Doctor and activist
16/12/2022
16 December 2022
It seems that alienation and feelings of impotence increase the likelihood of conspiracy theories.
If this is so, a social policy that lessened economic polarisation might be a good idea.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-drawn-to-conspiracy-theories-share-a-cluster-of-psychological-features/
11/12/2022
11 December 2022
President Xi Jinping has relaxed China’s Zero Covid policy.
One is reminded of King Canute, who wished to show his flatterers that there were limits to his power, so he took them to the seaside, planted his throne on the sand and commanded the tide to come in no further. Naturally it came in and his legs got wet.
President Xi Jinping recently made himself the most powerful man in China since Mao Zedong, but has also insisted on the Zero Covid policy.
As viruses evolve, they usually change to strains that are less lethal but more infectious, which helps them to spread. So trying to go back to zero was almost certainly impossible and the attempt was obviously disrupting Chinese society a lot. It may have been that while Xi was impregnable within the People’s Congress, if his Covid policies totally lost him support in the population change would still occur.
Relaxing the policy is likely to cause a big spike in infections. This will cause a lot of problems as older Chinese are less vaccinated- perhaps only two thirds, though 90% of younger people are. Older folk are therefore more likely to die, particularly as the Chinese vaccines are not quite as good as the Western ones.
From an Australian perspective the improvement in the Chinese economy is likely to help us. We rode through the last global recession, with the Government congratulating itself on our resilience and their wisdom, but the point was that our trade was principally with China, which was not having a recession. If China starts growing again, it may help us a lot. Hopefully this time, if things go well, we will take an opportunity, rather than just handing out tax cuts to the rich.
08/12/2022
8 December 2022
With the NSW Election due in March, Labor leader Chris Minns obviously does not want to upset the gambling, hotel and club industry, so is wimping out on gambling control.
The Liberals, under the religious Dominic Perrottet, are likely to lose the election, so are willing to bring in cashless gaming cards, which will allow the money lost to be traced, or limits placed on problem gamblers. The gaming industry hates this, as most gamblers actually cannot afford it, and the money laundering component is very large but currently unquantified.
Labor could support Perrottet and get the job done, but would rather cuddle up to the gambling industry, win the election and then presumably make some sort of token gesture to the voters. No wonder the big parties are on the nose.
The power of the clubs and pubs is very considerable of course. Labor had banning pokies as a policy in Tasmania in 2018 and just lost, winning 3 seats when they needed six. Gambling industry money was rated a considerable factor in the loss.
www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/mar/04/labor-sticking-with-pokies-ban-despite-tasmania-election-loss-rebecca-white-says
Here is the SMH article
07/12/2022
5 December 2022
Why people think the Liberals are better money managers never ceases to amaze me. They are ideological, venal and often do not know what they do not know and are too arrogant to ask.
Everyone said that Australia’s IT policy under John Howard was outstandingly poor, and it did not seem to improve under Turnbull as the Libs rejected (optical) fibre to the premises to save a few dollars.
Here is a retrospective look at the NBN, which should have been seen as a national asset and funded to a standard, rather than a government monopoly trying to keep costs down.
07/12/2022
7 December 2022
Everyone is aware that the Brittany Higgins trial was abandoned as some material was found in the jury room which showed that a juror had researched information on false memories. Jurors are specifically not allowed to look at material outside the courtroom, presumably so that their judgement can only be based on information from that source.
The ACT Director of Public Prosecutions was going to have a re-trial with a new jury, but the trial was abandoned because of the state of Brittany Higgins’ mental health.
I had spoken to some barristers who were of the opinion that the prosecution should never have been attempted because she could never win because no one would be convicted when it was one person’s word against another. This was demonstrated in the High Court decision when Cardinal Pell was accused of sexually molesting two boys, one of whom had suicided. It was the surviving boy, (now man) v Pell, so Pell was acquitted.
I spoke to a retired prosecutor who disagreed with this. He said that the accused, Bruce Lehmann, had been ‘very well advised’. Lehmann stated that there had been no sexual contact; he had merely retrieved some documents and left the building. This meant that there would be no argument over ‘consent’ and he would not have to go in the witness box. My prosecutor said that the circumstantial evidence was that Higgins was found naked and distressed in a foetal position on a couch and it was unlikely that she would have simply taken off her clothes and adopted this position for no reason, so the trial had a reasonable chance.
But because Lehmann was not giving evidence and Higgins had to make the prosecution case, she was the one effectively on trial with a hostile defence barrister.
Unsurprisingly this was very traumatic. Whether she had done enough to convince the jury will never be known as the trial was aborted by the judge. But she was not in any mental state for a retrial, which presumably would have followed the same course.
Her lawyers will apparently sue her employer and she will presumably only have to prove this on the balance of probabilities.
