"I'm not going to get involved in fuelling the debate around this report."

Mr Wilson said while long-term arbitrary detention of children is not in anyone's interests, he supported the government's asylum seeker policy.

"Stopping the boats matters. So does stopping the deaths at sea. The follow-through is to make sure that children and families are let out of detention," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-18/no-defence-for-gillian-triggs-over...

Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson has allegedly been promised Professor Gillian Triggs' job as president of the Human Rights Commission, writes contributing editor-at-large Tess Lawrence.

TRUSTED SOURCES have stated to me that Wilson was actually promised the presidency several years ago as an inducement to leave his role as a director of the Institute of Public Affairs, often described as a conservative think tank by some, a non-think tank by others. 

That promise was also allegedly more recently affirmed in secret discussions held at the behest of the Attorney General George Brandis, himself acting on direct instruction from besieged Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Given that the IPA had already preposterously called for the Human Rights Commission to be abolished, Wilson's appointment to the HRC in December 2013 was a decision mired in controversy and disbelief.

President Triggs has proved a fearless public servant, a formidable human rights advocate and guardian of those denied a voice and consigned to the marginalia of justice — especially children.

In particular, both her public statements and a recently tabled report The Forgotten Children: National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention(2014) damning Australia's degraded legal and moral conduct on the plight of those children in offshore detention centres, has incurred the wrath of the Coalition Governent intent on daily painting a whitewash over the black history of our bulk violations of human rights and industrial strength abuse of children, including violence and sexual abuse.

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/tim-wilson-already-promised-gillian-triggs-job,7416

When George Brandis gifted the IPA’s Tim Wilson the high paying job of Human Rights Commissioner for Freedom despite his qualifications being “woefully inadequate”, he said it was to “restore balance”, believing that the HRC was too focused on discrimination.

Senator Brandis said Mr Wilson was ”one of Australia’s most prominent public advocates of the rights of the individual”.

But apparently that advocacy does not extend to the rights of asylum seekers illegally incarcerated by this government.

When the HRC produced their report on children in detention, the government’s response was to launch a very personal attack against Gillian Triggs.

Tim Wilson’s response was to say “I’m not going to get involved in fuelling the debate around this report.”

So what the hell is our freedom commissioner there for?

When reports of rapes and the sexual abuse of minors on Nauru surfaced last October, Scott Morrison’s response was to sack the people who made the allegations public and to report them to the AFP on the basis of “an intelligence report” by the security company running the detention centre that claimed it was “probable” that staff were coaching asylum seekers to manufacture situations where evidence could be obtained to pursue a political and ideological agenda in Australia.

“I have been provided with reports indicating that staff of service providers at the Nauru centre have been allegedly engaged in a broader campaign with external advocates to seek to cast doubt on the government’s border protection policies.”

Whilst saying “the allegations of sexual misconduct are abhorrent and I would be horrified to think that things of that nature have taken place,” Morrison seemed far more interested in pursuing the messenger and commissioned former integrity commissioner Philip Moss to conduct an independent review.

Released late on Friday after news of Malcolm Fraser’s death, the report found no proof of misconduct by the Save the Children staff, 9 of whom are now preparing to sue.  I would suggest they have a far stronger case than Joe Hockey so if he wants to set a $1 million precedent, this could cost the government a lot of money.

The report, which the government has had for a month, did however detail many allegations against the security guards and the fact that 12 of them have been dismissed so far.

read more: http://theaimn.com/no-word-from-our-freedom-commissioner-about-offshore-detention/

Erstwhile free speech warriors have been falling over one another to gloat about the sacking of SBS soccer commentator Scott McIntyre. While the IPA built its brand on defending Andrew Bolt when he was found to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act, the McIntyre case has led them to gleefully call for SBS to be defunded.

Whether you think McIntyre’s comments about Anzac Day were factually and historically defensible, compare them with the comments about Indigenous Australians that landed Andrew Bolt in the dock.

And unlike those cheering his dismissal, McIntyre has a discernible expertise in the matters he usually comments on, namely soccer in south-east Asia. He is not a mere ideologue.

Malcolm Turnbull has denied directly interfering in an internal disciplinary matter, but the stench around this may not abate for some time. SBS’s reprehensible cowardice in the face of uproar from the political right is disastrous.

It affords de facto recognition of the idea that media workers may not have private views on public matters, and pushes the absurd recent sacralisation of Anzac Day to a point where anything but full-throated celebration of heroism is impermissible.

