Letter from Canberra Issue 66 10 August to 14 September, 2014 Saving you time for six years. A Changing Australia edition Inside Correspondence with Canberra ♦ Our world Leader ♦ Islam language New level of terrorism ♦ Budget fights/negotiations No Paid Parental leave for now ♦ RET peace deal on way ♦ Picking favourites, by Clive ‘Education budget might change’ ♦ Palmer again ♦ Meta data, not Mega data Challenges to Australian industry ♦ Scotland. No doubt a NO. Some good new books ♦ Our very own Jap subs
Transcript
Letter from
CanberraIssue 66 10 August to 14 September, 2014
Saving you time for six years.A Changing Australia edition
InsideCorrespondence with Canberra ♦ Our world Leader ♦ Islam language
New level of terrorism ♦ Budget fights/negotiationsNo Paid Parental leave for now ♦ RET peace deal on way ♦ Picking favourites, by Clive
‘Education budget might change’ ♦ Palmer again ♦ Meta data, not Mega dataChallenges to Australian industry ♦ Scotland. No doubt a NO.
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Alistair Urquhart, BA LLBAlistair Urquhart graduated from the Australian National University in Canberra, in Law, History and Politics. He may even hold the record for miles rowed on Lake Burley Griffin.
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Letter from Canberra4 Editorial
4 Governance
6 Bagpipeaucracy
7 Labor doings
7 Industrial relations & employment
8 Business, economy, manufacturing & finance
8 Trade
9 Mining
10 Refugees & immigration
11 Climate change, environment & energy
12 Agriculture, cattle & water
13 Media
14 Justice
14 Broadband & IT
15 Transport & infrastructure
15 Health
16 Education
17 Foreign affairs
18 Defence
18 Sports & arts
18 Society
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Next month ♦
Julia’s book Juia’s time in Court
Abbott’s unnoticed SuccessRudd insulation scheme
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Letter from Canberra
EditorialOur Cover. As I was taking this photo of The Melbourne Exhibition Building, some young French folk patted my dogs. This is the building where our Australian parlia-mentarians first met, be it only for a day. What might they thought of their new country? I can see the Dome out of one of my favourite Spring Street coffee shops here in Melbourne. My eyes were resting on it the other day as I was having a quiet moment to myself, in between preparing for the writing of this next edition and hav-ing a chat with some overseas visitors at the next table. I was, and am not alone in my thinking, as to what is happening to Our Australia. We are not pulling together enough for our Future. More next month.
Perhaps just a little on the Bureaucrats, and their weird ways. An anecdote relat-ing to my inability to take my own ivory-finessed bagpipes of many years out of this country without massive paperwork and expense, for each trip, through Customs, and the requirement that I need trust the British bureaucracy to provide me with a similarly difficult certificate, to bring them home, again/. So that I could go home to the Homeland just after I am sure they will have voted No, and play MY pipes on the wreck of an old family castle. Aha, I have found an alternative. See Correspondence with Canberra in the pages that follow.
Nearby, we have the latest TV stunt, Uto-pia, which fortunately need be not watched more than twice because each show has the very same theme with just a few changes to the anecdotal examples that are used. Unlike the ANZAC Girls, which required watching on each of its six Courageous ep-isodes. (Plenty of rules their for the brave nurses to dodge through!)
GovernanceA Storm is ComingAustralia’s terrorism threat well is poised to rise from medium to high for the first time, after ASIO want the government that have become increasingly concerned about the chances of an attack on home soil. The Australian reported that the Abbot government is privately bracing for formal advice from ASIO director-general David Irvine that the threat alert level be raised to the second highest level.
Mining tax, super riseAccording to The Age, the mining tax has been repealed after the federal government reached a deal with the Palmer United Party to scrap the tax but keep the associated compensation. The lower house voted in favour of amendments passed by the Senate earlier in the day to repeal the tax. The deal means millions of workers will not receive a promised boost to their su-perannuation, with the PUP agreeing to let the government delay the increase to improve the bottom line. Compulsory super, currently set at 9.5 per cent of an employee’s wages, had been set to increase to 12 per cent by July 2019. PUP has made a deal with the government that will sacrifice that increase in order to keep spending associated with the mining tax.
Budget fightTreasurer Joe Hockey has hit out at a lack of bipartisan support for tough economic reform, weak business advocacy for change, and the media for attacks against him personally.
Hardening lineThe federal government is digging in over un-popular cuts in the budget, with cabinet min-isters warning other savings measures will be found if a compromise cannot be reached with the opposition and Senate crossbench. Ac-cording to The Age, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said that if the budget spending cuts and savings measures, including the $7 GP co-payment, the rise in fuel excise and changes to university fees, were not passed then ‘the only alternative to balance the books is to increase taxes’. Education Minister Christopher Pyne said universities could face a ‘worst case’ sce-nario of research funding cuts if the Senate did not pass his proposed higher education reforms.
Reframe the budget sellFederal cabinet met recently in a bid to reframe its confused budget messaging as Labor con-firmed it would not be compromising on stalled measures forcing the government further to-wards retreat or compromises with the inde-pendents.
Some Hockey Plans will FailTreasurer Joe Hockey’s controversial threats to bypass direct Senate approval for an infra-structure asset recycling plan at the heart of this economic growth and jobs strategy will fail, according to expert advice. Advice from the Parliamentary Library obtained by the Labor Party argues that even a plan to insert it into an appropriations bill would be closed to him - essentially forcing the government to negoti-ate details of the package with the opposition, Greens, Palmer United party and independent cross benchers. Labor says while it supports the plan, it wants safeguards in the law to ensure projects funded under the scheme are subject to cost-benefit analysis.
MusingsIn the Financial Review, Jennifer Hewett wrote: ‘It’s painfully clear to any Coalition MP that – one year in – the government is in deep trouble and just staunchly carrying on with more of the same will not end well.’
Alternative cutsAccording to The Australian, cabinet ministers have begun canvassing new ways to slash the deficit as they step up talks with crossbench senators in the knowledge that compromise is essential on unpopular reforms.
Not that toughAccording to The Australian, political claims about a ‘tough budget’ were swept aside when the Reserve Bank issued a blunt warning on the need for fiscal reform to avoid harsh measures being forced upon Australians in future years. Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens skew-ered the rhetoric about this year’s budget by labelling it ‘not that tough’ and making it clear the nation needed federal parliament action to scale back the deficit.
Treasury admitsTreasury secretary Martin Parkinson has con-ceded the federal government’s marooned budget strategy should have canvassed tax re-form to counter complaints over its claimed unfairness.
And ending the crisis talkTreasury figures have punctured claims of a crisis over the passage of the federal budget, re-vealing that 98.9 per cent of expense measures are already legislated despite a savage political fight over a handful of reforms. According to The Australian, Parliament has passed more than $1.8 trillion in expense items for the next four years, according to an official analysis that shows hundreds of policy decisions are already in force, while a few face a Senate veto.
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Backing JoeAccording to the Financial Review, Treasurer Joe Hockey, under fire for complaining about his problems getting political support for the budget, has received some support from an economic veteran, former Treasury secretary Ken Henry.
Impasse costsThe government has lost $5 billion in revenue this financial year due to its inability to pass key budget measures, including the fuel tax increase which Treasurer Joe Hockey claimed would not affect poor people so much because they could not afford cars. According to the Financial Review, a raft of budget measures which were supposed to come into effect in 2014-15 have failed to do so because they have been either blocked by the Senate or have not been introduced. The 16 initiatives, of which eight are spending measures linked to the aboli-tion of the mining tax, are worth $5.07 billion to the budget this year alone.
Budget Savings ‘Palmered’ offClive Palmer urged Joe Hockey (successfully) to split the package of measures associated with the repeal of the mining tax and bank at least $7.6 billion in savings when he meets the Treasurer in Brisbane on Tuesday. According to the Financial Review, Hockey headed to the Queensland capital as part of his national tour to try to sway the senate cross benchers to support more than $40 billion in stalled budget and other savings measures before Parliament resumes in two weeks. The Palmer United Par-ty has three senators who hold the balance of power.
Poor People don’t DriveThere is growing concern within the coalition about Treasurer Joe Hockey’s gaffes. Hockey has come under fire over claims that raising petrol tax will not hurt ‘Poor people because they don’t drive cars’. In addition, Attorney-General George Brandis notably struggled to explain counter terrorism laws, Senate leader Eric Abetz endorsed a theory from the 1950s linking abortion to breast cancer and Tony Ab-bott abandoned plans to scrap s18C of the Ra-cial Discrimination Act. A dour perspective...
MusingsIn The Age, Mark Kenny wrote: ‘The six-week parliamentary break has done less to improve the government’s parlous reputation with voters than it had hoped. If anything, the lay-off has exacerbated a sense of drift and occasioned the odd break-out of political desperation.’
Save jobsAccording to The Australian, a spike in unem-ployment has sparked a new fight over the fed-eral budget as Joe Hockey holds out the prom-ise of tax cuts in the future to lift growth and create more jobs. The Treasurer urged the Sen-ate to ‘back the budget’ in the wake of official figures that showed jobs growth had stalled and the unemployment rate was at a 12-year high.
Super Mining Tax Fall OutWorkers will take a $20,000 hits to their retire-ment savings due to a shock deal in the Senate to secure the repeal of the mining tax, where the Abbott government blames Labor for forc-ing it to agree to the change.Leaving Turnbull outAccording to Dennis Shanahan in The Austral-ian, ‘Malcolm Turnbull’s ‘blow up’ in cabinet over mandatory retention of telephone and computer records was seen by some in the
Coalition as a ‘hissy fit’ and ‘Malcolm being Malcolm’. Others saw it as ‘sage advice’ that should have been tapped into before the deci-sion was made. Some in cabinet circles see his exclusion from the committee decision as tech-nically correct and proper process involving the national security committee. Others see it as missed opportunity to use the best ministerial skills available born of paranoia.
18CThe Institute of Public Affairs took out a full page ad in The Australian highlighting Tony Abbott’s comments that ‘Freedom of Speech is an essential foundation of democracy’ and that it will fight to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
Richo’s viewIn The Australian, Graham Richardson wrote: ‘Ditch the dodgy policies, Tony. The Abbott government is starting to see what the people worked out long ago.’
First year musingsIn the Herald Sun, Andrew Bolt wrote: ‘Ticks for stopping the boats, scrapping carbon tax and the mining tax, free trade deals with Japan and South Korea, MH17 response and saying no to corporate handouts. First year blues for break-ing no-new-taxes promise, selling $7 Medicare co-payment, free speech backdown, dealing with Clive Palmer, stalled budget cuts.’
BCA vision viewAccording to the Financial Review, the Prime Minister should make an annual ‘vision for Australia’ speech that outlines goals for the next five to ten years, including an assessment of the current position against that vision and the government’s strategy for achieving it, the Business Council of Australia says.
PUP lashes outClive Palmer says the federal government’s budget has crashed and challenged Prime Min-ister Tony Abbott to hold a double dissolution or implement a mini-budget.
Robb’s sovereign risk warningThe Senate blockade of major budget reforms threatens – according to Trade Minister Andrew Robb in a front-page story run by The Austral-ian – to intensify concerns about levels of sov-ereign risk in Australia. Mr Robb insisted on the need for a deal on the budget, in order to restore the nation’s ‘gold standard’ with foreign investors. He also said that uncertainty over economic policy would fuel fears about the ‘sovereign risk’ hanging over big investments.
Double blowAccording to The Australian, Clive Palmer has suffered a disastrous day in his multi-pronged legal war with Chinese corporate giant Citic Pa-cific, with judges in two states ruling against at-tempts by his flagship company to take control of a key iron ore port in Western Australia’s Pil-bara region. Mr Palmer suggested on the ABC’s Q&A that he had won a series of recent legal judgments over Citic, describing his estranged business partner as ‘Chinese mongrels’.
Lambie tooAccording to the Herald Sun, PUP Senator Jac-qui Lambie also said that the threat of a ‘Chi-nese communist invasion’ was very real and our grandchildren were in danger of becoming slaves to China.
CondemnedClive Palmer has been condemned by senior
federal government ministers, the federal oppo-sition and business groups for labelling the Chi-nese government ‘mongrels’ who ‘’shoot their own people’. According to The Age, China has also lashed the statements, branding Mr Palmer as ‘absurd’.
Public office – private feudAccording to The Australian, the federal gov-ernment has warned Palmer against using his elected position to pursue a private feud with Chinese investors, amid deepening fears of dip-lomatic and economic fallout from his vitriolic attack on China.
Bishop warningForeign Minister Julie Bishop says Clive Palm-er should ‘reflect’ on his actions in the wake of his comments about the Chinese being ‘mon-grels’ who ‘shoot their own people’, warning that even though China is Australia’s biggest trading partner, we ‘still have to compete with other countries’.
Double speakClive Palmer has tried to crab-walk away from his attack on Chinese ‘bastards’ and ‘mongrels’ despite being caught repeating his inflamma-tory claim that the Beijing government ‘shoots thousands of people every year’. The Palmer United Party leader, who has been condemned for what Tony Abbott described as ‘over the top, shrill and wrong’ comments, tried to hose down the furore by releasing a nine-paragraph statement, according to The Australian.
Palmer musingsIn The Australian, Nikki Savva wrote: ‘Tony Abbott is slowly rebuilding his stocks by fo-cusing on national security, a vitally important issue; however, whatever credibility he builds there has to be used to push through on other issues. He has to immerse himself in the econ-omy. One cabinet minister, lamenting the gov-ernment’s inability to articulate its reason for being, explained: ‘In politics, as in religion and life, it is all about hope.’ The government can begin to foster hope, as well as frame Palmer, by properly marketing its significant successes, wins that have been subsumed by the budget fights and own goals, especially in the area Palmer has put at risk — trade.’
Ricky MuirRicky Muir wants driver education to become part of the school curriculum, speed limits capped and more highway patrol on the roads rather than speed cameras. The Motoring En-thusiast Party senator also says he’s “moved on” from the TV interview with Mike Willisee which left a nervous Senator Muir struggling for words in his first ever media interview. ‘There’s no point in crying over spilt milk, I knew they had the footage, it turned out the way it did, so be it. I’m happy to keep moving forward.’
