Robert Byrne

@james00000001 @RupertsConscie1 @DaveMilbo The Big Banana is Australia's Mona Lisa.

@RupertsConscie1 @DaveMilbo Good, accurate article. Proud of my local Coffs Harbour 😁👍 🍌

For your sanity, read this 👇 from @DaveMilbo There has not been anything as truthful & cutting as this in any mainstream #Auspol Media outlet for over 2 years. What the fuck was that?! theshot.net.au/uncategorized/…

@Christie_Whelan We’re sending a submarine. Oh wait. Maybe a surface ship so it can be sacrificed.

honestly what is Albo gonna say?

@electricfelix Electric traction is the way to go, but why do you have to have such a radical departure from a typical prime mover on the road today? Why the central driving position? This makes reversing "blind side" on both sides. These unnecessary differences just make adoption harder.

Daniel Bleakley: 🇦🇺 "We transported essential household goods for our customer Who Gives A Crap from their distribution centre in Sydney to Canberra with a Windrose prime mover on a single charge." "Australia must act now and seize this moment to decouple from diesel." ⚡️⚡️⚡️

@nonstoptom Whenever I turn on the ABC, I see your gleaming head on repeat and think; "I hope Tom's getting a residual for this.".

ABC is on strike! What would they do without Hard Quiz repeats?!

@SimonCotter62 @KeenyDhk NDIS

@KeenyDhk Name one lib/labor… because we have gone backwards in 30 years.

After 30 years can anyone tell me of a One Nation policy initiative, one member's bill, that has improved the lives of Australians and advanced the national interest?

@debritz @CaseyBriggs I reckon there's a good chance a ON member will defect from the party before they sit in Parliament.

@CaseyBriggs What odds David Paton lasting a full term as a One Nation MP? History suggests it's unlikely.

One Nation has won its first lower house seat in an election outside of Queensland. The Liberal Party recommended prefs to One Nation over Labor in Ngadjuri and has fallen to third place, so David Paton will maintain his lead and is set to enter South Australia’s parliament.

@TonyHWindsor Liberal party ideology lives on in the Labor party.

Abbott and Credlin must be very proud..they have just destroyed the Liberal Party. No church no pulpit but dust to dust.

@noplaceforsheep To paraphrase Amy Remeikis, this Labor government is John Howard's greatest legacy. Albanese has become indistinguishable from John Howard.

Albanese couldn’t get us into this war fast enough, with his knee jerk, unreserved support a few hours after it started. Now it’s clear the “justification” for this war is as big a lie as was Howard’s WMD lie.

@ric18629748 @colonelhogans How about orange roughy?

@colonelhogans Racist redhead will only serve whiting ,no black bream or coloured fish

Out for lunch….

@emma__jayne14 Did you pedal?

Just remembered how in my 20s I’d sit on the exercise bike reading for 45 mins before work and that’s how I got through Anna Karenina

@gothburz @AppsEngineer DOGE would eliminate the $10.4 Billion in legitimate claims, and keep the fraud.

@AppsEngineer The checkbox was already pre-checked. DOGE would remove the checkbox entirely and call it efficiency.

