Weekend Wrap: Morrison’s ”blessing” a curse on NDIS, Barnaby’s Insiders sell off plus wage theft & pork barrelling

Ben Davison looks at Morrison's explanation that his debate
response to a mother who's child has had their NDIS support cut
that he was "blessed to not have had to go through that" was
about the difficulties in navigating the NDIS, rather than a
comment about children with a disability.  Even if we take
Morrison at his word it is, at the very least, a condemnation of
his own failure to properly deliver the NDIS. 


Plans have been cut by an average of 4%, appeals to the AAT have
doubled, foreign private equity backed unregistered and
unregulated "platforms" that "connect" workers and participants
in, what has been described as, digital sham contracting
arrangement are taking 14% margins out of the tax payer funded
system. 


As the campaigns head into the Northern Territory it is timely to
remember that HALF of NDIS plans in the NT have been cut in the
last six months.


Insiders discussed in detail the failures of the Morrison
government on the Solomon Islands and Ben explores how Morrison
spent the end of the week setting up another pork barrel program
while refusing to answer questions about Australia's largest
foreign policy blunder in the pacific for over 70 years.


Barnaby Joyce was the Insiders guest from the government and he
made it clear that their only plan is to let multinational
corporations sell our resources overseas.  While sitting in
Gladstone, where people have to fly to Brisbane to get medical
treatments as billions of dollars of resources depart the docks,
Barnaby was asked what the government's plan for the future "If
they want to buy it we will sell it" was his response.


This ideologically lines up with the findings of two major pieces
of work from the Australian Union movement this week. 


The ship building company Austal received a Morrison campaign
visit and a $124M contract after having been found to underpay
its workers. The union, ETU, won the money back but Morrison
wouldn't even acknowledge the request for safeguards to prevent
this from happening again on government funded projects.


The ACTU released research showing that while 100 countries put
limits on the use of "fixed term contracts" Australia is not
among that group of 100 nations and that casuals in Australia are
being paid up to $350 LESS than ongoing workers doing the same
job.


Ben urges everyone to join their union at
australianunions.org.au/wow and to put the Liberals last (with a
brief explanation of how the ballot papers work)