GreensBlog

'Intervention' on ABC1

TimNorton — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:46:19 +1000

A collaboration between Tangentyere Research and filmmaker Vincent Lamberti, Intervention looks at the impacts of the Federal Government's Northern Territory Emergency Response into Aboriginal Communities, otherwise known as the 'Intervention', from the perspective of the people who live under the legislation day in day out. It was the Winner of the Documentary Australia Award 2008 for Best Documentary raising awareness around an important social issue.

Intervention will screen on ABC1 this Sunday June 21st at 1.30pm

For more details visit the Message Stick website.

It will be repeated on ABC2 this Monday June 22nd at 5.00pm and again on ABC1 next Friday June 26th at 6.00pm

The TV version going to air is an edited down half-hour. For anyone interested in the full length version, it can be purchased online through Ronin Films.

Climate Change Rally

TimNorton — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:21:16 +1000

On Saturday 13th June, a national rally is being held in most capital cities around Australia. All five Greens Senators will be speaking at or attending rallies across Australia tomorrow calling for the CPRS to be scrapped and replaced with swift action to reduce emissions, drive renewable energy and create green jobs.

Bob will address the Melbourne Rally, 1pm, State Library
Christine will address the Hobart Rally, 12 noon, Parliament Lawns
Rachel will address the Perth Rally, with Scott also attending, 12.30 pm, Forrest Place, Perth
Sarah will address the Adelaide Rally, 11am, Victoria Square

We're also expecting large numbers of Greens members to be in attendance. Full details of the rallies can be found at www.climaterally.org and resources and details about the Greens' involvement can be found at www. greens.org.au/resources

Bob has also done a short video piece:

Hope to see many of you there!

ARACY Conference

TimNorton — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:25:43 +1000

The Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) Conference is coming up soon, and may interest some GreensBlog readers.

ARACY is a national non-profit organisation working to create better futures for all Australia's children and young people.

This Conference will focus on how we can best learn from one another and work together to innovate and take action to improve outcomes for young Australians. The Conference aims to build links between international and national experts, researchers, policy makers, practitioners, social entrepreneurs, marketers, business and financiers. It will explore pathways to success, and showcase preventive innovations that are improving the lives of children and young people.

Confirmed speakers include:

The Honourable Alan Milburn, MP, UK
Professor Fiona Stanley AC, ARACY Executive Director, ARACY Board Member
Dr Ken Henry, Secretary to the Treasury
Professor Mick Dodson AM, Director of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies at the Australian National University, and the 2009 Australian of the Year

Professor Fiona Stanley AC, ARACY Executive Director, ARACY Board Chair:

"The ARACY Conference is tackling the big and complex issues affecting today's children and young people. We need input from all sectors and disciplines with an interest in improving outcomes for our young people to find sustainable solutions. If we don't respond to these challenges and start to really seriously address them across the whole nation, then we will be looking at our generation being the last generation where children live longer than their parents."

Please visit the website to view the full speaker listing, Conference aims and the program: www.aracyconference.org.au

Latest info from Senate Estimates

TimNorton — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:37:15 +1000

We're right in the middle of Senate Estimates, and are slowly picking out the best bits to put up here on the website. For the uninitiated, twice each year, usually in May and November, the estimates of proposed annual expenditure of government departments and authorities are referred by the Senate to the relevant legislation committees for examination and report. At the estimates hearings, Senators may directly question Ministers and public officials not only about the details of proposed expenditure but also about the objectives, operations and efficiency of the programs for which they are responsible.

Picking out some of the more interesting reads:

Scott grilled ASIO representatives over phone tapping and surveillance.

He also continued digging into aspects of the Government's proposed internet filtering plan.

Rachel asked a serious of questions about the recent closure of Land & Water Australia, which you can read here, here and here. This was then followed up the next day with questions about other cuts to agricultural research.

And continuing on our campaign against GM canola trials, some questions here.

We'll put some more of these up as they come. In the meantime, for the politics geeks out there, you can watch live here, see the transcript production here, and get involved in the discussion in the comments below or on our forums.

7:30 Report on Fremantle by-election

TimNorton — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:41:46 +1000

Congratulations go to Adele Carles and the Greens (WA) for their recent victory in the Fremantle by-election.

The ABC's 7:30 Report last night produced a feature story about the by-election - you can watch it on the ABC's website here.

Transcript:

Broadcast: 18/05/2009

Reporter: Hamish Fitzsimmons

On the weekend political history was made in Fremantle, the safe Labor seat fell to the Greens in the lower house of Western Australia's parliament. Fremantle has been held by Labor for the past 85 years, but on Saturday the alp received a thorough drubbing in a by-election, with the greens candidate taking 44 per cent of the primary vote.

KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: On the same weekend Western Australians knocked back daylight saving in a record fourth referendum, political history was also being made with a safe Labor seat falling to the Greens in the Lower House of Western Australia's Parliament.

Fremantle has been held by Labor for the past 85 years, but on Saturday the ALP received a thorough drubbing in a by-election, with the Greens' candidate taking 44 per cent of the primary vote.

The result may also have implications for Labor federally with the Greens saying they'll now target inner city Melbourne and Sydney seats, where their vote has also been on the rise. Hamish Fitzsimmons reports from Perth.

ADELE CARLES, FREEMANTLE MP-ELECT: It was The Greens versus the Labor candidate in their heartland seat of Fremantle. It's known as the jewel for the Labor Party.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS, REPORTER: For 85 years it's been a bastion of the ALP. Now the West Australian seat of Fremantle will go down in history as only the second electorate to elect a Greens MP to the State Lower House - a first in WA.

Labor's vote haemorrhaged with the Greens grabbing 44 per cent of the primary, and it's a result with national implications, according to political analyst, Peter Van Onsolen.

DR PETER VAN ONSELEN, POLITICS, COWAN UNIVERSITY: The Green Party is either making the seats like Melbourne ports or Sydney or possibly Fremantle marginal Green seats or at least marginal seats outside the normal two-party process.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: The by election was triggered by the early retirement of former Labor leader and minister, Jim McGinty, who held Fremantle for 19 years. In last year's State election Mr McGinty nearly lost to the Greens, so when a by-election was called in April, the Greens say they knew there was mood for change.

ADELE CARLES: Jim McGinty only got across that line with that very clear Greens' preference, but he ignored or Labor ignored the Green mandate in that vote.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Labor's candidate was long-time Fremantle mayor Peter Tagliaferre, who the party expected to maintain the ALP's unbroken grip on the seat. Mr Tagliaferre was unavailable today, but the result has prompted some Labor heavyweights such as former Premier Peter Dowding to question the Party's pre-selection process.

PETER DOWDING, FORMER WA PREMIER: Peter Tagliaferre is a nice bloke, worked hard as the mayor of Fremantle, but has a lot of enemies and has - there are a lot of people in Fremantle who would have voted Labor, but wouldn't vote for Tagliaferre, and I think the Labor Party simply didn't understand the local electorate.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: The Fremantle by-election has raised the obvious question about the leadership of Labor's Eric Ripper. Ironically he believes the absence of a Liberal candidate cost the ALP dearly.

ERIC RIPPER, WA LABOR LEADER: It was not possible for Labor to outweigh the combined effect of the Liberal votes and the Green votes. We had a circumstance where strong Liberal voters decided to punish Labor by going to the Greens in the absence of a Liberal candidate.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: As the nation's newest Greens MP gets used to her workplace, Adele Carles has a different take on the reasons for her victory.

ADELE CARLES: The Labor Party has moved so far to the right they've almost become, you know, part of that - they've metamorphed into that Liberal heartland area.

