Adam

Well, I'm glad you asked, @JohnRowsthorne. I knew that some of you would be too clever to fall for that shit. Here's my response on Reddit just then to @friendlyjordies - before he deletes it, I guess. Jordan, we suggest you look at why you're being asked to put this about. The parliamentary record shows that Jordon Steele-John had a significant confrontation with the Labor government on Monday 12 October 2026, the day before the letter was delivered to David Shoebridge. The confrontation concerned automated government decision-making, something Steele-John has repeatedly challenged in relation to the NDIS. At approximately 12.04 pm AEDT, Steele-John spoke against provisions in the Health Insurance Amendment (Incentive Payments and Other Measures) Bill 2026 that would authorise computer programs to carry out certain Medicare administrative decisions. You know, the one using Palantir technology via Defence and Services Australia, aged care, veterans and the NDIS. He argued that removing human judgement from decisions affecting people's lives created serious risks. He said: "Automated decision-making processes that remove human beings from the loop or constrain their ability to intervene and utilise their expertise do not work. They place people at risk of harm." He also criticised technology companies selling automation systems to government: "It's nonsense. You've fallen for the con." NDIS Minister Jenny McAllister directly challenged him. She defended the proposed automation safeguards and described his approach to the debate as foolish, arguing that computers already play an essential role in government administration. The exchange was reported that same day by Medical Republic. And then this. Monday 12 October, 12.39 pm: Steele-John moved a telehealth amendment. He called for changes to Medicare's face-to-face appointment requirements, which can prevent disabled people, chronically ill people and rural residents from accessing subsidised GP telehealth appointments. McAllister said Labor would not support his amendment. Monday 12 October, 6.58 pm: Steele-John moved an aged-care amendment. Acting on behalf of Penny Allman-Payne, he moved an amendment calling for the government to: He connected the aged-care assessment system directly to the government's proposed NDIS assessment changes and its increasing reliance on automated decisions. The vote was deferred until Tuesday because it was after 6.30 pm. Abolish the Integrated Assessment Tool. End excessive aged-care co-payments. Fully fund aged care, including home support. Tuesday 13 October, 1.06 pm: Labor voted against the aged-care amendment. FOR13 AGAINST27 Steele-John and Shoebridge both voted in favour. All 23 Labor senators participating, including McAllister, voted against. Four Liberals, including Anne Ruston, so voted against. David Pocock, Jacqui Lambie, Lidia Thorpe and Fatima Payman supported the amendment. This was a concrete parliamentary defeat for Steele-John's proposal, just hours before the reported delivery of the letter. Nothing is an accident. And if you have a read at enoughaustralia.com and if you know anything at all about tech, data matching, algorithms or idk, life, then you should know that there is a reason that Labor colluded with the Coalition on this. Because it is the Coalition's proposal and project, and this is about the biggest collusion against Australian citizens in history. Gotta say, I am pretty disappointed that a talented young journalist turned out to just be the Dave Hughes of the Labor Party. What a waste of talent. If Jordan Shanks was actually a journalist, he would be asking BIG questions of Labor members like, oh, idk, Richard Marles (who is besties with Dutton) about data centres, Palantir, private equity rollups and - Pengana Capital Investments. Go have a little mother's look at THAT, including the following. Pengana funds and investment vehicles: Pengana Private Equity Trust (PE1) Pengana Global Private Credit Trust (PCX) Pengana Diversified Private Credit Fund Pengana AI Private Opportunities Trust (AIX) Pengana International Equities (PIA) Pengana High Conviction Equities Fund Pengana Australian Equities Fund Pengana High Conviction Property Securities Fund Pengana WHEB Sustainable Impact Fund Pengana Alpha Israel Fund Yep. And the companies that are included in that neat little batch of exy companies. SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, ByteDance, Databricks, Handshake, Helsing, Mesoblast, Clarity Pharmaceuticals, Radiopharm Theranostics, Actinogen Medical, Brazilian Rare Earths, IperionX, Metallium, Charter Hall, Goodman Group, Stockland, Centuria, Qualitas and NEXTDC. Richard Marles' wife (and yes, yes, she is allowed to be successful and have her own money, yada yada) had declared a portfolio through Pengana Capital Investments, previously valued at $91,000. But this is very relevant when you look at how this is playing out, how decisions made by a bunch of government actors are affecting the issue around ai, data centres, government cuts to social services, including aged care and the NDIS, where disabled and older Australians are dying on the daily due to automated decision making. That's what the Bill was. It creates a statutory framework for Commonwealth payments to medical practices and healthcare providers. It also - Supports payments encouraging practices to adopt