Julia Gillard’s buried story unearthed

Former prime minister Julia Gillard. Source: News Corp Australia

 

THE witness list for this week’s hearings of the royal commission into union corruption should shame the journalists who for so long protected Julia Gillard. 

It should especially shame the ABC, so quiet on the former prime minister’s links to the Australian Workers’ Union slush fund scandal.

The ABC used to sniff at claims that Gillard had a case to answer, even though she’d given legal advice as a solicitor to her then boyfriend, AWU official Bruce Wilson, in creating the slush fund then used to rip off bosses.

No, no, it insisted: nor was there any need to inquire into other claims — such as money from Wilson’s fund, deceptively named the Australian Workers’ Union Workplace Reform Association, not just going to buy him a house but to pay for renovations to Gillard’s.

“Every allegation ... has been aired, and dealt with publicly by Julia Gillard, multiple times,” the ABC’s Media Watch falsely claimed in 2011.

“It’s a house of cards,” agreed the ABC’s Jon Faine in 2012.

To viewers who asked why the ABC wouldn’t even say Victorian police were investigating, the ABC sent this letter in 2013: “Reporting that the prime minister of the nation is under police investigation is an enormously significant call to make. It cannot be made on supposition, on rumour, or on hearsay.”

To other viewers protesting at the blackout, it wrote: “To the extent that it may touch tangentially on a former role of the Prime Minister ... the ABC is unaware of any allegation in the public domain which goes to the Prime Minister’s integrity.”

True, Gillard has denied doing anything improper, and says she did not know what Wilson did with his fund after she’d advised on its creation.

She also denies benefiting from his alleged frauds and says she paid for her renovations herself.

But does that excuse the ABC — and other media outlets — from not asking further questions? For treating this scandal as “all dredged up and nowhere to go”, as the ABC asserted?

Victoria Police certainly doesn’t think the matter is dead. Victoria’s Chief Magistrate didn’t think so, either, and last December gave police access to documents seized from Slater & Gordon, ruling they were “prepared in furtherance of the commission of a fraud or an offence”.

Nor does the royal commission think there’s nothing left to learn, and its witness list this week suggests Gillard is a particular focus of its inquiries.

It includes the Fair Work Commissioner Ian Cambridge who, ever since he was an AWU national secretary in the 1990s, has demanded such an inquiry into the scandal he tried to uncover.

There’s also Olive Palmer, a paralegal working with Gillard at Slater & Gordon when Gillard advised on the slush fund, attended an auction of the house her boyfriend bought with the fund’s cash, and witnessed a power of attorney relating to the sale.

Then there’s Konstantinos Spyridis, the builder who worked on Gillard’s renovations.

There’s another tradesman, Athol James, who also worked on Gillard’s house and from whom, Gillard later told worried partners at Slater & Gordon, she couldn’t recall getting an invoice.

There’s Wayne Hem, the AWU official who told The Australian he’d paid $5000 from Wilson into Gillard’s bank account.

Of course, just because the royal commission is calling these witnesses does not mean allegations against Gillard have any substance. The witnesses may all clear her.

But it does suggest there is much still to find out — on oath — that so many journalists were strangely disinclined to learn.

It wasn’t just the ABC. Channel Nine’s Laurie Oakes declared Gillard had “answered every question” about the scandal. Michelle Grattan, the Fairfax veteran, claimed “her answers were credible”.

Sky News presenter Peter van Onselen told Gillard: “I believe you that you did nothing wrong.”

And this has been going on since 2007, when The Australian’s Glenn Milne became one of the rare journalists to mention the scandal.

Gillard told her biographer Jacqueline Kent: “Over the next two or three days, I received phone calls from many of the biggest names in the Canberra press gallery expressing absolute disbelief that such things were said (by Milne).

“Nobody followed up the story. It just died.”

