TWO THE FINAL PAGES OF DARK DARK POLICING

THE ECONOMIC QUAGMIRE





The size of the Morrison government's first round of tax cuts has fallen well short of expectations, as workers shun accountants and fail to make deductions, casting doubt on their impact on Australia's sluggish economy.
Ahead of Tuesday's Reserve Bank board meeting at which official interest rates are expected to be cut to a fresh record low of 0.75 per cent, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age can reveal that despite the new low and middle-income tax offset that promised to pump up to $1080 into the pockets of cash-strapped households, there has only been a modest lift in refunds.
Economists, the government and the Reserve Bank had hoped the larger tax offset would give a major financial boost to households that would then flow into the retail sector and the broader economy.

Areport by the parliamentary budget office (PBO) has revealed that the tax cuts legislated by the government overwhelmingly benefit higher income earners. It opens the budget to risks of an economic downturn given a narrowing of the tax base and projections within the budget that are very much based on an optimistic outlook for the economy over the next decade.

One of the best aspects of the minority parliament during Julia Gillard’s prime ministership was the creation of the parliamentary budget office. It provides an independent view of the budget because, unlike the Treasury, it does not report to a government minister; it reports to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the president of the Senate.

The federal government’s response to drought is looking more like the shimmering mirage you get on a hot sunny day across hectares of dust-bowl paddock
Mr Morrison hot-footed it to the parched Darling Downs town of Dalby on Friday immediately on his arrival back in Australia after a triumphant week in the thrall of Mr Trump.
Again “people” – this time the coalition’s core bush constituency – were showing signs of being unimpressed with the expensive shambles masquerading as drought policy.
In Dalby the PM was very keen to answer the social media campaign going viral in the bush asking “Scott Morrison where are you?”
Mr Morrison hot-footed it to the parched Darling Downs town of Dalby on Friday immediately on his arrival back in Australia after a triumphant week in the thrall of Mr Trump.
Again “people” – this time the coalition’s core bush constituency – were showing signs of being unimpressed with the expensive shambles masquerading as drought policy.

https://www.afr.com/companies/agriculture/scott-morrison-discovers-his-own-greta-thunberg-20190929-p52vzw

Scott Morrison discovers his own Greta Thunberg

An 11-year-old is being used to market government protection for farming, which should look after itself.
Aaron Patrick
Senior Correspondent

Oct 2, 2019 — 9.22am
When Prime Minister Scott Morrison arrived in the parched town of Dalby last Friday he was accompanied by the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister for Agriculture, the Minister for Water Resources, and Jack Berne, 11.

The presence of the Sydney student illustrated how the government's response to the NSW and Queensland drought has turned into an episode of A Country Practice - a feel-good fantasy about the capricious forces of rural life.

Berne, who hitched a ride on the Prime Minister's jet from Sydney to outback Queensland, nominally launched the "Fiver for a Farmer" campaign that has raised more than $1 million in drought aid.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, right, Jack Berne and Water Resources Minister David Littleproud at Dalby in Queensland last week. AAP

A star of television and tabloid magazines, he is the drought's Greta Thunberg.

The freckled young man even has his own line of country-style logoed shirts, which the Prime Minister generously modelled on the Dalby detour, which was used to draw attention to a loosening of the Farm Household Allowance scheme that is at the forefront of drought welfare.
Bridget McKenzie, the Minister for Agriculture, has managed to cut the application forms from 15 to 10 pages. She has also made the scheme more financially generous, giving the Prime Minister a useful counterpoint in Dalby's dry earth on Friday to Washington's rich lawns a few days before.
The changes being made and proposed to the allowance, and the use of a grade five student to market state protection for Australia's second-oldest industry, demonstrate the awesome lobbying power of blue skies, barren fields and sandy soil.
On Friday, Morrison said the rules had been relaxed to make it easier for farmers to earn income from non-faming work and still receive the Farm Household Allowance, which provides the equivalent of unemployment benefits for farmers in financial distress.
The new measures add to a decision announced three months ago to permanently set the maximum assets for qualifying farmers at $5 million, instead of $2.5 million. The payment was also made available for four years out of every 10, up from three.
Morrison, with young Berne nearby, framed the changes as a way to sustain farmers until the weather turns. "We want to keep them there because it is going to rain and then there's an opportunity on the other side, like there always is," he said.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison with farmer David Gooding on his drought-affected property near Dalby, Queensland. AAP

In reality, the lifeline will likely retard agricultural production. Poorly run farms that can't survive regular weather patterns should be allowed to go broke and be bought by operators who have the financial and organisational wherewithal to get through drought.

