Friday 14 April 2017
Turnbull denies government is looking to cancel all welfare payments which are worth below $520.53 a year to a Centrelink recipient
Images via @samanthamaiden
The Courier Mail, 19 March 2017:
WELFARE recipients would lose their concession cards and up to $49.10 a fortnight under secret budget savings costed by the Turnbull government.
A leaked document reveals the federal Government looked at scrapping all welfare payments below $20.02 a fortnight as part of the May budget……
“The objective of this proposal is to simplify administration of the payments system by setting a consistent floor below which payments would not be made, to avoid making small fortnightly payments,” the costings document said.
In its advice, the department warned the government those affected by the change would include “some who have experienced substantial reductions in payments as a result of recent policy changes” such as the assets test.
The document said the plan may cause “concern among affected age pension recipients”.
Despite costing the policy, Social Services Minister Christian Porter said the government had “no plans” for a minimum payment across all welfare categories.
Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS) chief executive Dr Cassandra Goldie warned the government against welfare changes, saying Australia already has one of the most targeted system of income support.
She said the costed proposal would put pressure on “people who are trying to make ends meet”……
“Once again, this kind of proposal targets people on low and modest incomes to make savings,” Dr Goldie said.
“Pensioners, people on allowances and single parents stand to be affected if they are getting a small part of their overall income from income support.
The Australian, 19 March 2017:
The executive summary in the Department of Social Services costings document states: “As part of Budget Repair, it is proposed that from 1 July 2018, the minimum amount payable to social security payments recipients would be $20.02 a fortnight.
“If, after the application of the income and assets tests, a recipient’s notional fortnightly entitlement would be less than $20.02 but greater than $0, they will not receive a payment,” it says….
Mr Turnbull this morning issued a series of tweets, disputing that there would be any cut to aged pensions, but notably not addressing the claim that the proposal was costed.
“A report today that the government is cutting the aged pension is false and we outright reject it,” the Prime Minister tweeted. “I can assure all aged pensioners the measure reported will NOT be in the Budget.
“We assured the journalist too, but she insisted on writing the story. And sadly, I can also assure you that you can always rely on Bill Shorten to lie.”
Thursday 13 April 2017
Fair Work Commission 2017 Minimum Wage Review - heads workers lose, tails workers lose?
Fair Work Commission (FWC) website 10 April 2017:
Every year an Expert Panel of the Fair Work Commission must review modern award minimum wages, and set a national minimum wage order for employees not covered by enterprise agreements or modern awards.
Each national minimum wage order made in an annual wage review comes into operation on 1 July in the next financial year, and continues in operation until the next national minimum wage order comes into operation.
The minimum wage hourly rate currently stands at $17.70 – and yes, we all probably know of an adult who is not even receiving this.
The FWC Annual Wage Review 2016-17 (C2017/l) is being conducted by:
JUSTICE ROSS, PRESIDENT
VICE PRESIDENT HATCHER
DEPUTY PRESIDENT ASBURY
COMMISSIONER HAMPTON
MR COLE
PROFESSOR RICHARDSON
MR GIBBS,
MELBOURNE, 7 APRIL 2017
The 2017 final minimum wage decision will be handed down in sometime in June coming into effect on 1 July.
Here is the preliminary hearing dealing with transitional instruments and relevant to annual wage reviews and existing arrangements for employees with disability DECISION.
Shorter version of this decision is:
go away little low-skilled people and don’t expect a minimum wage rise larger than that which we gave you in 2013, 2014, 2015 or 2016 - if you are lucky it will be somewhere between 41-50 cents an hour for an estimated 196,300 low-paid workers;
as for workers with a significant disability - too hard, we’ll pass the buck.
Of course if Justice Iain Ross, Adam Hatcher et al listen to the business sector this year then these 196,300 workers will only receive about a 20 cents an hour increase.
Tossing a silver coin in the air right now……….
