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Tax rorts, consultants, external Government advisors embed in Government departments. Golly gee what’s the problem

Nearly one week after the police were called, the government cannot directly say if it can stop doing business with a firm whose ex-CEO allegedly leaked Australian tax secrets. It’s eight years since Peter-John Collins, an executive at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), allegedly passed the confidential policy to colleagues advising clients on...

Robo-debt findings delayed to allow NACC referrals

Robo-debt royal commissioner Catherine Holmes requested a one-week extension to the inquiry’s reporting date so she can make referrals directly to the new national corruption watchdog, which does not begin operating until July 1. In the letter sent by Holmes to Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus asking to push back the June...

Voice to Parliament: the brains behind the No campaigns

Senators Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Lidia Thorpe (Images: AAP)According to a survey conducted for the Nine papers and reported yesterday, support for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament has dropped from 58% to 53% over the past month. It’s a boost for the two major No campaigns, which had consolidated...

Deaths inside

The staggering omission that led to Deaths Inside, the tally tracking Indigenous deaths in custody As usual I had been following links and just generally researching by digging through published articles .  These facts emerged. Just as previously there was no actual database for indigenous genocide there has never been a...

Kathryn Campbell – from RoboDebt ignominy to plum Defence job with the PM’s help

Rex Patrick writes in Michael West mediaKathryn Campbell AO CSC was not liked by Labor senators. The Senate inquired into Centrelink’s Compliance Program (“RoboDebt”) from September 2019 to May 2022, and whilst senators didn’t penetrate Minister Stuart Robert’s improper public interest immunity shield preventing fulsome evidence being available to...

Trump sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll, must pay her $5 million, jury says

NEW YORK, May 9 (Reuters) - Donald Trump must pay $5 million in damages for sexually abusing magazine writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s and then defaming her by branding her a liar, a jury decided on Tuesday. "Today, the world finally knows the truth," Carroll said in a...

Federal budget 2023: The winners and losers in Treasurer’s cost-of-living budget

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has pledged billions in new spending to help lower income families navigate the cost-of-living crisis as he handed down his second budget on Tuesday night. Long-awaited healthcare reforms were also unveiled as Dr Chalmers sought to begin fixing Australia’s struggling public healthcare system. Winners included the public broadcasters,...

Robodebt Cancer – has our public service become the secret service?

When ‘self-ambition’ cells in a senior public servant’s body grow and multiply, outflanking the ‘do public good’ cells, the diagnosis may be referred to as ‘Robodebt Cancer’; named after the malignant public service cancer discovered by the Robodebt Royal Commissioner. The recent release of National Cabinet minutes has further...

Fake Reform: Jim Chalmers’ itsy-bitsy tax “hit” is a gift for foreign fossil fuel giants

Jim Chalmers’ long-awaited tweaks to the PRRT are the itsy-bitsyest “reforms” about, the equivalent of recycling old Christmas presents with a fancy new bow. Michael West reports on how the Treasurer is merely returning a couple of billion in gas sector subsidies, and only for a while. “Chalmers slaps $2.4bn...

Scott Morrison’s dodgy grants

“The democratic process is not using public money for party political purposes. That’s not democracy,” Anne Twomey, professor emerita of constitutional law at the University of Sydney, shot back Nationals Senator Canavan: “That’s a different issue.” The congestion fund was only one of a number of programs under which the previous...