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Category: Accountability

08/12/2022

NSW Labor Weak on Gambling

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

The Myth of Liberal Competence

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.

johnmenadue.com

NBN write-down confirms its national importance and Coalition failure

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

03/12/2022

Children in Care- a Brief History

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.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/left-hungry-and-too-cold-to-go-to-school-urgent-review-of-children-in-care-20221127-p5c1kr.html

27/11/2022

Robodebt- an ongoing saga

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.

Robodebt: can you recall a greater failure of public administration?

27/11/2022

Morrison’s Minister for Everything’ Antics show Constitution is deficient

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

The IR Bill- two problems and a suggestion

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.

25/11/2022

Fire Bombing of Friendly Jordie a Litmus Test

24 November 2022

The fire-bombing of the Bondi home of Friendly Jordie on 23/11/22 will be a litmus test for the NSW Police.

Friendly Jordie is a comedian and political commentator who took on John Barilaro, famously staying at his luxury property while filming commentary critical of him. He was then accused of stalking Barilaro, using Police powers usually limited to terrorist suspects, which looked very much like abuse of Police powers.
He has a considerable audience, particularly among younger viewers.

Clearly this was a threat to him personally.

I have some experience of this. In 1983 I was living alone in Newtown in an upstairs bedroom and at about 3am I was woken by the sound of breaking glass downstairs. I looked out, but could see nothing. Quite quickly there was a smell of kerosene and immediately after the whoosh of a fire being lit and a raging fire in our back lane, like a car on fire. In some trepidation I ran downstairs, went to the back door, turned on the outside light and started to hose the back fence. There was no response from any neighbours and I reflected that in a house full of semi-detached houses almost everyone except me slept in the front bedrooms away from the lane. My hose did not have a nozzle, so I stood at the back door and had put my finger in the end of the hose to direct the water. There was an explosion and the light went out. This was pretty frightening, but it turned out that some of the water from my hose had squirted upwards onto the light, which had exploded, luckily a little away from directly overhead.

After a while the fire died down somewhat and I took stock of the situation and ventured to the back gate. A car was burning out close to the fence, but the fence was undamaged. I called triple zero and reflected on the situation. There was a World Congress of Advertising Agencies at the Opera House on and two days before, BUGA UP had staged some street theatre on the forecourt with a confession booth with ‘Redeematiser’ sign on it, and a ‘priest’ in a cassock urging advertisers to come in and confess their sins. I had been there to get interviews for my radio program ‘Puff Off- Australia’s leading program on smoking.’ An executive from the ‘Tobacco Institute’ had walked by and been conspicuously unamused.

The Fire brigade arrived very quickly, put the rest of the fire out and prised open the boot, which was empty. I waited for the Police for about an hour, then went back to bed. The Police turned up about an hour later, more than 2 hours after I had called and the officer smelled strongly of alcohol. I told him of my concerns about who might have been responsible for the incident, but he was quite dismissive. He said that people often set cars alight. I said that I had lived in the area for more than a decade, went for long evening walks and had never seen a car set alight. He said that he would get the chassis number from the number plate on the computer, (as he did not want to bother even looking under the now-cooled bonnet). Some years later there was a lot of publicity about corruption allegations in Newtown Police Station.

So there is a real question whether the fire bombing attack on Friendly Jordie will be investigated adequately. He has a far higher profile than I had, and fire-bombing a house is more extreme than torching a car. But his allegations touch Caesar nearer.

Here is the story in the SMH:

ARSON INVESTIGATION
YouTuber ponders suspect shortlist after latest attack
Sally Rawsthorne, Sarah Keoghan, SMH 24 November 2022
YouTube personality Jordan Shanks-Markovina, better known as Friendlyjordies, says he has a ‘‘long list of suspects’’ in the alleged arson attack on his Bondi home on Wednesday, the second time the address has been targeted in a week.
Police and Fire and Rescue NSW have launched investigations after the property in the eastern suburbs sustained ‘‘significant’’ fire damage in the early hours of the morning.
Shanks-Markovina, 33, who is an Australian political commentator and stand-up comedian, said yesterday he had a ‘‘long list of suspects’’ based on his work.
‘‘We’ve done some extremely dangerous reporting over the last year on a bunch of extremely powerful people and corporations; there are many people that would want to do that,’’ he said.
‘‘I do have a shortlist in my head of who I think could’ve done it. I would hope that the NSW strike force that is supposedly set up for fixated people and terrorists would be looking into this instead of a comedian and his team for six months straight,’’ he said.
Friendlyjordies producer Kristo Langker was charged by NSW Police’s Fixated Persons Unit in June last year and accused of stalking former NSW deputy premier John Barilaro. The charges were later dropped.
There is no suggestion Barilaro is involved in the alleged arson attack.
‘‘Someone has just tried to kill Jordan Shanks,’’ his lawyer, Mark Davis, said.
It is the second fire at the home, which is a subdivision, in a week. Davis said last Thursday’s arson attack hit the other dwelling mistakenly. ‘‘It’s the second time, there was an attempt [last week].’’
Shanks-Markovina yesterday posted an image of the fire to his Instagram account, captioning it ‘‘I’m still alive’’.
The YouTuber was not home at the time of the alleged attack because he couldn’t find his key, instead spending the night at another property.
Emergency services were called to Wilga Street by multiple neighbours just after midnight on Wednesday. ‘‘The fire is being treated as suspicious,’’ Fire and Rescue NSW’s Adam Dewberry said.
Specialist forensic police and dogs ‘‘trained in the use of detecting accelerants’’ will investigate the cause of the fire, he said.
NSW Fire and Rescue said it took crews half an hour to extinguish the blaze, which ‘‘caused fairly significant damage’’.
The home remained a crime scene yesterday, with detectives arriving at the address in the afternoon as the smell of smoke hung in the air.
‘‘Officers from eastern suburbs police area command attended along with Fire and Rescue NSW and found the veranda of the house well alight,’’ police said.
‘‘The fire was extinguished with significant damage caused to the home and an adjoining property.’’
Shanks-Markovina has been a YouTube personality for around a decade. He has interviewed Kristina Keneally, Tanya Plibersek and former prime minister Kevin Rudd among others.
Recent videos on his YouTube channel, which claims 627,000 subscribers, include ‘‘KFC Workers Confess Their Sins’’ and ‘‘Anthony Albanese: Enemy to Women?’’.

24/11/2022

The US is in Trouble and we with it.

24 November 2022

The re-election of Biden and the much-hyped failure of the ‘Red Wave’ at the US mid-term elections has given rise to the perception that although the US is deeply divided, it will be OK.

Sadly, this is probably not the case. In the Anglo world, people do not really win elections, they lose them and the alternative gets in. The quality of the alternative is often not considered. Trump was generally seen as a narcissistic psychopath, who did nothing but criticise and create fantasies. He lost the election, but continued the fantasy that he was robbed, despite the fact that the US electoral system is quite corrupt with the politicians setting their own electoral boundaries and changing the voter registration rules to rort the system and actually hugely favours the Republicans.

President Biden got in, but inflation has hugely increased, leaving the US, with its very poor welfare system in real trouble. Traditionally the ‘mid-term’ elections decimates the party in power. So the Democrats were supposed to be decimated by a ‘Red wave’, (red being the colour of the Republicans remarkably enough). Because of the memory of Trump’s incompetence and the poor quality of the Republican candidates, the Democrats retained control of the Senate, but narrowly lost control of the House of Representatives.

So things may appear to be stable. But the US is a deeply divided country, quietly sinking as a world power, and though the Republican majority is slim, they will be able to frustrate any action that Biden and the Democrats try to take to improve the situation. And if nothing improves, the government i.e. the Democrats will be blamed next election.

So who are the Rebublicans who are likely to choose? Front-runner for Republican Presidential candidates is Florida governor, Rick DeSantis. Sadly, he is almost Trumpian in his simplicity and wants to lump all progressive policies together as ‘woke’ (a word that is really extending and working overtime). So the tried and true formula of not being ‘for’ something, but being against ‘woke’ or ‘marxism’ (hey, what’s the difference) will be used to turn against any progressive ideas and look after the big end of town. This could be called fascism, but perhaps we should avoid name-calling at this stage.

How any of this will fix the huge problems in the US is beyond my ken, but when the US becomes dysfunctional the ramifications for the world, including us are likely to be significant, particularly if we continue to follow their policies like lapdogs.

DeSantis’ ideology is clearer, darker and more coherent than Trump’s

24/11/2022

iCare- a letter to the Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald

24 November 2022

Dear Editor,
iCare was set up by private insurers on their model with the NSW government keen to minimise costs, take profits and distribute them (just before the last election). So iCare delays or refuses treatments to the needy, and was very careless about what their Pre-Accident Average Weekly Earnings (PIAWE) were. Many accident victims complained that they were underpaid, and that was before their compensation was stopped or cut because they were certified partially fit to do jobs that could not be found.