Labels:
Australian society,
fair go,
Fair Work Commission,
jobs,
wages
Turnbull Government dragging its heels on legislation to protect vulnerable workers?
The Age, 6 April 2017:
The peak body for the $150 billion franchise sector has launched an intense behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign to convince MPs to water down Turnbull government legislation designed to prevent future worker exploitation scandals.
Spearheaded by former Liberal minister Bruce Billson, the Franchise Council of Australia is targeting the government, opposition and crossbenchers as it seeks to pressure Employment Minister Michaelia Cash into changing course on the bill.
It has also directed its members - which include 7-Eleven, Pizza Hut, Caltex and other companies accused of underpaying their workers - to bombard MPs with calls and letters about the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Vulnerable Workers) Bill.
The campaign comes as petrol giant United Petroleum became the latest company to be embroiled in an exploitation scandal, with the workplace regulator blasting it for rampant underpayment of workers across its franchise network. United Petroleum is not listed as a FCA member.
Mr Billson personally pressed the franchisor case with visits, calls and texts to MPs during the most recent parliamentary sitting fortnight in Canberra.
And in emails that have begun arriving in MP's inboxes in recent days, franchisors argue it is "unreasonable" to single out the franchising sector.
"The real issue here is that the risk of worker underpayment exists across the economy," the missives read.
The government's bill was introduced into Parliament last month but subsequently disappeared from the agenda, fuelling speculation from the Opposition that the council's campaign was succeeding.
However Senator Cash said the government remained "firmly committed to this policy"…..
The Franchise Council originally sought to kill off the bill entirely, warning it would lead to unavoidable unintended consequences.
It is now arguing for extensive amendments and is particularly concerned about the world-first "joint liability" provisions, claiming they will negatively impact investment, growth and employment.
It also wants courts and regulators to be explicitly forced to take a businesses size and resources into account, and further clarity about what "reasonable steps" actually means….
Franchises employ close to 500,000 people across 73,000 outlets across Australia and contribute up to 10 per cent of Australia's GDP.
The Age, 7 April 2017:
Shocking cases of wage fraud in the big brands of 7-Eleven, Domino's, Caltex and United Petroleum, ricochet across the country, prompting all sides of politics to promise new legislation to rein in systemic wage fraud.
Or so we thought.
In the weeks before the election the Turnbull government promised to change the law to make franchisors jointly responsible with their franchisees for workplace abuses if they have significant control or influence on the franchisee……
But the sector decided to have none of that.
Enter Bruce Billson, the former small business minister who became chairman of the franchise lobby group just before the last election. His role as chairman of the Franchise Council of Australia has been to tell anyone who will listen that the proposed laws are too draconian.
It was a smart move by the FCA. In one newspaper article Billson described the new laws as "a media-inspired regulatory misadventure to introduce unprecedented laws that fit up the franchisor for the Fair Work Act breaches of their franchisees where they have had no actual involvement".
The article worked itself up into a fervour, arguing that the laws represent an "existential threat" to the successful franchise model of enterprise.
The reality is convenience store giant 7-Eleven became embroiled in a systemic wage fraud scandal in August 2015. It shocked the nation. The business model was flawed and head office agreed to repay exploited workers. More franchisors should follow its lead.
The Protecting Vulnerable Workers Bill was designed to do just that. It was introduced on March 1, with the legislation listed on March 20.
But it quietly disappeared from the program last week with two other Fair Work Bills listed in its place, without explanation.
When it will be re-listed is anyone's guess but it is unlikely to be the next sitting as it will be dominated by the federal budget.
According to the Australian Parliament website the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Vulnerable Workers) Bill 2017: "amends the Fair Work Act 2009 to: increase maximum civil penalties for certain serious contraventions of the Act; hold franchisors and holding companies responsible for certain contraventions of the Act by their franchisees or subsidiaries where they knew or ought reasonably to have known of the contraventions and failed to take reasonable steps to prevent them; clarify the prohibition on employers unreasonably requiring their employees to make payments in relation to the performance of work; provide the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) with evidence-gathering powers similar to those available to corporate regulators such as the Australian Securities and Investment Commission and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission; and prohibit the hindering or obstructing of the FWO and or an inspector in the performance or his or her functions or powers, or the giving of false or misleading information or documents.”
