A client wanted to buy a property in order to tip it over and build a new home. His lawyer made contact with the “original owner” corp and asked the cost of obtaining approval. He was the cost would be 16k.

I don’t think an aboriginal has set foot in that burb for hundreds of years.

People really need to start making public fusses about this.
It’s just a government sanctioned mafia.

Thanks Tom, wonderful to have you posting the toons again. I liked the ‘Pence is toast’ best.

Aboriginal-specific drug and alcohol program

And in places that already have these, are they any more effective?

I very much doubt Aboriginal community controlled organisations will deliver anything other than waste, nepotism, theft and incompetence, not on their historical record.
Oh and if Aboriginal people are going to be held to much lower standards in obtainging an education and work performance everyone will continue to assume that incompetence.

a pilot allowing Aboriginal community controlled organisations to provide primary health care in New South Wales prisons.

Navalny sentenced to 19 years on trumped up charges.

Vikki Campion:

If you want to play the game where the Coalition is all evil and Labor comprised of all saints, you had better make sure you are right.

Not for one moment should anyone shirk from the responsibility of the administration disaster of Robodebt — primitive AI taking the place of people and assuming rather than researching, demanding rather than inquiring about repayment of debts that, in many instances, were never owed.

A royal commission found Robodebt responsible for suicides after vulnerable households were shell-shocked to find they owed so much and lacked the means to pay it back.

Two responsible ministers have offered their scalps for this debacle, resigning from parliament.

But this week, while Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth was admonishing the former government during question time for being “mean-spirited”, “evil”, “cruel”, “crude” and “callous” over its Robodebt disgrace, the briefest of glances at Services Australia’s social media pages clearly showed it remained robotically inhumane.

Centrelink debts are still being issued to the working poor without an explanation of how they were accrued.

Clients wait on call centre lines for hours trying to extract information.

Hundreds of complaints on Services Australia Facebook posts detail being unable to speak to someone on the phone. Instead a social media bureaucrat responds: “We suggest getting in touch with our Complaints line on 1800 132 468 to speak with a service officer about your concerns.”

Are they serious? A complaint about being unable to speak to a human gets a response to call the line they can’t get through on?

Imagine what it will be like if you complain about being unable to speak to a human about thousands of dollars being swiped from your account to pay an unexplained debt, only to have the one thing that helped Robodebt end — people speaking up — completely shut down?

Governments are inclined to censor people they don’t want to hear from. As we know, during Covid posts were shut down to limit “misinformation”, only for those claims to be found to be true later on.

It was only when victims of Robodebt were able to talk about it that the Senate inquiries and, finally, the royal commission even occurred.

With Centrelink and the Australian Taxation Office, the government has the power to impose a debt, to enforce it and presume it is always right and you are always wrong.

On Thursday, a working mother of Indigenous children had her entire tax return taken without warning. Calling the Aboriginal line on Centrelink meant an hour and a half of listening to My Island Home on repeat.

A breakdown of the debt was “out of the scope” of the Debt Recovery call centre. A Services Australia review was the only option for a breakdown of the claim, and it would be 49 days before they would get to it. Her only solution was to go to a local branch and find a real human being.

In other places where someone demands payment for a bill they can’t explain, it’s called fraud. Sometimes, they go to jail for it.

When Centrelink and the ATO do it, to people who follow a government policy in good faith, they don’t negotiate, they take — without transparency, accountability or apology.

Minister Rishworth indulged in self-righteous grandstanding this week as a $40 increase for welfare recipients was moved in the chamber, claiming the Coalition “seem to fail to truly recognise the damage that this scheme has caused”.

She forgets it was Coalition backbenchers representing the poorest electorates who first took the fight internally to the former government.

Nobody understood how damaging it was more than those in the electorates doing it toughest.

In question time, she said the former government intended to make people feel like criminals, told they would have to “repay those debts and you may end up in prison”.

That’s very brave of her since electorate offices around the country still have letters from Centrelink saying not only do they still data match with the ATO, but that they will take money from tax returns even if there is a payment plan in place; if not, you will face legal action.

These include a retired couple who paid $80,000 from their super, after panicking with Centrelink bill shock.

Services Australia Minister Bill Shorten has ended Robodebt, but his department is yet to fully deliver a solution as Centrelink call centres blow out under the stress of childcare claims and disaster payments, all on the back of Robodebt’s reduced staffing.

In defence of stretched SA staff, they did answer 55 million phone calls last year.

Robodebt was a disgrace, but free speech identified it and ended it.

How will future problems be fixed, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s anti-free speech Combating Misinformation and Disinformation Bill that may prohibit people from discussing these issues as the government deems any attack on it as “misleading” information?

