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Category: Justice

23/11/2023

Myanmar- some hope in Rebel Victories.

23 November 2023

Three groups in northern Myanmar have joined together in Operation 1027, after the day they launched their offensive (27 October). They have been very successful against the hated military dictatorship. The question is whether this will be the beginning of the end for the junta, who have been helped a great deal by the Chinese, presumably for economic concessions. But the Chinese may not be happy with the regime, as it has tolerated a ‘scam industry’ near the Chinese border, and it may also be that the Chinese are not sure that the junta have enough control of the country to allow a rail line to be built to a port on the Myanmar coast, which the Chinese want to use to export via the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean without needing to go around the Malay peninsula.

It is speculated that the Chinese have given tacit support to the rebels, and if this is the case the junta will have more trouble.

I visited Myanmar in 2017 when Aung San Suu Kyi was theoretically in power, but with the unpopular military junta still really in control. (There are a number of posts on my website, chesterfieldevans.com if you search ‘Myanmar’).

There was a coup in 2021 and Aung Sang Su Kyi was forced from her figurehead power and charged with treason because she had a few walkie talkies to talk to her staff, which were made ‘illegal’ because the junta could not eavesdrop on them. There was some resistance to the coup and unarmed people were shot, but it has led to more organised resistance.

Myanmar is a very divided country so there are different ethnic groups and armies resisting with varying success in different parts of the country. Not much news of this has been in the mainstream media here, until this rebel success. The military are universally feared and hated, which was evident even to the most casual tourist. They are not done yet, but if they lose Chinese support and the people believe that they can be overthrown, they will be.

https://thediplomat.com/2023/10/operation-1027-a-turning-point-for-myanmars-resistance-struggle/

10/11/2023

The Hamas Perspective on the 7 October attack on Israel

10 November 2023

Terrorism is a word that is often ill-defined. To call someone a terrorist is to assume that they are sub-human, cannot be negotiated with and must be destroyed at all costs or by all methods.

It is forgotten that the US is credited with inventing guerilla warfare during their war of independence aka revolution against Britain. It is also forgotten that when large numbers of Jews wanted to return to Palestine after WW2 the Irgun, their militant group, placed a terrorist bomb in the King David Hotel, the military and civil headquarters of the British Mandate in Jerusalem in 1946. The war-weary British allowed increasing numbers of Jewish refugees into Palestine, and Ben Gurion declared the State of Israel in 1948.

Terrorism is the use of violent action to achieve a political result. It is a tactic usually deployed by the weaker side, as they cannot win a military or political struggle. It naturally strikes fear into the civilian population as they recognise that any one of them could be a random victim; hence the emotive force of the word ‘terrorist’.

But those who use terrorism usually do so in a calculated way, and if progress is to be made in resolving the issue, there must be rational calculation in the response to it and dialogue if possible. An emotive or irrational response is likely to worsen the situation, and Israel’s carpet bombing of Gaza would have to be in this category. Unless all Palestinians can be removed from Israel, there is likely to be strife in Israel as long as the Palestinains survive, and if they are removed from Israel, there will be a nidus of hate outside Israel.

Here is the Hamas perspective which needs a response:

https://fb.watch/odoTimrgOg/

08/07/2023

Corruption and the Law

8 July 2023

I am no fan of our legal system. My view is that is a money-making talkfest, a debating plaything with justice when it is achieved, in no way cost effective. It is hugely stacked towards the rich and powerful, cumbersome and petty pedantic and it leaves huge issues of justice unacknowledged and unaddressed.

Many years ago the Non-Smokers Movement tried to stop tobacco sponsorship advertising on TV. It was perfectly obvious that Marlboro was a major sponsor of the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, that all the cars and signs were set up for a TV extravaganza of Marlboro exposure on Channel 9. Non-Smokers Movement had been going about 20 years trying to get rid of tobacco and smoking. We presented all the evidence with photos of what had been set up the livery of the cars. The judge ruled that we did not have ‘standing’ to bring the case as we would not lose money from the telecast, because we did not have an ‘interest’. An ‘interest’ equalled money, and we were considered lucky that the judge allowed us to present the case as he knew we did not have an ‘interest’ or ‘standing’. Be grateful for crumbs- we got the publicity, though of course the telecast went ahead, and they were awarded their costs (which in fairness Kerry Packer did not demand).

