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Matt Golding

 

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Tweet of the Week

 

Just in case he’s forgotten - this is me with Angus Taylor on Sunrise in 2016.

Here’s what he said when the Libs increased taxes on super in govt: “it’s totally inappropriate that someone who has contributed millions + millions of dollars continues to get those 15% concessions” pic.twitter.com/0q5icfsbUD

— Tanya Plibersek (@tanya_plibersek) February 27, 2023

 

Australia's Morrison Government appears to be living proof of that old adage, birds of a feather do flock together

IMAGE: Woodcut illustration of Vultures — Vector by ronjoe

Anyone who has been delving into Scott Morrison & Angus Taylor’s 98 page AUSTRALIA’S LONG-TERM EMISSIONS REDUCTION PLAN: Modelling and Analysis (Dept. of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources: DISER) document and, attempting to pin down where within its content examples of genuine modelling relying on science, fact-based assumptions and realistic projections, might have seen the name McKinsey & Company crop up on no less than 76 occasions.

That name rang a bell. Here is a brief background…….

The New York Times, 28 October 2021, p.6:

….a revolt has been brewing inside the world's most influential consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, over its support of the planet's biggest polluters.

More than 1,100 employees and counting have signed an open letter to the firm's top partners, urging them to disclose how much carbon their clients spew into the atmosphere. "The climate crisis is the defining issue of our generation," wrote the letter's authors, nearly a dozen McKinsey consultants. "Our positive impact in other realms will mean nothing if we do not act as our clients alter the earth irrevocably."

Several of the authors have resigned since the letter, which has never before been reported, came out last spring -- with one sending out a widely shared email that cited McKinsey's continued work with fossil fuel companies as a primary reason for his departure…..[my yellow highlighting]

The Hill, 27 October 2021:

... Since then, some of the letter's authors, who are consultants at McKinsey, have resigned from the company which is considered the world's most influential consulting firm, the Times reported.

Lawsuits, internal documents and interviews with four ex-McKinsey employees showed that McKinsey has advised at least 43 of the world's top 100 polluters in the past 50 years, per the Times.

The investigation by the Times found that those clients alone, excluding some of McKinsey's other clients who also contribute to pollution, accounted for over one-third of global carbon emissions in 2018.

At least one consultant who resigned specifically cited McKinsey's work with fossil fuel companies as his main reason for leaving. The Environmental Protection Agency has noted that "burning fossil fuels changes the climate more than any other human activity."

“Walking away from these sectors might appease absolutist critics,” D.J. Carella, a spokesman for McKinsey, said to the Times, adding that it "would do nothing to solve the climate challenge."…. [my yellow highlighting]

The New York Times, 6 November 2021:

A House committee has requested documents related to the firm's advice to drug makers and potential conflicts of interest with the F.D.A.

In a new assault on the global consulting giant McKinsey & Company, Congress on Friday started an investigation into the firm's role in the opioid crisis, sending a letter demanding records related to its "business practices, conflicts of interest and management standards."

The 12-page letter, which was sent by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, asked for names of McKinsey clients in the health care industry as well as documents connected to its work with opioid manufacturers, distributors and retailers. The committee is also looking at how McKinsey's consulting for drugmakers may conflict with work it has done for the Food and Drug Administration.

By advising opioid makers and "the federal agency regulating their conduct," McKinsey "may have had a significant negative impact on Americans' health," the committee said.

The letter was signed by the committee's chairwoman, Representative Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, who requested that McKinsey produce the documents by Nov. 19. McKinsey has a policy of not identifying its clients or the advice it gives.

A spokesman for the firm on Friday said McKinsey had "received the committee's letter and will engage directly with the committee regarding their requests."

This year, McKinsey agreed to pay all 50 states more than $600 million to settle investigations into how it had helped "turbocharge" opioid sales, focusing mostly on its work with Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. McKinsey did not admit any wrongdoing.

The request on Friday follows a narrower one on Aug. 23, from a bipartisan group of six U.S. senators seeking records from the F.D.A. on its work with McKinsey at the same time that it was regulating opioid manufacturers, calling that relationship "a potential conflict of interest." The senators asked for more information about the firm's work with the F.D.A. division that approved certain classes of drugs, including prescription opioids.

OxyContin and similar painkillers can be addictive and prone to abuse. From 1999 to 2019, nearly 500,000 people in the United States died of opioid overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…..  [my yellow highlighting]

Reuters, 18 August 2021:

… McKinsey earlier this year reached agreements with state attorneys general to pay $641 million to resolve claims it helped drug manufacturers, including OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, to design marketing plans and boost sales of painkillers.

Lawsuits by cities, counties and others followed, and Breyer now oversees at least 51 cases…. [my yellow highlighting]

The New York Times, 3 December 2019 - updated 24 February 2021:

Just days after he took office in 2017, President Trump set out to make good on his campaign pledge to halt illegal immigration. In a pair of executive orders, he ordered “all legally available resources” to be shifted to border detention facilities, and called for hiring 10,000 new immigration officers.

The logistical challenges were daunting, but as luck would have it, Immigration and Customs Enforcement already had a partner on its payroll: McKinsey & Company, an international consulting firm brought on under the Obama administration to help engineer an “organizational transformation” in the ICE division charged with deporting migrants who are in the United States unlawfully.

ICE quickly redirected McKinsey toward helping the agency figure out how to execute the White House’s clampdown on illegal immigration.

But the money-saving recommendations the consultants came up with made some career ICE workers uncomfortable. They proposed cuts in spending on food for migrants, as well as on medical care and supervision of detainees, according to interviews with people who worked on the project for both ICE and McKinsey and 1,500 pages of documents obtained from the agency after ProPublica filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act…. [my yellow highlighting]

The New York Times, 9 January 2019:

A judge in Virginia reopened a more than two-year-old case on Wednesday to consider accusations that the powerful consultancy McKinsey & Company had defrauded his court while advising a bankrupt coal company…..