On 23 March 2017 this bill was referred to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee.
Submissions were invited but none are listed on the Inquiry’s webpage to date. Public hearings are being held in Canberra on Wednesday 12 April and in Sydney on Thursday 13 April 2017.
Those giving evidence before the Senate inquiry are:
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI)
Council of Small Business Australia (COSBOA)
Franchise Council of Australia
National Retailers Association
The Australian Industry Group (AIG)
McDonalds Australia
Department of Employment
Fair Work Ombudsman
Fair Work Commission
West Justice (Western Community Legal Centre)
Prof. Andrew Stewart
Gerard de Valence
Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU)
Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association (SDA)
One other to be announced
The Committee is due to report to Parliament on 9 May 2017.
Australian Dept. of Human Services and Centrelink sink to a new low
An automated Dept. of Human Services-Centrelink debt recovery system that launched an est. 230,000 investigations into client welfare paymentsin 2016-17, then used an error-prone “income averaging” method to decide that more than 133,000 clients had incurred a debt owed to Centrelink and sent them a bill which included a recovery fee.
If that wasn’t bad enough, around 43 per cent of these debts were immediately referred to heavy-handed private sector debt collectors working on commission.
During this entire debacle spokespersons for the Turnbull Government, the Department and Centrelink have attempted to mislead and misinform welfare clients, mainstream media and the general public.
Now we have been told that for months, perhaps years, the software program being used by Centrelink to run its access to online services portal left users vulnerable to phishing attacks which can steal their credentials including names, addresses, bank account details.
Comment on office of the Minister for Human Services, Mr Alan Tudge
By an IT consultant.......
Senate Standing Committees On Community Affairs, Inquiry Into Design, Scope, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Contracts Awarded And Implementation Associated With The Better Management Of The Social Welfare System Initiative, Excerpt from Submission 38:
That Victorian Legal Aid saw it necessary to update its advice to clients to warn them that their personal information is no longer safe with the Department is an extraordinary situation. This is not advice from tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists. This is sober advice from legal professionals that a major part of the Australian Government cannot be trusted. I cannot stress enough how bad this is.
This behaviour from the Department has had a chilling effect, as I believe it was intended to. This chilling effect is not theoretical. I have personally spoken to individuals who have been reluctant to speak out against the Department, either to the media or to this Inquiry, because they fear repercussions from the Department as they are dependant in some way on income support.
At one point I discussed these matters with the office of the Minister for Human Services, Mr Alan Tudge, and was alarmed to discover that his office did not share my view that the Department has an asymmetric power advantage over individuals. They were of the view that if an individual is critical of the Department in the media, they become fair game.
The attitude from Mr Tudge’s office appeared to be one of a siege mentality where they were at a substantial disadvantage despite the vast array of resources at their disposal, particularly when compared to an individual reliant on income support. They felt that there had been a lot of false information being reported in the media and that it was time for them to “start fighting back.” This adversarial attitude, coupled with the astounding levels of secrecy from the Department, indicates major cultural issues in the Department and in the responsible Minister’s office.
The Department of Human Services exists to serve the humans in our society. The clue is in the name of the department. If individuals within the Department are unhappy with their role, then they should be encouraged to seek employment elsewhere.
By a Queen's Counsel.......
ABC News, 3 April 2017:
One of Australia's leading criminal barristers believes Human Services Minister Alan Tudge — or one of his staff — may have broken the law by supplying a journalist with a Centrelink client's personal information.
Robert Richter, a Queen's Counsel and former chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, believes the disclosure could lead to a prison sentence if it is tested beyond reasonable doubt in a criminal court.
