FIVE FINAL PAGES DDP NOTES

https://thenewdaily.com.au/money/finance-news/2019/10/17/treasurer-and-rba-still-at-war/



There is smoke coming from the economic house – some see sparks and flames.

Fire chief Josh Frydenberg says he can’t smell the smoke and dismisses all reports of fire. He’s refusing to turn on his Treasury hose, even though it’s plugged into the water mains.

So with the IMF joining the chorus warning about our economic health and the public disagreements between the Treasurer and Governor about what needs to be done, how bad has the relationship between the two key arms of economic policy become?

But first the IMF downgrade of our prospects. It is serious, though it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.

And it has been misreported by some media. It might sound pernickety, but the IMF downgraded its Australian 2019 calendar growth forecast from 2.1 per cent six months ago to 1.7 per cent.

That has been compared with the federal budget’s forecast of 2.75 per cent growth for the 2019-20 financial year. It’s not quite the same thing.

You might think forecasting 2019 with only one quarter to go shouldn’t be difficult, but knocking off 0.4 points in six months actually makes the extent of the downturn – the smoke and sparks – more stark.

And it can be compared with the RBA’s calendar year forecasts published in May and August. (The RBA and Treasury public forecasts can differ a little, but not much as they sup from the same joint-forecasting council bowl.)

Five months ago, the RBA growth prediction of 2 per cent for 2019 was within the rounding of the IMF’s 2.1 forecast.

The RBA stuck with 2 per cent just two months ago, but it’s been slapped by the IMF’s 1.7 per cent.

Along with our biggest domestic problem of real take-home wages going backwards, the retail recession and the slowing international economy the IMF is particularly worried about, it all adds to the need for the RBA and federal government to be pulling in the same direction.


https://thenewdaily.com.au/money/work/2019/10/17/unemployment-figures-marginally-attached-australia/

Australia’s jobless rate dipped slightly on Thursday from 5.3 per cent to 5.2 per cent.

That’s around 709,000 people officially unemployed in Australia.

While any reduction in unemployment is generally to be welcomed, one economist reckons there’s little to cheer about, arguing that the 709,000 figure is a myth, and that our true number of unemployed is more like a staggering 2.9 million people.

And that is down largely to a shadowy, little-known group called the “marginally attached” which comprises around 1.055 million Australians.

The marginally attached is a group that is counted among neither the unemployed nor the underemployed.

They are people who would like to work, and are available to work, but aren’t looking, mainly because they think there are no jobs for them.

Dr Stanford said if you count the marginally attached, our unemployment rate would be a touch under 12 per cent – not the 5.2 per cent commonly used.

He also argues that if you include the “underemployed” – people working some hours, but who would like to work more – the unemployment rate tops 19.7 per cent, based on the September numbers of underemployed of 1.139 million people.

Dr Stanford said combining the marginally attached and underemployed with the officially unemployed provided a truer picture of the jobs market.

“This says to me that one in five potential workers in Australia, or about 20 per cent, are people who want to work, want to work more, aren’t working at all, or working less than they want to,” Dr Stanford said.

“The reality is there’s an enormous pile of people who could work and contribute enormously to our economic performance, but are sitting on the sidelines.”

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-18/household-debt-leaves-australians-working-longer-spending-less/11608016

Australians have the world's second largest household debts. We know it, we worry about it, and there is increasing evidence it is changing our way of life.

Hovering around 120 per cent of GDP — that is everything the nation produces in a year — Australia's household debt is second only to Switzerland, and we're not too far behind the Swiss.

It wasn't always like this, with that debt burden almost trebling in the 28 years since Australia's last recession in the early 1990s.

And it seems Australians have noticed the change.

Ninety per cent of the nearly 55,000 respondents to the ABC's Australia Talks National Survey rated household debt as a problem for the nation.

On an individual level, 37 per cent are struggling to pay off their own debts, with almost half of millennials reporting that debt is a problem for them personally.

http://www.freespeech-time.com/2019/09/watch-australian-imam-rages-against.html?fbclid=IwAR3Ao_jK1hIIFoCaJt5Lfw1yQJ6Lvcr4CDggXKoajyaaCDwE-4uGvILmi8w

Watch: Muslim preacher tells worshippers at a Sydney mosque that ANYONE who celebrates Christmas will go to hell for eternity – saying it's a crime against Islam that is worse than sin.
As you can see in the video below he literally complaining about integration into Western society.
Imam who follows a seventh-century version of Sunni Islam, used the Arabic term for polytheism, shirk, to describe the idea of acknowledging Christianity.
He said doing this would see someone go to hell, using another Arabic term to highlight how he regarded this as the most serious of crimes against Islam.
'Shirk is much worse than committing a sin. A person believes in Christmas, he goes to Jahannam for eternity,' he said in February.

