Angus Taylor's staffer tries to slide out from under claims the minister made about Naomi Wolf

House of Representatives, Hansard, 10 December 2013:

Mr TAYLOR (Hume) (16:40): 

 ....At the same time, we must protect our basic values and bedrock institutions. I first encountered political correctness as a student at Oxford. It was 1991, and a young Naomi Wolf lived a couple of doors down the corridor. Several graduate students, mostly from the north-east of the US, decided we should abandon the Christmas tree in the common room because some people might be offended. I was astounded. My friends from Oklahoma, Alaska and Oregon explained this new kind of moral vanity that was taking hold in America. A few of us pushed back hard. In the end we won, because we were mainstream. But we must resist the insidious political correctness that would have us discard those core values that have made us great. In our times, the world over, the foundation of democracy—free speech—and the foundation of capitalism—property rights—are being chipped away by shrill elitist voices who insist that they know what is best for people who are not remotely like them. I can tell you, I will always defend property rights and free speech. And in this place I will back the parliament over the executive and the judiciary, because it is through this parliament that each of us here is accountable to our constituents.

The Australian, 3 December 2019:

The story was also paraphrased in a Financial Review profile on Taylor the next year, on December 5, 2014: “Taylor was awarded a Rhodes scholarship and went to Oxford University, where left-wing writer Naomi Wolf lived a few doors away. When she proposed banning the traditional Christmas tree, Taylor, a Christian, led a successful counter rebellion.”

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's cruel war on asylum seekers continues.....

On 4 December 2019 the Leader of the Morrison Government in the Senate, Mathias Cormann, moved to suspend standing orders to consider the for the remainder of the day.

According to the Government; The Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Bill 2019 (the Bill) amends the Migration Act 1958 (the Migration Act) to repeal the provisions inserted by Schedule 6 to theHome Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Act 2019 (the medical transfer provisions). As the medical transfer provisions do not provide for any return or removal mechanism, the Bill also amends the Migration Act to extend existing powers in relation to persons transferred to Australia under the medical transfer provisions to allow for their removal from Australia or return to a regional processing country once they no longer need to be in Australia for the temporary purpose for which they were brought. 

Thus Morrison wanted to ensure doctors did not retain more say in the medical treatment of offshore asylum seeker detainees and intended to remove those detainees already transferred to Australia in the last eight months as soon as possible. He and his government saw this as compatible with Australia's human rights obligations.

At 10.08 am Cormann moved that; That a motion to provide for the consideration of the Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Bill 2019 may be moved immediately and determined without amendment or debate.

This motion passed 38 to 36 with a majority of 2.

By 11.21am the bill was passed 37 to 35 with a majority of 2.

Those voting in support of the bill were:

Abetz, Eric (Lib-Tas) Antic, Alexander (Lib-SA) Askew, Wendy (Lib-Tas).

Bernardi, Cory (Ind-SA) Bragg, Andrew J (Lib-NSW) Brockman, Slade (Lib-WA).

Canavan, Matthew J (Lib-Qld) Cash, Michaelia C (Lib-WA) Chandler, Claire (Lib-Tas) Colbeck, Richard (Lib-Tas) Cormann, Mathias (Lib-WA).

Davey, Perin (Nats-NSW) Duniam, Jonathon (Lib-Tas).

Fawcett, David J (Lib-SA) Fierravanti-Wells, Concetta (Lib-NSW).

Hanson, Pauline (ON-Qld) Henderson, Sarah M (Lib-Vic) Hughes, Hollie (Lib-NSW) Hume, Jane (Lib-Vic).

Lambie, Jacqui (JLN-Tas).

McDonald, Susan (LNP-Qld) McGrath, James (LNP-Qld) McKenzie, Bridget (Nats-Vic) McMahon, Samantha (Lib-NT) Molan, A "Jim" (Lib-NSW).

O'Sullivan, Matthew A (Lib-WA).

Paterson, James (Lib-Vic).

