AGE OF ENTITLEMENT - PART 2
WATERLOO
Campbell Newman, for all his righteous indignation, proved to be just as inept and destructive as his predecessors. His genius solution to cutting government spending was to sack sixteen-thousand public servants which, in reality, was closer to twenty thousand. The flow-on effects were horrendous. Those who lost their jobs lost far more as their hopes and dreams were snuffed out with their careers, branded with the label of potentially being a ‘disgruntled former public servant’. They became unemployed. They could not get loans to buy a home or an income to support their families and plan for their futures, and the financial stress it put on them no doubt helped end many relationships and marriages.
It was a period that saw the State economy stall as the government cut funding to invest in projects. Public unhappiness was ignored and overshadowed by great debates on what were termed VLAD Laws, a means to arrest and prosecute members of motorcycle gangs for gathering in groups of three or more. The laws were a spectacular failure, resulting in the incarceration of people for no just cause and only two convictions when it would have been better to prosecute offenders for the real cause of the problems: drugs, assaults, extortion and countless other offences. The Newman government also saw Tim Carmody appointed Chief Justice, a decision that resulted in a united front of opposition from within the Queensland ‘Justice’ System and Carmody’s eventual, and humiliating downfall, forever seen as an undeserving stooge.
But the humiliation of the ALP wasn’t over. While the incompetence that led to the fiasco of the payroll system forced the government to hire public servants to manually process wages and find a solution to an ever-growing problem, one of those public servants was syphoning off millions of dollars to fund his own lavish lifestyle. Joel Morehu was a small time crook from New Zealand masquerading as a Tahitian Prince and flaunting his embezzlement for all to see. A simple background check would have ensured he was never given that position, and could never have stolen an estimated $16.6 million.
It is unclear exactly how much he stole. The ineptitude of the ALP run department simply did not have a means to record where all the money was going in all the excitement of digging a massive hole straight to hell. Some of it was recovered through auctions of seized property and possessions Morehu had purchased with his ill-gotten gains. He currently costs tax-payers around $100 thousand a year, serving out an eight years sentence for the theft. Most of us would happily do a six month stretch in prison for about a million dollars, some more, even if it was in solitary. But the question remains – how the hell did this Fresh Prince of Bris WTF get into a position in the public service where he had access to this kind of money?
There is a reason for appointing qualified people to positions of authority. There’s a reason why they should undergo background checks. There’s a reason nepotism should be avoided. There’s a reason people applying for those positions should undergo psychological screening. There’s a reason they should be dismissed from service as soon as their ineptitude and mental or intellectual deficiencies and failings are discovered. There’s few better examples than Christine Nixon. This absolute waste of space held the position of authority during the Black Saturday bushfires that claimed over two hundred lives. While the State burned, and people died, she went out to dinner with friends and switched off her phone. She was uncontactable during the very worst of that horrific period of time.
Unrepentant, this despicable individual justified what she had done and responded to the inquiry with glib answers and remarks that revealed a sociopathic personality bordering on psychotic. Her role, she insisted, was one of bureaucratic management, holding others accountable to standards she herself failed in such a way that exceeded epic fail in monumental leaps and bounds. The fact that over two-hundred lives had been lost did not seem to concern her. In fact, to her, they seemed little more than statistics. She seemed contrite, unwilling to even consider that she was accountable in any meaningful way.
Not only was she a candidate for a swift kick in the arse and one way ticket to Fugorf Town, but she should also have been charged with something like negligent homicide. Those policies and practices she enforced with her twisted bureaucratic mindset contributed to the devastation and shocking death toll. People’s lives are not simply numbers and letters in reports, and oversight requires a willingness to listen to concerns and address systemic failures. You cannot be part of the solution if you are part of the problem. But what did the Victorian State Government do to deal with her ineptitude? They promoted her. They put this bloated parasite, this festering pimple on the butt of humanity, in charge of the recovery efforts so the victims of her incompetence had to deal with her as they struggled to deal with their grief and loss. Clearly the Victorian State Government was as insensitive and dismissive toward the people of Victoria as the horrible, over-inflated gas bag known as Christine Nixon.
But despite the media reports on the ‘isolated incidents’ and the millions of dollars spent on inquests, these make up just a tiny percentage of reported ‘allegations’, and the actual total is unknowable. Many offences are never reported at all. Then there are the victims that some police and public servants actively discourage and prevent from making an official complaint at all, a rotten practice that ensures predators do not have an accurate ‘history’ of offending because, obviously, there is no record of previous complaints. If the true scale of systemic failure were exposed, the public would be horrified.
