Diary of our stinking Govt.

[boris1gary]

As it's more than 100 days now, it has been suggested that a new thread was needed.  The current govt has been breaking promises and telling lies at a rate so fast it's hard to keep up.

This below is worrying, "independent" pffft, as if your own doctor is somehow what? biased, it's ridiculous. So far there is talk of only including people under a certain age 30-35, for now. Remember that if your injured in a car, injured at work or get ill, you too might need to go on the DSP. They have done a similar think in the UK with devastating consequences.

and this is the 2nd time recently where the Govt has referred to work as welfare???? So when you go to work tomorrow (or tuesday), just remember that's welfare.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-20/disability-pensioners-may-be-reassessed-kevin-andrews/5400598

Independent doctors could be called in to reassess disability pensioners, Federal Government says

The Federal Government is considering using independent doctors to examine disability pensioners and assess whether they should continue to receive payments.

Currently family doctors provide reports supporting claims for the Disability Support Pension (DSP).

But Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews is considering a measure that would see independent doctors reassess eligibility.

"We are concerned that where people can work, the best form of welfare is work," Mr Andrews said at a press conference.

[gleee58]

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@am*3 wrote:

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@*julia*2010 wrote:

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@am*3 wrote:

More kindy Parliament time 

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You forgot to include the  date of my recent photo. What date was yours taken? Old stock?

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They're not a good comparison really.  I dunno what Shorten is doing but that pose by Pyne is the old extend one knuckle to cause more pain pose.   That is disturbing.  It makes me wonder what sort of relationship he has at home, when he's there.  Does he shape up to the wife like that, with his knuckle foward to cause more pain?  Does he tease and taunt her like he does to others? 

[monman12]

"I'm sure that the metadata from abbott's phone calls are fascinating and I 'm sure the journalist knows exactly what he's talking about... Abbott on the other hand ??

Therein is displayed that appreciation of metadata is not forthcoming , also by the journalist who does not know what he is talking about when he insinuates that the process has only been used within the Internet era,  because metadata has been around well before the Internet and even telephones.

"Metadata has existed for centuries. Card catalogs and handwritten indexes are examples long before the electronic age"

noun

1. The definition of metadata is information about other information.

   .

 A3 observed apropos metadata understanding:  "Not sure Aboutface does either - he calls it data about data.

Oh gosh HE was sure, and  correct

 "metadata" refers to data which relates to one or more information resources, supporting their discovery or management"

Wright was wrong, but at least he is not lonely.

[cherry*135]

You already posted that last paragraph.... Abbott says data about data (which is correct) but most refer to it as metadata. Just because he uses correct terminology doesn't mean he knows anything about data about data/metadata.

So he used a landline for his journalist work in the 1980's did he? Fascinating (not) and not relevant to today's journalists...bet they had a good belly laugh over that comment.

[debra9275]

Why won't you post the whole article, complete with abbott's comments about his own journalistic metadata? The journalist who wrote the article is not wrong, but you are wrong to insist that you are the only one here who knows what metadata is.

[cherry*135]

Daily Mail UK 

18 March

Does Tony Abbott know what metadata is? PM 'had no problem' with police accessing his files when he was a journalist... but that was BEFORE the Internet

It's a pivotal policy for the Federal Government but questions are being asked of the Prime Minister's understanding, or lack thereof, around metadata after his bizarre claim that he never worried about police looking into his, when he was a journalist.

The problem with his attempt to allay fears of the modern day media is that metadata was hardly a player when Tony Abbott was reporting in the 1980s and early 90s, before the advent of the Internet.

'In the days when I was a journalist there were no metadata protections for journalists,' he stated to a gathering of reporters on Wednesday. But if you do the math, his argument simply does not stack up.

While metadata does include some traditional methods of investigation; including phone numbers and length and time of calls, the overhaul's main thrust is aimed at computer based functions, particularly the online and email world.

The Internet came to be, effectively, in 1992. Full text searches were not available for two years after that and email access came to being about the same time.

By then, Tony Abbott was well and truly ensconced as press secretary to Opposition Leader Dr John Hewson, his days as a writer for The Bulletin and The Australian all but over. 

'I was perfectly comfortable as a journalist, I believe that Australian police and security agencies operate in a fair and reasonable and responsible manner,' the Prime Minister said.

'A contested warrant is more like a court case and if you had to have a court case to access metadata, well, the whole process would absolutely gum up,' he said.

In trying to explain the planned two-year retention, Mr Abbott has previously stated that he believed metadata to be the 'sites you're visiting'.

'It's not the content of the letter, it's what's on the envelope,' he had said when first flagging the legislation.

