Australian Employment Minister Michaelia Cash misleads parliament and the media

“She could not make eye contact with Doug Cameron when responding to his questions. She was as twitchy as a cockatoo on coke.” - @MSMWatchdog2013

BuzzFeed News, 25 October 2017:

Cash denied five times her office leaked the information, telling Senate Estimates her office was not informed about the raids until they had begun.

"I found out as it unfolded on the television after I returned from a meeting yesterday about 4.45pm on the ABC," Cash said on Wednesday morning.

"My understanding was that a phone call was made to my office once the search warrant was issued just before I saw it on the television ... 4.30, 4.45pm," she said.

When asked if she or her office advised any other person about the raid, Cash said: "No, as I said I literally watched it on the television unfold myself".

When asked again if anyone in her office had tipped-off the media, Cash said: "I said my office received a phone call from the Registered Organisation Commission notifying them that search warrants were being executed as the phone call was being made."

When asked a third time, Cash said her office fielded media calls for her to respond after the raids, but denied it had tipped-off the media.

"I have full faith in my staff," she said.

When asked a fourth time, Cash said she could "assure" senators that her office "did not find out about the raids until after they were being conducted".

Cash then refuted the claims for a fifth time saying:

DOUG CAMERON: Can you assure the Senate that no-one in your office called any media outlets about 3.30 yesterday?

MICHAELIA CASH: Yes I can and quite frankly I am offended on behalf of my staff as to those allegations. They are very serious allegations.

CAMERON: They are questions.

CASH: They are very serious allegations and I refute them.

Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull later told Question Time: "The minister for employment has assured me that she did not advise any journalists about the raid ... she is in estimates, I believe, this afternoon, and will no doubt have the opportunity to go into this in great detail."

BuzzFeed News has spoken to journalists who claim they received a phone call from Cash's office an hour before the raids, to make sure there would be cameras outside the AWU offices in Melbourne and Sydney.

The journalists say Cash's office phoned them around 3.30pm on Tuesday with the location and time of the raid, emphasising that it would take place at a union office.

The staffer pointed out the union in question, the AWU, used to be run by Labor leader Bill Shorten.

Labor has backed independent senator Nick Xenophon’s call for an independent inquiry to establish who tipped-off the media prior to the AFP raids. [my yellow highlighting]

The Minister's denials came unstuck once BuzzFeed published this article online, however she continued denying personal knowledge and instead blamed her media adviser.

Here is the moment @MurrayWatt ends Michaelia Cash's career. 8 hours after she first lied to the Senate before she corrected. pic.twitter.com/CoWRw2JYZW

— Stephen Spencer (@sspencer_63) October 25, 2017

Senator Cash is also allegedly denying knowing that BuzzFeed contacted her office for comment "well before" the article was published.

Is it imagination or is Michaelia’s nose getting longer?

The question remains as to exactly when, rather than if, Michaelia Cash knew there was to be an Australian Federal Police raid on Australian Workers Union premises on 24 October 2017.

Because neither the Registered Organisation Commission nor the police are likely to have bypassed this particular government minster and opted to directly contacted a staffer instead, when the minister herself is reportedly the original source of the complaint made against the union.

Whether or not the Australian Parliament choses to believe her deception was not deliberate, the average voter is unlikely to give this senator the benefit of the doubt - she has form and will turn a blind eye to unlawful actions if it suits her purpose.

BACKGROUND

Registered Organisation Commission Statement:

@StephieBorys

On 25 October 2017 the AWU successfully applied to the court to have union documents obtained by police frozen until the court ruled on the legality of the seizure.

Turnbull Government gets a lesson in 'Be Careful What You Wish For'

“Low wage growth means Australians aren't reaching into their pockets at the shops, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull believes.” [Sky News, 6 October 2017]

For years Liberal and Nationals state and federal politicians, along with the business sector, have been insisting wages need to be kept low in the ‘new’ economy.

They got their wish and then began to complain that consumers, who through their spending account for more than half of Australia’s GDP, weren’t spending with gusto anymore.

Apparently not one of these wage scrooges had stopped to consider that government economic policy leading to weaker consumer spending would impact on the national economy.

Now economists are beginning to point out the relationship between cause and effect.

Financial Review, 18 October 2017:

Australia's biggest domestic economic risk is a "skewed consumer cycle" and the government may need to step in with a policy on wages, Commonwealth Bank of Australia chief economist Michael Blythe says.

Normal wage growth is around 3.5 per cent per annum, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia, but Mr Blythe noted that wages are now growing at around 2 per cent per annum, "if you're lucky".

"There's a disconnect between slow wage growth and other economic fundamentals such as the employment rate, which are approaching levels that the Reserve Bank considers normal for a robust economy," he said.

"Given the usual economic fundamentals, like the unemployment rate, you would be expecting to see wages growth faster than it is right now. There's a market failure here, in a way, and governments are there to sort out market failures."……

In Australia, the risk is that low wage growth contributes to changing consumer behaviour.

