Australian Politics General...

basilio said:

Huge judgement. Judge Lee went to great pains to explain the reasoning behind his decision.

I think Lerhmann is in a world of trouble after this decision. There is still an upcoming rape case in Queensland and his history of getting women drunk and taking advantage of them is not going to go away. On top of that the other stories that came out in the trial about his behaviour when looking for money from Channel 7 won't be forgotten in a hurry.

The question of people having their drinks spiked is also on the table. I remembered a friend of mine who I had to take home from a pub after she suddenly went very wobbly. Almost certainly happened after a spiked drink. Very hard to prove however because it goes through the system quite quickly. It is quite scary to see the behavioural change in a person who has been spiked.

Did Bruce Lehrmann use a date rape drug like GHB to assault Brittany Higgins as suspected by the AFP as a possibility?

Former Assistant AFP Commissioner Leanne Close wrote in her notes, in relation to a meeting with Senator Linda Reynolds, about information that Brittany Higgins might have been drugged by Bruce Lehrmann and […]

kangaroocourtofaustralia.com

Bruce Lehrmann named as man accused of rape in Toowoomba

The former Liberal staffer has lost a bid to keep his identity suppressed after being charged with two counts of rape in Toowoomba late last year.

www.abc.net.au

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The legal system is designed to take emotions out of the proceedings and it looks as though judge Lee did an exceptional job, under extreme pressure.

IFocus said:

The AFP thought date rape drug had been used which would explain a lot.

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That would make a lot of sense, in the context of how she went from walking in to Parliament house and being unable to function coherently a short time later.

As I've said since the beginning of this, I think speculating on the forum in a situation like this, just puts the poster and Joe in a precarious position.

Two people behaved badly, by going for a night on the booze then both going back into their workplace, as you know that is a real no no in our industries.

When it becomes a criminal offence, people making statements, other than those which are either truthful or provable in an ongoing criminal matter is fraught with danger.

If any of those involved in the proceedings, googled their name and key words, I'm sure ASF posts would be brought up by the search engine, there is a difference between an opinion and a statement infering fact.


The later can be deemed as slander and defamation, as far as I know.

The criminal trial really needed to run. Wilkinson was heavily criticised and still thinks she came out smelling like roses. Both Higgins and Lehrmann lied. The whole thing was an utter mess.
The judge put forward the most plausible summary he could off the information he had.

moXJO said:

The criminal trial really needed to run. Wilkinson was heavily criticised and still thinks she came out smelling like roses. Both Higgins and Lehrmann lied. The whole thing was an utter mess.
The judge put forward the most plausible summary he could off the information he had.

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Exactly, spot on moXJO.
A good summary by the ABC.

So who were the rioters at the Sydney church stabbing and what was their motivation?


In some pretty disgusting scenes, paramedics and police were attacked by a mob who apparently were alerted by social media that an event was going on at this (Christian) church.

I don't think it's a stretch to conclude that the mob could have been supporters of the attacker trying to prevent him being arrested or assisting him to escape. If so, that could amount to being accessories to a terrorist act. If so, all of these rioters are terrorists themselves and should be dealt with accordingly, with very long sentences when (and if) they are finally identified.

SirRumpole said:

So who were the rioters at the Sydney church stabbing and what was their motivation?

Paramedics hid for over three hours in fear for their lives after Sydney church stabbing

Emergency responders were confronted with "terrifying and extremely violent" scenes after a bishop was stabbed during a church service. Paramedics had to hide in the church after coming under threat.

www.abc.net.au

In some pretty disgusting scenes, paramedics and police were attacked by a mob who apparently were alerted by social media that an event was going on at this (Christian) church.

I don't think it's a stretch to conclude that the mob could have been supporters of the attacker trying to prevent him being arrested or assisting him to escape. If so, that could amount to being accessories to a terrorist act. If so, all of these rioters are terrorists themselves and should be dealt with accordingly, with very long sentences when (and if) they are finally identified.

