The growing list of federal parliamentarians found to have been ineligible to stand due to breaches of Sec 44 of the Australian Constitution

1. Greens Senator for Western Australia Scott Ludlum – first elected 2007, resigned from parliament admitting dual citizenship 14.7.2017, High Court ruled ineligible due to dual citizenship 27.10.17

2. Greens Senator for Queensland Larissa Joy Waters – first elected 2010, resigned from parliament admitting dual citizenship 18.7.17, High Court ruled ineligible due to dual citizenship 27.10.17

3. Liberal MP for New England Barnaby Thomas Gerard Joyce – first elected 2004, refused to resign from parliament, High Court ruled ineligible due to dual citizenship 27.10.27

4. Liberal Senator for NSW Fiona Joy Nash – first elected 2004, refused to resign from parliament, High Court ruled ineligible due to dual citizenship 27.10.27

5. One Nation Senator Malcolm Ieuen Roberts – first elected 2016, refused to resign from parliament, High Court ruled ineligible due to dual citizenship 27.10.17

6. Liberal Senator for Tasmania Stephen Shane Parry – first elected 2004, resigned from parliament admitting dual citizenship on or about 2.11.17

7. Liberal MP for Bennelong John Gilbert Alexander – first elected 2010, resigned from parliament (refused to publicly confirm dual citizenship) on or about 11.11.2017

* Liberal senator-elect Hollie Hughes – eligibility being assessed by High Court in November 2017 due to question concerning holding an office of profit under the Crown

ACTU claims that Turnbull Government's changes to the superannuation industry will make it easier for employers to steal workers' superannuation

Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), media release, 1 November 2017:

The Australian Council of Trade Unions has warned that the government’s changes to the superannuation industry will make it easier for employers to steal workers’ superannuation, in addition to giving the big banks access to workers’ super.

Independent research shows that $5.6 billion of super is unpaid every year, causing millions of Australians’ financial security to be placed in jeopardy. Jim Stanford - Director of  the Centre for Future Work, reported that wage suppression and unpaid super could result in workers being short-changed $100bn by the time they retire.

Unions are warning that this will increase with the government’s changes, as it will make it harder for unions to ensure employers are paying workers' super.

Quotes attributable to ACTU President, Ged Kearney:

“Ensuring workers super is paid to the default industry fund is a difficult job for workers and their unions. Too many employers are trying to get away with avoiding their obligations already. Opening this up to allow in the banks will make it harder to ensure workers are paid properly. 

“The government’s changes will mean that workers’ super payments will be accessible to the big banks, and that as a result, it will be harder to ensure employers are paying workers their super.

“By removing single fund provisions from bargaining arrangements, the government is attacking people’s chance of a dignified retirement, by making it harder for unions to ensure that workers are being paid what they're meant to be paid.

“When workplaces have a single fund, super funds work with employers to ensure they are paying their workers the right amount of super, and on time. If the government gets its way good employers will find it harder, and unscrupulous employers will abuse the confusion and steal workers’ retirement incomes.

“Every year, billions of dollars in super is not paid to working people. It puts their future financial security at risk. Unions spend a lot of time ensuring workers super is being paid. Increasing the amounts of funds will make this work more time and labour intensive.

“We are deeply troubled that the government would make changes to super which will not address the massive theft of workers’ super, but in fact make it worse.

“Instead, the government has decided to attack working people, open up their financial security to the scandal plagued big banks, and make it harder for unions to do their job standing up for working people.”

“We urge the parliament to block the government’s superannuation bills to ensure workers financial security is protected in better performing industry super.”

Here is the man Trump and his supporters have been calling a low-ranking volunteer, a coffee boy - since Papadopoulos' plea deal was revealed

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/715725628465680386/photo/1

Salon, 1 November 2017:

The credibility of Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been called into serious question after the Justice Department unsealed a plea deal taken by a former foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump's campaign.

The documents revealed that former adviser George Papadopoulos attended a "national security meeting in Washington D.C.," on March 31, 2016, along with Trump, Sessions and others. In that meeting, Papadopoulos "introduced himself," and explicitly stated "in sum and substance, that he had connections that could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and [Russian] President Putin."

Trump tweeted a picture of the meeting the day it occurred, and he, as well as Sessions, sat at opposite heads of the table. Papadopoulos is pictured to the left of Sessions in the middle of the table.

