Victorian Liberal MP Kevin Andrews loses preselection for seat of Menzies

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-31/victorian-liberal-mp-kevin-andrews-loses-preselection-for-seat/13107342

Veteran Victorian Liberal MP Kevin Andrews has lost preselection for the federal seat of Menzies in Melbourne.

He was defeated by commando-turned-barrister Keith Wolahan at a preselection ballot of members.

Mr Andrews had been backed by senior MPs including Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

Bubblecar said: That’s Mr Lego Hair who was against same-sex marriage because he didn’t want to marry his cycling mates.

Bubblecar said:

Bubblecar said: That’s Mr Lego Hair who was against same-sex marriage because he didn’t want to marry his cycling mates.

sarahs mum said: ‘Good.’

sarahs mum said:

Bubblecar said:

Bubblecar said: That’s Mr Lego Hair who was against same-sex marriage because he didn’t want to marry his cycling mates.

sarahs mum said: ‘Good.’

Witty said it was “a damned shame”.

I’ll be like a lone voice crying in the wilderness, an Edvard Munch trying to keep youse grounded and in touch with reality as best I can.

Peak Warming Man said:

I’ll be like a lone voice crying in the wilderness, an Edvard Munch trying to keep youse grounded and in touch with reality as best I can.

You too, huh?

dv said:

Victorian Liberal MP Kevin Andrews loses preselection for seat of Menzies

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-31/victorian-liberal-mp-kevin-andrews-loses-preselection-for-seat/13107342

Veteran Victorian Liberal MP Kevin Andrews has lost preselection for the federal seat of Menzies in Melbourne.

He was defeated by commando-turned-barrister Keith Wolahan at a preselection ballot of members.

Mr Andrews had been backed by senior MPs including Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

Kerry Stokes will adore him.

More importantly, what’s the new bloke like?

party_pants said:

More importantly, what’s the new bloke like?

Mr Wolahan had served Australia “with distinction”, having completed three tours of Afghanistan in the Defence Force.

See if his name is on the list of those reprimanded?

roughbarked said:

party_pants said:

More importantly, what’s the new bloke like?

Mr Wolahan had served Australia “with distinction”, having completed three tours of Afghanistan in the Defence Force.

See if his name is on the list of those reprimanded?

Might be a matter of Vatican agent out, war criminal in.

Bubblecar said:

sarahs mum said:

Bubblecar said:

Bubblecar said: That’s Mr Lego Hair who was against same-sex marriage because he didn’t want to marry his cycling mates.

sarahs mum said: ‘Good.’

Witty said it was “a damned shame”.

;-)

Bubblecar said:

Bubblecar said: That’s Mr Lego Hair who was against same-sex marriage because he didn’t want to marry his cycling mates.

Indeed it is.

roughbarked said:

party_pants said:

More importantly, what’s the new bloke like?

Mr Wolahan had served Australia “with distinction”, having completed three tours of Afghanistan in the Defence Force.

See if his name is on the list of those reprimanded?

Or if he was lucky enough to be left off the list of those that got protected?

here’s no faulting the Australia Day awards for throwing up some real doozies but lost in the Margaret Court drama this year has been a so-called lifetime achievement award for Rupert Murdoch from the Australia Day Foundation.

On the face of it it looks to be an extraordinary decision: a prestigious honour bestowed on the media mogul whose recent hits in the United States include helping fan an insurrection against democracy via Fox News and in Australia leading the way on climate change denialism in cahoots with the Morrison government it supports.

The Australia Day Foundation, though, is not as it seems. It is a not-for-profit organisation in the UK, set up as a networking base for Australian business and high achievers. Losers need not apply.

The foundation and its awards are backed by a group of international conglomerates including mining giants BHP, Rio Tinto, Woodside and Anglo-American. Australia’s big banks, the National Australia Bank and Westpac, are also in on the act. Another leading name is CQS, the wealthy London hedge fund founded by Australian business figure Sir Michael Hintze.

Hintze is not well known in Australia, but he is at the centre of a powerful network of business and conservative UK and Australian politicians. As we reported last year he has been a force behind the climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation which has given voice to the views of Tony Abbott and Cardinal George Pell.

Nominally a business outfit, the foundation also blurs the lines with government. It is sponsored by Austrade and uses Australia House, home to the Australian High Commission, in London to hand out its “Australia Day” awards to UK and Australian figures of its choosing.

This year it gave its honorary Australian of the Year in the UK award to Conservative British MP Liz Truss who promoted the cause of Abbott as a trade adviser to the UK government. Past recipients have included Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/01/27/rupert-murdoch-australia-day-foundation/

This tread comes with a vomitorium.

sarahs mum said:

This tread comes with a vomitorium.

It needs to!

sarahs mum said:

here’s no faulting the Australia Day awards for throwing up some real doozies but lost in the Margaret Court drama this year has been a so-called lifetime achievement award for Rupert Murdoch from the Australia Day Foundation.

On the face of it it looks to be an extraordinary decision: a prestigious honour bestowed on the media mogul whose recent hits in the United States include helping fan an insurrection against democracy via Fox News and in Australia leading the way on climate change denialism in cahoots with the Morrison government it supports.

The Australia Day Foundation, though, is not as it seems. It is a not-for-profit organisation in the UK, set up as a networking base for Australian business and high achievers. Losers need not apply.

The foundation and its awards are backed by a group of international conglomerates including mining giants BHP, Rio Tinto, Woodside and Anglo-American. Australia’s big banks, the National Australia Bank and Westpac, are also in on the act. Another leading name is CQS, the wealthy London hedge fund founded by Australian business figure Sir Michael Hintze.

Hintze is not well known in Australia, but he is at the centre of a powerful network of business and conservative UK and Australian politicians. As we reported last year he has been a force behind the climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation which has given voice to the views of Tony Abbott and Cardinal George Pell.

Nominally a business outfit, the foundation also blurs the lines with government. It is sponsored by Austrade and uses Australia House, home to the Australian High Commission, in London to hand out its “Australia Day” awards to UK and Australian figures of its choosing.

This year it gave its honorary Australian of the Year in the UK award to Conservative British MP Liz Truss who promoted the cause of Abbott as a trade adviser to the UK government. Past recipients have included Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/01/27/rupert-murdoch-australia-day-foundation/

This tread comes with a vomitorium.

The awards seem to be pretty fair and unbiased, unlike Crikey.

Peak Warming Man said:

sarahs mum said:

here’s no faulting the Australia Day awards for throwing up some real doozies but lost in the Margaret Court drama this year has been a so-called lifetime achievement award for Rupert Murdoch from the Australia Day Foundation.

On the face of it it looks to be an extraordinary decision: a prestigious honour bestowed on the media mogul whose recent hits in the United States include helping fan an insurrection against democracy via Fox News and in Australia leading the way on climate change denialism in cahoots with the Morrison government it supports.

The Australia Day Foundation, though, is not as it seems. It is a not-for-profit organisation in the UK, set up as a networking base for Australian business and high achievers. Losers need not apply.

The foundation and its awards are backed by a group of international conglomerates including mining giants BHP, Rio Tinto, Woodside and Anglo-American. Australia’s big banks, the National Australia Bank and Westpac, are also in on the act. Another leading name is CQS, the wealthy London hedge fund founded by Australian business figure Sir Michael Hintze.

Hintze is not well known in Australia, but he is at the centre of a powerful network of business and conservative UK and Australian politicians. As we reported last year he has been a force behind the climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation which has given voice to the views of Tony Abbott and Cardinal George Pell.

Nominally a business outfit, the foundation also blurs the lines with government. It is sponsored by Austrade and uses Australia House, home to the Australian High Commission, in London to hand out its “Australia Day” awards to UK and Australian figures of its choosing.

This year it gave its honorary Australian of the Year in the UK award to Conservative British MP Liz Truss who promoted the cause of Abbott as a trade adviser to the UK government. Past recipients have included Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/01/27/rupert-murdoch-australia-day-foundation/

This tread comes with a vomitorium.

The awards seem to be pretty fair and unbiased, unlike Crikey.

Did you cherry pick just a little?

Peak Warming Man said:

sarahs mum said:

here’s no faulting the Australia Day awards for throwing up some real doozies but lost in the Margaret Court drama this year has been a so-called lifetime achievement award for Rupert Murdoch from the Australia Day Foundation.

On the face of it it looks to be an extraordinary decision: a prestigious honour bestowed on the media mogul whose recent hits in the United States include helping fan an insurrection against democracy via Fox News and in Australia leading the way on climate change denialism in cahoots with the Morrison government it supports.

The Australia Day Foundation, though, is not as it seems. It is a not-for-profit organisation in the UK, set up as a networking base for Australian business and high achievers. Losers need not apply.

The foundation and its awards are backed by a group of international conglomerates including mining giants BHP, Rio Tinto, Woodside and Anglo-American. Australia’s big banks, the National Australia Bank and Westpac, are also in on the act. Another leading name is CQS, the wealthy London hedge fund founded by Australian business figure Sir Michael Hintze.

Hintze is not well known in Australia, but he is at the centre of a powerful network of business and conservative UK and Australian politicians. As we reported last year he has been a force behind the climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation which has given voice to the views of Tony Abbott and Cardinal George Pell.

Nominally a business outfit, the foundation also blurs the lines with government. It is sponsored by Austrade and uses Australia House, home to the Australian High Commission, in London to hand out its “Australia Day” awards to UK and Australian figures of its choosing.

This year it gave its honorary Australian of the Year in the UK award to Conservative British MP Liz Truss who promoted the cause of Abbott as a trade adviser to the UK government. Past recipients have included Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/01/27/rupert-murdoch-australia-day-foundation/

This tread comes with a vomitorium.

The awards seem to be pretty fair and unbiased, unlike Crikey.

Since they are complaining about one particular award, I’m not sure that the others are really relevant.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-01/scott-morrison-biggest-donor-donations-liberal-labor-coalition/13098398

The Electoral Commission has released its latest donations disclosures headlined by millions of dollars from Clive Palmer’s Mineralogy company to his United Australia Party.

But some of the donations — covering the period July 2019 to June 2020 — are more than a year old, prompting former electoral commissioner Ed Killesteyn to describe the scheme as “one of the worst in the world”.

“Australia’s financial disclosure system is one of the worst in the world taken from the central objective of ensuring that the voter knows, at the time of voting, who is funding whom and by how much,” he said.

Mr Killesteyn was electoral commissioner from 2009 until 2014 when he left the post following the 2013 election in which votes were lost in the WA Senate race.

He is now chair of the Intra Government Advisory Group of the National Measurement Institute.

Queensland now requires pre-election donations information to be published prior to election day, but the federal political parties have shown little interest in updating the federal scheme.

“Both political parties are complicit in not addressing the all-too-obvious and well-documented deficiencies of financial disclosure in Australia,” Mr Killesteyn said.

The Labor Party has a policy to reduce the threshold of donation disclosure from $14,000 down to $1,000, and to introduce real-time reporting of donations.

A National Audit Office (ANAO) report last year found management of the scheme by the Electoral Commissioner (AEC) was only “partially effective” and made the point that the AEC was reluctant to penalise parties for late returns or errors.

But Mr Killesteyn believes the problem with Australia’s scheme is not its administration.

“A good legislative regime can be buggered by poor administration; but, just like a poor red wine can’t be improved by ageing, a poor legislative scheme can’t be fixed by administration,” he said.

I reckon corporate donations should be banned. Donations must be made by individuals only.

party_pants said:

I reckon corporate donations should be banned. Donations must be made by individuals only.

Unions?

sibeen said:

party_pants said:

I reckon corporate donations should be banned. Donations must be made by individuals only.

Unions?

Them as well, its really just a bribe reworded as a donation

sibeen said:

party_pants said:

I reckon corporate donations should be banned. Donations must be made by individuals only.

Unions?

Yeah, not sure how to handle those. I guess they can organise a system where they just collect donations from members and remit them to the ALP. Or the union fees might come with a compulsory donation fraction.

party_pants said:

sibeen said:

party_pants said:

I reckon corporate donations should be banned. Donations must be made by individuals only.

Unions?

Yeah, not sure how to handle those. I guess they can organise a system where they just collect donations from members and remit them to the ALP. Or the union fees might come with a compulsory donation fraction.

(I think PWM is posting in the wrong thread again)

Peak Warming Man said:

party_pants said:

sibeen said:

Unions?

Yeah, not sure how to handle those. I guess they can organise a system where they just collect donations from members and remit them to the ALP. Or the union fees might come with a compulsory donation fraction.

And it’ll be black as the inside of a cat until about 10am.

Vile woman forced to eat her own lies on air:

Peta Credlin forced to apologise to Kevin Rudd over false data harvesting claims

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/01/peta-credlin-forced-to-apologise-to-kevin-rudd-over-false-data-harvesting-claims

Bubblecar said:

Vile woman forced to eat her own lies on air:

Peta Credlin forced to apologise to Kevin Rudd over false data harvesting claims

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/01/peta-credlin-forced-to-apologise-to-kevin-rudd-over-false-data-harvesting-claims

Good

Today, we found out what money was given to political parties in 2019-20. It revealed that gas industry players are big donors to Australian political parties. In a year that saw the Morrison government trumpet a ‘gas-led recovery’, gas companies and peak bodies gave $698,339 to the major parties.

A few more troubling figures we found after diving into today’s report include:

Fossil fuel industry sources gave a total of $428,404 to Australian political parties. However, when the ambiguous ‘other receipts’ category is included, this amount rocketed to $1,329,754.

Gas industry players were the biggest fossil fuel donors, giving $698,339 to Australian political parties, while coal companies and peak bodies gave $316,224.

The top three fossil fuel funders were Clive Palmer’s Minerology ($5,910,341 to Palmer’s United Australia Party, Woodside Energy ($197,750 to the Liberal and National parties, $137,665 to Labor), and the Minerals Council of Australia ($65,383 to the Liberals, $55,000 to Labor).

Trevor St Baker, who is seeking federal money to upgrade his Vales Point coal-fired power station, donated $84,250 to the major parties.

In some cases, donors declared amounts that were far greater than what the parties themselves revealed, demonstrating serious problems with the transparency of reporting.

Between the parties, $38,777,998 of receipts have undisclosed sources. Ask yourself – why? We deserve to know where this money comes from.
These numbers were only made public today, many months after the donations were made. This isn’t an example of a healthy democracy in action. Nor is this a demonstration of transparency. Our elected representatives have to do better than this.

Democracy is for the people, not the big polluters, and it’s time we claim it back.

Australian Conservation Foundation

Ms Macklin said more than 1,800 people had their membership of the party revoked because they were not considered “genuine members”.

There are more than 13,000 Labor members in Victoria.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-01/victorian-alp-marlene-kairouz-branch-stacking-allegations/13099880

When you’re kicking out around 14% of your membership you should probably be sending out for a few cases of surströmming.

Mr Lego Hair’s successor (who also has funny retro hair) insists he’s “not a moderate”, but doesn’t identify which brand of extremism he endorses:

Keith Wolahan, the ex-commando who unseated Liberal Party stalwart Kevin Andrews, insists he’s ‘not a moderate’

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-01/keith-wolahan-kevin-andrews-menzies-liberal-party-moderate/13108654

Bubblecar said:

Mr Lego Hair’s successor (who also has funny retro hair) insists he’s “not a moderate”, but doesn’t identify which brand of extremism he endorses:

Keith Wolahan, the ex-commando who unseated Liberal Party stalwart Kevin Andrews, insists he’s ‘not a moderate’

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-01/keith-wolahan-kevin-andrews-menzies-liberal-party-moderate/13108654

With his lot that generally means he’s right of Hiitler.

Radio said this morning Scotty has blocked out the latter part of this year but denies an early election.

Divine Angel said:

Radio said this morning Scotty has blocked out the latter part of this year but denies an early election.

He denied it yesterday. And immediately everyone rubbed their hands together and said, ‘It’s on.’

IPA Geniuses Expose Coalition Failures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thI_YTCIuUg

There is a chance that with Abbott at work at the IPA that the IPA could turn into a laff. Not a huge chance.But unless they stop him from actually doing stuff…

sarahs mum said:

IPA Geniuses Expose Coalition Failures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thI_YTCIuUg

There is a chance that with Abbott at work at the IPA that the IPA could turn into a laff. Not a huge chance.But unless they stop him from actually doing stuff…

AWOL= Australian Way Of Life.

That’s cute.

Scabs!

Microsoft backs media bargaining code, suggests Bing can fill gap if Google and Facebook depart

furious said:

Scabs!

Microsoft backs media bargaining code, suggests Bing can fill gap if Google and Facebook depart

Saw that earlier today. I laughed.

party_pants said:

furious said:

Scabs!

Microsoft backs media bargaining code, suggests Bing can fill gap if Google and Facebook depart

Saw that earlier today. I laughed.

Yeah, it was kinda humorous…

furious said:

party_pants said:

furious said:

Scabs!

Microsoft backs media bargaining code, suggests Bing can fill gap if Google and Facebook depart

Saw that earlier today. I laughed.

Yeah, it was kinda humorous…

Kind of ironic too. Sort of like one big multinational threatening to take market share away from another is going to do more than any government plan to regulate. Expect Google to to do a backflip soon.

sarahs mum said:

Divine Angel said:

Radio said this morning Scotty has blocked out the latter part of this year but denies an early election.

He denied it yesterday. And immediately everyone rubbed their hands together and said, ‘It’s on.’

Scotty is back pedalling up a steep scree.

Larissa Waters

19 mins ·
Disappointingly, Labor have revealed their true colours when it comes to stopping dirty political donations, refusing to support the Greens’ motion calling for donations reform.
Today in the Senate, the Greens called on the federal government to support lowering the disclosure threshold for donations to political parties, requiring more timely disclosure of donations, and imposing caps on donation amounts.
Labor voted it down.
Labor made a big song and dance earlier this week about how unacceptable Clive Palmer’s $75,000 political donation to the National Party was.
They said they finally want to clean up our democracy and support the cap on political donations that the Greens have spent decades fighting for.
But we can see today that Labor are all talk and no action.
The Greens motion didn’t specify an amount that donations should be capped at, it just called for support of the idea of a donations limit, exactly what Albanese said was Labor’s position on Tuesday.
At the first chance Labor have had to stand by this new position, they’ve buckled. They are so afraid of turning off the tap to the dirty money that funds their election campaigns they’re willing to undermine their own leader’s position.

sarahs mum said:

Larissa Waters

19 mins ·
Disappointingly, Labor have revealed their true colours when it comes to stopping dirty political donations, refusing to support the Greens’ motion calling for donations reform.
Today in the Senate, the Greens called on the federal government to support lowering the disclosure threshold for donations to political parties, requiring more timely disclosure of donations, and imposing caps on donation amounts.
Labor voted it down.
Labor made a big song and dance earlier this week about how unacceptable Clive Palmer’s $75,000 political donation to the National Party was.
They said they finally want to clean up our democracy and support the cap on political donations that the Greens have spent decades fighting for.
But we can see today that Labor are all talk and no action.
The Greens motion didn’t specify an amount that donations should be capped at, it just called for support of the idea of a donations limit, exactly what Albanese said was Labor’s position on Tuesday.
At the first chance Labor have had to stand by this new position, they’ve buckled. They are so afraid of turning off the tap to the dirty money that funds their election campaigns they’re willing to undermine their own leader’s position.

Political donations are a bribe, the parties know it, the donators know it and we know it and should actually be stopped completely or so curtailed the bribe incentive isn’t worth giving the donator a favour in return

What’s the deal with preselection?

Kevin Andrews has lost his seat in a preselection battle.

Can he become an independent ?

Tau.Neutrino said:

What’s the deal with preselection?

Kevin Andrews has lost his seat in a preselection battle.

Can he become an independent ?

Yes.

The liberals must have a lot of shares in the coal industry.

Falling shares in the coal industry is their fear of renewables?

Why dont they invest in the renewable sector?

Energy is still energy.

Bushfire Recovery Money given to Billionaires
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDTAgw1×9Eg

Bushfire Rorts: Coalition targets bushfire recovery funds for Coalition seats
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/bushfire-rorts-coalition-targets-bushfire-recovery-funds-for-coalition-seats/

—

So 99% of bushfire relief funding went to seats held by the LNP.

And a good percentage of the money given to charities was withheld.

I believe we need to rethink this.

George Christensen is really a little boy in a man’s body isn’t he.

Tau.Neutrino said:

George Christensen is really a little boy in a man’s body isn’t he.

How the hell did he get elected?

Tau.Neutrino said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

George Christensen is really a little boy in a man’s body isn’t he.

How the hell did he get elected?

Betoota Advocate:

‘PM Fast-Tracks Travel Bubble With The Phillipines In Effort To Get Christensen To Fuck Off’

captain_spalding said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

George Christensen is really a little boy in a man’s body isn’t he.

How the hell did he get elected?

Betoota Advocate:

‘PM Fast-Tracks Travel Bubble With The Phillipines In Effort To Get Christensen To Fuck Off’

:)

had to giggle at that one

sarahs mum said:

Bushfire Recovery Money given to Billionaires
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDTAgw1×9Eg

Bushfire Rorts: Coalition targets bushfire recovery funds for Coalition seats
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/bushfire-rorts-coalition-targets-bushfire-recovery-funds-for-coalition-seats/

—

So 99% of bushfire relief funding went to seats held by the LNP.

And a good percentage of the money given to charities was withheld.

I believe we need to rethink this.

12mminutes ago

By Rebecca Trigger
What’s the best way to donate?

Lots of people have been asking how they can help people affected by the fires, including how to donate clothing, household items or even food.

But Premier Mark McGowan says those kinds of donations are not easy to manage, and it would be better to donate money to the Lord Mayor’s relief fund.

sarahs mum said:

sarahs mum said:

Bushfire Recovery Money given to Billionaires
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDTAgw1×9Eg

Bushfire Rorts: Coalition targets bushfire recovery funds for Coalition seats
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/bushfire-rorts-coalition-targets-bushfire-recovery-funds-for-coalition-seats/

—

So 99% of bushfire relief funding went to seats held by the LNP.

And a good percentage of the money given to charities was withheld.

I believe we need to rethink this.

12mminutes ago

By Rebecca Trigger
What’s the best way to donate?

Lots of people have been asking how they can help people affected by the fires, including how to donate clothing, household items or even food.

But Premier Mark McGowan says those kinds of donations are not easy to manage, and it would be better to donate money to the Lord Mayor’s relief fund.

maybe the best way is to elect someone useful

captain_spalding said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

George Christensen is really a little boy in a man’s body isn’t he.

How the hell did he get elected?

Betoota Advocate:

‘PM Fast-Tracks Travel Bubble With The Phillipines In Effort To Get Christensen To Fuck Off’

giggle

some fun

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/04/coalition-deletes-references-to-far-right-extremism-in-senate-motion

Coalition deletes references to rising far-right extremism in Senate motion

Bill condemning extremism passes only after references to Craig Kelly and George Christensen were removed and far-left anarchism and communism added

Labor has accused the government of seeking to “downplay and dismiss” the threat of rightwing extremism in contradiction of national security advice

SCIENCE said:

some fun

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/04/coalition-deletes-references-to-far-right-extremism-in-senate-motion

Coalition deletes references to rising far-right extremism in Senate motion

Bill condemning extremism passes only after references to Craig Kelly and George Christensen were removed and far-left anarchism and communism added

Labor has accused the government of seeking to “downplay and dismiss” the threat of rightwing extremism in contradiction of national security advice

The Senate has dramatically re-written this Labor motion on far-right extremism, to condemn far right AND LEFT extremism (both sides); and strikes out criticism of Craig Kelly and George Christensen

—

Taking a leaf from that recently discarded centrist president.. what’s ‘is name

Ian said:

SCIENCE said:

some fun

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/04/coalition-deletes-references-to-far-right-extremism-in-senate-motion

Coalition deletes references to rising far-right extremism in Senate motion

Bill condemning extremism passes only after references to Craig Kelly and George Christensen were removed and far-left anarchism and communism added

Labor has accused the government of seeking to “downplay and dismiss” the threat of rightwing extremism in contradiction of national security advice

The Senate has dramatically re-written this Labor motion on far-right extremism, to condemn far right AND LEFT extremism (both sides); and strikes out criticism of Craig Kelly and George Christensen

—

Taking a leaf from that recently discarded centrist president.. what’s ‘is name

“good people on both sides” ??

SCIENCE said:

some fun

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/04/coalition-deletes-references-to-far-right-extremism-in-senate-motion

Coalition deletes references to rising far-right extremism in Senate motion

Bill condemning extremism passes only after references to Craig Kelly and George Christensen were removed and far-left anarchism and communism added

Labor has accused the government of seeking to “downplay and dismiss” the threat of rightwing extremism in contradiction of national security advice

*shakes head slowly.

sarahs mum said:

SCIENCE said:

some fun

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/04/coalition-deletes-references-to-far-right-extremism-in-senate-motion

Coalition deletes references to rising far-right extremism in Senate motion

Bill condemning extremism passes only after references to Craig Kelly and George Christensen were removed and far-left anarchism and communism added

Labor has accused the government of seeking to “downplay and dismiss” the threat of rightwing extremism in contradiction of national security advice

*shakes head slowly.

The Liberals cannot except that Craig Kelly and George Christensen are childish idiots not fit to be in office.

Tau.Neutrino said:

sarahs mum said:

SCIENCE said:

some fun

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/04/coalition-deletes-references-to-far-right-extremism-in-senate-motion

Coalition deletes references to rising far-right extremism in Senate motion

Bill condemning extremism passes only after references to Craig Kelly and George Christensen were removed and far-left anarchism and communism added

Labor has accused the government of seeking to “downplay and dismiss” the threat of rightwing extremism in contradiction of national security advice

*shakes head slowly.

The Liberals cannot except that Craig Kelly and George Christensen are childish idiots not fit to be in office.

What is needed is all the waste of space politicians worldwide need to be told to form a party in the one location and drop a nuke on them.
Like that US women hassling the boy/man who survived a school massacre, I mean c’mon that’s off in just so many ways

Cymek said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

sarahs mum said:

*shakes head slowly.

The Liberals cannot except that Craig Kelly and George Christensen are childish idiots not fit to be in office.

What is needed is all the waste of space politicians worldwide need to be told to form a party in the one location and drop a nuke on them.
Like that US women hassling the boy/man who survived a school massacre, I mean c’mon that’s off in just so many ways

I think we need higher political standards that see people like Craig Kelly and George Christensen and other like them removed from parliament and prevented from entering parliament again.

Tau.Neutrino said:

sarahs mum said:

SCIENCE said:

some fun

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/04/coalition-deletes-references-to-far-right-extremism-in-senate-motion

Coalition deletes references to rising far-right extremism in Senate motion

Bill condemning extremism passes only after references to Craig Kelly and George Christensen were removed and far-left anarchism and communism added

Labor has accused the government of seeking to “downplay and dismiss” the threat of rightwing extremism in contradiction of national security advice

*shakes head slowly.

The Liberals cannot except that Craig Kelly and George Christensen are childish idiots not fit to be in office.

Our local MP Craig Kelly is an embarrassment. He doesn’t represent our beautiful community
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/04/our-local-mp-craig-kelly-is-an-embarrassment-he-doesnt-represent-our-beautiful-community

sarahs mum said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

sarahs mum said:

*shakes head slowly.

The Liberals cannot except that Craig Kelly and George Christensen are childish idiots not fit to be in office.

Our local MP Craig Kelly is an embarrassment. He doesn’t represent our beautiful community
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/04/our-local-mp-craig-kelly-is-an-embarrassment-he-doesnt-represent-our-beautiful-community

Our group We Are Hughes is mobilising to have the Liberal politician democratically demoted

ROFL. Democratically demoted…ROFL.

Tau.Neutrino said:

Cymek said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

The Liberals cannot except that Craig Kelly and George Christensen are childish idiots not fit to be in office.

What is needed is all the waste of space politicians worldwide need to be told to form a party in the one location and drop a nuke on them.
Like that US women hassling the boy/man who survived a school massacre, I mean c’mon that’s off in just so many ways

I think we need higher political standards that see people like Craig Kelly and George Christensen and other like them removed from parliament and prevented from entering parliament again.

Or they could lose in preselections because their local political party members think they are an anachronism like Kevin Andrews.

sarahs mum said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

sarahs mum said:

*shakes head slowly.

The Liberals cannot except that Craig Kelly and George Christensen are childish idiots not fit to be in office.

Our local MP Craig Kelly is an embarrassment. He doesn’t represent our beautiful community
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/04/our-local-mp-craig-kelly-is-an-embarrassment-he-doesnt-represent-our-beautiful-community

If the Liberals woke up they would have a preselection meeting and endorse another candidate, they don’t appear to be doing that, so it looks like an independent with oust him then at the next election.

sarahs mum said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

sarahs mum said:

*shakes head slowly.

The Liberals cannot except that Craig Kelly and George Christensen are childish idiots not fit to be in office.

Our local MP Craig Kelly is an embarrassment. He doesn’t represent our beautiful community
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/04/our-local-mp-craig-kelly-is-an-embarrassment-he-doesnt-represent-our-beautiful-community

Good luck to them.

“I can’t get my head around the fact that the most bushfire-prone city in New South Wales according to the insurance industry, the Blue Mountains, that is unlike a lot of other areas that have a lot of other industries, we have one, tourism, which was completely squashed by the fires.

“How on earth did we not get one project up out of that prospectus? Not one?”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/04/blue-mountains-did-not-receive-a-cent-from-177m-nsw-bushfire-disaster-fund

Tau.Neutrino said:

sarahs mum said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

The Liberals cannot except that Craig Kelly and George Christensen are childish idiots not fit to be in office.

Our local MP Craig Kelly is an embarrassment. He doesn’t represent our beautiful community
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/04/our-local-mp-craig-kelly-is-an-embarrassment-he-doesnt-represent-our-beautiful-community

If the Liberals woke up they would have a preselection meeting and endorse another candidate, they don’t appear to be doing that, so it looks like an independent with oust him then at the next election.

A round up of Craig Kelly…

Climate change denier.

Supports the coal industry, says fossil fuels were among the reasons “we are so safe”.

Conspiracy theorist.

Thinks people should not wear masks.

Spreads misinformation.

Regularly censors comments on his facebook page that go against his ideology.

Is clearly out of touch with his electorate.

After appearing On Good Morning Britain he says this on his facebook page referring to UK meteorologist Laura Tobin as “oh no! Ignorant Pommy weather girl calls me a climate change denier”. (Laura Tobin Meteorologist – A degree in Physics & Meteorology, 4 yrs as an aviation forecaster at the RAF, 12 yrs as a broadcast meteorologist, Attended a @WMO Climate course last year & upto date with all the science.)

Supports alternative treatments for Covid-19 that have not been properly evidenced.

Supports anti-vaxxers.

Is out of step with government and health experts.

Craig is into anti-science.

—

Bit of a loose cannon isn’t he.

The two men running the Australian economy are completely at odds, fighting each other while saying they’re not.

The one who is right is powerless, and the one with the power is wrong.

Philip Lowe, the Governor of the Reserve Bank, is trying to get wages up, but he can’t. Prime Minister Scott Morrison could get wages up but he is so deep in the habit of suppressing them that it’s an addiction.

So they’re at loggerheads. But the first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club.

Both of them made big speeches this week. Dr Lowe was explicit about trying to get wages up and said the RBA expected to be working at it until 2024, using near-zero interest rates and money creation; Mr Morrison said everything is fine and it’s time to start reducing debt.

The Australian economy is a horse with two jockeys: One is whacking it with a wet lettuce and the other is pulling on the reins. Horse confused, likely to pull up.

On Monday the Prime Minister proudly said “the unemployment rate has fallen from 7.5 per cent in July last year down to 6.6 per cent in December”.

https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/finance-news/2021/02/04/alan-kohler-fight-club/

dv said:

The two men running the Australian economy are completely at odds, fighting each other while saying they’re not.

The one who is right is powerless, and the one with the power is wrong.

Philip Lowe, the Governor of the Reserve Bank, is trying to get wages up, but he can’t. Prime Minister Scott Morrison could get wages up but he is so deep in the habit of suppressing them that it’s an addiction.

So they’re at loggerheads. But the first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club.

Both of them made big speeches this week. Dr Lowe was explicit about trying to get wages up and said the RBA expected to be working at it until 2024, using near-zero interest rates and money creation; Mr Morrison said everything is fine and it’s time to start reducing debt.

The Australian economy is a horse with two jockeys: One is whacking it with a wet lettuce and the other is pulling on the reins. Horse confused, likely to pull up.

