Poison Deviny

What’s kept Australia going through the financial crisis is all the policies she opposed - paying off government debt, the GST, the Future Fund, deregulation of the labour market.”“The Prime Minister is a socialist at home and free marketeer in Mexico,” jokes Costello. “She crosses the International Date Line and has a cathartic experience.” Gillard’s championing of labour market flexibility was what Costello found most “hilarious” in her G20 pronouncements at Mexico’s Los Cabos. “She, of course, is the person who introduced Fair Work Australia, the whole essence of which was to reduce flexibility… How she could lecture anyone on that is weird.

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—	https://twitter.com/MattCowgill/status/210546965858103296/photo/1 “ABS data show labour costs are near record lows” https://twitter.com/MattCowgill/status/210174539580186624/photo/1

9/5/12: “How do Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott justify their vote of confidence in Craig Thomson yesterday? For that is the message they sent by voting with the government against the Opposition motion to suspend Thomson for 14 days. Their assistance allowed Thomson to escape parliamentary censure in the wake of the damning Fair Work Australia report alleging financial mismanagement and rorting at the Health Services Union. The report alleges Thomson spent $500,000 of HSU members’ money on prostitutes, ATM cash withdrawals, fine dining and election expenses in his central coast seat of Dobell

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15/5/12: “CRAIG Thomson has been cleared of almost all allegations of dodgy election funding following an investigation by the Australian Electoral Commission. But there will still be demands for him to use his address to Parliament next week to explain why his old union, the Health Services Union, spent a significant sum on his political ambitions. The AEC today reported that just over $88,000 in money from the Health Services Union, where Mr Thomson had been national secretary, had been used to support his 2007 bid for the seat of Dobell on the NSW central coast as an ALP candidate. However, most of the amount - totalling about $71,300 - were either below the threshold for compulsory declaration, or had been declared by the HSU.”

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/national/craig-thomson-cleared-of-dodgy-election-funding/story-e6frea8c-1226357611368

“Who is Michael Lawler? For starters, according to reliable sources, Michael Lawler is friends with a man named Tony Abbott. Apparently, the two of them socialise regularly. Conveniently, Tony Abbott is also the leader of the political party making so much ground out of the claims Michael’s partner is making. Michael Lawler works for an organisation called Fair Work Australia, where he is a Vice-President on a salary of $400,000 a year. The only person higher than him at that organisation is Iain Ross, who just replaced Geoffrey Giudice – the one who Tony Abbott and Lawler’s partner Kathy Jackson were attacking daily – as President of Fair Work Australia. On the 11th of October 2002, according to the FWA annual report, Michael Lawler was appointed Vice President of Fair Work Australia — although back then it was called the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. Previously, Lawler was a barrister who made his mark representing employers in employment disputes. The man who appointed him to the AIRC was none other than Tony Abbott — who at the time was Employment and Workplace Relations Minister under John Howard’s Coalition Government.”

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/how-the-hsu-tangled-jackson-lawler-and-thomson-with-abbott/

The FWA investigation into Williamson and Thomson is in its third year. Last week, Jackson criticised the delay, alleging government interference. Gillard has defended Thomson, saying he does “a good job”. She has never defended Jackson, who has been subjected to intimidation so ruthless she was hospitalised with a nervous breakdown. The story only hit the front pages because Thomson’s seat was crucial to the minority government. But it is a rare opportunity to look into the union oligarchy, awash with cash and largely unaccountable, except to Fair Work Australia, which is stacked with ex-union apparatchiks. The Putinesque alliance between unions and Labor is welded by money - $230 billion from the cash cow of union-controlled super funds, with their secret fee structures.

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“Ms Jackson is also subject to a Fair Work Australia investigation.”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-31/hsu-head-calls-for-external-review-into-thomson-inquiry/3803498

“Heading the mining donors was Queensland magnate Clive Palmer, whose companies sent $959,000 to the Liberal and National parties. Queensland Nickel was the largest individual donor to the Liberal Party with $500,000. The commission’s figures appear to show no mining dollars going to Labor.

The tobacco industry was similarly one-sided, although in its case that was because Labor has stopped accepting its donations.

British American Tobacco and Philip Morris sent a combined $264,000 to Coalition parties, much of it in small parcels, the most intriguing of which was a donation of $999 to the South Australian Liberal Party.”

http://m.smh.com.au/national/rocksolid-support-for-coalition-as-miners-donate-their-millions-20120201-1qtiq.html

“Clubs and hotels also pulled out the cheque books, after the Independent MP Andrew Wilkie struck a now-defunct pokies deal to help Labor form government. Clubs New South Wales has disclosed it spent around $1 million last financial year on campaigns and more than $400,000 on donations. The New South Wales division of the Australian Hotels Association told the commission it gave nearly $860,000 in donations, mainly to the Liberal and National parties.”

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3420798.htm