Diary of our stinking Govt.

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.Woman Happy

 

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.

 

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Diary of our stinking Govt.


Mates first policy: Scott Morrison’s No. 1 value is seeing the country rot from the head down

BY: BERNARD KEANE

When 'looking after our mates' is your foundational value, those who work for you will get the message: taxpayer funding is there for the taking.


Remember, my value is: we look after our mates.

Scott Morrison, September 6 2018
Everywhere you look in the Morrison government, you see sleaze and self-interest, if not outright corruption. Merely itemising the current scandals on foot is an arduous task.

The million dollars paid to a Liberal mate for government advertising without the inconvenience of a tender. Christine Holgate’s spending habits at Australia Post, all approved by a Liberal-stacked board. The expenses scandal at ASIC that has already cost that regulator a deputy chairman and is likely to cost it the chairman. The ongoing investigation into the 1000% mark-up on the Leppington Triangle for a Liberal donor.

The festering sore of the Community Development Grants program, a scandal 10 times bigger than sports rorts. The soft pedaling of the ACLEI’s investigation into Home Affairs and Liberal donor Austal. The long-running harassment and prosecution of Witness K and Bernard Collaery for exposing the corruption of the Howard government in Timor-Leste. Allowing executives of fossil fuel donors to write energy policy.

And, of course, the now years-long wait for even a pale shadow of a federal anti-corruption body.

Of all of these, Scott Morrison only confected high dudgeon about Holgate, his marketing skills having alerted him to the toxic combination of the words “Cartier” and “not taxpayers’ money”. Otherwise, his moral compass remains unmoved.

A number of the scandals have their genesis in the Abbott and Turnbull governments; Morrison only inherited some; others are of his own creation.

But all reflect two themes that have run through this government from day one in 2013: that it’s OK to use taxpayer money, and taxpayer-funded positions, for your own benefit, and the benefit of your mates, and for the benefit of your party; and that there are no consequences for failure and scandal, unless political calculation necessitates them.

Those themes are potent indeed. Governments do not operate in a vacuum. The tone and example set by governments has impacts that ripple outward. First to the bureaucrats who serve governments, then businesses that work closely with government, then the broader business community and then, eventually, the whole community.

When a government appoints scores of former Liberal MPs and staffers to publicly funded offices like the AAT; when it hands a million dollars to Liberal-connected pollster without process; when a deputy PM creates a taxpayer-funded job for his new girlfriend; when it gives over $440 million to a tiny Great Barrier Reef charity run by people connected to the Liberal-allied Business Council without process; when it carefully spends taxpayer money to service its electoral needs; when it hands tens of millions of dollars to its mates at News Corp without process — it sends a clear signal.

Taxpayer funds are there to help you and your mates. And looking after mates is the explicit foundational value of the Morrison government.

The message has filtered out to the bureaucracy. To Australia Post. To ASIC. To someone in the department in charge of valuing land in Western Sydney. To the Health Department, which looked the other way rather than do anything about Bridget McKenzie allocating grants without any legal authority.

It has filtered out to one of the government’s favourite consultants, KPMG, and every other major consulting firm that has latched firmly onto the taxpayer teat in recent years while delivering what ministers want to hear rather than quality policy advice. To its shipbuilder Austal. And it filtered out to the Leppington Pastoral Company plenty good.

And when ministers are caught out lobbying for their family’s business interests, or pedalling forged documents without consequence; when a department like Home Affairs can be repeatedly assessed as incompetent in the use of its powers and its expenditure of billions of dollars without any repercussions for its secretary or minister; when over a hundred thousand Australians can be targeted by an illegal scheme like robodebt without a single bureaucrat or minister suffering any consequence; when forensic independent reports by the auditor-general are dismissed by senior bureaucrats and the funding of the Australian National Audit Office is cut, when those who seek to hold the government up to scrutiny are raided, rather than rewarded, that too sends a signal.

Accountability doesn’t matter. You don’t need to fear the consequences of misuse of taxpayer funding.

“The standard you walk past is the standard you accept,” David Morrison famously said. For the Morrison government, it hasn’t merely accepted the low standards that have mired federal politics in sleaze, it has actively promoted them.

This is the result.
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Conflict of Interest: Crown is part of Australia’s hotel quarantine story, so why is a board member running the hotel inquiry?

BY: GEORGIA WILKINS

Is Crown board member Jane Halton the best person to be heading the national inquiry into Australia's hotel quarantine failures?

If there’s one question all Australians want answered, it’s how our hotel quarantine program failed so badly that it allowed the coronavirus back into the community, sending Melbourne into another lockdown and spreading fear to the rest of the country.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews wasted no time announcing an inquiry into the botched Victorian scheme earlier this month. And on Friday, Scott Morrison launched a nationwide review of all hotel quarantine arrangements, led by the former health department secretary Jane Halton.

Halton seems like an obvious choice to lead the nationwide inquiry — an experienced bureaucrat and public servant who was already on the government’s National COVID-19 Coordination Commission and has weathered such storms as the children overboard scandal when she was head of John Howard’s people smuggling task force.

She is also the chair of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a group leading the global race to find and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine.

But among Halton’s many hats is a glaring, potential conflict of interest.

Halton sits on the board of Crown Resorts, which owns several hotels being used in quarantine schemes, including two in Victoria. At least one of these hotels has reportedly used the same security firm at the centre of state’s latest and biggest outbreak.