Instead, asset-rich small business owners will be allowed to live off welfare for 40 per cent of their careers.

Farmers already benefit from some of the most generous tax treatment in the economy. The value of their tax-shielded bank accounts rose over the past year by a GDP-busting 4 per cent to $5.8 billion during what some commentators mistakenly claimed was the "worst drought in a century".

If any farming family has $5 million in net assets and can't generate enough cash to cover basic living costs, they should sell up (usually without paying capital gains tax) and invest in the bond market. Vanguard's diversified index bond fund has returned 6.5 per cent over the past 10 years, which is $325,000 a year on $5 million - a sum that goes a long way in country towns.
With the macro-system policies in place, one objective of the goverment's response to the drought is getting more farmers to subsist off the state. Last year, an official review was conducted of the Farm Household Allowance to find out why only 5000 people were receiving it. The review discovered there is a reason farmers don't like applying for welfare: it makes them feel like welfare applicants.
"Many people felt the application process was ‘demoralising’ and ‘dehumanising’ in the requirements to provide third-party documentation to verify all statements," Michele Lawrence, Georgie Somerset and Robert Slonim wrote in their review. "People commented that it made the process feel like an ‘interrogation’ and with ‘no trust’ placed in the applicants."
Men and women living on the land really, really hate the long application forms, which they regard as an imposition on their valuable time. One farmer's accountant complained to the review the paperwork could take him more than five hours, and he wasn't always fully paid for the work.
Not only did the farmers want a separate website for their honour-based applications - imagine if every Australian was granted that level of trust - they asked for answers within two weeks and the program to be excised from social security law.
Turns out farmers who want the dole don't think they should be vetted by the same system used for the unemployed, students and pensioners.
For those who feel proud that a wealthy nation is prepared to help working families struggling under an adversity as old as human settlement, perhaps consider if the response might have been as energetic if the victims of nature were Halal butchers or Chinese shopkeepers.
In a way, the question has already been answered. Everyone except farmers in the agribusiness supply chain and the rural economy is banned from the allowance and most other forms of government protection for agriculture. This reflects the structure of rural politics, where farmers sit at the top of the hierarchy.
Ironically, Jack Berne isn't part of the country culture. "We are not farmers," his mother, Prue Berne, says. "We have no ties to the farming community at all. Which is why this has been an amazing learning experience."
For the rest of the country too.




It might come as a surprise to realise that Australia doesn't actually know how many of its farmers are in drought.

When asked, the Agriculture Department said the Australian Government was not in the business of making drought declarations.

Instead, it said, "its support for farmers is based on preparedness, risk management and support in times of hardship, including drought" irrespective of where they live.

That, as it turns out, is easier said than done, given Australia's drought policy vacuum — perfectly highlighted by last week's drought funding announcement.

Even before the Prime Minister defended his Government for being "too supportive, too generous and too much on the front foot," having announced $1 million for a Victorian shire having its best spring in decades, Scott Morrison's trip to Dalby left many in regional Australia scratching their heads.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack gave the Queensland trip a miss, spending the day in drought-affected parts of his electorate, while National Famers' Federation president Fiona Simson was absent having had little-to-no warning of the announcement.

Before the PM had even arrived in Queensland's Darling Downs, farmer Fiona Aveyard could foresee what would happen.

"They come out, put their boots on, put their Akubras on, there's a script that they continually work off, where they talk about how farmers are incredibly resilient, the drought won't break until it rains and they're there to support us," Ms Aveyard, from Tullamore in NSW's central west, said on Thursday.

