#Robodebt

[meangan-thee-lesbian]

You know what, if the robodebt scheme ends up bankrupting Australia, which it fully has the potential to do via the latest legal challenge, I'll actually be %100 fine with that, in fact I'll be downright cheerful, because I've already survived worse economic conditions than even that could wreak on me, so at least this time everyone else gotta suffer the same & maybe, just maybe, at that point people might even start taking robodebt seriously.

[dialogue-queered]

Australian Issues Primer

Comment: Combine a neo-liberal, national government aiming to make savings at any cost using decision-making algorithms to recover money come hell or high water with the view that legal analyses were just another opinion, and with a vicious contempt for welfare recipients.

Outcome: an illegal scheme causing widespread recipient despair, even suicide, over many years and a conclusion that ministerial and public servants' conduct amounted to varieties of abuse of power.

Report:

7 July 2023

On Friday [7 July] the royal commission into robodebt handed down its damning findings into the scheme. Here’s what you need to know.

What was the royal commission investigating?

The commission was established last year to investigate the federal government scheme known as robodebt, which was designed to recover supposed overpayments from welfare recipients going back to the financial year 2010-11.

The scheme relied heavily on a process known as “income averaging” to assess income and a person’s entitlement to a benefit.

Catherine Holmes SC was asked to investigate how and why the scheme was created, designed and implemented, and who was responsible; how risks and concerns about it were dealt with and how complaints and challenges were managed by the government; the use of third-party debt collectors; and the human and economic impacts of the scheme.

There were 3,030 hours of hearings held with 115 witnesses, with more than 5,050 pages of transcripts. More than 10,000 exhibits were tendered.

What did it find?

The commission’s 900-page report released on Friday found the “cruel and crude” scheme was “devised without regard to the social security law” using an averaging process to estimate welfare recipients’ income in a manner that “was essentially unfair, treating many people as though they had received income at a time when they had not”.

Holmes accused the architects of robodebt of “an obliviousness to, or worse a callous disregard, of the fact that many welfare recipients had neither the means nor the ability to negotiate an online system” to provide evidence of their income dating back five years.

An unknown number of key figures have been referred for civil and criminal charges, although the names are in a sealed chapter of the report that has not been released publicly.

Robodebt had “disastrous effects” including “families struggling to make ends meet receiving a debt notice at Christmas, young people being driven to despair by demands for payment, and, horribly, an account of a young man’s suicide”, the report said.

Who has been implicated?

The royal commission’s report is scathing of the former prime minister Scott Morrison, former government services minister Stuart Robert and former department of human services secretary Kathryn Campbell. It also damns Alan Tudge, who was human services minister in 2017 when the robodebt scheme was under scrutiny.

Holmes directly criticised Morrison in her report for not making proper inquiries in his role as social services minister about why his department went back on its 2015 suggestion that income averaging required legislative change.

The commission all but rejected Robert’s evidence that he attempted to end the scheme as soon as possible and had serious concerns about income averaging.

It found Campbell “had been responsible for a department that had established, implemented and maintained an unlawful program. When exposed to information that brought to light the illegality of income averaging, she did nothing of substance. When presented with opportunities to obtain advice on the lawfulness of that practice, she failed to act.”

Holmes found that Tudge was “not open to considering any significant alteration, or cessation, of processes underlying those fundamental features” and used “information about social security recipients in the media to distract from and discourage commentary about the scheme’s problems represented an abuse of that power”.

What did the report recommend?

There were 57 recommendations in the report. These included that a body should be set up to monitor automatic decision-making processes, that Services Australia should establish a debt-recovery management policy, that the government should review the structure of the social services portfolio and the status of Services Australia, and changes to the Freedom of Information Act so that the description of a cabinet document can no longer justify it remaining confidential.

It also recommended that Services Australia should design policies with an emphasis on recipients, which also shouldn’t reinforce feelings of stigma associated with government support; that consideration should be given to the vulnerabilities of recipients who could be affected by compliance programs; and that a new legal framework is needed for the use of automation in government services, with a clear path for review by those affected by related decisions.

