Big banks reach agreement to prevent struggling families losing their homes: news.com.au

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd will today announce 12 months of mortgage relief for the unemployed….

In his speech, the Prime Minister says the stress of paying mortgage and car payments are “real bottom-line concerns around kitchen tables right across Australia”.

“The immediate problem facing many families whose breadwinners have lost their jobs is the anxiety and fear that arises from, ‘How do I pay my mortgage, how do I pay off my car?” Mr Rudd says.

“That’s why, some time ago, I asked the Treasurer to negotiate an agreement with Australia’s big-four banks on a comprehensive package of assistance to workers who lose their jobs.”

At least when Obama was talking about bailing out homeowners in the US there was two justifications: one, lax Government regulation which led to the mess, and two: they’d already bailed out big business anyway, so it was really a matter of sharing the money around to some extent.

Neither apply in Australia.

What angers me is that this rewards people who aren’t responsible enough to manage their finances. Yes, becoming unemployed is hard and it’s not always your fault, but consider that the job cuts coming in many industries now have been predictable (mining, car industry, export related jobs etc.) If you were working in a high risk industry, the sensible choice would be to reduce your exposure to debt for if and when the rainy day came.

Then consider that if you do have a mortgage you can take out income protection as well. So thanks to Mr Rudd, people who do THE RESPONSIBLE thing and insure against unemployment by paying more on their mortgage payments to cover the insurance miss out, while those who aren’t responsible get a 12 month free pass anyway.

Anyone who has income protection insurance is going to be scratching their heads today, and if free to do so, canceling their insurance Monday morning.

And then there’s mention of car payments from Rudd. So I’ve taken out a massive mortgage without insurance, but I’ve also gone and purchased a $45,000 V8 Commodore on credit as well. Oh, poor me, life is so fucking hard, the Government should help me with my debts if I lose my job.

So a person who lives in their means, spends conservatively on a car with no loan (be it a used car or cheap new one) misses out, but those who couldn’t help themselves by running up even more debt get a hand from the Government.

Fucking unbelievable. This REWARDS bad behaviour.

What message does this send out to kiddies: oh, if you completely fuck up your finances, Chairman Rudd will be there to help. If you’re competent and cover yourself, you miss out.

For the record we have no debt of any type (including no credit cards). No, I don’t own a house either, and our single car was purchased for $13,000 (after trade in) brand new in 2003. We’ve owned it ever since, and the small debt we had on the car (we’d saved for it) has long been paid off.

One final word: to be fair though, Howard wouldn’t have been much better, and I’m not convinced Turnbull would be either, it was after all Howard who mastered the art of middle class welfare. There’s got to be a better choice.

Australian Minister for Censorship Stephen Conroy appeared on the ABC’s Q&A Thursday night. Transcript and video here (I’m not sure if the video is available outside of Australia).

I won’t rehash it all, but some interesting takeaways:

Political Content

STEPHEN CONROY: But that is not what is being proposed. I mean we believe that there is a compelling argument to block refused classification. We’ve not suggested, and I repeat, it would go against the fundamental tenet of the Labor party to suggest you would block political content, which is the China line and the Saudi Arabia line. I couldn’t be more clear or simple or straightforward on that. So no one is suggesting – no one – that we would go down that path.

The problem here is that refused classification has already been used to block political content, namingly the now infamous abortion site that included images of allegedly aborted fetuses.

Now we can argue whether those images are offensive or not (most people would say that they are), but like them or not, they demonstrate the effects of a legal procedure and were being used in a political context. You can show dead bodies on the 6pm news, but you can’t show abortion pictures online?

The call can only be political, even when the context isn’t taken into account, which is what ACMA claimed in Senate estimates.

So under the Labor Government, they won’t ban political websites for being political, they’ll just decree that the content on some political sites is refused classification on another ground and block them anyway.

And I nearly forgot, it was Conroy who previously described the filter as blocking “unwanted” content. For Conroy to now argue that the push as always been RC contradicts himself…until he changes his mind again…flip…flop….

Welcome to Nazi Germany.

Recourse/ errors

TONY JONES: Now, can I just interrupt once again, because there’s a story in the Sydney Morning Herald website today saying that a link containing a series of photographs of young boys by Bill Henson is actually on this blacklist. Bill Henson: back in the media for reasons of censorship. Is he on the list?

