Les Affaires posted:

It's good to see Lazarus taking a stand, though I didn't think they allowed props in parliament.

BCR posted:

Short answer is you need to lawyer up, and the cheapest and best way to do that is through the relevant union. Because it's very likely you'll get hosed around and its great to hand it off to someone else and take that stress away.

Call 1300 362 223 (9am-6pm Mon to Thu 9am-4:30pm Fri) and they'll hold your hand and point you in the right direction. Its the ACTUs worker helpline.

No harm calling fairwork either, 13 13 94

Longer answer

1) Are you casual, permanent part time or permanent or on contract? Do you get sick leave and annual leave?
2) Are you getting superannuation?
3) Are you Diebold, NCR or ? You don't have to tell me but take down your companys name, ABN, your office details like payrolls or HRs phone number.
4) Get all your paperwork together. Pay stubs, contracts, etc. You'll need them.
5) You may or may not want to check with ATO that you're squared away with them.
6) How many hours in a day do you work? Do you do shift work?

Will think some more and look up your award. Punchline is you're going to need to make some phone calls, get all your paperwork together and get legal support.

quote:

Being governed by fools is not funny


A bit like the old story of the frog that gets boiled alive because the temperature of the water in which it sits rises only gradually, we don't seem to quite be able to take in the growing realisation that we actually are being governed by idiots and fools, or that this actually has real-world consequences.

We finish the week with a Prime Minister who has lost his bundle and is making policy and political calls that go beyond reckless in an increasingly panicked and desperate attempt to save himself; a government that has not just utterly lost its way but its authority; and important policy debates left either as smouldering wrecks or unprosecuted.

At issue is not just whether Tony Abbott loses his leadership, or whether the budget bottom line deteriorates even further, but signs that our political system really is in deep trouble – not as a polemic point, but in a very real sense.

"Idiot" is the word that comes most often in Labor's focus groups when voters are asked about the Prime Minister. And lest you're thinking this is just what Labor would spin isn't it, we had a confirmation this week from focus group polling conducted for Fairfax by one of Australia's most respected focus group pollsters, Visibility's Tony Mitchelmore, with the small caveat being that these voters didn't describe Tony Abbott as an idiot but a fool.

The evolving shape of the budget since the release of the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook
The evolving shape of the budget since the release of the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook Angelo Vlachoulis
Voters in Western Sydney – selected because they had switched their vote from Labor to Liberal at the 2011 NSW election – described the Prime Minister as "incompetent, an international embarrassment and a fool".

These perceptions are not just a problem for Tony Abbott and his future, but for the broader Coalition, given that the government's conduct in the last couple of weeks can only leave voters with the idea that the idiocy stretches well beyond the Prime Minister's office.

DEEP DEPRESSION

A deeply depressed Treasurer has had his fate tied irrevocably to his Prime Minister. The best the minister for education and training has been able to do, is make himself a figure of ironic hilarity as "the fixer" of higher education as he has presided over a complete policy debacle in the Senate, which has sent the debate about both university funding and structural form back to Year Zero.

It's not just that voters don't like Tony Abbott any more, or are angry about broken promises, they see the government as incapable of doing its job competently.

This is a particularly devastating assessment for a conservative government. The phrase the Coalition used before the last election was that voters needed to put "the adults back in charge".

Yet the Liberal Party of Tony Abbott is not a natural party of government. In fact we no longer know what it is.

The process of formulating the 2015 budget is in disarray with central planks of the 2014 budget abandoned and the government making haphazard decisions to spend money on the run.

It is over a month since The Australian Financial Review reported that the government had ­abandoned the search for big May budget savings, would not meet its ­forecast 2018 return to surplus and was privately acknowledging collapsing revenue meant it was highly unlikely to offer tax cuts at the next ­federal ­election.

This raised barely a murmur at the time, trapped as we were in the drama of leadership manoeuvrings.

PROMISE OF 'DULL' BUDGET

But it has only got worse since, with the Prime Minister now promising a "dull" budget and expressing contentment with forecasts of a net debt equivalent to 60 per cent of the economy and no surplus for 40 years. Whatever happened to the budget emergency?

Surveying the disaster of the higher education reforms, some in the government argued this week that, despite the setbacks, it had made considerable headway in improving the budget bottom line.

Well actually no it hasn't. The accompanying table shows the evolving shape of the budget since the release of the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook, prepared by the secretaries of the departments of Treasury and Finance, in 2013, and every updated estimate of the bottom line since then.

The bottom line for the current budget year has deteriorated from a forecast deficit of just $24 billion to a deficit of $40.4 billion.

While there were no figures available in PEFO for 2017-18, the deterioration in the bottom line over four years from PEFO to the last mid-year review of the budget was at least $75 billion.

Even if you start the comparisons at the 2013 mid-year review of the budget (which the government said drew a line under Labor's policies but also loaded the budget with decisions like the one to give almost $9 billion to the Reserve Bank), the direction of the bottom line is into the red, and the combined deterioration over four years is about $30 billion.

