www.advanceaustralia.org.au |
Friday 30 November 2018
A not so new lobbyist on the block - just tired, old Lib-Nats supporters in a poor disguise
ABC News, 21 November 2018:
Australia has a new
conservative lobby group that wants to knock on your door, get in your ear and
ultimately swing your vote.
Advance Australia's
named with a nod to our anthem and the hope it can rival the powerful left-wing
lobby Get Up!
It has some prominent
backers and a bold mission — but can it succeed?
The group's financially
and ideologically backed by a group of prominent business leaders including
storage king Sam Kennard, businessman and former ABC chairman Maurice Newman
and the Australian Jewish Association's Dr David Adler.
Its national director is
Gerard Benedet, who was the chief of staff to former Queensland LNP Treasurer
Tim Nicholls in a previous life.
"We're not aligned
to any political party," he told 7.30.
"We're an
independent movement of mainstream Australians, who are determined to protect,
advance and defend mainstream values and freedoms."
Get Up! National
Director Paul Oosting says that's rubbish.
"Advance Australia
is a group of rich white men on a campaign to make themselves richer," he
said.
"They want to work
on issues that are in their own self-interest, that are the vested interests of
the corporate lobby they represent."
The
Monthly, 26
November 2018:
The quest for a
right-wing opponent to GetUp has been going on for almost as long as the quest
for a right-wing Phillip Adams at the ABC – and with about as much success.
The latest wizard wheeze
come from a stratospherically elite clique of rich, bored men looking for a
hobby. It includes men like Maurice Newman, who preaches that climate science
is a fraudulent conspiracy ensuring the establishment of a totalitarian
socialist dictatorship under the United Nations, and James Power, currently
fighting to prevent women from becoming members of Brisbane’s Tattersall’s
Club.
After diligent market
research, they have settled on the unoriginal name of Advance Australia, which
is not only plagiarism but deeply misleading – the only way they want Australia
to advance is either jogging on the spot, or, preferably, stumbling backwards.
They claim to be
protecting mainstream Australian values, but just about the only ones they have
come up with thus far are maintaining superannuation tax lurks for the rich,
keeping tax deductions for those who have not paid tax in the first place, and
not moving Australia Day from January 26. To date, mainstream Australia has
resisted the urge to storm the barricades on their behalf.
The organisation’s
oligarchs are predicting that they will have a million members in time for the
federal election, but are coy about how they plan to recruit these hordes.
Perhaps they are assuming that sheer weight of money, of which they have
plenty, will suffice, much in the way that Malcolm Turnbull bought his
Wentworth preselection and, before then, Kerry Packer bought Australian
cricket.
But mass campaigning
does not work that way; buying up a rent-a-crowd is hardly likely to move
swinging voters. You need a grassroots movement of enthusiasts and idealists,
and for that you need not a top-heavy pyramid, but a bottom-up structure based
on volunteers – like GetUp.
Labels:
lobby groups,
Queensland LNP
Call to protect infants from dangerous infectious disease, whooping cough
The Daily Examiner, 27 November 2018, p3:
NSW Health is urging all
pregnant women and new parents to be aware of the symptoms of whooping cough
and to ensure they and their children are vaccinated on time.
Despite almost 95 per
cent of infants in NSW now vaccinated against the disease, outbreaks still
occur every three to four years as community immunity wanes, and recent high
numbers indicate an outbreak might be on the way.
Dr Vicky Sheppeard, NSW
Health’s Director of Communicable Diseases, said that in October 2018 almost
800 people in NSW were notified with whooping cough (pertussis), the highest
number since October 2016.
Acting director of North
Coast Public Health Greg Bell said a similar situation was emerging in Northern
NSW where there have been 36 cases of whooping cough reported in the past four
weeks.
While these levels of
whooping cough across Northern NSW are similar to the averages of the previous
five years, pertussis notifications are trending upwards.
The latest Australian
Immunisation Register quarterly report shows that at September 2018 90.4 per
cent of five-year-olds and 88.9 per cent of 12-month-olds in Northern NSW Local
Health District were fully vaccinated.
These figures represent
an increase on vaccination rates in 2010 under the-then North Coast Area Health
Service, when 84.9 per cent of children aged 5 and 87 per cent of 12-month-olds
were fully vaccinated.
Even in highly
vaccinated populations it is not possible to eliminate whooping cough…..
“The aim of whooping cough control is to
protect infants, who are at highest risk of severe disease or death if they
contract whooping cough. Whooping cough vaccination is effective in preventing
severe infection.”