The old ministers might be gone, but the robots are just getting started.

Aboriginal community controlled organisations to provide primary health care in New South Wales prisons.

There’s that name again – Bugmy.

Lady complaining about not being paid for “cultural competence” (i.e. Welcome to Country) by the local council yesterday was a Bugmy.

I’ll give you an uptick Cassie!
Off now for the sons’ sporting pursuits.
But a question quickly, what the actual phuck is the Garma Festival? Albo trudging along adorned by an Akubra. All confected bullshit it seems.

Australians dependent upon Centrelink are trapped in a real life Kafka story.

It’s a year old article I stumbled on searching Bugmy.
Rent seeking Aboriginal Corporation is everywhere, getting kowtowed to .
Why do they need a Voice?
NVIT is government funded already.
how screen Australia is spending

out of touch with real life are Luigi & Charmless? ..
Just been down to ColesWorths, after a week, indoors, with a “Sam Kerr” leg, so $70 of groceries .. all fitz into one bag and able to be carried one handed by a 75yrs OAP plus all of 5 minutes to put away! ..
Yet, this week Luigi throws an extra $40 at “dole” recipients for no better reason than he can plus they’ll get another $16 come the September 20 adjustment so a rise of $56 a fortnight …….
In the “mean”-while OAPs will have to wait until September 20 to be thrown , measly, $23 (estimate) cos according to Charmless inflation & the 6 monthly cost of living index is only worth 2.2% for OAPs by his calculations even tho official inflation is still over 6% .. gotta luv these Treasury issue calculators! .. FFS!
Sooo, at this rate we is soon gonna be at the stage where the “dole” will be rivalling the OAP dollar -wize …..

Restumping is rather expensive. Not included in the quoted amount was a $18 and some cents Building Permit Number fee, apparently the private permit issuer can’t stump up for that out of his $1700 plus fee for issuing a copy and paste permit to remove and replace. Will someone even come out to do an inspection?
There’s an old seasonal creek (now inside a pipe) across the back of my block, running down to a larger creek that runs into the Yarra, I probably should be grateful, being on a 1200 square metre block I’m not up for having all the soil sieved in case there’s a knapped flint somewhere.

What do you suggest Duk?
Perhaps people should stop having their cancers treated and just die because you don’t like ‘big pharma’ ?
And oncologists don’t claim to cure cancer anyhow.
Getting extra years is the goal.

Founder says CIA & FBI control Wikipedia and made it “the most biased encyclopedia” ”

I have long since assumed that Wikipedia should never be relied upon for any topic capable of the even the slightest political bias.

And even there I am likely being too generous.

Chip Bok very pertinent.

Getting Trump nominated is the only way Dems can win.

Indigenous voice to parliament our chance to lift Indigenous lives above lies and insults
marcia langton

12:00AM August 5, 2023
51 Comments

When Anthony Albanese announced his commitment to the Uluru Statement from the Heart and outlined a draft question at the Garma Festival in July last year, we could not have predicted the viciousness of the opposition to what had been refined into a just, practical and constitutionally sound proposition. In November the Nationals announced their opposition to the question, followed in April by Liberal leader Peter Dutton, who announced his parliamentary party’s hard No position, disallowing a conscience vote.

This alienated not only Julian Leeser, who resigned as opposition Indigenous Australians and legal affairs spokesman, but also other Liberals including premiers who followed him out the door. Former Indigenous Australians minister Ken Wyatt resigned from the party in protest.

The question to be put to the voters is a simple one – it seeks the recognition of Indigenous Australians in the Constitution through a voice that may make representations to the parliament and to the executive government on matters relating to Indigenous people. The “composition, functions, powers and procedures” of this advisory body will be legislated by the parliament and the details determined by the elected parliament – as is the case with much of the Constitution.
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The proposition is the barest measure imaginable that would give Indigenous Australians a formal say in policies and legislation that affect them. The idea was developed by Noel Pearson following the rejection of the expert panel report on constitutional recognition in 2013.

Albanese’s government moved late last year to set up a process to ensure constitutional rigour in the final question. The Referendum Working Group, chaired by Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney, was advised by the Constitutional Working Group and worked with the Referendum Engagement Group. Along with Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and other parliamentary members and senators, Indigenous leaders from around the country have advised the Albanese government on every step of the legal process required to alter the Constitution.

There were several technical, legal and constitutional matters to consider. We met officials from the Australian Electoral Commission who briefed us on their efforts to enrol Indigenous voters and several technical matters. The group was briefed on and agreed to amendments to the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984 to overcome its inadequacies in 21st-century Australia. Among other things, it aligns postal voting procedures in referendums with equivalent procedures in federal elections and aligns authorisation requirements with the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. This passed the Senate on March 22 this year.