Mr Tudge has dismissed the legal advice, saying the disclosure was approved by his department's lawyers and was necessary to correct misleading public statements.
"I received clearance to release the information from the Chief Legal Counsel of the Department of Human Services, who is intimately across the details of the case and the relevant laws."
Mr Richter's advice was commissioned by Labor MP Linda Burney and his findings were based on public information, rather than inquiries with Mr Tudge's office.
In his opinion, it is "reasonably clear that either the Minister or one of his office's staff had committed an offence".
Wednesday 12 April 2017
See that furtive chap in the dark glasses? He's a negative gearer!
Just a reminder of the cost to the rest of us of the out-of-control negative gearing of investment properties.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 May 2016:
The re-analysis of the 2013-14 tax data, the latest available, shows that each negative gearer claimed an average loss of $8722 per year. Seven out of 10 had income before deductions in the top or second-top tax bracket. The average amount of tax saved by each of the 1.2 million negative gearers was $2900 per year.
Spread over the remaining 11.7 million taxpayers, the average cost was $310 each. The total, $3.646 billion, is about as much as the government spent on assistance to jobseekers and vocational training, and twice what it spent on assistance to indigenous Australians.
Haven't heard any negative gearer bragging about this around the barbeque lately.
Labels:
#TurnbullGovernmentFAIL,
government policy,
housing,
taxation
President Trump failed to stop yet another lawsuit
On 1 March 1 2016 Donald Trump held a campaign rally at the Kentucky International Convention Center in Louisville, Kentucky. What occurred at this campaign rally led to the United States District Court Western District Of Kentucky Louisville Division hearing KASHIYA NWANGUMA, et al., Plaintiffs, v. DONALD J. TRUMP, et al., Defendants (Civil Action No. 3:16-cv-247-DJH), which resulted in this 22 page Memorandum Opinion And Order.
AP News, 1 April 2017:
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- A federal judge has rejected President Donald Trump's free speech defense against a lawsuit accusing him of inciting violence against protesters at a campaign rally.
Trump's lawyers sought to dismiss the lawsuit by three protesters who say they were roughed up by his supporters at a March 1, 2016 rally in Louisville, Kentucky. They argued that Trump didn't intend for his supporters to use force.
Two women and a man say they were shoved and punched by audience members at Trump's command. Much of it was captured on video and widely broadcast during the campaign, showing Trump pointing at the protesters and repeating "get them out."
Judge David J. Hale in Louisville ruled Friday that the suit against Trump, his campaign and three of his supporters can proceed. Hale found ample facts supporting allegations that the protesters' injuries were a "direct and proximate result" of Trump's actions, and noted that the Supreme Court has ruled out constitutional protections for speech that incites violence.
"It is plausible that Trump's direction to 'get 'em out of here' advocated the use of force," the judge wrote. "It was an order, an instruction, a command."
Plaintiffs Kashiya Nwanguma, Molly Shah and Henry Brousseau allege that they were physically attacked by several members of the audience, including Matthew Heimbach, Alvin Bamberger and an unnamed defendant they have yet to be able to identify.
Bamberger later apologized to the Korean War Veterans Association, whose uniform he wore at the rally. He wrote that he "physically pushed a young woman down the aisle toward the exit" after "Trump kept saying 'get them out, get them out," according to the lawsuit.
Heimbach, for his part, sought to dismiss the lawsuit's discussion of his association with a white nationalist group and of statements he made about how Trump could advance the group's interests. The judge declined, saying such information could be important context when determining punitive damages.
The judge also declined to remove allegations that Nwanguma, an African-American, was the victim of racial, ethnic and sexist slurs from the crowd at the rally. This context may support the plaintiffs' claims of negligence and incitement by Trump and his campaign, the judge said.
