In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG says Turnbull is not conservative enough
Muslim fraudster caught but shows no remorse
We are just cattle to be exploited in her Muslim values
A millionaire Muslim woman who posed as a 'battling single mother' so she could live in public housing for 15 years has had her appeal thrown out of court.
Rebecca Khodragha, 44, appeared at Parramatta District Court on Wednesday to fight her three months home detention sentence, hoping for it to be lightened to community service.
The married mother-of-two, whose husband owns an electrical business which rakes in more than $1million each year, was given the sentence in 2016 when she was convicted of welfare fraud.
Rebecca Khodragha, 44, had her appeal thrown out in court on Wednesday and will now be kicked out of her housing commission apartment
The court was previously told that Ms Khodrangha's husband Khaled Sabsabi owned a lucerative electrical contracting business which was registered to the housing commission address.
At the same time Ms Khodrangha was claiming welfare benefits, the couple owned two other investment properties - in Lakemba and Greenacre - which they later sold for a significant profit.
Justice Martin Sides said mother-of-two had an 'absence of remorse' and 'complete lack of insight', and dismissed the appeal.
The court heard that despite the fraud conviction, Ms Khodragha is still living in public housing and receives Centrelink payments.
Ms Khodragha married husband Khaled in an Islamic ceremony in 1991 but their wedding was unregistered and the pair have been in a Punchbowl housing commission unit in the city's south-west since that year, 7News reported.
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Must not refer to illegal immigrants as "fleas"
None of the "aylum-seeker" detainees are in fact refugees. None of them came to Australia directly from their own countries. So they already had refuge before they departed for Australia
LIBERAL Senator David Fawcett has clarified a statement where he appeared to describe asylum seekers as “fleas” while quizzing the Immigration Department over border protection.
The senator made the statement while responding to Employment Minister Michaelia Cash in a senate estimates hearing at Parliament House today. Minister Cash had defended the Turnbull Government’s track record on border protection by saying it was “still trying to clean up” a mess left by the former Labor government.
Senator Fawcett, a panel member of the estimates hearing, responded: “I’ll leave it there, I just question the ethics of nitpicking when your particular group brought the fleas in the first place.”
Senator Ian Macdonald, who made headlines this month by defending the Life Gold Pass for retired politicians, laughingly said “Nicely put.”
Senator Fawcett has since clarified his comment, saying he was describing the Labor Party’s dispute of a very small detail of processes at a time the Immigration Department was under great stress and that the stress was due to Labor policies at the time.
“If they were nitpicking they were responsible for the cause of the irritation,” he said.
Shadow Immigration Minister Shayne Neumann had called on the senators to apologise for their comments after they were initially made.
“It is beyond belief that a Turnbull Government senator would ever refer to vulnerable people seeking asylum as fleas, and even worse, to have other Coalition senators laugh, cheer and eagerly agree,” Mr Neumann told News Corp.
“Senators Fawcett and MacDonald should immediately apologise for their comments and start treating Australia’s humanitarian program with the respect and seriousness it deserves.”
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Michaelia Cash nailed ABCC’s value by calling out building cartels
If you’ve been paying attention, you will know that this week people in the construction union and someone from academe have been jumping up and down, loudly catastrophising the impact of recent changes to the Australian Building and Construction Commission legislation. Senator Derryn Hinch, who arranged to delay the implementation of the laws last year, reflected on his actions over the Christmas period. Now we have brought forward the key weapon in the fight against corporatised corruption in our building and construction sector: the implementation of an anti-corruption building code.
Hinch’s is a welcome move for consumers, employers and workers. It’s not so welcome for construction unions and the many businesses owned by them and operated in conjunction with employer groups. The rivers of dirty gold might dry up just a little.
Dave Noonan is the national secretary of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union’s construction division. This week, this newspaper carried a picture of him, looking suitably forlorn, alongside terrifying predictions of industry Armageddon. Contributing to the prophecies was University of Adelaide law professor Andrew Stewart. He railed against the inconvenience to business and denounced the code as an “unholy mess” of the government’s making.
