$5 MILLION PIECE OF PAPER
A $4.9 million strategic review of the Department of Home Affairs did not produce a “single consolidated report”, the government has revealed.
The Age reports that the government defied a Senate motion to table the full findings of the review, with Attorney-General Christian Porter instead tabling advice from the department saying there was no report, but that the review had led to undefined “long term benefits”. Labor home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally accused the government of producing “$5 million worth of buzzwords”.
“This is either the single most expensive single piece of paper in the history of this chamber, or a blatant rejection of the will of the Senate by a minister who is allergic to scrutiny,” Keneally said, citing various failures since the creation of the department.
CROWN INVESTIGATION INTENSIFIES
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission — Australia’s peak criminal intelligence agency — has announced a major investigation into organised crime at casinos, with commission chief Michael Phelan telling Nine papers that investigators have uncovered damning “insights into vulnerabilities”.
The Targeting Criminal Wealth special investigation is examining the operation of agents responsible for bringing high rollers into casinos, and follows Nine’s reports of Crown operators with links to Chinese criminals and foreign influence agents. The papers have also revealed that they declined to run a Crown defence ad submitted to them for publication, instead laying out detailed rebuttals to each of the ad’s claims.
INDEFINITE SENTENCES
The government will today urge parliament to pass a bill keeping convicted terrorists locked-up once they complete their sentence if they still harbour terrorist ideology, even when serving time for a non-terror related crime.
The Courier-Mail reports that, under the current law, the Home Affairs minister can apply for a continuing detention order at the end of a terrorism sentence, but not if the prisoner is serving time for another offence. The government is looking to close this “loophole”, with Attorney-General Christian Porter arguing it shouldn’t matter if a terrorist’s final day is for a terrorist offence or another offence. The bill is believed to be aimed at 11 prisoners who are due for release in the next 18 months, with the government refusing to confirm how many of the 11 benefit under current law.
[free_worm]
THEY REALLY SAID THAT?
Ms O’Byrne, it’s very unladylike to be yelling in the parliament.
Sue Hickey
The Tasmanian parliament Liberal speaker has been blasted over her sexist admonishment of deputy opposition leader Michelle O’Byrne, who was interjecting from across the chamber.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Arthur Sinodinos calls for Liberal ‘bullying’ review to be expedited
Thousands of workers on the National Disability Insurance Scheme underpaid, new figures reveal
Townsville flood victim receives debt recovery notice contrary to Government’s claims
Five Eyes nations target tech titans on child sex abuse ($)
Sunrise backtracks on ‘dole bludger’ segment and issues apology
Six Chapel Street bars raided by workplace regulator
Folau takes Rugby Australia to court over dismissal
Thousands of Chinese police hold mass gathering next to Hong Kong
Australia to pressure China, India on EU-style Asian trade agreement
Government MPs back ACTU critique of union-busting bill
Josh Frydenberg’s citizenship challenged by constituent who feels ‘betrayed’ on climate
AFP say safeguards on warrants for media raids would undermine investigations
Brexit Johnson sends ‘ditch the backstop’ message to EU via adviser
Internet NBN Co told to forget about recouping investment and focus on service
Ebola: Second case confirmed in Goma, DRC
‘Insidious’: Climate crisis already causing deaths and childhood stunting, report reveals
CRIKEY QUICKIE: THE BEST OF YESTERDAY
The Victims: what it’s like to live inside the eye of a media storm
“It sounded like a hundred other sad but routine crime reports, but for Jason Staveley, who was watching at his home in Sydney, it was anything but routine. The images that flashed before him — a red brick house surrounded by police cars and ambulance — belonged to his 69-year-old mother Beth. Her son first found out about her murder from a random news report, at the same time as hundreds of thousands of strangers.
‘My legs went out from underneath me,’ Jason Staveley told INQ of that moment. He rushed to the phone to call his brother at work: ‘It was the worst call I’ve ever had to make.’ Queensland Police were already at his brother’s workplace when Staveley reached him. Although officers had asked the media not to report the story until next-of-kin had been informed, Nine was in such a rush to be the first to broadcast the footage they went to air before police had spoken to the family.”
Crown corruption ‘investigation’ shows how power really works in Australia
“Crown is always good for a decent chunk of change for the Victorian and WA branches on both sides. So instead of a parliamentary inquiry, Labor and the government were content with Attorney-General Christian Porter referring the whole thing to the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI). This means the matter will go precisely nowhere. The ACLEI is the reason why so many people outside the major political parties — until 2018, when Bill Shorten committed Labor to a federal anti-corruption body — think we need a federal ICAC: it’s hopelessly inadequate.”
