Not Good Enough

26 — Cop Tower

We talk about Victoria's lockdowns of public housing tower blocks, cops making drugs and the Morrison government's ongoing quest to shut down Jobkeeper as soon as they can.

 

Lock down the block

• 3000 people in low-income government housing tower blocks are completely locked down, immediately, with no notice.
• 500 police are going to be deployed to guard the tower blocks. One cop for every 6 people.
• A day after announcing the lockdown, residents were told they would be provided with income support, food and medical support.
• Unsafe practices, poor communication and language barriers play a large part in refusal of tests.
• For-profit operation of quarantine hotels has caused the spread of Covid in Victoria.
• Jounalist Megan Clement has a good thread running down the unsafe practices in quarantine hotels.

Buying votes with missiles

• There was an election in Eden-Monaro, which Labor won by a hair.
• McKinley with the Good Take.
• Before the election, the government announced $270B in new funding in for defense, including massive upgrades for military facilites in Eden-Monaro.

Drug cops

• Senior NSW police officers are under investigation for manufacturing and selling their own drugs.
• Adelaide cops have been given assault rifles to deal with “terrorism”.
• Less-lethal weapons are still lethal.
• Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has avoided being found in contempt of court by denying a visa to an illegally detained refugee.
• The Australian Immigration Minister has basically carte-blanche power to accept or deny requests.

Killing Jobkeeper

• Scott Morrison is determined to kill the Coronvirus Jobkeeper payments.
• The government’s claims that people are turning down work due to the Jobkeeper payments are simply untrue.
• With Australia’s record unemployment rates, there are simply many, many people looking for work.
• As reported by Asher Wolf, repayments for money stolen by the illegal Robodebt going to be made in instalments.

Gas is the new coal

• Fossil fuel companies are using instagram influencers to push gas cooking and hot water.
• Yoga mums are doing gas fire yoga.

Actions

• Follow and donate to RISE Refugee

25 — Nationalise the government

With climate disasters looming, we pick apart the Labor party's anaemic response. Then we chat about ideological cuts to the ABC and the right-wing media's take on Victorian Covid spikes.

 

Climate backslides

• Labour party leader Anthony Albonese has indicated he is willing to give up on pushing for climate action from the Liberals.
• Chevron’s carbon capture project Gorgon… didn’t work.
• Lang was right about Gorgons though.
• A National Audit Office report concludes that the Morrison government has failed it’s duty to protect the environment.
• 80% of federal environmental approvals were non-compliant with regulations or contained errors.
• Australia’s Reserve Bank has warned that inaction on climate change will cause GDP to drop 25% by 2100.
• The Government has cut funding from renewable energy research at CSIRO.
• …while the ABC makes cuts to the national emergency emergency broadcasting that was essential to saving lives during the 2019-20 bushfires.

Shorts in the arctic

• Temperatures reached 38° degrees in the Arctic this week, the highest ever recorded.
• Warming poles means more extreme weather all over the world.

Cutting the news

• The ABC has cut 250 jobs, and the flagship news bulletin, after losing almost a billion in funding since 2014.
• ABC Executives are still taking multi-million-dollar salaries and payouts.
• Scott Morrison insists that there are no cuts.
• ABC management is moving to sell their main headquarters… then rent it back?

Talking about distance

• Victoria is experiencing a second spike in Covid infections.
• The Victorian government’s crisis communication subcontractor was only asked to use languages other than English on Monday.
• The conservative media has been desperately trying to push a “BLM Bump” theory to case increases (unsupported by the facts).
• Now the conservative media wants to place the blame on immigrant families, with articles like “Diversity and death”.
• The COVIDSafe app has 6 million downloads, has been used to detect zero cases.

Actions

• Join the call to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14.
• Wear a dang mask when you go to the shops.

24 — Blaming families

We chat about the News Corp beat up of Lydia Thorpe, the re-up of the lockdown in parts of Victoria and ginned up cyber attacks in the news.