And almost no journalists protested, either, when Milne was later dumped as an ABC commentator — and Michael Smith sacked as a Fairfax radio host — for trying to cover Gillard’s role again.

Well, now there are two scandals which need answers.

One centres on the slush fund. The other is that many senior journalists of the Left didn’t just ignore this story, but helped to nearly bury it.

heraldsun.com.au 9 Jun 2014

The ex prime minister's crimes are of major significance to such an extent that they are hushed by all involved including the policy enforcers (police).

Julia Gillard has committed enough offences to be charged with TREASON, but the authorities are doing NOTHING about it.

These actions show that the corruption is deep within the system, including Victoria Police.

Another win for the corrupt government at large, and fraudulently in power.

Missing Malaysia Airlines flight: Oil rig worker Mike McKay loses job after MH370 'fire in the sky' report

Reports from an oil rig worker who saw a fire in the sky on the night Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared are being taken seriously, police sources have confirmed.

But New Zealander Mike McKay, 55, has lost his job in the ‘‘circus’’ that developed after his report to authorities was leaked.

Mr McKay had been working on the Songa Mercur oil rig in the South China Sea when he saw an ‘‘orange light’’ on an especially clear night.

The search for flight MH370 continues. Photo: Indonesian Air Force

The object was still in one piece and close to where MH370 first dropped off radar between Malaysia and Vietnam on March 8 with 239 people on board.

He emailed his employer and Vietnamese authorities about his sighting, but his statement was leaked, which included his full name, email, passport number, and full details of the company operating the rig.

In the ensuing media storm, Mr McKay said the Japanese-based petroleum company, Idemitsu, was flooded with emails and he was taken off the rig.

He is now unemployed and disappointed his efforts at reporting potentially vital information turned into such a circus.

‘‘I was only trying to privately help,’’ he told Fairfax Media during a series of interviews.

‘‘If it was the aeroplane I saw, then it must have been an external fire. How far would an aeroplane stay in the air after such a fire?’’

Mr McKay has worked in oil and gas exploration for more than 30 years, mostly in Southeast Asia, but returned to his native New Zealand while waiting for more work.

His initial statement described what he believed to be an aircraft on fire at a high altitude. The fire burned itself out in about 10 to 15 seconds and he gave an exact location based on his position on the oil rig platform.

‘‘There was no lateral movement, so it was either coming toward our location, stationary (falling) or going away from our location,’’ he wrote.

His sighting, however, appeared to be quickly discounted as one of the many hoaxes and false leads which have hampered the three-month international search effort.

Mr McKay’s reluctance to go public, and his complete lack of an internet presence, also raised doubts about the credibility of the report, which began on social media and gained traction largely through MH370 conspiracy theory websites.

But Fairfax Media tracked down the oil industry worker and confirmed with two police sources that he is being treated as a truthful and credible witness.

He was interviewed at length about his sighting at a police station near Auckland and his statement has since been forwarded to Malaysian authorities.

‘‘What he’s told you is effectively what he’s told us,’’ said a senior investigator involved in the case.

Mr McKay’s witness statement comes after a British sailor also reported seeing a burning object in the sky.

Katherine Tee, 41, was sailing from India to Thailand in early March when she spotted a plane surrounded by bright orange lights with a tail of black smoke.

The two sightings, however, are hundreds of kilometres apart.

Investigators have also moved on from searching the South China Sea and still believe MH370 went down somewhere in the Southern Indian Ocean.

While several underwater acoustic signals or ‘‘pings’’ have been ruled out as coming from the aircraft’s black boxes, satellite data still places it somewhere on a long arc in the large, southern search area.

Mr McKay said he hopes the plane is found in the Indian Ocean but he can’t explain how his sighting may fit in with what is known so far.

‘‘There are unanswered questions every step of the way,’’ he said.

‘‘I have no answers.’’

smh.com.au 9 June 2014

Another farce thrown into the face of the general public.

The real criminals are the authorities that know exactly where and when the flight went awry.

