As long as we have this sort of attitude and subsequent legal decision (Industrial Court of Queensland), we will have major problems in Australia. Is it any wonder that smaller business owners do not want to employ people on permanent staff, or that we perceive that many public servants (and yes, council employees are public servants too) are bludgers:


IT'S okay for council workers to have a punt on the horses during work time, if a recent decision by a Queensland tribunal is anything to go by.

A council worker sacked for gambling on the job has been reinstated after successfully claiming unfair dismissal.

The park maintenance employee won his job back even after it was revealed he and other council workers regularly went to the TAB when they were meant to be working.

Chipper Mark Moorhead was fired from Moreton Bay Regional Council last September after he and four workmates went to the TAB on work time, according to a recently published judgment of the Industrial Court of Queensland.

Council supervisors got wind of the unauthorised smoko and confronted the group when they emerged from the Kippa-Ring TAB on September 9, 2013.

The workers pretended they'd been to the bank but Mr Moorhead later cracked under pressure from his manager and admitted the truth.

He was sacked a fortnight later with a letter that said he'd breached his responsibilities as an employee and by lying had demonstrated a "lack of understanding about the seriousness of the incident''.

At least one other worker also lost his job but it's not clear what happened to the others.

However Mr Moorhead managed to win his job back after appealing to the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission.

The commission found the council had been too harsh despite hearing evidence from another council worker that Mr Moorhead and others regularly placed bets at the TAB on work time.

The commission decided there wasn't enough evidence to back the claims and took into account Mr Moorhead's good record and promise to obey the council's code of conduct.

"The commission is of the view that with appropriate supervision and in light of the commitment made by Mr Moorhead, that trust and confidence in the employment relationship is capable of being restored,'' its judgement said.

The council then went to the Industrial Court of Queensland to reverse the decision but the court backed the commission's judgment and threw out the appeal

No Cookies | The Courier-Mail

Interesting case. I'd like to read the judgement but I can't find it...:suspect:

IME cyber gambling is an increasing workplace problem, particularly when you get talking to IT types and hear just how much business bandwidth is being chomped up by Sports/Centrebet. Going to the TAB is pretty old school when you can use your work computer (wrong, but there's a lot of it around) or your smart phone to place bets. I don't gamble so it's a bit of a foreign world, but from what I hear if you sacked everyone for gambling on work time the office/depot would be pretty empty.
And no, I don't agree with it.

I find the current online betting ads particularly offensive; the basic theme is that big men gamble :yuk:. They got chased off the footy broadcasts (eventually) but they're still out there feeding people's addictions with big, jazzy ads.
Repost, but still relevant.
If I were put on the spot with this, my questions would be; did they complete their daily duties? Were they shirking work to go to the TAB or were they on downtime? I've never worked for a council, but I assume they get given a list of tasks and maybe a call-out phone to monitor for emergency jobs. If they did their tasks and monitored the phone, is going to the TAB any different from calling into a coffee shop or sandwich bar? Are they allowed to do that?

Do their fellow council employees who are office workers routinely use their computers to place bets? My guess would be yes, because it's a huge problem across Australia amongst low, middle and high level workers (not that it gets talked about all that often). If they do, is there anything so different about a road crew calling into a TAB to conduct the same activity, if they still completed their tasks?

Of course if they'd not done whatever they were supposed to do because they were goofing off at the TAB then none of these questions would bear fruit, but still... the article doesn't address this.

I can't see Abbotomy being the leader come the DD,
Hockey may of smoked his last cigar as well.

War in Australia (any Oz Politics)
 

Another case of "I wish..." Ethel?

Worrals

Re "If I were put on the spot with this, my questions would be; did they complete their daily duties ?"


Of course not, didn't you know that most workers never finish the job completely, always leaving something for the next day !

These are the kind of hit heads we don't need in Aus.
You'll need to read the article below the story of the boy about Mr Kelly,
the guy who's accident a few years ago started the Macquarie Fields riots.

She was soon told to leave her son in the hands of an off-duty nurse who witnessed the accident. Within seconds he had ripped off the boy's shirt and tried to resuscitate him.
“If it wasn't for the nurse then he certainly would not have made it to hospital,” the shopkeeper said.
He said the family of the little boy mistakenly thought the nurse had been the driver who had run into him.
“They started bashing the nurse's car,” he said.

Actually the nurse was dam lucky it wasn't him they where bashing on. Frankly in some places you are risking your own life stopping at the scene of an accident.

Its sad as sometimes immediate help can save a life. But we are at a stage now where there's violence against the person who's in the car, some place against firy's, ambo's etc, where's it all going.

Agreed. :( Many years ago I was warned against doing so in Mount Isa, and I'm sure it's not the only place like that.

The poor old ambos are frequently used as punching bags and targets by ferals who should be sent to the zoo (and not as visitors). Personally I'd arm them all with pepper spray and tasers, but according to a mate in the QAS many of them are opposed to the idea.

