Australia

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

In Australia the news has all been about dodgy politicians, corrupt union leaders, rorts, frauds and other corrupt behaviour. In each State they have an Independent Commission Against Corruption, and they are very effective and since being established have been run off their feet dealing with corruption. So much so that there are now valid calls for a Federal Independent Commission Against Corruption.

In New Zealand we have a similar stench pervading our halls of power now. Winston Peters donations, constant Electoral law breaches by Labour mostly, The Bill Liu case, Philip Field, Kim Dotcom…then there are the dodgy activities and strange financial arrangements of many of our unions.

The only overriding concern I have heard from politicians is how such an organisation could be funded under out tight fiscal constraints…personally I don’t think that we can afford not to have one.:

The debate over allegations of misbehaviour by our federal politicians has an important subtext. Does Australia have the right laws and institutions in place to deal with accusations of corruption, including misuse of travel entitlements and electoral fraud?

Unfortunately, we do not. The lack of a national anti-corruption body means that dishonesty and breaches of public trust by parliamentarians and Commonwealth agencies may never be detected, let alone addressed.

Improving the accountability of our politicians has focused on the idea of a new code of conduct. Such codes usually amount to grand statements about how politicians ought to behave. They are generally unenforceable, except through the actions of other politicians.

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Although there is no harm in having a code of conduct for the federal Parliament, it is likely to be ineffective.

The federal opposition has understandably been critical of a new code of conduct. What has been surprising is that they have not taken the lead in arguing for stronger mechanisms to oversee the work of parliamentarians and public servants. The running on this has instead been left to the Greens, who late last week reinvigorated their 2010 bill in the federal Parliament to establish Australia’s first national anti-corruption body.

The Greens’ bill would create a national integrity commissioner responsible for preventing and fighting corruption by parliamentarians and in federal agencies. At present, such anti-corruption powers are held nationally by the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, which can examine only bodies such as the Australian Federal Police.

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

Tony Abbott has been accused of double standards for not sacking a senator that shoved another lib and called him a poofter.

Somehow the ALP have lost their moral compass and this is just another example.

“Under the principles the Labor government has supported and continues to support Senator Heffernan is entitled to due process and the presumption of innocence,” senior minister Craig Emerson said.

But Dr Emerson said if Mr Abbott applied his own principles he’d “refuse to accept Senator Heffernan’s tainted vote, he will stand him down from chairing the relevant Senate committee and he will move to dismiss Senator Heffernan from the Liberal Party”.

Only in the warped parallel universe of Labor would a scumbag unionist who ripped off his union for $500,000 including putting hookers on the union credit card would be the moral equivalent of a bit of jostling and calling someone a poofter.

ᔥ Courier Mail

No federal Labor MPs would be left in the Sunshine State if this result were repeated at the next election.

Support for federal Labor has collapsed to a mere 23 per cent in Queensland, the latest Galaxy poll conducted exclusively for The Courier-Mail shows.

No federal Labor MPs would be left in the Sunshine State if this result were repeated at the next election.

And the majority of voters say this humiliation would be just desserts for Labor.

Almost 60 per cent of respondents to the poll said Labor deserved to be reduced to a rump of one or two seats in Queensland.

Under Julia Gillard, Labor’s primary vote has, for the second time, fallen to the lowest level recorded in the history of the Galaxy poll.

The 23 per cent primary vote marks a slump of more than 10 points since the last election.

ᔥ Business Spectator

In New Zealand the Meatworkers Union just hides Shed Funds and doesn;t file correct accounts. In Australia they get into the rorting in a much larger way:

Former longtime Meatworkers Union secretary and long-serving Meat Industry Employees Superannuation Fund trustee director Wally Curran allegedly took tens of thousands of dollars from a company that the fund invested $30 million in, according to The Australian.

The newspaper reports that property developer Austcorp, which collapsed during the global financial crisis in 2009, provided Mr Curran with the funds.

Mr Curran denies any wrongdoing and says he now regrets accepting the funds.

According to The Australian, Austcorp allegedly made regular payments to two other key figures who were also responsible for making investment decisions at the MIESF.

The MIESF was hurt badly by the collapse of Austcorp, with most of the $30 million investment unable to be recovered.

I bet he uses the Father Ted explanation for the appearance of cash in his accounts.

ᔥ Sky News

No wonder Julia Gillard is getting pasted in the polls and looks likely to send a corrupt and inept Labor Party to the opposition benches for a long stretch.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard and union leaders have promised ACTU conference delegates they will rescue Australia’s shrinking, scandal-ridden trade union movement by enforcing zero tolerance for corrupt practices.

Unions are failing just like the churches are losing membership. Unions are corrupt. Churches cover up boy buggering. This is not the central problem, the central problem is many people in society no longer see a need for ideology at the expense of pragmatism.