Ms Aveyard, a fifth-generation farmer, said her community was grinding to a halt because of the drought.

PHOTO: Farmers are left making tough decisions as the drought grinds on. (ABC Broken Hill: Sara Tomevska)

"We're all just walking around dazed."

For Ms Aveyard, reflecting on the Dalby announcement this week, it had seemed the Government's response was "reactionary" and simply offered more "stopgap measures".

More is needed.

It is as though there is a policy drought, instead of a drought policy.

"When it comes to drought policy, it's just made up on the run at the moment," Victorian Farmers' Federation president David Jochinke said.

"People need to know what is coming, and when," he said referring to what assistance might be available at what stage of the drought.

But like the benefits of existing drought measures — that is incredibly unclear.

S

AND THE REST

Not only did their targets, those who did not agree with the government narrative of the day, have every right to express their views, but their very suppression was poisoning the society as a whole.

The culture was being destroyed by the very people who thought they were transforming it into something better. They might have hoped, if only they had been capable of idealistic impulse, that they were leaving the world a better place, that they were doing good. 

Instead they came out looking like grubs.

Alex had stated the common sense theory frequently in his work: far from achieving societal wide enlightenment, the suppression of debate, the derision of those who did not accept the tertiary acquired theories of tolerance and diversity, who dared to disagree with the government narrative, was leading to a lurch to the right; and straight into the arms of extremist views.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. 

It was a bureaucratic tendency, to quash that which did not fit their narrative, their belief system. But as they worked for their secular enlightenment, executed the theories they had acquired at the knees of their professors, they destroyed the very culture they wished to save; as they worked for the betterment of mankind and instead stirred its darkest forces as the thuggery of groupthink became the norm. 

And in a more mundane sense, as they probed him for a response, there in those long nights, he built his defences. 

They probed him and he resisted. They watched him and he curled into a ball. Hazing only works if the target is vulnerable. He had been very vulnerable. He had clung to old beliefs that humans were essentially good. He had never truly understood, despite all those multiple lives, the base nature of the species in which he had been landed. 

Those who think humans are a nice species simply don’t understand them. 

Crude, barbaric, self-interested, they had no adherence to the truth, that curse, or trait, which had made his own life so difficult.

ONE THE FINAL PAGES OF DARK DARK POLICING

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

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.

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/morrisons-coalition-shunts-australias-wealth-offshore,13155

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.

Soaring Across the Sludge

More money for driver reviver schemes.
Hundreds of millions more into indigenous health programs.
Hundreds of millions more for so-called family violence, to add to the billions consumed by the taxpayer funded industry. Next year, of course, there will be demands for yet further money amidst claims of an epidemic of male violence. 
People go to work to fund multi-billion programs for which there is no evidence they work. 
The Guardian was wall to wall climate change. Even the film reviews seemed to manage to fit in the subject. It suited the government, the promotion of existential fear for which the plebs would have to seek outside help, that is the help of the government.
A problem they could not solve themselves.
Flat Earth News. 
Governments find what they fund for, and fund what they want to find. 
To the tune of billions.
The debilitated state of journalism meant that they got away with it. 
They embraced their own destruction; democracy slipped to totalitarianism just like that. 
In half a dozen short years Anzac Day had gone from a national celebration to a national security threat, from a singing triumph of human courage and selflessness against overwhelming odds to a dark invasion of Muslim lands. 
There was an almost audible sigh of relief from the security agencies when another Anzac Day passed without the much feared massacre. 
A massacre which would rip the veil off all the garbage inflicted upon the country. 
Invite in the world and you invite in the world's problems. The overcrowding, the falling standards of living, the increasing destruction of national identity was only part of it all.
Expanding security agencies. Free speech anachronistic.
The vast costs of surveillance. 
The suspect contracts. Wouldn't you like to blow that little boondoggle apart?
The utter and complete duplicity of our political leaders.
He just wanted out.
Just as did so many others.

