Not Good Enough

77 — Fixated Podcasters Unit (7th ed.)

The government is handing their homework in late and we tell you just how Both Parties Bad. Then we step into the Jordies discourse.

 

 

7th Ed.

• The Government released the “7th edition” of a plan to prepare the Aged Care sector for Covid. Turns out editions 1-6 did not exist.
• Aged Care Richard Colbeck stated that “The government maintains it’s position that it has a plan in place”.

LNP Bad

• Normal Guy Scott Morrison is away at the G7, so Nationals leader Michael McCormack get wild with it.
• In January McCormack said the US Capitol Riots are the same as Black Lives Matter, doubling down and saying “All Lives Matter”.
• McCormack also said that the plague of mice should be rehomed to inner-city apartments.
• Scott Morrison is having a great time with all his mates at the G7.
• …while making late night calls to the Australian gas industry to let them know they’re still his number one.
• The Nationals are outraged that Morrison even stood next to leaders promising zero emissions by 2050.
• Fossil fuel industries take more in subsidies than they pay in resource taxes.
• Australia is starting to be seen by institutional investors as “high risk”.

Labor Bad

• The terrible new Online Safety Bill is set to pass parliament. The Labor Party “will be supporting this bill, but we’re not happy about it”
• This week, the ALP voted with the government to open the Beetaloo Basin for gas exploration.
• Shadow Resources Minister Madeleine King thinks both sides are bad on the climate debate.
• The Labor party are saying that the Government wants to take away Medicare.
• Richard Marles says the quiet part out loud — there is no substantial difference between the Liberal and Labor parties on border policies.

FriendlyJordies Okay?

• FriendlyJordies is a YouTuber.
• His producer, Kristo Langker, was arrested by the Fixated Person’s Unit.
• The Fixated Threat Assessment Centre was established in QLD in 2013, and was one of the first units of its type.
• These units have been used to blackbag an Origin Energy whistleblower, and harrass a Greens councillor in Brisbane.
• The Government don’t have a history of using police to attack political enemies.
• Kevin Rudd has written about Jordan… but sitting Labor party members haven’t said a word.

Actions

• Listen to this week’s Floodcast on Mark Fisher’s “Vampire Castle”.
• Help the Gippsland Ranges Roller Derby club get their arena up and running again.
• Help fund 3CR Community Radio!

76 — Qaniel Qandrews

We chat about the conspiracy theory running rampant on Victorian Telegram channels, then discuss the situation of the Biloela family, and how we got here.

 

DanAnon

• On the 9th of March Victorian Premier Dan Andrews fell down the stairs.
• Soon afterwards, conspiracy theories started spreading.
• Dan Andrew’s wife Catherine posted a slightly odd photo of him getting a haircut.
• Shadow Treasurer Louise Staley has spent too long indoors, and is now pushing the conspiracies too.
• Victoria Ambulance released a statement verifying the official story.
• In good news, Dan Andrews has released a proof-of-line video.

Every elected representative in Australia is a literal demon from hell

• Nades and Priya are Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, fleeing the danger of of the civil war and persecution.
• They built a family and a better life in the town of Biloela, before being stolen away in a dawn raid.
• Now their daughter Tharnicaa, is deathly ill with pneumonia and sepsis.
• There are almost 1500 people being kept in detention in Australia.
• Kristina Keneally has been using the Biloela family as a political prop, despite never voting to improve their material situation.
• A handful of LNP ministers have called for the family to be brought home.
• Assistant Minister for Women Senator Amanda Stoker says the care on Christmas Island is “good enough”.
• The Minister for Immigration has “god powers” to give or deny visas. Peter Dutton used this power 4129 times as Immigration Minister.
• Indian Australians are still struggling to return to Australia. Australian citizens have died of COVID, trapped overseas.
• Shoutout to the Labor party being in policy lockstep with the Liberals and voting to allow indefinite detention for refugees.
• Scott Morrison refuses to say when Australians will be allowed to travel again.
• Behrouz Boochani on the suffering of the Biloela family and asylum seekers.

