Once more Speaker Bishop demonstrates her lack of boundaries

The Sydney Morning Herald 24 May 2014:

Bronwyn Bishop has been hosting Liberal Party fundraisers in her Parliament House Speaker’s suite, a move that has raised further questions about her role as an impartial adjudicator.

A spokesman for Ms Bishop said there was nothing illegal or improper about the practice, and no official rules appear to exist. But no recent Speakers interviewed by Fairfax Media had used their office for party fundraising.

Asked about a recent fundraising event held in the Speaker's Parliament House suite, Ms Bishop’s spokesman said: "From time to time the Speaker holds private functions in Parliament House as does a large number of members and senators... the cost is charged to her private account.”

"There is nothing illegal about it, there is nothing improper about it,” he added.

"It’s the use of a room that every other Member of Parliament does often. Are you chasing up all the other people that held fundraisers at Parliament House?”

Recent Labor Speakers Anna Burke and Harry Jenkins said they had never used their Parliament House office for party fundraising events.

“The Speaker’s office is representative of the Parliament,” Ms Burke said.

“The Parliament is not owned by the government of the day, it’s owned by the people. And it would be highly inappropriate for the people’s house to be used as a fundraising arm of a political party.”

The House of Representatives clerk would not comment on whether it was proper for the Speaker to be using her office for fundraising. He referred questions to Ms Bishop’s office.....

The Daily Telegraph 23 May 2014:

About 20 Liberal donors were charged $2,500 a plate at the intimate dinner, which was briefly attended by Prime Minister Tony Abbott, The Sunday Telegraph understands.

Mrs Bishop’s office said it had not breached any electoral laws and all food and drink consumed was charged to her private account to be paid for by the Liberal Party.

Her large parliamentary suite includes a formal dining room that opens on to a parliamentary courtyard. As Speaker, she also collects a taxpayer funded salary of $341,477 a year…..

Mrs Bishop’s fundraiser was one of many events held on budget night by the Coalition and Labor, including a $500-a-head function for hundreds of Liberal donors in the Great Hall.....

PM Abbott governs for his mates in a score-settling budget

Peter Martin telling it like it is in The Sydney Morning Herald on 19 May 2014:

The budget was an exercise in settling scores and looking after mates.

Sure, it improved the nation’s finances. But at every turn it took the opportunity to punish or threaten the Coalition’s critics while protecting its supporters. Australians on benefits get their incomes cut by up to 10 per cent and in some cases 18 per cent. They will be charged for previously free visits to the doctor. Organisations that normally speak up for them such as the Council of Social Service have been told their government funding will be extended by only six months this year and then the contracts put out to tender.

  

Big food, big tobacco and big alcohol have been thrown the carcass of the Australian National Preventive Health Agency. Like the introduction of Medicare co-payments the move won’t actually save the budget any money because the savings will be redirected to medical research, but it will please corporations which have been amongst the Coalition’s biggest backers. Coalition pets such as the banks, private health insurance industry and private schools get off lightly. The government will hand private schools $6.8 billion in the coming financial year - no cutback on what was scheduled - and $9.3 billion the following year. The private health insurance rebate survives with barely a scrape. It’ll cost $5.5 billion this coming financial year and $5.8 billion the next.

And the banks profit hugely from the tens of billions of dollars handed out every year in superannuation tax concessions, also untouched.

They are about to be given a second helping. Hurriedly pushed on to the back burner in March when assistant treasurer Arthur Sinodinos stepped aside over questions about his behaviour at the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, the government is about to revive its attempt to neuter parts of the financial advice law.

It wants what the banks want. They want to remove the requirement for financial planners to always act in their clients' best interests, and they want to reintroduce limited commissions….

Read the rest of the article here.

The Lies Abbott Tells - Part Seventeen

THE TRANSIENT LIE

Abbott said there was also time to talk through changes in federal-state responsibilities and revenue raising. “We're not talking about next week or next month or even next year. We're talking about changes in three years' time. [Prime Minister Tony Abbott quoted in The Guardian on 18 May 2014]

THE FACTS

But Abbott now agrees the national partnership agreement on public hospitals, which begins on 1 July, has been cut. Budget documents say it has been cut by $1.8bn over the next four years….

the budget document is clear that money has been cut by this government, stating: “The government will save $1.8bn over four years from 2014-15 by ceasing the funding guarantees under the national health reform agreement 2011 and revising commonwealth hospital funding arrangements from July 2017.”

The decision cuts $217m from hospitals in 2014-15, $260m in 2015-16 and $133m in 2016-17 before the big cuts begin in 2017-18, when the commonwealth ceases its contribution to the growth in hospital costs due to the ageing population and higher treatment costs. From that time commonwealth spending increases only in line with inflation and population growth.

[The Guardian 19 May 2014]

NSW Premier Mike Baird; said NSW stood to lose more than $1.2 billion from the health budget through scaled-back national partnership arrangements to fund hospital services. About 300 hospital beds would need to close in July unless the federal funding cuts could be absorbed elsewhere in the state budget. [The Sydney Morning Herald 19 May 2014]

It seems Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey was against university fees - while he was at Sydney University receiving a free law degree

Photograph of Hockey from The Sydney Morning Herald

Honi Soit 19 September 2012:

Hockey’s policy statement in the 1986

election edition of Honi: “There is no

question in my mind that students will

never accept fees. I totally oppose any

compromise the government may offer.”

His year as SRC President was chiefly

spent fighting Labor’s re-introduction of

university fees, which had been abolished

under Gough Whitlam.

Hockey’s backers, a ticket called

“Varsity”, were decidedly centrist and

unaffiliated, declaring they would “fight

the burden of factionalism presently

hindering the SRC’s effective operation”.

In stark contrast to Abbott, Varsity was

emphatic: “There should be no further

government cuts to university funding.”

Of course after receiving his education on the back of Whitlam Labor Government reforms to higher education, millionaire politician Joe Hockey can comfortably afford to fund his own children's education regardless of the increased costs and fee deregulation his 2014-15 federal budget will introduce.

UPDATE

A 1987 Channel 9 video has been released by Fairfax Media. This video features Joe Hockey as president of the Sydney University Student Representative Council protesting the annual Higher Education Administration Charge (HEAC) introduced that year and the proposed introduction of course fees  - which finally came into effect under the Commonwealth HIGHER EDUCATION FUNDING ACT 1988 commencing on 6 January 1989.

"We will continue to go out onto the streets and to protest and actively encourage the public to support us in our campaign for free education"

http://youtu.be/kgih2ORI8Z8

Brisbane Times 28 May 2014:

The measure Mr Hockey was protesting against was the introduction of a $250 "administration" fee, which he feared would threaten the universal free higher education that he and his contemporaries enjoyed.

In a 1987 article in the University of Sydney newspaper Honi Soit, Mr Hockey also criticised the same university deregulation measure his own government is now proposing.

"The Liberal Party, which released its education policy two weeks ago, promised to cut back funds to universities and, at the same time, leave the universities to charge whatever fee they wished," he wrote.

"Such a policy is suicidal for student welfare. We will have no effective voice in our own fortune."