United in resolveAccording to Jennifer Hewett in the Financial Review, ‘The government’s insistence that Aus-tralia is only interested in securing the Ukrain-ian site, returning the bodies and getting a full and independent investigation sounds logical and measured. And practical.’
PM looming largeAccording to Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun, ‘Tony Abbott is leading the West into a con-frontation with nuclear superpower Russia over the downing of MH17. The stakes are incred-ibly high, as the Prime Minister organises, ef-fectively, a small army to move into Ukraine. Abbott’s role in galvanising international action
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has been almost unprecedented for an Austral-ian prime minister. The media from Tokyo to Washington have reported it.’
Slipper facing timeFormer speaker Peter Slipper has been found guilty of ripping off taxpayers when he indulged a penchant for day trips to Canberra’s fine win-eries as a federal Coalition MP. According to the Herald Sun, he now faces the prospect of a maximum sentence of five years’ jail when sen-tenced on September 22, joining a growing list of MPs from the last parliament to have found themselves on the wrong side of the law. Not surprisingly, it was water rather than wine he was sipping yesterday in the ACT magistrate’s court when convicted of dishonestly using taxi vouchers to take three day trips to wineries around Canberra in 2010.
PM’s daughterThe design school that handed Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s daughter a scholarship is now facing a legal claim by a former staffer who was investigated by the school after the scholarship story broke. According to the Financial Review, a former employee of Whitehouse Institute of Design has filled an ‘adverse action’ complaint in the Fair Work Commission.
New speechwriterWith the pressure mounting over stalled budget items, and concerns over the government’s sales job, Joe Hockey has hired author David Hunt as his speechwriter. Hunt is the author of the best-selling book Girt, a humorous take on Austral-ian history. He is also a public policy consultant. But what he is not is an unquestioning supporter of Coalition policy. In fact, a quick trawl though his work on the social media site, Twitter, shows Hunt has been a trenchant critic of the govern-ment, issuing scathing critiques of its stance on asylum seekers, climate change, same-sex mar-riage and even Mr Hockey’s first budget.
Justifying a tripPrime Minister Tony Abbott told government MPs he had to schedule an early morning visit to a cancer research centre in Melbourne so that he could justify billing taxpayers to be in the city for a ‘private function’ the night before. Mr Abbott made the admission at the regular meet-ing of Liberal and Nationals MPs after being taken to task by one his own senators for turn-ing up an hour late.
MusingsIn the Financial Review, Laura Tingle wrote: ‘When Hawke was late for a meeting of cabinet, his irritated ministers simply started without him.’
Two party musingsIn The Age, Mark Triffitt wrote: ‘Is this the death of the two party system? There is a sharp decline in the number of Australians engaged with our democratic system. We can see this retreat in the type of people the major parties actively recruit or attract to their ranks. Instead of embracing the diversity and flux of the 21st century world, party selection for parliamentary seats repeatedly draws from the same pool they recruited from a century ago.
Lawyers, bankers and business figures - mainly middle age white males - dominate those cho-sen to represent and run the conservative side of politics. Lawyers and union officials - again largely middle age white men - dominate the ranks of those elected to represent the so-called progressive side. The impact on our political culture of this profoundly outdated demograph-
ic is made worse by a new class of MPs, ex-political advisors.
Most cut their teeth working for ministers and other MPs before moving directly into parlia-ment. As such they know little of the world outside the political bubble in which they have spent most of their adult lives.’
Shady dealsNSW Premier Mike Baird and state Liberal Party director Tony Nutt are pursuing a two-pronged attack on the ethical lapses that have tainted state politics.
Backlash fearedAccording to the Financial Review, some Lib-eral MPs fear a voter backlash prompted by the federal government’s reluctance to criticise Is-rael over some of its actions in Gaza.
Madigan quits DLPVictorian senator John Madigan, who has quit the Democratic Labor Party to become an in-dependent crossbencher, has been rocked by claims of financial disarray in his office and criticism over his failure to deliver on a promise made to orphans in East Timor 18 months ago that he would build them a new kitchen. DLP national president Paul Funnell called for Sena-tor Madigan to leave Parliament and give back his seat to the DLP.
More on Joe below
Hockey: mistakes in battle (1) ‘Everybody makes mistakes in the heat of the battle – the big mistake for me was the ini-tial defensive reaction.’ Thus Lachlan Harris, whose political credentials include the role of Kevin Rudd’s secretary, describing the embat-tled Treasurer Joe Hockey. ‘Politics,’ Mr Har-ris went on, ‘is not a statistical game, it’s an emotional game. It [the Treasurer’s assertion that poor people ‘don’t have cars or actually drive very far’ compared with rich people] was a dopey remark that should have been realised straight away and corrected.’
Meanwhile Jane Caro, communications con-sultant, said in the same Age article that the problem with Mr Hockey’s gaffe was that it re-inforced existing beliefs about him being out of touch with low-income earners, an image per-sonified by him smoking a cigar outside Parlia-ment House. In his August 15 apology – while being interviewed by the Sydney radio station 2GB – Mr Hockey used the words ‘sorry’ and ‘apologise’ no fewer than eight times.
But he was already on record as antagonising bulk-bill-paying medical patients with his May 15 complaint: ‘One of the things that quite as-tounds me is some people are screaming about a $7 co-payment. You can spend just over $3 on a middy of beer, so that’s two middies of beer to go into the doctor.’
The Herald Sun devoted an entire editorial (Au-gust 15) to the question ‘Has Hockey got a tin ear?’. It complained: ‘The Treasurer has been on the job for less than a year but is already out of touch. Has it all gone to his head?’. On the very same page of the same newspaper, column-ist Ellen Whinnett marked the forthcoming first birthday of the Abbott government by an article titled ‘Not bad, but no bonus this year, guys.’ As for the letters page, all but one of the missives published in that edition censured Mr Hockey.
Even Graham Richardson couldn’t resist pok-ing fun at the Treasurer. The veteran ex-senator and ALP power-broker, now a journalist for The Australian, remarked: ‘The Treasurer had a shocker of a week. First came the paranoia – the world is against me – it’s a conspiracy of the media, the Labor Party, the people and Uncle Tom Cobley – to criticise his beloved, benight-ed budget. Then came the show-stopper: poor people don’t have cars or don’t drive much. It is hard to believe that anyone can be that out of touch.’
Bagpipeaucracy See Editorial for more context.
The Punitive Bureaucracy’s Day Offby Mark Steyn • Aug 19, 2014
Quote. I wrote two weeks ago about two New Hampshire teenagers having their bagpipes seized at the northern border by US Customs & Border Protection. This would be the same “border” “protection” agency that has turned the southern border into an express welfare check-in for any of the world’s seven billion people minded to show up there.
The two 17-year-olders - understood that if you go to a highland fling a couple of hours north in Quebec you’re now obligated to get your bag-pipes approved by US Fish & Wildlife.
Because that’s just the way it is in the Land of the Free.
So Messrs Webster and Bean got their CITES certificate and presented it to the US CBP agent at the Vermont border crossing.
Whereupon he promptly confiscated their bag-
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pipes on the grounds that, yes, their US Fish & Wildlife CITES paperwork was valid, but it’s only valid at 28 ports of entry and this wasn’t one of them.
Nor is any other US/Canadian land crossing. So, if you’re a piper in, say, Pittsburg, New Hampshire and you want to play in a competi-tion in La Patrie, Quebec 20 minutes north, you have to drive four-to-five hours south to Logan Airport in Boston, fly to Montreal and drive two hours east to La Patrie.
Because that’s just the way it is in the Land of the Free.
When the CBP agent seized Messrs Webster and Bean’s bagpipes, he told them - with the characteristic insouciance of the thug bureau-cracy - that they were “never going to see them again”. But thanks to the unwelcome publicity the Homeland Security mafiosi were forced to cough ‘em up.
The rest of the story at the website. It gets worse.
Labor doingsBlocking tendering and ccard proposalsA plan by the federal government to exempt hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts from public scrutiny and increase credit card limits for government purchases from $10,000 to $20,000 will be blocked by La-bor. Finance Minister Mathias Cormann wrote to his opposite number in the ALP, Tony Burke, seeking the opposition’s support for the rule changes, which would mean any government contract worth less than $20,000 would not have to be reported on the AusTender website.
The present limit is $10,000. In his letter, Sena-tor Cormann said the changes would reduce red tape for business, help improve their cash flow and ensure greater efficiency in the public sec-tor. Mr Burke rejected the measures outright and said they were ‘extraordinary proposals, which doubles the threshold limit on credit cards in every government department’.
Back for GregJulia Gillard and Greg Combet, fallen titans of the 2013 Labor government, issued a call to arms recently, with Mr Combet urging the party faithful to step up the fight on climate change
and the federal budget. Supporters packed sev-eral hundred strong into the NSW Trades Hall auditorium on Sussex Street, giving the for-mer Prime Minister a rousing ovation as she launched Mr Combet’s book, The Fights of My Life.
Keating’s riftPaul Keating has reopened his bitter rift with Bob Hawke, using a book launch for Gareth Evans to accuse the former prime minister of going missing for five years during the 1980s. According to the Financial Review, Mr Keating said the book provided an insight into a crucial period of Australian history that had helped set up the nation for more than two decades of con-tinuous growth.
Naked truthAccording to the Herald Sun, Mr Keating said on his difficulties with Mr Hawke, he referred to talking with a nude PM. ‘I’d arrive at The Lodge at 10:30 and find Bob sunning himself by the pool.’
Musings Graham Richardson in The Australian: ‘For any ALP member, the new book by The Australian’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly, Triumph and De-mise, is a sobering read. The story of the Rudd-Gillard years is an ugly one. Not much inspira-tion, goodness or even civility can be found in its pages.’
Paul KellyAn extract: ‘Once in office, Kevin Rudd defied the orthodoxy and engaged in the most central-ised, novel and risky experiment in prime min-isterial power since Gough Whitlam. Rudd had two critical weaknesses — managing people and running a government. In opposition he was a master but those skills did not translate eas-ily into office, a story that perplexed the Labor Party and sent it on a voyage ending in panic.’
Accidental treasurerTroy Bramston in The Australian: If Kevin Rudd had his time over again, Wayne Swan would never have been appointed treasurer. Rudd promised the job of Treasury spokesman to Lindsay Tanner as he was preparing to chal-lenge Kim Beazley for the leadership in 2006. But during the 2007 election campaign, Rudd seized an opportunity to characterise the lead-ership of the government as being in a state of flux, with John Howard set to retire and Peter Costello the presumptive heir. Who would be treasurer if Costello became prime minister? Rudd decided to lock-in Labor’s ‘economic team’ of Swan as treasurer and Tanner as fi-nance minister in a future Labor government. It was a decision Rudd would regret.’
Shorten speaks outBill Shorten’s decision to come forward and name himself as the ‘senior Labor figure’ who had been investigated – and cleared – of rape allegations by police is a bold attempt to put the issue behind him. Whether voters have heard the last of it remains to be seen. The allegations first surfaced late last year, soon after Shorten became Opposition Leader.
G-G not impressed by KevAccording to The Australian, former governor-general Quentin Bryce made a series of com-plaints to Kevin Rudd as prime minister about his treatment of the office, his controlling atti-tude towards her and his lack of support when she was attacked for decisions imposed upon her by Rudd.
Industrial relations & employment
Jobless rateThe effects of the end of the mining boom in Queensland are flowing through the state’s sup-ply chain and hitting small and medium-sized businesses, with the state recording its highest unemployment rate in more than a decade. Ac-cording to The Australian, Queensland’s un-employment rate jumped from 6.3 per cent last month to 6.8 per cent on a seasonally adjusted basis, but the state’s participation rate also dropped, with the Australian Bureau of Statis-tics reporting that 12,600 people lost their jobs in Queensland last month, 12,000 of them being full time.
Day wants it DumpedFamily first Senator Bob Day has vowed lobby all cross bench senators to kill the government’s budget move to kick young people off the dole for six months, saying he is unwilling to negoti-ate on a compromise deal. The Australian re-ported that the others government is prepared to reduce the number of months that young people are denied the Newstart payment as a way of securing Senate support for the move.
Not union membersWorkers who don’t belong to unions are ‘free-loaders’ and do not deserve the same hard-fought benefits from industry funds as union-ists, a senior CFMEU official says. According to The Australian, Construction Forestry Min-ing and Energy Union national vice-president Michael Ravbar has rejected claims that multi-million-dollar redundancy and welfare funds were unfair because funeral, childcare, dental and travel-insurance payments went only to paid-up trade union members.
Apply to keep the doleJob seekers will be compelled to conduct 40 job searches a month and carry out up to 25 hours a week of community work to keep dole pay-ments, in a radical extension of mutual obliga-tion to be unveiled by the federal government, according to a report in The Australian.
40 jobs planThe federal government’s plan to force the un-employed to apply for 40 jobs a month will cost the small business sector $700 million a year, according to Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. He said it also shifted the cost of looking for work onto businesses – ‘especially small busi-ness’.
Work in returnThe federal government has revealed details of what will constitute work-for-the-dole ac-tivities, saying the jobs will be designed to help job seekers ‘give something back to the com-munity’. According to The Age, a spokeswoman for Assistant Employment Minister Luke Hart-suyker said work-for-the-dole activities would take place in the non-profit sector and for com-munity-based organisations. They would range from office administration and clerical work for local charities, to customer service in the retail shop of a non-profit organisation, to landscap-ing jobs and repair work.
Secret account warningsKathy Jackson kept spending thousands of dol-lars of union money that she held in a secret bank account — even after she was explicitly told to return any accounts she controlled con-taining union funds. According to The Austral-ian, Ms Jackson, whose exposure of former Health Services Union colleagues Michael Wil-
What a great sound in the right place.
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Letter from Canberra
liamson and Craig Thomson led to their convic-tions over large-scale fraud, was given a short deadline to hand over all accounts related to her union when an administrator was put in charge of its messy financial affairs in June 2012.
Admits paymentsHealth Services Union leader Kathy Jackson used money from a union slush fund to write her former husband a cheque for $50,000, and has admitted numerous inconsistencies in her previ-ous evidence about a large payment from a can-cer hospital to her union. According to The Age, as details of the payment and inconsistencies in her previous evidence emerged, Ms Jackson claimed she was being ‘ambushed’ by the Royal Commission on Trade Union Governance and Corruption, which abruptly adjourned to allow her to seek advice on legal representation.
