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May 23, 2024 08:21
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- Magog
- Jan 9, 2010
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http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/politicians-should-be-psychologically-assessed-says-hr-expert-20150621-ghtsji.html
I'm not going to take advice on the political process from HR.
But then there was this:
quote:"People think being a Rhodes scholar means you can't be a fool, but the two are not mutually exclusive. You can be a Rhodes scholar and still have a personality totally unsuited to being a leader or decision maker." 
Edit: Old article is old.
How about this instead: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2016/04/23/human-rights-commission-president-gillian-triggs-speaks-out/14613336003160
quote:GT: A shocking phenomenon is Australians don’t even understand their own democratic system. They are quite content to have parliament be complicit with passing legislation to strengthen the powers of the executive and to exclude the courts. They have no idea of the separation of powers and the excessive overreach of executive government.
RK: Sisyphus comes to mind.
GT: Well, it’s quite true. One can be astonished at the very simplistic level at which I need to speak. Our parliamentarians are usually seriously ill-informed and uneducated. All they know is the world of Canberra and politics and they’ve lost any sense of a rule of law, and curiously enough for Canberra they don’t even understand what democracy is. Not an easy argument to make, as you can imagine: me telling a parliamentarian they need to be better educated. [laughs] But it’s true.
RK: Have you done that?
GT: Oh, I have. And I have to say that some parliamentarians, and surprising ones, a Nationals MP, says “Come and give us a seminar.” Another one asked me to come up and work in parliament with the members of a particular committee that she was on. Terrific! But they listened to me and do you know, the response of some of them was, “Well, we had no idea Australia had signed up to these treaties. We should withdraw from them!” So backward steps! You still hear people say we must withdraw from the Refugee Convention or we must withdraw from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Magog fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Apr 23, 2016
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Apr 23, 2016 02:57
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- WhiskeyWhiskers
- Oct 14, 2013
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"هذا ليس عادلاً."
"هذا ليس عادلاً على الإطلاق."
"كان هناك وقت الآن."
(السياق الخفي: للقراءة)
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quote:When Gillian Triggs began her five-year term as president of the Australian Human Rights Commission in 2012 she aimed to bring our domestic laws into line with our international treaty obligations. Now, after the government’s attempts to trash her reputation and to ignore most of the 16 recommendations in The Forgotten Children report, she’s just back from Geneva where the United Nations review of our human rights record found we’d regressed. Australia, the review found, continues to be in breach of its human rights obligations.
Ramona Koval Did you think it was going to be this hard when you started at the commission?
Gillian Triggs [laughs] No! I had absolutely no idea. I rather naively thought if you’d been dean of a law faculty you could manage anything. I was unprepared for dealing with senior political figures with no education whatsoever about international law and about Australia’s remarkable historical record which they are now diminishing. We’ve got senior public servants who will roll their eyes at the idea of a human right. They say, “Look, Gillian, you’re beating a dead horse.” It’s not going to work, because they can’t talk to the minister in terms of human rights. We’ve had, in my view, very poor leadership on this issue for the past 10 to 15 years, from the “children overboard” lie. They’ve been prepared to misstate the facts and conflate asylum-seeker issues with global terrorism. What I’m saying applies equally to Labor and Liberal and National parties. They’ve used this in bad faith to promote their own political opportunistic positions.
RK When you delivered The Forgotten Children report you said your investigations proved to be “life-changing”. What did you mean? GT Talking to young men, old women and children on Christmas Island for the third time and they’re saying to me, “You’ve been here three times and what have you done? You’ve achieved nothing for us.” There were children in the dirt with chickens at our feet, the children waiting to use my pens and pencils because they had nothing to write with. Seeing women in their cabins who are starving themselves to death because they want to die, vomiting in front of me and I’m helping to clean them up and the guard turns away and says, “Nothing to do with me; it’s not my job.” And I said, “Get a doctor!” I’ve lived in a fairly lofty world of international law … Then you realise that you must learn how to translate these broad principles of law into action at a practical level.
RK What can you say to those men and women?
