National Press Club confronted with secret breaching fatalities and other Centrelink secrets.

“Centrelink does not collect post breaching terminal outcome statistics and therefore cannot provide this information”.

(The contents of this blog was emailed to the National Press Club on 30th January 2012, the day before Tony Abbott was due to be the guest speaker at the NPC. In the email the NPC is confronted with breaching fatalities and other Centrelink secrets that are the subject of highly illegal Senate suppression orders.)

The following info is far too long winded and is still in rough draft mode. However, someone needs to let Mr Abbott know that Hank Jongen is soon going to have to explain in a court why Centrelink never collected and reported breaching fatalities. Leaked stats suggest that Mr Abbott may have ‘forgot’ to mention a four figure breaching death toll. No big deal because every other Employment Minister for decades also forgot to do the same thing although Tony was silly enough to make that “industrial manslaughter” comment.

Recommended URLS for insight into felony murder laws:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082210/Sarah-McKinley-Teen-mom-shoots-dead-intruder-week-babys-father-died-cancer.html

http://www.dpp.sa.gov.au/03/2005-2006.pdf (See comments on page 7, R v Finch)

OVERVIEW

The media response to the Australia Day indigenous activist’s demonstration makes for pretty bizarre reading. What follows is equally or even more bizarre and over the top but there is enough empirical evidence to keep commissions of inquiry and tort class actions going for years. Whether or not journalists and editors/producers chose to believe this press release is actually irrelevant because some 4 million Australians have a ($200 Billion?) vested interest in believing it and they are the real target audience. Thanks to the social networking phenomenon, many of those 4 million potential readers may actually get to do so and how they respond could dramatically reshape politics in Australia over the next 12 months or so.

ICEBERG! DEAD AHEAD.

Actually that should be “Courtroom, dead ahead” but after all, this is the 100th anniversary of the RMS Titanic disaster. In RMS Titanic jargon, Julia Gillard has actually placed a ‘watchman’ in parliament’s ‘crow’s nest’, A-G Assistant Secretary Matt Hall, to keep an eye what is happening, but just like the “iceberg dead ahead” warning in 1912, any warning in 2012 will probably come too late to prevent the ship of state, Federal Parliament’ from being gouged open in a court challenge involving the official cover-up of breaching triggered fatalities. (Possibly 6,000-12,000 over several decades.)

Looming legal action challenging recent decisions made by senior investigators in the ACMA’s broadcasting investigations section may have already forced Julia Gillard to “promote” Tanya Slibersek out of the Human Services portfolio on December 12th, 2011, the day that ACMA investigators reluctantly agreed to expand their investigation into numerous issues that I had dumped into their unwilling hands. Common sense makes it quite clear that having Ms Slibersek the target of an ACMA investigation involved alleged Targeted Socio-Economic Vilification, i.e. welfare bashing, is hardly good PR for Julia Gillard and her government. The defense offered by both the ACMA investigators and Assistant Secretary Matt Hall of the Attorney-General’s Department, i.e. that socio-economic vilification is not unlawful is, to say the least, hardly a good defense response, especially for a struggling minority government.

It also goes without saying that it is also hardly good PR for the Gillard Government that that accusations also involve the 7 Network aiding and abetting Centrelink in an attempt to defraud welfare recipients of $3 Billion that is allegedly “owed” to Centrelink as a result of administrative errors and keyboard typos that have resulted in welfare recipients erroneously receiving the above mentioned $3 Billion in overpayments. As in the ACMA’s possession make quite clear, the 7 Network was fully aware that these erroneous overpayments are covered by paragraph 1,237A of the Social Security Act and all errors not corrected within 6 weeks require that Centrelink waive the repayment of these overpayments. As the minister responsible for Centrelink in 2011,Ms Slibersek would also have been aware that deliberately intimidating welfare recipients into repaying these overpayments was nothing more than White Collar Fraud. Her passive tolerance of this fraud was much more than bad PR; it made her an active participant in this criminal activity!