Labels:
children,
disease outbreak,
health,
New South Wales
Thursday 29 November 2018
This is the man Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison admires because of his trade policies
Almost
everyone could see this coming except US President Donald Trump and he had been
repeatedly warned that his imposition of tariffs, using anti-globalisation
sentiment as an excuse, would spring back and hit American manufacturing where
it hurts.
Almost
everyone – but not Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison who on 17 September 2018
was
quoted thus:
Spruiking the kind of
populist credentials that swept Trump to power, Morrison said many people in
both the US and Australia feel left behind by the powerful economic forces of
globalisation, which have brought massive wealth to some but left others
feeling poorer and disenfranchised.
“That’s what we get. The
president gets that. I get it,” the prime minister told the Times columnist
Maureen Dowd.
Morrison described Trump
as “very practical” and as someone “who’s not going to waste a day”.
“I like that about him.
I like that about him a lot, actually.’’
Here
is that oh so “very practical” Donald Trump this week.
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
27 November 2018:
On Monday local time,
the iconic carmaker announced it would close assembly plants in Ohio, Michigan,
Maryland and in the Canadian province of Ontario. The cuts amount to almost 15
per cent of the General Motors workforce.
A big part of Trump's
appeal in the so-called "rust belt" in the midwest was his promise to
bring back stable and well-paying manufacturing jobs, especially in the auto
industry. The General Motors plant at Lordstown, Ohio, is located in a county
that recorded a 29 percentage point swing towards Trump at the 2016 election.
So before heading to
Mississipi for a campaign rally, Trump said he had expressed his displeasure to
General Motors Chief Executive Mary Barra.
"I was very
tough," Trump said. "I spoke with her and I said, 'This country has
done a lot for General Motors – you'd better get back in there soon.' That's
Ohio.
"They say the Chevy
Cruze is not selling well. I say, 'Well get a car that is selling well and put
it back in' ... I'm not happy about it."
Trump said he expected
General Motors to start manufacturing another type of car in Ohio and that it
"had better" do so.
In an interview
with The Wall Street Journal on Monday, Trump said he told General
Motors: "You’re playing around with the wrong person."
Trump will this week
travel to Argentina for G20 meetings, where he will hold a highly-anticipated
meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping focussed on trade.
At the height of the
Global Financial Crisis, General Motors received a government bailout that eventually
cost US taxpayers $US11.2 billion ($15.5 billion in today's money).
But the President has
slapped a 25 per cent tariff on imported steel from China, which automakers
said has already increased commodity costs, and threatened more including on
auto parts. Car manufacturers said earlier in the year that tariffs could bring
job losses.
Trump has since boasted
about a renaissance in the industry thanks to his tax cuts and the removal of
environmental regulations put in place by his Democratic predecessor Barack
Obama.
In a tweet about
Michigan in August he said: "Lots of car and other companies moving
back!"
In 2017 he said
high-quality manufacturing jobs were no longer leaving Ohio.
"They’re all coming
back," he said at a rally in the state. "Don’t move. Don’t sell your
house."
Labels:
#ScottMorrisonFAIL,
anti-globalisation,
industry,
jobs,
trade,
US policy
Australian Politics 2018: let's leave the premises as fast as possible and don't show our LNP faces in parliament until after the federal election
It's official - The Morrison Coalition Government is a lame duck federal government incapable of functioning.
Why?
The Australian Parliament goes into end of year recess on 6 December and does not come back until February 2019.
After the opening Parliament on the later than usual date of 12 February 2019, the House of Representatives will probably sit for no more than seven days in total. There appears to be no plan to conduct parliamentary business after that except perhaps to table the 2019-20 Budget Papers between 2- 4 April.
The Senate is scheduled to sit for two days (11th or 12th and 14th) with four estimates hearings beginning on the 18th. The senate does not sit in March and only sits for one day in early April.
Parliament needs to be dissolved sometime in early April to comfortably meet the requirements of a 2019 national election timetable for the joint election of the House of Representatives and half the Senate.
Parliament needs to be dissolved sometime in early April to comfortably meet the requirements of a 2019 national election timetable for the joint election of the House of Representatives and half the Senate.
As it appears from the article below that interim Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison is ready to go to a general election in May, the parliamentary timetable looks suspiciously as if Coalition Government MPs and senators intend to hide from national scrutiny as much as possible before polling day.