Labels:
Donald Trump,
law,
violence
Examining the Alternative Media Ecosystem using Twitter
Kate Starbird, University of Washington, HCDE, excerpt from the Abstract for Examining the Alternative Media Ecosystem through the Production of Alternative Narratives of Mass Shooting Events on Twitter:
In the aftermath of major political disruptions in 2016—in Britain with the Brexit vote and in the United States with the election of Donald Trump to the presidency—there has been widespread attention to and theorizing about the problem of “fake news”. But this term is both amorphous and contested. One perspective locates the problem within the emerging ecosystem of alternative media, where the term has been applied to refer to “clickbait” content that uses tabloid-style headlines to attract viewers for financial reasons (Silverman & Alexander 2016) and to describe political propaganda intentionally planted and propagated through online spaces (Timberg 2016). Challenging these definitions, alternative media outlets have appropriated the term to attack “mainstream” media for its perceived economic and political biases and for hosting inaccurate or under-sourced content (e.g. Rappoport 2016). Beneath this rhetoric, we are seeing traditional new providers and emergent alternative media battle not only for economic viability, but over accepted methods of how information is shared and consumed, and, more profoundly, for how narratives around that information are shaped and by whom.
This research seeks to provide a systematic lens for exploring the production of a certain type of “fake news”— alternative narratives of man-made crisis events. For three years, our research group has examined online rumoring during crises. Over that time, we noted the presence of very similar rumors across many man-made crisis events— including the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings, the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, and several mass shooting events including those at Umpqua Community College in Oregon (October, 2015). For each event, rumors claimed the event had been perpetrated by someone other than the official suspects—that it was instead either a staged event performed by “crisis actors” or a “false flag” orchestrated by someone else. Both explanations claimed that a powerful individual or group was pulling the strings for political reasons. Interestingly, though the arguments and evidence used to support these alternative narratives were somewhat consistent across events, the motives cited were often very different—e.g. from the U.S. government trying to support gun control to coordinated global actors staging violence to motivate military intervention.
For this paper, we utilize this type of conspiracy theory or alternative narrative rumor as an entry point for understanding the ecosystem of alternative media. We examine the production of these narratives through Twitter and across the external websites that Twitter users reference as they engage in these narratives. We propose and demonstrate that this lens—Twitter data from mass shooting events and our method for utilizing that data to reveal and explore connections across web domains—provides a systematic approach for shedding light on the emerging phenomena of alternative media and “fake news”.
Our contributions include an increased understanding of the underlying nature of this subsection of alternative media—which hosts conspiratorial content and conducts various anti-globalist political agendas. Noting thematic convergence across domains, we theorize about how alternative media may contribute to conspiratorial thinking by creating a false perception of information diversity……
We collected tweets related to shooting events for more than ten months in 2016. This time period included several high profile shooting events, including mass shootings with civilian casualties at an Orlando, FL nightclub on June 12, in a shopping district in Munich, Germany on July 22, and at a mall in Burlington, WA on September 23. Each of these events catalyzed considerable discussion online and elsewhere about the details and motives of the attack— including claims of the attack being a “false flag”.
More than half of our alternative narrative collection (30,361 tweets) relates to the Orlando event, including:
@ActivistPost: "Was Orlando Shooting A False Flag? Shooter Has Ties To FBI, Regular At Club, Did Not Act Alone? "
This tweet is typical of an alternative narrative tweet, leveraging uncertainty in the form of a leading question (Starbird et al. 2016) to present its theory. The linked-to article—whose title is the content of this tweet—presents evidence to support the theory, including facts about the case (such as previous contact between the FBI and the shooter) and perceived connections to past events that are similarly claimed to be false flags. The underlying theme here is that the U.S. government perpetrated the shooting with the intention of blaming it on Islamic terrorism. This tweet’s author, the ActivistPost, is associated with one of the central nodes in our network graph (see Figures 1-3), referenced in 191 tweets by 153 users and connected (by user activity) to a relatively high number of other domains.
