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Category: Government

11/11/2021

iCare will repay 53,000 underpaid injured workers

11 November 2021

iCare, the State workers’ compensation insurer has admitted that it has underpaid thousands of workers and will now repay them, according to an article in today’s SMH.

This story has been leaking out in the media for ages. At a day to day level, my patients have always complained that they get a lot less in compo than they got before their injury. This has been even for workers on regular salaries. Those on casual work were in a worse situation as there was some argument about what their PIAWE (Pre-Injury Average Weekly Earnings) were, especially if they got variable hours from a labour-hire company.

When this scandal first broke, I tried to tell my patients to ask iCare if they had been underpaid and some did. It seemed that iCare could not work out what their PIAWEs were. It did not have the data. In that employers’ future premiums related to how much was paid out in claims, it suited both the employers and the insurers to minimise their PIAWE, so if a low amount was put in, there was little incentive to check it up. Now, a few years later, iCare would need a forensic accountant going through the employer’s books to get to the correct amount. This is unlikely to happen.

So while this promise is a start, it is hard to believe that it will be enough to see justice done.

Workers’ Compensation has always been seen as a cost for business rather than a moral obligation to pay for people injured at work. Generally it is about minimising the cost of the payout, rather than having an energetic injury prevention programme.

The Minister in charge is the Treasurer, so all of this happened on Dominic Perrottet’s watch. Matt Kean, the new Treasurer may be more sympathetic, and this will help, but we still need a lot better enforcement of safety to prevent accidents, and much more power to injured people to ensure that they are correctly paid.

It illustrates that active Unions are necessary to redress the power imbalances in the the system. Legislation without enforcement is just words on a page, just as apologies from banks and insurance companies for rip-offs are just sound vibrations in the air.

Here is the article:

‘My sincere apology’: iCare will pay back $38 million to 53,000 injured workers

Lucy Cormack SMH November 11, 2021

State insurer iCare will pay $38 million to 53,000 largely underpaid injured workers affected by historic miscalculation errors between 2012 and 2019.

An iCare review of 16,000 injured worker case files has revealed an average error rate of 3.5 per cent or an underpayment of $26 a week due to miscalculated pre-injury average weekly earnings.

“I would like to offer my sincere apology to any injured worker who has been affected by this calculation error,” said ICare chief executive Richard Harding.

Among the most seriously injured and affected are 523 workers underpaid a total of more than $3.9 million, or around $7500 each.

The mass pay-out follows a joint investigation by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and ABC’s Four Corners which last year revealed iCare had underpaid as many as 52,000 injured workers by up to $80 million in compensation.

ICare then disputed the underpayment figures, saying it believed only 5000 to 10,000 workers had been underpaid up to $10 million in total.

Chief executive officer Richard Harding on Thursday said affected employers and employees had been unable to provide the data to accurately assess underpayments. As a result, iCare conducted a “file by file review” of 16,000 cases as a sample to assess the scale of the errors.

“We’ve been advised there is a risk of overcompensation in this approach, but the desire is to get money back as quickly as possible,” Mr Harding said.

“I would like to offer my sincere apology to any injured worker who has been affected by this calculation error.”

The underpayments were caused by errors in the calculation of pre-injury average weekly earnings for injured workers dating back to 2012, when the insurance scheme was run by WorkCover.

Mr Harding said the average lump sum to be paid to the 53,000 workers will be around $700. However, some will receive thousands.

Affected workers will receive any money owed through an adjustment of their weekly benefits for the weeks already paid. Any historical overpayments caused by the same miscalculation error will not be recouped by iCare.

Revelations of financial mismanagement and widespread underpayment across the iCare stable first emerged last year, before a subsequent review into its culture and governance revealed systemic weaknesses and a failure to hold management to account.

Labor treasury spokesman Daniel Mooched said the announcement repudiated earlier claims that only a small number of people were affected.

“As always with iCare, the devil is in the detail. But today’s announcement is meaningful for the tens of thousands of people iCare underpaid”.

Mr Mookhey said the insurer must guarantee that it will not seek to recover the money from sick and injured workers through benefit cuts or employers through higher premiums.

Upper house Greens MP David Shoebridge said the pay-out to workers followed years of chasing by unions, injured workers and non-government MPs.

