We continue to await the return of Newspoll for the year, which I imagine might be forthcoming ahead of the return of parliament next week. With Essential Research having an off week in the fortnightly cycle, this leaves me with nothing to report on the poll front. Two bits of electoral news worth noting are that the Liberals won the supplementary election for the Victorian state seat of Narracan as expected on Saturday, confirming lower house numbers of 56 for Labor, 19 for the Liberals, nine for the Nationals and four for the Greens; and that Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles has announced that the by-election for the seat of Arafura, following the death of Labor member Lawrence Costa on December 17, will be held on March 18. With that, over to you.
c@t: “Take care, meher baba, and look after yourself. ”
Thanks.
My relationship with my wonderful partner is strong. The problems are with the generations immediately above and below me in the family tree. I’m hoping that time will eventually heal all wounds one way or another.
Alpo says:
Friday, February 3, 2023 at 8:17 pm
“citizen says:
Friday, February 3, 2023 at 8:10 pm
Trouble at t’ Liberal Party Mill?
‘LNP is being hijacked by young inner-city Liberals’
Experienced federal Liberals should be looking over their shoulders. If you listen to the chatter, the LNP’s next generation has them in their sights.
By MICHAEL MCKENNA, LYDIA LYNCH, SARAH ELKS (Oz headline)”
Gees, and here I was thinking that the Liberals were being highjacked by old, crappy religious nuts.
So, it’s the inner-city spoiled young Libs vs the old-obtuse religious nuts…. From the previous Liberal Civil War: Conservatives vs Moderates, we are now shifting to the Generational Civil War…
I bet that some smartarse in the Liberal party has already invested in the popcorn industry….
———————————————————————————————
Young fogies threatening to overthrow old fogies, hilarious. 😆
The leader of that inner-city Liberal push that is targeting experienced trustworthy LNP members is none other than a trusted political staffer of Dutton. This isn’t anything that changes anything – it’s just a party leader trying to get more allies on board so that he can stay leader long enough to become prime minister. I would be more than a little surprised if the inner-city Young LNP types affiliated with Dutton were blue teals or something.
“Another said: “The LNP is being hijacked by young inner-city Liberals.” Interestingly (or maybe, tellingly), the push is led by YLNP president Darcy Creighton who, when he is not doing the numbers, is a trusted political staffer of the LNP’s most senior MP in Canberra, federal Opposition leader Peter Dutton.”
Robodebt was conceptually flawed from the start. You can’t reasonably assume that the previous years’ taxable income of a person is an accurate indicator of their income while unemployed. It was also of course morally wrong and illegal. Basically, a program devised by the stupid, approved by the mean and administered by the incompetent and unethical.
You might also ask, was the welfare and employment system that much worse or defrauded when recipients were treated as citizens rather than conflated petty criminal/bums?
If Robodebt wasnt 100 per cent illegal we would not be where we are today.
Sure, some people probably were rorting the system but you can’t use an algorithm to shake down hundreds of innocent people to catch the crooks.
Some of them the most vulnerable in the community.
And you can’t reverse the onus of proof.
That’s what happened.
If you want to catch welfare cheats go ahead.
But do it properly.
i wonder who will be clubs nsw ceo the herald reportid that perotit and clubs nsw chair were discusing the new ceo so the government liberal party want to hand pick a ceo for a private cumpany to better aline with government maybi they should waight until election because minns could winn thenwhat would happin to the liberal suportive ceo i thought government should not interfear in private sector aparently barilarow was interested
Upnorth
There’s no way I could get Ms Cronus to stay in a yurt and worse still, she doesn’t eat meat. I doubt we’ll be darkening the sands of the Gobi Desert.
“Taylormade says:
Friday, February 3, 2023 at 8:39 pm
The Age 03/02
I want to be really frank with Australians and with people working in the health sector, I know that this is not going to fix things in and of itself. I know this is not a single budget challenge. I know there will be more to do,” Butler said.
_____________________
Unbelievable. Where was this frankness before the election you dickhead. It’s all very underwhelming.