Rennick, Gerard (LNP-Qld) Reynolds, Linda (Lib-WA) Roberts, Malcolm (ON-Qld) Ruston, Anne (Lib-SA) Ryan, Scott M (Lib-Vic)

Scarr, Paul (LNP-Qld) Seselja, Zdenko (Lib-ACT)  Smith, Dean A (Lib-WA) Stoker, Amanda J (LNP-Qld).

          Van, David (Lib-Vic).

These are the politicians who (along with their counterparts in the House of Representatives) returned Australian society to the days when, as a mattter of policy, offshore detainees were refused medical transfer to Australia unless they were on the brink of death. 

In the past this policy resulted in avoidable detainee deaths such as that of Hamid Kehazaei - it will likely do so again.

As soon as the Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Act 2019 receives assent, Prime Minister Morrison will in all probability quickly move to return the 179 medevac detainees back to Nauru and Manus Island.

Queensland Government gives Adani Group an early Christmas present worth up to $900 million in royalty deferrals

INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY ECONOMICS AND FINANCIAL ANALYSIS (IEEFA):

29 November 2019 (IEEFA Australia) – Queensland Treasury are expected to sign off on a massive early Christmas present worth up to $900m packaged as a seven-year royalty deferral – another term for a capital subsidy – for the Adani Group on 30 November 2019 (likely to be announced on 29 November), ironically on the one-year anniversary of Adani declaring it will self-fund its Carmichael thermal coal mine in the Galilee Basin, Queensland.

Adani Australia – part of the Adani Group of India – announced the Carmichael thermal coal mine would ‘stand on its own two feet’, without any subsidies, in November 2018.

One year later and the Adani Group is not only expected to receive a $900m royalty present from the Queensland government, but the Adani Group is also set to receive over $4.4 billion in total tax exemptions, deferrals and capital subsidies from taxpayers for the life of the Carmichael mine.

“If you give enough subsidies, anything becomes viable.”

“If you give enough subsidies, anything becomes viable,” says Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

“Global and domestic banks and insurers have turned their back on financing the Adani Group, joining the massive global financial exit away from thermal coal. To-date, 111 globally significant banks and insurers have implemented formal thermal coal restriction policies, including the latest just this week, being UniCredit, the largest bank in Italy.

“Yet the Queensland government still wants to give an early $900m Christmas present to the Adani Group for a product that faces technological obsolescence, is reliant on ongoing subsidies, and is only viable absent a price on carbon emissions.”

Under existing arrangements, Adani will effectively receive 17% of their coal for free compared to the royalty regime applying in NSW, according to The Australia Institute.

IEEFA notes the Queensland government’s royalty subsidy to Adani is due to be delivered this week.

Any deal should be publicly transparent given rising stranded asset risks

“Queensland’s generosity in providing such a lavish gift to India’s richest man means local Queenslanders will NOT see royalties from Adani’s Carmichael thermal coal mine for a decade,” says Buckley. “Any deal should be made transparent to the public, and credible financial assurance needs to be put in place as a minimum to ensure eventual payment, given rising stranded asset risks....

Read the full article here.

BACKGROUND

ABC News, 14 March 2017:

Up to $3 billion from Adani's planned Carmichael coal mine will be shifted to a subsidiary owned in the Cayman Islands if the controversial project goes ahead, an analysis of company filings shows.

Key points:

• 'Royalty deed' gives shell company rights to recieve $2-a-tonne payment beyond first 400K tonnes mined for two decades
• Entitlement owned by company registered in Cayman Islands, controlled by Adani family
• Carmichael coal mine's production capacity means payment ammounts to about $120 million per year

An "overarching royalty deed" gives a shell company rights to receive a $2-a-tonne payment, rising yearly by the inflation rate, beyond the first 400,000 tonnes mined in each production year for two decades.

The company with this entitlement is ultimately owned by Atulya Resources Limited, a secretive entity registered in the Cayman Islands, and controlled by the Adani family.

"In plain English, the upshot for the Adani family is [that] if the mine goes ahead, they receive a $2-a-tonne payment, so up to $3 billion, via a Cayman Islands company, a company owned in a tax haven," says Adam Walters, principal researcher and Energy Resource Insights.