THE BIGGER STORY: 




Turkish authorities say they have arrested a suspected Islamic State member believed to have been planning a terror attack on the Anzac Day service at Gallipoli.
A Syrian man was detained in Tekirdag, a northwest province close to the Gallipoli peninsula, a police spokesman said on Wednesday night.
Turkish police say the threat was serious but gave no details of the nature of the proposed attack.
The local Demiroren news agency said the man was believed to have been preparing an attack by bombing or driving into crowds in retaliation for the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand in March.
Turkish security sources told the ABC that the planned attack on Gallipoli was in retaliation for the Christchurch mosque attacks.
The Gallipoli site was evacuated as security forces searched for bombs and other threats.
Turkish nationals were earlier banned from attending the dawn service, which Chief of the Defence Force Angus Campbell is due to attend amid heightened security.
Despite the threat, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs maintained the Gallipoli dawn service would go ahead as planned from 12:30pm (Australian time).

After the gruesome Easter Sunday blasts in Sri Lanka, the plot took a major twist after the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the ghastly attack. In another major turn of horrific events, Fatima Ibrahim, the wife of millionaire-turned-suicide bomber Inshaf Ahmed Ibrahim, blew herself with her unborn baby and three kids after the police raided their residence. Three policemen were also killed in the incident.
Inshaf, 33, along with his brother Ilham Ahmed Ibrahim, 31, were behind the blasts at churches and hotels in the island nation which killed 359 people and injuring many more on April 21.
Fatima detonated the bomb fearing that she might be arrested by the police for her involvement in the terror outfit. She blew herself in the 3 storeyed luxury home at Dematagoda along with her kids.
Inshaf owned a manufacturing plant, Colossus Copper in Colombo, which according to the investigators was used for making the suicide bomb vests used in the attack. On Sunday, nine workers of the factory were arrested along with the manager.
The Sri Lankan defence ministry has stated that the terror attacks were carried out as a retaliation against the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand.

AUSTRALIAN ELECTION: 

 

A phone app used to mobilise voters to support Donald Trump, the Brexit movement in the UK, the anti-abortion campaign in Ireland and the National Rifle Association in the United States is being deployed in Australia's federal election campaign.
Key points:
Users earn points by watching videos, donating and sharing content and political messages with contacts via the app
Right-leaning Australian Taxpayers Alliance says it creates a "safe space" for its supporters
Privacy experts warn users to check what permissions they give apps
The right-leaning Australian Taxpayers Alliance (ATA), which describes itself as a non-partisan grassroots activist group, formally launched its app featuring the "Stop Shorten" slogan this week.

Built by US app developer uCampaign, the platform gamifies political activism — encouraging users to share ATA social media posts and invite friends to earn points.
Near identical versions of the app are also used by the Australian Conservatives and the Australian Christian Lobby, while anti-gay marriage group Marriage Alliance rolled out the tool during the marriage equality plebiscite.

The Victorian electorate of Bendigo is set for a showdown between two rival elements of Australia’s political far-right when Australia votes next month.
Senator Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party candidate for the marginal Labor seat is Julie Hoskin, a former Bendigo councillor who led an unsuccessful legal objection to a mosque all the way to the High Court, where she was refused leave to appeal and later went bankrupt, unable to pay the costs of the case.
Her One Nation opponent will be local businessman Vaughan Williams who is running on a platform of "Australian values, sane immigration policies, protecting farmers" and preventing Australia "heading down a road controlled by a non-elected United Nations and their global policies".

Amid all the argy-bargy of the election campaign the latest inflation growth figures from the bureau of statistics show that the economy is in serious trouble and that both major political parties and the Reserve Bank have got their settings massively wrong.

The government’s major claim of the budget earlier this month was that a surplus would be delivered next financial year. In a indicator of their willingness during the election campaign to play fast with the truth, the Liberal party also decided to treat the future tense as the past and proclaimed that they had delivered a surplus (back in black, don’t ya know!).
There is no demand in the economy pushing up prices, and right now the fiscal policy argument being played out across the election campaign is pretending everything is sweet and dandy.
It is not.

Step Into My Whrilwind

Lake Illawarra, April, 2019.