I am the Commissioner of Minnesota's Department of Human Services. I oversee 7,200 employees. I manage an annual budget of $19.4 billion. I administer programs that serve 1.2 million Minnesotans. I have been in public service for twenty-three years. I have a framed photograph of Paul Wellstone in my office and a laminated mission statement that reads "Helping People Live Better Lives" on a wall that faces nobody because the desk was rearranged during the last remodel. Nine billion dollars was stolen from my programs. I want to be precise. Not "lost." Not "unaccounted for." Stolen. Nine billion dollars in fraudulent welfare claims processed through systems I oversee, approved by employees I manage, funded by taxpayers I serve. The money was submitted by entities that did not exist, for services that were never rendered, to recipients who were sometimes fictional and sometimes dead. Nine billion dollars. I am told this is the largest welfare fraud in American history. I was not told this by my own department. I was told this by a reporter. My department was still categorizing it as a "billing irregularity" at the time. The fraud ran for years. The claims were processed through our standard intake system — the one we call MAXIS, which was built in 1989 and has not been meaningfully updated since the Clinton administration. MAXIS processes claims in batches. It does not flag impossible claims. It does not cross-reference death records. It does not ask whether a childcare facility that invoices $47,000 per child per month for 400 children exists on a physical street. MAXIS processes. That is what MAXIS does. A reasonable person might ask why MAXIS was not updated. In 2017 we requested $14 million to modernize MAXIS. The legislature approved $2.3 million. We used the $2.3 million to produce a report recommending that MAXIS be modernized. The report is 340 pages. It was delivered to the legislature in a three-ring binder. The binder is in a storage room in the Elmer L. Andersen Building. I have not visited the storage room. So MAXIS remained. And the claims came in. And we processed them. Some context on the volume. In one fiscal year, my department processed 4.1 million individual claims. Our fraud detection unit had eleven employees. Eleven people reviewing 4.1 million claims. That is 372,727 claims per employee per year. That is 1,440 claims per employee per working day. That is three claims per minute, eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year, assuming no lunch break, no bathroom break, no moment where a human being looks at a number and thinks "that seems wrong." We did not hire more people. Hiring requires authorization. Authorization requires a request. The request requires a form. The form is called an SF-52. The SF-52 requires a supervisor's signature, a budget justification, and an equity impact assessment. The equity impact assessment requires a thirty-day public comment period. The public comment period requires a notice in the State Register. By the time the SF-52 is approved, the fiscal year has ended and the position reverts to unallocated. We did not hire more people because the system for hiring more people is the same system that did not catch $9 billion in fraud. The system is consistent. A representative — Anderson, from the 10th district — asked me a question during the hearing. He asked it slowly, which I appreciated, because I wanted time to prepare my face. "Commissioner," he said, "how many employees have been terminated as a result of this fraud?" I said: "Congressman, we have undertaken a comprehensive internal review—" "How many," he said. "The review is ongoing and we have identified several procedural—" "A number, Commissioner." Zero. The number is zero. Zero employees terminated. Zero employees suspended. Zero employees placed on administrative leave. Zero employees reassigned. Zero employees given a written warning. Zero employees given a verbal warning. Zero employees called into a room and told that nine billion dollars had been stolen on their watch. The fraud unit's eleven employees still report to the same building. They still use MAXIS. They still process claims at three per minute. They received a morale-boosting email from the deputy commissioner in October that read "Your dedication does not go unnoticed." The email was sent to the entire department. It was not specific to the fraud unit. The subject line was "Fall Wellness Reminder." The representative then asked whether anyone had been promoted during the period of the fraud. I asked for a recess. The answer — which I provided after the recess, after consulting with counsel, after removing my glasses and cleaning them with a cloth I keep in my breast pocket specifically for moments when I need four seconds to not be speaking — is yes. Several employees in the oversight division were promoted during the period of the fraud. Two received commendations. One was named Employee of the Quarter in Q3 2023. The award included a $50 gift card to Panera Bread and a certificate that said "Excellence in Public Service." The certificate is signed by me. I sign all the certificates. I have a stamp. Let me explain how the fraud was eventually discovered. It was not discovered by my department. It was not discovered by our internal audit team — which, I should note, also reports to me and has never flagged a systemic issue in eight years of reporting to me. The fraud was discovered by an FBI field office in Minneapolis that was investigating an unrelated money laundering case and noticed that a network of Somali-American nonprofit organizations was receiving state payments for childcare services at addresses that were, in some cases, parking lots. The FBI told us. We thanked them. We did not issue a press release. We issued an internal directive titled "Claims Processing Protocol Enhancement — Action Items for Q1 Review." The directive was eleven pages. Page seven recommended "additional scrutiny for high-volume providers." Page seven was the only page with a specific recommendation. The other ten pages were definitions, acronyms, and a flowchart that terminated in a box labeled "Refer to Supervisor." The supervisor was one of the people who had been promoted. I should address the question of accountability. The word came up fourteen times during the hearing. Fourteen times. I counted because counting gave me something to do with my hands. Here is what I believe about accountability: accountability is a process. It is not an event. It is not a firing. It is not a perp walk. It is a deliberate, methodical review of systems, structures, and outcomes that, over time, produces insights that inform future decision-making. This process takes time. It cannot be rushed. Rushing accountability is how you get wrongful terminations. We are not in the business of wrongful terminations. We are in the business of processing claims. Nine billion of which were fraudulent. But the other $10.4 billion were perfectly legitimate. I consider this a 54% success rate. That is not a phrase I used during the hearing. The federal government has since opened its own investigation. The inspector general sent a team of fourteen people. Fourteen investigators for a $9 billion fraud. My department has 7,200 employees and caught zero. They have fourteen people and they seem optimistic. I admire their confidence. I signed their building access forms personally. We have made changes. I want to be clear about that. We have made changes. We renamed the fraud detection unit. It is now called the Program Integrity Division. We moved them to a different floor. The new floor has natural light, which I am told improves morale. We gave them new email addresses that end in @integrity.mn.gov instead of @dhs.mn.gov. We ordered new business cards. The business cards say "Program Integrity" in Garamond 10-point. We also updated MAXIS. The update added a field. The field is a checkbox. The checkbox reads: "I certify that this claim is accurate and complete." It is pre-checked. The claimant must uncheck it to indicate fraud. No claimant has unchecked it. I consider this a 100% compliance rate. The governor held a press conference. He stood behind a podium that said "Accountability and Reform." He announced that Minnesota would lead the nation in welfare fraud prevention. He announced a $6 million task force. The task force will produce a report. The report will recommend modernizing MAXIS. The recommendation will join the previous recommendation, from 2017, in the three-ring binder in the Elmer L. Andersen Building. I still have my job. My deputy still has her job. The eleven fraud investigators still have their jobs. The promoted employees still have their promotions. The Employee of the Quarter still has the certificate. The Panera gift card was redeemed in full. Nine billion dollars. Zero consequences. The mission statement on my wall still reads "Helping People Live Better Lives." It faces the window now. After the remodel, nobody moved it back. It has been facing the window for three years. The people who walk past my office cannot read it. I did not notice until the reporter pointed it out. She was doing a profile. She asked if it was symbolic. I told her it was a facilities issue. I am the Commissioner. I process claims. I sign certificates. I attend hearings. I clean my glasses when I need four seconds. I manage 7,200 people, none of whom have been fired, all of whom will report to work tomorrow, in the same building, using the same system, processing the same claims, at three per minute, with a checkbox that nobody unchecks. The system is working. I am the proof. I have not been disturbed.