On Monday the Prime Minister proudly said “the unemployment rate has fallen from 7.5 per cent in July last year down to 6.6 per cent in December”.

https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/finance-news/2021/02/04/alan-kohler-fight-club/

With growing numbers of homeless employed people perhaps it isn’t all about the unemployed.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-victorian-parliament-has-passed-a-bill-banning-gay-conversion-therapy

Gay conversion practices have been banned in Victoria following a marathon debate in the state’s parliament overnight

dv said:

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-victorian-parliament-has-passed-a-bill-banning-gay-conversion-therapy

Gay conversion practices have been banned in Victoria following a marathon debate in the state’s parliament overnight

You know, until a few years ago, I don’t think I even know such a thing existed. And then I thought it was an American thing.

buffy said:

dv said:

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-victorian-parliament-has-passed-a-bill-banning-gay-conversion-therapy

Gay conversion practices have been banned in Victoria following a marathon debate in the state’s parliament overnight

You know, until a few years ago, I don’t think I even know such a thing existed. And then I thought it was an American thing.

It’s a Hillsong thing

dv said:

buffy said:

dv said:

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-victorian-parliament-has-passed-a-bill-banning-gay-conversion-therapy

Gay conversion practices have been banned in Victoria following a marathon debate in the state’s parliament overnight

You know, until a few years ago, I don’t think I even know such a thing existed. And then I thought it was an American thing.

It’s a Hillsong thing

So what denotes it as a therapy?

buffy said:

dv said:

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-victorian-parliament-has-passed-a-bill-banning-gay-conversion-therapy

Gay conversion practices have been banned in Victoria following a marathon debate in the state’s parliament overnight

You know, until a few years ago, I don’t think I even know such a thing existed. And then I thought it was an American thing.

And now they’ll have to go overseas for treatment, it’s not right.

dv said:

buffy said:

dv said:

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-victorian-parliament-has-passed-a-bill-banning-gay-conversion-therapy

Gay conversion practices have been banned in Victoria following a marathon debate in the state’s parliament overnight

You know, until a few years ago, I don’t think I even know such a thing existed. And then I thought it was an American thing.

It’s a Hillsong thing

A distasteful practice, I wonder how they turn out, pretty poor I imagine and that’s not assuming the suicide risk increase

roughbarked said:

dv said:

buffy said:

You know, until a few years ago, I don’t think I even know such a thing existed. And then I thought it was an American thing.

It’s a Hillsong thing

So what denotes it as a therapy?

TM on GCT

roughbarked said:

dv said:

buffy said:

You know, until a few years ago, I don’t think I even know such a thing existed. And then I thought it was an American thing.

It’s a Hillsong thing

So what denotes it as a therapy?

Them saying so probably
The last thing anyone announcing themselves as gay is that nonsense from family, the best you can say is no problem, we’ll help you if you need it

Craig Kelly’s Facebook posts are mysteriously disappearing – and no one can explain it

Liberal MP insists he has not deleted any posts, and Facebook says it is not responsible and can’t account for their disappearance

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/05/craig-kellys-facebook-posts-are-mysteriously-disappearing-and-no-one-can-explain-it

sarahs mum said:

Craig Kelly’s Facebook posts are mysteriously disappearing – and no one can explain it

Liberal MP insists he has not deleted any posts, and Facebook says it is not responsible and can’t account for their disappearance

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/05/craig-kellys-facebook-posts-are-mysteriously-disappearing-and-no-one-can-explain-it

his password is password and someone hacked his account.

party_pants said:

sarahs mum said:

Craig Kelly’s Facebook posts are mysteriously disappearing – and no one can explain it

Liberal MP insists he has not deleted any posts, and Facebook says it is not responsible and can’t account for their disappearance

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/05/craig-kellys-facebook-posts-are-mysteriously-disappearing-and-no-one-can-explain-it

his password is password and someone hacked his account.

He might be …fibbing.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/07/michael-mccormack-says-agriculture-could-be-excluded-from-2050-net-zero-emissions-target?CMP=soc_567

Some Australian Nationals MPs, including the former party leader Barnaby Joyce and Senator Matt Canavan, have been increasingly vocal about quarantining industries such as agriculture and mining from any target Australia signs up to.

The prime minister has indicated his government is considering a formal target but has yet to commit.

“Our goal is to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible, and preferably by 2050,” he said last week.

But in a sign of just how difficult crafting a consensus climate policy can be within the Coalition, Morrison’s deputy said the future was not a priority for him.

“We are not worried, or I’m certainly not worried, about what might happen in 30 years’ time,” McCormack said.

dv said:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/07/michael-mccormack-says-agriculture-could-be-excluded-from-2050-net-zero-emissions-target?CMP=soc_567

Some Australian Nationals MPs, including the former party leader Barnaby Joyce and Senator Matt Canavan, have been increasingly vocal about quarantining industries such as agriculture and mining from any target Australia signs up to.

The prime minister has indicated his government is considering a formal target but has yet to commit.

“Our goal is to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible, and preferably by 2050,” he said last week.

But in a sign of just how difficult crafting a consensus climate policy can be within the Coalition, Morrison’s deputy said the future was not a priority for him.

“We are not worried, or I’m certainly not worried, about what might happen in 30 years’ time,” McCormack said. 

If they are going to exclude agriculture and mining they might as well exclude electricity generation and transport as well.

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/07/michael-mccormack-says-agriculture-could-be-excluded-from-2050-net-zero-emissions-target?CMP=soc_567

Some Australian Nationals MPs, including the former party leader Barnaby Joyce and Senator Matt Canavan, have been increasingly vocal about quarantining industries such as agriculture and mining from any target Australia signs up to.

The prime minister has indicated his government is considering a formal target but has yet to commit.

“Our goal is to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible, and preferably by 2050,” he said last week.

But in a sign of just how difficult crafting a consensus climate policy can be within the Coalition, Morrison’s deputy said the future was not a priority for him.

“We are not worried, or I’m certainly not worried, about what might happen in 30 years’ time,” McCormack said. 

If they are going to exclude agriculture and mining they might as well exclude electricity generation and transport as well.

And hey manufacturing

dv said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/07/michael-mccormack-says-agriculture-could-be-excluded-from-2050-net-zero-emissions-target?CMP=soc_567

Some Australian Nationals MPs, including the former party leader Barnaby Joyce and Senator Matt Canavan, have been increasingly vocal about quarantining industries such as agriculture and mining from any target Australia signs up to.

The prime minister has indicated his government is considering a formal target but has yet to commit.

“Our goal is to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible, and preferably by 2050,” he said last week.

But in a sign of just how difficult crafting a consensus climate policy can be within the Coalition, Morrison’s deputy said the future was not a priority for him.

“We are not worried, or I’m certainly not worried, about what might happen in 30 years’ time,” McCormack said. 

If they are going to exclude agriculture and mining they might as well exclude electricity generation and transport as well.

And hey manufacturing

So it’ll all be down to construction?

That’d be right.

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

If they are going to exclude agriculture and mining they might as well exclude electricity generation and transport as well.

And hey manufacturing

So it’ll all be down to construction?

That’d be right.

Manufacturing will be OK. We no longer have any.

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/07/michael-mccormack-says-agriculture-could-be-excluded-from-2050-net-zero-emissions-target?CMP=soc_567

Some Australian Nationals MPs, including the former party leader Barnaby Joyce and Senator Matt Canavan, have been increasingly vocal about quarantining industries such as agriculture and mining from any target Australia signs up to.

The prime minister has indicated his government is considering a formal target but has yet to commit.

“Our goal is to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible, and preferably by 2050,” he said last week.

But in a sign of just how difficult crafting a consensus climate policy can be within the Coalition, Morrison’s deputy said the future was not a priority for him.

“We are not worried, or I’m certainly not worried, about what might happen in 30 years’ time,” McCormack said. 

If they are going to exclude agriculture and mining they might as well exclude electricity generation and transport as well.

Simples: they could just keep going the way they are…

Oh wait, that’s what you suggested.

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

If they are going to exclude agriculture and mining they might as well exclude electricity generation and transport as well.

And hey manufacturing

So it’ll all be down to construction?

That’d be right.

Yeah, get rid of that concrete, or at least make them carbon-capture and store.

dv said:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/07/michael-mccormack-says-agriculture-could-be-excluded-from-2050-net-zero-emissions-target?CMP=soc_567

Some Australian Nationals MPs, including the former party leader Barnaby Joyce and Senator Matt Canavan, have been increasingly vocal about quarantining industries such as agriculture and mining from any target Australia signs up to.

The prime minister has indicated his government is considering a formal target but has yet to commit.

“Our goal is to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible, and preferably by 2050,” he said last week.

But in a sign of just how difficult crafting a consensus climate policy can be within the Coalition, Morrison’s deputy said the future was not a priority for him.

“We are not worried, or I’m certainly not worried, about what might happen in 30 years’ time,” McCormack said. 

Handing out exemptions kinda defeats the porpoise.

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

If they are going to exclude agriculture and mining they might as well exclude electricity generation and transport as well.

And hey manufacturing

So it’ll all be down to construction?

That’d be right.

Cement manufacturers will want an exemption too. That industry is a big emitter of CO2.

>And hey manufacturing

That comes under agriculture.

party_pants said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

And hey manufacturing

So it’ll all be down to construction?

That’d be right.

Cement manufacturers will want an exemption too. That industry is a big emitter of CO2.

Perhaps we should just forget about it? Makes life much easier.

PermeateFree said:

party_pants said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

So it’ll all be down to construction?

That’d be right.

Cement manufacturers will want an exemption too. That industry is a big emitter of CO2.

Perhaps we should just forget about it? Makes life much easier.

Other countries might impose economic sanctions on us.

Bubblecar said:

>And hey manufacturing

That comes under agriculture.

Amusing

dv said:

Jesus Christ.

dv said:

dv said:

Getting a bit nervous, Andrew?

dv said:

really?

Is it April 1?

Mind you, I can’t read the article if it is subscribers only.

party_pants said:

Mind you, I can’t read the article if it is subscribers only.

Andrew can feel the net closing around him…

dv said:

Is he worried about himself?

dv said:

What the actual fuck.

captain_spalding said:

party_pants said:

Mind you, I can’t read the article if it is subscribers only.

Andrew can feel the net closing around him…

… and Herald Scum subscribers?

party_pants said:

Mind you, I can’t read the article if it is subscribers only.

Yrah I thought about paying a dollar but nah

dv said:

party_pants said:

Mind you, I can’t read the article if it is subscribers only.

Yrah I thought about paying a dollar but nah

Well, I’m just trying to be fair.

I thought he might have been complaining about people being wrongfully convicted, sent to jail, and then found not guilty on appeal and released; rather than about guilty people being locked up as if jail terms were somehow an overreaction. The headline seems to suggest the latter, which I can’t believe even Bolt would be seriously advocating.

ABC News:

‘They might as well have been microchipping me’: Lambie on the offensive over unfair dismissal claims

By Lucy MacDonald
Senator Jacqui Lambie tells a court two of her former staff members were trying to “belittle” and “shame” her when they sent a letter to then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, detailing their list of grievances with her.’

The staff members are Rob and Fern Messenger.

Rob was my local Qld Parliament MP (L/NP) for a while.

He’s a sneaky, narcissistic, self-serving little shit. Why Lambie would employ him baffles me. I have no doubt that he was gathering every scrap of info he could about Lambie, and relaying it to whoever he thinks will look after him best in the future. Deliberately or accidentally, he would have been doing his best to ensure Lambie’s office ran like a shambles.

Why Uber Employs more Lawyers than Drivers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLR37TEL8cA
—-

Another Michael West about not paying tax.

It made me think about the Murdoch/Google thing and how the Feds are intervening. They aren’t intervening to ensure appropriate taxes are paid. They are intervening to make sure Rupert is happy. And why isn’t Rupert happy? Don’t they give him enough money to be happy? They have no interest in stopping tax money going to offshore accounts because they believe off shore accounts are fine. Indue is set up that way. I’m sure there are pollies with their own off shores. Turnbull had one. Or more.

Meanwhile the pollies and Rupert can sling poo at the poor and call them bludgers as he makes fortunes out of real estate liftouts. While more people are becoming homeless. They are bad even if they are the Sydney type homeless working two jobs and living in the car.

Maybe if I had of inherited millions I would understand it all better.

TiL that the top 20% of households have an average income of $4,166 per week – after tax.

That’s $217,000 after tax dollars per annum. No wonder the top 20% consists of wealthy cockies and weather girls.

sibeen said:

TiL that the top 20% of households have an average income of $4,166 per week – after tax.

That’s $217,000 after tax dollars per annum. No wonder the top 20% consists of wealthy cockies and weather girls.

Just out of curiosity, is the before tax number known?

sibeen said:

TiL that the top 20% of households have an average income of $4,166 per week – after tax.

That’s $217,000 after tax dollars per annum. No wonder the top 20% consists of wealthy cockies and weather girls.

Quite surprised it’s that high, even allowing for 2 income families.

I wonder how many of the 20% are accountants and lawyers.

party_pants said:

sibeen said:

TiL that the top 20% of households have an average income of $4,166 per week – after tax.

That’s $217,000 after tax dollars per annum. No wonder the top 20% consists of wealthy cockies and weather girls.

Just out of curiosity, is the before tax number known?

I don’t know. I’m just quoting a report. A report that in no way, no siree, Bob, has any political spin associated with it. Heaven forfend.

The Rev Dodgson said:

sibeen said:

TiL that the top 20% of households have an average income of $4,166 per week – after tax.

That’s $217,000 after tax dollars per annum. No wonder the top 20% consists of wealthy cockies and weather girls.

Quite surprised it’s that high, even allowing for 2 income families.

I wonder how many of the 20% are accountants and lawyers.

I’m wondering why they used average and not median.

I’m not really :)

sibeen said:

party_pants said:

sibeen said:

TiL that the top 20% of households have an average income of $4,166 per week – after tax.

That’s $217,000 after tax dollars per annum. No wonder the top 20% consists of wealthy cockies and weather girls.

Just out of curiosity, is the before tax number known?

I don’t know. I’m just quoting a report. A report that in no way, no siree, Bob, has any political spin associated with it. Heaven forfend.

That’s an average. The top 1% has most of it.

sarahs mum said:

sibeen said:

party_pants said:

Just out of curiosity, is the before tax number known?

I don’t know. I’m just quoting a report. A report that in no way, no siree, Bob, has any political spin associated with it. Heaven forfend.

That’s an average. The top 1% has most of it.

Well spotted.

I forgot about the mean/median thing.

The figures I quoted where from this article.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/08/how-good-is-australia-labor-crunches-the-numbers-to-answer-morrisons-question

sibeen said:

The figures I quoted where from this article.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/08/how-good-is-australia-labor-crunches-the-numbers-to-answer-morrisons-question

But Sooty never asks “How much less productive, more unequal, more corrupt, less happy, more indebted, less affluent and less trusting of public institutions is Australia than when the Coalition was elected in 2013?”

Ian said:

sibeen said:

The figures I quoted where from this article.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/08/how-good-is-australia-labor-crunches-the-numbers-to-answer-morrisons-question

But Sooty never asks “How much less productive, more unequal, more corrupt, less happy, more indebted, less affluent and less trusting of public institutions is Australia than when the Coalition was elected in 2013?”

There’s a truism in law and politics that you never ask a question to which you don’t already know the answer.

It’s equally true that you shouldn’t ask some question to which you do know the answer.

The Labor member for Hunter

dv said:

The Labor member for Hunter

He’s turning into an embarrassment.

Witty Rejoinder said:

dv said:

The Labor member for Hunter

He’s turning into an embarrassment.

Labouring.

dv said:

The Labor member for Hunter

Australia produces 373,728.37 barrels per day of oil (as of 2016) ranking 31st in the world. Australia produces every year an amount equivalent to 11.4% of its total proven reserves (as of 2016).
Oil Imports: 302,855
Oil Production: 373,728
Oil Exports: 215,925
Oil Consumption: 1,114,645

dv said:

The Labor member for Hunter

The closure of refineries and reliance upon imports is a bit of a real problem IMHO. For as long as we are dependent upon petrol, diesel and kerosene-based jet fuels to run our transport industry, the lack of local refining capacity and stockpiles is a strategic concern. I know we’re aiming at phasing it out by 2050 and all that, but in the meantime we need to be a bit careful about being too reliant upon foreign sources.

party_pants said:

dv said:

The Labor member for Hunter

The closure of refineries and reliance upon imports is a bit of a real problem IMHO. For as long as we are dependent upon petrol, diesel and kerosene-based jet fuels to run our transport industry, the lack of local refining capacity and stockpiles is a strategic concern. I know we’re aiming at phasing it out by 2050 and all that, but in the meantime we need to be a bit careful about being too reliant upon foreign sources.

Yes.

party_pants said:

dv said:

The Labor member for Hunter

The closure of refineries and reliance upon imports is a bit of a real problem IMHO. For as long as we are dependent upon petrol, diesel and kerosene-based jet fuels to run our transport industry, the lack of local refining capacity and stockpiles is a strategic concern. I know we’re aiming at phasing it out by 2050 and all that, but in the meantime we need to be a bit careful about being too reliant upon foreign sources.

Its a LNP trick. Change cars, trucks etc to steam, then you will need coal to power them. Pretty cunning don’t you think?

party_pants said:

dv said:

The Labor member for Hunter

The closure of refineries and reliance upon imports is a bit of a real problem IMHO. For as long as we are dependent upon petrol, diesel and kerosene-based jet fuels to run our transport industry, the lack of local refining capacity and stockpiles is a strategic concern. I know we’re aiming at phasing it out by 2050 and all that, but in the meantime we need to be a bit careful about being too reliant upon foreign sources.

Investing in a national strategic reserve is probably a better geopolitical plan than ramping up our own oil industry:

https://www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/taylor/media-releases/australia-boost-fuel-security-and-establish-national-oil-reserve

party_pants said:

dv said:

The Labor member for Hunter

The closure of refineries and reliance upon imports is a bit of a real problem IMHO. For as long as we are dependent upon petrol, diesel and kerosene-based jet fuels to run our transport industry, the lack of local refining capacity and stockpiles is a strategic concern. I know we’re aiming at phasing it out by 2050 and all that, but in the meantime we need to be a bit careful about being too reliant upon foreign sources.

On the other hand he’s wrong to couple it with finding new crude sources.

Witty Rejoinder said:

party_pants said:

dv said:

The Labor member for Hunter

The closure of refineries and reliance upon imports is a bit of a real problem IMHO. For as long as we are dependent upon petrol, diesel and kerosene-based jet fuels to run our transport industry, the lack of local refining capacity and stockpiles is a strategic concern. I know we’re aiming at phasing it out by 2050 and all that, but in the meantime we need to be a bit careful about being too reliant upon foreign sources.

Investing in a national strategic reserve is probably a better geopolitical plan than ramping up our own oil industry:

https://www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/taylor/media-releases/australia-boost-fuel-security-and-establish-national-oil-reserve

Hasn’t anyone noticed that the UAE are realising that they’ll have to direct their fundraising to a different source?

dv said:

party_pants said:

dv said:

The Labor member for Hunter

The closure of refineries and reliance upon imports is a bit of a real problem IMHO. For as long as we are dependent upon petrol, diesel and kerosene-based jet fuels to run our transport industry, the lack of local refining capacity and stockpiles is a strategic concern. I know we’re aiming at phasing it out by 2050 and all that, but in the meantime we need to be a bit careful about being too reliant upon foreign sources.

On the other hand he’s wrong to couple it with finding new crude sources.

Yes.

dv said:

party_pants said:

dv said:

The Labor member for Hunter

The closure of refineries and reliance upon imports is a bit of a real problem IMHO. For as long as we are dependent upon petrol, diesel and kerosene-based jet fuels to run our transport industry, the lack of local refining capacity and stockpiles is a strategic concern. I know we’re aiming at phasing it out by 2050 and all that, but in the meantime we need to be a bit careful about being too reliant upon foreign sources.

On the other hand he’s wrong to couple it with finding new crude sources.

they do really want to great Australian Bight.

sarahs mum said:

dv said:

party_pants said:

The closure of refineries and reliance upon imports is a bit of a real problem IMHO. For as long as we are dependent upon petrol, diesel and kerosene-based jet fuels to run our transport industry, the lack of local refining capacity and stockpiles is a strategic concern. I know we’re aiming at phasing it out by 2050 and all that, but in the meantime we need to be a bit careful about being too reliant upon foreign sources.

On the other hand he’s wrong to couple it with finding new crude sources.

they do really want to great Australian Bight.

They don’t even know all of what is there yet before they fuck it up.
Wait, that sounds familiar.

Dutton is going down the chute rapidly.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s office fast-tracked a one-off $880,000 grant proposal to a retail association eight days after it made a $1,500 political donation to the Queensland Liberal National Party — at an event Mr Dutton attended — for the purpose of personally supporting him.

The revelation is part of a cache of ministerial briefings obtained by 7.30 under freedom of information laws that set out Mr Dutton’s awarding of grants from within a multi-million-dollar fund earmarked to support crime prevention efforts.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-10/peter-dutton-office-fast-tracked-grant-proposal-after-donation/13126496

roughbarked said:

Dutton is going down the chute rapidly.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s office fast-tracked a one-off $880,000 grant proposal to a retail association eight days after it made a $1,500 political donation to the Queensland Liberal National Party — at an event Mr Dutton attended — for the purpose of personally supporting him.

The revelation is part of a cache of ministerial briefings obtained by 7.30 under freedom of information laws that set out Mr Dutton’s awarding of grants from within a multi-million-dollar fund earmarked to support crime prevention efforts.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-10/peter-dutton-office-fast-tracked-grant-proposal-after-donation/13126496

This sort of thing is normal now.

Foreign minister Marise Payne cancels press conference after Labor MP turns up

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/11/foreign-minister-marise-payne-cancels-press-conference-after-labor-mp-turns-up

—

What fun. It’s all about control of the narrative I suppose.

WA Liberal Party calling for coal to be tossed aside and wind and solar to take its place, with Labor blasting the idea as “reckless”.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-12/wa-political-landscape-turned-on-head-liberals-green-energy/13145928

right

we mean left

we mean this is getting fun

SCIENCE said:

WA Liberal Party calling for coal to be tossed aside and wind and solar to take its place, with Labor blasting the idea as “reckless”.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-12/wa-political-landscape-turned-on-head-liberals-green-energy/13145928

right

we mean left

we mean this is getting fun

Money money money nothing funny.

Sorry if this doesn’t quite belong in this thread, but some people here may find it interesting (and fun, so long as you aren’t an NZer).

Don’t often see our little corner of the world discussed like this in Youtube videos.

Would New Zealand’s military stand a chance against Australian invasion?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGYCRQk7i-s

roughbarked said:

SCIENCE said:

WA Liberal Party calling for coal to be tossed aside and wind and solar to take its place, with Labor blasting the idea as “reckless”.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-12/wa-political-landscape-turned-on-head-liberals-green-energy/13145928

right

we mean left

we mean this is getting fun

Money money money nothing funny.

Maybe the Liberals are sending a message to the coal industry: bump up the ‘donations’ or we can make life difficult for you.

SCIENCE said:

WA Liberal Party calling for coal to be tossed aside and wind and solar to take its place, with Labor blasting the idea as “reckless”.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-12/wa-political-landscape-turned-on-head-liberals-green-energy/13145928

right

we mean left

we mean this is getting fun

Fuckin’ ALP. When will they learn?

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

SCIENCE said:

WA Liberal Party calling for coal to be tossed aside and wind and solar to take its place, with Labor blasting the idea as “reckless”.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-12/wa-political-landscape-turned-on-head-liberals-green-energy/13145928

right

we mean left

we mean this is getting fun

Money money money nothing funny.

Maybe the Liberals are sending a message to the coal industry: bump up the ‘donations’ or we can make life difficult for you.

Ultra-cynic.

dv said:

SCIENCE said:

WA Liberal Party calling for coal to be tossed aside and wind and solar to take its place, with Labor blasting the idea as “reckless”.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-12/wa-political-landscape-turned-on-head-liberals-green-energy/13145928

right

we mean left

we mean this is getting fun

Fuckin’ ALP. When will they learn?

Must admit, this bit seems a tad optimistic

“…Coal-fired power stations would close within four years and the state would lean heavily on renewables for its energy needs within a decade….”

JudgeMental said:

dv said:

SCIENCE said:

WA Liberal Party calling for coal to be tossed aside and wind and solar to take its place, with Labor blasting the idea as “reckless”.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-12/wa-political-landscape-turned-on-head-liberals-green-energy/13145928

right

we mean left

we mean this is getting fun

Fuckin’ ALP. When will they learn?

Must admit, this bit seems a tad optimistic

“…Coal-fired power stations would close within four years and the state would lean heavily on renewables for its energy needs within a decade….”

I think it would be doable, our credit is good, but you’d need your fuckin’ skates on.

dv said:

JudgeMental said:

dv said:

Fuckin’ ALP. When will they learn?

Must admit, this bit seems a tad optimistic

“…Coal-fired power stations would close within four years and the state would lean heavily on renewables for its energy needs within a decade….”

I think it would be doable, our credit is good, but you’d need your fuckin’ skates on.

and some good ice, not that thin stuff. The big solar farm out Merredin way is slowly coming online. 1/3 there last i heard.

Michael V said:

captain_spalding said:

Ultra-cynic.

Perhaps, but it would be surprising if the coal lobby didn’t now make significant efforts to improve its relationship with the WA Liberal party.

Dutton rejects ‘absurd’ criticism of grants program handling
The Home Affairs Minister defends his handling of a community grants program, amid accusations he prioritised marginal seats.

https://thenewdaily.com.au/entertainment/people-entertainment/2021/02/12/pete-evans-gap/

It’s on … Pete Evans is stepping into politics.

The controversial celebrity chef and conspiracy theorist has joined forces with a bankrupt politician to run for federal parliament.

On Friday, Evans was “proudly announced” as the first Senate candidate for the Great Australian Party, a fringe party set up by former One Nation politician Rod Culleton.

—

Mind the GAP

dv said:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/entertainment/people-entertainment/2021/02/12/pete-evans-gap/

It’s on … Pete Evans is stepping into politics.

The controversial celebrity chef and conspiracy theorist has joined forces with a bankrupt politician to run for federal parliament.

On Friday, Evans was “proudly announced” as the first Senate candidate for the Great Australian Party, a fringe party set up by former One Nation politician Rod Culleton.

—

Mind the GAP

I do worry. I do.

dv said:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/entertainment/people-entertainment/2021/02/12/pete-evans-gap/

It’s on … Pete Evans is stepping into politics.

The controversial celebrity chef and conspiracy theorist has joined forces with a bankrupt politician to run for federal parliament.

On Friday, Evans was “proudly announced” as the first Senate candidate for the Great Australian Party, a fringe party set up by former One Nation politician Rod Culleton.

—

Mind the GAP

The GAP between their politics and reality.

captain_spalding said:

dv said:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/entertainment/people-entertainment/2021/02/12/pete-evans-gap/

It’s on … Pete Evans is stepping into politics.

The controversial celebrity chef and conspiracy theorist has joined forces with a bankrupt politician to run for federal parliament.

On Friday, Evans was “proudly announced” as the first Senate candidate for the Great Australian Party, a fringe party set up by former One Nation politician Rod Culleton.

—

Mind the GAP

The GAP between their politics and reality.

That would make a great political cartoon. A train pulled up a station, only the platform is a couple of steps away from the train. One of them is labelled ‘Reality’ and the other is “Great Australia Party”, with Pete Evans about to take a step off and into the gap. The caption is “Mind the GAP”.

party_pants said:

captain_spalding said:

dv said:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/entertainment/people-entertainment/2021/02/12/pete-evans-gap/

It’s on … Pete Evans is stepping into politics.

The controversial celebrity chef and conspiracy theorist has joined forces with a bankrupt politician to run for federal parliament.

On Friday, Evans was “proudly announced” as the first Senate candidate for the Great Australian Party, a fringe party set up by former One Nation politician Rod Culleton.

—

Mind the GAP

The GAP between their politics and reality.

That would make a great political cartoon. A train pulled up a station, only the platform is a couple of steps away from the train. One of them is labelled ‘Reality’ and the other is “Great Australia Party”, with Pete Evans about to take a step off and into the gap. The caption is “Mind the GAP”.

“But Senator Birmingham told Sky News that he trusted the Australian people to elect “more sensible” people to the parliament.”

party_pants said:

captain_spalding said:

dv said:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/entertainment/people-entertainment/2021/02/12/pete-evans-gap/

It’s on … Pete Evans is stepping into politics.

The controversial celebrity chef and conspiracy theorist has joined forces with a bankrupt politician to run for federal parliament.

On Friday, Evans was “proudly announced” as the first Senate candidate for the Great Australian Party, a fringe party set up by former One Nation politician Rod Culleton.

—

Mind the GAP

The GAP between their politics and reality.

That would make a great political cartoon. A train pulled up a station, only the platform is a couple of steps away from the train. One of them is labelled ‘Reality’ and the other is “Great Australia Party”, with Pete Evans about to take a step off and into the gap. The caption is “Mind the GAP”.

I believe he dropped off the edge ages ago.

JudgeMental said:

party_pants said:

captain_spalding said:

The GAP between their politics and reality.

That would make a great political cartoon. A train pulled up a station, only the platform is a couple of steps away from the train. One of them is labelled ‘Reality’ and the other is “Great Australia Party”, with Pete Evans about to take a step off and into the gap. The caption is “Mind the GAP”.

“But Senator Birmingham told Sky News that he trusted the Australian people to elect “more sensible” people to the parliament.”

Does he really believe that’s why he is there?

roughbarked said:

party_pants said:

captain_spalding said:

The GAP between their politics and reality.

That would make a great political cartoon. A train pulled up a station, only the platform is a couple of steps away from the train. One of them is labelled ‘Reality’ and the other is “Great Australia Party”, with Pete Evans about to take a step off and into the gap. The caption is “Mind the GAP”.

I believe he dropped off the edge ages ago.

Over the top, off the edge, and beyond the limits.

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

party_pants said:

That would make a great political cartoon. A train pulled up a station, only the platform is a couple of steps away from the train. One of them is labelled ‘Reality’ and the other is “Great Australia Party”, with Pete Evans about to take a step off and into the gap. The caption is “Mind the GAP”.

I believe he dropped off the edge ages ago.

Over the top, off the edge, and beyond the limits.

They’ll never be taken seriously with that godawful logo.

Neophyte said:

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

I believe he dropped off the edge ages ago.

Over the top, off the edge, and beyond the limits.

They’ll never be taken seriously with that godawful logo.

Actually, i suggest that they adopt ‘Over the top, off the edge, and beyond the limits’ as their slogan.

captain_spalding said:

Neophyte said:

captain_spalding said:

Over the top, off the edge, and beyond the limits.

They’ll never be taken seriously with that godawful logo.

Actually, i suggest that they adopt ‘Over the top, off the edge, and beyond the limits’ as their slogan.

Too bad “To infinity….and beyond!” has been taken.

captain_spalding said:

Neophyte said:

captain_spalding said:

Over the top, off the edge, and beyond the limits.

They’ll never be taken seriously with that godawful logo.

Actually, i suggest that they adopt ‘Over the top, off the edge, and beyond the limits’ as their slogan.

OTT_OTE_WBTL

they sound like SovCits.

JudgeMental said:

they sound like SovCits.

Mates of Vladimir Poo-tin.

roughbarked said:

JudgeMental said:

they sound like SovCits.

Mates of Vladimir Poo-tin.

that isn’t what SovCits means.

JudgeMental said:

roughbarked said:

JudgeMental said:

they sound like SovCits.

Mates of Vladimir Poo-tin.

that isn’t what SovCits means.

That’s true. Thanks for the education. :)

roughbarked said:

JudgeMental said:

roughbarked said:

Mates of Vladimir Poo-tin.

that isn’t what SovCits means.

That’s true. Thanks for the education. :)

People who want to be ‘sov. cits.’ don’t always think it through.

If you want to be a sovcit, and not subject to the laws and jurisdictions of e.g. Australia, well, that’s one thing.

But, it can also mean that you don’t get any of the Australian entitlements.

For instance, if you’re not an Australian citizen, and no reciprocal health agreement has been negotiated between you and the Australian govt., you may be obliged to pay for all medical costs incurred by you against the Australian health system, the same as for e.g. Canadian or German citizens.

As well, if you have a job, it may mean that you’re working illegally in Australia.

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

JudgeMental said:

that isn’t what SovCits means.

That’s true. Thanks for the education. :)

People who want to be ‘sov. cits.’ don’t always think it through.

If you want to be a sovcit, and not subject to the laws and jurisdictions of e.g. Australia, well, that’s one thing.

But, it can also mean that you don’t get any of the Australian entitlements.

For instance, if you’re not an Australian citizen, and no reciprocal health agreement has been negotiated between you and the Australian govt., you may be obliged to pay for all medical costs incurred by you against the Australian health system, the same as for e.g. Canadian or German citizens.

As well, if you have a job, it may mean that you’re working illegally in Australia.

There’s a UN convention against people being stateless. As a signatory, Australia can’t let someone cancel their citizenship, or cancel somebody’s citizenship if it means that person becomes stateless. They have to belong somewhere.

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

JudgeMental said:

that isn’t what SovCits means.

That’s true. Thanks for the education. :)

People who want to be ‘sov. cits.’ don’t always think it through.

If you want to be a sovcit, and not subject to the laws and jurisdictions of e.g. Australia, well, that’s one thing.

