On the 8th May 2013 the High Court handed down its second ‘Jailgate’ decision, a decision that has the potential to open a lot of ‘gates’ that never should have been locked such as ‘Travelgate’, ‘Perksgate’, and the AFP’s outrageously infamous July 2004,’Quotagate” decision. It may even put pressure on the AFP to investigate the Gillard-Abbott ‘Votegate’ memorandum.
[Note: The URL short-link for this post is: http://wp.me/p1n8TZ-eZ ]
Like the Mabo decisions of 1988 and 1992, there is massive flow-on potential that goes well beyond the 15,000 of Centrelink’s “10 a day” prosecutions of welfare recipients that ‘Jailgate 1′ undermined and ‘Jailgate 2′ killed off. It is potentially possible that most of the prosecutions dating back as far as June 27th 2000, or perhaps even earlier, may be able to be quashed/turfed out because of a vital legal technicality called “Manifest Ostensible Bias.”
Two Queensland Health Service officials, Darren Keating and Peter Leck were facing criminal prosecutions over the Queensland “Dr Death” affair.
- They used Manifest Ostensible Bias in a complaint to the Queensland Supreme Court to have the Morris Inquiry Report dismissed.
- The court agreed that they had been the victims of Manifest Ostensible Bias and the Morris Inquiry was shut after 50 days of public hearings that cost millions of dollars.
- The inquiry report was shredded and the evidence given at the inquiry was “tainted”, which was excellent news not only for Mr Leck and Mr Keating, but also for anyone accused of a crime.
Why was this good news? ANSWER: Anyone accused of a crime is entitled to be dealt with in EXACTLY the same way that the Federal Police and the ACMA deal with politicians who rort and as the examples in this posting reveal, federal politicians normally DO NOT GET INVESTIGATED. For the courts, “Manifest .” Ostensible Bias “is the equivalent of the snake in the Garden of Eden; it is simply an evil thing that courts simply do not tolerate anymore. Below is the text of a letter posted to the Australian Police on 10th June 2013, and if they respond in the usually manner, i.e. by refusing to do anything, it will further open the door to another 35,000 welfare prosecutions going down the gurgler.
============================================================
The Officer-in-Charge
Major Crimes Unit
Australian Federal Police
GPO Box 410
CANBERRA ACT 2601
Re: The High Court ‘Jailgate’ decision, Peter Slipper’s problem and the ‘Votegate’ memorandum.
As you are probably aware, on the 8th May 2013, the Australian High Court tossed out legislation that was intended to rectify a monumental legal blunder made in Centrelink’s ’10 prosecutions a day’ campaign. When confronted with the legislation, the High Court decided that it was “statutory fiction” and as a direct consequence some 15,000 of the 50,000 or so convictions of welfare recipients that Centrelink and the AFP have achieved over the last 16 years went straight down the gurgler.
On the 7th March 2013, the SA Supreme Court awarded Dr. John Knight $4.34 million in compensation for a Wrongful Dismissal 2 years ago by the (then) SA health Minister, John Rau. Instead of the federal politicians acknowledging that a stuff-up had been made, quashing the convictions and paying compensation to the 15,000 people wrongfully convicted, they deliberately tried to cover-up their mistake with the ‘statutory fiction’ legislation. Because of this (mens rea) socioeconomically biased legislation, we taxpayers could wind up paying Billions because of the mistakes made by politicians, Centrelink investigators, and the AFP who assisted in the investigation and prosecution of these people! When it comes overt, manifest systemic bias, ‘The Dirty Dozen’ below highlights the prejudice against welfare recipients.
1. For 10 years Howard Government ministers such as Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey missed the crucial point that there was no basis in statute law for many of these prosecutions;
2. So did government ministers in the Rudd and Gillard Governments;
3. The Federal Police assisting Centrelink with these 10 prosecutions a day missed this point;
4. Centrelink investigators missed this point;
5. Department of Employment administrators missed this point;
6. Department of Human Service administrators missed this point;
7. Centrelink administrators missed this point;
8. For more than a decade, hundreds of elected officials missed this point;
9. The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions missed this point;
10. The Assistant CDPP in each state and territory missed this point;
11. The legal profession missed this point;
12. Judges and magistrates across the nation missed this point.
How is it that so many people who should have known better missed the most fundamental of all legal points; before you prosecute someone for breaking the law it is prudent and wise to make sure that the law still exists? As the above list reveals, far, far too many people failed to check the obvious and the question is why was this so? The obvious answer is that all of these people were so innately prejudiced against welfare recipients that there was a presumption of guilt, even when the law against which guilt could be proven did not exist.
