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Category: Justice

03/10/2021

31% of JobKeeper recipients checked were ‘not eligible’

3 October 2021

As we all wonder at the level of corporate rather than individual fraud, a Federal review of JobKeeper found that 31% of recipients who triggered compliance checks were ‘not eligible at all’. This was after a survey of 13% of the recipient companies.

The ATO seems reluctant to say who they were or how much. 31% of the recipients may not mean 31% of the $89 billion given out.

Only $194 million has been repaid (which is around 0.2%) of the total payout.

The Government response contrasts starkly when compared to the amount of attention that went to Robodebt, where welfare recipients received relatively small amounts of money. The ATO is very concerned about the confidentiality of Tax records, but this is not tax records, it is money given out.

02/09/2021

Corruption at Many Levels- the ripping off of Meat workers

1 September 2021

An article in the SMH on 31/8/21 said that there was a lot of bribery and corruption in the recruitment of Chinese to work in Australian abattoirs.

Abattoir work is physically hard and unpleasant, so rather than pay Australians more to do it, workers are recruited from overseas, like fruit pickers. The government, perhaps because of political donations is happy to make special 457 visas for this, rather than insist that the jobs go to Australian residents. This is the case for both Liberal and Labor. (Marx said that people were more loyal to their class than to their country, but we won’t mention this now).

So the recruitment process has been corrupted as some foreign people will pay a lot to get into Australia and after working here for 2 years on totally exploited wages they hope to get a residency visa. Recruitment agents may take whatever money they can get, and whatever other little sweeteners. Fake CVs were used to claim that Chinese had good English skills and had worked in abattoirs, which is presumably unlikely as Chinese abattoir workers would not have the money to pay the recruiters. This farce came to light naturally from a whistle-blower who was in on the deal rather than any regulatory agency, the Home Affairs Dept or the Meat Industry National Training Council (MINTRAC). The Union was not mentioned in the story.

Migration agents are a poorly controlled profession at the best of times, with many dodgy operators exploiting desperate people.

Australia should spread its wealth by paying people to do jobs like abattoirs and fruit picking, and if these products are more expensive in consequence, we need encouragement to Buy Australian produce. Of course ‘free trade’ treaties favour cheap imports, but if we are going to have the social harmony that comes from a reasonably equitable society, we have to spread the nation’s wealth. Cheap meat should not just lead to a conga line of corruption and exploitation as a by-product.

26/08/2021

Afghanistan- a Callous debacle

26 August 2021

A brief history of Afghanistan.

It was a monarchy where the British and Russians had striven for influence for centuries.

The British had invaded in 1838 and installed King Shah Shujah, who was assassinated in 1842.

The second Anglo Afghan war was 1878-80 and gave Britain control of Afghan foreign affairs.

In 1919 Emir Amanullah Khan declared independence from British influence and tried to introduce social reforms, in particular education. He flees after civil unrest in 1926

King Muhammad Shar came to power in 1933 and tacitly supported the Germans in WW2 as the Afghans did not acknowledge the 1893 Durand Line, the British-initiated border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and he wanted to unify the Pashtun nation, which straddled the border. His government came under pressure from an increasingly educated younger population. He voluntarily created a Constitutional monarchy in 1964, but this did not lead to significant reform and his government lost prestige due to its mismanagement of a drought in 1969-72. There was a coup by another Royal, Prince Muhammad Daud in 1973.

The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan led by British-Indian-educated Nur Muhammad Taraki staged a coup in April 1978 and formed a secular leftist reformist government. It was relatively pro-Russia and anti-religious. It was more brutal than had been anticipated, and had internal infighting and resistance from conservatives and Muslims. Taraki unsuccessfully appealed to Russia for help.

The Cold War

It might be noted that US President and Russian Chief Secretary Leonid Brezhnev met in June 1979 to discuss SALT 2 (the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty).

(I read somewhere near that time that Afghanistan was mentioned and Carter, being somewhat naïve, said words to the effect that Afghanistan was in the Russian sphere of influence. Carter’s horrified minders corrected him after the meeting, but Brezhnev took this to mean that the US would not interfere if Russia took action there. I have been unable to confirm this story despite several efforts since, which either means that I imagined it or that it has been expunged from any written history that is available online).