With (military) real time satellite surveillance, the general population are conned into believing a plane can 'vanish'.

An 'official' government version does not necessarily mean it is the truth.

Kim Kardashian doppelganger Claudia Ochoa Felix is the alleged leader of a Mexican hit squad

Not shy ... Claudia Ochoa Felix posts a selfie in her swimsuit. Picture: Twitter/Claudia Ochoa Felix Source: Twitter

 

SHE’S a doppelganger for Kim Kardashian — but Claudia Ochoa Felix now has the internet talking after being named as the alleged leader of an infamous Mexican hit squad. 

Felix, nicknamed “The Empress of Antrax”, and “Mexico’s Kim Kardashian” by her fans, is thought to be the new leader of the Los Antrax hit squad, used by the Sinaloa cartel which carries out brutal murders and revenge attacks among other criminal acts.

The mother of three was reportedly married to a Sinaloa drug trafficker known as ‘El Chavo’.

Mexican media reports have stated she allegedly took over Los Antrax after the gang leader, Jose Rodrigo Arechiga Gamboa, otherwise known as El Chino Antrax, was arrested in Amsterdam this year.

But unlike other drug cartel bosses who tend to stay out of sight, Felix has attracted more attention to herself than ever with her social media posts where she shows off her lavish lifestyle.

Loud and proud ... Claudia Ochoa Felix holds a gun while sitting down with a glass of wine near another man with a rifle. Picture: Supplied. Source: Supplied

 

The 27-year-old has been regularly posting photos on social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram of herself with friends and associates.

But she is no tomboy-like G.I. Jane. She does it with the style of Kim Kardashian.

Living it up ... Claudia Ochoa Felix posts a photo showing off her sexy figure. Picture: Facbook/Claudia Ochoa Felix Source: Supplied

 

She takes selfies, promoting herself as a buxom Mexican beauty, showing off her curvaceous figure, designers clothes and more luxurious things.

She has posted photos of herself, which almost mirrors Kardashian’s own photos she has taken and posted on social media.

 

Sexy selfie ... Claudia Ochoa Felix, an alleged Mexican hit squad boss. Picture: Twitter/Claudia Ochoa Felix Source: Supplied

 

Very similar ... Kim Kardashian posts a selfie on Instagram. Picture: Instagram/Kim Kardashian Source: Supplied

 

In some photos, she is seen holding guns, including an AK-47.

“The Empress of Antrax” is usually seen accompanied by an AK-47 rifle, known colloquially as “cuerno de chivo” or “goat’s horn,” the Latin Times reports.

 

On target ... Claudia Ochoa Felix with her pink AK-47 assault rifle. Picture: Supplied  Source: Supplied

She has decorated hers with the colour pink with military-style camouflage.

 

Pretty in pink ... Claudia Ochoa Felix’s AK-47. Picture: Instagram/Claudia Ochoa Felix Source: Supplied

One photo she posted on Twitter even shows her son lying with hundreds of banknotes on his body.

 

Money man ... Claudia Ochoa Felix’s son covered in stacks of bank notes. Picture: Twitter/Claudia Ochoa Felix Source: Supplied

 

Since the Mexican media started to focus on Felix, she has disabled her Twitter account and made her Instagram posts private.

Felix has publicly denied having any connection to any criminal organisation in a tweet, the International Business Times reports, saying she was the victim of press sensationalism and describing claims about her as “cowardly lies and slander”.

 news.com.au 8 Jun 2014

The corporate media just would not be 'kosher' without articles 'glorifying' gangsters.

Australian readers really have no way of knowing whether the doppelganger is an attention 'whore', the event a publicity stunt or an actual criminal.

If in the case of the latter, then what are the authorities doing about it?

Vodafone reveals secret wires allow governments to tap phone calls on its global network

 

Revealed ... customers phone calls are monitored by secret wires on the Vodafone network. Source: AFP

 

GLOBAL telecommunications giant Vodafone admitted the existence of secret wires are allowing government agencies to listen in to conversations on its networks. 

