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Showing posts from February, 2022

Defective Stories

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  On Friday the 18th, the Morrison government rejected the recommendation of the bipartisan parliamentary committee enquiring into homelessness, that Australia should develop a 10-year national plan. The government's written response refused any new funding (including for provision of accommodation to women and children facing domestic violence), described homelessness as a matter for the states, and only agreed to fully support two of the 35 recommendations in the committee report. The following Monday, the government confirmed it would continue funding the hiring of private eyes by Services Australia, as part of its welfare "crackdown". (In 2019, with the post-election rush-of-blood-to-the-head, Services Australia was the agency created by Scott Morrison to replace and clean out the Department of Human Services.) Investigators are given the power to follow, photograph, film and bug recipients of social assistance, despite previous audits and department stats confirming ...

Bad Calls - The Covid Helpline Fiasco And The Robodebt Connection

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Extract from The Saturday Paper article by Rick Morton: "The centrepiece of the federal government’s “Living with Covid” program is a call centre outsourced to former robo-debt collectors and staffed by workers on casual contracts with no medical experience. A cache of documents and testimony obtained by The Saturday Paper reveals the inner workings of the National Coronavirus Helpline, which is being run by private-equity owned Probe Group and its subsidiaries, on contracts worth more than $270 million." Morton's article discloses that the national helpline - listed as the first point of contact by multiple government departments - has been staffed by Probe with a small, badly-paid band of random recruits, who're tasked with triaging, despite often having only 2 hours training and no background in health care. Morton reports that the highly-stressed workers are overwhelmed by the volume, complexity and variety of calls - and that when problems arise they're tol...