Loading...

The preacher told Muslims at an Auburn mosque that acknowledging Christmas was even worse than drinking alcohol, which is prohibited in Islam, and having illicit relation, known as zina.
'For you to celebrate Christmas is worse than for you to drink alcohol and commit zina,' he said.
Sheikh Feiz Muhammad, a senior leader of the ASWJ in Australia, has previously told Muslims it was sinful to observe non-Muslim events, such as the Easter Show in Sydney.
'Is it part of the sharia? Are we allowed to entertain ourselves with celebrations that are built on non-Muslim concepts?,' he said.
'If you go on the belief, 'I just want to join in and have the fun, you know, just have a night out, and enjoy myself but I don't believe in all this nonsense', that's a major sin.

Loading...

Amy Mek@AmyMek

Sharia Australia - Leftist Media is Celebrating

"Celebrating Christmas is Sure Path to Hell…"

IMAM tells worshippers at a Sydney mosque ANYONE who celebrates Christmas will go to hell for eternity – saying it's worse than drinking or premarital sexhttps://www.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6510709/Hardline-Sydney-Muslim-declares-celebrating-Christmas-hell-eternity.html …

1,726

5:23 - 20 בדצמ׳ 2018

מידע ופרטיות בנוגע למודעות טוויטר

3,490 אנשים מדברים על זה

FOUR FINAL PAGES DARK DARK POLICING

BOOKS & ARTS

Eighty-two counterterrorism laws, and counting


REBECCA ANANIAN-WELSH


9 OCTOBER 2019


Books | Veteran journalist Brian Toohey probes the network of laws and agencies that’s expanded rapidly in the name of national security



Chilling effect: acting Australian Federal Police commissioner Neil Gaughan speaking to the media after the raids on journalists in June this year. Lukas Coch/AAP Image

SHARE



Secret: The Making of Australia’s Security State
By Brian Toohey | Melbourne University Press | $39.99 | 277 pages

“Does Mr Toohey on his own now represent some kind of threat to national security?” When this question was put to prime minister Bob Hawke in May 1983, it hinted at the battle raging between Brian Toohey, one of Australia’s most formidable national security reporters, and the government. That battle would play out in the courts, in the pages of the National Times, in ASIO’s decision to bug Toohey’s family home, and in the journalist’s books.

The question “does journalism pose a threat to national security?” (and, for that matter, does Brian Toohey?) has fresh significance in 2019. The tally of federal laws enacted under the banner of counterterrorism has hit eighty-two, many of them granting expansive covert powers to government agencies and criminalising the communication and even handling of government secrets. Exposés of alleged war crimes by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan and potential new surveillance powers for the Australian Signals Directorate resulted in June raids on the ABC’s headquarters and the home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst. Prosecutions of whistleblowers are under way and the government hasn’t ruled out charging Smethurst and others with receiving, let alone communicating, leaked government documents.

Meanwhile, we await the outcome of two parliamentary inquiries into the impact of national security laws on press freedom. Before those inquiries commenced, government representatives emphasised that the uniquely broad laws under scrutiny were both necessary and appropriate, and that journalists can’t be trusted to assess the risks to national security associated with seemingly innocuous classified information.

Secret is a well-timed counterpunch for openness, accountability and public interest journalism. The stories that unfold in its sixty short chapters are anything but innocuous, lifting the lid on professional misconduct, personal vices, intelligence bungles, and more.

Drawing on almost fifty years of interviews, leaks and archival research, Toohey delivers a grippingly detailed account of the uses and abuses of secrecy by government agencies. He demonstrates the importance of not assuming that everything is hunky-dory behind the veil of secrecy, and highlights the very real risks associated with failing to question covert intelligence and its practitioners. One result is a disturbing picture of Australia’s imbalanced relationship with the United States, which — far from protecting our national interests — has undermined our independence, drawn us into unnecessary conflicts and cost countless lives.

