Friday 2 September 2016

ASIO wouldn't be asking for these extensions to its coercive powers if Australian Attorney-General George Brandis hadn't already given the nod


If Labor and the crossbenches agree to this demand then there is little hope left that Australians will have adequate protection under law.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 August 2007:
ASIO has proposed scrapping the need for judge-approved warrants to detain and question Australians for up to a week without charge in terrorism investigations, in a watering down of safeguards that has alarmed lawyers and rights advocates.

The power to grant the security agency a controversial "questioning and detention warrant" would rest instead with the Attorney-General – a situation the Law Council of Australia has branded "unprecedented".

The changes being requested by ASIO would also remove a current separate requirement that an independent legal authority, such as a retired judge, is present when a person is being questioned. Rather, oversight of questioning would rest with the intelligence watchdog, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.

Under laws passed in the wake of the September 11 and Bali bombing attacks, ASIO has the power to hold someone for up to seven days and question them if it may "substantially assist the collection of intelligence that is important in relation to a terrorism offence", even if the person isn't a terrorism suspect themselves…..

Currently ASIO needs an "issuing authority" in the form of a serving judge to approve the warrant.

The laws include both "questioning warrants", which make it an offence to refuse to answer ASIO's questions and also "questioning and detention warrants", which allow ASIO to have the Australian Federal Police arrest and hold someone so ASIO can question them…..

Police and intelligence agencies say that terrorism plots in the Islamic State era are increasingly rudimentary and fast-moving, which means processes such as obtaining warrants need to be streamlined as much as possible so authorities can swoop to protect the public.

But the detention warrants have never actually been used in the 11 years they've been in place. Questioning warrants have been used 16 times since 2004, though not since 2009.
The Attorney-General already has the power to approve intelligence-gathering methods such as phone intercepts and surveillance.

But Law Council of Australia director Arthur Moses, SC, who also gave evidence to the inquiry, told Fairfax Media: "We're talking here about persons being detained in custody and deprived of their liberty. That takes it to an entirely different level."

"Western democracies have always taken the position that we do not in effect have a situation where a politician can give that authority … Usually people have the protection of a judicial officer … In my view it's unprecedented.

"We accept and understand that in respect of an evolving security threat environment, sometimes legislation and procedures need to be amended … but we are not aware of any issue that has arisen where ASIO has attempted to obtain a detention warrant and it has not been able to."…..

Australian Census 2016 stumbles on.....


The Australian reports on the desperation of the Australian Bureau of Statistics to achieve the numbers required to legitimize census results, 29 August 2016:

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ grand experiment with digital technology has entered a new phase, asking more than 25,000 census collectors to use their own smartphones and tablets in a blitz of 3.5 million households that have failed to return their questionnaires.

In one of the world’s largest “bring-your-own-technology” enterprises, more than 500 varieties of smartphone and tablet have been registered to track which homes have been visited and what hazards collectors should expect when they arrive.

The initiative is part of an ABS effort to match the 98.3 per cent coverage achieved by the census in 2011 — a target the federal opposition suspects is now out of reach amid public panic over privacy concerns and website outages in its early stages.

Census chief Duncan Young said the census field collectors had been equipped with Apple iOS and Android applications instead of the hefty bound books issued to census collectors in previous years. Mr Young downplayed the system’s vulnerability to cyber attack, saying collectors faced strict security hurdles before being allowed access to the system……

If this exchange is correct in its details then something is seriously wrong with the attitude and actions of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Turnbull Government and, with  Australian society if it tolerates this behaviour.