Given that the Morrison Government is now two MPs shy of a majority (having only 74 MPs in the 150-strong House of Representatives), closing down parliament in this way also means that the Labor Opposition and cross benches will not have an opportunity to pass legislation in their own right in a parliament the Lib-Nats government of the day no longer controls.
Given that the Morrison Government is now two MPs shy of a majority (having only 74 MPs in the 150-strong House of Representatives), closing down parliament in this way also means that the Labor Opposition and cross benches will not have an opportunity to pass legislation in their own right in a parliament the Lib-Nats government of the day no longer controls.
The West Australian, 27 November 2018:
Scott Morrison has effectively
revealed the date of the next election just as one of his backbenchers
announced she was leaving the Liberal Party to sit on the parliamentary
crossbench.
In a dramatic 20 minutes
in Canberra, the PM confirmed the Federal Budget would be brought forward and
handed down on April 2 next year.
Saying “you can do the
maths”, the date means the Federal election will be held on either May 11 or
18. May 18 was the last available date for a full House and half Senate
election.
Mr Morrison said the
Budget would show a surplus.
In this year’s Budget,
the Government was already expecting a small $2.2 billion surplus for the
2019-20 financial year.
However, a surge in tax
revenue and a tight rein on spending is expected to show a bigger than expected
surplus. That should be confirmed in the mid-year Budget update that will be
released on December 17.
Wednesday 28 November 2018
The climate change risk coastal towns and villages don't discuss enough
Financial
Review, 15
November 2018:
Insurance giant IAG has
warned a failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could result in a world
that is "pretty much uninsurable", with poorer communities likely to
bear the brunt of the effects.
In Australia, IAG said
temperature increases of more than 3 degrees would expose greater swaths of
Queensland to cyclones and flooding, while a rise of more than 4 degrees could
make the risks to insurers prohibitive.
Timaru Herald, 26 May 2018, p.7:
Anyone now considering a
coastal property should know what sea level rise is.
If they already own one,
they shouldn't be surprised if buyers expect to know how it might affect them.
It's time to accept
these properties may come with some risk, and let government and other agencies
get on with the job of preparing without worrying about court battles over lost
capital gains.
It's an inconvenient
truth, but it appears that the value of flood- prone property will go down and
many coastal towns will face a new threat.
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
14 February 2018:
If any Australian
company needs to come clean over its climate risks, it’s QBE.
Not just so shareholders
can understand how secure (or not) their capital is as climate impacts
intensify.
This is about
Australians being able to see just how perilous our future has become without
urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Last
October QBE said it expected 2017 to be the costliest year in the history of
the global insurance industry, flagging a $US600 million ($767 million) hit
to its pre-tax earnings. They weren't wrong, nor were they alone.
The triple-whammy of
hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria hitting the US and Caribbean contributed to a
record $US135 billion in payouts globally on natural disasters. Wildfires in
California made things worse and, for Australian general insurers, Tropical
Cyclone Debbie added to the pain.
Tom Herbstein, of
Cambridge University’s insurance industry-funded project ClimateWise, summed it
up in saying “climate change fundamentally challenges the existing insurance
business model.”
And understandably there
have been some drastic responses from within the industry. Hannover Re was even
forced to sell its entire stock portfolio, worth €953 million ($A1.5 billion) ,
prompted by natural disaster claims.
Costly natural hazards
are nothing new to QBE or indeed any of Australia’s big three general insurers.
Last year, individual
large claims and natural hazards cost QBE $1.7 billion, or 15 per cent of the
company’s net earned premium.
Compare this to the
seven year average of 8.1 per cent to 2010, and you get an idea why QBE called
it “unprecedented”.
Additionally, over the
past decade, IAG under-provisioned for natural hazard claims by almost $1
billion while Suncorp under-provisioned by $1.9 billion.
It appears none of our
general insurers are keeping up with the pace of climate change.
BACKGROUND
Excerpt from the
Insurance
Council of Australia’s Climate Change Policy:
The role of general
insurance is to assist policyholders to recover from losses, such as those
caused by extreme weather events. With expertise in risk management developed
over hundreds of years of operation, general insurers play a critical role in
communicating, managing and responding to the the risks that many policyholders
face today, as well as how those risks may evolve under a changing climate.
It follows that the
general insurance industry naturally supports community policy adjustments that
will enhance resilience to extreme weather, as well as measures that may assist
to reduce emissions.
Using the industry’s
expertise in the pricing, transfer and management of risk, the following
activities being undertaken by the industry are intended to assist
policy-makers and communities to address the implications of climate change:
Maintain
the strong prudential foundations underpinning the Australian market, to ensure
that the industry continues to be able to respond to large disaster events when
they occur.
