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Senior law lecturer at UNSW, Bassina Farbenblum says, "Our study confirms that Australia has a large, silent underclass of underpaid migrant workers,” commenting on a report entitled, "Migrant Worker Justice Initiative." The authors do not question the impact on Australians of this corrupt industrial and academic underbelly, but observe complacently, that if Australia is to "position itself as the destination of choice for international students and backpackers, reforms must be urgently impl
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Environment and Planning Committee’s Inquiry into the proposed long term lease of the land titles and registry functions of Land Use Victoria.
The Committee has resolved to extend the closing date for submission to Friday 6 July 2018.
[Article by Sally Pepper.] The Communications Ombudsman, Judi Jones, said today that nearly one in two Australians have problems with their phone or internet service and that one in four issues were not resolved after four months. For small business, the situation is even worse. I can relate to this, and I bet you can too.
The Electrical Trades Union has slammed a recent report by the Grattan Institute as little more than an opportunistic call to sell-off Australia’s essential electricity assets to its corporate mates. ETU National Secretary Allen Hicks described the report as lacking integrity and avoiding the real cost drivers in Australia’s energy system.
Privatisation on the backfoot as new book shows that the growing wave of cities putting water back under public control has now spread to 37 countries impacting 100 million people.
Contrary to the expectations of many people living outside of New South Wales, on 23 March 2015 the Opposition Labor Party led by Luke Foley lost the state elections to incumbent Liberal Premier Mike Baird. This was in spite of Labor Party's opposition to privatisation and a grass roots trade union and community campaign against privatisation. 1
In part, the Liberal Party's victory was due to Michael Baird being able to convince some voters that his proposed sale of 99 year leases of the state's electricity network to the private sector was somehow different to privatisation. In her speech of 2/6/15 to the NSW Legislative Council (Upper House), Greens member Dr Mehreen Faruqi, shows that for corporations intending to buy the 99 year leases, as well as the consumers and current owners of the NSW electricity network, there is little practical difference. The Youtube of Dr Faruqi's speech is embedded below and the transcript of the speech from the NSW Legislative Council Hansard is also included. 2
This article gives a 'good cop bad cop' analysis of Australia's two party history since the fall of the Whitlam Government. It looks at the evolution of economic theory and foreign involvement in wars over this period.
Media release from Northen Greens, 17 Oct 14
See also: Issues that should be decided at the 29 November Victorian State elections (14/10/14) on candobetter.net.
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Federal and NT Greens have come out in opposition to the CLP's agenda of selling public assets like Power and Water Corporation, the Darwin Port Authority and the Territory Insurance Office. "Let's call a spade a spade. This plan is all about balancing the books today by selling assets which belong to the people and which make it possible for us to manage costs in the future," said NT Greens candidate for Casuarina Dr Michael Connard. "This is a short-sighted move. What happens when the NT has no public assets left to sell?" |
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Victorian voters could on Saturday 29 November begin to take back their state Parliament from the vested interests that are now running Victoria. If presented with open, informed discussion there is every reason to hope that a far larger proportion of Victorians than in previous years will vote for good independent or small party candidates and not for either of the two major parties. |
Plans to sell off public assets include:
The Australian Financial Review reports that the Queensland Nationals Government, which was elected in 2012 as a result of the repudiation by voters of former Labor Premier Anna Bligh's sell-off of public assets, is now planning to sell off Queensland's electricity transmission networks.
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Be there! at 5pm today at 118-122 Queen Street Woolahara, NSW As you may be aware the 2nd of our homes (29 Lower Fort Street Millers Point) is to be auctioned off by Di Jones Real Estate Agents. Like the invitational viewings the auction will be held in secret behind closed doors! Please share: #savemillerspoint #wheresgabby #savepublichousing |
Julianne Bell of Protectors of Public Land Victoria will be the speaker at a meeting of concerned citizens "Protecting Heritage and Public Interest in Banyule," Sunday July 6th, 2.00pm for 2.30pm, Seddon St. Community Centre, Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe Civic Precinct Master Plan includes demolition of the current library and privatisation of three lots of civic land. You can attend the meeting and be listed to speak at the start of the meeting.
