Self Employed Australia

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News Updates

Fearing the truth – Australia’s government institutions – ATO

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Richard-BoyleIn April 2018 we were intimately involved in the production of the ABC Four Corners program ‘Mongrel Bunch of Bastards’. The program exposed evidence of the ATO’s abuse of small business people. The program brought real ‘grunt’ to our campaign to reform the ATO. And we have to say that in our observation the ATO has improved since then. There’s still much to be done, but it is better.

Included in the Four Corners program was the profiling of Richard Boyle. Richard was a case officer in the ATO who exposed ATO abuse of small business people and he explained this on the program. The consequence of this is that Richard was charged and is being prosecuted. Richard has become one of Australia’s most high-profile whistleblowers. He faces a lengthy jail sentence if convicted.

In the production of the program, and subsequently, SEA has had considerable dealings with Richard. In July 2022, SEA released a statement joining the call for the charges against Richard to be dropped. In the statement we explain our dealings with Richard as well as our view of him and his whistleblower actions. We said:

…in our view the charges against Richard must be considered within the ambit of Richard’s whistleblower activity as it exposed malpractice within the ATO.

…Richard’s whistleblowing action (and the activities related to that) were done in order to protect taxpayers from garnishee activity by the ATO which breached the ATO’s own procedural requirements.

In all our dealings with Richard we have found him to be a person of the highest ethical and moral standards.

Our statement provides the full details of the independent investigations into Richard’s whistleblowing. Those investigations detail the maladministration of the ATO at the time and, in our view, effectively support the propriety of Richard’s exposure of the truth.

This Monday (18 September 2023) the ABC 7.30 Report ran a full segment on Richard Boyle. This time they interviewed a small business taxpayer (Dirk Fielding) who Richard had helped in 2017 and who, through the ATO’s actions, has been used to generate Richard’s prosecution. Dirk refers to the prosecution as ‘insanity’.

Further, last week some 30 MPs and Senators joined the call to have the charges against Richard dropped. We again join that call and reiterate the reasons for the dropping of the charges as we explained in our statement of July 2022.

Inside the Truth Police

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truth-policeIn late July we alerted you to the planned Misinformation and Disinformation laws. The laws will require social media platforms (Facebook, etc.) to determine what is ‘true’ and to warn people for posting ‘untruths’ and then ‘cancelling’ them.

Here’s the government’s information sheet on the law.

We mentioned that we, Self-Employed Australia, have had experience with such ‘truth’ suppression. A member put up on their Facebook page a post we made commenting on the outcome of our Supreme Court action over hotel quarantine. Facebook had its ‘truth police’ sanction the member. We’ve now completed a detailed analysis of that experience.

The full detail is available on Ken’s Substack post here: ‘The Truth Police are here’.

It’s a detailed analysis of how Facebook imposes its ‘truth’ on the public and suppresses dissenting ‘truths’. We go into the detail because it gives an insight from a real experience to which anyone could be subjected.

The essence is that Facebook took an objection to the exposure of this statement by a judge in the ruling on SEA’s court action. The judge said:

“If SEA is not granted an extension of time the individuals referred to in the First Request will be freed from the not insignificant stress of potentially being subjected to prosecution for serious criminal offences… the 20 individuals identified in the First Request may suffer considerable prejudice if SEA is granted an extension of time…”[emphasis added]

That is, the opinion could be reasonably formed that the judge was commenting that if a person subject to potential prosecution was under stress, then that was a reason not to proceed.

Facebook sought to close down and suppress that comment in our view, and we explain in detail how Facebook’s outsourced ‘truth police’ approached this. Rather than determining what Facebook says is ‘fact’, our analysis is that they were in fact expressing an opinion on SEA’s opinion on the Court’s judgement. That’s okay if opinion is presented as opinion. It’s a different matter altogether, however, to present opinion as ‘fact’.

We say that it’s fine if Facebook wants to determine what is true for its platform. It owns the platform. It can do what it likes. But it is something entirely different for parliament to pass a law that all social media platforms must do as Facebook has done.

The compulsory silencing of opinion on the basis of political ‘fact’ determination by appointed ‘truth police’ heralds an era of oppression of the people. We have seen this far too often in the history of human activity. The consequences are always ugly, sometimes horrifyingly so.

The full analysis is here.

Einstein is dangerously wrong. Silence him with a new law!

