UPDATE _DECEMBER 2005 PART ONE
FEDERAL PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE EXPOSES
HOWARD GOVERNMENT GRANT RORTS
A Federal Parliamentary Committee, have discovered the Howard Coalition was able to bypass funding guidelines to provide money for its favoured projects in Regional Australia.
The major allegations concern funding decisions and announcements made by former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, John Howard then parliamentary secretary for transport and Regional Services De-Anne Kelly and Local Government Minister Jim Lloyd.
But the Government rejected the findings of the Labor dominated committee with Regional Services Minister Warren Truss accusing the opposition of conducting a politically motivated inquiry, “Labor has failed in its attempt to find scandal or corruption,” he said. This statement from the former Minister for Agriculture and Quarantine Mr Truss can be accepted with a grain of salt. This Minister was responsible for allowing imported pork meat from Countries such as Canada, Denmark and the United States who pose a disease risk to the Australian Pork Industry because these countries have post Multi-systemic wasting syndrome.
Mr Truss is the same Minister who ignored the outbreak of Citrus Canker which eventually led to the total destruction of the citrus orchards in Emerald, Queensland. In fact an Emerald citrus grower in central Queensland told a Senate hearing that “the infected fruit on Evergreen Farms was never treated to stop the disease from spreading,” and added, “there was obviously months and months of Canker ridden fruit distributed throughout Australia.”
Apologies for diversifying from our story now back to the Government grant rorts. The grants investigated included $600,000 given to a financially troubled rail operation in Southern Queensland, $1.5 million for the dredging of a creek on the NSW Central coast, $1.3 million for a North Queensland Dairy Company that went into voluntary administration less than a month later, $1.2 million was provided to an Ethanol Plant in the Electorate of the former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson and $500,000 for a North Queensland Hotel with bikini clad barmaids.
Labor transport spokesman Kerry O’Brien accused the Government of using the program for its electoral advantage, describing its handling of the scheme as a scandal.
“That’s $5 million to fund a steam train that doesn’t go a creek that breached itself a milk company that folded before the ink on the funding announcement was dry, on Ethanol company worth $1 that’s yet to produce a drop of fuel, and a hotel funded, to run ‘whacky Wednesdays’ and stunt bikini babes, while other communities on the Atherton Tablelands cry out for drinkable water,” he said.
While finding that the Regional Partnerships was overall a worth while program, the committee said that an examination of a number of projects identified serious deficiencies in the transparency and accountability by which projects are brought forward, considered and approved for funding.
“Greater transparency around the program is required to allow the Parliament to monitor this significant area of expenditure and as a check on arbitrariness and politicisation,” it concluded. It also called for the administration of the entire scheme to be investigated by the National Auditor’s Office. The committee found that a $600,000 grant to the troubled Beaudesert Rail in Southern Queensland was made for “political purposes,” with the Department of Transport and Regional Services cut out of the application process and decisions apparently made by Mr Anderson and Prime Minister Howard.
Grants worth $1.5 million for the dredging of Tumbi Creek on the NSW Central Coast were approved by Ms De-Anne Kelly post haste and without following normal funding guidelines. “Funding for the dredging work was announced by the Prime Minister in a marginal electorate just days before the 2004 Federal Election was announced (on August 29),” the committee concluded. “Yet, as at mid August 2005, a funding agreement for the project still had not been entered into.”
Although several projects were deemed by the Department of Regional Services to be ineligible for grants, the committee found that so-called strategic opportunities were able to exercise “almost unlimited discretion to circumvent funding criteria.” The SONA guidelines are a major accountability black hole, “committee chairman Michael Foreshaw said. “The committee recommends they be abolished.”
The truth of the matter is Government Ministers from the Prime Minister down used “unrestrained discretion” to inappropriately push through questionable multi-million dollar Regional grants for political benefits in the run-up to the 2004 Federal Elections. This was the disgraceful scenario projected by the Senate inquiry into the Regional Partnerships and sustainable regions Programs.