SENATOR BOB BROWN, GREENS LEADER: There's a message here for Canberra with elections coming up next year. Don't treat the populous as environmental mugs.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: The growing Green vote in inner city Federal seats is going to be difficult for Labor to manage without taking big risks, according to Peter Van Onsolen.

DR PETER VAN ONSOLEN: If they respond to what's happened with Green voting in the inner city, then they risk losing mainstream voters and possibly government. If they don't respond, they put themselves in a situation where they could lose high profile candidates in inner city electorates; people like Lindsay Tanner in Melbourne or Tanya Plibersek in Sydney.

ADELE CARLES: When the Green primary vote gets up over 20 per cent, the Greens become serious contenders to win seats. So in the next federal election we're looking at Melbourne and Sydney, that inner heartland area with a very high Green vote. And if Labor don't watch it, those seats will go Green.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: In the light of the Greens' comprehensive win in Fremantle, some observers say the traditional political divide is a thing of the past in many of the inner city seats the ALP has never had to fight for, until now.

DR PETER VAN ONSOLEN: The Labor Party's never had to worry about the Liberal Party in these seats, but they do now have to worry about the Greens.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Hamish Fitzsimmons reporting from Perth.

Protecting those most in need

RachelSiewert — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:12:46 +1100

The global economic crisis has serious implications for the nation and particularly my home state of Western Australia. While there is no denying that action from the Federal Government is required if we are to head off the storm, this must be targeted to the needs of the community.

Western Australia is uniquely vulnerable to the global economic melt-down. Our economic growth has been driven by the mining boom and while housing prices and the cost of living have continued to climb, wages outside of the resources sector have stagnated. Once the mining bubble bursts, the state's economy could quite possibly nose-dive. More jobs will be lost and housing prices will drop. Those that bought houses when the market was buoyant may be forced to sell them when it is sagging. Loss of jobs and a falling housing market will mean hardship for thousands of Western Australian families.

This is the unfortunate consequence of Western Australia's boom and bust style economy. What we need is an economy that is built on jobs that are sustainable in the long term, not vulnerable to the ups and downs of one particular sector. By investing in the future, we can steadily grow a new, greener economy of the 21st century, a resilient and 'shock-proof' economy that isn't dependent on running down our resource base and stealing from future generations.

We are committing a huge amount of resources to fending off a global financial crash. While the need to do so is clear, there is a very real risk that once these resources are spent more will be hard to come by. We can expect to experience a protracted economic downturn, during which our capacity to dedicate resources to tackling other problems and investing in the industries of the future will be severely limited. Where will the money come from to invest in water infrastructure, to address climate change, to repair our natural environment, to help the most disadvantaged in our community?

As part of the committee inquiry into the Government's recent economic stimulus package, the major church welfare providers submitted a report from Access Economics. The first paragraph of the conclusion of the report said:

"Despite a period of sustained economic growth in Australia, acute pressures have mounted on certain parts of the community. Australia's two-speed economy has seen divergences in incomes across sectors, across states and across different parts of the income distribution. Evidently, Australians have not shared equally in the nation's recent economic prosperity."

In a time of economic uncertainty, we must ensure that those hit hardest by this economic crisis and most disadvantaged in our community are assisted. Prior to the impacts of the current global financial crisis (in the middle of what we were being told was an economic boom) many social service agencies, delivering frontline services to people in crisis, were reporting disturbingly high levels of unmet need. These included residential aged care, housing & homelessness, family relationship services, emergency relief and financial counselling.

During 2006/07, prior to the earliest impacts of the financial crisis, social services providers were forced to turn away over 77,000 eligible Australians seeking their support. These already overstretched services are now being strained to breaking point by the impacts of this latest crisis. In recent months service providers have reported a doubling of demand for emergency financial services across the board, with this demand quadrupling in some areas.

Last year, a support agency in Perth reported that they had to turn away a staggering 1778 people seeking emergency relief and financial counselling support, with demand growing substantially since then. As this pressure increases, it is these services that will bear the burden of providing support. These services urgently need additional funding from Government.

Unfortunately the predictions are that a lot more people are going to lose their jobs but if we can keep people in employment then there will be less impact on our social safety net, the housing market and the strength of the economy. If it costs us the same amount to keep someone in productive employment as it does on Newstart Allowance - then the better choice is to help them to continue in that job to play a productive role in the economy, delivering the goods and services that keeps the engine of the economy ticking over. Wouldn't it make more sense to invest in labour market programs?

For those unable to stay in employment they face the prospect of having to survive on the Newstart Allowance. Could you survive on $243 a week with a family to feed and a mortgage to pay? The Newstart Allowance urgently needs raising.

In a time of crisis we need to look to our social safety net. We should be targeting support services to low income earners - those who are credit limited, are struggling to get by and are thus most likely to spend any Government money immediately on the means of day-to-day life. We need to ensure we are investing in quality social infrastructure and thinking about the future.

Voices from the Cape

TimNorton — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:05:31 +1100

I'd just like to pass on some info to those of you may be interested. It's a documentary airing on ABC, and is about a Community Prophets program in the Aboriginal community of Aurukun (Cape York-far north QLD), engaging young people to make films and music.

In a nation abuzz with talk of the proposed ‘education revolution’, Voices from the Cape is an inspiring story set in the community of Aurukun. This two-part series for Message Stick documents a genuinely exciting approach to engaging young people from at-risk communities and inspiring them to use their voices again.

In April 2007, the community school in Aurukun invited David Vadiveloo to bring his unique ‘Community Prophets’ training model to engage their students. A filmmaker and former human rights lawyer, Vadiveloo says his model of working with marginalised youth can engage any group of young people in any community in the world. In Aurukun he proposed that not only would his team re-engage students with the school, but those students in his program would create 3 high quality short films for screening at a national youth festival.

For six weeks the Community Prophets team, led by Vadiveloo, worked with the community and youth of Aurukun. What transpired during the program was confronting, frustrating and emotionally raw. The young students were pushed to raise their own expectations and ultimately they proved to everyone that if they and their families are involved in the school system, they will display as much gifted and dedicated attention to their education as any young people in this country.

Voices from the Cape illustrates that the digital revolution is not simply about teaching children how to push the right buttons. Rather, it’s about opening children’s minds to the idea that these buttons can empower their communities, give them agency in their lives, a voice on the global stage, celebrate their identity, offer new possibilities for employment and, where necessary, bring attention to social issues that need to be addressed.

SCREENING TIMES:

ABC TV
Episode 1 - Sunday 22nd February / 1:30pm
Episode 2 - Sunday 1st March / 1:30pm

REPEAT SCREENING TIMES:

ABC 1 (repeat)
Episode 1 - Friday 27th February / 6pm
Episode 2 - Friday 6th March / 6pm

Thanks to Vincent for letting us know about this great project.

Throwing a lifeline to the Murray

TimNorton — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:51:09 +1100

The Greens, Coalition & independents have come together to unite in the need for immediate action on the Murray Darling Basin.

Senator Rachel Siewert (Greens spokesperson on water), Greg Hunt MP (opposition Environment Minister) & Senator Nick Xenophon (Independent) joined GetUp! National Director Simon Sheik in Canberra yesterday to call for Government action on the Water Bill and save the Murray Darling.

GetUp! presented the politicians with a petition signed by almost 50,000 Australians concerned about the Murray's future.

Mr Sheikh said that independent legal advice obtained by constitutional law expert Professor John Williams from Adelaide University suggests that the Federal Government has the power to wrest control of the waterway from the states.

"Experts suggest there is a way and what's more Liberal, National, Greens and Independent politicians have shown today is that there is also the political will to rescue Australia's biggest river," Mr Sheikh said.