With a production capacity of 60 million tonnes or more a year, that amounts to about $120 million per annum in payments, increasing each year in line with the CPI, potentially flowing offshore.

"I would describe it as a structure that means that the Adani family enriches themselves if the mine goes ahead but that other shareholders are impoverished," associate professor Thomas Clarke, director of the Centre for Corporate Governance at UTS told the ABC.

"The worry is that this may be just the beginning.

"That the Adani family have the ability to shift cash and assets around at will and in the future they may well do so at the cost of shareholders and the Queensland economy."

He said the billions flowing to the Adani private company would come at the expense of minority shareholders in the company listed on the Bombay stock exchange which ultimately owns the Carmichael mine.....

Read the full article here.

ABC News, 21 December 2016:

Giant Indian conglomerate Adani, which plans to build one of the world's largest coal mines in Queensland's Galilee Basin, has set up a complex network of companies and trusts in Australia which are owned in one of the world's major tax havens, the Cayman Islands.

The Adani Group is also attempting to shift ownership of the existing Abbot Point coal port — which it bought for $1.8 billion — to a Singaporean company ultimately owned in the Cayman Islands.

An exhaustive search of company filings and documents across the globe has cast light on this opaque structure of ownership and control.

It has alarmed environmental activists and legal experts, who fear it could make it harder to gain compensation from Adani in the event of an environmental disaster from Adani's planned mine and port expansion on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef.

"I've been a businessman for most of my life, as well as an environmental activist, and the risks are great," said Geoff Cousins, former Optus CEO and chairman of the George Paterson advertising agency, now a board member of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

"With these kinds of approvals of big mining operations or port operations, you always get a set of conditions that the Government puts on.

"But those conditions aren't worth anything if, when something goes wrong, you try to find the company responsible and either it has no money or if it has money it's in a tax haven and you can't reach it."

It is a view echoed by David Chaikin, a professor of business law at the University of Sydney.

"The advantage of having the money in tax havens is that you are able to conceal the source of money, the use of money, and also to minimise tax," he said…..

Adani has created four companies and two trusts in Australia for the rail project.

The parent company for all these entities is Carmichael Rail and Port Singapore Holdings Pte Ltd, a company registered in Singapore where the corporate tax rate is 15 per cent.

This Singapore parent company is in turn owned by Atulya Resources Limited, a private company controlled by the Adani family and based in the Cayman Islands.

The port expansion has a similar structure: five companies and two trusts in Australia, ultimately controlled by Atulya Resources in the Cayman Islands……

The Guardian, 29 August 2018:

Mining conglomerate the Adani Group is trying to prevent Indian authorities from accessing its business records as part of an investigation into an alleged $4bn fraud by power companies.

Lawyers for Adani on Tuesday filed a plea asking the Bombay high court to quash a formal request by Indian investigators to Singaporean authorities to force the company to produce information regarding its coal imports from Indonesia.

The request is part of an investigation by India’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) into a $4.4bn alleged fraud by 40 power companies including six Adani subsidiaries.

According to DRI documents, the companies allegedly used fake middlemen to inflate the price of coal they were importing from Indonesia. The scheme allowed the companies to charge higher tariffs by exaggerating their production costs, the DRI claimed.

If true, the alleged scam would also have allowed the companies to siphon billions of dollars from India into offshore bank accounts where Indian authorities would struggle to tax or account for the money....

Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan told he has ‘blood on his hands’

Echo NetDaily, 29 November 2019:

Around 200 people have joined together outside Kevin Hogan’s office in Lismore this morning declaring he has ‘blood on his hands’ as the federal government continues to refuse to take real action on climate change.

Red hand prints are covering the pavement and the front of Hogan’s office. Around 20 kids and students are currently in his office writing him letters about their climate concerns.The police have been in attendance and asked protestors to remove themselves from the road. They said that if protestors remain on the road they would be back with more staff.

One local parent with two children, Ivy Young, was there to point out that politicians need to listen to the experts on climate change and take action.