Feel good news?

• Victora has criminalised wage theft! Time to send George Calombaris to perma-jail.
• Aboriginal activist Lidia Thorpe has been elected by the Greens to Federal Senate. News Corp immediately tried to concoct a smear campaign.
• Crikey has a detailed run down of News Corp’s beat-up.

Not on the beers

• Victoria has cranked the lockdown up a bit.
• Victorian opposition leader has tried to score political points, saying that Dan Andrews has “reached a new low” in calling out families.
• The Victorian Government is providing $1500 to people who test positive or their close contacts so they can self-isolate.

Crank hack attack

• Australia was the “victim” of a “state-based” “cyber” “attack”.
• David Speers clarified that this wasn’t an announcement of an attack, just some ongoing security concerns.
• This news dropped at the same time as the Government moved to bypass parliament and effectively ban vaping.

Contemptuous Dutton

• Peter Dutton has been threatened with contempt of court for refusing to release an illegally held asylum seeker.
• We’ve covered this before all the way back in episode 13.

Taking from the Public Trust

• In pun news, the Guardian has been running a deep dive series on the political expense system.
• Stuart Robert, Dan Tehan and Simon Birmingham charged the taxpayers for flights to a $10,000-a-head fundraiser.
• Michael McCormack took a free trip to the Melbourne Cup to announce a cancelled grant.
• NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell resigned over a $3000 gift of a bottle of wine from Australian Water Holdings.
• Tony Abbot’s daughter was given a $60,000 scholarship.
• The Australian government is moving to make it twice as expensive to study arts and law at university.
• University education was free from 1974-1989.
• Former Treasurer Joe Hockey was once involved in a violent protest against a $250 annual university fee.

Actions

• Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi has a thread of MPs who received a free education. Call them!
• Check out the Guardian’s Full Story podcast.
• Listen to 7AM’s interview with the Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance on organising the Black Lives Matter protest.

 

23 — Law & Order: Statue Victims Unit

Police are out in force to protect metal in the shape of Captain Cook, the PM apparently hasn't learned anything since primary school and money keeps not reaching the people who really need it.

Metaphorical fire news

• Australia is still trying to be as On Fire as possible.
• Australia’s Covid recovery commission is heavily stacked with fossil fuel goons.
• The commission has been pushing strongly for Australia’s post-Covid economy to invest in gas, excluding other green industries.

Sinking statues

• Thousands of Australians came out in exercise gear to protest Aboriginal deaths in custody.
• Two women were arrested after spraypainting a statue of Captain Cook in Sydney, resulting in police being “Forced” to stand guard.
• NSW cops have been seen throwing Alt-right gang signs, and denying it.
• One of the chuds standing guard at the Captain Cook statue used to be a rapper.
• National Party MP Andrew Laming thinks protestors should be stripped of their welfare payments (as if protestors don’t have jobs).
• Finance Minister Matias Cormann agreed, after prompting by Sky News.

Scott on Slavery

• Scott Morrison reckons Australia doesn’t have a history of slavery.
• “Blackbirding” was happening in Australia up until 1970.
• Townsville in Queensland is named after slave trader Robert Towns.
• Emelda Davis, President of Australian South Sea Islanders Port Jackson, had an enslaved grandfather.
• Migrant workers are still being treated very poorly by fruit farms.
• Last year, the Queensland government paid $190 million in compensation for wages withheld from Indigenous workers.

Handouts for retirees

• The wealth transfer from the poor to the rich continues apace with the HomeBuilder program.
• The government’s $9.3m plan for sending food boxes to retirees in need sent out a total of… 39 boxes.
• The government’s promised bushfire relief grants have simply… not gone out.

Blowing up Aboriginal heritage

• Rio Tinto apologised for blowing up Juukan Gorge.
• They received a report in 2014 informing them that the caves are of the highest archaeological significance in Australia.
• BHP has plans to destroy at least 40 Aboriginal sites.
• In good news, Fortesque Metals Group has lost its high court appeal against Yindjibarndi traditional owners native title claim.

