Friday 29th of March 2024

looking like compassion-deficient boofheads...

robertrobert

The federal court ruled in May 2020 that Jane was entitled to use NDIS funds on sex worker services if it was deemed “reasonable and necessary” because the NDIS Act “does not expressly exclude such activities from being funded supports”.

Robert immediately responded that the government would seek to change the law, and in recent weeks he has embarked on a series of interviews highlighting the issue.

He began an interview with 2GB’s Ray Hadley last month by stating: “Ray, good to talk to you, never thought you and I would be talking about prostitutes.”

In another interview on FiveAA in March, Robert responded to host Leon Byner’s question about a push to fund “sexual relaxation” with taxpayer funds by stating: “You mean prostitutes, Leon?”

Asked if the law would pass the Senate, Robert said: “I believe it will because I don’t believe Australians think that it’s reasonable that they should be coughing up for the services of prostitutes.”

The minister insisted there was no “public debate” about the issue, because “the average Australian I speak to is aghast that we’d be paying billions of dollars for the services of prostitutes”.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/28/stuart-robert-on-crusade-says-woman-who-hired-sex-worker-on-ndis

 

 

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reporting from the kanbra brothel...

 

From Samantha Dick

 

When I told Dad I was flying to Canberra as a political reporter with The New Daily, he warned me to be careful.

“You’re not going as live bait are you?” he quipped.

I laughed and said I’d be fine. I’ve dealt with creepy men before.

Working in Parliament House had long been a dream of mine, and I couldn’t wait to get on that plane.

I needed to impress my editors and I also wanted to experience the “Canberra Bubble” for myself, to see the wheels of power up close.

But the truth is, I was nervous.

I’ve been a journalist for four years, and I’ve wanted to work in Canberra since I was 14.

What I saw during my 10 days in Canberra shocked me.

It was only when I wrote it all down in a list that I realised how bad it was:

For an institution that is supposed to represent the very best of Australians, the cultural problems were worse than I’d ever imagined.

“Has it always been this bad and we’ve just never known?” asked Greens senator Larissa Waters, when I asked her how we got here.

“The building has always been sexist. It’s always been dominated by white men in positions of power.”

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2021/03/29/women-inside-canberra-bubble/

 

julian

 


 

breaking the pattern...

What we're seeing right now in federal Parliament is something you very rarely get to see: The emergence of a new head of power.

Power shifts in politics are not rare. They happen all the time, in ways either big or small.

Someone gets promoted or resigns in disgrace; that's a small shift. A minor party acquires the balance of power in the Senate, and suddenly the members of that party go from "Random Nutter" status in the Prime Minister's Rolodex to "Invite to Lodge Immediately". That's a biggish shift.

As are tectonic rearrangements of factions in major parties, which occur at a subterranean level away from the public eye but sometimes burst forth in spumes of spectacular red-hot lava in the periodic events known as leadership spills.

This upheaval we're witnessing right now in Australia is entirely different, however, from the routine rearrangements we're used to seeing in Parliament House.

It's a new head of power. And what's extraordinary is that it's been generated nationally by the voices of people conventionally thought powerless, or near enough to powerless for the difference not to mean much. A young political staffer, close to the bottom of the heap. Schoolgirls. The voice of a woman from her grave, telling a contested story from long ago. Women who've been spat out from the system in Parliament House. Tens of thousands of nobodies gathering in the streets.

The driving element of the new power is this: Actions that previously did not carry consequences are now carrying consequences. Behaviour that was once tacitly acceptable in the elaborate and bespoke workplace that is Parliament House is now — with the benefit of sunlight — recognised as unacceptable.

Women are telling the stories of what happened to them and — rather than being dismissed as sluts or nuts, or being shuffled out of Parliament entirely — they're being believed.

How bad was the situation before? Bad enough that a young man allegedly thought he could probably get away with forcing sex upon an intoxicated young woman in the executive wing, and bad enough that for nearly two years he was proved right.

Bad enough that the young woman — a smart young woman, cognisant of her legal rights — correctly perceived that there was a distorting power structure around her that made it dangerous for her to seek the remedy to which the rule of law would ordinarily entitle her.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-28/new-power-emerges-in-australian-politics-not-coming-quietly/100030876

 

 

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limbo assessment of your non-disability...

Newly minted Government Services Minister Linda Reynolds has bowed to pressure and hit pause on widely criticised changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

But she’s stopped short of scrapping the plans altogether, leaving NDIS recipients in limbo over their future funding allocations.

It comes in the same week that leaked documents revealed the federal government was looking to limit new NDIS applicants, as well as the amount of money allocated to existing users, to avoid running over budget.

 

Senator Reynolds, who has been in the job for less than 20 days, told The Australian on Wednesday she will suspend controversial plans to roll out mandatory assessments for NDIS recipients, which were mooted to catch any ‘excess’ funds being doled out.

She said the three-hour, independent assessments were still being considered, but would be paused until the end of trials and after nationwide consultations.

The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), which is responsible for running the scheme, won’t say when the pilot trial is due to be finished.

However, the NDIS website states the results would be made available “later this year”, indicating the proposed laws may be off the cards for some months.

In the meantime, NDIS recipients like Nora Cufley, 58, are left hanging.

A paraplegic of 40 years who now suffers from a debilitating bone infection, Ms Cufley requires 24/7 disability care.

She fears the government’s push to introduce mandatory assessments is little more than a thinly veiled attempt to claw back money from Australians receiving NDIS funding.

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2021/04/15/ndis-funding-plans/

 

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sack the scummo government...

The agency that runs the National Disability Insurance Scheme hired an “external research company” to help create a “new narrative” aimed at selling controversial changes to its staff and the public, leaked documents show.

A staff memo that summarises the findings of the research, obtained by the Guardian, also reveals NDIS staff are “struggling” and feel they “cannot adequately support participants” through the rapid and sweeping overhaul of the scheme.

 

The government is facing widespread backlash from disability groups, and this week the new minister, Linda Reynolds, placed one of the most contentious changes – independent assessments – on hold.

But the overhaul – which includes a rewrite of the NDIS Act that determines who is eligible for the scheme and what can be funded, as well as technical changes to how funding packages are created – also appears to have frustrated staff within the agency.

The internal research found staff were “struggling with the amount of information … and do not feel they can adequately support participants through the changes”, while “inconsistency of message delivery is affecting participant, staff and partner trust”.

 

Other findings from the focus group research with “participants, staff and partners” included:

  • that the agency needed to provide more “transparency” on “wrongdoings”;

  • that it needed to reduce “corporate-speak and vague language” because “both lead to the assumption things are being hidden”;

  • that it needed to “speak about sustainability of the scheme” because “even if the outcome is not liked – transparency is important”.

“Sustainability can come across as threatening – detail is needed about why sustainability is an issue, and that participants are not at fault, and the responsibility the agency takes for this,” the research found, according to the staff memo from late March.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/17/ndia-hired-research-company-to-sell-controversial-changes-to-staff-and-public-leaks-reveal

 

 

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