Thursday 28th of March 2024

government transparency...

transparency

Not only the Australian government spies on its citizens via retention of data and other means, it also hides behind various veils of secrecy to stop its citizens from knowing the truth about what the government is doing — from fudging economic figures to "operational matters" and "injunctions" to stop the truth about its incompetent, ruthless, dishonest, inefficient, childish ways...

hockey fudge and circus floss...

 

Treasurer Joe Hockey has once more sought to deny facts, obfuscate and keep the public in the dark over his unfair budget.

What’s more, he has blamed his failings on the messenger.

Fairfax Media this week published Treasury figures released under Freedom of Information laws. They showed how Mr Hockey's budget measures hit low-income  families harder than middle-income and high-income households.

Mr Hockey’s accused Fairfax Media of “deliberately misleading” the public.

In reality, Mr Hockey did the misleading by producing red herrings, knowing full well that a more detailed analysis remains secret.

Those detailed figures –  “the distributional and cameo analysis for the 2014-15 budget. And the assumptions behind the analysis” – are most likely to include the winners and losers information missing from Mr Hockey's budget.

Treasury has kept confidential two related reports on the basis they informed cabinet decisions before the budget was presented on May 13.

Mr Hockey should release them and thereby prove his budget is fair. He will not, because it is not.

All Treasury released was raw data used to prepare a graphic in the budget overview. That graphic showed virtually no change between before and after the budget on average cash transfers and average income tax paid for three income groups.

The figures used to create that graphic show a different story. An average low-income family loses $844 a year in disposable income (earnings after tax and government payments) due to the budget. Middle-income earners forgo $492. High-income families will be down $517 – assuming the Treasurer can get his budget through the Senate.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smh-editorial/joe-hockey-release-the-fairness-figures-if-you-dare-20140805-100g4v.html#ixzz39Yo4pmo3

 

abbott jumps to his own defence for being a liar...

 

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has declared that he is nothing like the Gillard government in defending his decision to break an election promise to change race-hate laws, saying he is putting the nation’s security first.

Mr Abbott promised News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt before the 2013 election that he would repeal section 18c, which makes it illegal to ''offend'', ''insult'' and ''humiliate'' a person based on their ethnicity.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/we-are-not-like-the-gillard-government-tony-abbott-defends-backdown-on-racehate-laws-20140806-3d74s.html#ixzz39Z9BwbO5

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If this was Abbott's only failure not to follow an election promise, we might have to give him the benefit of the video referee.... But HELL, this is number 51 on the list of broken glass... 
Nothing like the Gillard Government?
At least, the Gillard government had more decency that this infantile imbecilic Abbott regime...
The Gillard Government did far more good than bad, while the Abbott regime has concentrated its only efforts on being stupid, bigoted, bad, incompetent, annoying, deceitful, dishonest, crazy, in order to win the wooden spoon as the worse government in Australia's history... Congratulation.
Yep, nothing like the Gillard government.

 

confusing and idiotic abbott regime...

Telecommunication companies are struggling to understand vague data retention proposals outlined on Tuesday by the Abbott government and believe different companies may be subject to varying requirements.

Tony Abbott insists the government is “not asking for anything that isn’t already being done. This idea that we are asking the telecommunications providers to store material that isn’t already kept and stored is just wrong.

“We are not asking for new information, we are simply asking telecommunications providers to continue to keep what they currently keep.”

Similar assurances were given on Tuesday night as officials from the Attorney General’s Department briefed some telcos on the plans, which the companies – and the cabinet – learned had been approved by the national security committee from that morning’s newspapers.

But telcos do not all store the same type or amount of information – so a requirement for them to keep what they now store for a longer, legislated period, will mean they store widely varying amounts of data.

John Stanton, chief executive of the communications industry peak body, the Communications Alliance, said: “Internet service providers and telecommunications companies all retain different things for different periods of time.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/06/metadata-telcos-confused-by-conflicting-messages-from-abbott-government

apathy following in the footsteps of abbott...

 

Most Australians no longer think it matters which major party is in government according to new research, which also reveals a significant decline in support for democracy over the past seven years.

The study, conducted by the Australian National University (ANU) in partnership with the Social Research Centre, found satisfaction with democracy slumped from 86 per cent in 2007 to 72 per cent when attitudes were surveyed again in June.

The number of Australians who believed it made a difference which party was in power plunged from 68 per cent to 43 per cent in the same period.

ANU Professor Ian McAllister said Australian democracy still enjoys high levels of support compared to overseas but he is concerned by the loss of belief in a meaningful vote.

"Efficacy, the belief in the effectiveness of your vote, is really quite an important indicator in the health of a democracy," Professor McAllister said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-11/poll-data-reveals-waning-interest-in-politics/5662568

 

While Abbott's policies are turdish and stupid, the media at large (MMMM) is still pushing the line that Labor ("social"democrat-ish) and the Liberals (CONservative neo-fascists) are as bad as each other, fostering apathy and disillusion in the ranks of voters.

Meanwhile, as every day we get news of corrupt politicians and news of those defecting from parties, as we get news of a clowning Palmer, as we see an Abbott getting grants for his daughter from "liberal" (CONservative) donors and we see how most of the Liberal (CONservative neo-fascist) ministers (Pyne, Brandis, Abetz) talk through their hats on subject they don't know anything about, no wonder that the young of today have lost the will to live. I mean live politically speaking... They still are out there tweeting to their heart content about inanities. Who would not?

Meanwhile, the policies of the Labor honchos seem to have vanished in smoke, as if they had lost their own will to be inventive by the sheer FEAR of the merde-och press pushing their buttons... They need to fight Tony the liar, tooth and nails and refuse to let pass one ounce of that terrible unfair Joe budget through, as well... They need to show some good old mojo...

Apathy is not a good look... but of course the merde-och press is cultivating it, while denigrating labor and promoting Tony as the hot sauce guy. He is not.