A somewhat prophetic blast from the past

In which journalist Latika Bourke slaps down then Opposition Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship and now Federal Minister for Maligning All Asylum Seekers Arriving By Boat, Scott Morrison, and suggests we all note his answer.....

Australian Coal Mining Policy Update 2014

For the people of Morwell, Victoria who are living with the reality of coal mining policy....

http://youtu.be/tqXzAUaTUSc

The article rumoured to have seen an indigenous magazine slated for closure

Does publication of the article below see NSW Aboriginal Land Council's Tracker Magazine closing under pressure from NSW Indigenous Affairs Minister Victor Dominello?

VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE: How black Australia rejected Tony Abbott

BY TRACKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2013

Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

NATIONAL: Tony Abbott is the new ‘Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs’. One problem: no-one bothered to ask Aboriginal people if they even wanted him. It turns out they didn’t, if the most in-depth analysis of Aboriginal voting intentions ever staged is anything to go by. CHRIS GRAHAM explains.

Somewhere in Wreck Bay – a tiny Aboriginal community on the NSW South Coast – a blackfella is hiding a deep, dark secret.

He or she voted Liberal at the recent federal election. I’m not kidding.

Wreck Bay is in the bellwether seat of Eden-Monaro, an electorate which, since 1972, has always fallen to whichever party forms government.

2013 was no exception – it was held by Labor’s Mike Kelly, a rising star in the ALP, but by the end of counting had fallen to the Coalition’s Peter Hendy, a virtual unknown.

Hendy certainly doesn’t have the Wreck Bay community to thank for his success.

An analysis of the results from the community reveals that of the 62 votes cast, all of them bar one were directed towards Labor.

That stunning statistic earns Wreck Bay the distinction of the highest anti-Coalition vote of any Aboriginal community in the nation, at 98 percent.

But Wreck Bay was by no means alone in its strong anti-Coalition stance. Tracker magazine analysed 23,515 votes from voting booths in 277 communities around the country.

We looked at communities which were ‘identifiably Aboriginal’ – towns with Aboriginal populations higher than 80 percent.

Wilcannia in the far west of NSW, for example, fits this profile. Other communities include Toomelah, Murrin Bridge and Wreck Bay in NSW, Woorabinda and Cherbourg in Queensland, and a host of discrete Aboriginal communities across the Northern Territory which have populations close to 100 percent Aboriginal.

The analysis reveals that all but seven of the 65 booths returned more than 50 percent against the Coalition.

Nationally, 64 percent of Aboriginal electors directed their vote – either before or after preferences – to the Labor Party. But even that figure is likely to be understated.

There’s no way to discern the black vote from booths in, for example, metropolitan Sydney, where anecdotally at least, the anti-Coalition vote is even higher.

SEE OVER PAGE.

PAGES: 1 2 3

Oh dear, did Immigration Minister Morrison really start to say 'Operation Sovereign Murders'

Freudian slip........

http://youtu.be/P8pnnVwcPUU

Abbott to introduce serfdom to Australia

Little or no workplace protections, no social security safety net and a nebulous commitment to short term on-the-job training appear to be the order of the day for young men and women who join Abbott's Green Army.

The Sydney Morning Herald 1 March 2014:

A ''green army'' of 15,000 young people will be paid as little as half the minimum wage, as fresh details emerge of the federal government's plan to create Australia's largest environmental workforce.

The plans have attracted the ire of the ACTU, which says the workers will be excluded from protections granted by federal workplace laws and says the program threatens to reset youth wage rates sharply lower.

Under legislation introduced by Environment Minister Greg Hunt on Wednesday, green army participants - who will be aged 17 to 24 - will work up to 30 hours a week.

Young people who fill the green army's ranks will be paid about half the minimum wage, earning between $304.20 and $493.70 a week.....

Excerpt from A Bill for an Act to amend the law relating to social security, and for related purposes to be cited as Social Security Legislation Amendment (Green Army Programme) Act 2014:

38J Certain participants in Green Army Programme are not workers or employees under Commonwealth laws 

(1) A person: 

(a) who participates in the Green Army Programme on a full-time or a part-time basis and who is receiving green army allowance; or 

(b) who participates in the Green Army Programme on a part-time basis and who is not receiving green army allowance; 

is not taken to be: 

(c) a worker carrying out work in any capacity for the Commonwealth, or an employee of the Commonwealth, for the purposes of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011; or 

(d) an employee within the meaning of section 5 of the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988; or 

(e) an employee for the purposes of the Fair Work Act 2009; 

merely because of that participation. 

Excerpt from the Explanatory Memoranda:

The Social Security Legislation (Green Army Programme) Amendment Bill 2014 amends the Social Security Act 1991 and the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 to clarify social security arrangements for participants receiving the green army allowance paid under the Green Army Programme...

