The past week brought us a new report of record bank profits fuelled largely by penalty fees being imposed by the banks against credit card customers. These penalty fees are charged at startlingly high rates &emdash; on the order of $40 &emdash; for late payments and for exceeding the credit limit. Most customers who incur these fees just pay them, but the dirty little secret that the banks do not want you to know is that these fees are illegal. You are under no obligation to pay them, and if they were to try to enforce them in a court they would lose.
The over limit fee is particularly insidious since the bank is the party that is in breach of the agreement when the account goes over the limit, or at the least it is equally in breach with the cardholder. The credit limit is not there just to protect the banks, it is there to help the customer control their spending. In the old days the banks would not allow the card to go over its limit, and in modern times when almost every credit card transaction is online, it would be a simple matter for them to decline transactions that would result in the limit being exceeded. They actually allow the limit to be exceeded specifically to get the benefit of the penalty fees and any excess interest payments the customer occurs because their spending has exceeded what they can comfortably manage.
Kevin Rudd has another option for dealing with the Government's use of public funds for political purposes &emdash; he could introduce legislation allowing for the funds to be recouped from the intended beneficiaries of political advertising funded by the Government. Such legislation could even be retrospective, and there is even a High Court precedent confirming this &emdash; former Labor Minister Andrew Theophanous was stripped of his parliamentary superannuation after being convicted of corruption. The High Court upheld this, indicating that retrospective laws stripping politicians of benefits after corrupt conduct were within powers and did not offend the "just terms" provision of the Constitution.
The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting this morning that leader of the opposition, Kevin Rudd, has announced that the ALP will introduce legislation banning the use of public funds for political advertising. This comes as the Howard Government is preparing to launch the most shameless abuse of public funds for political advertising in Australian history, claiming that "the ads were required because propaganda advertising by Labor and the ACTU had confused people."
Yes, the Government is claiming that they have to use public funds to get their message out because others are using private funds to get their conflicting message out. That amounts to an admission that the Government is using public funds for their own political propaganda.
Another survey of Bennelong voters has revealed the Prime Minister is behind in Bennelong, with McKew having 52% on a two party preferred basis. Interestingly the poll "showed 18 per cent of people in Bennelong who voted Liberal at the last election were leaning towards Labor", which suggests there is more room to move towards the ALP. With this poll being taken two days after the budget, there is likely to be some bias towards the Government in these figures.
There are differences in the Bennelong dynamic between 2004 and 2007. In 2004 the high profile challenger was with the Greens, whereas in 2007 the ALP candidate has this position. The scale of the Greens campaign in Bennelong in 2004 made it tough for anybody but the Greens and the Liberals to get much exposure, but this time the ALP is setting out to conduct a campaign that is likely to drown out other voices.
Last year you dismissed the $26 million acquisition of the former CSR Quarry site in Hornsby as a series of costly blunders made by the Hornsby Council which has resulted in an additional levy being unavoidably imposed on ratepayers.
You then went on to admonish complainants as being angry over cash costs, even if they cannot make a difference to matters past.
The issue is not that simple. The real concern is not the rate levy.
The real concern is the precedent that a multi million dollar liability (over and above the $26 million paid for it) belonging to a large corporation was handed over, in SECRET, to the rate payers of Hornsby. These deals were aided and abetted by our elected representatives and approved by the Minister - contrary to the Local Government Act.
Rudd is coming under fire for hand picking candidates, but while what he is doing might not make the local party members happy, the choices he is making are far better than is likely to come from the party machine. Rudd is hand picking candidates for all kinds of seats &emdash; from reasonably safe ALP seats like Brand to marginal seats like Eden-Monaro and long term Liberal seats like Bennelong &emdash; and the candidates he is picking have the skills that are needed to do a good job as an MP.
Take Colonel Mike Kelly as an example. Rudd has picked Kelly as his candidate for the bellweather seat of Eden-Monaro. As a senior military lawyer he has the legal and organisational skills to do an excellent job in Parliament, and international policy skills that will be highly valuable to a Government. Unlike the Liberal Cabinet, who had no military experience whatsoever when they made the strategically disastrous decision to participate in the invasion of Iraq, Kelly is likely to better understand the limitations of intelligence gathering and the limitations on what can be achieved through the use of military power.
The ALP is foreshadowing very detailed changes to industrial relations legislation if they win in this year's federal election. The problem with such detailed legislative changes is they often have unforeseen effects, sometimes good and sometimes bad. For example, the Workchoices legislation, despite being positioned as pro business, created significant additional administrative burdens for business, and gave some workers a better deal than they had under existing laws.
Rudd's policy is positioned as giving rights back to workers, but depending on the detail he may be taking rights away fro
After the national conference of the ALP last week there are two signs that the federal election campaign is now well under way. The first is the start of the Government's taxpayer funded media campaigning. The second is an enormous billboard for Maxine McKew, the ALP candidate for Bennelong, appearing on one of the pedestrian bridges on Epping Road near Lane Cove Road.
The Biggest Government Rort gets Bigger
The Government advertising commenced with advertisements for Government policy targetted at supporting private health insurance and making some adjustments to Medicare. This is the biggest single rort in the political system and I think it fair to describe the use of policy promotional advertisements by the Government using public funds as seriously corrupt conduct. It is true both major parties have done it, but that is not to excuse it. They have no business taking money from us in taxes and using that money to persuade us to keep them in their jobs.
The Australian Democrats MLC, Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, has conceded defeat in the New South Wales Legislative Council, leaving the Democrats without any New South Wales legislators at either the State or Federal level. If they fail to get a seat in the Senate in this year, there is no doubt that this will be the end of the Democrats in New South Wales, and there is a good chance of the Democrats being wiped out nationally. In a survey of 504 Queensland voters this week, the Democrats scored zero.
When we look at the available options Federally, there are in order of electoral support:
We should be finding out shortly what sentence Hicks has managed to secure under his plea bargain, but my bet is that it is "time served" or little more than this. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, if there is to be any pretence that the law being enforced is not retrospective then the punishment has to be based on the penalty available under the original laws covering the matter, where the maximum penalty was 10 years. Since Hicks has served more than half of that already he has already gone beyond any sentence he would be likely to have received under the older offence. Secondly, if Hicks is sentenced to longer than this he will serve out his term in Australia and will almost certainly lodge a petition for Habeas Corpus with the High Court. Howard does not want such a case dragging through the Courts during the election &emdash; he wants this whole matter over and done with as soon as possible in the hope that voters forget about it entirely before the election. Additionally the US does not want an Australian Court making a judgement as to whether the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals are capable of amounting to a Court, and any Habeas Corpus action would have to look at that in detail.