Jackson was quizzed extensively about a $250,000 payment from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre to her HSU No.3 branch to settle a dispute over back pay. She has admitted us-ing that $250,000 settlement as seed money for a bank account from which she withdrew tens of thousands of dollars, using it for personal spending including at fashion boutiques, David Jones, JB Hi-Fi and Bunnings.
Reaching for a lawyerWhistleblower Kathy Jackson has accused the royal commission into union corruption of ‘ambushing’ her with pointed questions about why she shifted $50,000 of her union members’ funds to a personal bank account she controlled — and then gave the money to her former hus-band.
Divorce in spotlightThe divorce settlement of corruption whistle-blower Kathy Jackson is likely to be drawn into a royal commission investigation because she paid her ex-husband large sums of cash from the union she controlled after their separation.
Old love affairAccording to The Age, Health Services Union whistleblower Kathy Jackson delayed the roy-al commission into union corruption for more than an hour after she asked for a barrister to be stopped from cross-examining her because she had sex with him more than 20 years ago. Ms Jackson submitted a statement outlining her sexual history with Mark Irving, SC, who was scheduled to cross-examine her about her alleged misuse of union funds on behalf of the Health Services Union. Commissioner Dyson Heydon rejected the submission and ques-tioned the relevance of the relationship. ‘’What do someone’s personal relationships with A in 1992 have to do with the personal relationships with B in the 21st century?’ he said. The chro-nology of events surrounding Ms Jackson’s ob-jection to Mr Irving ‘undermines the credibility of the application’, he said.
Corrupt gangHealth Services Union whistleblower Kathy Jackson has accused Labor Party leader Bill Shorten and his allies of being in a ‘corrupt lit-tle gang’ and of circling unions like vultures to further their own political power. She has also called on Prime Minister Tony Abbott to put the HSU into administration and accused the union of putting her through ‘judicial gang rape’.
MusingsIn The Age, Ben Schneiders wrote: ‘No one has doubted Kathy Jackson’s capacity for histrion-ics. But her ability to grab headlines should not distract from the serious evidence mount-ing against her that she potentially stole hun-
dreds of thousands of dollars from her Health Services Union branch and has lied to the royal commission. Fresh evidence at the inquiry into trade union corruption on Thursday included admissions by Jackson that she spent thousands more on herself than was previously known, it appears largely on overseas trips.’
Slush fundThe head of the Transport Workers Union has justified his use of a slush fund and a lack of disclosure about its use, saying it helped rid the Health Services Union of corruption. According to The Age, the union’s national secretary, Tony Sheldon, told the royal commission into union corruption that it was worthy of congratulations that money from the slush fund known as the McLean Foundation helped fund a successful campaign against allies of former HSU leader Michael Williamson.
Funding allies
National Labor vice-president and Transport Workers Union head Tony Sheldon requested that an international money transfer be used to send $20,000 to his political allies in another union, a hearing has been told. According to a report in The Age, the unusual payment method was revealed at the royal commission into union corruption by the Victorian and Tasmanian sec-retary of the TWU, Wayne Mader. The inquiry heard that the leadership of the TWU’s Victo-rian and Tasmanian branch controlled two funds that now hold cash of about $400,000 and had been used to intervene in the elections of the disgraced Health Services Union and a bid by Mr Sheldon to become ALP president.
Welfare lobbyAccording to the Financial Review, the govern-ment is investing $5.1 billion over three years in a new employment services system that encour-ages employment firms to get jobseekers into work as fast as possible.
Foreign workersEmployers will be able to hire foreign work-ers on salaries up to ten per cent below stand-ard rates for skilled migrants under a new federal government plan to ease dangerous la-bour shortages. Staring down union fears over imported labour, the federal government will allow employers to seek lower pay rates and easier language tests for foreign workers who can meet an urgent demand for skills in regions that are losing staff.
Fewer walking awayAustralia’s long-term decline in union mem-bership is now occurring at a slower rate, Mel-bourne Professor Jeff Borland says. According to the Financial Review, between 2006 and 2013 union membership fell by three per cent – during the period that HSU and AWU came under fire over allegations of fraud.
Reducing power of unionsPrivatising assets is one of the few ways of deal-ing with ‘uncompetitive’ union agreements that have driven up labour costs and electricity bills, one of the nation’s most respected government-owned business chiefs has declared. Writing in The Australian, Vince Graham, the chief execu-tive of Networks NSW, which comprises the three state-owned electricity companies that op-erate the industry’s poles and wires, warns that unions in the state have entrenched unproduc-tive and uncompetitive work practices.
Heavyweight federal appointmentsAnother news item about Peter Costello, whom
The Australian described as having been ap-pointed to the Australian Securities and Invest-ments Commission (ASIC), along with former prudential regulator John Laker and Google Australia boss Maile Carnegie. Mr Costello has joined the ASIC board as an ex-officio member of the panel. Catherine Livingstone also joined the 17-member panel as an ex-officio appoint-ment last year, after taking over from Tony Shepherd as the president of the Business Coun-cil of Australia. Other members of the panel are Woodside director Melinda Cilento, Tabcorp chairman Paula Dwyer, and Australian Super CEO Ian Silk.
Business, economy, manu-facturing & finance
RBA warningThe Reserve Bank has warned that moves to unleash more home loan competition could in-crease risk in the financial system, by pumping even more credit into the housing market.
Coles suppliersSupermarket chain Coles has taken another step towards rebuilding bridges with grocery suppliers. It has appointed one of the retailer’s most vocal critics, former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, to oversee a new supplier charter and help resolve disputes. Coles managing director John Durkan rejected suggestions the appoint-ment of Mr Kennett - who dobbed the retailer into the competition watchdog last year over false ‘baked fresh’ bread claims - was a public-ity stunt.
‘The last thing this is is a PR tactic,’ said Mr Durkan, who took the helm from Ian McLeod last month. ‘We wanted someone people in Aus-tralia knew and trusted would be completely impartial and would hold Coles to account ... and if there was an issue he would take Coles to task on it and make sure the issue is solved,’ he said. ‘We’ve undoubtedly been disruptive in the industry ... lowering prices is key for consumers but puts pressure on the whole supply chain.’
TradeAldi Looms LargeDiscounter Aldi could almost double sales in five years, challenging Coles and Woolworth’s stranglehold over Australia’s $85 billion dollar grocery market. This would likely place more pressure on Aldi’s rivals - who are trying to defend itself in the midst of a competition law review - to cut prices, including the cost of gro-ceries but increasing pressure on suppliers. Aldi could increase sales from $5.3 billion now to $9.3 billion by 2019 by opening new stores in the east, attracting more customers to existing stores and expanding into Western Australia and South Australia, which it plans to do by 2016, according to a report by investment bank UBS in the Financial Review.
Hit the GasAccording to the Financial Review, South Aus-tralian Premier Jay Weatherill will partially guarantee loans to small businesses, and outline measures to accelerate gas development, as part of an economic revival plan. Weatherall has brokered the deal for the Business Council of Australia board to meet his cabinet to bring the two closer together following the shift from the BCA in its latest report.f
His views‘One of my reasons for doing this is because I feel so strongly about the need to grow Aus-tralian agriculture,’ Jeff Kennett said. ‘If I can help that, I feel this would be a worthwhile ap-pointment.’ Mr Kennett said he had accepted
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the role on the understanding he would remain independent. Suppliers can contact him di-rectly and confidentially, and Mr Kennett will make recommendations on disputes directly to new Coles managing director John Durkan. Mr Kennett’s final recommendations will be bind-ing on Coles but not on suppliers. Mr Kennett said he thought he had been approached partly because he had sparked the Australian Con-sumer and Competition Commission’s suc-cessful case against Coles’ claims about fresh bread.
Legacy not popularOutgoing Coles managing director Ian McLeod has had to fend off new farmer anger towards his leadership legacy which they say should be characterized by his treatment of Austral-ian food producers. According to the Financial Review, wealthy property owner and farmer Warren Ebert told Mr McLeod that the num-ber of dairy farmers where he lives in Dayboro, north of Brisbane, had fallen from 26 to three since the price of milk had dropped to $1 a litre several years ago.
Losing competitive edgeMost of Australia’s industry sectors are behind the US and the nation faces a ‘painful correc-tion’ of lower wages and rising unemployment if an urgent competitiveness problem is not addressed, a landmark analysis finds. Busi-ness Council of Australia president Catherine Livingstone released research finding Australia was ‘strongly’ competitive in just one industry, agriculture, where there was ‘plenty’ of un-tapped potential and we should ‘play for scale’.
Back the championsAccording to the Financial Review, Australian governments need to rethink their role in the economy by encouraging industries that have natural advantages – such as agriculture, min-ing, energy, tourism and education, according to the Business Council of Australia.
Sims coolACCC chairman Rod Sims has asked to meet with Business Council of Australia president Catherine Livingstone to explain governments that ‘pick winners’ from industry usually fail.
Kennett agreesVictorian premier Jeff Kennett backed the Business Council of Australia’s call for an in-dustry policy that promotes specific industries, such as agriculture, a plan criticised as a ‘pick-ing winners’ approach. Mr Kennett said that decades had been wasted while governments with ‘no vision’ and a ‘we know better’ attitude ignored opportunities offered by the swelling appetites and purses of the 4 billion people to Australia’s north. He said sky-high domestic costs in food processing – more than twice New Zealand’s at $45 an hour – had drained Australia’s ability to develop products to meet the changing tastes of Asia.
Leighton profit fallsLeighton Holdings, which suffered a twenty per cent fall in first-half profits to $291 million, dropped out of the bidding for Melbourne’s $8 billion East-West Link Tunnel because the pro-ject was too risky, according to the Financial Review.
Medibank saleMum-and-dad investors and superannuation funds will soon own the bulk of Australia’s biggest private health insurer following the government’s decision to dispose of Medibank Private by Christmas. The decision to sell to the public rather than to a single buyer was
announced in April, while the move to bring forward the $4 billion sale was announced re-cently.
The position of Medibank policyholders is uncertain. Hundreds of them have petitioned the government demanding free shares on the grounds that their contributions built the fund from its inception in 1976. The government says it will consider their position in coming weeks. Announcing that he was bringing for-ward the sale deadline by six months, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said Medibank Private was a commercial business for which there was ‘no compelling reason’ for public ownership.
Auto partsThe Productivity Commission has recom-mended an end to government assistance for the automotive components industry within three years in a final report on the car manufac-turing industry. According to The Australian, it has called on the government to consider relax-ing restrictions on second hand car imports.
HoldenThe car that will replace the homegrown Hold-en Commodore in 2018 will come from Ger-many — not China — with a choice of four-cylinder or V6 power. According to the Herald Sun, it means there will be no V8 in Holden showrooms for the first time since 1968 and no passenger-car-based ute for the first time since 1951.
Holden (2)The boss of Holden has warned the Austral-ian car manufacturing industry could close early — prematurely axing up to 50,000 jobs — unless the Federal Government reverses its election promise to cut $500 million in funding support. Holden chairman and managing direc-tor Gerry Dorizas said without the financial aid promised under the previous Labor Govern-ment ‘some suppliers may not make it to the end of manufacturing’.
Future FundThe $101 billion Future Fund is preparing for a market in which surging US equities are no longer a big driver of investment performance, chairman Peter Costello says.
Relief vanishingHundreds of thousands of small businesses claiming tax breaks – some already planned for in this year’s tax return – will no longer be eli-gible under federal government changes.
Super condemnationFormer prime minister Paul Keating has launched a blistering attack on the federal gov-ernment, labelling the federal government’s deal with the Palmer United Party to pause the rise in superannuation contributions at 9.5 per cent until 2021 ‘wilful sabotage of the nation’s universal savings scheme’.
The Telstra Empire Strikes BackTelstra chief David Thodey will build a war chest to fund acquisitions in Australia and through Asia as he targets new areas of growth, even as the telecommunications giant deliv-ers a billion-dollar return to investors through a share buyback according to The Australian. Telstra reported its biggest full-year result in almost a decade.
Pension for Rich RetireesWealthy retirees would not be forced to take out as much money from their private pensions under an option being considered by the Ab-
bott government, which experts say maybe an easy way for the rich to preserve their super-annuation for the children. The government is considering lowering the annual minimum withdrawal from account-based pensions. The change is designed to assure retirees the money will not run out during downturns.
Justify Yourself: ANZANZ Banking Group has asked its major tech-nology suppliers to justify their contracts as part of a review of the millions it spends on IT each year. The bank on Monday asked Infosys, HCL and Wipro why they should be doing to work already under their control.
UnhappilyFormer federal health Minister Michael Wool-dridge and businessman Bill Lewski face being banned as company directors over their role in the $500 million collapse of Prime Trust which was a retirement home enterprise. Dr Wool-dridge, Mr Lewski, Mr Peter Clarke and fellow directors Kim Jacques and Mark Butler eacg face penalties
MiningUranium PlusAustralia has warned Russian President Vladimir Putin against crossing into Ukraine under the guise of a “humanitarian mission”, with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop saying fur-ther sanctions could involve bans on the sale of uranium according to The Age. Agricultural Minister Barnaby Joyce says Australian ex-porters and make up for lost Russian sales “in a heartbeat” by increasing exports to China or Indonesia, although the dairy industry is less certain.
Gas fires boomNatural gas has surpassed education as Aus-tralia’s third-biggest export, before even the biggest gas projects to come have been built, raising hopes the commodity will bolster the country’s trade balance as the Reserve Bank charts a lower growth future. According to The Australian, the RBA board kept interest rates at a record low of 2.5 per cent recently, pointing once again to the likelihood of sub-trend eco-nomic growth, rising unemployment, and weak investment outside the mining sector.
Olympic DamBHP Billiton is considering reactivating its Olympic Dam copper-uranium expansion two years after the $30 billion project was contro-versially shelved, a move that would stimulate South Australia’s flagging economy.
Looking for Gold
Mining industry employment is forecast to slump by 4.5 per cent over the five years to 2018 according to The Australian, with more than 16,000 jobs to be lost across exploration, metal ore and coal mining. Recent analysis de-scribes the predicted decrease as a “significant slowdown” compared with the 106,700 jobs created in the mining industry in the five years to May this year. This is contrasted to the previ-ous doubling of mining employment in the five years to May 2012.