Someone needs to get through to Julia her job is to lead Australia, not protect the corrupt union movement. If she really cared about the unions she would have sorted out Craig Thomson rather than keeping him in parliament to preserve her majority.

I don’t believe New Zealand unions are all law abiding, honest and abhor corruption either.  We will have our own union scandal, and it will be matched with a scandal that our lazy, bias mainstream media have not dug into obvious stories.  We have the Meatworkers who have hidden $4m per year from members and authorities and no one in the MSM has yet investigated “shed funds” which would be a good starting point for these guys.

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

A very smart play by a greenie in Australia. Get it out in the open and it is no problem any more…and her enemies look like a pack of heartless bastards.

IT IS less than a kilometre from Kings Cross to Sydney Town Hall. But, for Irene Doutney, it has been an epic journey.

The Greens councillor for the City of Sydney, who will recontest her seat at Town Hall this September, never expected to be telling her story publicly. Her past life, racked with mental illness and drug addiction, was kept firmly locked away. Only a few close friends and senior members of her party were aware of her background.

But, after the Greens learnt that one of Ms Doutney’s opponents in the election was compiling a dirt file on her, she decided to tell her story to the Herald.

“It’s been an albatross around my neck,” she says. “It was always my concern it would pop up somewhere, and it didn’t, so I got lulled into a sense of security. Now it has become an item out there in the political sphere.”

ᔥ NZ Herald

When you are in opposition you always promise to stop the flow of New Zealanders moving Australia. At about this stage in the electoral cycle Labour will start hammering on about all the Kiwis moving to Australia. they have certainly been using that approach in question time.

Thousands of New Zealanders – including many disillusioned immigrants – are looking for new jobs and new lives in Australia

Cue an ungagged David Cunliffe to start talking about how he doesn’t want to become a Skype grandparent.

The number of New Zealanders moving across the Tasman hit a record 53,000 in the year to February, but the unemployment rate at home and Australia’s new tax breaks that would make millions better off are tipped to lift that number.

Maybe David Shearer will find a grandmother in an airport somewhere to parade around in public talking about how New Zealand under National has gone backwards and how only Labour can stem the flow across the Tasman.

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey said he hoped claims that Liberal operatives had been spreading rumours about Mr Shorten were wrong. ”Quite frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of this stuff comes out of some of the union rivals,” he said, adding that in politics ”there is no place for rumour”.

What a load of bollocks. If rumour had no place in politics how would Trevor Mallard function? He has never come across a rumour he can’t embellish and hide behind parliamentary privilege to promote.

Tony Abbott has a really good message for Australians wondering about the budget in Australia:

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

It seems Australia’s head of the Catholic Church is a bit touchy on the subject of boy buggering. He has tried to sue Twitter and a blogger for a tweet…note that even in the apology the blogger kicks Pell in the slats on the way through. NFWAB.

A THREAT by Sydney’s Catholic Archbishop Cardinal George Pell to sue Twitter for defamation over an offensive tweet by the Melbourne blogger Catherine Deveny has revealed the increasing threat social media poses to the reputations of public figures.

While Cardinal Pell last night dropped his threat to sue over the tweet – which falsely suggested he condoned the sexual abuse of young boys – there was a call for the nation’s defamation laws to be updated to reflect the new influence of social media.

On Monday, Deveny posted a lengthy apology and retraction on her website after receiving an email from Twitter’s legal department, alerting her to the threat.

During a Q&A debate on ABC on the existence of God last month, Cardinal Pell paused after saying: ”We were preparing young English boys … ” before adding ”for Holy Communion”.

The studio audience erupted in laughter at the unfortunate pause and the comment went viral on Twitter. Minutes later, Deveny retweeted a Twitpic poster, which she said her 16,326 followers would ”love”. It showed Pell’s face on a mock flag saying, ”We were preparing young English boys”, and omitting the clarifying words, ”for Holy Communion”.

Following the legal threat, Deveny, who has more than 16,000 Twitter followers, issued an apology on her blog for any hurt Cardinal Pell may have suffered, insisting she never intended to suggest he was a paedophile.

“Clearly it was significant enough hurt and embarrassment caused for him to lawyer up and spend the Catholic Church’s money to pursue defamation action against Twitter and me,” she wrote.

“There must have been deep deliberation over the decision to spend thousands of dollars of parishioners’ money on legal fees.

“Spending money that could have been spent feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless or alleviating suffering, instead of on defamation litigation, clearly illustrates how serious the breach I allegedly committed was in the eyes of Cardinal Pell.”

Deveny noted many other Twitter users had distributed the image and called on Cardinal Pell to “forgive” her.