l'état, c'est moi: Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison is acting more like an autocrat every day

"Until this week, I’ve felt that comparisons between Morrison and Donald Trump have been way overblown. Now, I’m not so sure."  [Journalist Katherine Murphy writing in The Guardian, 28 November 2019]

In which it is revealed that Scott Morrison made a 'perfect' phone call à la Trump......

Crikey Worm: For the early birds, 28 November 2019:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is coming under increasing fire over his phone call to the NSW police commissioner, with a former top judge calling it an inappropriate use of his position.

Former ICAC commissioner David Ipp said the call appeared to have been made in the interests of political decision-making, rather than in the interest of the state, telling The Guardian “an ordinary citizen would not be able to get that information from the police … so what is it about the prime minister that entitles him to that information?” Ipp joins former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and Labor leader Anthony Albanese in condemning the call. The prime minister has refused to release notes from the call with the police chief, despite differing accounts of what was discussed, The New Daily reports.

THEY REALLY SAID THAT? 

“	Being blunt about it, it is a call I would not have made. — Malcolm Turnbull

The former prime minister offers his two cents on his successor’s decision to ring the NSW police chief.

So who do Australian trust the least these days?

Between 20 July and 29 July 2019 fifty-four thousand nine hundred and seventy (54,970) Australia Talks National Survey respondents were shown eleven professional categories and asked to rank them by level of trust.

The online survey question was; "How much do you trust each of the following?"

This was the result based on the proportion of respondents supporting each political party who answered "somewhat" or "a lot".

ABC News, 27 November 2019

It seems that the least trusted professions are:

1. Celebrities - 8%
2. Politicians - 19%
3. Corporate Exectutives - 20%
4. Religious Leaders - 29%.

The most trusted professions are:

1. Doctors & Nurses - 97%
2. Scientists - 93%
3. Police & Law Enforcement - 84%
4. Judges 80%.

When a frontpage montage goes horribly wrong

The Daily Examiner, Page One, 28 November 2019

Ghostly onlookers to an unfolding environmental and societal disaster - transparent bodies and a missing head turns this unacknowledged montage into a mockery of the current emergency.

Cartoons of the Week

David Rowe

Morrison Government's union busting 'Ensuring Integrity Bill' defeated in the Senate

Prime Minister Scott Morrison's pride and joy, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019, intended to weaken and perhaps even destroy registered unions in Australia was negatived in Committee of the Whole by the Senate.

The vote was tied at 34-all, with One Nation's two senators along with Senator Jacqui Lambie voting with the Greens and Labor.

It took 147 days for political commonsense to prevail but on 28 November 2019 the Senate politely told the prime minister and his hard right cronies where to go.

Another bill Morrison is reportedly hoping to pass before the parliamentary Christmas break is the Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Bill 2019 which removes provisions for asylum seeker detainee medical transfers to Australia from Manus Island and Nauru ('medevac').

BACKGROUND

Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), media release, 26 November 2019:

In a blow to the Morrison Government’s arguments for the Ensuring Integrity Bill currently before the senate the Federal Court has ruled the union regulator, the Register Organisations Commission (ROC) investigation into the AWU was invalid. 

Justice Bromberg has ruled that the ROC did not have grounds to order an AFP raid on the offices of the AWU and has ordered the return of the documents that were seized on behalf of the regulator in their first act after being established by the Liberal Government in 2017. 

The decision comes as the Morrison Government attempts to pass the Ensuring Integrity Bill in the Senate which would give the ROC the extreme power to determine which unions are deregistered and which officials are disqualified under the dangerous and hypocritical new union-busting law. 

Under the EI Bill the ROC would have the power to begin deregistration proceedings against a union which had made a handful of paperwork mistakes over a period of 10 years. 

Quotes attributable to ACTU President Michele O’Neil: 

“The Morrison government has been telling Senators that the ROC is an impartial body which can administer the extraordinary powers granted under EI. The Federal Court has just found it conducted an illegal raid on a union office. 

“Giving union busters more power to drag unions into courts over minor paperwork breaches, some that would only cost a company an $80 fine, Will cost members and the taxpayer millions in legal fees. This is before accounting for the cost of not being able to campaign for higher wages, better working conditions and safer workplaces. 

“To defend themselves from the ROC’s harrassment the AWU was forced to expending significant resources over two years to get justice. If the Ensuring Integrity Bill passes, all unions could face this harrassment over paperwork breaches. 

“Questions also need to be asked of the ROC who is continuing to waste tax payer’s money to challenge this finding. “This ruling gives the crossbench senators a stark example of how the Morrison government targets unions and will stop at nothing to try and bust unions. Ensuring Integrity will become another tool for union busters and should be rejected. 

“The Federal Court decision is a vindication for the AWU but also a warning for the Senate crossbench who weighing amendments which would give this discredited body even more power.”

