21 — Blow it up

We discuss National Sorry day, Aboriginal people dying an custody and Rio Tinto destroying an ancient and irreplaceable historic site. Then we dance on Robodebt's grave and chat about the long-lasting effects of Australia's bushfires.   Sorry Day

• May 26 is National Sorry Day, a day of recognition and apology to the Stolen Generations.
• While Prime Minster (and after), John Howard refused to apologise for the actions of the Australian government.
• Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised on behalf of the government in 2008.
• Since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991, there have been 400 deaths of Aboriginal people while in police custody, with no police being held responsible.
• Rio Tinto blew up Juukan Gorge cave, a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal sacred site.
• Scott Morrison invoked the Indigenous principle of caring for country to justify policies of austerity.

Robodebt, dead

• The government has scrapped Robodebt, the illegal policy of hounding people for debts they don’t owe.
• The robodebt program has been repeatedly shown to be ineffectual and inefficient.
• The government knew the scheme was illegal.
• 2000 deaths can be directly linked to the enforcement of Robodebt.
• Congratulations to the AUWU and the #NotMyDebt campaign for this win!
• If you were affected and are not a part of it already, you can register your interest in joining the class-action lawsuit against Centerlink.
• Stuart Robert, the government minister responsible for Robodebt, also once charged the taxpayer almost $63,000 for in excess mobile data usage.
• He also made his elderly father an unknowing dummy director of a company.
• Scott Morrison has asked the tax office to look into creating an automated recovery system like Robodebt for the JobKeeper Covid stimulus payments.

Big Budget Black Hole

• The government overestimated the amount they would spend on the JobKeeper payments by $60 billion (because a lot less people are elegible than originally projected).
• A week before the news broke, deputy PM Michael Sukkar suggested that if the scheme covered less people than planned, it should be reviewed.
• The NSW government has enacted a 12 month pay freeze on doctors, nurses and teachers.
• … after giving the chief of police a $90k pay rise.

Snitch on your boss

• Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has threatened bosses with fines if they force workers to come into the office unnecessarily.
• The NTEU rank and file members successfully pushed union leadership to push back on bad University management deals.

Where there’s smoke…

• Smoke from Australia’s 2019-20 fire season killed 445 people and put thousands in hospital.
• Australia’s Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 caused years of trauma.
• Australian people want immediate and drastic action on climate change.
• Brazil’s environment minister called for environmental deregulation while people are distracted by COVID.

Actions

• Talk to your friends, start a chat and work out who you can talk to and commiserate with. Find people who will have your back!
• Don’t just say Sorry. Pay the rent.
• Learn about deaths of indigenous Australians in custody. It’s easy to ignore, but dont.
• Please give us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps others find us.