The US began to help the mujahedeen in July 1979 to overthrow the Taraki government. Taraki was overthrown and murdered by his protégé, Hafizuzullah Amin in September 1979. The Russians invaded in December 1979. The Russians were in some economic trouble, and it has been said that their government wanted a military victory that would distract attention and shore up the state.

President Carter refused to sign the SALT11 treaty and boycotted the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. The US also increased training and weapons to the Mujahideen. President Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan insisted that all this aid go through him and hugely favoured a more radical Islamist agenda, also getting aid from Saudi Arabia to set up large numbers of Islamic schools. The Mujahideen guerrillas overthrew the Russians. The USSR was falling apart when the Russians, now under Mikhail Gorbachev, departed in February 1989.

The Russian Legacy

The Najibullah government, installed by the Russians lasted until 1992, when here was a civil war with the Northern Alliance fighting the Mujadiheen, which was not a united force, but a number of warlords, each with their own territory.

The Taliban

Taliban means ‘student of Islam’. The Taliban emerged in 1994 from the Pashtun nation who straddled the Afghan-Pakistan ‘border’, considerably helped by the money from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. They were seen as less corrupt than the Mujahideen.

In 1996 the Taliban got control of Kabul and controlled two thirds of the country.

In 1998 the US launched air strikes to get the Taliban to hand over Osama Bin Laden.

In 2001 Ahmad Shah Masood, the leader of the Northern Alliance was assassinated.

9/11 Leads to the US Invasion

The US was shocked by the 9/11 (11th of September 2001) attack by Al-Qaeda on the Twin Towers in New York and invaded Afghaistan, ostensibly to get Osama Bin Laden. Some have said that the US hawks wanted to invade and 9/11 merely gave them the excuse. They won militarily in 3 months, but were always an occupying force.

Interestingly in 2007 the UN stated that opium production reached record levels.

The Allied occupation was by many different national forces, and each country had different rules for the area it controlled. It seems that some countries simply paid the Taliban not to make any trouble. The Australians went in because the US did and cited our national interest. The only way that this was our national interest was in pleasing the Americans.

Exit Wounds 2013

The book ‘Exit Wounds’ by John Cantwell, the Australian commander from both Iraq and Afghanistan was written in 2013. He had been on the short list to be the supreme head of the Australian Defence Force, but withdrew to treat the PTSD that he had hidden but had been suffering. He stated that the war could never be won and it was his opinion that every Australian life lost there was wasted. The pointlessness of the exercise was what caused his PTSD, and probably led to the feral actions of some of the forces, as is being uncovered. We might note that in a story on the ABC (26/8/21) a witness known as Captain Louise who was going to give evidence to the Brereton Inquiry into Australian War Crimes had her house bombed. Her former husband is an SAS operator who told her of unauthorised killing and is under investigation after 4 Corners broadcast footage of him killing an unarmed Afghan in 2012 (Killing Field 16/3/20). Clearly the hearts and minds of Afghans were not won.

Corruption was rife in the Afghan government, and some of the 2009 UN election observers were killed in a bomb blast in their Kabul hotel. The UN could not insist on an independent investigation and the head of the UN team, who was not killed in the blast, was hurried out of the country. The re-elected government did the inquiry. So much for democracy!

Australian Embassy Closed May 2021

The Australian Embassy was closed on 21 May 2021, 3 days before the last Australian troops left. Clearly our own intelligence was that things would not go well. It made the investigations of war crimes more difficult and put the interpreters who had helped the Australian troops in much more danger. An Australian digger who has tried to get his Afghan interpreter and his family since 2013 has been blocked and been unsuccessful, despite seeing Minister Dutton’s senior adviser 3 years ago.

Taliban Victory

The Taliban won a victory in a few weeks as government forces that we had been training simply declined to fight. Now there is a cordon around the airport and the Taliban are stopping people getting through to the Kabul airport, where the allies are trying to do an airlift of Afghan civilians. The UN has been most desultory in not looking after locally recruited Afghan UN staff, who are at risk and do not even have foreign passports to allow them to leave.