Nice one folks! That monumental stuff-up raises the legal question of how many other boo-boos have been made by the AFP.
A couple of days ago, 78mm of rain fell on my house and in doing so reminded me of the biblical adage that ‘God lets the rain fall on the good and the bad.’ Which brings up the matter of Peter Slipper and the alleged Cab-Charge crimes that he is accused of?
On May 23rd at 3.00pm, ABC Radio 891 broadcast a section of on interview with Peter Slipper. He is to stand trial in December for allegedly misusing his taxpayer funded Cab-charge card 3 times on trips that were private. In the ABC recorded interview he indicated that he would vigorously oppose the charges and in doing so, he may have signaled the direction that he will be going with his defense. Mr. Slipper made a clear reference to the fact that it is standard operating procedure for the Department of Finance to handle such ‘errors’ “administratively”. I have written to Mr. Slipper requesting that he subpoena me if he wishes to utilize a “Manifest Ostensible Bias” defense. Mr. Slipper can utilize literally hundreds of examples of the Department of Finance acting in an “administrative” manner, even when it was manifestly obvious that politicians had blatantly ripped off the system.
A text book example that is likely to do serious damage to the case against him is the fact that a former lawyer named Julia Gillard, being a caring daughter, sent mum home in a taxi and allegedly had apparently used her parliamentary Cab-Charge to pay for the cab fare; not once or twice, but 10 times!
- Did the AFP investigate this alleged misuse of a Cab-Charge card and press charges? Err, no!
- Last December a Federal Court judge was hearing claims that Mr. Slipper had made sexually inappropriate advances to a member of his staff. Not only did the judge determine that the claim was without merit, he further determined that former Howard Government minister, Mal Brough, was behind the false allegations and that Mr. Brough was politically motivated and had tried to misuse the justice system to further his own political agenda.
- The judge was most adamant that Australia’s justice system would not be brought into disrepute by the spurious, politically motivated claims made concerning Mr. Slipper’s alleged conduct.
- If the Federal Court judge is to be believed, Mr. Brough tried to unlawfully manipulate the legal system to achieve his personal political agenda.
- So when did the AFP launch an investigation to determine if Mr. Brough had deliberately made false claims and/or had deliberately tried pervert the course of justice with those claims?
Mr. Slipper can highlight many similar examples of such blatantly biased non-implementations of the justice system. I am of the belief that the information that I can provide to him may significantly bolster his defense should he chose to avail himself of the documents that I can provide. For example:
The refusal of the AFP to investigate the Trish Draper ‘Travelgate’ scandal.
- The refusal of the AFP to investigate the Howard Government’s illegal “Performance Indicator Targets”, i.e. breaching quotas. Not only did the AFP refuse to act when this activity was first reported by Cheryl Kernot in 2000 and when subsequently confirmed a year later by Centrelink staff who testified to the independent Pearce Inquiry, the AFP still failed to investigate this manifestly fraudulent activity.
- The refusal of the AFP to investigate the fatalities caused by the “Performance Indicator Targets”, i.e. breaching quotas. Not only did the AFP refuse to act when this activity was first reported by Cheryl Kernot in 2000, but subsequently confirmed a year later by Centrelink staff who testified to the independent Pearce Inquiry, the AFP still refused to investigate this manifestly fraudulent activity.
- The 3rd refusal of the AFP to investigate the fatalities caused by the “Performance Indicator Targets.” A specific question put to the (former) AFP Commissioner, Mick Keelty, in 2004 was the question of whether or not any fatalities triggered by the illegal breaching quotas constituted either “Felony Murder” or “Manslaughter due to Criminal Negligence?” As you should be fully aware, under section 18 of the New South Wales Crimes Act (1900) and the South Australian Criminal Law Consolidation Act (1935), any such deaths would be Felony Murders whilst in Victoria they would be Manslaughter due to Criminal Negligence.