digital health technology. - Allows computer programs to make certain administrative decisions about incentive payments. - Enables eligibility, participation and some payment rules to be established through regulations. - Expands compliance, record-keeping and information-sharing arrangements. The Bill formalises a system where government money can flow to corporate healthcare providers under centrally determined rules, with information sharing, compliance monitoring and automation built into the administration. Larger businesses, like nib, will have advantages in meeting reporting requirements and operating at scale. And yes - Malcolm Turnbull DID co-found Pengana. With THAT GUY Russel Pillemer in 2003. Pengana’s Australian Equities Fund holds shares in nib, the corporate health insurer expanding into the NDIS, while Monday’s Medicare legislation strengthens the framework for government payments to health providers and digital technology adoption. Oh, and at the risk of this becoming longer than this already is, there's also the not inconsiderable issue that Australia is turning publicly funded healthcare and disability support into corporate investment opportunities. nib is a GREAT example. Under Mark Fitzgibbon, brother of former Labor Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon, nib went from a mutual health fund to an ASX-listed corporation. Back in 2009, Mark's meetings with senior Defence officials about nib's business opportunities sparked questions in Senate Estimates while his brother was Defence Minister. Joel's office maintained the meetings were handled properly. Fast-forward to the NDIS, and nib raised $158 million to buy up independent plan managers, acquired a digital marketplace connecting disabled people with support workers, and now manages funding for more than 40,000 NDIS participants. The company has openly told investors it expects the government's new plan management reforms to favour large operators like itself. Meanwhile, Parliament is expanding automated administration of public healthcare payments and arguing over billions in private health insurance subsidies. This is the political economy of modern Australian human services where public money (including from the Future Fund) creates the money, government policy reshapes it, corporations consolidate it and we cripples, older people and kids in childcare centres are increasingly treated as units of revenue. It does other things, which nobody is looking at while they are defaming a crippled guy and calling him a 'sleaze' and 'sex pest' because of 'inappropriate comments' they reckon he said more than a decade ago, when he was 21. It gives legal powers for provider eligibility, payments, audits, information-sharing and debt recovery, with important details left to ministerial rules. On Monday, Jordon Steele-John moved a telehealth amendment, while Labor and the Coalition both supported the bill’s main framework. We should be asking why a disability scheme founded on individual choice is being redesigned in ways that large corporate intermediaries themselves expect to benefit from, and whose financial interests are being served when Parliament makes those decisions. While you were all looking over there and dutifully printing shitty hatchet jobs on crippled stalking and coercive control victims (who, by the way, have an AVO (like many others) against the very unwell person making the allegations). And yes, it came from 'inside the Greens' - but the Greens didn't orchestrate this all of this. You know who orchestrated this. And you should know why. You could write a real story about this, or do a real piece on the issues if you were a real journalist, rather than someone who was more rusted on to Labor than a bolt on a jetty. But now I guess you'll just be writing Newspeak at Minitrue like the rest of the paid for hire journos. What a waste of talent. I wonder when you will just give up and become a political staffer instead. No offers, I guess, because too useful on the outside. NB: The Greens insiders? Well, @SerkanTheWriter, who I am exceedingly disappointed with, could tell you. So could I. And I could tell you a shit load about a little cabal around Sophie McNeil and equally about some shitfuckery over this side of the country - preselection for Shoebridge's position only shut yesterday. And you can guarantee that Sarah Hanson Young et al will be pushing as hard as possible to replace Shoebridge. As for Labor, this is just two birds with one stone and the chance to get rid of a troublesome thorn in their sides while painting the Greens as chaotic and piss poor. While getting rid of one of the hardest working Greens that there are. Which, I agree, is piss poor behaviour. Shoebridge's staffer is among the people in the NSW Young Greens minutes from 2018 that Jordan Shanks has just posted. Quel surprise. @GreensNSW and @TheGreensWA need to fucking clean house. And urgently, because if this is how they treat their friends (I can almost hear the 'Jordon is a nice guy, but...' from here) then by fuck how do they, and Labor, treat their enemies. Because this is not just about your petty political circuses nor your minor power grabs, you resoundingly obtuse twatwaffles. This is about AUSTRALIA. And all of our futures. Get your shit together. “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” - George Orwell, Animal Farm