Abbott's Australia in February 2015

# On 3 February 2015 Federal Liberal MP for Bowman Andrew Laming announced he will introduce a private members’ bill, abolishing Knights and Dames from the Australian honours system. Two titles unilaterally re-introduced into the honours system by Prime Minister Abbott in March 2014.

# On 5 February 2015 U.S. think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, published an opinion piece which stated:

Tony Abbott, however, is in charge of a regional power, a country that is the twelfth largest economy in the world and the only rich world nation to have survived the 2008-9 financial crisis unscathed. Yet in less than two years as prime minister, Abbott has proven shockingly incompetent, which is why other leaders within his ruling coalition, following a set of defeats in state elections, may now scheme to unseat him. They should: Abbott has proven so incapable of clear policy thinking, so unwilling to consult with even his own ministers and advisers, and so poor at communicating that he has to go.

# On 9 February 2015 Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott defeated by just 12 votes a Liberal party room motion to declare the positions of prime minister and deputy-prime minister vacant.

# At the start of the 2015 parliamentary year on 9 February were are 148 bills still being considered by the Australian Parliament or awaiting assent, 33 before the House of Representatives (including two bills aimed at encouraging state governments to sell off public assets) and 104 before the Senate.

# On the second sitting day (10 February 2015) the Speaker in the House of Representatives, Liberal MP for Mackellar Bronwyn Bishop, during Question Time declared the word “misleading” an unparliamentary term when used by the Labor Opposition Leader - despite allowing its use twice earlier that day and six times by six different MPs the day before.

# On 11 February 2015 the High Court of Australia unanimously held that a decision made by the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection in July 2014 to refuse to grant the plaintiff a permanent protection visa was not made according to law and that the plaintiff was entitled to have that visa granted.

# The Age reported on 11 February 2015 that the Australian National Audit Office will investigate Tony Abbott's decision to hand over $3 billion of public money for the East West Link without a rigorous benefit-cost analysis.

# On 11 February 2015 an emotionally out-of-kilter Prime Minister Abbott accused the Labor Opposition of wanting to see Australian submarines possibly built in Russia or North Korea. By 12 February he had also described evidence not yet presented to the court in one instance and has been publicly accused of using parliamentary privilege in an attempt to influence the judicial process "in a calculated political gambit". In another instance on that same day he had the insensitivity and bad taste to state; There was a holocaust of jobs in defence industries under members opposite. That’s what there was, Madame Speaker.

# On 11 February 2015 Opposition Leader Bill Shorten drew parliament's attention to Australian Bureau of Statistics findings that the number of adults in prison in 2014 has risen to a ten year high of 33,791 individuals with the national prison rate also at a ten year high of 185.6 up 13.4 points since 2013. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners accounted for just over a quarter (27% or 9,264 prisoners) of the total Australian prisoner population. The total Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population aged 18 years and over in 2014 was approximately 2% of the Australian population aged 18 years and over.

                                        

# The Abbott Government finally tabled the Australian Human Rights Commission's November 2014 National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention 2014 on 12 February 2015 and then the report was promptly attacked by Prime Minister Abbott for being a blatantly partisan politicised exercise for which the Commission should be ashamed, before he told Parliament that It would be a lot easier to respect the Human Rights Commission if it did not engage in what are transparent stitch-ups like the one that was released the other day. On or about 28 January the Australian Attorney-General George Brandis has asked the President of this independent commission to resign ahead of publication of the report.

                               

# According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics on 12 February 2015 Australia’s unemployment rate increased to 6.4 per cent in January (seasonally adjusted unemployed people increased by 34,500 to 795,200) and the number of employed people decreased by 12,200 to 11,668,700.

Between December and January the workforce-age population increased in size by 7,900 people and the number of people with a casual, part or full-time job fell by 251,200.

In NSW in January 2015 the unemployment rate was 6.2 per cent, representing an est. 237,600 individuals. This is a rise of 0.2% on December 2014 unemployment numbers.

# The Australian reported on 12 February 2015 on one instance of Tony Abbott's angry bullying of his own backbenchers.

# On 13 February 2015 ABC News reported that Chief Government Whip, Phillip Ruddock, was standing down following the leadership challenge. He became the first public retaliation by Tony Abbott against those in his party he now appears to distrust after the leadership spill motion vote was supported by 39 members of his own party.

