Limits on Australian political donations

Crackdown on donations would destroy activist groups, GetUp says. The article below is from the Left so is unlikely to be the whole story but if it is right, it would seem that the government is on the right track.  Political agitators often support destructive policies and spoil the scene for people with real grievances and problems.

And the idea that an attack on them is an attack on "democracy" is another example of Leftist Newspeak (in Orwell's terms).  The whole point of these groups, particularly when they take to the streets, is to rule from the streets, not the ballot box.  The recent homosexual marriage "debate" in Australia showed how coercive and thuggish  these groups can be

And it is clearly the Left who abuse the opportunity to demonstrate.  The "Occupy Wall St" demonstrations of 2011 in NYC were very aggressive and trashed the location whereas the conservative "Tea Party" demonstrations were polite, civil and picked up their rubbish after themselves.

In my home State of Queensland under the Bjelke-Peterson administration of the '60s, Leftist demonstrations were heavily limited by the police, resulting in quite civil Leftist behaviour, when a demonstration was allowed.  I know.  I was there.  I think that should be the general pattern.  Leftist hate-fests should be carefully monitored and cancelled when they become aggressive

Leftists are rarely content with free speech. They want freedom to coerce and intimidate as well.  Non-coercive, non-obstructive, non-abusive demonstrations should of course always be allowed but a Leftist demonstration rarely even starts out that way, let alone ending that way


The activist group GetUp has criticised the Turnbull government’s proposed crackdown on foreign political donations, saying its legislation will destroy the revenue streams of grassroots groups and minor parties.

In a submission to the joint standing committee on electoral matters, which is holding an inquiry into election funding and disclosure, GetUp says the government’s bill contains an extraordinary requirement for not-for-profit organisations to obtain a statutory declaration from donors who give just $4.80 a week to political campaign organisations such as GetUp.
Fear 'rushed' foreign influence bill will harm freedom of speech
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It says according to Sections 302L and 302P of the bill’s explanatory memorandum, buried on pages 43 and 45, the government makes it clear that if individuals want to donate $250 or more annually to an organisation they will have to declare they are an “allowable donor” and have a justice of the peace or a police officer witness their declaration.

GetUp says that would require organisations to monitor cumulative small donations in real time and, once the annual $250 ceiling is met, to refuse further donations until a statutory declaration is obtained.

Failure to comply with the law would result in 10 years’ imprisonment or a fine of $210,000.

“This hidden clause reveals the federal government’s true intention is to shut down anyone it doesn’t agree with,” Paul Oosting, GetUp national director, told Guardian Australia. “This will destroy grassroots groups’ and minor parties’ revenue streams.

“If brought into law, this would starve GetUp of more than half of our people-powered funding, essentially halting our ability to call on the government to save the Great Barrier Reef, demand corporations contribute a fair share to our local schools and hospitals and treat people seeking asylum in Australia humanely.

“You can get a passport or buy a house without a stat dec but now if you want to stand up for a cause you believe in you’ve got to line up at a police station and get a formal document signed and witnessed. It’s absurd.

“This bill serves the interests of the Turnbull government and no one else. It doesn’t stop the likes of Gina Rinehart or the Adani Corporation from cutting huge cheques to their favourite politicians but it forces everyday people to jump through absurd hoops just to have their say in our democracy.”

GetUp’s submission says the government’s bill is ostensibly a response to a series of scandals surrounding foreign funding of politicians and political parties, and the potential for undue foreign influence, but those scandals would not have played out any differently if the bill were enacted into law.

“The ‘foreign donors; namechecked in the media – Chau Chak Wing and Huang Xiang Mo – both hold or held Australian citizenship or residency at the time the donations were made and therefore would be allowable donors under the provisions of the bill,” GetUp’s submission says.

“Meanwhile, the bill not only prohibits many not-for-profits from receiving international philanthropy entirely, but imposes a large administrative burden for them to confirm the identity of all donors – as opposed to, for example, simply determining whether the donation came from a foreign bank account.

“This represents a near-impossible feat for community organisations that depend on the small donations of thousands of everyday people.

“There is also a reasonable concern that banning donations by reference to a person’s identity in the way currently drafted is unconstitutional. It is clear the Bill is not serving the interests of the Australian public, concerned about the recent slew of foreign donations scandals – which raises the question, what or whose interests does it serve?

“One clue is in what the bill omits. It misses by far the biggest risk for ‘foreign influence’ in Australia’s democracy: large multinational corporations.”

The Minerals Council of Australia, one of Australia’s biggest corporate lobby groups, has conceded that it makes political donations and pays to attend fundraisers to gain access to members of parliament.

In a submission to a separate Senate inquiry, the MCA said it made donations amounting to $33,250 in 2015-16 and $57,345 in 2016-17, which were declared to the Australian Electoral Commission. The majority in both years went to the Liberal or National parties and associated entities.

The frank admission – which reflects a commonly held belief about the role of money in politics – stuck out because major corporations and lobby groups by and large say they make donations to support democracy.

