Monthly Archives: August 2014

Prime Minister Tony Abbott told government MPs he had to schedule an early morning visit to a cancer research centre in Melbourne on Tuesday so that he could justify billing taxpayers to be in the city for a “private function” the night before.

Mr Abbott made the admission at the regular meeting of Liberal and Nationals MPs after being taken to task by one his own senators for turning up an hour late.

Several MPs told Fairfax Media that the Prime Minister described the private function as a “fund-raiser” to the party room.

The issue came to a head when LNP senator Ian Macdonald, who has been a frequent critic of his own side since he was demoted from the frontbench after the election, told Mr Abbott his priority should have been the regular party room meeting, which is held every Tuesday morning when Parliament is sitting.

But Senator Macdonald was swiftly rebuked by colleagues including backbencher Ewen Jones, who said Senator Macdonald’s constant criticism of his own team had “overstepped the mark”.

“I have the highest regard for Ian as a man but the direction he has taken is unfortunate,” Mr Jones said.

Several government sources told Fairfax Media they were stunned to hear the Prime Minister respond to Senator Macdonald’s complaint by saying he had to schedule an official function on Tuesday morning so he could justify being in Melbourne for a fund-raiser the night before under entitlements.

Cabinet Minister Malcolm Turnbull told ABC Radio on Wednesday morning Mr Abbott was “upfront” about why he was in Melbourne on a parliamentary sitting day but said he “did not recall” the prime minister saying anything about entitlements.  

“He said he was in Melbourne and he did go to a private function…I think Tony was quite upfront, he said he had been in Melbourne and he had been to a fund-raiser the night before,” he said.

Mr Abbott visited the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and told a news conference he was there to talk about the proposed Medical Research Future Fund.

He made no new announcements but reiterated his government’s commitment to science and research.

The government wants to pay for the fund with some of the proceeds from the proposed $7 GP fee, which has been blocked in the Senate by Labor, the Palmer United Party and the Greens.

The Prime Minister’s office did not deny Mr Abbott had made a fund-raising visit to Melbourne. A spokeswoman for Mr Abbott said: “The Prime Minister attended a private function in Melbourne [on Monday] night. All prime-ministerial travel is undertaken within entitlement.

“Whenever the Prime Minister travels he maximises his visits by ensuring he participates in community events, business visits and local media.”

The spokeswoman confirmed the Prime Minister “ran a little late” to the joint party room meeting because his visit in Melbourne ran “over time”.

She said the Prime Minister was a “passionate supporter” of medical research and “makes no apologies for his visit”.

Mr Jones, who has been in Parliament for about four years, said the meeting was the first he could recall the Prime Minister being late for “in all my time here”.

source: smh.com.au

Independent Senator for South Australia Nick Xenophon. Photo: Alan Porritt.

Nick Xenophon is to resume his fight against organised crime using pokies to launder money.

The SA senator told Neos Kosmos this week he intends to reinstate a bill which he first introduced in 2012 to close a glaring loophole which criminals use to launder large sums of money through poker machines.

His announcement comes as money laundering intelligence agency, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), said there had been a “significant increase” in the number of suspicious activities reported around machines.

Pokie operators are required by law to report payouts over $10,000 to AUSTRAC. Xenophon’s Anti-Money Laundering Amendment (Gaming Machine Venues) Bill 2012 tried to lower the AUSTRAC threshold to $1,000 but failed to gain support from the then Labor government.

Senator Xenophon will use his debating session next Thursday – one of the few he is allotted each year – to bring the bill on for a second reading.

“This is an issue now more than ever, to ensure criminals and drug dealers aren’t laundering money through poker machines,” he said.

“If poker machines are being used as a mechanism to launder funds from criminal activity then surely that’s something the operators should be concerned about.”

Xenophon, who describes the proposed changes as “pragmatic and sensible”, said he was nonplussed at why the powerful poker machine lobby would not support the bill, given the extra administrative burden would be minimal.

“If they’re serious about having zero tolerance for organised crime using poker machines in this way, why won’t they support this legislation?”