"Our message now to Federal Government is: throw the Murray River a lifeline, adopt our plan for one set of rules for one river and prevent the nation's food bowl from turning into a dust bowl.

"We cannot afford to let the situation of the country's most important river system to get any more direr.

"We need a Federal Government takeover to protect the future of the river's health and the livelihoods of the people who depend on it. We need Federal Government to throw the Murray River this critical lifeline now."

Rachel had this to say on the Water Bill:

"The Greens believe that limited water resources within the Murray-Darling Basin need to be retained within the Basin. We do not support any new extractions outside the Basin and believe that we need to progressively wean outsider users off the system," said Senator Siewert.

"Victoria's investments in irrigation efficiency to 'save' water for the Sugarloaf Pipeline is modernisation activity that should be undertaking anyway to address over-allocation. The solution to Melbourne's perceived water problems lie in Melbourne, not in the Murray Darling Basin."

"There is only a limited amount that can be recovered this way and all of it is urgently needed to help basin communities and threatened ecosystems deal with the impacts of climate change. Basin communities are hurting, and precious ecosystems are literally dying for a drink."

The GetUp petition reads:

Recover and release 500 gigalitres of water into the river system by the end of the year, and 4000 gigalitres overall to prevent our food bowl turning into a dust bowl.

Create an emergency Interim Basin management plan, including a focus on the Coorong and Lower Lakes. This could be done in a matter of weeks, as a precursor to establishing a truly independent authority that is not held to ransom by State governments' veto power

Establish a national freshwater reserve system to protect rivers, wetlands and estuaries of high value to the river. As a first step, urgently intervene to save the Murray River Red Gums, the river's "green lungs" suffering from State inaction.

See more photos of the event here

Swiss Cheese won’t solve the Murray Darling crisis

TimNorton — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:14:05 +1100

There are two fundamental problems with the current approach to reform in the Murray Darling Basin:

Basin communities have not been part of the consultation and negotiation process for the new arrangements. The only key stakeholders from the Rudd Government's point of view have been the State Governments.
Commonwealth investment in water buyback, infrastructure improvements and structural adjustment are being rolled out slowly in an ad hoc fashion, with no consideration for the social, economic, environmental or structural impacts of where water is bought, or irrigation infrastructure investments are located.

What we need is a targeted and integrated approach.

The Greens believe the solution lies in giving basin communities the tools and support they need to plan for the future.

This is why we're calling for the Government to move away from the current ‘bitsy' approach to spending the $12.9 billion Water for the Future fund of buying water back from individual farmers - in favour of an approach that prioritises funding for integrated planning, where groups of farmers and irrigation districts get together and map out where they will upgrade irrigation structure versus where they will sell back water and use structural adjustment funds to change to other crops and land uses.

Their current approach is delivering what ACF's Dr Arlene Buchan described to the Senate inquiry as a "Swiss cheese" effect - with holes in irrigation infrastructure where individual irrigators have been forced out by financial pressures... making it harder for their neighbours to maintain existing irrigation infrastructure... and making it even harder for them to improve it.

This "Swiss cheese" approach increases both the risk of stranded assets and the likelihood of the economies of local communities dropping below sustainability thresholds.

The Greens do not want to see some of our smartest and most efficient farmers walking off productive land because of the uncertainty... or because of financial difficulties that have nothing to do with the profitability of their enterprises, and everything to do with the costs of credit at a time of extremely low water allocations.

Taking a strategic approach to targeting infrastructure investment based on planning at the irrigation district level (with the support of the best available science on its future prospects) is the best way to minimise this risk, while at the same time helping to build community engagement at a time where community support is at its most valuable.

This is why the Greens are putting forward the MDB 2010-2050 plan.

Its aim is to develop a vision for the Basin in 2050 of a vibrant community, sustained by a healthy river system that delivers food, fibre and ecosystem services to the nation - with all the plans underway by 2010.

We are calling on the Commonwealth to:

Resource and support community planning as a matter of priority;
Enable communities to produce plans which integrate infrastructure investment, water sales and structural adjustment, and
Provide incentives and support for them to do so;
Give integrated community plans priority in assessing funding applications;
Empower the Murray Darling Basin Authority to develop an interim, non-binding Basin Plan, that suggests likely sustainable water use targets for individual catchments, as quickly as possible;
Create community planning support teams and resources - to produce decision-support tools including district maps with overlays of relevant information.

Many of the witnesses to the recent Senate inquiry also backed calls to speed up investment in infrastructure through an integrated and targeted approach - including NFF, ACF, NSW Irrigators, Prof. Mike Young and the Bondi Group.

The Greens believe that a more consultative and democratic approach will generate a fairer, more robust and sustainable outcome.

The kind of perverse outcomes we've seen to date from the intergovernmental agreement process reflect the narrow self-interest of the States... and wouldn't have survived an open public debate:

like a new pipeline to extract an additional 75 Gigalitres for Melbourne from the system at a time of crisis;
a definition of 'critical human need' that is not restricted to the core survival requirements of drinking water, health and sanitation but can include piggeries and golf courses;
or a plan to return extraction to sustainable levels that won't come into operation until 2014 (or 2019 in Victoria).

The Greens will be moving amendments in the Senate this week to tackle each of these problems... so stay tuned.

Forward with Workplace Relations

RachelSiewert — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:19:22 +1100

There are increasing concerns that the Government's Forward with Fairness legislation will not be delivering sustainable fair workplace laws but rather will be serving up Work Choices-lite.

The Greens have already argued the award modernisation process will result in a deterioration of minimum conditions of work, particularly affecting workers who are not able to access genuine collective bargaining.

On 12 November 2008 I read out in the Senate the stories of women workers finding life difficult under the current laws and wondering what life will be like under Forward with Fairness. The Greens strongly believe the voices of disadvantaged workers must be heard in the upcoming debate.

The recently released Australia@Work report found that more Australian workers are struggling to make ends meet, one third of workers are outside the protection of workplace laws and that Australia continues to have some of the worst working hours in the OECD. It also found that awards continue to be relevant to many workers.

Will Forward with Fairness provide the framework to increase job security, give workers more control over their working hours and provide sufficient protection for lower paid workers?

Without retaining a strong award system, without providing for arbitration and by allowing the deterioration of minimum conditions, the answer is no.

The Greens are determined to put Forward with Fairness to the test in the Senate.

Safe Work Australia
The Greens combined with Senator Xenophon and the opposition to make important changes to the Safe Work Australia Bill in the Senate. The Bill establishes Safe Work Australia to draft model OHS laws, regulations and codes of practice.

I delivered a speech in the Senate which outlines the Greens' key concerns with the Bill. Our approach was to follow the internationally accepted practice that OHS regulation works best when developed through a genuine tripartite and independent process.

The amendments passed in the Senate restored the former representative numbers for employees and employers and removed excessive interference in the operations of Safe Work Australia by the Minister and the Ministerial Council. The Government has inexplicably rejected all of the Senate's amendments.

Campaign to abolish the ABCC
On 28 August 2008 I introduced into the Senate the Building and Construction Industry (Restoring Workplace Rights) Bill 2008. The Bill repeals the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act and thereby abolishes the ABCC.

The Greens have consistently stated that it is an affront to democracy to have workplace laws that take away the right to silence, deny people their choice of lawyer, provide powers to compel evidence with the possibility of jail for not complying, and impose severe restrictions on the rights of workers to organise and bargain collectively.

There is not and never was any justification for targeting building and construction workers with such laws. Unfortunately the current government, like the previous one, doesn't agree.