But, it can also mean that you don’t get any of the Australian entitlements.

For instance, if you’re not an Australian citizen, and no reciprocal health agreement has been negotiated between you and the Australian govt., you may be obliged to pay for all medical costs incurred by you against the Australian health system, the same as for e.g. Canadian or German citizens.

As well, if you have a job, it may mean that you’re working illegally in Australia.

I do comprehend all of that. I simply hadn’t heard the term beforehand.

party_pants said:

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

That’s true. Thanks for the education. :)

People who want to be ‘sov. cits.’ don’t always think it through.

If you want to be a sovcit, and not subject to the laws and jurisdictions of e.g. Australia, well, that’s one thing.

But, it can also mean that you don’t get any of the Australian entitlements.

For instance, if you’re not an Australian citizen, and no reciprocal health agreement has been negotiated between you and the Australian govt., you may be obliged to pay for all medical costs incurred by you against the Australian health system, the same as for e.g. Canadian or German citizens.

As well, if you have a job, it may mean that you’re working illegally in Australia.

There’s a UN convention against people being stateless. As a signatory, Australia can’t let someone cancel their citizenship, or cancel somebody’s citizenship if it means that person becomes stateless. They have to belong somewhere.

Apparently if you have dual citizenship they can but they have to send you home.

roughbarked said:

I do comprehend all of that. I simply hadn’t heard the term beforehand.

I’m saying that people can’t just pick the bits that they like. If you claim to be not subject to the country’s laws and authorities, you may find it difficult to gain access to the country’s benefits.

There’s a quid pro quo. The country says that you acknowledge and abide by these rules, and we’ll do this and this for you. If you quit your end of the deal, well…

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

I do comprehend all of that. I simply hadn’t heard the term beforehand.

I’m saying that people can’t just pick the bits that they like. If you claim to be not subject to the country’s laws and authorities, you may find it difficult to gain access to the country’s benefits.

There’s a quid pro quo. The country says that you acknowledge and abide by these rules, and we’ll do this and this for you. If you quit your end of the deal, well…

Yep.

Summarises the fluff of the ScoMo gov’t…

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-13/climate-policy-morrison-government-commentary-what-about-answers/13149566

JudgeMental said:

eyes pop

Michael V said:

JudgeMental said:

eyes pop

Yeah, but, the Feds won’t take on Hotel Quarantine duties. Too expensive….

buffy said:

Michael V said:

JudgeMental said:

eyes pop

Yeah, but, the Feds won’t take on Hotel Quarantine duties. Too expensive….

sigh

Yes.

PORTER THE RORTER ABUSES HIS POSTION YET AGAIN
In Christian Porter’s world, party mates override process or merit.
The attorney-general calls the shots on admissions to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal — and party hacks are the big winners.
As Australia was drifting into its festivity-induced haze over the Christmas break, Attorney-General Christian Porter quietly slipped out news of a $500,000-a-year appointment he’d made to a Liberal Party lifer. Nothing unusual in that.
Even less surprising was that it was another well-paid job for life at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal which the government has relentlessly stacked with cronies.
Yet the appointment of Karen Synon, made in the figurative dead of night, deserves a closer look, not least because she is the government pick to run the very area of the AAT — the social services and child support division — which called out the illegal basis of the government’s robodebt scheme. That scheme was a scandalous abuse of power which left a trail of ruin in the name of budget repair on the way to a billion-dollar class action settlement.
The appointment also closes the circle for Porter. He was social services minister when robodebt was introduced, he defended it as questions piled up about its legality and refused to apologise for any trauma it might have caused.
For the past three or so years he has called the shots on who gets appointed to the AAT and who gets fired (or “contract not renewed” as the euphemism has it). He has plenty of power which he has exercised in secret and with zero accountability as he reshapes the division which has caused the government so much grief.
Crikey is aware of at least eight well-credentialed and politically neutral AAT members who were removed, it appears, to make way for party hacks.
Crikey has been told Porter appointed Synon to the most senior ranks even though an interview panel — which included at least one retired senior judge — did not interview her, let alone recommend her for the role. The position is paid $496,560 a year. A High Court judge’s base salary is $551,880 a year.
Synon also does not meet the requirement in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act that she be an “enrolled legal practitioner” of a state Supreme Court for at least five years — a minimum qualification for even a lower-rung member of the AAT.
Added to that she has no experience at all in social services and child support law, having previously worked in immigration and refugee appeals.
Crikey asked Porter to address each of these questions but he refused. It’s a remarkable display of contempt given the taxpayer money involved, the important role the AAT plays in the justice system, and the abuse of process involved.
All appointments, he maintains, are made “on merit”.
Who is Karen Synon, and why the special treatment?
Synon, now 61, has a Liberal pedigree stretching back to when she joined the Young Liberal Victorian branch as a 16-year-old. She found an ideological soul mate in Michael Kroger, two years her senior and as powerful as they come in the state’s Liberal Party.
She worked her way through the ranks up to a senior job in Liberal Jeff Kennett’s Victorian bureaucracy and made it to the Senate in Canberra in 1997 where she stayed for two years until her time was cut short by internal party politics. Her husband was also a Liberal Party operative. (More on that later.)
In the years since, Synon has stuck by the party, chairing the Victorian Liberal Women’s Organisation in the early 2000s. The appointments have come her way, first to the migration and refugee appeal tribunals under the Howard government. She has continued the same work at the AAT under the Abbott/Turnbull governments.
The Morrison government also appointed her to the board of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute in what looked like the government’s dying days in April 2019. (A Morrison mate from his Property Council days, Adrian Harrington, scored a gig with institute at the same time.)
Synon may not have lasted long in the parliament but she put down some big ideological markers. In her first speech as a senator, she rose in praise of Menzies-era Australian values. She argued for voluntary student unionism and decried the “sense of hopelessness” which she said had enveloped young people in Australia. Dole bludgers were in the gun. Social welfare — the very area she now oversees at the AAT — was to blame.
“In trying to put in place a safety net, we have created a security blanket that many refuse to give up,” she said. “We have bred an entitlement mentality; a culture of dependency. This assertion of rights without countervailing responsibilities is destructive of cohesion in society and ultimately destroys the individual as well.
“It is a national disgrace that some young people choose unemployment instead of working in what they see as menial jobs.”
Synon declined to comment on whether or not she still holds these views.
Synon eventually gained legal qualifications with a Master of Laws (Juris Doctor) from Monash University. The record shows she was enrolled in the Supreme Court of Victoria in late 2017, meaning she had not met the statutory minimum of five years enrolment before Porter made her a deputy president of the AAT.
Part of a Liberal power couple.
Synon’s mutual obligation convictions though have been tested by her husband and fellow Liberal Party stalwart, Giuseppe de Simone.
Synon told parliament back in the ’90s that she admired and respected de Simone “more than words can say”.
So what to make of subsequent events?
In the years after Synon’s glowing tribute, de Simone has had several legal run-ins, most notably over a failed business venture: a cafe, which he set up with a fellow Victorian Liberal Alan Evers-Buckland.
De Simone and his company were prosecuted by the Fair Work Ombudsman for underpaying two workers at the cafe by $7000. One was a non-native-English speaker on a temporary visa. The court found de Simone had attempted to “ride roughshod” over “established legal entitlements” and had “deliberately avoided” his legal obligations.
He was also found to have demonstrated “broad significant disrespect for government agencies”, illustrated by his tax file number declarations purportedly signed by “Captain Featherstone” and “Luigi Incredible”. Noting a “total” lack of contrition, the court fined him and his company just on $120,000.
It emerged in later Federal Court hearings brought by the Tax Office that de Simone’s company also owed $51,234.47 in unpaid taxes before it was wound up.
Crikey asked Synon if she stood by the admiration she expressed of her husband in parliament. She has not responded. Nor has she responded to our questions on how she was appointed.
Crikey

sarahs mum said:

PORTER THE RORTER ABUSES HIS POSTION YET AGAIN
In Christian Porter’s world, party mates override process or merit.
The attorney-general calls the shots on admissions to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal — and party hacks are the big winners.
As Australia was drifting into its festivity-induced haze over the Christmas break, Attorney-General Christian Porter quietly slipped out news of a $500,000-a-year appointment he’d made to a Liberal Party lifer. Nothing unusual in that.
Even less surprising was that it was another well-paid job for life at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal which the government has relentlessly stacked with cronies.
Yet the appointment of Karen Synon, made in the figurative dead of night, deserves a closer look, not least because she is the government pick to run the very area of the AAT — the social services and child support division — which called out the illegal basis of the government’s robodebt scheme. That scheme was a scandalous abuse of power which left a trail of ruin in the name of budget repair on the way to a billion-dollar class action settlement.
The appointment also closes the circle for Porter. He was social services minister when robodebt was introduced, he defended it as questions piled up about its legality and refused to apologise for any trauma it might have caused.
For the past three or so years he has called the shots on who gets appointed to the AAT and who gets fired (or “contract not renewed” as the euphemism has it). He has plenty of power which he has exercised in secret and with zero accountability as he reshapes the division which has caused the government so much grief.
Crikey is aware of at least eight well-credentialed and politically neutral AAT members who were removed, it appears, to make way for party hacks.
Crikey has been told Porter appointed Synon to the most senior ranks even though an interview panel — which included at least one retired senior judge — did not interview her, let alone recommend her for the role. The position is paid $496,560 a year. A High Court judge’s base salary is $551,880 a year.
Synon also does not meet the requirement in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act that she be an “enrolled legal practitioner” of a state Supreme Court for at least five years — a minimum qualification for even a lower-rung member of the AAT.
Added to that she has no experience at all in social services and child support law, having previously worked in immigration and refugee appeals.
Crikey asked Porter to address each of these questions but he refused. It’s a remarkable display of contempt given the taxpayer money involved, the important role the AAT plays in the justice system, and the abuse of process involved.
All appointments, he maintains, are made “on merit”.
Who is Karen Synon, and why the special treatment?
Synon, now 61, has a Liberal pedigree stretching back to when she joined the Young Liberal Victorian branch as a 16-year-old. She found an ideological soul mate in Michael Kroger, two years her senior and as powerful as they come in the state’s Liberal Party.
She worked her way through the ranks up to a senior job in Liberal Jeff Kennett’s Victorian bureaucracy and made it to the Senate in Canberra in 1997 where she stayed for two years until her time was cut short by internal party politics. Her husband was also a Liberal Party operative. (More on that later.)
In the years since, Synon has stuck by the party, chairing the Victorian Liberal Women’s Organisation in the early 2000s. The appointments have come her way, first to the migration and refugee appeal tribunals under the Howard government. She has continued the same work at the AAT under the Abbott/Turnbull governments.
The Morrison government also appointed her to the board of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute in what looked like the government’s dying days in April 2019. (A Morrison mate from his Property Council days, Adrian Harrington, scored a gig with institute at the same time.)
Synon may not have lasted long in the parliament but she put down some big ideological markers. In her first speech as a senator, she rose in praise of Menzies-era Australian values. She argued for voluntary student unionism and decried the “sense of hopelessness” which she said had enveloped young people in Australia. Dole bludgers were in the gun. Social welfare — the very area she now oversees at the AAT — was to blame.
“In trying to put in place a safety net, we have created a security blanket that many refuse to give up,” she said. “We have bred an entitlement mentality; a culture of dependency. This assertion of rights without countervailing responsibilities is destructive of cohesion in society and ultimately destroys the individual as well.
“It is a national disgrace that some young people choose unemployment instead of working in what they see as menial jobs.”
Synon declined to comment on whether or not she still holds these views.
Synon eventually gained legal qualifications with a Master of Laws (Juris Doctor) from Monash University. The record shows she was enrolled in the Supreme Court of Victoria in late 2017, meaning she had not met the statutory minimum of five years enrolment before Porter made her a deputy president of the AAT.
Part of a Liberal power couple.
Synon’s mutual obligation convictions though have been tested by her husband and fellow Liberal Party stalwart, Giuseppe de Simone.
Synon told parliament back in the ’90s that she admired and respected de Simone “more than words can say”.
So what to make of subsequent events?
In the years after Synon’s glowing tribute, de Simone has had several legal run-ins, most notably over a failed business venture: a cafe, which he set up with a fellow Victorian Liberal Alan Evers-Buckland.
De Simone and his company were prosecuted by the Fair Work Ombudsman for underpaying two workers at the cafe by $7000. One was a non-native-English speaker on a temporary visa. The court found de Simone had attempted to “ride roughshod” over “established legal entitlements” and had “deliberately avoided” his legal obligations.
He was also found to have demonstrated “broad significant disrespect for government agencies”, illustrated by his tax file number declarations purportedly signed by “Captain Featherstone” and “Luigi Incredible”. Noting a “total” lack of contrition, the court fined him and his company just on $120,000.
It emerged in later Federal Court hearings brought by the Tax Office that de Simone’s company also owed $51,234.47 in unpaid taxes before it was wound up.
Crikey asked Synon if she stood by the admiration she expressed of her husband in parliament. She has not responded. Nor has she responded to our questions on how she was appointed.
Crikey

Crikey indeed…

Divine Angel said:

Lolwhat

Divine Angel said:

Does that make sense to anyone? It doesn’t to me.

buffy said:

Divine Angel said:

Does that make sense to anyone? It doesn’t to me.

Nay.

buffy said:

Divine Angel said:

Does that make sense to anyone? It doesn’t to me.

That was the only photo in the article. Perhaps Scotty’s back to doing his own marketing.

Divine Angel said:

Kerry Stokes is clearly a fan. You should see the bullshit they put across Ch7 down here.

Divine Angel said:

buffy said:

Divine Angel said:

Does that make sense to anyone? It doesn’t to me.

That was the only photo in the article. Perhaps Scotty’s back to doing his own marketing.

Is he running ‘The Best of Scotty’?

captain_spalding said:

Divine Angel said:

buffy said:

Does that make sense to anyone? It doesn’t to me.

That was the only photo in the article. Perhaps Scotty’s back to doing his own marketing.

Is he running ‘The Best of Scotty’?

Too late anyway.

captain_spalding said:

Divine Angel said:

buffy said:

Does that make sense to anyone? It doesn’t to me.

That was the only photo in the article. Perhaps Scotty’s back to doing his own marketing.

Is he running ‘The Best of Scotty’?

Divine Angel said:

rubbish.

Bogsnorkler said:

Luckily Scotty doesn’t have sons.

Divine Angel said:

Bogsnorkler said:

Luckily Scotty doesn’t have sons.

Neither did Tony Abbott.

Divine Angel said:

Bogsnorkler said:

Luckily Scotty doesn’t have sons.

Seems he has not been seeing his empath consultant.

Bogsnorkler said:

Thank God he’s married I guess

Okay I found the beautiful throwback photo

dv said:

Okay I found the beautiful throwback photo

He looks a bit like Magnus Carlsen in that shot.

dv said:

Okay I found the beautiful throwback photo

Well 50% of the people in that photo look beautiful to me.

sibeen said:

dv said:

Okay I found the beautiful throwback photo

He looks a bit like Magnus Carlsen in that shot.

Yeah I’ll pay that, with hints of a young Shane Warne and Bob Irwin

dv said:

sibeen said:

dv said:

Okay I found the beautiful throwback photo

He looks a bit like Magnus Carlsen in that shot.

Yeah I’ll pay that, with hints of a young Shane Warne and Bob Irwin

The snidely sneer is all his own.

dv said:

Bogsnorkler said:

Thank God he’s married I guess

You think his photos are scary you should see some of the offenders photos I come across, the walking dead

sarahs mum said:

dv said:

sibeen said:

He looks a bit like Magnus Carlsen in that shot.

Yeah I’ll pay that, with hints of a young Shane Warne and Bob Irwin

The snidely sneer is all his own.

Not quite a shit eater grin

dv said:

sibeen said:

dv said:

Okay I found the beautiful throwback photo

He looks a bit like Magnus Carlsen in that shot.

Yeah I’ll pay that, with hints of a young Shane Warne and Bob Irwin

Which one’s which?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-16/jacinda-ardern-australia-stripping-dual-national-turkey-terror/13159300

Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap.

dv said:

Wrong colour.

ABC News:

‘Fixing the problems with Canberra’s culture has to start at the top
The Conversation
/

By Maria Maley
Brittany Higgins’ allegation she was raped in a minister’s office at Parliament House is one of a number of recent stories of bullying, sexual harassment and misconduct that have exposed the dark side of working conditions for some political staffers, writes Maria Maley.’

One thing that Sooty has not yet learnt is that no matter how much he wishes it was so, he can’t just pretend that somethings don’t exist/don’t happen, and that they won’t eventually surface to embarrass him.

‘If no-one mentions it, and everyone looks the other way, it’ll never be found out, and no-one will ever be the wiser.’

dv said:

nods

https://chaser.com.au/national/an-exhaustive-list-of-the-liberal-partys-corruption-over-the-last-7-years/

The Chaser is a satirical outlet but all of this is legit

—-

A complete list of the Liberal Party’s corruption over the last 7 years

Thanks to the Facebook news ban we’re now somehow the only news site in Australia, so here’s some serious journalism listing all the questionable decisions that ScoMo and co made after he forgot to check with Jenny first.

The federal government has:

Cut $14 million from the national audit office, after that office discovered substantial improprieties and wasteful spending (such as the sports rorts, and paying 10 times too much for land for the new Sydney airport). Voted against a binding code of conduct designed to ensure politicians act with integrity. Blocked a research-backed design change to increase the effectiveness of beverage warnings about drinking during pregnancy (recommended by an independent body) after meeting with lobbyists from alcohol companies who have donated over $300,000 to the Coalition. Gave $345,000 to News Corp to build a spelling bee website, discarding any pretense of propriety or fairness by skipping the usual parliamentary checks and tender process, instead just choosing to hand the excessive amount of cash to a company whose industry is neither website building nor education. Hid a record-breaking number of expenses from the public in an annual budget, including cash handed to a private rail project, maintaining an abandoned oil rig, and legal action relating to military bases which leaked toxic chemicals. Loosened political donation laws.  Committed a crime by ignoring a ruling of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.  Appointed a failed Liberal candidate to the SBS board instead of any of the ones recommended by the independent nominations panel. Prevented parliament from debating whether to set up a National Integrity Commission. Set up the COVID-19 National Co-ordination Committee with no terms of reference, no register of conflicts of interest, and then stacked it with gas company executives who unsurprisingly ended up recommending irrationally pro-gas policies. 690 documents about potential conflicts of interests were deliberately kept hidden.   Blocked parliament from debating significant environmental protection repeals, rushing through the legislation without allowing anyone to discuss it first. Lied by claiming they appointed a Liberal party staffer to a job paying half a million dollars per year through an “open merit-driven, competitive process”. It was actually a limited tender not open to all, exempt from procurement rules which guarantee fairness and impartiality. Tried to get parliament to vote on new legislation without giving copies of the bill to the people voting on it, and used unprecedented methods to prevent any politician to speak against it.   Paid tens of thousands of dollars to a company which was known to be corrupt, through a tender that was not opened up to all competitors. Illegally forged a document to publicly criticise a political opponent. Cancelled The Rule of Law and then preventing journalists from reporting on the case against a whistleblower who leaked truthful information in the public interest about senior politicians and law enforcement officials who flagrantly violated serious international laws. The court case is held in secret. The whistleblower’s name is illegal to publish. The witness and lawyers’ residences were raided, and the evidence against the government was confiscated.  Extended exemptions for political donation transparency, which are 25 years old and were only supposed to be temporary. Paid $39 million to a naval boat manufacturer when not required to because the company failed to fulfill the relevant contract clauses, and they coincidentally donated to the Liberal party. Illegally failed to respond to freedom of information (FOI) requests within the statutory 30 day deadline in 92.5% of cases. Bought water rights for 50 times more than many valuations, and double the price of the seller’s valuation. Lied by claiming that Kevin Rudd had travelled overseas and back during COVID while many Australians are still stranded overseas, when Mr Rudd had actually never left Queensland.  Refused to release a report into COVID policy communication strategies, which cost over $500,000. Introduced a mandatory code of conduct to force companies like Google to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to large private news companies (but not ABC news nor independent news, nor the Chaser). Google currently drives over 3 billion clicks per year to Australian news companies. Therefore this is like a local plumber demanding that the Yellow Pages pay the plumber for the act of directing plumber-seeking customers to the plumber. This will also undermine the fundamental principles of the web itself, according to its inventor. The laws are written based on the incorrect assumption that news makes up 10% of Google searches when it’s only 1%.      Introduced red tape and distorted the free market by forcing Google to give special insider knowledge of proprietary search algorithm changes to large news companies but not small, independent journalists. It includes ambiguously written clauses about giving news companies access to Google users’ private data.  Introduced protections for company executives who trade while insolvent during the pandemic. This is only for cases where the debts are incurred “the ordinary course of business”. Those who try to adapt to the challenging circumstances will not be exempt. In this way the government is incentivising executives to not adapt to the unique circumstances. Refused to release the minutes from an important meeting of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee giving COVID advice to the Prime Minister.  Created the ABCC ostensibly for reducing corruption, but the ABCC boss himself violated rules and endangered people by ignoring COVID flight restrictions, travelling across the country to interview workers about a rally that happened 8 months prior. Refused to release a multilateral trade agreement with China, which involves spending government money on infrastructure in other countries. The lack of transparency exacerbates existing concerns about burdening these other developing nations with unsustainable debt.  Deleted records of a $165,000 political donation from a political consultancy with stakeholders who stand to benefit from the government’s $1 billion visa privatization plan, and refused requests for further explanation. Kept secret a government-funded report that showed less than 1 in 3 Australians trust our public service sector. The justification was that the government believed that the report which they wrote would mislead and confuse people. Lied by claiming that all grants issued under the controversial $100M sports grant program were eligible for funding, when only 57% were. Failed to declare a property worth $1M in a minister’s declaration of interests. Failed to declare 2 properties worth more than $1M in another minister’s declaration of interests. Approved a $36,000 grant to a shooting club without declaring that the approving minister was a member of that club. Allocated sports grant funding based on which candidate projects were in marginal seats, rather than which were the most worthy. Then refused to release legal advice about whether such pork barrelling is illegal, and destroyed evidence about the funding choices.     Merged the Australian Federal Police into the Home Affairs department, allowing the minister to exert political influence on investigations. Ignored a Royal Commission report which found the government’s Murray-Darling Basin Plan is illegal, whilst refusing to publish their own report which they claim provides a valid rebuttal. Abandoned standard tender processes when awarding a $423 million contract to a company with $50k in funds, little experience, no phone number, no mail address, housed in a shack.  Refused to publish a report used to justify a $53 million contract to outsource Centrelink call handling.  Declared that they will violate a new law, because they don’t like it.  Spent $87,000 fighting against a Freedom of Information request about back-room deals, and then lied about the cost. Drastically increased the amount of government money spent without a proper tender process, up to $34 billion per month. Handed out $17.1M to private TV stations for a grant they didn’t ask for, without offering the money to the public broadcaster. Refused a Senate Order to release details about expensive contracts for security, health and infrastructure in their detention camps in PNG. Excused the conflict of interest arising when the head of the My Health Record (appointed by the government) privately received money for consultations about the My Health Record. Spent 2 years trying to hide documents from Freedom of Information requests, about a serious breach of top secret documents, and mishandling of those documents by a minister. Hid a report by the Governor General showing that the government paid twice as much as necessary for new combat vehicles, because such publicity would be bad for the private manufacturer’s future profitability. The company is not even Australian.  Lied about the Immigration Minister having no personal connection to someone who benefited from the direct intervention by the Immigration Minister in a visa case.   Spent an undisclosed amount of public money on legal defence for a minister who broken the law for political gain. Cut $84 million from the ABC (again). Exempted a facial recognition system storing data of innocent citizens from standard procurement policy disclosure rules. The excuse is a reliance on security through obscurity rather than actual security. Accuracy figures are also not published.   Increased the jail time for journalists who report on whistleblower’s truthful allegations by a factor of 10.  Refused to publish the percentage of calls to the veterans’ suicide help line which go unanswered, because that want negatively impact the brand of the private call centre operator. Prohibited public servants from liking social media posts critical of the government, even if anonymous. Failed to declare multiple $1600 Foxtel subscriptions gifted to ministers by a lobby group. Gave $30 million to Foxtel to boost “under represented sports”, and was unable to explain why free-to-air channels didn’t get the money, because the decision was made without any emails, letter, or supporting documentation.  Paid a minister $273 per night to stay in his own home. Prevented university newspapers from attending the release of multiple annual budgets like all other newspapers. These particular budgets contained multiple changes which negatively impact university students.  Refused to release the results for the trial of a national health register. Spent over $3,500 to send a minister to watch the AFL with his wife. Spent over $2,700 on a trip to watch polo. Spent $10,000 per day to send a single minister to the USA. Broke a promise to scrap free lifetime travel for former ministers. The excuse is that the government is to busy to pass legislation through parliament, despite that being the job of the government and of parliament. Falsely advertised the closure of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, despite Parliament rejecting the closure attempt. Refused to publish the cost benefit analysis on the agriculture minister’s decision to move a federal agency from Canberra to his own electorate. Personally appointed George Brandis’ son’s lawyer to a $370,000 job, without making a conflict of interest declaration.  Tried to privatise the database of ASIC (the corporate watchdog). Under private hands the cost journalists must pay to obtain information about potentially corrupt companies would increase. Spent over $140,000 for 5 ministers to travel to a country we have no trade or diplomatic ties with, visiting tourist sites and dining in 5 star restaurants. Refused to release 5 year old taxi receipts to assist in a fraud case, on the grounds that terrorists could use travel information from 5 years ago to help plan an attack against the minister in question. Spent $10,000 to fly the family of 2 ministers to a tropical island for a weekend holiday. Voted against a motion asking the Housing Affordability Inquiry to update the senate on how they are progressing with the recommendations the government supported. Rejected an inquiry which recommended that citizens accused of tax fraud be treated as innocent until proven guilty. Spent $30,000 on a private jet to fly one minister and their partner from Perth to Canberra (instead of catching a normal plane) because a non-business event ran overtime. This is despite the alleged budget emergency. Voted against increasing transparency about how much tax large corporations pay. Violated parliamentary anti-corruption rules by not declaring a substantial loan for almost 2 years. Broke an election promise to conduct and publish a cost benefit analysis for all infrastructure projects over $100 million. Spent over $20,000 in a legal fight in order to hide modelling for the impact of university fee deregulation.  Spent thousands of government dollars on taxi rides to the Opera in just 8 days. The government claims that the expenditure is reasonable because the minister didn’t pay for the tickets either. Spent thousands of government dollars on limousine rides, and fudged the declaration paperwork to say they were taxi rides. Spent $10,000 trying to chase down someone who leaked information to the media about how the Prime Minister deliberately and knowingly used false information to justify opposition to a defence force pay rise. Spent $27,000 on travel expenses for politicians to attend free sports events. Voted against a royal commission into corruption and misconduct in the financial service industry, following a series of scandals. Reaped $1000 per month of government money to pay for Joe Hockey to stay in his wife’s house. Proposed an exemption so that Australia’s richest companies no longer have to publish basic information about how much tax they are paying. Accidentally leaked the personal details of 31 world leaders, and chose not to notify them. They still claim your metadata will be safe though. Breached the criminal code of conduct by offering the independently appointed Human Rights Commissioner a new job if she resigned. Flew across the country on a taxpayer funded private jet to attend the private birthday party of a millionaire who has made large donations to the Liberal party. Refused to publish cost estimates for the data-retention policy which were provided by the industry. Voted to keep the text of the China Free Trade deal secret from the public. Abolished the $10,000 limit on political donations. Broke the law by missing the deadline for publishing the Intergenerational Report, as stipulated by the Charter of Budget Honesty Act. Spent $10,000 trying to identify a whistleblower who told the media that the Prime Minister knowingly mislead the public using information he knew was incorrect. Started an online petition to stop job losses at the ABC, just 36 hours after cutting ABC funding by 5%. Contracted out the managing of the Do Not Call Register to a marketing company. Secretly and retrospectively changed the official record of what was said in parliament. Broke an election promise by cutting ABC funding again ($120 million this time).  Spent $900,000 in just 2 months on private jet flights for ministers. Forced all community TV stations off the air, claiming that moving online will be better for stations and viewers. Meanwhile they continue to fervently defend foreign corporate stations like HBO, who stubbornly refuse to make content accessible online. Introduced new laws which mean Edward Snowden type leaks are punishable by up to 10 years of prison. No exemptions are made for anti-corruption leaks. If journalists report on anyone (including innocent bystanders) being killed accidentally or deliberately by security personnel, they will be jailed for up to 10 years.    Spent $50,000 on upgrades of curtains and upholstery for the Prime Minister’s office. Moved to abolish the role of freedom of information commissioner, abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and charge $800 for reviews of Freedom of Information Request denials. Refused to publish any submissions it received for or against the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, even though the government says the changes are to protect free speech. They refused to state what proportion of submissions supported the changes. The government defended this secrecy by claiming that all submissions were made with the expectation of confidentiality. This is false. The Senate Inquiry Submission Guidelines state that to make a Senate Inquiry Submission confidential, you must explicitly justify a request for confidentiality, and that such requests are generally denied.  Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons. Gave the Minister for Infrastructure the power to silence Infrastructure Australia (an independent body) without justification. (See section 5A.2 of the link.) Deliberately hid the cost of the $4.45 million renovations on The Lodge. Spent $50,000 on one dinner for 60 G20 guests, including food specially flown to Washington from all over Australia. Voted against the creation of a federal anti-corruption watchdog. Cut $38 million from Australian television and film funding. Broke an election promise by cutting $40 million from the SBS and ABC.   Broke an election promise to not cut ABC funding, by cutting all funding to the Australia Network (part of the ABC).   Claimed a 2.5% reduction in funding every year for the ABC is not a funding cut. Increased the fee for lodging Freedom of Information requests. Paid a public relations company $97,000 for 3 weeks of work to help improve the Education Department’s image, then refused to release the report that came of it. Proposed the scrapping of regulation which prevents media monopolies and duopolies. Spent over $15,000 on a custom made bookcase to replace a $7,000 custom bookcase which holds $13,000 worth of taxpayer funded books and magazines in senator Brandis’ office. Spent $22,000 taxpayer dollars buying new cutlery and crockery for the ministerial wing of parliament. Chose not to mention a $882 million payout to News Corp. when outlining a $16.8 billion budget black hole. The payout was the single biggest item in the black hole.  Denied any wrongdoing after a government aid married to the head of a junk food lobby pulled down a government website providing simplified nutritional information within hours of its launch. Violated Youtube’s policies regarding deceptive content, resulting in the suspension of Abbott’s whole channel. Criticised the ABC because they aren’t biased towards the Government. Spent over $120,000 on Kirribilli House, including $13,000 on an imported luxury rug, paid for by the taxpayer. Tried to silence the media to stop them criticising the upcoming private jet deal for politicians. Criticised the ABC for not “advancing Australia’s broad and enduring interests in the Asian region”, without actually accusing the ABC of any specific wrongdoing or poor judgement. Changed the ministerial code of conduct so ministers no longer have to sell shares which create a conflict of interest. Made Orwellian threats about cutting ABC funding because the government didn’t like one of their stories, and because their quality of journalism is too high, thereby creating competition which threatens the corporate newspaper duopoly (who are now floundering because they didn’t see the internet coming). 

List compiled by Matthew Davis. You can view the full list of 902 points at https://www.mdavis.xyz

(P.S. If you share this on social media, please let us know so we can invoice Facebook for that.)

https://chaser.com.au/national/an-exhaustive-list-of-the-liberal-partys-corruption-over-the-last-7-years/

The Chaser is a satirical outlet but all of this is legit

—-

A complete list of the Liberal Party’s corruption over the last 7 years

Thanks to the Facebook news ban we’re now somehow the only news site in Australia, so here’s some serious journalism listing all the questionable decisions that ScoMo and co made after he forgot to check with Jenny first.