When I was in Parliament a whistle-blower nurse, Nola Fraser was on 4 Corners making allegations that there was a big problem with health care in Campbelltown and Camden Hospitals. She was relatively senior nurse, who was sometimes night supervisor at Camden. I contacted her and she told me about the corruption in the hospital. She had over a hundred reports, some details on about 70, the names of about 35, reasonable detail of about 15, and a lot of information on about 7 cases. Her stories were credible. The patients were dying because doctors were not available, trying to cover both the ED and the wards at the same time, or in theory on call at two hospitals at the same time, and ambulance protocols had resulted in at least one death, as inter-hospital transfers were low priority, but resulted in a lessening of interest at Camden, as the patient was ‘about to go’. She had tried to speak to senior management as the ‘case conference’ meetings produced no results, and management had referred her to an officer who could not do anything but refer her back to the senior management in a sort of endless fob-off merry-go-round. She used the word ‘corrupt’. I asked her if she meant a corrupt process or if some of the hospital staff were on the take. ‘No’, she assured me, ‘they are not making any money, it’s a corrupt process; they are supposed to be helping people, but they are killing them and covering it up’. Clear enough.

I initiated a process which led to an inquiry on the complaints system within NSW Health and concentrated on Campbelltown and Camden Hospitals. She was a major witness; a lot of problems were found and South Western Sydney Area Health Service got an extra $360 million in the following year’s budget. But it went further. NSW ICAC initiated an inquiry to look at Nola’s allegation of corruption. Unfortunately I did not follow the mechanics of this closely enough. After an inquiry for some time at a cost of $1.3 million, Nola Fraser was excoriated as a person of no credibility as she had not proved her allegation of ‘corruption’ against the senior staff. But no one had asked the obvious question; what did she mean by corruption? She was talking about process; they could only think of money- the legal definition. After the sanctimonious verdict, her life was largely destroyed. What use was the legal system in getting justice? Nil.

Now we have findings of corruption against Gladys Berejeklian, who had been brought up in a rather sexually sheltered domestic environment and then chose a dodgy boyfriend and protected him. (SMH 30/6/23) No corruption there as she did not personally gain any money? It is up to NSW ICAC.

Of course the other big news this week is the Robo-debt Royal Commission. (SMH 8/7/23) Morrison started it; Attorney-General Christian Porter knew about it, and Ministers Alan Tudge (alleged sexual harasser) and Stuart Robert (Morrison loyalist, corporate enabler and generally recognised incompetent) were also responsible. Presumably none of them made any money from the Robo-debt scheme, so they were not corrupt and cannot be prosecuted? We will see. The sealed section of the report apparently makes recommendations to the NACC, but can they act on this in the legal system we have? It is said that there are 4 to be referred to NACC, and the Commissioner waited until NACC was established to release her report, which means that she wants some consequences. But we have National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) chief Paul Brereton saying ‘It is possible for conduct to be corrupt but not criminal’. Sure is. But does this mean that there is no prosecution no matter how dodgy the politicians allocating the money are? Looks like it. Endless ‘discretion’?

One other tricky little question will come out in all this- will the public servants be prosecuted? They did not give ‘frank and fearless’ advice and at least some of them knew it was not legal, or might not be. Probably they knew that it was going to happen anyway, and their own careers would be adversely affected if they made a fuss. It is very likely that they were correct in this last opinion. Does the Public Service Act compel them to be honest when there is no such compulsion for politicians? I note the article in The Saturday Paper speaks about public servants being ‘sanctioned’ for breaching the ‘code of conduct’. Sounds like being hit by a wet lettuce- possibly bad for your career in the short term.

The relationship between the public service and political system is interesting. The British comedy series ‘Yes Minister’ showed the public service as foolish. The more relevant Australian series ‘Utopia’ shows it the other way around. Who should have the power and how much?