Strangely, the man who gets paid $389,000 a year plus benefits to safeguard freedom of speech is comfortable with all of this. Yesterday, in response to demands from taxpayers that he do his job, Freedom Commissioner Tim Wilson tweeted out a link to an article he wrote last year for the Fairfax press.

In that piece Wilson was endorsing the gagging of public servants by a new code of conduct devised by the Abbott government. He began by patronising his readers and the people who pay his wages (“many Australians seem to have no idea what human rights are, and many certainly do not understand what free speech is”) and then made this curious and revealing claim:

Codes of conduct play an enormously important role in filling the gap between what is technically legal, and civilising and normalising behaviour.

Voluntary codes associated with employment are one of the most important ways that we regulate the conduct of the individual without laws, and they are fundamentally a good thing.

People who want a map of the libertarian or “classical liberal” mind without suffering through Chris Berg’s boring books can find it here. Whereas they claim to be fighting for freedom, Wilson’s talk about civilising us and regulating our conduct rather bells the cat.

What it tells us first is that people like Wilson think those of us who actually work for a living need civilising, and the means for doing that is workplace discipline.

As much as any authoritarian, Wilson thinks the conduct of working people – yours and mine – requires regulation. He just wants the power to do that to rest entirely with capital and not the state – as he writes, “without laws”. He doesn’t want you to be free at all, just your boss.

This is why libertarianism has its greatest appeal for people who have never done a day’s work. Wilson’s scheme puts the wealthy firmly in charge of the lower orders, without any pesky democratic interference.

Anyone who has had a job will know that it makes little practical difference if it’s your boss or the state telling you to shut up. Indeed, the restrictions on what we can say which are imposed by our employers feel far more real and immediate to most of us than the distant, abstract machinations of government.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/28/sacked-for-speaking-your-mind-dont-expect-the-free-speech-brigade-to-help

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Australians with disabilities have paid a high price for the Federal Government's decision to give an unnecessary job to a politician-in-waiting rather than hire a full-time Disability Commissioner, writes Graeme Innes.

During the febrile period at the end of the Gillard-Rudd government, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus made a mistake which led to significant disadvantage for people with disabilities.

The debate on racial vilification was running hot, and Dreyfus took a decision to withdraw the bill which would amend and consolidate human rights law. Included in this bill, with many other non-controversial improvements to which the Coalition had agreed, was the abolition of the role of Human Rights Commissioner.

Had Dreyfus taken out the vilification provisions, and put the rest of the Bill to Parliament, it probably would have passed. It would have abolished a role which was recognised as unnecessary, and which had been filled by Human Rights Commission presidents since 2009 when Attorney-General Robert McClelland asked me to step down from it. The bill would also have made many other positive changes to human rights law.

Dreyfus committed a sin of omission.

When George Brandis became Attorney-General in the Abbott government, he took advantage of this sin of omission, and added his own sin of Commission - pun definitely intended. He appointed politician-in-waiting Tim Wilson as Australia's Human Rights Commissioner, dubbing him the Freedom Commissioner.

Wilson came to the role with an interesting past. He was previously a policy director at the anonymously funded right-wing think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs, which had advocated that the Human Rights Commission be abolished.

What did taxpayers get for their $400,000 per year when Wilson became Human Rights Commissioner?

Not much. Some useful advocacy on same-sex issues, continuing the work which I started with the Same-Sex: Same Entitlements report, and which Catherine Branson and Gillian Triggs effectively continued as Commission presidents. A little Tim-splaining about Magna Carta, an 800-year-old UK statute which he seemed to think was more relevant to Australia than Skippy. But otherwise, the Commission contained the damage.

The main pain was felt by Australians with disabilities. In the first axe-wielding Abbott budget, there was no more money for the Commission, so a commissioner's position had to go. My term ended that July, and my position was not filled by a full-time commissioner with lived experience of disability. Instead, Susan Ryan, Age Discrimination Commissioner, was persuaded to take on the role as well as her full-time job. Susan has done her best, but Australians with disabilities have paid a high price.