GT I say I have very limited powers and I’m doing everything I can but I find myself saying pompous things like, “Please don’t break the rules here in the camp. If you do they declare you noncompliant and you end up staying longer or they are spiteful to you. Please be patient.” You can hear I’m not saying anything very comforting. The government has used the word unlawful [in relation to asylum seekers] and George Orwell understood the power of language very well. In the department you have a minister saying, “You will call these people ‘illegals’.” It’s shocking that Australia would come to that depth of abuse of power. RK You’ve said, “When I was younger I thought one could build on the past. But I have learned that we need to be eternally vigilant in ensuring human rights in a modern democracy.” Is that a sense of an idea of conservatism, building on the past, not letting go of good things that have been achieved? And feeling that confidence in that idea has been shaken?
GT A shocking phenomenon is Australians don’t even understand their own democratic system. They are quite content to have parliament be complicit with passing legislation to strengthen the powers of the executive and to exclude the courts. They have no idea of the separation of powers and the excessive overreach of executive government.
RK Sisyphus comes to mind.
GT Well, it’s quite true. One can be astonished at the very simplistic level at which I need to speak. Our parliamentarians are usually seriously ill-informed and uneducated. All they know is the world of Canberra and politics and they’ve lost any sense of a rule of law, and curiously enough for Canberra they don’t even understand what democracy is. Not an easy argument to make, as you can imagine: me telling a parliamentarian they need to be better educated. [laughs] But it’s true.
RK Have you done that?
GT Oh, I have. And I have to say that some parliamentarians, and surprising ones, a Nationals MP, says “Come and give us a seminar.” Another one asked me to come up and work in parliament with the members of a particular committee that she was on. Terrific! But they listened to me and do you know, the response of some of them was, “Well, we had no idea Australia had signed up to these treaties. We should withdraw from them!” So backward steps! You still hear people say we must withdraw from the Refugee Convention or we must withdraw from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
RK The treatment of you and your officers at last year’s senate legal and constitutional affairs legislation committee was quite shocking. You stood up to it with grace. Were you expecting it?
GT I expected questions on legal and constitutional analysis and on how we spend public monies. I have never had a question on that ever. I was completely unprepared for the attack at a personal level.
RK What were you thinking as the nine hours unfolded?
GT I was thinking, “I must stay calm, I must keep my answers measured, moderate and evidence-based, I mustn’t be rattled by them and I mustn’t react with the same lack of courtesy that they show to me.” The reality was that they could suffer no harm from this, whereas if I gave the wrong answers, I could lose my case and I just had to keep control of myself. I knew we had the law right and the facts right. I knew that anger was under the surface. I knew I could have responded and destroyed them – I could have said, “You’ve asked me a question that demonstrated you have not read our statute. How dare you question what I do?” And the chair [Queensland senator Ian Macdonald] said, “I haven’t read The Forgotten Children’s report because I’m far too busy.” How dare you do that when you are an elected parliamentarian and you are expected and required to read my reports.
RK I was astonished listening to him – how could the chair of the committee say he hadn’t read the report with such pride?
GT I know. So I could have reacted very angrily to that and I am quite articulate and I can be very strong if I need to be: I could have used those skills, but I determinedly did not. It’s an environment in which I must be respectful, so frankly I thought as a lawyer I’d lose my case if I did [react angrily]. There was a point when I thought, “I’ve had 50 years as a reasonably respectable and quite conservative lawyer, how on earth do I find myself in this situation?” [laughs] But in the end I just had to get through the moment. But there were some lovely little side things, like the public servants behind the scenes, coming around with bowls of Jelly Snakes and Jelly Babies and mini Mars bars. Because we’d had nothing to eat, and they wouldn’t get us any food. The senators and members of the committee were all going off and having lunch. We’d had no breakfast, no morning tea and no lunch and I thought I’d faint, but these wonderful people were coming in and we were grabbing the food and eating it and they were saying [sotto voce], “You do realise that we are not responsible for this, don’t you?”, because some might think the secretariat had fed them these questions.
RK But it was all the senators’ own work?
GT With the attorney-general sitting next to me and encouraging it. And he was writing the questions which would be taken by his staff up to one of the senators, so feeding them the questions – an extraordinary experience. People were hugely supportive afterwards. Flowers were coming in. Each one brought a cheer from the staff and eventually it was so full that I couldn’t get in the room anymore. It was almost as though I had died the week before, and I’m thinking I must have missed something because I’m still standing here.
