The Robodebt Royal Commission recommended prosecutions for the Coalition criminals behind the illegal welfare hunt.

In this article from 2017, Eleanor Green, one of the brave victims who spoke out about the scheme, shared her experience of receiving a Centrelink debt notice.

I AM ONE of the lucky people who have received a false debt notice from Centrelink.

The letter states:

We have completed our review of your employment income details and made a decision to change the amount you were entitled to receive.

You might notice it does not say I received more than I was entitled to. Rather, the Government has changed their mind about how much to pay me after the fact.

The debt notices scandal, or should I say scam, has been blamed on faulty government technology. When I received the notice, I was not surprised. It just seems typical of the Government, with its expertise in combining bullying and incompetence. The notice refers to a period over five years ago, when I was working casually as a checkout operator at Coles and I diligently reported my income at the time on a fortnightly basis.

Over the past six months, almost 200,000 debt notices have been delivered. They continue to be sent out at up to 20,000 per week, which is approximately the same amount that was sent for the whole of 2015. Meanwhile, Centrelink seems to be in no hurry to rectify the problem. There are plans to send out 1.7 million debt notices, in order to grab back $4 billion from welfare recipients.

Pressure on the Government to do something about it is hi...

A documentary lifting the lid on secrets surrounding the Fukushima nuclear disaster exposes the terrifying dangers of nuclear power, writes Karl Grossman.

A NEW documentary titled The Fukushima Disaster: The Hidden Side of the Story is a powerful, moving, informative film that is superbly made. Directed and edited by Philippe Carillo, it is among the strongest ever made on the deadly dangers of nuclear technology. 

Australians featured in the film are Dr Helen Caldicott, former president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and John Keane, professor of politics at the University of Sydney. Carillo is a resident of the nation of Vanuatu, 1,750 kilometres northeast of Australia.

The documentary begins with the words of U.S. President John F Kennedy from 1961:

Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by an accident, or miscalculation or by madness.

It then goes to the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan after it was struck by a tsunami. Its backup diesel generators kicked in but did not run for long, notes the documentary. That led to three of the six plant reactors exploding and theres video of this releasing an unpreceded amount of nuclear radiation into the air.

Fukushima is the worlds largest ever industrial catastrophe, then says Professor John Keane. He says there was no emergency plan and, as to the owner of Fukushima, Tokyo Electric Power Company (...

As the FIFA Womens World Cup draws near and national teams begin to descend on us, it is imperative we see beyond the jerseys and anthems and understand that female athletes are women deserving of support on and off the field.

In 2009, an author and an economist published a book together called Soccernomics, which was hailed as being soccers answer to Moneyball a book based on the data of the game.

In their book, the two allude to the fact that statistically, the English Premier League has more transfers from Scandinavia than it does from Latin America, despite the fact that Latin American players are more widely known for their talent and skill.

The reason, according to them, is that time and experience have shown that Latin American players adapt poorly to the culture in the UK, which is a prerequisite to performing well at any club within the English Premier League.

The authors write:

Latin Americans dont speak English, dont like cold weather and dont tend to understand the core traditions of English football, such as drinking twenty pints of beer in a night. Few Latin Americans adjust easily to English football.

 

Instead of Latin Americans, English clubs traditionally bought Scandinavians. On average, Scandinavians are worse footballers than Latin Americans, but they are very familiar with English, cold weather and twenty pints of beer.

The point that the authors, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, had set out to make is that players cannot simply be seen as merchandise and transferring players from club to club and country to country is not as simple as buying the best players and expecting them to perform.

Players, as obvious as it sounds, are people and the way that they are able (or unable) to adapt to a new culture, country and climate has a statistically proven effect on...

The Federal Government is currently facing challenges that could see a crash in student visa numbers, resulting in a costly aftermath, writes Dr Abul Rizvi.

IN THE PAST 40 years, whenever student visa numbers have increased very rapidly, this has come to an end with an almighty crash with far-reaching consequences for both students and education providers. Often, the Australian taxpayer had to pay to clean up the situation.