Clubs Australia executive director Anthony Ball has called the reintroduction of the bill as “wasting the time and resources” of federal Parliament.

“This bill reveals Nick Xenophon’s complete ignorance of laws involving poker machines,” Mr Ball said.

“This bill has been rejected by the Parliamentary Joint Select Committee for Gambling Reform, and its introduction would only heap further regulatory burdens on clubs, which already have significant anti-money laundering compliance measures in place despite their low risk profile.”

Xenophon described Mr Ball’s statements as “cowardly and desperate remarks by a powerful lobby”.

Meanwhile Adam Masters, an independent researcher with the Transnational Research Institute on Corruption at the ANU, has backed Xenophon’s position, saying that lowering the reporting threshold would “definitely have an effect” on the profitability of money laundering operations while exerting little extra administrative burdens on venues.

Mr Masters said the current limit facilitated the laundering technique called ‘smurfing’, where a number of people are paid several hundred dollars to insert just under $10,000 into a machine, play until they win, and then cash out.

Senator Xenophon, who has long campaigned against pokies, has described state and territory governments – who receive $4 billion in gambling taxes from pokies – as “hopelessly conflicted” over tightening laws affecting the industry.

source: Neos Kosmos

The sharp decline in the number of jobs held by immigrants is largely attributed to the collapse of construction activity.

Unable to find work, large numbers of non-Greeks have been buying one-way tickets home.

The crisis that has been gripping Greece for the last six years has also had a major impact on the economic activities of immigrants, according to the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT).

Unable to find work, large numbers of non-Greeks have been buying one-way tickets home. The Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) has recorded a sharp decline in the immigrant population, the Bank of Greece has registered significant outflows of deposits, and the Social Security Foundation (IKA) has recorded a big drop in the number of the immigrants insured.

In just one year, the number of non-European Union (EU) subjects living in Greece dropped by nearly 165,000, from 817,800 in 2011 to 650,800 in 2012. The largest segment concerns people of Albanian origin. The trend is certain to have continued in 2013 but as yet there is no available data.

The deposits of non-eurozone immigrants in Greek banks fell by 30 billion euros between June 2010 and June 2014. According to Bank of Greece data, the outflow amounted to about 3.5 billion euros in the June 2013 to June 2014 period.

The latest IKA data shows that the number of insured immigrants fell 33 per cent in the first four years of recession, from 237,470 in December 2009 to 159,670 four years later. At the end of 2013, Greeks represented 90.15 per cent of those insured with IKA from 87.17 percent four years earlier.

The sharp decline in the number of jobs held by immigrants is largely attributed to the collapse of construction activity. Of the 116,890 insured in this sector in 2009, 52,620, or 45 per cent, were of foreign origin. In 2013, employment in the sector had fallen by two-thirds and the number of foreigners in it had dropped to 16,090. Employers in construction, numbering some 43,800 at end-2009, fell to just 16,050 four years later.

In 2013 IKA registered a rise in the total number of insured, from 1,434,850 in 2012 to 1,621,260. This is largely attributed to firms’ fears of being fined if caught employing uninsured workers.

Source: Ekathimerini

Patra airport underutilised.

A Greek Australian teacher has spearheaded a campaign to see Patra airport retain international flights.

Catherine Zgouras couldn’t sit idly by when she saw the potential of Patra’s airport and the inaction of people in power.

When a low budget airline inexplicably stopped their scarce flights from London to Patra, the third largest Greek city, with no reason given, the local government didn’t care, or rather, it did not care after it actually realised the flights had been cancelled.

A regular on those flights was Sydney teacher and local Patrini, Catherine Zgouras. She saw the demand first hand, constantly travelling on overbooked flights and meeting her fellow passengers who would tell her of the need to keep the travel route open.

“I needed the flights because I write and edit for UK publishers, parents needed them to see their children studying in the UK, business people needed them to get to work and ex-pats to visit their family,” she tells Neos Kosmos.

“These flights were a blessing.”

When she saw the flight route disappear and not a peep came out of her local representatives, she decided to launch a campaign.

