ABOUT

I’m a Vice-Presdient and the Campaign Director at the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

Until 2015 I was the Secretary of the Australian Services Union in NSW and the ACT.

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46 thoughts on “ABOUT”

  1. Congratulations on your web site. It is so powerful because it is so simple. As I commented to one of the more nasty contributors who criticised you for your ‘opinions’ that you do not offer opinions, just the facts. It is the comments that are opinionated.

    As a volunteer I am in contact with a lot of elderly people and have helped many of them to ‘sort out the internet’. While they are happy to embrace the internet and use email, that is about it. They are not interested in Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites, so it is important that sites like yours are accessible. There is a growing tendency for some bloggers to just use Twitter, etc and this will alienate our elderly citizens.

    Another addition to your excellent site is the Steve Bracks appointment to New York, withdrawn at the very last minute after he had done the orientation and the introductory letters were issued, the house packed, etc. This severely embarrassed Australia in the eyes of the United States. Your excellent resources make it easier for you to access the details, unfortunately at the moment I do not have the time.

    The only other thought I would offer is for the excellent web sites that are growing daily should have some cross reference so there is a stronger movement. At the moment your are all doing excellent work for The Cause but we need to discover you all. This is a crucial time for Australia and I for one am feeling quite helpless. I am contributing my comments and alerting my family, friends and colleagues to the excellent sites I become aware of.

    Good luck with your venture – I think you will probably be overwhelmed in the coming months as so many frustrated and angry people discover your site. But please, keep it as simple and straightforward as it is now.

    Thank you

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  2. Great job! There is a few more you missed (sneaky, aren’t they?!) like: cut funding to 400 charities just before Christmas; cut funding to Deaf interpreter services and mental health services in country NSW, etc. Will be following – thank you.

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  4. Hey,
    The list is quite extensive so I may have missed it but I couldn’t see a mention of the ill-advised $20m scheme announced to provide one off vouchers to couples for counseling! Given the amount of cuts important areas of society have received I think showing that they’ve allocated money to something so ridiculous really highlights how bad things have been so far! Of course I may have just missed it, if that’s the case sorry! 🙂

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    • Hi Claire, I didnt include this as whilst ill-advised, I didnt think it fit the definition of “hurting” Australians or “wrecking” the country

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  5. This is brilliant work….and an absolute necessity..congratulations…if there is anyway I can assist…please let me know, so I can marshal people, inspire, inform and educate. Thank You

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  7. I want to know where you stand on Gobalisation TPP I see the global happenings infecting the Local National & think we need to attack at the disease not the symptoms. The symptoms see to be duplicated in many countries

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    • Our union has been opposed to and been involved in campaigns against these secret trade deals which remove democracy from countries and favour corporations since the original US agreement in 2003

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  11. The sociology of hipsters convinced me! Sally, we continually hear discussion that International treaties regarding Human Rights et al are not binding. (Really, that like using glue that doesn’t work) I’ve located this comment by Sir Harry Gibbs, former High Court Judge “The High Court has already answered with regard to the position held by treaties signed by the Commonwealth Government in the Teoh case of 1994. “Ordinary people have the right to expect government officials to consider Australia’s international obligations even if those obligations are not reflected in specific Acts of Parliament: the rights recognised in international treaties are an implied limit on executive processes.”

    The full letter by Gibbs is at http://www.scribd.com/doc/49243918/Sir-Harry-Gibbs-On-The-Constitutional-Crisis.

    If what Gibbs is saying, which seems backed by other eminent legalists, there may well be a case to push this question quite high for investigation in order to obvert the activities of Government against Unions and more generally the people.

    Its only a thought, back to hipsters now.

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  12. Thanks for the list, look forward to checking them off as we fix them, hopefully starting right after a soon DD. Probably more likely after 2016 😦

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    • I dont know much about this organisation. The article suggests it is independent of government. If so, can the Abbott Government be responsible?

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  16. Thank you so much for putting this all together. I have shared your regularly updated link with countless people, many of which are blissfully unaware of the true extent of the unfolding disaster that is the Abbott government. Keep it up! Cheers.