What happens next?

Some of the people criticised in the report are yet to comment publicly, so it is unclear if they dispute the findings.

Morrison rejected the findings and said he “acted in good faith and on clear and deliberate department advice” that it wasn’t necessary to legislate the scheme and “presented comprehensive evidence to support this position”.

“I reject completely each of the findings which are critical of my involvement in authorising the scheme and are adverse to me. They are wrong, unsubstantiated and contradicted by clear documentary evidence presented to the commission,” he said.

Robert says he has “not received a notice of inclusion in the ‘sealed section’ and I understand they have all gone out” meaning he is unlikely to be among the people referred for investigation.

Tudge has made similar comments, saying he had not received notification of any referral and “my legal team has not identified any basis of which any civil or criminal prosecution could successfully be made against me”.

Those who are criticised in the report will also not necessarily be subject to the civil and criminal referrals that are included in the sealed chapter.

Those referrals themselves could be expected to take months to investigate, and the nature of them may not be known until the individuals who have been implicated are charged, should such prosecutions occur.

But the report does note that “on the evidence before the commission, elements of the tort of misfeasance in public office appear to exist” which points to the possible nature of the referrals.

The report also noted that “where litigation is not available, the Commonwealth does have a “Scheme for Compensation for Detriment caused by Defective Administration” (which would be a very euphemistic way of describing what happened in the robodebt scheme) where a person has suffered from defective administration and there is no legal requirement to make a payment. It is not appropriate to say any more on that front.” This appears to suggest those affected by the scheme may be able to make further claims against the government (noting, however, the robodebt class action settlement).

Bill Shorten, the minister for government services, made clear that while he understood why people may be frustrated with the referrals remaining private, he did not wish anything to compromise possible prosecutions.

– Australian Associated Press contributed to this report

[sublimeobservationarcade]

Coalition Responsible For Consulting Crisis

10 years of Liberal/National federal governments stripped the public service of 15, 000 jobs and opened the door for consultants PwC, KPMG, EY, and Deloitte to feast on government contracts to the tune of billions of dollars. Coalition responsible for consulting crisis, as insider mates shuffle jobs between government and the big 4 consultancy/auditing firms to ensure the flow of business and big bucks. Four Corners has revealed the incestuous relationships in the Department of Defence and KPMG via whistleblowers telling their story about what has been going on. Pigs with snouts in the trough comes to mind as an analogy about what has been occurring. “It has been the Coalition's official benchmark for "responsible management" since 2015; a target that prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison also pursued. More than 15,000 government jobs were abolished as a result.” - (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-13/has-federal-budget-2021-ended-coalition-war-on-public-servants/100133980) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pduOqZPnqVc

Dishonest & Dodgy Coalition Governments Dealing Billions To Consultants

The lack of transparency is a major issue and questions have to be asked whether this was a deliberate strategy by the Coalition in government. Outsourcing, what has always been the work of government through the public service, means that these consulting firms are not scrutinised to the level government departments usually are. The Abbott, Turnbull, and Morrison governments moved much of their work of government to these private consulting firms. Public funds normally allocated to the trusted public service were diverted to these private companies. The PwC tax scandal has shown clearly that these firms are not to be trusted with sensitive and confidential government information.