The company said the tapping is widely used in some of the 29 countries in which it operates.

Revealing its cooperation with state agencies, Vodafone said in a 20-page report entitled “Law Enforcement Disclosure” that direct wires are connected to its network, allowing live conversations to be listened to and recorded.

The wires also allow agencies to verify the location of a user.

Vodafone admitted that as a global business it faced “constant tension” while enforcing the laws of different countries and the “expectations” of governments.

“Refusal to comply with a country’s laws is not an option,” it said.

Vodafone said that in about six countries where it operates, phone tapping is required by law, although it did not identify the countries.

Calls are tapped ... on the Vodafone global network. Source: AFP

 

Vodafone said it was publishing the information as its contribution to the debate on government surveillance systems.

“The need for governments to balance their duty to protect the state and its citizens against their duty to protect individual privacy is now the focus of a significant global public debate,” it said.

Privacy campaigners said Vodafone’s disclosure confirmed their worst fears.

Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, said: “These are the nightmare scenarios that we were imagining.

He told the Guardian newspaper: “I never thought the telcos (telecommunications companies) would be so complicit.

“It’s a brave step by Vodafone (to admit it) and hopefully the other telcos will become more brave with disclosure, but what we need is for them to be braver about fighting back against the illegal requests and the laws themselves.”

news.com.au 6 June 2014

This news may be of significance to the 'average' lay person or for those who have little technical knowledge of the telecommunications industry.

Since the introduction of GSM (Global System for Mobile) communications, pre GPS (Global Positioning System) and 'smart phone' technology, user location was known to the 'authorities'.

Australia is a country that keeps user mobile telephone data stored at government locations.

Australian telecommunications companies also work together with AMDOCS, an Israeli company, with the telco's user data.

The standard 'terrorist' excuse is wearing a bit thin, whereas the hidden agenda is spying on the people, where the information collected is placed in ones 'file'.

Warrant issued for arrest of driver with $300,000 in unpaid tolls fines

A WARRANT has been issued for the arrest of a serial tolls dodger who has amassed fines of almost $300,000. 
 
Isabelle Maree Weir was a no-show in court today, where she faced 138 individual warrants understood to relate to unpaid road tolls.

Ms Weir has accumulated a staggering $294,362.40 worth of infringement notices, Dandenong Magistrates’ Court heard, making her one of the state’s biggest fine evaders.

She had been bailed to appear at today’s penalty enforcement hearing, but had her bail revoked when she failed to attend.

Magistrate Pauline Spencer issued a warrant for her arrest. Ms Spencer said she would not reveal the exact nature of the charges facing Ms Weir until the matter returned to court when she was apprehended.

An anonymous tipster claimed on 3AW yesterday that the woman had failed to pay 515 EastLink and 495 CityLink tolls.

At least $4.4 million in road tolls and fines remain unpaid in Victoria, according to a report by the Sentencing Advisory Council released last week.

The council recommended that fine dodgers be barred from travelling overseas and have their passports flagged among a series of sweeping reforms to try to recoup more than $400 million of unpaid fines racked up in Victoria each year.

The bold proposal — one of 49 recommendations to the State Government — came after new figures revealed that about 700,000 police and local government infringements issued each year are ignored and 40 cent of Victorians refuse to pay court fines.

Other suggestions included the halving of infringement costs for concession card holders and children, introducing a HECS-style initiative to have the ATO collect outstanding fines, making directors personally liable for fines incurred by corporations, and making it possible for people to pay fines by completing community work or development courses.

Forty-five people were jailed for not paying fines in 2012-13.

The report found taxi drivers were Victoria’s worst toll dodgers.