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einsteinWhen Albert Einstein published his new theories around 1905 he challenged the established ‘truth’ of Newton’s laws of physics. Einstein was attacked by the scientific establishment at the time who were wedded to, and career-dependent on, Newton’s laws. Many sought to stop him. However, Einstein’s theory ultimately became the new ‘truth’.

This is how humans advance. ‘Truth’ is a view or perspective that is universally held, until such time as it is challenged, found to be faulty and replaced by a new view that becomes the new ‘truth’.

The Australian government is proposing a law that will force digital platforms (Facebook, etc.) to be the determiners of what is ‘true’. The government has put out a ‘Fact Sheet’ about this planned law and they are asking for your input.

The ‘Fact Sheet’ is here (with our markups)

We think it’s important that the government receive many responses and we encourage you to do so.

The planned law is very broad in its reach covering “Misinformation and Disinformation” that will “cause serious harm”

  • It defines misinformation as “content that is false, misleading or deceptive” but doesn’t define what those things are, leaving that open to interpretation.
  • It doesn’t define what is ‘harm’, leaving that open to interpretation.

But

  • The ‘Fact Sheet’ talks of “harm” that “…affects a significant portion of the Australian population, economy or environment, or undermines the integrity of an Australian democratic process.”

That is:

  • The law will cover almost anything that anyone says or thinks and that what is ‘true’ is to be determined by ‘truth authorities’ that supply ‘truth’ determinations to Facebook and other digital platforms.
  • The law will not be constrained to criminal or potential criminal incitement, or to issues of defamation and so on. The law will cover anything.

In ‘truth’, this law is an attempt by government (through third parties) to control what they, the prevailing establishment/s in society, decide/s is ‘true’. It will enable misinformation or disinformation that an establishment wants propagated as their ‘truth’ to be the only authorised ‘truth’.

Take this example from the opinion/‘truth’ website Wikipedia on the flat earth theory:

  • It is a historical myth that medieval Europeans generally thought the Earth was flat. This myth was created in the 17th century by Protestants to argue against Catholic.

That is, one religious group used the ‘flat earth’ allegation to take issue with a competing religious group. This is what humans have always done. ‘Truth’ and ‘facts’ are manipulated for purposes of power and oppression. The only way to limit this is to allow the broadest of human expression and challenge to existing ‘truths’.

The beauty of Wikipedia is that almost anyone can put up an opinion on their ‘truth’. Wikipedia allows competing opinions on ‘truth’ to flourish. But this law will surely suppress this feature of Wikipedia.

Self-Employed Australia has had experience with such ‘truth’ suppression. A member put up on their Facebook page a post we made commenting on the outcome of our Supreme Court action over hotel quarantine. Facebook had its ‘truth police’ sanction the member. Did Facebook’s ‘truth police’ contact us to seek our perspective? No! The ‘truth police’ instead ran with a spin the Victorian government would have wanted.

This is what this ‘truth’ law will enforce—government/establishment-sanctioned ‘truth’, with civil and criminal penalties for breaches.

In addition to responding to the ‘Fact Sheet’ above we encourage you to express your ‘truth’ to your local federal MP and State Senators.

The most effective emails are those that are respectful, to the point and personal. A follow-up phone call to the member’s office adds extra weight.

You can find your local member’s contact details through this parliamentary website. The search functions are good.

Robodebt lies and fraud: How corrupt government works

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robodebtRobodebt was and is a huge a scandal that was eventually investigated by a Royal Commission. We’ve studied the 1000-pages-plus Royal Commission Report—it’s a shocking read—and have written a summary and analysis.

If you read anything of what we write, this analysis stands out as one of the most significant we have written. (9-minute read)

The issue goes to the heart of whether government can be trusted to be honest and accountable.

Frankly, Robdebt should shatter any naivety Australians may hold about the ‘purity’ of government. Robodebt shows that governments will lie and cheat, particularly when transparency and accountability are more a public relations con than reality.

The Robodebt Royal Commission Report details how the government of the day decided that there must by wide-ranging social security fraud. It claimed the fraud to be in the order of well over $1 billion per year, but there were no facts to back that claim. Nonetheless, it was pushed as a political priority and the public service was charged with delivering the policy.

The orchestrated ‘scam’ that the government imposed on 866,857 Australians was pretty simple in its design as was its inbuilt flaw.

The scheme involved the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) providing the Department of Human Services (DHS) with income records of welfare recipients over short periods of time, usually a fortnight. DHS then assumed that the income for the short period applied over longer periods, say a year.

