Thursday 28th of March 2024

a bad day..

a bad day job...

no great loss...

It’s unlikely that Senator Bob Day’s disappearance from parliament will be a national tragedy. He was a thoroughly regressive individual looking to revive an Australia that he imagined existed in 1954.

No homosexuals, no hookers, no environmentalists – just God saving the Queen.

“If you own your own home, you’ve got a job, you’ve got your finances under control, you live in a safe neighbourhood, you don’t need the government,” he told the Adelaide online newspaper InDaily in 2013. 

At the time he was showing a reporter around his property on Fullarton Road in Adelaide, which is now at the heart of the pecuniary interest crisis that is to come before the high court. At the time it was called the Bert Kelly Research Centre, where there were some ultra-conservative outfits as tenants, including Cory Bernardi’s Conservative Leadership Foundation, the Samuel Griffith Society (dedicated to upholding the constitution!), the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance and Menzies House, plus Family First. Books by the likes of David Flint and Ian Plimer were launched from the Fullarton Road property.

Bert Kelly, a free trade Liberal member of parliament from 1958 to 1977 and the original author of the Financial Review’s Modest Member column, would be turning in his grave if he knew what was being carried on in his name.

read more

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/03/will-it-be-such-a-...

buying votes from the family...

The Turnbull government is under pressure to explain why it gave $2 million to a small trades training college in suburban Adelaide linked to financially stricken former senator Bob Day.

A Fairfax Media investigation has found the one-off grant is more than the annual revenue of North East Vocational College, an institution with seven classrooms.

The $1.84 million handed to the college, chaired for a decade by Mr Day, equates to $90,000 for each of the 20 construction apprentices involved in a four-year trial of Mr Day's pet project, "student builders".

The equivalent certificate IV in construction and building at TAFE costs just $3000 per student per year. 

Mr Day's college was handed the same sum at the same time as two industry bodies – Master Builders Australia and the National Electricians and Communications Association (NECA) – which have promised to benefit hundreds of apprentices across Australia with the grant

 

read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/fresh-questions-em...

the pong lingers on...

... in the long view, Day and Culleton have simply pushed their way to front of the crowded trough of privilege, where shameless self-serving and entitlement has swept away older verities of propriety, fair play and doing the right thing.

Few blinked when reports last July alleged Turnbull had forked out $1 million of his own money after his leadership change had deterred corporate donors to Liberal coffers. Andrew Robb, former Trade Minister, Kerry Packer minion and Liberal Party wheeler dealer, this week joined the Landbridge Group, the Chinese company granted a 99-year lease on the Port of Darwin last year.

Turnbull was adamant Robb would adhere to the ministerial code of conduct but the pong lingers, especially as Robb, 65, attracted a lot of sympathy for revealing he suffered from depression and subsequently announced he was bailing out of politics last February to work in mental health and the corporate sector.

The return to Sydney this week of Australia's ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, also prompted memories of the fortunate life that awaits some who quit politics.

Culleton's achievement in shooting himself in the foot is a reminder of the Brown's cows scenario that befell One Nation in Queensland when the party won 11 seats in the 1998 election only to unravel amid bovine stupidity and petty jealousies.

If Culleton fails to survive, his place will go on the recount to the next candidate on the party's ticket, Peter Georgiou. Felicitously, he is Culleton's brother-in-law.

In South Australia, Family First's future is problematic. Depending on how the High Court rules on whether he was eligible to be elected on July 2, his party could choose Day's successor – his former staffer Rikki Lambert if he wins the High Court case; and if he loses, SA MP Robert Brokenshire or Lucy Gichuhi, the second candidate on the Family First ticket; or the seat could go to Labor.

Day was an Adelaide builder who honed an ultra-conservative mindset into a political career. A member of the H.R. Nicholls Society's board of management from around its 1986 outset, he also pushed for labour market deregulation as founder of Independent Contractors of Australia but, after failing as a federal Liberal candidate in 2007, he fell victim to the party's labyrinthine Adelaide ruling class and jumped ship to Family First. After one electoral mis-step, Day was elected a senator in 2010, a feat he replicated at the federal election in July.

Along the way, for good measure, Day made two loans totalling $405,000 to the Family First Party.

 

read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bob-day-and-rod-cu...

declared invalid...

Former Family First senator Bob Day was not validly elected at last year's federal poll, the High Court has found.

In order to determine his replacement, a special recount of Senate ballots in South Australia will be held.

According to ABC election analyst Antony Green, the seat will likely go to Family First's second-spot candidate in South Australia, Lucy Gichuhi.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-05/family-first-bob-day-election-rule...

indirect pecuniary interest..

Bob Day was ineligible to be a senator because he had an “indirect pecuniary interest” in an agreement with the commonwealth, the high court unanimously ruled on Wednesday.

The ruling means that Day’s vacancy, created when he resigned in November over the liquidation of his building companies, will be filled by a recount of last election’s votes. 

The process is very likely to return the second Family First candidate, Lucy Gichuhi, as the new senator for South Australia. The result has no impact on votes cast by Day during his time in the Senate, which are all still valid.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/05/bob-days-election-invalid-...

See toon at top...