RK Bullying in such a public forum made me think of the experience people have behind closed doors, especially in immigration detention, for example – such hubris to have this occur in a broadcast to the nation without any thought of what it might imply.
GT Yes, hubris, quite right – did they ever say, “What if people see me behave like this? What will this mean about Australia’s democracy?” And the other point is if they can bully the president of the Human Rights Commission when she is on very firm grounds in law and evidence, what are they doing in these detention camps with these concepts of “noncompliance”? What on earth does this mean? And the spitefulness of some of it – making women stand in the heat for sanitary materials, or they are given three nappies a day and the child has used more than that and they have to stand again for more nappies.
RK The extent of the hostility and the personal nature of the attacks must have shocked you.
GT To use those terrible words that the prime minister and especially the attorney-general used: “We have no confidence in Gillian Triggs.” The words reverberated around my head for a very long time. It was a very cruel and unjustified comment and the attempt to get me to resign for another position was a disgraceful thing to do, but it was exposed by the questions in senate. I could have had other options, the possibility of criminal prosecutions of the attorney.
RK I wondered why you decided against pursuing that avenue?
GT The AFP did consider it. They dealt with it extremely professionally. They were courteous but I made the decision that the greatest recognition of this wrongdoing was in the senate itself, when the senate censured the attorney for the first time in about 80 years and I felt that this issue was much more political than it was legal. I also wanted to move on, and I think that this underlies a lot of cases that don’t proceed.
RK Senator Brandis told a journalist a year or so into your appointment that: “My sense is that she’s more conservative than her predecessor and therefore more open to cultural change at the commission.” Was it a message to you?
GT Oh, it was a deliberate message. I’m a lawyer and lawyers tend to be conservative. I really love the law and that means you tend to be cautious and careful and I have been for 50 years. It was a message that he expected me to stay away from the controversial matters. Well, no Human Rights president in the world could have turned their backs on the human rights issue.
RK Did you note it at the time as a message to you?
GT Yes. I thought politicians work in curious ways. Wouldn’t it have been nicer of him to pick up the phone or meet me for coffee, which he was happy to do in the glare of publicity in other contexts.
RK Could the government’s laws to prevent doctors speaking about the harm being inflicted on refugees or the ban on community legal centres from advocating law reform be framed as free speech issues, too?
GT Indeed. Of course they can. And this is where you get people who will use the language of human rights occasionally like “freedom of speech, liberty of movement” but very quickly find that they are trapped because they’ve promoted laws which are precisely against those freedoms. The attempt to stop people speaking about conditions was simply ham-fisted and completely unnecessary. Probably they are protected by the whistleblower’s law anyway, and in any event any self-respecting medico will always abide by the Hippocratic oath long before they are going to worry about some detailed bit of legislation passed in Canberra.
RK Thinking of the response to your report, how do you manage disappointment?
GT It’s hard because we’ve worked so hard on this. Our report met social science standards of credibility, we took senior members of the medical profession with us – paediatricians, psychiatrists who lent a huge level of credibility to our report. Our language is moderate, balanced and applied to both governments equally. It’s very disappointing to have such a careful report damaged in the way that this government set out to do. What I have learned is that politics in Australia is absolutely brutal.
RK When the new prime minister took up his office last year there were reports that he had invited you over for a cuppa, even poured the tea. This seemed to be the beginning of a more constructive relationship between the president of the AHRC and the government. You said that you were very optimistic indeed. Has there been a lot of tea since then?
GT No. I haven’t shared a cup of tea but I remain optimistic. I have written many times to the PM. His staff are terrific to work with. I deeply believe the first words he said to me, which were that on his watch we are returning to the rule of law, to the Westminster system and to respect for the AHRC. I believe that he believes that, and were he to win the next election I believe he will be good to his word.
RK I see that you have not let the 2015 experience cower you. You have made many comments on matters that you have proper concerns in – from marriage equality and Safe Schools programs to calling for monitoring of conditions for asylum seekers and refugees in offshore detention centres to concerns about counterterrorism laws. It looks like, if the government thought they could bully you into submission, they made rather the wrong call.
