If you would like to see a supermarket chain that only sells 100% Australian then please sign this petition to be sent to IGA management.

http://www.gopetition.com.au/petitions/congratulate-iga.html

It is obvious that the growth based economic model used over the last century is unsustainable and that we need to move to an ecologically sustainable population level.

Do you agree with the Kelvin Thomson plan to end with a stable population of 25 Million?
Or the Gillard / Rudd path to 36 million plus?
Or is there another figure you see as reasonable?

If you sign a 5 year contract with them they give you fixed prices on the telephone calls during this period, and free equipment such as: digital telephone system, photo copier, security cameras, or a plasma screen tv, etc.

In my case, the free equipment was worth $4000.
Call credits were $340/month and I was paying $406/month, so I assumed $66 x 60 roughly equals the value of the free equipment. No one really gets anything for nothing.

After 18 months the telephone company closed, for some victims this happened a few months or weeks after signing. The telephones stopped working and we were forced to find a new telephone carrier. Some businesses were without telephones for up to 12 weeks which crippled them even further.

We then found that we were in debt with a Finance Company for nearly $19000 for this free equipment. I checked the value at Domayne and I could replace it for $1800. After I signed the contract, additional equipment was added to the contract that I didn’t receive, luckily I was one of the few that took a photo copy of my contract.

Some of the victims are in debt of up to $380k that I know about.
If there are 40,000 victims averaging $20k that is $800 million.

The culprit behind the business model is Tony Hakim who has been prosecuted by the ACCC previously, but is still up to his neck in it. Apparently he has links to the Lebanese Mafia. His company, Clear Telecoms has done a reverse buyout of the Strathfield Car Radio chain and they are now ringing businesses offering security cameras when they sign up with telephones. They say it is just like signing a capped mobile telephone plan, but you are signing 2 contracts the same as this previous scam.

The reason you have to sign 2 contracts is so when you stop paying, the finance company can take you to court and say they know nothing about the telephone service or the equipment. You signed a contract saying you will pay $2000 per month and you have stopped paying. The victim loses and has to pay legal costs and interest on top.

None of the Company Directors are being investigated for the fraud and forged signatures, etc One of these companies was in business for 8 years, but when they closed the doors there was no written or computer records left - yet they didn’t get prosecuted by ASIC.

The ACCC is prosecuting 28 companies and directors over the Fresh Telecoms collapse. This is only one of many that have collapsed since. Each one trapping thousands more victims. Each having to pay to go to court or pay a huge settlement worth many times the value of the equipment.

The Police are not interested and neither are the Politicians, they just pass it from department to Department and back again. If the Laws were changed in Parliament, none of us would be forced to go through the legal process.

One of these victims is becoming our test case in the Federal Court. She only owes $8000 but has spent around $20k in legal fees already and it will probably cost $100k - $200k for the court case to be finalised. This is how much we have to pay for Justice, and the Finance Companies know this and they exploit it.

One of the victims did well in the consumer tribunal against EFS, only to be taken to Court by them. 3 days before the Court case, her husband died suddenly and unexpectedly. It was obviously caused by the pressure and strain, emotionally and financially. So this is not only affecting businesses, it is affecting families as well.

The ACCC action will take at least 12 more months, and in that time many more businesses will be crippled, and many more will be signed up in these scams. The ACCC say they are powerless to change the laws, and by the time they have finalised their actions, it will be too late for everyone that is caught up in this scam.

The biggest problem we face is finding these victims. We have started a website http://www.telco-finance-scams.com and we are urging victims to join up, unite and help us with a fighting fund so we can help to fund the federal court action, so that once the precedent is made, all other victims can use it as a defence to win their case, or negotiate a reasonable settlement amount.

If we raise enough, we will be funding investigators to dig up information on these Directors so that criminal prosecutions can be launched against them.

We need everyone to get behind this website and help out. It is under construction at the moment, and in the next couple of weeks it should be up and running properly.

Steve, I hope you can help us in this matter as most Politicians would rather just pass it along to someone else. It has been to the Minister for Small Business, Telecommunications & Broadband, Police, etc etc etc and also the Opposition, and they just keep passing it round and round and round.

Stateline Qld did a story on it http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2009/12/04/2762717.htm
The Sydney Morning Herald did a story on it on 15/12/2009 - Crossed Lines
ACA is in the process of doing a story on it in the next few days to a week.

Tony Hakim is behind most of it. Here are a couple of links:
http://www.insideretailing.com.au/Latest/tabid/53/ID/5831/Clear-Communications-unloads-Strathfield-Group-stake.aspx
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/markets/trust-betrayed-as-strathfield-tanks/story-e6frg91f-1111118714946

I am also told that the hon John George Ajaka MLC thanked Tony Hakim in a speech in Parliament for his help during the past 25 years.

