Gorilla Salad posted:

Have you heard about Men Going Their Own Way? It's a group all about men* they could be right for you.





*hating women and wanting to rape them

Vladimir Poutine posted:

I think the Young SA Greens consists entirely of people from this thread

turdbucket posted:

SAGreens are bad IMHO.

Amethyst posted:

Sorry mate, this thread is wacky, edgy, and above all irreverent. Spamming images of an irrelevant model seems like the kind of thing people do in funny cool places like 4chan, so we're gonna keep doing it! Hell yeah! Auspol ftw!

Guardian AU posted:

This was the exchange between Michael Brissenden and Dreyfus this morning.

Q: So do you think the policy should be overturned?

The policy has been instrumental in bringing the flow of refugees to Australia by boat to an end.

Q: But do you believe it’s time to overturn the policy?

We did not envisage, when we introduced this policy, that two and half years on you would have more than 1,000 men, women and children languishing in indefinite detention. It is time for the government to do a great deal more to end the dreadful circumstances in which these men women and children -

Q: Is it time to end offshore detention?

I don’t think it’s necessary to say that, that it is time to end that policy. What does need to be done is that the government’s got to do a great deal more so that we don’t have people in this situation. Two and a half years is an eternity, particularly for children and this present situation can’t be allowed to continue.

Amethyst posted:

I am, actually, since this thread has been rolling around pathetically like a bunch of moron children for several pages now, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with my influence.

Guardian AU posted:

Government monitoring social media accounts to hunt down welfare fraud
State and federal agencies outsourcing to private contractors to conduct surveillance on private accounts of people suspected of making false welfare claims

State and federal government agencies are increasingly outsourcing to private contractors to investigate and conduct surveillance on welfare and work-related claims, including through monitoring social media.

On Wednesday the Daily Telegraph reported the Department of Human Services had been gathering evidence from social media accounts and other online accounts in relation to cases about false Centrelink payment claims.

The department had been using information from accounts to debunk claims. The Daily Telegraph reported that in at least one case, posts from a Twitter account were used to prove two people who were claiming welfare as single people were in a relationship and had announced a pregnancy together.

Federal contracts showed a series of agreements with private investigators to conduct “security surveillance and detection” on behalf of the department.

Many of these contracts were for the primary purposes of conducting “optical surveillance”.

Questions have been put to the department about which organisations are conducting social media monitoring, and how much the department pays for these services.

But there is a broader trend across government to rely on private contractors to investigate claims of fraud or workers’ compensation claims.

NSW tender documents also show that Workcover NSW took on some of the same private investigators as the Department of Human Services to conduct surveillance on their behalf. Workcover NSW commissioned more than 10 private investigators from 2015-18 to assist them in conducting investigations and surveillance into Workcover claims. The contracts were worth more than $3m.

The use of social media analysis – or “open-source intelligence” – is a growing and lucrative field for private contractors, but has raised the concerns of some privacy advocates.

The Department of Human Services said it had discovered more than $2m in fraudulent claims through social media monitoring.

Anidav posted:

"Centrelink contracted investigators have also nabbed $1.7 million in fraud by scanning the eBay online auction accounts of welfare recipients who were selling off assets without declaring the sale price as income."

Lmao, what the gently caress.

adamantium|wang posted:

Periphery posted:

Surely there's enough evidence to prove that it would be a fiscally and socially responsible thing to do?

"Guardian Au posted:

Victims sick at heart that George Pell won't front child sex abuse royal commission
Medical report from Rome kept secret but royal commissioner accepts that travelling to Australia might have ‘serious consequences’ for cardinal’s health

The cardinal won’t be coming. It’s his heart. A fresh medical report from Rome says it would be “difficult” for Cardinal George Pell to take the long flight home to give further evidence to the royal commission into the institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

“It doesn’t preclude his travel,” observed the commissioner Peter McClellan. “It doesn’t say he can’t come.” But McClellan has accepted the verdict of Pell’s medicos that a journey home at this time might have “serious consequences” for His Eminence’s health.

