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.”