Vale Graham Freudenberg, herald of the promise of Labor
“There’s no point in damning the present through the past, not least because the Whitlam pushers were damned, at the time, as fey successors to the hard men of an earlier era. The times create the men and women; to be offered the chance to be great is impossible without a degree of luck. Still and all, as that generation departs, it would be worth looking back at the words this man wrote, and for Labor to discover the lost art of telling us what it is all for.”
THE COMMENTARIAT
Law allowing late-term abortions will pass – unless voters call their MPs – Damien Tudehope (The Age/Sydney Morning Herald): “Reader straw-poll: if the NSW parliament was poised to enact the most extreme abortion laws in the country (perhaps in the world), including unrestricted abortion until the moment of birth, should the people of the state be given the barest courtesy of an explanation – perhaps even a modicum of consultation? That’s the question I have been forced to ask my colleagues this week, after legislators from across the political divide tried to ride roughshod over parliamentary procedure and pass abortion laws that barely anyone in the state has even heard of. If democracy dies in darkness, this week it is on life support in NSW.”
This voice has echoes of its miserably failed forebear ($) – Maurice Newman (The Australian): “Constitutional recognition that Aboriginal people were here when Captain Cook landed 250 years ago is a statement of fact and a mark of respect. But romantic symbols will do nothing practical to improve the lives of indigenous people. That requires disempowering the sanctimonious elitists whose actions keep so many Aborigines out of the mainstream of modern society. It requires education and individual property ownership so effort and innovation can be rewarded through capital and income. It means a world where, to look forward, offers more than the next welfare cheque. Most of all, it means concentration on opportunity and personal fulfilment, not feel-good entitlements.”
Timor-Leste and Australia have little to celebrate if Witness K and Bernard Collaery are not free – José Ramos-Horta (The Guardian): “Knowing Australia as I do, I can sense the uneasiness and embarrassment felt across the political and legal minds in Canberra who hold the key to a decision on whether to sentence these two men to prison or to set them free. These important people in Canberra can make only one honourable decision – dismiss the case, set Witness K and Bernard Collaery free. These men haven’t done any harm to their country. They honoured Australia. I urge our president Francisco Guterres to honour both men with Timor-Leste’s highest national award, the Order of Timor-Leste. The 20 September celebrations will be somber and will have a bitter taste if Witness K and Bernard Collaery are not free.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Canberra
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Water minister David Littleproud will discuss compliance and integrity in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
Brisbane
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Anti-Adani campaigners will stage a protest outside a company contracted to carry out work for Adani, calling on the company to take a stance on climate change instead of doing the work.
Adelaide
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The repatriation and burial of the remains of 11 Kaurna people, previously held in the UK, will take place.
Devenport, Tasmania
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The operator of Spirit of Tasmania, the government-owned TT-Line Company, will appear in court charged over the deaths of 16 ponies during a voyage in January 2018.
Kingston, Tasmania
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Relationships Australia Tasmania and Clennett’s Mitre 10 will announce a formal mental health partnership to support the activities of SPEAK UP! Stay ChatTY.
Sydney
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An anti-abortion “Rally for Life” will be held outside NSW Parliament, hosted by Right for Life NSW, Family Voice Australia, Family Life International and We Support Women.
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A case management hearing will take place in Guy Sebastian v Titus Day, as the singer sues his former agent.
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NSW public hospital workers including paramedics, allied health and security staff plan will strike for four hours as they fight for increased hospital security.
Melbourne
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The Melbourne International Film Festival will hold its opening night, with former AFL footballer Adam Goodes’ film The Australian Dream making its world premiere.
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Former prime minister Kevin Rudd will address an Asia Society Australia gathering, speaking about US-China relations and the implications for Australia and the Pacific.
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The refurbished $430 million The Glen shopping centre officially opens, with Nadia Bartel and Aaron Faraguna to cut the David Jones store ribbon.
The Dirtbag and his offsider remain untouchable.
“Immigration can’t even protect our borders — time for an inquiry”
https://uat.crikey.com.au/2017/04/26/more-serious-bungles-at-immigration-show-the-case-for-an-inquiry/
A long series of independent reports has confirmed that the Department of Immigration is the most incompetent agency in the Commonwealth. A major intervention is needed.
“In fact, if you tote up the Department of Immigration’s failures in recent years, the list is almost Brandisian in length.
The offshore processing management flaws savaged by the auditor-general.
The strange way Transfield kept winning badly run tender processes and the regular and massive cost blow-outs for those contracts. A howler in its annual report.
The Operation Fortitude farce.
