53 — Cope attempt

We chat about Australia's contributions to the US Capitol riots, online abuse of people who fall through the cracks of coronavirus lockdown, and outages of the inhumane cashless welfare card.

 

We’re on fire

• Australia is yet again on fire.

Union news

• Deliveroo riders have elected health and safety representatives, and are trying to force the company to comply with the Work Health and Safety Act.
• Google workers have formed the Alphabet Union.
• Venture capitalist Mike Solana reckons it’s a LARP.
• Microsoft workers (not IBM) protested to stop the company working with ICE.

Diet coup

• Alan Jones leading protests at parliament house.
• Sky News drives right-wing extremism in the US.
• Australia helped pave the way for the US insurrection.
• The Q viking dude inside the Capitol was posting Sky news on his Facebook page.
• The Christchurch shooter was deeply ingrained in US politics and conspiracy theories.
• Australian politicians George Christenson and Craig Kelly tried to claim the the Capitol rioters were Antifa.
• Scott Morrison refused to condem Donad Trump for encouraging the insurrection.
• The Australia Labor party criticised Scott Morrison in a tweet. Joel Fitzgibbon didn’t want to be associated with it.

Coronavirus

• Brisbane has Coronavirus, and is in a three-day lockdown.
• Brisbane’s rules require masks as long as you’re out of the house.
• Victoria instituted a hard border lockdown with NSW on New Years Eve.
• Many people are still locked out of Victoria.
• A woman suffered a miscarriage while traveling back from NSW, and faced horrific treatment from police.
• The Twitter drips were nightmarish about it.
• The NSW Police let the two Germans through to Victoria.

Cashless christmas

• The Indue cashless welfare card had on outage over Christmas/New Years, so people were unable to access their money for three days.
• There was another outage in 2019.
• There are a long list of rules that restrict what people can do with their card.
• There is no evidence that the cashless welfare cards improve outcomes for the people on them.
• Mining billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest has spent years trying to push the card.
• Pauline Hanson says the quiet part out loud.

Actions

• Support the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union.
• Listen to the 7AM Podcast series, Climate change will kill you.