Toohey writes about Pine Gap and nuclear testing and calls out the government’s ingrained and reflexive fear of Asia. He is persuasively scathing about our spy agencies and laments their unwarranted faith in intelligence information. Indeed, one of the simplest but most powerful messages in Secret is that classified information is often wrong and, moreover, may be politically driven. Take, as obvious examples, the US administration’s assertion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or claims that “yellow rain” in Laos and Cambodia was caused by communist regimes’ use of chemical weapons. (The real culprit? Bee pollen.)

Toohey demonstrates the fundamental importance of well-researched public interest journalism in the national security field. Leaks and confidential sources are the bread and butter of Toohey’s trade and it is the coupling of this first-hand information with comprehensive archival research that sets Secret apart. But could this be a dying art?

Last year, the government expanded its secrecy offences so that current or former Commonwealth officers communicating information obtained by virtue of their position — information judged likely to harm Australia’s interests — now face imprisonment for seven years. If the information is security classified or the person held a security classification, then an “aggravated offence” provides for ten years’ imprisonment.

It is also an offence for anyone to communicate information obtained from a Commonwealth public servant that is classified or that damages national security. If prosecuted, a journalist could try to mount a “news reporting defence” by proving that he or she dealt with the information as a journalist and reasonably believed the communication to be in the public interest — a provision that encompasses, of course, national security and the integrity of government information as well as democratic accountability.

These laws have compounded the chilling effect on public interest journalism that was already evident, particularly in the national security sphere. New laws introduced in 2014, for instance, imposed a jail term of five to ten years on, as Toohey describes it, “anyone who revealed anything about what ASIO designates a Special Intelligence Operation.” Despite the fact that “numerous official inquiries and media reports in Australia and overseas have shown that highly secretive bodies will abuse their powers in the absence of strong checks and balances,” writes Toohey, the laws empower intelligence agents to commit criminal acts short of serious violent offences. But, as he astutely observes, “the prohibition on revealing almost anything about these operations still covers murder and other crimes, as well as endemic incompetence or dangerous bungling.”

These few examples demonstrate the great lengths to which successive federal governments have gone to ensure secrecy at the expense of the accountability mechanisms that, not so long ago, were taken for granted. As the only liberal democracy lacking a national bill or charter of human rights, our rights to privacy, free speech, a fair trial and humane treatment are at particular risk. This is what makes Toohey’s story of an ever-expanding, ever-more-secretive security state so disturbing. While the complex network of eighty-two laws (and counting) overwhelmingly operates to expand government power, protections against misconduct and overreach tend to be internally focused, inadequate or simply absent.

Agencies can gain access to retained metadata without a warrant. Gag laws are built into preventative detention orders and a range of ASIO powers. Dual citizens can “automatically” lose their Australian citizenship (a provision recently eviscerated by the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor as unnecessary, unjustified and counterproductive to intelligence efforts). Secrecy offences could criminalise even passive receipt of national security information. Twenty-seven new espionage offences are based on a definition of national security that encompasses all of Australia’s political and economic relations. Workers across the telecommunications industry can be forcibly and covertly co-opted to install spyware and decryption capacities on our devices. ASIO can secretly and forcibly interrogate and detain individuals without charge, and it is a criminal offence for the person being interrogated to tell anyone anything about it. The list goes on.

If, as the New York Times claimed, “Australia may well be the world’s most secretive democracy,” does that also make us the safest? Is Brian Toohey’s book the real threat to national security, based as it is on leaked information, government informants, and assertions that our close relationship with the United States is misguided and potentially dangerous?

It’s hard to believe the answer could be yes. In Toohey’s words, “Australian media reporting has never resulted in the death of an intelligence operative or undercover police officer — far more people have been wrongly killed as a result of intelligence operations being kept secret. Based on erroneous intelligence, drones and special forces repeatedly kill people, including children, around the globe.”

If nothing else, Secret demonstrates the power of national security journalism, reminds us of our democratic responsibility to hold the government to account, and should prompt us to seek more information when presented with claims of secrecy in the name of national security. •

THREE THE FINAL PAGES OF DARK DARK POLICING

It was as if the glue of everything had come unstuck.