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My understanding is that they were Christians wanting to lynch the attacker.

Syrian Christians maybe Greek Orthodox ?

SirRumpole said:

So who were the rioters at the Sydney church stabbing and what was their motivation?

Paramedics hid for over three hours in fear for their lives after Sydney church stabbing

Emergency responders were confronted with "terrifying and extremely violent" scenes after a bishop was stabbed during a church service. Paramedics had to hide in the church after coming under threat.

www.abc.net.au

In some pretty disgusting scenes, paramedics and police were attacked by a mob who apparently were alerted by social media that an event was going on at this (Christian) church.

I don't think it's a stretch to conclude that the mob could have been supporters of the attacker trying to prevent him being arrested or assisting him to escape. If so, that could amount to being accessories to a terrorist act. If so, all of these rioters are terrorists themselves and should be dealt with accordingly, with very long sentences when (and if) they are finally identified.

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Possible. More likely the local Assyrian community who have had an absolute gutful of anti-christian rhetoric.

I don't personally condone attacking first responders and in way excuse their actions but I understand Dean being

IFocus said:

My understanding is that they were Christians wanting to lynch the attacker.

Syrian Christians maybe Greek Orthodox ?

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Assyrian. Middle Eastern but not the same as Syrian, but yes Eastern Orthodox Christian.

Bishop Emmanuel is very revered in that community and indeed across the world, so yes the parishioners got a bit too passionate.

Labor shut the online videos of the stabbings down via esafety department. Albo has quadrupled the esafety budget. So we can now see less online because Labor voters are apparently too stupid to just not watch things that frighten them.

Labor always finds a way of being the world's biggest fckwits and make Australia look like a backwater. Completely off Labor again. They are screwing up on to many fronts.

moXJO said:

Labor shut the online videos of the stabbings down via esafety department. Albo has quadrupled the esafety budget. So we can now see less online because Labor voters are apparently too stupid to just not watch things that frighten them.

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In principle I'm anti-censorship but taking an objective view, perhaps there's a thinking that having video of a high profile incident online will just encourage copycat attacks?

Smurf1976 said:

In principle I'm anti-censorship but taking an objective view, perhaps there's a thinking that having video of a high profile incident online will just encourage copycat attacks?

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Yes I think all this high profile knife attack news, brings out the the worst in those with mental issues of a certain kind, they tend to want to fight imaginary people or are paranoid the imaginary people are after them.
Hopefully the news coverage is kept to a minimum, but usually that isn't the case.

Julia Baird damming reflection

Bruce Lehrmann's 'omnishambles' defamation case triggered a cruel culture war and a sick kind of grief. Will we learn from this shameful episode?​

An "omnishambles" that summonsed the vociferous support of the #metoo movement, then the vituperative condemnation of sceptics, culture warriors and rape-deniers. And through it all, we saw a savaging of a rape victim that was unprecedented in recent Australian history.

The attacks on Brittany Higgins have been ugly, cruel, and wildly disproportionate.

Which is why now might be a good time to reflect on how devotedly and brutally mastheads and prominent commentators seek to undermine, discredit and destroy women who allege sexual assault, or report on it. We have watched them monster Higgins with an almost maniacal obsession, day after day, for years, despite public knowledge of her fragile mental health — and her then untested claims. It's not just individual commentators: entire media networks exploited and failed her, entire newspaper groups seemed devoted to derailing her, and we were too often complicit, clicking on stories, taking sides, digging in.

Smurf1976 said:

In principle I'm anti-censorship but taking an objective view, perhaps there's a thinking that having video of a high profile incident online will just encourage copycat attacks?

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It's to stop revenge attacks. That wasn't the problem though. Esafety has been busily censoring a number of conversations. Even trying to censor overseas posters by asking them to take their material down.

Now their budget has increased I have no doubt they will go too far. The commissioner is a proven zealot and has an axe to grind against twitter. She is currently being sued in court by Elon.