Same old. same old.”
Please show us the quote where any member of the current ALP federal government promised to fix the complete disaster of 9 years of incompetent Coalition government overnight… C’mon, show us!
so clubs nsw chairman holds talks with government so is he holding talks with opposition is goverment in care taker yet it is not a great idea foor the government to atempt to install acoalition member in this position toby williams used to be a director of several clubs and was a clubs nsw rep this is perhaps whiy perotits anti pockies stunt has failed when you have barilarow giving bush fire funding only to government seats a bit hard to claim moral ground
zoomster: “What happened was that tax records were compared with welfare payments. The income declared on your tax was averaged out and assumed to be your fortnightly income. Centrelink then looked at the fortnightly figures the person had declared to Centrelink and decided that, if they were greater than had been declared, the recipient had lied and that they owed Centrelink the difference.”
But that’s income averaging, which dates back to when Brian Howe was the Minister for Social Security, or possibly even further back. It paid for a lot of worthwhile improvements to the welfare system, and considered legal until the Federal Court quite recently ruled that it wasn’t.
Of course a fair system required that people could contact Centrelink and put their case as to why its assumption about their income was wrong (eg, because all of it had been received in periods in which they weren’t claiming welfare). It is arguable that the Robodebt process – combined with the retreat of Centrelink services from a face-to-face counter to a phone-in arrangement – made it much more difficult for affected people to put their case.
However, my understanding is that it was the decades-old income averaging process that the Federal Court ruled illegal, and not Robodebt per se.
Steve777 says:
Friday, February 3, 2023 at 8:42 pm
I don’t think you need to be an Einstein to realise that demanding money from people without any basis of proof that they actually owe it to you has got to be illegal.
——————————————————————————————-
Isn’t it more commonly called extortion?
meher
Income averaging provided a tool for an investigation. The case would be flagged, someone would look into it, and determine if there’d been an overpayment.
Robodebt simply assumed the recipient had done something wrong and sent out a debt notice
Huge difference.
Further to the Professor Carney reference in DSS hatchet piece…..
Carney could well have written the Act… he may not infallible but sure as hell is more qualified than the DSS hacks..
I don’t think the RC will let this pass.
Social Security Law and Policy
Posted: 11 Apr 2006
Terry Carney AO
The University of Sydney Law School
Abstract
The Australian social security system has undergone a major transformation in the last decade. “Social Security Law and Policy,” published by Federation Press in 2006, provides a thorough discussion of legislation and case law, and sets out the legal principles and concepts, which underpin recent welfare reforms.
This book reviews the history and transformation of the welfare state, ideas about the nature of poverty, and the policy changes that need to be made. Detailed case studies examine current welfare issues and consider the changes affecting key groups including:
Cronus
I only know of one person who had a family member who got caught in Robodebt
My friend said her son was sure he’d done no wrong but confronted with a bill for a few hundred dollars and limited ability to track down pay slips and bank statements from years prior and in fear his future payments might be affected he boorrowed money from his mother and paid.
Which is what the system was designed to have happen.
zoomster: “Income averaging provided a tool for an investigation. The case would be flagged, someone would look into it, and determine if there’d been an overpayment.”
I think the pre-Robodebt income averaging arrangement was a little more assertive than you have described, but I don’t have the details at my fingertips, so I’ll leave it for another day.
What was found illegal was using income averaging as a proof of debt.
Using it to spark an investigation which results in determining a debt is a different process, and what was done originally.
Rossmcg: “I only know of one person who had a family member who got caught in Robodebt
My friend said her son was sure he’d done wrong but confronted with a bill for a few hundred dollars and limited ability to track down pay slips and bank statements from years prior and in fear his future payments might be affected he boorrowed money from his mother and paid.
Which is what the system was designed to have happen.”
Yes, Robodebt was modelled on the practices of private debt collectors. That is: present the bill to the client, limit their opportunities to appeal the debt or even to seek clarification of how they came to incur it, and then threatent them with legal action if they failed to repay it in a given period of time.
