So you think Australia is an egalitarian society? Think again.

Based on the World Population Clock as of 16 April 2016, a total of 74 million people (The 1 Per Cent) are said to own approximately 48 per cent of the entire world’s wealth.

In 2015 the Credit Suisse Group calculated total global wealth at US$250 trillion. 

An est. US$7.6 trillion of this was held offshore in low taxing jurisdictions (tax havens) and the majority of offshore wealth is managed by just 50 big banks, with the 10 busiest banks managing 40 percent of these offshore assets, according to Oxfam Briefing Paper 210. 

How much this represents in lost tax revenue to the countries in which profits were generated is unknown.

However, there is some indication that despite many of the extremely rich having residences in more than one country and often living in constant movement between these homes, they are not above seeking political influence in those countries in which they may not be citizens.

In countries in which they conduct business they are also politically active. In Britain the Sunday Times Rich List for 2015 revealed that: In total, 197 people who have featured in Rich Lists between 2011 and 2015 contributed £82.4m, just under half of the £174.7m donated in private and corporate cash. 25 gave more than £1m. Seven donors gave more than £2m.

What this all means is that by 2015 The 1 Per Cent had amassed US$120 trillion for their own exclusive advantage and use and, of these an est. 7.4 million individuals have the biggest share of that very large slice of the global riches pie.

In that 7.4 million strong group there is old money and new money - heads of royal houses, heirs of fortunes established in previous generations, hedge fund billionaires, investment bankers, oil barons, mining tycoons, industrialists, shipping magnates, the odd digital genius or two, oligarchs, financiers and other disreputable individuals.

Oxfam pointed out in that in 2015, 53 men and 9 women out of these 7.4 million rich individuals had a total combined wealth of $1.76 trillion.

According to the Institute for Policy Studies, by 2015 in America the 20 wealthiest people owned more wealth than the bottom half of the American population combined - that is more wealth than a total of 152 million people in 57 million households.

For the same year, Forbes listed Australia’s 50 richest residents (our very own 0.00020 per cent) as having a combined personal wealth of $85.41 billion - which would roughly equate to 5% of this country’s gross domestic product for 2015.

Also in 2015 news.com.au reported that the chief executive officers of Australia’s biggest corporations earned more than 100 times the annual salary/wage of the average worker - in some cases earning as much as $367,000 a week.

Going into 2015 Westpac Banking Corporation's CEO was already receiving an annual remuneration package worth an est. $13 million.

The gap between the very rich and the rest of Australia continues to grow.

In November 2015 Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that between 2003-04 and 2014-15 the 20% of individuals in the highest income quintile received 42 per cent or nearly half of the total growth in wages and salaries.

In September 2015 The Guardian reported that: The latest figures for Australian household incomes and wealth released last week showed that income inequality has risen in the past two years. The average annual income of the richest 20% rose by 7%, while median households saw their income rise by just 1.3% in the same period.

When one looks for evidence of political influence - it was not unknown for very large political donations from billionaires and millionaires to occur in years past, such as those from Lord Ashcroft and Reg Grundy. While in 2014-15 at least five of the first ten Australian billionaires included on the Forbes Rich List made more modest political donations - between $10,000- $100,000 and predominately to the Liberal-Nationals.

The rich tend to cluster together in life as well as politics. In 2015 Business Insider reported suburban clusters with the highest taxable incomes, of which the following are examples:

* Claremont-Claremont North-Karrakatta-Mount Claremont-Swanbourne, Western Australia, with 10,885 residents having a total combined average taxable income of est. $1.16 billion pa.

* Balmain-Birchgrove-Balmain East, New South Wales, where 10,515 have residents have a total combined average taxable income of est. $1.14 billion pa.
* Middle Cove-Castlecrag-Willoughby-North Willoughby-Willoughby East, NSW, with 10, 295 residents having a total combined average taxable income of est. $1.09 billion pa.

* Darling Point- Edgecliff-Point Piper, NSW, where 5,980 residents have a total combined average taxable income of est. $1.06 billion pa.

* Castle Cove, Roseville, Roseville Chase, NSW, with 8,985 residents having a total combined average taxable income of est. $976.68 million pa.

* Kooyong-Malvern-Malvern North, Victoria. where 7,755 residents have a total combined average taxable income of est. $817.36 million pa.

With all this conspicuous wealth in the top tier of a supposedly egalitarian society, one would expect that any journey towards the bottom of the pile would be more a gentle downward slope rather than a high drop from a cliff. 