Why does Australia need a Disability Discrimination Commissioner? Let me count the way:

• 20 per cent of Australians have disabilities
• We lodge 37 per cent of discrimination complaints, far higher than any other ground of discrimination
• 45 per cent of us live in or near poverty
• We are employed at a rate 30 per cent less than the general population
• There is a crisis in accommodation for us
• Our HSC pass rate is 25 per cent when the general rate is above 50 per cent, and we are often excluded from mainstream education
• A Senate inquiry has just heard about the violence and abuse we experience in institutional settings

The National Disability Insurance Scheme will address many of these issues, but it requires a powerful independent voice to help guide it through to completion. There has never been a greater need for this role.

I know this, because much of my time since I finished at the Commission has been performing duties of this role on a de facto basis. Every week, I do media interviews on disability issues, and hear from people with disabilities experiencing discrimination. Just last week, Yarra Trams refused a man access to a tram because he used a mobility scooter. And a man in Geelong did not see the latest blockbuster because the audio description devices failed yet again.

There are numerous candidates, with lived experience of disability, who would effectively carry out the role.

I, along with the disability sector, call on the grown-up Turnbull Government to correct these sins. They should quickly initiate a merit-based selection process leading to the appointment of a Disability Discrimination Commissioner

Graeme Innes is the former Disability Discrimination Commissioner, and is totally blind. His memoirs Finding A Way will be launched in July this year.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-15/innes-freedom-commissioner-choice-left-no-money-for-disability/7169122

And now Tim Wilson has resigned his commission to become a full-time ignorant politician under the good old Liberal (CONservative) allocation of "safe seats". We wish him the worst of luck.

Outgoing human rights commissioner Tim Wilson has won a hotly contested party battle to be selected as the Liberal candidate in the Victorian seat of Goldstein.

Mr Wilson edged out former aid worker Dr Denis Dragovic and Georgina Downer, the daughter of former Federal MP Alexander Downer, to stand in the seat held by former trade minister Andrew Robb.

Liberal members cast their votes in the high-profile tussle at a party convention in Brighton, in the heart of the blue-ribbon electorate, on Saturday afternoon.

As a former member of the conservative think tank the Institute for Public Affairs, and then human rights commissioner, Mr Wilson enjoyed the support of many Canberra politicians.

His campaign pamphlet featured endorsements from both Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and former prime minister Tony Abbott.

The contest took a dirty turn last week when openly gay Mr Wilson was branded a "danger" to families in a smear pamphlet released on Thursday.

A four-page pamphlet emphasising Mr Wilson's support for gay marriage, same-sex adoption and the Safe Schools anti-bullying program was sent to all preselectors.

"Tim is a danger to our families, schools and the local community," it read.

"Tim's homosexuality is not the problem. It is his unrelenting campaign for gay rights issues and waste of taxpayers' money."

The pamphlet was sent by "Alex Jones" from the "Bayside Community Coalition", but Liberal insiders said both the organisation and the person appeared to be fake.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-19/tim-wilson-wins-liberal-preselection-goldstein-election/7260762

Tim appears as if he was missing in action at the "what was he doing before?"... Hopefully he will represent the constituents of Goldstein with as much zeal. Congratulations, Tim,  for winning the selection, despite the "handicap" in such a very CONservative electorate...

See toon at top.

Labor has accused Liberal MP Tim Wilson of collusion and urged Prime Minister Scott Morrison to sack him as chair of the House of Representatives economics committee following claims Mr Wilson discussed co-ordinating protests at the taxpayer funded inquiry with a high-profile fund manager.

It can now be revealed that the government's franking credit inquiry was scheduled on the same day and within a few hundred metres of the annual general meeting of Wilson Asset Management, which the Liberal MP has multiple links to.

In an audio recording obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, veteran fund manager Geoff Wilson claims he contacted Tim Wilson to ask for parliamentary hearings into Labor's proposed changes to be scheduled at the same time as one his own six-monthly investor roadshows.

The schedule for Wilson Asset Management's meetings at the Westin Hotel in Sydney was finalised in August last year and sent to investors.

In audio of an investor phone call made in September, Wilson Asset Management founder Geoff Wilson can be heard talking about his discussions with "the committee chair" and co-ordinating dates for protesters and placards to attend the inquiry.

"I was saying [to the chairman] it would be nice if we could have one of the hearings on a day that we are doing a roadshow," the fund manager told investors in the recording.

"Then we could do a little protest, we could have our placards and we could walk down there."

The committee, chaired by Mr Wilson, booked the head office of the Law Society of New South Wales, for the November 20 hearing - the same day as the Wilson Asset Management annual general meeting.

