Friday 26th of April 2024

without rupert, he would die...

rescue by rupert once more...

Screaming children, soiled nappies, inquisitive minds. Our early childhood workforce work incredibly hard. These are the people who care for over one million of our children each and every day. They comfort, nurture and educate during the period when 90% of children’s brain development takes place.

And they do it for a pittance.

Few could argue that these vital workers should remain amongst the lowest paid of the Australian workforce, yet this week, just before Christmas, thousands of them have had a long overdue pay rise cruelly ripped off them. People are right to be mightily peeved about this. This is a display of the government’s chaotic decision making, their disregard for the promises they have made and for the workers who are affected.

By way of background, child care centres generally pay their staff in one of two ways: either at the award rate (painfully inadequate), or at a rate negotiated through an enterprise agreement (still seriously inadequate). Workers are paid at varying rates but they all share salaries so low that they are forced to make the impossible choice: between caring for other people’s children or being able to suitably provide for their own.

It is a common complaint from educators, “I love this job – I do it for the children – but I simply can’t afford to continue”. All reasonable people would agree that this needs to be fixed.

The solution is for an across the board increase to their award lifting all salaries, ensuring that no one gets left behind. For this to occur, the previous Labor government created the Fair Work Commission (which enabled cases like this to be heard), and established a pay equity unit to provide the support to help the case succeed. But it doesn’t happen overnight.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/12/tony-abbotts-broken-promise-to-early-childcare-workers-is-a-cruel-betrayal

 

The list of Tonycrap is long... too long to state here in full... But the Tony person who has little shitty ideas about this country should have been sunk way before he was allowed to steer anything... He is lucky though that the merdo-crappy press is always rescuing him...

And Tony and shit float with the same density...

the gall of sinodinos...

 

The Government will abandon a number of tax changes announced when Labor was in office, blowing out the budget by $3 billion over the next four years.

Last week, Treasurer Joe Hockey announced the Government would scrap seven of 92 tax and superannuation policies proposed by the previous government.

The Coalition now says it will abandon a further 48 of those measures.

Assistant Treasurer Arthur Sinodinos says Labor is responsible for the $3 billion hit to the budget.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-14/coalition-abandons-tax-changes-despite-budget-blowout/5156964

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Sinodinos cannot float without floaties, such as blaming others for his own muck... Tax accountants have difficulties understanding the Liberal (CONservative) flip-flops...

http://www.wimp.com/angryseas

 

the little turd dismisses criticism over more sackings...

 

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has dismissed criticism of a decision to axe an independent committee that provides advice on the health needs of asylum seekers as "a complete beat-up".

The Immigration Health Advisory Group (IHAG) was established in 2006 but all of the group's members except the current chair, Dr Paul Alexander, have now been sacked.

The ABC's AM program understands the Government is now planning to set up its own advisory panel headed by Dr Alexander, an Australian Defence Force medical expert who IHAG members say has little mental health experience.

Mr Abbott says the Government will still receive advice on the mental and physical welfare of asylum seekers.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-16/coalition-disbands-immigration-health-advisory-group/5158084

 

the worst federal government in our history...

 

If we still had an unmanacled press and lived in democratic times, the Abbott Government would be on its way out, writes Bob Ellis.

The headlines of the last few days (‘Chaos’, ‘Turmoil’, ‘Recession’) are like those that preceded the Whitlam sacking and it may be that the Redcliffe by-election will trigger events that bring Abbott down ‒ or not ‒ like the Bass by-election of 1975.

In such an onrush of dramatic probability, Abbott would sack Morrison, Brough and Pyne be accused of conspiracy, Truss withdraw from the Coalition, the Senate announce an Inquiry into Morrison’s breaches of international law, the UN demand that Morrison stand trial for crimes against humanity and the Governor General order a Federal election to coincide with the Senate election in Western Australia.

This is what might happen, or would normally happen, if we still had an unmanacled press and lived in democratic times.

But these are post-democratic times.

No reporter, for instance, can ask a Manus policeman what happened or interview a witness of the killing of an Iranian man whose name is still secret, for some reason, or hear a description of the man who killed him. No other murder has been treated in this way in history; as a state secret; the equivalent of a Kings Cross king-hit murder is now a state secret. And Morrison’s Orwellian gobbledigook in his last press conference yesterday, though it bespeaks a Government in meltdown and a Coalition in crisis — fighting like cats in a sugar bag in a river ‒ will not presage a single resignation.

These are uncharted waters.

An economy being wrecked; warlike skirmishes with Indonesia nearing; Niugini likely to expel our cruel colonising tormentors of children from their shores; a U.S. Secretary of State denouncing our global warming policy; the Iranians condemning our record on human rights; a High Commissioner, Labor and competent, sacked and replaced by a fatuous tory suspected of war crimes; a Health Minister assisting the chocolate industry and misleading parliament; Australia derided world-wide and a thousand more days of this to come.

 

There has not been a worse Federal government in our history.

Like that of Bjelke-Petersen, it shows us to be a Bible-bashing, science-denying, children-torturing, gulag-flaunting mob of redneck, racist hoons that Michael Kirby would haul, if he could, before the World Court for eloquent condemnation.

And it gets worse by the day. Soon we will be without manufacturing industries, the first among developed nations. Then we will be in recession. Then, with no ABC, we will be a voiceless, flailing post-colonial calamity — like many in Africa ‒ shovelling billions into the debt-maw of the IMF and hoping for the best.

And then our democracy will be over and our economy with it.

We should try to stop this happening soon, using our numbers in the Senate and the Governor-General.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/post-democratic-times,6190

 

See toon and story at top... Without a compliant mass mediocre media, little shit Abbott would have been on his arse along time ago...