He heard one of the foreign operatives declare, in an indignant way, as if their authority had been questioned: "I am a species differentiation expert."
As if that explained everything.
"What the ... ", he thought. 
 But there was nothing to be done for it; except to act even more exaggeratedly normal than ever. 
Buried in their quagmire. Buried in their sleaze. 
A new government was coming in, and the operatives were all afraid of fresh oversight. 
But they were protected by incompetence, because the new lot would be just as incompetent as the old. 
Australia's robber barons,  having pillaged the country of billions, were retreating to their castles. 
They were going through the electoral motions, as if to protect some sleight of hand, as if to protect their own normality, to pretend the country was still a democracy. They showed up on the campaign trail. They made their pit stops. Their announcements. Another project here, another project there. A new class of the vulnerable they must in order protect. 
It was all a farce. 
The attack ads had launched on television. The scare campaigns were well underway. 
And at heart: the country had been betrayed. 

Lake Illawarra, April, 2019.

THE BIGGER STORY: 






Islamic State has formally claimed responsibility for the Easter bomb attacks in Sri Lanka that killed 321 people in what officials believe was retaliation for the Christchurch mosques massacre.
IS claimed responsibility Wednesday morning via its Amaq news agency, naming who it said were the seven attackers that carried out the attacks.
IS later released a video showing eight men, seven of whom were masked, pledging allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The footage purported to show an unmasked Mohammed Zahran, also known as Zahran Hashmi, who Sri Lanka says led the Easter attack.
It gave no further evidence to support its claim of responsibility.



Sri Lankan authorities have confirmed one of the suicide bombers responsible for the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks attended an Australian university.

Key points:
One of the suicide bombers completed his post-graduate education in Australia
The death toll from the deadly attacks was revised up to 359 on Wednesday
Investigators say the attacks were retaliation for the Christchurch shootings

Sri Lankan Junior Minister for Defence Ruwan Wijewardene said the bomber completed his post-graduate education in Australia.
It comes after the death toll was revised up to 359 earlier on Wednesday.
"What I can say is this group, some of the suicide bombers, most of them are well educated and come from maybe middle or upper-middle class," Mr Wijewardene said.
"Some of them have studied in various other countries, they hold degrees and they are quite well-educated people.
"We believe that one of the suicide bombers studied in the UK and then maybe later on did his post-graduate in Australia before coming back to settle in Sri Lanka."

THE AUSTRALIAN ELECTION



Australian taxpayers still don’t know who were the beneficiaries of the Cayman Islands–based trust that owns Eastern Australia Agriculture (EAA), which sold $79 million worth of water to the Commonwealth when Barnaby Joyce was water minister and deputy prime minister. Joyce knows, of course, but all he would say in last night’s insufferable interview with RN Drive host Patricia Karvelas was that it was not his remit to find out who was behind the trust, and that he didn’t care if an inquiry was held because he was following a precedent set by “Labor, Labor, Labor, Labor Labor”, who had previously bought water off the same company … As if that’s an adequate answer.

Current energy minister Angus Taylor, who was a director of EAA when it was set up, insists that he is no longer associated with the company and did not benefit from the transaction. The Cayman Islands is a secrecy jurisdiction, as investigative journalist Michael West told Hamish Macdonald on Friday, so how would we know? Labor’s shadow water minister, Tony Burke, has released a list of questions that the prime minister must answer about #Watergate; but after Helloworld, the suspect Adani approval earlier this month, #Reefgate, and the AWU raids in 2017, the real question is: how much more scandal can Australian politics take?

Deception

Lake Illawarra, April, 2019.