One only has to recall that in 1993 Labor’s Ros Kelly had her “Political head decapitated because she was unable to explain how she handed out $30 million in sports grants prior to that years Federal Election arousing suspicions that her decisions had been politically motivated.
In 2005, the grants estimated to be at least $500 million allocated to Regional Partnerships since 2003 by several Federal Ministers, where there is direct evidence of ministerial interference apparently for political ends. And yet Nationals Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile on Thursday October 6, 2005 vigorously defended the Coalitions actions added that the Federal Government would review the future administration of the program.
In the face of the damning and detailed case studies in the Senate report, the Government unbelievably maintain that its decision making processes are transparent and its grants funnel only to deserving and worthy projects. Excuse us! Transparent? When a former responsible Minister, Ian Campbell authorised the Department to approve $1.2 million for an Ethanol project in the former National’s Leader John Anderson’s electorate, a project that had not yet been properly assessed: When Mr Anderson’s adviser also intervened and when the grant, ineligible under normal guidelines was finally approved under secret guidelines that allowed the regular ones to be waived?
Deserving and worthy? When interventions from Prime Minister John Howard and former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson pushed through a $600,000 grant against departmental reservations, for a tourist railway that was under administration at the time and which never operated again?
Predictably, the Government is erecting the “straw man” argument, that critics are discrediting a program that has benefited many Rural Communities.
As the Senate report visibly demonstrates, the program has been discredited not by its critics but by the manner in which it has been administered by the Government itself, with its blatant and inappropriate ministerial intervention and its unseemly rush to pump out money in the lead up to the Federal Elections.
INTERNATIONAL PET HATES
In the past ten year’s polls taken in Britain and Australia re: the professional most detested were as follows:
Therefore, we can’t for the life of us comprehend how the British elected Tony Blair into Government when you realise that both Mr Blair and his wife and Lawyers. The Australian voters amaze us in that Prime Minister Howard is a lawyer as are many of his Cabinet Ministers which include Treasurer Costello, Senator Vanstone and Mr Ruddock to name a few, continue to be re-elected.
When you consider that the Howard–Vail, Liberal National Coalition are spending Australian Taxpayers dollars on implementing infrastructure for Afghanistan and Iraq as well as introducing Constitutional Democracy to these Countries. How HYPOCRITIC! Our Federal Government want to introduce a Constitutional Democracy overseas although they continue to breach our Australian Constitution re: the following issues:
Issue of Writ_____________21 August 1946
Polling Day______________28 September 1946
Result__________________Not Carried.
The Howard-Vaile Coalition would be well aware that the Australian people rejected any changes to Industrial laws by Referendum in 1946 and that the true democratic way to know whether we wanted amendments to our Industrial Relations is to again put it to another Referendum, for the Australian people to decide.
For those who believe we are victimising the Howard-Vaile-Liberal-National Coalition we have decided to expose the failures of elected members and their Bureaucrats across the 3 tiers of Government Federal, State and Local (Council and shires).
We’ll qualify our statements by saying that the elected members of the 3 tiers qualifications and 99.9% of them have exactly that “no qualifications” and yet their wage rises agree indexed annually by the Independent Commonwealth Tribunal who was appointed by the Government of the day. Meanwhile their Bureaucratic advisers who have little or no hands on experience whose claim to fame is having at least one University diploma but unfortunately not one of them has a diploma for “common sense.” In fact the Federal Government was responsible for introducing an agency known as the “Productivity Commission.” The majority members of this Commission have hardly done a decent days work in their life time are dictating to fourth and fifth generation farmers how to run their industries. This is the greatest bit of Bureaucratic “crap” ever perpetuated in this country.
As one of our Colleagues mused, when a politician asks voters to trust him or her, then it’s time to begin counting the silverware. That’s probably a good idea at the moment as the Coalition continues to saturate us with an advertising campaign to “brain-wash” a suspicious electorate of the value of its Industrial Relation’s Work-place Changes.
This massive costs to taxpayers nation wide by the Howard Government have one problem, as yet there are actually no proposals. There is no Bill that is available to be scrutinised. It’s just another case of the Government wasting a minimum of $20 million, which will more likely blow out to more than $30 million.
