Latest blog posts

Written by our founders and volunteers, keeping you up to date!

TAX AVOIDENCE

PwC and the Adani mine triple dip. A conflict of interest? Surely not

0
A  humble footnote on page 30 of the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility’s 2016-17 annual report reads: “PwC supported NAIF in the development of its...

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

0
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...

You pay millions for these imbeciles to encourage conspiracy theories and misinformation. Why?

0
We get so used to the bonkers shit that goes on in the Australian Senate that it starts to seem unremarkable. Frustrating, exasperating, eye-rolling,...

Reframing tax policy to reset the rules of the monopoly game

0
Monopolists and rentseekers have been running rings round the democratic fiscal state for decades. It is obvious to everyone that the game is rigged....

Times have changed

0
Veteran economist and one-time Bob Hawke adviser Ross Garnaut put forward some Very Big Ideas in last night’s Jobs and Skills Summit keynote address,...

Donald Trump Court determines Trump engaged in an Insurrection on Jan 6th

Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace concluded – based on testimony of US Capitol Police officers, lawmakers, clips from Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech and expert testimony about right-wing extremism – that Trump engaged in the January 6 insurrection. This was a major legal hurdle that the challengers were able to overcome. And it’s the first time that any court in the country has ruled that Trump engaged in the insurrection, a watershed moment in the quest for accountability for...

Who is Donald Trump

Donald Trump is the only presidential candidate on the ballot who has publicly agreed that his own daughter is a 'piece of ass.' The bronze-gilded mogul is as notable for his multiple rape allegations and history of racist renting practices as he is for putting children in cages and shamelessly funding a campaign to execute 5 innocent Black teens. So how did the man who once said he’d choose Oprah as his running mate end up with yet another...

The rise and fall of Rudy Giuliani- Trump’s personal Lawyer

Adding more background context to debunk the Rudy Giuliani mythRudy Giuliani was hailed after 9/11 as “America’s Mayor,” a national hero who, at the time, was more widely admired than the pope. He was brilliant, accomplished—and complicated. He conflated politics with morality, made reckless personal choices, and engaged in self-destructive behavior. A series of disastrous decisions and cynical compromises, coupled with his need for power, money, and attention gradually ruined his reputation, cost him political support, and ultimately damaged...

Trump finally suffers KNOCKOUT BLOW in federal trial

In a remarkable revelation, one of Trump's co-defendants in the Georgie RICO case, Jenna Ellis, told prosecutors that Trump's close aid, Dan Scavino, said that Trump had decided he would not leave the presidency even though he lost the election. This video discusses the evidentiary implications of that statement and what it means for both Scavino and Trump. Ellis guilty plea. For the fourth time Donald Trump was charged with serious crimes. As part of the RICO (Racketeering Influenced and...

Trump rages as former acolytes turn against him under legal heat

Donald Trump’s wealth, power and fame acted like a magnet for new associates keen to enter his orbit. But now, key figures who sought a share of his reflected glory are turning against him to save themselves. The ex-president absorbed a trio of blows Tuesday that worsened his legal peril and underscored how the 2024 election – in which he is the front-runner for the GOP nomination – will play out in the courts rather than traditional voting battlegrounds. In the...

Donald Trump Investigations

Donald Trump has worst day yet in New York civil fraud trial as his underling's scribbled note emphatically ties Trump to ongoing financial conspiracy Special counsel Jack Smith argued Monday that Donald Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election was far from a case of misplaced “advocacy” or constitutionally protected speech, and he urged the federal judge presiding over Trump’s Washington, D.C., trial to sweep aside Trump’s bid to “sanitize” his conduct. “The defendant attempts to rewrite the indictment, claiming that...

Albo’s Secret Hose: bureaucrats block bushfire info as Australia braces for a deadly summer

Fire danger The 2023-24 fire season is already well underway. We’ve seen extensive bushfires across Australia involving significant property loss, and sadly loss of life. And there’s a lot more to come. The Bureau of Meteorology declared an El Niño weather event to be underway. The Bureau is expecting heatwaves with a high chance of unusually hot temperatures for most of Australia until at least February 2024 and there’s an increased bushfire risk for much of eastern and southern Australia due...

State capture 2

On Thursday, PwC's current and former CEOs appeared in front of a Senate inquiry examining the management and integrity of consulting firms in Australia, established in the wake of PwC's tax leak scandal. The inquiry was established in March after PwC's former head of international tax, Peter-John Collins, shared confidential tax information from Treasury and the Australian Tax Office in 2014 to reverse-engineer a scheme to help big multinational companies avoid paying their fair share of tax in Australia. Mr Collins had his...

Brisbane rail upgrade

Brisbane's Cross River Rail is a new 10.2 kilometre rail line from Dutton Park to Bowen Hills, which includes 5.9 kilometres of twin tunnels under the Brisbane River and CBD. The project will unlock a bottleneck at the core of our transport network and it will transform the way we travel across the whole of South East Queensland. Construction is underway at seventeen worksites across South East Queensland. With the successful completion of tunnelling in 2021, there are twin tunnels connecting the...

Donald Trump guilty of financial fraud

Pigsfly News is creating a cut through on the Donald Trump trial saga. We will help you understand what has been decided - that Trump has been found guilty of financial fraud and what is unfolding now. While part 1 is the intro it sets the stage as we unravel and simplify  "The What Next? Most people view politicians with distrust, cynicism mostly believing we are going to be mislead, snowed and that politicians most often have themselves first, donors next and voters...

