While yet another detention centre in Australia, Villawood, run by British multinational Serco, is today facing refugee riots (and what do we expect, locking people up for months if not years? No mental trauma or anger?), earlier this week ABC TV’s 7.30 tackled the role of Serco. The story wasn’t bad (overly focused on under-staffing…
Showing all posts tagged privatisation
Mercenaries look at Libya and see dollar signs
What a glorious war: Libya might soon turn into a goldmine for private security firms. Reports say that the UK is already hiring mercenaries to protect the interests of the big corporations there, once Colonel Gaddafi goes. But the fresh history of the previous NATO-led interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan give a pretty clear picture…
British government more than happy to allow Serco et al into the tent?
What are good friends for? Legal loopholes in the Health and Social Care Bill could leave health services open to exploitation by profiteering outsiders [such as Serco], and to misinterpretation by politicians and interest groups keen to capitalise on its uncertainties, according to independent policy experts. The Bill is permissive, not prescriptive, allowing a variety…
Hands up who trusts Serco with their lives?
Avoid like the plague (which is exactly why governments are increasingly turning to the British multinational): A man allegedly changed details on more than 67,000 speed and red-light camera fines in the computer system of the company which manages the data in Victoria. The tampering did not actually affect any infringement notices as the changes…
We dismiss Wikileaks at our intellectual peril
Last night here in Sydney I helped launch – MC really alongside author Andrew Fowler and journalist Kerry O’Brien – a wonderful new book on Wikileaks and Julian Assange, The Most Dangerous Man in the World. Go buy immediately! What was clear during the discussion was the significance of Wikileaks challenging the media class in…
This is what Australia is doing to refugees in its care
The reality of life in Australia for asylum seekers is too rarely heard. So when Perth-based refugee activist Victoria Martin-Iverson wrote to me yesterday with the story below I asked if I could publish it here exclusively. This is the reality of privatised refugees, mostly ignored in a country that doesn’t seem too interested in…
The best way to taint Libyan “democracy” push
This doesn’t sound like a disaster waiting to happen at all. No, it’s wonderful idea to get mercenaries to train Libyans in the art of killing and fighting: Britain is to urge Arab countries to train the disorganised Libyan rebels, and so strengthen their position on the battlefield before negotiations on a ceasefire, senior British…
Britain’s public cuts serve Serco wonderfully
Multinationals making money from the public purse – in prisons, detention centres, hopsitals and the like – are the perfect example of the modern age; firms that talk about rights and care but are all about only one thing. Serco is one of those companies, getting huge profits in the process. Governments love them; much…
Fighting privatised prisons is a noble act
Multinational G4S manages prisons the world over and its human rights record is troubling; the company makes money from misery. These workers are right to protest the company in Britain: The military has been put on standby as the prison service braces itself for a day of industrial disruption over the first privatisation of an…
Serco’s trick; reward failure with a pay rise
Australia’s immigration detention centres, woefully mismanaged by Serco and the Federal government, is in chaos. But not to worry. Serco head honcho clearly deserves more money for causing misery to countless thousands: Serco Group Plc (SRP), a U.K. outsourcing company that derived about half its revenue from public-sector contracts last year, raised the pay of…