McKinsey already faces similar claims of misconduct from Mr. Alix in the bankruptcy of another energy company, Westmoreland Coal, in Texas…. [my yellow highlighting]

Financial Times, 20 February 2019:

McKinsey has agreed to a $15m settlement with the US Department of Justice to resolve claims that the influential consulting firm failed to properly disclose conflicts of interest in bankruptcy cases over two decades.

The settlement on Tuesday is among the largest made by a bankruptcy professional accused of failing to comply with disclosure rules, according to the justice department, and adds to the mounting scrutiny of the professional services giant.... [my yellow highlighting]

Consulting.us, 4 December 2020:

The USTP [US Trustee Program] started the mediation with McKinsey in 2019 after noting that the consulting firm withheld “critical details” about connections to parties with a potential economic interest in the $1.4 billion Westmoreland bankruptcy case.

Westmoreland Coal emerged from Chapter 11 in June 2019. McKinsey, however, will forgo its fees for the advisory work performed, which the watchdog estimates at millions of dollars…. [my yellow highlighting]

Scott Morrison's "The Australian Way" climate change policy called out as unworkable, reckless and dangerous at UN COP26 Climate Change Conference 2021

"The pandemic has taught us that national solutions to global problems do not work. We come to Glasgow with global ambition to save our people and to save our planet. But we now find three gaps. On mitigation climate pledges are NDCs [nationally determined contributions]. Without more we will leave the world on a pathway to 2.7 degrees and with more we are still likely to get to 2 degrees. These commitments made by some are based on technologies yet to be developed and this is at best reckless and at worst dangerous...."  [Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley Q.C., Day Two, UN Climate Conference 2021, Glasgow Scotland U.K.]

FULL SPEECH: "1.5°C is what we need to survive, 2°C, is a death sentence... We do not want that dreaded death sentence, and we've come here today to say, try harder, try harder."

Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley Q.C. addresses #COP26 Climate Conference pic.twitter.com/hlK9cQ1eD6

— CCN TV6 (@tv6tnt) November 1, 2021

Snapshot of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor listening to the full speech.

Angus Taylor's staffer tries to slide out from under claims the minister made about Naomi Wolf

House of Representatives, Hansard, 10 December 2013:

Mr TAYLOR (Hume) (16:40): 

 ....At the same time, we must protect our basic values and bedrock institutions. I first encountered political correctness as a student at Oxford. It was 1991, and a young Naomi Wolf lived a couple of doors down the corridor. Several graduate students, mostly from the north-east of the US, decided we should abandon the Christmas tree in the common room because some people might be offended. I was astounded. My friends from Oklahoma, Alaska and Oregon explained this new kind of moral vanity that was taking hold in America. A few of us pushed back hard. In the end we won, because we were mainstream. But we must resist the insidious political correctness that would have us discard those core values that have made us great. In our times, the world over, the foundation of democracy—free speech—and the foundation of capitalism—property rights—are being chipped away by shrill elitist voices who insist that they know what is best for people who are not remotely like them. I can tell you, I will always defend property rights and free speech. And in this place I will back the parliament over the executive and the judiciary, because it is through this parliament that each of us here is accountable to our constituents.

The Australian, 3 December 2019:

The story was also paraphrased in a Financial Review profile on Taylor the next year, on December 5, 2014: “Taylor was awarded a Rhodes scholarship and went to Oxford University, where left-wing writer Naomi Wolf lived a few doors away. When she proposed banning the traditional Christmas tree, Taylor, a Christian, led a successful counter rebellion.”

NSW Police investigating Australian Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction & Liberal MP for Hume Angus Talyor's use of an apparently fraudulent document

SBS News, 26 November 2019:

NSW POLICE ARE INVESTIGATING A FRAUDULENT DOCUMENT USED BY ANGUS TAYLOR'S OFFICE TO CRITICISE CLOVER MOORE

NSW Police has opened an investigation into an apparently fraudulent document used by federal energy minister Angus Taylor to attack Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore over her council's travel expenditure.

A spokesperson for the Lord Mayor confirmed that "the Office of the Lord Mayor has been contacted by NSW Police regarding its investigation into falsified City documents used to inform Minister Taylor's correspondence with the Lord Mayor. The City will fully cooperate with the police investigation."

NSW Police confirmed that an investigation is underway, telling SBS that "the NSW Police Force is in the early stages of investigating information into the reported creation of fraudulent documentation."

"Detectives from the State Crime Command's Financial Crimes Squad have launched Strike Force Garrad to investigate the matters and determine if any criminal offences have been committed. As investigations are ongoing, no further information is available."

Controversy over the document in question began in September when the Daily Telegraph reported that the City of Sydney Council spent more on domestic and international flights than Australia's foreign ministers.

The story quoted from a letter sent by Mr Taylor to Clover Moore, which claimed that the City of Sydney's 2017-18 annual report "shows your council spent $1.7m on international travel and $14.2m on domestic travel".

These figures differed significantly from the council's publicly available annual report, which reported spending of $4,206.32 on domestic travel and $1,727.77 on international travel.

In emails to Ms Moore's office obtained by The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph said the figures in its story were drawn from a copy of the City of Sydney's annual report provided to the newspaper by Mr Taylor's office.

In Parliament, Mr Taylor has repeatedly claimed that the document in question was "drawn directly from the City of Sydney's website" and was "publicly available".

The City of Sydney says that the documents on its website have not been altered since they were uploaded in 2018.

Mr Taylor has since refused to answer questions about the document......