But, the Greens will keep fighting in the Parliament to repeal these laws and abolish the ABCC before 2010, and fight to ensure that Fair Work Australia does not have any similar punitive powers.

Star Chamber now under review

RachelSiewert — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:10:50 +1000

One of the many travesties of the Howard Government was the establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) and the enacting of the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act 2005 (BCII).

Together these represent John Howard's industrial relations agenda at its most extreme - explicitly anti-worker and using the power of the State against individuals in an ideological pursuit.

The Australian Greens have been consistent critics of both the legislation and the ABCC itself. We have never believed in the necessity for industry specific workplace relations regulation of this nature in the building and construction industry, which is why the Greens have introduced a Bill to repeal the BCII Act and abolish the ABCC. We have also successfully referred our Bill to the Education, Employment & Workplace Relations Committee for a full and proper Senate Inquiry.

Many of the details of the BCII Act and the powers and actions of the ABCC have remained out of the public spotlight but these are quite extraordinary laws. Only in the building and construction industry can individual workers be fined up to $22 000 for taking industrial action defined by the legislation as unlawful. This is materially different from other workers taking industrial action who risk being sued but not fined.

I labelled the ABCC a "star chamber" back in 2005 after hearing stories from ordinary workers about the bulling and intimidation they and their families were facing from the ABCC.

These stories included ABCC inspectors, who appear to have waited until a worker has set off to work to serve his wife or partner with a notice while pointing out in a heavy-handed manner that the worker is liable to a large fine or a jail term if they don't cooperate fully. I heard about workers being invited to have an informal conversation by an ABCC inspector, only to learn that the discussion has been recorded without their knowledge or consent. I heard about workers being separated from their legal counsel in ABCC hearings and workers and their legal counsel being denied the right to particulars about the matter they were being questioned on.

The ABCC has coercive powers to compel a person to provide information,
produce documents, or attend to answer questions at an examination. Persons face fines or a gaol term if they do not comply with a request from the ABCC. Lawyers have a limited role and the Commission determine its own practices with a high level of secrecy. There are not too many laws in Australia that deny individuals the right of silence or access to a lawyer of their choice.

These workers are being denied basic democratic rights to procedural fairness and natural justice that all of us take for granted. These workers - who have not been charged with anything and may only be suspected of knowing about an offence committed by someone else - are being treated with fewer rights than someone who has committed a very serious criminal offence.

It is not appropriate to regulate the relationship between employers and employees in a quasi-criminal way. If there is criminality on a building site it should be dealt with by the criminal law.
There have been hundreds if not thousands of workers investigated by the ABCC, with many required to attend hearings and being threatened with gaol if they do not attend and answer questions. Now Noel Washington is facing trial with the prospect of a gaol sentence for refusing to answer questions about what happened at a union meeting.
It is all very well to construct a narrative of overbearing unions creating havoc in the building industry, but these laws attack a bogyman through individual workers and their families.

A potential consequence of the operations of the ABCC is that building workers will be too intimidated to speak out about health and safety issues for fear of being investigated. In an industry that has such a high rate of workplace injuries and death, any laws or regulations that provide a disincentive to speak out about safety issues are unacceptable.

The International Labor Organisation has repeatedly commented that the BCII Act breaches international labor conventions to which Australia is a signatory. The ILO is a tri-partite body and it has found these laws breach the right to organise and collective bargain and the right to freedom of association.

It is almost inconceivable that an ALP Government would consider keeping such punitive and ideologically driven laws. Yet they are taking their time in getting rid of them and are keeping up the rhetoric of a 'strong cop on the beat' when talking about the proposed Specialist Division within Fair Work Australia to replace the ABCC.

It is hoped that Justice Murray Wilcox can bring some sense to this issue in his report on the creation of the Specialist Division for the building and construction industry. He is considering the scope of investigations of the proposed new Division and the powers it may require as well as the rights of persons will be subject to its investigations.

While the Greens do not believe such a specialist division is necessary or appropriate, we would expect that the ALP Government would at the very least scale back the powers and the scope of investigations of the replacement ABCC. Furthermore, we would expect this division of Fair Work Australia to cultivate a culture respectful of workers rights, rather than the aggressive bullyboy tactics of the current ABCC.

The ABCC is an affront to our democracy. Sometimes it seems almost old-fashioned to talk about the human rights of workers in a time when our public narrative is so focused on our economic indicators. But human rights do matter. They matter whether it is refugees being sent to detention centres, whether it is so-called anti-terror laws or whether it is our rights at work.

By referring the our Bill to repeal the BCII Act to a Senate Inquiry, we have started the process of proper scrutiny and review of this unfair legislation. In particular, we are very keen to focus on the powers of the ABCC, the conduct of the commission and its inspectors in the interpretation and exercise of their powers and the extent to which the BCII Act breaches internationally recognised labour standards.

The Greens will not shrink from defending the basic human rights of workers including those in the building and construction industry. The ABCC should be abolished and the building industry regulated just like any other industry -- in a fair and just manner that balances the needs of productivity and the economy with the health, safety and democratic rights of workers.

Award modernisation - what’s going on?

RachelSiewert — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:16:18 +1000

This piece was first published yesterday by Larvatus Prodeo.

Massive upheaval is occurring to Australia’s standard employment conditions and minimum wages, with little to no understanding or public attention.
The ‘award modernisation’ process currently underway in the AIRC, following a request from the Workplace Relations Minister, Julia Gillard, will impact on all Australian workers … either directly through loss of conditions or indirectly through lowering the base from which agreements can be made.

While the Rudd Government likes to compare its IR policy with Work Choices (…so it can say things are slightly better than they might have been), a better way of evaluating their policy is to look at the industrial relations system that existed in Australia before the aberration of Work Choices. On this test the Government is failing to provide adequate protection for workers.

Surprisingly, when it comes to stripping awards, this ALP Government is going further than Howard and Reith were able to (before the Coalition had the numbers in the Senate) in reducing award conditions and fundamentally changing the nature of the award system.

The award system, while not perfect, provided a comprehensive safety net of wages and conditions which for a century underpinned the rights of workers and preserved the relative equity of Australian society.

The term ‘modernisation’ hides the reality of a reduced safety net, continuing AWAs by another name (ITEAs) … and the politicisation of our minimum standards of work.

The key changes being made to the award system by the ALP government are:

Reducing the number of conditions in awards to 10 (awards often have up to 30 conditions);
Reducing the number of awards;
Introducing a ‘flexibility clause’ into all awards;
Ensuring the AIRC will only be able to alter awards in accordance with a request from the Minister, or at four yearly reviews; and
Removing the ability of the AIRC to hear and determine cases on appropriate award conditions.

The reduction in the numbers of awards and the number of conditions in each award will lead inevitably to a reduced safety net, with some workers not only losing actual conditions but also having their safety net conditions watered down. There is no other result possible – some workers will lose conditions, including take home pay.

The ‘flexibility clauses’ which are mandatory in all awards (and collective agreements) effectively create an ‘AWA-Lite’. They will allow employers to enter into individual agreements to alter certain award matters, including penalty rates, overtime rates and allowances. We have been told that these agreements will be subject to an overall no-disadvantage test, although there is no word yet on how this will be enforced.

This is a worrying development for a couple of crucial reasons.

Firstly, award workers are by definition low-paid and face significant barriers to participating in fair bargaining (…that is why they are award workers and not on another form of agreement). These clauses operate like AWAs for these workers, and given that they can affect penalty and overtime rates, they can potentially lead to even less take-home pay.

While Work Choices AWAs received the most attention, AWAs existed before Work Choices, and used a similar no-disadvantage test as that in the proposed flexibility clauses. Prior to Work Choices, AWAs weren’t used very much across most of Australia, but we picked up more in my home state of WA after the Court Government’s state-based individual workplace contracts were overturned.