To all intents and purposes, the Gillard Government has been caught out trying to balance next year’s budget by brazenly ripping the nation’s most disadvantaged and vulnerable citizens, i.e. welfare recipients and sometime between now and the 2013 election, those activities are going to the subject of close scrutiny in a court challenge to the ACMA’s flat refusal to investigate Ms Slibersek’s action because she is a federal politician. Fair dinkum! That is the official ACMA excuse for its hand off policy concerning Ms Slibersek’s involvement in this media supported rip-off and it opens the door to similar (secretly classified confidential) excuses by the AFP in 2004 and 2009 being scrutinized by the court.

On 16th May 2011, Centrelink’s general manager, Hank Jongen, was mouthing off “We will get you” statements during a 7 Network Today Tonight broadcast. Considering that Mr. Jongen was ripping of welfare recipients by concealing the 6 week rule and other frauds that had resulted in welfare recipients being ripped off to the tune of $10 Billion when the Howard Government was in power, Mr. Jongen’s comments were extremely hypocritical to say the least.

Tanya Slibersek may be out of Centrelink but Hank Jongen is not and therefore he is now target #1 when the subpoenas are issued. Hank Jongen can expect to be involved in extensive cross examination about the many and various ways in which Centrelink has helped to rip-off welfare recipients virtually since its inception in 1997. However, the most interesting issue for cross examination will probably be the following statement from Centrelink’s Assistant Secretary Neil Skill who, in a letter dated 18 May 2010 wrote:

“Centrelink does not collect post breaching terminal outcome statistics and therefore cannot provide this information”.

Centrelink’s powerful database allows this information to be collected and reported in real-time, daily, weekly monthly, quarterly, bi-annually and annually. The database is also able to annually accrue and tally these fatalities over a period of decades. DSS and Centrelink annual reports contain copious amount of statistical data; however every report released by the DSS and Centrelink since breaching legislation first came into force decades ago conspicuously contain no data relating to the humanitarian impact of breaching activity. There is no shortage of data about the numbers of breaches issued and the massive savings achieved by this activity, but there is not one single word about the many lives lost due to breaching activity. Perhaps this is because some of these fatalities violate South Australia’s Felony Murder statute? Whatever the reason for the official complacency surrounding these deaths, there are clear parallels with the Queensland Dr Death case that involved 87 deaths at the Toowoomba Base Hospital in Queensland 10 years ago.

WHAT IS FELONY MURDER?

For people who do not know what felony murder is, I believe that perhaps the best way to answer that question is to use a very recent case study that attracted worldwide media attention in January 2012?

On 31st December 2011, two men subsequently identified as Justin Martin and Dustin Stewart, allegedly attempted to break into the Oklahoma home of shot gun totin’, pistol packin’ mama, 18 year old Sarah McKinley. Ms McKinley gained worldwide media attention by dialing 911 and asking for permission to shoot if the two men broke into her home. Oklahoma has a wacky “Make my day” law which allows home owners to legally shoot people who illegally break into their home. When Justin Martin allegedly broke in via the front door, Ms McKinley fired a shot that killed him. Because her action in shooting Justin Martin was lawful, she was not charged with any crime. However, the other alleged intruder, Dustin Stewart, was subsequently charged with Felony Murder because.

(a) A crime had been committed, i.e. illegal entry into an Oklahoma residence.

(B) A death had occurred.

(C) The attempted illegal entry was a crime and it was therefore was a causal factor in the death that had occurred. Ms McKinley’s firing the gun was also a causal factor; in fact the primary cause of the fatality, but it was not an unlawful causal factor.

A + B + C = D, i.e. it is a Felony Murder even when the actual cause of death is deemed to be a “lawful” death.