Years ago the NSW Electricity Commission decided that NSW needed to commission a number of new coal-fired power stations to open every few years to meet projected energy demand. They were engineers and would obviously have work for their working lives implementing this project. Electricity demand did not rise as anticipated and at one time, NSW had generating capacity of 76% greater than peak load. No accountability, no transparency, no discussion.

In the 1980s I worked at Sydney Water and one morning, when in the foyer waiting for a lift, the man standing next to me said, ‘This is the time of day I hate’. I asked why and he said, ‘When I get to the office I will have to look at the fax machine and see what the Minister has thought of overnight and what I will have to deal with.’ (The Minister was Tim Moore, who was a relatively environmentally active in the Greiner government). Gradually engineers who had come up the ranks were replaced by politically active managers, who knew nothing about water or sewerage, and staff numbers were cut from 17,500 to about 3,000 staff. The new managers supervised private contractors, the infrastructure upgrades ceased, no apprentice training was done, no unemployment programs ran, and people with lifetime expertise in niche areas were made redundant. Large ‘dividends’ from the ‘State owned enterprise’ were put in state coffers. Politicisation was complete by the early 1990s. This happened all over the public service, Federal and State. We have gone from one extreme to the other.

An article on the ABC asked if economists were to blame for Robo-debt, having decided that a certain level of unemployment was necessary to stop inflation. The obligation for governments to achieve full employment was lost, and as government got smaller and welfare was seen as an evil, those who could not get jobs are demonised. I have written before about the 8 ‘apartheid buses’ that take children from our wealthy suburb to private schools. They make it possible for wealthy kids to avoid contact with much of society. From private schools to universities to political jobs- where is the reality contact? Religion may play a part too. The world is full of sinners who will be judged and rewarded of punished in the end, so there are ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’. Just as God has all wisdom, so does the neo-liberal market. The system that allocates resources in a medieval market model, where the townsfolk choose which vegetables to buy, is now assumed to optimally distribute resources with any interference to the model being seen as a disturbance of the natural order of things. Those who can accept that God must decide whatever the consequences seem to find it easy to believe that the market will sort out jobs and income distribution, and they judge the deserving and undeserving.

I am postulating an out of touch, judgemental government exercising its discretion, creating Robo-debt as the implementation of a philosophy. Now, what is the crime in this crass stupidity, and what remedy does the legal system or other system in our society have for this folly? I am not hopeful that there will be significant sanction on either politicians or public servants, though I think the former are far more guilty. I fear that after a lot of tut-tutting and few resignations from powerful positions, there will be assurances that it can never happen again, but there will be no preventive program for next time either. The only hope is for greater transparency, though Labor’s Liberal-lite policy seems against even that.

NACC at least exists now, so we will see what can be done. Helen Haines, the Independent for Indi who pressed for the NACC has an article in the Saturday Paper of 8/7/23 that urges continual vigilance and effort.

www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2023/07/06/robo-debt-breaking-news

24/05/2023

Modi’s Melbourne Rally has Australia Kow-Towing Again.

24 May 2023

The spectacle on tonight’s ABC news of visiting Indian Prime Minister addressing a rally in Melbourne sent shivers up my spine.

I had realised that Modi was acting as a Hindu nationalist, and doing quite bad things to Muslims Sikhs and other minority groups. He was and is using religion as a way of increasing his vote as over 80% of Indians are Hindu. But in a country of 1.3 billion people are lot are not Hindu, and areas in the North of the country have been suppressed, with the historic separation of Pakistan and Bangldesh (formers called East Pakistan), as well as problems in Sikh Kashmir, where the people actually want independence from both Hindu India who controls them and Muslim Pakistan who wants to.

Modi has used very authoritarian tactics, but has got away with it because the Indian economy has done well.

Australia is very pro-India at present as the China trade embargos have meant that we are looking to diversify our markets and a rising nation with 1.3 billion people looks just the ideal partner. Not to mention defence ties, though India has traditionally tried to create a group of non-aligned nations to cool whichever Cold War is going on at the time.

