Daily Archives: June 19, 2015

Syrian refugees near the Syrian town of Tal Abyad try to grab bottles of water thrown from the Turkish side of the border (AFP Photo)

Almost 60 million people worldwide were forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution at the end of last year, the highest ever recorded number, the UN refugee agency said on Thursday, while warning that the situation could deteriorate further.

“I believe things will get worse before they eventually start to get better,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said at a news conference in Istanbul. UNHCR said that Syria, where conflict has raged since 2011, was the world’s biggest source of internally displaced people and refugees.

“Even amid such sharp growth in numbers, the global distribution of refugees remains heavily skewed away from wealthier nations and towards the less wealthy,” UNHCR said.

Guterres said the responsibility to protect Syrian refugees should not be lie solely with Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, and called on the European Union and other parts of the world to open their borders to refugees.

source:hindustantimes.com

Noa Begic said he was arrested after a night out in Surfers Paradise and was assaulted repeatedly. Photo: Glenn Hunt

A Gold Coast police officer who leaked video footage of his colleagues assaulting a handcuffed man could face charges and jail time, civil libertarians say.

Australian Council for Civil Liberties president Terry O’Gorman says the case goes to the heart of the risks whistleblowers take.

He has called on Police Minister Jo-Ann Miller to take a personal interest in the case if charges are laid, and he says all Queenslanders should be watching the case closely.

“Queenslanders will say what sort of a system have we got where a video shows a number of police belting the hell out of a bloke. They don’t get charged, but the officer who leaks the video to the media gets charged,” Mr O’Gorman told the ABC.

He said the assault had cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in a payout to the victim.

The leaked video footage was published by media outlets in early 2012.

It showed a 21-year-old man being slammed face first into a concrete floor before being hit by officers using their knees, elbows and fists.

It showed the man again being punched after being put in the back of a police van, and a senior officer throwing a bucket of water on the concrete to wash away the man’s blood.

At the time, Noa Begic said he was arrested after a night out in Surfers Paradise and was assaulted repeatedly on the drive to the local police station and then later in the basement.

“They were making racist comments about me and then when we ended up in that basement I knew there was more on the way,” he said.

Public nuisance charges against Begic were dropped after then-Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson intervened.

The officers filmed carrying out the assault were subject to an internal police investigation, with two facing disciplinary action.

source:brisbanetimes.com.au

Bill Shorten delivers his victory speech in the seat of Maribyrnong on election night 2007 as former Victorian Upper House whip Cesar Melhem (in red shirt) looks on. Photo: Youtube

Bill Shorten’s union tipped thousands of dollars into his own campaign for the safe seat of Maribyrnong in the federal election of 2007 when he was still the union’s national secretary and preparing to enter Federal Parliament.

The funds contributed to an elaborate campaign dubbed by Labor insiders the “black hole of Maribyrnong” because of the amount of money and resources it absorbed.

A late 2009 filing by the Australian Workers Union national office records a $25,000 payment to ALP-Maribyrnong. Similar donations were also made to campaigns for the seats of Petrie and Stirling. Labor and union sources have also told Fairfax Media that AWU staff worked on Mr Shorten’s campaign.

Fair Work Commission records show Mr Shorten resigned as AWU national secretary on November 26, 2007, two months after the donations, and the same month as the federal election.

Ex-Labor MP and Health Services Union leader Craig Thomson is being sued by his former union for the alleged misuse of union resources on his successful 2007 campaign for the seat of Dobell. The use of union resources on parliamentary election campaigns is a grey legal area and the decision on the Thomson case may set a precedent on its lawfulness.

                        A campaign pamphlet from 2007. Photo: Facebook

While unions tip millions of dollars into the ALP every year, the revelation of the specific outlay on Maribyrnong is likely to be uncomfortable for Mr Shorten, given he was the national secretary at the time, and Maribyrnong was a safe seat which did not need the funds.

It is unclear if the union passed any formal resolution about spending and other support for Maribyrnong or other seats. On Thursday the union’s national office and secretary Ben Davis did not provide comment.

It is expected that the AWU will maintain its support for Mr Shorten, and thus he won’t face any of the problems faced by Mr Thomson.

A spokesman for Mr Shorten said the Opposition Leader would not respond to matters that may be considered by the royal commission until he is able to appear.

It is understood that a proposal to subpoena Mr Shorten and other MPs was raised in pretrial talks by Mr Thomson’s defence team along with the possibility of subpoenaing other MPs. But the subpoenas were not pursued after Mr Thomson, in March this year, walked out of the case telling the Federal Court he was too ill to continue.

A decision is yet to be handed down in the Thomson case by the Federal Court.

Mr Thomson, who was HSU national secretary before entering Parliament, avoided jail in a separate criminal case against him.

Instead he was fined $25,000 for the theft of less than $5000, an amount significantly reduced over time.

Mr Thomson is being sued in a civil case for about $265,000, the vast bulk of which was the alleged misuse of union resources and staff on his successful 2007 bid to win the marginal federal seat of Dobell in NSW.