“Former KPMG partner urges royal commission into consulting industry following damning report into PwC scandal” - (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/06/former-kpmg-partner-urges-royal-commission-into-consulting-industry-following-damning-report-into-pwc-scandal) “PwC Australia has sacked eight partners, including its former CEO Tom Seymour, over their direct involvement in or knowledge of the tax leak scandal which has engulfed the consulting firm.” - (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-03/asx-markets-business-live-news-july-3/102553582)

Neoliberal Coalition Oversees Erosion Of Ethics  & Professional Standards

Overcharging and extending contracts is rife in the consulting sector and via these government contracts they have gone to town. Tens of billions of dollars have been siphoned off into the hands of these firms and their insider mates of the Coalition. Scott Morrison has a lot of questions to answer re-Robodebt and PwC was involved in this illegal debacle as well. It is time that these people were brought to justice and prosecuted. The erosion of ethics and professional standards has been overseen by the Coalition in power. Screwing the taxpayer out of money and feathering the nest of private individuals has been happening on a very large scale. “Collins had breached a series of confidentiality agreements made with federal Treasury and the Board of Taxation that gave him access to various consultative forums as a senior partner in the local branch of a global accounting firm. Information obtained during those processes was used to brief local and international tax partners or staff on what the government was doing in specific areas of taxation. It was publicly known that Collins had shared knowledge that he should not have shared, as was the fact that his former firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (now PwC), was given a disciplinary penalty that required it to tighten up training and procedures.” (https://www.themandarin.com.au/219292-damning-emails-reveal-former-pwc-peter-collins-multiple-breaches/

Liberal Vision Of Australia All About Wealth At Any Cost For The Few These people at the heart of these big 4 consultancy firms have earned millions of dollars. They live in big houses in exclusive suburbs worth millions of dollars, and they drive very smart cars. Insider trading is illegal and yet these accountants have trod an inside track thanks to their Coalition mates in power. A decade of Coalition governments has overseen the massive expansion of private consultants taking over the public service. Liberals screwing the Australian people for their own advantage. Profits and avoiding public scrutiny by Abbott, Turnbull, and Morrison are at the heart of this betrayal of trust. “The previous Coalition government spent $20.8bn outsourcing more than a third of public service operations, an audit has found. The federal government released the findings of the Australian public service audit of employment on Saturday, which examined the hiring practices and associated costs of 112 public service agencies, excluding the CSIRO, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and parliamentary departments. It found the equivalent of nearly 54,000 full-time staff were employed as consultants or service providers for the federal government during the 2021-2022 financial year – the equivalent of 37% of the 144,300-employee public service.” - (Stephanie Convery, The Guardian, 6 May 2023) Conservative voters in Australia are hoodwinked into voting for the Coalition on the basis of socially conservative policies. Meanwhile, we are all shafted via insider trading for their mates and plum government contracts for wealthy friends in the consultancy business. Hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds being siphoned off into the hands of these dubious individuals. Donald Trump and the Republicans have written the modern rule book for this grifting behaviour in government in recent times. Trump is a hero for these conservatives combining billion dollar grift with authoritarian power to keep any dissenting voices in check. Look at the list of questionable activities undertaken during the Abbott, Turnbull, and Morrison governments. - Climate change and global warming – the Coalition has put back Australia at least a couple of decades via their inaction and manipulation of government policies in this space. - Consultancy Crisis/Gutting the Public Service – tens of billions of dollars going into private hands via overcharging, wasteful practices, and neutering public scrutiny and the voice of the public service. - Robodebt – the Robodebt scheme was cooked up by Scott Morrison and was illegal, but put into practice anyway. 500, 000 Australians were wrongly accused of owing large amounts of money to the government. People killed themselves in despair over this! A settled class action has cost taxpayers $1.6 billion so far. A Royal Commission was scathing in its condemnation and recommendations for further prosecution against those administering the scheme. Scott Morrison, of course, denies any wrong doing and responsibility for something he instigated. - Sports Rorts – pork barrelling taken to another level, as Coalition ministers direct spending to swing voter seats in a bid to shore up support for their electoral cause. Australians in Labor seats miss out on investment into their infrastructure because of where they reside and the political bellwether situation. - Uluru Statement from the Heart – 10 years of Coalition government denied this call from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians for a place at the big table. Whenever Liberal/National governments come to power they invariably dismantle and defund Indigenous bodies and programs, which were established by Labor governments to close the gap. Whether it is politics over concern for First Nations’ people or just out and out racism the end result is the same. Is it any wonder that First Nations’ Australians want a Voice to Parliament written into the Constitution. Peter Dutton is leading the No vote against the Voice in the referendum. The Nationals also oppose it. Mean spirited, racist, and, generally, lacking compassion are all ways to describe this behaviour. - Housing Crisis - Where has all the social housing in Australia gone? Neoliberal economic policies have given everything over to the private sector and the profit motive. Needy and vulnerable? Tough luck, you're stuffed in Oz these days. - Corporate Profits Driving Inflation - A concentration of corporate power via takeovers and mergers means that price setting is rife in Australia. Bugger all competition (where and what has the ACCC been up to?) in the banking sector, supermarkets, audit firms, airlines, real estate, mining, energy sector, and everywhere you seek to do business is an oligopoly. Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters: Navigating Credit, Debt & Financial Freedom ©WordsForWeb

