Liberal Party dirty linen spills out of the cupboard yet again

A timely reminder of what goes in the shadows during Liberal Party election campaigns......

 The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 March 2016:

The Liberal Party has suspended a campaign director in the 2015 NSW election, after he was charged with electoral crimes in a marginal seat where the Australian Labor Party candidate was anonymously smeared as a paedophile.

The NSW Electoral Commission has taken action under the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act against Jim Daniel, who ran the campaign for the seat of East Hills, which MP Glenn Brookes unexpectedly retained by just 628 votes, or 0.8 per cent, in 2015.

During the campaign about 300 posters of ALP candidate Cameron Murphy, a human rights lawyer who has an Order of Australia and is the son of High Court judge Lionel Murphy, were defaced with stickers saying "paedophile lover," "stranger danger" and "our children are not safe".

In 2015 ALP MP Lynda Voltz, under parliamentary privilege, accused Mr Daniel, who is on Bankstown City Council, of organising the defacement of the posters.

At that time Mr Daniel said the accusations were "just another attempt to reheat issues previously raised and dealt with".

The Electoral Commission issued a statement on Friday that it had investigated a number of complaints and served two notices on Mr Daniel to appear at Downing Street Court.  

"It will be alleged by the NSWEC that political campaign material distributed in the electorate of East Hills was in contravention of the act."

The NSW division of the Liberal Party said on Sunday that Mr Daniel was suspended and the NSWEC was the right body to investigate any complaints. 

PerthNow, 21 March 2016:

EAST Hills Liberal MP Glenn Brookes will stand aside from the Liberal Party and will serve on the crossbench until the outcome of a charge against his campaign manager over an alleged breach of the electoral act involving a paedophile slur is determined.

Mr Brookes will also step aside from his parliamentary committee roles, including serving on Premier Mike Baird’s parliamentary ethics committee until the matter is resolved.

The scandal now threatens to produce a possible by-election.

Labor candidate Cameron Murphy, who was the head of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, lost the seat of East Hills by less than 400 votes — or 0.2 per cent — after the dirty campaign.

In the week before polling day, 300 of Mr Murphy’s posters were defaced with stickers falsely declaring him “a paedophile lover”.

Thousands of anonymous pamphlets were also letterboxed wrongly claiming Mr Murphy, the son of former High Court Judge and Federal Attorney-General Lionel Murphy, had stood up for paedophiles.

The matter is listed for mention at the Downing Centre Local Court on May 3….

BACKGROUND

The Express, 31 July 2012:

THE Liberal Party has endorsed two south ward candidates for Bankstown Council's election in September. Picnic Point resident Jim Daniel and Revesby's Vanessa Gauci will run on the south ward ticket.

Father-of-two Mr Daniel was preselected to run as number one on the ticket.

"I am honoured by the trust that has been shown in me by so many people who sincerely know that I have what it takes to be a successful south ward councillor on Bankstown Council," Mr Daniel said…..

The Express, 2 October 2012:

East Hills state Liberal MP Glenn Brookes has stepped down from his role on Bankstown Council after eight years.

Mr Brookes stood down from the council at last month's local government elections under new state government laws prohibiting anybody from holding a council and an MP position at the same time. "During my eight years on council more than $288 million has been spent on capital works and I am pleased to say that $26 million has been spent in my South ward," he said. Mr Brookes' heir in South ward is newly minted Liberal councillor Jim Daniel.

The Express, 19 May 2015:

The Bankstown Liberal councillor accused in Parliament of being involved in an election smear campaign has called the accusations "cowardly".

Jim Daniel denies being involved in a smear campaign that wrongly implied East Hills Labor candidate Cameron Murphy was a "paedophile lover".

Mr Daniel, who was the campaign manager for East Hills state Liberal MP Glenn Brookes during the State Election, was named by Labor MP Lynda Voltz in Parliament on Thursday.

Using parliamentary privilege, Ms Voltz said a resident saw Mr Daniel delivering the unauthorised leaflets during the campaign. In one leaflet it states "if a convicted child rapist lived next to you would you want to know?" alongside a photo of Mr Murphy.

East Hills was the tightest seat going into the election.

Despite Mr Murphy being favourite to win the seat back for Labor, Mr Brookes won by 372 votes with a slight swing in his favour.

In Parliament last Thursday, Ms Voltz said copies of the pamphlets were delivered to Padstow, Georges Hall, Revesby and Panania…..

The Express, 15 December 2015:

Mr Daniel, a Bankstown councillor, has denied any involvement. "I've had enough of them trying to belittle me. It's a hard enough job in politics without people crying over spilt milk," Mr Brookes said.

"They can't get over that I won. I told the people from (Liberal Party) hierarchy 'don't write me off'." East Hills had always been a Labor seat until Mr Brookes won in 2011 and he was re-elected in March despite only holding the seat by 0.2 per cent.

"They think they have a God-given right to the (East Hills) area - nobody does," he said.

Mr Brookes challenged Labor to accuse him of involvement in the smear campaign outside parliament. "Have a cheque book ready and have a go," he said.

Canterbury Bankstown Express, 6 May 2014:

Bankstown councillor Jim Daniel says he is "disappointed" he has been forced to defend himself over a business networking event he helped organise in 2012 that has been referred to ICAC due to a connection to former energy minister Chris Hartcher.