Felony Murder may be a very weird and wacky law, but it is also just happens to be a law in South Australia and in February 2006, an SA teenager, Josiah Finch, was convicted and received the mandatory “life” sentence of 25 years with a minimum 14 year non-parole period. As the following hyper-link to trial summary shows, like Dustin Stewart, Josiah Finch did not kill anyone; he was unlucky enough to be present when an unlawful killing took place and, perhaps fearing for his life or the lives of his family, he would not reveal who fired the fatal shot. ERGO, A + B + C = D, i.e. a 25 year mandatory head sentence for Josiah Finch.

http://www.dpp.sa.gov.au/03/2005-2006.pdf (See comments on page 7, R v Finch)

When it comes to the unreported post breaching fatalities so cleverly concealed by DSS and Centrelink officials for decades, making a case for Felony Murder involves demonstrating that a criminal activity by DSS or Centrelink staff, or other government contracted agents was a causal factor, although not necessary the primary causal factor, in one or more of these preventable deaths. A reckless disregard for lives of human beings is a major crime, i.e. Manslaughter due to criminal negligence. Unfortunately for the public servants and federal politicians who played keys roles in hiding these fatalities, there is no shortage of evidence that there most definitely was a reckless disregard for human life that resulted in many of the as yet “uncollected” and therefore unreported death toll caused by both supposedly “legal” activity such as breaching and manifestly illegal activity that involved the misuse of breaching legislation to deliberately defraud welfare recipients of legitimate welfare entitlements.

Since at least 1946, paragraph 51(XXiii)(a) of the federal constitution has placed an obligation upon the federal government to pay a wide range of welfare benefits to eligible applicants. Unfortunately, many politicians were, and still are, ideologically opposed to the concept of constitutional welfare payments and were therefore willing to consider ways to weasel out of this constitutional obligation. One way to do so was to ignore the constitutional constraint contained in paragraph 75 of the constitution.

Check out and DSS or Centrelink annual reports up to FY 2008-09 and you will references to the term “Breaching”. Breaching was officially phased out by “Compliance Failure Measures” as of 1st July 2009, however, regardless of which term is used, both refer to an alleged Breach of Contract by welfare recipients and paragraph 75 of the constitution is quite clear that Breach of Contract involving the Crown or Crown agencies and third parties, e.g. welfare recipients, is clearly a matter for the High Court.

In effect, federal parliament unconstitutionally usurped one of the powers of the High court and placed this power in the hands of government ministers who in turn delegated this power to the public servants in the DSS and the Department of Employment. In practical terms, the powers of the High Court were placed in the hands of public servants who had neither the legal training needed to fairly use this power nor the constitutional right to use these powers. The end result of depriving welfare recipients of their constitutional right to the protection of the High court has been a humanitarian disaster of holocaust proportions that may be best described in legal terms as A Crime against Humanity and a Criminal Act of State Terrorism.

Over the top hyperbole? In November 2005 the Senate Inquiry into the Anti-Terrorism Bill #2 did not think so when confronted with those statements and supporting in submission 287, a submission which was titled “Who are the real terrorist?” Check out the status of that submission and it is listed as “Not yet available” but the truth is that it has been secretly classified as confidential and is the subject of a do not copy, do not distribute suppression order. A 2nd suppression order was issued by the Environment, Communication & Arts Committee that in March 2010 was “investigating” the so called Roofgate disaster and the deaths of four ceiling insulation installers that Peter Garrett had failed to mention to the federal parliament.

At the current time, some 4 million Breaches/compliance Penalties have been issued with often devastating, and sometimes fatal consequences for the victims of this politically biased and fatally flawed unconstitutional legislation.

