Australian Prime Minister can't stop people speaking out on the matter of the annual anniversary of the invasion of Australia

One of the reasons why Prime Minister Scott Morrison will fail in his bid to deny Australia's colonial history.......

The Daily Telegraph, 28 January 2021:

Hayley Talbot has long been recognised as a leader, an innovator, and a person with a drive to create positive change within the Clarence Valley.

In the past year, among a myriad of projects she helped drive a revitalisation of koala habitat devastated by bushfire with a program that planted 5000 trees and empowered many in the community who had lost their jobs due to COVID-19.

Along with her team, she also hosts a safe space for young women through her Blanc Space business in Yamba, where they provide an atmosphere to create, learn and converse openly.

It was for these works she was this week awarded the Clarence Valley’s Citizen of the Year.

While Ms Talbot said she was grateful to be honoured, she made the brave decision to use the opportunity to express what she described as an incongruous meeting of both celebration and mourning on Australia Day.

“... in good conscience I have to say, we should be doing this on another day. Ms Talbot said the decision to speak her mind and to receive the award was one she deliberated over, and admitted nerves beforehand, having heard the crowd boo 2019 Citizen of the Year Susan Howland for expressing her views at the ceremony.

“I was concerned at that, but I thought that if I didn’t accept the nomination, and didn’t show up, I would lose the opportunity to speak that truth and add to the conversation that needs to be leading the discourse on Australia Day,” she said.

“I know that conversations were catalysed among new hearts and minds, that was my goal, and I consider that a vindication of my decision to attend the ceremony and accept the award.” Ms Talbot told the hard truths of our history, including the atrocities perpetrated on the banks of the Clarence, and urged the crowd to consider the voices of those most hurt by the day.

“I can’t stand here today wholly with joy in my heart knowing that the neighbours I’m called to love are shattered apart by a day that’s considered a day of mourning by many Aboriginal people,” she said.

“I can’t stand here another white woman in a room of mostly white people pretending that in 2021 we’re all equal when we are governed by a system that still says we’re not.

“There’s a ‘ray’ in Australia, and there’s an us too, but only if we’re brave enough to tell the full story. Even though a date change can’t change it can we at least try?” 

For what it's worth, the first Newspoll of 2021

 

via @Leroy_Lynch

This 27-30 January 2021 Newspoll online survey is based on the answers of 1,512 respondents.

To date only around $120 million in JobKeeper payments appears to have been clawed back from ineligible business and sole trader claimants

 

On 30 March 2020 the Morrison Government announced it would provide a wage subsidy to around 6 million workers who would receive a flat payment of $1,500 per fortnight through their employer, before tax.

The $130 billion JobKeeper payment was expected to help keep Australians in jobs as they tackled the significant economic impact from the COVID-19 pandemic. The payment was open to eligible businesses that receive a significant financial hit caused by the pandemic and provided the equivalent of around 70 per cent of the national median wage commencing in early May 2020 with payments backdated to 31 March.

The first indication that employers were not going to abide by the rules came in April:

By 21 May 2020 media reports began to reveal that a number of employers had been quick to rort the JobKeeper system.

In June 2020 mention began to be made of ‘pop up’ businesses receiving JobKeeper payments even though these businesses were not created until after the wage subsidy scheme was announced.

By 28 August 2020 more than 15,000 businesses have been removed from the scheme after the Australian Tax Office found them to be ineligible.

In that same month it was revealed that at least 25 companies in the ASX 300 had been paying bonuses worth $24 million to executives and millions more in dividends to shareholders after claiming JobKeeper payments.

Come January 2021 and the Australian Taxation Office is still playing catchup with fraud discovered in the wage subsidy scheme and continues in its attempt to retrieve the hundreds of millions in wage subsidy payments it believes have been paid out in fraudulent employer and sole trader claims.

ABC News, 29 January 2021:

Dodgy employers have signed up jailed criminals, people living outside Australia and even the dead to receive $1,500-a-fortnight JobKeeper payments.