On March 23, the Referendum Working Group released its advice to the government on the constitutional amendment and referendum question. I attended most of the Referendum Working Group meetings as a member and, not being a lawyer, was fascinated by the ensuing debates when we received the Solicitor-General’s advice. So much can turn on a word – each carries a conceptual history, and tentacles reach into other areas of law. Every risk was carefully and judicially assessed. The resulting final question has the public support of seven retired senior judges, at least two retired High Court judges, and most constitutional experts. The question to be asked of voters is clear and simple: “A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?” After much debate, this question was unanimously supported by the Referendum Working Group. The Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) 2023 passed the Senate on June 19.

Soon, every enrolled voter will receive in the mail a pamphlet as required by law, resulting from the amendments to the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act. The Yes case text in the pamphlet is entirely correct while the No case text is largely false.

With the lies from the No case landing in Australian mailboxes stamp-marked from the AEC, many Australians may believe the No pamphlet is accurate. It is most unfortunate there is no legal requirement for factual content. It is a legal loophole that the No case has exploited to hoodwink Australians into voting No with their slogan, “If you don’t know, vote No”.

What a backhander for Australians, who want to be informed and inform themselves. Supporters of the Yes case feel gaslighted and have returned fire with the slogan, “If you don’t know, find out”. Yes advocates who have campaigned for years for this referendum are asking for a simple resolution from the Australian people: that is, recognising the first peoples in the Constitution will be a meaningful and practical way to celebrate and share in 65,000 years of history, unify Australians and send a powerful message to the world about the kind of nation we have created. The voice will make a practical difference in our shared future.

The Opposition Leader met twice with the Referendum Working Group. During the first extraordinary encounter, he told a pointed story about domestic violence in communities from his long-ago time as a police officer. Outside after the second, he referred to the members as the “Canberra elite”.

One of our members was the great Dr Yunupingu, from northeast Arnhem Land, who died just days before Dutton uttered the insult. The overwhelming majority of our members live outside Canberra in their own communities. Dutton’s cliched dismissal of our lives and contributions and the parliamentary process signalled he was only ever going to play politics with a sensible reform that should be discussed with open minds and hearts. It is worth noting that members of the group included people such as Professor Tom Calma, who was the main protagonist who convinced Australian governments to formalise the Close the Gap strategy. Pat Turner convinced Australian governments to sign the national partnership to Close the Gap and collaborate to achieve the new targets.

The public square has been flooded with egregious lies about the referendum proposal. The result has been an upsurge in anti-Aboriginal sentiment and hateful trolling on social media of most Indigenous leaders. The No campaign groups have spent millions of dollars flooding the electorate with disinformation via social media and phone calls. A racist No campaign advertisement published in The Australian Financial Review was withdrawn with an apology after complaints.

Yes advocates have worked respectfully for years to put this simple proposition to our fellow citizens. We conducted Australia’s biggest grassroots engagement involving thousands of Indigenous people across the country. The result was a thorough and thoughtful reflection of their aspirations about recognition in the Constitution, which we are asking Australians to endorse. Thousands were consulted about the design of the voice reported in the Calma-Langton report, approved by Scott Morrison’s cabinet when Dutton was a member. Meanwhile, governments have not listened, and Closing the Gap metrics show the deteriorating life chances for most Indigenous Australians.

It is alarming yet unsurprising that politicians and some aspirants have been prepared to set up Indigenous people and their advocates for abuse and vilification for nothing more than transactional electoral motivations. Millions of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are hoping we are all better than that; so many lives and our future rely on it. If the Opposition Leader were at the Garma Festival this weekend, listening, he would grasp why First Peoples respectfully ask him and all Australians to recognise us in the Constitution through a practical advisory body.

Marcia Langton is the Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor at the University of Melbourne.

He’s gone, probably for 2028 too. The base are very feral right now. The only way he can get back is to say the NYT report is false, and then to support Trump in the claim that 2020 was stolen, which it clearly was. He won’t do that because he’s too close to the GOP elites and their donors, and he’s already short of money.

This is when I miss the tick button. I totally agree with this.

Yesterday there were a couple of comments that had me laughing out loud and I would have loved to have been able to approve them.

I would distinguish between an agenda based bias, and the inevitable perspective based biases of normal life.

Even knowledge of what your enemy wants you to think can be valuable knowledge.

As to Wiki, I find the references the most useful thing about it.

Ha, punful.

Well I’m glad someone got it! 😀

Zat

He’d become the official Demonic candidate. But think this though, demons don’t think there’s anything wrong.