Chinese goalAccording to The Age, the international goal of halting global warming at 2 degrees is now within reach because China has slowed the growth of its coal use, despite continuing to develop economically, climate policy expert Ross Garnaut says. Through United Nations
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negotiations, countries, including China and Australia, have agreed to limit global warm-ing to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, which scientists believe would avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Countries will meet in Paris next year to try to reach a new global agreement to help meet this goal.
Mining industry ambushedWayne Swan has hit back at the claim he mis-led Martin Ferguson over mining tax talks, saying his former colleague has ‘always been close to the industry’. According to Paul Kelly in The Australian, reveals that Mr Ferguson, the former resources minister, has accused Mr Swan of misleading and ambushing the mining industry over his proposed mining tax, of be-traying him and of provoking the industry cam-paign against the former Labor government.
Wayne’s WorldIt’s the ghost, not of Christmas Past, but of Treasury Past. Wayne Swan has just released his memoir, in which his period as Kevin Rudd’s Treasurer (2007-10) and his volcanic quarrels with Mr Rudd are fully recounted. The controversy has had the odd effect of distract-ing public concern from Joe Hockey’s stum-bles, as the long-standing antagonism between Mr Swan and his boss – antagonism which did so much to impede Mr Rudd’s own career after the Julia-Gillard-led coup of 2010 – impinges upon media consciousness once more.
Reviewing the volume in The Australian, col-umnist Judith Sloan was vituperative: ‘I am absolutely thrilled, albeit in an unflattering way, in Wayne Swan’s latest book. I clearly got under his skin during his time as a failed and deluded federal Treasurer. The book is entitled The Good Fight: Six Years, Two Prime Min-isters, and Staring Down the Great Recession. A more appropriate title would be Blowing the Budget: A Guide to Bad Policy and Wasteful Spending.’
BHP spinoffAccording to the Financial Review, BHP Bil-liton’s historic $15 billion spin off has been given an instant thumbs down by the com-pany’s London investors as a plan to create a new Perth-based miner combined with lower than expected profit disappointed shareholders. The company’s UK-listed shares fell more than four per cent in early trade in London.
MusingsAccording to Terry McCrann in the Herald Sun, ‘The continuing BHPB will be essentially the 20th century BHP of great iron ore, copper, coking coal and oil and gas assets, plus the as-sets bought and built over the last decade or so from the fabulous profits generated by those old BHP assets. While it’s hiving off the Bil-liton assets, it’s not going to also hive off the Billiton name, CEO Andrew Mackenzie went on the record yesterday to state.’
Refugees & immigrationNorthern ImmigrationAccording to the Financial Review, the federal government will make it easier for employ-ers across Northern Australia to import guest workers as the $34 billion Icthys gas project creates labour shortages in the top end. The Northern Territory is set to be approved under the first so-called ‘designated area migration agreement’ for Western Australia’s Pilbara. The agreements are designed to free up busi-nesses outside the resources industry to have semi-skilled workers without having to meet the strick language, salary and training require-ments of the migration programs.
Crime InfestationRampant Visa fraud and migration crime in-volving people flying into Australia are going unchecked while the government focuses on stopping boats, according to hundreds of se-cret government files detailing entrenched Im-migration Department failings according to an exclusive article in The Age.
HeatedThe claims of more than 30,000 asylum seek-ers including children will not be processed until a controversial temporary visa is allowed through the Senate, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has told an inquiry. According to The Age, during a sometimes fiery hearing of the Australian Human Rights Commission inquiry on children in detention, Mr Morrison said the asylum seekers would not have their asylum claims processed until he could offer a “visa product” that only offered temporary residen-cy. The group includes more than 712 children who arrived in Australia after July 19 last year.
TPVs mootedImmigration Minister Scott Morrison is mount-ing a new push to restore temporary protection visas after announcing 150 children would be removed from immigration detention centres and placed on bridging visas in the community. The use of temporary visas, which have been voted down twice in the Senate, would allow asylum seekers to have work rights, but not al-low permanent residency in Australia.
Palmer demands concessionsClive Palmer has signalled he will support re-storing temporary protection visas only if the federal government removes asylum seeker children from Christmas Island and Nauru. Ac-cording to The Age, the Palmer United Party leader has made plain that he will seek conces-sions from Immigration Minister Scott Morri-son in return for his party’s support of TPVs. These could include giving those with TPVs the right to family reunion. ‘It’s very important at the moment to get the children off Christ-mas Island and get them off Nauru,’ Mr Palmer said. ‘We think it’s very important we have a real solution for asylum seekers and we are discussing that with Morrison at the moment.’
Flawed applicationsAccording to The Age, more than 90 per cent of visa applications from Afghanistan reviewed by Immigration Department officials contained ‘fraud of some type’, according to confidential federal government documents. The documents highlight vulnerabilities within the Australian immigration system and contain warnings by Immigration Department officials in 2012 that the widespread fraud involved in Afghan visa applications raised ‘people smuggling, identity fraud, suspected child trafficking and national security implications’.
Manus arrestsPort Moresby police have flagged further pos-sible arrests over the death of Iranian asylum seeker Reza Barati on Manus Island as they an-nounced they were charging two Papua New Guinean nationals for his February murder. According to The Age, six months after violent clashes at the island’s immigration detention centre left Mr Barati dead from horrific head wounds and at least 69 wounded, PNG police confirmed two former centre workers had been arrested and would be charged with murder.
‘Like animals’ According to a report in The Age, more than 50 refugees resettled by Australia on Nauru say they have been ‘abandoned to live like animals
in the jungle’. In an interview from the tiny Pa-cific island, the refugees said they don’t have enough clean water, food, or work to sustain themselves and that they can’t afford phone calls to their families back home.
Like GuantanamoAt least one in four refugees locked in in-definite detention on the basis of secret ASIO findings has attempted or threatened suicide, a new analysis has revealed. Several of the 44 refugees have now been incarcerated more than five years without charge in Melbourne and Sydney, and none are allowed to know the detail of the secret assessments used to justify their detention.
According to The Age, the unprecedented pic-ture of the group’s fragile mental state emerges from an analysis of thousands of Common-wealth Ombudsman’s reports into individuals held in immigration detention for more than two years. The reports are regularly tabled in Parliament, stripped of names and nationality for privacy but include detailed information about the refugees’ health.
Hitting outThe defence force chief responsible for bor-der protection under the Howard government has slammed the federal government’s asylum seeker policy. According to a report in The Age, Admiral Chris Barrie described detention cen-tres as ‘jails’ and said the policies enacted by Immigration Minister Scott Morrison were a ‘mess that reflect badly on all of us’. Admiral Barrie said the demonising of asylum seekers in Australia’s detention centres was a central concern for him. He also criticised the cost of Operation Sovereign Borders.
CouplingAccording to Verona Burgess in the Financial Review, ‘If there is one federal portfolio that makes hollow men of its ministers and callous bureaucrats of many staff it is Immigration. But ministers and governments move on, as do department secretaries. What can’t move is the department itself. Immigration is a highly com-plex agency that not only administers some impossible policies but has a deeply conflicted culture. This will become even more of a ‘chal-lenge’, as public servants like to call it, when it absorbs the Australians Customs and Border Protection Service and forms the Australian Border Force (ABF) on July 1, 2015, as recom-mended by the National Commission of Audit.’
Bolt’s musingsAccording to Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun: ‘The Human Rights Commission president must resign after turning her inquiry on chil-dren in detention into a political witch-hunt last week. Gillian Triggs’ behaviour was unfor-givable for someone with semi-judicial pow-ers, able to force witnesses to appear under threat of jail. We cannot have the head of an inquiry showing such bias, heckling witnesses and making false and emotive claims from the bench to make the Christmas Island detention centre seem a hellhole. Nor can we have an in-quiry head giving media interviews attacking witnesses and summing up the issues before hearing all the evidence.
It is now impossible to have confidence in Triggs’ impartiality. Triggs insisted ‘the peo-ple on Christmas Island are being detained in a prison effectively” because on her three visits she had noticed “you cannot get into any of the sections without going through armed guards’. That infuriated the Immigration Department secretary Martin Bowles, who protested at Triggs’ ‘emotive statements’. ‘It is not fair to
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characterise the detention system as a jail,’ he said, and Triggs should correct a falsehood. ‘We do not have armed guards, President. I would like you to acknowledge that.’
Immigration fraudA corrupt immigration official and her husband used stolen departmental equipment to run a $3 million migration racket, then fled to India. Im-migration Minister Scott Morrison demanded an urgent report on allegations of widespread visa fraud.
Dry landAccording to The Australian, the first group of asylum-seekers to reach the mainland in more than seven months arrived at the Curtin deten-tion centre in Western Australia last night, end-ing their month-long odyssey on a Customs boat in the Indian Ocean. The 157 men, women and children were flown from the Cocos Islands to the remote West Australian facility on three planes, and will be interviewed by Indian con-sular officials in the coming weeks as part of a deal struck last week between Tony Abbott and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Claims rejectedTamil asylum seekers sent to Nauru by the Aus-tralian government had only recently arrived in India and had no work, schooling or residency rights there, lawyers claim. According to The Age, the Australian government secretly flew 157 asylum seekers, held on the high seas for three weeks, to Nauru, after they refused to meet with Indian consular officials at the Curtin detention centre. The group includes 50 chil-dren, whom Immigration Minister Scott Mor-rison said could have returned to India, where they had family and were attending school, un-der his ‘unique’ offer. But lawyers acting for the asylum seekers said some of the Tamils had fled Sri Lanka and arrived in India in recent months, and faced a ‘precarious existence’ if returned.
Door open to 4000Up to 4000 Iraqi and Syrian Christians and members of other minorities fleeing persecu-tion by Islamic State terrorists will be offered sanctuary in Australia by the federal govern-ment.
Climate change, environment & energy
Cheaper permitsA proposal to make radical changes to the gov-ernment’s Direct Action policy so cheap inter-national carbon permits can be used in Aus-tralia threatens to exacerbate cabinet divisions over environmental policy. According to the Fi-nancial Review, the changes, to be introduced by independent senator Nick Xenophon, are the
result of weeks of negotiation with the help of the office of Environment Minister Greg Hunt and will test whether the government is will-ing to backflip on its previous opposition to the permits in order to get the $2.55 billion policy through the Senate.
Taking an axe to RETIf the federal government has its way, it will abolish the Renewable Energy Target (RET) rather than just scaling it back. So notes a front-page Financial Review news item. The govern-ment’s planned abolition will cost almost $11 billion in proposed investment. What is more, even Environment Minister Greg Hunt has very little enthusiasm for the move. Tony Ab-bott was reported as asking businessman Dick Warburton, whom he handpicked after the elec-tion to review the RET, to do more work on the option of terminating the target altogether, in-stead of merely reducing it. This was after Mr Warburton’s own review leaned towards reduc-tion rather than abolition. Mr Hunt, meanwhile, advocated reduction as a compromise. He is understood to have been latterly sidelined from the process, and to be none too pleased about the fact. Key to pushing the issue are Mr Ab-bott, Treasurer Joe Hockey, and Finance Minis-ter Mathias Cormann.
In a separate story, the Financial Review re-ported that business leaders have urged Mr Hunt to accede to demands to allow access to international carbon permits in his signature di-rect action scheme. These leaders say that such access will be key to the scheme’s success or failure. Mr Hunt is believed to support allow-ing access to a small number of international permits, which would provide a cheap way for businesses to top up their abatement if they fail to meet contracted targets. Independent Senator Nick Xenophon is lobbying for the move, but the Prime Minister’s Office continues to oppose it.
Renewable lobbyThe renewable energy lobby employs a neat trick to show that billions in subsidies for the costliest forms of electricity can lower power prices. According to the Financial Review, wind and solar power costs between 1½ and 10 times as much to produce as power from coal and gas. But the vagaries of the National Elec-tricity Market allow the renewables sector to claim that it lowers prices – even if it imposes costs on consumers elsewhere. In a shell game, a conman quickly moves around three shells on a table or mat and his buddies pressure passers-by to bet which one contains a pea.
The pea under the shell is $37 billion of renew-able energy certificates (RECs) that electricity retailers will buy from renewable energy gen-erators or generate themselves between now
and 2030 if the renewable energy target scheme isn’t changed. ‘It’s misleading, because the subsidy is the REC, and the REC certificate is acquitted at the retail level and is included in the retail price of electricity,’ Origin Energy chief executive Grant King says. The renew-able energy target has helped drive installations of 52 wind farms and 1.3 million solar roof-top systems – about one-eighth of total capacity – since 2001, Bloomberg New Energy Finance says.
The NSW Independent Pricing and Regula-tory Tribunal estimated the cost of the renew-able energy target to the average household in 2013-14 at $107 – about 5.3 per cent of a typical $2012 bill. It is now under review by a panel headed by businessman Richard War-burton, who is sceptical that human activity is causing global warming. Because the price of RECs is about the same as the electricity price per megawatt/hour, renewables generators are deriving as much revenue from selling RECs as they are from selling power to the National Electricity Market.
‘All it is is a tax on existing producers which is passed onto existing consumers,’ says Tony Wood, head of the energy program at the Grat-tan Institute. ‘No one denies, when they are asked the right question, that renewable energy costs more than fossil energy. ‘The only ques-tion is who pays for it? And right now it’s a combination of consumers and fossil generators who are paying for it, and you’ve got to ques-tion is that the right policy?’
Death to solar farm projectRecently Silex Systems – the company plan-ning to build what would have been one of the largest solar farms in all Australia – announced that it would suspend its proposed 2,000-dish project, which was to have been put into effect near Mildura, and had been billed as capable of producing enough electricity to run 30,000 homes. This decision, according to The Age, came amid reports that senior members of the federal cabinet, including Tony Abbott himself, were pushing a panel reviewing the renewable energy target to consider the case for abolishing the scheme. Assuming that the whole concept is indeed abandoned, the impact of its death will be big: more than $110 million in state as well as federal funding for the project will be forfeited.
Power lawsWesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder has disputed the government’s claims that there is a budget crisis at the moment but warns one will evolve unless current challenges are tack-led. According to a report in the Financial Re-view, Australia will sully its economic reform push as host of the G20 leader summit if it
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adopts domestic recommendations designed to curb the market share of supermarket giants, says Mr Goyder. He also said any restrictions placed on their ability to operate and keep pric-es low would fly in the face of Australia’s mes-sage to other nations.