Based on this false assumption, DHS then alleged that welfare recipients had more income than they had declared, and that overpayment of welfare had occurred as a result on a massive scale. DHS aggressively collected the ‘debts’. Great hardship followed. There were even suicides.

The Commission’s Report details systemic and deliberate lying, deceit, fraud and cover-up layered over the top of incompetence, bad management, maladministration and ignoring the law at the most senior levels of the public service and politics.

The extent of the scandal would surprise many, but what we observe are patterns of behaviour by government that we have seen before—particularly by the ATO as just one example.

We offer our view of how this needs to be addressed. We say that relying on internal government department policies to stop such government fraud (which is the current dominant structure) is not enough. Government, instead, must be held to at least the same levels of transparency and accountability as are expected of the rest of the community.

We say that Parliament needs to take charge of the bureaucracy.

How government can harm people – The Robodebt scandal

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RobodebtWe’re currently studying the report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme. The report describes a scandal of huge proportions, in which government inflicted enormous damage on individuals—even to the extent of a number of suicides occurring.

The scheme involved the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) supplying income assessment data to the Department of Human Services (DHS) on some 860,000 social welfare recipients. The ATO data reported PAYG income based on employer returns for specific periods during a year. The DHS then used the income data and assumed that the income from one period of time was income across longer periods of time (say a year). They called this ‘averaging’.

To quote directly from the Royal Commission Report:

“…the way averaging was used in the Scheme was essentially unfair, treating many people as though they had received income at a time when they had not … with the further fiction that they now owed something back to government…”

That is, the income assessments made by DHS based on ATO data were wrong. On the basis of these false incomes, people were sent bills to pay back social security payments they had received.

There is now, of course, a lot of political payback surrounding the issue, much we would observe likely justified. But there is a bigger issue at play.

There is a gross institutional failure in Australia when it comes to government operations being subject to transparency and checks and balance. Much of what are claimed to be ‘check and balances’ is government scamming the people. Take one example.

November this year marks the start of strengthened unfair contract laws for small business people. But government departments are not subject to these laws. That is, Australian governments are not prepared to apply to themselves the same rules which they apply to the community. Australia has a big problem in this respect, and it makes for bad government.

The Royal Commission report runs to over 1,000 pages. When we’ve finished our study, we’ll produce a detailed assessment.

On the issue of contracts, we’ve had a number of people ask us for assistance in devising their own contract or reviewing a contract they have been offered. SEA does not provide legal, accounting or other advice. But we have developed guidelines on contract assessment/construction that many people find helpful. SEA members can access that information here. These give good starting points that can be checked by a lawyer.

Should gig workers like Mick Jagger, Beyoncé and Harry Styles be worried?

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In late April, we alerted you to the new Australian Taxation Office (ATO) reporting rules for gig workers. We had some queries asking, “what are ‘gig’ workers?” That’s a pretty sensible question.

Last week I posted the answer on Substack. You can read ‘To Gig or Not to Gig’ (it’s free!)

Yes, icons of global popular culture such as Mick Jagger, Beyoncé and Harry Styles are all gig workers.

And (believe it or not) gig work is even older than Mick Jagger! Wow! I wonder if Mick’s eight children—particularly his youngest child, six-year-old Deveraux—would realise that Mick’s a gig worker? They probably wouldn’t care…

But the ATO does care about who is a gig worker. And the Albanese government, under Minister Burke, wants to kill off gig. But we assume that it wouldn’t give PM Albanese any ‘Satisfaction’ to attack Jagger, and anyway ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’.

But the ATO is really looking at this as a Satellite issue (apologies to Mr Styles).

What the ATO is focused on is the type of gig work that’s done through platforms. No, not the ‘stage’ platforms that Mick, Beyoncé and Harry work on, but the ‘tech’ platforms that Uber and other such companies use to organise work. The ATO calls it the sharing economy.

What the ATO wants to do is track your income if you work as a ride-share driver, rent out your flat/house/room for short-term accommodation and so on. The ‘platform’ companies will be required to report your income to the ATO starting on 1 July 2023 (i.e., soon!) The platform companies will require information from you, notably your:

  • ABN and business/trading name (where applicable);
  • first, middle and surname/family name (for individuals);
  • date of birth (for individuals);
  • residential or business address;
  • email address and telephone numbers; and
  • bank account details.