In the Sun-Herald, October 16, 2005 Alex Mitchell and Kerry-Anne Walsh in their Naked eye column headed, “so handy to have Hendy as IR Spruicker.” One of the most enthusiastic backers of the Howard Government’s industrial changes is the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Its Chief Executive Peter Hendy, bobs up constantly on TV lauding and applauding the Government’s anti-worker initiatives and he writes glowing article in the national media about them. Government ministers quote him endlessly, as an “independent third party, to support the contentious new laws. That wouldn’t be the same Peter Hendy who was chief of staff to former Workplace Relations Minister Peter Reith, who sooled the dogs of war onto waterfront workers? The same Hendy who moved with Reith to Defence, and who refused to give evidence before a Senate committee into the kiddier overboard affair? Whom Reith singled out for special thanks in his speech when he quit Parliament in 1998?
Indeed it is, 2SM 1269am Super network Breakfast Host Grant Goldman from 5am – 9am, Monday to Friday is spot on when he says the truth will eventually come out in the wash.
Because on Tuesday, October 11, 2005 the same Peter Hendy Chief Executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry let the penny drop re: unemployment figures which exposes John Howard and his Government using creative accounting to produce misleading figures to the Australian public. Mr Hendy said, Church leaders opposed to Industrial Relations reform are ignoring the plight of Australian’s 500,000 unemployed.
He expressed this in response to Sydney’s Anglican Archbishop Dr Peter Jensen, the Uniting and impact Catholic Churches spoke of their concern about the impact on family life of the planned Federal Governments Industrial Relations Reform.
You see 500,000 unemployed, represents 5 per cent of the Australian population the figure that John Howard and his Ministers say is the true unemployment members. You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to know that 500,000 unemployed plus the aged, infirmed, disabled and under working age children would give us a conservative figure of 13% plus. We at “Voice of the People” would prefer to rust a thief than a person who tells lies.
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS HOTLINE OPERATORS TOLD NOT TO DISCUSS SPECIFICS
The Howard Government’s Work Choices hotline operators have been ordered not to answer detailed or specific questions about the work place reforms. A report by Joe Hildebrand, Work and Family Reporter in Saturday, October 15, 2005 edition of the Daily telegraph, he stated one call centre worker told him, that if a question became too detailed or specific callers were told to simply wait for the legislation. Consultants also only have access to less than half the information contained in the Government’s 68 page explanatory booklet.
“I had access to the training documents and they carry extraordinarily little detail,” the operator said on condition of anonymity.
“As soon as a call delves any deeper than vague generalities, consultants are instructed to tell the caller that no answer is available until the legislation is released.
“Bottom line is that the hotline is largely useless and the information is already being distributed a fraction of the cost and in a more digestible format via the website.”
Six days after the hotline opened it is receiving only a trickle of calls, while consultants earn up to $37 an hour. Operators at centres in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne get $22.50 an hour on weekdays, $28 an hour on Saturdays and $37 an hour on Sundays. The line is staffed from 8am – 10pm.
Ironically, the payment of weekend penalty rates is one of the conditions that will be abolished under the reforms. The situation has also become a discussion topic at a website for call centre operators.
“On Sunday, the people working on the hotline that I spoke to did not take a single call all day. This is just another devious way to use Australian Taxpayers money to cover up the truth re: the changes to Industrial Relations. How the Australian Public can forgive successive Governments such as the Fraser-Hawke-Keating and the Howard-Vaile Coalition, of blatantly using taxpayers money to peddle their political propaganda? We believe that the money they’ve wasted over the decades would have been better utilised by introducing much needed infrastructure such as Health, Education, Water and Roads to name a few.
The aforementioned Prime Ministers led, Governments, Governed on hindsight they were incapable of projecting foresight in fact they remind us of a kitten chasing it’s tail.
Industrial Relations Reform could lead to cuts for Australia’s three and a half million pensioners, because pension rises under the “terms of reference by the Howard Government’s newly appointed Fair Pay Commission, would discount increases for the low paid.