CityLink spokeswoman Suzanne Waddell said: “We find the majority of motorists do the right thing, with only around 0.3 per cent of trips made on CityLink referred to the Department of Justice for action for non-payment.”

heraldsun.com.au 3 June 2014

Unfortunately for the authorities, the so called 'warrants' that are issued are issued UNLAWFULLY.

This is a fact that has been confirmed by police 'off the record'.

A warrant cannot be produced upon demand.

Another fraud by the authorities.

The so called 'fines' are also illegal.

This is a grand scale fraud, hidden in plain sight.

Black's Law Dictionary 2nd Edition 1910

A common reference point in Australian law is the Black's Law dictionary.

This is a useful resource when researching Australia's laws, particularly those around the time of Federation (1901).

The dictionary, in its second edition (1910), is now officially in the public domain, and its 1322 pages are available for download (54 MB) at:

'Rightful king of England' dies in Australia

 

Abney-Hastings, who was 69, was widowed but has several children

Michael Abney-Hastings, or "King Michael", was a British-born self-proclaimed republican who made international headlines in 2004 when a Channel 4 documentary suggested that King Edward IV was conceived illegitimately. It said the crown should have been passed down the Plantagenet line – ending at Abney-Hastings.

The reluctant, would-be king was born in Sussex and went to school at Ampleforth College in Yorkshire but moved as a teenager with his family to the small Australian town of Jerilderie, population 768, about 400 miles from Sydney.

His "claim" to the throne first became apparent after the documentary, Britain's Real Monarch, put forward a thesis by a historian, Dr Michael Jones, who said King Edward, who reigned from 1461 to 1483, was conceived when his parents were 100 miles apart.

At the time, according to a document unearthed by Dr Jones in a library in Rouen, Edward's supposed father, Richard, 3rd Duke of York, was said to be fighting the French near Paris, while his mother, Lady Cecily Neville, was at court in Rouen.

Furthermore, Lady Cecily was said to be spending a great deal of time with a local archer named Blaybourne and the two were rumoured to be having an affair. King Louis XI of France is said to have once claimed about King Edward: "His name is not King Edward – everybody knows his name is Blaybourne."

It was therefore proposed that Abney-Hastings, the direct descendant of George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence and brother of Edward IV, should be the rightful King.

When the claim was raised with Abney-Hastings at his farm in Jerilderie, he said he had been elected to the local shire council and would prefer to focus on his duties as councillor.

"When they told me I was surprised all right," he said. "But I don't think it will worry us too much. Titles don't mean much out here and I have no intention of leaving Jerilderie ... Why would you want to be King anyway? They can't do anything without someone on their back."

Abney-Hastings, who was 69, was widowed but has several children. He once joked that his eldest son would have to wait until he died before pressing a claim to the throne.

"He'll have to wait," he said. "It's not available till I go."

He had been battling a debilitating illness and had been in and out of hospital in the lead-up to his death on Saturday.

Though he did not budge from his support for Australia to become a republic, he did once note that his friends and family stood up and broke into God Save the King at a Christmas dinner shortly after the documentary was broadcast.

The new potential heir to the throne, Simon Abney-Hastings, the 15th Earl of Loudon, is a 37-year-old bachelor who works for a fabrics company in the town of Wangaratta, about 140 miles from Melbourne. He said he was aware he was "possibly" the rightful king but would prefer not to take the throne.

"I have always known about this – I have lived it," he said. "It does make you think about how things could be different. I am quite happy with how things have turned out. I have made my own life."

telegraph.co.uk 3 Jul 2012

Queen Elizabeth II is an UNLAWFUL monarch, and should realistically be removed from the throne, and placed under house arrest, from this 'fact' alone.

This shows how governments AND police support the criminal actions of the 'elite'.