Campbell Newman, for all his righteous indignation, proved to be just as inept and destructive as his predecessors. His genius solution to cutting government spending was to sack sixteen-thousand public servants which, in reality, was closer to twenty thousand. The flow-on effects were horrendous. Those who lost their jobs lost far more as their hopes and dreams were snuffed out with their careers, branded with the label of potentially being a ‘disgruntled former public servant’. They became unemployed. They could not get loans to buy a home or an income to support their families and plan for their futures, and the financial stress it put on them no doubt helped end many relationships and marriages.
Many staff were notified of their
dismissal by the arrival of a man with a cardboard box and two security
personnel who gave very clear instructions that they were to collect their things,
surrender data storage devices, security cards and other sensitive material,
and leave. They were not to speak to anyone. Survivor guilt was common. People
terrified they were he target, relived if they were not, and feeling guilty
when a colleague’s life was butchered before their eyes. Many of those who
survived the brutal cull suffered stress related illnesses, shaking
uncontrollably when elevator doors opened.
The staff that remained were then expected
to pick up the slack, undertaking additional workloads that had been performed
by the now absent staff. They were not paid more. Many suffered burnout. Some
tasks did not get done at all. In the case of Child Safety Services, there were
simply not enough people to deal with all the reports of possible abuse. In
years to come, Tialeigh Palmer and Mason Lee would become the face of failures
resulting from an entrenched culture of corruption and staff shortages. Short
term savings from poorly considered austerity measures resulted in long term
costs and brutal, tragic (in every sense of the word) deaths. Worse, the purge
was mismanaged, sacrificing numbers rather than targeting staff that were
incompetent, inept, idle, and problematic.
Departments saw the loss of good people
that ensured services were provided to the best of their abilities, including
managers who earned their positions through hard work, dedication, and
meritocracy. Campbell ushered in a time of nepotism, where stooges were awarded
leadership roles based on their ability to serve as bobble-heads for human
bollards, obstacles impeding progress. Laws changed, policies were overturned,
environmental vandalism escalated at a shocking rate as coal mines and tree
clearing were approved and, in one astonishing act of blatant corruption, Jeff
Seeney managed to pass a bill in the dead of night to help a friend who had
broken the law, backdating approval for operations that had destroyed the land
of three farmers downstream for four years. The farmers were left with no means
to gain compensation.
It was a period that saw the State economy stall as the government cut funding to invest in projects. Public unhappiness was ignored and overshadowed by great debates on what were termed VLAD Laws, a means to arrest and prosecute members of motorcycle gangs for gathering in groups of three or more. The laws were a spectacular failure, resulting in the incarceration of people for no just cause and only two convictions when it would have been better to prosecute offenders for the real cause of the problems: drugs, assaults, extortion and countless other offences. The Newman government also saw Tim Carmody appointed Chief Justice, a decision that resulted in a united front of opposition from within the Queensland ‘Justice’ System and Carmody’s eventual, and humiliating downfall, forever seen as an undeserving stooge.
But the humiliation of the ALP wasn’t over. While the incompetence that led to the fiasco of the payroll system forced the government to hire public servants to manually process wages and find a solution to an ever-growing problem, one of those public servants was syphoning off millions of dollars to fund his own lavish lifestyle. Joel Morehu was a small time crook from New Zealand masquerading as a Tahitian Prince and flaunting his embezzlement for all to see. A simple background check would have ensured he was never given that position, and could never have stolen an estimated $16.6 million.
It is unclear exactly how much he stole. The ineptitude of the ALP run department simply did not have a means to record where all the money was going in all the excitement of digging a massive hole straight to hell. Some of it was recovered through auctions of seized property and possessions Morehu had purchased with his ill-gotten gains. He currently costs tax-payers around $100 thousand a year, serving out an eight years sentence for the theft. Most of us would happily do a six month stretch in prison for about a million dollars, some more, even if it was in solitary. But the question remains – how the hell did this Fresh Prince of Bris WTF get into a position in the public service where he had access to this kind of money?