However, in January 2015 there were 795,000 ordinary people at the bottom of that proverbial cliff, without a job and living on about $140 per week, and on any given night an est. 1 in every 200 men, women and children were without a permanent roof over their heads.

So when multi-millionaire Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull and Treasurer Scott John Morrison begin to explain on 3 May this year how the approximately 90 per cent of Australian households (who don’t have net worths calculated in double digit millions or billions) should start to live on less or expect diminished public health and education provisions in order ’to assist' the national balance sheet, I strongly suggest that every low-income household in this group consider giving both these gentlemen the raised middle finger.

For the last three years it has been those on the bottom tiers of the wealth pyramid who have borne the brunt of punitive federal budget measures and it is time to say “No more!”.

via GIPHY

How to explain the trainwreck that is the last three years of the federal government?

Josh Bornstein writing in The Guardian on 13 April 2016 manfully tries to explain that which confounds us all:

How to explain the trainwreck that is the last three years of the federal government? The debacle poses a challenge that will dog journalists, policy wonks and historians for decades to come. The explanations for its dysfunction and sustained under-achievement are complex, but there are at least two distinct theories worth considering.

In Malcolm Turnbull’s second ministerial reshuffle in February, Alex Hawke was promoted to the office of assistant minister to the treasurer. In 2005, the then young Liberal office holder prophesied that conservative politics in Australia would move increasingly towards an American model. Hawke explained that: “The two greatest forces for good in human history are capitalism and Christianity, and when they’re blended it’s a very powerful duo.”

Can the relentless incoherence and incompetence of the current government be attributed to a particular blend of capitalism and religion that has found favour in the US? Perhaps…..

And yet, there is also a far more prosaic explanation for the mess.

The federal government is hostage to the campaign run by Abbott in opposition – a campaign had three essential features: it was ruthlessly prosecuted, very successful and, finally, completely and utterly irrational.

The opposition inculcated a state of perpetual crisis that was the envy of professional catastrophists the world over. The crises said to beleaguer the nation under a Labor government formed an impressively long list: the cost of living crisis, the retail crisis, the productivity crisis, the debt crisis, the deficit disaster, emergency low interest rates, sovereign risk crisis, the budget emergency.

None of the crises were real. Rather, they were a fiction borne of a political strategy designed to destabilise and remove the Labor government which, for all its faults presided over a stunning macroeconomic performance and successfully ducked a recession in the wake of the global financial crisis.

It is one thing to proclaim a series of crises. It’s another to promulgate the solution. The then opposition’s program was remarkably simple and painless: “No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS.” Critically, there would also be tax cuts.

Exactly how the federal government would cut taxes, reduce government debt and transition to a budget surplus, boost infrastructure and not cut major expenditure like health, education and the pension was never made clear. Nor could it be made clear. The laws of mathematics do not accommodate such idiocy.

Economic illiteracy can be masked by theatrical bluff and bluster for only so long. The government’s 2014 budget cut a swathe through its pre-election promises including gouging an $80bn hole in funding for health and education. Taxes weren’t cut; in fact, there was an attempt to raise a new tax – for visiting a GP.

The Senate kept the government to its pre-election promises and it has been stuck in a paralysing funk ever since.

In its short life the LNP government has levied more tax as a proportion of GDP than its predecessor. Government spending as a proportion of GDP has also increased, the budget deficit has more than doubled from its “crisis” levels in 2013, and gross government debt has ballooned by over $100bn…..

By January 2016, even conservative partisans at the Australian could no longer maintain the fiscal fantasy. Judith Sloan wrote: “I’m calling it here: the Turnbull government is a big spending, big taxing government with no real intention to pare back the growth of government spending, let alone cut it.” In other words, Turnbull continued where Abbott left off.

The wild irrationality that has infected the government has manifested itself in a series of government appointments. A climate science denier, Maurice Newman, was one of the government’s first, appointed to head its Business Advisory Council.

The appointment of Tim Wilson to the role of “freedom commissioner” was an Orwellian coup for the extreme right lobbyists at the IPA, effectively outsourcing Wilson’s labour costs to the taxpayer.

The man who specialised in the dehumanisation of asylum seekers and perpetuated the incarceration of children, Philip Ruddock, secured an appointment as special envoy for human rights. More Orwell…..