The Europeans have asked the US to extend the deadline for evacuations, which is 31 August- 4 days away. The US has declined to extend the deadline. Presumably this is because they are unable to even if they wanted to. The Taliban surround the airport, and could easily shoot down any planes they chose or bombard the whole crowded area with huge loss of life. American hubris would be very clearly shown.

The Debacle

It is a debacle- even when the Russians left the government that they established lasted a couple of years. What is wrong with US intelligence- did they have no idea that the whole country would collapse? It is hard to know why the Americans went into Afghanistan and why they stayed there. One wonders if the arms industry is happy to have a war somewhere and really do not care very much how much damage it does or who wins. One must ask what Australia is doing there and why we are so uncritical of the Americans. Sadly, Australia does not have a Peace Movement worthy of the name and seem to follow the US blindly. But when the Australian military commander says we cannot win and we continue there for another 8 years, there is something absurd.

The fact that the Labor opposition said nothing is also a worry- does our government work for us or the US?

The Fate of our Interpreters

Many people will be left behind outside the Taliban-controlled Kabul airport perimeter, or unable even to get near the city. The Taliban have been searching them out and killing not only those who helped the foreigners, but also their families. The idea that they have reformed seems very unlikely; the schools that taught them were radical Saudi Islam. It is a horrible story that has not yet ended.

www.smh.com.au/national/he-could-have-done-something-why-diggers-feel-let-down-by-scott-morrison-20210820-p58kks.html

04/07/2021

Christian Porter Rape Allegations

25 June 2021

The much publicised rape allegations against Christian Porter have been released.

People can judge their veracity for themselves. Click on the link in The Saturday Paper:

www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/post/max-opray/2021/06/25/porter-dossier-released

04/07/2021

Ransomware Now Done by Privateers

4 July 2021

The rise of ransomware has been a major problem for business. The government and law enforcement have traditionally cared little about scams, hackings or identity thefts. I have tried to report these, giving phone numbers of the scammers call back numbers after having proved that the scam number answers in order to demonstrate that they were the Tax Office or whatever. No interest at all. Eventually a government Scamwatch website has been developed. (There is a nice irony in the title as it watches rather than acts).

But scamming has progressed to Ransomware, where a computer system is hacked and huge sum of money demanded if the business is not to be either rendered permanently dysfunctioned or have it all its information shared to a competitor, and then still not function. The ransoms are usually paid, though no one actually likes to admit this. The fact that JBS Meat processing stopped in the whole world, and the whole East Coast of the USA could not buy petrol has stimulated law enforcement to take an interest.

Presumably, hacking and viruses are a continuation of the goodies and baddies in the programming world, with both working on the same computers and programs. The fact that it can be used as part of ongoing war against another country now seems relevant, with smaller countries seeking to take down larger ones. It seems that some hackers are nation-based, so they are termed privateers, after the pirates who actually worked for a country, like Francis Drake, who famously stole Spanish galleon gold (stolen from the South Americans) for England and was knighted for it.

As a safe computer system has to be developed, marketing and implemented, there is always a time lag which must surely help the hackers. Modest small businesses cannot be at the cutting edge of software systems, so will always be vulnerable- the only hope is that law enforcement gets serious about screening for miscreants and tracks them down. If they can screen every Facebook post, and act quickly there may be some hope, but I am not sure what difference encryption makes to all this.

This story is in a lot of papers this weekend in slightly different forms. Here is the SMH one:

www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/pirates-of-the-cyber-seas-how-ransomware-gangs-have-become-security-s-biggest-threat-20210624-p5840c.html

17/03/2021

Porter’s Defamation Case Against the ABC

17 March 2021

Many were surprised when Attorney-General Christian Porter sued the ABC, using the very defamation law that he has criticised as favouring the plaintiff.

What will happen? Will it go ahead? Will he win? And what will be the effect?

I do not pretend to be an expert on defamation law, but I did run a live radio programme that called tobacco executives mass murderers most weeks for 14 years and I gave some thought to avoiding being sued. The advice was basically that if you spoke about a class of people, it was OK, but if an individual was identifiable you were in much more danger.