GT I’ve just turned 70 and I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’m so confident about the law and about the evidence for the law not being respected that I feel very sure-footed in going forward on these other issues. My resilience and determination and experience for a long time in the law give me the determination to get through the remaining 15 months to continue to speak out. When you see that you are being bullied by people who you know are not coming from a good place, you know you don’t have to give in to them. They are cowards and the moment you stand up to them they crumble, and they did crumble. And several now have been seen off long before me. They’re not used to a woman aged 70 standing up to them. They can’t quite believe it. If I were 40 looking for a career opportunity, I probably wouldn’t do what I’ve done because it would have queered the pitch for me professionally. But why do I care now? I can do what I’m trained to do and they almost can’t touch me. And I’ll continue to do that work when I’ve finished with this position.
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Apr 23, 2016 04:35
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- Mr Chips
- Jun 27, 2007
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Whose arse do I have to blow smoke up to get rid of this baby?
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Can you post the whole saturday paper thing? Tia
Private browsing mode will let you view it for free
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Apr 23, 2016 04:49
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- LibertyCat
- Mar 5, 2016
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by WE B Bourgeois
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Ah Yes, Gillian "a dude who bashed his pregnant wife to death with a bicycle deserves 350k in compensation" Triggs.
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Apr 23, 2016 04:51
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- Lid
- Feb 18, 2005
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And the mercy seat is awaiting,
And I think my head is burning,
And in a way I'm yearning,
To be done with all this measuring of proof.
An eye for an eye
And a tooth for a tooth,
And anyway I told the truth,
And I'm not afraid to die.
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Ah Yes, Gillian "a dude who bashed his pregnant wife to death with a bicycle deserves 350k in compensation" Triggs.
The government had been oppressing his liberty? Why would you disagree with that?
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Apr 23, 2016 04:59
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- WhiskeyWhiskers
- Oct 14, 2013
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"هذا ليس عادلاً."
"هذا ليس عادلاً على الإطلاق."
"كان هناك وقت الآن."
(السياق الخفي: للقراءة)
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Ah Yes, Gillian "a dude who bashed his pregnant wife to death with a bicycle deserves 350k in compensation" Triggs.
quote:An unshocking phenomenon is that LibertyCat doesn’t even understand his country's own democratic system. He is quite content to have parliament be complicit with passing legislation to strengthen the powers of the executive and to exclude the courts. He has no idea of the separation of powers and the excessive overreach of executive government.
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Apr 23, 2016 05:03
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- Zenithe
- Feb 25, 2013
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Ask not to whom the Anidavatar belongs; it belongs to thee.
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Ah Yes, Gillian "a dude who bashed his pregnant wife to death with a bicycle deserves 350k in compensation" Triggs.
Thanks Liberty "I'm a libertarian, ask me about my support for draining blood from people without their consent" Cat.
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Apr 23, 2016 05:04
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- LibertyCat
- Mar 5, 2016
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by WE B Bourgeois
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Welfare recipients, not people.
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Apr 23, 2016 05:15
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- DeathMuffin
- May 25, 2004
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Cake or Death
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Welfare recipients, not people.
The skill in trolling is restraint.
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Apr 23, 2016 05:19
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- LibertyCat
- Mar 5, 2016
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by WE B Bourgeois
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I don't want to type it out every single time I post, so just assume whenever I say "welfare recipient", it's shorthand for "healthy person who could work, but doesn't, does not volunteer to help society, but instead expects society to support them in the long-term like a leach". I have nothing but contempt for these kind of people. Money spent on them could instead go to help the genuinely disadvantaged.
I'm not referring to Bob who lost his job and needs a hand for a few weeks until he gets another one.
(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Apr 23, 2016 05:23
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- WhiskeyWhiskers
- Oct 14, 2013
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"هذا ليس عادلاً."
"هذا ليس عادلاً على الإطلاق."
"كان هناك وقت الآن."
(السياق الخفي: للقراءة)
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I don't want to type it out every single time I post, so just assume whenever I say "welfare recipient", it's shorthand for "healthy person who could work, but doesn't, does not volunteer to help society, but instead expects society to support them in the long-term like a leach". I have nothing but contempt for these kind of people. Money spent on them could instead go to help the genuinely disadvantaged.
I'm not referring to Bob who lost his job and needs a hand for a few weeks until he gets another one.
Agreed, businesses should not get corporate welfare and negative gearing should be abolished. Bosses and landlords are parasitic leaches.