Read the full article

[phonakins-blog]

Sympathy for the Sober

Was it a fun night for you?Speeding down I-5, no cops on the mapScreaming out, “I’d die for you”But after all the stops and starts, crashes and carnageI’m just carsick I’ve mentioned a couple of times how you get more sympathy for some things when you’re sober – some rightly so and some perhaps a little harsh. Some, like running your car up on the kerb – way more sympathy when you’ve done it…

[eggshell-skull-rule]

Covering freedom of information laws...

The first person to be prosecuted in relation to Australian war crimes in Afghanistan is the whistleblower who exposed them.

[wholesaleposterposter]

[snugspheal]

Scott Morrison and some of his LNP friends are today one step closer towards criminal prosecution over the Robodebt scheme. These vile politicians have been found to have failed ministerial responsibilities and abused their power.

Vulnerable people should never have been treated this way and we need to ensure that it never happens again. I hope that today's report brings some justice and closure to the victims

[nando161mando]

An Australian Public Service employee was ignored when she blew the whistle on Robodebt in 2017, but was too afraid to go to the media thereafter – and for good reason.

[meangan-thee-lesbian]

Today's the day the Robodebt Royal Commission report is released and, while I can't wait to see a bunch of overpaid public servants get their ass handed to them, I'm also pre-emptively disappointed because I doubt any actual recourse will be made for the hundreds of thousands of robodebt victims STILL being held hostage over unlawfully raised debts (including me).

When the category 1, 2 and 3a robodebts were waived it was the result of a hasty settlement by a government in full fucking panic mode who, rather than fixing the whole problem, were just trying to throw the dog a bone in the hope this would all go away. They settled because they knew if the matter continued in court they'd have to waive every single robodebt, rather than just half of them (at least that's the strong implication from the little information regarding the settlement terms, most of which were redacted from the public🙃)

Ever since that half-assed, shrouded in government secrecy, bandaid solution of a settlement there's been no further action. Let alone thoroughly investigated, well thought out action that would address every victim of this scam. Consequently the hundreds of thousands of people classed as category 3b and 4 robodebts by a class action that only got halfway through proceedings have been left out to dry. Not only that but they've been quietly forced by the current government to resume paying off these unlawfully raised debts.

These facts have been entirely sanitised from the media whom have continued to lean heavily on the implication that no one is still paying off any robodebt. I doubt the Robodebt Royal Commission report will deviate much from that inaccuracy because both the media and commission are acting at the behest of the current government, who have a strong interest in sweeping the remaining dregs of robodebt under the rug.

First and foremost because it's category 3b and 4 robodebt victims who are funding their budget surplus (literally if the government waived all robodebts: goodbye budget surplus). Secondly, this whole Royal Commission was organised by the current government with the obvious motivation of making the previous government look bad and themselves look like unquestionable heroes. It wouldn't do too well for their image if they were found to be acting in exactly the same way as the previous government, by enforcing debts they know to be unlawful, all while loudly proclaiming "this will never happen again!"

