Australian Politics

Leftists are very resistant to confronting the probable ill effects of their "Good intentions"

Nitwit Jones

The Albanese government seems to have finally recognised the errors in its poorly worded law requiring tax practitioners to disclose any mental health problems to their clients.

Daily Mail Australia drew to its readers' attention the alarming ramifications of the law weeks ago - but it was only in a meeting on Friday between the government and tax practitioners that there seems to have been a belated admission of such.

Labor's assistant treasurer Stephen Jones had issued a ministerial directive requiring tax practitioners to disclose 'any' matter a client might consider relevant to whether or not they would engage their services.

Anyone with an ounce of common sense could see that 'any' matter is too broad for legally binding legislation and therefore needed tightening up.

The poor drafting was done to satisfy the Greens, who have been on a crusade since revelations of misconduct by a small number of tax practitioners within 'big four' accounting firm PwC.

The vague wording of the new laws opened a Pandora's box of problems, including the potential that tax professionals would need to disclose mental health problems to clients.

That would be a horrendous breach of privacy as well as a reason tax professionals might avoid mental health support no matter how much it was required.

Suicide Prevention Australia, the nation's peak body in this area, wrote to the minister expressing its concerns, and understandably so.

But for weeks Jones revealed his inner stubborn self, refusing to concede his badly worded law would force mental health disclosures.

Probably concerned about getting the Greens offside.

Jones kept insisting he didn't intend the new law to be interpreted that way, so that was the end of the matter. As though he had the power of an overlord or emperor.

He seemed to think the wording of the law was not relevant if he - as the junior minister responsible - offered misguided musings to the contrary.

Courts interpreting laws don't care about what the minister says; they care about what the law says, in black and white. You don't need a law degree to know that - it's common sense, just not to the minister.

Never mind also that the Chair of the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB), Peter de Cure, explicitly said mental health might need to be disclosed given the way the law was worded. The TPB is the government body applying the law on a case-by-case basis.

And never mind that when Daily Mail Australia rang the TPB's help line for tax agents we were told yes, mental health disclosures would be required under the new laws:

'It falls into the typical grey area of the TPB's wording. If [mental health] is affecting operations or working for the client it probably should be disclosed... It would be advised and it's recommended.'

The confusion highlighted the ambiguity that was in need of fixing, which the government is now finally - reluctantly - doing.

The emperor had no clothes but the Assistant Treasurer has finally accepted a barely there sheet to preserve some of his modesty.

Did any of this lead the minister to reflect on his policy stupidity in the first place? Sadly not. At least not until pressure was brought to bear by the media and the industry being affected.

Jones even continued his Monty Python-style Black Knight routine after receiving Silk’s advice that mental health was something that might need to be disclosed, unless the law was changed.

A Silk is a Senior legal Counsel - the highest-ranking barrister within the profession with many years of experience to go with their expert standing. This particular Silk was also the university medalist in law at ANU: Not exactly a junior burger whose legal advice should be discarded by a minister seemingly out of his depth.

Despite receiving such advice, Stephen Jones continued to describe claims that mental health would need disclosing as 'unfounded'.

Journalists such as Ed Tadros from the Australian Financial Review (AFR) parroted the false claim that the concerns were 'unfounded', even though, like the minister, he knew there was legal advice proving the concerns were, in fact, well-founded.

I'm not sure if I'm more critical of him replicating the spin of the minister or the ethics of describing something as 'unfounded' when he knew there was evidence to back up the concerns.

Lets call it a callow tie. We reached out to Tadros for comment but got no response.

Tadros even tried to claim yesterday that leading mental health expert Patrick McGorry agreed the wording of the new law did not require mental health disclosures.

However, when Daily Mail Australia contacted Professor McGorry he said he had not seen the law and Tadros had not even contacted him about the piece he wrote for Saturday.

'Haven't seen the draft law nor the AFR piece and nor have I been interviewed in relation to any story today.'