Defamation was defined merely as likely to lower the opinion of someone in the opinion of their peers, so was relatively easy to prove.

The defences were that it was true, or that it was in the public interest, or it was ‘fair comment’ on a known situation. (There was also ‘qualified privilege’ if the allegation was made to a closed body entrusted with maintaining standards, such as a complaint to a Medical regulatory body).

But after the lawyers had given this rather bleak advice, they said that main question was whether it would actually be in the interests of tobacco companies to sue a little-known doctor speaking on a little-heard community radio station. They could send him broke, but the issue would get a lot of publicity and how many people they killed would compete with how callous they were to stuff up the life of a little truth-teller. So I was to be careful, but not fearful.

Porter has raised the stakes in that if the ABC wants to run the truth defence, it has to prove it, which is hard with Katherine Thornton dead and the Police saying that without even a sworn testimony there was no hope of proving the case. If the story is not true, then arguably it is not in the public interest to discuss it, and since the ABC raised the issue, it is hardly fair comment on an existing discussion. Most people did not know which individual it referred to, but some did.

I am unsure to what extent comment will be shut down by the fact that it in sub judice, but I think if it is not a jury trial, judges are supposedly uninfluenced by the media, and you can comment on civil but not criminal matters. There is no doubt that everyone in the pub or tea room will have an opinion. If the ABC settles without running the case, Porter will claim a big victory. If the ABC fights and loses, he will also claim a big victory, but the damage done to him in the process is likely to be terminal. Most people are likely to continue to believe the story and he is likely to look like a privileged pratt using a bad law. This is not good when both he and his party have to face the voters.

Also, if the ABC loses, it will have a large budget blow, a loss of prestige and probably a budget cut from a vengeful government. But the process may have damaged the government enough to turn the next election and Labor may then restore the funding.

If you look at the tide of history, this issue is one that’s time has come. The coverage and discussion of the issue will make this a watershed moment where high legal costs are merely an investment in hastening a major social reform, though we cannot reasonably expect the ABC’s lawyers to see it that way.

Crikey looks at the strength of Porter’s team and case.

www.crikey.com.au/2021/03/16/christia-porter-defamation-trial-of-the-century/?fbclid=IwAR1_dcbIg1jexXl3TUkooK73YSy9yEIlKjTJ6CvMuE68BSqqZtKENo-TbvU

14/03/2021

Ex-Solicitor-General Calls for Inquiry into Porter’s Rape Allegation

14 March 2021

The former Solicitor-General, Justin Gleeson has made the case as to why there needs to be an investigation into Katherine Thornton’s rape allegation against Attorney-General, Christian Porter.

The mechanism for this would be that Morrison should ask the Solicitor-General for advice as to the situation. This Morrison has so far declined to do.

Interestingly, Justin Gleeson was highly respected Solicitor-General who resigned in 2016 after a very public argument with the then Attorney-General George Brandis, when Brandis wanted all referrals to the Solicitor-General to go through his office. Gleeson felt that this was restricting his freedom to give advice and effectively politicising his office. Prior to Brandis’ restriction he had made a statement about the legality of refugee legislation. (Guardian 24/10/16) The Prime Minister not asking the Solicitor-General now and the Solicitor-General not making a statement does sound like the same issue. Brandis, like Porter, was also accused of making poor appointments (of political party hacks) to judicial bodies.

In terms of the reasons for having an inquiry into the rape allegation, this opinion is as good as it gets. At least as an ex-Solicitor-General, Gleeson can speak publicly.

www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-09/christian-porter-historical-rape-allegation-gleeson/13229880

12/03/2021

Time to Look at the Legal System

12 March 2021

As a schoolkid, I was a good debater and the vocational guidance advice was that I should be a barrister. My father was dead against this idea. His dictum was, ‘Don’t go to court, you will get law but you will not get justice’.