RFK should be the one, but the DNC won’t allow it.

Good toons. It’s a shame that TDS has fried ramirez’s brain. This Branco one is what I’ve been saying for a while

Duk at 8:30.

Notwithstanding it looks like another ‘no child will live in poverty by 1990’ moment, take note of the wording – cancer will be conquered by *managing* it, not by *curing* it . Yet another tell on big pharmas business plan – drugs for life makes money for life, curing illness dont.

What is your solution to this “problem”, champ?

The AEC approved issuing a pamphlet of No lies?
Somehow I think the claimant is lying.

I would say we have descended into puns but I may have committed one myself. What next? Sarcasm?

cohenite
Aug 5, 2023 9:22 AM
Good toons. It’s a shame that TDS has fried ramirez’s brain. This Branco one is what I’ve been saying for a while

I’m afraid it’s heading that way since all the indictments are not denting Trump’s popularity but enhancing it.

If a Democrat candidate were subjected to such treatment the entire Dem establishment would be up in arms so I am shocked at the Republicans’ tepid reaction. They will regret it.

Even knowledge of what your enemy wants you to think can be valuable knowledge.

You never have to go looking for that – they will find you wherever you are.

But, yes. If it is a contentious issue you can get some great pointers to a informative sources in the form of Wikipedia dismissing them and what they say.

Next On the Agenda Towards Totalitarianism…..Climate Lockdowns!

Tony “war criminal” Blair is spreading his digital ID propaganda around the World

This is not heading anywhere good.

I would hope that the failure of the referendum would lead to a constructive discussion about the privileges of citizenship and the nature of our polity leading to a reset from the identity politics that the Voice is an egregious example of.

“Undisclosed illness”

Broadway Actor Clifton Oliver Dead at 47: He ‘Had His Final Curtain Call’

I see the half-wits in the msm have taken to calling Jodie Haydon “Australia’s First Lady.”

Prediction: Jack Smith Will Get a DC Jury to Convict Trump and SCOTUS Will Vacate It. In Fact, Smith Is Counting on It

He better kill the king, because the king will kill himl. See dersh’s comments

https://dailycaller.com/2023/08/02/thats-how-serious-this-is-alan-dershowitz-says-jack-smith-may-be-indicted-if-trump-wins-case/

I don’t know, Clifton Oliver died after a ‘lengthy illness’ was gay and had been in hospital and hospice care for the last six weeks.
Must have been the vaxx.

Watching the shoplifter cop a flogging was epic. The Korean shop owners from the LA riots nod their head in approval.

—

Fleccas Talks:

THIS WEEK IN CULTURE #159

Northern lights in a few months’ time so I’m struggling with how to do low light photography on the move. I don’t want to lug a tripod as well as all the other stuff.

The other people on the train don’t want that either!

Watching the shoplifter cop a flogging was epic.

Defunding the Stockton police leads to unintended consequences that were entirely predictable by anyone not beholden to the prog-left dogma of the fundamental goodness of human beings.

OK, answer this – do you want your cancer (or diabetes, or autoimmune disease, or hypertension, or obesity or ……) cured, or do you want it ‘managed’ for the rest of your life – 

Firstly, the original subject was childhood cancers, so let’s not muddy the waters with diabetes etc.
You assume the “either/or” option exists.
That there is a cure, presumably being suppressed by Dark Forces, in favour of long term drug therapy.
Tell us.
Have you ever profited from assisting a procedure which you knew or suspected wasn’t a complete and permanent cure?
#glasshouses

Goose Morristeen – worst prime minister in my lifetime with daylight second.

Mmm…quite a few to choose from.

Whitlam’s sponsorship of remote community living has has inflicted a wound on the nation that continues to fester.

Howard’s wars with veterans subsequently swept under the carpet or labelled war criminals.

Rudd-Gillard’s loss of control of the borders.

Political competency is a rare gift.

Oh Roger …

It’s a hope….without hope there is only despair.

Or emigration, and I’m too old for that.

Roger

Aug 5, 2023 9:51 AM

I would too, Roger. Sadly…

Yes, I know, Megan.

But if the referendum has done one good thing it has prompted ordinary people to reflect on these matters. 

More than that.
If it is defeated, it creates a platform to challenge the creeping “pay the rent” ticket clipping at state and local government levels and even voluntarily by Big Corporates.
It might embolden people to mount a High Court challenge to things like the $16k cultural heritage review on a reno mentioned by JC yesterday.
Pretty hard to argue something is Constitutional if that specific framework has just been belted in a Referendum.

It is understood, the ABC reports, that WA will revert to operating under the former 1972 Aboriginal Heritage Act.