Neil Skill’s comments make it quite clear that the precise death toll is currently not available because of Centrelink’s “Don’t ask – don’t tell” policy. Paragraph 8 on page 2 of the Disney Inquiry into the impact of Compliance Measures makes it quite clear that DEEWR officials did not provide requested information to the inquiry until it was too late for any public evaluation and response. Subsequent evaluation of some of the data so belatedly made available to the Disney Inquiry indicates that in FY 2000-01 when 346,078 breaches were issued (a rate of approximately 3 per minute during public service working hours for the entire year) as many as 700 fatalities MAY have occurred. I repeat, MAY have occurred. Until such time as Hank Jongen, or his superiors, release the actual data, no definitive figure is possible. The best potential outcome is that ‘ONLY’ 35 fatalities may have occurred. Whatever the actual figure, both the Employment Minister and the Minister Social security copied Peter Garrett’s 2010 action and failed to report any of these fatalities to the Federal Department, either when these deaths occurred or in their annual reports.

Based upon glaring conspicuous lack of available data, my best case estimate of the cumulative post breaching death toll since the first breaching fatality occurred decades ago is that it is between 2-4 times the 9/11 death toll, i.e. probably between 6,000 to 12,000 fatalities, a range that adds weight to the claim that Breaching was a massive crime against Humanity and a gross act of state terrorism. In order to refute this estimate, the two previously mentioned Senate committees of inquiry would have had to reveal the precise death toll and being unwilling to do so; they buried the respective submissions and imposed parliamentary privilege suppression orders.

Since Matt Hall is the government official designated by the Gillard Government to handle my ACMA allegations, he is to be provided with a signed copy of this press release and therefore the following statement places an official obligation to ensure that the Prime Minister’s Office and the two above mentioned Senate committees are informed that I do not intend to comply with those suppression orders because I believe that they represent the unlawful misuse of parliamentary privilege for the express purpose of obstructing justice. Ever since the 1946 Nuremburg War Crimes Trials, courts around the world have accepted that compliance with an unlawful order issued by a superior authority is itself an unlawful act. If the Prime Minister or the Senate committees belief that my action constitutes Contempt of Parliament, then they are welcome to cite me for Contempt of Parliament and we can let a Federal Court Justice decide just who is right.

Clearly, if I am not cited for Contempt of Parliament, then I am correct on the two suppression orders represent two conspiracies to pervert the course of justice for the purposes of avoiding criminal law, civil law (Tort) and political accountability for concealing as yet unknown number of deaths that involve criminal negligence and/or felony murder.

YET MORE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE – HREOC

Regardless of the lack of available Centrelink breaching fatalities data, there is no shortage of hard evidence of a reckless disregard for the lives of welfare recipients. In 1986 both breaching legislation and legislation establishing the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission was being drafted. The breaching legislation violated some 2 dozen basic human rights that are set out in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Breaching legislation was therefore at risk of being overturned by the soon to be established Human Rights Commission. A simple solution was implemented; HREOC was deliberately nobbled. Breached welfare recipients would no succor from HREOC for it charter prevented the commission from dealing with breaching legislation triggered human rights violations.

The deliberate nobbling of HREOC meant that the ‘negative consequences’ of breaching legislation, e.g. fatalities, were an acceptable consequence. Such an ‘acceptable consequence’ is clear, empirical evidence of the criminally reckless disregard for the danger to the lives of welfare recipients that was an integral in breaching legislation.

THE ABBOTT-VANSTONE DEFINITION OF BREACHING.

Tony Abbott and Amanda Vanstone added further fuel to fire in 2002 when they made a monumental blunder when they signed off on the 2002 Welfare Reform Discussion Paper.

Paragraph 47 carefully defined what a welfare allowance was but in doing so it unintentionally made the following definition of breaching possible.

“Breaching is the targeted, and therefore deliberate, removal of the only means of support from people who had no other means of support so that, for a period of three months, they were unable to meet even their most basic costs of living”.

When you deliberately stop vulnerable, impoverished people from meeting their most basic costs of living for three months, it was reasonably foreseeable that some of these at-risk people would probably die. Breach these vulnerable people at a rate of three times per minute for an entire financial year and it comes glaringly obvious to any reasonable person that a very significant number of people would probably die. Run breaching legislation for decades and issue 4 million breaches, mostly of 13 weeks or 8 weeks duration and common sense suggests that the cumulative death toll will be massive.