Manage
the commercial, individual and community-level risks posed by climate change
via innovative risk-transfer solutions.
Ensure
that risk-transfer solutions deliver competitive price signals, through risk
based pricing, that assist communities and decision makers to recognise and
adapt to current and emerging extreme weather risks.
Assist
to increase community resilience over time by sharing industry expertise that
will help policy decision makers and the community to:
Reduce
exposures by making development control decisions for exposed locations that
are appropriate for both the location and the planned life cycle of the
development, accounting for the increased risk posed by the changing climate.
Reduce
vulnerability to natural disasters by implementing localised defensive
infrastructure where necessary to achieve an acceptable residual risk of damage
to an exposed community.
Reduce
vulnerability to natural disasters by improving building codes to ensure that
built structures remain viable following predictable events over their planned
life cycle, accounting for the increased risk posed by the changing climate.
Assist
policy-makers to understand the long term economic implications of climate
change, as well as the benefits of any appropriate emission mitigation schemes,
by providing credible data on current exposures and vulnerabilities, as
measured by the general insurance industry.
Assist
to implement practical solutions to emission reduction strategies, through the
consideration of risk-transfer products that incentivise solutions to be
brought to market by other industries.
This policy was approved
by the ICA's Board on August 4, 2016.
Coast
Adapt, 2015:
Climate change threatens
the viability of insurance in Australia and across the globe.
Despite a number of
recent ‘quiet’ years, a trend of increasing losses is apparent in Australia and
globally due to extreme weather events.
Insurers are covering at
a loss some parts of Australia that are considered disaster-prone.
Labels:
climate change,
insurance,
natural disasters,
sea levels
Tuesday 27 November 2018
Morrison goes full Trump and democracy begins to suffer
Channel
9 News online,
22 November 2018:
Scott Morrison insists
police need immediate access to encrypted messages to stop future terror
attacks.
The prime minister says
new laws giving police access to the messages must pass federal parliament in
the final sitting fortnight of the year, after three men charged with plotting
a terror attack in Melbourne were accused of using encrypted communications.
"Our police, our
agencies need these powers now," Mr Morrison told reporters in Sydney on
Thursday.
"I would insist on
seeing them passed before the end of the next sitting fortnight."
He said the foiled
Melbourne plot showed it was incredibly important for authorities to have
powers to intercept encrypted messages on apps like WhatsApp.
Mr Morrison urged the
committee examining the laws to wind-up its review as soon as possible so the
laws can be passed.
The Liberal-chaired
committee has scheduled three public hearings on the bill, with the final one
set for December 4 - two days before parliament rises for the year.
To pass the encryption
legislation before then, the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security would
likely have to bring forward or abandon the hearings.
The next
Encryption Bill public hearings are scheduled for 27 November, 30 November and
4 December 2018. In addition to evidence from the full five hearings there are
87 submissions the Parliamentary
Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security needs to evaluate before
writing its report to Parliament.
Both Prime
Minster Scott Morrison and Home
Affairs Minister Peter Dutton are
reportedly applying pressure to the Joint Committee to throw out standard
parliamentary practice and deliver its report no later than 3 December.
It appears
that both theses hard-right politicians are determined to kill off democratic
processes whenever they see an opportunity to do so.
Monday 26 November 2018
Morrison Government looks at women's economic security and domestic violence
This was an Australian
Morrison Coalition Government announcement mentioned in the media on 19 November 2018:
“Women experiencing domestic and family violence will now
also be able to apply for early access to part of their superannuation to help
cover the significant costs of rebuilding their lives….Good Shepherd
Microfinance’s No Interest Loan scheme will help women at risk of domestic
violence access finance when they most need it, without high interest holding
back their financial recovery into the future. The loans will be able to assist
with relocation, essential household items, rental bonds, or, where appropriate,
debt consolidation….” [Australian Government “Women’s
Economic Security Statement”, excerpt, November 2018]
Bearing in
mind that although the husband’s superannuation entitlements are considered property of the marriage these funds cannot be anticipated ahead of any court sanctioned
property settlement in a divorce.
This was the
situation in June 2018 according to the Australian Government Workplace
Gender Equality Agency:
Women comprise 47.0% of
all employed persons in Australia; 25.0% of all employed persons are women
working full-time, and 21.9% are women working part-time.