But we suspect they’d have all this information anyway. The ATO has provided a detailed explanation here.

And just to ensure the message gets through, to steal a line from Beyoncé, these new gig reporting rules also apply to Single Ladies! (But presumably won’t apply if you’re still in nappies.)

Justice and Not Above the Law: Class action to bankrupt Victoria?

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not-above-the-lawIt can take a long time for justice and the rule of law to hold people accountable (particularly powerful people), where such accountability is proven to be warranted.

We made our attempt in Victoria to require WorkSafe to hold people (powerful people) accountable for the failures of the 2020 Hotel Quarantine disaster which resulted in 801 deaths. The Victorian Supreme Court ‘knocked us out’ on a technicality which meant that the Court did not have to rule on WorkSafe’s refusal to do its job!

Discernable recently interviewed SEA’s Ken Phillips (Executive Director) and Nick Karamouzis (Chair) where we gave a full report (26min).

But this issue is not over—not by the (proverbial) long shot! A class action for damages is proceeding in the Victorian Supreme Court with considerable success so far.

Class action—Victoria

The class action by the international legal firm, Quinn Emanuel, is suing for damages inflicted on the thousands of businesses forced into lockdown during 2020. As with SEA’s application,  the state government attempted to have the application knocked out on technical grounds. But the Full Court of the Supreme Court has dismissed the government’s attempt. The action now progresses. Speculation is that a successful ruling could result in a payout to affected businesses in the many billions of dollars, even enough to bankrupt Victoria.

You can follow the class action here.

Michigan class action took nine years

It’s instructive to note the successful class action in the US state of Michigan where the ex-Governor and eight other government officials faced criminal charges, including manslaughter. This happened after a government-induced health crisis in the city of Flint in 2014. The crisis resulted in twelve deaths and some 90 cases of Legionnaires’ disease.

Just this month the Michigan Supreme Court awarded $US600 million ($A900 million) to finalise the class action for damages—a damages situation vastly smaller than that which occurred in the Victorian lockdown. But note that it took nine years to reach final settlement.

We’ll continue to follow the Victorian class action and keep you updated.

Gig workers alert – ATO tracking your income

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gig-workersThis is to alert SEA members and subscribers about new laws affecting you if you earn income through ‘gig’ platforms.  As of 1 July 2023, the platforms will be required to report your income to the Australian Taxation Office. The move is directed to identifying undeclared income and will eventually apply to GST compliance.

Legislation for the Sharing Economy Reporting Regime passed Parliament in December 2022. The ATO is having to design the implementation of the new laws quite quickly. The ATO is seeking to implement this properly and is conducting industry and ‘stakeholder’ consultations on this. We’re involved in these consultations and have raised a number of issues.

To give you some context, the new reporting rules are targeting the (approximately) 970,000 people, or 7 per cent of the workforce of 13.9 million, who earn income using gig platforms. Only 0.19 per cent of the workforce, however, report earning all their income from gig. That’s according to the comprehensive inquiry into gig work done by the Victorian government.

Consequently, the ATO’s gig income reporting regime is overwhelmingly going to affect people who use gig as top-up income. If you’re using gig for income, you’ll need to ensure that you’re reporting that income correctly.

The issues we’ve raised in the consultation so far include the following:

Data collection: The gig platforms will be required to report data other than simply financial—mainly, we’re told, for identification purposes. We asked if the type of data required could be clarified.

GST: How will GST reporting operate? Will gig platforms be required to understand gig workers’ GST threshold limits?

Gross or net income: We assume that reporting will require net income declarations. That is, income after platforms take out all platform and related expenses.

Dispute management: This is our top query.

What if a platform incorrectly reports income or reports income that does not match the ATO’s prescriptions?

Our concerns here are strongly linked to the abuse of social welfare recipients in the Robo Debt scandal. In that case the ATO provided income data to Centrelink which then used that data to allege incomes that were false. The government’s dispute-resolution process was essentially non-existent, resulting in huge abuse of welfare recipients. The same potential exists with this new reporting system—namely, if there are reporting errors, then the gig worker is hopelessly disadvantaged in having them investigated and fixed.

We have to say that the ATO was/is very receptive to our concerns and queries.

If you earn income through gig, we’re keen to hear from you if you have concerns or can identify issues. Drop a line to me (Ken Phillips – kennethnormanphillips@gmail.com)

You can read more from Ken Phillips on his Substack Self-Employed Aren’t Stupid site, including ‘A tale of 2 Croissants.’