          1.    Amy Gray @_AmyGray_  Aug 22
Census collectors came to my place last week. They knocked on and then tried to OPEN my door. Another #CensusFail
          2.   kelloveslife @kelloveslife  Aug 26
@_AmyGray_ I came home Sat evening to find a card ON MY DINING TABLE that the census person had left!
          3.    Amy Gray @_AmyGray_  Aug 26
@kelloveslife No one had let them in?
          4.   kelloveslife @kelloveslife  Aug 26
@_AmyGray_ no one was home except the dog & cat
          5.    Amy Gray @_AmyGray_  Aug 26
@kelloveslife Just to confirm: no one who lives in your home took materials from or let in a census worker?
;          6.  kelloveslife @kelloveslife  Aug 26
@_AmyGray_ AFAIK no, there was nobody home all day
          7.  Amy Gray @_AmyGray_  Aug 26
@kelloveslife Have you asked the other people in your house? Sorry, just trying to confirm and edge out any potential deniablity from them.

       kelloveslife@kelloveslife


9:21 AM - 26 Aug 2016

Thursday 1 September 2016

Literally millions of Australians in the firing line as Treasurer Scott Morrison continues his assault on the poor


On current settings, more Australians today are likely to go through their entire lives without ever paying tax than for generations. More Australians are also likely today to be net beneficiaries of the Government than contributors - never paying more tax than they receive in government payments.
There is a new divide – the taxed and the taxed nots. [Australian Treasurer & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison, Bloomberg address, "Australia must take action to strengthen our economic resilience", 24 August 2016]

John Passant* writing in Independent Australia on 29 August 2016 is not impressed by Scott Morrison:

THE one sided class war continues. Only the words have changed.

Under Abbott and Hockey it was "lifters and leaners" and "ending the age of entitlement".

The "logic" behind this rhetoric gave us the horror Budget of 2014 and its proposed $80 billion in cuts over time to public health and public education.

Public opposition to that Budget was widespread, and angry. The Abbott Government never recovered and the 18 months of negative polls and the prospect of a Liberal wipe-out at the election, saw Malcolm Turnbull take over and win a bare one seat House of Representatives majority and an unpredictable Senate in the July 2 election.

Treasurer Scott Morrison has found some new weasel words to try to disguise the class war he is leading against the poor, pensioners, the sick, the unemployed and low paid workers.
After years of denying it Morrison has admitted we have a revenue problem, although he called it an "earnings" problem. According to Morrison, the great divide in Australian society is between the taxed and the taxed-nots.

In ScoMo world it is "the taxed" who have been bearing the burden of Budget repair while "the taxed-nots" have been bludging off us. Time for the taxed-nots to pull up their socks and start contributing to fixing the Budget problem.

Just who do Morrison and Turnbull have in mind as the taxed-nots? Could it be the 676 big businesses (36% of the group) which, according to the Commissioner of Taxation’s corporate tax transparency reportpaid no income tax in 2013-14? Not on your life.

Could it be the likes of Don Argus – former Bank of America chairman – and his wife with their tax free pension of $1.2 million a year? Not on your life.

Could it be the 56 millionaires who pay no income tax? Not on your life.

Morrison’s prescription for the earnings problem is not to tax big business and the rich but to cut welfare payments to those who most need them — the sort of people he and others claim pay no tax.

As Duncan Storrar, in replying to one accusation that he pays little or no tax, said on ABC's Q&A:

“I pay tax every time I go to the supermarket. Every time I hop in my car.”

In fact, as I have written previously for IA:

Analysis from NATSEM, contained in the ACOSS report on inequality, shows that Australia’s tax take (including GST as well as income tax) across various income quintiles fluctuates around 25%, with those on lower incomes as a generalisation a bit below and those with higher incomes a bit above that figure. However, it gets worse when we compare the two ends of the income spectrum. The bottom 5% pay 34.2% of their income in taxes while the top 5% pay 30.1% in tax.

In other words, Australia does not have a progressive tax system.

Morrison also argued that there were millions on ‘welfare’ who paid no net income tax. By this he means that the government payments they receive are greater than the tax they pay.
Let’s be clear about this. The sort of people Morrison has in mind – and in his sights – are pensioners, the unemployed, students, the disabled, the homeless, those women fleeing domestic violence, the low paid and the list goes on.

Among these groups, the main people who pay little tax and receive much more in payments and other benefits from government are pensioners — all 2.4 million of them….

Read the full article here.

* John Passant is a former Assistant Commissioner of Taxation in charge of international tax reform in the ATO.