The federal government has:

Cut $14 million from the national audit office, after that office discovered substantial improprieties and wasteful spending (such as the sports rorts, and paying 10 times too much for land for the new Sydney airport). Voted against a binding code of conduct designed to ensure politicians act with integrity. Blocked a research-backed design change to increase the effectiveness of beverage warnings about drinking during pregnancy (recommended by an independent body) after meeting with lobbyists from alcohol companies who have donated over $300,000 to the Coalition. Gave $345,000 to News Corp to build a spelling bee website, discarding any pretense of propriety or fairness by skipping the usual parliamentary checks and tender process, instead just choosing to hand the excessive amount of cash to a company whose industry is neither website building nor education. Hid a record-breaking number of expenses from the public in an annual budget, including cash handed to a private rail project, maintaining an abandoned oil rig, and legal action relating to military bases which leaked toxic chemicals. Loosened political donation laws.  Committed a crime by ignoring a ruling of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.  Appointed a failed Liberal candidate to the SBS board instead of any of the ones recommended by the independent nominations panel. Prevented parliament from debating whether to set up a National Integrity Commission. Set up the COVID-19 National Co-ordination Committee with no terms of reference, no register of conflicts of interest, and then stacked it with gas company executives who unsurprisingly ended up recommending irrationally pro-gas policies. 690 documents about potential conflicts of interests were deliberately kept hidden.   Blocked parliament from debating significant environmental protection repeals, rushing through the legislation without allowing anyone to discuss it first. Lied by claiming they appointed a Liberal party staffer to a job paying half a million dollars per year through an “open merit-driven, competitive process”. It was actually a limited tender not open to all, exempt from procurement rules which guarantee fairness and impartiality. Tried to get parliament to vote on new legislation without giving copies of the bill to the people voting on it, and used unprecedented methods to prevent any politician to speak against it.   Paid tens of thousands of dollars to a company which was known to be corrupt, through a tender that was not opened up to all competitors. Illegally forged a document to publicly criticise a political opponent. Cancelled The Rule of Law and then preventing journalists from reporting on the case against a whistleblower who leaked truthful information in the public interest about senior politicians and law enforcement officials who flagrantly violated serious international laws. The court case is held in secret. The whistleblower’s name is illegal to publish. The witness and lawyers’ residences were raided, and the evidence against the government was confiscated.  Extended exemptions for political donation transparency, which are 25 years old and were only supposed to be temporary. Paid $39 million to a naval boat manufacturer when not required to because the company failed to fulfill the relevant contract clauses, and they coincidentally donated to the Liberal party. Illegally failed to respond to freedom of information (FOI) requests within the statutory 30 day deadline in 92.5% of cases. Bought water rights for 50 times more than many valuations, and double the price of the seller’s valuation. Lied by claiming that Kevin Rudd had travelled overseas and back during COVID while many Australians are still stranded overseas, when Mr Rudd had actually never left Queensland.  Refused to release a report into COVID policy communication strategies, which cost over $500,000. Introduced a mandatory code of conduct to force companies like Google to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to large private news companies (but not ABC news nor independent news, nor the Chaser). Google currently drives over 3 billion clicks per year to Australian news companies. Therefore this is like a local plumber demanding that the Yellow Pages pay the plumber for the act of directing plumber-seeking customers to the plumber. This will also undermine the fundamental principles of the web itself, according to its inventor. The laws are written based on the incorrect assumption that news makes up 10% of Google searches when it’s only 1%.      Introduced red tape and distorted the free market by forcing Google to give special insider knowledge of proprietary search algorithm changes to large news companies but not small, independent journalists. It includes ambiguously written clauses about giving news companies access to Google users’ private data.  Introduced protections for company executives who trade while insolvent during the pandemic. This is only for cases where the debts are incurred “the ordinary course of business”. Those who try to adapt to the challenging circumstances will not be exempt. In this way the government is incentivising executives to not adapt to the unique circumstances. Refused to release the minutes from an important meeting of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee giving COVID advice to the Prime Minister.  Created the ABCC ostensibly for reducing corruption, but the ABCC boss himself violated rules and endangered people by ignoring COVID flight restrictions, travelling across the country to interview workers about a rally that happened 8 months prior. Refused to release a multilateral trade agreement with China, which involves spending government money on infrastructure in other countries. The lack of transparency exacerbates existing concerns about burdening these other developing nations with unsustainable debt.  Deleted records of a $165,000 political donation from a political consultancy with stakeholders who stand to benefit from the government’s $1 billion visa privatization plan, and refused requests for further explanation. Kept secret a government-funded report that showed less than 1 in 3 Australians trust our public service sector. The justification was that the government believed that the report which they wrote would mislead and confuse people. Lied by claiming that all grants issued under the controversial $100M sports grant program were eligible for funding, when only 57% were. Failed to declare a property worth $1M in a minister’s declaration of interests. Failed to declare 2 properties worth more than $1M in another minister’s declaration of interests. Approved a $36,000 grant to a shooting club without declaring that the approving minister was a member of that club. Allocated sports grant funding based on which candidate projects were in marginal seats, rather than which were the most worthy. Then refused to release legal advice about whether such pork barrelling is illegal, and destroyed evidence about the funding choices.     Merged the Australian Federal Police into the Home Affairs department, allowing the minister to exert political influence on investigations. Ignored a Royal Commission report which found the government’s Murray-Darling Basin Plan is illegal, whilst refusing to publish their own report which they claim provides a valid rebuttal. Abandoned standard tender processes when awarding a $423 million contract to a company with $50k in funds, little experience, no phone number, no mail address, housed in a shack.  Refused to publish a report used to justify a $53 million contract to outsource Centrelink call handling.  Declared that they will violate a new law, because they don’t like it.  Spent $87,000 fighting against a Freedom of Information request about back-room deals, and then lied about the cost. Drastically increased the amount of government money spent without a proper tender process, up to $34 billion per month. Handed out $17.1M to private TV stations for a grant they didn’t ask for, without offering the money to the public broadcaster. Refused a Senate Order to release details about expensive contracts for security, health and infrastructure in their detention camps in PNG. Excused the conflict of interest arising when the head of the My Health Record (appointed by the government) privately received money for consultations about the My Health Record. Spent 2 years trying to hide documents from Freedom of Information requests, about a serious breach of top secret documents, and mishandling of those documents by a minister. Hid a report by the Governor General showing that the government paid twice as much as necessary for new combat vehicles, because such publicity would be bad for the private manufacturer’s future profitability. The company is not even Australian.  Lied about the Immigration Minister having no personal connection to someone who benefited from the direct intervention by the Immigration Minister in a visa case.   Spent an undisclosed amount of public money on legal defence for a minister who broken the law for political gain. Cut $84 million from the ABC (again). Exempted a facial recognition system storing data of innocent citizens from standard procurement policy disclosure rules. The excuse is a reliance on security through obscurity rather than actual security. Accuracy figures are also not published.   Increased the jail time for journalists who report on whistleblower’s truthful allegations by a factor of 10.  Refused to publish the percentage of calls to the veterans’ suicide help line which go unanswered, because that want negatively impact the brand of the private call centre operator. Prohibited public servants from liking social media posts critical of the government, even if anonymous. Failed to declare multiple $1600 Foxtel subscriptions gifted to ministers by a lobby group. Gave $30 million to Foxtel to boost “under represented sports”, and was unable to explain why free-to-air channels didn’t get the money, because the decision was made without any emails, letter, or supporting documentation.  Paid a minister $273 per night to stay in his own home. Prevented university newspapers from attending the release of multiple annual budgets like all other newspapers. These particular budgets contained multiple changes which negatively impact university students.  Refused to release the results for the trial of a national health register. Spent over $3,500 to send a minister to watch the AFL with his wife. Spent over $2,700 on a trip to watch polo. Spent $10,000 per day to send a single minister to the USA. Broke a promise to scrap free lifetime travel for former ministers. The excuse is that the government is to busy to pass legislation through parliament, despite that being the job of the government and of parliament. Falsely advertised the closure of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, despite Parliament rejecting the closure attempt. Refused to publish the cost benefit analysis on the agriculture minister’s decision to move a federal agency from Canberra to his own electorate. Personally appointed George Brandis’ son’s lawyer to a $370,000 job, without making a conflict of interest declaration.  Tried to privatise the database of ASIC (the corporate watchdog). Under private hands the cost journalists must pay to obtain information about potentially corrupt companies would increase. Spent over $140,000 for 5 ministers to travel to a country we have no trade or diplomatic ties with, visiting tourist sites and dining in 5 star restaurants. Refused to release 5 year old taxi receipts to assist in a fraud case, on the grounds that terrorists could use travel information from 5 years ago to help plan an attack against the minister in question. Spent $10,000 to fly the family of 2 ministers to a tropical island for a weekend holiday. Voted against a motion asking the Housing Affordability Inquiry to update the senate on how they are progressing with the recommendations the government supported. Rejected an inquiry which recommended that citizens accused of tax fraud be treated as innocent until proven guilty. Spent $30,000 on a private jet to fly one minister and their partner from Perth to Canberra (instead of catching a normal plane) because a non-business event ran overtime. This is despite the alleged budget emergency. Voted against increasing transparency about how much tax large corporations pay. Violated parliamentary anti-corruption rules by not declaring a substantial loan for almost 2 years. Broke an election promise to conduct and publish a cost benefit analysis for all infrastructure projects over $100 million. Spent over $20,000 in a legal fight in order to hide modelling for the impact of university fee deregulation.  Spent thousands of government dollars on taxi rides to the Opera in just 8 days. The government claims that the expenditure is reasonable because the minister didn’t pay for the tickets either. Spent thousands of government dollars on limousine rides, and fudged the declaration paperwork to say they were taxi rides. Spent $10,000 trying to chase down someone who leaked information to the media about how the Prime Minister deliberately and knowingly used false information to justify opposition to a defence force pay rise. Spent $27,000 on travel expenses for politicians to attend free sports events. Voted against a royal commission into corruption and misconduct in the financial service industry, following a series of scandals. Reaped $1000 per month of government money to pay for Joe Hockey to stay in his wife’s house. Proposed an exemption so that Australia’s richest companies no longer have to publish basic information about how much tax they are paying. Accidentally leaked the personal details of 31 world leaders, and chose not to notify them. They still claim your metadata will be safe though. Breached the criminal code of conduct by offering the independently appointed Human Rights Commissioner a new job if she resigned. Flew across the country on a taxpayer funded private jet to attend the private birthday party of a millionaire who has made large donations to the Liberal party. Refused to publish cost estimates for the data-retention policy which were provided by the industry. Voted to keep the text of the China Free Trade deal secret from the public. Abolished the $10,000 limit on political donations. Broke the law by missing the deadline for publishing the Intergenerational Report, as stipulated by the Charter of Budget Honesty Act. Spent $10,000 trying to identify a whistleblower who told the media that the Prime Minister knowingly mislead the public using information he knew was incorrect. Started an online petition to stop job losses at the ABC, just 36 hours after cutting ABC funding by 5%. Contracted out the managing of the Do Not Call Register to a marketing company. Secretly and retrospectively changed the official record of what was said in parliament. Broke an election promise by cutting ABC funding again ($120 million this time).  Spent $900,000 in just 2 months on private jet flights for ministers. Forced all community TV stations off the air, claiming that moving online will be better for stations and viewers. Meanwhile they continue to fervently defend foreign corporate stations like HBO, who stubbornly refuse to make content accessible online. Introduced new laws which mean Edward Snowden type leaks are punishable by up to 10 years of prison. No exemptions are made for anti-corruption leaks. If journalists report on anyone (including innocent bystanders) being killed accidentally or deliberately by security personnel, they will be jailed for up to 10 years.    Spent $50,000 on upgrades of curtains and upholstery for the Prime Minister’s office. Moved to abolish the role of freedom of information commissioner, abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and charge $800 for reviews of Freedom of Information Request denials. Refused to publish any submissions it received for or against the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, even though the government says the changes are to protect free speech. They refused to state what proportion of submissions supported the changes. The government defended this secrecy by claiming that all submissions were made with the expectation of confidentiality. This is false. The Senate Inquiry Submission Guidelines state that to make a Senate Inquiry Submission confidential, you must explicitly justify a request for confidentiality, and that such requests are generally denied.  Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons. Gave the Minister for Infrastructure the power to silence Infrastructure Australia (an independent body) without justification. (See section 5A.2 of the link.) Deliberately hid the cost of the $4.45 million renovations on The Lodge. Spent $50,000 on one dinner for 60 G20 guests, including food specially flown to Washington from all over Australia. Voted against the creation of a federal anti-corruption watchdog. Cut $38 million from Australian television and film funding. Broke an election promise by cutting $40 million from the SBS and ABC.   Broke an election promise to not cut ABC funding, by cutting all funding to the Australia Network (part of the ABC).   Claimed a 2.5% reduction in funding every year for the ABC is not a funding cut. Increased the fee for lodging Freedom of Information requests. Paid a public relations company $97,000 for 3 weeks of work to help improve the Education Department’s image, then refused to release the report that came of it. Proposed the scrapping of regulation which prevents media monopolies and duopolies. Spent over $15,000 on a custom made bookcase to replace a $7,000 custom bookcase which holds $13,000 worth of taxpayer funded books and magazines in senator Brandis’ office. Spent $22,000 taxpayer dollars buying new cutlery and crockery for the ministerial wing of parliament. Chose not to mention a $882 million payout to News Corp. when outlining a $16.8 billion budget black hole. The payout was the single biggest item in the black hole.  Denied any wrongdoing after a government aid married to the head of a junk food lobby pulled down a government website providing simplified nutritional information within hours of its launch. Violated Youtube’s policies regarding deceptive content, resulting in the suspension of Abbott’s whole channel. Criticised the ABC because they aren’t biased towards the Government. Spent over $120,000 on Kirribilli House, including $13,000 on an imported luxury rug, paid for by the taxpayer. Tried to silence the media to stop them criticising the upcoming private jet deal for politicians. Criticised the ABC for not “advancing Australia’s broad and enduring interests in the Asian region”, without actually accusing the ABC of any specific wrongdoing or poor judgement. Changed the ministerial code of conduct so ministers no longer have to sell shares which create a conflict of interest. Made Orwellian threats about cutting ABC funding because the government didn’t like one of their stories, and because their quality of journalism is too high, thereby creating competition which threatens the corporate newspaper duopoly (who are now floundering because they didn’t see the internet coming). 

List compiled by Matthew Davis. You can view the full list of 902 points at https://www.mdavis.xyz

(P.S. If you share this on social media, please let us know so we can invoice Facebook for that.)

We’ve done that DV.

https://chaser.com.au/national/an-exhaustive-list-of-the-liberal-partys-corruption-over-the-last-7-years/

The Chaser is a satirical outlet but all of this is legit

—-

A complete list of the Liberal Party’s corruption over the last 7 years

Thanks to the Facebook news ban we’re now somehow the only news site in Australia, so here’s some serious journalism listing all the questionable decisions that ScoMo and co made after he forgot to check with Jenny first.

The federal government has:

Cut $14 million from the national audit office, after that office discovered substantial improprieties and wasteful spending (such as the sports rorts, and paying 10 times too much for land for the new Sydney airport).

 Voted against a binding code of conduct designed to ensure politicians act with integrity. 

Blocked a research-backed design change to increase the effectiveness of beverage warnings about drinking during pregnancy (recommended by an independent body) after meeting with lobbyists from alcohol companies who have donated over $300,000 to the Coalition. 

Gave $345,000 to News Corp to build a spelling bee website, discarding any pretense of propriety or fairness by skipping the usual parliamentary checks and tender process, instead just choosing to hand the excessive amount of cash to a company whose industry is neither website building nor education. 

Hid a record-breaking number of expenses from the public in an annual budget, including cash handed to a private rail project, maintaining an abandoned oil rig, and legal action relating to military bases which leaked toxic chemicals. 

Loosened political donation laws.  

Committed a crime by ignoring a ruling of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.  

Appointed a failed Liberal candidate to the SBS board instead of any of the ones recommended by the independent nominations panel. 

Prevented parliament from debating whether to set up a National Integrity Commission. 

Set up the COVID-19 National Co-ordination Committee with no terms of reference, no register of conflicts of interest, and then stacked it with gas company executives who unsurprisingly ended up recommending irrationally pro-gas policies.

690 documents about potential conflicts of interests were deliberately kept hidden.   

Blocked parliament from debating significant environmental protection repeals, rushing through the legislation without allowing anyone to discuss it first. 

Lied by claiming they appointed a Liberal party staffer to a job paying half a million dollars per year through an “open merit-driven, competitive process”. It was actually a limited tender not open to all, exempt from procurement rules which guarantee fairness and impartiality. 

Tried to get parliament to vote on new legislation without giving copies of the bill to the people voting on it, and used unprecedented methods to prevent any politician to speak against it.   

Paid tens of thousands of dollars to a company which was known to be corrupt, through a tender that was not opened up to all competitors. 

Illegally forged a document to publicly criticise a political opponent. 

Cancelled The Rule of Law and then preventing journalists from reporting on the case against a whistleblower who leaked truthful information in the public interest about senior politicians and law enforcement officials who flagrantly violated serious international laws. The court case is held in secret. The whistleblower’s name is illegal to publish. The witness and lawyers’ residences were raided, and the evidence against the government was confiscated.  

Extended exemptions for political donation transparency, which are 25 years old and were only supposed to be temporary. 

Paid $39 million to a naval boat manufacturer when not required to because the company failed to fulfill the relevant contract clauses, and they coincidentally donated to the Liberal party. 

Illegally failed to respond to freedom of information (FOI) requests within the statutory 30 day deadline in 92.5% of cases. 

Bought water rights for 50 times more than many valuations, and double the price of the seller’s valuation. 

Lied by claiming that Kevin Rudd had travelled overseas and back during COVID while many Australians are still stranded overseas, when Mr Rudd had actually never left Queensland.  

Refused to release a report into COVID policy communication strategies, which cost over $500,000. 

Introduced a mandatory code of conduct to force companies like Google to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to large private news companies (but not ABC news nor independent news, nor the Chaser). Google currently drives over 3 billion clicks per year to Australian news companies. Therefore this is like a local plumber demanding that the Yellow Pages pay the plumber for the act of directing plumber-seeking customers to the plumber. This will also undermine the fundamental principles of the web itself, according to its inventor. The laws are written based on the incorrect assumption that news makes up 10% of Google searches when it’s only 1%.      

Introduced red tape and distorted the free market by forcing Google to give special insider knowledge of proprietary search algorithm changes to large news companies but not small, independent journalists. It includes ambiguously written clauses about giving news companies access to Google users’ private data.  

Introduced protections for company executives who trade while insolvent during the pandemic. This is only for cases where the debts are incurred “the ordinary course of business”. Those who try to adapt to the challenging circumstances will not be exempt. In this way the government is incentivising executives to not adapt to the unique circumstances. 

Refused to release the minutes from an important meeting of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee giving COVID advice to the Prime Minister.  

Created the ABCC ostensibly for reducing corruption, but the ABCC boss himself violated rules and endangered people by ignoring COVID flight restrictions, travelling across the country to interview workers about a rally that happened 8 months prior. 

Refused to release a multilateral trade agreement with China, which involves spending government money on infrastructure in other countries. The lack of transparency exacerbates existing concerns about burdening these other developing nations with unsustainable debt.  

Deleted records of a $165,000 political donation from a political consultancy with stakeholders who stand to benefit from the government’s $1 billion visa privatization plan, and refused requests for further explanation. 

Kept secret a government-funded report that showed less than 1 in 3 Australians trust our public service sector. The justification was that the government believed that the report which they wrote would mislead and confuse people. 

Lied by claiming that all grants issued under the controversial $100M sports grant program were eligible for funding, when only 57% were. Failed to declare a property worth $1M in a minister’s declaration of interests. Failed to declare 2 properties worth more than $1M in another minister’s declaration of interests. 

Approved a $36,000 grant to a shooting club without declaring that the approving minister was a member of that club. 

Allocated sports grant funding based on which candidate projects were in marginal seats, rather than which were the most worthy. Then refused to release legal advice about whether such pork barrelling is illegal, and destroyed evidence about the funding choices.     

Merged the Australian Federal Police into the Home Affairs department, allowing the minister to exert political influence on investigations. 

Ignored a Royal Commission report which found the government’s Murray-Darling Basin Plan is illegal, whilst refusing to publish their own report which they claim provides a valid rebuttal. Abandoned standard tender processes when awarding a $423 million contract to a company with $50k in funds, little experience, no phone number, no mail address, housed in a shack.  

Refused to publish a report used to justify a $53 million contract to outsource Centrelink call handling.  Declared that they will violate a new law, because they don’t like it.  

Spent $87,000 fighting against a Freedom of Information request about back-room deals, and then lied about the cost. 

Drastically increased the amount of government money spent without a proper tender process, up to $34 billion per month. 

Handed out $17.1M to private TV stations for a grant they didn’t ask for, without offering the money to the public broadcaster. 

Refused a Senate Order to release details about expensive contracts for security, health and infrastructure in their detention camps in PNG. 

Excused the conflict of interest arising when the head of the My Health Record (appointed by the government) privately received money for consultations about the My Health Record. 

Spent 2 years trying to hide documents from Freedom of Information requests, about a serious breach of top secret documents, and mishandling of those documents by a minister. 

Hid a report by the Governor General showing that the government paid twice as much as necessary for new combat vehicles, because such publicity would be bad for the private manufacturer’s future profitability. The company is not even Australian.  

Lied about the Immigration Minister having no personal connection to someone who benefited from the direct intervention by the Immigration Minister in a visa case.   

Spent an undisclosed amount of public money on legal defence for a minister who broken the law for political gain. Cut $84 million from the ABC (again). 

Exempted a facial recognition system storing data of innocent citizens from standard procurement policy disclosure rules. The excuse is a reliance on security through obscurity rather than actual security. Accuracy figures are also not published.   

Increased the jail time for journalists who report on whistleblower’s truthful allegations by a factor of 10.  

Refused to publish the percentage of calls to the veterans’ suicide help line which go unanswered, because that want negatively impact the brand of the private call centre operator. 

Prohibited public servants from liking social media posts critical of the government, even if anonymous. Failed to declare multiple $1600 Foxtel subscriptions gifted to ministers by a lobby group. 

Gave $30 million to Foxtel to boost “under represented sports”, and was unable to explain why free-to-air channels didn’t get the money, because the decision was made without any emails, letter, or supporting documentation.  

Paid a minister $273 per night to stay in his own home. Prevented university newspapers from attending the release of multiple annual budgets like all other newspapers. These particular budgets contained multiple changes which negatively impact university students.  

Refused to release the results for the trial of a national health register. 

Spent over $3,500 to send a minister to watch the AFL with his wife. 

Spent over $2,700 on a trip to watch polo. 

Spent $10,000 per day to send a single minister to the USA. 

Broke a promise to scrap free lifetime travel for former ministers. The excuse is that the government is to busy to pass legislation through parliament, despite that being the job of the government and of parliament. 

Falsely advertised the closure of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, despite Parliament rejecting the closure attempt. 

Refused to publish the cost benefit analysis on the agriculture minister’s decision to move a federal agency from Canberra to his own electorate. 

Personally appointed George Brandis’ son’s lawyer to a $370,000 job, without making a conflict of interest declaration.  

Tried to privatise the database of ASIC (the corporate watchdog). Under private hands the cost journalists must pay to obtain information about potentially corrupt companies would increase. 

Spent over $140,000 for 5 ministers to travel to a country we have no trade or diplomatic ties with, visiting tourist sites and dining in 5 star restaurants. 

Refused to release 5 year old taxi receipts to assist in a fraud case, on the grounds that terrorists could use travel information from 5 years ago to help plan an attack against the minister in question. 

Spent $10,000 to fly the family of 2 ministers to a tropical island for a weekend holiday. 

Voted against a motion asking the Housing Affordability Inquiry to update the senate on how they are progressing with the recommendations the government supported. 

Rejected an inquiry which recommended that citizens accused of tax fraud be treated as innocent until proven guilty. 

Spent $30,000 on a private jet to fly one minister and their partner from Perth to Canberra (instead of catching a normal plane) because a non-business event ran overtime. This is despite the alleged budget emergency. 

Voted against increasing transparency about how much tax large corporations pay. 

Violated parliamentary anti-corruption rules by not declaring a substantial loan for almost 2 years. 

Broke an election promise to conduct and publish a cost benefit analysis for all infrastructure projects over $100 million. 

Spent over $20,000 in a legal fight in order to hide modelling for the impact of university fee deregulation.  

Spent thousands of government dollars on taxi rides to the Opera in just 8 days. The government claims that the expenditure is reasonable because the minister didn’t pay for the tickets either. 

Spent thousands of government dollars on limousine rides, and fudged the declaration paperwork to say they were taxi rides. 

Spent $10,000 trying to chase down someone who leaked information to the media about how the Prime Minister deliberately and knowingly used false information to justify opposition to a defence force pay rise. 

Spent $27,000 on travel expenses for politicians to attend free sports events. Voted against a royal commission into corruption and misconduct in the financial service industry, following a series of scandals. 

Reaped $1000 per month of government money to pay for Joe Hockey to stay in his wife’s house. 

Proposed an exemption so that Australia’s richest companies no longer have to publish basic information about how much tax they are paying. 

Accidentally leaked the personal details of 31 world leaders, and chose not to notify them. They still claim your metadata will be safe though. 

Breached the criminal code of conduct by offering the independently appointed Human Rights Commissioner a new job if she resigned. 

Flew across the country on a taxpayer funded private jet to attend the private birthday party of a millionaire who has made large donations to the Liberal party. Refused to publish cost estimates for the data-retention policy which were provided by the industry. 

Voted to keep the text of the China Free Trade deal secret from the public. 

Abolished the $10,000 limit on political donations. Broke the law by missing the deadline for publishing the Intergenerational Report, as stipulated by the Charter of Budget Honesty Act. 

Spent $10,000 trying to identify a whistleblower who told the media that the Prime Minister knowingly mislead the public using information he knew was incorrect. 

Started an online petition to stop job losses at the ABC, just 36 hours after cutting ABC funding by 5%. 

Contracted out the managing of the Do Not Call Register to a marketing company. 

Secretly and retrospectively changed the official record of what was said in parliament. 

Broke an election promise by cutting ABC funding again ($120 million this time).  

Spent $900,000 in just 2 months on private jet flights for ministers. 

Forced all community TV stations off the air, claiming that moving online will be better for stations and viewers. Meanwhile they continue to fervently defend foreign corporate stations like HBO, who stubbornly refuse to make content accessible online. 

Introduced new laws which mean Edward Snowden type leaks are punishable by up to 10 years of prison. No exemptions are made for anti-corruption leaks. If journalists report on anyone (including innocent bystanders) being killed accidentally or deliberately by security personnel, they will be jailed for up to 10 years.    

Spent $50,000 on upgrades of curtains and upholstery for the Prime Minister’s office. 

Moved to abolish the role of freedom of information commissioner, abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and charge $800 for reviews of Freedom of Information Request denials. 

Refused to publish any submissions it received for or against the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, even though the government says the changes are to protect free speech. They refused to state what proportion of submissions supported the changes. The government defended this secrecy by claiming that all submissions were made with the expectation of confidentiality. This is false. The Senate Inquiry Submission Guidelines state that to make a Senate Inquiry Submission confidential, you must explicitly justify a request for confidentiality, and that such requests are generally denied.  

Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons. Gave the Minister for Infrastructure the power to silence Infrastructure Australia (an independent body) without justification. (See section 5A.2 of the link.) 

Deliberately hid the cost of the $4.45 million renovations on The Lodge. Spent $50,000 on one dinner for 60 G20 guests, including food specially flown to Washington from all over Australia. 

Voted against the creation of a federal anti-corruption watchdog. 

Cut $38 million from Australian television and film funding. 

Broke an election promise by cutting $40 million from the SBS and ABC.   

Broke an election promise to not cut ABC funding, by cutting all funding to the Australia Network (part of the ABC).   

Claimed a 2.5% reduction in funding every year for the ABC is not a funding cut. Increased the fee for lodging Freedom of Information requests. 

Paid a public relations company $97,000 for 3 weeks of work to help improve the Education Department’s image, then refused to release the report that came of it. 

Proposed the scrapping of regulation which prevents media monopolies and duopolies. 

Spent over $15,000 on a custom made bookcase to replace a $7,000 custom bookcase which holds $13,000 worth of taxpayer funded books and magazines in senator Brandis’ office. 

Spent $22,000 taxpayer dollars buying new cutlery and crockery for the ministerial wing of parliament. Chose not to mention a $882 million payout to News Corp. when outlining a $16.8 billion budget black hole. The payout was the single biggest item in the black hole.  

Denied any wrongdoing after a government aid married to the head of a junk food lobby pulled down a government website providing simplified nutritional information within hours of its launch. 

Violated Youtube’s policies regarding deceptive content, resulting in the suspension of Abbott’s whole channel. Criticised the ABC because they aren’t biased towards the Government. 

Spent over $120,000 on Kirribilli House, including $13,000 on an imported luxury rug, paid for by the taxpayer. Tried to silence the media to stop them criticising the upcoming private jet deal for politicians. 

Criticised the ABC for not “advancing Australia’s broad and enduring interests in the Asian region”, without actually accusing the ABC of any specific wrongdoing or poor judgement. 

Changed the ministerial code of conduct so ministers no longer have to sell shares which create a conflict of interest. 

Made Orwellian threats about cutting ABC funding because the government didn’t like one of their stories, and because their quality of journalism is too high, thereby creating competition which threatens the corporate newspaper duopoly (who are now floundering because they didn’t see the internet coming). 

List compiled by Matthew Davis. You can view the full list of 902 points at https://www.mdavis.xyz

(P.S. If you share this on social media, please let us know so we can invoice Facebook for that.)

JudgeMental said:

https://chaser.com.au/national/an-exhaustive-list-of-the-liberal-partys-corruption-over-the-last-7-years/

The Chaser is a satirical outlet but all of this is legit

—-

A complete list of the Liberal Party’s corruption over the last 7 years

Thanks to the Facebook news ban we’re now somehow the only news site in Australia, so here’s some serious journalism listing all the questionable decisions that ScoMo and co made after he forgot to check with Jenny first.

The federal government has:

Cut $14 million from the national audit office, after that office discovered substantial improprieties and wasteful spending (such as the sports rorts, and paying 10 times too much for land for the new Sydney airport).

 Voted against a binding code of conduct designed to ensure politicians act with integrity. 

Blocked a research-backed design change to increase the effectiveness of beverage warnings about drinking during pregnancy (recommended by an independent body) after meeting with lobbyists from alcohol companies who have donated over $300,000 to the Coalition. 

Gave $345,000 to News Corp to build a spelling bee website, discarding any pretense of propriety or fairness by skipping the usual parliamentary checks and tender process, instead just choosing to hand the excessive amount of cash to a company whose industry is neither website building nor education. 

Hid a record-breaking number of expenses from the public in an annual budget, including cash handed to a private rail project, maintaining an abandoned oil rig, and legal action relating to military bases which leaked toxic chemicals. 

Loosened political donation laws.  

Committed a crime by ignoring a ruling of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.  

Appointed a failed Liberal candidate to the SBS board instead of any of the ones recommended by the independent nominations panel. 

Prevented parliament from debating whether to set up a National Integrity Commission. 

Set up the COVID-19 National Co-ordination Committee with no terms of reference, no register of conflicts of interest, and then stacked it with gas company executives who unsurprisingly ended up recommending irrationally pro-gas policies.

690 documents about potential conflicts of interests were deliberately kept hidden.   

Blocked parliament from debating significant environmental protection repeals, rushing through the legislation without allowing anyone to discuss it first. 

Lied by claiming they appointed a Liberal party staffer to a job paying half a million dollars per year through an “open merit-driven, competitive process”. It was actually a limited tender not open to all, exempt from procurement rules which guarantee fairness and impartiality. 

Tried to get parliament to vote on new legislation without giving copies of the bill to the people voting on it, and used unprecedented methods to prevent any politician to speak against it.   

Paid tens of thousands of dollars to a company which was known to be corrupt, through a tender that was not opened up to all competitors. 

Illegally forged a document to publicly criticise a political opponent. 

Cancelled The Rule of Law and then preventing journalists from reporting on the case against a whistleblower who leaked truthful information in the public interest about senior politicians and law enforcement officials who flagrantly violated serious international laws. The court case is held in secret. The whistleblower’s name is illegal to publish. The witness and lawyers’ residences were raided, and the evidence against the government was confiscated.  

Extended exemptions for political donation transparency, which are 25 years old and were only supposed to be temporary. 

Paid $39 million to a naval boat manufacturer when not required to because the company failed to fulfill the relevant contract clauses, and they coincidentally donated to the Liberal party. 

Illegally failed to respond to freedom of information (FOI) requests within the statutory 30 day deadline in 92.5% of cases. 

Bought water rights for 50 times more than many valuations, and double the price of the seller’s valuation. 

Lied by claiming that Kevin Rudd had travelled overseas and back during COVID while many Australians are still stranded overseas, when Mr Rudd had actually never left Queensland.  

Refused to release a report into COVID policy communication strategies, which cost over $500,000. 

Introduced a mandatory code of conduct to force companies like Google to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to large private news companies (but not ABC news nor independent news, nor the Chaser). Google currently drives over 3 billion clicks per year to Australian news companies. Therefore this is like a local plumber demanding that the Yellow Pages pay the plumber for the act of directing plumber-seeking customers to the plumber. This will also undermine the fundamental principles of the web itself, according to its inventor. The laws are written based on the incorrect assumption that news makes up 10% of Google searches when it’s only 1%.      

Introduced red tape and distorted the free market by forcing Google to give special insider knowledge of proprietary search algorithm changes to large news companies but not small, independent journalists. It includes ambiguously written clauses about giving news companies access to Google users’ private data.  

Introduced protections for company executives who trade while insolvent during the pandemic. This is only for cases where the debts are incurred “the ordinary course of business”. Those who try to adapt to the challenging circumstances will not be exempt. In this way the government is incentivising executives to not adapt to the unique circumstances. 