'It's not what you are doing on the internet, it's the site's you are visiting, it's not the content it's just where you have been.

'It's the person you are sending it to, the person sending it, it's the date and the place it's posted from.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3000086/Does-Tony-Abbott-know-metadata-PM-no-problem-police-... 

[debra9275]

http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/tony-abbott-proves-hes-the-new-einstein-...

Tony Abbott proves he's the new Einstein: metadata bends time

• 'I was never worried about metadata'

Tony Abbott is a genius.

He has proved Albert Einstein's greatest theory, propounded 100 years ago. Time and space do bend!

Mr Abbott, we learn, was pumping out metadata when he was a journalist years before journalists used the internet. He was spinning stories in hyperspace before we knew it existed.

We know this because the Prime Minister told us so on Wednesday

"In the days when I was a journalist," he revealed to seekers of truth, "there were no metadata protections for journalists and if any agency, including the RSPCA or the local council, had wanted my metadata, they could have just gone and got it on authorisation. Look, I was perfectly comfortable as a journalist."

Mr Abbott was a journalist in the second half of the 1980s. He quit the craft in 1990.

The first commercially available internet web browser, Netscape Navigator, appeared in 1994. Internet Explorer appeared in 1995. And even then, a computer with access to the internet was scarcer in the Australian news industry than a sober lunch.

Mr Abbott, in short, had managed to bend time.

He's been far too modest in the past about the interweb thingie. Before the 2010 election, feigning to struggle to explain the Coalition's broadband policy, he confessed to interviewer Kerry O'Brien: "I'm no Bill Gates here and I don't claim to be any kind of tech head in all of this."

Foxing, obviously.

It was catching, particularly when the subject turned to the definition of metadata and last year Attorney-General George Brandis chimed in and bent, not time, but the minds of all who tried to understand his brilliance.

"The web address, um, is part of the metadata," Senator Brandis told Sky TV's David Speers at the time.

"The ... well, the web address, the electronic address of the website. What the security agencies want to know, to be retained is the, is the electronic address of the website that the web user is ... "

And all along, back in the 1980s, Tony Abbott was happily beavering away on a keyboard, perfectly content that people like the RSPCA or the local council could sneak a peak at the metadata that didn't exist yet was being captured within the ether, where time, just as Einstein had predicted, was being distorted. Tomorrow was yesterday. Or something.

Genius.

journalists need not fear being arrested, or having their sources revealed due to the new metadata laws because Tony says  there was no metadata protection in the 1980's when he was a journalist.... so everything will be OK- he was never even worried about it and was very comfortable being a journalist

[debra9275]

Does Tony Abbott know what metadata is? PM 'had no problem' with police accessing his files when he was a journalist... but that was BEFORE the Internet

• Prime Minister says journalists should not hold any fear of the new metadata laws giving up sources
• Tony Abbott said police accessing his metadata when he was a journalist in the 80s and early 90s was never a problem
• The Internet and email did not come to be until 1992 - just as Tony Abbott's reporting career was coming to a close
• The government's proposed laws focus heavily on the retention of users' computer footprints 

[debra9275]

http://www.afr.com/news/politics/budget-goes-backwards-by-at-least-80-billion-since-coalition-electe...

Budget goes backwards by at least $80 billion since Coalition elected

The federal budget's forecast bottom line has gone backwards by at least $80 billion since the Coalition came to office, challenging the Prime Minister's promise that a tough budget is not needed this year because the nation's finances are under control.

The estimate by The Australian Financial Review covers the period to the end of last year. It therefore does not include around two-thirds of total announced cuts and tax increases of $28 billion that have have been abandoned by the Coalition, rejected by the Senate or are likely to be dumped.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott this week dumped the last remnants of tough rhetoric about budget savings, and instead promised voters they did not have to be alarmed about this year's "dull" budget "because we have got the budget situation from out of control to manageable".

On Thursday, the government pushed back at suggestions it had dropped the ball on budget repair, saying "there was much more to be done".

The budget papers show that, even before the government dumped its plan for a $7 Medicare charge and university spending cuts, the cumulative budget deficits for 2014-15 to 2017-18 have blown out from a forecast of $24.5 billion to $103.9 billion

[debra9275]

The government's economic credentials have faced a further battering in the wake of Mr Abbott's assertion on Wednesday that "a ratio of debt to GDP at about 50 or 60 per cent is a pretty good result looking around the world".

Labor took Mr Abbott to task over this in Parliament, by reminding him of the alarmist rhetoric he used against the former government when debt hit 13 per cent of GDP

and yet at the last budget we were told that we were in a 'budget emergency" situation.. but now everything is OK???

I'm reminded of the boy who cried wolf,

[debra9275]

what a fine example he's set