# The Guardian reported on 13 February 2015 that there is growing government backbench support for Liberal Senator Corey Bernardi's private member's bill weakening Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. 

# 14 February 2015 (Valentine's Day) saw the Prime Minister and his wife the subject of a News Corp puff piece, in which Margie Abbott told the world that her husband is honourable, decent, has a lot of grace, is chivalrous and is everything that as partner in life I could wish for.

# On 14 February 2015 Tony Abbott upload a video to his YouTube account, which signalled a possible intention to remove any presumption of innocence in national security, immigration and welfare legislation. He stated that for too long there has been the benefit of the doubt and that for migrants to this country and asylum seekers; "There's been the benefit of the doubt at our borders, the benefit of the doubt for residency, the benefit of the doubt for citizenship and the benefit of the doubt at Centrelink. And in the courts, there has been bail, when clearly there should have been jail."

# On 16 February 2015 The Australian reported on the continuing disconnect between party officials, Abbott’s advisers and government backbenchers; Several sources have told The Australian Mr Loughnane’s ­assessment that the fundamentals were in place to allow the government to rebuild against Bill Shorten “didn’t go down well’’. “MPs were challenging it, immediately telling him that it was not what people in the street and in their electorates were telling them,’’ one MP said. “The weirdest part was his claim the Paris terrorist attacks and the threat of terrorism was focusing the minds of people. “While we know people are concerned, all of us know that there are bigger ­issues for people.’’

#  Perth Now reported on 16 February 2015 that; Prime Minister Tony Abbott has embarked on a nationwide tour to reconnect with voters in a last-ditch bid to restore his electoral standing and save his job. Mr Abbott will spend this week visiting every state and territory and venturing out into shopping malls and coffee shops to show he is in touch with the voters and with his own backbench. The tour comes a week after he narrowly survived a spill motion bought on by his backbench, and followed months of complaints the PM had become remote, isolated and out of touch. The PM kicked off his tour with two morning tea functions in suburban Sydney. His wife, Margie, who was rarely seen at political events with him until the leadership crisis erupted, joined Mr Abbott.

Run! There are terrorists on the NSW North Coast

He's also kept up the fight against the bats, which continue to terrorise a number of towns on the north coast. [http://www.nswnationals.org.au/chris_gulaptis]

On the NSW North Coast it is easy to spot the many ‘terrorists’ in our midst.

According to the NSW Nationals MP for Clarence, Chris Gulaptis, they all look like this:

Photograph from  http://www.bats.org.au/

And they are lurking with intent to terrorise.

Can't you just tell there's a state election in a little over five weeks time?

Senator Nova Peris: "We are only talking in circles and using Aboriginal people - our lives and our disparity - as political footballs"

Senator Nova Peris, 13 November 2013. Photo: Mamma Mia

Labor Senator Nova Peris on her feet in the Australian Senate at 4.36pm on 11 February 2015 (transcript from OpenAustralia.org):

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the Ngambri-Ngunawal people, on whose land we stand today, and acknowledge my ancestors past and present and our future leaders. Today is an opportunity for all of us to speak out about reality. It is a day on which I stand here as an Aboriginal woman with the inherent responsibility to fight and sustain our culture for future generations. Unless you are on some other planet today what is being echoed in the walls of Parliament House by Aboriginal people who have gathered here today is that there are a lot of unhappy people out there.

Whilst a lot of people come to Parliament House to talk about Closing the Gap and walk away with a warm and fuzzy feeling about what it means to them and think that we are progressing, the gap in fact is not closing. People reflect on Australia as a nation of hope and a nation of opportunity, but we are a nation that continually lets down Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples—we are failing citizens of this country. We are not on track to close the gap on life expectancy, and the gap is not closing because things that work are being ignored. I have been listening to Senator Nash—and I have the greatest respect for her—and she understands what she says. But here is big difference between actually understanding it and wanting to implement what people are saying out there in the communities.

I have been around a long time, and Aboriginal people feel that what we say is falling on deaf ears day in and day out. Today we heard the Prime Minister claim that he is profoundly disappointed that the Closing the Gap has stalled. It is great that he has said that, because today we have heard truth in this place. That is what happens when you cut the funding from frontline services that have been proven to work. It is simple: Closing the Gap has fallen through the cracks of a divided and dysfunctional government. When we heard the opposition leader talk about cuts to frontline services, I saw 10 coalition members just get up and walk out. We heard Senator Nash talking about that this has to be a bipartisan approach, but to sustain lives everybody needs to be at the table to give hope and to implement the right things that Aboriginal people need. That walkout showed a total disrespect not only for leaders of this country but for a race of people—the oldest collective race of people in this world whose lives we are trying to enhance and for whom we want to make things better. I just do not get that you have people walking out of the chamber.

