Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"Contrary to its name, this Bill doesn't move people from welfare to work. It just dumps people from one welfare payment, to a lower welfare payment. These laws are the final stage of Prime Minister's tired old dreams becoming the new Australian nightmare. With these laws, the Prime Minister has recast Australia with American dye. With its fixation on ideological obsessions, the Howard Government is redrawing Australia in the American social model, where violence has replaced justice; where communities have become gangs and neighbours are enemies. This is what happens when you tear at a social fabric, when you assign moral failure to the vulnerable. When you say that people who are struggling are lazy or morally defective.The cold heart of the Howard Government's changes to welfare is a cut to income support for vulnerable Australians. People who would have been eligible for the Parenting Payment or the Disability Support Pension will instead be dumped onto the dole. The dole is not adequate to meet the basic needs of either of these groups." Penny Wong

UPDATE 8.50PM: Dems Senator Andrew Bartlett's first terror debate report for Webdiary has been added to this entry.

UPDATE 7.50 PM by Margo: The Government has just, without notice to non-Government Senators, guillotined Senate debate on the terror laws in what Dems Senator Andrew Bartlett said was an "utterly corrupt process". Few get the chance to state their views - speeches must and end at 8.30pm. All amendments must be debated, questions asked and the vote taken in a mere three and a half hours tomorrow, with the vote at 6.30 pm. It's unprecedented. You can hear and watch the speeches by going here.

The Law Council has launched a final assault on the Federal Government's anti-terrorism legislation and its lack of response to the legal profession's objections to the laws. Full-page advertisements will appear in newspapers criticising John Howard's failure to reply to a Law Council letter condemning the counter-terror laws.

UPDATE Dec 5 by Margo: The Government has just announced a crunched, derisory Senate debate on the Welfare to Work package. Speeches will be allowed from 8.30pm to 11.30pm tonight. Amendments must be debated, questions asked and votes taken between 7.30pm and 11pm tomorrow. You can hear and/or watch the debate here. 

UPDATE Dec 1 by Margo: Western Australian Liberal MP Judi Moylan tells Webdiary why she abstained on the House of Reps vote today on the Welfare to Work package.

November 30, Judi's speech to the House of Reps: "In my view, we have lost a golden opportunity to reform welfare in a meaningful way and put in place a package of measures that would strongly support not just the incentives for employers but true and real incentives for employees with additional caring responsibilities and disabilities to be supported in their efforts to access the workplace. I find this cut in income support really very disturbing the eve of the delivery of tax cuts for families earning more than $1,200 a week. We will all be the poorer if this legislation goes through. In my view, that part of the legislation which cuts income support and imposes disincentives and high effective or marginal rates of tax on some of the most vulnerable groups in our community does not deserve the support of this parliament." Judi Moylan, MP

"Industrial lawyers will be smiling from ear to ear now that the IR laws have passed through. I know I am. I can't wait to cash in on all those small businesses out there who could face a raft of negotiations and claims for "unlawful termination".Sydney is full of industrial lawyers who used to be personal injury lawyers. Personal injury and workers compensation used to be a bit of a club. Then Bob Carr, that great defender of the rights of poor struggling insurance executives, decided that workers and people injured in car accidents should get next to nothing. So a whole bunch of personal injury lawyers suddenly had little or no work to do. Well, not now. John Howard is handing out fists full of dollars at $4,000 a piece. That will give many workers at least 10 hours (and if they come to me, 20 hours) of lawyer's time to cause havoc to all those employers with less than 100 punters on the books." Irfan Yusuf