While he welcomed the payments, he said there was “no evidence from iCare that this payment goes anywhere near meeting their full obligation to injured workers”.

“We will continue to press iCare for a full accounting so that no injured worker is left short-changed,” he said.

Unions have described the decision to reimburse workers as a significant step but called for greater transparency about the process.

“This is hardly an organisation that can be taken at its word. iCare executives, who are better known for receiving fat bonuses, must detail their methodology,” said Mark Morey, Secretary of Unions NSW.

Last week, a budget estimates hearing heard iCare had reported a $1.4 billion underwriting loss in the past year, with the total accumulated loss of the past three years now exceeding $6 billion.

Treasurer Matt Kean, who is responsible for iCare, told the hearing new legislation following recommendations from another review prompted by the scandal would not be introduced until 2022.

04/11/2021

Australia at Glasgow COP26

4 November 2021

Just when you think it could not get any worse- it does. There has been relatively little about Australia’s appearance and presentation at the Glasgow climate summit and the reaction to it; the media being preoccupied with the fact that President Macron of France called Scott Morrison a liar, and chasing abducted Cleo Smith in WA.

Australia has had a SANTOS stall at its exhibition at the Glasgow Climate Summit. Santos is spruiking its carbon capture and storage, subsidised by guess who? You and me as taxpayers, facilitated by Energy Minister Angus Taylor who is charged up with a $2.3 million donation from Santos to the Liberal Party.

Carbon capture is a complete nonsense. Coal is more or less solid carbon. To do some basic chemistry, a mole of carbon weighs 12gm and occupies 5.3 cubic centimetres. When it combines with oxygen it weighs 44gm and becomes CO2, a gas which takes up 22.4 litres which is 22,400 cubic centimetres or 422.6 times the volume of the original carbon at atmospheric pressure. To capture the CO2, and then compress and store it will almost certainly take more energy than was released in burning it. To halve the volume of a gas, you have to double the pressure, which takes 101 Joules of energy per litre per atmosphere. The carbon dioxide is also able to penetrate barriers, such as going through solid concrete, and the sites suggested for the carbon storage are at 31 degrees, when carbon dioxide does not become a solid until minus 78 degrees. So the whole process cannot be economic or sensible, and no ‘technology’ will make it so.

Everything in the above paragraph is high school chemistry, so no great knowledge is required here. Only those venal or wilfully ignorant can dispute this. How the myth of Carbon Capture and Storage can still be peddled is beyond belief, excepting the explanation attributed to Napoleon, ‘In politics, absurdity is no impediment’.

The fact that Australia could have a Santos stall in its display in Glasgow shows the extent to which the Morrison government is willing to make us an international laughing stock for the sake of their $23 million, not to mention the subsidies, the greenhouse effects and the delays caused by this policy.

The other quote that seems apposite is Greta Thunberg’s, ‘Blah, blah, blah’.

www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/03/australia-puts-fossil-fuel-company-front-and-centre-at-cop26?fbclid=IwAR3x1hmLa5dbh7nJ8i_IFx8PyZEAyzSIuIeJVMQOlZfLQfY0-nt9wXE1Wgs

10/10/2021

Australian Universities’ Neoliberal Legacy

10 October 2021

The legacy of being turned into financial entities may be very severe. This article looks at their finances.

What will happen to Australia’s intellectual elite, now hopelessly underpaid or unemployed with no stable career path?

How can Australia compete internationally in this scenario?

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/09/australia-universities-neoliberalism-speculation-finance-real-estate-international-students?

08/10/2021

Toll Doesn’t Pay Toll

8 October 2021

Trucking giant Toll Holdings tells its drivers to avoid toll roads as they are not worth the time savings. It might be noted that Air Freight to Melbourne is actually taken by trucks, the only thing being sky high is the prices.The toll roads have the price levels befitting a private monopoly of Transurban. They were sold as lessening congestion. They have taken the money and now we have done nothing for our rail network. There was an article in the SMH of 29/9/21 and also this one:

www.truckandbus.net.au/toll-says-no-to-tolls/

03/10/2021

31% of JobKeeper recipients checked were ‘not eligible’

3 October 2021

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

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

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

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

30/09/2021

Nuclear Submarines- a horrendous folly to win an election?