I don't trust leftist activists in charge of censorship or anything for that matter. Canada and democrat states in the US are literally a roadmap to where we are heading.

wayneL said:

Possible. More likely the local Assyrian community who have had an absolute gutful of anti-christian rhetoric.

I don't personally condone attacking first responders and in way excuse their actions but I understand Dean being

Assyrian. Middle Eastern but not the same as Syrian, but yes Eastern Orthodox Christian.

Bishop Emmanuel is very revered in that community and indeed across the world, so yes the parishioners got a bit too passionate.

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Being classified as a 'terrorist' attack suggests the teenager was of a different religion. He is quoted as saying the victim deserved it because of online bad mouthing of his religion.

IFocus said:

Julia Baird damming reflection

Bruce Lehrmann's 'omnishambles' defamation case triggered a cruel culture war and a sick kind of grief. Will we learn from this shameful episode?​

An "omnishambles" that summonsed the vociferous support of the #metoo movement, then the vituperative condemnation of sceptics, culture warriors and rape-deniers. And through it all, we saw a savaging of a rape victim that was unprecedented in recent Australian history.

The attacks on Brittany Higgins have been ugly, cruel, and wildly disproportionate.

Which is why now might be a good time to reflect on how devotedly and brutally mastheads and prominent commentators seek to undermine, discredit and destroy women who allege sexual assault, or report on it. We have watched them monster Higgins with an almost maniacal obsession, day after day, for years, despite public knowledge of her fragile mental health — and her then untested claims. It's not just individual commentators: entire media networks exploited and failed her, entire newspaper groups seemed devoted to derailing her, and we were too often complicit, clicking on stories, taking sides, digging in.

How rape can be turned into a culture war boggles the mind. But this case was politicised at the starting gate

Now might be a good time to reflect on how devotedly and brutally mastheads and prominent commentators seek to undermine, discredit and destroy women who allege sexual assault, or report on it.

www.abc.net.au

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Whole saga reminds me of the line in the song by Stealers Wheel:

'Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right
Here I am stuck in the middle with you'

One of those situations where grubs duke it out and the audience takes sides for no solid logical reason except they can.

Tisme said:

Being classified as a 'terrorist' attack suggests the teenager was of a different religion. He is quoted as saying the victim deserved it because of online bad mouthing of his religion.

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Yes he is Muslim.

Tisme said:

One of those situations where grubs duke it out and the audience takes sides for no solid logical reason except they can.

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Yes, it's also a great expose of how debauched the general culture of Parliament House is.

What with the Big Swinging Dicks, staffers masturbating on Minister's desks and the amount of alcohol floating around the pollies and their staff need to take a good look at themselves.

Cutting their expenses by 90% would be a start.

SirRumpole said:

Yes, it's also a great expose of how debauched the general culture of Parliament House is.

What with the Big Swinging Dicks, staffers masturbating on Minister's desks and the amount of alcohol floating around the pollies and their staff need to take a good look at themselves.

Cutting their expenses by 90% would be a start.

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I have a feeling each side will be made to wear their own legal costs

ERIC JOHNSTON


Woolies boss Brad Banducci cops Bullsh*t and jail threats: Canberra are we really doing this?​

Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci holds the line when he appeared before the Senate committee on supermarket prices at Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday. Picture: Martin Ollman/NCA NewsWire