Reducing minimum wages to minimal wages would have a domino effect to pensioners because pensions are tied to average earnings. When the New Zealand Government introduced similar reforms which led to a drop in real wages in fact growth in wages fell from five per cent to two point eight per cent.
May we suggest you study and digest the following two articles, “The Real Facts about the sale of Telstra” and the “Truth About Pensions” proceed to Link >>>> Update – October 2005 part three.
It is obvious on perusing the aforementioned evidence that successive Governments perpetrated a fraud of monumental proportions against the Australian Taxpayers, i.e. aged pensioners and self funded retirees. No wonder we are the world’s highest taxed Country bar none.
Prime Minister Howard has announced that his Government will sell their 6 billion plus shares overseas. Excuse us Mr Howard, we the Australian taxpayers are the Telstra share holders, you and your Government were elected to be the minders of our shares.
Can Mr Howard and his Government give us a concrete guarantee that our Telecommunication Services won’t fall into the hands of terrorists. For example how can they prevent Osuna Bin Ladin from appointing an agent to purchase the majority of Telstra shares. Is the Howard-Vail Coalition attempting to risk Australia’s Telco security just as George W Bush’s Grandfather Prescott Bush did by financing the rise of Hitler between 1929-1942. Link >>>> Update – November 2005 part two.
Tens of thousands of Australians gave their lives for all Australians to have the right to freedom of speech and live in a democracy.
One of the greatest abuses of this right, was the in-house inquiry by the Beattie Queensland Labor Government into the incarceration of Pauline Hanson and David Ettridge. The Queensland Labor Government’s meaning of justice is not dissimilar to the manner in which Hitler controlled Germany during World War II.
LOVE HER OR HATE HER
The jailing of Pauline Hanson and David Ettridge must be fully investigated through an Independent Body. Any attempt to cover up evidence that led to their Incarceration must be Publicly Exposed.
The sacking of one bureaucrat should not prevent Australians from learning the truth, and nothing but the truth, re; the following:
An Independent Enquiry is the only way we’ll learn who was responsible for instigating these frivolous and vexatious actions.
THE HISTORY OF THE NEW PREMIER OF NSW
1961:______________Born in Sydney to Italian migrant parents and Giuseppe and Maria.
1984-86:___________Union official, Commonwealth Bank Employees Union.
1986-87:___________President of the Beverly Hills Labor Branch.
1986-87:___________Secretary of the Banks (Electorate) Young Labor.
1986-91:___________Adviser to Senator Graham Richardson on Environment/Social Security.
1991-99:___________Member of the NSW Legislative Assembly, Member for Hurstville.
1999-Present:_______Member for Lakemba.
1999-2001:_________Minister Assisting the Premier on Citizenship.
1999-2003:_________Minister for Public Works and Services.
2001-2003:_________Minister Assisting the Premier on Citizenship.
2001-2003:_________Minister for Sport and Recreation.
2003-Present:_______Minister for Health.
July 27, 2005:_______Bob Carr 57 Resigns.
July 29:____________NSW Police Minister Carl Scully pulls out of the contest to replace Bob Car.
August 2:___________Morris Iemma named as the 40th Premier of NSW in a Labor caucus ballot.
Family:____________Wife Santina, children Clara, 6 Matthew 4 and 21 month old twins Luka and Joshua
Education:__________Bachelor of economics (Sydney University); LLB (Law) (University of Technology).
Interests Include:_____Labor history industrial relations, economic development , law reform, music, theatre, sports.
You now have the statistical back ground of NSW Premier Morris Iemma. We will now
Expose what the NSW Labor spin doctors failed to mention about the new Premier.
In 1985-86 Prime Minister Hawke and Treasurer Keating deregulated the Bank Employees
Union Official, remained a financial member of the Labor Party, no doubt wanting to follow
up his political aspirations to the fullest, regardless of what his Labor Party Colleagues lolled
out to his union members. Thousands more of his fellow workers were later to join the ranks
of the unemployed after Prime Minister Keating sold the “People’s Bank,” the
Commonwealth. The question is, can we trust Premier Iemma not to dump the people of
NSW.
