Freedom of Information (FOI) requests from journalists and the public help hold governments to account. Let’s have a look at thirteen FOI stories from around Australia and what they tell us about the policies and operations of different governments.
One of the risks for higher inflation comes from the data centre boom we are now seeing. The RBA’s liaison with business has detected that data centres are hoovering up construction workers, adding to capacity constraints in the economy.
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The NDIS provides reasonable and necessary supports to people with disability so that they can live everyday life – to get out of bed, go to work, eat, breathe and be part of our communities. These proposed cuts are neither reasonable nor necessary.
The NSW parliament has released the final report of its inquiry into the modern slavery risks that temporary migrant workers in the state are facing. Its findings make clear that there is modern slavery in Australia.
Parties often encourage or compel their elected MPs (and sometimes their political staff) to pay a contribution to the party out of their parliamentary salary. It’s called “the tithe” or a “levy”. These levies are often exempt from donation caps, giving the major political parties an uncapped stream of revenue while new entrants have to raise money through small donations.
New polling from the Australia Institute shows that the majority of Australians would support the rights of PALM visa holders to change employer if they are not being treated fairly.
The good news is that headline inflation went down to 3.8%, (from 4% last month) with the trimmed mean (the inflation rate with the most volatile bits removed) unchanged at 3.6%. Both of these were below what the market and the RBA were predicting.
What could the romantic poets of the Eighteenth Century possibly teach us about modern politics? For those struggling to convince people to question existing practices and consider new ways of doing things, the answer is: quite a lot.
Australian parliaments inherited an ancient power from the United Kingdom’s House of Commons: the order for the production of documents (or OPD). These orders require the government to hand over to the Parliament (and make public) documents, reports, data and any other kind of information.
According to the most recent Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) data from 2018, theft is the largest source of new illicit weapons in Australia. Every theft adds more guns to the over 200,000 illicit firearms in Australia. Fewer legally owned firearms means there are fewer firearms that can be stolen.
