Tag Archives: Qantas

The Week That Was – March 30 to April 5

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So this week was pretty busy too for politics what with Western Australia going back to the polls to re-elect their six senators – Louise Pratt copped judgement for voting below the line and putting herself first – but hey, she has every right to do that and that is how she decided to vote.

The week began with a protest from Qantas workers who are upset that 5000 jobs are going. They are threatening to engage in civil disobedience, but have said that they will warn customers and the public if they plan on doing anything, unlike Alan Joyce when he just decided to ground Qantas flights back in 2011. They have support from some politicians as well, with Bob Katter and Tanya Plibersek attending their protest. Labor has been giving the government a hard time about all these job losses, given they promised to create them, asking if any of the one million jobs they have pledged to create will be in Australia.

We’re starting to hear about the budget a little bit as it gets closer and closer to May. The government has been saying that it’s going to be tough because according to Tony Abbott, “Labor booby-trapped the budget. Labor booby-trapped the budget” – Yes, he did say it twice – and that means its going to be a tough one. Labor seems to think that isn’t the case, and is saying the government is being over dramatic in order to get away with making huge cuts. To be quite honest I would not be surprised – given that booby-trapping a budget would have been quite difficult if it is computer based – maybe it had a virus…

The International Court of Justice in the Hague has ruled that Japan’s Southern Ocean whaling expeditions are not for scientific purposes as the Japanese have claimed. The court ruling is final, but the Japanese are expected to continue whaling in the Northern Pacific Ocean because they can. But it is a win for Australia and most, if not all, Australians are pretty happy about it.

Also this week, the government is being accused of moving asylum seekers for their own purposes – and not good ones. According to the government, Villawood Detention centre is being renovated and that means the asylum seekers inside need to be moved. The issue is that there are some asylum seekers at Villawood who are suing the government for protection because of a bungle a few months ago that saw their information put on the Dept of Immigration website, and their court cases are due to start this and/or next week. These asylum seekers are being moved to Curtin Detention Centre in a remote part of northern WA, which has what has set off the conspiracy alarms. The suggestion is that the government is moving them to a remote centre on the other side of the country, where there is limited communications and the possibility of not having contact with their lawyers, such that they will voluntarily leave Australia and return home or drop the cases. There were protests outside Villawood Detention Centre on Friday and Saturday, with people blocking the entries on Friday and others clashing with police on Saturday.

Also this week, Angus Houston was put in charge of the Australian-run search for MH370 and Tony Abbott has promised to look for as long as is possible for the flight, the Malaysian PM also came to visit to check on how it was going and to say thank you, Arthur Sinodinos suffered from ICAC Memory Loss Disorder and the ICAC was gatecrashed.

Tweet of the Week

There was mention that the guy who gatecrashed ICAC is a serial pest….

Stuff I’ve been Reading/Watching/Listening etc

A dating site in the US prevented Mozilla Firefox users from entering their site before they read a letter about how the Mozilla CEO was homophobic – SFGate

But was this an overreach by activists? – The Advocate

The Week That Was – March 9 to March 15

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This week seemed less politically charged nationally, which is a nice change, but there were state elections in Tasmania and South Australia.

We begin the week with both Tony Abbott and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten being sombre about the missing plane belonging to Malaysia Airlines. The flight, MH370 (the flight number now retired) went missing early (2am Malaysian time) on Saturday morning and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Tony Abbott talked with his Malaysian counterpart, and Australia has sent some Orion surveillance planes to search for the flight.

SPC Ardmona (you remember them?) have had a good week, signing a deal to give Woolworths supermarkets more fruit, not only in its capacity as an independent company with its own brands, but also as part of Woolworths’ home brand (Woolworths Select). Hopefully someone will think its a good idea to call the fruit products “Woolworth’s Select by SPC” such that the consumer can tell that the fruit is home-grown. SPC has also had a rise in sales due to the coverage of its bid to get some taxpayer money, so they are much happier down in Shepparton.

Meanwhile, the State election campaigns in South Australia and Tasmania have wrapped up, with Tasmania (at last glance) changing from a Labor Government to a Liberal Government. It looks like South Australia might have ended up with a hung parliament, but there are still pre-poll, declaration and postal votes to count, so we won’t know for a while, especially in some marginal seats. I don’t live there, so I don’t know much about it. You can read more in-depth on the ABC Elections website for both Tasmania and South Australia.

