Wednesday 28 May 2014

Royal Commission investigates union whistleblower Kathy Jackson & tobacco giant

Peter Wicks 28 May 2014, 9:45am 31

Investigations Politics

The federal government’s Royal Commission on union slush
funds is investigating whether tobacco giant, Philip Morris, helped
bankroll the disgraced Health Services Union campaign backed by union
whistleblower, Kathy Jackson. Peter Wicks from Wixxyleaks reports.

MANY HAVE said it is about time for an update from the land of Jacksonville, and given there is a bit going on and some new information to share perhaps they are right.

As I’m sure you would all know there is a witch-hunt/Royal Commission in progress at the moment that will be looking into the Health Services Union (HSU) as well as other unions and looking at allegations of slush funds and corrupt practices.

One result of this Royal Commission is that it has supplied the likes of Kathy Jackson and Marco Bolano with a handy excuse for not commenting on anything.

In the past they have had no issues with providing comment during
police investigations or during court hearings, but now the I can’t
comment “because of matters before the Royal Commission” excuse is
getting a great workout.

That’s because the microscope is suddenly on them.

The first of the slush funds,
the “National Health Development Account” (NHDA), under Kathy Jackson’s
control was exposed by Fairfax on the 29th April and was seemingly used
to fund election campaigns for politicians whom she supported. This
was,of course, done without the knowledge of the membership she claimed
to represent.

However, more has been discovered.

It has emerged that the Royal Commission is looking into the funding of HSU election campaigns by Philip Morris, the U.S. tobacco giant.

Philip Morris wares - photo www.theguardian.com.

These campaigns involve Kathy Jackson, Marco Bolano, and their principle backer, Federal Labor Senator David Feeney.

For what it’s worth Marco Bolano has stated that he is now aware that
Philip Morris contributed to his 2009 election campaign, although he
claims not to have known this at the time. This, despite the donations
allegedly being in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Firstly, what the hell is big tobacco doing funding a campaign in a Health Services Union?

**Senator David Feeney. Photo ABC News**

David
Feeney also acknowledged that he obtained donations from Philip Morris
up until 2004 when Labor banned donations from manufacturers of tobacco
products, but also admitted that he maintains contact with Philip
Morris.

Now we have a 2009 HSU election campaign that not only Feeney backed
but was heavily backed financially by Feeney’s contacts and former
financial supporters. Hmmm.

Kinda fishy smelling and miraculously convenient.

If, after investigation, it turns out that Feeney sought any of these
donations or if any of the Philip Morris money found its way via the
HSU to benefit Feeney’s campaign, I assume the Labor Party will be
forced to take action against David Feeney. As a party, the ALP would
have to show they are serious about their own rules.

In order to do that, I would expect to see Feeney expelled from the
Labor Party and someone else be given his Senate seat. Anything less
would be an insult to members and a sign that the party doesn’t respect
its own rules.

Just what the hell is a Labor Senator doing funding campaigns for these people anyway?

Let's not forget that these people are backed by virtually every
right-wing shock jock and praised by right-wing columnists. Kathy
Jackson also speaks at Liberal Party think tank events and is extolled
in parliament by Tony Abbott.

This week has also seen details of yet another slush fund emerge.

A fund tied to the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association was found to have allegedly pumped tens of thousands of dollars into the 2009 and 2012 campaigns for Marco Bolano.

I guess this shows that with enough campaign funds, anyone is capable
of winning. Although by 2012 the membership had clearly wised up with
Bolano’s campaign failing abysmally just as the other Jackson/Feeney
campaigns did.

Fairfax also revealed that back in 2009, the Jackson/Bolano ticket
also received $30,000 from another slush fund called Industry 2020. This
fund was linked to the Australian Workers Union.

It would seem that Kathy Jackson, David Feeney, and Marco Bolano have
spent more time organising slush funds to benefit themselves than they
have looking after the people they supposedly represent.

This made me look back over some of the bank account statements on my resource page and
check some of the transactions I had categorised as miscellaneous.
Below is a link to the breakdown of a 13-month series of statements with
some queries in the miscellaneous section highlighted.

***(Image by John Graham / johngraham.alphalink.com.au)***

HSU No. 3 Branch Cheque Account Breakdown

The $8,000 payment to Beth Jenson for recommending enormous pay rises to Jackson and her factional allies is alarming, but not surprising.

The $1,327 payment to Michael Lawler once again shows his involvement
and also raises questions of why a union is making payments to the
vice-president of the industrial relations umpire and watchdog,
Australia’s Fair Work Commission.

Also shown is a mystery payment of over $50,000 to creditors that
could be anyone, as well as $42,000 being paid into the aforementioned
NHDA slush fund exposed by Fairfax last month.

However what is scary is the $153,485.98 that is listed as ‘Aust Health Payment EP000887’.

This $153K got me wondering if it was another slush fund, so I contacted the union to find out.

The way it was described to be is that it is a consolidated entry for
numerous payments for all sorts of legitimate accounts. However, the
bank is apparently unable to give a breakdown of what went where.