There is a reason for appointing qualified people to positions of authority. There’s a reason why they should undergo background checks. There’s a reason nepotism should be avoided. There’s a reason people applying for those positions should undergo psychological screening. There’s a reason they should be dismissed from service as soon as their ineptitude and mental or intellectual deficiencies and failings are discovered. There’s few better examples than Christine Nixon. This absolute waste of space held the position of authority during the Black Saturday bushfires that claimed over two hundred lives. While the State burned, and people died, she went out to dinner with friends and switched off her phone. She was uncontactable during the very worst of that horrific period of time.
Unrepentant, this despicable individual justified what she had done and responded to the inquiry with glib answers and remarks that revealed a sociopathic personality bordering on psychotic. Her role, she insisted, was one of bureaucratic management, holding others accountable to standards she herself failed in such a way that exceeded epic fail in monumental leaps and bounds. The fact that over two-hundred lives had been lost did not seem to concern her. In fact, to her, they seemed little more than statistics. She seemed contrite, unwilling to even consider that she was accountable in any meaningful way.
Not only was she a candidate for a swift kick in the arse and one way ticket to Fugorf Town, but she should also have been charged with something like negligent homicide. Those policies and practices she enforced with her twisted bureaucratic mindset contributed to the devastation and shocking death toll. People’s lives are not simply numbers and letters in reports, and oversight requires a willingness to listen to concerns and address systemic failures. You cannot be part of the solution if you are part of the problem. But what did the Victorian State Government do to deal with her ineptitude? They promoted her. They put this bloated parasite, this festering pimple on the butt of humanity, in charge of the recovery efforts so the victims of her incompetence had to deal with her as they struggled to deal with their grief and loss. Clearly the Victorian State Government was as insensitive and dismissive toward the people of Victoria as the horrible, over-inflated gas bag known as Christine Nixon.
Not to be outdone, but unwilling to
compete with a body-count in which only a mass-murderer could take such total
indifference, Queensland Rail’s CEO, Helen Gluer stepped up to the plate. Her
role allowed her to over-ignore (honestly, we can’t call it oversee, can we)
the end user implementation aspect of the Morton Bay Rail Link, a project that
had been proposed over a hundred years earlier. You’d think that would be enough
time to get it right. Main Roads and Transport delivered the infrastructure but
managed to use traffic signal systems incompatible with the existing ones
connected to the rest of the network. And you’d think that would be the worst
embarrassment of a project that cost around a billion dollars. It wasn’t.
One would assume that the end user
implementation aspect of the Morton Bay Rail Link would be pretty straight
forward: trains on tracks taking people from one end to the other and stopping
at stations along the way. But the trains aren’t what they’re meant to be.
There’s design flaws. Not really an issue given Gluer and her over-paid band of
half-wits didn’t bother organising the one thing they really need in addition
to trains: drivers. Yeah, that’s right, they didn’t have enough drivers. So for
a couple of weeks, hundreds of commuters got to play the ‘my train is late and
I’m waiting hours to get to or from work when I could be spending that time
with my partner and kids’, but this time the game lasted much, much longer, and
it affected the entire network. It really pissed people off.
There didn’t appear to be a lot of
sympathy toward her. It seemed most people were happy to see her go. She had
earned a rather nasty reputation in regards to her personality and treatment of
those working under her authority. Words like aggressive, nasty, spiteful,
vindictive, unpleasant, bully, incompetent and the like were commonly
associated with references to her. She held on though, like a barnacle to the
underside of a boat, or a leech in a sweet-spot. She refused to fall on her
sword for her ineptitude until, it seems, someone gave her a good hard shove,
but not before she sacrificed others.
This is what happens when good, competent
people are purged from the public service through poorly considered, short term
solutions to what are perceived to be over-spending problems. They’re not
though. The poorly-considered spending is the problem. Clive Palmer once said
“you have to spend money to make money”. When that guy is the voice of reason,
you have a serious problem. Campbell Newman’s reign as Premier revealed a
serious personality flaw. His austerity measures did not extend to his own ego.
During the State Election, his how-to-vote ballot paper was twenty-five percent
larger than everyone else’s, and then he signed deals to erect his giant
phallic symbol: 1 William Street, a massive building that dwarfed all others
and cost tax-payers over a billion dollars. Lord Farquaad had arrived.
