bowmore posted:

A company that doesn't care about the welfare of animals also doesn't care about the welfare of its workers

shocker

Starshark posted:

Reasoned nuanced debate from Bolt.

https://twitter.com/jrhennessy/status/846104383817367553

quote:

CPA's Alex Malley's confidential Macquarie Uni exit

CPA Australia chief executive Alex Malley left Macquarie University in 2006 under a confidential settlement after the accounting lecturer was accused of serious misconduct.

The Associate Professor was allowed to resign without any finding of wrongdoing after allegedly directing hundreds of students each year to undertake paid tutorials through his wife's company, without Macquarie's knowledge. He also resigned mid-term (in June 2006) from his staff-elected position on the Council of Macquarie University, its highest governing body. The Council's members included then chancellor Maurice Newman and now-disgraced student union president Victor Ma.

Mr Malley was asked to explain student complaints that he was giving bonus marks in the university's first-year course, Accounting 101, to students who paid to complete private modules via Mrs Malley's website, Edextreme.

If proven, this would have been a prima facie breach of university policy and of the Commonwealth's Higher Education Funding Act, which proscribes auxiliary course-related charges (in addition to published fees) being imposed on students.
Edextreme was registered in 2002 in the previous surname (Wilson) of Mr Malley's wife Rachel. Mrs Malley has used her married name in the couple's other publicly-available property and company filings.

Mrs Malley was a director, secretary and 50 per cent shareholder in Edextreme with Adelaide man John Lugg. The entity was registered to the residential address of Castle Cove accountant Anthony Protich. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission began strike-off proceedings against Edextreme in January 2007 and the company was formally deregistered in April 2007.

Mr Malley was a serving director of CPA Australia when he resigned his faculty position at Macquarie.

CPA is a professional standards membership organisation for accountants. Despite the abrupt end to Mr Malley's academic tenure, he was elected CPA's president fewer than 16 months later, on October 1, 2007. At that time, another Macquarie academic, Richard Petty, sat on the CPA board and its Nominations and Remuneration Committee. Professor Petty was the committee's chairman from 2010 to 2015. Graeme Wade, now chairman of the National Basketball League which CPA Australia pays $756,000 to sponsor, has been a CPA director since 2006 and sat on the Nominations and Remuneration committee in 2013, and from 2015 to the present day. He replaced Professor Petty as its chairman in 2016. Kerry Ryan has been a CPA director since 2007 and has sat on the Nominations and Remuneration Committee every year since, bar 2014.

Professor Petty, Mr Wade and Ms Ryan have been able to remain directors after CPA's constitution was changed in 2014 to extend their term limits to a maximum of 11 years.
CPA Australia and Mr Malley did not respond to specific questions put by The Australian Financial Review but their solicitor confirmed the existence of the deed of settlement between Mr Malley and Macquarie University. The solicitor also claimed the Financial Review's questions included "significant factual errors", that Mr Malley was unable to comment on due to confidentiality terms and that CPA and Mr Malley were in the process of commencing defamation proceedings against this newspaper.

A spokesperson for the university said that "as a matter of practice, Macquarie University does not comment on individual matters pertaining to current or former employees. Mr Malley's employment with Macquarie concluded more than 10 years ago, and there has been no relationship between the university and Mr Malley since that time. Macquarie University maintains the highest ethical standards in our approach to teaching and research."

Mr Malley was appointed CPA's chief executive in October 2009 and under his leadership the organisation has exponentially increased its membership, revenue and public visibility. His critics, whom include hundreds of disaffected members, are indignant at board oversight, governance standards and excessive expenditure on augmenting Mr Malley's public profile, but unrelated to the accounting profession.

After weeks of public scrutiny of the organisation's spending and secrecy, CPA last week called its 2017 Annual General Meeting in Singapore for April 27. The 75 per cent of its members based in Australia will be able to access proceedings via an online video stream. Questions to the board from members not in attendance must be submitted in advance. Just 5 per cent of CPA's members reside in Singapore.

CPA has also disabled the public "Find a CPA" function on its website, preventing disaffected members from organising against management and the board, but also obstructing a critical generator of business leads for its members.

"The information about members on our website is available for professional usage," CPA's chief operating officer – Member Services, Jeff Hughes, wrote to members on Friday, March 16, "but if this information is used incorrectly such as to build email distribution lists then we will take appropriate action".