Women constitute 36.7%
of all full-time employees and 69.0% of all part-time employees.
Average superannuation
balances for women at retirement (aged 60-64) are 42.0% lower than those for
men.
As of June
2018 the Australian Bureau of Statistics recorded 6.25
million females 15 years and older as being in the workforce and 315,600
females as unemployed and looking for work.
According to ASFA
Research and Resource Centre, in the financial year 2015-16:
* Looking at all females aged 15 years and over the superannuation balance
averaged out at $68,499 per person.
* Only 16 per cent of females had superannuation balances of over
$100,000.
* When it came to all women aged 30-35 years of age the superannuation
balance averaged out at $33,750 per person.
* However, 32.7 per cent of all females in the workforce reported
they had no superannuation at all. That’s an estimated 2 million women Australia-wide.
When it comes to that 2 million women without super it is probably safe to assume that; a) the majority form part of the casualised workforce; b) most receive the minimum wage or less; and c) a significant number live in regional and rural areas.
A good many may also be from socially marginalised groups.
Somehow I can’t quite see that a woman being able to access part of her superannuation, or in lieu of super being able to take out a meagre $1,500 interest free loan which has to be repaid, as being of much assistance when fleeing life-threatening violence.
Not while first contact domestic violence services she attempts to access - along with DV emergency accommodation - are so chronically under resourced across the country.
A word of advice to the Morrison Government from Fiona the Bettong; Just shut up about it and fund it - just do your job and fund it - we know your every word is a lie so shhhhh just fund it.
Looking straight at you, Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan. Act like a real man and get domestic violence services in the Northern Rivers region more funding - structured to increase annually - guaranteed for the next ten years.
A good many may also be from socially marginalised groups.
Somehow I can’t quite see that a woman being able to access part of her superannuation, or in lieu of super being able to take out a meagre $1,500 interest free loan which has to be repaid, as being of much assistance when fleeing life-threatening violence.
Not while first contact domestic violence services she attempts to access - along with DV emergency accommodation - are so chronically under resourced across the country.
A word of advice to the Morrison Government from Fiona the Bettong; Just shut up about it and fund it - just do your job and fund it - we know your every word is a lie so shhhhh just fund it.
Looking straight at you, Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan. Act like a real man and get domestic violence services in the Northern Rivers region more funding - structured to increase annually - guaranteed for the next ten years.
Sunday 25 November 2018
I knew there was a reason why I don't watch Channel 9......
Never a fan of Channel 9 programming, this news report has turned my indifference to the existence of this television channel into active dislike.
ABC
News, 21
November 2018:
PHOTO: The Block's contestants on auction day for the renovated Gatwick Hotel. (AAP: Nine Entertainment) |
The lights, cameras and
crowds have finally cleared out of St Kilda following the auctions last month
at the Gatwick Private Hotel, a run-down three-storey rooming house that was
transformed into six multi-million-dollar apartments for this year's season of
the popular home renovation show, The Block.
But as the new owners
collect the keys and prepare to move in to their luxury lodgings, ABC News can
reveal an "alarming" number of women who used to live at the Gatwick
— a place of "last resort" for some of Melbourne's most vulnerable —
are currently in jail.
Channel Nine's purchase
of the 1930s mansion, which in its prime could house up to 120 people, was
welcomed last year by St Kilda residents who blamed the Fitzroy Street boarding
house — one of several to close in recent years as part of the area's
gentrification — for local problems with "rampant" drug-fuelled
violence and anti-social behaviour.
At the time, the local
council and state government worked with housing services in St Kilda to find
new accommodation, mostly outside the area, for its remaining occupants, who
were evicted in time for filming to commence.
But many of those
tenancies were unsustainable and fell through, homelessness support workers
say, and because of an acute lack of crisis accommodation across Melbourne,
dozens were dispersed onto the streets.
This includes at least
32 women who have since been charged and imprisoned for offences lawyers and
support workers say are directly related to their homelessness — an issue that
affects all genders but which leaves women particularly vulnerable.
Now, with the state
preparing to head to the polls after an election campaign dominated by debate
over law and order, advocates are calling on the government to urgently boost
funding for crisis accommodation and homelessness services to break a vicious
cycle that is causing the number of women in Victoria's prisons to soar.
One worker who runs a
program supporting under-privileged women in St Kilda told ABC News that, since
the beginning of 2018, 32 of her clients who were living on or off lease at The
Gatwick have since been incarcerated at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre,
Melbourne's maximum security women's prison.