News of the AWU payments comes as fallout continues from a Fairfax Media investigation detailing large payments from major companies to the AWU, when Mr Shorten ran the union. The payments include nearly $300,000 from Thiess John Holland, the joint venture builder of the $2.5 billion East-Link tollway.

The workplace deal struck by Mr Shorten saved the builder as much as $100 million through a favourable arrangement that allowed the builder to effectively work around the clock by reducing conditions around rostering and weekend work.

Fairfax Media understands that, at the time, Thiess John Holland regarded the payments to the AWU as an acknowledgment of the flexibility of the deal, which was struck by Mr Shorten.

John Holland again declined to comment on Thursday on what the payments were for as did CIMIC Group, formerly Leighton Holdings, which is the owner of Thiess.

The AWU’s Victorian branch have also not commented on the deal.

Internal AWU documents, including bank and accounting records, list some of the payments to Thiess John Holland as being for “training” but several large amounts are listed as “service” with “???” beside the entries. Total payments from the construction company into the AWU’s state branch bank account under Mr Shorten and his successor Cesar Melhem were $282,308. Another $16,500 was paid into the union’s national branch account.

Mr Shorten’s factional ally and former Australian Workers Union Victorian secretary Cesar Melhem also bankrolled Mr Shorten in Maribyrnong ahead of the 2010 federal election through a $2000 donation from the controversial Industry 2020 slush fund.

In 2011 and 2012 a drawcard at two Industry 2020 fundraisers.

The fund raised more than $500,000, mostly from employers, and was used in factional dogfights and branch-stacking that helped the political machine that Mr Shorten heads.

source:smh.com.au

In a combination of public bravado and private consultation, the Prime Minister has satisfied Malcolm Turnbull — the outstanding Liberal critic of the proposal to take Australian citizenship from dual nationals serving as terrorists and stranding them overseas — that his concerns will be addressed in the drafting changes to the bill.

The Prime Minister aggressively dismissed concerns raised by the Communications Minister and others at a cabinet meeting three weeks ago, declaring the cabinet decision “certainly won’t be revisited”.

“The reason why we have made this decision is because we have a very strong view: if you’ve left this country to join a terrorist army in the Middle East, we don’t want you back,” Mr Abbott said.

The bill was expected to go to the National Security Committee of cabinet last night.

Since the leaking of the cabinet dispute over the original proposal, Mr Turnbull has written to the Prime Minister’s office several times, including a submission on how he thought a change could be made to add “armed forces” to legislation — to cover Islamic State terrorists — to limit ministerial discretion and fend off a High Court challenge.

Mr Abbott has now responded to Mr Turnbull and addressed his concerns. Mr Turnbull, who does not sit on the NSC and is not in the leadership group, would be denied an opportunity to speak on the issue unless it returned to the full cabinet.

But Mr Turnbull has now been given advice from the Solicitor-General, which raised some querie­s, and has been consulted by Mr Abbott, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and Attorney-General George Brandis.

Liberal backbenchers, who overwhelmingly support the stripping of citizenship of terrorists, have become increasingly angry with Mr Turnbull as he has campaigned to have the decision brought back to the full cabinet.

Responding to a report in The Australian yesterday that there was still cabinet dissent over the drafting of the legislation and demands for it to come back to full cabinet for final consideration, Mr Abbott said: “We have made a clear decision. The government has made an absolutely clear decis­ion that we are stripping the citizenship from terrorists who are dual nationals and that’s a decisio­n that’s been made.”

“It was made in the National Security Committee, it was ratif­ied by the cabinet, it’s supported by the partyroom. Now, legislation to give effect to this will be coming into the partyroom next week and it will be going into the parliament next week,” he said.

Mr Turnbull, who raised objections to the proposed legislation in cabinet three weeks ago, continued to campaign publicly yesterday for changes and did not deny suggestions the initial cabinet process had been “botched”.

At the end of last month, at least six ministers — including Mr Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop — queried whether the proposed ministerial discretion to strip Australian citizenship from dual nationals involved in terrorism in Syria and Iraq was constitutional and open to a High Court challenge.

Mr Turnbull, a leading barrister before entering politics, has publicly expressed his concerns since and argued that cabinet should be given the Solicitor-General’s advice before making a final decision.

Yesterday he said there needed to be a lot of input into such a decision.

When asked if the process had been botched, Mr Turnbull replied: “People will always make comments about process — that’s your job, not mine. I just say, as I said yesterday, the only thing that matters is the shape of the bill when it emerges and is presented in the parliament.’’

Some Liberal backbenchers have also been angry because the internal dissent deflected political attention from the Labor Party and the opposition’s changing position on the issue.

Mr Abbott yesterday attacked the suggestion by Labor’s legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus that terrorists should be brought back for trial and face a conviction in court as “rolling out the red carpet” for terrorists, like it “rolled out the red carpet for people-smugglers when it was in government”.

Mr Dreyfus said it “should not make any difference at all” whether a suspected terrorist was in Australia or overseas.

source:theaustralian.com.au