Actions

• Call your local MP, and tell them that the will burn forever in the fires of hell if they don’t take drastic action to improve the lives of the people suffering in Australia’s refugee system.

75 — Sour worms

We discuss the cops who can't stop leaking sensitive information to abusers, Victoria's return to lockdown and the government ministers who keep forgetting that Grandma exists.

 

 

Porter stuff

• Christian Porter has dropped his case against the ABC.
• …a week after calling on the ABC to not drag out the case, because they’re spending taxpayer money.
• Fairfax papers published a weird puff piece on Porter’s new relationship.

Abusive leaks

• In 2013, a QLD Police sergeant Neil Punchard deliberately leaked information about a domestic violence victim to her abuser.
• In a completely unrelated note, QLD police is “grappling” with a rise in officers named in domestic abuse orders.
• This week, it came out that NSW police gave the entire image of a domestic violence victim’s phone to her abuser.
• Celebrite is an Israeli hardware/software package used by law enforcement.
• The CEO of Signal posted a blog post dissecting how Cellebrite works.
• It’s not just cops! The NDIS leaked information about a participant to their family, despite warnings they were at danger of domestic violence.

Lockdown!

• Victoria has been in lockdown for two weeks.
• The Victorian government has propped up businesses with $250m in grants.
• The Federal government has finally agreed to give some measly grants to individual people, in the form of a wizard’s riddle.
• Businesses have refused to pay back Jobkeeper overpayments (and the government isn’t asking for it back).
• …while they claw back money from individuals.

Aged care

• Richard Colbeck is minister for aged care, apparently. He just refuses to admit he’s responsible.
• Of the 910 people who have died of Covid in Australia, 655 were in Victorian aged care homes.
• The Royal Commission found that the Government did not have a plan for the pandemic.
• During the outbreak in 2020, the government provided additional funding for aged care workers to not work at multiple sites. They dropped this funding as soon as possible.
• The National cabinet has agreed that Covid Vaccines are not mandatory for aged care workers.
• We have a Registry of who’s been immunised in Australia!
• There are anti-vaxxers in the Government.
• A great thread about the roll-out of the HPV Vaccine.
• Health Minister Greg Hunt posted anti-mask propaganda.

Shoutouts

• Sign the petition to stop the planned cable-car up Mt Wellington in Hobart.

74 — Care of Duty: Modern Lawfare (feat. Lauren)

We're joined by legal expert Lauren to discuss the government's new duty of care to protect young people from the climate crisis. We also chat about international law and exploding coal power plants.

 

Defamation watch

• Ben Roberts-Smith is just carrying flowers around?
• Five days ago, he wiped a laptop (after being told by his legal team not to).
• After burying evidence of alleged war crimes in a pink lunchbox.
• Scope the man’s very weird portrait at the Australian War Museum.

The kids save the day

• A class action case brought by 8 teenagers, along with an 86-year-old nun, have won a case recognising that the Australian Environment Minister has a duty of care to protect young people from the climate crisis.
• Environment Minister Susan Ley has signed off an a few bad things in her term since 2019: Approving the clearing of koala habitat, rubber stamping 850 gas wells, greenlighting the bulldozing of sacred birthing trees, and stopping scientists from publishing pro-conservation papers.
• Children are an “umbrella species” for the rest of us.
• Shoutout to Sister Brigid Arthur for her fantastic action.

International good news

• The Netherlands has ordered Shell to reduce it’s emissions by 45% by 2030.
• Shell sells “carbon neutral” LNG, which is just slapping some carbon credits on a barrel of gas.
• Shell produces 1% of global emissions, all by itself.
• Activist shareholders at Exxon have gotten four environmentally-minded board members elected.
• Chevron shareholder forced the board to watch a video calling them out for their climate inaction.

Exploding coal plants!

