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.

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

It is hard in this day and age to find anything positive about having unions. Mostly they take members cash, fail to account for it properly and then use that cash to manufacture disputes or prop up failed ideologies. In Australia it is ll coming to a head.

Unsurprisingly  the Martime Union of Australia is in the thick of it all. Remember them? They flew in brothers to embroil themselves in the Ports of Auckland dispute.

The HSU is the poster child of disaster but far more insidious damage is done to the economy by the Maritime Union of Australia, which has been running numerous, varied rackets on the wharves for 80 years. It has been engaged in an industrial dispute for the past 18 months.

Last week, John Mullen, the chief executive of Australia’s largest port operator, Asciano, complained about the culture of endemic rorting at the ports, especially Port Botany. The Gillard government is pretending there is no structural problem.

The structural problem of union looting has spread to the crucial energy sector, where rising labour costs and a series of industrial disputes have caused several billion-dollar projects to be abandoned.

Then there are the criminal elements within the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Engineering Union, which has succeeded in having the Gillard government shut down the effective police force of the building sector, the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

Not just here, in Australia.

The profusion of senior executive service personnel, the 2790 bureaucrats in Canberra who typically earn between $200,000 and $360,000 a year, is even starker. Their number remained broadly flat between 1984 and 2001, but since then their ranks have almost doubled. Entire suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne are paying tax to support these jobs.

Causation runs the other way too. The public service has become so large and top-heavy with overpaid bureaucrats that private salaries are being driven up to giddy heights. The private sector has to offer more money because it cannot guarantee security. Ultimately, this makes consumer prices higher and profits lower. Remuneration in the public sector has lost its moral compass too. As the latest taxation statistics show, 90 per cent of taxpayers have taxable incomes of less than $100,000 a year. If any of these people refused to pay tax because they judged that having 118 people earning more than $280,000 in the departments of climate change and sustainability, for instance, was absurd, they would go to prison. However offensive some pay packets in the corporate world might be, shareholders could still sell their shares.

There are way too many well paid troughing hippies in Australia. Hopefully Abbott will close these departments. Climate change and sustainability staff don’t need to be paid close to $300,000.

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

The HSU scandal in Australia shows just how dodgy unions can be. Here rumours of sugar bagging, hiding money, backhanders and covering up donations to the Labour Party while buying safe seats for union hacks abound, but no one in the media wants to look into them.

The institutional bias of the mainstream media means they will churn out press releases by unions, following the diktats of Simon Oosterman. Basically it goes like this:

• Nasty employer wants workers to work not get paid for not working, which is just wrong
• Nasty employer is hurting New Zealand families by forcing honourable union workers to strike or locking them out
• Individuals who are being hurt by New Zealand and whose families are suffering are paraded in front of the media
• The media fails to investigate properly, repeating all the union propaganda
• The union is surprised when they get outed for shonky behaviour because they are morally righteous in the face of an evil employer
• The media ignore stories like hidden money, dodgy donations, intimidation and thuggery by the unions

Back to the HSU, the seriously corrupt boss has just been busted trying to take documents away from HQ before a police raid.

THE union boss Michael Williamson may face criminal charges after allegedly being caught trying to smuggle documents out of the Health Services Union headquarters during the middle of a police raid.

Detectives from Strike Force Carnarvon, which has been investigating allegations of corruption within the HSU East branch for eight months, executed a search warrant on the union’s Pitt Street headquarters shortly after 9am yesterday.

As police were seizing computers and documents from the union’s second floor offices, other officers are understood to have intercepted Mr Williamson and his son Chris in the underground car park.

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

The Meatworkers Union has been hiding $4m of members money per year. Their hiding of money means that it is interesting to consider whether they are doing something like the HSU are in Australia.

FIVE companies, some associated with the Health Services Union boss Michael Williamson, received more than $17 million over a four-year period, a scathing report into the union’s procurement process has found.

Ian Temby, QC, and the accountant Dennis Robertson were hired by the union to conduct an independent investigation into allegations raised by the Sydney Morning Herald last September of cronyism and corruption within the HSU East branch.

The pair wanted their interim report to be released immediately because of the millions of dollars the union is spending each year without going to tender or obtaining price comparisons.

New Zealand needs a system where unions who are not transparent with members funds can be investigated and de-registered.

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

Julia Gillard is in serious trouble with many dailies now calling for her to go.

JULIA Gillard should consider falling on her sword for the good of the Labor Party, because she can no longer present an even slightly credible face at the election. Her spectacular U-turn on everything she’d said before on Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper has left her looking nakedly expedient, and further exposed the state of crisis within the government.

At one point in her news conference Gillard wrung her hands. It was a metaphor for what the caucus is doing. Her claim that suddenly ”a line” had been crossed, so she had to act to preserve Australians’ respect for Parliament, came out as a workshopped confection she could not explain. After months of declaring Thomson had her support, after a week of backing Slipper returning to the Speakership if he was cleared on criminal allegations, she wants us to believe she arrived back from Gallipoli and suddenly realised that the public see a dark cloud over Parliament?

