Friday 29th of March 2024

on his watch...

rorts

As Christine Holgate went through four hours of ritualistic flogging of officials and executives known as Senate Estimates, the website of a Parisian luxury brand might have started to buckle under the surge in online traffic.

It wasn't a cyber-attack — it was the entire Federal Parliament logging on to Cartier's online store to check out the price of its luxury timepieces, lingering over the five-figure tags.

Therein lies the heart of this scandal.

If the four Australia Post executives had received cash bonuses instead of watches totalling almost $20,000, Ms Holgate may well still be in her role. It may never even have been brought up in Parliament.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-24/australia-post-cartier-watches-controversy-cultural-problems/12807110

daryl rort...

daryl

 


living under the roof of taxpayers...

The corporate watchdog's deputy chair Daniel Crennan has resigned after it emerged he claimed nearly $70,000 from taxpayers to cover rent.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has ordered a review of the housing expenses and a tax bill of almost $120,000 for Australian Securities and Investments Commission chairman James Shipton after the audit office raised concerns about the payments.

 

Read more:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/asic-deputy-chair-quits-in-wake-of-expenses-scandal-20201026-p568k7.html

saint rort, a famous australian miracle-maker...

It’s all very good for the PM to criticise senior public sector executives involved in expenses and taxation scandals (‘‘Largesse is offensive to Morrison’s ‘quiet Australians’’’, October 24-25) but when it comes to his own government and ministers’ failings, he is either silent or tries to convince us how we the public have it all wrong and shouldn’t believe everything we read and hear in the media.

We have had the politicisation of $100 million of sports grants to targeted Coalition seats just prior to the last election and now the purchase for $33 million of land valued at just $3 million.

Why hasn’t Scott Morrison been angry enough about these issues to establish a federal integrity commission to investigate these matters?

Con Vaitsas, Ashbury


Quiet Australians might well not be overly impressed by Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate spending $19,000 of public money on watches for her top performers.

They should be even less impressed by a Prime Minister whose government, and indeed whose office, directed many millions of dollars of public money into some of the most blatant sports rorts this country has ever seen.

Perhaps the PM, too, should offer to stand aside.

Barry Tomkinson, Little Forest


Once upon a time, before the corporate fever overtook our postal service, transport systems, communications, healthcare and the like, public servants ran these and many more government services.

State and federal governments are reaping what they have sown. Go back to having these entities run by the public service on its salary scale, not as a cash cow for corporate raiders paid vastly inflated salaries. We the general public have not benefited by this shift to recruit from outside.

Ronald Smith, Waterloo


So the PM has put board members and CEOs on notice that their remuneration, tax affairs and bonuses will be under scrutiny. The rest of us just wish we could do the same for politicians’ business dealings and their management of public grant programs.

Jill Napier, Phegans Bay


Events at Australia Post and Western Sydney Airport should come as no surprise and are the culmination of 25 years of corporatisation and politicisation of government services. The chickens have come home to roost.

John Constable, Balmain


Given that Morrison spent $2000 per minute on a ‘‘press conference’’ where he, his entourage and selected journalists flew to Christmas Island and back on an RAAF plane just before the last federal election, one must assume the only reason the PM is ‘‘appalled’’ by Holgate’s buying Cartier watches for senior staff is that she didn’t spend enough.

Given that Morrison subsequently reopened Christmas Island for $180 million, for no good reason except publicity, one must assume he’s showing Holgate by example how ripping off the taxpayer really ought to be done

Peter Arthur, Artarmon


So I guess the spin is that Morrison isn’t condoning any extravagant spending on his watch.

Ashley Collard, Fairlight

 

 

Sydney morning herald — 26/10/20

 

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and scott will beat it by 10 percent...

The Prime Minister’s Instagram post of giving himself an early Christmas of the Bunnings shark he had previously promoted had the desired effect – media attention on Scott Morrison that wasn’t about government failures, especially those involving whiffs of corruption and his reluctance to honour his pledge to introduce a national integrity commission.


(And please, oh please, if we ever do get a federal version of the ICAC, may it be called the National Integrity Commission as a small gift to headline writers.)


The shark social media stunt immediately worked, quickly run as a straight story by the government’s prime online channels.


“He shared a hilarious picture of himself on Saturday smiling widely and pointing at the box holding the decoration, as his wife Jenny looked on – less than impressed,” gushed the Daily Mail.


“Scott Morrison has gotten himself a Christmas gift that left his followers in stitches and his wife slightly less amused,” dutifully reported News.com.au.


Made for online satire, cue anyone with Photoshop.


 

 


And plenty we can’t repeat while the children are watching.


But that’s all good, mate, for perpetuating the Daggy Dad image, playing to the base, “having a laugh” and – most importantly – providing a distraction in the unlikely event that Labor had anything to say over the grand finals weekend.


Ditto Mr Morrison’s “furious” response (you weren’t following the script if you didn’t report it was “furious”) to discovering a large corporatised government enterprise acted like a large corporate enterprise by sometimes giving expensive gifts as bonuses.


For a Prime Minister under attack over the $27 million that disappeared into the Leppington Triangle and being caught NICerless (sorry, couldn’t resist) two years after promising one, Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate provided a very convenient head to kick when Senate estimates first disclosed she had rewarded four executives for Cartier watches worth a total of $12,000 – an amount subsequently corrected to nearly $20,000.


