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Last night, I discussed with Alan Jones (Sky News) issues surrounding criminal OHS prosecutions of the Victorian government over the hotel quarantine mess. The discussion is here.

The key point is that there must be consistency in the application of the law. There cannot be one rule for the rulers and another for the people who are ruled. To do that would amount to a collapse of the rule of law in society.  More...

Today we have lodged with the Victorian WorkSafe Authority a letter requesting that the Authority prosecute the Victorian government over failures in relation to the Hotel Quarantine Containment Program. These failures have resulted in 765 deaths to date.  More...

This morning we released our analysis that explains ‘nothing’—that is, why all senior Victorian government people say they ‘know nothing’ about who made the decision to use security firms for the hotel quarantine program. Yet evidence from the Coate Inquiry points directly to Victorian Trades Hall Council (VTHC) unions as the probable decision-maker/s.

Given the government’s ‘know nothing’ excuses, the possibility that unions made the decision is the most plausible explanation ‘left on the table’. Evidence submitted to the Inquiry points directly to VTHC. More...

Yesterday we wrote to the Victorian WorkCover Authority requesting them to investigate the Covid-19 hotel quarantine mess for possible breaches under the Victorian work safety laws (Occupational Health & Safety Act). Section 131 of the Act allows us to lodge such a request on the Authority who, under the Act must investigate and respond.

The Victorian government has pretty much admitted that the second Covid-19 wave outbreak happened because of the botched hotel quarantine mess in March. Hundreds of deaths have occurred following this.

If anything like this sort of scenario had happened in a private-sector business, we could be sure that a massive investigation would be undertaken by the Victorian WorkCover Authority. The investigation would look to see if prosecution should occur under the Victorian OHS Act, including application of the new manslaughter provisions. But the WorkCover Authority has done nothing over the Covid-19 disaster. More...

SEA Executive Director Ken Phillips has an article in today's Spectator discussing the application of Victorian Worksafe laws to the hotel quarantine mess. In this special blogpost we republish the article in full: More...

Last week we reported on Victorian Premier Dan Andrews’ agenda to make being your own boss illegal. Now’s there’s more evidence.

With the second big lockdown being imposed in Melbourne, Chairman Dan (as the cartoonists like to show him) has offered support packages for small businesses. But it’s not available for self-employed people. It’s discriminatory. Many are suffering according to this ABC report and will go broke because of this second lockdown. More...

The Victorian government is looking to push its new Labour Hire Licensing Bill through Parliament, starting this week. The Bill is a legislative scam pretending to do one thing, but in reality will do something else—namely, open new doors to corruption in Victoria.

The Bill is supposedly a (long overdue) response to the exposé by the ABC's Four Corners programme on 4 May 2015 about the exploitation of migrant workers on some Australian farms. What Four Corners exposed was illegal migrants, working below legal pay rates and organized through some small, illegal 'labour hire' businesses.  More...

This week, in Business Spectator, ICA Executive Director Ken Phillips wrote about a ‘mystery’ box that arrived in the post for him some years ago. It contained the true financial records of a major trade union. The records differed from the union’s publicly declared accounts. The point of Ken's article is that full transparency and disclosure should be imposed on the big superannuation funds or we could see corruption scandals in superannuation similar to those we are seeing with unions.  More...

Big business is angry that the Abbott government is proposing to make anti-competitive behaviour by them more difficult. New laws would restrict big businesses from abusing their market power. Small Business Minister Bruce Billson has hit back saying big business is talking “utter nonsense”. We agree.

Just recently, Coles had to refund $12m to 200 suppliers due to unconscionable conduct by Coles. And the competition regulator (ACCC) is finally responding to evidence of big business cartels in the construction industry. What’s odd is that unions and Labor seem be lining up with big business on this. More...

Australians tend to look down on developing countries, viewing many of them as suffering from wide-scale corruption. We think of Australia as relatively clean. We have independent authorities that root out and investigate corruption. Where corruption is found, we see it as the bad behaviour of individuals and not something that’s inbuilt into our social, legal, political, governance and business systems.

However, ICA Executive Director Ken Phillips has recently written a series articles for Business Spectator that put a different view. He argues that there’s plenty of evidence that, in Australia, we have corruption ingrained in key institutional arrangements. Our corruption is undertaken at a highly sophisticated level and is even given ‘legal’ cover. It sits under our noses but we choose to ignore it. More...