What actually happened is that she and whoever she is listening to observed a storm enveloping the government that could threaten her leadership.

Refusing to utter criticism of Thomson was always defending the indefensible. When Gillard then had Slipper added to her political burden, the weight simply became too heavy.

The Slipper affair tipped the balance, because she wasn’t going to be able to sustain her stand. The opposition and crossbenchers had the parliamentary numbers to keep him out of the chair. In more normal circumstances, Gillard might deserve some credit for doing the right thing, albeit late. But when she said black was white so vehemently and, in the Thomson case, for so long, her cynicism overwhelms any other impression.

While on Slipper she acted because she was cornered, she could not deal with him without distancing herself from Thomson, because the parallels were too close. Bearing down on her also was next week’s budget: hence the need for speed.

ᔥ ABC

It things weren’t dire enough already for Julia Gillard with the Peter Slipper affair, now embattled union crook Craig Thomson has been suspended from the ALP:

Julia Gillard has asked MP Craig Thomson to quit the Labor Party and told Speaker Peter Slipper to accept a longer suspension as she moves to dispel what she says is a “dark cloud” hanging over the Federal Parliament.

Mr Thomson, who is facing allegations about the misuse of a union credit card, has been suspended from the ALP but says he remains a “Labor person” and will continue to vote with the Government as an independent MP.

Meanwhile Mr Slipper has moved to head off a possible no-confidence motion by confirming he will not be in the chair when Parliament resumes on budget night, May 8.

Mr Thomson, the embattled member for Dobell, on the New South Wales central coast, has been under investigation by Fair Work Australia for nearly four years over allegations he used his Health Services Union (HSU) credit card to pay for prostitutes.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday afternoon, he confirmed that he had asked to be suspended from the Labor Party after a discussion with Ms Gillard late yesterday.

“I am still a Labor person … I will be supporting Labor’s agenda … clearly I am not going to be part of the Caucus process… but broadly I will be supporting the Prime Minister’s position in terms of the reform agenda… certainly in terms of no confidence motions, supply motions,” he said.

ᔥ Brisbane Times

The ALP continues to take a pasting in Queensland with them being routed in the Brisbane City Council elections:

Queensland Labor’s ‘‘thugs and villains’’ should fall on their sword following the ALP’s drubbing in Brisbane City Council elections yesterday, retiring councillor David Hinchliffe says.

The long-serving Labor figure last night warned the ALP had become the ‘‘personal fiefdom of a few egomaniacs’’ and renewed calls for the party’s state secretary, Anthony Chisholm, to resign.

Labor was reduced to six – possibly seven – wards in Brisbane City Council’s 26 wards in last night’s emphatic win by the LNP, with Lord Mayor Graham Quirk also returned with a higher share of the vote than LNP predecessor Campbell Newman achieved in 2008.

It means twice in five weeks Labor in Queensland has been routed by a resurgent Liberal National Party, given the comprehensive state election loss on March 24.

But wait for the best part:

‘‘The usual standover characters in the Labor party should fall on their sword and get out of the way of the real Labor party who work hard, year in and year out, to keep the light on the hill shining,’’ he said.

‘‘There are thugs and villains in the Labor party who should pack up their bags and get out of town as quickly as possible.’’

Mr Hinchliffe, who has served as a councillor since 1988 and was deputy mayor between 2004 and 2008, said he had been threatened over the phone last night after making earlier comments to brisbanetimes.com.au.

‘‘I have already had them on the phone to me tonight,’’ he said last night.

Sounds like good advice for Trevor Mallard to follow.

ᔥ The Guardian

Bill Shorten has to be the most loyal politician in the world. It doesn’t even matter that he has no idea what Julia Gillard has said, he is sure she is right.

Australia‘s Julia Gillard gets a minister happy to tell a TV interviewer that whatever his prime minister said, he agrees – even if he doesn’t know what it was.

Bill Shorten, the Australian workplace relations minister, was asked by Sky News Australia whether he felt the parliamentary speaker, Peter Slipper, should be allowed to go back to his job after being accused of sexual harassment and misuse of funds.

Aware Gillard was abroad, but unaware of what she’d said on the matter, Shorten replied: “I haven’t seen what she’s said, but let me say I support what it is she said.” Pressed by an astonished presenter to confirm he backed his boss even though he didn’t know what she’d said, he nodded: “I support what she said … My view is what the prime minister’s view is.” A new record in on-message obedience?

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

Unions in Australia pay outrageous salaries. More than $225,000 to represent nurses who earn well under $100,000. It is a big scandal that union reps turn out to be more greedy that the bosses of companies that actually create products, services and wealth, not just tax workers.

Meanwhile an audited annual statement for the HSU Victoria’s now defunct number three branch stated that Ms Jackson was paid $522,570 in 2010. However an email from the accountants responsible for the statement said it should have indicated she was paid $75,884 that year. That is on top of her $151,000 salary from the union’s national office.

Helen Kelly needs to publicly release details of her salary package so we can see if she is ripping off union members across New Zealand.