It sought to silence, intimidate and then remove the president of the Human Rights Commission, Professor Gillian Triggs. It has enacted laws to prevent doctors speaking about the harm being inflicted on refugees.

There are the measures taken to silence NGOs including community legal centres who are banned from advocating for law reform. The work of environmental organisations including the Environmental Defenders’ Office has been sabotaged notwithstanding the government’s failed attempt to prevent environmental groups accessing the legal system. So much for the rule of law…..

Who or what is responsible for the government’s many other strange cultural and religious obsessions? Eric Abetz’s insistence on a link between breast cancer and abortion, notwithstanding the science that discredited this theory five decades ago. The attempt to ban the burqa in the confines of Parliament House. The campaign to water down racial vilification laws in support of the right to be a bigot. The havoc wreaked on investment in renewable energy as the government campaigned against “ugly” wind turbines. The many attacks on the ABC, culminating in a government black-ban on appearing on its current affairs flagship, Q&A. The attack on Safe Schools.

Endless fuel to stoke the fires of satire – perhaps – but there is another more disturbing dimension to these obsessions. The federal government almost always “punches down”. The coalition caucus is a toxic brew of fierce antagonism directed at minority groups, the disadvantaged and victims of discrimination.

Those targeted to be disadvantaged by its policies are invariably minorities, the less well-off and those with little or no political voice: those with the smallest superannuation balances, Muslims, cleaners of Canberra offices, food processing workers employed at SPC, the unemployed (the attempt to impose a six-month qualification period to qualify for unemployment benefits), children in disadvantaged schools (the sabotage of Gonski education reforms), the strenuous attempts to chisel lowly paid workers with intellectual disability out of backpay owed to them, the calculated and deliberately cruel infliction of injury on refugees fleeing war zones including Syria.

And let us not forget the attempt to wind back consumer protections against predatory crooks in our ethically challenged banks, championed by Turnbull’s key ally, Senator Arthur Sinodinos…..

Then Australian Attorney-General George Brandis in March 2015: "Media organisations are not the target of this law. The targets of this law are criminals and paedophiles and terrorists"*

The Australian federal police have admitted they sought access to a Guardian reporter’s metadata without a warrant in an attempt to hunt down his sources.

It is the first time the AFP has confirmed seeking access to a journalist’s metadata in a particular case.

The admission came to light when the AFP told the privacy commissioner it had sought “subscriber checks” and email records relating to the Guardian Australia journalist Paul Farrell, and the correspondence was sent to Farrell by the office of the Australian information commissioner……

The AFP’s submission said: “You will see that exemptions have been claimed under s47E(d) and s37(2)(b) on some folios. These exemptions primarily relate to e-mail and other subscriber checks relating to Mr Farrell, and examination of meta data associated with some electronic files.”  [The Guardian, 14 April 2016]

At 11.35am AEST on 17 April 2014 The Guardian published journalist Paul Farrell’s article Australian ship went far deeper into Indonesian waters than disclosed with this map:

And this observation:

The redacted version of the classified report, obtained by the Australian Associated Press under freedom of information laws, said: “Entry to Indonesian waters was inadvertent, arising from miscalculation of the maritime boundaries, in that the calculation did not take into account archipelagic baselines.”

Crucially, the report adds: “Territorial seas declared by foreign nations are generally not depicted on Australian hydrographic charts.”

But the digital map from the vessel casts doubt on these findings, and clearly shows the Australian ship crossing the red line that marks the point of Indonesia’s baselines and entering its waters past the headlands near Pelabuhan Ratu bay. Indonesia’s territorial seas are 12 nautical miles further out from where the baselines are marked in red. It is not known whether the digital mapping device was operational at the time the Ocean Protector entered Indonesian waters.

If he wasn’t a blip on the Australian Federal Police radar before the publication date of that article, Paul Farrell was from then on.

However, it is unclear if the initial request to investigate this journalist came from the then Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Scott Morrison, his department or some other individual or agency.

Although what appears to be Folio 3 of an est. 200 pages in Case No.5610147 seems to suggest that Customs (now called Border Force) may have been the complainant of record by May 2014 and the media finger points to the head of Australian Customs and Border Protection Services, Michael Pezzullo.

On 12 Febraury2016 Farrell stated of this investigation:

The files are made up of operational centre meeting minutes, file notes, interview records and a plan for an investigation the AFP undertook into one of my stories. Most concerning is what appears to be a list of suspects the AFP drew up, along with possible offences they believe they may have committed.

