Yet another Liberal-Nationals publicly funded program ripe for rorting by the private sector

Remember the pile on to hoover money from the Research and Development (R&D) Tax Incentive program administered by the Tax Office and the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science or the debacle which is the Vocational Education and Training program?

Well now the Turnbull Government has decided this is great idea. What could possibly go wrong?

HuffPost, 3 April 2017:

CANBERRA – A voluntary internship program, designed to get young people eventually into work, has just been kicked off by the Turnbull Government despite widespread concern about its efficacy and potential for youth exploitation.

Under the Youth Jobs PaTH Program, an unemployed or disadvantage young person under 25 years will be paid an extra $200 a fortnight "incentive" on top of the usual income support payments to complete an internship of between four to 12 weeks….

Businesses partaking in the program will receive an upfront bonus of $1,000 for taking on an intern and get an additional $6,500 if the internship turns into a job.

The Guardian, 3 April 2017:

The Turnbull government launched its Prepare, Train and Hire (PaTH) internship program on Monday despite the legislation for its full implementation being stuck in the Senate.

Implementing the internships without legislation could cost workers up to $42 a fortnight, because the $200 a fortnight they receive for taking on work placements will count as income that reduces their other social security payments.

HuffPost, 3 July 2017:

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull trumpeted a breakthrough for his government's controversial PaTH internship program on Monday, as he unveiled a plan for 10,000 retail interns, but the businesses onboard with the plan have come under fire over previous penalties for mistreating and underpaying workers.

The PaTH plan -- Prepare, Trial, Hire -- was announced in the 2016 budget, designed as a way to get young unemployed people into job training and work experience programs, with a view to getting them off welfare and into paid employment. The job skills training is compulsory, but participating in an internship is voluntary, and completing up to 25 hours a week gives "interns" an extra $200 on top of their existing welfare payments. Businesses that take on interns would also receive thousands in financial incentives.

Unions and workers groups slammed the idea, claiming it would lead to "churn" culture where businesses would stop employing casual or part-time employees who the business itself has to pay, and instead sign up to receive a revolving door of interns who the business not only does not pay, but actually gets paid to take on.

On Monday, Turnbull joined employment minister Michaelia Cash to announce the Australian Retailers Association would "partner" with the government to offer up to 10,000 internships through the PaTH program. News Corp reported that retailers including Battery World, Coffee Club, Bright Eyes and Bakers Delight will participate in the program, but opponents have seized on the recent history of some of those businesses.

"The employers that have signed up to the Youth Path program don't have a good track record treating their workers with respect," said Labor's shadow employment minister Brendan O'Connor and shadow minister for employment services Ed Husic.

"Bakers Delight apprentices, and assistants were reimbursed almost $40,000 after the Fair Work Ombudsman found they were being underpaid. A former Coffee Club franchisee in Brisbane was fined more than $180,000 in penalties for contraventions including an unlawful cash back payment."

The Coffee Club decision was announced on the government's own Fair Work Ombudsman website just two weeks ago.

"The Turnbull Government can't explain how the Youth PaTh program won't displace jobs that could go to full-paid employees. The Government has not outlined how its agreement with retailers will stop subsidised workers from being used by some retailers to avoid paying penalty rates -- by engaging subsidised, so-called 'interns' in penalty shifts that would normally be staffed by employees," Husic and O'Connor said.

SBS News, 4 July 2017:

On Monday, Minister Cash sought to assure potential interns that they would have a decent chance of getting a job at the end of their placement…..

Australian Council of Trade Unions president Ged Kearney said the program offered no path to qualification, employment or workforce protection.

"This is a government-sanctioned program that actually borders on slavery," she told reporters in Melbourne.

"If this does create new jobs, then pay the kids for the jobs. Pay them a wage. They're going to be productive. They're going to be contributing to the bottom line of these businesses."

Trump's America reaches dangerous toxicity levels

The United States of America is becoming a nation to fear.

If the checks and balances within its political structure continue to fracture and the propaganda narrative that those who oppose the Trump Regime are 'evil' grows in volume and intensity, then a destabilised, disintegrating America gone rogue lurching across the international stage is likely to injure us all.

