Stop union racism, Senator tells Labor Party leader

Leftist racism is never far below the surface

CABINET minister Mathias Cormann has demanded Opposition Leader Bill Shorten pull unions into line and stop a "racist, dog-whistling" campaign against Australia's trade deal with China.

SEVERAL unions are stridently opposed to parts of the agreement they believe will allow Chinese companies to bring in cheap labour at the expense of Australian workers - something the government denies.

Senator Cormann said the "racist dog whistle against China" was contrary to Australia's national interest. "Bill Shorten clearly doesn't have the strength of character to do what needs to be done," he told Network Ten on Sunday.  "By saying nothing, he's effectively supporting this racist and dishonest union campaign against what is a very important free trade agreement for our country."

Labor wants a better explanation of the provisions under which companies can bring in workers, arguing the text of the deal does not explicitly lay out the safeguards the government says are included.  The government insists all the usual working visa "checks and balances" stay in place for work Chinese companies do in Australia under the agreement.

It stepped up the attack on Labor in parliament over the past week, with Prime Minister Tony Abbott accusing the opposition of wanting to bring back the White Australia policy.

Senator Cormann asked on Sunday why the unions were campaigning only against the China agreement, when the Abbott government had also completed trade deals with Korea and Japan.

"I suspect that the union movement is essentially just trying to take a generally protectionist approach, trying to hold back our economy in some sort of misguided view that this is better for their members," he said. "But it ain't better."

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No honour in Hastie smear
 
Leftists would not even know what honour means.  Hate is their abiding motivation



Miranda Devine

THE upcoming Canning by-election in WA is being framed as a referendum on Tony Abbott’s leadership, so it was always going to get dirty.  But the political smear launched yesterday against Liberal candidate Andrew Hastie sets a new low,

Captain Hastie, 32, is a former SAS soldier who served three tours in Afghanistan and was recently deployed in missions against Islamic State.

In other words he is a hero, who has laid his life on the line to protect our way of life. We are lucky he has decided to continue his service by standing for parliament.

But, according to damning headlines in the Fairfax press, there is a “Question of Conduct” hanging over Hastie because he was “officer in command of a troop being investigated for chopping the hands off dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.”

Turns out Hastie was elsewhere on the battlefield at the time the alleged incident took place in 2013. But, anyway, hands are removed from enemy corpses in the middle of a battle so that fingerprint checks can identify them later.

This is the grisly reality of war.

As Neil James, executive director of the Australia Defence Association, said: “At least [Hastie] has done something important with his life before he runs for Parliament.”

Abbott-haters understandably are gnashing their teeth that the Liberals have such an admirable candidate in Hastie.  But using his war service against him is contemptible.

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The real union fraud story involving Bill Shorten and Kathy Jackson. Where’s the missing $15million?

The HSU fraud saga is one of those triple backstab type situations where the corruption continues today under the watchful eye of current National President Lloyd Williams and National Secretary Chris Brown.

Put simply, Michael Williamson, Kathy Jackson, Craig Thomson and others had been involved in major fraud for years ripping off HSU members millions of dollars. Kathy Jackson decided to have a power grab and tried to oust the other crooks and thieves. Jackson had success in destroying Williamson, Thomson and a few others and for a while was hailed as a whistleblowing hero taking on union corruption.

Bill Shorten saw this and did not like it so he manoeuvred to have his own union crooks and thieves take over from Jackson. Shorten had a first go in the 2009 HSU elections and tried to oust Jackson by running a ticket headed up by Diana Asmar and supported with funding by the AWU and other unions. It failed.

In April 2012 Bill Shorten and Senator Stephen Conroy had a second go and tried to have the HSU charge Kathy Jackson for breaching Union rules. This also failed and I wrote an article at the time titled “Statutory Declarations show Bill Shorten and Stephen Conroy trying to put the political hit on Kathy Jackson” (Click here to read the article)

So in May/June 2012 Bill Shorten used his position as Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations to put the HSU into administration and appoint an administrator which cut off Kathy Jackson’s cash flow and made it near impossible for her or her allies to compete in the subsequent 2012 HSU elections.

Shorten had a corrupt ex judge called Michael Moore appointed as the administrator. (Click here to read more) This is interesting as Bill Shorten is currently trying to have former High Court of Australia judge Dyson Heydon removed as head of the Trade Union Royal Commission on the basis of perceived bias. But Shorten was happy to appoint a corrupt Labor Party puppet and former Federal Court judge such as Michael Moore as administrator so he could get his crime gang on the inside of the HSU. (Declaration: Michael Moore is mentioned on the front page of my book. Click here to see)

Since then Bill Shorten’s crime gang of David Asmar, Diana Asmar, Andrew Landeryou and his wife Kimberley Kitching have been stealing everything that isn’t nailed down at the HSU Victoria Number 1 Branch. (They trade as the Health Workers Union) Kitching left last year after the Royal Commission recommended she and Diana Asmar and five others at the branch face criminal charges. (Click here to read more)

The fraud and theft that currently goes on at the HSU by Shorten’s crime gang has gone unreported besides this website and people on social media. But the Trade Union Royal Commission is investigating and Diana Asmar and Co should be back in the witness stand in a few weeks.

