The Plibersek Industrial Relations Philosophy - I own you body and soul

The not-for-profit workforce

It was estimated that 5.2 million Australian volunteered in 2007 (ABS 2007b). Of these, 4.6 million were estimated to volunteer with the NFP sector. Around two-thirds of these volunteer with NFPs that do not have employees. The volunteer workforce was estimated in the ABS satellite accounts to provide over $14.6 billion of unpaid labour in 2006-07.

[Dept. Prime Minister and Cabinet,research report,2011]

The theme of the 10th anniversary of the International Year of the Volunteer is ‘Inspire the Volunteer in You’. Pierre, your work as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development and your fundraising for Habitat for Humanity has certainly inspired many here today.

Thank you for asking me to be with you today to help launch the Australian Volunteers for International Development Program.

Australians are a generous and compassionate people. In 2006, over 5 million people – that’s more than one-in-three adult Australians – volunteered for an estimated 700,000 not-for-profit and non-government organisations.

[Minister for Human Services and Minister for Social Inclusion Tanya Plibersek, Transcript: Launch of the Australian Volunteers for International Development, 2011]

LAST week, Tanya Plibersek challenged Australian governments and businesses to create a stronger and more sustainable volunteering sector. This week, 37,000 employees in her department were told that if they wished to engage in volunteering activities in the future, they would have to get their manager's permission first…..

For the first time, unpaid weekend volunteer work will come under the scrutiny of departmental supervisors, and public sector employees must get approval before undertaking such work. Employees must apply for a renewal of that approval every 12 months and will also be subject to a ''regular review'' of their activities.

The new policy also requires public servants to tell the department if the nature of their volunteering duties within a charitable or not-for-profit organisation changes during the 12-month period.

[Brisbane Times,10 December 2011, Public servants told to seek approval to volunteer]

Last week the Federal Department of Human Services tried to turn Australia’s volunteering culture on its head.

Ms. Plibersek denies any input into this new policy, however the minister of the day sets the tone for such changes to occur.

She personally, the department she heads and government generally need to recognise that their workers are neither serfs, indentured servants nor outright slaves – they do not own them body and soul.

An employer has a right to direct an employee for the period of each day which represents the agreed work day – not one jot more than that. Traditionally this broke each day of the working week down into Eight hours labour, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest.

The sort of skewed thinking which demands 24/7 allegiance to the wishes of an employer more properly belongs to the likes of the Liberal and National parties not the Australian Labor Party.

Ms.Plibersek needs to remember to which political party she actually belongs, as does the Prime Minister under whose leadership this attitude towards public servants has obviously been allowed to flourish.

Cartoon from ClipartOf

"There's a better way to help problem gamblers."

And any better way doesn't involve Fr. Chris Riley who admits to his charity receiving millions from the Australian clubs industry and that certainty means statements made by him on the subject as loaded down with pecuniary interest.
Last week CathNews reported:
"Father Chris Riley, the latest face in the clubs' campaign to block pokies reform, accepted $50,000 for a youth centre operated by his charity from Len Ainsworth, the founder of Australia's largest gaming machine company, Aristocrat Leisure, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
Father Riley's charity, Youth Off The Streets, also appears to have a longstanding connection with the Ainsworths - Mr Ainsworth's daughter-in-law, Anna Ainsworth, has been on the board of the charity since 2002 and was its chairwoman from 2008 until early this year.
Like many charities, Youth Off The Streets also receives funding made available by clubs - $122,325 in 2011............
The Catholic Social Services Australia executive director, Paul O'Callaghan, said Father Riley's stance was disappointing given the evidence that showed counselling alone was not enough to deal with problem gambling.
According to The Australian, Youth Off the Streets has received more than $3.5 million, nearly a decade up to 2009, from hundreds of clubs in NSW.
"Youth Off the Streets and ClubsNSW have worked in partnership for nearly a decade," Fr Chris Riley reportedly wrote in a 2009 submission to a Productivity Commission's inquiry into gambling reforms."
A bad move from a man who is shamelessly trying to parley his dog collar into dollars.