Attempts to cover up and gag people who revealed widespread abuse of offshore detainees, and not one but two apologies and compensation payouts to contractor Save The Children and its staff for a fictional claim that they had encouraged detainee self-harm.
The lie that the murdered Reza Barati had been trying to escape the Manus Island facility.
The secrecy and deception surrounding Operation Sovereign Borders and the repeated attempts to hunt down whistleblowers and journalists.
Pezzullo’s hysterical attack on refugee advocates and the media for causing problems in offshore detention camps.
The failure of Pezzullo to consult with counterparts in other countries about Astralia’s citizenship-stripping proposal.
Most of these events have happened on Pezzullo’s watch.
Pezzullo has overseen the militarisation of Immigration, and has been behind the persistent push to transform Immigration into what is inevitably called a “Homeland Security-style” domestic security agency, despite the constant flow of evidence that his department is fundamentally incapable of some of the most basic tasks public servants are asked to undertake, like running a tender process without breaking the law or triggering major probity concerns.
Now, one of the most important migration programs has “lost credibility” on his watch too.
Perhaps at some point the government will get the message about the problems at Immigration?”
https://uat.crikey.com.au/2017/04/19/the-end-of-457-visas-business-as-usual-for-department-with-no-credibility-to-lose/
Apparently NOT.
Julie Bishop aka Madam Mesothelioma was in the news re her sale of self to Palladin; the Coalition crooks line up after their snorting at the taxyers’ trough is over.
National Audits condemn Dutto and Pezzassary repeatedly.
They both need to be charged and jailed as the $2billion they’ve spent without authorization is a criminal offence; along with no departmental records existing as to who authorised the payments.
“$1.1bn was approved by DIBP officers who did not have the required authorisation; and for the remaining $1.1bn there was no departmental record of who authorised the payments”.
It comes off the back of another ANAO report into the procurement of support and welfare services for offshore detention centres that found the tendering process was horribly flawed. And we’re not talking Madam Mesothelioma’s new clients Palladin either.
The ANAO found that in 2014, rather than use an open tender process, the department “determined to only enter into negotiations with its preferred tenderer, Transfield”.
And this was done in a situation which the ANAO found “no available record of specific conflict of interest declarations having being made by departmental officers who were responsible for the procurement”.
To top it all off, the ANAO concluded that “Transfield’s overall price increased by $1.1bn above its tender bid during negotiations due to the department amending its requirements and accepting further enhancements to services” despite the department having “no government authority to increase the value of the contract to cover service additions”.
The latest ANAO report concludes of the whole tender process that these contract variation worth $1bn were made “without a documented assessment of value for money”.
What the ANAO has found is a dismissable offence under Commonwealth Finance Regulations amongst other things. Prosecutions can also be pursued and normally would be for amounts much smaller than those cited even when the malfeasance was not for personal gain.
To compound this issue the ANAO had already made similar findings in previous audits and nothing had changed/ followed up !!
The spending of in excess of $2 billion over budget AND without appropriate delegations (let alone following due procurement processes) is illegal.
For this amount the Minister must have known about it and approved the actions taken.
Both Morrison and Dutton must be held accountable and the matter investigated.
There are only 2 conclusions that can be reached…….
1. The Minister at the time of the breaches was so totally incompetentthat these transactions occurred without his knowledge……in which case the Secretary must be dismissed immediately.
2. The expenditure and non following of regulations was done at the behest of the Minister and he must therefore be sacked and charged
The APS simply does not have the “discretion” to spend that amount of money without approval. Even the most senior public servant cannot make that levelof decision without approval (with 2 or 3 exceptions eg: Head of ATO)
If this expenditure was outside/over and above the Appropriations Bill then then the matter is even more serious !
If Turnbull and Brandis do not act on this and at least suspend the 2 Minister spending a parliamentary enquiry then corruption has indeed gone too far.
To err once can be an oversight, to be told of the error, ignore the advice and Repeat the error is criminal/ wilful malfeasance.
Julie Bishop’s new clients post sucking on the teat and getting the extraordinary golden handshake. What a piece of excrement.
Dutton wants us to believe he knew nothing about the Manus Island security contractor Paladin to whom his department awarded massive contracts.
Dutton expects us to believe that he knew nothing about the $423 million security contracts.
The AFR’s investigation into Paladin revealed that Paladin was earning up to $17 million a month for security at three centres despite demonstrating a string of bad debts and failed contracts across Asia running its business out of a Kangaroo Island beach shack at Nepean Bay.
You can see why this sort of company was a natural pigeon trio for Julie Mesothelioma Bishop and Dutton and Pezza.