Actions

• Watch FriendlyJordies video on the evil of Rio Tinto.
• Read Asher Moses Griftwatch column.
• Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

 

22 — Black Lives Matter

We talk about Australia's Black Lives Matter protests against indigenous deaths in custody, and the responses of Australia's media and police.

Black lives matter

• Tens of thousands of Australians came out in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and to protest Indigenous deaths in custody
• There have been 432 indigenous deaths since 1990. Not a single police officer has been convicted.
• On the friday before people marched, another man died in prison in WA.

Cooked cops

• Sydney police kettled and pepper sprayed peaceful protesters trying to get home.
• NSW Police Minister David Elliot called protestors “certifiably insane”. This is a man who thinks he would be okay with police stripsearching his own childen, and assaulted a 17 year old who clipped his Lexus.
• Police Commissioner Mick Fuller thinks crime will increase if young people don’t fear the police.
• During the week leading up to the protests, a Sydney cop kicked an Indigenous teenager without cause.
• Victorian Police were very interested in protecting their police station.

Channel 7 is a cop

• Channel 7 in an interview with Black Lives Matter said that Australia doesn’t have a history of police violence.
• Sunrise have repeatedly platformed Pauline Hanson, congratulated a mixed-race twin on looking white, and green-screened out a protest of their racism outside of their studio.
• Two Channel 7 journalists were attacked by police at a Washington DC protest, which has gotten Scott Morrison the closest he’s ever gotten to saying police violence is bad.
• Ketan Joshi has a great thread on twitter enumerating Channel 7’s many racist moments.
• ABC is getting in on the action too, talking about riots as non-political action.

Spinning tales of spitting threats

• In a now-edited article, the Age parroted an anonymous “government source” saying that that activists threatened police with spitting and other forms of physical confrontation.
• The article was eventually edited to focus on COVID risks, and the Age issued an apology.
• Noel Towell from the Age publishes an quoting the Liberal Party leader pre-blaming protestors for any spike in COVID rates.

Constant bootlinking

• The Conversation asks “Why do protests turn violent”, that bends itself backwards to avoid saying “because police”.
• The Sydney Black Lives Matter protest was declared legal 15 minutes before it started.
• The Herald Sun wrings their hands in article calling protestors COVIDIOTS, while their jounalist reporting on site wears no PPE.
• Channel 9 gets owned for Copaganda.
• Natalie Wolf from news.com.au declares that police were “forced” to spay protestors.
• Jounalist use this passive voice to erase accountability from the police. Retired editor Paul Wiggins called out ABC Insiders host David Speers for his use of this language.
• Guggenheim museum released a Black Lives Matter statement while their first black curator called them out for institutional racism.

Actions

• WAR have asked for donations towards families seeking justice for loved ones that have died in custody.
• Pay the rent.
• Donate to Sisters Inside and Aboriginal Legal Services (VIC / NSW / WA / SA / NT).

21 — Blow it up

We discuss National Sorry day, Aboriginal people dying an custody and Rio Tinto destroying an ancient and irreplaceable historic site. Then we dance on Robodebt's grave and chat about the long-lasting effects of Australia's bushfires.

 

Sorry Day

• May 26 is National Sorry Day, a day of recognition and apology to the Stolen Generations.
• While Prime Minster (and after), John Howard refused to apologise for the actions of the Australian government.
• Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised on behalf of the government in 2008.
• Since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991, there have been 400 deaths of Aboriginal people while in police custody, with no police being held responsible.
• Rio Tinto blew up Juukan Gorge cave, a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal sacred site.
• Scott Morrison invoked the Indigenous principle of caring for country to justify policies of austerity.