The act that a local businessman is facing a $200,000 legal bill, for daring to upset the fvcking Wagyl, by building a culvert on his property?

Yes, settling on an Indigenous treaty is the right thing to do
peter van onselen Follow @vanOnselenP peter van onselen

12:00AM August 5, 2023
44 Comments

This weekend Anthony Albanese is addressing the Garma Festival, a crowd positively disposed towards his proposed Indigenous voice to parliament. Despite the Prime Minister’s best efforts, however, the Yes campaign continues to flounder among mainstream Australians. Albanese has admitted support for his referendum to give Indigenous Australians a voice in the Constitution is trending in the wrong direction, which has been confirmed by recent opinion polls.

Unless something changes dramatically before the referendum, due later this year, it will surely fail. Albanese has rejected delaying it to try to rebuild support.

Harry S. Truman once said “If you can’t convince them, confuse them.” While that certainly is the prescribed tactic of voice opponents, advocates unwittingly have adhered to the same script. Few Australians understand what an Indigenous voice to parliament entails, much less why it needs to be constitutionally enshrined when it can be legislated. If the referendum question were merely to include Indigenous recognition in the Constitution it would succeed in a canter, much like the 1967 referendum on Indigenous rights did. But crafted as a voice it raises more questions than it answers.

Now the No case has another meaty scare campaign it can tap into ahead of the vote: that the voice (whatever it is) is a precursor to a treaty. Polls by JWS Research and Essential in 2016 and 2019 respectively found 59 per cent of voters supported a treaty with Indigenous Australians, but I suspect that figure would be much lower today. The No campaign certainly thinks so.

Albanese wants to dismiss links between the voice and a treaty as a red herring. It is anything but. In May Albanese was asked if the voice would lead to a treaty and truth-telling. He said “they are very much a part of the next phase”. Yes, they are. The Uluru statement calls for the voice, once in place, to be followed up with a Makarrata commission that would oversee the crafting of a treaty.

Don’t take my word for it, or the demands explicitly spelled out in the Uluru statement. Not that long ago Albanese said: “One of the things that a voice to parliament would be able to do is talk about Makarrata, the need for agreement-making and coming together after a conflict.” In other words, the voice is the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end when it comes to reconciliation with Indigenous Australians.

Plenty of advocates for the voice also have spruiked the natural next steps towards a treaty once the voice is in place. Thomas Mayo, who sits on the board of Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition, said: “We need the power of the Constitution behind us so we can organise like we’ve never organised before.”

He also co-wrote The Voice to Parliament Handbook and hopes it is followed up with “reparations and compensation”, important components of any formalised treaty. While Albanese has implored the media not to conflate the views of voice advocates such as Mayo with the debate at hand, not doing so would be a dereliction of journalistic duty.

The “what comes next” discussion is absolutely relevant for anyone casting an informed vote.

Ideological opponents of the voice encouraged by the contents of this opinion piece so far might want to avoid reading any further. Because it just so happens that I’m in favour of a treaty, which is therefore a reason to vote Yes for the voice even though I don’t believe it needs to be constitutionally enshrined. Why the brains trust pushing for a constitutionally enshrined voice didn’t advocate for a referendum solely about constitutional recognition – thereafter legislating the voice instead of constitutionally enshrining it – is beyond me. The path taken has put the entire cause of Indigenous rights unnecessarily in harm’s way, including the natural next steps.

Of course there should be a formal treaty. Not having one means the colonisation of this continent and the 1901 establishment of nationhood occurred without official recognition of Aboriginal people despite thousands of years of residency on this continent. Not having a treaty allows otherwise unifying welcome to country ceremonies to appear inherently divisive, with references to sover­eignty never having been ceded.

When I first heard such references in welcome to country ceremonies I wasn’t sure they were appropriate. But I now realise for Indigenous Australians it is an understandable sentiment given the lack of official recognition they have received for much of the past 250 years. Only a treaty can address this. If the voice fails it will set back such efforts for decades.

While talk of treaties probably helps the No camp muddy the debate, complicating the messaging of the Yes side, that is unfortunate because a treaty should be seen as a worthy goal. The Yes campaign has already overcomplicated what should have been a simple proposition: support for recognition of Indigenous Australians in the Constitution, leaving the rest to the parliament. The voice campaign is serving as a reminder of just how hard achieving change can be. Republican campaigners learnt that lesson the hard way nearly a quarter of a century ago. But conservatives understand change is difficult for good reason: so it isn’t entered into lightly.

Coupe
2 hours ago
You first, Peter.

Give your job and your land back to its “traditional owner”. That can be your “treaty”.

Lead by example.