It started with humble beginnings, circulating a petition with the aim of raising awareness and giving politicians a real sense of how urgent the issue was and how beneficial it would be for the town.

“I received lots of help from friends, local businesses and other authority figures but we still didn’t get direct flights,” she says.

After the campaign gained more traction when it was featured in the local newspapers, Catherine was approached by politicians in the hope of using her campaign to further their election hopes.

Not the response she was hoping for.

“[When] the then mayor offered false promises, local authority figures asked me to run with them in the upcoming elections as my campaign was making the news,” she says.

“I obviously refused, because I’ve learnt that politics here in Greece are about feeding a hungry ego rather than repairing a country’s wounds.”

In a positive step, Aegean Airlines brokered a deal with UK holiday company Thompson to reopen the route, but only London to Patras return, not the other way around.

“When I asked Thomson about it, they said that the Greek side didn’t ask for outbound flights. I was furious!” Catherine says.

The fight still continues, and with appointments set up once again with local members, Catherine isn’t one to back down easily.

She hopes to convince the municipality to see the benefit of introducing more direct flights to Patra.

“It’s important to get the airport open again because it will help Patra get back on the map,” she says.

“The Greek people in Patra have shown me great support and so I will continue because we need these flights to introduce growth in a troubled and ailing city.”

For her work on the issue, Catherine was named a Patrian Person of the Year by Peloponnisos newspaper.

source: Neos Kosmos

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is under fire after telling government MPs he scheduled a visit to a cancer research centre in Melbourne on Tuesday so he could justify billing taxpayers for a Liberal Party fundraiser in the same city the night before.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has seized on leaks from the government partyroom saying they show the Prime Minister is unfit to govern the country.

Tony Abbott stunned MPs when he told them he scheduled a visit to a cancer research centre in Melbourne on Tuesday so he could justify billing taxpayers for a Liberal Party fundraiser in the same city the night before.

Mr Shorten told reporters on Wednesday the Prime Minister should “never need an excuse to visit a public hospital in Australia”.

But he said the division within the government was the real story and not the Prime Minister’s travel schedule.

“What is most telling about these reports is that there are Liberal Party members leaking against the Prime Minister. A party and a leader that cannot govern itself cannot govern Australia,” he said.

Mr Shorten became Opposition Leader after the party lost office in 2013, largely as a result of Labor infighting and leaking over the leadership.

The issue of Mr Abbott’s schedule arose when government senator Ian Macdonald took Mr Abbott to task for showing up an hour late to the party room meeting on Tuesday.

Cabinet minister Malcolm Turnbull told ABC Radio on Wednesday that Mr Abbott was “upfront” about his reason for being late.

“He said he was in Melbourne and he did go to a private function … I think Tony was quite upfront; he said he had been in Melbourne and he had been to a fund-raiser the night before,” Mr Turnbull said.

He said he could not recall whether Mr Abbott had mentioned entitlements.

However, several sources have confirmed to Fairfax Media that Mr Abbott cited entitlements as a factor in scheduling an interstate function on a parliamentary sitting day.

Speaking on his way into Parliament on Wednesday, Liberal MP Steve Ciobo said it was an “absurd proposition to suggest the Prime Minister is doing anything other than remaining focused … to advancing medical research and to engaging with the community”.

He said any other suggestion was a “slur” and added that “all of the Prime Minister’s travel is within entitlement”.

As Prime Minister, Mr Abbott is entitled to travel in his taxpayer-funded plane to any function because of his security requirements.  

However, using taxpayer-funded entitlements for the sole purpose of party fund-raising is usually avoided and leaders will try to book fund-raising events around official work rather than the other way around.

Mr Abbott has received some unexpected backing from Palmer United Party leader Clive Palmer who said any prime minister should be “entitled” to travel for whatever purpose without question.

“I think it’s a very poor situation that our national leader couldn’t legitimately go anywhere to talk to any Australian, be it a political or other function or whatever because he is the Prime Minister of this country,” he said in Canberra.

source: smh.com.au