Union whistleblower Kathy Jackson has been called almost every name under the sun over the last few days since the $1.4million judgment against her for stealing from the Health Services Union (HSU). While most of the names such as fraudster, thief and hypocrite are fair and reasonable, credit also has to be given for Jackson’s whistleblowing as it saved millions for HSU members. If she had not blown the whistle massive fraud would be continuing by Michael Williamson and others at the HSU. Although it hasn’t stopped Bill Shorten’s crime gang.

So while Jackson should not be given the standard credit most whistleblowers receive she should get some credit.

There has been a huge effort, while the Royal Commission has been in progress, by the Labor Party and the Unions to put the focus and responsibility on Kathy Jackson for most of the Union corruption. While that might have worked at times to distract some media it won’t work at all from now given this week’s judgment against her.

It is interesting that Labor and the Unions try and use Kathy Jackson in an attempt to embarrass Prime Minister Tony Abbott because he once praised Kathy Jackson for blowing the whistle. Yet it was Bill Shorten who was long-term friends with Kathy Jackson while she ripped off the Union. Their friendship dated back to their university days and apparently continued up until 2007 when they had a falling out.

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Phonics call for Australian schools

Around this time last year, a review of the Australian curriculum commissioned by the federal government called for a revision of the primary school curriculum to place greater emphasis on literacy and numeracy, particularly in the early years. It found that the curriculum did not adequately cover the essential components of effective reading instruction, especially phonics. The results of national and international testing show the consequences of less-than-exemplary instruction-unacceptably high numbers of children failing to achieve even minimal literacy and numeracy standards.

At the time, the review's recommendations were characterised as proposing a 'back to basics' curriculum, but this view is not commensurable with a closer reading of the report. Far from proposing a hollowed-out, skills-based curriculum, a large part of the review report is devoted to the importance of content - the facts, concepts and ideas that embody what it means to be well-educated.

This week, it has been reported that the draft version of the revised curriculum contains more detail about the scope and sequence of the building blocks of written language - phonemic awareness and phonics. This is a welcome development. While schools often claim to teach phonics, the existing Australian curriculum gave the impression that this was a minor aspect of early literacy teaching.

Again, this has been described as a back-to-basics approach. Or even worse, as 'drill and kill'. Yet phonics instruction is far from basic - it is highly specific and scientific, and for many children, essential. Even the most ardent phonics advocate would not suggest that phonics is all children need to be good readers. They also need a good vocabulary and good general knowledge. First you need to be able to work out what the word is, then you need to understand what it means.

At this stage it is not clear exactly how other areas of the primary curriculum might have changed.  New ACARA chair Professor Steven Schwartz has said that the revised curriculum will allow schools more 'creativity' in their teaching of subjects like history and geography. Ideally, that means that history, geography and social sciences are embedded in comprehensive literacy programs, and vice versa. Either way, it would be wrong to assume that phonics comes at the expense of knowledge

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Biffo is as angry as ever

Conservatives will always thank him for making Labor unelectable under his leadership

Former Labor leader Mark Latham has again landed himself in hot water after a controversial tirade at the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Commenting on an assortment of topics, Mr Latham added to the public debate surrounding his highly publicised departure last week as a columnist for the Australian Financial Review.

Mr Latham was meant to be discussing the objectivity of ex-politicans reporting on politics, but baffled the audience when he opened the session by saying: 'This is how I talk ... and if you don't like it, you can f*** off.'

'What's wrong with a bit of unfiltered conversation? And the word f*** and c***, they've been on the front page of the Australian so they've been legitimised, so let's get right into it — f***, c***, poo, bum', he continued.

The question and answer session with Mr Latham on Saturday turned ugly when event host and ABC presenter Jonathon Green asked him to confirm whether he was behind a Twitter account used to attack prominent Australians.

It was Mr Latham's first public appearance since the Twitter controversy began last week. There was wide speculation the account was behind him leaving the AFR, though the paper's editor denied it.

A number of people left during the display while others in the audience clashed with Mr Latham about his criticism of prominent women, including Rosie Batty, and the booing of Sydney Swans footballer Adam Goodes.

Mr Latham's appearance was laced with provocative comments.

During his rapid-fire rant, he said Labor's best bet for electoral success was to stop fighting for 'symbolic' things like marriage equality, domestic violence and indigenous recognition.

He also lashed out at the host, attacking Mr Green for reposting a critical tweet about him, calling him an 'ABC w***ker', 'deviant' and 'bigot'.

Mr Green later tweeted about the tirade, saying, 'well that escalated quickly'. Using its official Twitter account, festival organisers expressed regret for Mr Latham's outburst.

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