These fictitious employees are among thousands of people being pursued by an Australian Taxation Office (ATO) investigation into rorts of the $130 billion wage subsidy program.

"Client is in jail" is one of the categories being scrutinised as a red flag in around 6,000 cases where employers may have created fictitious employees to take advantage of the JobKeeper scheme, hurriedly launched at the end of March last year to keep the economy afloat during the coronavirus pandemic.

Documents obtained using a freedom of information (FOI) application show that, by the end of September, the ATO was investigating 5,974 cases of "inflated employees" in applications for the wage subsidy.

"The reality is you cannot check every application," said lawyer and corporate investigator Niall Coburn.

"So certain things may have been overlooked, but that doesn't stop the Government from now being able to go back and look at the applications in more detail, and that's what seems to be the case here."

Paying the dead

By the end of September, the ATO had 5,974 cases under investigation, with almost a third found to be ineligible. The majority were ineligible because they "involve employers applying under the wrong ABN (business number)".

It noted there "have also been instances of putting spouses 'on the books'," as well as people overseas ("has a valid visa but … out of the country").

A further category of fictious employees were the dead. "Employee in their JobKeeper application that is deceased," the report observed…..

Fraud prevention efforts

In July, the ATO told ABC News 3,000 staff would be doing ongoing reviews of JobKeeper applications.

"At any particular time, we are reviewing between 2 and 3 per cent of JobKeeper applications," an ATO spokeswoman said.

"We will identify those who are intentionally defrauding the system and we will use the full force of the law [to punish them]."

More than 6,500 applications were rejected for a range of reasons, from people making genuine errors to fraudulent behaviour.

In December, the ABC revealed the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) was pursuing criminal investigations into fraud and had issued fines to program applicants who had made false or misleading statements.

BACKGROUND

ABC News, 9 December 2020:

The Australian Taxation Office has 19 active criminal investigations into fraud against the $101 billion JobKeeper scheme.

It has also issued fines to another 19 applicants to the wage subsidy program who have made false or misleading statements, and is considering penalties for another 24.

Since JobKeeper was launched in March, the ATO has clawed back $120 million in payments to applicants who made it into the system but were later found to be ineligible.

"While most businesses and employees are doing the right thing, we have identified concerning and fraudulent behaviour and claims by a small number of organisations and employees," the ATO said in a statement.

The agency declined to comment on whether the criminal investigations relate to employers or employees and would not provide details about any of the businesses involved or when the investigations began.

However, ABC Investigations understands employers and individual workers are being investigated over fraud and abuse of the scheme.

Applicants could face a prison sentence or fines if found guilty of defrauding the scheme……

The fraud investigation revelations come as the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) considers its own probe into the scheme.

According to its website, the ANAO has flagged JobKeeper for a potential audit next year that would include an "examination of the implementation of integrity measures designed to protect the scheme against fraud and other abuse."

The ATO fraud hotline has received more than 10,000 tip-offs about fraud against JobKeeper, including claims that some employers have not been passing on the full subsidy to their employees.

ABC Investigations has also spoken to workers concerned that their employers may have artificially suppressed their revenue in order to qualify for the scheme, for example by delaying invoicing customers or removing popular items from sale in retail stores.

The ATO says it has initiated 14 of the fraud investigations using its powers under the Taxation Administration Act and has referred a further five cases to the Australian Federal Police's Serious Financial Crimes Taskforce.

Smart Company, 10 December 2021:

A marketing company has been made to repay $22,500 in JobKepeer funding, after the Australian Taxation Office received a tip-off the business was misusing the stimulus payments.

The ATO said the tip-off alleged the marketing company had incorrectly claimed JobKeeper for its employees, which came to a total of $12,000 per month.

The ATO’s investigation found two of the company’s four employees were ineligible for JobKeeper, because one was on work experience and not receiving any wages, and the other was hired after March 1, 2020.