‘We live on Wallace Ridge which is the ridge dividing Tuntable and Terania Creeks. The fire got to within about two or three properties from us, about 5km up in the forest,’ Ivy told Echonetdaily.

‘I’m here today because I care. I see the urgency to act. I’m worried for the future. We have a window of time where we can actually take the steps to mitigate the worst effects of climate change before we reach tipping points where the sea levels rise and temperatures become too high for many of the places in the world to become habitable......

Few Liberal-Nationals politicians have ever understood the strength of community in the NSW Northern River region

Few Liberal-Nationals politicians have ever understood the strength of community in the NSW Northern Rivers region or the passion of locals to protect their families, neighbours, the land, rivers, forests and native animals from those who threaten all six. Including those who threaten by refusing to take meaningful action to mitigate climate change.

Here is yet another Northern Rivers resident speaking up.....

The Guardian, 2 December 2019:

Melinda Plesman stands with the remains of her burnt-out house, destroyed in the NSW bushfires, outside Parliament House in Canberra. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Melinda Plesman and her partner, Dean Kennedy, lost their family home of 35 years after bushfires tore through Nymboida, south of Grafton in NSW, last month.

Plesman said she wanted to show Scott Morrison the direct result of climate change.

“It’s happening now and this is what climate change looks like,” Plesman said.

“I’m losing my home, whole communities are losing their homes ... and the prime minister said we’re not allowed to talk about it.

“He said he was going to pray for us. And that was the last straw.”.....

Terania Creek Rainforest needs saving again - this time from climate change

https://youtu.be/0KbkMJXjvgw

In November 2019 wildfire burnt into the World Heritage Listed rainforests of Terania Creek. The community stood up to protect these rainforests from logging 40 years ago, now they need to stand up to protect them from global heating.

Gondawana Land formed around 250 million years ago and began the slow process of breaking up to form South America, Africa, Madagascar, India, Antarctica, and the Australian mainland an est. 165 million ago.

Australia split off est. 65-75 million years after the land mass break up began with Tasmania the last piece to break way from the continental remnant which became Antartica and that occurred around 45 million years ago. 

Inside the remnants of ancient Godwana rainforests in Australia can be found plant species that are direct decendants of plants that existed before Gondwana Land ceased to be.

The toll on New South Wales as of 1 December 2019 flowing from the Morrison Government's refusal to take meaningful action on climate change

If one looks at media records the year 2019 commenced with the odd isolated bushfire fire and continued in the same manner through to July when fire outbreaks began to increase. 

By early September major fire activity was occurring in the Clarence Valley and, by October it was obvious that northern NSW was going to go up in flames.

When November came along many other regions were also battling huge unprecedented bushfires.

The state toll as of 1 December 2019 was:

It is hard to calculate accurately - but at this time it appears that at least 36% to 38% of the 10,441 sq. km Clarence Valley Local Government Area has experienced bushfires, with est. 100 homes and two irreplaceable lives lost.

I hope that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, every member of his Cabinet, each and every Liberal and Nationals MP and Senator are proud of what their negligence over the last six years of Coalition rule has brought about.

The bushfires continue with no sign of stopping.

Australian Government admits that it has acted unlawfully since July 2016 with regard to the treatment of debt under its Centrelink income compliance program

On 27 November 2019 the Federal Court of Australia ruled in Amato v The Commonwealth of Australia that the use of data matching between Centrelink and Australia Taxation Office (ATO) records was not capable of providing proof that a debt exists under the Dept of Human Services/Centrelink Income Compliance Program ('robodebt') if that data matching was the only method used to establish such a debt. Therefore the debt was invalid.

The court also ruled that it followed that the garnishee notice given to the ATO was invalid and that the necessary preconditions conditions for imposition of a 10 per cent debt recovery fee were not met.  

The Federal Court made these orders, agreed to by both parties, after the Australian Government conceded that the averaging process using ATO income data to calculate the robodebt was unlawful.

Victoria Legal Aid has posted an explainer of this robotdebt case and its implications for other people who received a debt notice from July 2016 onwards.

