Category Archives: Australia

Australia

A Sick Joke

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You remember those old jokes like the signs that say “credit only granted to those over 80 accompanied by both parents” ?

Well how about this for a new twist:

If the employee is unable to attend work for reasons other than an emergency (as determined by the company), the employee must provide 12 hours verbal notice. If the employee breaches this clause, the employee expressly authorises the company to deduct from the employee’s weekly remuneration the amount of $200.

In other words, if you are going to be too sick to work you need to give at least 12 hours notice beforehand, otherwise you get fined $200 in addition to not getting paid for the time you are unable to work.

Unfortunately this is not a joke, this is from the very real “Australian Workplace Agreement” which a mining company tried to force Lorissa Stevens to sign, with the company representative apparently attempting to browbeat her into signing.

Lorissa Stevens: She stood over me, basically said that if I didn’t sign the AWA that I would not have a job with the company, and that she would personally go out of her way to destroy me and make sure I didn’t enter in on another Hunter Valley mine site again.

In addition to this craziness the AWA in question also abolishes their workers sick leave (hence no pay for being off sick) as well as cutting their pay rates.

This is in a mining industry where safety is meant to be a top priority, but obviously it can’t be that important to this mob if they’re willing to risk making sick people work to avoid getting fined in addition to no pay..

New Blog Anti-Spam Tools

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Recently I’ve added a three new tools to my anti-spam arsenal. A few weeks back Rich gave me a heads up that he’d gotten the time to modify the WP 2.0 Akismet plugin to allow you to simply ban spamming IP addresses to your blog based on what Akismet classifies as spam.

Basically you get a top-10 of comments ordered by IP address and URL allowing you to quickly dispatch (and ban in the case of IP addresses) those evil posts. It works rather nicely, I must say.

This evening I’ve just added the Did You Pass Maths plugin from Aussie Steven Herod which is kind of a numeric captcha plugin for comments.

But this won’t stop trackback spam which seems to come in bursts, so I’ve also added the Trackback Validator Plugin from the Computer Security Lab at Rice University which visits the referrers of trackbacks received to ensure that there is really a link to you from that site in that page.

It’s not infallible as spammers can still configure a fake blog with links to your site, but they believe that when that happens it is no longer completely a spam trackback as it does originate from a real posting somewhere – just that you may disagree with the content and agenda behind it.

So, we’ll see what happens!

RIP Harriet the Tortoise, 175 years old

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The oldest known living animal, 175 year old Harriet the Tortoise has died of a heart attack following a short illness at Australia Zoo in Queensland.

Harriet the Tortoise in 2002

Whilst it was long thought that Harriet was collected by Charles Darwin on his visit to the Galapagos Islands, genetic testing has shown that although she was born prior to his visit she actually came from a population that lived on an island that Darwin didn’t visit.

It Gets Worse

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I can’t believe that just a minute after my last post I find this report via Google News about the state of Villawood detention center.

A WOMAN held at the nation’s second-biggest immigration detention centre was allegedly raped repeatedly in front of her toddler because she could not lock the door to her room.

The claim — and reports of widespread drug abuse among detainees — will be at the centre of an investigation ordered by the Immigration Department into the privately run Villawood centre in western Sydney.

The Weekend Australian has learned the probe will investigate claims women have been sexually assaulted by guards and male detainees. It will also examine the availability of illicit drugs in the detention centre, and has already heard evidence that detainees in the high-security area have been seen shooting up and claim to be able to access speed, ice, heroin, morphine and marijuana.

26 More Aussies Locked Up Mistakenly By Own Government

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In February this year I wrote:

Once is a mistake (a severe & tragic one at that), twice is carelessness, but three?

How many more cases like this are there ?

Well it seems we finally have the answer.

26

That’s right – the Australian Government hasn’t just managed to lock up one of its own nationals as an illegal immigrant by mistake once, twice or three times (not to mention wrongfully deporting someone), it’s actually managed to do it an extra 26 times in the last 10 years.

Mr Georganas says the reply last week from the Attorney-General and former immigration minister Philip Ruddock confirmed most cases have been settled out of court.

“They have told us they’ve paid in excess of $800,000 for out of court settlements,” he said.

Time Team on the ABC!

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One of the things I miss moving from the UK to Aus was the TV, here we’ve only really got 2 channels worth watching (ABC and SBS), the commercial channels are awful – poor content, poor presentation and (deliberately) poor timekeeping – fortunately I’ve never watched a lot of TV!

One of the gems of UK TV is Time Team from Channel 4, an archaeology program showcasing a 3 day excavation from random peoples gardens where interesting artifacts have been found to prominent archaeological sites. A great bunch of characters and always interesting and I’ve missed it a lot.

But now it’s arrived down under! The ABC are showing it on TV on Tuesday nights at 6:10pm (though I missed the first one through being at a LUV meeting). Can’t wait!

Time Team team