Refused to release the minutes from an important meeting of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee giving COVID advice to the Prime Minister.  

Created the ABCC ostensibly for reducing corruption, but the ABCC boss himself violated rules and endangered people by ignoring COVID flight restrictions, travelling across the country to interview workers about a rally that happened 8 months prior. 

Refused to release a multilateral trade agreement with China, which involves spending government money on infrastructure in other countries. The lack of transparency exacerbates existing concerns about burdening these other developing nations with unsustainable debt.  

Deleted records of a $165,000 political donation from a political consultancy with stakeholders who stand to benefit from the government’s $1 billion visa privatization plan, and refused requests for further explanation. 

Kept secret a government-funded report that showed less than 1 in 3 Australians trust our public service sector. The justification was that the government believed that the report which they wrote would mislead and confuse people. 

Lied by claiming that all grants issued under the controversial $100M sports grant program were eligible for funding, when only 57% were. Failed to declare a property worth $1M in a minister’s declaration of interests. Failed to declare 2 properties worth more than $1M in another minister’s declaration of interests. 

Approved a $36,000 grant to a shooting club without declaring that the approving minister was a member of that club. 

Allocated sports grant funding based on which candidate projects were in marginal seats, rather than which were the most worthy. Then refused to release legal advice about whether such pork barrelling is illegal, and destroyed evidence about the funding choices.     

Merged the Australian Federal Police into the Home Affairs department, allowing the minister to exert political influence on investigations. 

Ignored a Royal Commission report which found the government’s Murray-Darling Basin Plan is illegal, whilst refusing to publish their own report which they claim provides a valid rebuttal. Abandoned standard tender processes when awarding a $423 million contract to a company with $50k in funds, little experience, no phone number, no mail address, housed in a shack.  

Refused to publish a report used to justify a $53 million contract to outsource Centrelink call handling.  Declared that they will violate a new law, because they don’t like it.  

Spent $87,000 fighting against a Freedom of Information request about back-room deals, and then lied about the cost. 

Drastically increased the amount of government money spent without a proper tender process, up to $34 billion per month. 

Handed out $17.1M to private TV stations for a grant they didn’t ask for, without offering the money to the public broadcaster. 

Refused a Senate Order to release details about expensive contracts for security, health and infrastructure in their detention camps in PNG. 

Excused the conflict of interest arising when the head of the My Health Record (appointed by the government) privately received money for consultations about the My Health Record. 

Spent 2 years trying to hide documents from Freedom of Information requests, about a serious breach of top secret documents, and mishandling of those documents by a minister. 

Hid a report by the Governor General showing that the government paid twice as much as necessary for new combat vehicles, because such publicity would be bad for the private manufacturer’s future profitability. The company is not even Australian.  

Lied about the Immigration Minister having no personal connection to someone who benefited from the direct intervention by the Immigration Minister in a visa case.   

Spent an undisclosed amount of public money on legal defence for a minister who broken the law for political gain. Cut $84 million from the ABC (again). 

Exempted a facial recognition system storing data of innocent citizens from standard procurement policy disclosure rules. The excuse is a reliance on security through obscurity rather than actual security. Accuracy figures are also not published.   

Increased the jail time for journalists who report on whistleblower’s truthful allegations by a factor of 10.  

Refused to publish the percentage of calls to the veterans’ suicide help line which go unanswered, because that want negatively impact the brand of the private call centre operator. 

Prohibited public servants from liking social media posts critical of the government, even if anonymous. Failed to declare multiple $1600 Foxtel subscriptions gifted to ministers by a lobby group. 

Gave $30 million to Foxtel to boost “under represented sports”, and was unable to explain why free-to-air channels didn’t get the money, because the decision was made without any emails, letter, or supporting documentation.  

Paid a minister $273 per night to stay in his own home. Prevented university newspapers from attending the release of multiple annual budgets like all other newspapers. These particular budgets contained multiple changes which negatively impact university students.  

Refused to release the results for the trial of a national health register. 

Spent over $3,500 to send a minister to watch the AFL with his wife. 

Spent over $2,700 on a trip to watch polo. 

Spent $10,000 per day to send a single minister to the USA. 

Broke a promise to scrap free lifetime travel for former ministers. The excuse is that the government is to busy to pass legislation through parliament, despite that being the job of the government and of parliament. 

Falsely advertised the closure of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, despite Parliament rejecting the closure attempt. 

Refused to publish the cost benefit analysis on the agriculture minister’s decision to move a federal agency from Canberra to his own electorate. 

Personally appointed George Brandis’ son’s lawyer to a $370,000 job, without making a conflict of interest declaration.  

Tried to privatise the database of ASIC (the corporate watchdog). Under private hands the cost journalists must pay to obtain information about potentially corrupt companies would increase. 

Spent over $140,000 for 5 ministers to travel to a country we have no trade or diplomatic ties with, visiting tourist sites and dining in 5 star restaurants. 

Refused to release 5 year old taxi receipts to assist in a fraud case, on the grounds that terrorists could use travel information from 5 years ago to help plan an attack against the minister in question. 

Spent $10,000 to fly the family of 2 ministers to a tropical island for a weekend holiday. 

Voted against a motion asking the Housing Affordability Inquiry to update the senate on how they are progressing with the recommendations the government supported. 

Rejected an inquiry which recommended that citizens accused of tax fraud be treated as innocent until proven guilty. 

Spent $30,000 on a private jet to fly one minister and their partner from Perth to Canberra (instead of catching a normal plane) because a non-business event ran overtime. This is despite the alleged budget emergency. 

Voted against increasing transparency about how much tax large corporations pay. 

Violated parliamentary anti-corruption rules by not declaring a substantial loan for almost 2 years. 

Broke an election promise to conduct and publish a cost benefit analysis for all infrastructure projects over $100 million. 

Spent over $20,000 in a legal fight in order to hide modelling for the impact of university fee deregulation.  

Spent thousands of government dollars on taxi rides to the Opera in just 8 days. The government claims that the expenditure is reasonable because the minister didn’t pay for the tickets either. 

Spent thousands of government dollars on limousine rides, and fudged the declaration paperwork to say they were taxi rides. 

Spent $10,000 trying to chase down someone who leaked information to the media about how the Prime Minister deliberately and knowingly used false information to justify opposition to a defence force pay rise. 

Spent $27,000 on travel expenses for politicians to attend free sports events. Voted against a royal commission into corruption and misconduct in the financial service industry, following a series of scandals. 

Reaped $1000 per month of government money to pay for Joe Hockey to stay in his wife’s house. 

Proposed an exemption so that Australia’s richest companies no longer have to publish basic information about how much tax they are paying. 

Accidentally leaked the personal details of 31 world leaders, and chose not to notify them. They still claim your metadata will be safe though. 

Breached the criminal code of conduct by offering the independently appointed Human Rights Commissioner a new job if she resigned. 

Flew across the country on a taxpayer funded private jet to attend the private birthday party of a millionaire who has made large donations to the Liberal party. Refused to publish cost estimates for the data-retention policy which were provided by the industry. 

Voted to keep the text of the China Free Trade deal secret from the public. 

Abolished the $10,000 limit on political donations. Broke the law by missing the deadline for publishing the Intergenerational Report, as stipulated by the Charter of Budget Honesty Act. 

Spent $10,000 trying to identify a whistleblower who told the media that the Prime Minister knowingly mislead the public using information he knew was incorrect. 

Started an online petition to stop job losses at the ABC, just 36 hours after cutting ABC funding by 5%. 

Contracted out the managing of the Do Not Call Register to a marketing company. 

Secretly and retrospectively changed the official record of what was said in parliament. 

Broke an election promise by cutting ABC funding again ($120 million this time).  

Spent $900,000 in just 2 months on private jet flights for ministers. 

Forced all community TV stations off the air, claiming that moving online will be better for stations and viewers. Meanwhile they continue to fervently defend foreign corporate stations like HBO, who stubbornly refuse to make content accessible online. 

Introduced new laws which mean Edward Snowden type leaks are punishable by up to 10 years of prison. No exemptions are made for anti-corruption leaks. If journalists report on anyone (including innocent bystanders) being killed accidentally or deliberately by security personnel, they will be jailed for up to 10 years.    

Spent $50,000 on upgrades of curtains and upholstery for the Prime Minister’s office. 

Moved to abolish the role of freedom of information commissioner, abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and charge $800 for reviews of Freedom of Information Request denials. 

Refused to publish any submissions it received for or against the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, even though the government says the changes are to protect free speech. They refused to state what proportion of submissions supported the changes. The government defended this secrecy by claiming that all submissions were made with the expectation of confidentiality. This is false. The Senate Inquiry Submission Guidelines state that to make a Senate Inquiry Submission confidential, you must explicitly justify a request for confidentiality, and that such requests are generally denied.  

Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons. Gave the Minister for Infrastructure the power to silence Infrastructure Australia (an independent body) without justification. (See section 5A.2 of the link.) 

Deliberately hid the cost of the $4.45 million renovations on The Lodge. Spent $50,000 on one dinner for 60 G20 guests, including food specially flown to Washington from all over Australia. 

Voted against the creation of a federal anti-corruption watchdog. 

Cut $38 million from Australian television and film funding. 

Broke an election promise by cutting $40 million from the SBS and ABC.   

Broke an election promise to not cut ABC funding, by cutting all funding to the Australia Network (part of the ABC).   

Claimed a 2.5% reduction in funding every year for the ABC is not a funding cut. Increased the fee for lodging Freedom of Information requests. 

Paid a public relations company $97,000 for 3 weeks of work to help improve the Education Department’s image, then refused to release the report that came of it. 

Proposed the scrapping of regulation which prevents media monopolies and duopolies. 

Spent over $15,000 on a custom made bookcase to replace a $7,000 custom bookcase which holds $13,000 worth of taxpayer funded books and magazines in senator Brandis’ office. 

Spent $22,000 taxpayer dollars buying new cutlery and crockery for the ministerial wing of parliament. Chose not to mention a $882 million payout to News Corp. when outlining a $16.8 billion budget black hole. The payout was the single biggest item in the black hole.  

Denied any wrongdoing after a government aid married to the head of a junk food lobby pulled down a government website providing simplified nutritional information within hours of its launch. 

Violated Youtube’s policies regarding deceptive content, resulting in the suspension of Abbott’s whole channel. Criticised the ABC because they aren’t biased towards the Government. 

Spent over $120,000 on Kirribilli House, including $13,000 on an imported luxury rug, paid for by the taxpayer. Tried to silence the media to stop them criticising the upcoming private jet deal for politicians. 

Criticised the ABC for not “advancing Australia’s broad and enduring interests in the Asian region”, without actually accusing the ABC of any specific wrongdoing or poor judgement. 

Changed the ministerial code of conduct so ministers no longer have to sell shares which create a conflict of interest. 

Made Orwellian threats about cutting ABC funding because the government didn’t like one of their stories, and because their quality of journalism is too high, thereby creating competition which threatens the corporate newspaper duopoly (who are now floundering because they didn’t see the internet coming). 

List compiled by Matthew Davis. You can view the full list of 902 points at https://www.mdavis.xyz

(P.S. If you share this on social media, please let us know so we can invoice Facebook for that.)

Buffy posted it yesterday. And we chatted.

DV posted it little while ago.

sarahs mum said:

JudgeMental said:

https://chaser.com.au/national/an-exhaustive-list-of-the-liberal-partys-corruption-over-the-last-7-years/

The Chaser is a satirical outlet but all of this is legit

—-

A complete list of the Liberal Party’s corruption over the last 7 years

Thanks to the Facebook news ban we’re now somehow the only news site in Australia, so here’s some serious journalism listing all the questionable decisions that ScoMo and co made after he forgot to check with Jenny first.

The federal government has:

Cut $14 million from the national audit office, after that office discovered substantial improprieties and wasteful spending (such as the sports rorts, and paying 10 times too much for land for the new Sydney airport).

 Voted against a binding code of conduct designed to ensure politicians act with integrity. 

Blocked a research-backed design change to increase the effectiveness of beverage warnings about drinking during pregnancy (recommended by an independent body) after meeting with lobbyists from alcohol companies who have donated over $300,000 to the Coalition. 

Gave $345,000 to News Corp to build a spelling bee website, discarding any pretense of propriety or fairness by skipping the usual parliamentary checks and tender process, instead just choosing to hand the excessive amount of cash to a company whose industry is neither website building nor education. 

Hid a record-breaking number of expenses from the public in an annual budget, including cash handed to a private rail project, maintaining an abandoned oil rig, and legal action relating to military bases which leaked toxic chemicals. 

Loosened political donation laws.  

Committed a crime by ignoring a ruling of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.  

Appointed a failed Liberal candidate to the SBS board instead of any of the ones recommended by the independent nominations panel. 

Prevented parliament from debating whether to set up a National Integrity Commission. 

Set up the COVID-19 National Co-ordination Committee with no terms of reference, no register of conflicts of interest, and then stacked it with gas company executives who unsurprisingly ended up recommending irrationally pro-gas policies.

690 documents about potential conflicts of interests were deliberately kept hidden.   

Blocked parliament from debating significant environmental protection repeals, rushing through the legislation without allowing anyone to discuss it first. 

Lied by claiming they appointed a Liberal party staffer to a job paying half a million dollars per year through an “open merit-driven, competitive process”. It was actually a limited tender not open to all, exempt from procurement rules which guarantee fairness and impartiality. 

Tried to get parliament to vote on new legislation without giving copies of the bill to the people voting on it, and used unprecedented methods to prevent any politician to speak against it.   

Paid tens of thousands of dollars to a company which was known to be corrupt, through a tender that was not opened up to all competitors. 

Illegally forged a document to publicly criticise a political opponent. 

Cancelled The Rule of Law and then preventing journalists from reporting on the case against a whistleblower who leaked truthful information in the public interest about senior politicians and law enforcement officials who flagrantly violated serious international laws. The court case is held in secret. The whistleblower’s name is illegal to publish. The witness and lawyers’ residences were raided, and the evidence against the government was confiscated.  

Extended exemptions for political donation transparency, which are 25 years old and were only supposed to be temporary. 

Paid $39 million to a naval boat manufacturer when not required to because the company failed to fulfill the relevant contract clauses, and they coincidentally donated to the Liberal party. 

Illegally failed to respond to freedom of information (FOI) requests within the statutory 30 day deadline in 92.5% of cases. 

Bought water rights for 50 times more than many valuations, and double the price of the seller’s valuation. 

Lied by claiming that Kevin Rudd had travelled overseas and back during COVID while many Australians are still stranded overseas, when Mr Rudd had actually never left Queensland.  

Refused to release a report into COVID policy communication strategies, which cost over $500,000. 

Introduced a mandatory code of conduct to force companies like Google to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to large private news companies (but not ABC news nor independent news, nor the Chaser). Google currently drives over 3 billion clicks per year to Australian news companies. Therefore this is like a local plumber demanding that the Yellow Pages pay the plumber for the act of directing plumber-seeking customers to the plumber. This will also undermine the fundamental principles of the web itself, according to its inventor. The laws are written based on the incorrect assumption that news makes up 10% of Google searches when it’s only 1%.      

Introduced red tape and distorted the free market by forcing Google to give special insider knowledge of proprietary search algorithm changes to large news companies but not small, independent journalists. It includes ambiguously written clauses about giving news companies access to Google users’ private data.  

Introduced protections for company executives who trade while insolvent during the pandemic. This is only for cases where the debts are incurred “the ordinary course of business”. Those who try to adapt to the challenging circumstances will not be exempt. In this way the government is incentivising executives to not adapt to the unique circumstances. 

Refused to release the minutes from an important meeting of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee giving COVID advice to the Prime Minister.  

Created the ABCC ostensibly for reducing corruption, but the ABCC boss himself violated rules and endangered people by ignoring COVID flight restrictions, travelling across the country to interview workers about a rally that happened 8 months prior. 

Refused to release a multilateral trade agreement with China, which involves spending government money on infrastructure in other countries. The lack of transparency exacerbates existing concerns about burdening these other developing nations with unsustainable debt.  

Deleted records of a $165,000 political donation from a political consultancy with stakeholders who stand to benefit from the government’s $1 billion visa privatization plan, and refused requests for further explanation. 

Kept secret a government-funded report that showed less than 1 in 3 Australians trust our public service sector. The justification was that the government believed that the report which they wrote would mislead and confuse people. 

Lied by claiming that all grants issued under the controversial $100M sports grant program were eligible for funding, when only 57% were. Failed to declare a property worth $1M in a minister’s declaration of interests. Failed to declare 2 properties worth more than $1M in another minister’s declaration of interests. 

Approved a $36,000 grant to a shooting club without declaring that the approving minister was a member of that club. 

Allocated sports grant funding based on which candidate projects were in marginal seats, rather than which were the most worthy. Then refused to release legal advice about whether such pork barrelling is illegal, and destroyed evidence about the funding choices.     

Merged the Australian Federal Police into the Home Affairs department, allowing the minister to exert political influence on investigations. 

Ignored a Royal Commission report which found the government’s Murray-Darling Basin Plan is illegal, whilst refusing to publish their own report which they claim provides a valid rebuttal. Abandoned standard tender processes when awarding a $423 million contract to a company with $50k in funds, little experience, no phone number, no mail address, housed in a shack.  

Refused to publish a report used to justify a $53 million contract to outsource Centrelink call handling.  Declared that they will violate a new law, because they don’t like it.  

Spent $87,000 fighting against a Freedom of Information request about back-room deals, and then lied about the cost. 

Drastically increased the amount of government money spent without a proper tender process, up to $34 billion per month. 

Handed out $17.1M to private TV stations for a grant they didn’t ask for, without offering the money to the public broadcaster. 

Refused a Senate Order to release details about expensive contracts for security, health and infrastructure in their detention camps in PNG. 

Excused the conflict of interest arising when the head of the My Health Record (appointed by the government) privately received money for consultations about the My Health Record. 

Spent 2 years trying to hide documents from Freedom of Information requests, about a serious breach of top secret documents, and mishandling of those documents by a minister. 

Hid a report by the Governor General showing that the government paid twice as much as necessary for new combat vehicles, because such publicity would be bad for the private manufacturer’s future profitability. The company is not even Australian.  

Lied about the Immigration Minister having no personal connection to someone who benefited from the direct intervention by the Immigration Minister in a visa case.   

Spent an undisclosed amount of public money on legal defence for a minister who broken the law for political gain. Cut $84 million from the ABC (again). 

Exempted a facial recognition system storing data of innocent citizens from standard procurement policy disclosure rules. The excuse is a reliance on security through obscurity rather than actual security. Accuracy figures are also not published.   

Increased the jail time for journalists who report on whistleblower’s truthful allegations by a factor of 10.  

Refused to publish the percentage of calls to the veterans’ suicide help line which go unanswered, because that want negatively impact the brand of the private call centre operator. 

Prohibited public servants from liking social media posts critical of the government, even if anonymous. Failed to declare multiple $1600 Foxtel subscriptions gifted to ministers by a lobby group. 

Gave $30 million to Foxtel to boost “under represented sports”, and was unable to explain why free-to-air channels didn’t get the money, because the decision was made without any emails, letter, or supporting documentation.  

Paid a minister $273 per night to stay in his own home. Prevented university newspapers from attending the release of multiple annual budgets like all other newspapers. These particular budgets contained multiple changes which negatively impact university students.  

Refused to release the results for the trial of a national health register. 

Spent over $3,500 to send a minister to watch the AFL with his wife. 

Spent over $2,700 on a trip to watch polo. 

Spent $10,000 per day to send a single minister to the USA. 

Broke a promise to scrap free lifetime travel for former ministers. The excuse is that the government is to busy to pass legislation through parliament, despite that being the job of the government and of parliament. 

Falsely advertised the closure of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, despite Parliament rejecting the closure attempt. 

Refused to publish the cost benefit analysis on the agriculture minister’s decision to move a federal agency from Canberra to his own electorate. 

Personally appointed George Brandis’ son’s lawyer to a $370,000 job, without making a conflict of interest declaration.  

Tried to privatise the database of ASIC (the corporate watchdog). Under private hands the cost journalists must pay to obtain information about potentially corrupt companies would increase. 

Spent over $140,000 for 5 ministers to travel to a country we have no trade or diplomatic ties with, visiting tourist sites and dining in 5 star restaurants. 

Refused to release 5 year old taxi receipts to assist in a fraud case, on the grounds that terrorists could use travel information from 5 years ago to help plan an attack against the minister in question. 

Spent $10,000 to fly the family of 2 ministers to a tropical island for a weekend holiday. 

Voted against a motion asking the Housing Affordability Inquiry to update the senate on how they are progressing with the recommendations the government supported. 

Rejected an inquiry which recommended that citizens accused of tax fraud be treated as innocent until proven guilty. 

Spent $30,000 on a private jet to fly one minister and their partner from Perth to Canberra (instead of catching a normal plane) because a non-business event ran overtime. This is despite the alleged budget emergency. 

Voted against increasing transparency about how much tax large corporations pay. 

Violated parliamentary anti-corruption rules by not declaring a substantial loan for almost 2 years. 

Broke an election promise to conduct and publish a cost benefit analysis for all infrastructure projects over $100 million. 

Spent over $20,000 in a legal fight in order to hide modelling for the impact of university fee deregulation.  

Spent thousands of government dollars on taxi rides to the Opera in just 8 days. The government claims that the expenditure is reasonable because the minister didn’t pay for the tickets either. 

Spent thousands of government dollars on limousine rides, and fudged the declaration paperwork to say they were taxi rides. 

Spent $10,000 trying to chase down someone who leaked information to the media about how the Prime Minister deliberately and knowingly used false information to justify opposition to a defence force pay rise. 

Spent $27,000 on travel expenses for politicians to attend free sports events. Voted against a royal commission into corruption and misconduct in the financial service industry, following a series of scandals. 

Reaped $1000 per month of government money to pay for Joe Hockey to stay in his wife’s house. 

Proposed an exemption so that Australia’s richest companies no longer have to publish basic information about how much tax they are paying. 

Accidentally leaked the personal details of 31 world leaders, and chose not to notify them. They still claim your metadata will be safe though. 

Breached the criminal code of conduct by offering the independently appointed Human Rights Commissioner a new job if she resigned. 

Flew across the country on a taxpayer funded private jet to attend the private birthday party of a millionaire who has made large donations to the Liberal party. Refused to publish cost estimates for the data-retention policy which were provided by the industry. 

Voted to keep the text of the China Free Trade deal secret from the public. 

Abolished the $10,000 limit on political donations. Broke the law by missing the deadline for publishing the Intergenerational Report, as stipulated by the Charter of Budget Honesty Act. 

Spent $10,000 trying to identify a whistleblower who told the media that the Prime Minister knowingly mislead the public using information he knew was incorrect. 

Started an online petition to stop job losses at the ABC, just 36 hours after cutting ABC funding by 5%. 

Contracted out the managing of the Do Not Call Register to a marketing company. 

Secretly and retrospectively changed the official record of what was said in parliament. 

Broke an election promise by cutting ABC funding again ($120 million this time).  

Spent $900,000 in just 2 months on private jet flights for ministers. 

Forced all community TV stations off the air, claiming that moving online will be better for stations and viewers. Meanwhile they continue to fervently defend foreign corporate stations like HBO, who stubbornly refuse to make content accessible online. 

Introduced new laws which mean Edward Snowden type leaks are punishable by up to 10 years of prison. No exemptions are made for anti-corruption leaks. If journalists report on anyone (including innocent bystanders) being killed accidentally or deliberately by security personnel, they will be jailed for up to 10 years.    

Spent $50,000 on upgrades of curtains and upholstery for the Prime Minister’s office. 

Moved to abolish the role of freedom of information commissioner, abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and charge $800 for reviews of Freedom of Information Request denials. 

Refused to publish any submissions it received for or against the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, even though the government says the changes are to protect free speech. They refused to state what proportion of submissions supported the changes. The government defended this secrecy by claiming that all submissions were made with the expectation of confidentiality. This is false. The Senate Inquiry Submission Guidelines state that to make a Senate Inquiry Submission confidential, you must explicitly justify a request for confidentiality, and that such requests are generally denied.  

Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons. Gave the Minister for Infrastructure the power to silence Infrastructure Australia (an independent body) without justification. (See section 5A.2 of the link.) 

Deliberately hid the cost of the $4.45 million renovations on The Lodge. Spent $50,000 on one dinner for 60 G20 guests, including food specially flown to Washington from all over Australia. 

Voted against the creation of a federal anti-corruption watchdog. 

Cut $38 million from Australian television and film funding. 

Broke an election promise by cutting $40 million from the SBS and ABC.   

Broke an election promise to not cut ABC funding, by cutting all funding to the Australia Network (part of the ABC).   

Claimed a 2.5% reduction in funding every year for the ABC is not a funding cut. Increased the fee for lodging Freedom of Information requests. 

Paid a public relations company $97,000 for 3 weeks of work to help improve the Education Department’s image, then refused to release the report that came of it. 

Proposed the scrapping of regulation which prevents media monopolies and duopolies. 

Spent over $15,000 on a custom made bookcase to replace a $7,000 custom bookcase which holds $13,000 worth of taxpayer funded books and magazines in senator Brandis’ office. 

Spent $22,000 taxpayer dollars buying new cutlery and crockery for the ministerial wing of parliament. Chose not to mention a $882 million payout to News Corp. when outlining a $16.8 billion budget black hole. The payout was the single biggest item in the black hole.  

Denied any wrongdoing after a government aid married to the head of a junk food lobby pulled down a government website providing simplified nutritional information within hours of its launch. 

Violated Youtube’s policies regarding deceptive content, resulting in the suspension of Abbott’s whole channel. Criticised the ABC because they aren’t biased towards the Government. 

Spent over $120,000 on Kirribilli House, including $13,000 on an imported luxury rug, paid for by the taxpayer. Tried to silence the media to stop them criticising the upcoming private jet deal for politicians. 

Criticised the ABC for not “advancing Australia’s broad and enduring interests in the Asian region”, without actually accusing the ABC of any specific wrongdoing or poor judgement. 

Changed the ministerial code of conduct so ministers no longer have to sell shares which create a conflict of interest. 

Made Orwellian threats about cutting ABC funding because the government didn’t like one of their stories, and because their quality of journalism is too high, thereby creating competition which threatens the corporate newspaper duopoly (who are now floundering because they didn’t see the internet coming). 

List compiled by Matthew Davis. You can view the full list of 902 points at https://www.mdavis.xyz

(P.S. If you share this on social media, please let us know so we can invoice Facebook for that.)

Buffy posted it yesterday. And we chatted.

DV posted it little while ago.

Might be a good idea to keep posting it until everyone reads it?

roughbarked said:

sarahs mum said:

JudgeMental said:

https://chaser.com.au/national/an-exhaustive-list-of-the-liberal-partys-corruption-over-the-last-7-years/

The Chaser is a satirical outlet but all of this is legit

—-

A complete list of the Liberal Party’s corruption over the last 7 years

Thanks to the Facebook news ban we’re now somehow the only news site in Australia, so here’s some serious journalism listing all the questionable decisions that ScoMo and co made after he forgot to check with Jenny first.

The federal government has:

Cut $14 million from the national audit office, after that office discovered substantial improprieties and wasteful spending (such as the sports rorts, and paying 10 times too much for land for the new Sydney airport).

 Voted against a binding code of conduct designed to ensure politicians act with integrity. 

Blocked a research-backed design change to increase the effectiveness of beverage warnings about drinking during pregnancy (recommended by an independent body) after meeting with lobbyists from alcohol companies who have donated over $300,000 to the Coalition. 

Gave $345,000 to News Corp to build a spelling bee website, discarding any pretense of propriety or fairness by skipping the usual parliamentary checks and tender process, instead just choosing to hand the excessive amount of cash to a company whose industry is neither website building nor education. 

Hid a record-breaking number of expenses from the public in an annual budget, including cash handed to a private rail project, maintaining an abandoned oil rig, and legal action relating to military bases which leaked toxic chemicals. 

Loosened political donation laws.  

Committed a crime by ignoring a ruling of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.  

Appointed a failed Liberal candidate to the SBS board instead of any of the ones recommended by the independent nominations panel. 

Prevented parliament from debating whether to set up a National Integrity Commission. 

Set up the COVID-19 National Co-ordination Committee with no terms of reference, no register of conflicts of interest, and then stacked it with gas company executives who unsurprisingly ended up recommending irrationally pro-gas policies.

690 documents about potential conflicts of interests were deliberately kept hidden.   

Blocked parliament from debating significant environmental protection repeals, rushing through the legislation without allowing anyone to discuss it first. 

Lied by claiming they appointed a Liberal party staffer to a job paying half a million dollars per year through an “open merit-driven, competitive process”. It was actually a limited tender not open to all, exempt from procurement rules which guarantee fairness and impartiality. 

Tried to get parliament to vote on new legislation without giving copies of the bill to the people voting on it, and used unprecedented methods to prevent any politician to speak against it.   

Paid tens of thousands of dollars to a company which was known to be corrupt, through a tender that was not opened up to all competitors. 

Illegally forged a document to publicly criticise a political opponent. 

Cancelled The Rule of Law and then preventing journalists from reporting on the case against a whistleblower who leaked truthful information in the public interest about senior politicians and law enforcement officials who flagrantly violated serious international laws. The court case is held in secret. The whistleblower’s name is illegal to publish. The witness and lawyers’ residences were raided, and the evidence against the government was confiscated.  

Extended exemptions for political donation transparency, which are 25 years old and were only supposed to be temporary. 

Paid $39 million to a naval boat manufacturer when not required to because the company failed to fulfill the relevant contract clauses, and they coincidentally donated to the Liberal party. 

Illegally failed to respond to freedom of information (FOI) requests within the statutory 30 day deadline in 92.5% of cases. 

Bought water rights for 50 times more than many valuations, and double the price of the seller’s valuation. 

Lied by claiming that Kevin Rudd had travelled overseas and back during COVID while many Australians are still stranded overseas, when Mr Rudd had actually never left Queensland.  

Refused to release a report into COVID policy communication strategies, which cost over $500,000. 

Introduced a mandatory code of conduct to force companies like Google to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to large private news companies (but not ABC news nor independent news, nor the Chaser). Google currently drives over 3 billion clicks per year to Australian news companies. Therefore this is like a local plumber demanding that the Yellow Pages pay the plumber for the act of directing plumber-seeking customers to the plumber. This will also undermine the fundamental principles of the web itself, according to its inventor. The laws are written based on the incorrect assumption that news makes up 10% of Google searches when it’s only 1%.      

Introduced red tape and distorted the free market by forcing Google to give special insider knowledge of proprietary search algorithm changes to large news companies but not small, independent journalists. It includes ambiguously written clauses about giving news companies access to Google users’ private data.  

Introduced protections for company executives who trade while insolvent during the pandemic. This is only for cases where the debts are incurred “the ordinary course of business”. Those who try to adapt to the challenging circumstances will not be exempt. In this way the government is incentivising executives to not adapt to the unique circumstances. 

Refused to release the minutes from an important meeting of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee giving COVID advice to the Prime Minister.  

Created the ABCC ostensibly for reducing corruption, but the ABCC boss himself violated rules and endangered people by ignoring COVID flight restrictions, travelling across the country to interview workers about a rally that happened 8 months prior. 

Refused to release a multilateral trade agreement with China, which involves spending government money on infrastructure in other countries. The lack of transparency exacerbates existing concerns about burdening these other developing nations with unsustainable debt.  

Deleted records of a $165,000 political donation from a political consultancy with stakeholders who stand to benefit from the government’s $1 billion visa privatization plan, and refused requests for further explanation. 

Kept secret a government-funded report that showed less than 1 in 3 Australians trust our public service sector. The justification was that the government believed that the report which they wrote would mislead and confuse people. 

Lied by claiming that all grants issued under the controversial $100M sports grant program were eligible for funding, when only 57% were. Failed to declare a property worth $1M in a minister’s declaration of interests. Failed to declare 2 properties worth more than $1M in another minister’s declaration of interests. 

Approved a $36,000 grant to a shooting club without declaring that the approving minister was a member of that club. 

Allocated sports grant funding based on which candidate projects were in marginal seats, rather than which were the most worthy. Then refused to release legal advice about whether such pork barrelling is illegal, and destroyed evidence about the funding choices.     

Merged the Australian Federal Police into the Home Affairs department, allowing the minister to exert political influence on investigations. 

Ignored a Royal Commission report which found the government’s Murray-Darling Basin Plan is illegal, whilst refusing to publish their own report which they claim provides a valid rebuttal. Abandoned standard tender processes when awarding a $423 million contract to a company with $50k in funds, little experience, no phone number, no mail address, housed in a shack.  

Refused to publish a report used to justify a $53 million contract to outsource Centrelink call handling.  Declared that they will violate a new law, because they don’t like it.  

Spent $87,000 fighting against a Freedom of Information request about back-room deals, and then lied about the cost. 

Drastically increased the amount of government money spent without a proper tender process, up to $34 billion per month. 

