Blue Mountains residents who had to flee their houses and then returned home to be faced with no gas, electricity or hot water for days have slammed the Federal Government's changes to disaster relief payments.

The day after bushfires tore through the area, the federal government tightened the rules for disaster payments leaving hundreds of residents who were forced to evacuate without any financial help.

Eligibility for payments, available in disasters such as the January Tasmanian fires, were changed on October 18, so residents who did not lose their homes but had to relocate for days at a time would not receive assistance.

The cover of the 27 October...  The article below on the 6 of October...

KEVIN Rudd and other senior Labor figures may be forced to give evidence as part of a royal commission-style inquiry into the deadly roof batts fiasco.

Insulation businesses that suffered heavy financial losses could also be paid compensation, as part of a wide-ranging probe to be signed off by Cabinet within weeks.

News Corp understands the Abbott Government is close to choosing a senior legal figure to chair the inquiry - which will be charged with getting to the bottom of a scandal that killed four people and triggered more than 200 house fires.

Draft terms of reference are currently being discussed among Ministers with senior government figures keen to ensure Mr Rudd and former environment minister Peter Garrett are able to be compelled if necessary.

http://www.news.com.au/national/kevin-rudd-may-face-inquiry-into-botched-home-insulation-scheme/story-fncynjr2-1226733816800

And now on the 27th of October:

KEVIN Rudd faces questioning over his role in his former government's $2 billion-plus home insulation program, which became notorious for the deaths of four workers, after the Abbott government goes ahead with a judicial inquiry, a report today says.

Brisbane's The Sunday Mail says today it has obtained draft terms of reference which show the judicial commission will demand answers from members of the former Labor government.

Four men - Matthew Fuller, Rueben Barnes, Mitchell Sweeney and Marcus Wilson - died in 2009 and 2010 while installing insulation under the program, part of the first Rudd government's stimulus response to the global financial crisis.

The newspaper says Environment Minister Greg Hunt wants the inquiry's report finalised by June 30 next year and wants evidence to be given publicly.

 Mr Hunt told the newspaper the inquiry would be done in consultation with the dead men's families. "We are currently consulting with families affected by this massive policy failure,'' he said.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/rudd/story-e6frg6nf-1226747555698

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There were some death — not due to the policy of installing roof batts, but due to some "employers" using any means to make a buck out of a policy that saves Australia's arse when the rest of the world was tanking under the GFC... Out of more than one million homes insulated, for which most of the people are more than grateful, around 400 homes had some problems due to "unwise" practice by "employers" who did not train their staff properly. Out of this, there were four deaths, mostly young kids, who did not know not to staple through electric wiring. Or not to operate when the electric wiring was in such a poor state that touching aluminium batt insulation would zap... There is a code of practice for work in a safe environment. 

The code is and was available to all. And Mr Hunt cannot say: "affected by Massive policy failure"

Greg Hunt is again politicising what is four tragedies. The newspaper report should whack him over the head with a baseball batt (if you see what I mean)...

The papers continues:

The newspaper also says the commissioner, whose identity is unknown, would have to determine how the Rudd government made its decisions on the program and what extra steps it should have taken to avoid deaths, fires and loss of business, under the 10 draft terms.

The inquiry could lead to compensation payouts for families, business and homeowners, it says.

Possible witnesses may include top public servants as well as Mr Rudd, former ministers Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan Lindsay Tanner and Peter Garrett and then parliamentary secretary Mark Arbib, it says.

Mr Rudd did not comment yesterday, the newspaper says, but Labor's environment spokesman Mark Butler said there had been eight inquiries, reviews and audits into the scheme and its implementation, including a Queensland coroner's report.

- See more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/rudd/story-e6frg6nf-1226747555698#sthash.jszXAzJU.dpuf

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Sure there should be compensation to the families, but the Government is by no way liable for what practices that led to the death...

Unlike the friends of the Liberals (CONservatives) — the banks such as the US biggest bank, JP Morgan, that has agreed to a 5 billion settlement to Fannie May and others, KNOWINGLY they were selling subprime packages at premium prices, thus deceiving the public, with a no fault clause  — the Australian Labor government was doing its best — using normal work practice guidelines for installers of roof insulation...

It's about time some sanity and less politics prevailed... especially in the shit-press.

Presently this site, yourdemocracy.net.au, is the only outlet where the truth about Tony Abbott's arrogance is fully outed, since the other decent site Independent Australia is being upgraded... All the other media outlet are too meek (or do some strategic fence sitting) to see that when Tony announces that "the carbon tax is a socialist plot", he should be hit on the head for six. The carbon pricing has nothing to do with socialism though it is socially responsible — unlike Tony Abbott and his cronies who have lied to us while in opposition and now lie to us while in government...