- In 2009 the Auditor-General tabled Report No 3 which reported that a high proportion of the 144 Members of Parliament audited had double-dipped on parliamentary entitlements to the tune of $4.64 Million. Incredibly, the AFP refused to investigate this fraud which, I called ‘Perksgate’, whilst at the same time assisting Centrelink to investigate and prosecute welfare recipients for violating a non-existent law!
As the appended copies of the responses from federal agents Denley and Pearce make quite clear, in both 2004 and again in 2009 the AFP refused to investigate citing “gravity/sensitivity” and an implied lack of resources. Apparently there were not enough AFP officers available to investigate alleged fraudulent activity by the Howard Government and Members of Parliament, but the case load was light enough for 10 AFP officers to be out-posted to Centrelink to train and assist in the investigation of alleged fraud by welfare recipients. How well do you think that that reasoning would stand up in court in the light of ‘Jailgate’?
In addition, how well would Federal Agent Pearce’s logic hold up (in the High Court) in the light of Senator Penny Wong’s comments made on the ABC’s 11th May 2011 AM program when unknowingly and unintentionally, but quite correctly, she totally trashed Agent Pearce’s spurious reasons for not investigating the ‘Perksgate’ rorting?
The legal reality, highlighted by the FWA investigation and prosecution of Craig Thomson, is that Agent Pearce’s letter is most probably nothing more than “A Criminal Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice, possibly because the AFP did not wish to trigger a federal election by depriving the Parliament of a quorum!
Whatever the reason for the AFP to take action in both 2004 and 2009 (and 2011), the end result is that shortly after the 2007 election, the ALP and Coalition began engaging in secret talks to find another way for the members of these parties to meet the high costs involved in campaigning for re-election, without having to rely upon the risky (and fraudulent) method of double-dipping on parliamentary entitlements.
As you would be fully aware, on May 24th, 2013, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott signed off on a secret memorandum of agreement to put more statutory fiction legislation through the Federal Parliament that would provide the ALP and the Coalition members who won in the upcoming election with “a dollar per vote.” Whilst that may not seem much, based on the last election that would put almost $10 million of tax-payers funds into the pockets of ALP and Coalition members and provide them with a manifestly unfair financial advantage in funding their next election campaigns.
I am of the opinion that this secret deal to misuse taxpayers funds to gain an unfair re-election advantage in the 2016 election was both a clear violation of “Vested Interest Principles” and a grossly malfeasant misuse use of lawful authority (Malfeasance/Misfeasance?) that would have resulted in personal financial gain.
Justice is supposed to be blind and therefore I should not have to be writing this letter or offering to make my- self available to Mr. Slipper as a witness. The AFP should have already announced an investigation into the Gillard-Abbott Covenant to determine if it unlawfully violated vested interest laws or laws that deal with the misuse of lawful authority for personal gain.
The High Court’s Jailgate’ “statutory fiction” decision has opened the door to some 15,000 convictions being over-turned. That still leaves some 35,000 convictions in place; however, it may be possible to have all of those convictions overt-turned on the grounds of “Manifest Ostensible Bias.” Two Queensland Health Service officials, Mr. Peter Lech and Darren Keating were successful with a Manifest Ostensible Bias complaint in the Queensland Supreme Court. Their success in winning court case has made it more difficult for the Queensland DPP to successfully convict Dr. Patel; a task that is now potentially made even more difficult by the communications written by Federal Agents Denley and Pearce re ‘Quotagate’ and ‘Perksgate’. When he was the Employment Minister, Tony Abbott was responsible for approximately 1 million breach penalties being issued to unemployed people, a targeted socio-economic group that at the time was leading in the suicide statistics at a time when death by suicide was more common than deaths caused by car and industrial accidents.
Beyond “statutory fiction” – The “legal fictions” of the AFP letters and other we do not investigate” letters.”
If 99.9% of the approximately 1 million of Tony Abbott’s breaching victims survived, the remnant 0.1% of breaching triggered fatalities would still represent approximately 1,000 preventable deaths that were probably either felony murders or manslaughter due to criminal negligence.
Just 5 weeks short of 10 years after Cheryl Kernot issued her June 27th press release, on May 18th 2010, a high ranking Centrelink official, Assistant Secretary, Neil Skill, wrote a letter in which he acknowledged that Centrelink could not provide data on post breaching fatalities because Centrelink did not “collect” this data from the Welfare database!