Robodebt was therefore a reprehensible scheme: although I’m not certain that it was unlawful.
What has been ruled to be unlawful was income averaging, which pre-dated Robodebt by 25 years or so.
Anyway, over and out from me. I hope to be back again soon.
Didn’t JWH try something similar to appear tough?
Not using RoboDebt, but getting DSS to do thorough auditing to catch those damned dole cheats getting our tax money.
IIRC it cost way more than it recovered.
[meher baba]
(My rather awkward summary of RoboDebt as I understand it – feel more than free to correct me)
SFM decides to use tax records over a year to average incomes and determine a debt was due – without all that expensive human auditing.
Initially SFM(and later others) simply used the tax records and sent out debt notices WITHOUT getting human eyes on the details.
And because Labor had used tax records to determine potential rorting and THEN used humans to investigate, he claimed “no changes here – all good”.
When the complaints started coming in the “clients” (hate that term) were initially sent notices to provide information to disprove the tax averaging nonsense. This was information going back years that HAD PREVIOUSLY been provided to DSS. If they did not respond they got a debt notice based on averaging – which was still illegal.
So once again the tax payer has spent far more money than was recovered when the Government got taken to the Federal Court.
As an aside and slightly off topic, a UBI would solve a lot of this stuff ever happening.
MB
It’s a bit late in the day to come here and defend Robodebt. Not even Tudge and Porter tried to do that this week.
Good luck
“However, my understanding is that it was the decades-old income averaging process that the Federal Court ruled illegal, and not Robodebt per se.”
That is Trudge’s constant assertion but I’m not sure there is any foundation for it.
mb
Quick check, and I see what you mean.
The main difference appears to be that before 2015, income averaging was used rarely; after 2015, it was weaponised.
The reverse onus of proof in order to stay the debt was the kicker.
My sister was caught up in Robodebt. She’s a seasonal hospitality worker. I didn’t find out for years but our mum bailed her out for $10k. My sister was in a fragile enough state as it was and this set her back significantly in any kind of recovery that she might have been on.
I’m hoping for some criminal charges to be laid on those responsible.
It really comes down to the fact that you don’t demand money from people who don’t owe you money. If you ask for money, you need proof that it’s owed, it’s simple as that. Data matching won’t do it unless it’s followed up by more detailed analysis, whether by a human being or by a more sophisticated programs with access to sufficiently detailed data. Just try the same trick sending random tax bills to big corporations and see where it get you.
…regardless, the point stands – the way it was applied meant that many recipients who had done everything that was required of them were accused of owing money they didn’t.
Of course some who did were picked up too, but we get back to 9 guilty people should go free rather than 1 innocent being convicted…
Zoomster
In case you didn’t know I’m a RC tragic.
Tudge tried a few times to say Robodebt was a system going back to the 80s.
It’s such a ludicrous claim that counsel assisting didn’t even bother challenging him on it.
You don’t need a lesson from me on how it worked.
I’m getting old and I try not to get angry about much these days but I have been angry the last two weeks watching public servants and ministers trying to explain how they thought it was ok. And didn’t ask why it might not be, even as evidence in the public domain mounted.
the cake was taken by the PwC guy today who could not explain why the report they had nearly finalised, which was damning, was suddenly no longer required. He couldn’t remember who canned the project he was in charge of.
But the $1 million invoice was paid and PwC got 12 or 13 million worth of work from DSH over the next few years.
The commissioner was on to it. Was there a nod and a wink that DHS didn’t want to receive a report they didn’t want to read?
I know what I think
meher baba says:
Friday, February 3, 2023 at 9:56 pm
Maybe baba has checked out… but is wrong on every statement
Rossmcg says:
Friday, February 3, 2023 at 9:52 pm
Cronus
I only know of one person who had a family member who got caught in Robodebt
My friend said her son was sure he’d done no wrong but confronted with a bill for a few hundred dollars and limited ability to track down pay slips and bank statements from years prior and in fear his future payments might be affected he boorrowed money from his mother and paid.