The crooks can't even cover their own tracks, so brazen, blatant and corrupt are they. 
More calls for more Royal Commissions, as the government abandons any attempt at governance and pork barrels to their legal mates.
About time there was a Royal Commission into Royal Commissions.
As there most certainly should be for the Banking Royal Commission, which saw bank shares surge $20 billion in what on the face of it is the greatest market manipulation in Australian history.
In other words, the richest people and the most savvy investors, those who spend their days watching stock movements and whose job it is to work the stock exchange, made an absolute fortune on the back of a Royal Commission paid for by the peasants aka the public.
Crooked as. 
But they trundle on, announcing this and announcing that, pretending that they're doing what we're paid to do, representing the interests of the public. Going through the motions. One Big Lie.
An irrigation scheme in Tasmania. A tourist project in Queensland. 
This. That. And all the other bullshit of the day.
Billionaires line up to fund the conservatives and feather their own nests; whether there are enough billionaires to save Scott Morrison and him and his Big End of Town mates to continue ignoring the interests of the population remains to be seen. 
"Do you think this the most corrupt government in Australian history?" he asked, looking down to the screen of trees which hid the lakeside.
They who would not be obeyed simply rolled their eyes. 
Where else was there to go in this feeble time and place? 
Lose all faith in government. That was their edict. Would have to be. 
They roll off their luxury Queen sized mattresses each morning and think: "What can I do today to make Australian governance appear even more farcical than it did yesterday?"

AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS





Barnaby Joyce has conducted a train wreck interview in which he attacked critics of an $80 million water buyback linked to an offshore tax haven as peddling “an absolute load of horse poo”.
There are now calls for a royal commission into the 2017 purchase of the water by the Commonwealth, which critics say should never have occurred because it involved unreliable “overland flows” or floodwater and was overpriced at $80 million.
It also emerged on Monday that the company at the centre of the deal, Eastern Australian Agriculture, donated $55,000 to the Liberal Party before the 2013 election.
At the time of the subsequent sale in 2017, Mr Joyce was the agriculture minister.
Mr Joyce said that the true owners or beneficiaries of the company that sold the water and secured $80 million was “irrelevant”.
“You’re asking if they have water to sell. You are not asking them what clothes they wear or who they are married to,” he said.
“I’ve heard it’s a trust fund in the Cayman Islands. There you go. That’s what the Queensland government should have told me.”
The complete list of owners or beneficiaries of the $80 million deal are unknown.

A private company co-owned by the Liberal Party’s federal treasurer donated $200,000 two weeks into a government tender process for an accommodation contract worth nearly $1 billion that another of his companies ultimately won.

Donations experts said the 2016 gift from Helloworld Travel chief executive Andrew Burnes created a perceived conflict of interest that raised serious concerns about oversight of political fundraising.Mr Burnes' private company - Burnewang Pastoral Company - followed the $200,000 donation by paying $120,000 for tickets to a Liberal dinner held in 2017 when contract negotiations remained under way. The money was treated as an attendance payment rather than a donation.
The businessman and the party say his contributions are unremarkable for a treasurer.
The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald revealed in February that Finance Minister Mathias Cormann had not paid for international travel booked through Mr Burnes’ company. Mr Cormann immediately paid the cost, saying he "genuinely thought" he had already been charged.
On December 1, 2016, the Finance Department released a request for tender for a three-year accommodation package that would serve thousands of government employees travelling for work.

The Australian Prime Minister

Remember those remarkable photos of Scott Morrison at church on Easter Sunday?
They didn’t exactly spark the reaction he was looking for.
Mr Morrison took the unusual step of inviting cameras inside his Pentecostal church in Sydney’s south.
Three rows from the front, with his wife Jenny by his side, Mr Morrison sang and clapped along with the rest of the congregation, which numbered almost 1000.
But the photos sparked a surprising backlash on social media. Some people felt the Prime Minister’s decision to allow cameras inside was inappropriate. Others were clearly uncomfortable with Mr Morrison’s faith.
Then there were those who just thought the photos looked weird.
Yesterday Mr Morrison hit back at the people who had mocked him in an extraordinary spray.



The Australian Prime Minister

“There was another one, another group, who was likening my praise in my own church on the weekend to some sort of Hitler salute,” Mr Morrison said.
“I mean, it’s disgusting. Australians are bigger than that. And I know that the great majority of Australians are bigger than that.
“These grubs are gutless and keyboard warriors in their mother’s basement, trying to make heroes of themselves.”

A Scythe Through the Broiling Dark

Lake Illawarra, April, 2019.