Though 17 of those women
have been released in recent months, she said, 15 still remain, many of them on
remand.
"There is
absolutely no doubt that The Gatwick's closure has had an effect particularly
on women in the city of Port Phillip," said the worker, who asked not to
be named because she feared speaking out would jeopardise her organisation's
public funding arrangements.
"I'm not
necessarily saying that The Gatwick was the best place for people to live
because there were a lot of issues — there were some deaths there, there was
violence. But everybody needs a place to stay."
The majority of the
worker's clients in Dame Phyllis have been charged with drug-related offences
which are believed to be a result of their homelessness, she said. "Many
women with involvement in the justice system offend to fund their drug habit
and use substances to self-medicate," she said.
"Sleeping rough is
extremely unsafe for women so many use drugs to keep themselves awake at night,
which provides them with a false sense of security."
Forced homelessness is not confined to Victoria,
As the
Pacific Highway Upgrade works its way up the NSW North Coast there are reports
of people couch surfing after their landlords gave them notice in favour of
road worker tenants capable of paying higher rents.
Labels:
homelessness,
housing,
New South Wales
Saturday 24 November 2018
Tweets of the Week
Here’s the moment where the NSW Parliament voted tonight to introduce new laws to fast track children from foster care into adoption. As the Bill passed, you could hear loud jokes from Liberal members about wanting to “hurry up so we can get out of here and enjoy Christmas” pic.twitter.com/WW1p1bTbD1— Padraic Gibson (@paddygibson) November 22, 2018
“These reforms were sprung on the legal, community & Aboriginal sectors with no notice. What limited consultation occurred in 2017 made no mention of many of these reforms, & those that were raised were opposed by a majority of stakeholders,” Leach said” https://t.co/JIkJATdluz— Ray Wilton (@raywilton4) November 23, 2018
Quotes of the Week
“ScoMo’s blue bus is the perfect symbol of the man and his government –
a brash, ostentatious clichĂ©, non-functional and completely phoney.” [Journalist Mungo MacCallum writing in The
Monthly, November 2018]
“Australians often
over-estimate the proportion of the population that is Muslim, with Ipsos
surveys finding respondents believe it is 17 per cent when the reality is 3 per
cent.” [Journalist David
Crowe, writing in The
Sydney Morning Herald, 18 November 2018]
“Later, Fairfax Media went to another publicly-accessible area from where the Cutaway is audible. Mr Turnbull was heard to lament the Coalition was presently "not capable" of dealing with climate change as an issue, despite it being "a profound problem".” [Journalist Michael Koziol writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 November 2018]
“If
they're going to fine everyone who calls Scott Morrison a "fucking
muppet" this country will never be in debt again.” [Richard O’Brien, Twitter,
19 November 2018]
Labels:
climate change,
immigration,
Malcolm Turnbull,
Scott Morrison
Friday 23 November 2018
Water Wars 2018: water mining of the Alstonville aquifer suspended pending government review
BLOCKADE:
Around 100 people were there for the 'Stop water mining rally in Uki' on
Saturday 27 October, where residents stopped water trucks in the main street. Dave
Norris/The Northern Star
Echo
NetDaily, 20
November 2018:
Regional water minister
Niall Blair has requested an independent review into the impacts of the bottled
water industry on groundwater sources in the Northern Rivers.
And local councils have
been advised to suspend approving any new applications for water mining until
the report is complete in mid 2019.
The NSW chief scientist
& engineer will provide advice on the sustainable groundwater extraction
limits in the region, as well as advice on whether the current or proposed
groundwater monitoring bores are sufficient.
Minister Blair said the
NSW Government ‘recognises the pivotal role that water plays in regional
prosperity and long-term growth of communities’.
‘Local community members
and community leaders have made representations to me on behalf of their constituents
and we are taking action,’ he said.
‘I have asked the chief
scientist & engineer to investigate the sustainability of groundwater
extraction in the Northern Rivers for bottling purposes.
‘Water is a finite
resource and we are completing this review to make sure that water remains
available into the future in the Northern Rivers catchment for all purposes
including stock and domestic users and for groundwater dependent ecosystems,’
Mr Blair said.
Labels:
Northern Rivers,
people power,
water wars,
water mining
This was Australia’s faux prime minister Scott Morrison proudly pointing out that he had been fundraising at considerable taxpayer expense
This was
Australia’s faux prime minister Scott
Morrison proudly pointing out that he had been fundraising at considerable
taxpayer expense in order to fill the election campaign coffers of the the Liberal
Party of Australia.....