Yes, some of this can be attributed to revenue writedowns (reflecting slumping commodity prices and a weaker economy). But the deterioration in the budget bottom line is even greater.

BUDGET NEWS NOT GOOD

We know there is a further deterioration in revenue coming in the looming budget. And of course, none of these figures include the humiliating backdowns and defeats on the Medicare copayment and higher education which amount to more than $8 billion over four years.

Much of the budget debate has been about what happens beyond the next four years. And these numbers are even less pretty.

What about Labor and the crossbenches, you ask. They too have some culpability.

But the government's utter failure to prosecute either the policy arguments or political strategies to get voters to countenance its signature policies, is a responsibility that rests squarely with the government of the day.

Under siege, Tony Abbott has retreated further and further into attempts to hold onto a very hard right base. Doing so, he has left the centre ground completely vacant for Labor – and for Malcolm Turnbull – to redefine a new constituency.

There is an immense opportunity for the Opposition, yet angst about how best to proceed. The collapse of the government's raison d'etre requires a response which is more than just the release of individual policies. It opens the ground for an entirely new policy platform. The best launchpoints for this are the Opposition Leader's speech in reply to the budget and the ALP Conference in June.

Yet they are an agonisingly long way away in such dramatic times.

No wonder Labor MPs would nervously ask this week if the government was really considering an early double dissolution election.

Such an option would appear utter madness to most observers. The only rational explanation for why the PM has been raising it is as a way of trying to restore some discipline to his ranks. Unfortunately, many of them now share the view of voters about their leader.

Laura Tingle is the politial editor for the Australian Financial Review.

quote:

About 11.20am on Thursday, Mr Price allegedly sexually attacked a woman on Harvester Road in Sunshine, just minutes before going to the police station.

Murodese posted:

Because the victim was female and he wasn't a Muslim

Mattjpwns posted:

yes, yes, that's all well and good but have we asked what role personal responsibility plays in this and what she could have done to lessen the chances of her bei...

brb washing taste of bile out of my mouth knowing that this probably got said completely unironically in the comments threads of articles reporting on this.

edit: oh wait, Victorian Homicide Squad leader talking about a separate incident pretty much says this, holyfuckingchristonabikewithoutahelmet.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/parks-not-safe-for-women-says-homicide-squad-boss-20150319-1m2rgc.html

quote:

The same detectives who had scoured Mr Price's flat had earlier that day been asking Abbotsford businesses if they had CCTV footage of the suspect.
...
Abbotsford Tools had two cameras that police wanted to check, but, as the manager told Fairfax Media, she turned them off when she closed the small shop at 5.30pm each day.

Murodese posted:

Because the victim was female and he wasn't a Muslim

Fruity Gordo posted:

Except fat women I guess, no one would want to rape A FATTY

Feeeeeeeeeeeeeemaaaaales

ScreamingLlama posted:

Avshalom posted:

Reminder for people who don't read the good thread: I got backed up against a wall and threatened with rape and murder and then pissed on in a crowded bus stop, beside a busy road, next to a shopping centre, in the middle of the day, while stone-cold sober and wearing jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt and no make-up, and I wasn't even wearing earphones or playing with my phone or doing anything sinful like that; and also there were at least half a dozen grown men within three metres and not one of them did anything to get the guy away from me.

hiddenmovement posted:

To be fair, often times when awful poo poo like that was happening near me I just sort of assumed the two people knew each other and didn't find out it was an assault until later.

CrazyTolradi posted:

.......you're kidding, right?

Zetsubou-san posted:

quote:

The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases in which individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present. The probability of help is inversely related to the number of bystanders. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help. Several variables help to explain why the bystander effect occurs. These variables include: ambiguity, cohesiveness and diffusion of responsibility.

hiddenmovement posted:

No? You go outside in public places, right?

You see two people talking in the corner of the bus stop. People don't usually have a conversation unless they know each other. Most people ignore these conversations and don't eavesdrop in, because hey hey it's probably none of your business. The fact that something horrible is going on can very very easily pass under the radar.

Or are you the sort of person that creepily leans into every little chat in the hopes that you will get to throw the superhero cape on?

thatbastardken posted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

CrazyTolradi posted:

Mate, I don't know about you, but I don't think it's normal for people to piss on each other in public.

CrazyTolradi posted:

Mate, I don't know about you, but I don't think it's normal for people to piss on each other in public.

hiddenmovement posted:

I very much doubt I would have even noticed unless a ruckus was made. People don't pay attention to each other at places like that.

Murodese posted:

Dude, you're from Brisbane. I'm pretty sure that's just an average Saturday night.

e; to clarify, I was talking to Tolradi

Murodese posted:

Dude, you're from Brisbane. I'm pretty sure that's just an average Saturday night.

e; to clarify, I was talking to Tolradi

Anidav posted:

Brisbane is a good city friend.