FORMER NSW PREMIERS ON THE HIGHWAY TO SUCCESS
Four of the State’s 5 Premiers since 1986 are working for companies that control all of Sydney’s major road infrastructure. On retiring from politics, Neville Wran, John Fahey, Nick Greiner and Bob Carr have accepted key positions with the Multi-National consortiums backing the biggest road projects in NSW. Between them, the former NSW Premiers’ Roles cover every major piece of road infrastructure in Sydney.
Mr Carr is being paid a half a million dollars a year as a Macquarie Bank consultant. The Macquarie Investment Group controls the M4 and Easter Distributor Toll Roads. It also owns 50% of the M5 and 40% of the M7, now under construction, and is the major shareholder in Sydney Airport.
Mr Carr is expected to advise on community attitudes, social trends and political implications for Macquarie Bank’s global asset portfolio. Its unclear if the Macquarie Bank will back the 2 billion dollar desalination plant announced by Mr Carr before he quit politics.
Mr Greiner is the chairman of Bilfinger Berger Australia the parent company of Baulderstone Hornibrook, builder of the Cross City Tunnel and the M5 Est Bilfinger Berger recently acquired Abigroup, which operates the M2.
Mr Neville Wran resigned as a director of Abigroup in 2001. His wife Jull, is a director of the company.
Mr Fahey was appointed chairman of the $1.1 billion Lane cove Tunnel project in December, 2003.
It is worth noting that when Bob Carr was NSW Premier his Government was involved in an ICAc inquiry into the massive oasis development, involving a Labor controlled Liverpool City Council, Macquarie Bank and the Canterbury bulldogs Rugby League club. Allegations that State Upper House Labor Member Eddy Obeid was acting as a bagman for a $1 million dollar donation to the NSW Labor Party slush fund for the development to go ahead.
When Premier Carr called for an ICAC inquiry it would be interesting to know how much money his Government made available pertaining to how wide the terms of reference would be. It was interesting that the commissioner of ICAC Irene Moss stood down from the investigation as her husband Bill was and still is a senior executive of the Macquarie Bank. The “Oasis Development” investigation should have been an Independent one to avoid any possibility of a conflict of interest. This was not done and everyone involved was exonerated including how the Bulldogs Rugby League Club breached the player salary cap by funnelling overpayments via the “Oasis Foundation.” When you realise that Premier Carr in his profession pre-politics was a very ordinary journalist who was better know for his knowledge of the “American Civil War.”
We can understand the countless enquiries we’ve received, asking how a serving leader of a State can resign and shortly afterwards accept a $500,000 a year Consultancy with the Macquarie Bank who has been involved in Commercial Deals with this man’s NSW Labor Government. One can be forgiven in suspecting that a conflict of interest has occurred between Premier Carr and the Macquarie Bank and that more conflicts could arise in the near future.
DRUG ADDICTS SNUB TAX FUNDED INJECTING ROOM
Following is a report by the Daily telegraphs Investigations Editor Kelvin Bissett in the Tuesday, October 18, 2005 Edition.
Registered addicts are using the Kings Cross injecting room only once every 42 times they shoot up, a damning report shows.
The figures suggest that Sydney Medically supervised injecting centre, on Darlinghurst Road, has been a waste of taxpayers’ money with users snubbing it as a safe place to use, despite it being open for four years.
According to Drug Free Australia a critic of the Darlinghurst Road facility, statistics suggest, on average, addicts only use the injecting room for one of their three daily hits every fortnight or once every 42 hits.
“Lobbyists for the injecting room told the people of NSW that an injecting room was necessary because every heroin injection could be fatal,the report says. “Quite clearly the injecting room is not meeting the most important criteria for its establishment.”
The report is the latest blow for the facility which last week was embarrassed by A Current Affair, showing drug deals being done on its doorstep. And last month, Opposition Leader Peter Debnam vowed to shut it down should he win the next election. The facility controversial since it opened in May 2001 has so far cost taxpayers $10 million to set up with an annual operating bell of $2.4 million.