The two remaining employees were eligible for JobKeeper, however, the ATO said their employer did not pay them the full $1,500 per fortnight in some periods.

“We determined that it was not an honest mistake and required the employer to repay $22,500,” the ATO said.

The ATO says it is closely tracking the misuse of pandemic support.

The global COVID-19 pandemic appears to be increasing food insecurity & child hunger - even in OECD countries

 

Across the globe widespread food insecurity is a millennia-old enduring problem. It was said to affect an estimated 800 million people worldwide by 2001, with malnutrition in small children being a significant factor.

Action Against Hunger defines hunger thus:

• Hunger is the distress associated with lack of food. The threshold for food deprivation, or undernourishment, is fewer than 1,800 calories per day.

• Undernutrition goes beyond calories to signify deficiencies in energy, protein, and/or essential vitamins and minerals.

• Malnutrition refers more broadly to both undernutrition and overnutrition (problems with unbalanced diets).

• Food security relates to food availability, access, and utilization. When a person always has adequate availability and access to enough safe and nutritious food to maintain an active and healthy life, they are considered food secure.

By December 2020 UNICEF was warning that millions of children in crisis hotspots were ‘on the brink of famine’, highlighting the need of 10.4 million children in Democratic Republic of the Congo, northeast Nigeria, the Central Sahel, South Sudan and Yemen wiho are expectedb to suffer from acute malnutrition in 2021.

The African continent and Middle East are extreme examples of the world’s failure to equitably distribute food in times of crisis.

The Global Hunger Index 2020 indicates 33 counties experiencing alarming to serious levels of hunger in their populations and another 26 countries having moderate levels of hunger.

However, although the Index shows that by comparison OECD countries were the least affected by hunger, the COVID-19 global pandemic is increasing hunger, including child hunger, in these countries.

By way of example…………..

According to CNBC Make It in December 2020:

Millions of Americans are facing hunger as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic — and many of those are children. An estimated 17 million children could go without enough to eat this year, according to Feeding America, a leading national nonprofit food bank network.

Nearly 12% of Americans, or 25.7 million people, reported not having enough to eat over the past week, according to the latest Household Pulse Survey released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Dec. 2. Nearly 14 million households with children report they sometimes or often do not have enough to eat.

In June 2020 iPolitics reported:

One in seven Canadians lived in a household where there was food insecurity in April and those living with children are more likely to be impacted from food insecurity resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study from Statistics Canada.

The survey, which was part of the Canadian Perspectives Survey Series (CPSS), collected data from May 4 to 10 from 4,600 respondents in all 10 provinces. Of the participants, 14.6 per cent indicated that they lived in a household where there was food insecurity in the past 30 days.

The survey was based on a scale of six “food experiences” ranging from food not lasting until there was money to buy more, to going hungry because there was not enough money for food. Most Canadians reported only one negative experience, but 2 per cent reported the most severe food insecurity, with five or all six experiences reported.

Canadians who were employed during the week of April 26th to May 2nd, but absent from work due to business closures, layoffs, or other personal reasons related COVID-19, were more likely to be food insecure (28.4 per cent), compared to who were working during that period (10.7 per cent). The rate of food insecurity for those who were not employed during the reference week was in between these two, at 16.8 per cent.

The Guardian also reported in September 2020:

New data from the Food Foundation [UK charity] shared exclusively with the Observer has revealed that almost a fifth of households with children have been unable to access enough food in the past five weeks, with meals being skipped and children not getting enough to eat as already vulnerable families battle isolation and a loss of income…...

A reported 30% of lone parents and 46% of parents with a disabled child are facing food insecurity and finding it difficult to manage basic nutritional needs at home. With schools no longer providing a reprieve for children reliant on free breakfast clubs and school lunches, poorer families are at crisis point…..