30/9/21

Many of us despair at the Morrison government; whether it is the callous approach to asylum seekers, Robodebt and welfare generally or the naked favouring of their constituency where JobKeeper payments are not required to be repaid. The total breakdown in ethical standards where public moneys are rorted with grants to electorates that will favour them at the polls and might even be the reason that they were re-elected. The dismantling of public service capabilities and intellectual resources with the granting of private contracts for welfare payments with the Indue card, given to Liberal-friendly companies or to compliant companies to run detention centres or Great Barrier reefs research. The lack of support for TAFE and trade skills, replaced by skilled migrants on visas that have no Medicare or income support when they became stranded, the casualisation of university teaching positions with and no support or quarantine for foreign students despite the fact that education is our 3^rd biggest export industry. It just goes on and on.

The mismanagement of the COVID epidemic in terms of being unwilling to build quarantine facilities to allow overseas citizens to return home and the lack of purchase of vaccines, and their desultory distribution practices is the current big issue that is upsetting their popularity. They were willing to throw money at JobSeeker when it went to big business, but now that it continues and has to go to individuals they want to end welfare and will stop payments as soon as vaccination rates hit 70% of the over 16s, which is only 57% of the population. As I have said on this page before, this is a level of irresponsibility beyond all else, justified by the idea that the economy has to go on and only the aged and sick will die. The divisiveness and callousness of this leaves one breathless, and as it plays out it is likely to be the end of the Morrison government.

So Morrison, the master media manipulator needs a very major distraction. China is asserting itself, which is clearly a problem, but the demonising of it seems very convenient for Morrison. The French submarine contract was not good, but it seems that the nuclear one is worse.

We were going to get 12 conventional submarines at a cost of $90 billion, the first coming in 2034. Now we have dumped the French contract and get nuclear submarines at a cost of either $3.45 billion each for the US Virginia model or $2.83 billion for the UK Astute model (2018 prices). The delivery dates are likely to be around 2040, so our old Collins class ones will be a long way past their use-by date.

The noted defence commentator, Hugh White had a very critical piece in The Saturday Paper 18-24/9/21, teased with ‘The old plan was crazy, the new plan is worse’. Two ex-Prime Ministers, Keating and Turnbull were both highly critical of the decision in the SMH of 22/9/21 and 29/9/21 respectively. Turnbull even spoke at the National Press Club on the subject. www.smh.com.au/world/asia/morrison-is-making-an-enemy-of-china-and-labor-is-helping-him-20210921-p58tek.html

The deal, dubbed AUKUS, was announced by Morrison with US President Joe Biden and UK PM, Boris Johnson. One could hardly believe this was not some sort of parody. The old Anglo alliance, rooted in history, but totally at variance from the image that Australia since Keating had been trying to project, a country engaging with Asia.

Boris Johnson wrote a hagiographic biography of Churchill and fancies himself as a latter day Churchill, which is absurd hubris. The UK has no power ‘East of Suez’ as was demonstrated when 2 British warships sent to defend Singapore in 1941 were promptly sunk by Japanese aircraft. Have they done anything significant here since?

The US is playing a far more strategic hand. Australia has been a lap dog to the Anglosphere for all its history and this changed from the UK to the US in WW2. Even in the absence of reasonable Peace lobby in Australia one might have hoped that the debacle of the Afghanistan war would temper our enthusiasm to go all the way with the USA, but it seems not. The US is preoccupied with China. It wanted a base in Australia. It may be hubris for the US to set up bases to try to contain China, but that is still where their thinking is at present. Why would Australia need submarines to go to China except as part of a US force?

Gillard was the first Prime Minister to allow US troops to be stationed in Darwin, but the US wants a submarine base. Australia may not have been willing to let the US have such a base as it would make us a nuclear target. So the answer was simple. Promise to sell us some nuclear submarines. We would then need a nuclear submarine base and to maintain our subs. Presto, Australia is paying for nuclear submarines and a base that our ally can use. The US will not be able to contain China, which will sadly be demonstrated when China decides to take Taiwan. China wants to be the dominant power in the world, and it seems that the world is going to have to get used to this idea. China is likely to want to dominate economically and technologically, so the invasion of Australia is unlikely to be necessary and we should retain our economic and technical sovereignty, but rely on diplomacy to look after our interests.