He was a surgeon and to prove his point he took me to a court case where he was an expert witness. A company that manufactured concrete pipes was having an industrial dispute. The workers had stopped work and the union delegate was standing on a pipe giving an impassioned speech about how terrible the company was and that they should all go out on strike immediately. As he spoke a runaway truck crashed through the fence, knocked him off his pipe and broke his leg. It seemed obvious that was injured but he was not at work. The Union claimed that he was at work. The employer argued that he was not at work, and threw in that he was not injured either, which was why an expert witness was needed.

My father’s point was the process had nothing to do with the truth of the matter- it was just a talkfest that would give me the sh-its after a while. He won in the sense that I did not do law.

40 years later I went to a Family Law barrister as a support person for a friend getting divorced. The barrister, unprompted, said that he had thought about being a doctor, and regretted having done law as, ‘there is right and wrong on both sides, it all becomes adversarial, it is random which side you are on, and it is all about money.’

When I lived in New Zealand there was a high profile trial where a man had allegedly shot his brother in law. The brother in law was to inherit the family farm and he was jealous. The evidence looked very strong. His barrister managed to create a shadow of doubt in one of the juror’s minds and he walked free. It then came out that the man had been released charged with damaging farms, killing stock and burning buildings where he felt that he had been slighted, But the jury had not been allowed to know this. The defence barrister, Greg King, a family man with two children suicided a few months later. (Radio NZ 17/10/13). In his obituary people said he was a good kind man who did jobs that had to be done but no one else wanted.

I had a barrister acquaintance who said he had had a bad week in that he had been vehemently abused by a stranger as he tried to buy a pizza. He had been recognised by his critic as the defence barrister for a paedophile. He felt that this was completely unreasonable as he was ‘just doing his job’.

Our legal system is adversarial. Effectively there is a debate, with one side saying that the person is guilty and the other that they are not. It is about winning the argument; the truth is often an early casualty. The people running the system are as affected as those in the dock, albeit differently. The adversarial model in our legal system spills over into our parliamentary party system. It is more about winning than the truth.

Napoleon reformed the French legal system by making it inquisitorial rather than adversarial. The object of all parties to the court proceedings is to get to the truth, then the judge deals with that. Lawyers trained in our system think this is a terrible idea, but it seems very reasonable to me.

Now, because the complainant in the alleged rape by Christian Porter is dead there supposedly cannot be an inquest. No adversary, no action. No truth either.

Minter Ellison is a big end of town law firm which advised Christian Porter. Now its chief executive, Annette Kimmitt is being forced to resign because she questioned the firm’s support for him. Is giving him advice supporting him? Obviously she is not alone in thinking so.

Is there any chance of Australia getting a cost-effective, affordable legal system that gets to the truth, or is it too long after Waterloo?

SMH article today

MinterEllison boss exits after Attorney-General all-staff email

MinterEllison’s board and its chief Annette Kimmitt have ‘‘mutually agreed’’ she will leave the law firm after she sent an all-staff email critical of a senior partner for providing advice to Attorney-General Christian Porter about a 1988 rape allegation.

In an email to staff this week, MinterEllison chairman David O’Brien said the board had come to an agreement with Ms Kimmitt that she would depart the firm.

Managing partner Virginia Briggs, who heads the firm’s infrastructure, construction and property division, will serve as acting chief executive while the board considers a permanent replacement.

Ms Kimmitt has faced pressure since she sent an all-staff email last week that was critical of veteran partner Peter Bartlett for not following ‘‘consultation or approval processes’’ before he provided advice to Mr Porter. The Attorney-General has denied the allegation.

She apologised in the email to staff who may be experiencing pain over ‘‘the nature of this matter’’ and said that she too had been ‘‘triggered’’.

The email divided the firm and implicitly questioned whether the firm was right to represent Mr Porter.

Mr Bartlett, who also provides advice to the Herald, wasn’t aware of the email until it landed in the inboxes of the more than 2000 staff and partners it was sent to, some of the firm’s lawyers have said.

Tammy Mills, Chris Vedelago

06/03/2021

JobKeeper becomes an Unaudited Subsidy to Big Business

6 March 2021

It seems that while JobKeeeper did help employees, some businesses did not actually need it, but got it anyway. Now it is ‘moral issue’ that they give it back- that is to say it is voluntary. If they have already taken it as executive bonuses or shareholder dividends it is probably not refundable.