The Borgen Project, September 2020:

Food insecurity, fortunately, has reduced to about 10% of New Zealanders in 2019. But with the outbreak of COVID-19, the Auckland City Mission estimated that that number had rocketed to 20%. Between citizens losing jobs, panic-buying at grocery stores and other factors, the pandemic is threatening more widespread food insecurity in New Zealand. Emergency food assistance services have seen large spikes in demand. Additionally, many essential workers may be working full-time but are still not making enough to put food on the table….

Food insecurity in New Zealand remains an important problem. In the face of the COVID-19 outbreak, these problems are becoming harder to ignore. Recently, CPAG released a paper about its ideas to solve food insecurity for New Zealand’s youth, including food programs in schools. It showed that with awareness and advocacy, people can begin to find solutions to these problems. In fact, the 2020 budget plans to expand an existing school lunch program to ensure that by the end of 2021, 200,000 students will receive a healthy lunch every day at school, up from the 8,000 currently receiving aid from the program. This sort of increase is a promising step to reducing the amount of food insecurity for New Zealand’s children.

Additionally, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Auckland City Mission has gone from supporting 450 families to over 1,200 and expect that number to stay high throughout the winter. Thanks to the 2020 New Zealand budget, Auckland City Mission will be able to continue helping those in need.

It is an unprecedented time for food insecurity in New Zealand, especially on top of existing challenges lower-income families have been facing. However, with help from the government and organizations like Auckland City Mission, the country is beginning to put more focus on providing food to those who need it most.

In late 2020 Food Bank Autralia released its Food Bank Hunger Report 2020 which revealed that:

While COVID-19 has made life even more difficult for already-vulnerable Australians, it has launched others into food insecurity for the first time. Almost a third of Australians experiencing food insecurity in 2020

(28%) had never experienced it before COVID-19.

Charities have seen two newly food insecure groups emerging as a result of the pandemic: the casual workforce and international students…..

Government assistance such as JobKeeper and JobSeeker, has been a means of survival for businesses and individuals. For the most vulnerable people in our communities, however, even with these lifelines, it has been anything but smooth sailing. Of those who are in

need of government assistance, only 38% suggest this assistance has helped their situation, whereas 62% are not receiving the help they need (37% needed additional assistance, 21% were ineligible, 4% found it

too difficult to apply)…..

“WE STARTED TO SEE ANOTHER

LAYER ON TOP OF OUR REGULAR

CLIENTS, OF PEOPLE WHO

HADN’T ACCESSED FOOD RELIEF

BEFORE AND WERE DOING OKAY

BEFORE THE PANDEMIC. SOME

HAD TWO WORKING PEOPLE

IN THEIR FAMILIES AND THEN

THEY NO LONGER HAD JOBS…

BECAUSE THEY WERE THROWN

INTO THAT SITUATION, THE

LEVELS OF ANXIETY AND

FEAR ROSE, PEOPLE WERE

VERY WORRIED…PEOPLE LIVE

TO THEIR INCOME. YOU RENT

PLACES YOU CAN AFFORD ON

YOUR INCOME SO WHEN YOU

HAVE NO INCOME, THE FIRST

THING THAT GOES IS FOOD.”

Angie, Reservoir Neighbourhood House.

“THE DEMAND FOR FOOD RELIEF HAS

BEEN VERY UNPREDICTABLE THIS YEAR.

WE’VE HAD TO TAKE EACH WEEK AS IT

COMES. ONE WEEK WE ACTUALLY ENDED

UP GOING STRAIGHT DOWN TO THE

SUPERMARKET AND SPENDING $600 TO

GET EXTRA FOOD JUST BECAUSE THE

DEMAND THAT WEEK WAS FAR GREATER

THAN WE HAD ANTICIPATED. WE HAD

109 FAMILIES COME THROUGH IN THAT

WEEK ALONE WHICH WAS 20 MORE THAN

WE WERE AVERAGING. WE SAW PEOPLE

COMING MORE OFTEN THAN PRE-COVID

UNTIL THE JOBSEEKER PAYMENT

INCREASE AND JOBKEEPER PAYMENTS

CAME. SOME PEOPLE WERE COMING

MORE OFTEN AND SOME WERE COMING

LESS OFTEN DEPENDENT ON WHAT THE

GOVERNMENT WAS DOING AT THE TIME.”

