Blow it up

Sorry Day

• May 26 is National Sorry Day, a day of recognition and apology to the Stolen Generations.
• While Prime Minster (and after), John Howard refused to apologise for the actions of the Australian government.
• Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised on behalf of the government in 2008.
• Since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991, there have been 400 deaths of Aboriginal people while in police custody, with no police being held responsible.
• Rio Tinto blew up Juukan Gorge cave, a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal sacred site.
• Scott Morrison invoked the Indigenous principle of caring for country to justify policies of austerity.

Robodebt, dead

• The government has scrapped Robodebt, the illegal policy of hounding people for debts they don’t owe.
• The robodebt program has been repeatedly shown to be ineffectual and inefficient.
• The government knew the scheme was illegal.
• 2000 deaths can be directly linked to the enforcement of Robodebt.
• Congratulations to the AUWU and the #NotMyDebt campaign for this win!
• If you were affected and are not a part of it already, you can register your interest in joining the class-action lawsuit against Centerlink.
• Stuart Robert, the government minister responsible for Robodebt, also once charged the taxpayer almost $63,000 for in excess mobile data usage.
• He also made his elderly father an unknowing dummy director of a company.
• Scott Morrison has asked the tax office to look into creating an automated recovery system like Robodebt for the JobKeeper Covid stimulus payments.

Big Budget Black Hole

• The government overestimated the amount they would spend on the JobKeeper payments by $60 billion (because a lot less people are elegible than originally projected).
• A week before the news broke, deputy PM Michael Sukkar suggested that if the scheme covered less people than planned, it should be reviewed.
• The NSW government has enacted a 12 month pay freeze on doctors, nurses and teachers.
• … after giving the chief of police a $90k pay rise.

Snitch on your boss

• Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has threatened bosses with fines if they force workers to come into the office unnecessarily.
• The NTEU rank and file members successfully pushed union leadership to push back on bad University management deals.

Where there’s smoke…

• Smoke from Australia’s 2019-20 fire season killed 445 people and put thousands in hospital.
• Australia’s Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 caused years of trauma.
• Australian people want immediate and drastic action on climate change.
• Brazil’s environment minister called for environmental deregulation while people are distracted by COVID.

Actions

• Talk to your friends, start a chat and work out who you can talk to and commiserate with. Find people who will have your back!
• Don’t just say Sorry. Pay the rent.
• Learn about deaths of indigenous Australians in custody. It’s easy to ignore, but dont.
• Please give us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps others find us.