Tadros was forced to concede yesterday that Labor is now fixing the problem (you know, the 'unfounded' one):

'The government will amend the wording of proposed laws', he wrote, seemingly unaware that ministerial directives can't be 'amended'.

They need to either be forcibly removed via a disallowance motion in the Senate or withdrawn by the government. Or an entirely new directive needs to be issued, which is what Labor is now proposing.

Also, these aren't 'proposed' laws, as Tadros misunderstood. When directives are tabled in the Senate they are written into law. In this case, the start date has been delayed as the government works through this mess of its own making.

While Labor has done an about-face to fix the mental health implications of its new laws, there are other problems that still need fixing, such as loose wording forcing tax professionals to dob in clients.

We only know about these continuing problems with the new law because those who attended the consultation meeting on Friday refused to sign non-disclosure agreements. At one point, the government threatened to walk away from discussions if attendees would not do so.

It is the same anti-transparency action Labor tried to get away with when consulting the anti-gambling lobby, a move to silence them that Tim Costello called out in all its shameful ignominy just the other week.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13819571/Labor-tax-mental-health-law-PVO.html

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Fifteen rape cases discontinued during NSW DPP Sally Dowling’s audit

Long overdue

Fifteen rape cases have been discontinued following an audit launched by NSW chief prosecutor Sally Dowling after a series of judges criticised her office claiming it was running meritless rape cases, with the full results of the highly-anticipated probe due to be made public in a matter of weeks.

Ms Dowling, addressing a NSW budget estimates committee on Wednesday afternoon, said 330 cases set down for trial this year have been audited by experienced crown prosecutors, with the results of 11 matters still pending.

The audit was announced by Ms Dowling in March, after five NSW District Court judges accused her office of running sexual assault cases that had no hope of securing a conviction.

The full findings of the audit will be published by the end of October, once looked over by an external academic source. However, Ms Dowling revealed fifteen matters have been discontinued.

“Eight were terminated on evidentiary grounds and seven were terminated on either discretionary grounds or a combination of discretionary and evidentiary grounds,” she said.

She said of the eight matters terminated on evidentiary grounds, she understood it was likely they “would have been identified in the normal course of the prosecution because some of these matters were many months out from trial”.

Asked how she came to this understanding, Ms Dowling said “in the life of a prosecution, the viability of the prosecution is constantly under review”.

“For example, and this is just a hypothetical example, if a matter was listed for trial in November and it’s being reviewed in April, it is likely that between April and November a very detailed review of that would have been taken in the normal course,” she said. “The crown prosecutor who is going to be running that matter, when in preparation for that matter would have identified the problems with that and sent it up.”

There were 10 matters identified as “non-compliant with the prosecution guidelines”, but Ms Dowling said “not all of those have been discontinued”.

“In all of those matters, late brief service was a contributing factor,” she said. “So that means that the time for certification of those charges was much truncated due to the late receipt of the brief, and that resulted in intense time pressures for the certifier at the ODPP.”

Ms Dowling said the review has “demonstrated consistently high standard of legal analysis by the prosecution teams in an area of the law that is complex”.

“No systemic issues have been identified, but opportunities for improvement have been noted,” she said.

Ms Dowling said “no unwritten policies have been identified” as a result of the audit.

The NSW Judicial Commission last month upheld a complaint made by Ms Dowling against judge Robert Newlinds, after he had accused her office of making “lazy and perhaps politically expedient” referrals of meritless rape accusations to court.

Judge Newlinds also raised a “deep level of concern” that there “is some sort of unwritten policy” within the ODPP that sees matters go to court that have no hope of conviction.

The watchdog recommended Judge Newlinds be sidelined from criminal trials after deriding the prosecution office “without notice or evidence”.

NSW District Court judge Peter Whitford is also the subject of a complaint from Ms Dowling, after he accused her office of prosecuting matters “without apparent regard to whether there might be reasonable prospects of securing a conviction”. The result of the complaint against him is unknown.