The fireys are a bit bigger and tend to be able to fight back but I hear they still get a lot of aggro, particularly at car accidents.

In pre-Independence PNG, the rule, if your car hit someone, was "don't stop but drive to the nearest police station". The situation there hasn't improved any since then.

Sadly, the same rule has been gaining popularity in the NT over the past few years; borne from painful experience. (Not my pain, I hasten to add.)

Mind you, when I first arrived up here, you could safely go out without locking your doors. Now we all live behind security screens and the police run "Lock it or Lose It" campaigns. (I remain to be convinced of the value in telling the crims its the victim's fault if they rip off something not locked down...:rolleyes:)

Social progress in the Age of Entitlement. :ouch:

I heard that about PNG from soldiers that served there.

Rascals or Ratbags I think they were called.

I know one person who was accosted as he got out of his car
and shot the guy dead, the others ran off.

I see the abbotomies are introducing a new crime fighting package, I guess it's in anticipation when all the peasants revolt!
I wonder when the lieberals faceless men will make a showing?

How will we know who they are?

Is this a new trend in Australian politics? Pre-election you put up a leader who makes a vast range of promises, then post-election, after a reasonable time, dispose of them. This enables the Party to lay the blame for all broken promises at the feet of deposed leader. "We didn't make those promises - he did", and a such we are no longer bound by them.

So Turnbull for PM before the years out? Unless you fancy any of the others - such as?

.

Quote from the SMH this morning:

And quite understandably a significant increase in petty crime. If the only way a person can get food is by shoplifting, then shoplifting they will. The young begging on the streets, not because they want to but because they have to, is NOT the Australia I want.

Whilst working for Aer Lingus some forty years ago I saw women with children begging in the streets of Dublin. It isn't something I have ever had an expectation of seeing in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth or Brisbane.

The under 25's are the same age group as those who flew the Spitfires and Lancasters in WWII, who manned the barricades during the Cold War and of those who fought in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. I am only too well aware that Govt's don't give a sh*t after they return, but think it rather stupid that just because we don't need them right now we should give them the finger as Abbott and Hockey have chosen to do. Do they really have to go overseas and kill people to be considered to be of value to the nation?

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Though technically possible, its unlikely. No matter how much you keep wishing for it, that ain't going to make it happen.

There's a couple of things that are signature conservative, that is economic management and making the hard calls. The other is holding the line, in some cases called being pig headed.:p

Though I'm sure there's more than a few pretend conservatives who are ready to bolt, I'd be surprised if it was enough to tilt the balance.

Don't have a problem with the possible need for hard decisions. But lets start with all the middle class welfare that gets doled out. Like negative gearing for middle class property investors, their child benefits, subsidies for their health insurance and child care, plus tax relief on their super contributions, etc. etc. etc.

Abbott and Hockey lack the courage to take on the middle classes so hit the most vulnerable. Sad b*stards.

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Riiiight.:hmm: So the reason we have ‘asylum seekers’ bypassing any number of countries where they would be safer than that they left, and would also be of suitable religious persuasion would be...? Probably the same reason we have so many Kiwis here. Oh that’s right – our poor record of “supporting single unemployed people”, otherwise known to those who pay taxes as unfettered access to welfare.
Concur with all except tax relief on superannuation. Why should I be penalised (ie taxed) for working my butt off and preparing for my retirement? Should I just say ‘stuff it’, spend it all now and follow the well trodden path of relying on the government to provide? I think the word you’re looking for is ‘incentive’.
True enough. However governments of both persuasions are voted in by the same population who don’t give a sh*t about returned servicemen and women. Caring about them involves more than waving a flag on ANZAC Day.

Actually some of that does more good than harm, though there is a lot of abuse of what you call middle class welfare and it could be knocked back a bit.

The problem we have is retirement, thats the big killer, the side effect of all this will be a lot of those people will be less dependent on the government when they retire because of it.

I know in my case despite having been in super since I started working, it will be nowhere near enough to support me. What will probally support me when I finish at 70, will be the assets I have accumulated (thats if I get enough). I have never been on the dole, nor do I intend to, but I have watched my pennys and have paid a price for it.

Whilst there are genuine hard up people out their, there a sh!t load more squarking who don't need to get designer this, designer that etc.

Capt Sand Dune:
Wasn't aware that hordes of "refugees" from rich countries were heading here on boats.

I'd suggest we need a definition of "rich countries" before we can run a comparison.

Is the USA rich? Japan, China, Russia, Brazil, India, South Korea?

We have a population divided between those who create wealth and a standard of living for the nation, those who are part of society but genuinely are unable to contribute and a bloody large group who could but don't contribute yet seem to demand the same standard of living as those who work ; while at the same time criticising them for having "too much".

Then we have the public service, who work but don't create wealth and thinks that entitles them to dictate to the workers.

It's about time the first group woke up to itself and placed a three month moratorium on paying taxes. :E

Then the whinging masses might get an appreciation of the realities of life.