Lehmann plans to sue the media for defamation, and presumably hopes either to repair his reputation or at least recover some settlement monies.
But the obvious conclusion is that if you are raped in Parliament House, it is not worth trying to pursue justice. As my father told me as an adolescent, ‘Avoid the Courts son; you will get law, but you will not get justice’.
Here are some references, with a ‘w’ missing, except for Jacqui Maley’s SMH article.
ww.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-02/bruce-lehrmann-rape-charge-to-be-dropped-brittany-higgins/101725242
ww.smh.com.au/politics/federal/media-alleged-that-bruce-lehrmann-assaulted-other-women-court-20221202-p5c39n.html
ww.canberratimes.com.au/story/8010840/bruce-lehrmann-preparing-defamation-action/?cs=14264
www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-brittany-higgins-matter-is-closed-has-anything-really-changed-20221202-p5c3b4.html
03/12/2022
3 December 2022
One summer evening when I was still a medical student, I was strolling with friends through a festival with stalls and lights in Hyde Park. A young woman approached me and said “I’m a ‘Hookah for Christ, will you come with me?”, and handed me a leaflet. She was a few years younger than I and one of the most stunningly beautiful women I have ever seen. I paused, somewhat shocked, and wondered how much Christ and how much hookah was in this Goddess incarnate and whether I should follow her path to enlightenment. My girlfriend reappeared at this point and was very definitely of the opinion that I should not.
Some years later, in 1992, I had further cause to rue this ignorance as DoCS (Department of Community Services) were involved in a court case with a sect called the ‘Children of God’, who, it was alleged, had used young girls sexually to recruit members for their cult. The sect maintained that the term ‘Hookahs for Christ’ was merely a rhetorical device. The sect had expensive lawyers and won the case , though there was considerable public doubt about the freedom of cult members. DoCs was highly criticised over the case and the Premier, Nick Greiner, cut huge number from its middle management.
Neo-liberalism was new at that time, and his slogan was ‘Putting people first by managing Better’, which was in itself reflected an attitude of the time that managers knew better than those who actually did the work. A contemporary management slogan was ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, which tended to translate into ’Don’t spend any money on prevention, as it might not break’. Money spent supporting families has trouble showing big returns on management KPIs. The NSW Public Service was being massively downsized and there are some of the view that DoCS has never recovered from this downsizing, as human organisations rely on human knowledge and if there are just generic managers and new recruits, there is not enough corporate memory and experience to handle cases.
In 1999 when I was in Parliament, I was approached by a number of people telling me that DoCS was failing children at risk. The children with dysfunctional families from drug abuse, alcohol or domestic violence were not getting home support, and the initiation and supervision of fostering arrangements were poorly executed. I tried to set up an inquiry into DoCS. I had a number of NGOs speak to the cross bench. I had to get enough numbers so that there was a majority in the upper house. One of the groups suggested that the UN treaty on the Rights of the Child be a term of reference. This seemed reasonable, but Fred Nile said that he and Elaine would not vote for the inquiry if this was in the terms of reference. Richard Jones said he would not if it was omitted. I needed both of their votes to be sure of the numbers. I thought Richard would fold if I left it out- I was pretty sure Fred Nile wouldn’t. The Liberals, who were in Opposition at the time, were generally up for anything that would embarrass the Labor Government. I asked if they would support it, and told them that if Richard Jones changed, we had the numbers. They said, “We are a serious political party. If you cannot guarantee the numbers, we will not support you”. I regretted telling them about Richard and I did not move the motion. 21 months later the Liberals decided to support the idea, and approached me to amend my motion slightly, which initiated an inquiry (10/4/2002) .
The 2003 Inquiry found that DoCS was indeed dysfunctional . It had contracted out quite a lot of work to charitable NGOs without them having either the funds or the expertise to deal with difficult cases. Huge resources were spent monitoring wayward adolescents to keep them out of the criminal justice system until they reached 16, after which DoCS were not legally responsible for them. Cases did not have much preventive work done or decisions made and tended to stay on the desks of managers ‘unallocated’ until there was a problem . When there was a crisis or the matter went to Court, a relatively junior DoCS person would be allocated the case and have to face a crisis situation. The plans given to the Children’s Court for approval were hastily cobbled together at the last minute, often by new case managers who had only just got the brief. The Government had introduced ‘mandatory reporting’ with a phone and fax Helpline. This meant that there were huge numbers of reports, and huge efforts dealing with multiple reports on the same child or situation, but the call centre gobbled up resources that would have been better spent actually managing cases. The government was reluctant to get rid of the mandatory reporting ’Helpline’ as it was supposed to force schoolteachers etc. into reporting cases, which would leave no stone unturned. The function of DoCS seemed more concerned with appearances than reality and it got a lot of negative press.