US President Donald J. Trump at a Washington faith rally on Saturday, 1 July 2017

https://youtu.be/n-uuK9xAfTI

National Rifle Association of America call to arms against citizens who oppose Trump

https://youtu.be/WK_jkPhrddc

Somehow this scenario doesn’t seem so farfetched anymore:

Historian Timothy Snyder: “It’s pretty much inevitable” that Trump will try to stage a coup and overthrow democracy.

Business Insider, 3 May 2017:

TIMOTHY SNYDER: So, it’s really important, I think, to accept the logic of our constitutional structure. The logic of our constitutional structure is not that Americans are great. The logic of our constitutional structure is that Americans are people and people have weaknesses.

When the framers of the Constitution were setting up our system, they weren’t thinking about how wonderful we were gonna turn out to be, which is a good thing because we’re not always so wonderful. They were thinking about the structures that would be needed to preserve a Democratic Republic overtime. So the right mood is always scepticism. The framers of the Constitution were worried that someone might come along at some point who could be elected president. This was precisely their worry, who didn’t have concern about the rule of law or about democracy. We are now in that situation.

Up until now, there is nothing in Mr. Trump’s words or in his actions which would convince us or which would even suggest that he cares even a little bit about democracy or about the rule of law. On the contrary, there are plenty of things he said like referring to judges as “so-called” judges, referring to journalists as enemies of the people, talking about “America First” and indulging other kinds of nostalgia for the 1930’s, which suggests he doesn’t like democracy at all. His admiration tends to be limited to foreign tyrants.

So we need to be sceptical about ourselves and we need more than sceptical about him. What I would say is that our institutions were set up for a moment just like this one but they will only protect us if we enliven them and if we support them.

Would you trust these men with your personal health information?

The darknet vendor says they are “exploiting a vulnerability which has a much more solid foundation which means not only will it be a lot faster and easier for myself, but it will be here to stay. I hope, lol.” [The Guardian, 4 July 2017]

Left to Right: Minister for Human Services and Liberal MP for Aston, Alan Tudge

& Minister for Health and Liberal MP for Flinders, Greg Hunt

These two federal politicians have portfolio responsibility for some of the largest government databases in Australia.

One has portfolio responsibility for those sensitive e-health records which are due to be rolled out nationally on an opt-out basis by 2020.

This is how secure your personal information is on their watch…….

The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 July 2017:

The Australian Federal Police is investigating reports Australians' personal Medicare details are being accessed and sold on the dark web, an apparent breach that has been labelled an "internet catastrophe".

According to a Guardian Australia report, an online vendor can pull up the full Medicare card details of any Australian on request — and is selling them for around $30 each — indicating a security hole somewhere in the health system.

Human Services Minister Alan Tudge said the government was taking the matter seriously. 

The sales are reportedly listed on an undisclosed dark web marketplace, in which the vendor claims to be "exploiting a vulnerability" in order to run software that pulls the data. The vendor calls it "the Medicare Machine".

"Leave the first and last name, and DOB of any Australian citizen, and you will receive their Medicare patient details in full", the listing says, adding that the nature of the security hole being utilised means the vendor will be "here to stay".

In a statement, Mr Tudge said any authorised access to Medicare card numbers was "of great concern" and his department was also conducting its own investigation. 

Medicare's database was always a honeypot waiting to be exploited once governments embraced data matching, data retention and data sharing with much enthusiasm but little understanding.

Once someone decides they want your Medicare details ID theft is now just 0.0089 bitcoin away - as is your abusive former spouse/partner or that anonymous stalker or Internet troll that has been making your life a misery.

UPDATE

Anthony Baxter, 4 July 2017:

You supply the person with name, date of birth and gender and around $30 of Bitcoin they'll give you the person's Medicare number. This is pretty bad, as it allows idemtity thieves to forge them - a Medicare card is usually worth 25 points on the standard 100 point ID check here. The AU govt had no idea this was happening until the journo from The Guardian let them know.

It turns out there's a portal that any health care provider can use to look up Medicare numbers this way. In case you've lost your card or whatever. Likely it's someone who works for one of them selling access, or someone's popped a PC there (more on that to come).

When asked, the relevant government minister (the same guy who presided over the Census fuckup last year (update: I misremembered, that was a different clown), the accidental publishing of PBS data that was poorly deidentified and the ongoing Centrelink robodebt nightmare) claimed it's OK because you can't get access to someone's medical records through the shiny new online electronic health records system with just a Medicare number. Aside from ignoring the ID theft issue there's a liiiiiittle bit of an issue here.

