SEARCH
Justinian News

Time's Up for Naughty Nathan ... Recommendation that horrible NSW solicitor be derolled ... Misuse of online funding campaigns ... Spraying ripe and abusive language ... Trolling Robert Beech-Jones ... So unfit and improper as to be beyond reeducation ... Anthony Kanaan reports ... Read more >>

Politics Media Law Society

Perils of the Defamatorium ... Lovely Linda Reynolds’ “victory” leaves her underwater … Politics, sex, law, and money … Injuries galore … The art of Tottling … Where’s the serious harm? … Trust me … Jurisdictional backwater ... Read more >> 

Free Newsletter
Justinian Columnists

Act of gracelessness ... Kathleen Folbigg's miserable ex gratia payout ... Comparable awards in other miscarriage cases ... Weasel words from the NSW Premier ... Need for a proper system of compensation assessment ... Procrustes in a lather ... Read more >> 

Blow the whistle

 

News snips ...


This area does not yet contain any content.
Justinian's Bloggers

Postcard from London ... Summertime - And the living' is easy ... Votes for 16-year olds ... Paralegal's theft by pen ... Spy helping British intelligence from his job at Border Force ... Super-injunction comes out of the shadows ... Feed them strawberries and cream ... Floyd Alexander-Hunt files from Blighty ... Read more >> 

"I actually never saw the President in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way. The President was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects ... Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me. And I just want to say that I find, I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now."

Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell interviewed by Trump's former lawyer Todd Blanche, now Deputy Attorney General ... July 25, 2025. Interviews released by DOJ, August 22, 2025 ... Read more flatulence ... 


Justinian Featurettes

Schmoozing and Betrayal ... Judge Water Softener rides into Integrityville mounted high on his horse ... Judicial review of corruption finding ... Unprecedented assistance to morals monitor ... Plenty to think about ... Court reporter Ginger Snatch files ... Read more >> 

 

 

Justinian's archive

The Tamil Times ... The corruption wars ... Blitzkrieg from The Australian's legal affairs man ... Campaigns to sink ICAC and 18C ... Battles lost in the trenches ... Where are they now? ... Extravagant fulminations ... From Justinian's Archive, April 8, 2017 ... Read more >> 


 

 

« A lustrous place in the sun | Main | Twittering courts »
Friday
May112012

Tricky bits in the budget 

Polly Peck sniffs out some of the weirder corners of the federal budget … Drug money propping up the surplus … And access to justice takes a biff 

Among the measures announced in this week's budget there was one particularly crass and small-minded item. 

Reliance on the tainted vote of Craig Thomson is bad enough, but hooking into the tainted loot of drug barons takes us to a different level of irksomeness.

All the money in the confiscated assets account is to be sent to consolidated revenue, by way of a teeny contribution towards the budget surplus. 

It means goodbye to funds earmarked for drug, alcohol and diversionary services, which came out of the confiscated assets account. 

Anyway, there's probably no votes there, just as there are no votes anywhere.

It was wrapped in alluring budgetese - a "deferral of expenditure" of $60 million over four years from the confiscated assets account to be "redirected to support other government priorities".

Who said crime doesn't pay ?

Then there is the redirection of funding from the indigenous law and justice programs in the Attorney General's Department to "community safety initiatives" under the Northern Territory intervention. 

That's code for taking money away from indigenous legal aid and early intervention programs and putting more police on the ground in Aboriginal communities. 

It also means Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin is still gouging money out of AGD.

And there's a useful $8.8 million for the Commonwealth DPP to beef-up prosecutions of people smuggling crew and organisers. 

More money for "surveillance of Ashmore Reef" presumably will appeal to rusted-on haters of "queue jumpers". 

The Federal Court emerges as one of the few institutional winners in the budget, although it's a bit of a curate's egg. 

Chief executive Warwick Soden continues to build his empire by taking control of the administration of the National Native Title Tribunal and over $19 million a year from its bloated budget. 

Tribunal president Graeme Neate will no doubt be on the phone to ministers' offices, but his execution warrant had already been signed by Stephen Skehill.

Skehill was given the job of providing the cover for the carve up of the tribunal.

At the same time Soden will have to raise an additional $77 million in court fees. 

Access to justice ... yakkity yak. 

Polly

Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.
Editor Permission Required
You must have editing permission for this entry in order to post comments.