New Matilda, 30 August 2016:

“The new divide – the taxed and the taxed nots”

Here was an opportunity to state categorically that we need to increase our taxes, and to make those who are well-off pay their share. Instead we have been presented with a rambling discourse, dominated by his claim that there is a large proportion of Australians who “go through their entire lives without ever paying tax”.

That is plain wrong.

This year the Commonwealth is budgeted to collect $59 billion in GST, and $25 billion in excise and customs duty on tobacco, fuels and certain imports. That’s around $9,000 a household, in taxes that are practically impossible to avoid. Not even a Carmelite nun can avoid the GST.

And that’s before we consider state taxes such as drivers’ licences and car registration fees, and state and local government property taxes paid directly by homeowners or by tenants through their landlords.

Most of these taxes are regressive. The lower one’s income, the higher is the proportion of that income devoted to consumption and therefore to paying the GST, and the registration fees for a Corolla and a Porsche are pretty much the same.

That’s not to mention road tolls, private health insurance, fees at government schools and higher co-payments in health, all of which are high-cost privatised means of paying what we could be paying more fairly and efficiently through our taxes.

Morrison reluctantly admits that Australia has a public revenue problem, but he fails to acknowledge the yawning gap between what we presently collect in taxes and what we should be collecting if we are to fund adequately the public goods and a social security system appropriate for a high income country.

Our tax collections, as a percentage of GDP, are close to the lowest of all OECD countries – among prosperous developed countries only the USA collects less tax, and contrary to partisan spin, our taxes are falling.

Over the early years of this century Commonwealth taxes were around 24 per cent of GDP, before plummeting to 20 percent during the GFC and recovering to only 22 per cent now.

Read the rest of the article here.

NOTE

The Australian Goods & Services Tax (GST) taxes the final consumer of a good or service. Most unprocessed and raw foods as well as most education, childcare and medical services are GST exempt. The current GST rate is 10 per cent of the retail cost of goods and services and this tax is paid by est. 23.96 million people living in an est.10 million households. This tax is not included in government calculations of how much net tax is paid by any individual after government pensions/benefits/tax concessions received are deducted. Low income individuals/households pay proportionally more GST that middle and high income individuals/households.

[The Conversation, 24 July 2015]

Seems all Liberals feel entitled until........


The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 August 2016:

A young Liberal who is managing Christine Forster's campaign to become Sydney's next lord mayor had to repay almost $14,000 to his former charity employer after it was discovered he had charged personal expenses to the organisation's credit card.

Mitchell Price, who is also a senior adviser to Coogee MP Bruce Notley-Smith MP, used a corporate credit card to purchase $13,816 of personal hire-car travel and social media and Facebook advertising while employed as an executive assistant to the CEO of Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras from November 2013 to April 2015.

Mitchell Price, 26, is campaign manager for Christine Forster (pictured right), 
who is vying to be Sydney's next lord mayor. 
Photo: Facebook

Mr Price, whose sudden departure from the organisation was subject to a confidentiality agreement, told Fairfax Media he had "mistakenly" charged his personal expenses to the charity's corporate credit card.

He attributed the mistake to an inadvertent linking of the charity's corporate credit card to accounts on his computer……

It is understood Mr Price's spending was discovered in December 2014 when the card provider issued an SMS to the chief executive, then Michael Rolik, alerting him to activity on the account.

The board of Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras - a registered charity - confirmed it referred the matter to NSW police. 

However, it is understood Mr Price engaged lawyers and reached a confidential agreement with the organisation to repay the money in full. Mr Price said he repaid the money by 2015.

Following the incident, the Mardi Gras board cancelled all corporate credit cards and replaced them with limited debit cards to restricted accounts, and cancelled all third party transport accounts.

The emergence of Mr Price's fall-out with the Mardi Gras organisation has come during a period of bitter infighting among inner Sydney conservatives, even as Ms Forster is poised to mount a strong challenge to Town Hall titan Clover Moore.

Ms Forster and Mr Notley-Smith both rallied behind Mr Price on Tuesday, telling Fairfax Media they accepted his explanation that the misuse of corporate funds had been the result of a mistake…..