But the rally in Melbourne as shown on ABC News tonight had a huge stadium shouting with Modi in the centre like a rock star. Our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, said that the last time he saw this was a Bruce Springsteen Concert and the crowd were more adoring of Modi than they had been of the Boss, Springsteen. They also hugged, like footballers after scoring. But it went on. Modi stood alone in the centre and addressed the crowd in their own language. It was doubtless staged for the Indian elections which are next year. It seems that our government was complicit. It is very hard to think that they were unaware of what was being organised, and their part was as direct an endorsement of Modi personally as could have been done.

Having kow-towed to the US on defence last week, and mumbled a few platitudes about Julian Assange, this was another example of the Albanese government being very weak on human rights, or even standing up for anything. We should have been friends with India without such a party-political statement.

www.themonthly.com.au/the-politics/rachel-withers/2023/05/24/yes-boss?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The Politics%20 Wednesday 24 May 2023&utm_content=The Politics%20 Wednesday 24 May 2023+CID_646eeca792ac1e467a7fad04b06e163a&utm_source=EDM&utm_term=Read on free&cid=646eeca792ac1e467a7fad04b06e163a

16/12/2022

A Scientific Approach to Conspiracy Theories

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/

07/12/2022

Brittany Higgins trial shows that legal system is not fit for purpose

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

24/11/2022

Danny Lim Bashing a bad sign of the times

24 November 2022

Danny Lim is a regular at many protests. He is a very kind and gentle man, and his protests are quite individual and idiosyncratic with very humane values. He would never harm anyone, and the way he was thrown face first onto the tiled floor at the Queen Victoria Building by the Police is frankly a disgrace.

As the gap between rich and poor widens with neo-liberal policies and a welfare system which is starved of funds, the level of social frustration rises. Many times in Parliament I was asked to pass legislation which simply increased Police powers, mostly in response to an item in the media where some crime had occurred. There was never any question as to why the crime occurred, there was simply an increase in Police powers and usually the maximum fines or sentences. The Police Service was re-named the Police Force, presumably to reflect the same philosophy. No one ever asked if this would actually work.

I have formed the view that the defence industry increasingly uses the Australian War Memorial as a temple of militarism. A couple of years ago, Nick Deane of the Marrickville Peace Group asked me to help him hand out leaflets on Anzac Day that said, ‘Honour the Dead by Working for Peace’. So I dressed in suit, wore a discrete sign with the slogan on it and went to the edge of the public area in the Hyde Park ceremony and started handing out his leaflet. People took it, and most agreed that it was reasonable.

After a while a Police sergeant came and told me to move 150 metres away as I was ‘offending people’. I said that no one had been offended, (not that there is a law against offending people in any case) and I was not going to move, as I had a right to stand there. He said words to the effect of, ‘You will do what I tell you or you will be arrested and charged’. I told him that he was there to enforce existing laws, not make them up, and if he charged me he would merely be told by the Magistrate that he did not have a case. I agreed to move about 2 metres so he could save face. He was furious, and went off asking to find someone who was offended. He came back and we had a second altercation. I really thought that if I had not been in a suit and told him I was an ex-MP, I would have been thrown down and roughed up. It was a line ball as it was.

The Police are there to keep us safe, not remove people harmlessly expressing opinions, and certainly not to do so roughly. They must obey laws of reasonable behaviour the same as we should. Clearly pressure on them needs to be maintained. The presence of cameras on every phone will help in this- no longer will stories of people ‘falling over’ be believed.

Fortunately Danny has come out of hospital and seems OK, but the video below leaves little doubt that he was assaulted by Police.

www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/excessive-police-force-is-damaging-sydney-s-reputation-minister-told-after-danny-lim-arrest-20221123-p5c0no.html

19/11/2022

Immigration – it is Time to Clean it up.

19 November 2022

One of the legacies of the Morrison Government is a complete mess in immigration.

I grew up in Port Kembla where a huge influx of ‘displaced persons’ (i.e. refugees) from post-war Europe came to Australia and worked in the Steelworks. Initially the kids at my primary school came from the migrant hostels that had been set up in the old army accommodation, but then the NSW Housing Commission built whole suburbs to cope with the load. These were initially rented, but eventually they bought their homes. The kids learned English, we got used to their funny names and unusual school lunches and they grew up as good Aussie kids.