Other than that, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce fronted a Senate Estimates Inquiry, and the Western Australian Federal Senate re-election campaign began to gain momentum.

Tweet of the Week

What I’ve Been Reading/Watching/Listening etc

Tasmania’s State voting system explained – ABC Online

The YouTube ad revenue split – DailyDot

Ukraine – explained by author John Green

Scott Ludlam invites Tony Abbott to Western Australia

The Week That Was – March 2 to March 8

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This week began with the Australian missionary arrested in North Korea being released after he apologised, although it was mainly because of his age. Also, both Tony Abbott and the government are warning Russia not to invade Crimea in Ukraine, so he does have some diplomacy skills. It also happens to be the 6-month mark for the Coalition government.

Qantas’ issues continue to divide the politicians, with debate over whether or not the government should get rid of the Qantas Sale Act, with one suggestion being that the international operations of Qantas remain Australian-owned, while having the domestic operations foreign-owned. Apparently there is no “Plan B” so to speak, despite rumours that Warren Truss had come up with an idea to have the government keep majority ownership of the airline, but increase the maximum number of shares a foreign shareholder can have. It may have been on the news, but apparently it was never an idea…oh well.

The other issue that arose early this week was the airline’s communications, with a message from Qantas on Monday saying the carbon tax had nothing to do with their problems. But on Wednesday, all of a sudden, the carbon tax was a factor – the Opposition were suspicious, and rightfully so. Labor also expressed concern that the virtually clean safety record of Qantas could be compromised, which then brings out the clip from Rain Man.

This week the Grattan Institute called for a change to health pricing, particularly surgery prices. They found huge differences in prices between hospitals, with one charging less than $10,000 for a specific surgery and another hospital doing the same surgery charging almost $25,000. Apparently it has something to do with the services given to you pre- and post-operation, so in some ways it adds up.

Still with health, it appears that Medicare is being defrauded by a few nasty people – apparently the vast majority of Australians are not rorting or misusing the system. But it is an easy system to defraud because people’s information is available at so many service providers.

The government is still trying to convince workers that they will be ok under the new government, but may have had a setback when the draft terms of reference for the Productivity Review Commission were leaked. They want the commission to see if penalty rates could be removed…I thought Work Choices was dead, buried and cremated.

Tweet of the Week

Faux Pas of the Week

Mattias Cormann, the Finance Minister, said that the issue of more women in cabinet was a “side issue” – it may not have caused so much fuss, if he hadn’t said it on International Women’s Day…Ooops.

What I’ve Been Reading/Watching/Listening etc

SBS2’s The Feed had fun spoofing 12 Years a Slave in the hope that the ABC might apologise for spelling their presenter’s name wrong, a là Solomon Northup and the New York Times.

The Week that Was – February 23 to March 1

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So back last week, a guy died on Manus Island during riots. When Scott Morrison first talked about it, he said that the deceased asylum seeker was outside the complex when he was killed. It appears that this was not the case – the Iranian asylum seeker, who arrived after Kevin Rudd’s asylum seeker PNG resettlement plan, was inside the centre when he was killed. There have been calls for Scott Morrison to resign or for Tony Abbott to sack him. Abbott has said that he won’t sack him because we “don’t want a wimp running border protection” and that Morrison is “strong and decent”, despite the fact that Scott Morrison is the Minister for Immigration and not the Minister for Border Protection. Back on Manus Island, the locals have said they are rattled by the event and would very much like to know what happened that night. Fair enough, if a guy had died near my house, I’d like to know exactly what happened too. The Manus locals are blaming Australia for what happened and Papua New Guinean officials are saying that locals and PNG police weren’t very involved. They also said that the asylum seeker death was confirmed to have taken place in the complex very early on.

Craig Thompson, after having been found guilty in court last week, has this week been referred to the Privileges Committee to see if he deliberately lied to Parliament when he made a speech, denying he did anything untoward, and the Government has apologised to the people Thompson named in his speech. Labor allowed both motions through, and I guess, given Thompson was found guilty, it would look bad if they voted against it.

