Consolidating a coupla earlier posts here.
First of all, a few tenders from DFAT AUSAID to the CF. Some of you may have already seen these.
Can be verified by searching the number at tenders. gov.au. All dates listed are the publish dates.
CN60579 - 13/02/2008 - $5,257,378.50
CN119937 - 12/09/2008 - $4,323,000.00
CN310696 - 15/07/2010 - $15,127,586.10
There a few more minor ones under $100,000. Also a bit under $650,000 from the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency spread out.
Next, and this may not be a big deal, but I noticed a trend and felt it was worth mentioning.
Education in recent Australian politicians:
TL;DR you are much more likely to get into politics if you attended a Group of Eight university.
What is a Group of Eight university? The Group of Eight is comprised of, unsurprisingly, 8 out of our 43 universities: University of Adelaide, Australian National University, University of Melbourne, Monash University, University of NSW, University of Queensland, University of Sydney and the University of Western Australia.
Labor 2007 - 2013: Out of the 49 members of their Cabinet and Outer Ministry, 41 attended a Group of Eight university, 4 did not, and 4 did not receive tertiary education.
Liberals 2013 - Present: Out of the 44 members of their Cabinet and Outer Ministry, 26 attended a Group of Eight university, 13 did not, and 5 did not receive tertiary education. One of the 13 who did not attend a Group of Eight university only received an education overseas, at an LERU member (see below).
All four prime ministers during this period attended a Group of Eight university. Both recent Liberal leaders have received Rhodes Scholarships to Oxford.
So it also seems like the Group of Eight work with other international university groupings, in particular the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the League of European Reach Universities (LERU).
These include a lot of international universities, such as:
Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Vanderbilt University, Oxford, Cambridge.
Full lists at (AAU) https:// en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Association_of_American_Universities (LERU) https:// en.wikipedia. org/wiki/League_of_European_Research_Universities
After this I looked at the board of the Group of Eight. Every single member, except for one, has attended either an AAU or LERU member university previously.
May just be that they're better recognised, but I found it interesting.
Finally, a small tidbit about the Trump Turnbull transcript.
First of all it reaffirms that Obama was pushing for Muslim migration into the US.
But I found the number of people coming to Aus interesting. 31. Why so few? Incompetence?
It's hard to confirm what these people are, Central Americans in Detention? Turnbull says they're people the U.S. was keen to get out of their country. Are they criminals? Children? Why so eager to get only these people out, considering all the refugees from Central America they receive?
Finally it was interesting to note Turnbull's outlook: He'll take whoever the US wants us to take, as long as they don't arrive by boat. Apparently this is to prevent encouraging people smugglers, but personally I think he just wants to make himself look good.
Will keep digging around.