Why is it a battle to get information from the Albanese government?

Grattan on Friday: It can be a battle to get information from the Albanese government Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra Thank goodness for Senate committees. This week, they’ve proved, yet again, to be worth their weight in accountability gold. On Monday, at an inquiry into the cost of living, senators from both sides gave Qantas boss Alan Joyce a salutary roughing-up, over everything from yet-to-be-returned flight credits to the government’s blocking of extra Qatar Airways flights and Joyce’s contacts with Anthony Albanese. (Subsequently,...

Trumps little piggies are coming home to roost

Judge Arthur Engoron to preside over a non-jury trial starting this Monday in Manhattan in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil lawsuit. Judge Engoron, recent ruling in a phase of the case known as summary judgment, found that Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, defrauded banks, insurers and others with annual financial statements that massively overvalued his assets and exaggerated his wealth.Engoron ordered some of Trump’s companies removed from his control and dissolved. James alleges Trump boosted...

The Mike Pezzullo scandal has damaged Australia

And a bit behind that is the extent he has played much of the press gallery. It is worth noting that the very fine Age exposure of “the Pez” came out of Melbourne, not Canberra, the work of Michael Bachelard and Nick McKenzie, not the journalists who were often up close and personal with Pezzullo, the ones he described as “some colleagues in the fourth estate”.There is a further question about how The Age team acquired the damning WhatsApp messages...

Pezzullo story points to serious issues in the Australian Public Service

Pezzullo story points to serious systemic problems in the Australian Public Service Andrew Podger, Australian National University The revelations in the Nine newspapers that Mike Pezzullo, secretary of the powerful Home Affairs department, shared with Liberal Party powerbroker Scott Briggs are certainly extraordinary. But, just like the revelations about Robodebt from the royal commission, they must not be treated as an isolated case but as evidence of serious systemic problems in the Australian Public Service (APS). So what is expected from public servants...

Nine key lies told about the Voice to Parliament

“No” campaigners Kerrynne Liddle, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Nyunggai Warren Mundine and Michaelia Cash. The ‘disinformation’ (read: lies and bullshit) being propagated about the indigenous Voice to Parliament by the Murdoch media, among others, harms our society. It promotes division, celebrates and cultivates ignorance and bigotry, oppresses a minority and diminishes us all. Why do we tolerate such behaviour? Two months ago, The Saturday Paper spoke with half a dozen senior “Yes” campaigners. Largely given anonymity, they were candid in their...

The astonishing lies of the no campaign burn like lurid rockets in our sky. We must not go saying no

I can’t believe this old line is running wild again. We have had land rights decisions (“They’re gonna take your house and barbecue pit, mate”); the Mabo decision (Again, “They’re gonna take, etc,”); followed by the Wik judgment of 1996 (“Mate, your swimming pool too!”); and now that crude three-times-disproved claim is back, with all the other astonishing lies. They burn like lurid rockets in our sky. And those who launch them, knowing that they will harm all who...

Colonists upended Aboriginal farming, growing grain and running sheep on rich yamfields, and cattle on arid grainlands

Yam daisies on the left, cattle on the right. Cutting out the cattle, Kangatong/Eugene Von Guerard, 1856 , CC BY-SA Bill Gammage, Australian National University First Nations readers are advised this article contains references to colonial violence against First Nations people. In 1788 the First Fleet brought two bulls and four cows from the Cape of Good Hope and put them on grass on Bennelong Point, where Sydney Opera House is now. But there wasn’t much grass, and it wasn’t much good, so...

Why The Voice will lead to better government decision-making

Olympic champion Cathy Freeman has called on “all Australians” to vote Yes for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament while declaring her support.The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to parliament will result in systemic and sustainable change in government decision-making and policy formulation affecting First Nations peoples. Here are four reasons why. This article concentrates on the proposed new section 129(ii) of the Constitution, which provides that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice ‘may make representations to the Parliament...

John Farnham The Voice To Parliament Campagain

The Australian music legend John Farnham has lent his iconic song You’re the Voice to the referendum’s yes campaign, backing calls to insert an Indigenous voice to parliament in the constitution. You’re the Voice will soundtrack a new series of ads from the Uluru Dialogue to be released in a nationwide blitz this weekend. It’s believed to be the first time Farnham, who is recovering from cancer, has ever permitted the song to be used in a commercial. “This song changed...

Labor aims for $1.9b from multinational tax crackdown

0
The federal government lost an estimated $6bn in revenue in 2014 as a consequence of tax avoidance by multinational corporations with Australian operations, according...

The class war is back, and Morrison and the media are waging it

0
By Crikey's Bernard Keane Remember “class war”? References to class war were incessant in the 2019 campaign, with Bill Shorten portrayed as a class warrior...

Voice from The Heart

0
The Uluru Statement from the Heart outlines the path forward for recognising Indigenous Australians in the nation's constitution. It was endorsed with a standing ovation...

The truth about political donations: there is so much we don’t know

0
The truth about political donations: there is so much we don't know AEC disclosures revealed Malcolm Turnbull to be the single biggest donor to a...

Violence Has Forced 60 Million People From Their Homes

0
Migrants and refugees flooding into Europe have presented European leaders and policymakers with their greatest challenge since the debt crisis. The International Organization for...