BACKGROUND

On 20 October 2017, Mr Chris Enright, the Executive Director of the Registered Organisation Commission (ROC) and a delegate of the Commissioner decided to conduct an investigation.

Judgment in Australian Workers’ Union v Registered Organisations Commissioner (No 9) [2019] FCA 1671 was delivered on 11 October 2019. The judgment concluded that; "the decision to conduct an investigation as to whether ss 285(1), 286(1) and 287(1) of the RO Act had been contravened was affected by jurisdictional error and is invalid."

Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 was introduced by the Morrison Coaltion Government in July 2019 and was currently before the Senate for the second reading debate when the ACTU penned the aforementioned media release.

*Images of ROC document come from the published Federal Court judgment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Bill 2019  is apparently scheduled for a second reading before 5 December 2019.

This bill removes provisions in Schedule 6 of the Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Act 2019. These provisions (commonly referred to as the medical transfer, or medevac, provisions) established a framework for the transfer of transitory persons from regional processing countries to Australia for the purpose of medical treatment or assessment. The Bill also amends the Migration Act to allow for the removal of people brought to Australia under the medical transfer provisions back to a regional processing country once they no longer need to be in Australia.

On 27 November 2019 a nonconforming petition was tabled in the Senate asking for medevac provisions to be saved. It contains 51,299 signatures.

On the same day Professor David Isaacs, Clinical Professor, Paediatrics & Child Health, Fellow, Royal Australasian College of Physicians was joined by doctors in Canberra urging senators to reject the medevac repeal bill. Professor Isaacs carried an open letter signed by 5,040 doctors urging Senator Jacqui Lambie to save medevac.

Another year, another global greenhouse gas emissions record

Australia as the 15th highest greenhouse gas emitter in absolute terms - and the highest in per capita terms among developed countries - contributed to rising emissions in the report below.

World Meteorologocal Organisation, Global Atmosphere Watch, WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin: The State of Greenhouse Gases in the AtmosphereBased on Global Observations through 2018, excerpt, 25 November 2019:

The latest analysis of observations from the WMO GAW Programme shows that globally averaged surface mole fractions(1) calculated from this in-situ network for carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) reached new highs in 2018, with CO2 at 407.8±0.1 ppm(2), CH4 at 1869±2 ppb(3) and N2O at 331.1±0.1 ppb. 

These values represent, respectively, 147%, 259% and 123% of pre-industrial (before 1750) levels. 

The increase in CO2 from 2017 to 2018 was very close to that observed from 2016 to 2017, and practically equal to the average yearly increase over the last decade. 

For CH4, the increase from 2017 to 2018 was higher than both that observed from 2016 to 2017 and the average over the last decade. 

For N2O, the increase from 2017 to 2018 was also higher than that observed from 2016 to 2017 and the average growth rate over the past 10 years. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI) [9] shows that from 1990 to 2018 radiative forcing by long-lived greenhouse gases (LLGHGs) increased by 43%, with CO2 accounting for about 80% of this increase.

NSW Police investigating Australian Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction & Liberal MP for Hume Angus Talyor's use of an apparently fraudulent document

SBS News, 26 November 2019:

NSW POLICE ARE INVESTIGATING A FRAUDULENT DOCUMENT USED BY ANGUS TAYLOR'S OFFICE TO CRITICISE CLOVER MOORE

NSW Police has opened an investigation into an apparently fraudulent document used by federal energy minister Angus Taylor to attack Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore over her council's travel expenditure.

A spokesperson for the Lord Mayor confirmed that "the Office of the Lord Mayor has been contacted by NSW Police regarding its investigation into falsified City documents used to inform Minister Taylor's correspondence with the Lord Mayor. The City will fully cooperate with the police investigation."

NSW Police confirmed that an investigation is underway, telling SBS that "the NSW Police Force is in the early stages of investigating information into the reported creation of fraudulent documentation."

"Detectives from the State Crime Command's Financial Crimes Squad have launched Strike Force Garrad to investigate the matters and determine if any criminal offences have been committed. As investigations are ongoing, no further information is available."

Controversy over the document in question began in September when the Daily Telegraph reported that the City of Sydney Council spent more on domestic and international flights than Australia's foreign ministers.

The story quoted from a letter sent by Mr Taylor to Clover Moore, which claimed that the City of Sydney's 2017-18 annual report "shows your council spent $1.7m on international travel and $14.2m on domestic travel".

These figures differed significantly from the council's publicly available annual report, which reported spending of $4,206.32 on domestic travel and $1,727.77 on international travel.

In emails to Ms Moore's office obtained by The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph said the figures in its story were drawn from a copy of the City of Sydney's annual report provided to the newspaper by Mr Taylor's office.

In Parliament, Mr Taylor has repeatedly claimed that the document in question was "drawn directly from the City of Sydney's website" and was "publicly available".

The City of Sydney says that the documents on its website have not been altered since they were uploaded in 2018.

Mr Taylor has since refused to answer questions about the document......