If we are to believe these chaps, now that the industry will be required to not act corruptly, chaos, confusion and business disruption will imminently be upon us. Five thousand businesses will be in turmoil; there will be demands by the union for more money, marches in the streets, protests involving the manufacturing and transport sectors and, more generally, hell to pay.
Now is the precise moment that every single person in the country must ignore Noonan and his grieving mates. This is the wail of the ditched boyfriend, the spurned lover. We are seeing the break-up to end all break-ups: tier-one construction firms are going to have to break up with their dearly beloved chums in the unions. They will have to stop forcing their subcontractors into union enterprise bargaining agreements, and deal ethically with the subcontractors instead.
Unions are going to have to break up with the corporates that support them. Can you imagine the golf days that will have to be cancelled? Now, unions will have to go back to raising money the old-fashioned way, by walking up to workers at building sites in their lunch hour and asking them to join the union.
Noonan wasn’t the only one sooking in recent times. A few executives were a bit put out too. You see, Employment Minister Michaelia Cash nailed them, really nailed them, in parliament.
For decades, the big players in the construction sector have had the rest of the community conned. They complain about the unions, but really, they have always been in business with them. There is more profit that way.
In government ranks the penny has dropped, and Cash blasted the “big end of town”. She said, “I am not going to blame the CFMEU here, because ... it takes two to tango … So I am going to lump Lendlease in there and I am going to lump Probuild in there, on Hansard. I am going to say to them: ‘The reason we are doing this is to stop your cartel-like behaviour.’ ’’
Cash told parliament how small and medium-sized building contractors, if they want to work on jobs managed by tier-one builders such as Lendlease and Probuild, have to sign union EBAs at the insistence of the builders. This behaviour is forbidden by the new code.
Contrary to the union line, the code does not prevent building companies from employing apprentices or casuals, nor does it inhibit the safety of workers.
The code does not apply to unions at all, it only applies to companies. Simply, the code prohibits large companies from forcing smaller companies into union EBAs.
The punishment for breaking the code is the tier-one in question would be denied federal government work. As Cash said, subcontractors “cannot stand up to the CFMEU, they cannot stand up to Lendlease, they cannot stand up to Probuild’’ and that “what the code is seeking to do is break — we admit it — the cartel-like behaviour between head contractors and unions.’’.
Lendlease rejected the Minister’s characterisation, saying it is not engaged in cartel-like behaviour. Australia is known as the most expensive construction destination on the planet. There is ample proof that cartel-like conduct by tier-one builders and the construction unions has led us to this point.
Recently, I spoke with a contractor who was phoned by a tier-one firm and asked to consider tendering for some work. Several days later, a complete stranger to their completely non-union workplace arrived: a union rep. He mentioned the tender, dropped a union EBA on the desk and waxed lyrical about the “benefits of a union relationship”, but made the contractor aware he would need to be “kept happy”.
The contractor emailed the tier-one to say he wanted to tender for work but wouldn’t be entering into an EBA with a union. He already had an EBA with his staff, and everyone was happy, would that do?
A reply came straight back, his tender wouldn’t be required, not now, not ever.
Ominously, the email was signed off with the words “Good luck”. This is how a company in a cartel behaves.
Long live the code, and good luck to all those who breach it.
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International students studying in Australia reach record numbers, Education Department figures show
Figures from the federal Education Department show there were 554,179 full-fee paying international students in 2016, an increase of more than 10 per cent on the previous year.
The higher education sector had the largest share of Australia's international students, with 43 per cent.
Of those the largest numbers came from China and India.
The vocational education sector accounted for 26 per cent of international student enrolments with English Language Intensive Courses attracting 21 per cent.
The schools sector only attracted 3 per cent of the total figure.
Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham said the numbers showed the importance of attracting overseas students. "International education is now our third largest export sector generating more than $21 billion of economic activity in Australia, supporting many jobs and providing benefits to both Australian and international students," he said.
"There are real upsides in terms of the jobs that are created, the opportunities for Australian students to study alongside international students and to gain exposure to people from more than 200 different countries who are now studying in Australia."
As well as the data on enrolments, the Government has released the results of last year's International Student Survey.
The survey found 89 per cent of students were satisfied or very satisfied with their overall experience in Australia.
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Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here