Ex-Treasurer wants lower GST thresholdPeter Costello, Australia’s longest-serving fed-eral Treasurer (1996-2007), has re-emerged to back the campaign for a reduction in the $1,000 GST-free threshold for overseas online retail-ers. Mr Costello, who as Treasurer introduced the GST in the first place, told The Age recently that the purpose of the GST was to create a lev-el playing field for Australian exporters.
‘If we now have a situation where it’s an un-level playing field, that is in home consumption our retailers and our manufacturers are taxable and foreign retailers and foreign manufacturers are not, that’s not the purpose of the GST, and we ought to have a look at that.’
Meanwhile, a Financial Review article reported Mr Costello as giving his support to major re-tailers fighting the introduction of an ‘effects test’ that would make it harder for big compa-nies to take out smaller rivals. Bruce Billson, Small Business Minister in the federal govern-ment; Rod Sims, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman; and former ACCC chairman Allan Fels: all three support changing section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act to introduce an effects test, rath-er than just a purpose test.
Mr Costello agreed with yet another ACCC ex-chairman, Graeme Samuel, who maintained that a test for business behaviour would have a ‘chilling effect’ on growth, competitiveness, and the welfare of consumers. Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder supports Mr Costello, and has said that an effects test ‘would deter business from seeking efficiencies and keeping prices low.’
Criminal?The federal government has approved a giant Queensland coalmine that it says will generate as much as $300 billion for the economy, but which environmental groups say will contribute to a ‘carbon bomb’ and risk causing significant damage to the Great Barrier Reef. According to The Age, Environment Minister Greg Hunt said that he had approved the Carmichael Coal Mine in the Galilee Basin and its associated rail link to the coast with ‘the absolute strictest’ environ-mental conditions.
Science vs mythScience is beginning to win out over myth in the public debate over fracking and coal seam gas, Origin Energy chief Grant King says. Ac-cording to the Herald Sun, Mr King said the coal seam gas industry had been subject to a prolonged scare campaign. But its impact was waning amid a growing volume of scientific evidence confirming its safety and benefits. His comments came on a bumper day for investors, with shares in the group surging 4.2 per cent — Origin’s best rally in a year — after it posted a strong full-year report card.
Carbon warningThe consumer watchdog is eyeing off five Vic-torian councils it says must lower rates now that the carbon tax is gone. According to the Her-ald Sun, Qantas and Virgin have been issued a please explain over claims they have no savings to give. Delivering his latest carbon monitoring report to Treasurer Joe Hockey, ACCC chair-man Rod Sims said households will be $550 better off a year with the tax now repealed, but
warns people won’t notice half the savings they get.
However 21 councils that raised rates because of the carbon tax will need to show ratepayers the money, Mr Sims said. They include five of Victoria’s biggest, although the ACCC declined to name which.
Carbon statementAlinta Energy took out a ½ page advertisement noting an estimate for how much customers will save by the repeal of the carbon tax.
A role for solarAccording to the Financial Review, the solar power industry should be treated differently to wind in the review process of the Renewable Energy Target, says Liberal MP Angus Tay-lor, and has an important role to play in rural Australia. Mr Taylor, MP for Hume in southern NSW, was, in part, elected on the back of anti-wind farm sentiment within his electorate. He says issues facing wind and solar are very dif-ferent, and should be treated as such. ‘I think solar has a very important role to play,’ Mr Tay-lor said.
Inquiry demandedThe clean energy industry in demanding an in-vestigation into the conduct of a panel review-ing the renewable energy target, with the gov-ernment about to release a report.
Overhaul of RETTony Abbott has been handed a blueprint for heavy cuts to subsidies for wind farms and solar rooftop panels, after a review of the Re-newable Energy Target found the scheme un-dermined national productivity and was an expensive form of carbon abatement. Accord-ing to The Australian, the recommendations of the four-person RET review panel, headed by businessman Dick Warburton, sparked outrage from renewable energy interests, who warned it could bankrupt the industry and jeopardise 21,000 jobs.
Target in perilTony Abbott has been given cover to break an election promise not to touch Australia’s renewable energy target after his handpicked review panel recommended the scheme be dra-matically cut back.
Clean energy industry leaders said the findings of the review, headed by businessman and cli-mate sceptic Dick Warburton, represented the ‘worst case scenario’ and would cost thousands of jobs and more than $ 10 billion in investment if the government adopted its recommenda-tions. Clean Energy Council acting chief exec-utive Kane Thornton said the proposals would ‘shut down the future of the industry’ in Aus-tralia. Environment Minister Greg Hunt – who favours keeping the target, but faces opposition in cabinet – said the government was consider-ing the report and that he was ‘very, very mind-ful’ of its election commitment to maintain it.
Not budgingPleas by solar and wind companies to leave the Renewable Energy Target untouched have fall-en on deaf ears with the government deciding to proceed with a phasing down of the scheme.
MusingsIn The Australian, Maurice Newman, chairman of the PM’s Business Advisory Council, wrote: ‘Yet the global warming pause is now nearly 18 years old and, as climate scientist Judith Curry says, “attention is moving away from the pause to the cooling since 2002”. Anastasios
Tsonis, who leads the University of Wisconsin Atmospheric Sciences Group, talks of “massive rearrangements in the dominant pattern of the weather”. But the political establishment is deaf to this. Having put all our eggs in one basket and having made science a religion, it bravely persists with its global warming narrative, ig-noring at its peril and ours, the clear warnings being given by Mother Nature.’
Musings (2)In the Financial Review, energy program direc-tor at the Grattan Institute Tony Wood wrote: ‘The imminent review of the RET will come up with a least-bad revised target. But what should policy makers learn from the experience? The RET was designed to deliver a steadily increas-ing supply of renewable energy at lowest cost. It has done so effectively and efficiently. First, policies on energy and climate change are inex-tricably linked and both require clear long-term direction.
Secondly, both the fixed RET target and the recently departed fixed price emissions trading scheme (aka carbon tax) show just how bad it can be to base policy on a forecast. Third, parti-san politics and its associated continual change are poisonous to investment that desperately needs a credible and predictable framework to deliver the reliable, affordable and sustainable energy that Australians expect.’
BOM transparencyBureau of Meteorology was told to be more transparent and make public all details of the computer models used to adjust historic tem-perature records by the peer review panel that cleared its work as world best practice. The 2011 independent panel told BOM to clearly explain any changes that were made between raw and ‘homogenised’ data.
Solar plantsAccording to The Australian, plans to duplicate the world’s largest solar thermal energy plant at sites across the US are being opposed because thousands of birds are bursting into flames in the sky.
BBC changesReporters for BBC News are being directed to significantly curb the amount of air time they give to people with anti-science viewpoints — including people who deny climate change exists — in order to improve the accuracy and fairness of the network’s news coverage.
Pink battsAccording to Verona Burgess in the Finan-cial Review; ‘the report by commissioner Ian Hanger QC (for the Home Insulation Program Royal Commission) might not have provided the government with a political mega-bang for its buck, given that it’s the fourth Com-monwealth inquiry into the ill-fated scheme. But to describe the findings as blistering is an understatement. Not only did Hanger finger the tow key ministers, Peter Garrett and Mark Ar-bib – though he hardly let Kevin Rudd off the hook about the perceived immutability of the program’s start date – but he exposed deficien-cies at the very top of the public service. ‘the failings of senior management assured the fail-ure of the project. There can be no substitute for the leadership, advice and decision making that senior managers are required to provide.’ Ouch. The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and its then-Office of the Co-ordinator General were heavily criticised for the design of both the program and the method of delivery and for overriding the Environment department’s pre-ferred model. Environment was, and remained,
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ill equipped to deliver the program, he said.’
Agriculture, cattle & waterFeeding ChinaAndrew Forrest has signed up three of China’s biggest food companies to join his radical push to revive Australia’s farm sector and position the nation as China’s ‘friendliest, largest, and most efficient’ supplier of agricultural products over the next 100 years, according to The Aus-tralian.
Joyce Judges WatchdogIn The Australian, Agricultural Minister Barn-aby Joyce has lashed out at the competition watchdog, Claiming that its treatment of dairy giant Murray Goulburn’s bid for Warnambool Cheese & Butter was a poor application of competition law.
MusingsIn The Age, Jared Lynch wrote: ‘A 747 jet will take off from an Australian airport, carrying the first of three plane loads of sheep to Inner Mongolia. There they won’t land on a dinner plate, like many Australian agriculture products being sent to Asia in an effort to capitalise on the region’s fast-growing middle class. Instead, they will be taken to pasture to help improve the quality of the Inner Mongolian flock.
This is what Tim Harcourt, a former chief econ-omist of Australia’s international trade promo-tion agency Austrade, calls the other prong to the Asian dining boom. ‘We can’t feed Asia, or the Middle East for that matter, single-handedly but our expertise is actually quite handy. I’ve met a lot of dairy farmers in China helping the Chinese build up their capacity,’ Mr Harcourt said. He is not the only one who has dismissed claims - often made by state and federal politi-cians - that Australia could be the food bowl of Asia.
Not the corporate smartsFederal Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce says the Australian funds-management commu-nity needs to urgently employ more people with real knowledge of agriculture to help provide much-needed equity in the sector. According to a report in The Australian, the pressure of short-term financial returns have driven domes-tic super funds away from investment in Aus-tralian farmland, leaving largely foreign private companies and offshore institutional investors to fill the void. Global fund managers and in-ternational pension funds have acquired more than $1.5 billion of farmland in Australia in the past three years.
Dairy boostAustralia should consider emulating New Zea-land’s decision to overlook competition con-cerns and create a dairy monopoly like Fonterra, consulting firm McKinsey & Company says. In a report commissioned by the Business Coun-cil of Australia, McKinsey says New Zealand’s dairy exports and milk production has boomed while Australia’s has lagged. Australia’s big-gest dairy group Murray Goulburn was stymied by regulators this year in its efforts to consoli-date the industry in the $500 million bidding war for Warrnambool Cheese & Butter.
Cheaper milkAustralia’s biggest milk processor plans to in-sulate farmers against Russia’s ban on many Western foods by halving exports of bulk dairy ingredients and bolstering shipments of high-value products such as baby formula.
ACCC and dairyAgriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce has hit out at the competition watchdog and the law it en-forces, claiming its treatment of Murray Goul-burn’s bid for Warrnambool Cheese & Butter was a poor application of competition law. Ac-cording to The Australian, Mr Joyce called for an overhaul of competition law to support the creation of national champions in industries across Australia after the giant Murray Goul-burn co-operative was effectively blocked from buying Warrnambool by delays in the competi-tion review process.
More to comeThe boss of Australia’s biggest dairy company is forecasting more consolidation in the sector, saying there ‘isn’t enough money to be made’ for all players. Murray Goulburn managing director Gary Helou says Australia’s ‘stag-nant’ milk production means that some of the countries biggest dairy companies will have to merge in coming years. His comments come eight months after competition concerns forced Murray Goulburn out of a three way global bid-ding war for Warrnambool Cheese and Butter.
Organic boomA little known group of 23 Victorian farmers is set to grab the cream of the booming -demand for premium, green Australian dairy products. According to The Australian, the Organic Dairy Farmers of Australia co-operative already pro-duces more than 23 million -litres of organic milk a year, commanding major market power with a grip on 75 per cent of national organic milk supply.
IrrigatorsAccording to a report in The Australian, the Coalition faces a $120 million-a-year budget hole on its Murray-Darling Basin plan be-yond 2017, sparking calls by irrigators to use the current review of water laws to reform the roles of key agencies. The National Irrigators’ Council is concerned that underfunding beyond 2017 — based on current budget forward esti-mates — could spark another shake-up in the system. This would create uncertainty for the industry or tempt governments to increase user charges for a program aimed at environmental outcomes.
MediaNew satire?Here’s the ABC publicity blurb: ‘Set inside the offices of the Nation Building Authority, a new-ly created government organisation responsible for overseeing major infrastructure projects, Utopia explores that moment when bureau-cracy and grand dreams collide. It’s a tribute to those political leaders who have somehow managed to take a long-term vision and use it for short-term gain.’
More cutsA secret study of ABC operations has identified $60 million worth of potential savings, a finding the federal government will use to justify a new round of cuts to the broadcaster’s budget. Ac-cording to The Age, critics fear the ‘alarming’ plans, contained in the federal government’s efficiency study into the ABC and SBS, could undermine the broadcasters’ independence.
Whose ABC? Aunty seeks the youth marketThe Age announced that the Australian Broad-casting Corporation will examine cutting back on television and radio programs which are aimed at older audiences, as part of a major review of the public broadcaster’s program-
ming. In the resultant overhaul, hundreds of jobs could go – in addition to those which have already gone of late – as the federal gov-ernment contemplates more funding cuts and believes that the ABC’s ‘analogue’ structures have become outdated. Mark Scott, the ABC’s managing director, publicly observed that the ABC would ‘robustly review its programming and services’ to ensure the broadcaster remains relevant to modern audiences.
Eating roosAfter seven months of passionate argument, formal hearings, quasi-litigation and wasted time, the Press Council is edging towards a fi-nal ruling on whether it will allow food writers to express an unqualified opinion in favour of eating kangaroos. According to The Australian, this is a case of national importance. It directly raises the question of whether eating Skippy is a concept that no Australian food writer will be allowed to endorse with impunity.
But it also raises the question of whether the complaint-handling processes of the Press Council are too easily captured by activists seeking to punish journalists who express opin-ions with which they disagree. In the hands of Julian Disney’s Press Council, ‘the kangaroo case’ has become the stuff of legend. It has become a marathon of complaint notifications, summaries of the principal issues, debates about the relevant standards of practice, multi-ple responses and a formal hearing.
Media reforms not ruled outCommunications Minister Malcolm Turnbull hasn’t ruled out changes to media ownership laws, despite admitting that he can’t proceed without agreement between the major play-ers. ‘It’s fair to say that change is still on The Agenda,’ Mr Turnbull said in a speech deliv-ered yesterday at a newspaper industry forum in Sydney.