Robodebt, dead

• The government has scrapped Robodebt, the illegal policy of hounding people for debts they don’t owe.
• The robodebt program has been repeatedly shown to be ineffectual and inefficient.
• The government knew the scheme was illegal.
• 2000 deaths can be directly linked to the enforcement of Robodebt.
• Congratulations to the AUWU and the #NotMyDebt campaign for this win!
• If you were affected and are not a part of it already, you can register your interest in joining the class-action lawsuit against Centerlink.
• Stuart Robert, the government minister responsible for Robodebt, also once charged the taxpayer almost $63,000 for in excess mobile data usage.
• He also made his elderly father an unknowing dummy director of a company.
• Scott Morrison has asked the tax office to look into creating an automated recovery system like Robodebt for the JobKeeper Covid stimulus payments.

Big Budget Black Hole

• The government overestimated the amount they would spend on the JobKeeper payments by $60 billion (because a lot less people are elegible than originally projected).
• A week before the news broke, deputy PM Michael Sukkar suggested that if the scheme covered less people than planned, it should be reviewed.
• The NSW government has enacted a 12 month pay freeze on doctors, nurses and teachers.
• … after giving the chief of police a $90k pay rise.

Snitch on your boss

• Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has threatened bosses with fines if they force workers to come into the office unnecessarily.
• The NTEU rank and file members successfully pushed union leadership to push back on bad University management deals.

Where there’s smoke…

• Smoke from Australia’s 2019-20 fire season killed 445 people and put thousands in hospital.
• Australia’s Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 caused years of trauma.
• Australian people want immediate and drastic action on climate change.
• Brazil’s environment minister called for environmental deregulation while people are distracted by COVID.

Actions

• Talk to your friends, start a chat and work out who you can talk to and commiserate with. Find people who will have your back!
• Don’t just say Sorry. Pay the rent.
• Learn about deaths of indigenous Australians in custody. It’s easy to ignore, but dont.
• Please give us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps others find us.

 

20 — What's the go with Angus Taylor

In this very special episode we talk about the life, times and scandals of Angus Taylor, the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction.

 

Angus Taylor, this is your life

• Angus Taylor and his wife Louise are apparently extremely litigious.
• Taylor had a career before politics at McKinsey. His brother, Charlie Taylor is a senior partner at McKinsey.
• While at McKinsey, Taylor played a large role in setting Fonterra, New Zealand’s largest company.
• If you’ve heard of McKinsey, it might have been via the US Presidential election primaries. They have ties to US intelligence.
• Taylor has hated renewable energy for a long time. In 2013 he spoke at a “Stop these things” anti-wind farm campaign.
• Angus Taylor’s brother Richard founded a company called Growth Farms Australia, a $400 million dollar agricultural fund manager. Richard is also the director of a company called Jam Land.
• He also has interests in a whole mess of Cayman-islands registered companies with names like Eastern Australian Irrigation and Agricultural Managers Limited, along with Gufee, the Taylor family investment firm.

2013 was a big year

• In 2013, Angus Taylor was by far far the biggest donor to the LNP, giving $155,000 to the party. He was also elected to the seat of Hume.
• As a backbencher, he was strongly anti-renewable energy.

Jamming up the grasslands

• Jamland is a company Angus Taylor’s family investment fund is heavily invested in, and his brother Richard is a director of the company.
• The company was investigated by the NSW government, but the investigation went nowhere.
• The Federal Government opened an investigation into the poisoning, but Josh Frydenburg’s office started looking into whether they could secretly weaken the environmental protections.
• John Auer—a former part-owner of Jamland—was convicted of illegally poisoning 420 wedge-tailed eagles.

Watergate

• In July of 2017, Eastern Australia Agriculture was paid $79m by the federal government for water licences. This was done without a tender and netting massive profits for EAA.
• EAA then used debt loading and Cayman islands-trickery to avoid paying any tax on the deal.
• The water credits were valued by Colliers, a company previously retained by EAA.
• Tony Reid, who formerly worked with Taylor at McKinsey, was heavily involved in the deals.
• Reid at the time also worked for Growth Farms Australia, a company invested in by Gufee, the Taylor family investment fund.
• Richard Taylor (Angus’ brother), is a director at Growth Farms.