• The Callide C coal power plant exploded!
• People with solar power and batteries didn’t even notice.
• The power plant was overhauled in 2019 (for $60 million) and 2017 ($50 million).
• Matt Canavan, said “this is good actually”.

Shoutouts

• Support the 3CR Radiothon!

73 — Dispatchable planet

We chat about hangovers, what's up with the energy sector (and who's getting the handouts), and the government simply refuses to deliver a vaccine.

 

Hangovers

• It was RAHU’s first birthday!
• Shoutout to the Renewables in Agriculture Conference.

Energy sector

• The International Energy Agency dropped a new report saying that fossil fuels are bad.
• Climate change-denying former Federal Minister for Finance Mathias Cormann was elected as head of the OECD.
• The “Green Energy Fund” can now be used to fund fossil fuels.
• The Australian government is funding a new $600 million gas power plant.
• The power plant will run at about 2% capacity, about 150 hours per year.
• Luckily, it looks like it will just be a chance to hand money to donors.
• Jeff McCloy, owner of the land that is flagged for the plant, is a major liberal party donor.
• He was the the only “stakeholder” to objected to land protections koalas.
• Update: Oh also he has known the head of the company responsible for the project for 20 years.
• The world’s seven largest economies have agreed to stop funding coal projects.
• The Labor party have found it very difficult to criticise the government.

Keith Pitts

• Keith Pitt, minister for Resources, Water, and Northern Australia has vetoed a wind/batter power station near Cairns.
• Keith Pitt is a battery denier.
• The Queensland state government has stepped in and provided funding instead.

Delivering a vaccine

• The government is continuing to fuck up the vaccine rollout. Only 25% of aged care workers and 4% of people in disability care facilities.
• If you want a vaccine, you can pretty much get one now.
• Update: Nope.
• The media is reframing the botched vaccine rollout as instead that people are afraid of getting the vaccine. Shoutout to Health Nerd on Twitter for pointing out that this isn’t really what the data says.

Big wins!

• Deliveroo has lost a case against the Fair Work Commission, now holding up that their workers should be defined as employees instead of contractors.
• Shoutout to the Transport Workers Union and Diego Franco for winning this case!
• Solidarity with the staff at Better Read than Dead who have entered into bargaining talks with management, after previously being met with threats of termination.
• Congrats to the Save the Inks campaign for pushing back on QLD’s restrictions!

72 — WiNnErS & LoSeRs

We talk about the media's narratives of omission, whether the subject is Kristina Keneally's necklace, the federal budget or the people of Palestine.

 

 

Drawing the line

• Kristina Kersher Keneally wore a necklace given to her by Kopi of Biloela family in Parliament…
• …while the Labor party passed a bill making indefinite detention legal, and allowing the immigration minister to strip people of refugee status.
• The supreme court originally ruled that stateless people could be held indefinitely in 2019.

War crime media watch

• Many passive-voice related incidents occurred in Australian media this week regarding conflict in the Middle East.
• Sky news had good coverage?? Nah don’t worry, they’re back on track.
• Schwartz media has had a long-standing pro-Israel stance.
• More than 670 Australian journalists and media personalities have signed an open letter calling for media organisations to do better on Palestine.
• Shoutout to political economist Elizabeth Humphrys for calling for more collective action amongst media workers.

One budget, please sir

• The Australian media loves to divide the budget into winners and losers.
• David Speers walks right into Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s framing trap.
• The budget predictions are simply a fantasy.

Shoutouts

• Shoutout to Celeste Liddle, who is running for the Greens in the federal seat of Cooper.
• Lydia Thorpe, Victoria’s first Aboriginal woman senator “The instruction from the colonizers was to wipe us and our language out, to take our children… Their plan was to annihilate us, to get rid of us altogether. But they failed.”

Actions

• Attend one of the rallies happening across Australia this weekend in solidarity with the people of Palestine.