Liberal MP Susan Carter during estimates questioned what would happen if an ODPP staff member did not believe the matter should proceed to trial.

Ms Dowling said: “People are not being forced to run matters in my office.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/legal-affairs/fifteen-rape-cases-axed-during-nsw-dpp-sally-dowlings-audit/news-story/6e9b8a95c60112ec312588cdf3d6e235

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Labor's latest immigration move will bring one part of society to its knees - and there is a real danger the nation may never recover from the damage it does

Higher education insiders say Labor's latest round of changes will imperil a sector already on its knees, as economic data reveals the economy is grinding to a halt, despite stubbornly high inflation.

This week’s National Accounts show Australia’s economy is on the brink of recession, yet the higher education policy Labor is imposing will severely hamper Australia’s second largest export industry - the only thing currently standing between poor economic results and a recession.

While the latest quarterly economic growth numbers were in the doghouse at just 0.2 per cent, services exports have been propping that figure up. Led by the university sector, it grew annually at 5.6 per cent.

However Education Minister Jason Clare’s recent changes - capping the intake of foreign students at elite universities at 2019 levels - will grind that growth to a halt.

Just as importantly, the new policy will destroy Labor's signature higher education policy goal of increasing the number of Australians with university qualifications. This policy was announced to much fanfare ahead of the 2022 election.

For years now, full-fee-paying foreign students have subsidised underfunded university research as well as the intakes of local students.

However, capping the full-fee-paying student numbers from overseas will force some universities to shut down entire faculties and limit the number of domestic student they enrol.

That's because these students are a per capita cost to the university. Full-fee-paying overseas students have been subsidising that loss.

Without the cash cow of full-fee-paying foreign students, Labor's goal of a more highly educated domestic population simply won’t happen, unless the government significantly increases university funding, which it won’t do because of the pressures already on the budget.

But that’s not the only policy goal Clare’s disastrous policy is putting in jeopardy.

Even the politically driven motive of reducing foreign students to cut immigration and ease pressure on housing stocks won’t work, if the government tries to shoehorn overseas students from elite institutions into lesser quality universities, in a bid to help the lower ranked institutions already suffering from earlier policy changes by Labor.

That’s because foreign students won’t tolerate moving to lower reputation institutions. They will simply take their business elsewhere and attend higher quality universities in other parts of the world.

Higher education is a competitive global business. It is almost as if the education minister is unaware that we live in a globalised world.

Daily Mail Australia has been told by insiders the minister has been captured by his higher education department deputy secretary Ben Rimmer, who ‘is out of control and leading the minister down a blind alley’, according to the source.

‘The policy is disastrous for the university sector and terrible for the country,’ the senior source told Daily Mail Australia.

'Its implementation design is so faulty (such that) it will do the opposite of what the government seeks to achieve.'

University administrators are united in opposition to what the government is doing.

They have collectively warned the minister and those around him that it will damage elite universities, including lowering their world rankings, but won’t fix the problems Clare’s Ministerial Directive 107 imposed on the lower quality institutions.

Ministerial Directive 107, imposed on the sector nearly a year ago, prioritised visas to lower risk, higher quality, institutions.

Replacing this with a quota system built on 2019 numbers limiting intakes to top institutions means that quality students will study abroad and only higher risk students will get through the quota system to study at lower quality institutions.

‘It’s just a disaster’, another university administrator told Daily Mail Australia.

Those lower quality students are also more likely to want to take advantage of visa rules making it easier for them to migrate to Australia.

'Only a tiny fraction of overseas students who study at the top universities seek to emigrate to Australia.

'The overwhelming majority return home with their qualification.'

But that isn’t the case at the lower quality institutions.

‘What Labor is doing will add to the number of foreign students who seek to stay in Australia, not subtract from it’, the university administrator says.

That will put upwards pressure on immigration, contrary to the political goals of the government.

