*Pic: Senator David Leyonhjelm
The word ‘dickhead’ has made its way into parliamentary speech.
Senator David Leyonhjelm (Lib Dem, NSW) used it to describe the 17yo Bankstown youth who went missing on a fishing trip and turned up in the Middle East waving a black flag.
Brendan O’Connor (Lab, Gorton Vic ) criticised Senator Mathias “Girlyman” Cormann (Lib, WA) for “sounding like a dickhead” when using the sexist putdown against opposition leader Bill Shorten (Lab, Maribyrnong, Vic).
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said opposition leader Bill Shorten was leader of “Team Idiot” on border protection. So much for debate on the human rights of refugees.
The standards in parliament are dropping:
• in general debate;
• during question time;
• on principle;
• in the quality of the representatives, as evidenced by some committees CLA has appeared before over the past decade; and
• in how Ministers think they are entitled to interfere with independent bodies…see below.
ASIC gets it right, one day
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) chairman Greg Medcraft told a business lunch in Sydney last month that civil penalties for white-collar offences were “just not strong enough”.
“This is a bit of a paradise, Australia, for white collar, frankly,” he said, expanding on his thoughts by saying Australia needed harsher jail terms and bigger penalties. “All you’re doing is giving them a slap on the wrist [and] that is not deterring people.”
But he metamorphosed into a wimp after a phone conversation with Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, who said he was concerned on seeing Medcraft’s comments in the media. Before a Senate Estimates hearing later in the month, Medcraft said: “”I correct that. Basically the point is that we want to make sure we don’t become a paradise.”
There, it’s official. Australia, paradise for white collar crime one day, not a paradise the next.
CLA has previously commented that ASIO and the AFP could find many more criminals, doing much more damage to Australia and individual Australians, if they concentrated on the boardrooms of the nation rather than the back streets.
Apparently the chair of ASIC agreed with us, for one day. http://tinyurl.com/mopbmwz