Stephen Conroy caused a major brouhaha (yes, brouhaha) this week, when he accused Angus Campbell of a political cover-up to do with Operation Sovereign Borders and what happened on Manus Island, which you can watch here. The Defence Minister wants an apology, which Conroy hasn’t given and Bill Shorten isn’t forcing him to. Conroy has however, withdrawn the comment, but the Liberals still want him sacked. In Senate Estimates hearings, it has been said that about $2 million has been spent on Operation Sovereign Borders, but they won’t say how much specifically they have spent on the orange lifeboats they’ve been using to send the asylum seekers back. Hmmm.

Aid for drought affected farmers also passed through parliament this week, with money for loans as well as handouts for those farmers who really and desperately need money and help. They are also setting aside $33 million dollars for mental health services to help farmers as well.

Speaking of aid, Qantas came back with its results, but it seems that the government is very reluctant to give it money, because there would be backlash from, well, a lot of people. However, they may still change the Qantas Sale Act so they can have more foreign ownership and make a bit more money. And while I don’t understand finance and economics that well, I can tell when shareholders are unimpressed. Qantas shares went down twice on Thursday, first when the $252 million loss was announced and then again when Alan Joyce said he was staying in his role as CEO…Ouch.

Tweets of the Week

A selection of tweets from the growing number of people who are taking part in a twitter campaign #notinmyname

The Week That Was – February 9 to February 15

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So, Griffith will remain in Labor hands after the by-election last week, despite a lower than expected voter turnout. Who can blame them though? People in that area have had to go and vote up to five times in the last three years.

Meanwhile, the Government has decided to hold a Royal Commission into construction union corruption after the ABC and Fairfax broke the story. Speaking of unions, Tony Abbott seems to like blaming them for problems. This week Toyota announced they would stop manufacturing cars in Australia by 2017. This means that there will be no more car manufacturing in Australia after 2017. He says that the unions are to blame because they were demanding about work conditions, despite the fact that Toyota’s isn’t blaming them at all.

Tony Abbott has also been using his “some businesses close, others open” and “some jobs finish and others begin” lines again. While that line wasn’t commented on in Australia, an Australian CNN journalist threw some excellent shade by commenting “No word yet on what those new jobs will be”. There are fears however, because if the number of new jobs created is less than the number of jobs lost, there could be a recession here in Australia, which we avoided thanks to Kevin Rudd’s Labor government in 2007.

SPC Ardmona has been thrown a $22 million lifeline by the Victorian Government in a deal with the parent company Coca Cola Amatil. They’ll upgrade the plant with the money and hopeful keep some workers there. I don’t know if the Victorian Government were always going to give some money anyway, but they had promised to match the $25 million that SPC asked the Federal Government for, had they helped. Another issue is Qantas, Australia’s national airline. They would also like some money and some ownership legislation change. They’re saying that because they are not Holden, and they mainly want a change in their foreign ownership guidelines, the government should really consider helping them, and that argument appears to have worked.

Moving on, the Close the Gap Report shows that while there have been some gains within the indigenous population, particularly in decreasing infant mortality and the rise in Year 12 attainment, there are still some major issues to deal with, such as life expectancy and unemployment. The national unemployment rate also rose this month, which was expected but there are disagreements over who or what is to blame.

On to international matters, the foreign minister Julie Bishop has been in Fiji with delegates from the Pacific Forum in the hopes that once free and fair elections are held in Fiji later this year, the nation can rejoin the forum. Bishop says that she hopes to increase to trade between Australia and Fiji. Of more concern however, is that when the Americans come to Indonesia in the next week, the Indonesian Foreign Minister has said he will be talking to them about Australia’s actions in Operation Sovereign Borders. Oh dear.

Tweet of the Week

Juanita Phillips, the weekday newsreader for ABC News NSW has got Twitter (and a new news set)

Faux Pas of the Week

A lesson in paying attention in Federal Parliament.  Nickolas Varvaris, a Liberal MP, appeared to be asleep during a division of the house and he ended up voting with Labor, because no-one told him what had happened. Oops.

What I’ve been Reading/Watching/Listening

A Valentine’s themed Dumb Ways to Die message (see the original here)

The ABC Elections Site – with two (maybe three) state elections and multiple by-elections this year, not to mention some recent redistributions, you need to have a look.