Guess what information you need along with the Medicare number to pull someone's medical records? Did you guess "name, date of birth and gender"? Collect your prize.

According to https://www.itnews.com.au/news/govt-blames-medicare-card-breach-on-traditional-crims-467502 the folks who did the Privacy Impact Assessment on the electronic health records system were told it would be secure because you needed Medicare number as well as name/DOB/gender and weren't told you could use the latter to look up the former.

It Gets Worse.

In theory you can only look up this stuff from a secure endpoint, with a client side certificate installed. Which in practice means maybe 20K PCs scattered across every doctors office in the country. Worse still, many of these client certs were originally sent out via unencrypted email, and a nontrivial number were "lost". And you reckon all or even a significant fraction of these 20K boxes are running modern Windows with up to date patches? Me neither. I can't count the number of times I've been left alone in a room with an unlocked doctor's PC while he went to check something.

It (Incredibly) Gets Even Worse.

They have a Two Factor Auth system which doctors are supposed to use. One of the ways to get the 2FA key is, and I wish I was joking here, email.

So get access to a box running some XP/Win7 version that's ludicrously unpatched that's also logged into the doctors email, collect health care records. Australian government cannot computer.

At the moment the electronic health records thing is opt-in, at some point next year they'll be moving to an opt-out scheme with a window to opt-out. There's an email form here https://myhealthrecord.gov.au/internet/mhr/publishing.nsf/content/home where you can sign up to be notified when the window to opt the hell out is opened and I urge everyone to do so ASAP.

UPDATE

The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 July 2017:

The federal government was warned more than three years ago of security deficiencies surrounding personal Medicare data, with the Department of Human Services told it was not fully complying with spy agency rules.

Questioning the department's ability to keep the data safe from "security threats from external and internal sources", the government auditor made a series of recommendations in April 2014 but it is unclear if they were fully implemented.

Unique International College Pty Ltd could face multi-million-dollar fines

Yet another example of the Australian Government’s failed vocational education privatisation policy ……..

http://uniquecollege.com.au/.

On 12 February 2016 Unique International College Pty Ltd had its membership of the Australian Council for Private Education and Training terminated – this was challenged by the company and that matter is still before the Supreme Court,

On 18 April 2017 Unique International College’s VET Provider Approval  was revoked.

At that point students who had been enrolled under VET in the college’s  Diploma of Management,  Advanced Diploma of Management, Diploma of Salon Management and Diploma of Marketing were liable for individual debts of up to $25,000.

By the time this ‘college’ came to the attention of the Australian Consumer Affairs Commission in 2015 its annual income after tax had reached $33.7 million.

During the subsequent court case Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Unique International College [2017] FCA 727 (30 June 2017):

It was alleged that Unique had targeted particular locations for enrolment purposes. These towns and cities were said to be situated in areas where inhabitants were generally people of lower socio-economic means and/or were comprised of a higher percentage of indigenous persons than the average eastern Australian town or city. These locations were said to include: Bankstown, Boggabilla, Bourke, Brewarrina, Emerton, Moree, Taree, Toomelah, Walgett, Wagga Wagga and Granville. At these locations it is then said that Unique conducted marketing operations by, inter alia, calling on consumers at their homes for the purpose of conducting group marketing activities. At these group marketing events, it is alleged that Unique’s staff told the attendees that its courses were free or free until they reached a particular level of income following completion of their chosen course. At the same time, free laptops were allegedly handed out to those who signed up. It is also alleged that the staff were on remuneration arrangements which were based on the number of students whom they were able to convince to enrol.

The Federal Court judgment found that:

The Applicants’ case was that Unique had a ‘system of conduct or pattern of behaviour’ within the meaning of s 21(4)(b) of the ACL. The four features of the Applicants’ case on this which I have accepted are:

(a) the strategy of targeting disadvantaged people by reference to indigeneity, remoteness and social disadvantage (whether deliberate in its original conception or not);
(b) the use of gifts of laptops or iPads to students signing (or loan computers after 31 March 2015);
(c) the use of incentives to staff to encourage them to sign up students; and
(d) the holding of sign-up meetings…..

The effect of the system in (b) to (d) was to supercharge the exploitation of the disadvantaged group which was being targeted (and also Unique’s remarkable profits). The system was unconscionable within the meaning of s 21.

