Australian Attorney-General Senator George Henry 'Soapy' Brandis finally obeys the court

For these reasons I consider that the decision communicated to the applicant by letter dated 13 June 2014 that a practical refusal reason exists because the work involved in processing the request(s) would substantially and unreasonably interfere with the performance of the Attorney-General’s functions should be set aside and, in lieu thereof, I decide that no practical refusal reason under s 24 of the FOI Act exists in relation to the request(s), with the consequence that the request(s) are required to be processed in accordance with the FOI Act. [Dreyfus  and Attorney-General (Commonwealth of Australia) (Freedom of information) [2015] AATA 995 , 22 December 2015]

With Australia’s British High Commissioner Alexander Downer not due to step down his post until around April 2018 and no other acceptable option to mothball the Attorney-General in sight, I fear that Australian voters will have to put up with the undistinguished legal mind Senator George Henry ‘Soapy’ Brandis until at least the next federal general election due sometime between August 2018 and May 2019.

Right now he is probably acting like a bear with a sore head in the corridors of power as, once he was forced to obey legal judgment, his diary entries appear to confirm that he never bothered to consult with any legal assistance services before he took a razor to government funding to that sector.

The Guardian, 20 March 2017:

George Brandis has finally released his ministerial diary and it shows no evidence he met with anyone working in the community legal sector before their funding was cut in the 2014 budget.

He handed his electronic diary to Mark Dreyfus, the shadow attorney general, late on Friday.

It took three years for him to release his diary after Dreyfus made his original freedom of information request.

The move came a week after Dreyfus threatened Brandis that he would push for contempt of court proceedings if Brandis did not release the diary immediately.

“Three years since the original freedom of information (FoI) request was made, and thousands of taxpayer dollars later – George Brandis has finally handed over his diary,” Dreyfus said on Monday.

“While the capitulation represents a victory for common sense, transparency and the principles of FoI, it is also ridiculous that it took such lengths to force the attorney general to comply with an act that sits within his own portfolio.

“In order for the attorney general to fulfil a simple request, it has taken an appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, a hearing in the full court of the federal court, and the threat of contempt.

“It is absurd, and it shows once more Senator Brandis’s unsuitability for the role of attorney general and his contempt for the rule of law.

Labor has been seeking Brandis’s diary since February 2014 to discover what consultation he held before cuts to his portfolio in the 2014 budget.

Dreyfus lodged an FoI request to inspect Brandis’ electronic diary from September 2013 to May 2014.

The Labor frontbencher has had a string of legal wins, with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal rejecting Brandis’s refusal of the request in December 2015 and finding it had to be processed. In September 2016 a full federal court decision upheld the tribunal’s ruling.

But less than two weeks ago, Dreyfus’s lawyers wrote to the Australian government solicitor accusing Brandis of “continued avoidance of his obligation to process” the FoI request because he still hadn’t released his diary.

The letter said that Brandis had had six months since the full federal court decision to process the request but “has continued to behave in a manner that is contemptuous” of the decision and the FoI Act.

It threatened if Brandis did not process the request by 20 March, Labor would seek a court order to set a deadline for the attorney general, after which it could begin contempt of court proceedings.

“No explanation for this delay has ever been proffered nor have we been given any reasons why the application has not been processed,” the letter said.

On Monday, Dreyfus said the saga – which cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars – had been a “monumental waste of everyone’s time”.

“What a waste of of taxpayers’ money, of public servants’ time, of the court’s time just because of – apparently – the attorney general’s vanity,” he told ABC radio.

He said it was notable there was no evidence in the diary that Brandis had met with legal assistance services, including Environmental Defenders Offices and Community Legal Centres, before cutting their funding in 2014.

In September 2014 the Productivity Commission found that the federal and governments needed to inject an extra $200 million a year into legal assistance centres to better align the means test, maintain existing frontline services and broaden the scope of legal assistance services; with the majority of funding being the responsibility of the federal government.

