With the industrial debate hotting up in Canberra, I thought some of you might be interested in what's going on with a key wage theft case in higher education. A thread. As many would be aware, wage theft is endemic in Australian universities. A number of Australian universities have admitted to widespread, systematic underpayment of staff, especially casual teachers and academics. afr.com/work-and-caree….

Thought I might put a few thoughts down about the #Robodebt Royal Commission. If you're following me you probably know I've taken a close interest ikn it for a long time now. So: a thread. Robodebt is the name @manjusrii and I came up with in late 2016 to describe what seemed to be a rogue Centrelink debt raising program, in which welfare recipients seemed to be getting issued with automatic welfare debts, debts that didn't even seem to be real debts

Robodebt Royal Commission resumes today. Counsel Assisting Justin Greggery already dropping a bombshell: Department of Social Services had preliminary legal advice in December 2014 that ATO avergaing was not consistent with the Social Security Act Greggery adds that one reason the bureaucracy did not seek a proper legal opinion on Robodebt from the Solicitor General until 2019 (years after they started) was that they knew all along Robodebt was likely to be unlawful

A few of the things I'd like to see journalists abandon after this election ... a thread:
* following party leaders around on media junkets
* 'gotcha' questions
* discussions of complex policy areas entirely through the prism of 'optics' and 'campaign startegy' * I'd also like to see the media abandon any discussion of voters without, you know, actual interviews with voters.
* No more offhand comments about what "the voters in Western Sydney want to see" without interviews with voters, in Western Sydney, about what they want to see

The efficiency dividend is terrible public policy. It is a really dumb way to cut public spending. Every single agency in the public service gets a cut. The Health Department? Yep. The National Recovery & Resilience Agency? Yep. The Bureau of Metereology? Yep.

https://twitter.com/ALeighMP/status/1526453060062806016

For obvious reasons, not every part of the federal government deserves a funding cut. Some are doing vital work and we should give them more funding, not less. Larger departments can cut spedning much more easily than small ones.

Over at @Meanjin, I have an essay about Scott Morrison's extraordinary decision to campaign against integrity in public office, and what this says about the culture of graft and maladminstration in his government meanjin.com.au/blog/national-… @Meanjin Morrison has now repeatedly attacked the independent anti-corruption agency of Australia's largest state. This is quite something. Politicians typically say they are against corruption. It’s not every day you hear the Prime Minister argue *against* integrity in public office.

A bit of a thread about costings. Journalists love to write stories about costings, especially in election campaigns. But costings are almost always meaningless. Let me explain. 1/n 2. What is a "costing"? Basically, a notional estimate of the cost of a proposed policy. It's a completely imaginary number that may or may not make sense, but in any case is simply an estimate that can't be verified until the actual policy is done.

Emails to casual academics at Monash Uni have been going this week, informing them that the University will be backpaying them for wage theft. The University has admitted to $8.6m in wage theft going back to 2014 Not that we're allowed to call it 'wage theft', mind you. In two separate letters from the Provost, Professor Sue Elliott, I've been informed not to use the phrase 'wage theft'. Monash prefers the term 'unintentional underpayment'.

This is a deeply ideological budget. It rewards the Morrison government's friends, and punishes perceived enemies. #Budget2020 Tens of billions will be given to big business, and to high-income earners. Wealthy men will get the bulk of the benefit. The poor, the unemployed, women, and those working in sectors the government doesn’t ideologically favour will get little.

A quick thread on Bridget McKenzie, Scott Morrison and Australia's broken Ministerial Standards These are Australia's so-called Ministerial Standards. They were issued in a Statement by Scott Morrison when he became Prime Minister in 2018. pmc.gov.au/resource-centr…

The thing about the right-wing news media ecosystem in Australia is that you can be as crooked and dishonest as you like, as long as you're shilling the right message for the generals of the culture war. In Australia, if you are reliably conservative, you can pretty much say and do what you like, without any professional consequences.

I know many of my followers are both Australian academics and also horrified at what climate change is doing to our beautiful country.

Well, here's a thing you can do: write to Uni Super and tell them to divest from fossil fuels.

unisuperdivest.org I was actually stunned when I learned how dirty Uni Super's invstment portfolio is. At least 10% of the fund’s Australian share investments are in companies actively undermining the climate goals of the Paris Agreement, including Woodside, APA and BHP.

I hope Andrew Forrest's bushfire PR ploy leads to more public scrutiny on his privately-controlled Minderoo Foundation Minderoo's latest financial figures show quite astonishing cash inflows from Forrest and his business entities -- $655m in the 2019 FY and $402m in 2018. All told the Foundation has a whopping $1.4b in assets

I had a go at posting on various (public) Facebook threads in response to the "Greens caused the bushfires" posts. This is a pretty fair sample of how people responded.

Social media has broken our public discourse And another one ...

These memes - that the fires were started by environmentalists - are circulating right through certain pockets of Australian Facebook at the moment

https://twitter.com/davidparis/status/1212659445395648518

I should point out that David Paris not himself suggesting this

Side note on the fires: I wonder if the Mallacoota situation is showing up big deficiencies in the ADF's amphibious and sealift capability Under the much vaunted Plan Beersheba, the ADF is meant to be able to sustain an amphibious battalion. It also supposedly is able to land troops and vehicles off the Canberra class ships, eg news.navy.gov.au/en/Aug2019/Fle…

Just did an interview with Abdul Aziz Muhamat, a refugee recently granted asylum by Switzerland. Where did he flee from? He fled from Australia's concentration camp in Manus Island, where he had been illegally detained for 6 years. Prosperous European nations are now granting people asylum after they escape persecution and unlawful imprisonment by Australia

Anna Caldwell was chief of staff at the Courier-Mail when they published the front-page story shaming murdered trans woman Mayang Praestyo. She would have been intimately involved in the production of that front page. The editor of the Courier-Mail at that time, incidentally, was Chris Dore. Caldwell followed Dore to Sydney when he went to the Daily Telegraph.

Melbourne’s toxic waste fire is a way bigger story than it appears. We’re talking about a large criminal network that has hoarded waste The waste has been stockpiled in grey and black sites in mind-boggling quantities for years. When the EPA or cops get close, they torch it

Even for the seemingly rock-bottom standards of our Commonwealth government, the past week has been a desperately grim parade of malfeasance and sleaze.

Some low-lights include: * a federal court case establishing that two of the former Employment minister's most senior staffers broke the law leaking the AWU raid to the media

A quick thread on this report by the Australian Academy of Science, and what it says about the Coalition government science.org.au/news-and-event… Firstly, the report is a devastating indictment of the management of the Murray-Darling, and the failure of policy makers