71 — A hotline for losers

We keep up to date on the War consent manufacturing machine, chat about ACIC's claim that encryption is for criminals, and follow up on the jobseeker dob-in hotline.

 

Assault update

• The cop who beat up a Blak kid 11 months ago has been charged with assault. We talked about this back in episode 22.

War chat

• Scott Morrison doesn’t know why Australia should go to war with China.
• Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lijian Zhao, calls Australian politicians the “real troublemakers”.
• In the Saturday Paper, Hugh White likens Australian politicians to the the statesmen of 1914.

Encryption is for criminals

• The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission thinks that all encryption is for criminals.
• Former PM Malcolm Turnbull confirmed that he uses encrypted messaging apps.
• Former Attorney General George Brandis was very confused by what “metadata” is.
• Cam Wilson’s article in Crikey on the online privacy bill.

It’s dobseeker time

• The Dobseeker hotline is up and running.
• People turning down jobs is a problem that statistically doesn’t exist — of 1.1 million people on Jobseeker, only 114 turned down a job.
• The tax return graphs that show “where your taxes go”.
• The Australian Retail Association opposes the hotline too.

Robodebt settlement

• Hundreds of people have officially objected to the Robodebt class action settlement.
• The Government is using the same data matching approach as Robodebt, and applying it to Jobkeeper.

Actions

• Join the Australian Unemployed Workers Union.
• Sign the petition to Save the Inks.
• Come to the RAHUGALA on May 22!

Emergency action

• Protest the colonial violence being committed against the Palestinian people. Rallies across Australia: Melbourne (May 15th), Sydney (May 15th), Brisbane (May 14th), Perth (May 14th).

70 — I stopped these (Australian citizens)

We review urgent reviews, talk about jail time for traveling to Australia from India, and discuss Andrew Laming's ADHD.

 

Urgent review review

• The government has ordered an “urgent review” into the Australia Day council.
• The review is being conducted by Glenys Beauchamp, who you may remember for destroying her sports rorts notebooks.

India travel ban

• The situation in India is real bad.
• The government is instituting a policy of jail time or massive fines for people who travel from India.
• This may or may not be legal.
• Australia stripped Suhayra Aden of her Australian citizenship, leaving her a citizen of only New Zealand.
• When Covid first kicked off, people were quarantined off-shore on Christmas Island.
• Hotel quarantine continues to be not great. Workers keep on getting Covid.
• The Victorian government is proposing a dedicated quarantine facility. Peter Dutton doesn’t like it.
• In October 2020 the government’s own Covid Commission recommended a federal approach to quarantine.
• In an outrageous display of “diplomacy” China is sending vaccines to India.
• India is a net-exporter of vaccines.
• Bill Gates doesn’t think vaccine formulas should be shared with India. The Gates Foundation is heavily invested in medical technology.
• Australia is home to 700,000 people from India.

War, we’re going to war

• It’s WAR.
• Defence minister Peter Dutton says Australia should be ready for WAR with China.
• Home Affairs Michael Pezzullo reckons Europe learned the wrong lesson from the first World WAR.
• Defence Force chief Angus Campbell thinks WAR with China is a bad idea.
• War with China would be a bit-one sided.

Laming

• Liberal backbencher Andrew Laming says he has ADHD.
• Laming reckons the empathy training he was required to complete showed that he has too much empathy.
• On ABC Radio, Patricia Karvelas grilled Laming on his diagnosis and whether he is sorry for his actions.
• Laming does some 👁 stuff.

Actions

• Support refugee advocate Shane Bazzi, who is being sued by Peter Dutton for defamation.
• Listen to Lang on the Reanimates podcast.

68 — Kristina Kerscher Keneally’s Kaptive Kid Korner

On the pod this week: stealing valor, cringing out of our skin, Scott Morrison's climate spin and children used as political pawns.

 

Thanks to special guest show-notes author, podcast host Tom Lang.