So basically I have little hope for any actual recourse from the Robodebt Royal Commission. I expect it's going to be much of the same old, same old. The media is going to be thrown a couple of nice juicy headlines about corrupt politicians to distract the public from the fact that this is still happening. The robodebt scheme will continue operating. I'm going to keep paying $10 a fortnight towards this $17000 fake debt and never be able to drag myself out of homelessness. That's how we do it in this country where if there's a problem the government's primary purpose isn't to fix it, it's to make it just disappear.

[dialogue-queered]

Australian Issues Primer

9 July 2023.

Comment: The ABC's Gareth Hutchins paints aspects of the context to an Australian economic and social debate that has come to treat the unemployed and many welfare recipients as 'dole bludgers' and would-be fraudsters. He does so in the light of changing economic events and the narratives of economic theory. He barely hints, though, at changing state elite attitudes or underlying classes processes - so it is a 'middle-brow' analysis focused primarily on culture and narratives.

Note: the ABC site is an open-access one, and so the full article is readily available.

Extract 1: How did the Robodebt scandal happen in Australia?

The Royal Commissioner Catherine Holmes, former Queensland Supreme Court chief justice, says we need to change our social attitudes to people receiving welfare payments so it doesn't happen again.

She said politicians must lead the cultural change, given their unique position in the community.

But what about economists too?

Because economists are the ones who built the theoretical framework that has lent intellectual "credibility" to the idea that we need hundreds of thousands of people to be unemployed to keep inflation under control.

Is it surprising that that idea could have had a negative influence on our culture over time?

Is it surprising that it could have led to a situation in which unemployed people were treated with such contempt by a government and public servants?

Extract 2: During Australia's genuine "full employment" era, from 1946 to the mid-1970s, our unemployment rate averaged below 2 per cent.

That full employment regime was supported by a political culture that punished politicians for allowing unemployment to get too high.

However, in the early 1970s when our economy was hit by "stagflation," unemployment started to rise sharply, to levels not seen in a generation.

It challenged policymakers' notions of reality.

Extract 3: But while policymakers were trying to fight stagflation in that decade, economists were busy working on an alternative theory of "full employment" that would eventually allow a much higher level of unemployment.

You can get a taste of that work-in-progress by reading this Nobel lecture from 1977, by the famous British economist James Meade.

When you read it, you'll see how Mr Meade was struggling with the definition of full employment and wondering if his previous idea of what full employment was ought to be abandoned.

His lecture was a small stepping-stone in the history of economic thought.

Extract 4: Jump forward to the early 1990s, and Australian policymakers had well-and-truly abandoned the old full employment model, and they'd begun using a new model built around the concept of inflation-targeting.

It's the system we're still using today.

For inflation-targeting to work, the unemployment rate has to be allowed to move up and down to keep just enough "slack" in the labour market to prevent wages and inflation growing too quickly.

And the adoption of inflation-targeting was accompanied by a radical overhaul of our labour market institutions to support the new definition of full employment.

For example, in the 1980s and 1990s, the Hawke and Keating Labor governments, and the Howard Coalition government after them, began to make financial support for unemployed people increasingly conditional on certain behavioural obligations.

A "new paternalism" had arrived in Canberra, on political winds from overseas.

Extract 5: Could the Robodebt scandal have happened if our modern economic policies didn't already treat unemployed people in such a cavalier way?

[sublimeobservationarcade]

Right Wing Parties Don’t Govern For All

Peter Dutton has taken the Liberal party further to the right, as most Australians well know. His leadership of the LNP Coalition means that he brings the same intentions to his bid to become PM of Australia. Right wing parties don’t govern for all. Rather they come to the table with a slew of culture war inspired prejudices. Anti-immigration, anti-refugee, anti-trans, anti-renewables, and anti-public servant are all strong intentions they bring to their campaign to govern this nation. Dutton is inspired by Donald Trump and his extremist dismantling of government for all those he derides. DEI, USAID, the Education Department – all those lefties, non-whites, women and LGBTQI folk are the enemies of Trump’s America.