His musingJonathan Holmes in The Age: ‘An Australian Press Council leadership change will surely bring back the bad old days. I have written be-fore in this column that of all Australia’s news-papers, it’s The Australian that is most inclined to use its own substantial power to berate and belittle its critics - or anyone else who stands up to it. That all-too-familiar behaviour has been on display again in recent weeks. The tar-get this time is the chairman of the Australian Press Council, Professor Julian Disney. The council he chairs has become “a laughing stock ... drunk on power”, claimed a recent editorial.’
Musings (2)According to Chris Merritt in The Australian, ‘for an organisation charged with standing guard against attacks on freedom of speech, Ju-lian Disney’s Press Council has not just fallen asleep on the watch — it has joined the other side. The Australian Press Council’s constitu-tion requires it to promote freedom of speech and challenge political, legislative and other developments that might adversely affect the dissemination of information of public interest.
The right to know and freedom of speech ap-pear in three of the six clauses of the consti-tution that lists its objects. Yet when the chips were down, the press council became deeply in-volved in a plan that seems difficult to reconcile with these constitutional responsibilities. Under Disney’s chairmanship, the council developed a plan for a new way of regulating the news me-dia that would have used the same core mecha-nism that underpinned Stephen Conroy’s failed scheme, which would have created a Public In-
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terest Media Advocate to oversee the regulation of newspaper content.
But, in some ways, Conroy’s PIMA would have been better than the scheme favoured by the council. And within the media industry, the PIMA was widely viewed as the work of the devil. So have things changed? Recently, the council announced that Disney would stand aside from hearing complaints about articles in News Corp Australia publications until he leaves the council in January.
On August 1, the council put into effect new general principles by which it would judge future complaints about media conduct. This newspaper has raised concerns about the op-eration of these new principles, including the capacity of third-party complainants to restrict press freedom.’
News CorpThe poor financial health of News Corp Austral-ia’s newspapers has been exposed by the release of confidential documents showing continuing losses at its flagship publication The Australian, diving profits for its tabloids, and swingeing job cuts. Insiders say the release of the 276-page internal operating accounts, by website Crikey, had News Corp Australia’s Holt Street head-quarters in meltdown. Revenue at The Austral-ian fell 20.2 per cent to $107.6 million. Operat-ing income for the broadsheet fell to a loss of $27 million. Melbourne’s Herald Sun revenues fell 13.5 per cent to $249.6 million, while rev-enue at Sydney’s Daily Telegraph dropped by 14.4 per cent to $160.4 million.
JusticeDonation in the cupboardAccording to the Financial Review, a NSW Lib-eral MP who was given $10,000 in a paper bag by a property developer kept it in a cupboard for a month because he didn’t know what to do, a corruption inquiry heard. ‘It was just a huge mistake, I just froze,’ said Andrew Cornwell, who stood aside.
Cancer Hospital ThreatenedMelbourne’s Peter MacCallum cancer hospital was warned not to pay $250,000 to Kathy Jack-son’s union or risk serious criminal sanction un-der the Crimes Act for bribery. A senior source at the hospital has confirmed concern was raised with the board in 2003 about the legality of the $250,000 payment to the Health Services Un-ion and whether it was a secret commission, or bribe. The payments helped settle a dispute over back pay that resulted in about 150 research sci-entists agreeing to forgo $3.16 million owed to them.
The scientists had been told they could lose their jobs if they did not give up their rights to backpay. Crucial to whether a secret commis-sion was paid by the hospital - which relies on government funding and public donations to op-erate - relates to the intent of the payment and whether it was disclosed to the scientists. While Ms Jackson has claimed it was disclosed, sev-eral scientists have told The Age it was not.
ICAC Claims Two More VictimsThe (NSW) Commission Against Corruption has claimed two more state parliamentarians and drawn in the Federal Liberal Party (this has not gone very far) over claims that property developers money was knowingly used to fund the party’s state election campaigns. Govern-ment whip Andrew Cornwell and Liberal MP Tim Owen were susceptible to manipulation by wealthy individuals. Premier Mike Baird said while he made no judgement regarding the in-
vestigation, it would “take time for the allega-tions to be resolved, and I am not prepared to allow this to become a distraction” according to the front page of The Australian.
Batts inquiryThe royal commission investigating the Rudd government’s deadly insulation scheme will make serious adverse findings against at least one senior Labor ex-minister and several cur-rent and former top public servants. According to The Australian, Ian Hanger QC will also urge the government to compensate hundreds of es-tablished installation businesses devastated by the $2.8 billion program, through a mediation process that could result in payouts that could total $200 million.
Appealing to MuslimsAustralia’s top spy has launched an impassioned appeal to the nation’s half a million Muslims not to mistake the federal government’s counterter-rorism push as ‘fighting Islam’. Amid simmer-ing fears in the Islamic community about pro-posed new terrorism laws, ASIO boss David Irvine has given a rare one-on-one interview with a Muslim radio program in which he said he was ‘utterly outraged’ by a recent newspaper headline that talked about ‘fight[ing] Islam for 100 years’.
Counter terror lawsA central plank of Tony Abbott’s push to tough-en counter-terrorism laws to guard against the heightened threat from Australians being radi-calised in foreign wars and returning to engage in homegrown attacks is struggling to secure wholesale parliamentary backing. As three-quarters of Australians endorse the proposed crackdown on foreign fighters, crossbenchers have joined Labor and the Greens to voice con-cerns about handing the government a blank cheque with its sweeping changes.
StrippedAccording to the Herald Sun, the nation’s top spy agency has stripped almost 70 passports from Islamic extremists, prompting fears the grounded radicals will now lead attacks on Aus-tralian soil. An increasing number of suspected jihadists planning to deploy to Iraq and Syria are being stopped in their tracks, according to sources. In July, ASIO cancelled six passports in addition to 63 confiscated in the past two fi-nancial years.
Authorities are escalating their activities to try to stem the flow of radicals joining terrorist or-ganisations such as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and al-Qaeda, who teach potential ji-hadists combat and bomb-making skills before sending them home. But there are now fears of a ‘ricochet effect’ - that those prevented from leaving could plot an attack on east coast Aus-tralian cities instead.
Advisory panelAccording to the Financial Review, an advisory panel set up by Attorney-General George Bran-dis and charged with investigating the regula-tion of litigation funding and class actions re-mains on hold, despite increasing concerns from the sector.
Jihadis on welfareAccording to the Herald Sun, welfare payments to more than a dozen suspected jihadists have been stopped to prevent Australian taxpayers’ money being used to finance terrorist events in Iraq and Syria.
So sadThe daughter or former NSW Premier Neville
Wran is being questioned over the stabbing murder of a man at a Redfern apartment block.Safer streetsThe federal government’s ‘Safer Streets’ anti-crime program is the second federal pot of money in less than a week to attract claims of pork-barrelling in Liberal and Nationals held electorates, prompting the Commonwealth Au-ditor-General to examine the administration of the $50 million fund. The decision comes after the opposition last week raised similar concerns over the much larger $314 million Community Development Grants scheme, asserting that it was being used to effectively shore-up coalition seats in a revival of the Howard government’s notorious ‘regional rorts’ program.National emergencyGovernor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove and his predecessor, Dame Quentin Bryce, have joined forces for a national initiative to reduce violence against women and children. The new organi-sation, is headed by Natasha Stott Despoja and will offer national leadership in the fight to re-duce what Ms Stott Despoja has labelled the ‘national emergency’ of violence against wom-en. ‘One woman is killed almost every week by a current or former partner in Australia. That is an extraordinary and chilling statistic,’ said Ms Stott Despoja, the National Ambassador for Women and Girls and chair of the group’s precursor, the Foundation to Prevent Violence against Women and Their Children.
Call for submissionsThe NSW government has established a panel of experts to review the potential for further re-forms to election funding laws. Submissions to [email protected] .
Broadband & ITData retentionInternet service provider iiNet has labelled the federal government’s changing set of require-ments for its controversial data retention policy as ‘simply chaotic’. The federal government an-nounced it would back a data-retention policy that would force telecommunications compa-nies to record the metadata of every customer for two years. It said such moves were vital for fighting terrorism and crime in a digital age.
The horse has boltedIn the Financial Review, Jennifer Hewett said that any degree of government surveillance of citizens is laughably minor compared to the data built up around what we buy, from whom, how and when. At a conference in Australia last week, US researcher Rebecca Costa cited a commercial trial where a smartphone app reads consumers’ facial expressions about potential purchases in order to know what sort of dis-count is needed to close the deal.
Some upscale designs are using facial recogni-tion technology on those who visit their stores to provide instant details to shop assistants of the customers’ past purchases and experience of the brand anywhere in the world.
Political Terror over Terror LawsTony Abbott and the Attorney-General have been forced onto the back foot in explaining and justifying plans to force Internet providers and phone companies to keep every record of the customers phone and web use for at least two years. An angry and frustrated Communications Minister forcefully warned the Prime Minister and his colleagues yesterday that they risked embarrassment over the new terror provisions because they had taken a decision without full knowledge of the repercussions for internet ser-
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vice providers and the public.
PiracyAustralia would have some of the toughest anti-piracy measures in the Western world if leaked government proposals to crack down on online copyright infringement were implemented, ac-cording to copyright experts. According to The Age, the draft discussion paper, published by news site Crikey, includes proposals to block overseas websites that host pirated content and to compel internet service providers (ISPs) to stop users illegally downloading movies and music.
Attorney-General George Brandis has said Australia - which topped the world for illegal downloads of Game of Thrones last year - is the ‘worst offender’ when it comes to pirated content. The paper proposes to make it easier for content creators to take ISPs to court if they don’t implement action against illegal down-loading and to force ISPs to block access to sites hosting pirated content.
RolloutThe federal government remains committed to subsidising the roll-out of fast broadband in ru-ral areas despite a cost-benefit analysis finding the economic and social benefits of doing so are dwarfed by the costs.
Mobile Data gets Chilly ReceptionTelstra shareholders and analysts are worried the company’s revenue and profit powerhouse - its mobile division - could be hit by a slowdown in subscriber numbers over the next few years. The inexorable rise of Telstra’s mobile arm has been vital for offsetting the company’s falling profits from fixed-line phone calls and helped push its share price to 12-year highs. It generat-ed $9.7 billion in revenue during financial year 2014, representing 38 per cent of the companies total revenue.
This was 5.1 per cent higher than last year’s result. Where Telstra gained 730,000 mobile customers in the first half of 2014, it added just 198,000 in the second half of the year. Telstra now has 16 million mobile customers, com-pared to 9.4 million at SingTel Optus and around 5 million at Vodafone Australia. Both its rivals have lost subscribers to the past 12 months.
Governance damnedAccording to the Financial Review, the NBN Co board did not have the right mix of skilled and experienced directors and failed to identify strategic risks of Australia’s biggest infrastruc-ture project. The findings by KordaMentha were about directors who served on board between 2009 and September 2013.
MusingsIn the editorial in the Financial Review: ‘The independent cost benefit analysis of broadband and review of regulation is a condemnation of the Rudd government’s approach of making policy on the run.’
Faster than neededAccording to the Financial Review, the growth in internet usage is being driven by older sin-gle-person households who place significantly less demand on the network than families with teenagers. The finding is contained in a report prepared for the Vertigan Panel that reveals how Australians are using the internet.
MusingsAccording to Malcolm Maiden in The Age: ‘The Vertigan report on cost-benefit equations for various broadband rollout options gives Labor’s
aborted fibre to the home project the dunce’s cap. It reaches that conclusion after making as-sumptions about the future, however, and that’s a fraught exercise. My first conclusion is that Malcolm Turnbull was right to argue patiently inside the Coalition when it was in opposition that while Labor’s gold plated network should be scrapped, the concept of a national network should be retained.’
Transport & infrastructureMember’s billLabor will move to end a parliamentary dead-lock which is threatening to leave already cash strapped local councils without road funding. According to the Financial Review, parliamen-tary approval for spending on the $350 million a year Roads to Recovery program expired on June 30. The bill to extend the scheme included other measures that Labor sought to amend in the lower house.
The opposition wanted changes to heavy ve-hicle standards, as well as an amendment that would implement a Coalition election promise to conduct a cost-benefit analysis on any project worth more than $100 million. The government voted down the amendments, but has failed to progress the legislation in the Senate, leaving the future of the funding uncertain.
Congestion pricingAlong with throwing his support behind the move to sell off more government assets, “con-gestion pricing” should be on the table in any debate over further economic reform, the head of the competition watchdog Rod Sims is to tell a conference. Congestion pricing, which is where charges to use public services are raised at times of peak demand, has been touted for the use of some roads and in other areas, such as electricity, to ensure the most effective use of public assets. It is already used on Sydney’s two harbour crossings, with tolls raised during peak hour, for example. ‘The reason to privatise assets is to promote economic efficiency,’ Mr Sims, the chairman of the Australian Competi-tion and Consumer Commission said.Tax on toll revenueAccording to The Age, Australia’s monopoly toll road operator Transurban paid $3 million tax last year despite racking up $1 billion in tolls from motorists. As the debate rages over “lifters and leaners” in the wake of Treasurer Joe Hockey’s federal budget, the Transurban financial statements for 2014 put in stark relief the paltry income tax contributions which some large corporations are making to the Common-wealth coffers. Transurban Holdings Limited, the umbrella company which holds the lucra-tive toll-road assets in Sydney and Melbourne, notched up $1 billion in toll revenues last year.
The company was able to achieve this thanks to the way in which it structures its financial ac-counts and runs high debt levels. Some $344 million was paid in interest on Transurban’s massive $6.8 billion in borrowings. Interest payments are tax deductible and have the ef-fect of bringing down profits from which tax is ultimately paid. Earnings (before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation charges) came in at $759 million. Actual income tax paid was just $3 million, down from $12 million last year.SeatbeltsAccording to the Herald Sun, driver fatigue is one of the biggest killers on our roads and re-sponsible for up to one-third of serious injuries. A group of companies have joined forces with the University of Manchester in the UK and the Biomechanics Institute in Spain to come up
with a hi-tech seatbelt and car seat cover to alert drowsy drivers.Qantas capAccording to the Herald Sun, Qantas will re-main majority Australian owned as the govern-ment backs away from removing restrictions on foreign investment. The moves comes as the government proposes changes to the Qan-tas Sale Act, which prevents individual foreign investors from owning more the twenty five per cent of the airline, and caps combined owner-ship by foreign airlines at thirty five percent.Foreign ownershipAccording to Ellen Whinnett in the Herald Sun, ‘Earlier this year, the government refused to give Qantas a debt guarantee. The surprise decision by Prime Minister Tony Abbott came despite Treasurer Joe Hockey having Qantas plenty of signals to the contrary. Instead, it produced legislation to amend the Qantas Sale Act to allow the airline to be majority foreign owned. This was a cynical move because the government knew the legislation would fail. Labor was never going to allow Qantas to fall into foreign hands, citing safety concerns and a desire to keep maintenance and other jobs on Australian soil.’