Facecrook: NSA storing your facial web images, millions intercepted daily

The National Security Agency is collecting millions of images of people through its international surveillance network to be implemented in a number of other facial recognition programs, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

Read Snowden’s comments on 9/11 that NBC didn’t broadcast
 
Thanks to rapid advances being made in the field of facial recognition technology, the NSA is much better equipped to “exploit the flood of images included in emails, text messages, social media, video conferences and other communications,” according to an article in the New York Times, co-written by Laura Poitras, who, together with Glen Greenwald, are the only two journalists to have received the leaked NSA documents.

The NSA has the capacity to intercept “millions of images per day,” as well as some 55,000 “facial recognition quality images.” This latest milestone in US intelligence gathering, which goes a long way to putting the final touches on the much-feared Orwellian nightmare, gives the US spy agency “tremendous untapped potential,” according to the 2011 documents.

“It’s not just the traditional communications we’re after: It’s taking a full-arsenal approach that digitally exploits the clues a target leaves behind in their regular activities on the net to compile biographic and biometric information” that can help “implement precision targeting,” noted a document dated 2010.

AFP Photo / Angela Weiss

Such comments are bound to spark fears that the harvesting of facial images, much like the collection of oral and written communications, will snag innocent Americans in the vast intelligence net.

The latest revelations to be gleaned from Snowden’s stash of top-secret documents prove the NSA is not just interested in collecting the meta-data from global communications, but also the images that put a face on potential terrorists and other would-be adversaries of the American government.

The NSA is unique in its ability to match images with huge troves of private communications.

“We would not be doing our job if we didn’t seek ways to continuously improve the precision of signals intelligence activities — aiming to counteract the efforts of valid foreign intelligence targets to disguise themselves or conceal plans to harm the United States and its allies,” said Vanee M. Vines, the agency spokeswoman.

ID databases out of the game?

Since most people have a number of photographs taken of themselves for identification purposes, the question arises as to how much reach the NSA has in acquiring peoples’ facial images.

According to Vines, the NSA does not access driver’s licenses or passport photos of Americans, but refused to say whether the agency had access to the State Department’s photo archive of foreign visa applicants. She also declined to say whether the spy agency collected photographs of Americans from social media sources, like Facebook and Instagram, which would not be a difficult task considering that millions of people willingly post ‘selfies’ to the web.

Moreover, the report claimed that one of the agency’s most intense efforts to acquire facial images is through a program dubbed Wellspring, which “strips out images from emails and other communications, and displays those that might contain passport images.”

AFP Photo / Chris Hondros

Because images are considered a form of communicational content, the NSA is required to get court approval for collecting facial images of Americans, just as it is required to read emails or listen in on phone conversations, an NSA spokeswoman was quoted in the Times article as saying.

However, exceptions may be made in the event “an American might be emailing or texting an image to someone targeted by the agency overseas,” it said.

Human rights and civil liberty groups are expressing concern that the power of the technology, in the hands of government and corporate officials, could have a disastrous impact on privacy.

“Facial recognition can be very invasive,” Alessandro Acquisti, a researcher on facial recognition technology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, told the paper. “There are still technical limitations on it, but the computational power keeps growing, and the databases keep growing, and the algorithms keep improving.”

Harvesting on video conferences

The NSA facial recognition program made tremendous headway in 2010 when it successfully matched images from two separate databases, one in the NSA database code-named Pinwale, and another in the government’s primary terrorist watch database, known as Tide, the NSA files revealed.

That technical breakthrough led to an “explosion of analytical uses” for the agency.

The NSA has since brought on board “identity intelligence” analysts whose job it is to match the facial images with other records about individuals to build broad portfolios of intelligence targets.

The full depth of the image-collection program is daunting in that it has developed sophisticated methods of integrating facial recognition programs with numerous other databases.

Reuters / Nacho Doce

“It intercepts video teleconferences to obtain facial imagery, gathers airline passenger data and collects photographs from national identity card databases created by foreign countries, the documents show,” the files revealed.

They also show that the NSA was attempting to infiltrate such databases in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Aside from its own programs, the NSA partially relies on commercially available facial recognition technology, including from PittPatt, a company owned by Google, the leaked files show.