Instead the Attorney-General has insisted on cutting funding wherever he could and the fight continues with deans of law schools joining in the push back against Brandis:

On his part Brandis denies the funding cuts and attempts to blame the former Labor federal government (which has not been in power for the last three annual budgets) as well as the states, in his speech to the Bar Association of Queensland Annual Conference on 25 March 2017:

"I've been asked this morning to say a few words about federal matters so I thought I'd take the opportunity to address a matter which I know has been of much interest to the Bar, and which was averted to briefly by the state Attorney and that is the question of the Federal Government's contribution to legal assistance funding. We should never forget that most court proceedings in Australia are conducted in state and territory courts under state and territory law. Appropriately, therefore, it is the governments of the states and territories which are the principal funders of legal assistance in Australia. That is as it should be, even acknowledging, of course, that a very large component of the budgets of state and territory governments is money provided to them by the Commonwealth Government under various Commonwealth grants.

Nevertheless, federal governments of both political persuasions have always acknowledged that there is an important role for the Commonwealth to play in supporting the states in the provision of legal assistance through direct payments to Legal Aid Commissions, to Community Legal Centres, and to Indigenous legal assistance bodies.

With that in mind, I note that in the recent past there have been a number of statements made about the size of the Commonwealth's contribution to the legal assistance sector.

So let me take the opportunity with these remarks this morning to put some facts on the table.

First, to date, there have been no cuts to payments to Community Legal Centres by the Commonwealth Government. It has been claimed by some that the Government is withdrawing $6.8 million annually. That claim is misleading.

That money, to which the state Attorney also referred, was money provided for under a four year program, announced by the previous federal government in the 2013 budget, which was deliberately designed to terminate on 30 June 2017. When that program terminates that money will no longer be available. This is what is being called by some - the "Dreyfus funding cliff".

In spite of those, and other claims, the reality of competing funding priorities and the necessity for budget repair across Government should not obscure the significant support that the Commonwealth provides and to which we are committed to continue to provide."

BACKGROUND

The Guardian, 27 March 2017:

The fight for adequate funding for community legal centres stretches back to 2013. When the Abbott government was elected in September 2013, it used its first mid-year budget update to cut $43.1m for legal assistance services over four years, including $19.6m from community legal centres.

Six months later, in its 2014-15 budget, it cut another $6m from CLCs.

A month later it made one-off grants worth $1.55m to just 14 CLCs. Then in March 2015, following intense community pressure, it reversed some of its 2013-14 budget update cuts, reinstating $12m in funding over two years for the sector.

A few months later, in mid-2015, it signed a new five-year national partnership agreement on legal assistance services. The agreement provided Australia’s 189 community legal centres with $42.2m funding in 2016-17, but that funding drops to $30.1m in 2017-­18, $30.6m in 2018-­19, and $31m in 2019-­20.

The reduction in funding levels from 2016-­17 amounts to $34.83m over three years, 30% of CLC funding.

Australia Card Mark 3: Surprise! Without justification we will be collecting biometric data to create one centralised identity for each and every one of you and we will be retaining your metadata for an indefinite period at our discretion

The Turnbull Government received the Commonwealth Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) preliminary report, Initial Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) for the Trusted Digital Identity Framework (TDIF) Alpha, in December 2016.

The origin of this particular digital identity proposal was a recommendation by the Financial System Inquiry set up by then Treasurer Joe Hockey in December 2015, with an inquiry committee dominated by representatives of banks and the financial services sector.

This preliminary Privacy Impact Assessment is the latest step in establishing a single digital identity for each and every Australian citizen, with all the same privacy and security risks as the formerly proposed Australia Card and Access Card.

It is proposed that an individual’s digital identity information will initially be made available to federal government departments/agencies and later to state government departments/agencies that apply to join the TDIF.

As yet there is no underlying legal authority for the Trusted Digital Identity Framework, much of the security arrangements for this framework are apparently not yet developed and a full independent risk assessment has either not been completed to date or is not publicly available.

Cross-border data transfers of personal information held on Australian citizens may occur under this framework.