Why Commissioner Keelty failed to take action over the information in Ms. Kernot’s press release is unknown; in the absence of any data on the post-breaching fatalities, he may have falsely assumed that no-one was really being hurt by this malfeasant, fraudulent activity (except to make life tough for ‘dole bludgers’) and that there was no real harm in the enforcement of Performance Indicator Targets, i.e. breaching quotas.
If he thought that, then Neil Skill’s remarkably candid admission underscores just how fatally wrong he was!
Whatever, Commissioner Keelty though, he failed to take action when action was required and in doing so, effectively turned a blind eye to an on-going humanitarian disaster of holocaust proportions! In my 2004 correspondence to Commissioner Keelty, I called upon him to protect our democracy and root out the endemic corruption that so infested the Federal Parliament. His failure to respond then now leaves us with unresolved issues such as ‘Travelgate’, ‘Perksgate’, Votegate’ and biggest of all, the ‘Quotagate’ murders and the manner in which Centrelink bureaucrats concealed them from the public by continually omitting them from public accountability reports and thus allowing this toll to continually rise until at least 2009. No-one in the federal justice system expected last month’s ‘Jailgate’ decision; it was and is, a game changing reality that cannot be ignored. For example, if someone is successful in forcing full disclosure of the humanitarian disaster caused by ‘Quotagate’ and the unconstitutional breaching legislation, do you really believe that the Commissioner Keelty’s failure to take action when urgent action was required will be ignored by a court?
The Breaching Mantra (The cause of Australia’s current Covert Holocaust.)
“Millions of demonstrably ‘at-risk’, emotionally vulnerable or financially impoverished people were unconstitutionally deprived of billions of dollars with the result that un-numbered thousands are dead.”
Neither the DSS nor Centrelink have ever published the breaching fatalities data but the truth is in the public domain for it can be tediously extracted from state and territory coroner’s databases, death by death. However, any competent criminologist with forensic database analyst skills should be able to quickly extract the dreadful truth now buried in Centrelink’s welfare customer database.
Try this potential scenario for size; Tony Abbott is elected Prime Minister and then in December, Centrelink is forced to disclose to a court the FY 2000-01 death toll amongst the 346,000 ‘Quotagate’ victims and that since breaching legislation was introduced, thousands of welfare recipients had died after being breached? In addition to the political and legal crisis that this news would cause, within the AFP anyone in any way tainted by Non-feasance with these deaths would be on the public accountability hit-list.
The 6 Week Rule Fraud. (See Paragraph 1,237a of the Social Security Act.)
One of the almost overlooked issues to come out of the ‘Jailgate’ decision is the confusion surrounding Centrelink’s error rate. The figure reported in Centrelink annual reports is 2.5% – 3%. While that may sound very good, with 6.8 million clients, that amounts to as many as 200,000 mistakes per fortnight! What casts doubt on the 2.5% – 3% figure is the error rate mentioned during the ‘Jailgate’ hearing of 1 in 3, i.e. 33.3%.
Whatever the true error rate is, one of the problems with these errors is that some welfare recipients were/are overpaid and the mistakes are often not picked up for years and over a period of years, this can result in individual welfare recipients being over-paid many thousands of dollars. However, paragraph 1,237a of the Social Security Act contains the 6 Week Rule, i.e. the Waiver of Debt due to Centrelink error. This statute specifically states that “The Secretary” must waive any debt that are solely due to Centrelink error with 100% of the erroneous debt be waived if it is not identified and corrected within 6 weeks of the error occurring.
The legal onus is quite clearly upon Centrelink to prove that a debt is owed and if required to do so, I believe that I could present to a court evidence that bullying clients into making repayments is happening. ‘Field research’ that I have conducted leaves me with a reasonable belief that it is common practice for Centrelink to ignore this statute. Measures taken to recover over-payments can be blatantly fraudulent and may involve overt stand-over-tactics, lies and other deceptions, some off which involve the active support of some of the commercial mass media entities. The previously mentioned logic about breaching quota triggered fatalities being a major crime, i.e. murder or manslaughter, also applies to this fraudulent scam. Any forensic audit of the Centrelink customer database should therefore also look for alleged debts raised by Centrelink that were either never repaid or only partially repaid and had to be extinguished because the alleged debtor was dead.