Is it any wonder that the two Senate committees have misused parliamentary privilege suppression orders to deliberate avoid public disclose of this totally preventable, ideologically driven holocaust.

26 WEEKS DURATION – UPPING THE ANTE.

Having unintentionally defined breaching activity as a criminal act of reckless disregard for human life, common sense would suggest that that Tony and Amanda would have implored John Howard to immediately repeal this lethal legislation. Unfortunately, as the record of parliamentary debate sets out in word by word detail, this most definitely did not happen. In what must be the worst example of amoral, sociopathic legislation that the Australian federal parliament had ever seen, the Howard Government attempted to double the Breaching penalty to 26 weeks!

Despite the constitutionally obligation on the federal parliament to care for welfare recipients, the Hansard record is further empirical evidence that there is quite clearly no lack of impartial evidence of an ideology driven, criminally reckless disregard for the lives of welfare recipients by some members of the Federal Parliament. Unfortunately for taxpayers who will have to foot the massive restitution and compensation bills, there are the twin problems of Malfeasance and outright Fraud.

MALFEASANCE – THE SCORECARD.

During the mid 1990s I was managing a Job Club in a national unemployment black spot at Salisbury. During this time I discovered that some CES case managers were misusing their breaching powers to engage in BREACHING COMPETITIONS. The prize for the winner at the happy hour was a bottle of booze up to the value of $60. I guess that answers the question as to how valuable is a welfare recipients life? The price of a bottle of booze.

Readers should note that case managers kept a breaching SCORECARD. Read some of Centrelink’s annual reports and guess what word pops up to describe the ‘efficiency’ of Centrelink’s operations? You guessed it. Scorecard!

MALFEASANCE – ADMINISTRATIVE CONVENIENCE and TERMINAL OUTCOMES.

When querying with a CES case manager as to why one of my clients who had a 100% attendance and performance record had been breached, I was informed that sometimes times clients will ignore a letter requesting that they attend a case management interview but they will always attend if they have the dole cut off. This was a blatant misuse of breaching legislation for ADMINISTRATIVE CONVENIENCE. Horrified by this casual explanation, I stated that it was highly dangerous because many welfare recipients have acute hypertension problems and this form of breaching could easily trigger a fatal hypertensive event such as a heart attack or stroke. The response left me speechless.

No problem. We call these “Post breaching terminal outcomes. An outcome is an outcome, be it getting a job or dying. Either way gets them off the books”!

Forget about $60 for a bottle of booze. At the time I believed that recklessly endangering the lives of at-risk welfare recipients” administrative convenience” had to be the lowest of low reasons for breaching welfare recipients. Oh how wrong I was.

EMPLOYERS AND ‘UNACCEPTABLE’ JOB INTERVIEWEES.

Shortly after Senator Vanstone became the Employment Minister, she sent an ‘information’ letter to every registered business in the nation. This letter provided an employer hotline number that enabled employers to dob in job seekers whose appearance or demeanor at a job interview was deemed by the employer to be ‘unacceptable’. If a job seeker did not measure up to what they believed were ‘acceptable’ standards of dress. promptness or behavior, just report the job seeker on the hot line and they would be punished, i.e. breached. It was bad enough that politicians had put the power of life and death into the hands of irresponsible public servants. What Senator Vanstone did was extend this lethal privilege to employers, some of whom were anything but ethical as I discovered when two of clients were threatened by an employer with being breached if they refused to accept an adult wage of just $2 per hour.

That breaching legislation could be used by unscrupulous employers to blackmail vulnerable job seekers into accepting wages well below minimum award rates is just one sick example of how employers could, and did, misuse breaching legislation. Unfortunately, this was not the worst example of how ‘entrepreneurial minded’ people could exploit breaching legislation for the purpose of maximizing business profits.

THE JOB NETWORK – THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN RORT RUSH.