Right Wing Coalition Will Not Govern For Those They Deride

The LNP Coalition, in a similar vein, will take courage in a Trumpist America and start similar attacks on the fabric of government here. Every time the Coalition gets into power they attempt to take Australia further right toward the United States’ way of doing things. They hate socialised medicine and Medicare, which they tried to eradicate for 33 years, will be neglected in a bid to discredit it with the citizenry. Tony Abbott tried to privatise higher education to make our sandstone universities cash cows charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for degrees. The neoliberal right wing way is to privatise everything and make ‘user pays’ the credo for Australia. They believe in the power of market forces, despite the fact of the current housing crisis not delivering adequate shelter for many working Australians. The market has priced thousands of us out of having a home. In reality, it is tax scams that have driven the massive inflation in the residential property market downunder. A 50% capital gains tax discount, negative gearing, and superannuation as bolt hole for the very wealthy to hide their money from the tax man. This is not market forces but manipulation by the rich and powerful. The LNP governs for the oligarchs and the wealthier parts of the country. Remember the Stage 3 tax cuts, before Albanese made them fairer for all Australians. Slashing The Public Service By The Trumpist LNP Coalition Slashing jobs from the public service to the tune of some 36, 000 jobs is the keystone of the Dutton LNP campaign. Remember that Albanese was forced to rebuild the public service after 10 years of Morrison, Turnbull and Abbott. They had syphoned off tens of billions of dollars to their mates at PwC, KPMG etc to do the job of the public service at ten times the rate. The Libs had gutted the public service in their ideologically inspired but economically stupid purges. Reducing government means less transparency and more macro corruption, as the private sector fills the bill at ten times the cost. Government spending never comes down under LNP federal governments, they just move the figures around on the balance sheets and tell you what they want you to hear. Plus, their insider mates benefit from huge government tenders and jobs for the boys. The anti-public service stance of the LNP plays well to their perpetually disgruntled voters, who only ever think of themselves and their hip pockets. The Right Appeal To The Greed Of Those Who Already Have More Donald Trump has inspired right wing political parties to push unadulterated selfishness as a vote winner. The disgusting Trump is  an unmitigated bully who picks on weaker opponents. Interestingly, Trump has only ever beaten female Presidential contenders. The only time he faced another bloke was a really old Joe Biden who beat him fair and square. What did he do? He lied about being cheated but was never able to provide any actual evidence that stood up in court for his repeated lies and false claims. Trump is a bad loser and has no class, zilch in this regard. Still, he inspires right wing folk like Peter Dutton, who never let the facts get in the way of sewing fear in the electorate. Divisive Dutton told his followers, during the Voice referendum, that “if you don’t know, vote No.” Another way of understanding this is the LNP preference for keeping folk dumb, as it is easier to manipulate them on this basis. Appeal to their innate prejudices and bigotry. Don’t ask more from the citizenry, rather, drill down into their comfort zones and appeal to their greed for more. The Right Wing Parties Run A Zero Sum Game Right wing parties don’t govern for all. A big part of their platform is demonising the other. Once again appealing to the polarising human trait, which seeks to punish others in the race. The right wing parties runs a zero sum game, where a few winners take all and there are losers galore. They demonise difference to make you feel better about your greed and proclivity to want to see others punished. Immigrants and illegal refugees are bad people, according to their propaganda. Gang members, rapists, paedophiles, and scammers – all evil and this government will punish them if elected. In addition, they demonise LGBTQI folk and especially trans people because they go against God and how nature intends things to be. This is a big vote winner, especially among non-college educated folk who don’t have any experience of gay people in their lives. This is because if you actually have a family member or close intimate who is one of these people you know that instead of being demons they are only human like you and me. Propaganda does not work when faced with direct experience running contrary to the lies being promulgated. I mean, what power hungry individuals and parties will do is unabashedly shameful. Peter Dutton In A Constant State Of Alarm Peter Dutton has called for the power for politicians, like him, to have the power to deport dual citizens. The courts already have this power, why do populist politicians want this power? Could it be to perform strongman acts on centre stage, where the biased right wing Murdoch owned press can applaud in print and across digital screens? What a powerful and decisive leader locking up the bad guys and then kicking them out of our pure country. Anglo-settler nations, like Australia, have a white European seam running through them. Right wing political parties appeal to this white supremacist undercurrent, this belief that white men are the natural leaders of the land. An ex-cop from Queensland who has repeatedly cried wolf about the dangers of