The documents show that during the course of an investigation into my sources for a story I had written, an AFP officer logged more than 800 electronic updates on the investigation file.

Farrell is not the only journalist whose metadata has been accessed in search of sources, but the Australian Federal Police insists that it has not accessed any journalist’s metadata for the last six months – the last time being in 13 October 2015.

Footnote

* See http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/probes-of-journalists-communications-records-rare-police-say-20150317-1m1g9d.html

Australian Federal Election 2016: genes are destiny excuse

Journalist Jennifer Oriel in The Australian on 11 April 2016, putting the case for a two-tiered national education system where public schools and their 'dumb' students living in comparative poverty are offered less opportunity because genetics are allegedly destiny:

More punitive taxes and big spender social programs in education and health are central pillars of ALP plans for fiscal repair. The former is aimed at reducing the deficit Labor increased by squandering the proceeds of the mining boom. It wasted billions on cash splashes and social programs that have failed to achieve stated policy goals in improving educational and social outcomes. Now the party needs a scapegoat. The politics of envy provides an endless supply…..

Whether the object of envy is intelligence, talent, beauty, status or wealth, there is always a group that feels entitled to what nature or nurture did not provide. If they cannot take the envied trait or property by force, the envious seek to deride those who bear it.

As a unifying political device, the emotion of envy has few equals. In Australia, it finds social form in the tall poppy syndrome. Visitors to Australia long have remarked upon the darker side envy amplifies in our national character.….

Modern Labor began its campaign against Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull by sowing envy about his wealth and international investments. But the collective envy required to justify a circular regimen of Keynesian redistribution demands a collective target and policy goals that are always just out of reach, either because they are unattainable or conveniently unquantifiable. Equality of outcome is the substantive socialist solution.

While liberals support equal opportunity and formal equality, socialists engineer equality of outcome through policy prescriptions increasingly at odds with science. Labor’s education policy is a case in point. In a letter to school principals last week, Bill Shorten committed to redressing inequality by promising money the government doesn’t have to fund Gonski education reforms. Despite the sound aim of improving the educational outcomes of all children, at a cost of $37.3 billion, delivering the Gonksi policy through government inflicts a heavy toll on the taxpayer with doubtful return on investment. Numerous private companies provide high efficacy literacy and numeracy programs while decades of government-run interventions have had little impact in levelling educational outcomes. And recent research indicates the Gonski reform package, like numerous social programs before it, is unlikely to succeed.

Despite Labor’s education revolution and promises of substantive equality, vast differences in educational outcomes continue. The most recent research suggests a reason for inequality of educational attainment that should provoke a rethink of social and economic policy. Speaking on SBS’s Insight program, Brian Byrne of the University of New England revealed findings of soon to be published research with colleagues at the Centre of Excellence for Cognition and its Disorders. It indicates that genes are the most important determinant of maths and reading skills among schoolchildren. Their study of twins’ NAPLAN performance apparently found that maths, reading and spelling skills are up to 75 per cent genetic and writing skills are about 50 per cent genetic. The influence of schools and teachers, the focus of Labor’s policies, accounts for only about 5 per cent of performance.

Social psychologist Richard Nisbett was more hopeful in his assessment of the nature versus nurture debate in education. In Intelligence and How to Get It, he analyses research on various interventions to improve the educational outcomes of children from poor backgrounds. Some appeared promising, but many had only a modest impact whose effect diminished.

Recent research suggesting academic performance is substantially heritable challenges existing literature in which academics and politicians extol the benefits of government interventions to redress educational inequality. But it could be used constructively to drive policy reforms that provide greater choice in school and university education to cater to inborn differences…… [my red bolding]

There we have it in a nutshell - genes are destiny, a second-tier education system is advisable and anyone who suggests otherwise is suffering from pathological envy.

However, the journalist wasn't being as honest as possible concerning the views of Emeritus Professor Brian Byrne.

Here are two quotes from the answers he gave the Insight program moderator when questioned about that international twin study, which included twins from the Sydney area:

JENNY BROCKIE: This is what's genetic, what's inherited? 

PROFESSOR BRYAN BYRNE: What's genetic, for the NAPLAN varies between about 50 and 75 percent of the differences amongst children's performance can be traced back to genetic differences which leaves a fair bit for the environment…..

JENNY BROCKIE: And genes aren't destiny Bryan we need to make that very clear? 