When setting up the Job Network, Senator Vanstone was interviewed on the ABC’s 7.30 Report. During the interview, presenter Kerry O’Brien warned senator Vanstone that as planned, the Job Network was highly vulnerable to being rorted by profit based, commercially run Job Network agencies.. Absolutely gobsmacked by this comment, Senator Vanstone eventually muttered something about having her staff look at the matter. The problem was that whilst public servants basically believe in order through regulation, in the world of private enterprise, the entrepreneurial principle of ‘do what it takes to make a profit’ is a basic business principle, particularly with those business people who lacked moral and/or ethical integrity. When launched on 1st May 1998, the Job Network was nothing more than an ideologically ill-thought out political cash cow creation that was ripe for plundering.

And plundered it was, on a truly massive scale.

It is a matter of both public and parliamentary record that just four months after its launch, the Job Network was facing bankruptcy. Some ‘entrepreneurial rorters with FLEX 3 (Intensive Assistance) contracts had financially gutted the Job Network by exploiting a loophole created by breaching legislation. Sign up a FLEX 3 client, receive up to $3,000 in subsidies from the government, breach the client to get them off the books and repeat the process endlessly. Senator Vanstone’s staff was unable to prevent this problem because breaching legislation was Holy Writ to the Howard government which meant that the loophole was ‘untouchable’.

Job Network management should have called in the cops but this would have brought down the government and the Job Network. Centrelink management provided the solution by imposing a moratorium on breaching. Although rorters were not prosecuted, they did not receive new contracts. However, welfare recipients who had been improperly breached as part of this fraudulent activity were not compensated. The ‘discovery’ of South Australia’s felony murder law in late 2005 must have came as quite a shock those involved in the official cover-up for there is no difference in law between what those covering the Job Network rorting fatalities and the crime that Josiah Finch was charged with other than the number of deaths involved. However, as bad as the Great Australian Rort Rush was, it paled in comparison to what was to come.

PERFORMANCE INDICATOR TARGETS.

On June 27th 2000, an ALP MP, Cheryl Kernot, issued a press containing leaked details of the Howard Government’s implementation of breaching “Performance Indicator” targets. In FY 2000-01 alone a staggering 346,078 breaches were issues and the Employment Minister, Tony Abbott, never reported and of the post breaching fatalities triggered by this tsunami of breaching activity. Perhaps this was because the reporting of any such fatalities may have triggered criminal investigations into the link between the performance indicator targets and these fatalities?

Whatever the actual cause of death of the victims, the criminal misuse of breaching legislation would have meant that any deaths that occurred in South Australia could be reclassified as Felony Murders. Compounding the possibility of such investigations are testimonies made by Centrelink staff to the Independent Pearce Inquiry.

THE INDEPENDENT PEARCE INQUIRY.

The breaching tsunami so overwhelmed community welfare agencies that they responded by financing an independent inquiry into breaching activity that was chaired by professor Denis Pearce. Some of the testimonies made at this inquiry by Centrelink staff include reports that there were instructed to delay administrative appeals by breached welfare recipients for 6 weeks. Although many breached welfare did not appeal because they did not know about the administrative process, some victims of the breaching tsunami did appeal. Official statistics reveal that 6 out of every 7 breaching appeals were upheld in favour of the appellants, i.e. the breached welfare recipients. This staggeringly high success rate is empirical evidence of just how enormous was the scale of the malfeasant misuse of breaching legislation by the Howard Government.

INDUSTRIAL MANSLAUGHTER.

Two years ago, in February 2010, Tony Abbott took an enormous political and legal risk when he made a statement in which he suggested that if Peter Garrett had been running a business in New South Wales, he would have been charged with “Industrial Manslaughter” over the deaths of four ceiling installers. It was a risky gamble that at the time paid off with huge political dividends, bringing the Liberal-National Coalition within one seat of winning government. Now however, it is time to pay the piper.

TONY ABBOTT – THE THIRTY BILLION DOLLAR MAN.