multicultural Australia being antisemitic, after his junket tour to Israel. About the dangers posed by China. Dutton was alarmed about Indigenous Australians being empowered by the Voice to parliament. He was alarmed about stateless refugees all being dangerous criminals threatening the safety of the nation, as if they were a marauding force. Peter Dutton is seemingly in a perpetual state of alarm or could it be a political ploy to win votes via the anxieties of some Australians? Don’t Let Australia Become A Mini Trumpist America In Trump’s America undercover, masked police are picking up legally working academics on university campuses and disappearing them. These university professors and Fulbright scholars have written pro-Palestinian independence essays in journals but have done nothing to break the law. This is what right wing fascist dictatorships do to dissenting voices within their communities. https://www.instagram.com/stevendonziger/reel/DHrSR6sy0I6 This is not what we want to see happening in Australia. We need to stand like a beacon against such blatant misuse of power by the state. Right wing parties don’t govern for all. Rather, they look after their defined sort of people at the expense of diversity and equity. This is why they have demonised DEI initiatives through continual lies and exaggerations. Once again, appealing to the sensitivities of the already dominant white cohort within populations. This is called reclaiming victimhood status. They are disenfranchising the actual victims and making them out to be villains, so that the majority white population can feel better about always looking out for their own interests first and finally. It is disgusting behaviour on both scores. The world is a complex place and there are no simple solutions, despite the BS put about by populist demagogues. If you hurt someone else they are going to come back and hurt you or yours. Divisive leaders who go around drumming up popularity on the back of promises of retribution will not make Australia a better or safer place. If we provide a fairer nation offering economic opportunity for all sorts of ordinary Australians things will be better for all. Don’t get sucked into believing the shite about there being bad people and strongman tripe about protecting the nation. This is all garbage, history tells us so, as none of this is new. Right wing parties, like the LNP Coalition, don’t govern for all. They are the party of the oligarchs and how they see the world, which is by making a buck out of you at the expense of our rights. Why don’t we tax extreme wealth in Australia? Why do we tax wage earners but not  those who make much more money out of their capital at similar rates? Why is housing so bloody expensive? It is because the rich get looked after at the expense of the working poor. Over the last 25 years, the Coalition have been in power for 17 of those years – they have defined the economic conditions in which we live through governing Australia. The lack of competition in every sector on the back of mergers and takeovers approved by the ACCC. This has killed off consumer buying power. Capitalism doesn’t work properly if there is no real competition in the ‘so called’ free market. The system has been gamed by CEOs, boards, and complicit governments and their agencies in Oz. We have copied the Americans, of course, we bring out their business leaders and employ them on huge multi million dollar salaries. President Trump Congratulates Record Breaking Astronaut (NHQ201704240006) by NASA HQ PHOTO is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 Albanese is not a charismatic strongman leader; indeed, he lacks a lot in this regard. However, he leads a team of capable and dedicated ministers who have guided Australia through a tough economic period. The Albanese government has mended the many Chinese economic sanctions costing the nation billions following the Coalition’s behaviour in this regard. There has been modest wage growth, especially at the bottom, whereas no wage growth but rather stagnation occurred under the Coalition. This is because the LNP are the party of the bosses and multinational corporations. Things have become fairer under the Albanese Labor government for workers amid the winding back of labour hire abuses under the Coalition’s decade in power. Cost of living support has been sustained under this government despite the high inflation they inherited from Morrison. Economically, things are looking up after touching the bottom of the RBA enforced cycle. Inflation has been tamed at the cost of a sluggish economy, but that is always the way. Now, we can move forward together in a somewhat fairer economy. There is still a lot to do to improve things but now is not the time to listen to lies about the need for deregulation. Deregulation won’t help you; it will only make more money for the billionaires. It will make things less safe for your family and less fair for all Australians.   Oh, one last thing do not forget the lessons re-Robodebt. This LNP Coalition government scheme was an ideologically motivated attack on poor and vulnerable Australians. It cost people’s lives and us taxpayers $1.8 billion in a settled class action against the Coalition government. A Royal Commission and several NACC inquiries later, we are still waiting for someone to be held accountable for this illegal betrayal of 500, 000 ordinary Australians. Dirty deeds done by right wing idealogues in the LNP and upper echelons of the public service. If you want to see someone punished how about for this disgraceful abuse of state power. Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump. ©GolfDom Read the full article