PROFESSOR BRYAN BYRNE: That's right. 

Nor does the journalist specifically mention that Professor Dr. Richard Nisbett has formed a view that genetics matters less than differences in family environment and culture when it comes to intelligence and educational outcomes.

Wangan and Jagalingou to Adani Mining: Take your shut up money and go home

https://youtu.be/cdts26tQElM

"Adani Mining won’t listen – they are rude and obstinate – so we will take the fight up a notch. We are planning more action in the courts and will take this fight all the way.

We will continue to fight. We are protecting Wangan and Jagalingou country from irreversible destruction, from complete devastation. We will maintain our stand against the Adani Carmichael mine. Because when we say no, we mean no."

wanganjagalingou.com.au/donate

Dear Prime Minister, Australia doesn't need lower taxes

The Australian federal election tax debate is well underway.

The Financial Review revealed on 12 April 2016 that modelling indicated that a cut to company tax would not be in the national interest as it would lead to a sharp decrease in living standards by 2040.....

"It is national income, and not production, that provides an indicator of living standards. Overall we conclude that while a cut to company tax will boost domestic production, it will lead to a fall in real incomes in the range of $800 to $2000 per person in present value terms," Dr Dixon writes in The Australian Financial Review.

The Turnbull Government received an open letter on 13 April......

The Australia Institute, 13 April 2016:

Top economists and community leaders have signed an open letter calling on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to not to cut taxes at this time - especially not on company profits.

The letter, published as a full-page newspaper advertisement, is signed by Former Reserve Bank Governor Bernie Fraser, ACTU National President Ged Kearney, Former WA Premier Carmen Lawrence, Uniting Church Australia President Stuart McMillan and Nobel prize winner Peter Doherty and a collection of economists are part of a list of 50 prominent Australians who are calling for prioritising services, not tax cuts.

The letter reads:

“Cutting programs which support needy Australians to give more tax benefits to companies is not fair. Collecting more tax, more equitably, will make Australia a better place to live and work.”

“Now is not the time to cut taxes. It would be fiscally irresponsible to lower the company tax rate in the current budget environment,” Executive Director of The Australia Institute, Ben Oquist said.

“Proponents of a cut to the company tax rate continue to promote claims of long-term, trickle-down benefits without identifying the immediate impact to revenue and in-turn essential services.

“In fact, a five-point cut in the company tax rate would deliver a projected $27 billion windfall over ten years for the four major banks alone. This simply makes no economic sense and would put Australia’s revenue base at risk. 

“Australia is a low taxing country, 6th lowest by OECD standards. We also have a clear revenue problem, which should be this priority for this budget,” Oquist said.

This was followed three days later by a breakdown of the taxation profiles of the Liberal-Nationals and Labor federal governments.....

THE 10 HIGHEST TAXING AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENTS

2004-05  24.3% Liberal
2000-01  24.2%  Liberal
2005-06  24.2%  Liberal
2002-03  24.0%  Liberal
2003-04  24.0%  Liberal
2006-07  23.7%  Liberal
2007-08  23.7%  Liberal
1986-87  23.3%  Labor
1987-88  23.2%  Labor
2001-02  23.2%  Liberal

[Stephen Koukolas, 16 April 2016]

THE 10 LOWEST TAXING AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENTS

1992-93  20.0%  Labor
1993-94  20.0%  Labor
2010-11  20.0%  Labor
2009-10  20.2%  Labor
1991-92  20.7%  Labor
2011-12  20.9%  Labor
1983-84  21.0%  Labor
1994-95  21.2%  Labor
2012-13  21.5%  Labor
2013-14  21.5%  Labor

And the source for these numbers are the MYEFO released by Treasurer Morrison and Finance Minister Cormann in December 2015: http://www.budget.gov.au/2015-16/content/myefo/html/index.htm [Stephen Koukolas, 16 April 2016]

Australian Federal Election 2016: is the country really going to the polls on 2 July?

On 18 April 2016 the Australian Senate again failed to pass the Turnbull Government’s Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) bill - this time by two votes.

A fact which gave the prime minister the double-dissolution trigger he was hoping for and an apparently favoured poll date – 2 July 2016.

If this is indeed his preferred date, then the election writs need to be issued no later than 31 May, as there is a mandatory minimum 33 days between writs and polling day.

The 2016-17 budget speech is scheduled to be delivered on 3 May, the appropriation bills are then submitted to the House of Representatives later that same day or the next and read a first and second time.