The evidence shows that these pre-Work Choices AWAs also led to reduced conditions and take home pay for workers.

Secondly, individual agreements undermine the safety net. Can we really continue to call it a safety net when key conditions can be bargained away?

There are serious questions of fairness about these clauses and how they will work. Most of the conditions Australian workers enjoy in the workplaces today came about through the award system – annual leave, sick leave, carers leave, parental leave, penalty rates, overtime rates, termination and redundancy rights and pay … and more recently, rights to flexible hours on return to work after maternity leave.

The value of the AIRC determining contemporary community standards though award ‘test cases’ lay with the open, transparent and independent way in which they were processed, with stakeholders able to bring application for changes that were then evaluated by the Commission.

Awards will now become static instruments. However, our workplaces and our society will remain changing, dynamic systems, far from static. We need to ensure there is sufficient ability in the new system to respond to changing circumstances.

From what we can gather from the ALP’s policy, new modern awards will only be able to be changed by Fair Work Australia following a request from the Minister or at 4 yearly reviews.

This process politicises our minimum conditions. Do we have faith that federal governments will respond appropriately to changes in workplace and our labour market into the future?

The continued lack of paid maternity leave suggests Governments are not particularly willing to adopt new standards in workplace conditions even when there is significant support for a new measure.

There can be no question that our awards need to be updated. Many awards do not reflect contemporary work practices or standards, and the award system languished in the decade under Howard. However, there is a huge difference between genuinely updating awards to reflect modern workplaces … and stripping conditions out of the safety net.

The process being undertaken by the AIRC is also of grave concern. It is a huge task to re-create a new award system – yet insufficient time is being given to this task. In the rush to simplify awards by 2010 to appease big business, the Government is leaving workers behind.

In the end we have an ALP Government accepting in large part the fundamental ideological shift made by the Howard Government to abandon conciliation and arbitration along with the role of worker and employer representatives in that system.

The ALP is not “ripping up” Work Choices or even significantly rolling it back – rather this Government is explicitly accepting the basic architecture of the Howard plan, including the trashing of the award system.

It will be interesting to see how much longer Australian workers and their unions continue to put up with it…

Building Commission 'star chamber' must be abolished

RachelSiewert — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:27:56 +1000

One of the many travesties of the Howard Government was the establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) and its supporting legislation, the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act (BCII Act).

Together they strip away the basic human rights of workers in these industries, taking away the right to silence and giving the ABCC sweeping powers to compel evidence with harsh penalties for not complying with their demands. The legislation also imposes severe restrictions on the rights of building and constructions workers to organise and collectively bargain.

This is arguably John Howard's Work Choices agenda at its most extreme - but strangely we've heard relatively little about it. This legislation went through Parliament at the time that the concept of Work Choices was introduced and was essentially swamped by that debate. It also came on the back of the media hype surrounding the Cole Royal Commission, meaning it effectively slipped under the radar for most people.

While the Cole Commission heard evidence of similar amounts of corruption and thuggery on both sides of the fence, and the Royal Commission resulted in few successful prosecutions, the media of the time was filled entirely with accusations of union thuggery, standover tactics and corrupt activities, and was curiously silent on the accusations of corrupt and dirty dealings by construction companies.

There was certainly nothing in the findings of the Cole Royal Commission that justified the draconian legislation contained in the BCII Act.

The Australian Greens opposed both the ABCC and the BCII Act at the time they were introduced, and have consistently spoken out for the abolition of the ABCC and the repeal of the BCII Act.
At the time I felt a bit like a lone voice in the wilderness. While the ALP opposed the legislation in the Parliament they didn't speak out against it too loudly in public, and any comments attempting to draw attention to the issue were mostly ignored by the media.
The ABCC is an affront to our democracy.

As I said in my second reading speech on the legislation that established the ABCC:
"If you were to ask someone to guess which country you were talking about when you described a place where the right to silence was being removed and workers could be thrown in jail for failing to incriminate themselves or dob in a mate, where unions were being locked out of workplaces and could only inspect conditions and safety at the boss's discretion, where workers could be told to sign up to unfair contracts or not get a job and could be dismissed with no comeback because somebody was having a bad day, what kind of country would you think we were talking about? A proud nation with a long tradition of workplace organisation, a supposed commitment to a fair go, a commitment to site safety and an atmosphere relatively free of industrial turmoil?
No, you would think of some despotic dictatorship where workers worked for next to nothing in sweatshops or on building sites and were treated as mere commodities and where the real cost could be measured not in wages but in human lives. And this could be Australia. This is the brave new world of workplace relations under the Howard government."

The Greens will not shrink from defending the basic human rights of workers in the building and construction industry. It is wrong that the ABCC can compel individuals to provide information, produce documents, or attend to answer questions at an examination. It is even more offensive that the penalty for failing to do so is six months jail.

The ABCC operates more like a 'star-chamber' with individuals denied the right to silence and access to a lawyer of their choice. Lawyers have a limited role and the Commission determine its own practices with a high level of secrecy. Commissioners play the role of both questioner and judge - ruling on whether their own questions are in order.

There is no doubt that the primary aim of this legislation is to hurt and eventually destroy the building unions. Such an aim has no place in a democratic nation that recognises the fundamental right of freedom of association. But more than that, the Act and the ABCC targets the unions through their members - ordinary Australian workers - who are subjected to a Spanish inquisition.

It is unacceptable that a union official is currently facing jail for refusing to attend an interview with the ABCC to answer questions about what happened at a union meeting.

The ABCC has powers that few organisations in Australia have ever had - I understand only bodies like the Australian Crime Commission, investigating organised crime have similar authority. These laws criminalise the ordinary collective action of workers, giving such workers less rights than alleged murders. It is an inordinate and over-the-top response to issues in the industry. It is able to bully and harass ordinary workers to pursue its ideological mission to destroy the building unions with little regard of the consequences for workers and their families.

I have repeatedly spoken out against the ABCC in the past 3 years. Not only did the Greens oppose the BCII Act at the time it was introduced, but I also subsequently moved a disallowance motion for the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Regulations 2005. I used that opportunity to describe the harassment and bullying workers and their families were experiencing from the ABCC. I have subsequently raised the issue in parliament as well as outside in speeches to rallies, in forums and in the media.

The ABCC should be abolished and the building industry regulated just like any other industry -- in a fair and just manner that balances the needs of productivity and the economy with the health and safety of workers.

Caring for our Country - or is it?

RachelSiewert — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:41:58 +1000

At the end of March, Environment Minister Peter Garrett finally announced the Government's new environment funding package 'Caring for Our Country'. I say 'finally' because the funding under the Natural Heritage Trust (NHT) was coming to an end, and they had been dragging their heels so long that nobody had any idea about the future funding of environment and natural resource management projects.
Up to that point, the Government had not announced an overarching vision for environment and natural resource management, and all we had to go on was a small number of ad hoc election commitments.

It was obvious that the announcement, once it was finally made, was a rushed response that hadn't been thought through. The program is not strategic. It is unfocused and is in danger of undoing much of the progress we have made over the last three decades in conservation and natural resource management (NRM). Unfortunately it takes us right back to the bad old days, of disconnected one-off short-term 'bitsy' projects, and it is clear that the Government is still scrambling to work out what to do.

Regional NRM bodies and catchment management organisations still don't really know their future. While they now know that they will get 60 per cent of historical funding for the next year, they do not know what will happen beyond that. They don't know what ongoing projects can be funded under that 60 per cent, or just how to go about chopping out bits of the five-year plans they've spent a couple of years developing ? and now, with partial funding guaranteed for only one year, they can only run one-year projects.