Faced with three court cases, including a class action, on 19 November 2019 the Morrison Government finally admitted that automated data matching was a flawed tool, after mainstream media discovered and published the details of departmental email admissions to compliance staff. 

However, the Minister for Government Services has stated that government has no intention of abandoning this data matching scheme entirely. So welfare recipients must wait on the outcome of the class action in the hope that the Morrison Government will finally end its war on the poor and vulnerable.

The question remains as to how long has the Morrison Government has known it was acting unlawfully given it has finally admitted to receiving legal advice to that effect.

Even though bushfires are still burning across the Clarence Valley support and recovery planning has begun

Since 5 September 2019 the Clarence Valley Local Government Area has been affected by major fire activity.

At the Clarence Valley Council ordinary monthly meeting on Tuesday, 26 November 2019, councillors gave this mayoral motion unanimous support.

SUMMARY 

This Mayoral Minute aims to acknowledge the community loss from the bushfire emergency and provide further assistance from Council to help the Clarence Valley community recover in the fire effected areas which have been impacted since Friday 8 November. These fires are unprecedented in our area, like nothing we have seen before and as I write this Mayoral Minute fires are threatening the communities at Tullymorgan, Ashby and surrounds, Woombah and Iluka. 

The message to our community is that recovery is going to take a long time. Not all recovery work can start in all areas as we need to think about safety around fires that are still going. Don’t expect things to be fixed as fast as you might expect. We have to be patient. We need to look after each other and make sure that everyone in our community is safe.....

COUNCIL RESOLUTION – 05.19.006 
Mayor Simmons 

That Council 

1. Convey our deepest sympathy to the fire affected communities who have recently lost houses and other buildings and the large financial impact the fires are having on our farming community especially the beef industry. 

2. Again acknowledge the amazing ongoing efforts of the RFS, Community Services and other emergency agencies, including our own Council staff, response to the fires and thank all the volunteers both locally, nationally and internationally who have come to the Clarence Valley’s aid, and also acknowledge the ongoing State and Federal Government recovery support. 

3. Subject to public notice in accordance with Section 356 of the Local Government Act provide $16,500 to the Nymboida Canoe Centre to support its role as a community driven recovery hub (which they are currently funding from their resources which are fast running out), with this funding to particularly help with power, their water treatment facility (supplying emergency water to the Nymboida community), dust suppression on the canoe centre internal road network ($5,000) and will enable a booster antenna to be fitted at the centre ($1,500). 

4. Arranges to supply for free a one off potable water replenishment to fire affected households in the RFS mapped fire zones capped at 7,000 litres (estimated to be one months normal household water supply at a cost of around $180 a load) with residents to register for the water delivery and Council allocate $60,000 from accumulated general fund surplus for this purpose. 

5. Lobby the State and Federal Government, local members, the local and state recovery committees to reimburse Council for the water tank refill in 4 above. 

6. Work with the Canoe Centre to establish a Blaze Aid camp (note the State Government has already indicated that funds will be made available for Council to help fund the camp) and the Blaze Aid Vice President Christine Male has indicated a camp will be established shortly. 

7. Work with Coffs Harbour City Council on a possible Blaze Aid camp at Glenreagh or Nana Glen. 

8. Liaise with Blaze Aid with regard to possible activities and potential other sites in the Clarence Valley. 

Voting recorded as follows: 

For: Simmons, Kingsley, Baker, Ellem, Clancy, Novak, Williamson, Lysaught, Toms 

Against: Nil

BACKGROUND 

Council at the October meeting allocated $6,000 to both the Ewingar Hall Committee and the Dundurrabin Community Hall Committee to fund community driven recovery in these areas. At Ewingar a booster antenna was installed, $2,000 given to the community to help run the Ewingar Rising event and it was arranged to refill the water tanks. In addition a Blaze Aid camp has been established at Ewingar with $40,000 support from the NSW Office of Emergency Management- Council has arranged out of these funds for food supplies and cooking, a generator and fuel to power RV air conditioning, water tank refilling and shortly porta loo hire. 

No similar request has been forth coming from the Dundurrabin community, although this is likely to be coming shortly. 