SOURCE





Aboriginal activist called a ‘hypocritical hater’

Hate is what Leftists do

An Aboriginal activist who called for Australia to be burnt to the ground during an incendiary ­address to an “invasion day” rally has been described as a hypocritical hater and faces calls to be dumped from her leadership role with a government-funded body.

Former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett said the Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) ­organiser Dtarneen Onus-Williams should step down as an executive member of Victoria’s Koorie Youth Council for a series of angry, divisive comments.

At a rally outside Victoria’s Parliament House on Friday, Ms Onus-Williams, 24, told the crowd: “We have not organised this to change the date. We have organised this to abolish Australia Day because f..k Australia. F..k Australia, I hope it f..king burns to the ground.’’ She later stood by the comments, saying that although they were intended metaphorically rather than literally, she wanted “everything, all the governments to fall apart”.

Mr Kennett said that while the young activist was entitled to speak her mind and to say what she wanted, it was inappropriate for her to continue with the state government-funded Koorie Youth Council and to sit on any government-funded body.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate that she continues to serve on the council,” Mr Kennett said.

“This is something that’s meant to advance the understanding and appreciation of all things indigenous and in saying what she has, she’s shown that she’s totally incompatible with that. I think it’s a case of ‘thank you, but goodbye’.”

Indigenous leader and former ALP president Warren Mundine said Ms Onus-Williams was a hypocrite and a “hater” for working with the government on state-funded programs while openly attacking the government and causing division in other forums.

Mr Mundine said the episode illustrated that governments across the country had to rethink which indigenous groups and panels they funded and more carefully scrutinise where the funds are spent.

“The serious question here is why is the government funding these groups and these organisations when the people involved are haters who have no scruples about taking taxpayers’ money and then spitting in their faces,” Mr Mundine told The Australian.

“And governments only have themselves to blame for wasting taxpayers’ money, because there’s no real rigour in appointments and no questions about where this money is going. And then you see money going into causes and demonstrations where people are racially abusing and threatening people — it has to change.”

The Victorian Koorie [Aboriginal] Youth Council has received almost $2 million from the state government since 2012, with the Andrews government providing $545,342 for 2016-17. The Koorie Youth Council yesterday said it did not support Ms Onus-Williams’s comments. In a statement, it stressed that Ms Onus-Williams was a volunteer with the organisation and had been sharing her personal opinion — rather than the council’s — at the rally.

The council said it had played no role in the organisation of the rally, nor provided any funding for external activities. “Media reports associating KYC with the march are misleading and unfounded,” a statement said.

Mr Mundine said the Victorian government should strip the youth council of funding following Ms Onus-Williams’s comments. He said the youth council had promoted the rally several times on its Twitter feed.

Mr Mundine’s comments angered indigenous academic Marcia Langton, who hit back. “With youth detention rates at a high, the overwhelmingly good work of the KYC needs our support,” she said. “Think about consequences of your demand to defend/shut down one of the few voices for young indigenous people.”

Ms Onus-Williams could not be reached for comment yesterday. She deleted her Facebook ­account after the rally.

SOURCE





The Never-ending Battles of the Coral Sea

Viv Forbes

For at least 50 years Australian taxpayers and other innocents have supported a parasitic industry in academia, bureaucracy, law, media and the tax-exempt Green Alarm “Charities”, all studying, regulating, inspecting and writing about yet another “imminent threat to Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef.”

It has become the never-ending battle of the Coral Sea.

The threats change, but there is always a doomsday forecast – Crown-of-Thorns, oil drilling, fishing, cane farming, coastal shipping, global warming, ocean acidity, coral bleaching, port dredging, chemical and fertiliser runoff, coal transport, river sediments, loss of world heritage status etc. Every recycled scare, magnified by the media and parroted by politicians, generates more income for the alarm industry, usually at the expense of taxpayers, consumers or local industries.

The reality is that sea creatures would starve in pure water – all marine life needs nutrients, salts and minerals. These come from other life forms, from decomposing rocks and organic matter carried to the sea by rivers, from dissolving atmospheric gases, or from delta and shelf sediments stirred up by floods, cyclones, dredging or coastal shipping. No one supports over-use of toxic man-made chemicals, but well-run cane, cattle and coal companies can co-exist with corals.

Corals first appeared 500 million years ago and have proven to be one of Earth’s great survivors. They outlasted the Carboniferous Forests, the Permian and Cretaceous extinctions, the dinosaurs, the mammoths, the Neanderthals and the Pleistocene cycles of ice age and warming. They thrive in warm tropical water, cluster around hot volcanic fumaroles and survive massive petroleum spills, natural oil seeps, tidal waves and volcanic dust. They have even recolonised the Montebello Island waters devastated by atomic bomb testing in the 1950’s.

The ENSO oscillation of blobs of warm Pacific water which caused recent coral bleaching can be identified in historical records for at least 400 years. Corals have survived El Nino warmings for thousands of years and they will probably outlast Homo Alarmism as Earth proceeds into the next glacial epoch.