While much of the behaviour that led to the recent surge has been traced back to containment breaches by guards at the Rydges on Swanston and Stamford Plaza hotels, the crisis has turned the spotlight on the security industry in general. Why was it allowed to be a part of the hotel quarantine scheme, given its record of shady operators, dodgy practices and sham contracting?

Crown became part of that story last week, with reports claiming guards employed to work at Crown Promenade while it quarantined travellers were subcontracted out by Unified Security and paid $22-an-hour cash-in-hand, with no superannuation or even pay slips. One guard claimed he had $8000 put into his account and was asked to distribute it to nine other guards.

Speaking on ABC’s 7.30 on Monday, Halton defended the use of security guards at Victoria’s quarantine hotels, saying it was more important that whoever was in charge was well trained.

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“Look, I think it’s not a question of what kind of uniform you wear. I think the issue is either people providing security or other services are well trained in managing hygiene and infection control. That’s the issue I’m focused on,” she said.

Asked by host Michael Rowland how big a bungle the Victorian scheme had been, she said: “Ultimately lots of people who aren’t necessarily wearing uniform or indeed have medical qualifications work in situations where they have to practice inspection control procedures. [And] they do it really well. I want to look to see how well we are doing that in hotel quarantine.”

As one of the country’s biggest tourism and gambling operators, Crown is fighting for survival. In April it revealed it had progressively stood down around 95% of its direct employees and acquired more than $1 billion in fresh debt as it endured enforced shutdowns. Its two biggest hotels are based in Melbourne, which is now under a second lockdown.

The James Packer-backed company would likely benefit from a reopening of Australia’s borders given its reliance on tourism. It’s not clear to what extent Halton’s review will focus on getting quarantine hotels to work efficiently enough that the country can start welcoming back tourists.

The Andrews’ inquiry into the scheme is being led by former judge Jennifer Coate, and was announced after breaches by guards at the hotels were identified as the source of the latest outbreaks.

Speaking on ABC radio on Monday, the state’s chief health officer Brett Sutton said it was “conceivable” that most, if not all, the active COVID-19 cases in Victoria had stemmed from the problem quarantine program.

Scott Morrison announced a national review into hotel quarantine arrangements after a meeting with the national cabinet on Friday. He said Halton’s inquiry would look at, among other things, the training of hotel and security staff, infection prevention and control, and the management of suspected and confirmed cases.

Halton declined to respond to questions from Crikey about her position on the board of Crown, and whether it posed a potential conflict of interest as she led a review into the quarantine schemes.

Crown confirmed its Melbourne hotels — Crown Metropol and Crown Promenade — are still being used as part of Victoria’s quarantine program. Its Crown Promenade hotel in Perth had also been part of the Western Australian scheme but was no longer being used to house returned travellers.

Without knowing how potential conflicts are managed, it leaves us with the question, will the inquiry turn the blowtorch equally to all hotels in the scheme, including Crown’s? - Georgia Wilkins. Crikey.
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"There are some similarities between global warming and ghost stories. Both are supposed to be dangerous. Both are hard to see."1

That's the baffling stance the Centre for Independent Studies, a think tank renowned for championing right-wing politics and policies, takes on climate change.

But more baffling still: the Centre for Independent Studies receives tens of thousands of dollars of public funding each year to preach this propaganda.

Since 2006, the CIS and a similarly right-wing think tank The Sydney Institute are each paid $20,000 a year by one of our most important public institutions: the Reserve Bank of Australia.3

That's more than half a million dollars in public dollars going to partisan think tanks. Yet these covert funding arrangements have largely flown under the radar, buried in a single article published on New Year's Eve.

These revelations should shock all of us. The Reserve Bank's authority comes from non-partisanship, and continuing their ties to right-wing think tanks could discredit the integrity and independence of their decisions.

All Bank Board members are bound by a Code of Conduct6 that requires them to ensure the Bank acts in the public interest with independence and integrity. Shining a spotlight on these ties now would hold Board members accountable to this code and pressure the Reserve Bank to choose the public over right-wing propagandists.
The Centre for Independent Studies has ridiculed life-saving coronavirus lockdowns,7 dismissed the movement against police brutality as "emotional rhetoric",8 and even endorsed the reelection of hard-right US president Donald Trump.9

Meanwhile, climate denialism10 and anti-ABC rhetoric11 are the bread and butter of the Sydney Institute.

And while both think tanks decry government assistance and rail against "dependency",12,13 they gladly accept $20,000 every year from our central bank. It's hypocrisy at its finest.

In addition to promoting dangerous fringe ideas, these organisations clearly lack integrity — and ties to them erode public trust in our central bank. A parliamentary committee revealed these ties: now, a huge public push could cut them for good.

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Diary of our stinking Govt.

Diary of our stinking Govt.

As evinced on these boards, there are always people who will go with the straws that support their view, rather than established science, facts, commonsense...

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Diary of our stinking Govt.

Some very good reasons to vote these b**tards out at the next election.

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2021/01/14/democracy-trump-morrison-australia/?utm_source=A...
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Diary of our stinking Govt.

Diary of our stinking Govt.

Just when you thought all the corruption this government's been involved in was reported here, there's more.

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2021/01/18/michael-pascoe-grant-rorts/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium...
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