STEPHEN CONROY: The classification board looked at this website and actually said it’s PG and a technical error inside ACMA, I’m advised – literally a technical error – included it, but it was actually cleared by the classification board, so it shouldn’t have been on the list. Now, I’ve asked ACMA in the last few hours to go through their entire list again to see if there’s any other examples of this and at this stage – and they’re piling their way through it overnight – they found this one site that falls into this category where it’s been misclassified, not by the classification board but by the ACMA technology that they’ve been doing.

So the list, which is secret so there’s no way of telling what’s on it (until it gets leaked that is), contains “technical errors.” The list currently has 1100 sites on it, but under the new scheme could expand to include millions. How many “technical errors” are acceptable?

Guilty for the actions of others

STEPHEN CONROY: Now, I’d like to talk about the dentist, because that’s been a good bit of fun this week. Here’s what happened. The Russian mob targeted Queensland small businesses last year and what they did was they identified websites that had blank pages underneath the main page and what they would do is they would put some material that would be refused classification on that site, on that one page within that site.

So site owners who have done nothing wrong get banned because someone hacked their site and put RC material on it.

If someone broke into my home and committed a crime, would I be charged for the crime they committed?

Zig Heil.

STEPHEN CONROY: So the dentist that people say, well, how could you possibly block a dentist: because the Russian mob hacked his site. Well, not his site directly, but they actually entered into using his web address, so I don’t actually have a problem with wanting to try and combat the Russian mob putting – I’m not exaggerating – putting material that would be refused classification and then trying to publicise it worldwide

Because striking the innocent in a quest to target the guilty is a reasonable tactic? So someone at the back of my house is a terrorist, and the army is out the front wanting to get to the terrorists. Under Conroy’s logic it would be ok for the army to run their tanks over my house with me inside of it, because it’s justified in getting the bad guys.

Lies

STEPHEN CONROY: This is the existing standards by which current newspapers, current TV shows, current radio shows, are judged.

Actually, that’s also not true. News programs get a free pass of things like dead bodies in war zones as long as it’s deemed “news.” The picture of Saddam Hussein hanging was shown on TV. Dead body in a noose.

And now to the truth

STEPHEN CONROY: I believe in a civil society and a civil society does not have a wild west laissez faire culture.

So this is actually a culture war as opposed to cracking down on kiddie porn Senator Conroy?

Note that in context of Government policy, laissez faire is to “minimize or eliminate government intervention in most or all aspects of society.” So if this policy is the opposite of laissez faire, then it must be one of increasing Government intervention in culture. Culture is not child pornography or other illegal material, culture is (from Wikipedia) an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning. Sounds more and more like Nazi Germany, doesn’t it.

SMH: Bikie killed in Sydney Airport brawl

The man was beaten to death INSIDE the Qantas Domestic Terminal.

Where in the world was security? I know, it was too busy looking for forbidden fruit (like Apples from Victoria) in the baggage collection area, or making sure the pram going through X-ray wasn’t carrying a bomb.

It is incomprehensible that a person could be beaten to death inside Australia’s busiest airport. This is an EPIC FAIL of security beyond anything seen in this country. WTF doesn’t even begin to describe it.

SMH again

he 29-year-old was knocked to the ground during the brawl – involving at least 10 men – and bashed repeatedly in the head with a metal bollard.

The attack took place in terminal three, one of the most secure and monitored public spaces in Australia.

Obviously not that secure.

Sir Humphrey Appleby would be proud:

Last night I said that Telstra hadn’t shut down Leslie’s Twitter account. This was based on the advice of my colleagues. It’s factually correct, though it’s also true that Leslie’s senior managers independently told him last night to stop.

So it’s factually correct that Telstra did not ask that the Fake Stephen Conroy Twitter account be shut down, but it’s also true that they did ask the account to be shut down.

Now we’re talking gibberish 😉

Here’s the headline
Swan to curb ‘obscene’ salaries

Here’s the first paragraph
The Federal Government will introduce new laws to curb excessive executive payouts, Treasurer Wayne Swan says.

Here’s the first catch
Under the change flagged by the treasurer, shareholder approval will be required for termination payouts of more than one year’s base pay.

So basically the Government isn’t actually cracking down on exec pay, it’s just changing the approval goal posts.

And here’s the second catch: who owns most of these companies in the first place?

Answer: funds managers with predominately super fund money.

Who runs most super funds?

Answer: banks

Who sits on the boards and gets big executive salaries to begin with?

Answer: usually the same people who sit on the boards of banks.

So when executive salary comes up, what’s the real chance that these funds will vote against proposals? Maybe some industry super funds will vote no, but it won’t be enough.

Double bonus round
“The government will curb golden handshakes in the form of excessive termination payments,” he said.