Anzac Biscuit Day

• Anzac day is becoming increasingly iffy, and the kids just aren’t feeling it any more.
• The government loves to pay lip service to the troops, and then turn around and do things like lend money to veterans using their pensions as collateral, and then not restore the pension after they pay it back.
• This is the inside of Evie’s mind on Anzac day.
• Did we mention Ben Roberts Smith won Father of the year back in 2013? ALLEGED sorry ALLEGED father of the year.

I non-consensually drink your milkshake

• The government tried to make an education program about consent without using the word “consent”, which went predictably poorly.
• Alan Tudge, the relevant Minister, has so far not gone to jail for anything, and is newsworthy for a variety of reasons, including alleged bullying.
• The Safe Schools program, which tackled LGBTIQ+ issues and other important topics of sexuality and identity, outraged conservatives and was ended in most areas except for Victoria.
• Scott Morrison apparently hated existing sex education programs so much that he sent his daughters to a private school.

Happy Corporate Greenwashing Day

• It was Earth Day on the 22nd of April, which was originally started among the civil rights movement in the 60s.
• Environmental Journalists like Emily Atkin from Heated can tell you about the corporate greenwashing festival this day has become.
• Scott Morrison thoroughly embarrassed the nation at the Climate Leaders Summit, with a classic combination of incompetence, spin, and lies.
• Even fluffy morning TV show host (and alleged father of the year) Kochy called Angus Taylor on our pathetic climate targets.

Kristina Kerscher Keneally’s Kaptive Kid Korner

• The notorious KKK visited the Tamil Asylum seeker family that was deported from their loving community in Biloela. They’re currently being held indefinitely on Christmas Island.
• She wrote about her experiences, but be warned, this is coming directly from a politician whose party was instrumental in the laws that have resulted in this family being detained.
• It’s easy to check her personal voting record.
• She’s previously dogwritten on how migrants will take our jobs.

•  

67 — A L L E G E D L Y

We talk about alleged war crimes, alleged lunch boxes, allegedly improper firing of CEOs and alleged plans fossil-fuel companys to pay nothing in resources taxes.

 

Lunchbox update

• Ben Roberts-Smith (alleged war criminal) allegedly buried some incriminating evidence in a lunchbox.
• It is also alleged that he kept a bunch of burner phones and sent intimidating letters to witnesses.
• Channel 7 are standing by Roberts-Smith, and paying for his defence fund.

Holgategate

• Christine Holgate, Former CEO of Australia Post, gave some watches to executives who landed a deal for the company.
• This was originally brought to light by was originally pushed by Kimberly Kitching the Labor Party, then finally by the government.
• Kimberly Jane Elizabeth Kitching wore “suffragette white” in solidarity with Holgate.
• Meanwhile, Australia Post was asking their staff to work for free and use their own vehicles.
• At the Senate inquiry into Holgate’s sacking, Holgate wore a $40k watch.
• She racked up $300k in personal expenses over a couple of months of work.
• Auspost Licensees sent Scott Morrison $5 notes to “pay back” the value of the watches.
• During Victoria’s early tower lockdown (see Episode 26), Holgate argued that Pauline Hanson should be able to send abusive propaganda into the towers.

Gassed up

• Australia is giving out natural resources away for free! Shell is projected to pay $0 in resources taxes.
• Shells profits “slumped” in 2020 to $4.8 billion.
• The Gorgon gas plant, which Shell and Chevron are using as a tax writeoff, doesn’t work.
• 4 Corners has been listening to the podcast, and decided to follow up on Angus Taylor pressuring the AEMO into a “gas led recovery”.
• The government paid $2.5m on the Boston Consulting Group to recommend the gas plan.
• The same group were in 2019 paid to recommend that Australia Post be broken up and sold off.

Shoutouts

• If your bank or Superannuation invest in fossil fuels, dump em!
• The Renters and Housing Union are going national, baby!
• Make a category for climate change podcasts, Apple.
• Shoutout to the NDIS leaker. Listen to last week’s ep for more detail.