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  17. Hi Sally, please be sure to keep an updated copy of this website safe and secured offline as it will probably draw the attention of people who want it shutdown. Best wishes, Ken

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  18. Hi Sally,
    It’s been over a decade now but I will never forget when you and the ASU stood beside me and assisted my fight through the Industrial Relations Commission. Good to see you are still fighting the fights that need to be fought for all Australians and keeping others honest!
    Kindest Regards
    Heidi

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  20. How do we as the voting public take action against this as in legally putting a stop to it. A tax is a tax is a tax. Not the only broken promise but high on the agenda at present. Elected politicians should be held to their election promises. How do I as an individual do anything about this?

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  21. Carnage more like it.
    abbott is, and always will be, a Right-Winged-Fascist.
    A Megalomaniacal Zealot is what he is.
    SHAME ON YOU…to all the Gullible Australian’s who voted for abbott and his Brown-Shirts.
    Individuals really needed to been pro-active and to make an effort to find out what abbott is all about and what his actual policies were before voting. He is such a dangerous individual.
    One of abbott’s actual Policies is to “Repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act”.
    Enough said.

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  22. think this a great site,, but id like to see also what his spent our money on,, from the sporting, to the religious to the prebudget dinner..

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  23. I’ve just stumbled upon this site. Excellent work. I’ve been constructing my own mental list, but this is a far more comprehensive, and public, collection. H0wever I’m worried that while Abbott is leading the most incompetent and cruelest government I can recall, and takes the crown from Billy Hughes as the worst PM ever, the Opposition is largely missing in action.

    Shorten was good on the budget reply, but that’s about the first we’ve heard from him. Where’s Albanese and the other Labor front-benchers? Labor should be tearing into this miserable lot on a daily basis — there’s enough ammunition on your site alone to warrant a daily press release — and yet we’ve heard precious little. The country needs a visible Opposition, and one with a compelling set of policies.

    Keep up this excellent work.
    Tony Guttmann

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  26. Heard about your push at the ALP conference today for a change on offshore processing. Thanks so much for that. It’s the one ALP policy I cannot get past. Even thinking to preference the Greens in protest. Even Palmer is more enlightened than the ALP on this issue and that feels like an incredibly weird thing to say!

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  27. Hi Sally,

    Congratulations on your very comprehensive list.

    I have written a similarly comprehensive article on the actions of the Abbott government. I used your list in my research but I’ve also covered some other things that I don’t think are on your list: http://precariousclimate.com/2014/08/29/a-year-in-abbottland-2/ (The Political Sword have also published it but they removed all the hyperlinks.)

    Of course there may be examples where you disagree with me about whether the decision was bad!

    I’m also intending to publish an environment-specific list over the weekend.

    James Wight, precariousclimate.com

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  28. I’m hoping you will continue to update Tony Abbott’s wreckage page. I’m relying on you. It looks like your updates have stopped.

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  29. Just found your site Sally I thank people like you for telling it as it is I’m a staunch TWU member and a believer of workers rights cheers !

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  30. This is impressive. I was beginning to do the same but I could not keep it going. Abbott was stuffing up at too rapid a rate for me to keep up.

    We have two years to go with this mad man. Meanwhile so much damage is being done to our community.

    I feel more despairing than I every have in my life. However the anger is building and I just hope that the Australian public does not forget all the disasters. Your list is brilliant. I hope it can be continued because there is nothing surer that the stuff ups will continue.

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  31. Thanks Again Sally, I first visited your site some time ago and am stunned at this idiot governments continued rampant destruction of our governance system.

    But please don’t include verification links to sources that you have to subscribe to, especially the bastard Australian newspaper, who really have a lot of responsibility for getting these idiots elected in the first place.

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  33. Hi Sally,

    I am sure you’d be interested in my kickstarter.

    I am trying to fund toilet rolls with Tony Abbott on them. Please share this if you believe in this art project.

    Regards,
    Keaton

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  34. Thanks so much, Sally
    I often regret not recording events, and lose the facts I needed to quote.
    It would be great to have a ‘sort by subject’ which would help campaigners extract the entries relevant to them.

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  35. Hi Sally, within a few days we shall see the last of CRS Australia (formerly the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service), which was responsible for getting people with a disability or long term illness/ injury into (or back into) the workforce. I don’t have a link to the announcement of the decision to close it down, because I never saw it mentioned in the mainstream media, but workers in the Service were advised soon after the election of the Abbott government that it was being axed.

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  37. Hi,

    Thank you so much for this. It is concise and to the point and I love the fact that everything is referenced! I am doing a condensed version of this in my blog, which I will link here later, but I will credit you explicitly and send people your way! I hope you don’t mind.

    Alice

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