to $1062 in the 2017-18 survey.

In NSW, those in the lowest 20 per cent of income earners have seen their incomes go backwards in real terms since 2015-16, from $412 a week to $397 a week. They are only $6 a week higher than in 2011-12. The biggest increase has been for people in Tasmania, where disposable incomes jumped $83 to a record-high $922, with households across all income ranges boosted. The largest slump has been in Western Australia, where disposable incomes are $157 lower than their peak in 2013-14. [my yellow highlighting]

However, lest Australian voters seek to blame the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison or any employer lobby group for paltry wages growth, the Australian Treasury and participants at a recent conference organised by the rather esoteric Economic Society of Australia - est. in 1925 and delighting in producing articles such as "Community and Expert Wine Ratings and Prices" and "Non‐monotonic NPV Function Leads to Spurious NPVs and Multiple IRR Problems: A New Method that Resolves these Problems" - have rushed to the defence of both government and the business community.

With Treasury in particular pointing a finger at employees, who are reluctant to quit their current jobs and chance their arm in an uncertain labour market, as a possible cause of low wages growth.  
So there you have it. Despite both the federal government and employer groups constantly pushing to limit wages growth, it's really the fault of workers. 

Regardless of the fact that productivity growth mainly from workers' efforts has averaged 1.4 percent a year since the end of 2010 having risen at a relatively steady rate since 1991.

Note:
* See https://www.fwc.gov.au/awards-agreements/minimum-wages-conditions/annual-wage-reviews/annual-wage-review-2017-18-3. Go to right hand sidebar, open a wage review link, select Submissions &  then click on Initial Submissions.

Kevin Hogan still pretending he went to the May 2019 federal election as an Independent now surfaces as the Nationals MP he always was

MP for Page Kevin Hogan while remaining a member of the parliamentary National Party of Australia, while still the Party's Whip in the House of Representatives and the Liberal-Nationals Coaltion Government's Deputy Speaker, attempted for over 8 months to pass himself off as an Independent sitting on the cross benches.

During those 8 months Hogan routinely voted with his government.

He used this political deceit in order to hold on to his chance for re-election on 18 May 2019, when he like many other government MPs and Senators thought it was likely that they would lose government.

Of course ahead of the federal election being declared he still sought and received National Party preselection as its candidate in the seat of Page.

The Murdoch media assisted this deceit by referring to him as sitting on the cross benches.

Now that the Coalition has been returned to government at the recent election and is preparing to sit on the right hand benches of the 46th Parliament, Hogan has finally abandoned his pretence and announced that voilà! he is a National Party MP once more and will sit once more on the government benches.

Government benches which in fact he was mostly found on even when pretending to be a cross bencher.

A NSW Northern Rivers perspective on the 18 May 2019 Australian federal election results

A political and social perspective in thirteen tweets........

Yes, this is the #Australia #trump or #brexit moment. But not in the way talked about in this piece.

This is about the manipulation of our electoral system by wealthy and powerful individuals to achieve a specific multi-billion dollar outcome.

This is not a conspiracy theory. https://t.co/DoANEoxeV9

— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019

The entire #UAP campaign was about grabbing 4% of the vote and directing it to the LNP. It worked spectacularly well in Queensland.

These will turn out to be highly disengaged voters, the undecideds from a week out. Excluded from polls (explaining how the polls were so wrong)

— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019

If Clive spent $50 or even $80 million, don’t you think he spent some of that on analytics.

On targeting messages to the most receptive.

He was never trying to win seats, just keep #Labor out.

— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019

Clive’s pay-off is a Government and a group of very grateful Parliamentarians already keen to do his bidding.

So his #Galilee Basin mine isn’t rendered worthless. So a new #coal fired power station is built in North Qld.

It’s worth Billions to him.

— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019

Why did it work?

The LNP played its part. The Presidential style campaign was designed to focus everything on Bill Shorten.

Labor was vulnerable. Bill Shorten, even after My Mum and Hawkie, never became likeable Bill.

— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019

Like the #trump campaign, it was proceeded by years of tearing down the most likely challenger.#Hilary was damaged goods in the same way as #Shorten

Nothing like a sham Royal Commission to make your opponent appear shifty.

— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019

#Trumps win was based on suppressing the vote in key states in a voluntary voting system.

Here, it was capturing the vote of the people that didn’t want to be there in our compulsory system.

— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019

As to the links to #brexit

I’m assuming a man throwing $millions to influence an election is going to hire people with some experience in this endeavour.

I’m sure this mining magnate & former Liberal Party Treasurer has got the right connections.

— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019

And yes, like #brexit and #trump our largely supine media simply watched the shells and forgot all about the peas.

The show was everything.

And the chorus from the Murdoch stable was deafening.

— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019

It’s #GameOfMates writ large.

The same dynamic that drives the destruction of the #MurrayDarling and rewards the Nationals in NSW and Qld is working for the coal barons in North Qld.

— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019

It’s a system that preys on the disengaged. To get them to vote against their interests.

It relies on the belief that they’re all bastards...and then seeks to tell them who their true enemies are.

— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019

The point of this rant, however is not about how we was robbed.

As Bill Shorten put it, we didn’t get enough votes. Simple.

The question is, how do we reach the disengaged?

How do we leave ourselves less vulnerable to this attack in the future?

— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019

Because ranting about stuff on twitter does didly squat.

— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019

This move by Murdoch’s News Corp has Scott Morrison’s political paw prints all over it

Standing in the shadows pulling the strings of those willing to make spurious or defamatory claims about a political opponent worked so well for the interim Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison in the past that he appears to be doing it again.

Last time the efforts of his political puppets cost News Corp tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs and like last time The Daily Telegraph is the Liberals vehicle of choice.

The smear campaign revealed……..

The Saturday Paper, 11 May 2019, excerpt:

Midweek, Murdoch’s Sydney tabloid The Daily Telegraph went for broke. On page one, it ran a story under the headline “Mother of invention”, and set out to destroy what it said was hailed as Shorten’s “election-winning moment”. It accused him of omitting the fact his mother went on to enjoy an illustrious career as a barrister. The paper said he had failed to disclose that his mother graduated law later in life “and [practised] at the bar for six years”. It said the Labor chief had only told half the family story. If that were the case, however, he left out the half that gives even more potency to his mother’s legacy.

One senior Liberal wondered who was the genius on their side who thought it a good idea to prompt the Telegraph’s ill-considered and cockamamie attack. Gallery journalists confirm the “Libs were shopping the story around on Tuesday”. 

Melbourne’s Herald Sun, unlike its Brisbane stablemate, The Courier-Mail, refused to take it. Scott Morrison played the innocent bystander. He told reporters it was a “very upsetting story” and he can understand that Shorten would have been “very hurt by it”. That was an understatement. The opposition leader was furious.

For 10 minutes during a half-hour press conference on Wednesday, Shorten spoke of his mother’s achievements. Fighting back tears, he told of a woman in her 50s with grey hair, who, even though she topped her law school, could not get a law firm to take her on for articles. When she eventually got to the bar, she struggled for briefs – “she got about nine briefs in her time”. Far from fulfilling her dream, as the Murdoch hatchet job claimed, she went back to education. The partisan attack on the Labor leader opened the way for him to hit back at one of the Liberals’ biggest vulnerabilities: their failure to promote more women through their parliamentary ranks. Their most high-profile and credible woman, Julie Bishop, has quit. She won’t be at the party’s Mother’s Day launch on Sunday to support Morrison, the man who blocked her run for the leadership. Shorten says the experience of his mother – “the smartest woman I’ve ever known” – is why he believes in the equal treatment of women.

News Corp sources say the Tele has another story on their news file to throw at Shorten. It is highly defamatory and legally dubious. The desperation that led to the attack on Shorten and his mother’s memory may give them pause to think about running it. As one Labor campaign worker says, “It’s difficult to know where the government ends and News Corp begins.” [my yellow highlighting]

Phase Two of the smear campaign.......

A scurrilous, below-the-radar whispering campaign has broken through onto social media.