Behind all this was the Children’s Court, where the conscientious Senior Magistrate, Scott Mitchell, was about the only quality control on the Department as he insisted in fulfilling his legislated role of ensuring that there was a realistic plan for children placed into custody of relatives or foster homes.
The Minister for Community Services, Fay Lo Po was sacked as was the head of DoCS, Carmel Niland. Neil Shepherd, who had been Deputy Director of the Cabinet Office and Health of the EPA replaced Niland. The Labor government promised a billion dollars over 10 years (most towards the end of the 10 years). Prevention was addressed with a new program, Brighter Futures, but the key problems remained with lack of action on 21% of cases noted by the Helpline, so there was another Special Commission into Child Protection Services in NSW in 2008 by Justice Wood , (who had achieved fame because of his work on Police corruption and paedophiles in 1997 ). Wood was helped by DoCS officers and one of their complaints was the stress that the Children’s Court put them under when they had to front up to Scott Mitchell with their child management plans. The report recommended weakening the power of the Children’s Court, and Scott Mitchell was disposed of by appointing a new President of the Children’s Court, who was to be a Judge- a level higher than Mitchell, who would have had to apply for the promotion that he was not going to get. On 1/9/2009 Attorney-General John Hatzistergos appointed Judge Mark Marien the new President , claiming he was strengthening the Court as he expanded on the new Judge’s CV, which lacked anything relating to child welfare.
An academic researcher, Katherine Macfarlane, noted that even in 2015 there was no data collected on how many Australian children in Out of Home Care ended up in the criminal justice system. She termed it ‘Care Criminalisation’ and noted that this data is collected in other jurisdictions .
It would seem that DoCs, which had a name change to Dept. of Family and Community Services (FACS) and then in 2019 came to be part of the Dept. Communities and Justice, still has its problems .
A report in the Sydney Morning Herald on 28/11/22 noted that a private contractor, Lifestyle Solutions, had subcontracted a child’s care to another subcontractor, Connecting Families and the children in question could not go to school as they were too cold without a winter uniform, despite the payment of $77,000 per month to the contractors to look after them . The Office of the Children’s Guardian has not accredited the Dept of Community and Justice Western NSW District to look after the 547 children in its care as it did not ‘meet the requirements‘ in the frequency of visits and that it had ‘limited evidence to demonstrate the district’s support for children’, its record-keeping was inconsistent, and its work in keeping in touch with families came in for questioning .
The Department has never been run properly. One of my minders in Parliament had worked there and spoke of the immense stress of going to Court almost unbriefed or accompanying Police to take children from the parents to foster homes. One of my patients who is an upper-middle level case manager has been off work on stress for 14 years, with no serious effort made to rehabilitate her.
But when there is no public housing, rents are unaffordable, welfare payments are insufficient to survive on, day care is expensive, Aboriginals are becoming increasingly isolated from both mainstream Australia and their own community leaders, ‘choice’ and subsidies have left poorer public schools as ghettos of disadvantage, inflation is rising and services are now for profit, it is hardly surprising that things are not going well. Anyone trying to put together a stable social situation for a disadvantaged family would struggle without these basic elements.
Society’s systemic problems need to be addressed if we are to return to the halcyon Aussie concept of a fair go.
27/11/2022
25 November 2022
Robodebt involved looking at the tax records of welfare recipients over a year, and then demanding money back from them over their year’s income. The Social Services Act specified that their income should be calculated fortnightly. Many people, particularly unemployed and disadvantaged ones, live from week to week, and don’t keep good records for tax purposes, as mostly they do not have enough income to pay tax, or the tax is already deducted from their income before they get it. So when a computer algorithm stated that they owned money to the Taxation Dept. and they had to prove that they did not, they were in no position to dispute this and the money was automatically taken from their already meagre welfare payments.
It seems that a number of public servants told the government that the process was neither wise nor legal, but it went ahead anyway.
This was in sharp contrast to the JobKeeper scheme, where businesses could estimate the costs of keeping their staff and be reimbursed. The JobKeeper legislation was modelled on New Zealand legislation, which had ‘claw-back’ provisions if businesses were overpaid. So the government did not ‘forget’ the claw-back provisions, they actively deleted them from the template.
It is difficult to see these actions as anything other than an ideological, punitive approach to people on welfare combined with a willingness to overpay those were approved of. It is difficult to see the Morrison government except in the light of rewarding friends and punishing people that were not approved of. The exemption of university academics and the performing arts from JobKeeper is further evidence of this proposition.
Since one of the significant public servants has now died, it may be that there will be no answer as to who is responsible for the Robodebt fiasco, but this maladministration has immense consequences for those denied income, with a number of suicides linked to the stress.