Worst overAccording to a report in The Age, Qantas Air-ways chief executive Alan Joyce has declared the worst is over for the airline after it reported its biggest ever annual loss of $2.84 billion, six months after the federal government rejected its plea for financial assistance. The figure was driven by a $2.6 billion write-down on its in-ternational fleet along with other restructuring charges. The underlying pre-tax loss - the figure examined most closely by investors - was $646 million. That was better than expectations of a $750 million loss because the airline managed to cut costs faster than expected.MusingsIn the Financial Review, Jennifer Hewett wrote regarding Qantas’s record $2.8 billion net loss: ‘Whether the Joyce version will produce the desired results requires considerable faith in the ability of Qantas management to learn from its mistakes.’Petrol pricingMotorists are paying more for petrol because big chains BP, Caltex, Coles, Woolworths and 7-Eleven use a members-only website to co-ordinate price movements, the consumer watchdog alleges. In a Federal Court lawsuit, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleges that by posting price hikes to the Oil Price Watch (OPW) service run by Queensland company Informed Sources, each chain was able to propose price increases in the Melbourne market and monitor how competi-tors responded.LogisticsIn a speech to the Future of Infrastructure Con-ference, Australian Logistics Council Managing Director Michael Kilgariff has called for infra-structure action and reform across five key ar-eas to boost supply chain efficiency. ‘The first of these is passage through the Senate of the gov-ernment’s asset recycling bill to stimulate in-vestment in productive infrastructure. The sec-ond is progressing reforms to how infrastructure is priced and funded.’ Mr Kilgariff said the third priority area is ensuring the right infrastructure projects are selected for funding.
HealthAMA demandAccording to the Financial Review, the federal
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Letter from Canberra
government faces a budget hit of up to $2 bil-lion if it agrees to a demand from doctors that pensioners be exempt from the $7 medical pay-ment, which is designed to discourage people going to the doctor with minor complaints. The Australian Medical Association put a modi-fied version of the scheme to Health Minister Peter Dutton. It proposes a significant watering down of coverage for the measure and refuses to budge from the AMA’s opposition to any cut in the Medicare rebate for doctors.
Rein in feesSurgeons should be forced to accept a cap on their fees in return for Medicare subsidies, ac-cording to Terry Barnes, the former Howard Government advisor who kickstarted debate about Medicare co-payments. Mr Barnes said Health Minister Peter Dutton should use his current negotiations with the Australian Medi-cal Association on the government’s proposed $7 Medicare fee to tackle the spiralling fees charged by some specialists.
Pensioners to payAccording to The Age, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has rejected a proposal by doctors to exempt pensioners from a $7 GP fee, but has left open the possibility of negotiating over whether children’s visits were charged. Speak-ing to reporters in Melbourne, Mr Abbott said pensioners already paid about $7 for prescrip-tions subsidised by the government under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
AMA schemeThe federal government says an Australian Medical Association plan for a GP co-payment would represent a $580 million windfall for doctors. According to The Australian, adopt-ing the AMA plan would also erode 97 per cent of planned budget savings, said Health Minis-ter Peter Dutton. Under the AMA’s alternative model to the government’s $7 co-payment plan, children and pensioners would have their GP fee paid by taxpayers.
Going privateMore than $30 billion in Medicare and phar-maceutical benefit payments a year is likely to be outsourced, cutting the Department of Hu-man Services in half and reshaping the delivery of government services. The decision – a key recommendation of the Commission of Audit – could allow Australia Post or one of the big four banks to step in to calculate and process health payments and absorb Medicare retail outlets. It aligns with the government’s plans as part of the budget process to reduce the size the public service and make government services more ef-ficient.
PharmaciesAccording to the Financial Review, one issue the government must address this year is the framework for regulating pharmacies in Aus-tralia. Its five-year agreement with the Pharma-cy Guild, the peak body representing pharmacy owners, is due to expire in July 2015. Plans to deregulate the community pharmacy sector, by removing the ownership and location rules con-tained in the National Commission of Audit re-port, has made the future regulatory framework less predictable.
The ownership restrictions, which state that only a registered pharmacist can own a pharma-cy, date to the 1930s, when a law change was in-troduced to prevent the British pharmacy chain Boots from entering the Australian marketplace. But in a speech in March, Health Minister Peter Dutton explicitly ruled out allowing ‘retail gi-ants’ into pharmacy, so the prospect of signifi-
cant changes to these rules seem slim.
Paid parental leaveLegislation for Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s prized $5.5 billion paid parental leave scheme has been quietly shelved and is unlikely to be put to Parliament this year, sources have re-vealed. According to The Age, the move is aimed at quelling backbench dissent on the is-sue and is also a recognition it may be voted down by rebel government senators if put to the test.
Alcohol deathsFifteen Australians die each day and 430 are hospitalised because of alcohol, according to a report on the national burden of booze. The report, prepared by the Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre, and funded by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education and VicHe-alth, shows a 62 per cent increase in the number of alcohol deaths.
Childhood reportSome of the childcare policies touted by the Productivity Commission risk dire consequenc-es for children’s wellbeing and development, according to early childhood experts. One aca-demic said it would be ‘internationally embar-rassing’ if Australia put economics and work-force participation ahead of children’s needs.
Medicinal marijuanaThe only way to protect people from question-able black market marijuana is to regulate the supply of medicinal forms of the drug that can be prescribed to suitable people, doctors say. According to The Age, President of the Austral-ian Drug Law Reform Foundation and addiction medicine specialist Dr Alex Wodak said given it was impossible for people to know what they were getting when they purchased cannabis on the black market in Australia, the only solution was for the government to create a controlled ‘white market’.
Psychosis treatmentA compound found in marijuana could soon be tested on young Australians to prevent and treat psychosis after European research suggested it could treat schizophrenia with fewer side ef-fects than other drugs. As state and federal gov-ernments face increasing calls for the legalisa-tion of medicinal cannabis, leading psychiatrist and mental health advocate Patrick McGorry said one part of the drug was showing promise as an anti-psychotic medicine.
International Baby FactoryAbout 50 Australian couples’ dreams of hav-ing surrogate children have been shattered af-ter Thai authorities linked their Bangkok clinic with a suspected international “baby factory” trafficking syndicate said to be behind at least 14 babies destined for overseas. On Friday, the forced closure of the most popular IVF clinic for Australians in the Thai capital, All IVF Cen-tre, has raised fears Thai surrogate mothers will abort their babies after loosing support from the centre.
Cannabis reportAccording to The Age, pharmaceutical cannabis is effective for treating some forms of pain, re-ducing nausea and helping people gain weight, but there are barriers to medical use in Aus-tralia, the federal government’s principal drug advisory group says. An Australian National Council on Drugs’ report on medicinal canna-bis published recently said research suggested a number of cannabis pharmaceuticals could treat pain, particularly chronic and neuropathic pain,
the latter of which is caused by injuries to the nervous system.
The background and information paper said clinical trials of various cannabinoids had also shown they could treat spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis and stimulate appetite and weight gain in people with HIV, advanced cancer and anorexia. While cannabinoids may be able to treat epilepsy, glaucoma, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, Tourette’s syndrome and spinal cord injuries, the report said the evidence for its use in these conditions was less clear.
Research fundPlans for a $20 billion medical research fund are being locked into the federal government’s budget strategy despite growing concerns about the idea, as ministers insist on keeping the scheme, as well as a controversial GP co-pay-ment to pay for it.
Disability careAccording to a report in The Australian, closure of government-run facilities for the disables is causing divisions. The United Nations Conven-tion on the Rights of the Person with Disability argues against large residential institutions, and four large institutions remain in Victoria with more than 300 residents — Colanda, Sandhurst, Plenty and Oakleigh — and there are almost 200 people living in two centres in South Aus-tralia at Strathmont and Highgate Park.
Public appealThe Red Cross is calling for donations to its Eb-ola Outbreak 2014 Appeal. Donate at redcorss.org.au/ebolaappeal.
EducationStudents Pyne Education ChangesEducation Minister Christopher Pyne conceded he will have to make changes to the Coalition’s higher education package - probably to his plan to charge a real interest rates on student debt - which has sparked violent student protests ac-cording to The Australian.
Scholar cutsAccording to the Financial Review, Australia risks becoming a nation of degree holders who can’t find a plumber, says University of Can-berra vice-chancellor Stephen Parker, backing the Business Council of Australia’s call to cut university student numbers and increase voca-tional education.
Join the UnionThe National Union of Students says that de-spite an apparent unified stance from Labor, the Greens and Palmer United Party against the government’s reforms, it isn’t taking anything for granted since being blindsided in 2005 when Family First senator Steve Fielding delivered the Howard government its victory on voluntary student unionism. And it is facing a challenge to galvanise a broader spectrum of student voices in opposition to the reforms as an increasing number of undergraduates say they feel a lim-ited by radical politics according to The Austral-ian.
Training programMelbourne University has removed a perceived criticism of the controversial Teach for Austral-ia program from its submission to the federal inquiry into teacher education. Teach for Aus-tralia - which fast-tracks non-teaching graduates into disadvantaged schools after six weeks’ ini-tial training - complained to the university after quotes from the submission were published in
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Letter from Canberra10 August to 14 September, 2014
The Age.
Chaplaincy programThe federal government is pushing ahead with a religious-only school chaplaincy scheme fol-lowing a cabinet debate over whether secular welfare workers should be included in the pro-gram.
Universities packageAccording to The Age, universities appear no closer to relieving the uncertainty surrounding the government’s planned deregulation agenda for the higher education sector as a Senate ma-jority proves elusive.
Reform bidEducation Minister Christopher Pyne has stepped up pressure on the Senate crossbench to pass controversial university deregulation which would see many students pay more for degrees and enter the workforce with larger debts.
Budget bonanzaAustralia’s elite universities could gain hun-dreds of millions of dollars a year from changes proposed in the federal budget, leaked docu-ments show. According to The Age, confiden-tial modelling prepared for university officials suggests top universities could reap up to half a billion dollars in one year in the most extreme cases, while regional universities stand to gain far less, sparking fears the divide between re-gional and city institutes could widen. The windfall would flow from legislation expected to be introduced by Education Minister Chris-topher Pyne, which would allow universities to set their own fees.
Not supportingAccording to the Financial Review, Clive Palmer has written to Christopher Pyne telling him that the PUP will not support deregulation of university fees or increased interest rates on student loans.
Foreign affairsBring Them HomeTony Abbott is confident any bodily remains and possessions that could be recovered from the East Ukraine crash sight of Malaysia Air-lines MH17 have been collected and the first stage of mission Bring Them Home has been completed according to The Australian.
Abbott not Kevin It was slightly unconventional for Tony Ab-bott as Prime Minister to be overseas when the US secretaries of State and Defence visited for AUSMIN. But it was reasonable for Abbott to visit the Netherlands and Britain now accord-ing to Greg Sheridan, the foreign editor of The Australian. Although he is being very active and successful in foreign policy, other is conscious that he never wants to become a version of Kevin 707, always abroad. But in this short trip he is attending directly to Australian interests. He wants to thank the brave Australians in the Netherlands who have worked to recover bodies and effects from the MH17 crash site, to consult the Dutch prime minister, and make a quick stop in London to catch up with key security offi-cials and ministers. Even if you were here, I but would not formally participate in the AUSMIN meetings. But he would have hosted a dinner for all the ministers involved.
Day of Rage at DFATMelbourne protesters have joined an interna-tional “day of rage” against Israeli air strikes on Gaza, chanting “shame Abbott shame” and
calling on the federal government to condemn the bombings. The protesters rallied outside the State Library before marching to the Melbourne offices of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on Lonsdale street.
100 Year War DeclaredIslamic community leaders and Labor yesterday criticised former army chief Peter Leahy’s pro-vocative warning that Australia should prepare for a 100-year battle with his Islamic radicals intent on terrorist attacks according to The Aus-tralian.
Australian Industry SubmergedAustralia may have built its last submarine, with a Japanese build of a new class of submarine to replace the aging Collins class canvassed in talks between Tokyo and Canberra according to The Australian.
Rise of Savage JihadiIraq Islamic State Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has taken advantage of US-created opportuni-ties to make his brutal assent, write Tim Aran-go and Eric Schmitt in the Financial Review. Much mystery surrounds the rise of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who is now the self-appointed caliph of the Islamic State. He has much cred-ibility because he “runs half of Iraq and half of Syria”. This has lead to criticism from legisla-tors and political figures, including Hilary Clin-ton, to accuse Obama of aiding the group’s rise in two ways: first with the complete American withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, then by hesitating to arm more moderate Syrian opposition groups early in that conflict.
Boy with Severed HeadOn the front page of The Australian, the grand-father of the young Sydney boy forced to pose with the severed head of an executed soldier in Syria has called on the government to act, say-ing he is “gutted” by the second image. This plea was made after a photo of Khaled Shar-rouf’s son, a child raised in the suburbs of Syd-ney, struggled with both arms to hold up the de-capitated head of a slain Syrian soldier.
Militant Islam and the language barrierAccording to The Australian, senior Islamic leaders in this country are disconnected from the radicals they are trying to help, and from mainstream Australian society, because they are unable or unwilling to relay their messages in English, and are thought to have ‘sold out’ to the government. Community leaders have warned of strong barriers preventing top Islamic au-thorities from building relationships with such English-speaking, Australian-born citizens. The warning came as the Australian spokesman for the controversial Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir said, in English, that anyone travelling to Syria and Iraq to help ‘oppressed’ people was carry-ing out a noble deed – regardless of what that person did there. Numerous young men likely to sympathise with jihadists distrusted sen-ior imams, regarding them as little better than Canberra’s puppets. Aggravating the difficulty has been the linguistic issue. These days many young Islamic males in this country have Eng-lish, rather than Arabic, as
Allies Jihadist PlansThe United States and Australia will seek a common international approach to manage the flow of jihadists returning from a rock, Syria and other conflict zones that have radicalised thousands of young Muslim men according to the front page of the Australian Financial Re-view.