It happened in 1989-90. Addressing the aftermath of that took almost a decade. It happened again in 2008-09 and again in 2019-20.

While each of these crashes was triggered by particular events, the broad ingredients were much the same: a very rapid rise in student visa holders associated with a strong labour market and lax regulation; a high level of fraud in the caseload; a rise in questionable education providers delivering low-quality courses designed to enable students to do little study and mainly work; and education and migration agents misleading students about the cost of living in Australia and the pathways to permanent residence.

In mid-2023, the Albanese Government faces a very similar set of circumstances plus a few additional challenges that past governments did not have to deal with. The question is whether the Albanese Government can manage this situation leading to a soft landing or whether we will have another painful crash.

The number of students in Australia has over the past 18 months increased at an unprecedented rate after the re-opening of international borders (see Chart 1). The total number of students in Australia at end May 2023 was 610,065. While that was still below the peak of 633,816 in September 2019, that peak will be easily surpassed in the next few months.

We also need to take into account...

Plastic is in the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink. How does it get there and what does it mean for human health? Erica Cirino reports.

THE AIR IS plasticised and we are no better protected from it outdoors than indoors. Minuscule plastic fibres, fragments, foam and films are shed from plastic stuff and are perpetually floating into and free-falling down on us from the atmosphere. Rain flushes micro- and nanoplastics out of the sky back to Earth. Plastic-filled snow is accumulating in urban areas like Bremen, Germany and remote regions like the Arctic and Swiss Alps.

Wind and storms carry particles shed from plastic items and debris through the air for dozens, even hundreds, of miles before depositing them back on Earth. Dongguan, Paris, London and other metropolises around the world are enveloped in air that is perpetually permeated by tiny plastic particles small enough to lodge themselves in human lungs.

Toxic tyres

Urban regions are especially full of what scientists believe is one of the most hazardous particulate pollution varieties: synthetic tyre debris. As a result of the normal friction caused by brake pads and asphalt roads, and of weathering and wear, these tyres shed plastic fragments, metals, and other toxic materials. Like the plastic used to manufacture consumer items and packaging, synthetic tyres contain a manufacturers proprietary blend of poisons meant to improve a plastic products appearance and performance.

Tyre particles from the billions of cars, trucks, bikes, tractors and other vehicles moving across the world escape into air, soil, and water bodies. Scientists are just beginning to understand the grave danger. In 2020, researchers in Washington State determined that the presence of 6PPD-quinone, a byproduct of rubber-stabilising chemical 6PPD, was playing a major factor i...

Australias security agencies must watch closely the speech and actions of Don Jr and expel him at the earliest opportunity, as Alan Austin reports.

*Also listen to the "https://open.spotify.com/episode/6pLhcQyjFVK1rxsAcgAzQe" target= "_blank">HERE.

DONALD TRUMP JR, the oldest son of former U.S. President Donald Trump, finally has his visa to visit Australia. There was some doubt the Albanese Government would grant this after an online petition garnered more than 20,000 signatures.

The petition simply read:

Donald Trump Jr is an illegal drug-taking bigoted person who should not be allowed to enter Australia for the purpose of earning himself and possibly his father any Campaign Contributions. 

 

Ban him from this country.

Trump family criminality

Surprisingly, the petition doesnt mention Don Juniors role in the Trump Organisation, arguably the worlds most notorious criminal operation.

In January this year, the property development group was found guilty of multiple fraud charges arising from a 15-year scheme to evade taxes payable on senior executive incomes. The corporation was fined the maximum of US$1.6 million (AU$2.4 million). Chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg copped five months in gaol.

Those convictions came after decades of adverse judgments for illegal activities. The Trumps were...

"Know all Rons" long defence of Ben Roberts-Smith met nods of agreement and encouraged him to pause, stretch his back and deepen his voice.

So there you go lets call it for what it is tall poppy syndrome the bloke won a Victoria Cross so of course he is innocent. I am going to stand with Ben Roberts-Smith.

"Hear hears" all round and Mick took a sip of his schooner:

You are spot on as usual, Ron. Lets drink to that.