The street name and number said it all:
The Big 1. The Big Willy. Campbell got what was coming in the end after an
election campaign involving departmental budget cuts to fund projects in his
own electorate, and a blatant threat to cut funding to projects in electorates
that did not vote an LNP representative into office. He got shafted but he
never got to daily mount the highest perch on his pride and joy. But the deal
had been done and while ‘the tower of power’ sprouted like a grotesque and
embarrassing fungus of self-absorbed opulence, the public service agencies
robbed of manpower remained neglected, their decimated ranks struggling to cope
and perform their duties. It came to a head after Campbell discovered that
voters want a competent representative, not an arrogant, self-centred,
over-indulged, idiotic little despot.
While northern Queensland politicians
begged for funding to undertake projects and create employment in their
electorates, and railed against the excess of a south-east Queensland centralised
government that was determined to continue the tradition of reducing the
capital to a money pit, Campbell continue his reign of narcissistic stupidity.
He seemed blissfully unaware of the security issues and concerns associated
with gathering all of the State’s politicians, department heads and key public
servants in a single location, nothing less than the now biggest building in
Brisbane. It was a strange oversight for someone with an (allegedly) military
background. Then again, if any potential terrorists were aware of what the
building represented, it was unlikely they (like anyone else) would want to
touch that.
The rape and murder of Tialeigh Palmer,
then the brutal, agonising, prolonged torture and murder of Mason Lee, along
with a series of media reports focussing on vicious murders inflicted on women
as a direct result of domestic violence and systemic failures, exposed the
pitfalls of a mindless cull of the public service, and equally foolish
austerity measures combined with the misuse of tax-payer funds to stroke an ego
and create a giant erection to compensate for some insignificant yet very
apparent personal issue.
As the systemic failures were picked
apart, it was quickly discovered that forty-six percent – almost half – of
reports on suspected child abuse were not followed up within the first thirty
days. Child Abuse Statistics in another State had revealed a similar problem,
where only twenty percent of reports had actually been investigated, and of
them, enough evidence had been found to prove half could be verified. Jacqui
Petrusma, an LNP MP, had commented at that time, “which raises the question,
how many more would have been verified if they’d actually been investigated.”
In Queensland, however, the LNP were quick
to demand the ALP Minister for Child Protection, Shannon Fentiman, be sacked,
laying the blame at her feet. Admittedly, her department had failed on her
watch. But given her department was still understaffed and underfunded from the
idiotic and incompetent actions of the former government, it was a problem that
could have been prevented by the LNP itself. Perhaps those children may have
been saved from the fate they suffered if Campbell’s mighty William Street
edifice had never been approved, if the money had been used to retain public
servants in that department.
Shannon Fentiman, if anything, appeared
deeply distressed by the deaths of those two children, as if she herself had
personally failed them, shouldering the blame that should have been borne by
the Newman LNP government. The LNP, on the other hand, seemed more than
thrilled to use the deaths for their own political advantage, blaming others
for their own failures in an effort to seize power and inflict the same
ineptitude, incompetence and corruption as they had when they ruled. The
response was disturbing.
Meanwhile, across the border in the
Northern Territory, the LNP Territorial government faced a crisis of their own
making. Brutal, shocking and reprehensible child abuse had been exposed in the
Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, where prison staff were brutalising young
people, some little more than children. The response from the Minister was to
deny any knowledge, then apologise when that claim was exposed as a lie. The
response from the public was mixed, some expressing anger at the abuse, but far
too many claiming the victims had somehow deserved to have their basic human
rights violated because they had committed whatever crime (no matter how small)
had landed them here in the first place.
How, exactly, did those despicable people
(the Minister, the staff, and the unhinged cretins a large in our community)
think that brutalising troubled young people would rehabilitate them for
reintegration back into civilised society? Many of those kids came from broken
homes, places where child abuse had shaped what they had become, and to cure
hem of their anti-social attitudes, a bunch of dickheads decided it was okay
for them to wail on kids in prison for the same crime or less. Well done.
Of course, there would be an
investigation. The Prime Minister was forced to order one by public outrage.
There had been an awkward moment where it seemed he and other LNP politicians
paused, maintaining a silence that appeared to be the holding of a collective
breath, hoping the reprehensible facts might just slip quietly back into
indifference. It didn’t happen. The public wanted an investigation into the
DDYDC and other Youth Detention Centres across the country, some even calling
for it to be expanded to the illegal immigration facilities. Turnbull crushed
them all, claiming there was only evidence of abuses there and to expand the
investigation would cause it to lose focus and water-down any findings.