ACMA Report 2780
Was ACMA Report 2780 a criminal conspiracy to pervert the course of justice or was it just one more example of systemic, middle-class value systems driven Manifest Ostensible Bias (M.O.B.) that Peter Slipper, or anyone else accused of fraud, can use in their defense? In addition to the 35,000 convicted welfare recipients not covered by the High Court’s ‘Jailgate’ Decision, any person, anywhere in Australia, can mount a M.O.B. based defense based upon not only the AFP decisions but upon decisions by the ACMA and other federal and state agencies that have investigative powers. ACMA Report 2780 is an example of systemic M.O.B. in full flight.
As the extract above from an ACMA letter makes quite clear, the ACMA, like Fair Work Australia, has the power to conduct criminal investigations into allegations (made against broadcast license holders) that may involve violations of criminal laws.
Check out the last line of the above ACMA statement, i.e. “The ACMA does not investigate politicians or participants in broadcasts.” What sort of federal investigation is it if the federal investigators who work for the ACMA automatically exclude politicians and other persons involved in broadcasts who may have made statements that deliberately deceive and make it easier for the Human Services Minister to knowingly defraud welfare recipients by deliberately creating the false believe that welfare recipients are defrauding the government if they do not repay over-payments made in error by Centrelink.
Jacintha Saldanha.
Secretly recording a phone conversation is an indictable offense. In NSW where the 2Day FM call to Ms. Saldanha originated, if an indictable offense results in a fatality, then that death is a Felony Murder. However, Senator Conroy was prepared to ignore this and accept 2Day FM’s promise not to do it again!
Did his actions in excusing 2Day FM for this lethal ‘prank’ constitute obstruction of justice?
- Was ‘suspending the hosts’ a suitable punishment for what in New South Wales may be a Felony Murder?
- Was 2Day FM’s recent decision to make one of these hosts their star presenter of the year a one-finger-salute to our nation’s justice system?
‘Jailgate’ appears to have been a wake-up call to someone involved in the ‘Votegate’ conspiracy. Just as the High Court had kicked out the ‘Jailgate’ legislation, it was highly likely that it could not only kick out the ‘Votegate’ legislation but also order a police investigation into this scam. It is possible that the secret ‘Votegate’ deal was leaked to the social media, and thus to the mass media, for the express purpose of killing off this self-serving, vested interest deal before it could be sneaked through the Federal Parliament.
If that was the intention, it worked well enough to give one of the signatories to this deal a bad case of cold feet. On 30th May, Tony Abbott owned up to the deal but his comments on the deal make it quite clear that that he was only doing so in order to let voters think that Julia Gillard was the originator of the secret deal. As mentioned previously, this was apparently the end result of a 5-year long series of negotiations and not a spur-of-the-moment deal as was implied by Tony Abbott in some of his statements to the mass media.
The ‘Jailgate’ legislation involved the misuse of legislative authority to conceal the wrongful conviction of thousands of impoverished people who had been convicted for violating a legal obligation that did not exist! Although Governor-General Quentin Bryce signed that “statutory fiction” into law, it must have been very obvious to her that the legislation was a gross violation of human rights and was a misuse of lawful authority by federal legislators, i.e. the legislation was a cynical ‘C.Y.A.’ exercise .
‘Jailgate’ needs to investigated to determine if it blatant Malfeasance.
- ‘Votegate’ also needs to be investigated to determine if it was an attempt to malfeasantly (or misfeasantly) misuse lawful authority for the purpose of giving the political parties represented by julia Gillard and tony Abbott a manifestly unfair advantage in the 2016 election.