The society is located on Philip Street, 400 metres from the Westin Hotel.

Mr Wilson has two separate investments in funds with assets of more than $2 billion run by Wilson Asset Management.

The MP has disclosed the shareholding in the parliamentary register but did not inform the inquiry directly until Wednesday.

That is a departure from a standard set by Liberal MP David Coleman, who regularly declared his interests in a financial services firm during a recent banking inquiry.

Mr Bowen said Mr Wilson had no choice but to resign from the committee which is costing taxpayers $160,000 for 12 town-hall style meetings.

"If he won't, the Prime Minister should sack him," he said.

"This is collusion in a taxpayer-funded road show dressed up as a House of Representatives committee."

Labor MP Matt Thistlethwaite said he would pursue the matter when Parliament resumes next week.

One option is to try and refer Mr Wilson to the House of Representatives' privileges committee. This would require Labor getting the support of the crossbench and the Greens.

Labor could also ask the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tony Smith, to deliver a ruling on whether Mr Wilson has a pecuniary interest in a matter under inquiry by the committee.

Under parliamentary rules, the opposition is also able to ask Mr Wilson questions during question time.

With Michael Koziol 

Read more:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/scott-morrison-must-sack-tim-wil...

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Tim Wilson is the latest Coalition politician to cry crocodile tears over the housing affordability crisis, calling for Australians to access their superannuation to buy a house. Yet Coalition policies – from negative gearing, property subsidies, money-laundering, super fund borrowing to banking and lending standards – are all about pushing up house prices to benefit those who already own a house. 

The Coalition’s track record shows it has no intention of making housing more affordable. It continues to implement policies that inflate the housing market, while offering straw-man solutions.

High housing prices in fact are demonstrably a plank of Coalition economic policy. Rising house prices, it is argued, lead to a feeling of wealth, which in turn, it is hoped, will translate into consumer spending.

When in 2018 Labor announced its election policy of ending negative gearing, the Coalition claimed it would “smash” housing values with a “sledgehammer”. Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull called Labor’s plan reckless and that it put “the value of every Australian home at risk”. As treasurer, Scott Morrison had acknowledged the “excesses” of negative gearing but in the lead up to the 2019 election Morrison claimed Labor’s policies would “erode the value of Australians’ homes”.

Treasury criticised the Coalition for exaggerating the impact of Labor’s policy: documents obtained by the ABC under freedom of information laws revealed that Treasury explicitly told the Coalition Government it should not claim that home values “will” fall under the proposal.

Another Coalition policy that turbo charged the property market was the decision by John Howard, in the final days of his government, to allow self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs) to borrow money to invest in property. Independent economist Saul Eslake described it as “the dumbest tax policy of the last two decades”.

The Council of Financial Regulators recommended the federal government ban such property investment after it was found that 18,000 SMSFs had more than 90% of their savings in a single asset class, primarily investment properties. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg ignored the recommendation, though Labor promised that if elected it would ban direct borrowing by SMSFs as part of its plan for housing affordability.

Australia’s property market has been labelled “a prime target for money laundering”,  with young Australians forced to pay more for housing as a result.

In 2015, the global regulator of money laundering – the Paris-based Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) – released its mutual evaluation report, which found Australian homes were a haven for laundered funds.

Transparency International ranked Australia as having the weakest anti-money laundering (AML) laws in the Anglosphere, failing in all 10 priority areas.

Nobody really knows just how many billions of dollars in dirty money is pouring into Australia’s housing market.

And as AMP chief economist Shane Oliver noted in 2018, criminals willing to pay extra to wash illegal funds have probably had an impact on the high end of the housing market. Real estate agents say corrupt money can also increase average house prices, because criminals paying more than market value for one house are likely to encourage higher asking prices for similar properties in the same street.

Yet for more than a decade, Australia has refused to complete the second half of its anti-money laundering reform, despite repeated promises from federal government ministers that it was about to do so. The reforms are known as Tranche 2 of the AML/CTF regime — rules that would force lawyers, accountants, real estate agents and other “gatekeepers” to join the global fight against serious and organised financial crime.

As Nathan Lynch, a financial crime intelligence expert at Thomson Reuters, says:

“That Australia has become a sink for the illicit wealth of some of the Pacific region’s worst kleptocrats should horrify all Australians.”

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/housing-hypocrites-tim-wilsons-housing-affordability-crusade-just-an-assault-on-super/

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