With the Leader of the Opposition’s budget reply speech expected on 5 May, all appears well with Turnbull’s time table. He has twenty-six days up his sleeve before having to quit governing to enter the official election campaign period.

However…….

The debate on the second reading of Appropriation Bill (No. 1) is known as the ‘Budget debate’ and normally continues over a period of several weeks. The scope of discussion in the Budget debate is almost unlimited because the debate on the main Appropriation Bill is exempt from the standing order (rule) which requires the second reading debate on other bills to be strictly relevant to the bill. The standing order allows debate on appropriation bills to cover matters relating to ‘public affairs’. This is interpreted to mean any matters concerning government policy or administration. [Australian Parliament, Infosheet 10 - The budget and financial legislation]

In 2015 it took forty days for the House of Representatives to finish debating Appropriation Bill (No. 1) -  the bill covering money out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for ordinary annual services of government.

Government has the numbers in the Lower House and can possibly truncate this debate – but not by much and not without alienating a substantial numbers of voters.

At this point Turnbull’s twenty-six day leeway may be dwindling down to less than 14 days. Still, getting to the 31 May writs deadline with the main appropriations bill passed looks vaguely possible.

But…….

Before they become law the three main budget appropriation bills must be passed by the Senate in the same way as any other bills. [ibid]

Two years ago the Senate took a mere two days to send the main appropriation bill back down to the House of Representatives. Last year the senators took only one day.

This year the 'reformed' Senate may just decide to debate this bill a good while longer and, it will serve the prime minister right if the cross-bench runs him down to the wire on this.

Of course Turnbull could go to an election without money from consolidated revenue being guaranteed for 1 July 2016 through to 30 June 2017.

It’s just that this would be such a slapdash look for a former investment banker who portrays himself and his government as good economic managers.

Australia Autumn 2016: The Emu in the Sky

The Emu in the Sky

CSIRO Australian Aboriginal Astronomy

Map of Australian sky in April here.

So Malcolm Turnbull wants to continue Tony Abbott's vendetta against the former Labor Government's industrial relations legislation

After Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull initially promised to abolish a road safety tribunal if re-elected, following the body's attempts to introduce a new minimum pay rate for trucking contractors, he then announced that the demolition process would begin in this week's special parliamentary sitting.

So what did he actually abolish on 18 April 2016 and why?

The Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal (RSRT) began operation on 1 July 2012.

The Tribunal makes road safety remuneration orders, road transport collective agreements, deals with certain disputes relating to road transport drivers, their employers or hirers, and participants in the supply chain and, conducts research into pay, conditions and related matters that could be affecting safety in the road transport industry.

One month after the last federal election which saw the Liberal-Nationals coalition win government, the Abbott Government announced a review of the RSRT as part of its election promise to review industrial relations law made since the abolition of Work Choices.

The Government’s pre-election Policy to Improve the Fair Work Laws (May 2013) included a commitment to review the operation of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal as a matter of urgency. [Review of the Road Safety Remuneration System, Rex Deighton-Smith Jaguar Consulting Pty Ltd, 16 April 2014]

This review was published on 16 April 2014 and, such was the alleged urgency of the matter that the government did not act on its recommendations.

On 11 December 2015 the Tribunal published its Contractor Driver Minimum Payments Road Safety Remuneration Order 2016 which was to take effect from 4 April 2016.

This was the second remuneration order it has made – the first being in 2014.

Subsequent to Remuneration Order 2016 the Abbott-Turnbull Government ordered a second review of the RSRT which was published in January 2016 – a year in which not so co-incidentally it faces a federal election.

On application by Australian Trucking Association (ATA) and National Road Transport Association (NatRoad) the Federal Court of Australia granted a stay on the remuneration order on 1 April 2016, which it later lifted on 7 April 2016.

This is where the matter stood on 18 April 2016 as to the continuing existence of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal and the validity of its remuneration orders relating to time and distanced travelled by contract drivers.

But what of the road safety issue? Many people on the NSW North Coast are concerned about their safety when travelling on routes used by heavy commercial vehicles. Anecdotes concerning near misses and reckless heavy vehicles are common when it comes to travel on the Pacific Highway between Coffs Harbour and the NSW-QLD border.

Heavy vehicles reportedly make up 3 per cent of all Australian road traffic and heavy vehicle speeding above posted limits is recognised by governments, the trucking industry and the community as a serious issue in Australia.