Geo-positioning does matter

But the power of facial recognition technology apparently goes beyond the collection of faces, and includes geographic points photographed from satellites.

One leaked file shows photographs of several men standing near a waterfront dock in 2011. Through the use of the recognition technology, the NSA was able to match their surroundings to a satellite image of the same dock taken about the same time.

The document said the photograph showed a militant training facility in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, US law remains surprisingly flimsy in terms of the protections it offers Americans when it comes to their images.

“Unfortunately, our privacy laws provide no express protections for facial recognition data,” said Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, in a letter in December to the head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

News of the NSA’s ‘facial-mining’ techniques echo earlier leaked information, reported in February, that Britain's spy agency GCHQ, in direct cooperation with the NSA, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of terrorism or other criminal behavior.

GCHQ records between 2008 and 2010 reveal a surveillance program, codenamed Optic Nerve, harvested still images of Yahoo webcam chats and stored them on databases, the Guardian reported.

“In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally,” the paper reported.

rt.com  1 June 2014

Tony Abbott's secret $710,000 home loan

Story summary:

• Abbott fails to declare mortgage
• "Bloody big oversight"
• "Question of accountability"

 

Tony Abbott's salary was halved after the Liberals lost the 2008 election and he lost his ministerial post Source: The Daily Telegraph

 

LABOR has questioned whether Tony Abbott could manage the Australian economy after he failed to declare a $710,000 mortgage on his family home. 

The Opposition Leader took out the mortgage after losing his ministerial salary when the Howard government was ousted, to help cover living costs including private school fees for two of his three daughters, The Australian reports.

But he failed to declare it until about two weeks ago - almost two years after taking out the loan.

Small Business Minister Craig Emerson told 2UE radio this morning he thought the failure to declare was “probably a genuine oversight, but it's a bloody big oversight”.


“This is a question of accountability,” Dr Emerson said.

“Tony wants to be the prime minister of Australia, and I guess it does raise some questions about his capacity to run a trillion-dollar economy when he forgets that he's got a $700,000 mortgage to declare.”

Mr Abbott, who took out the loan against his family home in northern Sydney in April 2008, could be in breach of the parliamentary rules covering pecuniary interests.

“You're supposed to declare all of your financial interests, all your significant financial interests. There's no doubt about the rules - that you're supposed to declare mortgages and other loans, any other liabilities that you have. It's sitting right there on the form,” Dr Emerson said.

Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb defended his leader, saying it was a “simple mistake”, and accused Labor of muckraking.

“There's no reason why he wouldn't disclose it, unless he's overlooked it, really,” Mr Robb said.

“This Labor Party has resorted already to just grubby smear campaigns.”

After moving into Opposition after the Coalition lost the last election, Mr Abbott took a $90,000 pay cut on the $200,000-plus salary he earned as federal health minister.

“The advent of the Rudd Government has caused serious mortgage stress for a section of the Australian community, ie former Howard government ministers,” he joked to The Australian in January 2008.

“You don't just lose power, in inverted commas, you certainly lose income as well, and if you are reliant on your parliamentary salary for your daily living, obviously it makes a big difference.”

But this morning Dr Emerson said parliamentarians should consider ordinary Australians struggling to cover their own living costs.

“I'm just saying, if Tony Abbott thinks that parliamentarians are struggling to make ends meet, spare a thought for the average Australian, who's working very hard to try to cover the cost of housing, particularly in Sydney - childcare costs, electricity costs, a lot of these pressures,” he said.

Dr Emerson told The Australian Online he thought parliamentarians were paid enough and that the primary motivation for pursuing a political career was not financial advancement.

“My own view is that we don't we go into politics in search of very high salaries," he said.

“If you wanted to do that, seek out a career in the private sector. Given our motivation is not primarily money, I think the parliamentary salaries are reasonable and meet a community standard.”