Which is what the system was designed to have happen.
———————————————————————————————
And several hundred dollars might not mean anything to the Ministers and senior officials in those two departments but to those who are temporarily unemployed or on lower paid jobs or casuals or students working multiple jobs it can be more than significant. I think you have a point about those folk with supposed debts seeking family assistance or borrowing from others in order to avoid a record of debt recovery. The absence of evidence proving innocence rendered all these recipients as guilty until proven otherwise, an invidious position.
Cronus
And then of course there were those who couldn’t rely on family for help or were so distressed they took their lives.
Tudge was less than convincing dealing with questions about how concerned he was about that.
Very quick to leak “case studies” to The Australian to prove his point though.
the legality of that is yet to be fully explored but I think the idea that he called for the files of every Robodebt critic named in the media an absolute abuse of power.
US Debt ceiling
https://images.app.goo.gl/SSfFjq4QLs2thgQ27
US Debt ceiling is 31.4 Trillion US dollars, which has been reached a couple of weeks ago.
Now US HOR led by MAGA Republicans say that they will default debt by not increasing debt ceiling if don’t get what they want.
The thing is they don’t know what they want.
Can a one trillion dollar coin solve the problem?
https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/31/one-trillion-dollar-coin-debt-ceiling-solution?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16754243596905&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2023%2Fjan%2F31%2Fone-trillion-dollar-coin-debt-ceiling-solution
“As I understand the government’s current thinking, the idea is to put a limit – perhaps $5m – on how much people can have in their accumulation accounts. This makes perfect sense to me, as it is unlikely that most people with more than $5m in an accumulation account are intending to spend it in a hurry, so it is possibly being used as a way of building up an estate for their heirs. As this is not the purpose of superannuation, it is reasonable that they be required to withdraw it and invest it in ways that attract normal taxation.”
That is a very solid justification, MB.
But you have the income averaging thing all mixed up. There’s nothing wrong with using income averaging to filter records for closer inspection, but there is a lot wrong with relying solely on income averaging to raise a debt.
Having met many a millennial and zoomer Liberal at the polling booths here in Brisbane, I think it’s very unlikely that they will be moving the LNP in a more moderate direction. Most of them embody every stereotype you can think of when you imagine a Young Lib.
I remember one guy during last year’s federal election who thought the “It won’t be easy under Albanese” slogan was absolute genius and spoke at length about how awesome it would be if Dutton were PM. When he found out one of the Lib Dem volunteers worked for the AFP, he was fawning over the dude so hard that it was a little embarrassing to watch.
I would have paid good money to see his reaction on election night – poor guy was convinced the government would be reelected!
Mb appears to have forgotten, in his robodebt drive-by, that the scheme cost the Australian taxpayer over a billion dollars in repayments and compensation for money claimed against the most vulnerable Australians and that was NEVER owed.
All of this happened under the changed use of income averaging, the changed use being completely illegal. The previous use, as a last resort, was completely legal.
The DHS and DSS seem to have successfully engineered out the concept of ‘service’ from their structures. Quite remarkable really.
Windhover
Yeah and MB still not convinced it was illegal.
Pity for Libs he’s not a federal court judge.
I remember reading a case officer talking about how averaging was used in a review.
They said that if some pay records could not be found they would suggest that the unaccounted income be averaged over those periods. If the recipient was agreeable, that would happen.
So they weren’t saying that averaging was being applied over the whole year, just a few smaller periods.
meher baba @ #2063 Friday, February 3rd, 2023 – 8:50 pm
It really would be best that you simply did not comment, rather than revealing your profound ignorance, and abject stupidity. You don’t have a clue about the subject, or what has been revealed in testimony to date.
Income averaging based on ATO annual figures was not used as the basis to raising debts until July 2016. To state otherwise is simply to lie through your teeth, which is typical of you. Your racist statements about deaths in custody are well remembered by us all.
Interesting, Barney.