Handed out $17.1M to private TV stations for a grant they didn’t ask for, without offering the money to the public broadcaster. 

Refused a Senate Order to release details about expensive contracts for security, health and infrastructure in their detention camps in PNG. 

Excused the conflict of interest arising when the head of the My Health Record (appointed by the government) privately received money for consultations about the My Health Record. 

Spent 2 years trying to hide documents from Freedom of Information requests, about a serious breach of top secret documents, and mishandling of those documents by a minister. 

Hid a report by the Governor General showing that the government paid twice as much as necessary for new combat vehicles, because such publicity would be bad for the private manufacturer’s future profitability. The company is not even Australian.  

Lied about the Immigration Minister having no personal connection to someone who benefited from the direct intervention by the Immigration Minister in a visa case.   

Spent an undisclosed amount of public money on legal defence for a minister who broken the law for political gain. Cut $84 million from the ABC (again). 

Exempted a facial recognition system storing data of innocent citizens from standard procurement policy disclosure rules. The excuse is a reliance on security through obscurity rather than actual security. Accuracy figures are also not published.   

Increased the jail time for journalists who report on whistleblower’s truthful allegations by a factor of 10.  

Refused to publish the percentage of calls to the veterans’ suicide help line which go unanswered, because that want negatively impact the brand of the private call centre operator. 

Prohibited public servants from liking social media posts critical of the government, even if anonymous. Failed to declare multiple $1600 Foxtel subscriptions gifted to ministers by a lobby group. 

Gave $30 million to Foxtel to boost “under represented sports”, and was unable to explain why free-to-air channels didn’t get the money, because the decision was made without any emails, letter, or supporting documentation.  

Paid a minister $273 per night to stay in his own home. Prevented university newspapers from attending the release of multiple annual budgets like all other newspapers. These particular budgets contained multiple changes which negatively impact university students.  

Refused to release the results for the trial of a national health register. 

Spent over $3,500 to send a minister to watch the AFL with his wife. 

Spent over $2,700 on a trip to watch polo. 

Spent $10,000 per day to send a single minister to the USA. 

Broke a promise to scrap free lifetime travel for former ministers. The excuse is that the government is to busy to pass legislation through parliament, despite that being the job of the government and of parliament. 

Falsely advertised the closure of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, despite Parliament rejecting the closure attempt. 

Refused to publish the cost benefit analysis on the agriculture minister’s decision to move a federal agency from Canberra to his own electorate. 

Personally appointed George Brandis’ son’s lawyer to a $370,000 job, without making a conflict of interest declaration.  

Tried to privatise the database of ASIC (the corporate watchdog). Under private hands the cost journalists must pay to obtain information about potentially corrupt companies would increase. 

Spent over $140,000 for 5 ministers to travel to a country we have no trade or diplomatic ties with, visiting tourist sites and dining in 5 star restaurants. 

Refused to release 5 year old taxi receipts to assist in a fraud case, on the grounds that terrorists could use travel information from 5 years ago to help plan an attack against the minister in question. 

Spent $10,000 to fly the family of 2 ministers to a tropical island for a weekend holiday. 

Voted against a motion asking the Housing Affordability Inquiry to update the senate on how they are progressing with the recommendations the government supported. 

Rejected an inquiry which recommended that citizens accused of tax fraud be treated as innocent until proven guilty. 

Spent $30,000 on a private jet to fly one minister and their partner from Perth to Canberra (instead of catching a normal plane) because a non-business event ran overtime. This is despite the alleged budget emergency. 

Voted against increasing transparency about how much tax large corporations pay. 

Violated parliamentary anti-corruption rules by not declaring a substantial loan for almost 2 years. 

Broke an election promise to conduct and publish a cost benefit analysis for all infrastructure projects over $100 million. 

Spent over $20,000 in a legal fight in order to hide modelling for the impact of university fee deregulation.  

Spent thousands of government dollars on taxi rides to the Opera in just 8 days. The government claims that the expenditure is reasonable because the minister didn’t pay for the tickets either. 

Spent thousands of government dollars on limousine rides, and fudged the declaration paperwork to say they were taxi rides. 

Spent $10,000 trying to chase down someone who leaked information to the media about how the Prime Minister deliberately and knowingly used false information to justify opposition to a defence force pay rise. 

Spent $27,000 on travel expenses for politicians to attend free sports events. Voted against a royal commission into corruption and misconduct in the financial service industry, following a series of scandals. 

Reaped $1000 per month of government money to pay for Joe Hockey to stay in his wife’s house. 

Proposed an exemption so that Australia’s richest companies no longer have to publish basic information about how much tax they are paying. 

Accidentally leaked the personal details of 31 world leaders, and chose not to notify them. They still claim your metadata will be safe though. 

Breached the criminal code of conduct by offering the independently appointed Human Rights Commissioner a new job if she resigned. 

Flew across the country on a taxpayer funded private jet to attend the private birthday party of a millionaire who has made large donations to the Liberal party. Refused to publish cost estimates for the data-retention policy which were provided by the industry. 

Voted to keep the text of the China Free Trade deal secret from the public. 

Abolished the $10,000 limit on political donations. Broke the law by missing the deadline for publishing the Intergenerational Report, as stipulated by the Charter of Budget Honesty Act. 

Spent $10,000 trying to identify a whistleblower who told the media that the Prime Minister knowingly mislead the public using information he knew was incorrect. 

Started an online petition to stop job losses at the ABC, just 36 hours after cutting ABC funding by 5%. 

Contracted out the managing of the Do Not Call Register to a marketing company. 

Secretly and retrospectively changed the official record of what was said in parliament. 

Broke an election promise by cutting ABC funding again ($120 million this time).  

Spent $900,000 in just 2 months on private jet flights for ministers. 

Forced all community TV stations off the air, claiming that moving online will be better for stations and viewers. Meanwhile they continue to fervently defend foreign corporate stations like HBO, who stubbornly refuse to make content accessible online. 

Introduced new laws which mean Edward Snowden type leaks are punishable by up to 10 years of prison. No exemptions are made for anti-corruption leaks. If journalists report on anyone (including innocent bystanders) being killed accidentally or deliberately by security personnel, they will be jailed for up to 10 years.    

Spent $50,000 on upgrades of curtains and upholstery for the Prime Minister’s office. 

Moved to abolish the role of freedom of information commissioner, abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and charge $800 for reviews of Freedom of Information Request denials. 

Refused to publish any submissions it received for or against the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, even though the government says the changes are to protect free speech. They refused to state what proportion of submissions supported the changes. The government defended this secrecy by claiming that all submissions were made with the expectation of confidentiality. This is false. The Senate Inquiry Submission Guidelines state that to make a Senate Inquiry Submission confidential, you must explicitly justify a request for confidentiality, and that such requests are generally denied.  

Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons. Gave the Minister for Infrastructure the power to silence Infrastructure Australia (an independent body) without justification. (See section 5A.2 of the link.) 

Deliberately hid the cost of the $4.45 million renovations on The Lodge. Spent $50,000 on one dinner for 60 G20 guests, including food specially flown to Washington from all over Australia. 

Voted against the creation of a federal anti-corruption watchdog. 

Cut $38 million from Australian television and film funding. 

Broke an election promise by cutting $40 million from the SBS and ABC.   

Broke an election promise to not cut ABC funding, by cutting all funding to the Australia Network (part of the ABC).   

Claimed a 2.5% reduction in funding every year for the ABC is not a funding cut. Increased the fee for lodging Freedom of Information requests. 

Paid a public relations company $97,000 for 3 weeks of work to help improve the Education Department’s image, then refused to release the report that came of it. 

Proposed the scrapping of regulation which prevents media monopolies and duopolies. 

Spent over $15,000 on a custom made bookcase to replace a $7,000 custom bookcase which holds $13,000 worth of taxpayer funded books and magazines in senator Brandis’ office. 

Spent $22,000 taxpayer dollars buying new cutlery and crockery for the ministerial wing of parliament. Chose not to mention a $882 million payout to News Corp. when outlining a $16.8 billion budget black hole. The payout was the single biggest item in the black hole.  

Denied any wrongdoing after a government aid married to the head of a junk food lobby pulled down a government website providing simplified nutritional information within hours of its launch. 

Violated Youtube’s policies regarding deceptive content, resulting in the suspension of Abbott’s whole channel. Criticised the ABC because they aren’t biased towards the Government. 

Spent over $120,000 on Kirribilli House, including $13,000 on an imported luxury rug, paid for by the taxpayer. Tried to silence the media to stop them criticising the upcoming private jet deal for politicians. 

Criticised the ABC for not “advancing Australia’s broad and enduring interests in the Asian region”, without actually accusing the ABC of any specific wrongdoing or poor judgement. 

Changed the ministerial code of conduct so ministers no longer have to sell shares which create a conflict of interest. 

Made Orwellian threats about cutting ABC funding because the government didn’t like one of their stories, and because their quality of journalism is too high, thereby creating competition which threatens the corporate newspaper duopoly (who are now floundering because they didn’t see the internet coming). 

List compiled by Matthew Davis. You can view the full list of 902 points at https://www.mdavis.xyz

(P.S. If you share this on social media, please let us know so we can invoice Facebook for that.)

Buffy posted it yesterday. And we chatted.

DV posted it little while ago.

Might be a good idea to keep posting it until everyone reads it?

okay. you post it in a few hours and I will post it before I go to bed.

sarahs mum said:

roughbarked said:

sarahs mum said:

Buffy posted it yesterday. And we chatted.

DV posted it little while ago.

Might be a good idea to keep posting it until everyone reads it?

okay. you post it in a few hours and I will post it before I go to bed.

OK.

sarahs mum said:

Buffy posted it yesterday. And we chatted.

DV posted it little while ago.

and I edited it so it could be read.

sarahs mum said:

roughbarked said:

sarahs mum said:

Buffy posted it yesterday. And we chatted.

DV posted it little while ago.

Might be a good idea to keep posting it until everyone reads it?

okay. you post it in a few hours and I will post it before I go to bed.

We shall post this every hour on the hour until the Libs are gone

#whatwouldjennydo

In fairness to Morrison, at least his staffer said he was mortified about what had happened and how it had been handled

sarahs mum said:

JudgeMental said:

https://chaser.com.au/national/an-exhaustive-list-of-the-liberal-partys-corruption-over-the-last-7-years/

The Chaser is a satirical outlet but all of this is legit

—-

A complete list of the Liberal Party’s corruption over the last 7 years

Thanks to the Facebook news ban we’re now somehow the only news site in Australia, so here’s some serious journalism listing all the questionable decisions that ScoMo and co made after he forgot to check with Jenny first.

The federal government has:

Cut $14 million from the national audit office, after that office discovered substantial improprieties and wasteful spending (such as the sports rorts, and paying 10 times too much for land for the new Sydney airport).

 Voted against a binding code of conduct designed to ensure politicians act with integrity. 

Blocked a research-backed design change to increase the effectiveness of beverage warnings about drinking during pregnancy (recommended by an independent body) after meeting with lobbyists from alcohol companies who have donated over $300,000 to the Coalition. 

Gave $345,000 to News Corp to build a spelling bee website, discarding any pretense of propriety or fairness by skipping the usual parliamentary checks and tender process, instead just choosing to hand the excessive amount of cash to a company whose industry is neither website building nor education. 

Hid a record-breaking number of expenses from the public in an annual budget, including cash handed to a private rail project, maintaining an abandoned oil rig, and legal action relating to military bases which leaked toxic chemicals. 

Loosened political donation laws.  

Committed a crime by ignoring a ruling of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.  

Appointed a failed Liberal candidate to the SBS board instead of any of the ones recommended by the independent nominations panel. 

Prevented parliament from debating whether to set up a National Integrity Commission. 

Set up the COVID-19 National Co-ordination Committee with no terms of reference, no register of conflicts of interest, and then stacked it with gas company executives who unsurprisingly ended up recommending irrationally pro-gas policies.

690 documents about potential conflicts of interests were deliberately kept hidden.   

Blocked parliament from debating significant environmental protection repeals, rushing through the legislation without allowing anyone to discuss it first. 

Lied by claiming they appointed a Liberal party staffer to a job paying half a million dollars per year through an “open merit-driven, competitive process”. It was actually a limited tender not open to all, exempt from procurement rules which guarantee fairness and impartiality. 

Tried to get parliament to vote on new legislation without giving copies of the bill to the people voting on it, and used unprecedented methods to prevent any politician to speak against it.   

Paid tens of thousands of dollars to a company which was known to be corrupt, through a tender that was not opened up to all competitors. 

Illegally forged a document to publicly criticise a political opponent. 

Cancelled The Rule of Law and then preventing journalists from reporting on the case against a whistleblower who leaked truthful information in the public interest about senior politicians and law enforcement officials who flagrantly violated serious international laws. The court case is held in secret. The whistleblower’s name is illegal to publish. The witness and lawyers’ residences were raided, and the evidence against the government was confiscated.  

Extended exemptions for political donation transparency, which are 25 years old and were only supposed to be temporary. 

Paid $39 million to a naval boat manufacturer when not required to because the company failed to fulfill the relevant contract clauses, and they coincidentally donated to the Liberal party. 

Illegally failed to respond to freedom of information (FOI) requests within the statutory 30 day deadline in 92.5% of cases. 

Bought water rights for 50 times more than many valuations, and double the price of the seller’s valuation. 

Lied by claiming that Kevin Rudd had travelled overseas and back during COVID while many Australians are still stranded overseas, when Mr Rudd had actually never left Queensland.  

Refused to release a report into COVID policy communication strategies, which cost over $500,000. 

Introduced a mandatory code of conduct to force companies like Google to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to large private news companies (but not ABC news nor independent news, nor the Chaser). Google currently drives over 3 billion clicks per year to Australian news companies. Therefore this is like a local plumber demanding that the Yellow Pages pay the plumber for the act of directing plumber-seeking customers to the plumber. This will also undermine the fundamental principles of the web itself, according to its inventor. The laws are written based on the incorrect assumption that news makes up 10% of Google searches when it’s only 1%.      

Introduced red tape and distorted the free market by forcing Google to give special insider knowledge of proprietary search algorithm changes to large news companies but not small, independent journalists. It includes ambiguously written clauses about giving news companies access to Google users’ private data.  

Introduced protections for company executives who trade while insolvent during the pandemic. This is only for cases where the debts are incurred “the ordinary course of business”. Those who try to adapt to the challenging circumstances will not be exempt. In this way the government is incentivising executives to not adapt to the unique circumstances. 

Refused to release the minutes from an important meeting of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee giving COVID advice to the Prime Minister.  

Created the ABCC ostensibly for reducing corruption, but the ABCC boss himself violated rules and endangered people by ignoring COVID flight restrictions, travelling across the country to interview workers about a rally that happened 8 months prior. 

Refused to release a multilateral trade agreement with China, which involves spending government money on infrastructure in other countries. The lack of transparency exacerbates existing concerns about burdening these other developing nations with unsustainable debt.  

Deleted records of a $165,000 political donation from a political consultancy with stakeholders who stand to benefit from the government’s $1 billion visa privatization plan, and refused requests for further explanation. 

Kept secret a government-funded report that showed less than 1 in 3 Australians trust our public service sector. The justification was that the government believed that the report which they wrote would mislead and confuse people. 

Lied by claiming that all grants issued under the controversial $100M sports grant program were eligible for funding, when only 57% were. Failed to declare a property worth $1M in a minister’s declaration of interests. Failed to declare 2 properties worth more than $1M in another minister’s declaration of interests. 

Approved a $36,000 grant to a shooting club without declaring that the approving minister was a member of that club. 

Allocated sports grant funding based on which candidate projects were in marginal seats, rather than which were the most worthy. Then refused to release legal advice about whether such pork barrelling is illegal, and destroyed evidence about the funding choices.     

Merged the Australian Federal Police into the Home Affairs department, allowing the minister to exert political influence on investigations. 

Ignored a Royal Commission report which found the government’s Murray-Darling Basin Plan is illegal, whilst refusing to publish their own report which they claim provides a valid rebuttal. Abandoned standard tender processes when awarding a $423 million contract to a company with $50k in funds, little experience, no phone number, no mail address, housed in a shack.  

Refused to publish a report used to justify a $53 million contract to outsource Centrelink call handling.  Declared that they will violate a new law, because they don’t like it.  

Spent $87,000 fighting against a Freedom of Information request about back-room deals, and then lied about the cost. 

Drastically increased the amount of government money spent without a proper tender process, up to $34 billion per month. 

Handed out $17.1M to private TV stations for a grant they didn’t ask for, without offering the money to the public broadcaster. 

Refused a Senate Order to release details about expensive contracts for security, health and infrastructure in their detention camps in PNG. 

Excused the conflict of interest arising when the head of the My Health Record (appointed by the government) privately received money for consultations about the My Health Record. 

Spent 2 years trying to hide documents from Freedom of Information requests, about a serious breach of top secret documents, and mishandling of those documents by a minister. 

Hid a report by the Governor General showing that the government paid twice as much as necessary for new combat vehicles, because such publicity would be bad for the private manufacturer’s future profitability. The company is not even Australian.  

Lied about the Immigration Minister having no personal connection to someone who benefited from the direct intervention by the Immigration Minister in a visa case.   

Spent an undisclosed amount of public money on legal defence for a minister who broken the law for political gain. Cut $84 million from the ABC (again). 

Exempted a facial recognition system storing data of innocent citizens from standard procurement policy disclosure rules. The excuse is a reliance on security through obscurity rather than actual security. Accuracy figures are also not published.   

Increased the jail time for journalists who report on whistleblower’s truthful allegations by a factor of 10.  

Refused to publish the percentage of calls to the veterans’ suicide help line which go unanswered, because that want negatively impact the brand of the private call centre operator. 

Prohibited public servants from liking social media posts critical of the government, even if anonymous. Failed to declare multiple $1600 Foxtel subscriptions gifted to ministers by a lobby group. 

Gave $30 million to Foxtel to boost “under represented sports”, and was unable to explain why free-to-air channels didn’t get the money, because the decision was made without any emails, letter, or supporting documentation.  

Paid a minister $273 per night to stay in his own home. Prevented university newspapers from attending the release of multiple annual budgets like all other newspapers. These particular budgets contained multiple changes which negatively impact university students.  

Refused to release the results for the trial of a national health register. 

Spent over $3,500 to send a minister to watch the AFL with his wife. 

Spent over $2,700 on a trip to watch polo. 

Spent $10,000 per day to send a single minister to the USA. 

Broke a promise to scrap free lifetime travel for former ministers. The excuse is that the government is to busy to pass legislation through parliament, despite that being the job of the government and of parliament. 

Falsely advertised the closure of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, despite Parliament rejecting the closure attempt. 

Refused to publish the cost benefit analysis on the agriculture minister’s decision to move a federal agency from Canberra to his own electorate. 

Personally appointed George Brandis’ son’s lawyer to a $370,000 job, without making a conflict of interest declaration.  

Tried to privatise the database of ASIC (the corporate watchdog). Under private hands the cost journalists must pay to obtain information about potentially corrupt companies would increase. 

Spent over $140,000 for 5 ministers to travel to a country we have no trade or diplomatic ties with, visiting tourist sites and dining in 5 star restaurants. 

Refused to release 5 year old taxi receipts to assist in a fraud case, on the grounds that terrorists could use travel information from 5 years ago to help plan an attack against the minister in question. 

Spent $10,000 to fly the family of 2 ministers to a tropical island for a weekend holiday. 

Voted against a motion asking the Housing Affordability Inquiry to update the senate on how they are progressing with the recommendations the government supported. 

Rejected an inquiry which recommended that citizens accused of tax fraud be treated as innocent until proven guilty. 

Spent $30,000 on a private jet to fly one minister and their partner from Perth to Canberra (instead of catching a normal plane) because a non-business event ran overtime. This is despite the alleged budget emergency. 

Voted against increasing transparency about how much tax large corporations pay. 

Violated parliamentary anti-corruption rules by not declaring a substantial loan for almost 2 years. 

Broke an election promise to conduct and publish a cost benefit analysis for all infrastructure projects over $100 million. 

Spent over $20,000 in a legal fight in order to hide modelling for the impact of university fee deregulation.  

Spent thousands of government dollars on taxi rides to the Opera in just 8 days. The government claims that the expenditure is reasonable because the minister didn’t pay for the tickets either. 

Spent thousands of government dollars on limousine rides, and fudged the declaration paperwork to say they were taxi rides. 

Spent $10,000 trying to chase down someone who leaked information to the media about how the Prime Minister deliberately and knowingly used false information to justify opposition to a defence force pay rise. 

Spent $27,000 on travel expenses for politicians to attend free sports events. Voted against a royal commission into corruption and misconduct in the financial service industry, following a series of scandals. 

Reaped $1000 per month of government money to pay for Joe Hockey to stay in his wife’s house. 

Proposed an exemption so that Australia’s richest companies no longer have to publish basic information about how much tax they are paying. 

Accidentally leaked the personal details of 31 world leaders, and chose not to notify them. They still claim your metadata will be safe though. 

Breached the criminal code of conduct by offering the independently appointed Human Rights Commissioner a new job if she resigned. 

Flew across the country on a taxpayer funded private jet to attend the private birthday party of a millionaire who has made large donations to the Liberal party. Refused to publish cost estimates for the data-retention policy which were provided by the industry. 

Voted to keep the text of the China Free Trade deal secret from the public. 

Abolished the $10,000 limit on political donations. Broke the law by missing the deadline for publishing the Intergenerational Report, as stipulated by the Charter of Budget Honesty Act. 

Spent $10,000 trying to identify a whistleblower who told the media that the Prime Minister knowingly mislead the public using information he knew was incorrect. 

Started an online petition to stop job losses at the ABC, just 36 hours after cutting ABC funding by 5%. 

Contracted out the managing of the Do Not Call Register to a marketing company. 

Secretly and retrospectively changed the official record of what was said in parliament. 

Broke an election promise by cutting ABC funding again ($120 million this time).  

Spent $900,000 in just 2 months on private jet flights for ministers. 

Forced all community TV stations off the air, claiming that moving online will be better for stations and viewers. Meanwhile they continue to fervently defend foreign corporate stations like HBO, who stubbornly refuse to make content accessible online. 

Introduced new laws which mean Edward Snowden type leaks are punishable by up to 10 years of prison. No exemptions are made for anti-corruption leaks. If journalists report on anyone (including innocent bystanders) being killed accidentally or deliberately by security personnel, they will be jailed for up to 10 years.    

Spent $50,000 on upgrades of curtains and upholstery for the Prime Minister’s office. 

Moved to abolish the role of freedom of information commissioner, abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and charge $800 for reviews of Freedom of Information Request denials. 

Refused to publish any submissions it received for or against the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, even though the government says the changes are to protect free speech. They refused to state what proportion of submissions supported the changes. The government defended this secrecy by claiming that all submissions were made with the expectation of confidentiality. This is false. The Senate Inquiry Submission Guidelines state that to make a Senate Inquiry Submission confidential, you must explicitly justify a request for confidentiality, and that such requests are generally denied.  

Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons. Gave the Minister for Infrastructure the power to silence Infrastructure Australia (an independent body) without justification. (See section 5A.2 of the link.) 

Deliberately hid the cost of the $4.45 million renovations on The Lodge. Spent $50,000 on one dinner for 60 G20 guests, including food specially flown to Washington from all over Australia. 

Voted against the creation of a federal anti-corruption watchdog. 

Cut $38 million from Australian television and film funding. 

Broke an election promise by cutting $40 million from the SBS and ABC.   

Broke an election promise to not cut ABC funding, by cutting all funding to the Australia Network (part of the ABC).   

Claimed a 2.5% reduction in funding every year for the ABC is not a funding cut. Increased the fee for lodging Freedom of Information requests. 

Paid a public relations company $97,000 for 3 weeks of work to help improve the Education Department’s image, then refused to release the report that came of it. 

Proposed the scrapping of regulation which prevents media monopolies and duopolies. 

Spent over $15,000 on a custom made bookcase to replace a $7,000 custom bookcase which holds $13,000 worth of taxpayer funded books and magazines in senator Brandis’ office. 

Spent $22,000 taxpayer dollars buying new cutlery and crockery for the ministerial wing of parliament. Chose not to mention a $882 million payout to News Corp. when outlining a $16.8 billion budget black hole. The payout was the single biggest item in the black hole.  

Denied any wrongdoing after a government aid married to the head of a junk food lobby pulled down a government website providing simplified nutritional information within hours of its launch. 

Violated Youtube’s policies regarding deceptive content, resulting in the suspension of Abbott’s whole channel. Criticised the ABC because they aren’t biased towards the Government. 

Spent over $120,000 on Kirribilli House, including $13,000 on an imported luxury rug, paid for by the taxpayer. Tried to silence the media to stop them criticising the upcoming private jet deal for politicians. 

Criticised the ABC for not “advancing Australia’s broad and enduring interests in the Asian region”, without actually accusing the ABC of any specific wrongdoing or poor judgement. 

Changed the ministerial code of conduct so ministers no longer have to sell shares which create a conflict of interest. 

Made Orwellian threats about cutting ABC funding because the government didn’t like one of their stories, and because their quality of journalism is too high, thereby creating competition which threatens the corporate newspaper duopoly (who are now floundering because they didn’t see the internet coming). 

List compiled by Matthew Davis. You can view the full list of 902 points at https://www.mdavis.xyz

(P.S. If you share this on social media, please let us know so we can invoice Facebook for that.)

Buffy posted it yesterday. And we chatted.

DV posted it little while ago.

Actually, I can’t claim that one. Someone else put the link in here and I spent time this morning reading it. But it doesn’t matter.

JudgeMental said:

https://chaser.com.au/national/an-exhaustive-list-of-the-liberal-partys-corruption-over-the-last-7-years/

The Chaser is a satirical outlet but all of this is legit

—-

A complete list of the Liberal Party’s corruption over the last 7 years

Thanks to the Facebook news ban we’re now somehow the only news site in Australia, so here’s some serious journalism listing all the questionable decisions that ScoMo and co made after he forgot to check with Jenny first.

The federal government has:

Cut $14 million from the national audit office, after that office discovered substantial improprieties and wasteful spending (such as the sports rorts, and paying 10 times too much for land for the new Sydney airport).

 Voted against a binding code of conduct designed to ensure politicians act with integrity. 

Blocked a research-backed design change to increase the effectiveness of beverage warnings about drinking during pregnancy (recommended by an independent body) after meeting with lobbyists from alcohol companies who have donated over $300,000 to the Coalition. 

Gave $345,000 to News Corp to build a spelling bee website, discarding any pretense of propriety or fairness by skipping the usual parliamentary checks and tender process, instead just choosing to hand the excessive amount of cash to a company whose industry is neither website building nor education. 

Hid a record-breaking number of expenses from the public in an annual budget, including cash handed to a private rail project, maintaining an abandoned oil rig, and legal action relating to military bases which leaked toxic chemicals. 

Loosened political donation laws.  

Committed a crime by ignoring a ruling of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.  

Appointed a failed Liberal candidate to the SBS board instead of any of the ones recommended by the independent nominations panel. 

Prevented parliament from debating whether to set up a National Integrity Commission. 

Set up the COVID-19 National Co-ordination Committee with no terms of reference, no register of conflicts of interest, and then stacked it with gas company executives who unsurprisingly ended up recommending irrationally pro-gas policies.

690 documents about potential conflicts of interests were deliberately kept hidden.   

Blocked parliament from debating significant environmental protection repeals, rushing through the legislation without allowing anyone to discuss it first. 

Lied by claiming they appointed a Liberal party staffer to a job paying half a million dollars per year through an “open merit-driven, competitive process”. It was actually a limited tender not open to all, exempt from procurement rules which guarantee fairness and impartiality. 

Tried to get parliament to vote on new legislation without giving copies of the bill to the people voting on it, and used unprecedented methods to prevent any politician to speak against it.   

Paid tens of thousands of dollars to a company which was known to be corrupt, through a tender that was not opened up to all competitors. 

Illegally forged a document to publicly criticise a political opponent. 

Cancelled The Rule of Law and then preventing journalists from reporting on the case against a whistleblower who leaked truthful information in the public interest about senior politicians and law enforcement officials who flagrantly violated serious international laws. The court case is held in secret. The whistleblower’s name is illegal to publish. The witness and lawyers’ residences were raided, and the evidence against the government was confiscated.  

Extended exemptions for political donation transparency, which are 25 years old and were only supposed to be temporary. 

Paid $39 million to a naval boat manufacturer when not required to because the company failed to fulfill the relevant contract clauses, and they coincidentally donated to the Liberal party. 

Illegally failed to respond to freedom of information (FOI) requests within the statutory 30 day deadline in 92.5% of cases. 

Bought water rights for 50 times more than many valuations, and double the price of the seller’s valuation. 

Lied by claiming that Kevin Rudd had travelled overseas and back during COVID while many Australians are still stranded overseas, when Mr Rudd had actually never left Queensland.  

Refused to release a report into COVID policy communication strategies, which cost over $500,000. 

Introduced a mandatory code of conduct to force companies like Google to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to large private news companies (but not ABC news nor independent news, nor the Chaser). Google currently drives over 3 billion clicks per year to Australian news companies. Therefore this is like a local plumber demanding that the Yellow Pages pay the plumber for the act of directing plumber-seeking customers to the plumber. This will also undermine the fundamental principles of the web itself, according to its inventor. The laws are written based on the incorrect assumption that news makes up 10% of Google searches when it’s only 1%.      

Introduced red tape and distorted the free market by forcing Google to give special insider knowledge of proprietary search algorithm changes to large news companies but not small, independent journalists. It includes ambiguously written clauses about giving news companies access to Google users’ private data.  

Introduced protections for company executives who trade while insolvent during the pandemic. This is only for cases where the debts are incurred “the ordinary course of business”. Those who try to adapt to the challenging circumstances will not be exempt. In this way the government is incentivising executives to not adapt to the unique circumstances. 

Refused to release the minutes from an important meeting of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee giving COVID advice to the Prime Minister.  

Created the ABCC ostensibly for reducing corruption, but the ABCC boss himself violated rules and endangered people by ignoring COVID flight restrictions, travelling across the country to interview workers about a rally that happened 8 months prior. 

Refused to release a multilateral trade agreement with China, which involves spending government money on infrastructure in other countries. The lack of transparency exacerbates existing concerns about burdening these other developing nations with unsustainable debt.  

Deleted records of a $165,000 political donation from a political consultancy with stakeholders who stand to benefit from the government’s $1 billion visa privatization plan, and refused requests for further explanation. 

Kept secret a government-funded report that showed less than 1 in 3 Australians trust our public service sector. The justification was that the government believed that the report which they wrote would mislead and confuse people. 

Lied by claiming that all grants issued under the controversial $100M sports grant program were eligible for funding, when only 57% were. Failed to declare a property worth $1M in a minister’s declaration of interests. Failed to declare 2 properties worth more than $1M in another minister’s declaration of interests. 

Approved a $36,000 grant to a shooting club without declaring that the approving minister was a member of that club. 

Allocated sports grant funding based on which candidate projects were in marginal seats, rather than which were the most worthy. Then refused to release legal advice about whether such pork barrelling is illegal, and destroyed evidence about the funding choices.     

Merged the Australian Federal Police into the Home Affairs department, allowing the minister to exert political influence on investigations. 

Ignored a Royal Commission report which found the government’s Murray-Darling Basin Plan is illegal, whilst refusing to publish their own report which they claim provides a valid rebuttal. Abandoned standard tender processes when awarding a $423 million contract to a company with $50k in funds, little experience, no phone number, no mail address, housed in a shack.  

Refused to publish a report used to justify a $53 million contract to outsource Centrelink call handling.  Declared that they will violate a new law, because they don’t like it.  

Spent $87,000 fighting against a Freedom of Information request about back-room deals, and then lied about the cost. 

Drastically increased the amount of government money spent without a proper tender process, up to $34 billion per month. 

Handed out $17.1M to private TV stations for a grant they didn’t ask for, without offering the money to the public broadcaster. 

Refused a Senate Order to release details about expensive contracts for security, health and infrastructure in their detention camps in PNG. 

Excused the conflict of interest arising when the head of the My Health Record (appointed by the government) privately received money for consultations about the My Health Record. 

Spent 2 years trying to hide documents from Freedom of Information requests, about a serious breach of top secret documents, and mishandling of those documents by a minister. 

Hid a report by the Governor General showing that the government paid twice as much as necessary for new combat vehicles, because such publicity would be bad for the private manufacturer’s future profitability. The company is not even Australian.  

Lied about the Immigration Minister having no personal connection to someone who benefited from the direct intervention by the Immigration Minister in a visa case.   

Spent an undisclosed amount of public money on legal defence for a minister who broken the law for political gain. Cut $84 million from the ABC (again). 

Exempted a facial recognition system storing data of innocent citizens from standard procurement policy disclosure rules. The excuse is a reliance on security through obscurity rather than actual security. Accuracy figures are also not published.   

Increased the jail time for journalists who report on whistleblower’s truthful allegations by a factor of 10.  