As Peter Costello made abundantly clear with his “non-core promises” statement, politicians will say anything in their efforts to win or retain political power. Tony Abbott is famous for his infamous “No changes to Medicare” promise and Julia Gillard is equally infamous for her “No carbon Tax” promise. Now legislated, opponents of this tax have made it quite clear that they do not want to pay this thirty billion dollar tax. A consummate political opportunist, Tony Abbott has promised that when he is elected as Prime Minister, he will abolish the carbon tax. Unlike his “No changes to Medicare” promise, this is a promise that Tony Abbott intends to honour. As a consequence, this promise has given corporate Australia a thirty billion dollar incentive to protect Tony Abbott from any issues that could undermine his chance of becoming Australia’s next prime minister.

Thirty billion dollars is one heck of a financial incentive to ensure that Hank Jongen does not expose the post breaching fatalities that Tony Abbott concealed from parliament when he was the Employment Minister from 1998 to 2003. Whether Tony Abbott was hiding 1,000 deaths or just one death is actually irrelevant for in the wake of his “Industrial Manslaughter” comments even one fatality would totally destroy his political credibility with the electorate. It is therefore an imperative for corporate Australia that no stone be left unturned in the effort to prevent Hank Jongen from testifying about why Centrelink does not “collect” and report post breaching fatalities statistics.

NAMING NAMES.

One way to negate any temptation on my part to sell off the incriminating documents and clam up is to name names now.

As previously mentioned, Matt Hall is the man tasked by the Gillard Government with monitoring the issue that I am so doggedly pursuing. In addition to receiving this press release, I shall provide him with names and contact details of victims of the 6 week scam and the “not eligible for benefits” scam. These names are a litmus test of both the integrity of Matt Hall and Julia Gillard for If they do nothing, then they risk being crucified both in court and in the public arena. These scams will have to shut down even though that will make it much harder for Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan to bring in a budget surplus next year.

Not only will the scams have to be shut down, the victims will have to be compensated for Centrelink’s multi-billion dollar ‘administrative errors and oversights’. Is that just wishful thinking on my part is it a reasonable expectation.

4 MILLION AND RISING.

So far, some 4 million people have been victims of various welfare scams but the number continues to rise at the staggering rate of 31,000 new victims per month.

When breaching legislation was introduced decades ago, the phenomenon that we now call Social Networking was the stuff of science fiction. Today it is a reality; there is an inexpensive, almost universal communications medium that exists that has the capability of informing most of the victims of these welfare scams about the scale of the scams and the modus operandi. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and web blogging are social networking tools that make this possible. More significantly, they are tools capable of unifying or guiding these people into taking co-ordinated political action such as deliberately voting the ALP and the Liberal-National Coalition last at the next federal election. If that happens, it will dramatically reshape the national political landscape with neither Julia Gillard nor Tony Abbott able form a stable minority government. As unstable as the current situation is, just image it with another 10 or 20 independent MPs who owe their allegiance to outraged welfare voters.

THE COMPENSATION ISSUE – WHO PAYS?

The compensation bill for decades of rip-offs and fatalities is going to make the carbon tax seem like small change. Voters did not like the Queensland Flood Levy and any tax hikes or higher taxes will go down like a lead balloon with voters. Who then will stick the taxes needed to pay the huge compensation bill? Simple logic says that non-voters will get saddled with the bill and who are these non-voters? Corporate Australia, that’s who!

For every dollar of ‘savings’ that Tony Abbott and Amanda Vanstone achieved through the enforcement of Performance Indicator Targets, i.e. breaching quotas, Corporate Australia is going to repay through the nose. Is that not poetic justice?

THE TRANSIENCE OF POLITICAL MAGNIFICENSE.