Global defence contractors are among the largest beneficiaries of Australian government spending. All the big names of military hardware operate here: from Boeing and Raytheon to Lockheed Martin and BAE. Do they donate to political parties? Do they pay much tax in return for billions in taxpayer contracts, contracts which are rarely subject to public scrutiny? Eliot Barham and Michael West crunch the major numbers and take a look at the biggest of them all, BAE Systems.

British multinational defence contractor, BAE Systems, has just won an eye-watering $35 billion contract to build a fleet of nine frigates for the Royal Australian Navy. The money in defence is huge but analysis of where that money goes shows foreign taxpayers are often the beneficiaries.

We discovered a host of contracts struck by the Australian government directly with foreign companies, meaning hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes are being lost offshore because the government has failed to insist that defence contracts be struck with the local subsidiaries of multinational weapons manufacturers.

Further, we found Australian taxpayer money being used to finance BAE’s operations in the UK.

The money in defence is huge. Since 2016, BAE has won more than $5 billion dollars in government work. According to the Tax Office transparency data, the British contractor recorded total income of $4 billion over the three years to 2016 but paid zero tax.

Data analysed by michaelwest.com.au found that in 2015 BAE won $563 million in government work. This increased to $960 million in the following year and, in 2017, BAE was rewarded with more than $1.5 billion in government contracts.

Our analysis of the top players in the defence sector showed a number of patterns:

• All the major beneficiaries are foreign multinationals
• They won more than $22 billion in contracts over the three years analysed since 2016
• Disclosed donations to political parties (AEC data) were remarkably small.
• Income tax paid, at $335 million (ATO data) was also remarkably small.
• A host of contracts are struck directly offshore.

https://www.michaelwest.com.au/housing-crisis-confirms-australias-economy-tanking-alone-in-the-developed-world/

The latest figures on new homes reinforce other data showing Australia currently making close to the worst economic progress in the Western world. It doesn’t help that the Coalition has virtually abandoned public housing, reports Alan Austin.

Permits for new dwellings in the financial year ended in June came to a total of 188,250. That sounds quite a lot. But it was 44,726 fewer than the year before, and a thumping 50,406 fewer than three years ago. It was also fewer than in 1988-89 during Paul Keating’s reconstruction of Australia’s economy.

The percentage decline in the last year over the year before was 19.2%, the worst annual decline since 2000-01 at the depths of the early 2000s global recession.

Private sector houses declined 9.7% in the year ended in June from the previous year. The number – just 110,015 – was the lowest since 2012-13, towards the end of the global financial crisis (GFC). Private sector dwellings other than houses dropped a staggering 29.9% last year from the year before. That is the worst decline in 23 years.

Public sector dwellings, including both types, declined 17.9% year on year. The number – a puny 2,416 – was the lowest on record by far. The second lowest was 2,722 in 2011-13, and the third lowest 2,779 in 2016-17, when Scott Morrison was Treasurer.

This confirms the Coalition has virtually abandoned public housing, a high priority – and a strategic economic stimulus measure – of most previous governments.

The average number of public housing dwellings built annually by the Keating Government was 8,514. Through the Howard years, this dropped to 4,346. The Rudd and Gillard period, most of which was impacted by the GFC, averaged 6,402.

In stark contrast to these, the average under the Coalition – during an unprecedented global building boom – is just 3,060.

Here comes the scary part. We now have ABS housing permit numbers for July and August, which indicate how things are travelling in the new financial year.

Total dwellings approved in those two months are just 25,782, a dramatic drop of 25.1% on the number for the same two months last year. That’s the lowest for July and August in seven years. It is the lowest relative to population on record. So there is no sign of any turnaround, despite the benign conditions.

CRIKEY: 

CHAPTER ONE:

Chinese spying on dissidents in Australia reaches new levels

 UNDER SURVEILLANCE

SUZANNE SMITH

OCT 08, 2019

The Chinese government is not only spying on Chinese nationals in Australia, but on Australians themselves. Inq hears first-hand from those who believe they are being watched.

CHAPTER TWO :

China’s enemies of the state in Australia

 UNDER SURVEILLANCE

SUZANNE SMITH

OCT 09, 2019

China's surveillance operations in Australia have spiked dramatically in recent years. Inq speaks to one dissident who spent a week being interrogated in a Chinese hotel room and says there is a network of informants operating on Australian soil.

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.