I had a speech prepared, but I am not going to read a speech, because I should be able to speak from my heart to tell it how it is. When I see things like that, I think to myself: 'Why did I put my hand up for parliament?' Because I wanted to make a difference in the lives of the people who paved the way for me today.

All this rhetoric about how we have to get it right and we have to listen to people. There are so many times you see Dr Yunupingu and all these talking politicians—it just has to stop. Senator Nigel Scullion knows the Northern Territory very well—it is his backyard. He has respect for the people, and people respect him in the communities. But, Nigel, we cannot be serious about getting kids to school while your government closes 38 childcare centres. There was a report from Twiggy Forrest. Why do we have a wealthy man, who has never worked a day in the life of an Aboriginal person—he does not know what it is to live in poverty or how you get out of poverty—so why are we asking him to tell us how to live our lives? I do not get it. We are only talking in circles and using Aboriginal people—our lives and our disparity—as political footballs. I said that earlier today and it has got to stop. It really has to stop.

When we talk about constitutional recognition, there is the whole fear factor: what are we recognising? What have we got to fear? Every day we acknowledge the Ngambri-Ngunawal people. We exist. We acknowledge it here, and so what is so scary about acknowledging it in our Constitution. We cannot change the past. I said that in my maiden speech. We cannot change what has happened; we cannot drag the chains of this black history that this country has in order to move into the light. We talk about 600,000 Aboriginal people in this country, and yet every single day in the newspapers there is a story about an Aboriginal person. You do not see that about any other race of people in Australia; it is only Aboriginal people. It is almost as if we are a product of disparity. You talk about people coming in and walking together, but I have been to so many communities—and Senator Scullion knows this too—and how do you expect 25 non-Indigenous service providers to be delivering programs to a community of 200 or 300 people? There is not one Aboriginal person delivering those services. We have been oppressed and we continue to oppress citizens who have survived the 40,000 years in spite of continuous failed policies.

We cannot just keep talking about it. Every election cycle we make these promises; we say we are going to give you this and then, when we get in, we backflip on health and education. It is not rocket science. If you want to engage a child in primary school—to get them into school—they have to have a profound love of education. You cannot just say that it is about jobs; it is about housing. They are the basic fundamental things that we take for granted—every single one of us—but that is like asking a hen to have teeth. You are just asking for the basic fundamental human rights for people to have an opportunity, and we are denying the opportunity when we cannot get the basics right. It upsets me that Aboriginal people are coming to this place and begging from money to drive programs in their community. They should not have to do that. I do not tell anyone how to run their lives and so why are people telling Aboriginal people how to run their lives?

There is story I would like to tell, because it is important. We are Catholics and my grandson, who is 5½ years old, went to his first day of school this year. The principal, after welcoming everyone, talked about Jesus and God and then he said, 'And don't forget; let's us all be like Jesus.' My grandson turned to his mum, my daughter, and said, 'Well, who is Jesus?' The thing is that everyone has a religion, everyone has a spiritual belief, and this country is a multicultural country. We as Aboriginal people have our spirituality and our religion. We know what we want.

It is almost like our dreams and aspirations are continually controlled by the dollar factor. And it goes back to a Country Liberal government who wants to dilute the Heritage Act and the Land Rights Act. You have 35 per cent of people in the Northern Territory owning 50 per cent of the land. When you see incarceration rates escalating, not decreasing, what does that say about society? You just want to bulldoze the people out of the way who have control over what other people want. And that is not even telling a lie; that is telling it how it is. We heard a great speech by Joe Morrison today who said: 'We are not part of the problem. We are part of the solution'. If you want to progress this country for what it is meant to be—what other countries see it for—you need to bring Aboriginal people with you. And it is not by continually taking the top-down approach. To say that an Aboriginal kid has no dreams and aspirations is wrong. To tell an Aboriginal parent, 'you don't want your children to go to school'—that is absolute rubbish. We have the same dreams and aspirations. We should be allowed to flourish as human beings and as equal citizens in this country. This whole place needs to change.

