Can no-one in the Liberal Party put a brake on these fools?

This week regional Australia woke to find that the foundation statistics used by local government, community groups or individuals lobbying for an increase in government services/funding are now under threat.

The Sydney Morning Herald 19 February 2015:

The controversial proposal to axe the 2016 census has originated from the Bureau of Statistics rather than the Abbott government, the bureau has revealed.

The ABS has asked the government to legislate to remove the requirement that it conduct a census every 5 years and replace it with a requirement to conduct the survey only once every 10 years as happens in Britain and the United States.

The political spin on the proposal to abandon the 2016 national census and change the period between census nights from five to ten years, is that the 109 year-old Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has requested this.

Various journalists point to the fact that the ABS was without a chief executive for almost a year, has had to reduce staffing numbers, is behind in its preparation for the 2016 national census, while its computer system is old and in urgent need of replacement.

However, one doesn’t need to look far for the underlying reason for the bureau’s malaise.

Successive federal governments have starved it of funds and resources. A fiscal position the foolish Abbott Government continued with relish, when in May 2014 it increased the ABS annual funding reduction (Efficiency Dividend) and included a reduction in staffing numbers of est. 100 employees.

Will no-one in the Liberal Party put a brake on Messrs. Abbott, Hockey and Cormann before their mindless and destructive cost-cutting destroys yet another vital institution?

BACKGROUND

Australian Financial Review 29 January 2014:

The ABS needed government support if it was to continue to produce its current workload, Mr Pink says in the annual report.

He warns that without action, the ABS will no longer be able to maintain its mandated functions in the future “as the trusted and respected statistical leader” in Australia.

“Our constrained budget situation may require hard choices in the coming year as we ensure the next phase of our business and infrastructure transformation strategy, which is so critical to our future sustainability, proceeds in 2014–15,” Mr Pink says.

In his final annual report as Australian statistician, Mr Pink thanked his staff for their work in “an increasingly difficult, constraining and frustrating environment in which to operate”.

Mr Pink has not yet been replaced and Ian Ewing is acting Australian statistician…..

Bank of America Merrill Lynch Australia chief economist Saul Eslake said he had no reason to believe the funding crisis had yet materially affected the quality of the ABS statistics, “but I have no trouble believing that at some point it will”.

Australian Government Treasury Portfolio Budget Statements 2014-15, May 2014:

	MEDIA RELEASE
5 June 2014	Embargo: 11.30 am (Canberra time)	71/2014

ABS announces planned changes to future work program

The acting Australian Statistician, Jonathan Palmer, today announced planned reductions to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) work program. 
The ABS must reduce expenditure by about $50m over three years. While the ABS has been able to implement efficiencies in its operations, these are insufficient to meet the expenditure target. As a result, the statistical work program will be reduced from 2014-15. 
Mr Palmer said the revised work program, developed after consultation with key Australian Government agencies, will continue to meet Australia’s core statistical needs. 
“Our highest priority was to maintain activities that are critical to effective government decision making and deliver the most public benefit.
“While the revised forward work program retains core statistical elements and outputs, we have had to discontinue or reduce outputs in areas that are valued by the users of those statistics. If funding is provided for the work we are ceasing, we will reinstate it.

“The quality, integrity and relevance of our statistics are critical to informing effective decision making and we must not lose sight of that as we plan for the future,” Mr Palmer said.

The work program changes, which will be implemented from 1 July 2014, are:

Discontinue

* Environment collections from Australian Households

* Waste Account

* Measures of Australia's Progress

* Australian Social Trends

* Survey of Tourist Accommodation

* ABS funded component of Culture, Sport and Recreation statistics 

Reduce

* Industry statistics research, development and reporting in selected areas

* Social conditions statistics research, development and reporting in selected areas

* State and territories statistical services engagement and analysis activities

* Regional statistics analysis and development

* Macroeconomic research and development engagement in international activities

* National information and referral services response times

* External statistical education development programs

Review

* Review the House Price Index, with the view to discontinuing it pending identification of alternative sources to meet the Australian National Accounts and other requirements

Further details of the work program changes will be advised to affected users in due course.

As Australia’s national statistical agency, the ABS provides official statistics on a wide range of topics relevant to government, business, and the Australian population.

The Sydney Morning Herald 13 February 2015:

When his predecessor as Australian Statistician Brian Pink left in January 2014, he wrote that the bureau had barely enough cash to "keep the lights on".

Instead of replacing him promptly, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister's offices tossed around options and deferred the decision until December when they finally gave the job to Kalisch, one of the original applicants from earlier in the year.  

DATA RETENTION. Abbott v Shorten. Fascism versus the rights of the citizen?

Fascism versus the rights of the citizen? Take the time to read up on the many concerns expressed about the Abbott Government's legislation, TELECOMMUNICATIONS (INTERCEPTION AND ACCESS) AMENDMENT (DATA RETENTION) BILL 2014, which will allow it to spy on Australian citizens regardless or whether or not they are suspected of committing a crime. Then you decide whether this is a huge step too far.