ABC News reported the matter on 30 June 2017:

A private college in Sydney breached consumer law when it signed up thousands of students to loans without them knowing, the Federal Court has ruled.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) took action against the Unique International College in Granville.

It alleged the training college, owned by Amarjit Singh, misled up to 3,600 people when it enrolled them in courses, giving them free laptops and telling them the class was free when in fact they were incurring VET FEE-HELP loans of up to $25,000.

The debt would be payable if they earned more than $54,126 per annum……

Judge Nye Perram found the college made false representations and engaged in a pattern of behaviour that amounted to unconscionable conduct in breach of Australian Consumer Law.

Mr Sims said it was a significant victory and the college could face multi-million-dollar fines.

"Our focus is now on ensuring that the affected customers will not remain in debt because of Unique's exploitative behaviour," he said.

The man intent on bringing down the Liberal Party of Australia

Driven by what looks suspiciously like an increasingly desperate and insatiable need for revenge, sacked prime minister and now ‘humble’ backbencher, Anthony John ‘Tony’ Abbott MP …….

https://youtu.be/Xzmrtv082SE

https://youtu.be/GfDzEG0ynMk

Tony #Abbott is running amok and it's causing the Liberal Party a world of pain, says @barriecassidy. #insidersextra #insiders #auspol pic.twitter.com/zbLHkWUXJq

— Insiders ABC (@InsidersABC) June 30, 2017

The American Resistance has many faces and these are just some of them (9)

See: http://kentucky.gov/Pages/Activity-stream.aspx?n=SOS&prId=120

"President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order creating a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes released the following statement:

While cloaked as an effort to protect the integrity of our elections, President Trump's voter fraud commission will be anything but. The cloak hiding its real mission is thin; indeed, it will no doubt serve as a tool to further real and serious Republican attacks on American voting rights and leave eligible voters disenfranchised.

For months, the President has falsely claimed that millions of illegal votes are cast in our elections. With zero evidence and none provided since, he boldly called into question the honorable work thousands of Americans do to conduct our free and fair elections.

My mission as Kentucky's chief election official has been to tear down barriers to the ballot box, not to erect them. That should be the mission of every American election administrator. This sham voter fraud commission will hamper that mission.

If the President truly wishes to protect American elections, he should finally admit what our intelligence community accepts as fact: Russia and perhaps other foreign powers attempted to influence our presidential election. If the President wants to investigate "voter fraud", let it begin there."

The Hill, 30 June 2017:

Kentucky's secretary of State delivered a biting rejection on Friday of a presidential voter fraud commission's broad request for voter registration information, saying "there's not enough bourbon" in Kentucky to convince her to comply with the demand.

"There's not enough bourbon here in Kentucky to make this request seem sensible," Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) said on MSNBC. "Not on my watch are we going to be releasing sensitive information that relate to the privacy of individuals."

The Washington Post, 1 July 2017:

More than two dozen states have refused to fully comply with a sweeping and unprecedented White House request to turn over voter registration data, including sensitive information like partial Social Security numbers, party affiliation and military status.

Overall, the states that have said they will not be complying at all with the Kobach commission's request represent over 30 percent of the nation's population. That could complicate any efforts to build a truly national voter file, although it remains unclear what the commission's ultimate goal is in collecting the data…..

“I will not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally,” said California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Democrat.

“California's participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud made by the President, the Vice President, and Mr. Kobach,” he added. "[Kobach's] role as vice chair is proof that the ultimate goal of the commission is to enact policies that will result in the disenfranchisement of American citizens.”…..

A number of states said they would only provide limited, publicly available information, as required by state law.

Vermont Secretary of State James Condos (D) said “I am bound by law to provide our publicly available voter file, but will provide no more information than is available to any individual requesting the file.”

North Carolina will comply with the request by handing over “publicly available data as already required under state law,” said Kim Westbrook Strach, the executive director of the bipartisan North Carolina State Board of Elections and Ethics enforcement.

Mississippi rejected the request on privacy and states' rights grounds. “They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico,” Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, said on Friday. “Mississippi residents should celebrate Independence Day and our State's right to protect the privacy of our citizens by conducting our own electoral process."

In Alabama, another GOP stronghold, Secretary of State John Merrill told the Montgomery Advertiser he will not comply with the request until he learns more about how the Kobach commission will keep the data secure. “We’re going to get answers to our questions before we move on this,” Merrill said.