The Courier-Mail, 19 November 2018, p.6:
While he was on the
Queensland blitz early this month, Mr Morrison confirmed he attended
fundraisers. Many of the donations came from Rockhampton and the Sunshine
Coast.
“I’m meeting with
supporters all around Queensland and I don’t make any apologies for that,” he
said.
“We’re raising funds for
our campaign to make sure Bill Shorten never becomes prime minister in the
country.” Mr Morrison was the special guest at Liberal National Party
fundraising events in several regional towns.
Here is what
he was not boasting about this month……
Seven years before he
was sacked as managing director of Tourism Australia – amid serious concerns
about his management practices – Scott Morrison was the subject of criticism in
a New Zealand audit report examining his activities as head of NZ’s Office of
Tourism and Sport.
A 1999 New Zealand
Auditor General’s report challenged the future Australian prime minister’s
handling of an independent
review of the Office of Tourism and Sport (OTSp) where he was managing
director.
The OTSp was a
quasi-independent body offering policy advice to the New Zealand government and
experienced the loss of a number of board members and officials during Mr
Morrison’s tenure. He finally resigned from the job in 2000 a year ahead of his
contract schedule and returned to Australia….
During Mr Morrison’s
time at the helm of OTSp in the 1990s, New Zealand’s then Tourism Minister,
Murray McCully, praised his input and defended importing him for the job.
“Australia actually
happens to do a bit better than we do out of both tourism and sport,” Mr
McCully said at the time.
But the Auditor General
and the NZ Labour Opposition questioned his performance.
In New Zealand in 1999,
the Auditor General found Mr Morrison had launched a PriceWaterhouseCooper
review of OTSp which precluded contributions from senior staff and the board.
He had said the review
was independent of them, but it seems they were not aware of this.
“Mr Morrison’s
explanation came as a surprise not only to (the office’s CEO and board members)
but also to the Minister himself,” the report said.
“These people had
regarded the PWC report as the review referred to in the purchase agreement.”
The Auditor General’s
report said the board should have been told it had a duty, under the
review arrangements, to commission its own “independent” review.
“It seems that at no
point did Mr Morrison do so,” the Auditor General found.
In June 2000, the New
Zealand Herald quoted the Labour Opposition’s tourism and sport spokesman
Trevor Mallard as blaming Mr Morrison for problems with the OTSp and the
minister.
“And a key reason for
that was that it was run by Mr Morrison, an Australian who was seen as Mr
McCully’s ‘hard man’,” said the report.
“Australian standards of
public sector behaviour ‘are lower than ours,’,” added Mr Mallard.
He was quoted as saying:
“My experience with Australian politicians is that rules and ethics are not as
important to them as they are to New Zealanders.”
Mr Morrison did not
respond to the claims but was supported by the Tourism Minister as “highly
regarded”.
He had lifted the energy
levels and the competence levels substantially above those previously servicing
tourism and sport, said Mr McCully.
Australian Labor is
closely examining the Prime Minister’s career before he was elected to
Parliament in 2007 and the New Zealand experience could be raised.
His next job after New
Zealand was as NSW Liberal Party state director but was linked to the party’s
2003 election failure.
Mr Morrison became
Tourism Australia managing director in 2004 but left in 2006, again ahead of
schedule….
Ever since Scott
Morrison was sacked from his job as managing director of Tourism Australia in
2006, the reasons for his dismissal have been kept secret.
At the time and since,
public speculation has variously attributed the now prime minister’s removal to
a personality clash with his minister, a falling out over changes to the
organisation’s structure, and a dispute over the agency’s contentious “Where the
bloody hell are you?” campaign.
But an auditor-general’s
report completed 10 years ago, which has escaped public scrutiny until now,
reveals that in the period leading up to Morrison’s dismissal, his agency faced
a series of audits and a review of its contractual processes ordered by the
Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, amid serious concerns about its
governance.
The auditor-general’s
inquiry into Tourism Australia – which followed these reviews, and was
conducted after Morrison’s departure – reveals information was kept from the
board, procurement guidelines breached and private companies engaged on
contracts worth $184 million before paperwork was signed and without
appropriate value-for-money assessments.
THE AUDIT REPORT OMITS
THE NEXT EVENT IN THE CHRONOLOGY OF RELATIONS BETWEEN THE MINISTER AND TOURISM
AUSTRALIA – THAT BAILEY SACKED MORRISON THE SAME MONTH.
