Summary: THE FOCUS GROUP Oh God Manus Island OH MY GOD could Labor finally stop supporting offshore processing?! Former Manus Island Guards make comic tshirts commemorating that time asylum seekers under their care were assaulted. PNG immigration Minister contradicts Canberra - says PNG will decide which refugees it will resettle, not Australia. Morrison yet to advise what will happen to the other refugees. Injured Manus Island detainees being spirited away Amnesty tells the Senate Inquiry that that thing we’re doing leaving refugees who’ve witnessed violence in our custody in that same custody - “failing to meet our human rights commitments. (Isn’t it sweet that that phrase now wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow in modern Australia?) Budgets Past Remember 1996? (Tony does; remembers that “Tough But Fair” Daily Tele headline; “I’d be thrilled if we would have the same treatment again.” Laura Tingle compares Joe Hockey’s first budget to John Howard’s first. Chris Bowen compares it to Howard’s 79 mini-budget. Will you remember next time you’re thinking of electing a Liberal government? Remember Queensland’s Campbell Newman & Commisison of Audit destruction from a few years back? Well, now they’re paying themselves a huge pay rise. September 2013: Abbott tells SBS there will be “no cuts to the ABC or SBS”. January 2014: Julie Bishop calls GP co-payment proposal “scaremongering on Labor’s part”. Budgets Present Aware that NewStart was already locking people into poverty? Imagine what will happen now that Hockey, Abbott and the Liberals ARE HALVING IT Tony A really is going to damage the health system with his co-payment, based on Tony S’s gut feeling that maybe some doctor’s visits are unnecessary. Both Tonies apparently unrecognised medical experts. Here’s Abbott: Mr Abbott was incredulous that almost 400,000 had mental health problems or bad backs that prevented them from ever doing work. “Half have mental health or muscular skeletal issues. They are not permanent conditions or lasting conditions so are not complete obstacles to work.” But then people will go to hospital emergency rooms, you say. Not when Joe and Tony break the emergency room system with a $7.50 “co-payment” for the emergency room. Seriously. (“I’m bleeding to death!” “I heard you, where’s your credit card!”) Administering co-payment to cost Health budget $3.5bn over four years. Freedom of Information and Privacy framework torn down. office of Australian Information Commissioner broken up - “would shut door on open government”. ASIC funding cut in favour of “self-regulation”. Warren Truss lays down some ‘real talk’ for aged pensioners No money for a Disability Discrimination Commissioner after July 1st, perhaps the Freedom Commissioner can take up the slack? University degrees to cost three times as much according to the architect of the HECS scheme; Pyne actually tells Sky News “The prices might go up or they might go down through competition”. LIKE THAT HAS HAPPENED ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. $7bn cut in foreign aid over five years, boasts Julie Bishop. Tanya Plibersek calls the “cut to the world’s poorest… a sick thing to boast about” Albanese points out fuel excise rise hurts outer suburban commuters Hockey robs from the poor - but not the rich (Keane); Budget pain? Not for millionnaires who pay no tax (Peter Martin) Quarter of a billion dollars for school chaplains - and the Liberals change rules so they can’t be secular social workers instead. (In a week where a Catholic Priest at a Queensland school told children at a mother’s day breakfast to “thank mum you weren’t aborted”. Grade 2 children. And for what? Alan Kohler points out: I count 89 specific cuts to health and welfare