The Kansas secretary of state, a Republican, told the Kansas City Star on Friday that he would not be providing any parts of Kansas voters' Social Security numbers because that data is not publicly available under state law. “In Kansas, the Social Security number is not publicly available,” he said. “Every state receives the same letter, but we’re not asking for it if it’s not publicly available.”

Similarly, Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson said in a statement that “Indiana law doesn't permit the Secretary of State to provide the personal information requested by Secretary Kobach.” Lawson, another Republican, is also a member of the commission.

Trump's tweet suggests the commission's work remains a top priority for him. That's going to cause concern for elections experts and voting rights activists, many of whom are concerned that Kobach will use the state voter registration data to manufacture “evidence” of widespread voter fraud.

“We're concerned about unlawful voter purging, which has been something that Kris Kobach has been leading the charge,” said Vanita Gupta of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and former head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, in an interview Friday.

Gupta and others argue that Kobach doesn't exactly have a reputation for being honest about his work on voter fraud. Just a week ago, a federal judge fined Kobach $1,000 for “presenting misleading arguments in a voting-related lawsuit.”

  

Is the Liberal Party of Australia taking a leaf out of Steve Bannon's playbook

This was a ‘news’ banner on the Liberal Party of Australia’s The Fair Go website on 27 June 2016:

The short eight sentence long spiel behind the login wall began with:

Where does Getup get its money from and what is the real agenda behind the bluster?

From Open Society to Podesta to The Sunrise Project, Avaaz to GetUp in Australia! There’s certainly been a lot of US money a-flowing toward Aussie Leftists groups. So, who is giving who how much and where is it all going?

And ended with this image:

However it did not disclose any “secret money trails” and appeared to base its claims in part on 'fake news' produced during the 2016 US presidential election and the political donations disclosures GetUp! (Getup Limited est. 29 April 2005) regularly submits to the Australian Electoral Commission which can be found on the commission’s website as well as on a GetUp! web page.

According to the staff writers at The Fair Go the villain of the piece is George Soros – one of the people Donald Trump likes to hate – who is supposedly nefariously funding GetUp! through Avaaz.

Of course no mention is made of the fact that two co-founders and current board members of GetUp! were later also co-founders of Avaaz, so there is an existing and acknowledged relationship which has seen these two groups work together on climate change campaigns.

Instead this little gem made it off a staff writer’s keyboard and onto the website:

Getup alone spent $10m on pro-Union, pro-Green, anti-development, anti-jobs agenda last year. They have been getting some help from American organisation Avaaz with $275,000 in donations over the last two years.

But where does Avaaz get their funding from? Open Society Foundation of course! 

All roads lead back to George Soros.

Small problem with the maths though. The figure for the last two Third Party Return of Political Expenditure forms submitted by GetUp! show zero donations from Avaaz in 2015-16 and a single $99,985 donation in 2014-15. Even if one goes back to the 2013-14 form, that included donation would only bring the Avaaz donation total to $195,605 over the last three financial years declared to date.

It should come as no surprise to find that Avaaz also publishes its US expenditure declarations which means that there is even less to The Fair Go’s secrecy claims. Avaaz received a general support grant in 2008-09 from the Open Society Institute (OSI est. 1979) and since then does not appear to have accepted donations from “foundations or corporations”.

As for George Soros and the Open Society Foundations (formerly OSI) – well that registered philanthropic organisation operating world-wide produces annual budgets which show what programs it is involved with and where. Australia is not one of the countries in which it has a presence and, apart from attending at least one international conference which happen to be held in this country and including Australia in its “Case Watch” series and the occasional report, it does not appear to be active here.

The 2016 Open Society Foundations budget showed expected expenditure of US$544.6 million and the 2017 budget expenditure is expected to come in at US$940.7 million. This money goes to small and medium sized organisations such as those providing advocacy, legal aid, assistance to refugees, early childhood development and education and food security in the face of climate change programs, as well as to grass roots activism.

Who would you believe when it comes to “secret money trails”? A political party (with its own political donation probity issues) which couldn’t even come up with an original design for a website which appears to be using the Steve Bannon approach to facts and is aping one of Donald Trump’s pet conspiracy theories, or the publicly available political donation disclosures GetUp! has been submitting since 2006-07.