It makes some sense to use averaging to interpolate for missing data when a regular pattern of hours was expected.
It makes little sense when dealing with longer periods, and no sense where the hours of employment were know to vary considerably over a longer period.
Everyone here – Labor, Green and everything in between – can celebrate this one together:
“Among the blizzard of announcements aimed at showing the EU’s support for Kyiv, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said Europe is “bringing light to Ukraine”.
Von der Leyen has confirmed the EU will supply Ukraine with 35m LED lightbulbs, 2,400 generators on top of 3,000 already delivered and promised funding for solar panels to power the country’s public buildings.
“Together, we are bringing light to Ukraine! Ukrainians can exchange their old bulbs at the post office for energy-efficient LED bulbs. The EU is gladly providing 35 million of them. Every kW of energy saved is precious to counter Russia’s energy war.”
– Von der Leyden on Twitter
“Thanks to the EU, the programme to replace old light bulbs with energy-saving LED bulbs started this week. In the first 3 days, @ukrposhta has already replaced more than 750K bulbs. Next week, another 6M will be distributed in Ukraine’s regions. Grateful to @vonderleyen for the initiative.”
– Ukraine PM Denys Shmyhal on Twitter
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/feb/03/russia-ukraine-war-live-zelenskiy-pushes-for-10th-sanctions-package-from-eu-leaders-meeting-in-kyiv
Now, everyone can back support for Ukraine’s energy needs, both now and post-war, with a perfectly clear environmental conscience.
🙂
Robo debt Royal Commission.
If I was receiving benefits after advising Centrelink I earned, say, $150 per week, I would expect the amount paid to me to be correct. I then get a job and receive no further benefits. At end of that financial year my employer sends a copy of my Group Certificate to ATO.
I then receive a statement ( no phone number provided, directed online). Letter states based on figures given when I was receiving a benefit and my group certificate, I was not entitled to the amount paid to me. Clearly not correct.
I check all the figures on the Centrelink record and everything I advised is correctly recorded as is the Group Certificate.
I accept Centrelink has done something but I have no different figures to provide. I cannot contest their information. They say I have a debt but don’t explain averaging / smoothing has added income back into the fortnights I received a benefit.
Threatened with legal action, extra fees, prison and a criminal record, I pay the amount in dispute. I believe they received over $700 million in uncontested repaid alleged overpayments.
The six seconded debt recovery staff who dealt with the first 1000 letters sent out, explained to their boss that raising these debts was illegal without further investigation. They were removed from their positions and sent back to their own Depts.
From then on – don’t mention it, don’t look at anything with an enquiring mind, ignore any suggestions further investigation required, I don’t recall, not my area, I know nothing.
So 800,000 Aussies were wrong after they swear they sat on the phone for over an hour every fortnight to provide earnings details. All liars and dishonest.
We have seen a handful of staff who should receive a highly commended because they told their bosses the truth. A dozen of those bosses should be dealt with for their ignorance or deliberately side tracking issues.
Morrison was told, among other things, parliament would need to pass legislation to start the scheme. With a hostile senate that could not happen. Ten days later he was told all the glitches were fixed with no mention of the illegality of the scheme and legislative changes needed. He assumed Dept had found a way around that and approved it. All systems go. Tudge and Porter assumed someone would have checked the legislative requirements before Morrison approved it.
You can delegate the authority but not the responsibility.
My sympathy to anyone caught up in this sorry saga, particularly those families who lost loved ones because of it.
Mr Ed @ Saturday, February 4, 2023 at 12:26 am
A most excellent summation.
Sadly I have few opportunities to watch the robodebt royal commission live.
I am now reading a little about what happened recently.
As we know the LNP are superior economic managers. (Sarcasm alert) Presumably that means they are frugal with our money. If that is right, how could this happen? (Paragraphs below pasted from Twitter) I read somewhere else that this little effort cost in the order of $1,000,000.
At 1 point West is asked if he was concerned that DHS was giving them contracts for no real return. His response is that it was too late by that point as DHS were already focused on “implementation” of the scheme. So why audit?