It’s an unhappy outcome all round. McClellan wants him to give evidence in person. Abuse victims are keen to confront the man in the flesh. And the cardinal, it seems, may never walk the streets of his native Ballarat again.

Just how sick he is remains a mystery. Pell is keen to keep the finer details of his heart problems secret.

His counsel, Alan Myers QC, argued against releasing the medical reports in full: “All it would do is provoke some sort of debate in the press about the medical condition of Cardinal Pell. There is no public interest in that.”

Under strict secrecy, McClellan allowed four barristers to read the latest report. Unimpressed was Paul O’Dwyer SC who told the commission the two-page document revealed “common or garden problems in a man of the cardinal’s age”.

O’Dwyer represents the school principal Graeme Sleeman who lost his job after trying to get rid of a deranged paedophile, Fr Peter Searson. The Searson case is a problem for Pell: he investigated the priest and left him in his Melbourne parish.

Sleeman never worked in the Catholic school system again.

O’Dwyer observed that the difficulties facing Pell “fade into insignificance” compared with the pain and distress of victims giving evidence to the commission.

But none of the barristers – some in Sydney and some gathered in Melbourne – challenged the medical report outright. One or two remarked that they were not cardiologists and had no access to cardiologists to contest its conclusions.

Barristers and the commission threw around possible solutions: could the cardinal come by short stages? What about oxygen on the flight? Could he, wondered the commissioner, come by sea?

But time is on Pell’s side. “There is a need,” said McClellan, “to bring the matter to an end as soon as we can conveniently do so.”

He is going to consider his position over the weekend but the commissioner clearly signalled that Pell will be allowed to give evidence by video link from Rome beginning on 29 February.

He is expected to be in the box for about four days: three days’ questioning by counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness SC, and another day’s questioning by the barristers representing victims.

McClellan also foreshadowed he will release some, at least, of the cardinal’s medical report on Monday. The public, he said, had a right to know why Pell would not be present in the flesh. His counsel agreed. He told the commission his client was anxious “to avoid the appearance of unwillingness to give evidence”.

fiery_valkyrie posted:

I think dying on his way to the Royal Commission would be a fitting way for Pell to go.

Mithranderp posted:

Centrelink complaints continue to rise, new Ombudsman figures reveal



Nope nothing wrong with the system at all.

Tokamak posted:

Funny how those conditions didn't prevent him from leaving the country.

MythLisp posted:

I just read the comments on the Daily Telegraph facebook page about this story and now want to die.

A Fuckhead posted:

If David Morrison had any honour, he’d resign

DAVID Morrison, the Left’s latest choice as Australian of the Year, used to be big on “standards” when he was chief of Army.

“The standard you walk past is the standard you ­accept,” he thundered in his “Jedi Council” speech of 2013, so acclaimed by the feminist establishment because he claimed demeaning attitudes towards women were “systemic” in the Australian Defence Force.

This was Morrison’s mantra when he stripped a blameless lieutenant colonel of his command two months after that speech, for failing to be aware of sexist and pornographic emails cc’d to him by a civilian, which he hadn’t opened.

Morrison shamed the married officer in public statements by claiming he was part of the so-called Jedi Council “sex ring”, as an excitable media dubbed it, and killed his promising career. He didn’t name him, but he didn’t have to.

Everyone in the Army knew which lieutenant colonel in Townsville had been marched out of his office by military police wearing plastic gloves.

“Ken”, 43, has tried to kill himself twice since he was ­retired medically unfit last January, most recently on Australia Day after watching TV coverage of Morrison receiving his gong. He is due to enter a military hospital this week for treatment including electro-convulsive therapy.

thatfatkid posted:

There's no gene that forces a fatfuck to continue to be a fatfuck.

gay picnic defence posted:

I'm no doctor but I'm tipping that a first world diet and lifestyle play a bigger role in it.

thatfatkid posted:

Hmm yes obesity is clearly caused by anything other than eating too much loving food and not exercising enough.

thatfatkid posted:

There's no gene that forces a fatfuck to continue to be a fatfuck.

thatfatkid posted:

People get fat/obese poor because they're lazy pieces of poo poo who eat too much are lazy and don't exercise try enough. There is no justification for being obese poor and making excuses for the obese poor as if they have no agency is just enabling them.

thatfatkid posted:

Hahaha really? Comparing a self inflicted health issue to poverty? Wow, just wow...