It is expected that complaints and correction requests may cause some difficulties in the TDIF because multiple participants may each hold part of the relevant data and responsibility for dealing with complaints and corrections may be difficult to determine.

On 24 March 2017 The Canberra Times reported:

The federal government is experimenting with a system that would allow Australians to use selfies to log onto Centrelink, Medicare and other Commonwealth services.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's digital re-invention agency is designing a system that would use "bio-metric" facial recognition technology to allow easy log-ins while protecting accounts from identity thieves.

The Digital Transformation Agency insists that no collection or data base of images would be built, the system would be voluntary and the strictest privacy safeguards would be in place.

But privacy activists are worried the idea is simply a high-tech version of the unpopular "Australia card" plan, resurrected more than 20 years after the national ID scheme was dumped.

The government is determined to improve to access to its services online, to save time and money, and to step-up the automation of many of its core activities, particularly in the expensive health and welfare sectors.

But security and privacy has been a huge issues, with many of the problems associated with the much-maligned myGov portal put down to the complex and glitch-prone log-in protocols……

A user of the proposed new system, after establishing their account, would log-in by scanning their traditional forms of ID and as a fail-safe against hacker and identity thieves, take a selfie and upload it from their mobile, tablet or computer.

Central [to] the architecture of the scheme would be an online "identity exchange", a portal that would confirm to a government agency, Centrelink for example, that a user's identity had been verified and cleared to use their account but would not supply the photo or any other data used to make the confirmation.

But talks with "stakeholders" including state and federal privacy authorities as well as online privacy campaigners, have begun to reveal the full complexity of the privacy problems facing the TDIF.

Many of those consulted were surprised they had not already heard of such a game-changing project  and questioned the motivation for the decision.

"Stakeholders queried whether due consideration had been given to the failure of previous centralised models in the Commonwealth identity field, such as the Australia Card and the Access Card," Galexia reported.

There were worries that various parts of the system "would obtain, over time, a large and rich source of personal data that will be attractive to third parties for surveillance...or subject to external attack (e.g. hackers), and  or subject to accidental breach."

"The consequences of surveillance or a breach were likely to be significant," Galexia noted.

""Some stakeholders predicted that, over time, each [agency] would collect biometric information (photographs) and contribute to the development of a national data set of photographs.

"Although there is no intention to retain photographs in the TDIF, and they are destroyed as soon as a verified match has been made, stakeholders believed that 'it was only a matter of time' before the system was changed and photographs were retained and shared."

A prototype of the TDIF system is expected to be ready for testing in mid-2017….

Key stakeholders consulted sometime in October-November by Galexia Pty Ltd for its 5 December 2016 report:

Australia Post

Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN)

Australian Privacy Foundation (APF)

Commissioner for Privacy and Data Protection Victoria (CPDP)

Department of Finance, Services and Innovation NSW (DFSI)

Digital Rights Watch           

Information and Privacy Commission NSW (IPC)

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC)

Office of the Information Commissioner QLD (OIC)

Queensland Government Chief Information Office (QGCIO)

Queensland SmartService (Digital Productivity and Services Division)

Service NSW

According to Galexia on Page 27 of its report:

In the consultation conducted for this PIA, the following views were expressed on this issue:

* Stakeholders questioned where the decision had ‘come from’ as it appeared to take nearly all stakeholders by surprise;

* Stakeholders queried the link between the decision to establish a single Commonwealth IdP and the recommendations of the Murray Report (which in part endorses the development of multiple IdPs in order to foster competition, choice and innovation);

* Stakeholders queried whether due consideration had been given to the failure of previous centralised models in the Commonwealth identity field, such as the Australia Card and the Access Card. Although stakeholders recognised some differences between those proposals and the TDIF in relation to the overall framework and the Identity Exchange, they viewed the decision to establish a single Commonwealth IdP as a ‘throwback’ to those earlier proposals. Even after detailed discussions and explanation on the details of the TDIF most stakeholders still viewed the single Commonwealth IdP as an updated version of the Australia Card / Access Card;

* Stakeholders were strongly of the view that such an important and far-reaching decision should have been the subject of extensive community consultation and debate, with many stakeholders calling for a public discussion paper and / or legislation; and

* Almost all stakeholders struggled to see any justification for the establishment of a single IdP – a common question was “what is the problem that needs to be solved?”.

