Australian Dept. of Immigration, Border Force and Federal Minister Peter Dutton damned by these findings

A ministerial portfolio, government department, contractor and officers medically negligent and/or corrupt…….

The Guardian, 28 June 2016:

Australia’s immigration department failed to appropriately oversee the multinational that provides healthcare for asylum seekers and was unable to cope with the “commercially aggressive practices” that led to numerous failures to meet medical benchmarks, a series of damning internal reviews have found.

The findings substantiated a number of key allegations published by Guardian Australia in July 2015 about the relationship between International Health and Medical Services and the immigration department.

Leaked documents showed IHMS failed to meet medical targets, deliberately included incorrect data in reports and admitted it was “inevitable” fraud would occur as it tried to meet government standards. The documents also revealed that IHMS failed to undertake working with children checks and police checks on Manus Island.

Three reviews were commissioned by the immigration department to examine the allegations. Two were internal and one was to be conducted by KPMG.

IHMS, a subsidiary of the global healthcare giant International SOS, has received more than $1.6bn in government funding to provide asylum seeker healthcare in Australia and on Manus Island and Nauru.

The detention assurance review team report, released under freedom of information, which drew together findings from the KPMG audit and the first initial internal audit, said: “Through the review processes, both internal and external reviews agree that IHMS took an approach of seeking to maximise profits, including through actively reducing opportunities for the department to seek contract abatements.”

It later continued: “There is a fundamental conflict between contractual and clinical objectives where profit and cost dictate clinical operations.”

ABC News, 27 June 2016:

Australian Border Force staff have been referred for investigation over more than 100 cases of alleged corrupt activity in Australia's skilled and student visa program.

A 7.30-Fairfax Media investigation has discovered that in the last 12 months, Australian Border Force chief Michael Pezzullo has referred 132 cases of suspected corruption inside the department to the national corruption watchdog, the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI).

It comes as a former immigration official claims that a focus on boat arrivals has allowed migration crime involving people arriving by plane to flourish unchecked.

"In the border security debate, it has been easy to deflect the public's attention to boat arrivals," said Joseph Petyanszki, who worked at the Department of Immigration for 27 years and was joint head of the Department's investigation office between 2007 and 2013.

"But this fear-mongering has totally ignored where the vast bulk of real fraud is, most significantly undermining our immigration programs."

 The man responsible for this shocking state of affairs.....

Peter Craig Dutton former police officer, current Liberal MP for Dickson and Minister for Immigration and Border Protection.

Australian Federal Election 2016: waxing poetic on Malcolm's decline

Elizabeth Farrelly waxing poetic in the 18 June 2016 issue of The Sydney Morning Herald on Malcolm’s decline:

 

Malcolm has long been rich, but the hollowness is recent, starting from his installation as PM.  So, theory two: that the wealth and the hollowness are co-symptoms, both signifying something else.

Naturally, Malcolm denies it, insisting he hasn't changed "one iota". But the approval of 3.3 million voters he's lost in six months begs to differ. That's a lot, 3.3 million. Almost 18,000 a day. Malcolm has shed voters more assiduously than he shed kilos. How? By looking like the hero we craved, then yielding, one principle at a time, to grimy old politics-as-usual. Changed? From where we sit, we the voters, he's all but unrecognisable.

It's amazing how the inner change appears without. Malcolm used to be charismatic, in a cocky, I'm-so-rich kind of way. Now, he seems thinner by the day, and not from the Chinese tea and cycle vacs. The PM seems spiritually thin, hollowed out from the inside. So thin you can almost see the hand within, making the arms wave, the jaw move.

There's a macabre fascination in witnessing this evisceration, like watching someone's cosmetic surgery go horribly wrong. There's also pathos, as though the crows of fate, spotting a juicy flaw, lifted Malcolm high into the stratosphere only to watch him fall and break.