EvilElmo posted:

And you know, the fact they only appeal to a small section of the population.

Wow 8.6%.

MysticalMachineGun posted:

Yeah, I played around with it as well and it just can't be that easy. Can it?

Amethyst posted:

Not sure how a corrupt embezzler has any bearing whatsoever on ScreamingLlama's ideas on welfare fraud.

Amethyst posted:

Ok, but they are entirely unrelated crimes.

Birb Katter posted:

Change from within

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Guardian AU posted:

Reuters distances itself from Greg Hunt 'best minister' award: 'It wasn't our idea'
Confusion surrounds the process by which Australia’s environment minister was crowned the world’s No 1, with the news agency denying it designed the scheme

Confusion surrounds the selection process for the “best minister in the world” award bestowed upon Greg Hunt at the World Government Summit in Dubai for his efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

According to the summit’s website in the United Arab Emirates, the “best minister in the world” award was “thoroughly and independently managed by Thomson Reuters where the search for the nominees is conducted according to the established criteria”.

According to a radio interview by the “humbled” Hunt, the award was also initiated by Reuters.

“Reuters news agency said to the UAE government that they’d like to create the award and present it at the World Government Summit,” the federal environment minister said.

“They then commissioned the World Bank, the OECD, Ernst & Young and an international strategic firm called Strategy and Co to draw up a list of 100 – they then winnowed it down to 10. They used a series of criteria, they had a voting program – and we didn’t know about it, and I got a call just over a week ago.”

But Thomson Reuters said it was “not correct” to say that the company initiated the award or were responsible for designing the selection process.

“Thomson Reuters was solely responsible for assisting in the administration of the award, to a set of criteria approved by the World Government Summit organisers,” said Tarek Fleihan, head of corporate communications for the financial information company in the Middle East, Africa and Russia.

Thomson Reuters promised a full clarifying statement, but has not yet issued one. Reuters news said it had no involvement in the process.

Accepting the award at the summit, Hunt said that “on a personal level I am genuinely humbled to receive this award. I am, however, deeply proud that this inaugural award is being presented to an environment minister.”

In an interview with Fairfax Media, Hunt described his win as “really an award for Australia” and reassured readers that his wife had insisted he “still had to put the bins out”.

The website says there were nominations from 80 countries, which were assessed based on four criteria:

Innovation and leadership: the solution that was introduced by the candidate will have revolutionised the utilisation of government services by its citizens. This work of true innovation will have increased productivity, reduced costs and improve the citizen’s opinion of the government.
Quality and impact: the solution should address the needs of the citizens and must demonstrate a significant social impact. Significant social impact includes but is not limited to easily accessible government services for all citizens, efficiency in execution, human development impact, job creation, etc.
Replication: the solution must have the quality of being easily replicated in multiple geographies. The solution should demonstrate propensity for impact beyond the local level, either nationally, regionally or globally.
Reputation: the candidate must be highly credible amongst his peers and the general public. The candidate must have a proven record amongst his peers of developing innovative solutions that have positively impacted the citizens.

“The aim of this award is to recognise innovation in global government work and highlight ministerial initiatives that have resulted in positive changes in their communities,” the UAE minister of cabinet affairs, Mohammed Al Gergawi, told the summit as he gave Hunt the award.

“Our world today needs ministers to serve as role models of thought and action, which bring about progress and welfare and improve general societal wellbeing.”

Official statistics released in December revealed Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions increased in the year to the end of June 2015 by 0.8% and by 1.3% when land use and deforestation were taken into account.

On Wednesday the Greens deputy leader, Scott Ludlam, attacked Hunt’s “brazen audacity” over accepting the “best minister in the world” award.

In a satirical address to the nation, Ludlam said while the award “might sound like something his mum made up ... on behalf of the Australian Greens I am asking you to join me in calling on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to declare February the 10th a public holiday to mark this unique occasion”.