Reporting from Marxism Conference 2023

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Marxism-conferenceWe’ve reported that the Albanese government has committed itself to upending our right as self-employed people to be self-employed. Its stated agenda is to create a third definition of self-employment called ‘employee-like.’ This will throw into confusion, perhaps even remove, key protections we have long campaigned to achieve—for example, protection from unfair contracts.

The government plans to move with legislation later in the year. We intend to mount a strong campaign against this and are preparing for the battle ahead. The government comes at its agenda from the perspective that there is an inherent conflict between ‘workers and bosses’. This is the old Left-wing perspective of the social and economic order.

The challenge posed by self-employed people to this perspective is that we are both worker and boss at the same time. So, do we exploit ourselves? Are we inherently in conflict with ourselves? Um … confusing!!

Over Easter, Australian Marxists held their Marxism Conference 2023 in Melbourne. Self-Employed Australia’s Executive Director Ken Phillips attended the full three days. His aim was to seek to understand what the Marxists’ arguments are and the world view that underpins them. If we are to effectively defend the right to be self-employed, we need to understand what the ‘other side’ are saying and thinking—even at the furthest end of the spectrum.

The Albanese government is broadly of a Left-wing persuasion. Prime Minister Albanese is from the socialist left of the Labor Party. We’re not offering a view on that, but rather seek to understand a range of political views. All political views fit somewhere along a spectrum of some sort. We don’t know where the PM sits on the Left-wing spectrum. We doubt that he is a hard-line Marxist as presented at the Easter Marxism Conference.

What we have done, however, is to put together some day-to-day reports on what we think it is that Australian Marxists believe. Here are the three reports we put together over Easter:

Reporting from the Marxist Front Line – Overview and agenda

  • Listing the agenda items.

Reporting from the Marxist Front Line – Day One

  • Capitalism is the enemy.
  • We are defined by our class.

Singing “the  Internationale”

  • On War and Identity Politics

We have genuinely attempted to present reports of what was said and what was argued. We’re not commentating on those claims. Rather, we’re simply trying to gain a broader understanding of the mind of the Marxist Left.

‘A Tale of 2 Croissants’ and Being a Little Bit Pregnant(?)

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substackI let you know a little while ago that I’ve started posting as a Substack writer. Substack is for obsessive writers (like me). I’ve called my Substack SELF-EMPLOYED AREN’T STUPID!

Substack gives me a platform to write about self-employed issues, ideas, concepts and thoughts that complement what we do at Self-Employed Australia.

So here are some thoughts that might interest you from SELF-EMPLOYED AREN’T STUPID!

A tale of 2 croissants

croissantsI explain that:

“In my home city of Melbourne there’s a near-inner-city suburb that’s rapidly changed from working-class to ‘woke-well-to-do’ class. At the outer edge of the suburb there’s one street that seems to divide the two classes. On the working-class side of the street is a popular bakery run by a Vietnamese family. Not quite half a kilometre away (in the woke-well-to-do section), is another bakery.

The Vietnamese bakery sells croissants for $4.00.

The woke-well-to-do bakery sells croissants for $6.50.”

Read more   

A serious look at being a ‘little bit pregnant’

surpriseThis article looks at the labour academic argument that self-employed people can be a ‘little bit an employee’.  I explain that:

For a long time, Australian unions, labour academics and their political fellow travellers have sought to cut away at the right of people to earn their income through the commercial contract. The Albanese government has committed to doing this later in 2023.

And explain the history and thinking around this idea.

Read more

Independence and the Death of Employment

bookYou may not be aware that I published a book on this in 2008. I’ve decided to make this available through Substack in serialised, chapter format. I’ll progressively release chapters. In this first release I provide the book’s Introduction. In it I quote Roman Emperor Caligula who stated:

“Bear in mind that I can treat anyone exactly as I please”.  That’s real power.

The modern employment contract is a contract of control and power, of one party over another. Few realise this. And much of my (obsessive) journey is to argue against such power and control.

As you are a subscriber to, or member of, Self-Employed Australia, you’ve become part of, or maybe are committed to, the campaign to defend self-employment—that is, escaping the control and power over you that comes with ‘employment’.

I invite you to subscribe to my Substack SELF-EMPLOYED AREN’T STUPID! blog and join me on the further development of this journey.