Corals do not rely on computer models of global temperature to advise them – they read the sea level thermometer which falls and rises as the great ice sheets come and go.

In the warming phase like the one just ending, ice melts, sea levels rise and the reef that houses the corals may get drowned. Corals have two choices – build their reef higher or just float south/inshore and build a new reef (like the Great Barrier Reef) in shallower, cooler water. When islands sink beneath rising oceans, corals may build their own coral atolls as fast as the water rises.

Then when the cold era returns, ice sheets grow, sea levels fall, and the warm era coral reefs (like the Great Barrier Reef) get stranded on the new beaches and coastal plains. Usually the process is slow enough to allow the coral polyps to float into deeper warmer water closer to the equator and build another reef.

This eminently sensible policy of “move when you have to” has proved a successful survival policy for the corals for 500 million years.

Humans should copy the corals – “forget the computer climate models but watch real data like actual sea levels and . . . move when you have to.”

SOURCE






Absurd ‘modest Australian fashion’

How did you dress your little girl for school this morning? Shorts, and a short-sleeved polo?

A sunhat, to wear outdoors?

And what about your good self, what do you have on? A cute off-the-shoulder number? A shirt, with the second button undone?

Do you think that makes you a little immodest? Synonyms for which include immoral, and indecent?

I ask because Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, otherwise known as DFAT, or else as Australia’s face to the world, has this week launched a thrilling new exhibition, in both Malaysia and Indonesia, showcasing, wait for it, “modest Australian fashion.”

In case you don’t know what that is, it’s skirts to the floor, ladies.

It is full body suits at the beach. It’s covering up your hair, and draping yourself in heavy fabric as you go about your day.

When did this become something the Australian government wanted to promote, and celebrate?

In 2018, apparently.

A media release announcing the exhibition, titled “Fashion Diplomacy in Action: Showcasing Australian Modest Fashion” went up on DFAT’s social media pages on 22 January. You can find it here.

It starts in a cheery way: “You may not have even heard of the modest fashion market but it is booming.”

Yes, it is. Depressingly, it is booming, as the corruption of Sharia in the name of Islam, and its attendant misogyny, expands around the globe, sweeping all before it in an orgy of violence and terror.

But hey, what a great opportunity to introduce “Australian modest fashion” to the world!

Just curious, though, if you’re not wearing modest fashion, as defined by DFAT, what kind of fashion are you wearing today?

Immodest fashion? Because you haven’t got a pair of leggings under your calf-length skirts, and a turtle-neck under your blouse?

This is how Australian government officials describe us now?

Apparently so, because the blog helpfully explains: “Modest fashion is clothing that conceals rather than accentuating the body — and it is quickly increasing in popularity.”

Popularity. What an interesting word to choose.

The post goes on: “The emerging modest fashion market can help advance Australia’s public diplomacy objectives.”

How so, exactly? The post is illustrated with glamour shots of women covered head to toe, as if this is the ideal.

Australian women have done very well without being told what they can wear, from day dot. And that is because Australian womanhood is robust, hands-on, shoulder to the wheel. It is pioneers on outback stations, and it is women, and indeed teenage girls, sailing solo around the globe. It’s walking across the continent with your own fleet of camels, and flying your own damn plane.

It is women like Annette Kellerman, who in 1905 held all the world’s records for swimming, including the coveted 26-miles from Dover to Ramsgate.

It’s Joan Mary Barry, who at the age of 25 in 1961, was hauled before the Waverley Court for wearing a bikini on Bondi Beach, and for telling the lifeguard who tried to arrest her that he was a fool.

Obviously it’s possible to be both Australian and to wear the veil. But the idea that by choosing not to cover up — heading to the beach in a pair of bathers, or hitching up your shorts for climbing trees — makes one immodest … that’s something we need to push back against, as hard and as fast as we can.

The giddy tone of the DFAT post truly defies belief: “We first came across the exhibition (of modest clothing) in 2016 when we were researching public diplomacy activities for the coming financial year,” it says.

“We thought the exhibition would resonate well with Malaysians and we were right — a comment we heard from many was ‘wow, we didn’t realise Australia had a modest fashion scene.”

We’re meant to feel thrilled about that?

How about we tell them: Australia is an enlightened country, where women can dress as they please?

How about we immediately divert the funds from the “modest fashion exhibition” toward programs for breaking up child marriages, sending girls to school, and clamping down on genital mutilation?

DFAT may think it is a you-beaut idea to “support” the veiling of women in Malaysia and Indonesia, but in case they missed the cable, women across the Middle East are currently battling for the right not to wear the hijab.

Those women are disappearing from street corners.

They’re being thrown into prison.

How about we “support” them in their “immodest” desires? Because it’s getting harder to live without the scarf in Malaysia, and in places like Aceh, in Indonesia. Religious police are roaming the streets, and breaking into private homes, and arresting women for hanging out with chaps who aren’t their husbands.

Why are we supporting the idea that dressing freely is immodest? That is our government — our money, in our secular democracy — in the service of misogyny. It’s not fashion forward. It is fashion backward, and plain grotesque.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here