It might be noted that there was an influx of Hungarians after the 1956 uprising against the Russians there and some of those became captains of Austr;ian industry. Australia took a lot of refugees from Vietnam, claimed it was a multicultural country and had benefited enormously from the influx of foreign talent. Paul Keating tried to fund an initiative to foster language teaching so that a large number of Australians would become bilingual, but this and the free ESL (English as a Second Language) classes were defunded by John Howard, who won an election by demonising refugees and promising to ‘turn back the boats’ The fact that there were numerically not very many boat people and that political refugees are generally the elite from when re they come was ignored and Australia was set on a path of not only being totally callous with refugees, but also wasting huge amounts of money on dodgy contractors and facilities. The delays were also a disgrace.

But meanwhile other immigration developed with migration agents charging exorbitant amounts, stories of people of dubious character buying visas, and even sex slaves. Some employers brought people in with a sponsored deal that they had to work for 2 years to then be eligible for a permanent visa, and in my own experience I saw a couple on five 12 hour night shifts a week to get this. Many students, allowed to work only 20 hours a week and unable to live on this were paid sub-award wages, obviously dragging Australian wages down in all the casual industries.

I have tried to help a number of good people who were injured and in danger of deportation to save insurers money, and found there are many dodgy practices and practitioners, as well as a very unresponsive system.

The current ‘labour shortage’ shows how dependent we all were on work visa and student casual labour, and the fear of industry-wide awards that are actually enforced says quite a lot about what was going on.

At last, after a lot of publicity about sex trafficking someone is cracking down on the Industry. Hopefully, this as well as adding a lot of public servants to process the applications in a more honest way will improve the situation.

Taskforce targets migration criminals

Nick McKenzie SMH 19 November 2022

The federal government has established a new multi-agency taskforce to target criminals exploiting Australia’s migration system after revelations of widespread visa rorting linked to sex trafficking, foreign worker mistreatment and drug crime.

Operation Inglenook is led by Australian Border Force and backed by other state and federal agencies, and will target the organised crime gangs and migration fixers exposed by Trafficked, a major investigative series by the Herald, The Age and 60 Minutes.

The taskforce is focusing on 20 migration agents with suspected links to the rorting, and one federal government-licensed agent has already been issued a notice that the Office of the Migration Agents Regulation Agency will ban him from providing migration advice.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has promised major reform to the system, and said yesterday that the new taskforce was being staffed by investigators and regulatory officials aiming to reduce rampant exploitation of the migration system.

‘‘Its goal is to disrupt the networks exposed by the Trafficked series. The taskforce includes intelligence and compliance teams to assist with an investigation into the vulnerabilities of the migration system,’’ O’Neil said.

The minister said that after years of neglect by the former Coalition government, Labor was now acting. The Office of the Migration Agents Regulation Agency was working closely with the new taskforce.

The Trafficked series cast a light on visa rorting, sex trafficking and foreign worker exploitation in Australia. Among the reports was that of a human trafficking boss who entered Australia in 2014 and built a criminal underground sex empire despite having previously been jailed in Britain for similar offending.

That crime boss, Binjun Xie, is in hiding and being sought by authorities after being exposed in the series. Border security failures enabled Xie to allegedly set up a nationwide sex network that police said moved Asian women around like ‘‘cattle’’.

Trafficked also revealed how state and federal agencies have spent years issuing confidential warnings of migration rorting involving syndicates gaming the visa system to bring criminals or exploited workers into Australia. This is facilitated by networks of corrupt federal government licensed migration agents, education colleges, fixers and people who rort the English language test.

The investigation also focused on migration agent Jack Ta, who had boasted of ‘‘cosy’’ meals with Coalition ministers and who donated more than $25,000 to the campaign fund of former Liberal assistant home affairs minister Jason Wood. Ta is suspected of repeatedly gaming the visa system to help more than a dozen drug offenders remain in Australia.

Wood was the chair of parliament’s migration committee when the donations took place and he hosted Ta on at least two occasions to dine with now opposition leader Peter Dutton when he was home affairs minister.

This masthead has also confirmed that Ta attended the launch for O’Neil’s election campaign when she was a shadow minister and bought items at an auction worth $5200. The funds were donated to a charity after Ta’s conduct was exposed by this masthead.