Privacy Breach: Telstra was going to tell its customers, when?

Image from The Age 10 December 2011

http://telstratccmail.custhelp.com/app/bundles_search/

Sensible Telstra customers will be changing their passwords promptly as a first measure after reading this in The Australian this morning:

TELSTRA faces the wrath of the federal Privacy Commissioner after leaving details of potentially millions of customers exposed on the web, reportedly including their user names and passwords.

The details were exposed on a search page used by Telstra customer service agents that was left unprotected and openly accessible on the web.

The page, titled "Telstra Bundles request search", was reportedly discovered by a user of the community broadband forum Whirlpool.

Telstra hastily took down the site after it became aware of the breach yesterday afternoon, but not before computer security experts showed it could be used to access customer details including their account numbers, broadband packages, technician visits, and in some cases their email user names and individual passwords.

Media reports suggested credit check details (but not credit card details) were also accessible, but that has not been confirmed by Telstra.

Telstra said it was uncertain how many customers' details were potentially breached.

"It's unsure at this stage -- it appears to be limited to bundled customers but we don't know how many," a Telstra spokeswoman said.

In its annual report for this year, Telstra said it had sold 659,000 new product bundles in the year to June 30.

Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim has been made aware of the breach and a full investigation and report will be completed as soon as possible.

The Telstra spokeswoman said the carrier's priority was to close the security gap.

The company would move as quickly as possible to notify customers of the breach and maintain transparency in reporting details of the incident….

Whirlpool forum regular exposes this privacy fail (emanating from what looks suspiciously like an internal company database whose creation and management may have been outsourced) at 1.08pm 9 December 2011:

Ugh, well, after a series of good experiences dealing with Telstra over the last eighteen months it feels like we're back in the bad old days. Tl;dr: Telstra is an enormous corporation with a seemingly endless number of autonomous departments, none of which knows what any of the others is doing. Telstra have leaked customer information onto the Web. I signed up for the $78 deal on 24th November—hadn't previously had a bundle on my account, or a Bigpond connection. Got my bill by email yesterday and, sure enough, the discount wasn't applied. First thing I did was to jump onto online chat. Had to wait over 10 minutes for a consultant (which was fine because I could basically just get on with my work). He didn't know anything about the $78 offer, but I gave him the link, it felt like he was about to apply the discount both to my current bill and to future bills, but then he told me that I would have to ring 1800 330 192. OK. I rang 1800 330 192 and after some humming and hawing the guy there gave me the $13 credit on my bill for this month ($10 plus the discount for the pro-rata initial period), but said that they don't in fact know anything about the $78 deal, and that I would have to ring the 'Bundles' department at 1800 008 851. Incidentally, if you do a Google search for that number, you get a very interesting result. Um, Telstra, that's customer information just sitting out on the open Web… That page also seems to suggest that he shouldn't have given me the number, but should have put me through…….

Despite this unforgivable privacy breach, I'm told Telstra is not making it easy for customers to access their accounts to change passwords as its My BigPond is currently offline due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems.

The art of the small

From the wonderful lens of Pieces of Contentment, a Northern New South Wales blog……..

A classic two-faced political balfastard?

And Aussie pollies wonder why they have such a credibility problem…………..

Nationals Lismore MP Thomas George, whose son Cr. Stuart George (who reportedly owes him a considerable pile of dosh) is currently employed by the coal seam gas industry:

“Mr George said he had been working behind closed doors to make representations {concerning coal seam gas issues} on behalf of his constituents to Resources Minister Chris Hartcher.”

Betcha didn't know this APN staffer was so talented

The Daily Examiner is always guaranteed to provide a bit of light relief and Thursday's edition was no exception. It carried wine reviews by a bloke who previously paraded around the Clarence valley posing as a newspaper editor. Nowadays the bloke's associated with APN on Queensland's Fraser coast.
Thursday's Examiner treated its readers to the bloke's reviews of three Aussie wines. His reviews of Taylors 2011 Sauvignon Blanc, Mandala 2010 Blanc De Blancs and Yellowglen NV Spritz Chilled White provided enough evidence to confirm that Huon Hooke, James Halliday et al can sleep comfortably at night, knowing Pete isn't going to take their jobs.