There had been an empath in the area and he had been beyond disturbed, entirely compromised.

A scythe had cut through the emissaries, those who gathered in their clouds when they sensed impending death. Clean out the old spirits. They have no power now. 

Australia was in election mode, but you wouldn't know it, so disengaged the public, so decimated the traditional gathering points. Standards of living were falling. That was a critical mistake. He mouthed platitudes. They all mouthed platitudes. And then it was gone. 

The last remnants of those fantastic trellises had been washed into the depths. A frail belief in participatory democracy had disappeared.   

The overlords were back. 

"What do you think?" he was asked.

"I think we're being sold One Big Lie," he responded. 

As other narratives ran through the cooling air, the changing of the seasons. 

"How good is mining?" the Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared in a fawning speech to the Minerals Council.

The Big End of town. The very big end of town. 

Needless to say there's no such expression in the Shire. Unless perhaps you're one of the top 0.1 per cent staring with delight at your latest dividend cheque.

To quote Crikey: 

According to Scott Morrison, we have a lot to thank the mining sector for.

In a speech at the Minerals Council of Australia dinner at Parliament House last week, the Prime Minister reaffirmed his deep commitment to the industry, and railed against the “noisy, shouty voices” that wanted to shut it down:

"There’s a Shire expression. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about it’s that wonderful southern part of Sydney. We have our own language and if we like something, this is what we say; ‘How good is mining?"

Everything about this terrible election was already a farce. 
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The Easter Sunday bomb blasts at Sri Lankan churches and luxury hotels have killed at least 207 people and injured more than 450.

Key points:
A total of eight sites have been targeted, including Christian churches and luxury hotels
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attacks on a day of violence not seen since Sri Lanka's civil war ended 10 years ago
Sri Lankan Prime Minister declares a curfew with immediate effect, and shuts down social media sites and messaging services.

So far, eight explosions have been reported — three at church services, three at hotels, one outside a zoo south of the capital Colombo, and another on the outskirts of the city.
Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said 13 suspects have been arrested in connection with the attacks.
He said police have a vehicle they suspect was used to transport the suspects into Colombo, and police have also found a safe house used by the attackers.
Three police officers were killed during a security forces raid on a house in the Sri Lankan capital several hours after the rash of attacks, some of which officials said were suicide bombs.

AUSTRALIAN ELECTION COVERAGE:

https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/falling-house-prices-threaten-tax-cuts-or-surplus-as-australia-s-economy-softens-20190414-p51e34.html

Doubts over the election promises made by the Coalition and Labor have been raised with new predictions the Australian economy is softening on the back of falling house prices and stagnant wages.
Ahead of a warning from shadow treasurer Chris Bowen that the Coalition's tax cut plans would drive the budget into the red if the economy weakened, forecasts from Deloitte Access Economics point to budget problems that may curtail expensive vote winners.
The Coalition is promising $290 billion in personal income tax cuts between 2022 and 2029 even after it was forced to write down expected revenue by $15 billion in its recent budget.
Labor, opposed to key elements of the Coalition's tax plans, hopes to raise billions from a string of measures including changes to negative gearing, franking credits and capital gains tax.

Running Hot

Anti-Immigrant Rampage in Germany

We're on the tarmac now.

The aim is to minimise the damage.

How could we have been so stupid?
You know what disturbs me the most about this story?
Just how dishonest they were. How blitheringly, mind bogglingly inept.
Their solution? Shoot the messenger.
I'm glad I found you before they killed you. 
We're back.
We're here to help.
Trust no one.
He's going to have to act like he doesn't know.
But he's not a good actor. The target is an experienced operative. Makes us look like amateurs, what's gone before.
Dark Dark Policing.
Not a nice thing to do to a fellow citizen.
Unbelievable the stuff ups in this case. 
Anyone who dared to speak out was pilloried in that terrible time. 
As his spirit swept across the dark shadows of the suburb he declared loudly: Don't criticise what you don't understand. 
Echoes of Bob Dylan. 
Those who prophecy with their pen. 