So it’s only when they leave, not what they get paid upfront? 🙂

Overall I don’t believe the Government should be interfering with pay rates in private companies (well, bailouts aside), but if they’re going to do it, do it properly, not just the piss and wind claytons version.

Margaret Simons wrote about the now infamous Freeview spoof in Crikey Tuesday. She left something out. This was my response to Crikey, although it wasn’t published.

Margaret Simons’ otherwise excellent coverage of the Freeview spoof video saga was somewhat sullied by a last line that reads “At the time of publishing, you can view the spoof video here, but we anticipate it will get taken down again, so quick sticks!”

What Simons failed to note, either in the article or in drawing that conclusion, is that the video (as a parody) is protected speech both in Australia and the United States. It isn’t clear from the article whether the take down notice received by YouTube was made under US law (where the video would be hosted) or under Australian law, but the result is still the same in both jurisdictions: a parody of this
nature is clearly legal.

In Australia, The COPYRIGHT ACT 1968 – SECT 41A clearly defines fair dealing (our weaker version of fair use) in this context: “A fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, or with an adaptation of a literary, dramatic or musical work, does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the work if it is for the purpose of parody or satire.” The University of Melbourne notes that this includes “Audio-visual works (cinematographic films, sound recordings & broadcasts).”

In the United States, the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. ?Ç¬ß 107 includes the line “the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.”

If the law firm backing Freeview made the claim under the US DMCA, they could be found liable for making a false claim. A standard claim must include the words “I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate.” If the lawyers had spent 5 seconds on Google they would have discovered that the video was not an infringement of copyright under existing and tested law.

Latest job figures out today show more bad news for the Australian economy. Notable though was how they were reported.

News.com.au grouped newspaper ads (5-6% of the total) with online, and didn’t offer split figures:

The ANZ survey found total job advertisements slipped 10.4 per cent in February, the largest recorded monthly fall since the series began in 1999…..

In the year to February the number of job advertisements in newspapers and on the internet has backpedalled nearly 40 per cent. This was also the worst outcome in the history of the survey.

Fairfax grouped as well, initially at least

Jobs advertised online and in newspapers fell 10.4% in February alone, the most in any month since the survey began, to an average of 161,583 a week,

but then went for the split with newspapers first

Online ads drop too

Newspaper ads alone collapsed 25.2% in February, ANZ said, taking them 55.4% lower than a year ago.

”But newspaper advertising is down 27% over the summer and 44% since the collapse of Lehman Brothers,” ANZ’s Mr Hogan said in a statement, referring to the collapse of the US investment bank in September.

Jobs posted online dropped 9.4% in February, or 38.6% lower than a year ago.

The slump is ”the largest monthly decline since the combined internet and newspaper series commenced in 1999,”. ”The annual rate of decline, at 40%, is also the worst outcome on this record.”

Interestingly, neither offered a raw number split, only percentage declines. Finally they’re doing it right, well nearly, but close enough for my liking. The drop in newspaper ads probably deserved a separate mention due to the size of the drop, although primacy in order reported is arguable.

As is not unusual when backed by a media that likes nothing more than pitting company owners against a presumed proletariat, the Pacific Brands lynching continues.

For those outside of Australia, Pacific Brands announced recently it was shutting down its Australian manufacturing plants. The company owns brands such as Bonds, Hard-Yakka and more. It was then disclosed that (ZOMG) the CEO had a pay rise last year along with the board. The Federal Government, along with the media and unions are jumping up and down about how disgraceful the pay is given they are putting of approx. 1800 people.

Here’s the thing. It’s beyond bloody remarkable that the manufacturing was still done in Australia in the first place.

If anything, the board of the company should be praised for keeping the local jobs going for so long when nearly all of their competition shut up shop and moved their plants to China years ago.

The economic reality is that the textile manufacturing in Australia is cost-prohibitive compared to China. We can argue whether that’s fair or not, but the reality is that most of the garments we buy now share one thing in common: they’ll have Made in China stamped on the tag, because it’s multiple times cheaper to make them there instead of here.

If anything, it could be argued that the company was acting irresponsibly in not taking the business off shore years ago.

I feel badly for anyone who has lost their job, but this tall poppy lynching is a crock, and it does nothing to save jobs.

God help us if this is going to be the carry-on when every big company puts of staff in the coming year as Australia finally falls into a recession. I suppose on the bright side, the Australian media will have something to easily write about, given any serious reporting is quickly becoming untenable as they shed staff as well.