Amid talk of higher official rates in 2018, Australians are already carrying very high levels of debt. Moreover, workers are concerned about job security, even as households face big increases in energy bills. All of which add up to a "pretty difficult mix", Mr Blythe said.

"Consumer spending is 56 per cent of GDP, so if it[s] underperforming it is a drag on the rest," he said.

To date, households have been running down savings rates, Mr Blythe noted, but "there's a limit to how far you can go on that front and what that tells you is we need to get some more income".

The income story consists of wages, interest rates, taxes and social welfare payments.

But of those four factors, wages are really the only "swing variable" as interest rate cuts or tax cuts are unlikely to occur any time soon and social welfare payments are under pressure from winding back the budget deficit, Mr Blythe said.

Some of the traditional mechanisms that have delivered wages increases in the past aren't delivering the same outcomes in the current environment. Tightening labour markets normally deliver higher wages. As the unemployment rate falls, wage growth tends to come through

.

"But we've been expecting that for a few years now and that hasn't happened," said Mr Blythe. "There's a fair amount of slack in the labour market, it seems, even though the headline unemployment rate has been falling."

Mr Blythe said that this indicates there's a high degree of underemployment in the economy. "When the economy works some of that off I think you'll get a wage response," he said.

However, he believes that low income growth has already changed consumer behaviour.

"Consumers seem to be less responsive to good news and the risk is they overreact to the bad news coming through…..

"So it's an indication that not all the good news is flowing through and if you were to get a negative shock, for example oil were to go up, you would quite likely see consumers cut back their spending more aggressively than they normally would."

"This kind of skewed consumer cycle remains a risk to the broader outlook I think. It's the main domestic risk we talk about when we look at the economy."

The NSW Government’s Latest Attack On The Environment

How important is protection of the natural environment to the NSW Government? 

Many in the community believe that the Government gives it a very low priority.   There are even some who would assert that the NSW Coalition Government is conducting a war on the environment.

Concern about the Government’s environmental attitudes is the inevitable result of a series of its policies and legislation over recent years.  A few examples are its original very strong support for CSG and unconventional gas mining[1], its weakening of land-clearing and biodiversity protection laws[2], its strong support of coal mine expansions despite community opposition[3], and more recently, its plan to change the law to enable Lithgow’s Springvale Mine to stay open despite its threat to Sydney’s water catchment[4].

The latest major threat to the natural environment in NSW is the re-structure of the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS).  The National Parks and Wildlife Service, a part of the Office of Environment and Heritage,  manages more than 870 national parks and reserves covering over 7 million hectares of land  which is more than 9% of the state’s land area.

The restructure which is currently under way involves the amalgamation of administrative areas, and either the loss of experienced officers or their demotion to what will be little more than clerical roles with substantially reduced salaries.  In addition there are serious concerns about the effect of the changes on fire-fighting capacity as well as on pest management.

The changes resulting from this restructure will have serious effects throughout the state.

Grafton on the NSW North Coast, for years an administrative centre for NPWS, will lose that function. Despite Grafton’s location in the geographical centre of the new region, the administrative headquarters is being transferred to Coffs Harbour. 

Clarence Valley locals, having seen over recent years the steady transfer of state government jobs from Grafton to Coffs Harbour, are angry about this.  What makes this decision even more nonsensical to some Clarence residents is that the Clarence Valley LGA (Local Government Area) contains one of the biggest areas of national parks on the North Coast.  Clarence Valley Mayor, Cr Jim Simmons, pointed out recently that the Clarence had 2,262 sq km of national parks, 22% of the Council area, while Coffs Harbour, has only 42 sq km – a mere 4% of the Coffs council area.

While there is concern about job losses, the loss of expertise in the Service and the impact of this drawn-out and unfair process on the Service officers, there is another major concern – the long-term effect on our very important national parks estate.  Despite the claims by politicians, including the Nationals Member for Clarence, Chris Gulaptis, this is a cost-cutting exercise at a time when the Government has boasted about a record budget surplus of $4.5 billion.  Any claim that it is not cost-cutting when the NPWS budget has been reduced by $121 million is obviously ludicrous.

However, it is probably more than just a cost-cutting exercise.  It is almost certain that it is at least partly driven by the ideology of the Coalition Government a core part of which, according to John Menadue[5], is commercializing and privatising public assets.

With reference to this, Menadue said: “A clear case at the moment is the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. It is being deliberately underfunded and forced to seek private funding and promoting commercial access to public parks.

“Yet this is happening when, with growing population density, we have a greatly increased need for public parks, gardens and open space. Furthermore, we were able to fund our public parks for decades in the past when we were much poorer than we are today. We need to protect our parks more than ever and we have more money to do so. Yet state governments are screwing national parks with funds to force commercialization and privatization.”

