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| Lake Illawarra |
These people had been such vandals.
The triumph of managerialism. A profound ineptitude.
A callous disregard of their fellow Australians.
Antediluvian social policy.
"It will be alright," someone said as he brushed past. The sort of assurance you would give a calf before it was sent to slaughter.
The internet blinked in and out, only occasionally working. This government were a pack of crooks, pure and simple.
Pray for righteousness.
You're a joke.
The criminalisation of journalists continued apace.
A dishonest government was a paranoid government, and the truth must never out on this atrocious mob.
As with this report from the ABC:
Journalists will be under even more pressure to keep the Federal Government onside or risk prosecution under a new Attorney-General directive, Australia's peak legal body has warned.Under pressure to do more to protect press freedom, Christian Porter issued a directive that prosecutors will need his approval before charging journalists under certain sections of Australia's secrecy laws.
The decision could shield ABC and News Corp employees from facing possible criminal charges over their reporting on national security issues following June's raids by the Australian Federal Police.
But Law Council of Australia President Arthur Moses SC said it would not help solve the "legitimate concerns raised by the media" since the raids."Let me be very blunt about this, it does not allay the concerns that have being raised in relation to press freedoms in Australia," Mr Moses said.
"It puts the Attorney-General, who after all is a politician, in the position of authorising prosecutions of journalists in situations where they may have written stories critical of his Government."It creates an apprehension on the part of journalists that they will need to curry favour with the Government or, in particular, the Attorney-General in order to avoid prosecution."The media should never be put in that situation."
Mr Moses said there would be ambiguity around any decision Mr Porter made."It is a decision that no Attorney-General should ever be required to make, because it may undermine the appearance of the Attorney-General's independence," Mr Moses said."[It may] call into question an Attorney-General's own motive because he or she may be seeking to, it would say by way of an appearance, protect or otherwise the reputation of the Government."
Mr Porter has not responded to the ABC's request for an interview.Arrogant in victory, they felt no need to explain themselves.
THE BIGGER STORY
THE QUAGMIRE
https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/09/24/aat-anatomy-of-a-scandal/?utm_campaign=Weekender&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter
It’s a glittering prize: a job as a member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, one of the plummest appointments within the gift of a federal government.
Tenure of up to seven years, renewable. Annual salary of up to $385,000 for senior members. Removal only by order of the governor-general after a vote from both houses of parliament. No compulsory retirement age. The prestige of effectively being a judge sitting atop a multi-pronged legal institution whose annual budget is nine times more than the cost of running the High Court.
Australia’s Consul-General to New York, Alastair Walton, once had big plans for a second Australia-US business forum to take on the heavyweight American Australia Association founded by Keith Murdoch.
THE QUAGMIRE
https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/09/24/aat-anatomy-of-a-scandal/?utm_campaign=Weekender&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter
Anatomy of a scandal: how the government stacks the AAT with its political cronies
It’s a glittering prize: a job as a member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, one of the plummest appointments within the gift of a federal government.
Tenure of up to seven years, renewable. Annual salary of up to $385,000 for senior members. Removal only by order of the governor-general after a vote from both houses of parliament. No compulsory retirement age. The prestige of effectively being a judge sitting atop a multi-pronged legal institution whose annual budget is nine times more than the cost of running the High Court.
Australia’s Consul-General to New York, Alastair Walton, once had big plans for a second Australia-US business forum to take on the heavyweight American Australia Association founded by Keith Murdoch.
It was a plan that hit a snag when Scott Morrison pulled Australia’s in-principle support shortly after becoming Prime Minister.
(Walton, we recall, succeeded Morrison's predecessor Malcolm Turnbull as Goldman Sachs' local boss.)
All that now seems water under the bridge.
Walton hosted one of the most high-powered lunches of Morrison’s trip on Tuesday at the Consul-General’s official residence — a 10-room Manhattan apartment metres from United Nations HQ.
Morrison had the chance to meet some of America’s financial community — from Morgan Stanley chief executive James Gorman to Goldman Sachs executive John F.W. Rogers — at the White House state dinner thrown by President Donald Trump last week.
This time it was a more intimate setting.
At lunch: Kohlberg Kravis Roberts private equity boss Henry Kravis (whose outfit recently snapped up Arnott’s Biscuits for $3.15 billion), Blackstone billionaire Tony James, New York Stock Exchange president Stacey Cunningham and Mastercard chief executive Ajay Banga.
And if Morrison felt he hadn’t spent enough time around Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama there was also a reception with the Pacific states at the UN Plaza before the official reception hosted by Trump at the Lotte New York Palace on Madison Avenue.