The 200 injections daily in the room cost taxpayers on average about $32 each, more than the $30 street price addicts pay for the cap of heroin they take in. A spokesman for Health Minister John Hatzistergos dismissed Drug Free Australia’s disputing their evidence and arguing they were just repeating the same gripes they had in 2003.
Drug Free Australia based its findings on performance figures in the june 2005 face up publication, the official magazine of the injecting room.
Other conclusions include that:
Overdose rates inside the room are about 25 times higher than on surrounging streets
Referrals for addiction treatment took place with about 15 per cent of users, well down on the 32 per cent referral rates elsewhere in the health sector and
Use of the room at 200 injections daily is well short of the capacity of 320 a day.
Since its inception in May 2001, 7,500 clients have registered to use the injection room and 240,000 injections have taken place there.
This finding was made after subtracting 32.5 per cent of visitors that are unlikely to visit again. Report spokesperson Gary Christian said the infrequency of visits support a theory that addicts use the facility for “risky experimentation”, knowing medical staff will help if things go wrong.
If true, the centre was worsening the drug problem he said. Prior to the Carr Government’s invalid and illegal legislation to license the injection room two of our colleagues informed the then Opposition Leader Kerry Chikarovski, her shadow Attorney General Chris Harcher and present leader of the opposition Peter Debnam and yet they all failed to include our evidence in their debate against the injection room Bill. Is it possible that the Howard Government and the Federal Liberal Party applied pressure to their state counter parts to remain silent about the illegalities.
Bob Spanswick 23 years a senior Law Enforcement Customs Officer was one of our Colleagues who altered the State Opposition. Its interesting that Drug Free Australia’s spokesperson failed to disclose to Kelvin Bissett that not only has the NSW Stat Labor Government breached the Australian constitution and committed indictable offences under Federal Law by legislating to license a supervised injecting room for the use of illegally imported substances, i.e. Heroin, Cocaine.
The Howard Government’s failure to enforce the full brunt of Federal Law against the then Carr Labor NSW Government guilty of offences against the Australian Customs Act.
We sincerely hope that Drug Free Australia did not deliverately omit to mention the aforementioned till legalities in exchange for a $600,000 grant over 3 years for them to remain silent. Full evidence can be found on:
Link>>>> Invalid Drug Laws
Link>>>>Update October 2005 – Part Three, Did He Leave The Path of God For Greener Pastures?”
LETTERS
Chaos looms on country trains fellow country link train travellers: I have recently become aware that it will soon be almost impossible to buy tickets face-to-face. Good old fashioned service will be replaced by phone, Computer bookings or you may have to collect them from inexperienced staff at City Rail Stations.
You may even have to board a train with no ticket and then buy it on board. The result will speak with a knowledgeable person about my particular needs when I travel. Many knowledgeable and loyal country link staff will lose their jobs with an arbitrary stroke of the political axe. Why would we need John Howard’s proposed industrial relations laws when already a State Labor Government can treat its workers and the public with such contrempt?
Is this the kind of railway “service” we want? No, let us stand up and make our dissatisfaction and disapproval known
Prue Watson, Wombarra
CUTTING COSTS
If my job was recalculated minus penalty rates and overtime, I would lose about $15,000 a year. Without overtime and penalties, many shift related jobs are low paid. To compensate for the loss it may be necessary to cancel private health insurance because of the high premiums and the inability to meet gap payments. Voluntary superannuation payments would also be gone.
So while I would contribute less to the economy by paying less tax and being a low level consumer the risk of me becoming welfare dependent in later life becomes greater. As corporations benefit from lower wage bills and payroll tax, the Government will pick up the tab for higher welfare dependency. If this is the price we have to pay for some lop side Free Trade Agreement, then you’ve lost me: I’ll see you at the ballot box.
Richard Purser Chipping Norton
Link>>>> Update – August 2004
FEES PLEASE
CROWN PRINCESS MARY – IT’S A BOY
30 YEARS PLUS OF POLITICAL
WHITE – ANTING BY SUCCESSIVE GOVERNMENT
DO WE AS AUSTRALIANS REMAIN BRAIN DEAD AND APATHETIC?