The French conventional submarines were as fast underwater as the nuclear ones will be, but have a lower range and lower costs. The French version of these is nuclear, so one of the reasons that they were chosen was that they could be re-engined at any time with nuclear propulsion with a lower-grade uranium, which was not weapons grade. Naturally they had a lesser range, but if the object is to defend Australia, this may not have been a problem. Nuclear submarines can stay underwater indefinitely, but their reactors produce a lot of heat, so if they are still they leave an area of hot water, which either is or will be visible to a satellite. So the idea that they are less vulnerable to attack may not be correct. It is not impossible that in future submarines will be as vulnerable to satellites, missiles and drones as battleships were to aircraft in WW2.

In terms of the perception of Australia oversea there are considerable downsides to the deal.

The Chinese representative said to Stan Grant on China Tonight on ABC TV 20/9/21 that the submarines would make Australia a nuclear target. Grant seemed indignant and said that there were no nuclear weapons- it was just the propulsion. Presumably the Chinese representative was referring to the fact that there would be a US nuclear submarine base on Australian soil, and he assumed that Grant knew that. It appeared that Grant had not thought it through. https://iview.abc.net.au/show/china-tonight/series/0/video/NC2130H008S00

The Indonesians are concerned that we have long-range submarines that we do not really need for our coastal defence and that we are firmly partisan in the US-China standoff and have brought the conflict into their area, quite apart from any aggressive intentions that we might harbour against them. The old colonial ties are all renewed- what sort of country are we, Asian or Anglo?

The French are naturally furious, and they are very influential in the EU while we are on the verge of a free trade treaty. This is very poor politics on a very big trade issue. We have unilaterally torn up a major deal. How reliable are we?

Morrison has been seen in happy snaps with the US and UK leaders. He is appealing to his Anglophile base. He thinks this parody of statesmanship can be spun into an election victory, some say as soon as November, before the COVID debacle reaches its final stage. If Morrison can win again it will be the last straw in taking Australia down a dismal and unconsidered path.

www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/clumsy-deceitful-and-costly-turnbull-slams-handling-of-nuclear-submarine-decision-20210928-p58ve3.html

30/09/2021

Tasmania Wants 90% of Adults Double Vaccinated before Opening the Border

30 September 2021

Here is a realistic assessment of how to stop an epidemic if you have the choice. Liberal Premier Peter Gutwein has some modelling coming. Bear in mind that 20% of the Tasmanian population are under 16 year of age, so if no kids are vaccinated the actual rate is still only 70%, not 90%. Even you assume that kids will not get sick, which is actually not a reasonable assumption, there are 30% who can spread COVID and 10%, the adults, who are quite vulnerable.

In reality, it is hard to get vaccination rates over 90%, though Blacktown LGA has 95% with first jabs, and presumably Tasmania would also being trying to vaccinate 12-15 year olds and younger if possible.

Meanwhile Morrison is stopping welfare payments to States when they get over 70%, which is actually starving people into unlocking. Even Conservative NSW Treasurer Perrottet is adding some welfare payments from the State budget.

www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-29/tasmania-wont-reopen-covid-border-before-90pc-vaccination/100500844?sf249931972=1&fbclid=IwAR2NqGfeDQA9rGcnm7XQ6iLiDGK7XH1PNkRsjYs3uL15J31hP7qLbDsby88

22/09/2021

Victorian Government Bites the Bullet and Mandates Vaccination

22 September 2021

At last! A government that does the sensible thing. The Victorian government will only open up if people are vaccinated. Thanks to NSW the Delta variant genie is out of the bottle and spreading nationwide. Business wants to unlock, some with no care for anyone but themselves.

Victoria wants to unlock but minimise spread among those now having more interpersonal contacts. The R (Reproduction) number is the number of cases each case infects. If everyone is vaccinated, less people will get it and those who have it will get it to less people.

Reasonable medical opinion is that the risks of vaccine are massively less than the risks of getting COVID, so the case against vaccination is incredibly weak on medical grounds. The ‘right not to have your body violated’ etc sounds very dramatic, and makes vaccination equivalent to rape in a semantic sense. But in a practical sense the two concepts are as far apart as could be. One is sensible medicine and the other is a crime.

Anyone who thinks that this does not matter should look at the graph of NSW cases that has peaked and is just starting to fall. Anything that can flatten the curve or make it fall is good. Anything that makes it rise is creating deaths and misery.