Welfare cuts and terrorism riskThe Age mentioned warnings of a terrorism ex-pert, Michele Grossman (professor at Victoria University in Melbourne), that for the federal government to cut welfare benefits to people suspected of extremist conduct would increase rather than decrease the terror threat. ‘If you deny people who need benefits, it draws them to seek alternative forms of support,’ Professor Grossman said. ‘It’s a very, very risky strategy.’
In the Financial Review, political divisions in the Iraqi government and now threatening to undermine the United States-led humanitar-ian rescue mission against Islamic militants in the country’s north. Top US officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry and Defence Sec-retary Chuck Hagel have anticipated fairly rou-tine discussions with counterparts Foreign Min-ister Julie Bishop and Defence Minister David Johnston, but given Iraq’s further unravelling a focus on remedies to an evolving crisis will be unavoidable.
High-energy Biscuit DropAn RAAF C-130 its first package of high ener-gy biscuits and bottled water to stricken Yazidis trapped on Iraq’s Mount Sinjar as the United States all but ruled out sending in a ground force to conduct an evacuation according to the Fi-nancial Review.
Failed Asian PivotA US agency responsible for missile defence co-operation with Australia and global arms control has failed to adequately engage with Asia and is poorly equipped to lead arms con-trol and deterrence in the region. A strongly worded report by the US State Department In-spector-General says its bureau for arms control has not adapted to President Obama’s so-called Asian pivot and has no comprehensive strategy to reassure allies in Asia, including on missile defence arrangements.
Closer corporation between the US and Austral-ia on missile defence was discussed in Sydney when US Secretary of State John Kerry and US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel meet Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Defence Minister Da-vid Johnston for the Australia-US Ministerial Consultations, known as AUSMIN.
Tony 747?When Tony Abbott arrived home from India and Malaysia, he will have matched a record set by Kevin Rudd: the most trips abroad by a prime minister in their first 12 months in office.
Boris shows his cardsLondon Mayor Boris Johnson has broken cover to declare he will run for British parliament, ending years of speculation but leaving himself with only a week to challenge for the seat at the top of his wish list.
Aussie job in UKThe appointment of an Australian to the most senior non-political position in the UK parlia-ment has been put on hold, after the man who chose her for the job buckled in the face of fierce opposition. According to a report in The Age, Carol Mills, currently the head of parlia-mentary services in Canberra, was chosen last month to be the next Commons clerk by a panel led by Speaker of the Commons John Bercow. However, the appointment drew immediate, fierce opposition, and the row has now esca-lated to the point that it might not just cost Mills her new job, but also cost Mr Bercow his. The selection of Ms Mills to the £200,000-per-year position ($355,748) – more than the prime min-ister - was interpreted in some quarters as a grab
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Letter from Canberra
for power by Mr Bercow, as Ms Mills would not arrive with the experience or knowledge to influence how he ran the Commons.
Abbott on Scotland’s independence referendumOn September 18, Scottish voters will go to the polls in order to decide whether their coun-try should become independent or should stay within the United Kingdom. Meanwhile Tony Abbott has antagonised pro-independence ac-tivists by telling The Times of London: ‘It’s hard to see how the world would be helped by an independent Scotland. I think that the people who would like to see the breakup of the United Kingdom are not the friends of justice, not the friends of freedom, and that the countries that would cheer at the prospect of the breakup with the United Kingdom are not the countries whose company one would like to keep.’ This drew a sharp response from Gail Lythgoe, a campaign organiser for the Yes vote, who observed that independence, far from being intrinsically ob-jectionable, ‘seems to be working well for Aus-tralia.’
Still more hostile was Alex Salmond, who is now throwing his substantial political strength – he has been Scotland’s First Minister for the last seven years – behind the demand for full independence. Having called Mr Abbott’s com-ments ‘foolish, hypocritical and offensive’, Mr Salmond said that if anything, these comments were likely to boost the Yes vote instead of de-creasing it.
Scottish Independence: Aye or Nay?Australian business leaders with links to Scot-land are urging their fellow Scots to remain in the 307-year-old union with England and Wales. Business leaders from BHP chief executive An-drew McKenzie to Santos David Knox have raised concerns that Scotland’s economy may not be diverse enough to sustain independence. Independence also raises uncertainty around key areas such as currency, regulation, tax, defence and critically European Union membership. To the frustration of many Australian-based Scots, the vote is restricted to residents of Scotland ac-cording to The Australian.
James FoleyThe purpose of the horrific video of the behead-ing of US photojournalist James Foley seems straightforward – to terrify the US into halting its aerial bombardment of the militant group. But what appears to be a barbaric and blood-soaked ransom note to force a US withdrawal has an entirely different objective, say former national security operatives and terrorism ex-perts. That is, to generate enough public outrage so the US and its allies expand their military campaign in Iraq and Syria to include ground forces. That is three heads now, as at 14 Sep-tember.
Russia bansAustralia has ramped up its economic and trade sanctions against Russia in protest at Moscow sending troops and heavy weaponry across the border into Ukraine. According to the Herald Sun, Prime Minister Tony Abbott outlined a further list of sanction against Russia, includ-ing banning Russian state-owned banks from accessing Australian capital, preventing any ex-ports that assist Russia’s oil and gas industries, and ending any arms trading. A further 63 Rus-sians will be banned from travelling to Australia — but the ban does not include Russian Presi-dent Vladimir Putin, who is still on the guest list for the G20 talks in Brisbane in November.
WikileaveJulian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, has an-nounced that he intends to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy in London – where he has been im-mured for two years – and surrender to British police. He sought asylum in the embassy after being accused of sexual offences; had he not done so, he would almost certainly have been extradited to Sweden, where his accusers insist that the offences occurred. Sky News Crime re-porter Martin Brunt was quoted by the Finan-cial Review as saying that Mr Assange ‘believes a diplomatic solution to his problems will be found within a couple of months.’ The Austral-ian quoted Mr Assange as saying that recent changes to British law may offer him from some protection from the extradition threat.
DefenceAir strikesThe federal government has been actively con-sidering an extended military role for Australia in Iraq, and is encouraging the US to increase its military involvement there and possibly in Syria. According to The Australian the US is considering air strikes in Syria against Islamic State, and Australia could join the US in air strikes.
West says ‘all in’According to the Financial Review, US Presi-dent Barack Obama says air strikes and a hu-manitarian campaign in northern Iraq could go on for months, as Australia, France and Britain announced they would join the aid mission.
Ship buildingAccording to The Age, Australian ship builders simply could not provide a ‘viable tender that would meet budget and time frame’. And in a defiant shot across the bow, the federal govern-ment placed state governments and ship build-ers on notice that any future contracts would depend on their cooperation. ‘The Abbott Gov-ernment is seeking open cooperation with state governments,’ Defence Minister David John-ston told an industry conference in Adelaide.
Frigate buildingA plan to save Australia’s ship building industry by bringing forward construction of eight po-tent new frigates for the Royal Australian Navy is being considered by the federal government. This option to bridge the so-called ‘valley of death’ for shipbuilding would mean construct-ing sections of some of the new frigates when the hulls of the three air warfare destroyers (AWDs) are completed.
According to The Australian, that would mean the 7000-tonne frigates would use the same hulls as the destroyers so that they could be built with the existing equipment and the same workforce. The sections, or ‘blocks’ can be built in different shipyards and then welded together.
Sub promisePrime Minister Tony Abbott has been pressed for reassurances by his own MPs and Sena-tors after the government walked away from a pre-election promise to build 12 submarines in South Australia.
Axe loomingAccording to The Australian, the federal gov-ernment wants to sack its own naval shipbuilder and install British defence giant BAE Industries to rescue the nation’s largest defence project, the $8.5 billion construction of three air warfare destroyers. The proposal would revolutionise Australia’s defence industry and potentially halve the responsibilities of the current AWD
shipbuilder — the government-owned ASC — by limiting it to maintaining the Collins Class submarines rather than building new warships.
ISISAustralia’s defence chief has warned the brutal Islamic State group will sooner or later have to be defeated ‘on the battlefield’ as the United States was reportedly preparing to ask Australia for help with air strikes in Iraq.
ANZAC snubThe regiment of the only light horseman to win the Victoria Cross has been snubbed by organis-ers of the commemoration of the centenary of the convoys that left Albany for World War I. According to The Australian, despite the he-roics of Hu Throssell of the 10th Light Horse Regiment at Gallipoli in August 1915, Austral-ian Light Horse Association riders from Bun-bury and Albany were excluded from the troop march on November 1 over fears their horses posed a public safety risk.DMOAccording to a report in the Financial Review, the federal government department that buys and maintains military equipment would be pri-vatised under one option to be considered by an expert panel led by former Rio Tinto boss David Peever.Weapons on the wayAccording to the Herald Sun, Australia has tak-en another step towards military engagement in Iraq, agreeing to a US request to deliver weap-ons and ammunitions to Kurdish forces holding back the rampaging ISL terror group in northern Iraq.Under attackAn Australian C-130 Hercules transport plane came under fire from Islamic militants during a humanitarian mission over Iraq.
Sports & artsBlackest Day in Australian SportRevelations from the Gillard government show that the “blackest day in Australian sport” was a political stunt according to the Herald Sun. There was suspicion from February 7 last year when then sports Minister Kate Lundy and Jus-tice Minister Jason Clare called a media confer-ence to claim Australian sport was riddled with match-fixing, crime and illicit performance-en-hancing drugs despite a single case to evidence such claims. The political meddling that oc-curred is a disgrace with such allegations being made in a public forum. Let’s have a chat now about ethics in Government...ASADA and the BombersAccording to The Australian, an independent inquiry will examine evidence of high-level political interference in the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority’s investigation into -Es-sendon, after the Federal Court hands down its finding on whether ASADA’s pursuit of the club was conducted outside the law. Govern-ment sources last night expressed concern at the persistent involvement of Kate Lundy, Labor’s sports minister at the time, along with her ad-visers and senior departmental figures in discus-sions between ASADA and the AFL about how the investigation would run and the outcomes it could deliver. It is understood a judicial or Senate inquiry will be established to examine whether ASADA failed to maintain its statutory independence from government after government ministers and sports chiefs were late year called to Can-berra on the so-called blackest day in Australian sport
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Letter from Canberra10 August to 14 September, 2014
Ponting’s new causeFormer cricketer Ricky Ponting has become ambassador of a Victorian greyhound adoption program. A record 536 former racing hounds found new homes under the Greyhound Racing Victoria program last financial year.
Golden girlsSiblings Cate and Bronte Campbell because the first sisters to win gold and silver in a Common-wealth Games race as Australian won all three medals of the 100m freestyle for the first time since Dawn Fraser helped achieve the feat in 1958.
SocietyBolt’s musingsIn the Herald Sun, Andrew Bolt wrote that ‘La-bor (needs) to wake up and smell the threat. Im-port people and you import a culture. You also import voters, and Muslims now outnumber Jews by five to one’.
Free love?According to The Age, Kevin Andrews’ love revolution is a slow burner. Almost all the free relationship counselling vouchers under the Social Services Minister’s scheme to introduce more harmony in Australians’ love lives are still up for grabs. While the $200 vouchers are open to all committed couples over The Age of 18, regardless of their marital status or sexual-ity, most people who have registered so far are between 25 and 34 years old and are engaged. The scheme is currently undergoing a one-year trial and the government is set to roll out a broader advertising campaign for the vouchers, spruiking them through bridal expos, marriage celebrants, churches, Centrelink and Medicare centres. Relationships Australia spokeswoman Susan Visser said she was noticing couples starting to come in for counselling because of the vouchers.
Forrest’s planAccording to The Australian, about 2.5 million welfare recipients on ‘working age payments’, including disability support pensioners and carers, would be forced into a cashless world where 100 per cent of their payments were income managed and they were banned from purchasing ‘prohibited’ goods. The radical pro-posal is contained in mining magnate Andrew Forrest’s blueprint for indigenous welfare and employment, which he has delivered to the fed-eral government.
This last item is taken from an unsought email to my computer. You can see how these folk are
doing it.
Dear friends in and around Melbourne,
In just 10 days thousands of us will flood the streets of Melbourne as a part of the biggest cli-mate mobilisation in history -- Click to join the People’s Climate March:
On Sunday 21 September, thousands of people are going to flood the streets of Melbourne to call for action on climate change. It is going to be massive, will you join in?
Melbourne is one of seven focus cities of the biggest climate mobilisation in history -- we’ll be joining people marching in 100 countries across the world! And it’s just two days before world leaders hold an urgent UN climate sum-mit. Our numbers on the streets will influence their ambitions.
Click to join now -- the march starts at The State Library at 11am on 21 September:
With our future in the balance, it’s time to show world leaders our movement is awake. If enough of us show up they will realise people everywhere want: a world economy that sus-tains people and the planet; a world safe from ravages of climate change; a world with good jobs, clean air and water, and healthy communi-ties.
This is about all of us! Our planet needs every-one, including you, to come out to call for ac-tion to stop climate devastation. It is up to our generation to solve this crisis.
GetUp, 350 Australia, The Australian Youth Climate Coalition and other great movements and groups are working with Avaaz to create a huge, colourful march in Melbourne. Don’t miss out! Join us at 11am at The State Library and bring your friends:
This is a global crisis and all of us are the global solution. We’ve built a community big enough to take a giant step towards the world we want. Now let’s all show up to demand it! To secure a better future for us all we need to unite in hope.
With hope,
Meredith, Nic, Emily, Oli and the whole Avaaz team
More information
Global warming: it’s a point of no return in West Antarctica. What happens next? (The Guardian)
Avaaz.org is a 38-million-person global cam-paign network that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people shape global decision-making. (“Avaaz” means “voice” or “song” in many languages.) Avaaz members live in every nation of the world; our team is spread across 18 countries on 6 conti-nents and operates in 17 languages. Learn about some of Avaaz’s biggest campaigns here, or fol-low us on Facebook or Twitter.
You are getting this message because you signed “Taliban releases South Korean Hostages” on 2007-07-26 using the email address [email protected].
To contact Avaaz, please do not reply to this email. Instead, write to us at www.avaaz.org/en/contact or call us at +1-888-922-8229 (US).
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