We can only hope that our arcane legal system will find a crime was committed and that someone will be charged and found guilty. What is more likely is that there will be shared responsibility, ministerial discretion, people in charge protesting their unawareness of the effect of the algorithm, a few embarrassing moments for a few people and nothing substantial happening. I hope I am wrong.
Here is part of the legal saga so far, as told by an ex-public servant.
27/11/2022
27 November 2022
When Prime Minister Morrison gave himself 5 ministries without even bothering to tell the ministers who he was over-riding, the Governor-General merely allowed him to do so.
Whether this was due to the fuss that was made when Kerr dismissed Whitlam and the upshot is that Governors-General believe that they have no right to countermand Prime Ministers I am unsure. Perhaps G-G David Hurley thought this; perhaps he wanted the PM’s support for his $18million ‘leadership’ scheme , or perhaps being military, he did not rock the hierarchical boat.
But some of us assumed that the Governor-General is head of State in order to stop political antics which are not in the interest of the Australian people. Naturally all the possible types of antics are not defined, nor presumably can anyone craft a law which bans any possible eventuality.
One is reminded of the aging President Hindenburg, who after the Reichstag fire made Hitler Chancellor and put out the Reichstag Fire Decree which Hitler used to suppress his opponents and get absolute power, even though Hitler did not have a clear majority on the floor of the Reichstag. The fire created an ‘emergency’ which was blamed on the Communists, but it is quite possible that the Nazis did it to create a crisis and enable them to take extra-judicial actions.
It is quite simply not acceptable to have a Prime Minster able to over-ride the Cabinet and take whatever powers he likes. The fact that Morrison only used this to stop a fracking project in the NT that he knew would be unpopular with the elections coming is not relevant. He could have done anything, and Hurley did not stop him.
If there is a censure motion against Morrison, this is also irrelevant. Morrison may be embarrassed and may or may not resign, but this will not stop it happening again a few years ahead. Even if Albanese arranges a law to prohibit multiple ministries, this may not help- any law can be reversed by a new government. It might also be noted that immediately after the 1972 election Prime Minister Whitlam and his Deputy Lance Barnard divided all the ministries between them and started enacting the programme that the ALP had taken to the election, merely to save time until his full Cabinet was appointed. This was consistent with the election result and seemed not to arouse any constitutional issues.
If we are to continue with a head of State who is ‘above politics’ he or she needs to be able and willing to stop political excesses. We need to know that there is some mechanism to stop an individual Prime Minster giving himself or herself whatever powers he or she likes. If you think, ‘it could not happen here’ you are wrong. It just has. The powers of the Governor-General were either inadequate or unclear and were certainly not used when they should have been. I cannot see that anything other than a clarification of the Constitution will resolve the matter. It seems that Justice Bell has overlooked this issue.
https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-the-bell-report-on-morrisons-multi-ministries-provides-a-bad-character-reference-195368
26/11/2022
25 November 2022
When I buy petrol, I sometimes ask the attendant how much he or she is paid. Often they glance at the CCTV camera and say that they cannot answer that. But the other morning early I asked an attendant who looked like a very tired student from the Indian subcontinent. Yes, she had worked all night, a 12 hour shift for $10/hour cash. I asked her how she thought she might get a decent wage. She replied, ‘Well, an Australian boss might help’. I took this to mean someone who paid an award wage.
As small business tries hard to exempt itself from ‘sector-wide’ bargaining, I wondered how she will fare if there is still no industry-wide award or no enforcement. What will change?
I have a friend who runs a small business and he says that although wages have not risen, neither have small business profits. I asked why? He said that the supply chain had ‘consolidated’ and took a larger share of the final price. One might note that Deliveroo just left food delivery, Amazon is taking an increased percentage of online retail sales, Airbnb takes an increasing percentage of accommodation spending, Uber has increased its percentage take from its rides, and Spotify pays very little to those who make their music. It is the Monopoly game in real life, the big get bigger and the frail are pressed to the rail. The view that the biggest problem small business has is big business seems a neglected truism. The question is whether this will or indeed can be addressed by Federal Parliament. The point is that competition drives down prices, but cartels and oligopolies develop if not stopped. A new book looks at this problem, Chokepoint Capitalism www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/culture/books/2022/11/30/chokepoint-capitalism#mtr
Another aspect is that the system seems totally unable to restrain is the salaries of top executives. One person I know advised, ‘I always vote against the management salary increases at the AGM’. There is legislation that salary rises have to be approved by the shareholders, but it seems that the top executives always have enough proxies to ensure that they salary rises come despite the efforts of small shareholders like my friend. So I suggest legislation that stipulates that no executive may get more money than, say, 20 times the full time equivalent hourly rate of the lowest paid person in the organisation. It seems that a few hundred thousand at the top does not matter, but a few dollars at the bottom do. This needs to brought into perspective.