Authorities have linked Ta’s migration agency to dozens of unmeritorious asylum seeker claims, including at least 15 made by convicted Vietnamese drug offenders.

Earlier this month, the federal government cleared the way for an overhaul of the visa rules by naming former Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson to review the system.

The new taskforce to investigate the migration scams will complement his inquiry.

Parkinson said it was ‘‘indisputable’’ the migration system was not working.

01/11/2022

Relevance of Books

8 September 2022

Like a lot of people I do not read as many books as I should, but it seems that they have not lost their relevance. We are now well past Orwell’s 1984 and have facial recognition software pictures taken when we visit nursing homes and all our conversations and email analysed by algorithms.

Three recent articles came to my attention:

The Booker Prize, a prestigious prize for novels, which used to be confined to the British Commonwealth but is now open to any writing in English, has satire as its major theme this year. Below is a NY Times article, reprinted in the SMH.
The US has been banning books for a while

ww.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/07/book-bans-pen-america-school-districts (add an extra w to make www)

And now China has gaoled the writers of a children’s book about sheep defending themselves from wolves as this is said to be a political analogy for the actions of the Communist Party in Hong Kong. See link below

Satire dominates in a diverse Booker Prize shortlist

Alexandra Alter The New York Times

A barbed political satire about the fall of an African dictator, told from the perspective of talking animals. A mordantly comic novel about the inescapable horrors of racism in America. A bleak but slyly funny story that explores the trauma of Sri Lanka’s civil wars.

These potent satirical novels are among the six finalists for the Booker Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards.

This year’s shortlisted novels include authors from five countries and four continents, and encompass a diverse range of prose styles and subject matters, from quiet, introspective literary fiction to fantasy and magical realism.

Several of the novels deploy humour, myth and allegory to tackle painful chapters of history. In Glory, Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo obliquely tackles the downfall of autocrat Robert Mugabe, through a narrative featuring a cast of animals — horses, donkeys, dogs, goats, chickens and a crocodile.

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, a mythic story by Sri Lankan novelist Shehan Karunatilaka, follows a photographer who wakes up dead in an underworld where he encounters victims of political violence. And in his novel The Trees, Percival Everett lampoons the stain of racism in America with a story about a pair of black detectives who investigate a series of murders that echo the lynching of Emmett Till.

‘‘One of the great powers of language is to make you laugh, even in the middle of terrible things,’’ Neil MacGregor, former director of the British Museum and chair of this year’s judges, said on Tuesday.

Other authors on the shortlist are Irish writer Claire Keegan, for Small Things Like These, about the unmarried women who suffered in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries; English fantasy writer Alan Garner, for Treacle Walker, a dreamlike story about a boy who has magical visions; and American novelist Elizabeth Strout for Oh William!, about a woman who helps her ex-husband investigate his troubled family history.

Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize is one of the most coveted literary prizes in the world. The winner, who will receive a prize of £50,000 ($A86,000), will be announced on October 17.

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/07/hong-kong-authors-of-childrens-books-sheep-wolves-convicted-of-sedition

20/05/2022

Government protects Bonuses of iCare Executives while workers are dudded.

20 May 2022

Some things make me unspeakably angry.

In the SMH online today the government giving bonuses to executives who presided over iCare cheating injured people out of their payments and treatments.

In my real job, I treat injured workers and motor vehicle accidents. Many wait more than a year for surgery- my longest was 9 years. They are subjected to Independent Medical Examinations that find any other reason than their accident for the cause of their pain. Age, previous injury and arthritis are the commonest ones. It is stated that they are fit for work, when they are obviously not, or that they can get another job when they obviously have no physical or mental capacity to do another job, let alone compete for one.

The ongoing inefficiency of the computer algorithms making decisions without even anyone being responsible was the brainchild of John Nagle, whose other bright idea was to change his KPI (Key Performance Indicator) from getting people back to work, to having them declared fit to be back to work. Nagle resigned after a bad day at a Parliamentary inquiry. All this happened while iCare was under Treasurer Dominic Perrottet.