West is from PwC (PriceWaterhouseCoopers) He then more or less admitted, without properly admitting, that the PwC / DHS tax payer funded Audit was nothing but a sham. Its purpose was to allow LNP Ministers to say that robodebt had been audited and all was above board.
Questions from me:
How could the royal commission not find that fraud had been committed? Fraud is criminal.
How could the Government continue to offer lucrative contracts to PwC?
Robodebt was/is a very expensive attempt to extract money from the least well-off, least able and most vulnerable by bullying from public servants, too harangued by haphazardly designed procedural structures to safeguard a legal framework poorly developed to be accurate.
Many recipients of money from the government were harassed to allow the collection of their benefits to be returned to the government without regard to accuracy and fairness.
Many of the least well-off suffered stress, anxiety and hardship.
Some people killed themselves as a result of the imposition of the the badly designed and dishonest Robodebt scheme.
Robodebt was built on the false premise that all beneficiaries of government benefits are undeserving, dishonest and lazy cheats.
The LNP government was “clawing” money back from the most needy for perceived political gains.
The irony of the Robodebt scheme is/was that the supposed fiscal benefits to be gained could have more easily and efficiently been achieved by ensuring the integrity of tax collection from both the more financially well off and the recipients of government welfare.
The alleged overpayments to recipients of money from government assistance would mostly have been returned to the government at the end of the financial year in the same manner as the more financially well-off either receive taxation benefits or impositions at the end of each financial year.
The overriding problem with Robodebt is that it is/was discriminatory, inaccurate and unfair.
The LNP government during the time of robodebt has been shown to be discriminatory, dishonest and unfair.
The LNP government has been voted out of office because enough voters perceived them to be discriminatory, evasive, dishonest and non transparent in a manner not seen in living memory.
Robodebt represents a very unnecessarily “dark”, dishonest, unfair and selfish period in the relatively short history of nation blessed with unimaginable wealth and resources.
Thankfully without greater suffering and hardships and even deaths the voters have exiled the LNP government to the opposition benches.
Thankfully it seems that enough voters in the States of the Federation will continue to insist on integrity and honesty by voting in a manner that best represents the honesty, fairness and integrity the nation likes to imagine of itself.
“pissing into the wind” has probably attained notoriety as the biggest participatory sport in a nation obsessed with sport.
The voters at elections and the performance of the various LNP governments have shown that there are no “gold medals” to be had for ‘cheating” to attain glory.
Some quotes from and comments on Chalmers’ “The Monthly” article: “Capitalism after the crises”. My own notes inside the quoted texts are indicated as such.
1) p. 22 “Our mission is to redefine and reform our economy and institutions in ways that make our people and communities more resilient, and our society and democracy stronger as well.”
In other words, the ALP plans to replace the failed Neoliberal paradigm with a far more promising Social Democratic paradigm.
2) The paradigm shift is dictated by the reality that requires it, it’s not an ideological imposition. p. 23: “Being a good policymaker begins with having the right information and mental models for how the world works – that always precedes any particular decisions or actions. It’s these mental models that John Maynard Keynes was thinking of when he wrote: ‘Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist’. And since 2008, the mental models for most economic decision-making have been changed.”
3) Going hard against Neoliberalism. P. 23: “So, for a decade before the pandemic, when most advanced economies had a terrible record, governments and independent authorities, backed by conservative prejudices and vested interests, still mostly stuck to a negative form of supply-side economics. They pursued loosely defined goals for competitiveness through a race to the bottom on wages and public investment.”
4) More bashing of Neoliberalism. P. 23: “The ‘Washington Consensus’… (over time) became a caricature for ever more simplistic and uniform policies prescriptions for ‘more market, not less’. This school of thought assumes that markets would typically self-correct before disaster struck.”