The welfare recipients who had spent money and were accused retrospectively of Robodebt could not repay it either, but were hounded till the end. All that will happen to the big end of town is a few days of newspaper articles.

It is surely a reasonable principle that if taxpayers’ money is given away there should be monitoring of where it goes. If it was too hard to set up a monitoring system quickly, the obvious solution would be to make a regulation that it had to be used for purpose and would be checked and there would be prosecutions if it were misused. This would have allowed follow up, a few prosecutions and majority compliance. This government seems incapable of any sensible management of anything, unless you think that deliberately handing money to mates is an unwritten policy.

Now even small businesses are annoyed.

www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/pretty-close-to-theft-small-business-slams-big-corporate-jobkeeper-profits-20210304-p577sn.html

03/03/2021

Christian Porter’s Rape Explanation

3 March 2021

I just watched Attorney-General Christian Porter out himself as the Cabinet Minister accused of rape. He was live on ABC News Channel 24 at 3pm (but 8 minutes delayed, so they played the newsflash of NSW Sports Minister resigning after his property dealings were referred to ICAC).

I had deduced that Porter was the minister, as there had been a 4 Corners about him in November and his birthday made him the exact age that the alleged victim said her rapist was. We knew what he would say, as the media said that he was not going to resign, so as a debater I was as interested in his rhetoric as its contents.

He started by saying he was very sorry for the family of the alleged rape victim for their loss. He said that he had heard rumours of the allegation since November but he was unaware what was alleged. He denies the allegation completely, but was concerned about the effect on his colleagues.

He was also concerned that the journalists were trying him by media and were not following due process. He said that they had flowed due process when a previous Opposition Leader was accused of sexual harassment, clearly implying that the media were giving him a worse time. (There was no mention that one was alleged sexual harassment, the other alleged rape and suicide).

He said that he, unlike the media, was following due process.He in his professional life had been a prosecutor and had always tried to stand up for the victims and protect them.

He is now working hard but may now be removed by an accusation. If he were to resign it would mean ‘no rule of law’ and that an unsubstantiated media accusation would be enough to force Ministers to resign, so he will not stand down and set a bad precedent.

(Presumably the alternative is that no one stands down until ‘proper process’ has them convicted, which will very convenient for sports rorts and other current government activities).

He is taking a 2 week break on his doctor’s orders, and his friends are standing by him.

He expanded on the story somewhat during the questioning. There were 4 people in the debating team, 3 men and one woman. They went to her room and she showed him how to iron a shirt as none of them had ever ironed a shirt. He may have told her that ‘she would make a good wife one day’. He may have gone to dinner but he absolutely denied that he demanded oral sex or raped her. It did not happen. He pleaded with the media to ‘imagine for a second that it is not true’. Their faces were not shown on TV, but it seems from their voices that they found this hard to imagine.

He had had no contact with that person since January 1988, for 33 years, so he could not remember details, but she was a ‘bright, happy person’.

He cannot explain the story and he cannot test the evidence, so he does not favour an inquiry as he will be ‘asked to disprove something that did not happen’. Others may decide to have an inquiry. He wonders at ‘conspiracy theories everywhere’.

He spoke to the Prime Minister on Wednesday, presumably 8 days ago, not yesterday, and believes that he has the Prime Minister’s support.

My bet is that there will be a delay, then an inquiry, and then he will resign to save the government from embarrassment, but not be charged with anything. I could be wrong. Certainly the ‘Me Too’ movement has changed the paradigm in the entertainment industry and now even in Australian politics. But we are still nowhere near the old standard when Barry O’Farrell resigned as NSW Premier when he did not remember receiving a bottle of wine from a dodgy donor, or the Dutch Cabinet all resigned recently over a situation like Robodebt.

If Porter limps along, he will be lead in the Liberals’ saddlebag for a while. The election is a year away, so many will forget, but some will not, and a negative impression of the government grows stronger. These impressions eventually coalesce onto a ’gut feeling’ that the government has to go and the government becomes doomed. Usually the Canberra bubble of both politicians and their journalists are the last to realise.