GOVT.FAIL.AU: Labor tough on whistleblowing

Labor tough on whistleblowing  - The Canberra Times   

The Labor Government is a far more ferocious prosecutor of whistleblowers and leakers than the Howard government, with Kevin Rudd overseeing a doubling of leak referrals to the Federal Police during his time as prime minister.  

New figures obtained during a Fairfax investigation into Federal Police leak probes show that while the Howard government referred 16 leaks of government material to Federal Police between 2005-07, the Rudd Government referred 32.  The surprising figures reflect a similar trend in US politics, where the more liberal Obama Administration has become known for taking a harder line on whistleblowers than the previous Bush administration.  

The Federal Police unit the investigations are run out of is a section called Special References, and most investigations are run by a Canberra-based million-dollar-a-year, 17-officer unit called Head Office Investigations.(snip)   ''If the government want us to do it, they're our masters, so we do it ,'' the source said. ''And that's not just a particular government, both Labor and Liberal and everyone in between gets the shits when their policies are undermined or their big announcements appear on the front page of the newspapers 24 hours before they announce it.''

Now we see why the Prime Minister set herself against Julian Assange and the release of Cablegate.  Without whistleblowers, our democracy is degraded as there is no other way to monitor the activities of those who we elect to govern on our behalf.  Our governments must be held accountable.

Is Penny W(r)ong right?

• Wong says beaches could erode away | Herald Sun

  • AUSTRALIA'S most iconic beaches, including Sydney's Bondi and surfing mecca Bells beach, could erode away or recede by hundreds of meters over the coming century, the nation's Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said yesterday.

    But locals aren't so sure, The Australian reports.

  • In her opening address to the National Climate Change Forum in Adelaide yesterday, Wong made some alarming predictions for Australia's coast.
  • She urged people not to listen to critics using isolated errors in the UN climate change panel's report to undermine action, claiming the report had been subject to "breathless, scandalised claims" implying the world had been hoodwinked by scientists.

Greg's Comment::

Penny Wong is using the arrogant Kevin Rudd concept of, "If I say it, it must be right". It shows a return of the Howard politics of fear where there is no justification for such statements. Beach sand is a fluid medium that gets moved by the tides and storms and is redeposited in another place. Our coastline is constantly changing and will continue to do so.

She may be smart but she shows a complete and utter disregard for the intellectual competency of the Australian people in telling them not to listen to critics of what she has determined to be right.

We must take into account the critics of the ICCC and the ICCC itself which is about to undergo a restructuring because they have accepted the flaws in their own processes. When the world's leaders could not agree on ways to handle climate change in Copenhagen, it seems horribly unlikely that Australia's Penny Wong is the only person on earth to get it right. She has no right to be imposing her will on her fellow Australians

Sykes: Local gap year students ‘dudded’ by Labor

Source: (State MP for Benalla) Bill Sykes Media Release

Over 100 students in the Benalla electorate, currently in their university gap year, will be forced to reconsider whether they can afford to take up their deferred tertiary place in 2010 because of the Labor Government’s ill-conceived changes to Youth Allowance, Nationals Member for Benalla Bill Sykes said today.

“The Labor Government simply does not understand the ramifications of their proposed changes to the independent Youth Allowance,” Dr Sykes said. “By making the changes retrospective, students who in good faith at the end of their 2008 VCE year made the decision to defer an offered tertiary place in order to qualify for Youth Allowance have now been caught short.

Dr Sykes said almost all those country students who deferred their studies for a year did so to become eligible for Youth Allowance.

“This is the most important issue to hit rural Victoria for years and the On Track figures released reveal the full impact of the Youth Allowance changes,” Dr Sykes said.

The On Track report, prepared by the Australian Council for Educational Research, showed that the rate of deferral in country areas was twice that of Melbourne students. The report also showed a lower uptake of tertiary study by rural students.

“It shows, for example, that 84 per cent of the 64 students from Benalla College were offered a university or TAFE place and that 37 per cent deferred. That’s 24 young people from just one school who have been hit by the change. By comparison, in a Melbourne school of comparative size VCE numbers 93 per cent of the 62 students were offered a university or TAFE place and only 6 per cent deferred.

“In spite of a high percentage of offers 18 per cent of students were actually university enrolled.

“Of the 49 students from FCJ College 94 per cent were offered a university or TAFE place and 50 per cent deferred. That’s another 24 students from Benalla who have been hit by the change. While FCJ College however had no students looking for work 23 per cent of students were enrolled at university.”

While the statewide deferral rate was more than 12 per cent, many regional schools had rates in the high 20s and even into the 30 per cent range with one school at 50 per cent.”

Dr Sykes said that if the Federal Government does not scrap its Youth Allowance changes next year’s On Track figures will show an alarming decrease in the uptake of tertiary places by country students because without Youth Allowance higher education is not possible.

The Federal Government argued in Parliament this week that changes to Youth Allowance involve more than a single issue and were designed to weed out those twisting the rules to get the money.

“In arguing that case,” Dr Sykes said, “they again missed the point, and that is that Electorate Offices, state wide, are not being contacted by people who know they should not get Youth Allowance but by people who are halfway through their gap year and are now not eligible.”

Earlier this month Dr Sykes direct mailed a petition against the changes to Youth Allowance to over 800 young people in the Benalla Electorate with many more distributed to homes and schools. He has since made three presentations of signed petitions in Parliament.

“I will present more petitions when Parliament resumes next week and call on people to return all signed petitions to my office as soon as possible,” he said. “At both State and Federal levels, the fight against these changes has been led by Nationals MPs and we will maintain the pressure to have these controversial changes scrapped.”

Migrant women want more workplace protection

• Migrant women want more workplace protection - ABC News
  

• A public hearing in Sydney today into the Federal Government's Fair Work Bill will be told that vulnerable workers should be allowed to take individual workplace agreements home before they sign.
  

• Angela Zhang, a Chinese community worker from Sydney's Asian Women at Work says migrant women feel pressured to sign whatever the boss gives them, and wants better employment protection for migrant women.
  • 
    • For six years I worked as a contract vineyard worker for a winemaker renowned for offering the best deal to its workers. In spite of that, one feels intimidated when, out of the blue, you are asked to sign a backdated contract that gives the employer the right to sack you with one hour notice and gives you nothing in return. And I'm a national.
      
    
    
    • What must it be like for migrant workers who are dependent upon a third party contractor (used by employers to escape superannution and workplace regulations) just to find work. The worker has no rights in these circumstances and taking home the agreement before signing is useless as it is a case of sign or lose your job. - post by gnaylor

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