andojc 🌈🐯

Why is Jess Wilson’s husband in the middle of this? The Liberal Party is now one step away from settling factional disputes via the family group chat.

Here she goes again — kicking our most vulnerable to maintain the grievance and rage that appeals to her base. She’s back to Aboriginal people this week. … Let’s fact-check the “$30 billion Aboriginal industry racket” claim, because it’s one of the most persistently dishonest figures in Australian political debate. Of that $30 billion, 81% is mainstream expenditure — hospitals, schooling, welfare — available to all Australians. The Productivity Commission confirmed only $5.6 billion is Indigenous-specific funding. Not $30 billion. $5.6 billion. And that $5.6 billion in targeted funding exists for exactly the same reason the government funds free bowel cancer screening for Australians over 45, free breast cancer screening for women over 50, and prostate cancer campaigns for men. Because when a specific group dies at catastrophically higher rates from preventable causes, you direct resources accordingly. That is not a racket. That is what taxes are for. It is the entire basis of preventive health policy in this country. We don’t argue about those campaigns. Nobody calls BreastScreen a racket. Nobody demands prostate cancer funding be scrapped on the grounds that women don’t get it. Apparently we only argue about it when it’s the colour of the prostate being examined. Or the colour of the breasts being screened. The data on why Indigenous health funding exists is not subtle. 68% of deaths among Indigenous Australians are preventable. That is 2.3 times the rate of preventable deaths among non-Indigenous Australians. Indigenous Australians die from rheumatic heart disease at 20 times the rate of other Australians. In the Northern Territory, over 50 times. Indigenous children aged 5 to 15 are 55 times more likely to die from it than other Australian children. This is a disease effectively eliminated in the rest of Australia decades ago. It still kills children here. It is entirely preventable. So here is the only question that matters: why are we having a public argument about the money being spent to prevent children dying, instead of the fact that children are dying? There is only one answer. It is the colour of the children. And even with that targeted spend, the funding still falls short of what need-based modelling requires. NACCHO and Equity Economics put the current annual health funding shortfall at $4.4 billion. The argument that this is too much money is being made while the actual problem is that it is not enough — and has never been enough. Here is the deeper problem with calling it “Aboriginal money.” That label makes the spending visible and politically vulnerable in a way that mainstream funding never is. It gives politicians licence to frame an entire cultural identity as fraudulent — not a program, not a contractor, not a bureaucracy, but the people themselves. And it gives successive governments the cover to keep underfunding, because cutting “Aboriginal money” is easier to justify politically than cutting hospitals. The racket framing does not follow the money. It follows the people.

Free Ben Roberts-Smith. It's appalling that he must now stay behind bars until at least June.

According to Deeming in this leaked recording, Jess Wilson had agreed Deeming was transphobic and homophobic. Now Wilson’s leadership depends on the religious right, those views present no obstacle for Jess. Wilson’s principles extend only as far as her numbers allow.