CPA is an incorporated members' body whose stated vision is to be "known as… the world's best member service organisation."

Unlike listed companies whose governance and transparency it often critiques, CPA does not break out the individual remuneration of its directors or its executives (except, for the board, in 2008).

In 2007, CPA's volunteer board began drawing directors' fees for the first time, which have risen from $63,000 in 2008 (when Mr Malley was paid $168,000 as president) to around $100,000 annually in 2016. In 2014 and 2015, Mr Wade was paid in the vicinity of $400,000 to serve as president. Total remuneration for the board's 12 members, Mr Malley, Mr Hughes and CFO Adam Awty was $5.51 million in 2016, up from $4.57 million in 2015.

In 2016, Wade was replaced as president by University of Sydney deputy vice-chancellor Tyrone Carlin. Both Professor Carlin and Professor Petty were PhD students at Macquarie while Mr Malley was on faculty.

In addition to their paid positions at CPA Australia, Mr Malley, Professor Carlin, Professor Petty, Mr Wade, Mr Hughes and Mr Awty are all paid additionally as key management personnel of its new and fully-owned subsidiary CPA Australia Advice, which the parent loaned $5.6 million in 2016 to keep afloat.

Starshark posted:

Reasoned nuanced debate from Bolt.

https://twitter.com/jrhennessy/status/846104383817367553

Robert Manne posted:

Bolt challenged me to name ten stolen children. This was, I must admit, a cunning move. Unless one is prepared for a challenge of this kind, lists of names of the victims of a policy do not trip off the tongue. I doubt I would have done better if I had been asked to name ten victims of the Stalin terror or the Armenian genocide, matters I have read a very great deal about. Bolt’s “name ten” myth was born.

Soon after this radio encounter – the transcript of which was published in the Herald Sun – I asked the Director of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival if she was interested in inviting Andrew Bolt for a debate with me on the stolen generations. What then followed was truly bizarre. Bolt made it a condition of his participation that I send him a list beforehand not merely of ten “stolen children” but of “a hundred” or even “hundreds”. I emailed Bolt to let him know that I found his request peculiar. The issue dividing us was whether or not there were ten or a hundred or indeed thousands of “stolen children”. What Bolt seemed to require, as a condition of agreeing to a debate, was that I first provide him with the evidence proving that he was wrong. Although we had by now entered an “Alice in Wonderland” world, I told him I was happy to meet his condition so long as he provided me with a definition of what counted for him as a “stolen child”. Bolt refused to answer this question. Nonetheless I decided to send him a reasonably detailed list of mixed descent children removed in the different states and territories between 1900 and 1970.

I divided the list sent to him into four categories. The first involved cases outlined in detail in books. Here there were twelve names. The second category was of “half caste” children seized in Queensland at the beginning of the twentieth century. As I explained to Bolt: “The origin of the policy of “half caste” child removal began in Queensland at the turn of the century. All these children were “half castes” who came to the attention of the Protector Walter Roth. He authorised for them to be formally arrested. None of them received a welfare assessment of any kind. All of them were found guilty of being neglected after a perfunctory hearing of a magistrate’s court.” According to the relevant law, the Industrial Schools and Reformatory Act of 1865, being Aboriginal was in itself evidence of neglect. In this category I provided Bolt with some 65 names. The third category was of children sent to “half caste” institutions in the Northern Territory in the interwar period. As I explained to Bolt: “In the Northern Territory from the early 1920s ‘half-caste’ children were picked up by authorities of the Commonwealth government (which administered the Territory) and sent to one of two extraordinarily overcrowded “half-caste” homes, in Darwin and Alice Springs. None of the children received any welfare assessment. None was taken before a court … The aspiration of the policy was to pick up all these children …” There were some 120 names in this group. Finally in the fourth category I sent Bolt a list of 60 names of those who had been removed and had subsequently provided testimony to a Howard government-funded stolen generations Oral History Project. Simply to convince Bolt to debate me I had provided him with some 260 names of mixed descent children who had been removed by government from their mothers, families and communities and sent to institutions. At last Bolt agreed to a debate.

...

Not only did Bolt ignore the evidence presented in the documentary collection. After the debate, almost everything Bolt wrote about the stolen generations was not merely a lie but provably so on the basis of the evidence he had in his possession.