Refused to publish the percentage of calls to the veterans’ suicide help line which go unanswered, because that want negatively impact the brand of the private call centre operator. 

Prohibited public servants from liking social media posts critical of the government, even if anonymous. Failed to declare multiple $1600 Foxtel subscriptions gifted to ministers by a lobby group. 

Gave $30 million to Foxtel to boost “under represented sports”, and was unable to explain why free-to-air channels didn’t get the money, because the decision was made without any emails, letter, or supporting documentation.  

Paid a minister $273 per night to stay in his own home. Prevented university newspapers from attending the release of multiple annual budgets like all other newspapers. These particular budgets contained multiple changes which negatively impact university students.  

Refused to release the results for the trial of a national health register. 

Spent over $3,500 to send a minister to watch the AFL with his wife. 

Spent over $2,700 on a trip to watch polo. 

Spent $10,000 per day to send a single minister to the USA. 

Broke a promise to scrap free lifetime travel for former ministers. The excuse is that the government is to busy to pass legislation through parliament, despite that being the job of the government and of parliament. 

Falsely advertised the closure of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, despite Parliament rejecting the closure attempt. 

Refused to publish the cost benefit analysis on the agriculture minister’s decision to move a federal agency from Canberra to his own electorate. 

Personally appointed George Brandis’ son’s lawyer to a $370,000 job, without making a conflict of interest declaration.  

Tried to privatise the database of ASIC (the corporate watchdog). Under private hands the cost journalists must pay to obtain information about potentially corrupt companies would increase. 

Spent over $140,000 for 5 ministers to travel to a country we have no trade or diplomatic ties with, visiting tourist sites and dining in 5 star restaurants. 

Refused to release 5 year old taxi receipts to assist in a fraud case, on the grounds that terrorists could use travel information from 5 years ago to help plan an attack against the minister in question. 

Spent $10,000 to fly the family of 2 ministers to a tropical island for a weekend holiday. 

Voted against a motion asking the Housing Affordability Inquiry to update the senate on how they are progressing with the recommendations the government supported. 

Rejected an inquiry which recommended that citizens accused of tax fraud be treated as innocent until proven guilty. 

Spent $30,000 on a private jet to fly one minister and their partner from Perth to Canberra (instead of catching a normal plane) because a non-business event ran overtime. This is despite the alleged budget emergency. 

Voted against increasing transparency about how much tax large corporations pay. 

Violated parliamentary anti-corruption rules by not declaring a substantial loan for almost 2 years. 

Broke an election promise to conduct and publish a cost benefit analysis for all infrastructure projects over $100 million. 

Spent over $20,000 in a legal fight in order to hide modelling for the impact of university fee deregulation.  

Spent thousands of government dollars on taxi rides to the Opera in just 8 days. The government claims that the expenditure is reasonable because the minister didn’t pay for the tickets either. 

Spent thousands of government dollars on limousine rides, and fudged the declaration paperwork to say they were taxi rides. 

Spent $10,000 trying to chase down someone who leaked information to the media about how the Prime Minister deliberately and knowingly used false information to justify opposition to a defence force pay rise. 

Spent $27,000 on travel expenses for politicians to attend free sports events. Voted against a royal commission into corruption and misconduct in the financial service industry, following a series of scandals. 

Reaped $1000 per month of government money to pay for Joe Hockey to stay in his wife’s house. 

Proposed an exemption so that Australia’s richest companies no longer have to publish basic information about how much tax they are paying. 

Accidentally leaked the personal details of 31 world leaders, and chose not to notify them. They still claim your metadata will be safe though. 

Breached the criminal code of conduct by offering the independently appointed Human Rights Commissioner a new job if she resigned. 

Flew across the country on a taxpayer funded private jet to attend the private birthday party of a millionaire who has made large donations to the Liberal party. Refused to publish cost estimates for the data-retention policy which were provided by the industry. 

Voted to keep the text of the China Free Trade deal secret from the public. 

Abolished the $10,000 limit on political donations. Broke the law by missing the deadline for publishing the Intergenerational Report, as stipulated by the Charter of Budget Honesty Act. 

Spent $10,000 trying to identify a whistleblower who told the media that the Prime Minister knowingly mislead the public using information he knew was incorrect. 

Started an online petition to stop job losses at the ABC, just 36 hours after cutting ABC funding by 5%. 

Contracted out the managing of the Do Not Call Register to a marketing company. 

Secretly and retrospectively changed the official record of what was said in parliament. 

Broke an election promise by cutting ABC funding again ($120 million this time).  

Spent $900,000 in just 2 months on private jet flights for ministers. 

Forced all community TV stations off the air, claiming that moving online will be better for stations and viewers. Meanwhile they continue to fervently defend foreign corporate stations like HBO, who stubbornly refuse to make content accessible online. 

Introduced new laws which mean Edward Snowden type leaks are punishable by up to 10 years of prison. No exemptions are made for anti-corruption leaks. If journalists report on anyone (including innocent bystanders) being killed accidentally or deliberately by security personnel, they will be jailed for up to 10 years.    

Spent $50,000 on upgrades of curtains and upholstery for the Prime Minister’s office. 

Moved to abolish the role of freedom of information commissioner, abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and charge $800 for reviews of Freedom of Information Request denials. 

Refused to publish any submissions it received for or against the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, even though the government says the changes are to protect free speech. They refused to state what proportion of submissions supported the changes. The government defended this secrecy by claiming that all submissions were made with the expectation of confidentiality. This is false. The Senate Inquiry Submission Guidelines state that to make a Senate Inquiry Submission confidential, you must explicitly justify a request for confidentiality, and that such requests are generally denied.  

Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons. Gave the Minister for Infrastructure the power to silence Infrastructure Australia (an independent body) without justification. (See section 5A.2 of the link.) 

Deliberately hid the cost of the $4.45 million renovations on The Lodge. Spent $50,000 on one dinner for 60 G20 guests, including food specially flown to Washington from all over Australia. 

Voted against the creation of a federal anti-corruption watchdog. 

Cut $38 million from Australian television and film funding. 

Broke an election promise by cutting $40 million from the SBS and ABC.   

Broke an election promise to not cut ABC funding, by cutting all funding to the Australia Network (part of the ABC).   

Claimed a 2.5% reduction in funding every year for the ABC is not a funding cut. Increased the fee for lodging Freedom of Information requests. 

Paid a public relations company $97,000 for 3 weeks of work to help improve the Education Department’s image, then refused to release the report that came of it. 

Proposed the scrapping of regulation which prevents media monopolies and duopolies. 

Spent over $15,000 on a custom made bookcase to replace a $7,000 custom bookcase which holds $13,000 worth of taxpayer funded books and magazines in senator Brandis’ office. 

Spent $22,000 taxpayer dollars buying new cutlery and crockery for the ministerial wing of parliament. Chose not to mention a $882 million payout to News Corp. when outlining a $16.8 billion budget black hole. The payout was the single biggest item in the black hole.  

Denied any wrongdoing after a government aid married to the head of a junk food lobby pulled down a government website providing simplified nutritional information within hours of its launch. 

Violated Youtube’s policies regarding deceptive content, resulting in the suspension of Abbott’s whole channel. Criticised the ABC because they aren’t biased towards the Government. 

Spent over $120,000 on Kirribilli House, including $13,000 on an imported luxury rug, paid for by the taxpayer. Tried to silence the media to stop them criticising the upcoming private jet deal for politicians. 

Criticised the ABC for not “advancing Australia’s broad and enduring interests in the Asian region”, without actually accusing the ABC of any specific wrongdoing or poor judgement. 

Changed the ministerial code of conduct so ministers no longer have to sell shares which create a conflict of interest. 

Made Orwellian threats about cutting ABC funding because the government didn’t like one of their stories, and because their quality of journalism is too high, thereby creating competition which threatens the corporate newspaper duopoly (who are now floundering because they didn’t see the internet coming). 

List compiled by Matthew Davis. You can view the full list of 902 points at https://www.mdavis.xyz

(P.S. If you share this on social media, please let us know so we can invoice Facebook for that.)

I’ll just fact check an easy one.

>>Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons.

The head of the AFP, Commissioner Negus, had this to say at the time.

“The decision was that it would be an unreasonable risk to put the Prime Minister and other people around in that circumstance.’‘
It’s not a good start.
I’m sure many of the other claims don’t pass the pub test as well.

JudgeMental said:

sarahs mum said:

Buffy posted it yesterday. And we chatted.

DV posted it little while ago.

and I edited it so it could be read.

I don’t think it was cut and pasted originally on here. Because I followed a link to read it. But it still doesn’t matter.

Peak Warming Man said:

JudgeMental said:

https://chaser.com.au/national/an-exhaustive-list-of-the-liberal-partys-corruption-over-the-last-7-years/

The Chaser is a satirical outlet but all of this is legit

—-

A complete list of the Liberal Party’s corruption over the last 7 years

Thanks to the Facebook news ban we’re now somehow the only news site in Australia, so here’s some serious journalism listing all the questionable decisions that ScoMo and co made after he forgot to check with Jenny first.

The federal government has:

Cut $14 million from the national audit office, after that office discovered substantial improprieties and wasteful spending (such as the sports rorts, and paying 10 times too much for land for the new Sydney airport).

 Voted against a binding code of conduct designed to ensure politicians act with integrity. 

Blocked a research-backed design change to increase the effectiveness of beverage warnings about drinking during pregnancy (recommended by an independent body) after meeting with lobbyists from alcohol companies who have donated over $300,000 to the Coalition. 

Gave $345,000 to News Corp to build a spelling bee website, discarding any pretense of propriety or fairness by skipping the usual parliamentary checks and tender process, instead just choosing to hand the excessive amount of cash to a company whose industry is neither website building nor education. 

Hid a record-breaking number of expenses from the public in an annual budget, including cash handed to a private rail project, maintaining an abandoned oil rig, and legal action relating to military bases which leaked toxic chemicals. 

Loosened political donation laws.  

Committed a crime by ignoring a ruling of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.  

Appointed a failed Liberal candidate to the SBS board instead of any of the ones recommended by the independent nominations panel. 

Prevented parliament from debating whether to set up a National Integrity Commission. 

Set up the COVID-19 National Co-ordination Committee with no terms of reference, no register of conflicts of interest, and then stacked it with gas company executives who unsurprisingly ended up recommending irrationally pro-gas policies.

690 documents about potential conflicts of interests were deliberately kept hidden.   

Blocked parliament from debating significant environmental protection repeals, rushing through the legislation without allowing anyone to discuss it first. 

Lied by claiming they appointed a Liberal party staffer to a job paying half a million dollars per year through an “open merit-driven, competitive process”. It was actually a limited tender not open to all, exempt from procurement rules which guarantee fairness and impartiality. 

Tried to get parliament to vote on new legislation without giving copies of the bill to the people voting on it, and used unprecedented methods to prevent any politician to speak against it.   

Paid tens of thousands of dollars to a company which was known to be corrupt, through a tender that was not opened up to all competitors. 

Illegally forged a document to publicly criticise a political opponent. 

Cancelled The Rule of Law and then preventing journalists from reporting on the case against a whistleblower who leaked truthful information in the public interest about senior politicians and law enforcement officials who flagrantly violated serious international laws. The court case is held in secret. The whistleblower’s name is illegal to publish. The witness and lawyers’ residences were raided, and the evidence against the government was confiscated.  

Extended exemptions for political donation transparency, which are 25 years old and were only supposed to be temporary. 

Paid $39 million to a naval boat manufacturer when not required to because the company failed to fulfill the relevant contract clauses, and they coincidentally donated to the Liberal party. 

Illegally failed to respond to freedom of information (FOI) requests within the statutory 30 day deadline in 92.5% of cases. 

Bought water rights for 50 times more than many valuations, and double the price of the seller’s valuation. 

Lied by claiming that Kevin Rudd had travelled overseas and back during COVID while many Australians are still stranded overseas, when Mr Rudd had actually never left Queensland.  

Refused to release a report into COVID policy communication strategies, which cost over $500,000. 

Introduced a mandatory code of conduct to force companies like Google to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to large private news companies (but not ABC news nor independent news, nor the Chaser). Google currently drives over 3 billion clicks per year to Australian news companies. Therefore this is like a local plumber demanding that the Yellow Pages pay the plumber for the act of directing plumber-seeking customers to the plumber. This will also undermine the fundamental principles of the web itself, according to its inventor. The laws are written based on the incorrect assumption that news makes up 10% of Google searches when it’s only 1%.      

Introduced red tape and distorted the free market by forcing Google to give special insider knowledge of proprietary search algorithm changes to large news companies but not small, independent journalists. It includes ambiguously written clauses about giving news companies access to Google users’ private data.  

Introduced protections for company executives who trade while insolvent during the pandemic. This is only for cases where the debts are incurred “the ordinary course of business”. Those who try to adapt to the challenging circumstances will not be exempt. In this way the government is incentivising executives to not adapt to the unique circumstances. 

Refused to release the minutes from an important meeting of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee giving COVID advice to the Prime Minister.  

Created the ABCC ostensibly for reducing corruption, but the ABCC boss himself violated rules and endangered people by ignoring COVID flight restrictions, travelling across the country to interview workers about a rally that happened 8 months prior. 

Refused to release a multilateral trade agreement with China, which involves spending government money on infrastructure in other countries. The lack of transparency exacerbates existing concerns about burdening these other developing nations with unsustainable debt.  

Deleted records of a $165,000 political donation from a political consultancy with stakeholders who stand to benefit from the government’s $1 billion visa privatization plan, and refused requests for further explanation. 

Kept secret a government-funded report that showed less than 1 in 3 Australians trust our public service sector. The justification was that the government believed that the report which they wrote would mislead and confuse people. 

Lied by claiming that all grants issued under the controversial $100M sports grant program were eligible for funding, when only 57% were. Failed to declare a property worth $1M in a minister’s declaration of interests. Failed to declare 2 properties worth more than $1M in another minister’s declaration of interests. 

Approved a $36,000 grant to a shooting club without declaring that the approving minister was a member of that club. 

Allocated sports grant funding based on which candidate projects were in marginal seats, rather than which were the most worthy. Then refused to release legal advice about whether such pork barrelling is illegal, and destroyed evidence about the funding choices.     

Merged the Australian Federal Police into the Home Affairs department, allowing the minister to exert political influence on investigations. 

Ignored a Royal Commission report which found the government’s Murray-Darling Basin Plan is illegal, whilst refusing to publish their own report which they claim provides a valid rebuttal. Abandoned standard tender processes when awarding a $423 million contract to a company with $50k in funds, little experience, no phone number, no mail address, housed in a shack.  

Refused to publish a report used to justify a $53 million contract to outsource Centrelink call handling.  Declared that they will violate a new law, because they don’t like it.  

Spent $87,000 fighting against a Freedom of Information request about back-room deals, and then lied about the cost. 

Drastically increased the amount of government money spent without a proper tender process, up to $34 billion per month. 

Handed out $17.1M to private TV stations for a grant they didn’t ask for, without offering the money to the public broadcaster. 

Refused a Senate Order to release details about expensive contracts for security, health and infrastructure in their detention camps in PNG. 

Excused the conflict of interest arising when the head of the My Health Record (appointed by the government) privately received money for consultations about the My Health Record. 

Spent 2 years trying to hide documents from Freedom of Information requests, about a serious breach of top secret documents, and mishandling of those documents by a minister. 

Hid a report by the Governor General showing that the government paid twice as much as necessary for new combat vehicles, because such publicity would be bad for the private manufacturer’s future profitability. The company is not even Australian.  

Lied about the Immigration Minister having no personal connection to someone who benefited from the direct intervention by the Immigration Minister in a visa case.   

Spent an undisclosed amount of public money on legal defence for a minister who broken the law for political gain. Cut $84 million from the ABC (again). 

Exempted a facial recognition system storing data of innocent citizens from standard procurement policy disclosure rules. The excuse is a reliance on security through obscurity rather than actual security. Accuracy figures are also not published.   

Increased the jail time for journalists who report on whistleblower’s truthful allegations by a factor of 10.  

Refused to publish the percentage of calls to the veterans’ suicide help line which go unanswered, because that want negatively impact the brand of the private call centre operator. 

Prohibited public servants from liking social media posts critical of the government, even if anonymous. Failed to declare multiple $1600 Foxtel subscriptions gifted to ministers by a lobby group. 

Gave $30 million to Foxtel to boost “under represented sports”, and was unable to explain why free-to-air channels didn’t get the money, because the decision was made without any emails, letter, or supporting documentation.  

Paid a minister $273 per night to stay in his own home. Prevented university newspapers from attending the release of multiple annual budgets like all other newspapers. These particular budgets contained multiple changes which negatively impact university students.  

Refused to release the results for the trial of a national health register. 

Spent over $3,500 to send a minister to watch the AFL with his wife. 

Spent over $2,700 on a trip to watch polo. 

Spent $10,000 per day to send a single minister to the USA. 

Broke a promise to scrap free lifetime travel for former ministers. The excuse is that the government is to busy to pass legislation through parliament, despite that being the job of the government and of parliament. 

Falsely advertised the closure of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, despite Parliament rejecting the closure attempt. 

Refused to publish the cost benefit analysis on the agriculture minister’s decision to move a federal agency from Canberra to his own electorate. 

Personally appointed George Brandis’ son’s lawyer to a $370,000 job, without making a conflict of interest declaration.  

Tried to privatise the database of ASIC (the corporate watchdog). Under private hands the cost journalists must pay to obtain information about potentially corrupt companies would increase. 

Spent over $140,000 for 5 ministers to travel to a country we have no trade or diplomatic ties with, visiting tourist sites and dining in 5 star restaurants. 

Refused to release 5 year old taxi receipts to assist in a fraud case, on the grounds that terrorists could use travel information from 5 years ago to help plan an attack against the minister in question. 

Spent $10,000 to fly the family of 2 ministers to a tropical island for a weekend holiday. 

Voted against a motion asking the Housing Affordability Inquiry to update the senate on how they are progressing with the recommendations the government supported. 

Rejected an inquiry which recommended that citizens accused of tax fraud be treated as innocent until proven guilty. 

Spent $30,000 on a private jet to fly one minister and their partner from Perth to Canberra (instead of catching a normal plane) because a non-business event ran overtime. This is despite the alleged budget emergency. 

Voted against increasing transparency about how much tax large corporations pay. 

Violated parliamentary anti-corruption rules by not declaring a substantial loan for almost 2 years. 

Broke an election promise to conduct and publish a cost benefit analysis for all infrastructure projects over $100 million. 

Spent over $20,000 in a legal fight in order to hide modelling for the impact of university fee deregulation.  

Spent thousands of government dollars on taxi rides to the Opera in just 8 days. The government claims that the expenditure is reasonable because the minister didn’t pay for the tickets either. 

Spent thousands of government dollars on limousine rides, and fudged the declaration paperwork to say they were taxi rides. 

Spent $10,000 trying to chase down someone who leaked information to the media about how the Prime Minister deliberately and knowingly used false information to justify opposition to a defence force pay rise. 

Spent $27,000 on travel expenses for politicians to attend free sports events. Voted against a royal commission into corruption and misconduct in the financial service industry, following a series of scandals. 

Reaped $1000 per month of government money to pay for Joe Hockey to stay in his wife’s house. 

Proposed an exemption so that Australia’s richest companies no longer have to publish basic information about how much tax they are paying. 

Accidentally leaked the personal details of 31 world leaders, and chose not to notify them. They still claim your metadata will be safe though. 

Breached the criminal code of conduct by offering the independently appointed Human Rights Commissioner a new job if she resigned. 

Flew across the country on a taxpayer funded private jet to attend the private birthday party of a millionaire who has made large donations to the Liberal party. Refused to publish cost estimates for the data-retention policy which were provided by the industry. 

Voted to keep the text of the China Free Trade deal secret from the public. 

Abolished the $10,000 limit on political donations. Broke the law by missing the deadline for publishing the Intergenerational Report, as stipulated by the Charter of Budget Honesty Act. 

Spent $10,000 trying to identify a whistleblower who told the media that the Prime Minister knowingly mislead the public using information he knew was incorrect. 

Started an online petition to stop job losses at the ABC, just 36 hours after cutting ABC funding by 5%. 

Contracted out the managing of the Do Not Call Register to a marketing company. 

Secretly and retrospectively changed the official record of what was said in parliament. 

Broke an election promise by cutting ABC funding again ($120 million this time).  

Spent $900,000 in just 2 months on private jet flights for ministers. 

Forced all community TV stations off the air, claiming that moving online will be better for stations and viewers. Meanwhile they continue to fervently defend foreign corporate stations like HBO, who stubbornly refuse to make content accessible online. 

Introduced new laws which mean Edward Snowden type leaks are punishable by up to 10 years of prison. No exemptions are made for anti-corruption leaks. If journalists report on anyone (including innocent bystanders) being killed accidentally or deliberately by security personnel, they will be jailed for up to 10 years.    

Spent $50,000 on upgrades of curtains and upholstery for the Prime Minister’s office. 

Moved to abolish the role of freedom of information commissioner, abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and charge $800 for reviews of Freedom of Information Request denials. 

Refused to publish any submissions it received for or against the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, even though the government says the changes are to protect free speech. They refused to state what proportion of submissions supported the changes. The government defended this secrecy by claiming that all submissions were made with the expectation of confidentiality. This is false. The Senate Inquiry Submission Guidelines state that to make a Senate Inquiry Submission confidential, you must explicitly justify a request for confidentiality, and that such requests are generally denied.  

Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons. Gave the Minister for Infrastructure the power to silence Infrastructure Australia (an independent body) without justification. (See section 5A.2 of the link.) 

Deliberately hid the cost of the $4.45 million renovations on The Lodge. Spent $50,000 on one dinner for 60 G20 guests, including food specially flown to Washington from all over Australia. 

Voted against the creation of a federal anti-corruption watchdog. 

Cut $38 million from Australian television and film funding. 

Broke an election promise by cutting $40 million from the SBS and ABC.   

Broke an election promise to not cut ABC funding, by cutting all funding to the Australia Network (part of the ABC).   

Claimed a 2.5% reduction in funding every year for the ABC is not a funding cut. Increased the fee for lodging Freedom of Information requests. 

Paid a public relations company $97,000 for 3 weeks of work to help improve the Education Department’s image, then refused to release the report that came of it. 

Proposed the scrapping of regulation which prevents media monopolies and duopolies. 

Spent over $15,000 on a custom made bookcase to replace a $7,000 custom bookcase which holds $13,000 worth of taxpayer funded books and magazines in senator Brandis’ office. 

Spent $22,000 taxpayer dollars buying new cutlery and crockery for the ministerial wing of parliament. Chose not to mention a $882 million payout to News Corp. when outlining a $16.8 billion budget black hole. The payout was the single biggest item in the black hole.  

Denied any wrongdoing after a government aid married to the head of a junk food lobby pulled down a government website providing simplified nutritional information within hours of its launch. 

Violated Youtube’s policies regarding deceptive content, resulting in the suspension of Abbott’s whole channel. Criticised the ABC because they aren’t biased towards the Government. 

Spent over $120,000 on Kirribilli House, including $13,000 on an imported luxury rug, paid for by the taxpayer. Tried to silence the media to stop them criticising the upcoming private jet deal for politicians. 

Criticised the ABC for not “advancing Australia’s broad and enduring interests in the Asian region”, without actually accusing the ABC of any specific wrongdoing or poor judgement. 

Changed the ministerial code of conduct so ministers no longer have to sell shares which create a conflict of interest. 

Made Orwellian threats about cutting ABC funding because the government didn’t like one of their stories, and because their quality of journalism is too high, thereby creating competition which threatens the corporate newspaper duopoly (who are now floundering because they didn’t see the internet coming). 

List compiled by Matthew Davis. You can view the full list of 902 points at https://www.mdavis.xyz

(P.S. If you share this on social media, please let us know so we can invoice Facebook for that.)

I’ll just fact check an easy one.

>>Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons.

The head of the AFP, Commissioner Negus, had this to say at the time.

“The decision was that it would be an unreasonable risk to put the Prime Minister and other people around in that circumstance.’‘
It’s not a good start.
I’m sure many of the other claims don’t pass the pub test as well.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/senior-afp-officer-raises-questions-about-security-advice-given-to-tony-abbott-on-university-visit-20140527-391fh.html

dv said:

In fairness to Morrison, at least his staffer said he was mortified about what had happened and how it had been handled

For what reason was he mortified? How it might affect his likeabililty?

JudgeMental said:

Peak Warming Man said:

JudgeMental said:

https://chaser.com.au/national/an-exhaustive-list-of-the-liberal-partys-corruption-over-the-last-7-years/

The Chaser is a satirical outlet but all of this is legit

—-

A complete list of the Liberal Party’s corruption over the last 7 years

Thanks to the Facebook news ban we’re now somehow the only news site in Australia, so here’s some serious journalism listing all the questionable decisions that ScoMo and co made after he forgot to check with Jenny first.

The federal government has:

Cut $14 million from the national audit office, after that office discovered substantial improprieties and wasteful spending (such as the sports rorts, and paying 10 times too much for land for the new Sydney airport).

 Voted against a binding code of conduct designed to ensure politicians act with integrity. 

Blocked a research-backed design change to increase the effectiveness of beverage warnings about drinking during pregnancy (recommended by an independent body) after meeting with lobbyists from alcohol companies who have donated over $300,000 to the Coalition. 

Gave $345,000 to News Corp to build a spelling bee website, discarding any pretense of propriety or fairness by skipping the usual parliamentary checks and tender process, instead just choosing to hand the excessive amount of cash to a company whose industry is neither website building nor education. 

Hid a record-breaking number of expenses from the public in an annual budget, including cash handed to a private rail project, maintaining an abandoned oil rig, and legal action relating to military bases which leaked toxic chemicals. 

Loosened political donation laws.  

Committed a crime by ignoring a ruling of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.  

Appointed a failed Liberal candidate to the SBS board instead of any of the ones recommended by the independent nominations panel. 

Prevented parliament from debating whether to set up a National Integrity Commission. 

Set up the COVID-19 National Co-ordination Committee with no terms of reference, no register of conflicts of interest, and then stacked it with gas company executives who unsurprisingly ended up recommending irrationally pro-gas policies.

690 documents about potential conflicts of interests were deliberately kept hidden.   

Blocked parliament from debating significant environmental protection repeals, rushing through the legislation without allowing anyone to discuss it first. 

Lied by claiming they appointed a Liberal party staffer to a job paying half a million dollars per year through an “open merit-driven, competitive process”. It was actually a limited tender not open to all, exempt from procurement rules which guarantee fairness and impartiality. 

Tried to get parliament to vote on new legislation without giving copies of the bill to the people voting on it, and used unprecedented methods to prevent any politician to speak against it.   

Paid tens of thousands of dollars to a company which was known to be corrupt, through a tender that was not opened up to all competitors. 

Illegally forged a document to publicly criticise a political opponent. 

Cancelled The Rule of Law and then preventing journalists from reporting on the case against a whistleblower who leaked truthful information in the public interest about senior politicians and law enforcement officials who flagrantly violated serious international laws. The court case is held in secret. The whistleblower’s name is illegal to publish. The witness and lawyers’ residences were raided, and the evidence against the government was confiscated.  

Extended exemptions for political donation transparency, which are 25 years old and were only supposed to be temporary. 

Paid $39 million to a naval boat manufacturer when not required to because the company failed to fulfill the relevant contract clauses, and they coincidentally donated to the Liberal party. 

Illegally failed to respond to freedom of information (FOI) requests within the statutory 30 day deadline in 92.5% of cases. 

Bought water rights for 50 times more than many valuations, and double the price of the seller’s valuation. 

Lied by claiming that Kevin Rudd had travelled overseas and back during COVID while many Australians are still stranded overseas, when Mr Rudd had actually never left Queensland.  

Refused to release a report into COVID policy communication strategies, which cost over $500,000. 

Introduced a mandatory code of conduct to force companies like Google to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to large private news companies (but not ABC news nor independent news, nor the Chaser). Google currently drives over 3 billion clicks per year to Australian news companies. Therefore this is like a local plumber demanding that the Yellow Pages pay the plumber for the act of directing plumber-seeking customers to the plumber. This will also undermine the fundamental principles of the web itself, according to its inventor. The laws are written based on the incorrect assumption that news makes up 10% of Google searches when it’s only 1%.      

Introduced red tape and distorted the free market by forcing Google to give special insider knowledge of proprietary search algorithm changes to large news companies but not small, independent journalists. It includes ambiguously written clauses about giving news companies access to Google users’ private data.  

Introduced protections for company executives who trade while insolvent during the pandemic. This is only for cases where the debts are incurred “the ordinary course of business”. Those who try to adapt to the challenging circumstances will not be exempt. In this way the government is incentivising executives to not adapt to the unique circumstances. 

Refused to release the minutes from an important meeting of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee giving COVID advice to the Prime Minister.  

Created the ABCC ostensibly for reducing corruption, but the ABCC boss himself violated rules and endangered people by ignoring COVID flight restrictions, travelling across the country to interview workers about a rally that happened 8 months prior. 

Refused to release a multilateral trade agreement with China, which involves spending government money on infrastructure in other countries. The lack of transparency exacerbates existing concerns about burdening these other developing nations with unsustainable debt.  

Deleted records of a $165,000 political donation from a political consultancy with stakeholders who stand to benefit from the government’s $1 billion visa privatization plan, and refused requests for further explanation. 

Kept secret a government-funded report that showed less than 1 in 3 Australians trust our public service sector. The justification was that the government believed that the report which they wrote would mislead and confuse people. 

Lied by claiming that all grants issued under the controversial $100M sports grant program were eligible for funding, when only 57% were. Failed to declare a property worth $1M in a minister’s declaration of interests. Failed to declare 2 properties worth more than $1M in another minister’s declaration of interests. 

Approved a $36,000 grant to a shooting club without declaring that the approving minister was a member of that club. 

Allocated sports grant funding based on which candidate projects were in marginal seats, rather than which were the most worthy. Then refused to release legal advice about whether such pork barrelling is illegal, and destroyed evidence about the funding choices.     

Merged the Australian Federal Police into the Home Affairs department, allowing the minister to exert political influence on investigations. 

Ignored a Royal Commission report which found the government’s Murray-Darling Basin Plan is illegal, whilst refusing to publish their own report which they claim provides a valid rebuttal. Abandoned standard tender processes when awarding a $423 million contract to a company with $50k in funds, little experience, no phone number, no mail address, housed in a shack.  

Refused to publish a report used to justify a $53 million contract to outsource Centrelink call handling.  Declared that they will violate a new law, because they don’t like it.  

Spent $87,000 fighting against a Freedom of Information request about back-room deals, and then lied about the cost. 

Drastically increased the amount of government money spent without a proper tender process, up to $34 billion per month. 

Handed out $17.1M to private TV stations for a grant they didn’t ask for, without offering the money to the public broadcaster. 

Refused a Senate Order to release details about expensive contracts for security, health and infrastructure in their detention camps in PNG. 

Excused the conflict of interest arising when the head of the My Health Record (appointed by the government) privately received money for consultations about the My Health Record. 

Spent 2 years trying to hide documents from Freedom of Information requests, about a serious breach of top secret documents, and mishandling of those documents by a minister. 

Hid a report by the Governor General showing that the government paid twice as much as necessary for new combat vehicles, because such publicity would be bad for the private manufacturer’s future profitability. The company is not even Australian.  

Lied about the Immigration Minister having no personal connection to someone who benefited from the direct intervention by the Immigration Minister in a visa case.   

Spent an undisclosed amount of public money on legal defence for a minister who broken the law for political gain. Cut $84 million from the ABC (again). 

Exempted a facial recognition system storing data of innocent citizens from standard procurement policy disclosure rules. The excuse is a reliance on security through obscurity rather than actual security. Accuracy figures are also not published.   

Increased the jail time for journalists who report on whistleblower’s truthful allegations by a factor of 10.  

Refused to publish the percentage of calls to the veterans’ suicide help line which go unanswered, because that want negatively impact the brand of the private call centre operator. 

Prohibited public servants from liking social media posts critical of the government, even if anonymous. Failed to declare multiple $1600 Foxtel subscriptions gifted to ministers by a lobby group. 

Gave $30 million to Foxtel to boost “under represented sports”, and was unable to explain why free-to-air channels didn’t get the money, because the decision was made without any emails, letter, or supporting documentation.  

Paid a minister $273 per night to stay in his own home. Prevented university newspapers from attending the release of multiple annual budgets like all other newspapers. These particular budgets contained multiple changes which negatively impact university students.  

Refused to release the results for the trial of a national health register. 

Spent over $3,500 to send a minister to watch the AFL with his wife. 

Spent over $2,700 on a trip to watch polo. 

Spent $10,000 per day to send a single minister to the USA. 

Broke a promise to scrap free lifetime travel for former ministers. The excuse is that the government is to busy to pass legislation through parliament, despite that being the job of the government and of parliament. 

Falsely advertised the closure of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, despite Parliament rejecting the closure attempt. 