The secret ‘Votegate’ Memorandum of Agreement’ and the May 8th ‘Jailgate’ decision are wake-up calls to both federal investigators and the legal profession that whilst the leading members of our Federal Parliament may refer to themselves as “Honorable, the reality is that they are anything but honorable for both the ‘Votegate’ memorandum of agreement and the May 8th ‘Jailgate’ decision were manifestly all about Vested Interest. So much so that our nation’s leaders were prepared to pervert justice by leaving thousands of people with unjustified criminal convictions, and if that in itself is not a crime, then nothing is! Paragraph 5 of the Australian Constitution is quite clear, the law is “binding on the people” and that phrase includes federal politicians. Mick Keelty was wrong to ignore Travelgate and the Quotagate complaints just because they involved the Prime Minister, some of his ministers and a Parliamentary Secretary . Tony Negus was also wrong to ignore Perksgate. It would be wrong to ignore the possible violations of the law that may be implicit in both ‘Jailgate’ and ‘Votegate’ just because the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are deeply involved in these issues. The High Court’s ‘Jailgate’ decision has made it quite clear that Vested Interest has no lawful place in our Federal Parliament. The responsibility now rests with the Federal Police to act.
Ronald Medlicott. (A Christian advocate for justice.)
4 page supplement to AFP letter.
She said…, Federal Agent Denley on the ‘Travelgate’ fraud, the ‘Quotagate’ murders and other issues.
- 1. Even though Trish Draper eventually admitted that she had ripped of the parliamentary entitlements fund, the AFP refused to investigate because that would have meant charging John Howard as an “Accessory after the fact to defrauding the Commonwealth by obtaining a benefit by deception.”
- 2. The “Children overboard Scam” involved the deliberate misuse of military intelligence during a time of war (against terrorism) for personal and political gain. That is Treason, which is a very serious crime.
The AFP was working in partnership WITH Centrelink to catch welfare fraudsters but refused to investigate fraud BY Centrelink . I believe that’s what is known as nemo iudex in causa sua, i.e. protecting your own patch.
Note: the AFP does not deny that these crimes occurred. They just flatly refused to investigate them.
1. “Centrelink’s breaching”, or to be far more specific and accurate, the Howard Government’s implementation of “Performance Indicator Targets”, i.e. breaching quotas, represents the misuse of lawful authority to commit mass fraud.
- 2. Four years, one week, and three days after Chery Kernot’s press release that exposed the breaching quotas, the AFP had not allocated one police officer to investigate this activity and yet 3 AFP officers had been out-posted to Centrelink to assist in the investigation of anonymous hotline tip-offs.
- 13 years on, Justice has still been delayed; clearly it is Justice denied! This month marks the thirteenth year since Cheryl Kernot first blew the whistle on this unscrupulous misuse of lawful authority and the AFP has yet to investigate either this fraud or the suicides, fatal strokes and fatal heart attacks triggered by these quotas!
- In the wake of the High Court’s “Jailgate” Decision, what court will accept that the AFP has been acting in accordance with its mandate by refusing to impartially investigate ‘Travelgate’ and the ‘Quotagate’ fatalities?
He said… Assistant Secretary Neil Skill’s letter.
The most crucial point in this letter is the point made by Neil Skill in the second paragraph where he makes it quite clear that “Centrelink does not collect Post Breaching Terminal Outcomes Statistics and therefore is unable to assist you with this information.”
A rose by any other name is still a rose; this logic also applies to the post breaching fatalities. It does not matter what official terms were used to describe them, the glaringly obvious reality in every DSS and Centrelink report ever produced whilst Breaching laws were in force, these deaths were never ever reported.
1. Millions of unconstitutional, breaching penalties issued to a targeted socio-economic group that for years had “topped the pops” in official suicide statistics.
2. Since 1996, a person was more likely to die violently from suicide than from a car accident, plane crash or industrial accident and the largest number of suicides has occurred amongst unemployed people. Exactly how many died because of Breaching is still a big unknown?
3. Over a period of decades, DSS and Centrelink management have churned out a veritable Boxing Day Tsunami of reports that contained detailed data tables of breaching and prosecutions activity and other welfare support activities.
4. Yet somehow, in this tsunami of information, the death toll triggered by breaching was not deemed to be of sufficient importance to be mentioned even once.
5. Why was this so? Was it because they wished to avoid legal accountability?
6. How low can you go? Since November 2005, these fatalities have been secretly classified as confidential by the Senate’s LEG-Con Committee and in January 2006, and again in March 2006, the Senate’s EWRE Committee described them as “irrelevant”. In the wake of the High Court’s “Jailgate” Decision, realistically what court would now accept that breaching triggered deaths were “irrelevant”?
He said… Federal Agent Jeff Pearce’s Perksgate email.