Clover Moore news

• Angus Taylor’s office a document apparently showing that Clover Moore, the Lord Mayor of Sydney spent $14.2m on travel.
• The document with those figures never existed on the Sydney City council website. (the council actually spent $228,000).
• The investigation into the doctored documents was dropped by the NSW Police (Scott Morrison called the NSW police commissioner, an old mate).
• The Australian Federal Police investigation was dropped too, after they “formed no concluded view”.
• The rumour mill suggests Taylor’s wife, Louise Clegg, was planning a run for Lord Mayor.

Self-congratulatory Angus

• Angus Taylor once wrote a comment on his own Facebook post: “Fantastic. Great move. Well done Angus”

Future Angus

• Angus Taylor is up to his usual tricks, pushing gas and coal as the plan for future energy generation.
• There’s also talk of a massive new gas pipeline, and an end to bans on fracking.
• Taylor is also blocking any kind of Australian emissions plan, refusing to put in place any kind of target.
• Australia’s climate policy was ranked 0 out of 100 in a global performance index.

Actions

• Change your electricity provider and buy renewable energy

 

 

19 — The podcast of Australia to all Australians

We break down the Prime Minister's meaningless speech patterns, then dig into the politics of journalism and climate change.

 

Morrison’s words

• Scott Morrison hates hiding under the doona. Not Good Enough is a pro doona podcast.
• Is Morrison copying Buttigieg, copying Obama?
• What is the Promise of Australia?
• As immigration minister, Morrison awarded himself a trophy celebrating stopping the boats.
• He has no idea how to deal with people with less power.
• Employment Minister Michaelia Cash advocates “Having A Curry For The Country”.

Climate news and climate journalism

• Greenpeace has released an investigation into News Corp’s role in pushing the fake narrative around Australia’s bushfires, with an accompanying short documentary.
• Annabel Crabb is responsible for pushing the narrative of Scott Morrison as the goofy dad. In 2015 she cooked dinner with a man responsible for the deaths of asylum seekers.
• Australia’s Coronavirus commission, responsible for creating a plan for economic recovery, is heavily stacked with oil and gas executives.
• Shell oil has announced they plan to be carbon neutral by 2050.
• Blackrock, the world’s biggest investment firm, is divesting from fossil fuels.

Unions and why you need them

• The NTEU have been shown to be in secret negotiations with university leadership to cut hours of casual workers by 10% and wages by 15%.
• RMIT university has taken the lead by firing 200 casual workers, and asking other workers to pick up the slack.
• If you’re worried about being screwed over by the NTEU, join the NTEU Fightback group. Here’s the Google Drive with resources and talking points.
• BHP implemented a new enterprise agreement that left workers worse off than the award minimum.
• Gerard Boyce, the Fair Work Comissioner responsible for oversight of minimum wages shared internal modeling with BHP. He also decorated his office with big tiddy anime figurines.
• Senator James McGrath reckons he’ll own the libs with some taxidermy.

Smooth brain business news

• A Northern Territory business lobby has proposed re-opening climbing on Uluru.
• The Australian Newspaper has appointed Michelle Gun as their first female editor. Is this a glass cliff?

Actions

• If you’re concerned about work in higher education, link up with NTEU fightback:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Downloadable resources
• Tell your friends, and please give us a review on Apple Podcasts!

18 — Boardgames & Blasphemy

We get real nerdy on this one. First we discuss the socialist and feminist history of Monopoly that Hasbro has erased, then dive into the source code of the CovidSafe app.

News

• Anneliese van Diemen, Victoria’s Deputy Chief Health Officer has been cleared of wrongdoing, after tweeting a comparison between Captain Cook and COVID-19.
• George Pell bad.
• Universal Basic Income good.

