Dingo bytes

The Federal Government's religious fundamentalism has seen it 
carry out regressive policies to push its vicious god-bothering 
agenda, including accusing public schools of lacking "values", 
and pouring taxpayers' money into private schools. This funding 
bias extends to the likes of the St Joseph's School near Cowra, 
on the NSW north coast. Operated by a doomsday cult run by a 
lunatic called William Kamm, the school has been granted $440,000 
by the Howard Government. Kamm, who is known by followers as 
"Little Pebble", says he and his devotees will survive a coming 
apocalypse — they are currently building bunkers in preparation 
— after which he will become the last pope. Female followers are 
to bear his children because he carries the "Holy Seed" that will 
breed a new race. In the fenced-off school compound a 
spokesperson for the school told the media, "There are lot more 
loonies out there than there are in here". Yes, and some of them 
are running the country.

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It's the little things that show they care. The punitive nature 
of the privatised welfare system has driven many thousands of 
recipients to despair and desperation and many unemployed workers 
to simply give up. So we have the case of a 68-year-old woman 
whose pensioner husband died four weeks ago. Centrelink has 
hounded her about how much rent she is paying and about her 
living arrangements with her grandson. The woman, who was her ill 
husband's carer for many years, had her Carer Allowance cancelled 
less than a week after the funeral.

* * *

The workers who have to run Centrelink are also having to the 
bear the brunt of attacks with ongoing job cuts — more than 2000 
in the last 12 months — and deteriorating work conditions. And 
staff often suffer violent attacks by people angry and frustrated 
at the system. The Community and Public Sector Union says that 
staff are increasingly reluctant to "carry the can" for problems 
caused by poor government policy. "It is often overlooked that 
Centrelink staff are at the front line of service delivery in 
Australia", says the union. "They too often get caught in the 
cross-fire of the political policy debate."

* * *

CAPITALIST HOG OF THE WEEK: is NSW Premier Bob Carr. Big business 
and the Federal Government are being blamed by Carr for the 
criminal rip-off of asbestos victims by James Hardie Industries. 
"You ought to go straight to the Federal Government, which has a 
corporations power, and find out why they did not exercise it in 
this case", he told the parliamentary inquiry into Hardie's 
fleeing the country and leaving behind an under-funded 
compensation trust. Carr admits the company paid him a "courtesy 
call" but denies anything could have been done by his government. 
But that clearly wasn't Hardie's view as it spent tens of 
thousands of dollars lobbying government staffers to "persuade" 
Carr not to legislate to hold the company responsible for future 
compensation.