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Apr 23, 2016 05:29
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- LibertyCat
- Mar 5, 2016
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by WE B Bourgeois
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Mildly Political Related News: Young people are moving to the Beach, isn't that Great?
quote:AS THE ticket price of a pint-sized pad in the city rises to meet that of a beachside family-friendly home out of town, an increasing number of househunters are opting for the latter and never looking back.
For Brad and Fleur Frost, moving out of Melbourne just over a year ago for a cheaper life on the coast near Geelong was a no-brainer.
“Now I can come home and go straight to the beach instead of sitting in traffic, how good is that?” Mr Frost said. “It was about getting an affordable home, but it was also about lifestyle,” he said.
The new first-time parents, who are in their mid-thirties, are not alone. According to CoreLogic figures there has been a significant demographic shift in the type of househunter on the fringes of our big cities. In many regions the under 44-year old age bracket is actually outweighing the baby boomer bunch; the traditional sea and tree changing group.
CoreLogic’s research analyst Cameron Kusher took a look at recent ABS migration data and discovered a surge in the popularity of coastal towns and other “lifestyle markets”.
“Sea and tree change appear to be the long forgotten buzzwords for the migration of people to coastal and lifestyle markets. This trend was particularly strong before the financial crisis hit in 2008, however, since the end of this occurrence, we saw interstate migration slow and many lifestyle markets underperform when compared to the capital city housing markets,” Mr Kusher said.
Some of the big movements were around Australia’s most expensive city. In Sydney’s outer south west 54.2 per cent of people moving into the areas were in the 25 to 44-year-old age bracket compared with just 6.7 per cent of 45 to 64-year-olds. And to the north of the city in the Baulkham Hills and Hawkesbury areas, a whopping 117.2 per cent of the new migration has been 25 to 44-year-olds while there was actually negative growth among 45 to 64-year-olds at -62.7 per cent.
...
Of the top 25 regions across the country where internal migration (excluding overseas migration) occurred over both the 2008/09 and the 2014/15 financial years, 15 of the regions could “wholly or partly be described as lifestyle regions” according to Mr Kusher.
The data showed a boost in migration for those aged 0 to 14 years and between 25 and 64-years-old. However, the movement of 15 to 24-year-olds proved to be low and the migration over 65-year-olds was not as strong as younger children and those of working age.
“This would seemingly indicate that migration within these coastal and lifestyle markets is being driven by young families,” he said.
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“Based on the latest ABS data, it is still too early to say that sea change and tree change has returned. However, given the ABS data is almost 12 months old, it’s likely the trend has progressed further over the current financial year as more Australians make the move to lifestyle markets.
“Given that is the case, you can be sure that there are plenty more people that are contemplating a similar move and may make one over the coming years,” Mr Kusher said.
^^^I agree with you on Negative Gearing btw.
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Apr 23, 2016 05:30
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- DeathMuffin
- May 25, 2004
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Cake or Death
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I'm not referring to Bob who lost his job and needs a hand for a few weeks until he gets another one.
How's about Jane who lost her job and looks for one for 3 years but can't get one because there simply aren't as many jobs as jobseekers?
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Apr 23, 2016 05:47
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- LibertyCat
- Mar 5, 2016
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by WE B Bourgeois
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After a few months or so she should face reality, swallow her pride, and stack shelves at Coles or something - maybe move to another area where there is more work, or train into a different area.
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Apr 23, 2016 05:52
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- LibertyCat
- Mar 5, 2016
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by WE B Bourgeois
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Ignoring the unprovoked ad hominem, how so? Admittedly I've never had to do unskilled work so my experience is limited, but I'm sure there will always be a need for people to sweep the floors etc. Please enlighten me.
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Apr 23, 2016 05:57
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- Nibbles!
- Jun 26, 2008
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TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP
make australia great again as well please
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You didn't work through school/uni?
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Apr 23, 2016 06:00
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- Zenithe
- Feb 25, 2013
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Ask not to whom the Anidavatar belongs; it belongs to thee.
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Ignoring the unprovoked ad hominem, how so? Admittedly I've never had to do unskilled work so my experience is limited, but I'm sure there will always be a need for people to sweep the floors etc. Please enlighten me.
That you think this area is basically free jobs for everyone who wants them at any time. Seems you are rather out of touch with the people you want to drain the blood of.