This leaves a huge question mark over the account as the money could have literally gone anywhere and nobody would know.

It would seem the Financial controller at the time, Jane Holt, has some serious questions to answer.

Also emerging have been further examples of Jackson's extravagant spending on the members’ dime.

Below is a link to a spread-sheet with details of the spending and
how it was paid. Also below are links to PDFs of the receipts.

Some of the receipts are quite faded and although readable to the
naked eye, proved difficult for the scanner. So I've put their totals on
the spreadsheet only.

Further receipts Kathy Jackson

Ivy Receipt

Vintage Cellars

Moët & Chandon

There seems to be a lot of members’ money being spent on alcohol. Not
just beer for a branch BBQ either. We are talking Moët & Chandon,
Veuve Clicquot, gin and Midori. One of these benders cost the members a
cool $973.79.

Jackson is clearly not a believer in the “free lunch” either. Instead, we have a $446.30 lunch.

Also coming to light are the details of a stay at the Bellagio in Las Vegas on the members’ dime, the receipt is linked below.

Bellagio

I suppose she at least she managed to get a discount rate via the Internet.

Then there is the flight itinerary for 24th September 2011 below.

Lawler And Jackson Flight

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the need to travel for work, and I don’t think that $136.70 is an exorbitant spend.

However, I would like to think that Michael Lawler as the
vice-president of FWC, with a tax-payer funded salary of around$400K
p.a., could afford his own plane ticket. I hope he can provide some
proof that he repaid the money.

Last,
but not least, we have a Jackson family holiday at Mount Buller which
the HSU Branch No. 3 have confirmed was paid for by the union
membership.

In Jacksonville, it seems that just when you think there can be no
more to find, evidence emerges that shows that we are still probably
just scratching the surface.

The Jackson Family Ski Trip

Let’s hope that this Royal Commission flushes more evidence out of
those who may be hiding it and let’s also hope that the Victorian Police
break with tradition and actually do a better than half-arsed job of
investigating Kathy Jackson and her allies instead of leaving it to me
and the Melbourne office of Fairfax.

It would make a nice change.

Kathy Jackson Vampire Hunter | Shaun Micallef's MAD AS HELL | Wednesdays, 8pm, ABC1

Find out more about the Jacksonville saga here. You can follow Peter Wicks on Twitter @madwixxy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License

Tuesday 6 May 2014

Entitlement « The Australian Independent Media Network

Entitlement

By The AIMN Network on May 7, 2014 • ( 1 )

There
is much inequality in the world, writes Peter Barnes, and much of it is
due to the colour of your skin, or your gender, or your socio-economic
status. For those who don’t suffer from inequality, there comes a sense
of entitlement.

One of the great things about Australia is that any child can grow up to be Prime Minister.

Travel to any Western democracy and you’ll hear the same thing, with
slight variations; the great thing about the USA is that any child can
grow up to be President, and so on.

Any child. Even a girl – in Australia, but so far not the USA. Even a person of colour – in the USA, but so far not Australia.

Which really makes you stop for a moment, because, hang
on, isn’t half the population female? Isn’t that a bit weird, over a
hundred years of Prime Ministers – twenty eight Prime Ministers – and so
far only one girl has made it? Two hundred and twenty odd years of
Presidents in the US – forty four Presidents – and so far only one
person of colour has made it, and no girls at all?

Yet half of children are girls.

Perhaps there’s more to it than being a child and growing up.

While our constitution, our voting systems and our laws don’t prohibit
any child from becoming Prime Minister, it’s painfully obvious that
those aren’t the only things stopping at least half our children from
achieving that goal. As Anatole France said a long time ago “The law, in
its majestic equality, forbids both rich and poor alike to sleep under
bridges, beg in the streets, and steal bread”.

Perhaps it helps to be a particular kind of child?

While we all may be born equal under the law, we are certainly not
born with equal opportunity. Nobody can deny that a male caucasian child
born to a rich family living in a capital city has some advantages; you
only have to look at the faces in Parliament to see the truth in that.
That’s not to say that any other child still cannot become
Prime Minister; it’s just an unarguable fact that, so far, only one has
succeeded.

That’s not the entitlement this article is about, however.

So, what other entitlement is there? Few would argue that, in
general, your race, colour, gender, wealth, location and many other
factors make it easier, or harder, for you to succeed.

It seems obvious, then, that circumstance and luck will play a part
in any success – or so you’d think. But here’s the strange thing.
Successful people don’t believe that. They might agree about it in
general, but never in their own particular case.

The entitlement I’m talking about is the entitlement assumed by the “successful”, and its consequences for their behaviour.

How does it work?

Many of those who succeed truly believe
that their success is not because they had greater advantages, or luck.
They believe it’s because they are truly better. More, they believe
that they deserve everything they have, because they’ve earned it by
being better – no matter how much they’ve got.

There’s more. Having succeeded, they truly believe that anybody else could also succeed, if only they wanted to or tried hard enough.