KEY ISSUES 

Filling of water tanks emptied to fight individual house fires by house owners (note not RFS) has fell through the assistance cracks. Many in the fire affected areas who were able to save their house only did this by exhausting their tank water supplies, which now not only provides issues around living in the house but the ability to fight future fire’s. My minute is seeking Councillors support for Council to approve a one off free 7,000 litre replenishment paid by Council (estimated as one months supply). 

The Nymboida Canoe Centre has become the local community recovery hub ably led by Gray Stride and a team of local volunteer co-ordinators for different recovery areas. The Nymboida community has suffered major house (over 80 destroyed) and grazing land loss due to the fires. These fires are like nothing we have ever seen before. It will take an incredible effort from everyone to work together to rebuild our community and this minute aims to support this community led process. The addition of a mobile booster antenna, help with the power bills and running the water treatment plant at the centre (supplying emergency potable water), dust suppression on the canoe centre internal road network, as well as other incidental costs is needed urgently as the canoe centre’s resources are rapidly being exhausted. The booster antenna is needed to improve the Telstra reception at the centre which will also be used by Blaze Aid and the Office of Emergency Management etc for outreach. 

I also will be asking for State and Federal Government assistance under the disaster provisions to fund the water tank supply initiative and reimburse Council. I do note on this RFS will refill tanks (and dams) when they used them to fight fires and Local Land Services supply emergency water for stock. 

The minute also aims to obtain Council’s endorsement to set up a Blaze Aid camp at Nymboida and alerts Council to another possible one at Glenreagh. The State Government has indicated they will give funding support to help establish the Blaze Aid camp at Nymboida, they gave Council $40,000 for Ewingar.

l'état, c'est moi: Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison is acting more like an autocrat every day

"Until this week, I’ve felt that comparisons between Morrison and Donald Trump have been way overblown. Now, I’m not so sure."  [Journalist Katherine Murphy writing in The Guardian, 28 November 2019]

In which it is revealed that Scott Morrison made a 'perfect' phone call à la Trump......

Crikey Worm: For the early birds, 28 November 2019:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is coming under increasing fire over his phone call to the NSW police commissioner, with a former top judge calling it an inappropriate use of his position.

Former ICAC commissioner David Ipp said the call appeared to have been made in the interests of political decision-making, rather than in the interest of the state, telling The Guardian “an ordinary citizen would not be able to get that information from the police … so what is it about the prime minister that entitles him to that information?” Ipp joins former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and Labor leader Anthony Albanese in condemning the call. The prime minister has refused to release notes from the call with the police chief, despite differing accounts of what was discussed, The New Daily reports.

THEY REALLY SAID THAT? 

“	Being blunt about it, it is a call I would not have made. — Malcolm Turnbull

The former prime minister offers his two cents on his successor’s decision to ring the NSW police chief.

So who do Australian trust the least these days?

Between 20 July and 29 July 2019 fifty-four thousand nine hundred and seventy (54,970) Australia Talks National Survey respondents were shown eleven professional categories and asked to rank them by level of trust.

The online survey question was; "How much do you trust each of the following?"

This was the result based on the proportion of respondents supporting each political party who answered "somewhat" or "a lot".

ABC News, 27 November 2019

It seems that the least trusted professions are:

1. Celebrities - 8%
2. Politicians - 19%
3. Corporate Exectutives - 20%
4. Religious Leaders - 29%.

The most trusted professions are:

1. Doctors & Nurses - 97%
2. Scientists - 93%
3. Police & Law Enforcement - 84%
4. Judges 80%.

When a frontpage montage goes horribly wrong

The Daily Examiner, Page One, 28 November 2019

Ghostly onlookers to an unfolding environmental and societal disaster - transparent bodies and a missing head turns this unacknowledged montage into a mockery of the current emergency.

Cartoons of the Week

David Rowe

Morrison Government's union busting 'Ensuring Integrity Bill' defeated in the Senate

Prime Minister Scott Morrison's pride and joy, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019, intended to weaken and perhaps even destroy registered unions in Australia was negatived in Committee of the Whole by the Senate.