 

news.com.au 23 June 2010

Another action where the criminal rulers are exempt from the law.

Victorian government misses out in $400 million in illegal fines

The Lie:

There is NO doubt whatsoever that the corporate media is a subservient government tool spreading government propaganda akin to 'communist' eastern Europe.

To make it PERFECTLY clear:

12. Grants of forfeiture

That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of
particular persons before conviction are illegal and void.

as defined by law in Victoria, Australia, within S.12 of the Bill of Rights, which is a current law in Victoria.

Some so called well versed lawyers / barristers / judges / magistrates (who should be up for treason) may state that the Bill of Rights (1688) does not apply, which is blatantly FALSE information.

A letter from the Attourney General's office, states that the 1688 Bill of Rights 1 Will and Mary SESS 2, is VALID.

See document within post:

Bill of Rights and Magna Carta valid in Victoria

 This information is 'bad for business', and is a 'legal secret' that is kept away from the masses by lawyers, solicitors, etc who work for a foreign entity, the City of London', which again is unlawful.

The so called 'warrants' generated in Victoria are also UNLAWFUL, and this FACT can be proven very easily.

Australia the new Alcatraz:

In an (illegal) move the, unlawfully elected Australian authorities are going to imprison Australians, by forbidding free travel. which every Australian is entitled to, for the non payment of their ILLEGAL fines.

According to the Constitution, EVERY single 'Australian' has the right to freedom of travel.

If Australians think they live in a democracy (rule by majority), they may be correct, but when one looks at the term fascist or Martial Law, then this is the more accurate description of Australia's governance.

The corporate media lie:

This is the article that appeared in the Herald Sun publication on Friday, 30th of May 2014 under the headline:

 Crackdown urged on those who avoid paying fines, including a ban on foreign travel

 

 

Suggested reform would ban fine dodgers from travelling overseas. Source: ThinkStock

 

FINE dodgers would be barred from travelling overseas and have their passports flagged under suggested reforms to try to recoup more than $400 million in unpaid fines a year. 

The plans come as new figures reveal that 700,000 police and local government infringements issued every year are unpaid, while 40 per cent of Victorians refuse to pay court fines.

Under the plans, fine evaders would be blocked from overseas travel until they have paid any outstanding warrants.

The idea has been previously backed by the Napthine Government after Victoria's worst fine evader was believed to have fled the country in November with 807 unpaid fines worth $222,000.

A report by the Sentencing Advisory Council makes 49 recommendations to the government that also include: slashing infringements by 50 per cent for concession card holders and children; a HECS-style initiative to have the ATO collect outstanding fines; making directors personally liable for payment of infringements and fines incurred by corporations; and improving options for people to pay fines by completing community work or development courses.

Council chair Arie Freiberg said restricting overseas travel for people with outstanding warrants had seen a drastic increase in the amount of outstanding fines paid on the spot in other countries, including New Zealand.

He said the current system was tying up precious court resources by trying to prosecute habitual evaders.

They include prosecuting a husband and wife with almost $500,000 in fines and a man arrested for amassing almost 500 sheriff's warrants for toll road fees totalling $132,000.

“We don’t really want the courts wasting their time on these cases,” he said.

“The whole system was designed to keep these cases out of court. “If a court fine of infringement penalty is not paid, then no sanction has been imposed and the purposes of the sentence of penalty are not fulfilled,” he said.

The report found taxi drivers are among the worse dodgers for refusing to pay tolls, while 45 people were jailed for not paying fines between 2012 and 2013.

Attorney General Robert Clark said the Coalition had already moved to introduce sweeping reforms to the fines system with the Fines Reform Bill currently before Parliament.

The reforms include a single integrated system to track and collect fines, shorter timelines for enforcement, targeting repeat offenders with high levels of unpaid fines and tougher use of sanctions such as suspension or cancellation of vehicle registration.