Although speeding is a significant risk factor for road crashes for all types of motor vehicles, it is generally considered to be a more critical factor in heavy vehicle crashes. This is because of:

longer breaking distances—heavy vehicles require between 20 to 40 percent more stopping distance;

shorter reaction times—reaction time is a smaller proportion of stopping distance;

greater instability—heavy vehicles are less stable than lighter vehicles, which makes emergency manoeuvres and loss of control on curves more likely; and

greater collision energy—due to their size and rigidity, heavy vehicles exert more collision energy and cause more damage on impact than do other vehicles (Bishop et al. 2008; Brooks 2002; NTC 2005). [Australian Institute of Criminology, October 2012, Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 446]

The federal Dept. of Infrastructure and Regional Development publishes quarterly bulletins on fatal heavy vehicle crashes.

These following statistics are found in its December 2015 bulletin and accompanying tables.

During the 12 months to the end of December 2015, 210 people died from 187 fatal crashes involving heavy trucks or buses.

These included:

– 115 deaths from 102 crashes involving articulated trucks

– 79 deaths from 72 crashes involving heavy rigid trucks

– 20 deaths from 17 crashes involving buses.

Of those 58 fatal crashes which occurred in NSW:

* 31 involved articulated trucks (5 of which did not involve another vehicle) – resulting in 34 deaths of which 22 were drivers of either the heavy or light vehicle involved

* 22 involved heavy rigid trucks (1 of which did not involve another vehicle) - resulting in 24 deaths of which 16 were drivers of either the heavy or light vehicle involved

* 5 involved buses – resulting in 5 deaths of which 3 were drivers of the bus or light vehicle involved.

The correlation between truck drivers wages and safety has been drawn to the attention of the Turnbull Government.

The Conversation, 13 April 2016:

On the question of pay and road transport safety, the Pricewaterhouse Coopers report said:

directly comparing remuneration and safety does demonstrate statistically significant correlations. However, results vary substantially.

the four most recent papers range in conclusion from a) a very large effect, b) a U-shaped curve, in which a large positive effect of initial remuneration rises eventually turns negative, through to c) and d) with a very small effect

the literature is very limited in size and focuses on employee drivers

Drivers are likely to benefit the most [from tribunal orders] due to increased remuneration and fewer road accidents, followed by government and members of society who face costs following road crashes, and will therefore benefit from an improvement in safety.

You can read the full response from O'Connor’s spokeswoman here.

If you just read that Pricewaterhouse Coopers report excerpt above, you might think that the evidence is fairly mixed. In fact, the overwhelming weight of evidence supports Albanese’s claim: there is persuasive evidence of a connection between truck driver pay and safety. [my red bolding]

So there we have it.

The Turnbull Government ignored evidence and supported trucking industry calls to abolish the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal and, with the assistance of Senate cross benchers on 18 April, set in motion the removal of a minimum wages award for contract drivers.

However, voters and other road users are being told ‘don’t you worry about that’ when it comes to the safety of themselves and their families when sharing roads with commercial heavy vehicle operators seeking to make profits under a no minimum wage, performance (time) based system.

First Dog on the Moon slyly put the case for the continuance of a minimum wage, without the ongoing political interpretive dance (left) being performed by Michaelia Cash in pursuit of the creation of Work Choices Mark II:

Click on image to enlarge

Australian Federal Election 2016: Ooopps!

Receiving an honourable mention on the slippery slope of media attention are; a missing rare coin, Liberal MP for Corangamite Sarah Henderson's election campaign corflutes, the Liberal Party of Australia, Liberal Senator for Victoria and Australian Minister for Vocational Education & Skills Scott Ryan, along with Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull's failure to notice the homophobe and 457 visas.

Crikey.com.au, 14 April 2016:

It has the hallmarks of an episode of The West Wing: the Prime Minister was given a rare and precious artefact. The artefact went missing. And now the staffer who was supposed to have been looking after the artefact is gone.

Electrical Trades Union on Twitter, 14 April 2016:

Herald Sun, 12 April 2016:

ACCESS to a confidential database that holds federal Cabinet ministers’ personal contact details was issued to a non-government employee because he shared the name of a current political staffer.

In an embarrassing breach of the Liberal Party’s “secure” website protocols ahead of this year’s federal election, an adviser to a crossbench senator was issued with personal login details to the site that contains confidential internal government documents and policy briefing notes.