Some therefore defend him. What could the guy do, they reason, working for such masters? But I say you don't get to leave your conscience on the nightstand just because you're prime minister. You can sell off Medicare, outsource your concentration camps, but you can't offload responsibility. The fault, and the blame, are his.

True, it's not all about Malcolm. He's prime minister after all, not president – but really, that's the point. Lear is not about Lear. Macbeth is not about Macbeth. The great tragedies are about power, greed and ambition and how these seek out and amplify human frailty, especially that of the protagonist.

For here, as in any Shakespearean tragedy, the fall-from-great-height, and the tangle-with-irresistible-forces that generates it, are triggered by the protagonist's core weakness. His fatal flaw. Ambition.

The rest is all there. There's no shortage of Gonerils and Edmunds behind the LNP arras, God knows. Any number of garrulous poisoners, tuppeny swordsmen and passive-aggressive manipulators among the LNP's profit-junkies, poor-haters, tycoons, homophobes, hardheads, opportunists and climate deniers. Abbott, Bernardi, Joyce, Madigan, Frydenburg, Leyonhelm, Dutton ...

They're pulling Malcolm's strings, much as he denies it, waggling his jaw with or without his consent to mouth hypocrisies without number.

Of these, the most obvious and damaging is climate change. On Saturday, Malcolm's Collaroy condolences linked storm damage to climate – within weeks of approving Reef-destroying coalmines and having taken Australia from 20th worst to 3rd worst carbon-polluter, ahead only of those bastions of social and environmental enlightenment Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia.

Sunday, Malcolm Instagrammed excitedly about heritage-listing Centennial Parklands, despite his abject silence as local MP over the ongoing destruction of the Anzac avenue and of parkland hectares in his electorate. Monday, he pretended the Orlando massacre was a "hatred of freedoms" and an "attack … on our borders" rather than recognising it as a homophobic hate crime, despite having made headlines attending Mardi Gras a few weeks earlier.

He mouths support for gay marriage, then proposes a plebiscite that will likely fail. He once crossed the floor on climate change, but now he holds to a policy-vacuum shaped by backroom sceptics and deniers. Two years ago, on UK television, he described Abbott's stop-the-boats policies as "harsh measures … some would say they're cruel…" Now he backs Peter Dutton's "illiterate and innumerate" comments as "outstanding". He once (in Spycatcher days) stood for civic conscience and free speech. Now he speaks with hobbled tongue.

It's not that I think Malcolm is personally unsympathetic toward climate change, sexual diversity, indigenous cultures, asylum seekers or trees. Maybe yes, probably no. I suspect his earlier views were more genuine – but that makes it worse.

Some say he just never stopped being a lawyer. Lawyers get used to being hired guns, shooting for the bad guys. They become adept at ignoring their own principles to further causes in which they have not the slightest interest or belief. Indeed, the very idea of belief disappears, very often, from their mental lexicon.

Either way, it means the deal he did with his party was indeed Faustian, exchanging self-sovereignty for the throne. Why? Ambition. Like Macbeth, Malcolm had everything – wealth, love, family, respect – but he wanted more. But where Macbeth is tempted by the witches' insinuations of greatness, the character Malcolm, you recall, is the rightful king. Malcolm is entitled.

The delicious irony is that the LNP's determination to reshape Malcolm actually makes them 10 times less electable, as backroom deceivers, and him a hundred times, as a marionette.

But who is Malcolm's noble fool, dispensing unheard wisdom? Who his Cordelia, sweetly absorbing others' guilt and dying in consequence? In both cases, we are. Us. Dead as earth.

Read the full article here.

Pressure of community concerns sees National Party and Labor candidates joining The Greens in Page to oppose Yamba Mega Port plan

While not yet official party policy at either state or federal level for any of the major political parties, it was heartening to see the Nationals Kevin Hogan and Labor's Janelle Saffin join The Green's Kudra Falla-Ricketts in opposing Australian Infrastructure Developments' proposal to create an industrial mega port in the Clarence River estuary.