A friend of mine injured his back lifting on a Friday. He called his GP and visited him on Saturday. He had an MRI scan on Monday which showed a bad disc injury, saw the neurosurgeon on Thursday, had a discectomy on Saturday and went home on Monday. All fixed in 8 days. That is what should happen. It never happens in the WC or CTP system.

The Workers Comp system takes 14 days to accept liability, then has to ‘decide’ if the treatment is appropriate, so weeks go by, and if they dispute it, years. People wait 3 months for the insurer’s medical examination, 6 weeks for the result of it, another couple of months for their specialist examination and a few months for the government medical to settle the dispute. And they blame the injured people for the worse results out of the system, and give bonuses to those who managed to reduce the costs. Given the huge administrative machinery, the clerk, investigators, extra medical examiners, lawyers, dispute resolvers and the rest, all the savings come from not treating people. And those responsible get bonuses, and the government, ever keen not to upset the private sector ring-ins makes sure that they are amply rewarded for this appalling situation. Perrottet, the most recent architect of iCare, had a 2^nd inquiry by McDougall to kick the can down the road, then rose to be premier before his report was out.

Here is the SMH article:

Government votes to protect bonuses for icare executives

By Lucy Cormack

May 20, 2022 — 5.00am

The Perrottet government has protected bonus payments for icare executives, rejecting a bid to ban the practice after revelations millions of dollars in bonuses were handed out while injured workers were underpaid.

The attempt to strip bonuses from executives at the state insurer was contained in Opposition amendments blocked in the lower house this week during a vote to amend the state insurance and care legislation.

Icare has been the subject of intense scrutiny since an investigation by the Herald and ABC TV’s Four Corners in 2020 revealed the underpayment of workers while senior executives claimed almost $4 million in salaries and bonuses.

The insurer, which provides workers’ compensation insurance to 3.6 million public and private sector employees in NSW, has since been forced to repay $38 million to 53,000 injured workers.

The scandal prompted the government to amend legislation governing icare, following a review by former judge Robert McDougall, QC.

More than 200 icare employees are entitled to bonuses, including chief executive officer Richard Harding, who is entitled to an incentive of $411,000.

Opposition treasury spokesman Daniel Mookhey said there was little justification for bonuses while the insurer continued to record billions of dollars in underwriting losses.

“Employers are staring down the barrel of a decade of rising premiums, yet the government is protecting bonuses for top executives at Australia’s most disaster-prone insurer,” Mookhey said.

“We intend to stand up for employers and injured workers. We will fight against lavish bonuses for icare’s top executives in the Legislative Council next week.”

During debate on Wednesday, Minister for the State Insurance Regulatory Authority Victor Dominello said the McDougall Review had not found executive bonuses at icare were excessive.

He said McDougall noted the benefit of allowing icare to set competitive salaries to “attract appropriate talent”

The Herald last year revealed icare hired 18 new executives with potential annual bonuses collectively worth more than $1.2 million, while employee operating costs have increased from $162 million to more than $200 million since 2020.

However, an icare spokesman previously told the Herald no executive bonuses have been paid in the past two years.

Unions NSW boss Mark Morey wrote to NSW MPs last week calling for reforms to address “repeated governance, financial and operational crises”, including ending executive bonuses.

Other proposed reforms included enforcing the same procurement laws that govern the NSW public sector, from which icare is exempt, and appointing an injured worker to the board.

Morey on Thursday said the government had missed an opportunity to “clean up” the state insurer.

“How can the premier justify continued bonuses for highly paid executives when sick and injured workers have been dudded and small businesses are paying increased premiums?” he said.

Other changes sought by the government included additional powers for the State Insurance Regulatory Authority and expanded access to commutation, which allows injured workers to negotiate lump sum payments and exit the system, rather than remain on weekly payments.

However, the government agreed to withdraw its proposal to allow changes to commutations via regulation and reconsider them in future legislation.

Opposition spokeswoman for industrial relations, work, health and safety Sophie Cotsis said she was pleased the government had agreed to consult further on lump sum payments, arguing that regulation should not be used to expand the system.

The State Insurance and Care Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 will now move to the upper house, where the opposition will make another attempt to ban bonuses.