The Green Army is a key Coalition Government election commitment and will commence from July 2014. This voluntary initiative will recruit young people aged 17-24 years who are interested in protecting their local environment while gaining hands-on, practical skills, training and experience.

The Green Army will become Australia’s largest-ever environmental workforce, building to 15,000 participants by 2018, capable of delivering on-ground environmental projects...

The Programme will be delivered by an external Service Provider(s) who will be responsible for recruiting, establishing and managing Green Army Teams across Australia to engage in approved projects, alongside communities, to support local environment and heritage protection and restoration activities, consistent with regional, national and international priorities of the Government.

Participation in the Programme will be available to a diverse spectrum of young people, including Indigenous Australians, school leavers, gap year students, graduates and unemployed job seekers. Up to nine eligible participants and at least one Team Supervisor will constitute a Green Army Team. Participants will be eligible to receive a green army allowance while participating in the Programme, and will also have the opportunity to undertake training. The Service Provider(s) will be responsible for the disbursement of green army allowances and the provision of training. The Team Supervisor will be employed by the Service Provider and paid a wage.

Project proposals will be submitted to the Department of the Environment by individuals and organisations, such as local groups, councils and natural resource management bodies. A Green Army Project involves environmental and/or heritage activities that can be undertaken by a Green Army Team for 20-26 weeks.

The Programme will commence in 2014-15 with the rollout of 250 Green Army Projects and approximately 2,500 people undertaking on-the-ground environmental activities in the first financial year. By 30 June 2017, the Programme will have had 1,500 Green Army Projects and 15,000 placements undertaken. The Programme will scale up to 15,000 placements and 1,500 Projects per annum from 2018-19.

The Bill amends the Social Security Act 1991 and the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 to specify that persons receiving a green army allowance under the Green Army Programme cannot also receive a social security benefit or social security pension and that a determination made in this regard may be backdated. The Bill does not impact entitlement to family assistance and child care payments which will remain payable to Green Army participants where eligible...

Unfortunately little of this information is reaching Northern Rivers readers of APN News & Media newspapers, as the two main mast heads are running what are essentially reworked versions of government media releases without any evaluation of their contents.

Another north coast voice on the wider stage

Letter to the Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 March 2014

Beware the glass house

I see the G8 is likely to be cut back to G7 in response to Russia's actions in the Crimea (''Australia may use G20 role to pressure Putin'', March 4). Will this necessarily lead to a further drop to a G5 as the West tries to evade accusations of hypocrisy by no longer ignoring the illegalities of the British and American invasion of Iraq?

Perhaps Putin's real offence was in ignoring correct protocol by not first alleging that Ukraine had weapons of mass destruction. Without this important first step others might think that its aim was just to try to maintain contact with its Black Sea naval fleet and naval base, or in the case of Blair and Bush, just to steal some oil. The world is much more forgiving if at least the courtesy of a plausible excuse is given beforehand.

Dermot Nunan 
Maclean NSW

Source: SMH Letters, 5 March 2014

The cost of Australia's offshore detention centres

According to the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service at 28 February 2014 there were 1,325 asylum seekers in the Manus Island detention centre and another 1,107 asylum seekers at Nauru detention centre.

Under a contract negotiated by the Abbott Government with Transfield Services (Australia) Pty Ltd, over the next twenty months housing these 2,432 detainees in offshore centres will cost Australia $1.22 billion (medical and counselling services excluded).

That is over $25,000 per month paid to for each Manus Island detainee (living in tents behind a crude wire fence and serviced by a field kitchen) and Nauru detainee until sometime in November 2015.  

This of course does not include the cost of air transport contract/s.

Under the previous 2013 security services contracts Manus and Nauru detention centres combined management costs were estimated around $503 million over twelve months.

The entire cost of border protection policies laid out in the September 2013 Liberal Party-National Party Coalition document only budgeted for a total of $701 million in net spending up to 2016-17, which factored in a ‘saving’ of $1.08 billion over four years from “stopping the boats”.

Detention centre costs were not a specific line item in the document so one has to guess how the Abbott Government originally expected to pay for offshore detention over the forward estimates.

It is obvious that in 2014-15 any so-called savings will be eaten up by the blow-out in detention centre management costs.

It will be interesting to see how Prime Minister Abbott and Treasurer Hockey explain these increased detention centre expenses during May 2014 budget week, given there appears to have been no increase in actual service delivery and very little in the way of additional infrastructure.

NOTE: Nationally in Australia in 2011-12 the cost per prisoner/offender per day in state adult correctional facilities was $305 or an estimated $9,455 per month.