All of this comes after we'd spent years trying to convince all the players of the need for long-term strategies that take a joined-up whole-of-landscape approach to fixing our complex land management problems and putting in place sustainable solutions.

The staff employed by these regional NRM groups don't know if they will have a job as of the first of July, because they don't yet know what particular projects are still being funded, or if they can and will be employed beyond a year. They don't know if the projects they already have underway will be continued, or to what extent existing plans will need to be changed to address the Government's new priorities, which currently haven't been clearly articulated beyond the Government's ad hoc election promises and list of six priority areas.

For those working in natural resource management things are looking particularly bleak. With most employment contracts these days stipulating a minimum of four weeks notice and only two weeks until the funding runs out, these network coordinators and project managers, along with the estimated 2000 staff in the 56 regional NRM bodies are placed in an invidious position.
There hasn't been anything like an open process with environmental groups, land managers and the wider community to develop or discuss the Caring for Our Country package, and we are all still struggling to find any useful information about what it will mean on the ground, and what will happen to existing programs and initiatives.

Rather than give the impression that I'm merely out to give Peter Garrett a hard time, I want to stress my professional and personal history in the area of natural resource management. I worked, meeting-ed and lobbied my way through the 'decade of LandCare', the two NHT programs and the NAP. A crucial experience for many of us was seeing the chaos that eventuated when the Commonwealth Government failed to think through the transition from NHT1 to NHT2. This resulted in a long hiatus in funding, where many of the community landcare officers were forced to move on to other jobs, many successful projects fell over and a good deal of the time and effort that we'd spent building capacity was lost - together with much of the hard-earned community good-will.

The community invested a great deal of time and money in building up knowledge and networks to be able to effectively communicate between researchers, farming systems experts, policy makers and the people on the land, just as we have more recently invested heavily in building up the structures, networks, planning and extension capacity of our regional groups. Unfortunately a good deal of this comes down to building personal relationships and resides between the ears of the staff now walking out the door. Because of the complexities of the issues involved and the on-again off-again nature of NRM funding it is difficult to maintain institutional knowledge and 'corporate memory'.

It's important to realise the transition we have made over the years as we've moved from awareness raising, through a series of well-meaning but ultimately ineffective on-the-ground efforts, on to much more targeted and evidence-based interventions - that prioritise key community assets or develop and extend sustainable farming systems which are profitable rather than costly for our farmers. We've learnt the dangers of the 'vegemite' approach - trying to spread small amounts of funding equally between landholders across the landscape - and we've learnt the need to get all the key stakeholders at the table and build up from the common ground.

Creating regional NRM groups and investing in a catchment-based or bioregional approach to managing landscapes was a visionary move which has not yet been given the time to find its feet and deliver on its promises. It has been a very steep learning curve for the players involved, and it has not been popular with some of the key players in the various state primary industry and land management departments whose domains were reduced as a result.
Over the last three decades state agriculture departments, research and extension services have been greatly reduced and they have become increasingly reliant on outside funding sources including the industry research and development councils (RDCs) and Commonwealth programs like NHT. Some are cynically suggesting, with back-to-back Labor governments now lined up at state and federal levels, that there is a push to undermine the regional groups from state agencies seeking a bigger slice of the pie.

When it comes to sustainable agriculture and how you reduce the impacts of agricultural practices on nearby or downstream ecosystems, Caring for Our Country has to address the same challenge as all those previous NRM programs from Landcare through NHT and NAP.

How do we efficiently and effectively invest limited public money to bring about changes in land-use on private land to deliver significant and justifiable public benefits?

It's clear that we are dealing with very different circumstances depending on the landscapes and climates involved, the kind of environmental and community assets we're trying to protect, the nature of the problems we're tackling and the complexities of the farming systems and land management practices involved.

Along the way we have substantially refined the way that we plan our land management strategies, evaluate investment decisions. We've developed some innovative land use systems and improved the way we share our skills and information.
To date the Caring for Our Country program is still very light on detail, and the three or four brochures and pages available on the CfOC website mostly repeat the same sketchy information.

The program is probably best characterised as being an uneasy wedding of two elements - a series of unconnected environmental commitments made by the ALP in the run-up to the election, and a list of aspirations for a new approach to funding environmental programs.
The Government is undermining the good will of the community.

The Intervention... one year on

RachelSiewert — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:00:16 +1000

We are one year on from the inception of the NT Intervention, and today is a day we should not be celebrating. It has been a long year for those in the NT communities of this paternalistic, top down approach that will make future generations ashamed.

This legislation was a knee-jerk reaction that seemed designed purely to gain election bounce for the Coalition (made even more ludicrous by the recent admission from former Minister Mal Brough that the whole plan was thought up in one 48 hour session), but it was the Rudd Government's decision to stay the course that has been most disappointing. Frankly, we expected better.

Howard's original ‘emergency' lacked the in-depth kind of community involvement necessary to effectively undertake such a radical overhaul of Indigenous life in the territory. Laws were slapped together and rushed through Parliament only to land with a disappointing crash in the laps of Indigenous communities across the NT.

Since that day, most of the money being poured into the NT intervention is being spent on administration and not hitting the ground to address the underlying causes. Imagine what such a huge amount of resources could do to turn around lives in these remote communities, if it were properly thought out and effectively administered in conjunction with existing programs in the Indigenous communities.

Today should be the day that the Rudd Government and the Minister for Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin admit they made a mistake in backing the rushed approach taken by the Northern Territory Intervention. It is high time that they returned to the ALP's core values and committed to an evidence-based community-development approach to Indigenous Affairs that respects human rights and empowers people.

Our Indigenous Affairs Minister, Jenny Macklin is clearly still struggling to resolve the contradictions between the punitive approach of the NT Intervention and the ALP's philosophical commitment to a social inclusion approach to disadvantaged Australians.

For the whole of Australian history, the commitment of resources to address the problems in Aboriginal communities has been under-resourced. However, after so many years of crying out for these resources, they are now being so blatantly squandered on unnecessary, ill-conceived and ineffectual measures, while successful Aboriginal programs and organisations still go begging.

The Tangentyere Council Safe Families program is a prime example of one of these initiatives. This program focuses on reducing family violence and preventing children becoming part of the child protection system. They also provide limited reunification and placements and a strong emphasis on case management. It is staffed only by Aunties and Uncles from the local indigenous community, with 10 full time Indigenous residential care staff being employed.

The Federal Government used to contribute to this vital program, with 50% of Territory and 50% Federal Government funding under the Family Violence Partnership Program, so now they may face having to lose staff and resources. Current funding will cease in less than three weeks. This program serves as a perfect candidate to receive Intervention funding, and without support from the Federal Government, this community will lose a successful, effective child protection program.

While the resources poured into the NT intervention have the potential to turn around lives on remote communities, more needs to be done to ensure money is spent wisely on the things that actually make a difference, such as the Safe Families program.

The heavy handed and paternalistic approach on the NT emergency response isn't working and very clearly was never going to work. The Rudd Government has always held up its commitment to evidence-based policy in Indigenous Affairs and yet it is still pushing on with these ill-conceived Howard-era policies, for which there was never an evidence base.

The suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act remains a sticking point and an international embarrassment for the Rudd Government. We do not need the upcoming review to tell us that this aspect of the intervention is and always will be morally wrong and ethically unjustifiable.

When the quarantining period comes to an end, those affected won't have been educated and empowered to take control of their own finances, because that has not been a focus under the Intervention... and there still won't be jobs for them to go to. Much more of these resources need to be focused on delivering basic health services and protecting children at risk, on fixing existing houses and building safe new homes for the future.

