Australians are more used to pointing the accusing finger at other countries than having it pointed at us. Many Australians criticise China for allegedly engaging in genocide against its Uighur population and harvesting their organs. We have for decades been expressing concern about Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingya and the repression of women in Iran, Saudi Continue reading »
Government
I am the child of holocaust survivors. I cannot remain a member of a party which turns a blind eye to the ongoing persecution of millions of people who have a right to live in peace and freedom in the land of their ancestors. On the 19th of May, 2023, I tendered my resignation from Continue reading »
Sudden political excitement about the unethical, almost certainly illegal conduct of a large, too big to disappear, accountancy company, deflects attention from the primary site of a cancerous managerialist disease. That site was infected with the idea that individuals labelled managers, usually but not always accountants, could be trusted to decide how government departments, universities, hospitals Continue reading »
The PwC scandal reveals appalling behaviour by an individual consultant and his company that provided consulting services to the federal government. PwC reportedly used its insider knowledge to advise multinational firms on how to continue to avoid tax when the legislation it advised on came into operation. Confidentiality agreements were broken and the central objective of the Continue reading »
At the post-budget Press Club lunch, Treasurer Chalmers made a telling comment about the meaning of social security and, by extension, the role of government. Responding to Shadow Treasurer Taylor’s concerns that the broader community would be funding the government’s social security measures, Chalmers happily pointed out the bleeding obvious, namely that the idea that Continue reading »
As a long-ago holder of an orange lobbyist Parliament House pass (referred to as a ‘gold diggers’ pass, in contrast to the ‘true blue’ pass of staffers or the ‘yellow press’ pass for the press gallery), I read the latest kerfuffle about lobbying, political donations, influence peddling and political insider trading with an element of Continue reading »
Last year the NSW Education Department paid almost $10 million to Deloitte Consultants for ‘expert’ advice, not to mention how much of tax-payers revenue went into the pockets of the disgraced PWC for similar nonsense. This reliance on outside know-how is a ‘logical’ step up from the failed policy of governments employing experts in leadership Continue reading »
Atrocities don’t happen overnight. They ramp up over time. The Nazi death camps, were preceded by at least a decade of smaller, selective and escalating removals of human rights for Jewish and LGBTIQ+ peoples. Similar patterns allowed for the genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia – incremental and selective removals of minority rights built momentum and Continue reading »
The Public Service Act doesn’t just allow secretaries and their departments to push back on politicians’ abuses of power; it demands it. But targeting ministers or SES, or tightening the standards and laws under which they operate, will not be the most effective way to repair what is a broader issue. It is hard to Continue reading »
My recent stocktake of the state of play on implementation of the Thodey Report recommendations was written just before PM&C released details of proposed changes to the Public Service Act with an exposure draft of the legislation and an exposure draft of explanatory materials. Extraordinarily, consultation on the changes ends on 31 May but these Continue reading »