Tweet of the Week

A vote for Barnaby Joyce in NewEngland is a vote for Gina #Citizenship7 #auspol pic.twitter.com/mGIpSbsWss

— Travis (@teakingw) October 27, 2017

Quotes of the Week

“AFTER toppling Tony Abbott in the Liberal leadership ballot on the night of September 14, Malcolm Turnbull held a news conference and then headed for Warren Truss’s office. The National Party leader was with colleagues, including his deputy, Barnaby Joyce, and party director Scott Mitchell, plus key staffers, discussing what should be included in a revised Coalition agreement. Turnbull stuck his head through the door, looked around the room, and then announced: ‘I own more cattle than all of you’.” [Herald Sun, 5 December  2015]

“But Maritime Minister Melinda Pavey said providing shore-to-ship power was expensive and would bring a “negligible reduction” in pollutants from funnels.”  [Inner West Courier, on the subject of cruise ships,18 July 2015, p5]

Cashless Debit Card problems ignored by Turnbull Government

“For example, data is provided which shows that 55% oftransactions on the cards failed due to insufficient funds (Orima 2017: pA6). That is nearly 21,000 transactions,where people were unable to purchase what they wanted.However, only 1% of failed transactions related to trying to use the card for prohibited purchases. This indicates some hardships and poverty and/or the problem that people did not know what their card balance was, indicating the challenge of money management using this card. Another reported problem related to the need to access phones and internet to find card balances, which can cause many problems for those without phones, phone credit, internet access, or not being in a mobile phone or internet server area.” [Hunt, J, T h e  C a s h l ess  D e b i t  C a r d  Tr i a l  E va l u at i o n : A  S h o r t  Re v i e w]

Yet another voice expressing concerns that the Turnbull Government is ignoring problems with the Cashless Debit Card system.

Opening remarks in Dr Janet Hunt’s (Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University, Canberra) submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Inquiry into the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Cashless Debit Card) Bill 2017, 2 November 2017:

Thank you for the opportunity to make this submission. I write as an experienced social science researcher with over 30 years of experience in the fields of international and Indigenous development. I am as concerned about the situation of Indigenous people in Ceduna and the East Kimberley as anyone, and very much want to see their lives improve. I am also very much driven by evidence about what works, and as a social science researcher am concerned that the evidence provided for policy making is the most robust and credible as possible. This is both in order to get the best outcomes, but also to ensure the greatest efficiency in public expenditure.

The proposed legislation seeks to make possible the extension of the Cashless Debit Card trial in Ceduna and the East Kimberley and facilitate the expansion of this program geographically. My concern is whether the evidence of the trial evaluation supports this continuation and expansion, and whether the considerable cost of this program is reaping commensurate benefits. In public policy there are always opportunity costs of any expenditure. In other words, my concern is whether this program is the best way to spend limited public funds to reach a desired outcome or if there are more cost efficient and effective alternatives.

My interest in this was sparked when the Wave 1 Report was released in March this year, and I decided to look at what the evaluation said. I was shocked when I read the report, as the Minister had already announced that the trial was a success and would be continued indefinitely. When I read the report, I discovered that it was extremely flawed and did not provide adequate evidence to draw the conclusions that had clearly been drawn. As I was extremely concerned at the poor quality of the evidence on which the Minister had made his decision, I wrote a critique of the Wave 1 Report, which was peer-reviewed and published by CAEPR. It is this Wave 1 evidence which the Statement of Compatibility with Human Rights relating to this Legislation uses to justify the proposed legislation. I argue that this evidence is flawed, and does not provide a sound basis for continuing the Cashless Debit Card Trial (CDCT) program. Whilst superficially appealing, a careful analysis of the evaluation reveals many problems with the purported findings.

Given my concerns about the quality of the Wave 1 Report and the Minister’s interpretation of data from it, I was naturally interested to read the Wave 2 Report. Just before the report was released, the Minister issued a Press Release which hailed the success of the trial without qualification. But once the Report was public it was clear that the Report’s authors had in fact qualified their positive findings with many caveats which have been completely ignored by the Minister in his public statements about the evaluation. So while I have serious problems with the evaluation design and the data presented, I am also aware that the Minister has ignored important reservations about some of the findings that the Report’s authors did make clear.

This submission outlines many of the shortcomings of the evaluation, both Wave 1 and Wave 2.

Read the full submission here with attachment.