The Australian Greens today remain united and steadfast in our opposition to the approach taken by the NT intervention. We were the only Party to stand up as one in the Australian Parliament to condemn the intervention when it was announced ... and we have maintained and continue to maintain our opposition;

to the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act,
to compulsory seizures of lands,
to indiscriminate quarantining of welfare
and to the trampling of the human rights of Aboriginal people in the NT

We've had one whole year of this racist policy; of frivolous spending, and of total disregard for the basic human rights of Aboriginal people in the NT. We would much rather see these resources being spent on truly delivering for the Aboriginal communities.

It is not an anniversary to celebrate ... it is a call to action.

An Emergency Rescue Plan for the Coorong

RachelSiewert — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:13:19 +1000

It has just come to light that a scientific report presented to the Murray-Darling Basin ministerial council on the health of the Coorong and Lower Lakes in May gave a deadline of October for action. Instead of setting in place an immediate response, the ministers put the issue on the back burner until they meet in November.

Scientists have given the Commonwealth and Murray Darling Basin Governments six months to save the Coorong, Lakes Alexandrina and Albert. We need to move quickly on an emergency rescue package, before this Ramsar listed wetland site is lost forever.
As my colleague Senator Bob Brown has said:

Penny Wong and Peter Garrett owe an explanation to the Parliament today as to how they have put this report on the shelf when the scientists are saying there was urgent action required and if you wait that long, it'll be too late.

Unless 450GL of water can be delivered to the Coorong and lower lakes through winter and spring these ecosystems will hit a crucial tipping point beyond which acidity problems will be out of control and the runaway collapse of these ecosystems is almost certain.

Even though we have had an extended period of drought there is still more than enough water in storage to fix this problem – what is lacking is the political will.
The Federal Government needs to secure the release of water stored in the Menindee lakes and purchase some of the water in major storages in northern NSW. Irrigators should also be encouraged to loan water for the rescue package and could be rewarded for their efforts with extra water in future.
Most health indicators of the ecosystem are now in the red – the water-birds, fish, frogs, turtles and native plants that make up and rely upon this ecosystem are now all on the line. It is entirely possible that Lake Albert may never be freshwater again.

The ecological values of the Coorong and lower lakes Ramsar wetland site have deteriorated alarmingly since it was listed in 1985, as a result of over-regulation and over-extraction of water in the Murray resulting in diminishing freshwater flows. The management plan for these systems laid out in the Living Murray Initiative called for the restoration of a more variable flow regime, but nothing has been done to restore flows and the barrages remain in place.
Research into riverbed soil profiles show that water is now half a metre below sea level for the first time since these systems formed 7500 years ago.

As strongly expressed by the Australian Conservation Foundation, this is a warning that cannot be ignored. What is urgently needed is a major rescue operation, but unless we act now to secure this water and biologically remediate the exposed acid sulfate lake bed by spring these precious and internationally renowned ecosystems will probably be gone forever.
To stop high levels of acidity and toxic heavy metals being produced by these exposed acid sulphate soils it is crucial that exposed lake beds are mulched and revegetated with native aquatic plants before they are refilled. The careful addition of lime to suitable sites will also help manage this problem.

This crisis has not happened overnight. Governments have had a series of more and more urgent warnings on the declining health of the Coorong and lower lakes over the last decade. The most crucial evidence yet is the ecological assessment undertaken last year by Phillips and Muller on the Ecological Character of the Coorong, Lakes Alexandrina and Albert wetland of international importance and the release today of the April report by the Southern Australian Murray Darling Basin Natural Resource Management Board.
Commonwealth Ministers Penny Wong and Peter Garrett need to act now to put pressure on the NSW Government to secure the release of water from Menindee and northern NSW storages and to put in place remediation measures for the Lakes.

They then need to be either calling an urgent meeting of the MDB Ministerial Council or taking this issue to COAG when they meet in early July to get sign on to an emergency rescue package for the Coorong and lower lakes.
These problems point clearly to the fact that the Water for the Future plan won't deliver water fast enough to deal with the problems facing our river system.

It is very clear that we need a much more responsive approach to this crisis, and that we need an approach to basin management that allows us to be more responsive to future crises in the Murray and Darling rivers. We cannot afford to wait until 2019 to have in place a whole-of-basin cap and plan.

We need to fix the system once and for all in a way that ensures the same old problems are not locked into place, and that the other critical issues of river health that we are already aware of are dealt with in a timely fashion to stop these issues getting to crisis point before governments can find the will to respond.

We need to act now to save the river, lakes and wetlands - not some time in the distant future.

Closing the Gap

RachelSiewert — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:18:52 +1000

(Between Rudd's rhetoric on Indigenous Australians and budget commitments)

The level of spending committed to Indigenous disadvantage in the budget barely sets the Government on the right road to delivering on the Government’s election promise to actually 'close the gap'. Despite the rhetoric from the Government on closing the gap and their signing on to the pledge to deliver equality of access to services within a decade, the commitment of resources in the 2008 budget does not boost funding nearly enough to achieve this target.

The Government commitment amounts to additional expenditure of around $250 million per year across the entire Indigenous budget (that is, $1.2 Billion in new money over 5 years). But the biggest chunk of that ($666 Million) will be eaten up feeding the NT intervention juggernaut.
This is a small percentage of the $450 million needed each year to simply catch up on Indigenous health alone, and a far cry from what is really needed to fix the problem. Don't forget there's the estimated $2-3 Billion required to address unmet need on housing, not to mention the widening gap on education, community infrastructure and employment.

By comparison, Wayne Swan has poured $40 Billion into three large future funds - $20 Billion for roads and ports, $10 Billion for higher education institutions and $10 Billion for refurbishing hospitals and building major medical research facilities. While it’s possible in theory some of this money could be spent on Indigenous Australia, in practice there are not too many Aboriginal communities that have their own ports, hospitals, universities and major medical research facilities.

The problem is not simply the quantum of dollars in the budget – as we've seen over the last nine months in the NT, simply throwing money at an issue doesn't get you anywhere if you don't have a plan, are not properly partnering with communities, spending the money in the right areas and building on what is already known to actually work.

We are not seeing a strategic, co-ordinated approach at all – this is nothing more than piecemeal programs which fail to address the key underlining causes. More than half of the money already spent has gone on administration of one form or another and not enough funding has been allocated to programs that actually deliver services or infrastructure on the ground.

You only have to glance around to see Australia’s response to this under-funded section of the budget. Organisations such as the Human Rights Equal Opportunity Commission, the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation and the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care are all in agreement that the budget lacks sufficient funding to achieve the government's goals.
Scarily enough, even former Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough agrees.

A large slice of the allocation is being taken up by continuing the inefficient and expensive Howard Government’s agenda. The Northern Territory Intervention is still causing huge problems for communities and huge resources are being put into administration rather than services. Take, for instance, the $109 Million spent on welfare and employment reform between June 2007 and April 2008.

The concerns voiced by the Greens at the introduction of the NT Intervention remain just as valid today. The need to consult communities and build effective partnerships to ensure on-the-ground outcomes; the value of building on what is already working and training up local people; the problems that would be caused by suspending the RDA and quarantining welfare payments … all remain huge problems.

With the Rudd Government’s announcement last month that Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) would be re-instated, it’s clear that there is a slight change in the winds of bureaucracy for Indigenous Australia. While this is a signal that the Labor Government is prepared to take some steps to moderate Brough's boots-and-all military approach to the intervention, we are talking small steps, and these changes, while important, leave the core components of the intervention untouched.