It was the knee-jerk populist response you would expect from any successful radio shock jock – outrageous that $3000 watches should be showered on posties when the mail is running slower than ever. (Subsequently, try watches worth $7K or so.)


But once the headline passed, if anyone looked a step further, it was an own goal.


If there is a problem with Australia Post’s management, it is the government’s fault as it well and truly stacked the board with Liberal Party mates, including former Queensland Liberal National Party president Bruce McIver, former Liberal Senator and Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Michael Ronaldson, former federal and state Liberal Party director Tony Nutt, and Deidre Willmott, former chief of staff for WA Liberal Premier Colin Barnett.


If you’re calling Australia Post dud, you’re calling the Liberal Party dud.


It’s only my opinion, but if the Australia Post board had any quality, any principles, it would have either stuck up for its CEO and told Mr Morrison to take a cold shower, or resigned.


Instead, all the chairman managed was to refuse to front for Senate estimates and ordered his deputy to do likewise.


Both sides of politics have a habit of finding jobs for mates when in government, but the Coalition has elevated the jobs-for-the-boys-and-girls to an unprecedented level since 2013, routinely cleaning out Labor-appointees in the process whether or not they had Labor affiliation.


People mindful of their reputation might think twice now about accepting a federal government appointment to a board lest it look like they are merely political hacks.

And the watches gifts themselves are a nonsense. What caught the populist eye about them was that nearly all Australians would regard spending $3000 on a watch as rather embarrassingly extravagant.


Never mind the bonus, there’s something just a little obscene about such conspicuous consumption. And that’s without mentioning the $30,000 watch Ms Holgate herself flashes. Oops, I mentioned it.


If each of the four was given a $10,000 salary bonus instead, it would have cost twice as much but nobody would have blinked.


Despite the Prime Minister’s current histrionics, those with experience of large corporation gifts, rewards and bonuses would think nothing of it – it’s par for the course.


It’s a little odd that a government that pledges alliegence to the ethics of private enterprise, of “incentivation”, of running down the public service, suddenly wants government-owned corporations to act like APS bureaucracies instead.


But knee-jerk reactions for a bit of look-over-there distraction can twist that way.


The funny thing is, I’m not sure most people are silly enough to buy it. On Friday morning I was invited to have a chat on ABC Brisbane morning radio about those obscene Australia Post watches.

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2020/10/26/michael-pascoe-jumping-the-shark-watches/

 

 

not passing the pub test...

Christine Holgate, chief executive of the national postal service since 2017, had been strongly criticised for what many saw as a waste of public money.

The gifts of Cartier watches in 2018 were revealed by a parliament inquiry last month, prompting an investigation.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he had been "appalled" by the spending.

Speaking last month, Mr Morrison said the British business executive "should go" from her role.

"Every dollar that goes to Australia Post is managed on behalf of Australian taxpayers and it should be done in a way that respects the taxpayers," he said.

Australia Post is run by an independent board but is owned by the Australian government on behalf of taxpayers.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54775199

 

Apparently Christine Holgate said that the watchgate "did not pass the pub test"...

 

From now on, all steps and policies from governments should be adjudicated by beer drinkers in pubs around Australia — after a dozen schooners to make sure the mind is fully disengaged from the bias of the laws of perception. In the case of sports rorts, drinking holes in towns that have received favoured treatment should be disqualified from the pub test. Patrons who have fallen off their bar stool are allocated two votes and a free beer. The final tallies are counted on beer coasters handed over by patrons on the way to the toilets. The more beer, the more visits to the toilets. 

 

Parliament shall be dissolved and all politicians dismissed to avoid "rorting the system". Unfortunately, this could lead to the pubs becoming boringingingly quiet as no political discussion (argy-bargy) could be aroused. This could lead to the death of the pub test, except for fishing stories.

 

 

See also:

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/36991

 

 

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the time needed to make fake documents...

The Morrison government has refused to comply with a Senate order to produce 10 briefs associated with the controversial purchase of land for Sydney’s second major airport at 10 times its market value.

During the last parliamentary sitting week, the Senate ordered the government to table documentary material associated with the purchase of the so-called Leppington triangle that had been referenced in a scathing assessment of the transaction by the Australian National Audit Office.

But the federal government says it will not obey the upper house order because releasing the material could prejudice current investigations into the land purchase, including a police probe.

In a damning report released in September, the ANAO found infrastructure department officials acted unethically by failing to advise their minister and senior decision-makers how much they proposed to pay the landowner, and for not providing accurate answers when the sale was investigated.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/nov/19/coalition-flouts-senate-order-by-refusing-to-release-leppington-triangle-documents

 

It takes more time to make fake documents than the originals because they have to match up with a semblance of reality... And considering the "Police" could not find any source to Angus Taylor's fake document on his attack of Clover Moore, what chance have we to discover the truth... Ah, I see, the "Police" has just raided the CFMEU headquarters... Raiding a union headquarters is always a nice distraction when the Liberal governments have been caught with both hands in the cookie jar.

 

And imagine the fakeness (or fakery) of the "Saddam has weapons of mass destruction" documents... Some of these were so bad, that only stupid media organisations (all of the MSM) took the documents at genuine, apart from the one that cost Valerie Plame Wilson's employ at the CIA...

And we might find out that the documents have been shredded by accident... Read also about the idiots at: the nasty bastards who see history in the way of their new toys, are at it again...

 

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