Australian Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources seeks to place farm lands and water security in jeopardy

This man is the Deputy Prime Minister, Leader of the National Party of Australia and Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources.

Photograph found at The AIM Network

Member for New England Barnaby Joyce is also the same man who is irresponsibly calling for the dismantling of the already inadequate protections afforded rural and regional lands and water resources when coal seam gas miners move into a district.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has started dismantling Australia's sweeping ban on coal seam gas drilling, arguing a new scheme to divert a share of government royalties to farmers will overcome furious opposition in the bush.

Mr Joyce on Friday embraced a South Australian government plan to pay farmers 10 per cent of royalties in exchange for allowing gas wells on their land, saying the scheme should be rolled out nationally, with an exclusion of prime agricultural land.

The Agriculture Minister said lifting moratoriums and giving landholders a fair price in exchange for access would equate to "a substantial turnaround in attitude and that is a very good outcome".

"I can't see people who start making hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of dollars a year having a backlash," Mr Joyce told Fairfax Media.

"I think you'll probably find them onside."

Mr Joyce's comments could cause political problems in regional Australia and will be opposed by some MPs in the Coalition party room, where views about the environmental, social and electoral impacts of CSG remain mixed……

National Farmers Federation president Fiona Simson said moratoriums were "blunt instruments" but still needed "because of the lack of confidence the community, including the farming community, have in the way governments have regulated the gas industry in the past".

"Until we have absolute confidence these concerns have been addressed, then moratoriums will be part of the response," she said.

But Joyce said excluding prime agricultural land and productive aquifers from exploration would address most concerns….

Ms Simson said the National Farmers Federation welcomed the South Australian plan to "adequately compensate" farmers, but said "it's never been just about the money".

"The two things we can't and won't compromise on is the secure access to water and land," she said.

NSW Resources Minister Don Harwin said the state gas plan "makes clear that landholders and communities will share in the benefits of gas development, and the government has already made legislative changes to deliver on this commitment."

Since July 2016 companies have been able to apply to establish a Community Benefits Fund from which individuals and organisations can apply for grants for community initiatives.

NSW landowners are also entitled to compensation under a land access agreement struck with a company wishing to drill on their land.

"Further compensation may be payable to landowners if there is any loss or damage resulting from exploration or production," Mr Harwin said.

But opponents say this is insufficient as landowners still have no right to refuse access.

NSW Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham said of Mr Joyce's statement: "Barnaby hasn't got the message that farmers won't be bribed. Rural community know coal seam gas destroys land values".

This is what typical coal seam gas production wells, supporting infrastructure and access roads looks like on rural land.

ABC Four Corners, 3 April 2013

Look at the birdie. Smile!

Photograph by ABC News journalist Nick Wiggins

The Bush Stone-curlew, or Bush Thick-knee, is a large, slim, mainly nocturnal, ground-dwelling bird. It is mostly grey-brown above, streaked with black and rufous. It is whitish below with clear, vertical black streaks. The bill is small and black, and the eye is large and yellow, with a prominent white eyebrow. Both sexes are similar. Young Bush Stone-curlews are similar in appearance to the adults, but are paler, and a little browner in colour. Bush Stone-curlews are nocturnal birds (night birds), doing all their feeding and other activities at night. 

If Bush Stone-curlews are nearby you may hear their eerie, high-pitched wailing at night. This ghost-like call is their contact call, and may be given by several birds in a chorus. Rendered as weer-lo, it is repeated four or five times, sometimes culminating in a trilled, screeching crescendo. It is sometimes also heard during the day, when stone-curlews are usually inactive, standing quietly in the shade with their eyes half-closed, or squatting on the ground where their cryptic plumage makes them difficult to see among the leaf litter. 

Listed as Endangered in New South Wales and Victoria. [Birdlife Australia]

The story of how this photograph came about can be found here.