The overheads of Medicare are about 5%, iCare about 38%, so it is totally inefficient as well as incompetent with bloated salaries for the top executives who think it is a financial problem rather than a medical one and hence are unable to solve it. The real solution would be to fund Medicare as the only medical system and let the insurers have widespread income-guarantee insurance.
Sincerely
Dr Chesterfield-Evans- works as a GP specialising in Workers Comp and CTP injuries.

Here is an article from today’s SMH

EXCLUSIVE
Injured workers to lose benefits
Adele Ferguson

Greg Dayman is one of almost 400 workers who will get a Christmas ‘‘present’’ they will never forget.

The Sydney construction worker was badly injured on a building site in 2013, which left him unable to work with chronic pain in his neck, the side of his head, down his arm, torso and leg.

In 2017 he was among thousands of employees whose compensation payments to cover wages were cut as part of controversial reforms to the state’s scandal-ridden icare organisation. Changes to the legislation terminated injured workers receiving weekly wage benefits after five years unless they met a whole body impairment assessment of more than 20 per cent.
However, he still received medical or health benefits. Now he has found out even these will be cut from December 25.

‘‘It’s another upper-cut,’’ he said. ‘‘And to do it on Christmas Day, that’s just cruel.’’

Dayman is one of 395 workers facing a grim future as a crisis at icare deepens, with a document prepared by the State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA) revealing the workers’ compensation scheme ‘‘has deteriorated to the point the longer-term sustainability of the scheme is under threat’’.

NSW Auditor-General Margaret Crawford will hold a performance audit into icare next year that will examine how effectively key risks are managed, including the rising cost of workers’ compensation claims and its payment processes. Dayman said he lost everything after his injury.

‘‘I lost my health, my career, and financially I’m in a position that if my specs break I can’t afford to buy them. The system dehumanises you, so you give up.’’

He does now qualify for a disability pension but will have to rely on Medicare for future medical treatment. ‘‘I have been suicidal at times because of the system and the way it treats you,’’ he said. ‘‘My time is spent trying to survive.’’

In the executive summary of SIRA’s review into icare’s Nominal Insurer Improvement Plan, dated September 26, the authority said it had a ‘‘low level’’ of confidence icare’s strategy would improve return to work rates and overall performance.

In 2015-16, 93 per cent of injured workers were back at work 26 weeks after their injury, compared with 84 per cent in August 2022.
SIRA said it believed icare’s strategy ‘‘encompasses an increase in work capacity decisions to cease worker benefits instead of focusing on improving health and recovery through return to work’’.
Richard Harding, icare’s managing director and CEO, said it was the insurer’s role to implement the law, and legislation ‘‘does not give icare any discretion to act outside that’’. ‘‘Tailored and individualised support is provided to workers transitioning from the workers’ compensation scheme,’’ he said. ‘‘This may include support from NDIS, Community Support Services and Medicare in conjunction with their GP.’’

This masthead this week revealed a third underpayment scandal of injured workers and concerns raised by NSW Treasury in August that a deterioration in icare’s finances would require insurance premiums to rise 33 per cent by 2025, or $1 billion a year, to cover the shortfall.

Against this backdrop, the icare board granted pay increases to 116 of its executives, including Harding, making him one of the state’s top-paid public servants, earning more than $1 million a year.
Shadow Treasurer Daniel Mookhey said icare’s finances were in a catastrophic condition.

‘‘They’ve lost billions. They are planning massive premium hikes. And their next step is to expel even more injured workers from the system,’’ he said.

‘‘It is a ruthless tactic stemming from their financial desperation.’’
In a statement, SIRA chief executive Adam Dent said its views on the Nominal Insurer Improvement Plan in September were made with limited detail on how the plan would be executed.

‘‘Over recent weeks, SIRA has continued to engage with icare to address information gaps, including detailed briefings on managing IT and transition risks associated with the onboarding of new claims services providers.’’

But SIRA said poor return to work performance continued to be an issue of concern.

‘‘Icare’s targets for 2023 are lower than current return to work rates, and they are projecting a further decline of 2.5 per cent on 26-week return to work rates through 2023 and 2024 as the scheme transitions to new claims providers,’’ Dent said.

Icare said its focus was building injured workers’ capacity for employment using rehabilitation providers and associated vocational placement interventions. ‘‘This includes assistance with job seeking and vocational retraining. Work capacity decision-making is applied when the worker has a demonstrated capacity for work and has been provided the right support.’’
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