Cr Daniel helped his friend, accountant George Germanos, organise the networking meeting for Mr Germanos's Georges River Club at Bankstown Paceway in July 2012.

Mr Hartcher, who is being investigated by ICAC over allegations of a slush fund, was the guest speaker.

Cr Daniel said he asked East Hills state Liberal MP Glenn Brookes, for whom he works as an electorate officer, to invite fellow government members to attend.

"(Mr Brookes) invited a number of prominent people to attend, and it's just our luck that the one MP who did is now being investigated by ICAC," he said.

Cr Daniel said he and Mr Germanos had written to ICAC and the Electoral Funding Commission before the original event in 2012 to make sure there were no irregularities.

Cr Daniel said it was a shame Mr Brookes was now forced to defend himself for "helping out a staffer". He said there had not been enough money raised from the event to continue holding them.

Australian Federal Election 2016: laffing at 'Truffles'

“Malcolm is completely infatuated with truffles”

[Lucy Turnbull in The Guardian, UK News, 11 November 2015]

First the world laughed at Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott until his sacking, then less than two months later it commenced to laugh at Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

His wife accidentally started the ball rolling as she enthused to journalists covering a royal visit and, for many people Malcolm became 'Truffles' Turnbull for the duration.

The laughter rose a notch when the official Twitter account of an over-the-top U.S. fictional political drama tweeted this:

Then someone noticed the similarity between this fictional campaign slogan used in the comedy Veep

and this slogan uttered by our very own prime minister as he gears up for the 2016 federal election

which resulted in this

Even the Murdoch media couldn't resist likening the Prime Minister to that fictional political schemer and multiple murderer on its Daily Telegraph front page of 22 March 2016 - although I'm sure that the editor hoped readers would not recall those particular murder plots

Australian Federal Election 2016: company tax is a vexing question

In 2014 Treasury made a case for a flow-on to the Australian economy from a 1 per cent tax cut “in the long run” and the Abbott Government reduced company tax for small business by 1.5%, effective 1 July 2015.

This meant that in 2015-2016 the following applied:

(a)  a sole trader in Australia pays the same rate of tax as an individual taxpayer with the same tax-free threshold of $18,200 as the individual. Tax rate brackets range from 19 cents in the dollar if taxable income is between $18,201-$37,000 up to 45 cents in the dollar if taxable income is $180,001 and over; and

(b) a small business with an annual aggregate turnover of less than $2 million pays company tax of 28.5% and businesses with a higher turnover pay 30% company tax. The tax rate for companies is less than the highest rate for individuals.

In December 2014 (updated March 2016) the Australian Tax Office (ATO) created its first corporate tax transparency report for the financial year 2013-14 and the companies listed in this report represented 63% of the approximately 1.1 million companies operating in Australia who reported a taxable income in that tax year. The ATO data tables can be found here.

In 2013-14 company tax was an est. 28% of total income tax revenue received by the federal government and, according to the ATO companies paid total net tax of $67.3 billion.

On 22 March 2016 the ATO released taxation details of 321 private resident companies with listed revenue of $200 million or more in that same financial year.

Of these 30.52% paid no tax and another 31% paid less than the full company tax rate.

Using ATO data the Australian Financial Review published a table of 1,860 companies - with total annual incomes between $100 million and over (public/foreign-owned entities) and $200 million and over (private entities) - which showed that when tax was actually paid the taxation rates for these businesses in practice ranged from as low as 1%-2.5% up to 30%, with only an est. 30 per cent of all these companies paying the full company tax rate.

Yet with an est. 70% of these 1,860 companies not being liable for the full company tax rate and net company tax collected falling to $66.9 billion in 2014-15, the Coalition Government still appears to be hinting that it will consider reducing the company tax rate for a second time.

The Sydney Morning Herald also reporting on 21 March that: Big business wants the rate paid by larger corporations cut to 28.5 per cent to match the rate paid by small companies, and phased down to 25 per cent by 2020 and 22 per cent by 2025. This call by the Business Council of Australia (see paper precis) appears to be backed by some in the small business sector.

Are Turnbull & Co really thinking of giving in to a greedy cash clawback by big business, some of whom are generous political donors?

The prime minister refuses to be drawn before the 3 May 2016 budget papers are released.

Australian Minister for Justice and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Counter Terrorism Michael Keenan and his unfortunate phrasing

This is the Minister for Justice, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Counter Terrorism and Liberal MP for Stirling, Michael Keenan,  during his address to the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combatting Anti-Semitism in Berlin on 15 March 2016:

Anti-Semitism is far from being a new concept. It has a long and particularly dark history. It is a worldview that should have died and been consigned to history long ago but its resilience should continue to trouble us all.

We should also be mindful that anti-Semitism evolves. In the west you may no longer find many who would assert that Jewish people are racially inferior, and mainstream society overwhelmingly rejects outlandish conspiracy theories – but newer and subtler forms of anti-Semitism can still be found.

The extravagant attention given to the alleged human rights abuses in Israel while similar atrocities in other countries remain unheard of should ring alarm bells.

All countries here today are working to tackle this important issue and Australia is no exception.

It would appear that the minister is of the opinion that alleged human rights abuses in Israel are indeed atrocities, but that mentioning them in the press is a closet form of anti-Semitism by mainstream media journalists and editors.

Or is he just the victim of his own clumsy phrasing?