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Apr 23, 2016 06:00
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- DeathMuffin
- May 25, 2004
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Cake or Death
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Ignoring the unprovoked ad hominem, how so? Admittedly I've never had to do unskilled work so my experience is limited, but I'm sure there will always be a need for people to sweep the floors etc. Please enlighten me.
There are not as many jobs for people as there are people seeking work. Not "there are not as many jobs you really want as you would like there to be", but there are not as many jobs as there are people seeking work. Like I know maths is hard, but sock puppets and butchers paper is hard over the Internet, so I guess we'll have to leave it there.
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Apr 23, 2016 06:01
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- LibertyCat
- Mar 5, 2016
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by WE B Bourgeois
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You didn't work through school/uni?
I did skilled work as soon as I was legally old enough, based on experience acquired while underage. Never had to do retail etc.
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Apr 23, 2016 06:02
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- Nibbles!
- Jun 26, 2008
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TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP
make australia great again as well please
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When I go to Coles and the like now it looks like the majority of the people there are 50+.
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Apr 23, 2016 06:02
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- Nibbles!
- Jun 26, 2008
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TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP
make australia great again as well please
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I did skilled work as soon as I was legally old enough, based on experience acquired while underage. Never had to do retail etc.
That sounds an awful lot like "I worked for dad".
Or a troll, I guess.
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Apr 23, 2016 06:03
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- LibertyCat
- Mar 5, 2016
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by WE B Bourgeois
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Nope, not working for family (although I was introduced to certain people which helped a lot). I could operate a heap of farming and construction equipment, and wasn't half bad at certain kinds of repairs either. It was the latter which got me started.
If you don't mind I'm not going to give future Internet Detectives ammunition, so won't go into any more detail.
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Apr 23, 2016 06:07
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- LibertyCat
- Mar 5, 2016
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by WE B Bourgeois
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It was plenty provoked.
Some of these jobs that you assume are always available have more than 50 applicants. When I worked retail we would get anywhere up to 5 people per week come in and ask for a job when we specifically weren't hiring. There are simply not enough jobs to go round. Our choice of economic model relies on this fact. We choose to have unemployed people.
If we didn't have these kinds of jobseekers the "our economic system ensures we will never hit 100% employment" argument would make more sense.
quote:Your genius idea of just moving is always idiotic. You are saying that someone should give up their accommodation and support network in order to complete uproot their life in the hope they might get a job somewhere else. This costs money. What if they can't find a job? Do they just keep moving? What about finding accommodation each time? What if they have kids? Keep up rooting them as well? What if they have gone through all their savings and are relying on friends and family to keep eating? Should they move to an area where they know no-one and hope?
We have centrelink. They're not going to starve. I'm not proposing they move at the drop of a hat, but if you live in one of those (as an extreme example) totally nonviable remote communities it makes sense to go anywhere else.
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Apr 23, 2016 06:14
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- I would blow Dane Cook
- Dec 26, 2008
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Speaking of bludgers
quote:
More Great Liberal Ideas From North-West Tasmania
If one of your state's major political parties is run with an iron first by Erich Abetz there's a pretty good chance state representatives of that party will be arch-conservatives. On a good day, about 70 mad men ensure Abetz will hold first spot on Tasmania's senate ticket. Abetz and state Liberal director Sam McQuestin ensure who those mad men are. The Tasmanian Liberal circle of life. The puppeteer's strings ensure that circle of life devolves on a steady diet of obsessing over gays, druggies, the unemployed, anyone not wearing RM Williams, while looking to shovel money towards and approve any half-witted, tinpot resource extraction idea. Disagree on the blinkered ideals and you'll be labeled a 'greenie'. The now official Tasmanian pejorative term for anyone with an opinion differing from Erich Abetz.
Bringing us to Braddon Liberal MP, Brett Whiteley. If you're one of the four regular readers, you'd recall Brett's featured here more than once. Feel free to get some Streisand backing tunes playing before you read on and recall Brett's finer political moments.
Playing on the lie that jobs exist and the unemployed are little more than children who need a paddling, allows him to puff his chest out and offer the following:
“It is my very strong view that some of our young people just need an extra prod,” Whiteley tells me. “They need that prod and that is for us to say, ‘Some of the options have been taken away and here are the options that are left if you want the government to provide regular payments’.” He likens the policy to controlled crying with young children. “Some people will cry a little longer than others but it is for their own good in the long run.”
