Watching the watchers in Australia

A 2008 US Embassy cable published by Wikileaks on 29 August 2011 states:

¶3. (C) Scott explained that Australia's Movement Alert List (MAL) has been updated to include not only those persons banned from entering or transiting Australian territory, but also all persons subject to asset freezing or whose travel is subject to reporting. 

An application for a visa by any person on the Movement Alert List triggered an alert to DFAT and/or other agencies responsible for taking action on the specific case. 

The system was as an effective mechanism to screen and prevent travel to Australia by persons of proliferation concern or who were subject to a travel ban, according to Scott. 

This included refusal of visas to Iranians on a regular basis.

According to the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship Movement Alert List fact sheet on 10 August 2010:

As at end of July 2010 there were approximately 630 000 identities of interest listed on MAL.

People may be listed on MAL when they have serious criminal records. Other people listed include those whose presence in Australia may constitute a risk to the Australian community and people who may not enter Australia as they are subject to exclusion periods prescribed by migration legislation. This can occur for a number of reasons, including health concerns, debts owed to the Commonwealth or other adverse immigration records.

About 1.8 million documents of concern are also recorded on MAL. These include reported lost, stolen or fraudulently altered travel documents.

Details of identities of concern are recorded on MAL as a result of the department's liaison with security, law enforcement agencies, other Australian Government departments and immigration officers in Australia and overseas.

If there is a MAL match a decision on entry is taken by the department in consultation with any other relevant agency.

Now aside from what seems like an incredible number of people being on the Australian Government’s watch and/or no fly data base, it would appear that if one owes a “debt to the Commonwealth” then the no fly provisions will possibly be activated.

Which may be of some concern to those Australians with large unpaid tax bills, those owing money due to cash transfer overpayments or having significant outstanding costs awarded against them in favour of a federal government agency; who probably were not expecting the Tax Office, Centrelink or the Attorney-General to be contributing to the Movement Alert List and now find their names side by side with those of suspected Al Qaeda sympathizers.

Given that Australian citizens already residing in the country are being placed on this list and, a second 2010 US Embassy cable indicates that information on these citizens when officially passed on to the US Government will possibly result in those named (after assessment by the Visas Viper committee) being placed on American no fly and/or selectee lists, one has to wonder exactly how many government departments are contributing names to the Australian Movement Alert List.

Judges don't sh*t ice-cream

Due to blog formatting problems this post can be found here.

Would you really like this bloke to be Australia's next prime minister?

*Due to blog formatting problems this post can be read here.

Fairfax must reckon its readers are mugs

Prominently posted at the top of the front page of today's Sun Herald is a promo for a free Top Gun DVD.

Readers are referred to page 36 for details about how they go about getting the free DVD.

Fairfax has a strange idea of what "free" means.

To get the "free" DVD readers have to sign up and join a
DVD hire mob and that requires readers handing over their
credit card details. Not likely!

Elite private school sources funds from drug dealer

Being Sunday and the broadsheets not publishing today it's only reasonable that NCV does a bit of tabloid-like blogging.

Cranbrook, an Anglican independent non-selective day and boarding school for boys, located at 5 Victoria Road Bellevue Hill, has found itself in the picture for accepting cash from a drug dealer as payment for school fees.

Today's Sun Herald reports:

Even cocaine traffickers have to pay their kids' school fees. But the Maroubra drug dealer Wayne Cleveland miscalculated when he turned up at Cranbrook on March 12, 2008, with $40,000 in cash.

According to a police statement tendered in the District Court, the school, apparently alarmed at the sight of so much money, declined to accept the full amount owing, taking just $15,000. To add insult to injury, it told Cleveland it might have to report the transaction to authorities because it was more than $10,000.

Somewhat panicked, Cleveland turned to his friend and prominent eastern suburbs real estate agent Glenn Farah, the then chief executive officer of NG Farah, a family business founded almost 50 years ago.

Read more here.