An email sent on behalf of Liberal Party federal director Tony Nutt provided Chris Evans, an adviser to independent Victorian senator John Madigan, with a password to the site while it also outlined security protocols around its strict access.

Government sources yesterday told the Herald Sun it should be viewed as potentially a “serious security breach” and labelled it “incredibly sloppy”.

Approved access to the site known as Jeparit Town, a reference to the rural Victorian birthplace of Australia’s longest-serving prime minister, Sir Robert Menzies, is reserved for “approved personnel” including Liberal MPs and senators, candidates and senior staff.

It is viewed as an important source of information that also includes “talking points” for media interviews, personal phone numbers of parliamentarians and staff, political artwork, and training materials.

The Canberra Times, 12 April 2016:

Vocational Education Minister Scott Ryan has been left red faced for giving a speech to a national training organisation that not only lifted – without attribution – quotes directly from the association's own journal, but also praised the "current" work of an entity that no longer exists.

Last Thursday Senator Ryan delivered the keynote address to Group Training Australia's national conference in Adelaide.

GTA is the body representing Australia's largest employer network of apprentices and trainees.

In his address the minister lauded the work of a Charters Towers based trainer Rural Industry and Extension, or RITE, for providing training right across northern Australia.

He spoke of RITE being both a Registered Training Organisation (RTO) and an official Group Training Organisation (GTO) "responsible for one of the largest regions in the world, extending across Queensland, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia".

By this point, eyebrows were already being raised in the audience…...

Geelong Advertiser, 11 April 2016:

A FORMER Victorian Liberal candidate who was once disowned by his party over homophobic comments has been awarded the party’s most prestigious award for young members.

Aaron Lane was given the meritorious youth award at the party’s state council in Victoria on Saturday.

The award was presented by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who news.com.au understands was not aware of the 2014 controversy.

The honour comes less than two years after Mr Lane was forced to resign his candidacy in the upper house Western Victorian Region over a series of derogatory tweets.

Mr Lane published tweets including the word “faggot” and saying, “The problem is (IMO) many homos make their sexuality a defining aspect of their being.”

He also called Labor figures Simon Crean and former speaker Peter Slipper “a giant C”…..

7 News, 5 Februrary 2016:

7 News can reveal a truck driver who sparked traffic chaos, shutting down the M5 East on Friday, is here working on a 457 visa. The driver is so inexperienced that he couldn't reverse after realising his truck was too tall to enter the airport tunnel. Chris Reason reports.

UPDATE

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18 April 2016

Global corruption of democracy in the 21st Century

The Guardian UK, 11 April 2016:

Because at root, the Panama Papers are not about tax. They’re not even about money. What the Panama Papers really depict is the corruption of our democracy.

Following on from LuxLeaks, the Panama Papers confirm that the super-rich have effectively exited the economic system the rest of us have to live in. Thirty years of runaway incomes for those at the top, and the full armoury of expensive financial sophistication, mean they no longer play by the same rules the rest of us have to follow. Tax havens are simply one reflection of that reality. Discussion of offshore centres can get bogged down in technicalities, but the best definition I’ve found comes from expert Nicholas Shaxson who sums them up as: “You take your money elsewhere, to another country, in order to escape the rules and laws of the society in which you operate.” In so doing, you rob your own society of cash for hospitals, schools, roads…

“Those who exited our societies are now also exercising their voice to set the rules by which the rest of us live”

But those who exited our societies are now also exercising their voice to set the rules by which the rest of us live. The 1% are buying political influence as never before. Think of the billionaire Koch brothers, whose fortunes will shape this year’s US presidential elections. In Britain, remember the hedge fund and private equity barons, who in 2010 contributed half of all the Conservative party’s election funds – and so effectively bought the Tories their first taste of government in 18 years.

To flesh out the corrosion of democracy that is happening, you need to go to a Berlin-born economist called Albert Hirschman, a giant in modern economic thinking. Hirschman died in 2012 at the age of 97, but it’s his concepts that really set in context what’s so disturbing about the Panama Papers.

Hirschman argued that citizens could protest against a system in one of two ways: voice or exit. Fed up with your local school? Then you can exercise your voice and take it up with the headteacher. Alternatively, you can exit and take your child to a private school.

In Britain and in America, the super-rich have broken Hirschman’s law – they are at one and the same time exercising economic exit and political voice. They can have their tax-free cake and eat it……