Australian Politics
Sunday, October 09, 2022
New bureaucratic burden for welfare housing
Evictions from welfare housing -- often due to extensive rental arrears -- normally require an extensive, costly and time-consuming bureaucratic process. Which costs the taxpayer a lot of money. So the W.A. government has been using a loophole that sidesteps that process. Do-gooders are trying to close that loophole. In the case below, it is almost certain that the Aborigine man was way behind with his rent
The West Australian government is being urged to stop evictions of public housing tenants without reason, or risk a deluge of litigation following an injunction being granted in the Federal Court.
After receiving a without grounds eviction notice in August, Noongar man John Abraham lodged a racial discrimination complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission.
In September, the Federal Court granted an injunction to his eviction until his AHRC complaint is heard.
The Tenancy Network, a group of community law firms, on Thursday urged Housing Minister John Carey to issue an immediate moratorium on the use of “without grounds” terminations of public housing tenancies.
It was signed by tenancy-focused lawyers from Circle Green Community Legal, Daydawn Advocacy Service, and SCALES community legal centre at Murdoch University.
They said since Abraham’s injunction was granted another elderly Aboriginal man was made homeless after he was evicted using the without grounds termination.
“This eviction was despite multiple written requests from the lawyers assisting him to the Housing Authority, to confirm that they would not action the eviction in light of the Federal Court injunction; requests which received no response from the Housing Authority,” it said.
They also warned the state was opening itself up to further litigation if it didn’t apply a statewide halt to its use, “to avoid further risk of eviction to homelessness, and excess litigation in other tenants lodging similar actions” with the AHRC and the Federal Court.
The lawyers said they did not want the Housing Authority, which sits within the Department of Communities, prevented from terminating tenancies where there were express reasons for doing so but urged the state to follow existing processes to evict tenants for breaches.
The department must apply to a magistrate to have a public housing tenancy terminated.
The magistrate must be satisfied there has been a breach of the tenancy agreement, and that the tenant has been given every opportunity to rectify the breach and has failed to do so.
However, Circle Green principal lawyer Alice Pennycott said magistrates considering without grounds terminations only needed to consider whether the request was issued correctly.
She said if the department had compelling reasons to terminate an agreement then it should follow existing processes.
A spokesman for Carey said the government would respond formally to Circle Green Community Legal “in due course”.
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How left-wing teachers have taken schools 'back to the Middle Ages', according to ex-PM Tony Abbott - and conservatives are 'too polite' to stop it
Left-wing teachers have taken Australian schools 'back to the Middle Ages' as dogma replaces learning and 'heretics' are hunted down, according to former prime minister Tony Abbott.
The radicalisation of education by the left was so 'pervasive' and 'destructive' the damage done would take generations to fix, the firebrand conservative said.
And he warned conservatives were not without blame in the rise of left-wing ideology - saying they were often too polite to call out the 'palpable nonsense' of activists.
Mr Abbott made the remarks on stage with fellow staunch conservative, former Liberal senator Amanda Stoker, at the right-wing CPAC convention in Sydney.
He said nowhere had 'the long march of the left through our institutions... been more pervasive and destructive than in our educational system'.
'It’s almost like we have gone back to Middle Ages where there is dogma - only it's not Christian dogma, it’s anything but Christian dogma - with modern day inquisitions hunting out modern day heretics (and) if not burning them at the stake at least cancelling them,' Mr Abbott told the October 1 conference.
Mr Abbott admitted he was out of step with the core beliefs of left-wing dogma. 'I don't like the climate cult, I don’t like the virus hysteria. I can't understand the gender fluidity push,' he said.
He warned that repairing the state of the schools would be a 'multi-generational' task that would require a cultural shift. 'It took us a long time to get into this deplorable position and I fear it's going to take a long time to get back to where we should be,' Mr Abbott said.
Mr Abbott called for more parental involvement in schools, greater attempts to attract the 'best and brightest' people to teaching and 'above all more academic rigour'.
He believed that education should be about the 'disinterested pursuit of truth'. 'There's got to be this insatiable curiosity, what more can we know? How better can we be,' he said.
Mr Abbott said he believed activists had taken advantage of the 'good manners' of people who knew their left-wing beliefs were 'palpable nonsense' but were too polite to say so.