The unprecedented attack on the independent Australian Human Rights Commission by Prime Minister Abbott provoked a response from the Australian Bar Association and the Law Council of Australia

According to the Australian Human Rights Commission in November 2014; Australia currently holds about 800 children in mandatory closed immigration detention for indefinite periods, with no pathway to protection or settlement. This includes 186 children detained on Nauru. Children and their families have been held on the mainland and on Christmas Island for, on average, one year and two months. Over 167 babies have been born in detention within the last 24 months.

In November 2014 it completed its The Forgotten Children: National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention report which it states; provides compelling first-hand evidence of the negative impact that prolonged immigration detention is having on their mental and physical health. The evidence given by the children and their families is fully supported by psychiatrists, paediatricians and academic research. The evidence shows that immigration detention is a dangerous place for children. Data from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection describes numerous incidents of assault, sexual assault and self-harm in detention environments. 

The evidence presented within this report spans the period 1 January 2013 to 30 September 2014, during which time there was both the former Labor and current Liberal-Nationals federal governments directing the detention of asylum seekers.

The Abbott Government did not make this report public until 11 February 2015. Prior to tabling this report, the Attorney-General unsuccessfully sought the voluntary resignation of the Commission’s president, Professor Gillian Triggs.

On 12 February 2015 the Prime Minister rose to his feet in the House of Representatives and uttered these words:

It would be a lot easier to respect the Human Rights Commission if it did not engage in what are transparent stitch-ups like the one that was released the other day. I say to the Human Rights Commission: if you are concerned about real human rights, real human decency, real compassion for people, you should be writing congratulatory letters to the former Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, who has stopped the boats, who has saved lives and who has got children out of detention.

In an earlier pre-recorded interview with Neil Mitchell of Radio 3AW he had also said this:

"Where was the Human Rights Commission during the life of the former government when hundreds of people were drowning at sea?"

"This is a blatantly partisan politicised exercise.

"The Human Rights Commission should be ashamed of itself."

Finally, the legal community reached the limit of its tolerance:

From @GCobber99

The real Tony Abbott is never far from the surface.....

The Australian 12 February 2015:

On Sunday, May 25, last year Queensland backbencher Wyatt Roy was part of a group of about 30 marginal seat-holders invited to dine privately with the Prime Minister in the cabinet anteroom. Abbott’s practice at these dinners is to go around the room, asking each member to say their piece.

Roy, trying to be helpful, stood at the table to tell the Prime Minister that broken promises were the fundamental cause of the government’s problems. It might be a good idea, Roy suggested, to apologise to people a la Peter Beattie and move on.

Abbott was furious. He rounded on Roy, yelled at him, then directed his remarks to all of them that there were no effing broken promises and no one should concede there had been. The incident stuck in the mind of MPs, first because of Roy’s bravery in broaching it, then because of the Prime Minister’s use of the F-bomb.

Many months later Abbott was forced to concede the bleeding obvious, but only after accusations of lying about lying trashed his credibility. If he had taken the advice of his youngest MP last May, he would have spared himself considerable pain.

Is Clarence Valley Council's general manager trying to inoculate himself against any regime change at the 10 September 2016 local government election?

Clarence Valley Council’s 17 February Ordinary Monthly Meeting Business Paper contains these interesting items:

Now it is my understanding that a general manager can ask for an early renewal of a contract. 

It is further my understanding that the General Manager’s existing $240,000 per annum five-year performance based contract still has approximately 20 months left to run and doesn’t end until around six to seven weeks after the September 2016 local government election. 

However, these two mayoral minutes raise certain questions.

Is Mayor Richie Williamson attempting to ensure that the general manager doesn’t have to face a possible new mix of councillors when renewing his contract? Or perhaps face a set of councillors disinclined to keep him in this position?

Is the contract renewal minute occurring this far out because the NSW Government has signalled that it will not approve of councils renewing general manager contracts in the six months prior to any local government election and, by having the matter addressed now is the mayor hoping no-one will make a connection with the next council election?

Are current councillors really desirous of keeping this general manager under contract until 2020, thereby side stepping the six month limit and binding a post-September 2016 Clarence Valley Council to this particular general manager?

Background

Excerpt from the NSW Government Response to the Independent Local Government Review Panel Recommendations:

The next time you buy eggs, poultry or bacon....

….check that the companies producing the food going into your grocery trolley are not involved in factory farming.

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