There has been some damning evidence coming out of the recent Senate Committee inquiry into the emergency response consolidation bill, of an 'urban drift' of Indigenous Australians from rural and remote areas into regional centres (like Alice, Darwin and Katherine) . Non-government community service agencies and charities have reported a 300% increase in demand for emergency relief, and I can't help wonder about the well-being of the children of families living rough – especially when the wet season starts..

It seems that the focus of the NT intervention on welfare quarantining ahead of housing and child protection is only making these problems worse . It is very clear from the evidence received by the Committee that the legislation needs many more changes than the tinkering around the edges contained in the Consolidation Bill.

The suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) continues to be a major source of concern, and failure to address community concerns that the broader legislation is racist will remain a sticking point for the new ALP Government in trying to better direct the intervention. Whilst the Government has recognised the issues surrounding the RDA by not seeking exemption on the new amendments, nothing has been done to alter the existing racism inherent in the original legislation.

With less than a month to go before the promised review of the NT emergency intervention commences, the Government seems ill-prepared to embark on such a major undertaking. During Senate Estimates, the Government was able to tell us very little about how it would proceed; the terms of reference were not available and the proposed Review Board has yet to be selected.
There has been no community consultation on the terms of reference for the review or its evaluation framework, despite significant community concerns having been expressed over the last nine months and so much hanging in the balance.

The message appears to be that the Minister will appoint a Review Board and the details of the review process will be largely left to their discretion.
The Rudd Government inherited this rushed and ill-conceived intervention from the former Minister Mal Brough, and Jenny Macklin has struggled to resolve the contradictions between its punitive approach and the ALP’s philosophical commitment to a social inclusion approach to disadvantaged group’s communities.
The two simply won't fit together.

The big question is which will go first – the values or the populist programs?

Senate Estimates on Live Animal Exports, Whaling, GE & Natural Resource Management

TimNorton — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:35:05 +1000

To follow on from Tim H's post on Senate Estimates transcripts, I thought I'd also post a few links to some of the more interesting discussions coming out of estimates.

Rach asked some questions on Live Animal Exports, in particular around those Memorandum of Understandings that the Australian Government have with countries to which we export live animals.
The Government were quick to defend the possible leasing of the Oceanic Viking ship to the Japanese, for 'scientific research'. I posted about this a few days back, but still worth a read in its entirety.

Genetically Modified foods continues to be an issue, particularly following the WA Government's calls for a halt on all Genetically Modified food approvals until they are fully tested for safe human consumption and rigorous national labelling laws are in place. Yet another misleading report from ABARE was scrutinised under Estimates, where it was revealed that the Bureau based their report on the assumption there would be a 100% take-up of GE crops.

Later today we shall tackle the Food Standards issues surrounding labelling of GM products in food.
Our usual concerns around Caring for our Country were again raised after the Government were unable to give a coherent account of funding priority guidelines. You can read some of it here, followed up the next day here.

The issues surrounding ongoing funding for Landcare are covered here.

More as they come.

HREOC strain under Work Choices Lite

RachelSiewert — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:00:45 +1000

During Senate Estimates last night, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission confirmed $1.8 million of funding to support workplace related complaints has been cut by the Rudd Government, placing more stress on the Commission.
HREOC received additional money when Work Choices was introduced, as it was expected that workplace related complaints would increase, given the abolition of unfair dismissal protections. The Government has now cut this funding.

The Government is trying to justify the cuts by saying Work Choices will eventually be abolished. However, they do not intend to re-introduce protection from unfair dismissal until 2010. This leaves another two years of workers not being protected by unfair dismissal laws and HREOC struggling to meet increased demand.
The removal of unfair dismissal protections is one of the key concerns about the changes to industrial relations laws.

Prior to Work Choices most workers could apply to the industrial relations commission if they thought they had been unfair fairly dismissed. Work Choices removed this protection for all workers in businesses of less than 100 employees, representing a large proportion of employees in Australia.
Protection from unfair dismissal is important for job security - when you risk being sacked for any reason at any time, it can easily create a culture of fear and intimidation.

Employees may become more cautious about raising occupational health and safety concerns or demanding their rights in the workplace. Employers may also feel freer to harass, bully or discriminate against employees. While harassment and discrimination are unlawful, it is a more difficult and complicated process to receive redress for that sort of behaviour.
HREOC confirmed there has been a marked increase in complaints since Work Choices and indicated they have no reason to think the level of complaints will drop any time in the near future. For a Government that came into office on the back of a campaign for workers rights, it is not actually doing very much to help those employees who are facing discrimination or unfair dismissal right now.

Most of Work Choices is alive and well at the moment. There is still no protection from unfair dismissal for most workers. In fact the Government opposed amendments put forward by the Greens to re-introduce protection from unfair dismissal in March this year. Meanwhile, after making so much noise about AWAs, thousands of employees are still employed on AWAs and more employees can now be employed on Interim Transitional Employment Agreements (ITEAs), which are merely AWAs by another name.

The ALP is making things worse by making it more difficult for employees to get redress against their employers for discrimination, and placing more pressure on HREOC to help out.

Special Disability Trusts

RachelSiewert — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:46:35 +1000

Although the introduction of the Special Disability Trust (SDT) in September 2006 was welcomed by parents and carers of those living with disabilities, it has not been as widely taken up as expected, during questioning in Senate Estimates it was revealed that only 22 trusts have been established Australia wide to date.

I'm aware through constituents contacting the office that many people are not happy with various aspects of the current SDT legislation and that significant barriers are preventing Trusts being established.

Some of the key limitations to the Special Disability Trust in its present form include:

1. Eligibility to be a beneficiary of a STD is too restrictive, meaning that many people may miss out.
There is concern that many people living with a disability will fail to qualify for eligibility because of their inability to meet the requirements, which states the beneficiary must:
i.) have a disability that would, if the person had a sole carer, qualify the carer for carer payment or carer allowance: or
ii.) be living in an institution, hostel or group home in which care is provided for people with disabilities and for which funding is provided (wholly or partly) under an agreement, between the Commonwealth, the State sand the Territories.

2. Capital Gains Tax payable on assets transferred to a SDT.
When a property or assets are transferred into a SDT, Capital Gains tax is payable. This is seen to be unfair when people are trying to establish long term care arrangements for people living with a disability.

3. Tax is payable at 46.5% on unused SDT income and Capital Gains Tax is payable if a property in a SDT is sold (even if it is sold for relocation reasons).
A property held by the Trust is not viewed as personal property or home of the person with a disability as it would be if the property was in the person’s name (that is, if they did not lack the testamentary capacity to own property). If this person was not living with a disability they would be able to buy and sell their own home, paying no Capital Gains Tax.

4. Limited use for SDT funds.
Limiting the SDT to providing for care and accommodation is too narrow. Items such as food, medical expenses, private health cover and dental care are all costs that cannot be paid by a SDT (unless specifically required for the beneficiary’s disability). There is also no allowance for holidays or recreational needs.

5. Stringent Reporting & Audit Requirements
The reporting and audit requirements of a SDT exceed the rules applied to other forms of trusts.

6. Public Trustees have not embraced SDT.
Public trustees in all states are seemingly reluctant to utilise SDT as the administration requirements are unworkable. I have been told two trusts would be required in order to avoid tax on unused SDT income – a costly and complicated exercise that defeats the point of setting up the SDT system.

On Thursday, I moved a motion in the Senate, referring this issue to the Community Affairs Committee for inquiry into what are the problems and what can be done to fix them. I hope this inquiry [set to report by 18th September 2008] will result in Special Disability Trusts that deliver great benefits for those living with a disability.