These are the some of the finance companies involved:
Macquarie Finance, Macquarie Leasing, Enterprise Finance Solutions, Australian Integrated Finance, Quikfund, Suncorp, Technology Leasing, Bank of Queensland. http://cspcentral.com.au/2009/09/bank-of-queensland-finances-telco-scam/

Cheers
Greg

I was previously unaware of you and your party Family First. Being a long term ALP supporter, traditionally voting for the ALP, I had little knowledge of the minor parties.

However, your recent expression of empathy for the shabby treatment of Telstra “mum and dad” shareholders by the incumbent Government touched a raw nerve when I saw you speaking on TV today, and I feel ever so grateful that Australia is thankfully a democratic nation, that we have freedom of speech, that we have perceptive principled people of integrity such as yourself in our Parliament, to provide the necessary checks and balances on the incumbent Government.

Having retired after a lifetime dedicated to education, I rely for support on my self funded Superannuation Fund, which is invested substantially in Telstra shares, because they were an Australian icon and were largely owned by the Future Fund, a Government sponsored entity, and because they were being sold by the Government itself. I assumed that the Government would look after its own so to speak. I have always believed in the ideals of the ALP and in fact voted for the ALP in the last election.

However, I am seriously disillusioned by the behaviour of this incumbent Government in its pursuit of its ill conceived NBN and the heavy handed arrogant approach it has taken with Telstra in its bid to pursue and fund this white elephant project, which had its nascence in a politically motivated unplanned and unbudgeted election promise. The folly of the NBN project and the associated decisions of this Government is only surpassed by the recent “Home Insulation” debacle.

The proposed legislation which effectively threatens to destroy Telstra by breaking it up and denying it access to future wireless spectrum unless it co-operates and helps to fund this white elephant project is worse than un-Australian. If it were industry behaving in this manner, it would no doubt be dubbed outrageously un-Australian, immoral and anti competitive. If our business community behaved in such an unprincipled and underhanded manner, it would more than likely be prosecuted.
   
It is suggested that the nub of the problem is that the NBN project was given birth with a political objective in mind and had not been thought through carefully from the outset with a realistic business plan. In order to cover for this, it would seem that the Government is making its hastily and ill conceived plan worse in its bid to develop the NBN by itself, partly funding it by “nationalising” Telstra and partly funded by the taxpayer. This is particularly galling in that it was the Australian Government that sold the Telstra shares to the public in the first place. Shareholders bought the Telstra shares in good faith!  There is a palpable element of bad faith in this strategic play in support of a white elephant project costing a whopping $43 Billion, which by the time it is implemented, could well have been superseded by wireless technology delivering comparable speeds and bandwidth. The key player in the development of such wireless technology would logically be Telstra as it alone has the wherewithal, were it not for the fact that this Government might well by then have effectively crippled Telstra by denying it the capacity to develop such wireless technology, barring it from access to the crucial radio spectrum required.

The legislation appears to incorporate a thinly veiled attempt to stifle the more flexible and advanced wireless technology bearing in mind that such technology could render the NBN obsolete. So perhaps this Government is holding Australia back rather than moving it forward and is doing so at the expense of the taxpayer not to mention Telstra shareholders, in a desperate bid to justify its own political ends.

Is the pursuit of this NBN white elephant project truly in the best interests of Australia?

Senator Fielding, it is refreshing to hear you speak in support of the “mum and dad” Telstra shareholders who have unwittingly been caught up in this political mess, which has the potential to turn into a debacle worse than the “Home Insulation” conundrum.

What is needed to sort out this mess, is a total rethink of the NBN proposal, taking sound business decisions that are truthfully in the best interests of Australia founded on practical commercial reality along normal business lines and principles. It should not be necessary to unfairly penalise “mum and dad” Telstra shareholders, in order to fund development of the new technologies.  The best and fairest solution would result, I believe, if the role of Government were simply to encourage and co-ordinate the resources of industry, arranged along usual commercial lines of business. The public would then perhaps fund the development through an IPO, but they certainly would not invest in this white elephant project, with our Government demonstrating a propensity to interfere with and destroy the value in a commercial entity such as Telstra, in order to cover up and help fund its political blunders.

Senator Fielding, please use your standing in the Senate to bring about change to our Parliament, to bring honesty, truth, integrity, transparency, fairness, justice, and above all sound business judgement to the Australian Government.