And if you can't get your workers cheap enough.
WORK for the Dole should be opened up to small business, Braddon Liberal MHR Brett Whiteley believes. The Abbott government program is currently available to not-for-profits, community groups, councils and so on. Mr Whiteley has been arguing within the government to make small businesses eligible to provide placements, and said he would continue to do so.
Meanwhile, Whiteley enthusiastically cheers growth in the the labour pool from outside Australia, at the same time he fights for small businesses to use workers in a work for the dole program.
A PROPOSAL for 457 visas to be streamlined has been welcomed by Fruit Growers Tasmania and Braddon MHR Brett Whiteley.....
Mr Whiteley said the proposed changes would not have a huge impact on Tasmania. ‘‘In Tasmania we don’t see many huge projects that could have huge impacts on the economy but wither on the vine due to a shortage of skilled workers,’’
And finally there's the really important thing to remember.
Brett Whiteley. Whiteley, who looks like your standard Liberal politician from central casting, a glazed ham dressed in a suit,
With that cornucopia of brilliant thought and public policy, you know I'm about to introduce some more fine thinking from Brett.
LONG-term dole recipients should be randomly drug tested and have their payments suspended if they are “off their heads”, Braddon Liberal MHR Brett Whiteley says. “One just needs to walk through the centre of our larger towns to see that there is a significant problem,” Mr Whiteley said. He has been pushing his idea within the party and has raised it directly with Treasurer Scott Morrison.
That's representation for North-West Tasmania. Get an audience with the treasurer and focus on populist nonsense. One would assume Scott Morrison would be face palming the minute Whiteley left his office. And where did this light bulb come from? Well it's not the first time Whiteley's raised it, but he has refined it to random testing, given the last reaction was wholly negative from the Facebook set, pointing out the enormous costs to drug test every dole recipient. So where was the concept refined before being presented to the treasurer?
Asked if he was pushing a populist issue because the election was close, Mr Whiteley said he was pushing for the policy after people who attended the latest round of his Community Cuppa events raised concerns “ taxpayers’ generosity is being abused by some in the community”.
What's a Community Cuppa? Well that's where Brett goes to a local bowls club or RSL and sits listening to a bunch of pensioners (non drug tested pogey recipients) as they gripe about gay marriage, halal, druggies, the unemployed and potholes on local council roads. And the local newspaper, never one to exploit division, gave the idea just the right amount of deference - on the front page.
The questions to be raised are endless, but I'll leave it at one. We're pushing for policy based on someone seeing some unruly types apparently staggering around the streets during the day? What's with the implicit implication they're unemployed? No employed person ever uses drugs or alcohol on their days off? Which could be any time, given modern work schedules.
However, let's stick to the narrative. The blue rinse set has seen their tax dollars snorted, injected and smoked away by the unemployed. The best assumption we can make here is those doing it are young, so we've got another young verses old battle in the electorate with the highest rate (last time I checked) of youth unemployment in the country, the lowest educational achievements and is classified as having a high level of socio-economic disadvantage according to the ABS.
You'd think addressing youth disadvantage would be some sort of priority, but as noted by Whiteley's previous ideas on restricting the dole for unemployed young people, that's really not on the agenda... He likens the policy to controlled crying with young children. “Some people will cry a little longer than others but it is for their own good in the long run.”
Although sometimes we find out the local unemployed aren't little kids with the toys out of the cot. They're screwed around by large companies who appear to have a preference for foreign workers.
Imagine this situation. You're desperate for work and you're continually told there's opportunities available at a company. You apply multiple times and never hear a thing. At the same time that company continues to parade around in the local media claiming it can't get local workers - yet you're a local worker! What kind of BS game is being played here? And to rub salt in the wounds, that company has been gifted a million bucks of taxpayer money in the last year.
What of Abetz and Whiteley? The employment minister and Tasmanian senator was not seen or heard from during this clusterfuck. This, despite being the advocate of getting the unemployed into the fruit and vegetable fields. Whiteley stepped up to the plate and while happy to tar the unemployed at the drop of a hat, he was more conciliatory towards Costa's bullshit.
Federal MP for Braddon Brett Whiteley said he had raised the concerns of his constituents with the company. "I've spoken to Costa again today about that and we've spoken about whether or not there are any blips in their system and I think if there are they have a responsibility to fix those," he said.