If Labor's policy goes ahead, universities will be forced to impose massive staff and faculty cuts to their institutions to remain financially in the black.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13819219/PETER-VAN-ONSELEN-Labor-immigration-Australian-universities.html

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Aboriginal woman Madison King reveals why she wants Welcome to Country ceremonies cancelled

An Aboriginal woman has branded modern Welcome to Country ceremonies 'bulls*** money making schemes', and is encouraging employees to take their bosses to court if they are forced to attend one.

Madison King, who describes herself as a 'proud Kimberley woman', said there was a long history and tradition to smoking ceremonies but claimed they had been 'bastardised' for modern audiences, often for profit.

'That's not our culture. We didn't just go around and have corroborees (an Aboriginal ceremonial meeting) and stuff whenever we felt like it,' Ms King said in one of two videos which have since gone viral on social media.

'There was a purpose and a meaning for it. And what an insult to all the mob that do corroboree as a tradition and you mob make a mockery out of it and turn it into entertainment and for money purposes.'

She added: 'It's a private matter, a personal matter and doing it for thousands of people at the same time, I reckon it' bulls***.'

Ms King, who co-wrote a book called 'Kimberley Bush Medicine: Medicinal Plants of the Kimberley Region of Western Australia' last year, gave short shrift to modern ceremonies which now take place in schools, workplaces and before sporting events.

She likened them to 'forcing someone's religion on to you' and accused those involved of trying to 'milk our culture and tradition for money' .

'They'll try and make it out that it's normal. That's not normal,' she said.

'I grew up in the community. I didn't grow up in a big city, I grew up in the community of Forest River Commision, Oombulgurri. So I know what smoking ceremony is and what it's about.

'But it's turned into a money making scheme and the true value of it is not what it is.'

In another video, which she entitled 'doubling down on cultural awareness', Ms King claimed that modern Welcome to Country ceremonies were 'made up' by Richard Walley's theatre group, which included a young Ernie Dingo.

While Indigenous communities have greeted strangers through smoking ceremonies and performances for tens of thousands of years, modern Welcome to Country ceremonies were only created in 1976.

Maori and Cook Islander performers attending the Perth Arts Festival that year refused to set foot on the lawns of the University of Western Australia, where they were due to perform, until they had been welcomed in an Indigenous ceremony.

Mr Walley's Middar Aboriginal Theatre group - which included a young Ernie Dingo - created the ritual after consulting local Nyoongar Elders, and that enabled the show to go on.

This then became the blueprint for all future ceremonies.

But Ms King said 'everything about it is wrong'.

'When you let a lie go on for that long that people now think it's what our culture is,' she said.

'Now it's just for entertainment. If you looks at all these people who go into boxing rings clapping sticks, shame job. That's not out culture.'

Ms King suggested some performers were making from '$5,000 to $50,000' per show and questioned whether any of that money was going toward indigenous groups.

'You think them people in the community are making that money? No. It's the purple circle. So when you go around clapping for all these people, you're clapping for only a small group of people,' she said.

'We already see in Aboriginal corporations our money being used and spent by the purple circle. They're not looking after our mob.'

Ms King encouraged people to 'fight back'.

'If they are forcing you to do acknowledgment or Welcome to Country in your workplace, take them to court,' she said.

'You don't have to sit there and do anything. If they want to call you racist, whatever. They call me racist and I'm black.'

Reconciliation Australia, a non-government body promoting dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, said that a Welcome to Country ceremony 'shows respect' by 'upholding cultural protocols'.

'Taking the time to Acknowledge Country, or including a Welcome to Country at an event, reminds us that every day we live, work, and dream on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands,' its website states.

It adds that 'protocols for welcoming visitors to Country have always been a part of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures' and consist of welcoming visitors and offering them safe passage and protection.

'Today, while these protocols have been adapted to contemporary circumstances, the essential elements remain: welcoming visitors and respect for country,' it states.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13815337/Welcome-Country-ceremonies-called-out.html