The vote was tied at 34-all, with One Nation's two senators along with Senator Jacqui Lambie voting with the Greens and Labor.

It took 147 days for political commonsense to prevail but on 28 November 2019 the Senate politely told the prime minister and his hard right cronies where to go.

Another bill Morrison is reportedly hoping to pass before the parliamentary Christmas break is the Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Bill 2019 which removes provisions for asylum seeker detainee medical transfers to Australia from Manus Island and Nauru ('medevac').

BACKGROUND

Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), media release, 26 November 2019:

In a blow to the Morrison Government’s arguments for the Ensuring Integrity Bill currently before the senate the Federal Court has ruled the union regulator, the Register Organisations Commission (ROC) investigation into the AWU was invalid. 

Justice Bromberg has ruled that the ROC did not have grounds to order an AFP raid on the offices of the AWU and has ordered the return of the documents that were seized on behalf of the regulator in their first act after being established by the Liberal Government in 2017. 

The decision comes as the Morrison Government attempts to pass the Ensuring Integrity Bill in the Senate which would give the ROC the extreme power to determine which unions are deregistered and which officials are disqualified under the dangerous and hypocritical new union-busting law. 

Under the EI Bill the ROC would have the power to begin deregistration proceedings against a union which had made a handful of paperwork mistakes over a period of 10 years. 

Quotes attributable to ACTU President Michele O’Neil: 

“The Morrison government has been telling Senators that the ROC is an impartial body which can administer the extraordinary powers granted under EI. The Federal Court has just found it conducted an illegal raid on a union office. 

“Giving union busters more power to drag unions into courts over minor paperwork breaches, some that would only cost a company an $80 fine, Will cost members and the taxpayer millions in legal fees. This is before accounting for the cost of not being able to campaign for higher wages, better working conditions and safer workplaces. 

“To defend themselves from the ROC’s harrassment the AWU was forced to expending significant resources over two years to get justice. If the Ensuring Integrity Bill passes, all unions could face this harrassment over paperwork breaches. 

“Questions also need to be asked of the ROC who is continuing to waste tax payer’s money to challenge this finding. “This ruling gives the crossbench senators a stark example of how the Morrison government targets unions and will stop at nothing to try and bust unions. Ensuring Integrity will become another tool for union busters and should be rejected. 

“The Federal Court decision is a vindication for the AWU but also a warning for the Senate crossbench who weighing amendments which would give this discredited body even more power.”

BACKGROUND

On 20 October 2017, Mr Chris Enright, the Executive Director of the Registered Organisation Commission (ROC) and a delegate of the Commissioner decided to conduct an investigation.

Judgment in Australian Workers’ Union v Registered Organisations Commissioner (No 9) [2019] FCA 1671 was delivered on 11 October 2019. The judgment concluded that; "the decision to conduct an investigation as to whether ss 285(1), 286(1) and 287(1) of the RO Act had been contravened was affected by jurisdictional error and is invalid."

Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 was introduced by the Morrison Coaltion Government in July 2019 and was currently before the Senate for the second reading debate when the ACTU penned the aforementioned media release.

*Images of ROC document come from the published Federal Court judgment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Bill 2019  is apparently scheduled for a second reading before 5 December 2019.

This bill removes provisions in Schedule 6 of the Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Act 2019. These provisions (commonly referred to as the medical transfer, or medevac, provisions) established a framework for the transfer of transitory persons from regional processing countries to Australia for the purpose of medical treatment or assessment. The Bill also amends the Migration Act to allow for the removal of people brought to Australia under the medical transfer provisions back to a regional processing country once they no longer need to be in Australia.

On 27 November 2019 a nonconforming petition was tabled in the Senate asking for medevac provisions to be saved. It contains 51,299 signatures.

On the same day Professor David Isaacs, Clinical Professor, Paediatrics & Child Health, Fellow, Royal Australasian College of Physicians was joined by doctors in Canberra urging senators to reject the medevac repeal bill. Professor Isaacs carried an open letter signed by 5,040 doctors urging Senator Jacqui Lambie to save medevac.