Janelle Saffin MP on North Coast industrial relations

Federal Labor's Janelle Saffin, Member for Page, speaking in the House of Representatives last week:

Re-establishing fairness to Australian workplaces was one of the hallmarks of the Rudd Labor government, so when I hear of workers in my electorate of Page being treated more like cattle than people it makes my blood boil. One of my first jobs after leaving school in Ipswich was as an abattoir hand. It was hard, physical and sometimes dangerous work. On staggered days last year—28 November, 1 December and 2 December—up to 23 employees turned up to a south Grafton abattoir for work to be told by embarrassed foremen that they were out of a job due to 'a WorkCover thing'. They were handed a week's pay, shown the gate and thrown out on Armidale Road to uncertain futures. Appallingly, they did not receive their rightful entitlements: termination pay, redundancy, annual leave and long service—nothing. Coming up to Christmas, with mortgages to service, bills to pay and presents to buy, this was a very cruel, bloody-minded and gutless way to treat employees, some of whom had been veterans of the slaughter floor.

All of these workers tell me they were employed by Tempus Holdings Pty Ltd, a labour hire company that provided labour to abattoir owner Stuart Ramsey's company Ramsey Food Processing Pty Ltd. The sacked workers were informed in writing that Tempus Holdings would on 28 November 2008 cease to be a labour hire company supplying labour for Ramsey Food Processing Pty Ltd. The local Daily Examiner newspaper, which has been championing the plight of the affected workers and their right to entitlements, has repeatedly asked Stuart Ramsay, Tempus Holdings director Michael Considine and their solicitors about the complex corporate structure attached to the abattoir. The Daily Examiner's inquiries have been met by silence and stonewalling. I have twice written to Mr Ramsey, on 12 December and 12 January, on behalf of my constituents seeking clarification on exactly who is responsible for paying the sacked workers their outstanding entitlements, but I have had no response to date............

I have arranged for any sacked abattoir employee to get free legal advice on unfair dismissal or unlawful termination from the Lismore based Northern Rivers Community Legal Centre. I have raised this with my colleague the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations the Hon. Julia Gillard. I raised the allegations of these men with the Commonwealth Workplace Ombudsman and am heartened to say that they have given a high priority to their investigation..........

I know that the Workplace Ombudsman recently served a notice to produce documents on the director at the registered office of Tempus Holdings and that significant resources are being directed at the investigation. I am encouraging more affected workers to come forward and provide evidence so that they can recover what is rightfully theirs and perhaps discourage rogue employers out there from running roughshod over other workforces in regional Australia. I do not care what tricky, albeit legal, company arrangements may have been put in place, the person morally and ethically responsible for paying these workers their entitlements is the person who owns the abattoir—Stuart Ramsey.

The full text of Ms. Saffin's speech here.

Is local government to blame for bushfire vulnerability in villages and small towns?

As the main stream media and blogosphere begin to discuss the causes of Victorian bushfire fatalities, a voice of reason is heard in the remarks of Russell Rees, chief officer of Victoria's Country Fire Authority:

AUSTRALIANS living in the bush and in semi-rural suburbs must change the way they live or else risk dying in bushfires....................
firefighters could no longer guarantee saving the lives of those who chose to surround themselves with vegetation despite the obvious fire risks.................

"We've got to choose," .....'If we choose to live in this way, then who do we blame? My fear is that people will say the fire service failed (last Saturday) and I will go to my grave saying we fought our guts out.
"Fundamentally, our community is choosing to live in a way I can't, and our people can't, guarantee their survival. Why do we choose a system of civilisation that puts itself at so much risk?"

Mr. Rees quite rightly mentions personal lifestyle preferences.

However, we also need to remember that local government hungry for residential and business rate revenues and developers avid for less expensive land to sell on at a profit are also pushing the same dangerous (albeit attractive) lifestyle.

This same scenario can be seen playing out in the Northern Rivers coastal town of Yamba right now.

Not only is Clarence Valley Council seriously considering development of flood prone land at West Yamba, this same land sits directly above scrub and forest cover which extends further south into Yuraygir National Park.

When strong southerly winds are driving bushfires, the blaze can (and has) come raging up past Wooloweyah and begin knocking on West Yamba's door.

Which makes one narrow bridge over the Clarence estuary a very chancy exit for around 6,000 people.

Photograph from The Australian

Greed no longer rules in the corridors of power?

I've watched with growing amazement as governments all around the world have thrown money at financial institutions and industry with almost reckless abandon as everyone tries to stop the economic haemorrhaging.
I thanked my lucky stars that (with the exception of the ABC childcare debacle) money wasn't going directly to corporation bailouts here in Australia.