What did Agent Pearce say?
- OOPS! Federal agent Pearce did not know that the 2004 decision not to investigate Travelgate and the Quotagate rip-offs had been secretly classified as confidential. That’s the trouble with such secrets; no-one knows when to keep quiet!
1. “Each case is assessed and a decision made as to the appropriate response.”
2. Well, the AFP had 10 officers out-posted to Centrelink following up anonymous hotline tip-offs.
3. However, the Auditor-General’s Report 3# and details of this report in the mass media could not persuade the AFP to investigate the possible rorting of a staggering $4.64 million by federal politicians who needed funds to finance their re-election in the 2007 election.
4. The VOTEGATE Memorandum has made it quite clear that re-election funding is a major issue for federal politicians and that no stone is left unturned in finding ways to use taxpayers money in order to support their re-election campaigns.
5. “gravity/sensitivity” – The alleged rorting by self-serving federal politicians is of insufficient “gravity/sensitivity” to merit any investigation by the AFP; or was it actually a case of far too much political “gravity/sensitivity” for the AFP?
When it comes to Manifest Ostensible Bias, both the Denley Letter and the Pearce Email make it abundantly clear that alleged welfare rorting was of far more concern to the AFP than the same activity by federal politicians, which was apparently not worthy of an AFP investigation. What is manifestly obvious is that there is a “legal fiction” used by the AFP that turns a blind eye to paragraph 5 of the Australian Constitution which clearly states that the law is binding on “the people”, an all-encompassing term that I believe also includes politicians; even Prime Ministers. Post “Jailgate”, what court will now accept the AFP’s logic for turning a blind eye to alleged rorting by federal politicians.
She said… The Penny Wong Interview.
(Source: ABC Radio – AM at 7.10am on May 11th 2012)
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/am-with-peter-cave/4004806
(About 8 minutes into MP3 file: bst_20120511-0710.mp3 )
Senator Penny Wong unwittingly smashed Federal Agent Pearce’s excuses for not investigating Perksgate.
(Senator Wong:) “… there are allegations made against members of parliament, made against individuals in our community … and the appropriate way to deal with those is to allow the courts to deal with them. Now, I’ve spoken about this for some time, including on the ABC. When I’m asked about a number of things which are in the public arena, for example in the Fair Work Australia Report, I’ve said, if those allegations are correct, they are manifestly inappropriate. Manifestly! But politicians are not judge and jury when it comes to these matters, and there’s a very good reason for that. Because we have a system that is about the separation of powers and is about proper process when it comes to these and Anthony (Albanese) was making that point.”
(Presenter:) “Are the gloves now off?”
(Senator Wong 
“Well, we have said, very clearly, we believe that the Parliament should respect the processes of our courts; the processes which exist for very sound reasons. Regrettably, that’s not the way the Opposition, on this issue, are approaching it.”
MY COMMENTS:
1. Senator Wong said, “But politicians are not judge and jury… we believe that the Parliament should respect the processes of our courts; the processes which exist for very sound reasons. Regrettably, that’s not the way the Opposition, on this issue, are approaching it.” Exactly how biased was the AFP’s approach to political rorting, e.g. Agent Pearce’s spurious comment about Parliament debating ‘Perksgate’?
2. VOTEGATE – 5 years of negotiation: It appears that the real parliamentary debate was the behind-closed-doors debate that produced the Votegate Memorandum.
3. “…the separation of powers and is about proper process when it comes to these…” Well, politicians clearly knew the limits of their powers! How then do you explain the Breaching/Compliance Failure laws which deliberately extinguished the Constitution Right of welfare recipients to have any alleged Breach of Contract resolved by the High Court as per the “due process” that Senator Wong mentioned?
4. Those constitutional rights of “due process” were deliberately violated for just one reason; so that welfare recipients would be ‘fair game’ when it came to deliberately, fraudulently depriving them of a welfare allowance!
5. This means that every post breaching fatality was an unlawful killing; which explains why the DSS and Centrelink management teams have never once reported any of the post breaching fatalities.
Bill Bonney, a senior Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) official has demonstrated that when it comes to closing gates that should not be closed, and also in giving Australian welfare recipients a one-finger-salute, Australia’s public servants are experts are truly world class experts.