In the same post Menadue quoted figures from John Benson about the downgrading of the NPWS[6]. “The number of rangers has been reduced by more than 90 over seven years. Only two of 14 regional managers have been appointed after a restructure and a similar threat faces critical staff at the area management level. Staff is so reduced in some regions that basic amenities cannot be maintained and a lack of field staff presence disappoints public visitor expectations.”

Despite all the spin from politicians and bureaucrats, it is obvious that the government intends to downgrade our national parks and is setting up the National Parks and Wildlife Service for failure. If the community, including that in our local area, does not protest vehemently enough, we will be stuck with this vandalism until this arrogant government is removed.

Hildegard

Northern Rivers

Footnotes

[1] In particular for Metgasco in the Northern Rivers – until the very strong community opposition forced a buy-back of the Metgasco licence.

[2] The 2016 Biodiversity Conservation Act and Local Land Services Amendment Act. There are strong concerns that this legislation will lead to huge biodiversity loss and allow broadscale land clearing.

[3] http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-case-of-bulga-village-is-part-of-a-broader-pattern-thats-hurting-nsw-20160524-gp298e.html

[4] http://www.smh.com.au/environment/nsw-bids-to-skirt-courts-coal-mine-ruling-by-weakening-laws-protecting-sydneys-water-20171008-gywt0o.html

[5]John Menadue’s blog -  https://johnmenadue.com/john-menadue-the-new-squatters-in-our-national-parks/

[6] John Benson’s post on Menadue’s blog - https://johnmenadue.com/john-benson-biodiversity-is-threatened-in-new-south-wales/  provides an interesting view of the former world class quality of the NSW national parks estate and its current decline.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GuestSpeak is a feature of North Coast Voices allowing Northern Rivers residents to make satirical or serious comment on issues that concern them. Posts of 250-300 words or less can be submitted to ncvguestspeak AT gmail.com.au for consideration. Longer posts will be considered on topical subjects.

News Corp joins Turnbull Government in bashing welfare recipients yet again

A report released by the Federal Government's Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [AIHW] on 19 October 2017 states that welfare spending in 2016 reached 9.5 per cent of Australia's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) having been increasing on average by 0.09 per cent or est. $4 billion annually over the last ten financial years.

Some of this increase is inevitably due to population growth over the same period - between 2006 and 2016 the national population grew by 3.18 million people to reach a population total of 24.20 million.

However, the media suitably primed began to discuss welfare costs principally in terms of cash transfers to Centrelink clients.

But does such discussion take in the whole picture of welfare costs in this country? 

According to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) there are a large number of concessions, offsets and rebates available to working and retired individuals, active businesses, family trusts and superannuation funds.

These can reduce the annual tax payable by an individual, business, trust or fund – sometimes as low as zero dollars.

Along with universal education and health services, Centrelink and Veterans’ Affairs pensions, benefits, and concessions; these ATO concessions, offsets and rebates are a form of government welfare.

So when the Murdoch media trumpet statistics like “Last year, more than 733,000 people received unemployment benefits, costing $10 billion” with est. 68 per cent of recipients moving off this payment within a year - remember that Australian Government tariff, budgetary assistance and tax concessions to primary, mining, manufacturing and services industries totalled $15.1 billion in 2015-16 and, based on past performance, an estimated 33 per cent of all businesses would probably have paid zero tax in that year.

Put simply, Australian Government welfare directed at industry cost taxpayers est. $41.3 million per day in 2015-16.

And when these same News Corp megaphones go on to state that “more than 100,000 jobseekers who were on the dole for at least five years had cost taxpayers $15 billion over the past decade” – readers might like to recall that the Australian Government spent in the vicinity of est. $96 billion on industry assistance in the six years commencing 2010-11 and ending 2015-16.

[Australian Government, Productivity Commission Annual Report Series, Trade & Assistance Review 2015-16]

If a similar level of government assistance were to continue for another four financial years then government welfare received by industry would reach est. $156 billion over ten years.

That's over ten times the quoted amount in welfare payments outlaid on the long term unemployed in a decade.

However, when the likes of Liberal Minister for Human Services Alan Tudge, Liberal Minister for Social Services Christian Porter, Liberal Senator Eric Abetz or One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson talk about the cost of government welfare programs they rather strangely neglect to look at the full range of federal government financial assistance across all sectors of the economy – preferring instead to target vulnerable groups of people with little ability to fight back against their distorted, punitive and highly politicised world views.

Some serious money is being laid down in one political betting marketplace

In October 2017 SportsBet stated that one punter has just bet $100,000 at $3.40 on Donald Trump winning the 2020 US Election and the same individual also has $20,000 at $3.75 as well.

SportsBet (Australia) and politics on 16 October 2017:

*Just the beginning of a large field ending with Beyonce.

NSW ELECTION

AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION

The American Resistance has many faces and this is just one of them (14)

Via @LizClaman