Both Ms. Saffin and Ms. Falla-Ricketts have a strong history of opposing inappropriate development in the Northern Rivers region.

Kudra Falla-Ricketts was active in the CSG Free Northern Rivers campaign and Janelle Saffin successfully lobbied NSW Labor to include a ban on coal seam gas exploration and mining within the Northern Rivers region in her party's official policies.

Clarence Valley Independent, 29 June 2016:

Click on images to enlarge

Excerpt from this article:

Australian Federal Election 2016: Liberals behaving badly and being found out right to the bitter end of campaign

The Liberal Party of Australia has been caught lying to Twitter in an attempt to manipulate mention of its campaign in the Higgins electorate on that particular social media platform. Polling earlier in June 2016 suggested Assistant Treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer is in danger of losing her seat.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 June 2016:

Social media giant Twitter has launched an investigation into the Liberal Party after it faked a copyright claim to try and shut down a joke account that likened embattled assistant treasurer Kelly O'Dwyer to Sophie Mirabella.

Last week Fairfax Media reported that Ms O'Dwyer had taken the extraordinary step of forcing Twitter to dismantle the joke account @Kelly_dnuSophie, which compared her election campaign in Higgins to the disastrous 2013 loss of Indi by her friend and fellow Liberal Sophie Mirabella.

The joke account had barely more than 200 followers at the time – "a significant proportion of whom are pornbots" said one of the students who started it – but the public comparisons to Ms Mirabella's failed campaign seemingly irked Ms O'Dwyer.

As the "is Kelly the new Sophie" comparisons gained traction, an official complaint was lodged by Jennifer Freind (sic), who is described as the "social media advisor to the Victorian Liberal Party".  She issued a "Digital Millennium Copyright Act (USA) takedown notice", claiming the copyright to photographs used by the account was owned by Kelly O'Dwyer.

Twitter locked the account in response, however, most of the photographs on the site appear to be under copyright not to Ms O'Dwyer, but to Fairfax Media.

Twitter's latest determination of "Case #34662656" isn't good news for Liberal Party of Victoria or Ms O'Dwyer.

"Upon further review of the DMCA notice  . . we have determined that the notice is invalid," states the social media giant.  "The content has been restored and [the] account has not been penalised."

Twitter has also issued a please explain to the Liberal Party of Victoria, and wants to know why it faked a copyright claim over the photos in order to shut down the account. 

"We have requested additional information from the reporting party," read a statement from Twitter.

As part of the original complaint, Jennifer Freind [sic] had signed a statement declaring that "Kelly O'Dwyer" owned the copyright to the photos, and  "the information in this notification is accurate, and I state under penalty of perjury that I am authorised to act on behalf of the copyright owner"……

One senior Victorian Liberal told Fairfax Media there were real fears Higgins could be "the Indi of 2016", a reference to Sophie Mirabella's shock loss of the safe Liberal seat of Indi to independent Cathy McGowan at the 2013 federal election…..

WARNING: Baird's new tree-clearing laws will increase extinctions in New South Wales

This is what Australia Infrastructure Developments and Des Euen want the people of the Clarence River Estuary to be complicit in establishing **WARNING: Distressing Images**

On 2 June 20016 CEO of Australia Infrastructure Developments Pty Ltd talked of the fact that his proposal for an industrial mega port in the Clarence River Estuary through the Port of Yamba would be capable of exporting live cattle for the Asian meat market.

Snapshot of part of power point presentation on 2 June 2016

Local media reported on the prospect on 4 June 2016:

NORTHERN Rivers cattle producers have welcomed preliminary negotiations for a live trade industry to Indonesia which could see the Port of Yamba revived as an export hub.

Exploratory trade inquiries, initiated by Australia-Indonesia Business Council executive member Welly Salim, has strong support from Richmond River Cattle Producers Association members, who sizzled rendang curry and satay sticks at their Casino Beef Week exhibit on Saturday in honour of the potential Indonesian market.