The following tweet, by an account associated with a domain that has a strong edge tie with ActivistPost, forwards a similarly themed alternative narrative:
@veteranstoday: Orlando nightclub shooting: Yet another false flag? - looks like another PR extravaganza
This article was linked-to 147 times in our data. The tweet and the article feature an image with the title, “Omar Mateen: Patsy or MK Mind-Control Slave”. The term patsy is often used to label an accused perpetrator who has been framed for the incident by government or other powerful groups. MK Mind-Control refers to a CIA project that experimented with mind control in the 1950s. This speculative tweet and related article therefore present two potential explanations of the Orlando shooting event, both building off alternative narratives used in previous events. The underlying claim here is that the named suspect was not responsible for the Orlando shootings, but that the U.S. government was. This claim is extended in the article to apply to other violent acts attributed to Muslim terrorists.
Alternative narratives around the Munich shooting had a similar theme, though blame was pushed onto international geo-political actors: Desperate Zionists Commit Another Fraud with Munich Shooting Hoax - NODISINFO
The above tweet links to an article (tweeted 54 times) within the nodisinfo.com domain, one of the most highly tweeted and highly connected domains in our data. Citing photographic evidence from the scene, the article claims that the shooting was a drill, staged by crisis actors. All of these terms echo other alternative narratives of other events. Diverging from the Orlando narratives, which blame the U.S. government, in this case the accused “real” perpetrators are Zionists—echoing long-active narratives about covert power wielded by Jewish bankers and others. The article offers no evidence to support that connection other than reference to other “staged” events.
The Cascade Mall Shooting in Burlington, Washington referenced a third kind of alternative narrative that has appeared after many U.S.-based shootings, including the Sandy Hook School shooting in 2012 and the Umpqua School shooting in 2015. This narrative claims that these mass shooting events are again staged using crisis actors, but in this case by the left-leaning U.S. government to provide a political basis for reducing gun rights.
Absence Of Footage Of Wounded/Deceased Victims. Media Were Told Victims Remained In The Mall #Cascade #FalseFlag
This tweet suggests that there were no actual victims of the event. It links to an article on the memoryholeblog.com domain, which also has a relatively high degree in our network graph and was tweeted 125 times. The linked-to article assembles evidence to make a case for the event being a drill and describes an outlook that connects several events to this narrative: “Such events are reported on by major news media uncritically, thus supporting the call for strengthened gun control measures. […]”
Interestingly, the second most highly referenced event in our alternative narrative collection from 2016 (at 5,914 tweets) is the Sandy Hook shootings, which occurred in 2012. Though a large portion of those tweets contest or deny that alternative narrative, several utilize Sandy Hook “evidence” to support alternative narratives around more recent events. For example:
Orlando shooting was a hoax. Just like Sandy Hook, Boston Bombing, and San Bernandino. Keep believing Rothschild Zionist news companies. More Orlando shooting Hoax – proof - same actors in Sandy hook & Boston Marathon Fake bombing - gun take away agenda.
These two tweets both connect the Orlando Shooting to claims that Sandy Hook was a hoax. In the first, the author refers to the “Rothschild Zionist news companies”, a reference to anti-globalist and anti-media viewpoints that appear as major themes across many alternative news sites. The second tweet connects Orlando to Sandy Hook (and paradoxically the Boston Marathon bombings) as part of an ongoing agenda to reduce gun rights in the U.S.
Taken together, these examples describe a few of what turns out to be a collection of distinct alternative narratives that share several common features. As the above tweets highlight at the micro-level, at the macro-level our domain data demonstrate that different alternative narratives are connected across users and sites—e.g. some users reference both memoryholeblog.com (which assigns blame to U.S. government officials trying to take away gun rights) and veteranstoday.com and/or nodisinfo.com (which theorize that international conspirators set up these events to further their political agendas by falsely blaming Muslim terrorists). Our tweet and domain data suggest that the production of these narratives is a distributed activity where “successful” elements (e.g. drills, crisis actors, Zionist conspirators) of one narrative are combined with others in a mutually reinforcing manner……
Labels:
fake news,
right wing rat bags,
Social media,
Twitter
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