Whistleblower behind PM's daughter scholarship leak must wait for fate Freya Newman, the Sydney student who pled guilty to illegally using login credentials to leak documents about a scholarship awarded to the daughter of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, won't learn her fate until November 25th. Magistrate Theresa O'Sullivan was due to sentence Newman at a packed Sydney court house at noon …
Soon there will be a press release stating that Tony Abbot does not actually enter the details into the pecuniary interest register himself and that the person who does obviously made a small clerical error. Amendments have been made and the regster has been updated.
Meanwhile new laws will quickly be passed in order to ensure that illegal database entry is punishable by 40 years in a hard labour camp. No relation to the Freya Newman case should be inferred.
Ok, I'll bite, and see how many down-votes I get. She is an adult (22 at the time). She was awarded a scholarship (the details surrounding it do appear fishy and I presume if she hadn't been the PM's daughter no scholarship would have been forthcoming, but that's not the subject of my comments). Tony Abbot did not, personally, benefit from the scholarship either financially or any other way, so why on earth should he have to declare it? His adult daughter benefited.
If my kids had received a scholarship at age 22, I would not have benefited. As it is, my son has a debt of $90,000 for his degree, but it is not MY debt.
At the end of the day, it simply depends on which political party you support which determines who is right and who is wrong. It seems most people can't look past the point-scoring, or desire to stick the knife in to those politicians they dislike. "Prominent Australian barrister and human rights advocate Julian Burnside", like most of his ilk, would be far-left wing, so his comments are really no surprise, and are just an opportunity to criticise someone he despises.
>As it is, my son has a debt of $90,000 for his degree, but it is not MY debt.
Excellent start in life, well done, daddy! I guess it depends, just because you leave your offspring in the cold does not mean everybody else does. Who knows what the pm did, not sure what the age is at which you are no longer allowed to declare you support a child.
Besides, you probably know that 90k is the price of a house in some places, don't you ?
I know it is customary in my home country (UK) to let your kids work it out by themselves as soon as they reach the magical age of 18. I will support my offspring until they have finished their studies. No, they will not attend unis that cost 10 000 quid a year and that fail to produce knowledgeable "English Professors" when it comes to English grammar. I know, I had one at my uni, could not answer a pretty simple grammar question I had ... and simply replied: "I do not know ... you know, we no longer teach English grammar in the UK."
French unis cost a 50th of that (I think registration fees amount to 200euro/y), and ye kids learn a new language in the process ...
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