5) But is Chalmers against the basics of capitalism and markets as such? Nope, he is just against capitalism and markets that don’t work for the benefit of the People. P. 23: “It’s clear now that the problem wasn’t so much markets as poorly designed ones. Carefully constructed markets are a positive and powerful tool… markets built in partnership through the efforts of business, labour and government are still the best mechanism we have to efficiently and effectively direct resources. But these considered and efficient markets were not what the old [Neoliberal, my note] model delivered.”
6) Smashing the ATM failed government. P. 23: “From the neoliberal frontline of the catastrophic 2014 austerity budget [I call this the “Budget from Hell”, my note], three successive Coalition prime ministers participated in muddy, chaotic, ideological retreats – insignias torn from uniforms, electoral howitzers spewing public money until the last votes were counted last May.”
7) Ah, that comment by Frydenberg. P. 23: “When Labor spoke about a wellbeing budget, the then federal treasurer guffawed in Question Time about yoga mats and incense. Not only did he miss the preponderance of yoga studios in his own electorate… he misunderstood people’s appetite for a more conscious sense of wellbeing. He missed perhaps the key lesson of the pandemic…”. Indeed, the pandemic gave an opportunity to millions to temporarily exit the Neoliberal rats race… and they saw that there is more to life beyond the Neoliberal fantasy.
8) As a consequence of the Neoliberalism and incompetence of the ATM government, “we became more vulnerable to international shocks” (p. 24).
9) P.27: The ALP offers a “Value-based Capitalism”… Hence, no Neoliberalism which disregards human values, nor Marxism, which is antithetic to Capitalism. It’s Social Democracy, that’s what the ALP is offering and, so far, the People of Australia seem to like it!
I invite everybody to read the entire article. It’s time very well spent!
“ the push is led by YLNP president Darcy Creighton who, when he is not doing the numbers, is a trusted political staffer of the LNP’s most senior MP in Canberra, federal Opposition leader Peter Dutton.”
Any relation to the Murdoch maddie Adam Creighton?
Chalmers, per Alpo:
“And since 2008, the mental models for most economic decision-making have been changed.”
Indeed. US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, testifying to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the aftermath of the GFC in 2008:
“I discovered a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works. I had been going for 40 years with considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/oct/24/economics-creditcrunch-federal-reserve-greenspan
Speaking about Chalmers’ “The Monthly” assay on Value-based Capitalism (and against Neoliberalism), there is a very good article by Katharine Murphy published in The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/04/fury-over-chalmers-essay-is-a-reminder-to-labor-change-wont-get-an-easy-ride
This is how Murph opens her article:
“One of the more comical subplots of the political week has been the fury belching from the opinion pages of the Australian and the Australian Financial Review in response to Jim Chalmers suggesting in conciliatory terms that capitalism should (brace yourselves readers) be tethered by values.
You might have missed this because the tantrum was contained largely within those enclaves. If you missed the provocation that triggered the response, the treasurer penned a 6,000-word essay for the Monthly during his summer break. The Chalmers thesis was capital could be harnessed both for private profit and public good. He also posited (wait for it readers) that better informed markets make better decisions.”
…. the rest of the article continues with her devastating assessment of the current Coalition and the good signs coming from the ALP government.
I expect the article to be open to comments at some stage today…. stay tuned!
Washington: The US Congress could not support the $US20 billion ($28.3 billion) sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey until Ankara ratifies the NATO memberships of Sweden and Finland, a bipartisan group of senators said.
New thread.
Balloon Tracking the Chinese Spy Balloon over Montana.
Where is the USAF?
If anyone flew any unidentified or unauthorised aircraft over the USA, fighter jets would be sent to escort the aircraft to the next, most immediate airfield, and if the instruction was deliberately ignored – shoot it down.
For fuck’s sake, it is a bloody balloon!
Disable the balloon and retrieve and analyse the spyware and data.
Maybe they are flying over Billings to check out the next generation of Trek cycles.
I am certain the Chinese wouldn’t contend with any unauthorised aircraft flying over China.
They routinely harass and intimidate air movements and shipping in international air space and sea lanes on a near daily basis.