Peter, Kingborough Family Church, Hobart.

Political Cartoons of the Week

 

Peter Broelman

David Rowe

Cathy Wilcox

World's largest islands

Australian's are used to calling mainland Australia "the largest island and the smallest continent" but we rarely wonder who our land mass is being compared to. 

Here's the answer..... 

https://i.redd.it/a1nr8zgq4mzz.png

Uncertainty continues over Australian rollout dates for COVID-19 mass vaccinations

The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 January 2020:

Australia’s vaccine rollout plan is under a cloud after the European Union slapped export controls on COVID-19 vaccines produced within their territory, including the Pfizer and AstraZeneca jabs the Morrison government is relying on.

The controls, which effectively mean vaccine producers must ask for permission before shipping vials outside the region, will at the very least slow the distribution process for countries outside Europe. 

A spokesman for Health Minister Greg Hunt did not answer specific questions about what the European decision means for Australia’s vaccine rollout. Australia has ordered 10 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which is being manufactured in Belgium. The first shipment of at least 80,000 doses is due by the end of February.

On ABC News on 25 January 2021, Pfizer Australia Managing Director Anne Harris says surging demand for the Pfizer vaccine around the world has delayed the rollout of the vaccination program in Australia. She is anticipating that there will be a two week delay so the Pfizer vaccine will not arrive until later in February at the earliest.

Bloomberg, 26 January 2021:

European Union regulators proposed requiring drugmakers to flag exports of coronavirus vaccines in advance as the bloc seeks to step up inoculations amid growing anger about delivery delays by AstraZeneca Plc, which faces a fresh grilling at mid-week. 

The proposed “transparency mechanism” for vaccine exports comes after the European Commission expressed “deep dissatisfaction” with a disclosure by Astra that planned deliveries of its Covid-19 vaccine would face delays. The EU’s executive arm says that this would mean significantly fewer deliveries of the jab this quarter than what was foreseen in the advance purchase agreement struck between the two sides last summer.....

The federal government's phased rollout plan is that the vaccines will initially be available at between 30-50 hospitals around the country, with exact locations yet to be confirmed. Then the rollout will be extended to est. 1,000 locations, including GP practices, dedicated vaccine clinics and community health centres. Residential aged care and disability care facilities will be delivered doses to be injected into residents and staff on-site.

The rollout is intended to cover 25.7 million people.

In Phase 1a quarantine and border staff, frontline health workers, aged care and disability staff and residents, will receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Up to 1.4 million doses expected to be available.

Phase 1b will see anyone aged over 70, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are over 55, other healthcare workers, younger adults with an underlying condition and high-risk workers will receive a vaccine - likely to be the AstraZeneca vaccine. Up to 14.8 million doses expected to be available.

Phase 2a covers Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are between 18-54 years of age, along with others in the population over 50 years old and other critical high-risk workers. Up to 15.8 million doses expected to be available.

Phase 2b is the rest of the adult population, plus anyone from the previous phases that have been missed out. Up to 16 million doses expected to be available.

Phase 3 will see child vaccination but only, but only if medically recommended. Up to 13 million does expected to be available.

NOTE: It is unclear whether the term "dose" is for the preliminary first dose of the two-dose vaccines or refers to the total vaccination per person. As other government documents mention an expectation of acquiring over 104.8 million doses of these two COVID-19 vaccines in 2021, it would appear it is likely the first dose which is mentioned in the three phases. 

UPDATE

The Guardian reported on 29 January 2021 that due to supply issues AstraZeneca is unable to meet the Morrison Government's initial order of 3.8 million doses of its vaccine and the order has been reduced to 1.2 million doses. At this stage Australia's order of 10 million vaccine doses from Pfizer remains unchanged.