Given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all societies eventually will.
Anne Applebaum.

"I keep forgetting to breathe."
"Don't they have air where you come from?"
He shook his head: "No atmosphere."
The man looked at him and thought: "We've got a live one here."
"Humans," he thought in return. "They know so very little."
"An out of body experience," one of the Watchers on the Watch explained.
"Your explanation, not mine," he thought, and left it at that. 

The failing drama of Scott Morrison

Latest Newspoll confirms Morrison on the slide.

Sending the man who, as Prime Minister, was responsible for dropping more than a hundred bombs a month onto the crowded medieval streets of Mosul, thereby killing more Muslims than any Australian in history, as an envoy to the world's most populous Muslim nation was a stroke of sheer genius.

In a government plane. At everybody else's expense but his. 
A generosity for which the suffering public got no thanks whatsoever. Inflicted with more pain. More garbage. More crap. 
Oh yes, and global warming.
All that hot air.
The last thing Malcolm was doing was watching his carbon footprint.
At a time when religious fervour and a return to fundamentalism was sweeping the Muslim world, including much of Indonesia. 
The ineptitude of these people was simply staggering.
Rubbish in rubbish out.
Back in Australia, in the dismal world of local politics, all was falling towards the ledge.
Having learnt absolutely nothing, the big-end-of-town Liberal Coalition were steering towards the cliff.
Electoral Oblivion. Here We Come.
Step by step: the failing world of Australia's latest Prime Minister, Scott Morrison.

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CRIKEY




Scott Morrison is truly the Forrest Gump of Australian politics
Guy Rundle
“Russian multipart novels typically end with a short comic story that recapitulates the entire plot in farcical terms. How lucky we are that Australian politics has taken up that form! A decade on from the election of Kevin 07, our sixth prime minister since John Howard has turned out to be an absolute blithering idiot. ScoMo rounds out the series, not with the mediaeval strangeness of Tony Abbott, the exhausting delusions of Malcolm Turnbull, or Kevin Rudd — last seen as a relentlessly saluting golden cat on the shelf in Richo’s Chinese restaurant — but with plain old-fashioned suburban crapness.”

Scott Morrison hits back following criticism over Malcolm Turnbull's role at Bali conference By political reporter Jackson Gothe-Snape Updated yesterday at 2:46pm PHOTO: Malcolm Turnbull visited Indonesia and met President Joko Widodo in 2017. (Instagram/Malcolm Turnbull) RELATED STORY: Australia to provide funding to help Indonesia create 10 new Balis RELATED STORY: Widodo to talk trade, trust and foreign tensions on Australia trip Prime Minister Scott Morrison has fired back at critics over his decision to send his predecessor — now an ordinary citizen — to represent Australia at an international conference in Bali. Key points: Scott Morrison argues sending his predecessor to a Bali conference is good for the country The move had attracted criticism, including from Barnaby Joyce Malcolm Turnbull is no longer a member of Parliament Mr Morrison said today the Our Ocean conference was important to Indonesia and sending Malcolm Turnbull was appropriate given he was originally invited. "I understand some people out there might be disappointed about that or might be angry about that, others might think it's a terribly good idea," he said today. "Frankly what matters is Australia's national interest and ensuring we're acting in a positive way, managing well our relationships with our neighbours." Former deputy prime minister and now 'special envoy' on the drought response, Barnaby Joyce, described the decision to send Mr Turnbull to the conference as "wild", "remarkable" and "a problem". "There should have been a bit more thought put into this," he told radio station 2GB on Tuesday. "I don't think it was the right move." The Prime Minister said the conference was "very important" to Indonesia and it was appropriate for Mr Turnbull to attend on behalf of the Government. "He's been in a position due to his previous relationship with President Joko Widodo to assist our national interest in attending this event," he told reporters today. He said the decision to send Mr Turnbull was "very warmly received" by Mr Widodo. Mr Morrison cannot attend due to other commitments. (Subsequently his office could not say what those commitments might be.) https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/31/malcolm-turnbull-to-appear-on-qa-in-first-major-interview-since-morrison-became-pm