@ErraticleeM If the RBA serves no useful purpose then get rid of it, I am pretty sure someone in the treasury can announce rate rises based on the 2 year bond rate and as for the other “function” of keeping steady employment HOW ARE THEY DOING THIS NOW!!!!
@ajamesbragg MMT ?
If a country can make currency out of thin air (Like the RBA does) why do we have to pay taxes?
There are many reasons, which ones are yours?
@ajamesbragg We don’t need him to have another arts degree, I don’t care if it on how to groom cats, I just want the government to listen to the Australian people.
@OMGTheMess But the banks make more profit.
The RBA works for the banks, not the government or the people. It’s a PRIVATE INSTITUTION allowable under government regulation. Its sole purpose is to support the BANKS so the money keeps flowing their way.
@SimonKennedyMP The global elite’s plan.
1 - too many people on the planet, cause conflict (Christian versus Islam) start wars, create shortages (oil) farming becomes impossible, food shortages, starvation.
2 - Elites come to the rescue and you are saved only if you comply to their wishes.
@mike_maloney It’s too late.
It’s virtually impossible to start a new business and be profitable without spending 90% of your time in compliance issues, set up by a small minded bureaucrat who doesn’t care about your business but will defend his right to interfere because his job is dependent
@shallowchal It was John Howard who set the Australian fuel prices to the international market price making it cheaper to import our fuel oils than produce it at home.
Stupidity goes back a long time in politics.
@Ptcn_24 About half a day of interest payments on $1 Trillion of debt and growing with no intention of ever paying it off.
Will your bank give you more money when you haven’t even tried to pay anything off the last loan.?
@DHughesy Also the LIBERAL party Dave, the other side of the Uniparty coin. It’s about time you opened your eyes a bit more and started talking to ON and reading their programs for change.
MORE THAN A BILLION DOLLARS, AND NOBODY HAS TO SAY WHERE IT WENT
I've spent months documenting that Australia's political money laws never require anyone to disclose where a dollar was spent. I thought that was an electoral law problem. It isn't. It's the whole system.
Put the discretionary streams in one column.
Major and Local Community Infrastructure, $560.9 million, one-off. Invitation-only. Forty-five divisions got nothing. 73.2 per cent went to divisions notionally held by Labor.
Criteria never published.
Supporting Multicultural Communities, $171.3 million over three years. The department's own page says closed non-competitive and one-off ad hoc rounds.
How you get invited is not published.
The Journalism Assistance Fund, $67.6 million over three years at $13,000 per full-time-equivalent journalist a year. Plus $33 million to AAP, a mandated minimum $3 million a year of advertising carved out for regional newspapers, and $204.1 million of campaign advertising in 2024-25 alone.
The News Bargaining Incentive.
Two government members told Parliament it should deliver $225 to $275 million a year to news businesses. Treasury has published no costing of its own.
The Department of Finance, $55.8 million on the electoral register over its history, including $12.7 million to the major parties' research centres, filed as Other Receipt rather than public funding.
And from January, election funding rises to $5 per formal first preference vote, indexed every six months, alongside a new quarterly payment to registered parties with a sitting member, and to independents.
My finding on the electoral register was that you can see who receives and never who pays out. This is the same gap at the other end of the pipe. On the grants register the payments are itemised. You can see every dollar and every recipient. What's invisible is the decision. Who was asked. Who approved it. On what basis.
So there are three points in one circuit.
Money coming in, where six dollars in ten arrive with no payer named. Money going out, where no section of the Act requires itemisation. And government money going out, where the payment is published but the selection is secret.
At no point in the whole circuit can you trace a decision back to a person.
Now the part where I have to be fair, because I had this wrong when I first drafted it. Recipients are not unaccountable. The journalism fund requires expenditure reports and can demand an audit. The payments scheme carries penalties for failing to report. What none of it requires is disclosure to you. Treasury looked at this in November 2022 and decided against going further, saying it did not consider there was a persuasive case for regulating how news businesses use funding. That is their reasoning to defend, not a gap they missed.
The rest of the steelman holds too.
Every one of these streams has a defensible purpose. Communities need infrastructure. Journalism is collapsing. Parties need resourcing or they end up owned by donors. None of this requires anyone to have acted badly.
That's what unsettles me. Nobody had to.
Cold Hard Facts. Corrected when wrong. No misinformation.
What's your thoughts…?
Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺
Sources:
Are in the comments below