Australian Prime Minster Tony Abbott's attempt to place pressure on the Opposition and the Opposition's response:

Letter to Opposition Leader Bill Shorten from Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, 22 January 2015

Letter to Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott from Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, 9 February 2015

If all you have is Abbott & Forrest's cashless debit card how do you catch a bus to Grafton and back to see a specialist doctor or attend a job interview?

The question in the title of this post is only one of many that will arise if the Abbott Government introduces a debit card which won’t allow disability support pensioners, the unemployed or those receiving  any form of federal government benefit or allowance (other than aged and veteran pensions which appear to be exempt) any cash whatsoever. The plan apparently is to place the entire government cash transfer into a locked bank account which the welfare recipient can only operate through the cashless Healthy Welfare Card.

The Australian 14 February 2014:

THE Abbott government will push ahead with the controversial healthy welfare card to address indigenous disadvantage, along with all but one of the 27 recommend­ations of Andrew Forrest’s sweeping blueprint for welfare reform….

The most contentious of the Forrest reforms is a healthy welfare card, a debit card that would quarantine a person’s welfare payments to prevent their buying alcoh­ol and drugs.

Senator Scullion said the government had considered the Forrest review and now was looking at the “challenge” of implementing them.

“We have adopted every one of the recommendations except for the tax-free threshold for indig­enous businesses,” he said.

“We think the outcomes (in the Forrest review) are the sorts of outcomes that we all desire and we think the recommendations are sufficiently robust to be able to examine and look at how we imple­ment them.”

Other measures recommended in the review included integrating early-childhood services, case management for vulnerable children, tying family tax benefit payments to school attendance and funding only vocational training that is linked to job outcomes.

Excerpt from the Forrest Review, Chapter 2, October 2014:

In summary, the Healthy Welfare Card would:

* allow individuals to use the mainstream banking system to manage their welfare payments rather than the expensive Centrelink income management system

* enable the purchase of all goods and services, with the exception of alcohol, gambling products, illicit services and instruments that can be converted to cash (such as gift cards) and exclude activities discouraged by government, or illegal in some places, such as pornography

* be issued by banks on the basis of a current bank account, which is already required for the current cash payment of welfare support

* use a cashless debit card redeemable at Australian retail stores and accepted at any BPAY or EFTPOS terminals through internet and phone banking with the protection of fraud security be linked to a locked savings account which can accrue savings for major purchases, such as a deposit on a home, whitegoods, furniture or rental bond, or unexpected large costs

* use existing data mining technology to monitor use of the card to detect any unusual sales or purchases, with Centrelink applying on-the-spot penalties on retailers and individuals for fraudulent use of the card

* have the scope to expand to accept other government payments such as funding for care packages under the new National Disability Insurance Scheme.

The Sydney Morning Herald 24 October 2014:

Mr Forrest's welfare management scheme would see all welfare payments to all Australians, other than age or veterans' pensions paid into a savings account, which could be accessed by a "health welfare card"….

More than 20,000 Australians currently have their incomes managed voluntarily or compulsorily around Australia in places including the Northern Territory, Perth, the Kimberley region, South Australia and Cape York, with trials in local government areas, including Bankstown, Greater Shepparton and Ceduna.

Some welfare recipients have their incomes managed to deal with issues around child protection, financial hardship and drug and alcohol dependency. Other people have their incomes managed simply because they have been on a particular benefit - such as Youth Allowance - for three of the previous six months.

The current schemes, which were introduced by Coalition and Labor governments, quarantine at least half of a person's payment for necessary items and prevent spending on things such as alcohol, cigarettes, home brew kits and pornography. At this stage, the various schemes are due to end in mid 2015 and mid 2016 and the government is considering its next move in the area.

UPDATE

The question is only partially answered by Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister Alan Tudge, who says the Government is "very seriously considering a trial but doesn't want to rush a decision.
He says if the Coalition goes ahead with the card it'll be extended beyond Indigenous populations….
Second point I'd make is that, if we proceed at all, it would likely be done on a trial basis in a discrete geographical area, where it probably would apply to everybody who is on income support payments in that geographical area.

Mr. Tudge also does not anticipate Health Care Card holders not being able to access a small amount of cash, but doesn’t know how much this will be or how the amount will be decided.

What is clear is that those on Centrelink benefits or allowances will have little input into the development of this new income management scheme on steroids.

Day 12 of Good Government in Australia

During a press conference on 9 February Prime Minister Tony Abbott declared to the world that good government starts today in Australia.

On Day 12 of his new leaf The Australian reported:

Abbott sits for much of the day in his office in Parliament House pondering national security, Islamic State and reading Winston Churchill. He has 50 staff in his office but he insists on writing many of his speeches as Credlin, sitting in the office next door, works the phones, managing the detail.
She is, as Abbott himself has said, “the fiercest political warrior” he has ever worked with.
This is the Australian duumvirate, a new form of government in which Abbott and Credlin run the country. They are, in reality, co-prime ministers.