 Image credit: The Daily Examiner, 8/12/11

On feeling OLD........

Whatever happened to liquorice straps, sherbet cones, slate pencils, genuine musk sticks, rainbow balls, allsorts, mint leaves, bulls eyes, candy hearts, snow balls, caramel chews, tiny macaroons, freckles made with quality chocolate, big fat jelly babies with faces and navels, cobbers the size of doorstops and stick jaw toffees?

Oh, I feel OLD when I read this Roy Morgan graph with its list of sterile, globalised lollies:

Oi, Richie! Please explain that extra council rate gouge

This is what NSW Independent Pricing And Regulatory Tribunal said when it set the council rate peg percentage for 2012/13 at 3.6% on 6^th December 2011:

* we took the increase of 3.4% in the Local Government Cost Index (LGCI) for the year to September 2011

* we deducted a productivity factor of 0.2%

* for this year only, we have added a carbon price advance of 0.4%.

This is what Clarence Valley Mayor and recently unsuccessful Nationals pre-selection candidate, Richie Williamson, told ratepayers in The Daily Examiner on 8^th December:

“..council's costs would rise by between .4 and .5% as a result of the tax, and the local government minister had factored in a carbon tax increase of .5% when determining the rate-pegging limit.”

Now if Bazza O’Farrell and Local Government Minister Don Page have indeed granted Clarence Valley Council an extra .1% increase above the IPART ruling, fellow travellers Richie, Bazza and Don need to explain why this isn’t an attempt to gouge local ratepayers based on an ideological desire to cast the Federal Gillard Government in a bad light.

Dorrigo Environment Watch contradicts Anchor Resources claims concerning community consultation

Community consultation contradictions

In early November 2011 Dorrigo Environment Watch Inc undertook a survey of local residents near the Wild Cattle Creek Mine to substantiate Anchor Resource’s claims of wide community consultation. The results of the survey contradict these claims.

In an interview with Katya Quigley Coffs Coast ABC Radio on October 6^th  2011 Anchor Resources General Manager Ian Price quoted ‘Anchor since it started exploration drilling, in about 2009 has consulted widely with the local residents particularly in the area affected by the project. We continue to do that as there are changes and we planned to do activities that’s included letter drops and face to face meetings with people. We are continuing that consultation into the local community, distributing an updated brochure to people in the community and will continue to do that work.’

A follow on interview on the 18^th November 2011 reiterated Anchor’s claims about widely consulting with the local community and their community engagement project. 

Results from the survey found that 52% of landholders had received no communication from Anchor Resources, whilst 26% were contacted in 2009 with no further communication since. 17% of landholders had communications in 2009 and 2010 and 13% of landholders have been communicated with between 2009 to 2011. One of these landholders received over 96 emails from Anchor Resources in a 2 year period, mostly in relation to access agreements. The landholder survey conducted included 88% of known residents along Lower Bielsdown Road.

DEW is alarmed by the comments made by Mr Price in relation to community consultation. It is very misleading to state publicly that Anchor Resources has been consulting widely with the community and specifically with those living near the area most affected by the project when the survey findings clearly showed that a very small proportion of residents have actually been consulted. We feel false and misleading information about our community is being presented by Anchor Resources. Given this and Anchor Resources' refusal to attend or accept invitations to community public forums it follows a pattern occurring in communities throughout NSW affected by mining, where mining companies use tactics that have been described in parliament as ‘divide and conquer’.  We invite Anchor Resources to adopt best practice community engagement including organising and hosting an open public forum in Dorrigo where all community members are welcome.

Dorrigo Environment Watch Media Release 7 December 2011

Japan the Unspeakable

Whale image from RealPhoto


ABC News 6 December 2011:

Harpoon ships from Japan's whaling fleet have left their home port and could now be heading towards the Antarctic for this year's hunt.

Japan says it is going ahead with the expedition despite falling demand for whale meat.