Blinded by media hype and the sheer magnificence of the Titanic, Captain Smith ignored the dangers posed by the icebergs that he knew were drifting into the path of his ship and as a consequence, over 1,500 died. Perhaps blinded by perceptions of their own political magnificence, somehow our nation’s federal legislators ignored the fact that they had a constitutional Duty of Care for the nation’s disadvantaged. Political ideology somehow managed to override common sense, compassion and constitutional obligation; so much so that finding ways to deprive the nation’s most impoverished of the little that they successfully persuaded themselves that it was “sound economic management”.

The reality was, and is, that it was gross criminal stupidity. Stupidity hurled the Titanic against an iceberg and stupidity also drove a preventable humanitarian disaster of holocaust proportions.

Our ship of state, Federal Parliament, now desperately needs a far better captain and crew than we currently have. when it comes to the question how many of the current 226 ‘crew members’, i.e. the MPs and senators, know about the welfare rip-offs and fatalities, the answer is most of them.

WHO KNEW?

Obviously the Employment and Welfare minister, past and present who are still currently serving in parliament knew as did Treasurers, Justice Ministers, Attorney-Generals, Home Affairs Ministers and the senators of the committees that deliberately took action to conceal the breaching holocaust. However, the Who Knew list also includes independent MPs like Bob Katter, Tony Windsor, Andrew Wilkie and Nick Xenophon.

In April and May 2010, I personally emailed all 226 members of parliament and in May 2011, I personally hand delivered a 40 page summary, “An Absence of Justice” to the offices of Chris Pyne, Nick Zenophon, Sarah Hanson-Young, Kate Ellis and Senator Wortley.

THE COMPLIANT, PARTISAN ROLE MEDIA.

It is impossible to hide a holocaust without the co-operation of the national media. One of the issues that the ACMA must now deal with is the allegation that the 7 Network knew about breaching fatalities way back in 2004. unfortunately, early network responses failed to appreciate the legal implications of their “we don’t have to be impartial” responses and only now are 7 Network legal advisors waking up to the implications posed by SA’s felony murder laws.

The media convergence review panel is also treading carefully after having been ambushed with both verbal and written submissions about the ultra partisan ‘we shouldn’t be subject to any laws’ attitude of the national media which only served to highlight the critical role played by the media in dumping on welfare recipients whilst actively concealing the death toll caused by breaching activity.

WE LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES..

There are so many victims of breaching and other welfare rip-offs that compensation payments will result in a significant transfer of our national wealth to the nation’s most impoverished community sector.

That should be interesting!

If just 50% of these people deliberately vote for the Greens and/or independent candidates and vote for the ALP and the Coalition last of all, then it could be decades before either the ALP or the Coalition ever get to form a majority government.

THE BLAME GAME.

Disasters are never the consequence of one single factor. Breaching legislation, performance indicator targets, Tony Abbott’s “Industrial manslaughter” comments, the honesty of Neil Skill, the incredible cowardice of AFP and ACMA investigators, the bias of the 7 Network and other mass media organizations, Hank Jongen’s desire to be a national personality, Tanya Slibersek’s incredible stupidity, and even my pig headed stubbornness, are just a tiny fraction of the factors that underpin the national disaster that we are headed for at full speed while Julia and Tony squabble of the top job. Talk about arranging the deck chairs whilst the ship sinks. Our nation really does deserve better leadership, especially given that we mug taxpayers are no longer paying peanuts.

Breaching legislation was big mistake by big people, i.e. politicians. However, the decision to hide the consequences of breaching legislation involved thousands of little decision by little people, i.e. electorate office staff who decided that the ‘boss’ really did not need to know about the awful news. “After all, what he/she does not know can’t hurt them can it?

GOING DOWN.

Enjoy the ride, because some things never change and there aren’t going to be enough ‘lifeboats’ when the chilly waters of accountability start to sink the ship. Consequently, some of the self serving passengers in federal parliament will be going down with the ship. Politicians, public servants, political advisors and even members of the press, will all be dragged down. Hopefully, this time it will most be the first class mob rather than the third class workers who go down with the ship.