The Australian National
Audit Office (ANAO) report examines three major contracts that Tourism
Australia signed while Scott Morrison was managing director. It criticises
processes in all three cases but especially the contracts for global creative
development – advertising campaigns – and media placement services.
Ten years since the
audit, and 13 years since the contracts were signed, those two completed
contracts appear not to be listed on the government’s AusTender website, where
all contracts are required to be available for public viewing.
Searches, including by
AusTender staff, have failed to locate them on the site this week. Procurement
rules say they must be reported within 42 days of the contracts being entered.
The 2005 request-for-tender documents announcing the proposed contracts are
listed…..
The audit report
criticises extensively the agency’s processes for drafting, executing and
managing the contracts, the opaque accounting processes involved in aspects of
them and poor communication with the board and regional offices, including by
service providers. It details Tourism Australia’s failures at the time to
adhere to guidelines – the signing of a contract without incorporating
measurable performance indicators and non-existent risk assessments or
value-for-money analysis.
Tabled in parliament on
August 6, 2008, the report was one of more than 40 the Audit Office had
produced in the previous 12 months.
It escaped public
attention at least partly because it was not among the handful that
parliament’s joint committee on public accounts chose to examine further in its
role as chief audit scrutineer. At the time, the committee was chaired by then
Labor MP Sharon Grierson with then Liberal MP Petro Georgiou as her deputy.
When the report was
tabled, Morrison was a member of the public accounts committee, which was
tasked with considering it for review. He resigned from the committee six weeks
after the report was tabled and, it is understood, some months before the
committee formally considered it. The Saturday Paper does not suggest
Morrison influenced the audit’s treatment. Grierson says that as Tourism
Australia had accepted its three recommendations, and nobody on the committee
raised any issues, the report was not officially examined further – standard
procedure in dealing with the volume of audits each year.
The Saturday Paper lodged
detailed questions about the audit report with Morrison’s office but was told
he was not able to answer them in the time available.
Performance reviews of
the two key contracts between 2005 and 2007 – contained in the audit – revealed
Tourism Australia had failed to disclose to its own board that it had
underspent $3.9 million on one of the contracts in 2006-07.
It was found that in one
case invoices had been raised before the contract was signed and that in
another case the price paid in some areas of a contract was “more expensive
than the benchmark”.
The audit report does
not mention then tourism minister Fran Bailey’s sacking of Morrison in July
2006, nor any of the alleged preceding tension between them that has been the
subject of public speculation since.
But The Saturday
Paper understands the events and issues the audit report outlines played a
significant role in Morrison’s removal. Unconfirmed news reports have since
alleged that he received a payout of more than $300,000.
Asked to comment this
week on the report’s contents in relation to Morrison’s dismissal, Bailey would
only repeat the one comment she has made before: “I reiterate that it was a
unanimous decision to get rid of Mr Morrison by the board and the minister.”
She added: “I have
always treated confidential matters as confidential.”……
The
Guardian, 18
November 2018:The Morrison government has extended emergency three-month funding contracts to 16 more financial counselling, legal aid and charity groups to keep them open over the Christmas holiday period after it cut their funding with little warning.
The move was made
without fanfare, logged quietly on the Department of Social Services website on
Wednesday evening.
It comes as the social
services minister, Paul Fletcher, faces continued criticism for his
department’s decision to overhaul funding arrangements for key community
services groups in the lead-up to Christmas.
In some cases, barely
two months’ notice has been given to groups to prepare for dramatic cuts in the
new year – a time of year when thousands of Australian families have
traditionally needed more emergency assistance and financial counselling.
On Wednesday
evening, the Department of Social Services (DSS) released a document on its
website saying it would extend emergency three-month funding contracts –
covering the period 1 January 2019 to 31 March 2019 – to 16 organisations that
had lost their funding in the latest round of grants:
FMC
Relationship Services
EACH
Uniting
(Victoria and Tasmania) Limited
VincentCare
Victoria
Odyssey
House, Victoria
Mallee
Family Care Inc
Anglicare
SA Ltd
Centacare
Catholic Country SA Ltd
The
Trustee for The Salvation Army (NSW) Property Trust
Southern
Youth and Family Services Limited
Vietnamese
Community in Australia NSW Chapter Inc
The
Uniting Church in Australia Property Trust (Q.)
C
Q Financial Counselling Association Inc.
Prisoners’
Legal Service Inc
Agencies
for South West Accommodation Inc.
CentreCare
Incorporated
Neither the government
nor the department has drawn attention to the funding extensions……
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