Outgoing Woolworths boss Brad Banducci was never going to be in for an easy ride in front of the Senate inquiry, but it entered a parallel universe when a Greens senator with no real substantive experience outside of politics, lectured and bullied the seasoned retail executive about how to measure profit in his business.
Indeed, Greens Senator Nick McKim – the chair of the inquiry into supermarket prices – has undermined the importance of his own probe, threatening Banducci with jail time over his response on how returns are generated by Woolworths.
McKim, who briefly worked in advertising before entering politics two decades ago, wasn’t getting his way. He blustered, threw a tantrum and accused the Woolies boss of “bull****” and lying. Then as chair, the Tasmanian Green levelled repeated threats of personal sanctions and jail time for contempt of Senate rules. Canberra, are we really doing this?
This was never intended to be an exercise in information gathering by the Greens senator. And with other senators sitting idly by, if this reflects the attitude of politicians toward business and private capital, Australia is fast moving toward an economically destructive place.
If this is the benchmark, why would any other CEO volunteer co-operating with the myriad of parliamentary inquiries that are already chewing up an extraordinary amount of time?
Greens Senator Nick McKim has spent more than two decades in politics and done little else. Picture: Martin Ollman/NCA NewsWire
The Greens-led push to get the Senate look at supermarket pricing was always going to be a politically motivated exercise. This was evident in the very loaded “price gouging” preamble by McKim. There’s a bigger motivation for McKim, the Greens are gunning hard for a forced break-up of the supermarkets.
“You have thrived in a weak regulatory environment, you’ve engaged in anti-competitive behaviour and you’ve convinced large parts of this parliament, not to rein you in,” the Greens senator said in his welcome to both CEOs.
It is a shallow political response to deep and very real consumer frustration about inflation. But performances like McKim’s simply let Australians down.
The Albanese government, vulnerable over cost of living pressures, decided to back the Greens push for a supermarkets inquiry earlier this year. This means Labor are also responsible for this farce. And by doing so they’ve essentially outsourced Albanese’s efforts to respond to the crisis to the Greens.
To really get to the bottom of pricing pressures any inquiry should also consider the regulatory, planning and supply chain challenges faced by the supermarkets. Add into this rents, energy costs, and labour pressures that are all adding substantially to their cost of doing business. Then there are demands from Woolworths’ own local suppliers to raise prices. All of these points will merely form a footnote in the final report.
Instead the inquiry, like so many efforts in performative politics these days, has been conflated with a dozen concurrent real and invented issues supermarkets are grappling with. This includes the code of conduct with suppliers as well as competition barriers when it comes to expansion and adjacent acquisitions. There are problems in securing cash and the lack of resilience in the supply chain. Of course there is the yet-to-be-proved claims of gouging by the big supermarkets by McKim has the answer.

All smoke, no gun​

The senator reckoned he cracked the code by ignoring all conventional measures of earnings used by Woolworths and Coles as well as their investors for that matter, to instead target both supermarkets fulsome return on equity number.
This was not the focus of Woolworths, Banducci repeated. Nor was it a number that executives were remunerated on, or even how big investors measured the supermarkets performance, Banducci told the committee. Woolworths’ best measure was ROFE: return on funds employed.
Last year, Woolworths return on equity was 26.8 per cent. Australian banks are closer to 10 per cent. Viola – there’s the price gouging smoking gun, McKim blustered, ignoring that Commonwealth Bank generated 14 per cent.
Big banks have a lower return on equity than Woolworths or Coles. We all know big banks are gouging, McKim reasoned. So that means the supermarkets must be twice as bad.
What he can’t understand is banks are required to put aside large levels of capital to back their lending and this lowers their returns. ROE is more generally used as a like-for-like earnings measure among banks given they are very capital hungry and constantly topping up their balance sheet with new funds. For non-bank players ROE measures vary greatly and are less meaningful. Woolworths doesn’t have a need to keep topping up its capital base – nor does rival Coles.
Brad Banducci appeared by himself at the Senate committee on supermarket prices. Picture: Martin Ollman/NCA NewsWire
Woolies’ ROE numbers put it behind BHP which has a return of equity in the low 30s. The retailer is closer to CSL, Cochlear and Rio Tinto with a return on equity measure in the 20s. By way of comparison A2 Milk has an ROE in high teens. Coles delivered 31 per cent last year. Don’t tell McKim, JB Hi-Fi, a TV and computer discounter, had an ROE closer to 40 per cent – four times the average generate by banks.
Coles chief executive Leah Weckert appeared shortly after Banducci and explained: “There are multiple different measures that can be looked at for returns for a company and ROE is one...I would say that it’s not a measure that we use a lot in the grocery space”.
In other words, McKim’s smoking gun was just smoke.
Senator, what a wasted opportunity to try an understand and fix the challenges faced by business and consumers in this high-inflation environment.
CEO of Coles Leah Weckert in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman
Even with the multiple threats of being hauled off to jail for six months, Banducci held firm.
“I have been authentic and clear in answering the question that has reassessed profitability in our sector as return on investment and total shareholder returns. Those are the numbers. We look at those numbers for our remuneration system and that’s where our focus is”.
“Return on equity actually does vary as you would be aware by month or depending on where share prices are, and I don’t focus on that,” he told the inquiry.
“The focus is – you put $1 and what is returned to you. When you look at it that way, you see us making a fair return. It’s a 10 per cent return of funds employed after tax, and you see us making a fair return in the context of the stock market, the 10 per cent total shareholder return over five years, which is the average of the ASX top 100 over that period”.
Banducci, sans tie, appeared by himself at the Senate inquiry in Canberra by himself, a risky move for a long and hostile hearing given he had to do all the talking. Throwing to a colleague would have allowed him a chance to reset. In contrast Coles’ Weckert was accompanied by government relations manager Vicki Bon.
In dealing with the senators, the Coles executives subtly put into practice conflict de-escalation training they have been giving front line staff to deal with the rise in hostile customers. In Canberra, it has come to that after all.
Banducci is planning to retire this year and by going solo he was protecting his executives including incoming Woolworths boss Amanda Bardwell from the Senate circus. This might just be Banducci’s last public act as CEO before his exit in September: taking the political bulls**t for the team.