Refused to publish the cost benefit analysis on the agriculture minister’s decision to move a federal agency from Canberra to his own electorate. 

Personally appointed George Brandis’ son’s lawyer to a $370,000 job, without making a conflict of interest declaration.  

Tried to privatise the database of ASIC (the corporate watchdog). Under private hands the cost journalists must pay to obtain information about potentially corrupt companies would increase. 

Spent over $140,000 for 5 ministers to travel to a country we have no trade or diplomatic ties with, visiting tourist sites and dining in 5 star restaurants. 

Refused to release 5 year old taxi receipts to assist in a fraud case, on the grounds that terrorists could use travel information from 5 years ago to help plan an attack against the minister in question. 

Spent $10,000 to fly the family of 2 ministers to a tropical island for a weekend holiday. 

Voted against a motion asking the Housing Affordability Inquiry to update the senate on how they are progressing with the recommendations the government supported. 

Rejected an inquiry which recommended that citizens accused of tax fraud be treated as innocent until proven guilty. 

Spent $30,000 on a private jet to fly one minister and their partner from Perth to Canberra (instead of catching a normal plane) because a non-business event ran overtime. This is despite the alleged budget emergency. 

Voted against increasing transparency about how much tax large corporations pay. 

Violated parliamentary anti-corruption rules by not declaring a substantial loan for almost 2 years. 

Broke an election promise to conduct and publish a cost benefit analysis for all infrastructure projects over $100 million. 

Spent over $20,000 in a legal fight in order to hide modelling for the impact of university fee deregulation.  

Spent thousands of government dollars on taxi rides to the Opera in just 8 days. The government claims that the expenditure is reasonable because the minister didn’t pay for the tickets either. 

Spent thousands of government dollars on limousine rides, and fudged the declaration paperwork to say they were taxi rides. 

Spent $10,000 trying to chase down someone who leaked information to the media about how the Prime Minister deliberately and knowingly used false information to justify opposition to a defence force pay rise. 

Spent $27,000 on travel expenses for politicians to attend free sports events. Voted against a royal commission into corruption and misconduct in the financial service industry, following a series of scandals. 

Reaped $1000 per month of government money to pay for Joe Hockey to stay in his wife’s house. 

Proposed an exemption so that Australia’s richest companies no longer have to publish basic information about how much tax they are paying. 

Accidentally leaked the personal details of 31 world leaders, and chose not to notify them. They still claim your metadata will be safe though. 

Breached the criminal code of conduct by offering the independently appointed Human Rights Commissioner a new job if she resigned. 

Flew across the country on a taxpayer funded private jet to attend the private birthday party of a millionaire who has made large donations to the Liberal party. Refused to publish cost estimates for the data-retention policy which were provided by the industry. 

Voted to keep the text of the China Free Trade deal secret from the public. 

Abolished the $10,000 limit on political donations. Broke the law by missing the deadline for publishing the Intergenerational Report, as stipulated by the Charter of Budget Honesty Act. 

Spent $10,000 trying to identify a whistleblower who told the media that the Prime Minister knowingly mislead the public using information he knew was incorrect. 

Started an online petition to stop job losses at the ABC, just 36 hours after cutting ABC funding by 5%. 

Contracted out the managing of the Do Not Call Register to a marketing company. 

Secretly and retrospectively changed the official record of what was said in parliament. 

Broke an election promise by cutting ABC funding again ($120 million this time).  

Spent $900,000 in just 2 months on private jet flights for ministers. 

Forced all community TV stations off the air, claiming that moving online will be better for stations and viewers. Meanwhile they continue to fervently defend foreign corporate stations like HBO, who stubbornly refuse to make content accessible online. 

Introduced new laws which mean Edward Snowden type leaks are punishable by up to 10 years of prison. No exemptions are made for anti-corruption leaks. If journalists report on anyone (including innocent bystanders) being killed accidentally or deliberately by security personnel, they will be jailed for up to 10 years.    

Spent $50,000 on upgrades of curtains and upholstery for the Prime Minister’s office. 

Moved to abolish the role of freedom of information commissioner, abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and charge $800 for reviews of Freedom of Information Request denials. 

Refused to publish any submissions it received for or against the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, even though the government says the changes are to protect free speech. They refused to state what proportion of submissions supported the changes. The government defended this secrecy by claiming that all submissions were made with the expectation of confidentiality. This is false. The Senate Inquiry Submission Guidelines state that to make a Senate Inquiry Submission confidential, you must explicitly justify a request for confidentiality, and that such requests are generally denied.  

Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons. Gave the Minister for Infrastructure the power to silence Infrastructure Australia (an independent body) without justification. (See section 5A.2 of the link.) 

Deliberately hid the cost of the $4.45 million renovations on The Lodge. Spent $50,000 on one dinner for 60 G20 guests, including food specially flown to Washington from all over Australia. 

Voted against the creation of a federal anti-corruption watchdog. 

Cut $38 million from Australian television and film funding. 

Broke an election promise by cutting $40 million from the SBS and ABC.   

Broke an election promise to not cut ABC funding, by cutting all funding to the Australia Network (part of the ABC).   

Claimed a 2.5% reduction in funding every year for the ABC is not a funding cut. Increased the fee for lodging Freedom of Information requests. 

Paid a public relations company $97,000 for 3 weeks of work to help improve the Education Department’s image, then refused to release the report that came of it. 

Proposed the scrapping of regulation which prevents media monopolies and duopolies. 

Spent over $15,000 on a custom made bookcase to replace a $7,000 custom bookcase which holds $13,000 worth of taxpayer funded books and magazines in senator Brandis’ office. 

Spent $22,000 taxpayer dollars buying new cutlery and crockery for the ministerial wing of parliament. Chose not to mention a $882 million payout to News Corp. when outlining a $16.8 billion budget black hole. The payout was the single biggest item in the black hole.  

Denied any wrongdoing after a government aid married to the head of a junk food lobby pulled down a government website providing simplified nutritional information within hours of its launch. 

Violated Youtube’s policies regarding deceptive content, resulting in the suspension of Abbott’s whole channel. Criticised the ABC because they aren’t biased towards the Government. 

Spent over $120,000 on Kirribilli House, including $13,000 on an imported luxury rug, paid for by the taxpayer. Tried to silence the media to stop them criticising the upcoming private jet deal for politicians. 

Criticised the ABC for not “advancing Australia’s broad and enduring interests in the Asian region”, without actually accusing the ABC of any specific wrongdoing or poor judgement. 

Changed the ministerial code of conduct so ministers no longer have to sell shares which create a conflict of interest. 

Made Orwellian threats about cutting ABC funding because the government didn’t like one of their stories, and because their quality of journalism is too high, thereby creating competition which threatens the corporate newspaper duopoly (who are now floundering because they didn’t see the internet coming). 

List compiled by Matthew Davis. You can view the full list of 902 points at https://www.mdavis.xyz

(P.S. If you share this on social media, please let us know so we can invoice Facebook for that.)

I’ll just fact check an easy one.

>>Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons.

The head of the AFP, Commissioner Negus, had this to say at the time.

“The decision was that it would be an unreasonable risk to put the Prime Minister and other people around in that circumstance.’‘
It’s not a good start.
I’m sure many of the other claims don’t pass the pub test as well.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/senior-afp-officer-raises-questions-about-security-advice-given-to-tony-abbott-on-university-visit-20140527-391fh.html

Yep and that’s where that quote comes from.

buffy said:

JudgeMental said:

sarahs mum said:

Buffy posted it yesterday. And we chatted.

DV posted it little while ago.

and I edited it so it could be read.

I don’t think it was cut and pasted originally on here. Because I followed a link to read it. But it still doesn’t matter.

No. you can post it later too if you need to. It’s fine with us.

can we stop quoting the full list already?

My scrolling finger is getting RSI.

Peak Warming Man said:

JudgeMental said:

Peak Warming Man said:

I’ll just fact check an easy one.

>>Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons.

The head of the AFP, Commissioner Negus, had this to say at the time.

“The decision was that it would be an unreasonable risk to put the Prime Minister and other people around in that circumstance.’‘
It’s not a good start.
I’m sure many of the other claims don’t pass the pub test as well.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/senior-afp-officer-raises-questions-about-security-advice-given-to-tony-abbott-on-university-visit-20140527-391fh.html

Yep and that’s where that quote comes from.

so the government lied.

“A senior Australian Federal Police officer has said the agency did not advise Prime Minister Tony Abbott to cancel a visit to a Victorian university amid widespread protest against the Coalition’s budget last week.

But the Prime Minister’s office has insisted the decision not to visit the Geelong campus of Deakin University was based on risk assessment advice provided by the AFP.”

sarahs mum said:

dv said:

In fairness to Morrison, at least his staffer said he was mortified about what had happened and how it had been handled

For what reason was he mortified? How it might affect his likeabililty?

So cynical

party_pants said:

can we stop quoting the full list already?

My scrolling finger is getting RSI.

Never

JudgeMental said:

Peak Warming Man said:

JudgeMental said:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/senior-afp-officer-raises-questions-about-security-advice-given-to-tony-abbott-on-university-visit-20140527-391fh.html

Yep and that’s where that quote comes from.

so the government lied.

“A senior Australian Federal Police officer has said the agency did not advise Prime Minister Tony Abbott to cancel a visit to a Victorian university amid widespread protest against the Coalition’s budget last week.

But the Prime Minister’s office has insisted the decision not to visit the Geelong campus of Deakin University was based on risk assessment advice provided by the AFP.”

No, the Commissioner of the AFP refutes that claim by his own statement.

party_pants said:

can we stop quoting the full list already?

My scrolling finger is getting RSI.

I click and run down rather than scrolling. It’s actually faster.

Peak Warming Man said:

JudgeMental said:

Peak Warming Man said:

I’ll just fact check an easy one.

>>Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons.

The head of the AFP, Commissioner Negus, had this to say at the time.

“The decision was that it would be an unreasonable risk to put the Prime Minister and other people around in that circumstance.’‘
It’s not a good start.
I’m sure many of the other claims don’t pass the pub test as well.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/senior-afp-officer-raises-questions-about-security-advice-given-to-tony-abbott-on-university-visit-20140527-391fh.html

Yep and that’s where that quote comes from.

Understandable. Hockey’s budget was a shocker.

Mr buffy is out of the shower. I can go and shower now. Pub tea – probably fish and chips unless there is a special that is enticing on the menu.

dv said:

party_pants said:

can we stop quoting the full list already?

My scrolling finger is getting RSI.

Never

I’d say most of those claims are contestable.
I picked just one to fact check and it came up bogus.

Peak Warming Man said:

JudgeMental said:

Peak Warming Man said:

Yep and that’s where that quote comes from.

so the government lied.

“A senior Australian Federal Police officer has said the agency did not advise Prime Minister Tony Abbott to cancel a visit to a Victorian university amid widespread protest against the Coalition’s budget last week.

But the Prime Minister’s office has insisted the decision not to visit the Geelong campus of Deakin University was based on risk assessment advice provided by the AFP.”

No, the Commissioner of the AFP refutes that claim by his own statement.

AFT says the didn’t advise, government says they did by giving them a risk assessment which i presume said best not to go. that’s how it reads. unless the government just ignored the assessment.

JudgeMental said:

Peak Warming Man said:

JudgeMental said:

so the government lied.

“A senior Australian Federal Police officer has said the agency did not advise Prime Minister Tony Abbott to cancel a visit to a Victorian university amid widespread protest against the Coalition’s budget last week.

But the Prime Minister’s office has insisted the decision not to visit the Geelong campus of Deakin University was based on risk assessment advice provided by the AFP.”

No, the Commissioner of the AFP refutes that claim by his own statement.

AFT says the didn’t advise, government says they did by giving them a risk assessment which i presume said best not to go. that’s how it reads. unless the government just ignored the assessment.

afp

Witty Rejoinder said:

Peak Warming Man said:

JudgeMental said:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/senior-afp-officer-raises-questions-about-security-advice-given-to-tony-abbott-on-university-visit-20140527-391fh.html

Yep and that’s where that quote comes from.

Understandable. Hockey’s budget was a shocker.

Hockeys budget was indeed a shocker.
The current treasurers on the other had was very good.

Peak Warming Man said:

dv said:

party_pants said:

can we stop quoting the full list already?

My scrolling finger is getting RSI.

Never

I’d say most of those claims are contestable.
I picked just one to fact check and it came up bogus.

Even if they were all true you wouldn’t care because you’re not interested in accountable government when it’s your side in power.

Channel seven think that was news, To tell us nothing.

roughbarked said:

Channel seven think that was news, To tell us nothing.

oops, how did I change threads?

JudgeMental said:

Peak Warming Man said:

JudgeMental said:

https://chaser.com.au/national/an-exhaustive-list-of-the-liberal-partys-corruption-over-the-last-7-years/

The Chaser is a satirical outlet but all of this is legit

—-

A complete list of the Liberal Party’s corruption over the last 7 years

Thanks to the Facebook news ban we’re now somehow the only news site in Australia, so here’s some serious journalism listing all the questionable decisions that ScoMo and co made after he forgot to check with Jenny first.

The federal government has:

Cut $14 million from the national audit office, after that office discovered substantial improprieties and wasteful spending (such as the sports rorts, and paying 10 times too much for land for the new Sydney airport).

 Voted against a binding code of conduct designed to ensure politicians act with integrity. 

Blocked a research-backed design change to increase the effectiveness of beverage warnings about drinking during pregnancy (recommended by an independent body) after meeting with lobbyists from alcohol companies who have donated over $300,000 to the Coalition. 

Gave $345,000 to News Corp to build a spelling bee website, discarding any pretense of propriety or fairness by skipping the usual parliamentary checks and tender process, instead just choosing to hand the excessive amount of cash to a company whose industry is neither website building nor education. 

Hid a record-breaking number of expenses from the public in an annual budget, including cash handed to a private rail project, maintaining an abandoned oil rig, and legal action relating to military bases which leaked toxic chemicals. 

Loosened political donation laws.  

Committed a crime by ignoring a ruling of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.  

Appointed a failed Liberal candidate to the SBS board instead of any of the ones recommended by the independent nominations panel. 

Prevented parliament from debating whether to set up a National Integrity Commission. 

Set up the COVID-19 National Co-ordination Committee with no terms of reference, no register of conflicts of interest, and then stacked it with gas company executives who unsurprisingly ended up recommending irrationally pro-gas policies.

690 documents about potential conflicts of interests were deliberately kept hidden.   

Blocked parliament from debating significant environmental protection repeals, rushing through the legislation without allowing anyone to discuss it first. 

Lied by claiming they appointed a Liberal party staffer to a job paying half a million dollars per year through an “open merit-driven, competitive process”. It was actually a limited tender not open to all, exempt from procurement rules which guarantee fairness and impartiality. 

Tried to get parliament to vote on new legislation without giving copies of the bill to the people voting on it, and used unprecedented methods to prevent any politician to speak against it.   

Paid tens of thousands of dollars to a company which was known to be corrupt, through a tender that was not opened up to all competitors. 

Illegally forged a document to publicly criticise a political opponent. 

Cancelled The Rule of Law and then preventing journalists from reporting on the case against a whistleblower who leaked truthful information in the public interest about senior politicians and law enforcement officials who flagrantly violated serious international laws. The court case is held in secret. The whistleblower’s name is illegal to publish. The witness and lawyers’ residences were raided, and the evidence against the government was confiscated.  

Extended exemptions for political donation transparency, which are 25 years old and were only supposed to be temporary. 

Paid $39 million to a naval boat manufacturer when not required to because the company failed to fulfill the relevant contract clauses, and they coincidentally donated to the Liberal party. 

Illegally failed to respond to freedom of information (FOI) requests within the statutory 30 day deadline in 92.5% of cases. 

Bought water rights for 50 times more than many valuations, and double the price of the seller’s valuation. 

Lied by claiming that Kevin Rudd had travelled overseas and back during COVID while many Australians are still stranded overseas, when Mr Rudd had actually never left Queensland.  

Refused to release a report into COVID policy communication strategies, which cost over $500,000. 

Introduced a mandatory code of conduct to force companies like Google to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to large private news companies (but not ABC news nor independent news, nor the Chaser). Google currently drives over 3 billion clicks per year to Australian news companies. Therefore this is like a local plumber demanding that the Yellow Pages pay the plumber for the act of directing plumber-seeking customers to the plumber. This will also undermine the fundamental principles of the web itself, according to its inventor. The laws are written based on the incorrect assumption that news makes up 10% of Google searches when it’s only 1%.      

Introduced red tape and distorted the free market by forcing Google to give special insider knowledge of proprietary search algorithm changes to large news companies but not small, independent journalists. It includes ambiguously written clauses about giving news companies access to Google users’ private data.  

Introduced protections for company executives who trade while insolvent during the pandemic. This is only for cases where the debts are incurred “the ordinary course of business”. Those who try to adapt to the challenging circumstances will not be exempt. In this way the government is incentivising executives to not adapt to the unique circumstances. 

Refused to release the minutes from an important meeting of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee giving COVID advice to the Prime Minister.  

Created the ABCC ostensibly for reducing corruption, but the ABCC boss himself violated rules and endangered people by ignoring COVID flight restrictions, travelling across the country to interview workers about a rally that happened 8 months prior. 

Refused to release a multilateral trade agreement with China, which involves spending government money on infrastructure in other countries. The lack of transparency exacerbates existing concerns about burdening these other developing nations with unsustainable debt.  

Deleted records of a $165,000 political donation from a political consultancy with stakeholders who stand to benefit from the government’s $1 billion visa privatization plan, and refused requests for further explanation. 

Kept secret a government-funded report that showed less than 1 in 3 Australians trust our public service sector. The justification was that the government believed that the report which they wrote would mislead and confuse people. 

Lied by claiming that all grants issued under the controversial $100M sports grant program were eligible for funding, when only 57% were. Failed to declare a property worth $1M in a minister’s declaration of interests. Failed to declare 2 properties worth more than $1M in another minister’s declaration of interests. 

Approved a $36,000 grant to a shooting club without declaring that the approving minister was a member of that club. 

Allocated sports grant funding based on which candidate projects were in marginal seats, rather than which were the most worthy. Then refused to release legal advice about whether such pork barrelling is illegal, and destroyed evidence about the funding choices.     

Merged the Australian Federal Police into the Home Affairs department, allowing the minister to exert political influence on investigations. 

Ignored a Royal Commission report which found the government’s Murray-Darling Basin Plan is illegal, whilst refusing to publish their own report which they claim provides a valid rebuttal. Abandoned standard tender processes when awarding a $423 million contract to a company with $50k in funds, little experience, no phone number, no mail address, housed in a shack.  

Refused to publish a report used to justify a $53 million contract to outsource Centrelink call handling.  Declared that they will violate a new law, because they don’t like it.  

Spent $87,000 fighting against a Freedom of Information request about back-room deals, and then lied about the cost. 

Drastically increased the amount of government money spent without a proper tender process, up to $34 billion per month. 

Handed out $17.1M to private TV stations for a grant they didn’t ask for, without offering the money to the public broadcaster. 

Refused a Senate Order to release details about expensive contracts for security, health and infrastructure in their detention camps in PNG. 

Excused the conflict of interest arising when the head of the My Health Record (appointed by the government) privately received money for consultations about the My Health Record. 

Spent 2 years trying to hide documents from Freedom of Information requests, about a serious breach of top secret documents, and mishandling of those documents by a minister. 

Hid a report by the Governor General showing that the government paid twice as much as necessary for new combat vehicles, because such publicity would be bad for the private manufacturer’s future profitability. The company is not even Australian.  

Lied about the Immigration Minister having no personal connection to someone who benefited from the direct intervention by the Immigration Minister in a visa case.   

Spent an undisclosed amount of public money on legal defence for a minister who broken the law for political gain. Cut $84 million from the ABC (again). 

Exempted a facial recognition system storing data of innocent citizens from standard procurement policy disclosure rules. The excuse is a reliance on security through obscurity rather than actual security. Accuracy figures are also not published.   

Increased the jail time for journalists who report on whistleblower’s truthful allegations by a factor of 10.  

Refused to publish the percentage of calls to the veterans’ suicide help line which go unanswered, because that want negatively impact the brand of the private call centre operator. 

Prohibited public servants from liking social media posts critical of the government, even if anonymous. Failed to declare multiple $1600 Foxtel subscriptions gifted to ministers by a lobby group. 

Gave $30 million to Foxtel to boost “under represented sports”, and was unable to explain why free-to-air channels didn’t get the money, because the decision was made without any emails, letter, or supporting documentation.  

Paid a minister $273 per night to stay in his own home. Prevented university newspapers from attending the release of multiple annual budgets like all other newspapers. These particular budgets contained multiple changes which negatively impact university students.  

Refused to release the results for the trial of a national health register. 

Spent over $3,500 to send a minister to watch the AFL with his wife. 

Spent over $2,700 on a trip to watch polo. 

Spent $10,000 per day to send a single minister to the USA. 

Broke a promise to scrap free lifetime travel for former ministers. The excuse is that the government is to busy to pass legislation through parliament, despite that being the job of the government and of parliament. 

Falsely advertised the closure of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, despite Parliament rejecting the closure attempt. 

Refused to publish the cost benefit analysis on the agriculture minister’s decision to move a federal agency from Canberra to his own electorate. 

Personally appointed George Brandis’ son’s lawyer to a $370,000 job, without making a conflict of interest declaration.  

Tried to privatise the database of ASIC (the corporate watchdog). Under private hands the cost journalists must pay to obtain information about potentially corrupt companies would increase. 

Spent over $140,000 for 5 ministers to travel to a country we have no trade or diplomatic ties with, visiting tourist sites and dining in 5 star restaurants. 

Refused to release 5 year old taxi receipts to assist in a fraud case, on the grounds that terrorists could use travel information from 5 years ago to help plan an attack against the minister in question. 

Spent $10,000 to fly the family of 2 ministers to a tropical island for a weekend holiday. 

Voted against a motion asking the Housing Affordability Inquiry to update the senate on how they are progressing with the recommendations the government supported. 

Rejected an inquiry which recommended that citizens accused of tax fraud be treated as innocent until proven guilty. 

Spent $30,000 on a private jet to fly one minister and their partner from Perth to Canberra (instead of catching a normal plane) because a non-business event ran overtime. This is despite the alleged budget emergency. 

Voted against increasing transparency about how much tax large corporations pay. 

Violated parliamentary anti-corruption rules by not declaring a substantial loan for almost 2 years. 

Broke an election promise to conduct and publish a cost benefit analysis for all infrastructure projects over $100 million. 

Spent over $20,000 in a legal fight in order to hide modelling for the impact of university fee deregulation.  

Spent thousands of government dollars on taxi rides to the Opera in just 8 days. The government claims that the expenditure is reasonable because the minister didn’t pay for the tickets either. 

Spent thousands of government dollars on limousine rides, and fudged the declaration paperwork to say they were taxi rides. 

Spent $10,000 trying to chase down someone who leaked information to the media about how the Prime Minister deliberately and knowingly used false information to justify opposition to a defence force pay rise. 

Spent $27,000 on travel expenses for politicians to attend free sports events. Voted against a royal commission into corruption and misconduct in the financial service industry, following a series of scandals. 

Reaped $1000 per month of government money to pay for Joe Hockey to stay in his wife’s house. 

Proposed an exemption so that Australia’s richest companies no longer have to publish basic information about how much tax they are paying. 

Accidentally leaked the personal details of 31 world leaders, and chose not to notify them. They still claim your metadata will be safe though. 

Breached the criminal code of conduct by offering the independently appointed Human Rights Commissioner a new job if she resigned. 

Flew across the country on a taxpayer funded private jet to attend the private birthday party of a millionaire who has made large donations to the Liberal party. Refused to publish cost estimates for the data-retention policy which were provided by the industry. 

Voted to keep the text of the China Free Trade deal secret from the public. 

Abolished the $10,000 limit on political donations. Broke the law by missing the deadline for publishing the Intergenerational Report, as stipulated by the Charter of Budget Honesty Act. 

Spent $10,000 trying to identify a whistleblower who told the media that the Prime Minister knowingly mislead the public using information he knew was incorrect. 

Started an online petition to stop job losses at the ABC, just 36 hours after cutting ABC funding by 5%. 

Contracted out the managing of the Do Not Call Register to a marketing company. 

Secretly and retrospectively changed the official record of what was said in parliament. 

Broke an election promise by cutting ABC funding again ($120 million this time).  

Spent $900,000 in just 2 months on private jet flights for ministers. 

Forced all community TV stations off the air, claiming that moving online will be better for stations and viewers. Meanwhile they continue to fervently defend foreign corporate stations like HBO, who stubbornly refuse to make content accessible online. 

Introduced new laws which mean Edward Snowden type leaks are punishable by up to 10 years of prison. No exemptions are made for anti-corruption leaks. If journalists report on anyone (including innocent bystanders) being killed accidentally or deliberately by security personnel, they will be jailed for up to 10 years.    

Spent $50,000 on upgrades of curtains and upholstery for the Prime Minister’s office. 

Moved to abolish the role of freedom of information commissioner, abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and charge $800 for reviews of Freedom of Information Request denials. 

Refused to publish any submissions it received for or against the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, even though the government says the changes are to protect free speech. They refused to state what proportion of submissions supported the changes. The government defended this secrecy by claiming that all submissions were made with the expectation of confidentiality. This is false. The Senate Inquiry Submission Guidelines state that to make a Senate Inquiry Submission confidential, you must explicitly justify a request for confidentiality, and that such requests are generally denied.  

Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons. Gave the Minister for Infrastructure the power to silence Infrastructure Australia (an independent body) without justification. (See section 5A.2 of the link.) 

Deliberately hid the cost of the $4.45 million renovations on The Lodge. Spent $50,000 on one dinner for 60 G20 guests, including food specially flown to Washington from all over Australia. 

Voted against the creation of a federal anti-corruption watchdog. 

Cut $38 million from Australian television and film funding. 

Broke an election promise by cutting $40 million from the SBS and ABC.   

Broke an election promise to not cut ABC funding, by cutting all funding to the Australia Network (part of the ABC).   

Claimed a 2.5% reduction in funding every year for the ABC is not a funding cut. Increased the fee for lodging Freedom of Information requests. 

Paid a public relations company $97,000 for 3 weeks of work to help improve the Education Department’s image, then refused to release the report that came of it. 

Proposed the scrapping of regulation which prevents media monopolies and duopolies. 

Spent over $15,000 on a custom made bookcase to replace a $7,000 custom bookcase which holds $13,000 worth of taxpayer funded books and magazines in senator Brandis’ office. 

Spent $22,000 taxpayer dollars buying new cutlery and crockery for the ministerial wing of parliament. Chose not to mention a $882 million payout to News Corp. when outlining a $16.8 billion budget black hole. The payout was the single biggest item in the black hole.  

Denied any wrongdoing after a government aid married to the head of a junk food lobby pulled down a government website providing simplified nutritional information within hours of its launch. 

Violated Youtube’s policies regarding deceptive content, resulting in the suspension of Abbott’s whole channel. Criticised the ABC because they aren’t biased towards the Government. 

Spent over $120,000 on Kirribilli House, including $13,000 on an imported luxury rug, paid for by the taxpayer. Tried to silence the media to stop them criticising the upcoming private jet deal for politicians. 

Criticised the ABC for not “advancing Australia’s broad and enduring interests in the Asian region”, without actually accusing the ABC of any specific wrongdoing or poor judgement. 

Changed the ministerial code of conduct so ministers no longer have to sell shares which create a conflict of interest. 

Made Orwellian threats about cutting ABC funding because the government didn’t like one of their stories, and because their quality of journalism is too high, thereby creating competition which threatens the corporate newspaper duopoly (who are now floundering because they didn’t see the internet coming). 

List compiled by Matthew Davis. You can view the full list of 902 points at https://www.mdavis.xyz

(P.S. If you share this on social media, please let us know so we can invoice Facebook for that.)

I’ll just fact check an easy one.

>>Lied about the Australian Federal Police advising Tony Abbott not to visit Deakin University for safety reasons.

The head of the AFP, Commissioner Negus, had this to say at the time.

“The decision was that it would be an unreasonable risk to put the Prime Minister and other people around in that circumstance.’‘
It’s not a good start.
I’m sure many of the other claims don’t pass the pub test as well.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/senior-afp-officer-raises-questions-about-security-advice-given-to-tony-abbott-on-university-visit-20140527-391fh.html

So it seems that they didn’t say what the chaser says they didn’t say, but they did say what PWM says they did say.

Think I’d better go to the pub and think about it.

roughbarked said:

Channel seven think that was news, To tell us nothing.

Oh the news break that is actually an adert for the news. F that.

JudgeMental said:

Thank god that News Corp and The Australian are on the ball and were able to track down that text message exchange.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/federal-police-in-embarrassing-uturn-on-tony-abbotts-university-noshow-20140527-392bn.html

JudgeMental said:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/federal-police-in-embarrassing-uturn-on-tony-abbotts-university-noshow-20140527-392bn.html

‘But late on Tuesday, the AFP issued a statement, ‘‘correcting its response’‘. In the letter, Mr Drennan asked that the record now ‘‘reflect the fact that the AFP did advise the PMO that the Prime Minister should not attend the event at Deakin University due to security concerns’‘.’

Oh dear looks like Chaser got it right.

Still, probably the other 124 are all wrong eh PWM?

dv said:

JudgeMental said:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/federal-police-in-embarrassing-uturn-on-tony-abbotts-university-noshow-20140527-392bn.html

‘But late on Tuesday, the AFP issued a statement, ‘‘correcting its response’‘. In the letter, Mr Drennan asked that the record now ‘‘reflect the fact that the AFP did advise the PMO that the Prime Minister should not attend the event at Deakin University due to security concerns’‘.’

Oh dear looks like Chaser got it right.

Still, probably the other 124 are all wrong eh PWM?

There seems to be a big logic flaw there, a rooly big one.

dv said:

sarahs mum said:

dv said:

In fairness to Morrison, at least his staffer said he was mortified about what had happened and how it had been handled

For what reason was he mortified? How it might affect his likeabililty?

So cynical

Then again

dv said:

dv said:

sarahs mum said:

For what reason was he mortified? How it might affect his likeabililty?

So cynical

Then again

Why do you do this DV.
Surely you must know the pedigree of van Badam.

dv said:

I thought it was the accused staffer who entered the psychiatric hospital, not Reynolds.

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

I thought it was the accused staffer who entered the psychiatric hospital, not Reynolds.

True, they lost the thread there

dv said:

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

I thought it was the accused staffer who entered the psychiatric hospital, not Reynolds.

True, they lost the thread there

Might be on her bucket list.

dv said:

That’s appalling..

So am I right that the AFP are not pursuing charges against the accused rapist for lack of evidence or does the victim still have a say in it?

Witty Rejoinder said:

So am I right that the AFP are not pursuing charges against the accused rapist for lack of evidence or does the victim still have a say in it?

Whatever the upshot of it all will be right now the lass is very distressed and needs comfort and close monitoring.

Witty Rejoinder said:

So am I right that the AFP are not pursuing charges against the accused rapist for lack of evidence or does the victim still have a say in it?

I am not sure if that level of detail has been published yet.

Generally speaking the police/prosecution case will be reliant upon the victim giving evidence in court, along with whatever other corroborating evidence they can gather. If the victim is unwilling to go through that process they probably will not prosecute, as it would be a big hole in their case. I guess technically they could resort to summons and force a person to testify, but that would be seen as being a bit uncaring.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-19/brittany-higgins-to-make-formal-police-complaint-alleged-rape/13173730

sibeen said:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-19/brittany-higgins-to-make-formal-police-complaint-alleged-rape/13173730

Thanks Sibeen.

dv said:

JudgeMental said:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/federal-police-in-embarrassing-uturn-on-tony-abbotts-university-noshow-20140527-392bn.html

‘But late on Tuesday, the AFP issued a statement, ‘‘correcting its response’‘. In the letter, Mr Drennan asked that the record now ‘‘reflect the fact that the AFP did advise the PMO that the Prime Minister should not attend the event at Deakin University due to security concerns’‘.’

Oh dear looks like Chaser got it right.

Still, probably the other 124 are all wrong eh PWM?

I’m even more confused now.

I thought the chaser said the police had not advised a no-show, but it seems they did.

So I guess that one is wrong, but the other 124 are right?

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

JudgeMental said:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/federal-police-in-embarrassing-uturn-on-tony-abbotts-university-noshow-20140527-392bn.html

‘But late on Tuesday, the AFP issued a statement, ‘‘correcting its response’‘. In the letter, Mr Drennan asked that the record now ‘‘reflect the fact that the AFP did advise the PMO that the Prime Minister should not attend the event at Deakin University due to security concerns’‘.’

Oh dear looks like Chaser got it right.

Still, probably the other 124 are all wrong eh PWM?

I’m even more confused now.

I thought the chaser said the police had not advised a no-show, but it seems they did.

So I guess that one is wrong, but the other 124 are right?

who knows. at least we now have options. the second article is a few hours later than the first. same journo.