A now defunct Port Macquarie newspaper gets caught out in yet another conflict of interest

The Port Paper shutdown with suspicious alacrity once its connection to The National Party of Australia began to surface.

However, even the quoted paragraph below by The Poll Bludger  on 27 August 2011 and the earlier 
allegations of push polling do not explain why the newspaper’s owner/s folded their tent so quickly or why there appears to be deliberate obfuscation over the company name.

In other poll news, a fortnightly Port Macquarie-based publication called The Port Paper has published results from an automated phone poll conducted by ReachTEL in Rob Oakeshott’s electorate of Lyne showing support for Rob Oakeshott at just 14.8 per cent, against 55.3 per cent for the Coalition and 17 per cent for Labor. This has raised eyebrows on a number of counts. Firstly, the question on voting intention was the last of three put to respondents, after attitudinal questions on carbon tax and pokies reforms (both of which were strongly opposed), which is commonly recognised in the polling caper as the wrong way to get an accurate response. Secondly, the principals behind The Port Paper are very strongly associated with the Nationals. And thirdly, Bernard Keane in Crikey today relates that ReachTEL “proudly announced it was an associate member of Clubs Qld, which has this year been campaigning aggressively against the Andrew Wilkie-led poker machine reform push. The Port Paper story fails to disclose that.”

Perhaps that grave acronym ICAC being publicly coupled with a certain NSW O’Farrell Government Minister (who joined the Solar Bonus Scheme at the then optimum kilowatt hour pricing and whose own electorate abuts Port Macquarie) is what routed this supposedly independent publication - given an associate of the newspaper is also reportedly a policy adviser to this same minister.

The close proximity of yet another Nationals MP (whose electoral office is only approximately four street corners away from the newspaper office and who is a Facebook friend of The Port Paper editor and its website registration contact person aka ministerial policy advisor) probably didn’t smooth the feathers of the publishing company’s handful of unidentified shareholders either.

One has to wonder if they are also connected to the National Party in some manner, as The Port Paper paper often reads like those political campaign leaflets or MP newsletters not uncommonly found in NSW North Coast letter boxes.

At least one of the newspaper's advertisers (also quoted in a prominent anti-Oakeshott article) may possibly be one of these shareholders.

Sunday Snaps

Debrah Novak Untitled

Anna Calvert Clarence River Grafton NSW

John Nalder Reflective Sunset Hat Head NSW

Pet Census

Are you disappointed that the latest census didn't ask about your furry, feathery or scaly friends?
Pet Census 2011 enables some pet owners to provide their loved ones' details, but lovers of goats, handlers of snakes and riders of horses will be disappointed to know they are excluded from the census and can't fill out the form at www.petcensus.com.au .
Sadly, only cats and dogs are included in the census.



The Pet Census is commissioned by Petplan Australasia Pty Ltd which states the census seeks to explore four main areas relating to human-animal relationship, namely, health, finance, social relations and family life. Whilst Australians are already known to be a nation of animal lovers, the findings may show that pets actually play their part in a 'big society' with proof that pets make us more compassionate, happier, healthier and more sociable.

Reminder: Monday 5 September is the last opportunity for people to submit that other Census form online using eCensus. That Census is compulsory for everyone who was in Australia on Census night, Tuesday, 9 August 2011.

Been wondering why Tony Abbott appears to be enthusiastically treading the Republican Tea Party path? Well wonder no more...

He may not quite have the full hang of it yet, but the not-so-honourable Tony Abbott MHR has obviously caught sight of a Tea Party aktion cheat sheet and for months has been happily whipping up angry wingnuts wherever he can find them.

Perhaps his decision to turn political debate into a mindlessly ugly experience can be found among those U.S. diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks.

In September 2006 Liberal Party Federal Director Brian Loughnane was considered a Protected Source by the U.S. Embassy in Canberra and was busy telling with the Yanks that; “the close ties between President Bush and Howard where reflected in the similarly strong ties between the Australian Liberal and U.S. Republican parties.”