'One of the things I often say is the majority that stays silent will not long remain the majority for very long,' he said. 'Good people have been too polite in the face of things that defy common sense. 'We can't let politeness stop us from expressing ourselves and contradicting in a polite and respectable way stuff which is palpable nonsense. 'Sometimes we have been unduly deferential. We have been remarkably shy of being the adults we should be.'
The former prime minister, who won office in 2013 but was deposed by Malcolm Turnbull in 2015 after a run of poor polls, also argued strongly against the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament, calling it 'discrimination'.
'Just because there may have been institutionalised discrimination in the past that’s no reason to institutionalise discrimination in the present and the future' Mr Abbott said to a round of applause from the CPAC crowd at Sydney's Darling Harbour.
The Albanese government has promised to hold a referendum on amending the constitution to create the special 'Voice' body, which would advise federal parliament on matters important to Indigenous Australians.
Mr Abbott argued the Voice to Parliament was being pushed with bullying tactics. 'We should never allow ourselves to be morally bullied into changing what works and if something doesn’t work let's fix it,' Mr Abbott said. 'What we shouldn’t do is forsake the important principles that made our country special and precious in an attempt to apologise for bad behaviour in the past.'
He said if Indigenous people weren't sufficiently represented in parliament they should be elected 'in the normal way'.
'Likewise the emissions obsession will eventually end when weather-dependent power can't keep the lights on. 'And the cultural self-loathing will stop when people have to choose between liberal democracy and its alternatives. 'That’s our task, to fight the good fight, to stay the course and keep the faith.'
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Australia’s baby drought: Call for return of Baby Bonus payment
Australia is in a baby drought, with a record-low birth rate threatening our future workforce and tax revenue – and leaving little support for the ageing population.
It’s prompting calls for a return of the “Baby Bonus” and significantly relaxed immigration policies.
Social analyst Mark McCrindle said the Baby Bonus payment – introduced in 2004 and worth between $3000 and $5437 – had been successful in helping to raise the Australian birthrate.
Mr McCrindle said he supported the reintroduction of a similar policy, which was offered to everyone who had a child, regardless of income or employment status. He said it was a large enough payment to help with family expenses but not so large that the government covered the cost of raising the child.
“The policies have moved more to child care assistance … and that has its benefits, but it’s more around getting parents back into labour force,” Mr McCrindle, founder of research company McCrindle, said.
“I think the cash is the most equal (policy) – people can make their choices based on their particular circumstance and world view. “Even if it went up to $10,000, it’s only token anyway compared to the costs of raising those kids.”
But the architect of the baby bonus – former treasurer Peter Costello – said the only way a similar payment would work today is if it came with strong messaging.
“I don’t think it was the payment itself that changed attitudes, it was the fact we talked about the problem and made people feel good about having more children,” Mr Costello, chair of sovereign wealth fund the Future Fund, said.
“(Twenty years ago) I said the best thing that could happen was if we could reverse the decline in fertility rate and I jokingly said ‘everyone should have one for mum, one for dad, one for country’ and for a while we arrested the birthrate and it actually ticked up.
“But then, in my view, we lost focus on the issue, and with various financial problems, it started to decline again. “It takes a long time to turn these things around.”
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australia had a total fertility rate of 1.58 births per woman in 2020 (294,369 babies).
This was down from 1.9 births per woman 30 years earlier, and down from 3.5 in 1961 at the height of the “baby boom”. In 1991, Census figures showed 7.5 per cent of the Australian population was aged 0 to 4.
Last year, this figure was down to just 5.8 per cent of the population, meaning about 440,000 fewer young children than if we had maintained that 7.5 per cent rate. That’s a 440,000-person hole in the future workforce – about the equivalent of the entire population of Malta.
But Australia cannot wait 20 or 30 years for population increases to flow through to the workforce. Demographer Simon Kuestenmacher said Australia was already running out of working-age people.
“If you look at the future population profile of Australia in 2030, you see there will be a massive lack of people aged 25 to 33,” Mr Kuestenmacher said. “The skill shortage is here to stay.”
He said the most cost-effective solution was to bring in skilled workers from overseas, but this was becoming more difficult as Australia was not the only country that needed more workers.