Bolt claimed on a dozen occasions or more that I had been challenged but had failed to name even ten “stolen” children. Usually he failed to mention that I had sent him some 260 names. He never mentioned that I had asked him to supply a definition of what counted for him as a stolen child and that he had refused. On one rare occasion when he did acknowledge that I had sent him more than 200 names, Bolt claimed that the names I had sent him all came from Queensland. They did not.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Some quality trolling from Bolt, given his previous experience with lists of ten things


If you haven't read it the whole thing is worth a read and a great example of how Bolt is actively dishonest (which is also what happened in his RDA case; 18D gives you huge amounts of leeway as long as you're arguing in good faith).

quote:

Take note of tough talk and avoid economic disaster The Australian12:00AM March 27, 2017 JUDITH SLOAN Contributing Economics Edito rMelbourne

It’s always hard to pinpoint when a nation starts to go down the gurgler*. Even the most astute commentators didn’t pick the inevitable tragedy that would befall Greece until the process of decline was well under way. The same could be said of Australia. Blessed by the bounty of our mineral resources and sky-high commodity prices, the strong element of decline has been masked by the years of buoyancy associated with a historic investment boom in mining. We are now approaching a clear phase of structural weakening, particularly in relation to our budgetary position but also our political institutions. This is where the Shepherd review comes in. Entitled “Statement of National Challenges: Why Australians are Struggling to Get Ahead”, the project involves “multiple opportunities for community discussion and debate on the nature of the problems and the potential solutions”. Sponsored by the Menzies Research Centre, which is aligned with the Liberal Party, it is proposed that a fact-based assessment of various national challenges takes place so that options to deal with these challenges can be canvassed.

These challenges are listed as: confidence in a growing economy; effective and accountable government; competitive economy and open markets; infrastructure and energy; and imagination and adaptation.

The core premise of the project is that many Australians are struggling to get ahead but governments are equally struggling to meet their expectations. In the words of the first report of the project, “a strong economy is the basis of a just and fair society”. Wealth creation must come before wealth redistribution. Without this acknowledgment, there is a real risk we will end up in a low growth trap with chronic budget deficits and rising government debt, ineffective governments, poorly performing markets, weak investment, low productivity and a lack of imagination and adaptation. Resistance to change will only make matters worse. Now this may all sound rather wordy, but the first report is packed with facts and figures that in particular query the bland and rosy assessments presented in nearly every government budget and intergenerational report.

In useful blunt fashion, the Shepherd review paints a much more pessimistic picture in which the challenges of our steeply rising dependency ratio (in 2015, the prime age population (15 to 64 years) was 4.5 times the population aged 65 years and older; in 2045, it will be three times) make sustained budget repair close to impossible without significant policy changes. The Shepherd review is a welcome addition to the frank discussion we must have to avert us heading down the path too many European countries have taken. The Business Council’s honest assessment of our budget position — we are facing a future tax impost of $5000 per adult a year without remedial action — is similarly useful. It is time for the real discussion to begin and to see through the excuses and obfuscations that characterise the daily output of modern governments at all levels and of all political persuasions.
The wider the participation in the discussion, the more likely it is that sustainable and acceptable solutions can emerge.

Cartoon posted:

* only if you are as clueless and oblivious to all the evidence as you are Judith. It was the Howard/Costello tax cuts of 2005 (source - http://www.tai.org.au/content/peter-costellos-five-most-profligate-decisions-treasurer-cost-budget-56bn-year)

Bogan King posted:

https://twitter.com/TomMcIlroy/status/846094884343709696

The ABC posted:

It is the final sitting week before the May budget, but the Coalition's attempts to pass legislation could be derailed because of an unrelated dispute involving Queensland sugarcane growers.

One Nation senators say they will effectively go on strike until a dispute involving Queensland sugarcane growers, sugar mill Wilmar and sugar marketer QSL is resolved.

Arriving in Canberra, Pauline Hanson said she was just standing up for the people who voted for her.

"I've made a stance that myself and One Nation senators will not be supporting any Government legislation or any legislation before Parliament until the Wilmar dispute is sorted between the cane growers and Wilmar," she said.

Senator Hanson wants the Federal Government to intervene to help growers have more of a say in the marketing and sale of their crop.

"I believe that they need to actually have a code of conduct, a mandatory code of conduct," she said.