In fact, they actually believe that those less fortunate deserve their misfortune! Why? Because they didn’t try hard enough.

The following poll comes from the USA, however the basic distinction
between conservatives (Republicans) and liberals (Democrats) is also
true in Australia. The poll asks the simple question: are poor people
poor because of circumstances, or because of lack of effort?

Roughly half of Americans believe that poor people are poor because
of their circumstances. However there’s a massive difference when you
break that down by party affiliation. Less than 30% of Republicans think
it’s because of circumstances, while over 60% of Democrats do.

Put another way, 57% of Republicans believe that poor people are poor simply because they don’t try hard enough.

Think about that. Nearly two thirds of conservatives think that poor people’s poverty is their own fault.

Which, when you think about it, could be translated into saying that
the reason why we’ve had twenty eight Prime Ministers and only one
female Prime Minister is that basically women just aren’t trying hard
enough…

Another way to look at it is to observe that in the USA the top 0.01% of households earned an average of US$10.25 million per year. The overall average for the US was US$51,000. As Matthew Hutson points out in his excellent article, “Social Darwinism Isn’t Dead“, that logically means that the top households are 200 times smarter and work 200 times harder than the average household . . .

You hear stories about poor people who are successful “against the
odds”, but strangely those odds don’t get mentioned when the more
privileged are successful. It’s the same for arguments about
intelligence, hard work, or any other quality. They don’t guarantee
success, and successful people don’t necessarily have them.

Let’s face it, if you work hard and are successful you’d much rather
believe that your success was due entirely to your own efforts and
intelligence, and not just luck or good birth. It’s only human nature.
It’s what follows that belief that’s dangerous.

There’s a lot of other research into this, here, here, here, here, here and here.

So what’s the problem?

The problem comes when people with those beliefs – particularly when
rich, successful conservative politicians – decide policies about social
welfare, health and education.

Research here, and this article here, document how poorer
people give more than twice as much to charity, proportional to income,
as rich people. Simply put, the poor are generous because they know
what hardship and privation are. The rich are not, either because they
have no experience, or because they actually don’t think the poor
deserve it.

Recent figures indicate that the world’s richest 1% own 46% of
the world’s assets. And this research shows that, largely, they think
they got that wealth because they’re better, and they deserve it. And
the poor are poor because they don’t work hard enough.

If you’re conservative, or rich, or both, you’ll probably hold those
beliefs. It’s not very hard then to see why you might not believe in age
pensions, subsidised health care, unemployment benefits and many other
publicly funded services. It’s not very hard to see why you would have
no qualms at all in cutting back those schemes simply based on your
personal beliefs and ideology, regardless of the economic circumstances.

The very way Joe Hockey uses the term “entitlement” clearly indicates
that he thinks it’s optional, and its time is over. Of course an
entitlement is a right, and most Australians believe our society has
agreed that things like pensions and medical care are rights.

The following graph, again from the USA but likely to be repeated
here, particularly on predictions of the coming budget, shows the change
in cost of various goods and services over the last ten years.
Chillingly, while “things” are getting cheaper, critical services like
health and education are increasing in cost. Poor, unhealthy, uneducated
people are not going to escape from this trap.

However the entitled don’t believe in a poverty trap.

In the article “Noblesse Oblige? Social Status and Economic Inequality Maintenance among Politicians“, Michael Kraus and Bennett Callaghan examine the policy and voting patterns in US government.

Their study shows that Republicans tend to support legislation
increasing economic inequality regardless of their social status. For
Democrats, their social status – measured in terms of average wealth,
race, or gender – was a significant predictor of support for economic
inequality. That is, even amongst Democrats, if you’re rich and
successful, you’ll vote for legislation that continues or increases
economic inequality.

A scan of the benches in Parliament
reveals many rich white males making our current policy decisions.
Although parliamentarians represent us, they are not representative of
us. For example, in the Australian population, about half a percent are
lawyers by occupation. In the current Parliament, 60 parliamentarians,
or 25%, are lawyers.

This is not a call to class warfare. Neither is it an assault on
wealth. What I’m trying to point out is that there are well documented,
honestly held beliefs held by conservatives and the successful that
simply do not match up with reality. Those real beliefs, in turn, lead
to policies that are generally harmful to people who are already
vulnerable. If there’s class warfare, that’s its source. If there’s an
unreasonable distribution of wealth, that’s where it starts.

So the Age of Entitlement is not over. It is over for the sick, the
poor, and defenceless. It’s alive and well and built into the belief
systems and psyche of a large majority of conservative politicians, and
the conservative voters who support them.

We can trace the upcoming budget and all social legislation far more
easily to the government’s personal and ideological beliefs than to any
reality in the economy or the needs of the poor, the sick, the aged or
the young. If those groups have problems, it’s their own fault!

In Australia a girl of colour from a poor background may one day be
Prime Minister, but not while the current, entitled, incumbents govern,
and the current incumbents truly believe that they’re entitled.

This article was first published on Peter’s blog infinite8horizon and has been republished with permission.