Ms. Monopoly

• The Not Good Pod crew are big boardgame nerds (Mitch is a metalhead, Evie is cool).
• Ms. Monopoly is here to save capitalism from the boys.
• Monopoly was originally invented by a woman, Elizabeth Magie, as a teaching tool called the Landlord’s Game, intended to demonstrate that capitalism is miserable.
• The game was pirated by a man and rebranded as Monopoly, who sold the rights to Parker Brothers.
• In Millenial Monopoly, no one can afford property and buy experiences instead.

Unions are good, this Union is bad

• The Shoppies union has fucked over workers again, cutting penalty rates for part time worker.
• The Shoppies union has a long history of screwing over their members.
• Sally McManus, secretary of the ACTU has agreed with Labor Senator Kristina Keneally’s racist anti-immigration stance.

The App is Not Good Enough

• Thanks to open source digging, we know the app is much worse than we originally though.
• Due to poor design, it’s possible for the app to incorrectly tell people they have be diagnosed with Covid.
• According to a dissection of the the app source code, it shows that the app violates open source software licences. Whether it allows you to violate the Geneva Convention, we do not know.
• The government spent $416k over ten days developing the prototype.
• Footballer’s wife Bec Judd is berating people for not downloading the app.
• The Government is marketing the app as if it keeps individual users safe, not as a tool for society-level modeling.
• Retailer Harvey Norman are trying to sell phones off the back of the CovidSafe app. Gerry Harvey has previously called the Coronavirus pandemic an “opportunity”.

Actions

• Live on a lag, don’t go out. Don’t play Monopoly.
• If you’re part of the Shoppies Union, join the Retail and Fast Food Union or Hospo Voice.
• Listen the the Mandatory Redistribution Party podcast.

17 — Captain Cooked

We break down the culture war surrounding Victoria's Deputy Chief Health Officer. Then we explain why the Great Barrier Reef is important and why you shouldn't install the government's Covid Safe app.

News

• Victoria’s deputy Chief Health Officer compared Coronavirus to Captain Cook. Australia’s right-wing media are kicking up a shitstorm.
• Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton has called for her to resign. He also forgot to declare a $1 million property he owns.
• Malcolm Turnbull bought his seat for $1.75 million.
• He also businesses connections to businesses involved in shady offshore business shown in the Panama papers.
• Turnbull been calling for the Morrison government to take climate change seriously. While in power, he handed $444 million to some mates.
• Pets are legal.
• Always google the minor characters!

Enviro chat

• The Great Barrier Reef is incredibly important to the planet’s ocean ecosystem.
• Federal Energy Idiot Angus Taylor has refused to release a report he commissioned into emissions reductions. I wonder why?
• Australia could get to 90% renewable energy by 2040 with no increase in power prices.
• Massive investment firm Blackrock has divested from fossil fuel.
• The logging of some native forests in Victoria has been halted by a court injunction.

No-Vid Safe

• Despite being downloaded 4 million times the government’s app is not actually active for Covid tracing.
• The messaging about the Australia’s government’s app has been horrifically confusing. People think it’s an early warning system, and pubs are planning to prevent people from entering if they don’t have the app.
• The app has been shown to track all the device it connects to, not just for 15 minutes, and not just people within 1.5 metres.
• Gambling addicts have been helped to kick https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-26/pokies-addicts-kick-habit-during-coronavirus-venues-shutdown/12183018
• Many AFL clubs take a huge portion of their revenue from pokie machines.
• Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan admitted his criticism of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews over school closures “overstepped the mark”.

Actions

• Listen to Drilled, a true crime podcast about the fossil fuel industry for a good debunking of Michael Moore’s new documentary.
• Listen to Citation Needed’s latest episode on GDP and how using it as our core measure of economic wellbeing is destroying the environment.