You and your party will certainly have my vote in the up coming federal elections and I would think that the million plus Telstra shareholders who stand to be unjustly disenfranchised by the incumbent Government, are of similar sentiment.

Please put a stop to this politically motivated folly and madness.

A Resource Rent Tax, properly designed and properly negotiated with all key players, would be good for Australia.

But this government is totally incompetent.

Worse than Whitlam

The senior members of Cabinet have virtually no experience in business or in communicating with the leaders of business (other than from the perspective of a union representative).

Rudd is rude and dismissive to the heads of the mining industry.  But these people have world level knowledge.  They have a better understanding of what makes the world go around than an ex-bureaucrat like Rudd.  Heads of business have a wealth of knowledge, they understand employees needs as well, and they understand what is good for Australia.  They are good people.  We should be really grateful for what they do and what they give Australia.

Rudd should listen to the leaders of business.  And listen very carefully.

Rudd does not realise what he doesn’t know.  He is extremely arrogant.

Rudd and his team are on the way to sending us back to the days of the “workers versus bosses” when we had wharf strikes, petrol strikes, and every other type of strike imaginable.

The mining tax is a disaster. 

The CPRS was a disaster (Thank you Steve for stopping it!!),

‘Pink Bats’ is a disaster. 

BER is a disaster,

NBN is a looming disaster.

Health agreement with the states is a disaster

The new Labor government had a once in a life time opportunity to sort out Federal State responsibilities and accountabilities.  There were Labor governments in every State.  That opportunity has slipped away.  That was a really important point to be resolved. 

Instead, Rudd wasted his first term on the Dangerous Anthropogenic Global Warming hoax.

1. Australian Mining Industry is a large holder of Australia’s Super Funds - Problem with the new tax is that investment in these companies and the share prices of these companies are falling and falling fast, rapidly reducing the value of our Super!
2. Increased Costs to Mining companies will effect the job security of many Australian’s all over the nation. Especially in Western Australia.
3. Many of the processing places for mining operations on the eastern half of Australia are in regional communities that rely on the big mining companies to supply employment for the people in these areas, any stress on wealth created by these companies places regional communities on a very fine edge.
4. The Australian Stock Market is still getting after shocks from the problems in Europe, combined with the slug on the miners here, the Australian stock market has fallen around 400 points of the main index, our country’s value has dropped and many people have already lost money, how much more are mum and dad investors going to lose over the next few years as these taxes come into effect.
5. The Government places all its hopes on commodity prices and countries like China, yes things have been good but just like we placed faith in the big banks in America look where it took us, the GFC. NOTHING CAN BE TRUSTED.

https://www.onlyoz.com.au/index.php?osCsid=b8fca3caf4a69164c9c43eef18baead2

My name is Tristan Ewins.  I am a freelance writer, Christian, and grassroots member of the ALP.

I am writing to draw your attention to the issues I raise in a recent article of mine - available at my blog.

see:    http://leftfocus.blogspot.com/2009/03/protecting-most-vulnerable-pension.html

With a cost of living which is spiralling out of control: cost of rent and fuel; cost of water; cost of groceries - our most vulnerable - pensioners of all kinds need a compassionate and just response from government.

The Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Society (CPSA) and the Council on the Ageing have both developed proposals for consideration by the Parties of the Australian Senate. 

From other sources - a proposal in the ‘ballpark’ ot $35 a week has been suggested - but even here no decision is ‘set in stone’.  Importantly - we need a FORMULA to ensure any increase is automatically adjusted with inflation and the relative definition of poverty.

Importantly - the unemployed should not be left out of this picture - with a Recession biting - these people should not be made to ‘pay the price’ - or be stigmatised.

To Senator Fielding - and readers - please consider publicly working for a 30% a Male Average Total Weekly Earnings formula for ALL pensions - inc Disabled, unemployed, carers…  This would be a FORMULA to last the test of time for some while.

This is a compromise in light of other claims COTA.

Finally: Please also consider the CPSA proposal for targeted assistance of around $3.2 billion - ie: $80/week - divided amount 1.5 million of the most vulnerable pensioners of ALL kinds…  This is eminently affordable….  Surely it is the Christian ‘thing to do’ to put the needs of the poor and vulnerable first!

Also - Please fight for higher minimum wages for the most vulnerable WORKERS - Hospitality workers, Child Care workers, retail, cleaner etc - Don’t let the poor be left behind as unemployment rises - and the bargaining power of workers is eroded.

Discussion is also welcome at my blog - again:  http://leftfocus.blogspot.com/2009/03/protecting-most-vulnerable-pension.html

Please respond Senator Fielding - and discussion is welcome!!!

sincerely,

Tristan