I am a member of the Council for Civil Liberties and have spent years working against excess government power. But sometimes it is necessary to act for the common good. I have no time for smokers’ rights or the right to spread disease. The Morrison government is as usual missing in action when real leadership is needed. ‘Let every workplace decide’, is a nightmare for retail business owners, offices and just about every other employer. Gladys is similarly missing. Dan Andrews has stepped up, despite a motley crew in the streets spreading disease and demanding the right to continue to do so.

What of the Health System? We are going the way of the Americans by stealth, and the fact that the public system is what has helped us survive is being glossed over, hidden by subsidies to private hospitals. The Federal government has been quietly trying to kill public medicine for years. The Medicare rebate has fallen from 85% of the AMA rate to 45%, so for the same bulk-billing work doctors incomes have almost halved over 35 years, while subsidies to the inefficient Private Health Insurers continue. Being a GP is now a little-sought speciality. (I have a FB page- Fix Medicare that I spend too little time on).

The States have maintained the public hospitals at a minimal level, as all the lucrative work has been siphoned off by the private system basically doing the easy stuff. There is No slack in the system, not that counting the number of ICU beds should factor. All our efforts should be to keep people out of Hospital and ICU by prevention of infection.

Have a look at this article on the anti-discrimination aspects of mandatory vaccination, and also look at the NSW cases, just turning down, but likely to rise if anything, like opening up from lockdown, tips the balance.

www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/here-s-why-no-jab-no-entry-is-not-discrimination-20210920-p58t2v.html?fbclid=IwAR2jrbfGJsq6fD-J-unnAn12j9UyWvdk-do5BpE23bI0z0gQ8kknq5nc39c

15/09/2021

An OECD Analysis of the Federal Government’s Policies

16 September 2021

This is a good and reasonably comprehensive article in The Guardian where the OECD looks at Australia with some interesting graphs and international comparisons.

The OECD also wants to review the role of the Reserve Bank. One might comment that the Reserve Bank might have more power in other countries and the OECD might either think it has more power here, or is pushing for it to have such. The RBA here had traditionally kept out of politics, finally made some very sensible comments and been roundly ignored.

www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2021/sep/15/australias-climate-failures-are-costing-its-economy-and-scott-morrisons-government-is-being-blamed?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR0HPjSa-z0Esu7GklbLRl3IrvAzJnjsBdMNX7VhWFbCcOsNbNBTYGpZO2U

15/09/2021

Uncontested Grants for NT Gas Exploration Despite Court Proceedings in Progress

15 September 2021

Federal Resources Minister Keith Pitt gave $20 million for gas exploration for fracking in the Betaloo Basin in an uncontested grant. The grant was to Empire Energy that donates to both major parties, but seems to prefer the Liberals as they flew Energy Minister Angus Taylor and Liberal fundraiser, Ryan Arrold around the NT site (Guardian 20/8/21).

The Betaloo Basin is in the centre of the Northern Territory, and the grant application was the subject of Court proceedings brought by the Environmental Centre (NT) and the Environmental Defenders Office. It seems that undertakings were given not to give the grants, but they went ahead despite the assurances given to the Court. The Australian Government Solicitor (AGS) said somewhat lamely that they can only do what their clients say. The Resources Minister, Keith Pitt was criticised by the Federal Court judge, Justice John Griffiths, but it seems that this will make no difference either to the outcome or to the Minister’s career. Presumably the idea that he would be charged with contempt of court is fantasy.

We seem to have reached the point of a third world country where the Government gives whatever it likes to its mates and due process is a distant memory.

Labor might be marginally better, but the benchmark has now been set very low. Companies are becoming accustomed to governments bending to their will and will be reluctant to leave the ‘new norm’. The only answer is a Swiss-style democracy with referenda as the main source of power and citizens able to overturn government decisions. We need proportional representation and an end to the two-party duopoly so that all decisions are made on the floor of the parliament, not in back-room deals. This will take a change to the Constitution, but this well overdue in any case, and we might as well do a thorough job of it. The Swiss also have provisions to change their constitution without a fuss.

www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/14/no-satisfactory-explanation-court-blasts-keith-pitt-over-grant-agreement-with-gas-company?fbclid=IwAR3v_4oGwTWFkiQ2xYp_l9Mjw2alDLARFN_St8hwoDbEp_MRup44fFbfXaU