Mr Kuestenmacher suggested Australia follow the Canadian model and start “handing out citizenships to international students like candy”.
“You want future taxpayers in your country and international students are the best because they are educated to the level you require and they already have spent a couple of years in the country so are somewhat acclimatised,” he said.
“But what do we do? We make it very hard for them to acquire citizenship and to find jobs and make it a bureaucratic and expensive process.
“It’s not just mean but plain stupid.”
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Government to create new welfare card to phase out Howard-era Basics Card
Tens of thousands of Australians will be given a new welfare card to replace the much-maligned Basics Card, as the Albanese government moves to eliminate compulsory income management.
Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth has revealed that following the scrapping of the cashless debit card, welfare recipients will next year have access to a “new enhanced card”.
Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth says a “new enhanced card” will be made available for welfare recipients, but it will be voluntary.
New figures reveal that a third of the participants who had the opportunity to get off the cashless debit card did so in just four days last week.
The new card is expected to be simpler to use, available in many more stores and welfare recipients will only be placed on it voluntarily. It will also be managed by Services Australia, not a private company.
“It’s about offering certainty and choice,” Rishworth said. “We’re committed to a better Australia by leaving no one behind and holding no one back.”
The government’s move to scrap the cashless debit card – which quarantines up to 80 per cent of a person’s welfare payment onto a card that can’t be used to withdraw cash – was widely welcomed by the social services sector and many advocates for First Nations people.
But they have been calling on the government to also abolish the Basics Card, which usually quarantines 50 per cent of a welfare participant’s income, with many believing it is just as objectionable as the cashless debit card.
There are still 24,000 Australians on the Basics Card, which can only be used at stores that the government has approved and severely limits online purchases.
Rishworth said all welfare recipients who go on income management will have access to the new card from July 2023, while everyone previously on the cashless debit card will be able to go on the new card from March 6.
She said the future of the Basics Card would be determined by an 18-month consultation process, but other government sources who weren’t authorised to speak publicly confirmed that the government would phase it out.
The Basics Card was first given to First Nations people in remote communities under the Howard government’s 2007 Northern Territory intervention, but the former Labor government expanded it to a wider cohort of people in 2010.
Early data confirms that people have rushed to get off the cashless debit card at the first available opportunity. This is despite having until March next year to move off the card following the government passing legislation to abolish it last month.
Of the 12,302 who could move off the card from last Tuesday, 3813 have already transitioned off. This does not include people who were on the card in the Northern Territory and Cape York regions who will be transitioned off the card on March 6. People moving off the cashless debit card can now either move onto the Basics Card or to self-managed payments.
Rishworth said the government was “committed to voluntary income management and over the next 18 months we will be consulting widely with communities to determine what the future of income management looks like”. “All participants on income management with a Basics Card or the new card ... will receive client services provided by Services Australia rather than a private company,” she said.
“From community consultation, we know people want the support and experience modern technology provides.”
During the parliamentary inquiry into the abolishment of the cashless debit card, the Tangentyere Council Aboriginal Corporation raised concerns about people being transitioned back onto the Basics Card.
“The Basics Card is not a good alternative to the Cashless Debit Card and is in many respects more limited,” it said. “The Basics Card for example cannot be used to make online purchases of food or other essential services including purchases of credit for prepayment phones and prepayment electricity meters.”
The Traditional Credit Union said scrapping the Cashless Debit Card “gets rid of an instrument that has a name to it that we believe is actually a better instrument than the Basics Card”.
Edwina MacDonald, the acting chief executive for the Australian Council of Social Service, said that even with an improved Basics Card, mandatory income management “continues to discriminate against First Nations people and penalises people for being on a low income”. “Credible evidence shows that quarantining people’s income support payments does not lead to improved outcomes for individuals or their communities,” she said.
“Improved technology won’t address the deep flaws of compulsory income management. After 15 years, this failed policy must be abolished.”
Elise Klein, associate professor at the Australian National University, said there was no evidence that compulsory income management, including the Basics Card, had a positive effect in communities.
Klein also said a close eye needed to be kept on what the government meant by “voluntary”, saying people shouldn’t be given extra money to go on income management.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Evelyn Rae, a 
Sahara Ray is undoubtedly a good-looking woman. Since she is Australian-born there is even a possibility that we may be distantly related
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