11 AM | 28 Jan

“Gonski school funding report back online…” [#geekgirl] [#censorship]

[Via The Sydney Morning Herald] “The Gonski report is back on a government website, after an intervention by Fairfax Media.

All traces of the 286-page school funding report and its associated submissions vanished from departmental websites shortly after the Abbott government took office.

A search for the phrase ‘Gonski Report’ on the education department’s website returned the query: “Did you mean ‘lenskyi support’?”

The new education minister Christopher Pyne said he wanted to go “back to the drawing board” on school funding and charged his department with developing “a new model that is national, that is fair to everyone and that is needs-based”.

The Gonski Review, the most comprehensive in 30 years, vanished from the official record.

Other publicly-funded reviews including the Henry Tax Review and the Garnaut Climate Change Review remained on their dedicated websites.

Asked through the freedom of information process why it had deleted the Gonski website the department referred to “the outcome of the federal election and the relevant machinery of government changes”.

In January Fairfax Media used a little-known provision of the Freedom of Information Act in attempt to return the report to the department’s site.”

03 PM | 23 Sep

Australian Companies to Get Protection from Activists

[From The Australian] ‘CONSERVATION groups seeking boycotts of products linked to alleged poor environmental practices may soon be liable for prosecution under consumer law.

The move, which could severely hamper market-based campaigns by groups such as Markets for Change and GetUp!, is to be pursued by the Abbott government.

Parliamentary secretary for agriculture Richard Colbeck told The Australian the move would prevent green groups from holding companies to ransom in their markets.

“We’ll be looking at the way some of the environmental groups work because we are very concerned about some of the activities they conduct in the markets,” Senator Colbeck said. “They have exemptions for secondary boycott activities under the Consumer and Competition Act. We are going to have a complete review of the act.

“And one of the things I’d be looking at would be to bring a level playing field back so that environment groups are required to comply with the same requirements as business and industry.”

 The move has strong backing within the Liberal and Nationals parties, as well as among sections of the ALP, concerned about groups targeting the customers of timber and agricultural products in campaigns against old-growth logging and live-animal exports.”