Ivanhoe’s much loved Chelsworth Park, on the Yarra flood plain near the southern entrance to Banyule, is currently being considered for a 20 +10 year Commercial Lease between Banyule City Council (BCC) Ivanhoe Grammar School (IGS) - A commercial entity.
A Commercial Lease threatens the ability of our Community to decide how the park will be used, over a period of expected high population increase in Melbourne and Ivanhoe and a growing reduction in private residential space - as the number of multi-unit dwellings increase due to Government policy.
Inside a short video on privatisation of electricity. In 1994, the Kennett government disaggregated the SECV into five distribution and retail companies (absorbing the MEUs in the process), five generation companies, and a transmission company. Along with other state-owned utilities (such as the Gas and Fuel Corporation of Victoria), these businesses were all corporatised, then privatised between 1995 and 1999.
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"Resisting is pointless," we hear endlessly repeated. "So many years of protest but the crisis continues, why bother?" insist others, inoculating us with apathy and resignation. "Protests could lead to something that's even worse," whispers the machinery of fear. They want us submissive, heads bowed. Dreams of change are forbidden. However, history rebels, indomitable. And it shows us, despite the naysayers, that struggle is worth it. |
Today the Australian Financial Review carried a surprising and uncharacteristic number of remarks about the high cost of privatisation and the benefits of public provision of vital services.
The report by past Federal Treasurer Peter Costello of his supposedly independent investigation into Queensland State finances on behalf of the Queensland Government Commission of Audit recommended the full privatisation of Queensland Government's electricity generators. Only last year, the Queensland public, outraged at the asset fire sale embarked upon by former Premier Anna Bligh without any electoral mandate whatsoever from the 2009 state elections, savagely punished Labor at the ballot box leaving only 7 sitting Labor members in a house of 89.
That, less than a year after, the new Government of Campbell Newman has contrived an excuse to continue with policies, that have been so resoundingly repudiated by Queenslanders, provoked outrage. An example of the outrage felt is a new opinion poll taken by news.com, which shows that Qld privatisation [is] opposed by 85%: poll.
Professor John Quiggin of the University of Queensland responded on 6 March with a post on his web site. That post included a link to a pdf report which, by examining the disastrous history of privatisation across Australia in recent decades, comprehensively demolishes the case for any privatisation.
How did stealing from the public to enrich the private sector become a norm in Australia and why do some religions give it moral credence? This is a reminder of the existence of an important, publicly available article about the rise of right-wing so-called 'think tanks' in Australia since the mid 1970s and their recent tendency to combine forces with the religious right.
On the ABC News radio this morning (9 Sept 2012) we heard that private coal companies are demanding compensation for carbon trading costs from the Victorian Government and apparently this is being taken seriously!
This article contains James Sinnamon's submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) which wants to pass new laws to make all your emails and other internet transactions up to two years back accessible to the Australian Government.
A study published by McGill University in Montreal and Utrecht University in the Netherlands, analyzed data from global ground water use against computer generated models of underwater aquifers and concluded that the "groundwater footprint" of reliable resources above ground is 3.5 times larger than
the known aquifers.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard was playing politics when she used a speech to the Energy Policy Institute of Australia on Tuesday to blame state governments for soaring power prices.
In her Quarterly Essay piece, "Great Expectations," Laura Tingle loads a gun with a big bullet that she never shoots - which I thought any writer knew was a no-no. She says that "constant mass migration" " more than anything else" pushed the Australian economy and the population through waves of rapid change.
It was maddening to hear a number of mainstream and lesser media organs come out observing that the Labor Party lost the recent Queensland election because of ex-Premier Anna Bligh's and ex-Treasurer, Andrew Fraser's counterintuitive and unpopular insistence on going ahead with privatisation and population growth policies, when you spent time recording the efforts of a man who continually tried to ra
Back in 2002 the Australian Government owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) surprisingly placed itself in the forefront of efforts to steamroll the public into acceptance of the Howard Government's plans to privatise Telstra.
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