Long live the revolution... And please Labor, don't cave in to Abbott the Rat's demands or defiance... Stand by your principles, if you have any left after the silly bruising battle of the popular versus the caucus. Idiots... FIGHT FOR THE CARBON PRICING, PLEASE... 

Good evening. Tonight I want to speak to you about honesty. And dishonesty. On honesty good government depends. Dishonesty is the seed of bad government. It is a betrayal of the people, of democracy itself.

“And then a Plank in Reason, broke / And I dropped down, and down” – as the poet said.

Let me begin by saying that I came here tonight on a bicycle. My own bicycle: a Christmas present from an Indian philanthropist that I at once declared on the pecuniary interest register. The tyres were inflated by my chief of staff, on her own time. She also lent me the water bottle. I tell a lie … it was the one sent to me by the proprietor of an Indonesian abattoir and which I will declare when the pearl inlay has been valued.

This is the sort of honest and transparent government that I promised before the election and am determined to deliver – though I must say this obsession with travel entitlements distracts from the real business of governing, which is why I held the previous government so sternly to account on them.

As I said to the Malaysian prime minister and the Indonesian president last month, we play our politics very hard in Australia.

I acknowledged that in Opposition we said some pretty hard things about the treatment asylum seekers in Malaysia could expect under Labor’s policy proposal, but pointed out that it was the previous government we were talking about, not Malaysia itself or its people. I have since been told that this was not strictly true. Or even true at all. It seems we did say pretty emphatically that asylum seekers released into the Malaysian community would be treated “very, very harshly” by the Malaysian people, and Joe Hockey almost cried about it.

read more: http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2013/november/1383224400

The making of effective foreign policy always looks easier than it is. As a result, new governments tend to underestimate the task. The Howard and Rudd/Gillard governments each made tentative starts on the international stage. The current government's diplomatic initiation has been worse. Even allowing for inexperience, the Abbott government appears to be setting a new standard for diplomatic ineptitude. The Prime Minister in particular has lurched from one mistake to another, with each episode more ham-fisted than the last.

Three cases illustrate the point.

When the Prime Minister left for Indonesia on his first overseas visit, he had a clear set of objectives. He needed agreement on one of three approaches designed to ''stop the boats''. A policy based on turning boats around, buying boats, or buying information about boats had been sold to the Australian public. Now it had to be sold to the country whose sovereignty it threatened to breach. Unsurprisingly, this was a non-starter in Jakarta. After a couple of apologetic speeches, the only thing turned around was Tony Abbott himself.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/pm-stumbling-around-the-international-stage-20131105-2wz4q.html#ixzz2joldhmZd

Stop the presses. From this morning, there is a new player in Australia's cut-throat news media industry.

But as traditional hard copy newspapers struggle to survive in the digital world, there is not a media magnate in sight.

Instead, The New Daily will be bankrolled by three Australian industry superannuation funds: Australian Super, Cbus and Industry Super Holdings.

And unlike the online mastheads from Fairfax and News Corporation, such as The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian, The New Daily will not have a pay wall.

Like The Guardian and The Global Mail, the new online entrant is offering a quality product at a time when hard copy newspapers are hurting from dwindling sales and advertising revenue.

Bruce Guthrie, a former editor of The Age and the Herald Sun, is The New Daily's managing editor.

He has been a witness to the dramatic decline of traditional news outlets.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-13/new-daily-launches/5087940

This could be adding to the blancmange of mediocre fence sitting mass media — unless this new site develops a far more critical view of the present bunch of right-wing loonies ruling Canberra. 

We need media to thrash the "glass ceiling"

We need media to post proper articles on "global warming" with alarm bells.

We need media to expose the con artist that John Howard was (and is).

We need media to show the value of social policies.

We need media to blast the concept that digging holes is the only way to get out of one

We need media to show the hypocrisy of Abbott/Hockey telling us that the budget is going south, that we need to tighten our belt, that we need to be sacked and then in the same breath remove essential tax on the rich's rorts to hit the poorest decent people.

We need media to help Bill Shorten dismantle Abbott's bravado, whether we like Shorten or not.

We need media to have a better grip on the insanity of asylum seeker policies...

And no pandering to the idiots of the rabid right wing-nuts who are trying to dismantle proper safeguards to human rights, under the guise of "freedom"

We need media to sing the value of "carbon pricing" as against the idiocy of Tony's "direct action" in order to reduce carbon emissions. 

We need media to show that Tony Abbott is a science ignoramus and a follower of George Pell/B A Santamaria doctrine with added rabid capitalism.

We need the media that will do all this, day in day out, without relenting...