[phonakins-blog]

You have a new message in your MyGov inbox - Robdodebt and the culture of fear that governs welfare recipients in Australia.

I didn’t get a Robodebt. I’ve had Centrelink debts before – the main one was when my stepdaughter went back their mother after attempting to live with us for a year – $500 or so of Family Tax benefit that they’d paid to me after Phoebe had moved back out. Most of it was paid out of my meagre tax return that year. I’d just lost my job and was on JobSeeker with the Covid supplement (bless that), so…

[quarkscooljacket]

hm i needed another health care card so i went into the centrelink app. and tapped the button that said "request document" and then followed the prompts. it was like, five taps max. now there is a hcc on the way to my home. i didn't even have to put my address in. it was too easy and i feel like instead someone is going to come to my house with a gun.

[muninnhuginn]

kinda neat how media can be used as a jumping off point to learn about new things. there are the obvious things like documentaries, but then there are all sorts of other things. when 'hamilton' first got big, you ended up with people learning about aaron burr and the new york water system and various trivia from usa history around that era which wasn't even featured in the musical itself.

when 'mr bates vs the post office' came out recently over here (UK), a whole lot of people were able to appreciate the impact the whole horizon/post office affair had on its victims. sure, the story has been in the news for a few years now, but it's the first time it's been a story actively discussed in daily life. and people learning more about it has actively pushed the government to consider speeding up compensation or mass exonerations.

and even aside from these obvious instances, there are a lot that don't tell you up front and you realise as you're watching. when shows and films and books reference real life events through the veneer of fiction. suzume, referencing the tohoku earthquake of 2011 (something I imagine pretty much every japanese citizen is aware of - suzume's own age is very deliberate in how she lost her mother to the quake. she was very young at the time it happened, but it still had a huge impact on her and many others). link click, referencing the 2008 sichuan earthquake (and deliberately having the arc revolve around school-age children in a run-down old building when irl one of the reasons the casualties were so high was because of poor construction of school buildings). various kdramas referencing generational SK disasters: imf financial crisis (explored in 'reborn rich', but I imagine many other shows), sampoong department store collapse (referenced in 'move to heaven', but again, once I knew the history, it made a lot of sense why so many corrupt villains in kdramas were specifically involved in construction).

it's a mix of how, if you know the events being referenced, they'll impact you more. but if you don't know the events, then it gives you a reason to learn. I personally had very very vague memories of the 2008 earthquake, just in terms of some clips on the news at the time. I had no idea about the various factors that made the disaster so much worse until I realised what was being referenced when watching the show and decided to read up on it.

I have somewhat conflicted feelings on how fictional (or dramatised in the case of mr bates) media approaches specifically *disasters*, as opposed to other historical events, but I think the shows I've mentioned here at least take a victim-first approach.

[wholesaleposterposter]

[sydneysageivashkov]

oh now there's a presumption of innocence?