@HumanSoTired @TomCBallard What if the RBA used this war as justification to raise interest rates? Could you be more cynical then?

@TomCBallard Then it was Bali bombing that was used. Now Bondi. I was cynical before but FMD i don't think I could get more cynical now if I tried

It appears some anti-war people have forgotten that ideally you should still be anti-war when there is a war happening.

@TomCBallard That's very pedantic of you Tom.

@klara_sjo It's just like people. It made an assumption about what would happen, then ignored the contradictory facts. People do that all the time.

This is the AI that will be taking our jobs

@noplaceforsheep @nswpolice They might have forgotten to turn it on? All of them.

Can we please see the body cam evidence of protesters attacking police ? @nswpolice

@meladoodle I can already see your content Mel. It might be as much as 10% of why I'm still here, and 100% of why I watch channel 10.

Meta seems to be trialling a new feature which I believe translates to “if you want anyone to see your content, pay us $1000 dollars a month”

@Phil_End @ATRightMovies Walking backwards.

@ATRightMovies People who hear a strange noise from the cellar go looking for it with a tiny torch.

@SweetArmadillo1 @Peter_Fitz @BelindaJones68 @smh Are they saying freedom of expression is currently too broad, and must be narrowed? Sounds like it to me.

@Peter_Fitz @BelindaJones68 @smh Their excuse of "a continuing rapid shift in the national discourse around the breadth of freedom of expression in our nation...." doesn't make them look any better. Zionists, RW media and billionaires do not get to decide that for the rest of us.

#Breaking. Adelaide Writers Festival has been cancelled for this year. And they apologise to Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah for how the decision was represented. Full report to come in the @SMH

@gothburz @MerriamWebster So each employee saves 3 hours 20 minutes by not opening it? Good to know.

@MerriamWebster This is incredible news for our AI enablement journey. We deployed Microsoft Copilot to 12,000 employees at $1.4M/year. 47 opened it. 12 used it twice. But our dashboard showed '40,000 hours saved' so we got featured in a Microsoft case study. Slop is the business model.

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

@dieworkwear I've met that guy. He gave me a glass of his home made grappa. I don't remember anything after that.

"Next up, we have a 3 hour interview with an 80 year old Italian tailor who is no longer taking orders and isn't interested in helping you."

CBS should make me editor in chief and it will be 24 hours nonstop coverage about arcane menswear rules no one knows or cares about