When the Yanks began to put together their latest stimulus package I thought that some sanity might be returning, for President Obama was making a lot of noise about stopping these big corporations spending some of that enormous pile of taxpayer funding on their own salary packages and bonuses.

At first it seemed that my optimism was premature and greed was still stalking the corridors of power and board rooms across America because it appeared that the move to cap these often multi-million dollar payouts is in trouble.
"Congressional efforts to impose stringent restrictions on executive compensation appeared to be evaporating yesterday as House and Senate negotiators worked to fine-tune the compromise stimulus bill."
Another day brought other news however and the U.S. Congress has gone even further than the conditions suggested by Obama as it applies the cap retrospectively.
"The bill, which President Obama is expected to sign into law next week, limits bonuses for executives at all financial institutions receiving government funds to no more than a third of their annual compensation. The bonuses must be paid in company stock that can be redeemed only when the government investment has been repaid. With the measure, lawmakers seek to address public outrage over extravagant Wall Street paydays even as taxpayers bail out the industry."

Perhaps Sol Trujillo may decide to stay with Telstra after all - he now milks a more productive cow Downunder.

Across the Pacific: links comparing two economic stimulus packages

For all those political tragics out there this weekend.

From Open Congress last week the Obama Administration's $789.5 billion economic stimulus package in its final form:

H.R. 1 – American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009:

Text of the Conference Report-Division A

Text of the Conference Report-Division B

Joint Explanatory Statement – Division A

Joint Explanatory Statement – Division B

From Com Law the Rudd Government $42 billion economic stimulus package passed by the Australian Parliament last week:

Appropriation (Nation Building and Jobs) Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009

Appropriation (Nation Building and Jobs) Bill (No. 2) 2008-2009

Household Stimulus Package Bill 2009

Tax Bonus for Working Australians Bill 2009

Tax Bonus for Working Australians (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009

Commonwealth Inscribed Stock Amendment Bill 2009

As the stimulus package amendments which the Rudd Government was forced to concede do not yet appear to have made it into publication, here is the Senate Hansard transcript for 12 February 2009.

Are hot days melting the Internetz?

Almost marching side by side with rising summer temperatures across Australia since late January - early February has been the strange behaviour of my Internet connection.

Now either (i) the heat is so severe that the Internetz are melting, (ii) I've suddenly developed the most wayward Internet connection, or (iii) some of the 6 ISPs identified as taking part in Conroy's ISP-level filtering trial (or a number of the other 10 small ISPs rumoured to be involved) are currently gearing up.

I telephoned Senator Conroy's Canberra office on Thursday 15 January and was told that the ISP applications of expression of interest were still being assessed and that the entire matter was behind a Chinese wall as it involved a commercial tender process and therefore was commercial-in-confidence.
I was further informed that the ISP-level filtering trial would not start for a couple of weeks at least.
This would of course take the staggered startup for the live trial right into the high volume of Net traffic as business entered its first full trading month for 2009.

Last Monday 9 February when I telephoned again I found the Senator's office was in a whimsical I don't THINK it's begun yet mood.

However, on Wednesday 11 February Senator Conroy finally announced that the trial was all go with six ISPs involved: Primus, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1.
Though he was careful not to give a start date for the trial. Here are Senator Conroy's weasel words in the media release.

So who do I believe here - the first staffer's very polite Sergeant Shultz defence, Conroy's sidestepping, or my suddenly erratic Internet connection?

Examples of the high number of Windows/Internet Explorer messages I have been seeing so far this past week:

The Requested Page Could Not Be Found

Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage

Proxy Error

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request *******************************.

Reason: Error reading from remote server

The webpage cannot be found

HTTP 404

Most likely causes:

There might be a typing error in the address.

If you clicked on a link, it may be out of date.

(Er, say again. It was the Google search engine I was trying to access)

403 Forbidden (WTF. It was an international news site)

403 Forbidden (For heaven's sake it was a picture of a beach, minus people!)

Server Error

The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
Please try again in 30 seconds.
Please see Google's Terms of Service posted at http://www.google.com/terms_of_service.html
(Oh dear, and all I was trying to do was read Still LIfe with Cat)

The web site you are accessing has experienced an unexpected error.
Please contact the website administrator.

Navigation to the webpage was canceled

Information Alert
Status : 504 Gateway Time-Out
Description : Unable to connect to origin web server. The web site you are attempting to access is currently unreachable. This may be due to a network outage, or the web site might be experiencing technical difficulties.

You are not permitted to browse this view (The Attorney-General's department has a hissy fit?)

And no, before anyone suggests it, my PCs don't appear to be infected with anything according to the checks I've run.