Mr Salim owns Oceanic Cattle Stations, a 15,800-head Tennant Creek station. He also has close business ties with Toowoomba transport tycoons, the Wagner family.

This week he was on a fact-finding mission, collecting data from brahman producers from Coffs Harbour to Tweed Heads.

It was hoped the Northern Rivers market could dovetail with the established Northern Territory live export trade industry, which shuts down over the wet season.

These are some of the live trade cruelties that would ruin the reputations of family-friendly, clean, green towns like Yamba and Iluka.

On the ship transporting cattle......

The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 June 2016:

ABC's 7.30 program on Wednesday night aired shocking footage and photographs taken by the experienced vet, Dr Lynn Simpson, who monitored the health and welfare of cattle on export ships.

The images depicted animals lying dead on floors centimetres-thick with excrement, which had also contaminated food troughs.

Other cattle lay injured, suffocating or bleeding and barely alive.

"It's just business as usual on these ships. I expect to see leg injuries, I expect to see pneumonia, I expect to see animals drenched in faecal matter," Dr Simpson told the ABC.

At some of the abattoirs which receive the exported Australian cattle.....

https://youtu.be/OiIeHMIkdeA

https://youtu.be/EwtFMq2tvHg

  https://youtu.be/le8Xh_38qKQ

Australian Federal Election 2016: 666 apprenticeships gone under Nationals in Page

Labor Candidate for Page Janelle Saffin, media release, 30 June 2016:

666 Apprenticeships gone in Page under the Nationals

New figures released by the Department of Education show that apprenticeship numbers in Page have fallen by 31.5 per cent in two years, with a loss of 666 apprenticeships in the Page electorate.

Janelle Saffin, Federal Labor Candidate for Page said disappointingly Mr Hogan and the rest of the Nationals have allowed this to happen, with these figures replicated across Australia, with 130,000 apprenticeships gone nationally.

The number of apprenticeships in Page dropped from 2,117 at 31 December 2013, to just 1,451 at 31 December 2015.

“The retreat from supporting apprentices and the vocational education and training sector started with Mr Abbott and Mr Truss, and it continues with Mr Turnbull and Mr Joyce,” Ms Saffin said.

“I am serious about investing in apprentices, skills and training in Page.

“The Nationals have cut $2.75 billion from the skills portfolio, including $1 billion in cuts to apprentices by scrapping the Tools for Your Trade program and access and mentoring programs.

“How can they talk ‘jobs and growth’ and then decimate apprenticeships and the VET sector?

“It’s vital that we train and retrain our workforce to improve participation, productivity, and innovation. This is what will drive growth in our region.

“Kevin Hogan and the Nationals have been missing in action on apprenticeships and jobs.”

Ms Saffin said Labor had a comprehensive set of policies to help apprentices, skills and training, including among other policy measures:

• A TAFE Funding Guarantee.

• $8,000 cap on VET FEE-HELP loans per year and a VET sector ombudsman.

• A sector-wide national review to ensure vocational education is able to meet the

training needs of the nation.

• Establishing Commonwealth Institutes of Higher Education to deliver new technical

and education opportunities to areas where access remains difficult and participation is too low.

• Boosting apprenticeships across the country by:

- creating new apprenticeship opportunities through setting a quota of

apprentices on major federally-funded projects.

- reintroducing the Tools for Your Trade program at $3,000 per apprentice to

support them from commencement to completion.

- restoring support for Group Training organisations.

- creating pathways into apprenticeships for 10,000 young people unemployed

people through the Apprentice Ready program.

- piloting a National Skills Recognition Entitlement program with 5,000 places to

help mature-aged, retrenched workers turn their extensive work experience into

formal qualifications.

- connecting potential apprentices with jobs and training through an

Apprenticeships Connect search portal.

- appointing a dedicated Apprentice Advocate.

“Only a Shorten Labor Government will deliver the support for apprentices and TAFE that local residents expect and a vocational education system that delivers a skilled workforce for the future,” Ms Saffin said.