Meanwhile, when not demeaning the unemployed and getting his photo taken handing out money to companies who could easily improve and build their own facilities, Whiteley is running around doing money drops and photo ops at local bowls clubs and RSLs, just the place where most disenfranchised youth hang out.
What he hasn't done is explain to his electorate (just to highlight again, one of the most economically disadvantaged areas in the country with the highest rate of youth unemployment) why their major population areas will be left without FTTP NBN despite being on a rollout map with commitments that the Liberals said they'd honour when they came to power.
Whiteley's stance on the NBN after coming to power
Mr Whiteley said the review would have no bearing on the Tasmanian rollout. "The review was about laying out the facts for all to see," he said. "Under the previous Labor Government the NBN was a fact-free zone, and now we know why. We committed to honouring existing contracts during the campaign and that is happening right now. "Any suggestion to the contrary is simply false."
These days FTTP is the "rolled gold Lamborghini version" and local Mayors campaigning for that option are chastised.Yet as the Mayors point out, it's likely going to be an economic good for an area that's been in the dumps for a long time.
“Mayors are not talking down their cities, they are advocating for equity, looking to the future and talking up the important role access to fibre to the premises will play in the North-West's economy.” And 'It took 75 years for 500 million people to receive the telephone, but 35 days for an app to reach 500 million people. What will happen in the next ten years if we don’t have that capacity and resource to all Tasmanians?’’ Alderman Martin said.
In Whiteley's world you'll undermine your town, city or region with that kind of talk.
“Now they’d be doing better talking up their cities instead of talking them down. “It’s very, very unhelpful for local mayors to be suggesting to people reading about our beautiful state that you wouldn’t want to come to the North-West because you can’t get NBN to the premises.”
Yet it's more likely you'll undermine it with garbage digital infrastructure. Paradoxically, Brett's saying we need to attract younger people to the region, presumably we hide the lack of FTTP before their arrival.
Braddon Liberal MHR Brett Whiteley said the decline was a concern, ‘’but it is as much about the age demographic as it is about the number of people’’. ‘’We need to ensure that we’re attracting younger workers to the region.‘’There is a long-term strategy in place to increase Tasmania’s population as developed by the Hodgman government and supported by me.
This farce has played out because it's not really about the local community, well not all of it. There's a big dip in demographics between 20-34 in Braddon. The important parts are at the bowls clubs and the RSLs. A lot of the youth take the hint and piss off, while the blue rinse set don't care about yesterday's internet tomorrow because they'll be in the ground by then. The youth unemployment figures should be an embarrassment for a local member, but you rarely if ever hear about them. Pandering to the bigger demographics on ridiculous social issues and tossing around money to pensioner recreations is the game because it's a marginal seat.
How are we going to fix economic disadvantage, youth unemployment, the scourge of drugs and attract younger people to the region?
You can be sure the pensioners Brett's sharing an Iced VoVo with at his next Community Cuppa will have all the solutions.
http://www.idiottax.net/2016/04/more-great-liberal-ideas-from-north.html
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Apr 23, 2016 06:15
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- Nibbles!
- Jun 26, 2008
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TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP
make australia great again as well please
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I'm not sure I'd call basic farm work 'skilled' labor.
Fact is if you've reached adulthood without sweeping a floor you've probably had a very sheltered upbringing.
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Apr 23, 2016 06:20
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- LibertyCat
- Mar 5, 2016
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by WE B Bourgeois
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It's interesting how our experiences colour our opinions. I take the view that if you reach age 18 without being able to drive (at all, let alone a manual) you're an unbelievable pussy, but apparently that's quite common these days. If you've never lit a campfire as a kid, gone crabbing/fishing etc I'd call that sheltered.
^^ Done plenty of sweeping, it just hasn't been the main thing I was paid for.
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Apr 23, 2016 06:27
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- Lizard Combatant
- Sep 29, 2010
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I have some notes.
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gently caress off you boring loser. Troll or just stupid? Don't care either way.
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Apr 23, 2016 06:32
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- BBJoey
- Oct 31, 2012
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Admittedly I've never had to do unskilled work
ayy, lmao
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Apr 23, 2016 06:35
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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Apr 23, 2016 02:10