It was Grade A Bullshit, the kind that the
LNP specialised in. It ensured that only those caught out, exposed by the media
would be thrown under the bus, sacrificed so that others might escape the inquest
unscathed. Initially, it looked like John Elferink, the Northern Territory
Minister for Corrections, would be placed in charge of the investigation only
escalated public anger – he had been in charge of Don Dale when abuses had
occurred, had known about it, and had allowed it to continue. Giving the people
accused of a crime the authority to investigate it would be seen as an act of
base idiocy anywhere but in government, the police and public service. In those
circles, it is known as ‘internal investigation’. In Monopoly, it’s known as a
‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.
Elferink claimed to be taking the
‘allegations’ seriously but went on to say he agreed with the Corrections
Commissioner… who was dismissive of them. What hope do victims of abuses, crime,
systemic failure and injustice have when the authorities refuse to even
consider allegations? That attitude conceals and enables the problem and the
predators inflicting hell on others. Elferink quickly found himself under the
wheels of that proverbial bus, given a good hard shove by Northern Territory
Chief Minister, Adam Giles. It is said there is no honour among thieves.
Admittedly, Elferink had a long history of being a miserable arsehole and was
long overdue for a pack-your-shit-and-piss-off dismissal from service order,
but Giles should have been part of the temporary pavement too. Giles had
originally claimed to have no knowledge of the abuses, but then recanted when
evidence exposed his memory lapse. If he had been an ordinary person, the word
‘liar’ would be more apt, his integrity left in tatters, and his corrupt or
incompetent (pick one) arse fired.
The Royal Commission ordered by Turnbull
was a response that followed a similar methodology. Giles and his mate Elferink
had managed to screw-up so catastrophically that the facts appeared around the
same time as the Federal government would be heading for an election. It had
the potential to raise ugly reminders of LNP cover-ups concerning abuses and
human rights violations in illegal immigration detention facilities even as it
exposed more. The first pick to oversee the Royal Commission was Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory Brian Martin, quite possibly one
of the most idiotic choices that could have been made given his attitude toward
Indigenous people and sentencing that would be a sick joke if he hadn’t
actually made those reprehensible, shameful decisions.
In the face of public outrage over the
appointment, Martin stepped down within just a few days of being appointed to
the role of overseeing the Royal Commission. Turnbull and Brandis replaced him
with Mick Gooda and former Queensland Supreme Court Judge Margaret White. Given
the behaviour of Brandis over the years, it was the only logical choice – he
had a reputation for suspicious activities that involved using laws, policies
and procedures to manipulate and conceal uncomfortable and potentially damaging
facts that might harm his career and position of authority and power. The
selection of Gooda and White at least gave the impression of making a real
effort to expose and purge the culture of corruption.
It is no wonder the LNP hates the ABC. It
is not some ‘lefty’ bias or agenda against the LNP that bothers them because
that’s a load of horse-shit. What bothers the LNP is that they are so rotten
they must engage in a full-scale conflict against the media to conceal what
they are doing. The ABC is uncompromising. The integrity of the ABC cannot be
bought. They report the facts, objectively, and cannot be silenced by owners
with vested interests like the commercial networks. The only people stupid
enough to believe the ABC has a ‘lefty’ bias are RWNJs who don’t like it when
anybody dares disagree with their idiocy – they have no problems when the ABC
calls out the ALP, Unions or other ‘enemies’ of the LNP for the same.
But despite the media reports on the ‘isolated incidents’ and the millions of dollars spent on inquests, these make up just a tiny percentage of reported ‘allegations’, and the actual total is unknowable. Many offences are never reported at all. Then there are the victims that some police and public servants actively discourage and prevent from making an official complaint at all, a rotten practice that ensures predators do not have an accurate ‘history’ of offending because, obviously, there is no record of previous complaints. If the true scale of systemic failure were exposed, the public would be horrified.
The reason
why so many victims are turned away is justified by a defence of “there’s not
enough evidence to warrant an investigation”. Logic would indicate the idiocy
of such a statement. As George Brandis himself once said, “how can we know what all
the evidence is without an investigation?” and “we suspect a cover-up”. In too
many instances, police and public servants refuse to look at any of the
evidence before making the excuse. It doesn’t matter. The burden of proof is
moved higher and higher at every stage of a prosecution until it fails and the
offender avoids exposure by using the law to circumvent justice, continuing to
do as they please while their victims are literally branded liars despite
telling the truth.
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