Amazon attack​

One slither of information that did escape from hours of interrogation was how competition is viewed from the vantage of the two CEOs.
As well as the direct entry of natural supermarket rivals including Aldi and Costco, both Coles and Woolies bosses spoke of tech giant Amazon as real force, particularly for packaged household goods. Significantly, Coles’ Weckert said Amazon played a role in resetting customer expectations around delivery times.
Canberra has wasted an opportunity to find ways to help bring down supermarket prices. Picture: Getty Images
“With Amazon coming into the market and offering same day and in some cases delivery within a couple of hours we have definitely seen increased demand for what we would call immediacy where a customer is able to put in an order and get it within 60 or 90 minutes”.
Even so, Amazon’s $6bn in sales were dismissed by the senators because the tech major “doesn’t operate a supermarket here”. For context these sales are equivalent to two-thirds the supermarket turnover of national player, the IGA’s wholesaler Metcash.
Banducci also spoke at length about the rising force of Chemist Warehouse which turns over $8bn annually. Then there are others like hardware giant Bunnings moving into pet care and Wesfarmers-owned Priceline into personal care. Both bosses said competition from these areas, Aldi, IGA independents and specialist suburban retailers remained intense.
And this shows how competition is evolving in Australia and the real need for the big players to be price competitive.
“It is critical in the fight to win our customers shopping basket, which we need to do on a daily and weekly basis,” Banducci said.
“Australian consumers are savvy and have high expectations. The vast majority of consumers shop across multiple retailers. The growth of online shopping and new digital tools are making it ever easier for consumers to compare prices and cross-shop”.
All this doesn’t mean consumers are finding it any easy to make ends meet, Banducci acknowledged. But the way to beat the food inflation is by allowing retailers to invest to become even more efficient while getting goods around the country cheaper. Not that the Senate wanted to hear this.
johnstone@theaustralian.com.au

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Watched a lot of this live.

Never seen so much communist propaganda masquerading as a voice for the common person in Australia.

UMike said:

Watched a lot of this live.

Never seen so much communist propaganda masquerading as a voice for the common person in Australia.

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The left really has gotten out of control right across the western world. If we don't bring them to heel it will have grave consequences, economically and for our geopolitical security.