Her comments come almost one month after Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce warned the companies the Federal Government would intervene if they didn't "fix up" the business.

Mr Joyce told reporters the Federal Government could act after the Queensland Government failed to pass laws on the situation.

The sugar dispute explained

Cane farmers are concerned about a payment dispute and it is creating a bitter taste for the National Party.
"Nothing is going to happen today, but if they [Wilmar and QSL] think for one second we have taken our eyes off the ball and will let it go through the keeper, we haven't," he said.

"I say to QSL and Wilmar: if you don't want clumsy fingers in your business then fix up your business and fix it up today."

Fellow Queensland One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts supports his leader's stance, and denies One Nation is horse trading on Government policy.

"We're not asking for anything in return other than the Government do its job, and we'll just abstain," he said.

"We're not seeking anything in particular, we just want them to listen and work for the farmers, that's all we want."

Nationals senator John Williams says he shares One Nation's concerns about the growers, but he does not like Senator Hanson's approach.

"I instigated a sugar inquiry a couple of years ago now about this very issue of the Wilmar and their [basic] monopoly of these sugar mills. It's a real problem," he said.

"But Pauline, don't blackmail, I think just work on each issues as it comes along, let's work together to fix up the sugar industry and that monopoly and the problems they face."

He said he supported One Nation's call for a code of conduct.

"When you have monopolies, and monopolies holding a gun basically at your head in business, then you need regulation. And a mandatory code of conduct I would welcome," Senator Williams said.

"I think that Pauline should work with the legislation, deal with one issue as it comes through, not just hold a gun to our head in the form of blackmail, that's my position."

Anidav posted:

So why is Clive Palmer suddenly a meme queen? Did the courts breathing down his neck just make him flat out bonkers?

SLASHER HAWKE posted:

nah it was 1788

Bogan King posted:

So PHON are going on strike - which they would scream bloody murder about if it was the CFMEU - to help farmers and the Nats are telling her she's gone too far and should tow the Libs line.

Solemn Sloth posted:

PHONs opposition to strikes and their use of them comes from the same place: it's actually effective.

JBP posted:

I hope she actually does do it now because FWC will be forced to apply the law to her due to the language she's used.

TheMightyHandful posted:

Bolt moonlighting for buzzfeed:


E: beaten like Bolt in court

hooman posted:

wow, actually? Please do tell.

TheMightyHandful posted:

Bolt moonlighting for buzzfeed:


E: beaten like Bolt in court

JBP posted:

Reminder: In this free and democratic country it is illegal to withdraw your labour under any circumstances without first notifying a government department.

Synthbuttrange posted:

giant boob off qld

Anidav posted:

So why is Clive Palmer suddenly a meme queen? Did the courts breathing down his neck just make him flat out bonkers?

Cartoon posted:

So let me get this straight.

Synthbuttrange posted:

giant boob off qld

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

Are you ready to unleash the motherfucking fury?

Doctor Spaceman posted:

If you haven't read it the whole thing is worth a read and a great example of how Bolt is actively dishonest (which is also what happened in his RDA case; 18D gives you huge amounts of leeway as long as you're arguing in good faith).

quote:

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION ACT 1975 - SECT 18D
Exemptions

Section 18C does not render unlawful anything said or done reasonably and in good faith:

(a) in the performance, exhibition or distribution of an artistic work; or

(b) in the course of any statement, publication, discussion or debate made or held for any genuine academic, artistic or scientific purpose or any other genuine purpose in the public interest; or

(c) in making or publishing:

(i) a fair and accurate report of any event or matter of public interest; or

(ii) a fair comment on any event or matter of public interest if the comment is an expression of a genuine belief held by the person making the comment.

Pedestrian posted:

A dilapidated terrace house in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Camperdown has sold for $1.96 million, following an auction which lasted all of four minutes.

...

The woman said “we did the research, but I just didn’t expect that we would be the ones to get the house. We’re excited but aren’t quite sure what we’ll do with it yet.” She suggested they may just re-do the entire joint as a "long-term project we could pass onto the kids," but the fact they're still deliberating after the fact is... well. Yeah.

Bogan King posted:

snoremac posted:

Sucks about Steggles, I like their chicken nuggets but won't buy them now

Doctor Spaceman posted:

That's a really good location.