Four schooners froze mid air and four stares were trained on Bazzas stationary glass.

Bazza broke the silence with a clearing of his throat:

Nah The bloke was not even on trial. In fact, it was a defamation suit he initiated and it backfired big time. It went for 110 days and a judgement of 736 pages. It gets summarised and tossed around in a media frenzy and we all become instant experts.

An awkward silence before "know all Ron" leaned in:

So youre against a war hero, Bazza? Bloody disappointing!

Some audible "tut tuts" spurred on "know all Ron".

The system is at fault. The same applies to the ICAC finding on poor Gladys Berejiklian

Nods of agreement and the conversation became animated about the former Premier. Her performance during the bushfires and COVID-19 lockdowns praised and her choice of boyfriend identified as her only fault.

Mick held up the conversation and fixed Bazza in his stare:

Well lets raise a glass to Gladys innocence.

Bazza again refused and Micks face reddened:

Nah Mick. Again, its a 700 odd page ruling after months of consideration of evidence we only get a glimpse of I mean whats the point of a legal system based on precedent, hopefully well considered laws, rights of appeal and highly trained legal minds or an ICAC with sweeping...

Tributes to writer Gabrielle Carey, who died in early May, are expressing great sadness. As her former mentee, Im as angry as I am sad.

Most Australians may not heard of Gabrielle Carey, but many Australians have heard of Puberty Blues, the iconic book she co-wrote with Kathy Lette. It was a popular film in 1981 and a TV series in 2012.

My teenage sister and I were captivated by the book and film, because as surfie chicks on the Gold Coast, we related to the chauvinist, shallow, destructive culture of the 1980s surf scene.

I became a journalist and roughly twenty years on, received an Australian Society of Authors mentorship with Gabrielle to work on my manuscript. It was an emerging writers dream to be mentored by one of the authors I admired the most.

The days we spent working on my novel at her big dining table in Sydney in the late 90s are etched in my memory. It was early days for computers and we worked energetically with the hard copy, cutting up pages and restructuring the entire story. One day we went for 10 hours without a break. Gabrielle supplied chocolate cake and plunger coffee and a generous amount of her time. Her wit, warmth and flat out technical competence made a difficult process fun.

She was a champion of my manuscript and helped me believe in myself as a creative writer. She never, ever shamed me for my naivet about creative writing and publishing. Gabrielle also put me in touch with her literary agent, who was an amazing support and together we got the manuscript to a quality where the leading publishing houses in Australia read it. They said it was fine writing and passed. One chapter of my novel was published in an anthology of short stories and broadcast on the ABC Short Story program.

I was okay with that outcome for a first novel, though I thought of myself as a failed creative writer until a copyright fee alerted me that a leading university has for years been using that chapter from my novel to teach creative writing.

Gabrielle contacted me on LinkedIn recently to ask how my writing was going, but I missed the message. It was a horrible shock to read she had died suddenly&r...

If there was an instance of a hideous failing in government policy and its cowardly implementation by the public service, Australias vicious Robodebt scheme is one of them.

Robodebt was a scheme developed by the Department of Human Services (DHS) and submitted as a budget measure by the then-Minister for Social Services, Scott Morrison, in 2015. Its express purpose: to recover claimed overpayments from welfare recipients stretching back to the 2010-11 financial year. The automated scheme used a deeply flawed income averaging method to assess income and benefit entitlements, yielding inaccurate results. 

Vitally, the assumption there was that recipients had stable income through the financial year.  The scheme also failed to comply with the income calculation provisions of the Social Security Act 1991 (Cth).

The results were disastrous for the victims in receipt of crude, harrying debt notices. The scheme induced despair and mental ruin. It led to various instances of suicide. It saw a concerted government assault on the poor and vulnerable. A remorseless campaign was waged by such unwholesome types as the former Human Services Minister, Alan Tudge, ever keen to libel the undeserving. 

Media outlets such as A Current Affair were more than happy to provide platforms for the demonising effort. We will find you, he told the program, we will track you down, and you will have to repay those debts,...