The Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre to close because the Morrison Government refuses to consider funding it further

In 2015 the Abbott Coalition Government changed guidelines for government-industry-community cooperative research centres.

This change was implemented by the federal Department of Industry and Science.

At the time the 2015/2016 Federal budget planned to cut $26.8 million of CRC funding (over four years).

In spite of the original budget cut less than two years into its existence, the 
Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre (BNHCRC) went on to do sterling work in cooperation with federal and state governments, industry, non-government organisations and international bodies.

This was Australian Prime Minister on 7 February 2020 according to the 
BNHCRC website: 

CRC Chair Dr Katherine Woodthorpe, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, CRC Research Director Dr John Bates and Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Karen Andrews.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison invited the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC to Parliament House to discuss current and future contributions of research to the bushfire response and recovery. 

CRC Chair Dr Katherine Woodthorpe and Acting CEO and Research Director Dr John Bates met with Prime Minister Morrison and the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Karen Andrews on 5 February to talk about building a bushfire-resilient Australia. 

After the meeting Prime Minister Morrison posted the above picture on his Facebook page, saying: 

“Today Minister Karen Andrews and I also met with the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC to discuss their important work to assist with the bushfire response and improve preparedness for future fire seasons. We talked about making a more bushfire-resilient Australia and how it can support the proposed Royal Commission.” 

The CRC was invited to discuss how it could support the Royal Commission using its research knowledge and expertise, and through the Inquiries and Reviews database that catalogues over 300 inquiries and reviews of emergencies and disasters caused by natural hazards across all jurisdictions in Australia between 1886 and 2017. The database captures the findings of previous royal commissions and other bushfire inquiries.

What Scott Morrison was well aware of, and most ordinary voters hadn't realised, was that the 2015 change to those guidelines meant that the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre would cease to receive federal government funding as of 30 June 2021 and inevitably will have to close its doors.

On the heels of a devastating 2019-2020 bushfires season, marked by mega wildfires burning across millions of hectares, this Senate Estimates hearing (below) is how the Australian public became widely aware that one of the supports enabling emergency services to fight such fires was being withdrawn.

The full evidence of the Gov saying there is no more funding for the bushfire CRC, unless it finds something itself, can be seen here: https://t.co/j0yvxKZkeg Australia needs public good research like what the Bushfire CRC does.

— Kim Carr (@SenKimCarr) March 4, 2020

On 2 January 2020 The Australian reported that the Insurance Council of Australia had urged the federal government to commit to keep funding this key bushfire research organisation.

This call seems to have had no effect on Scott Morrison and his government - it appears that he is still intent on burning Australia back to nothing but bare barren earth.

The Morrison Government is still not managing to present itself in a good light in 2020

Dissatisfaction with the Morrison Government appears to be widespread....

In November 2019 there were fears Tweed Heads could lose hundreds of jobs if Centrelink moves three of its offices to the Gold Coast.

The offices were identified as a national call centre, service centre and administrative centre.

At the time Centrelink denied it was moving out of the region.

But less than three months later, on 22 Februrary 2020, Centrelink announced it was indeed closing its Tweed Heads office.

Branches at Newcastle and Newport in New South Wales and Mornington in Victoria will also close their doors.

This news was reported as far away as the UK:

Some offices will be replaced with a so-called 'agency' or kiosk that will be staffed by one person.

Each day more than 66,000 people walk into Centrelink offices around the country.

This is being dwarfed by the amount of people who access government services online, with half a million people logging into the MyGov website each day.

Former opposition leader Bill Shorten has claimed the closing of some Centrelink locations is a move by the government to cover costs in other areas at the expense of citizens.

'This government's more interested in band aiding a dodgy budget surplus and it's going to do it by shafting everyday Centrelink users,' Mr Shorten said.

Services Australia, which oversees Centrelink, said in its annual report that it is trying to 'maximise the benefits of digital capabilities while reducing the costs of administering payments'…..

In Mornington, Mayor Sam Hearn told 9 News that he is furious. He says 35,000 people in the area could be worse off when the local branch closes at the end of the next month. Mr Hearn is now urging Prime Minister Scott Morrison to intervene.

Given Mornington is in Australian Minister for Health, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service and Cabinet & Liberal MP for Flinders Greg Hunt’s electorate, the mayor’s fury may yet be translated into action by his local member who appears to have been as much in the dark about these closure as everyone else.

However, the residents of Tweed Heads and environs have little chance of their dismay registering with Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook, ‘Scotty From Marketing’ Morrison, as Tweed Heads is in a federal electorate which has been held by the same Labor MP for the last fifteen years and six federal elections.

The Daily Examiner, 22 February 2020:

DAVE and Jan Binskin are in quarantine in “a sh-thole” in Darwin. After being evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship where two people died and 620 people tested positive for coronavirus, the Casino couple and 170 other Australians are in another 14 days’ quarantine in a mining compound.

They were on the ship in Japan when the Australian Government notified them they could return to Australia, but face further quarantine.

The conditions at the compound are terrible, Mr Binskin said. “Morrison conned us. They didn't prepare for us and the people opposite us didn't even have water for six hours,” he said.

Their quarantine sounds more like a prison.

“They locked us into an area with double fences around us and then decided it was a fire risk and took down the fences,” he said.

The Binskins were excited to be going back to Australia, he said, but conditions were worse than on the boat.

They have single beds, the room is unclean, the TVs don’t work and they’re not allowed to have alcohol, Mr Binskin said.

“We were told they didn't want the old people drinking and falling over,” he said.

“We can’t use the pool, we don't even have a garbage bin and some people don’t even have bed linen.” The couple tested negative for coronavirus.

“The government has forgotten about us,” Mr Binskin said in a flat voice. With nothing to do in the compound, Mr Binskin said his wife Jan liked knitting and providing her with wool and needles would help.

“It’s against human rights,” he said.

Had they disembarked in Japan they would have been free to leave, but were told they would be looked after in Australia.

“They didn’t prepare for us,” Mr Binskin said…...

He said many people at the compound had received letters from their local member of parliament.“We’ve heard nothing from Kevin Hogan (Member for Page),” Mr Binskin said.

ABC News, 23 February 2020:

The Country Women's Association (CWA) has slammed the Federal Government over its drought assistance, describing the latest funding announcement as "disappointing, infuriating, insulting and disrespectful".

But the CWA said despite repeatedly seeking more federal funding for its drought programs since September, it only learned of the voucher announcement on Wednesday evening.

"It was a total disregard, it's disrespectful ... it would have been nice to have been consulted," national president Tanya Cameron said.

"It's very disappointing. It's actually infuriating. It's very annoying. I'm really quite angry.

"It's quite insulting and it's disrespectful to an organisation that has been around as long as ours has."

The CWA has written to the Government to say it will not be participating in the outreach program as it is currently proposed.

It said its state branches did not support the process of administering $500 vouchers at public events, such as barbecues or roadshows, as they understood the Government intended.

"We've explained to the Federal Government on a number of occasions very clearly why, for NSW, the vouchers don't work," CWA NSW chief executive Danica Leys said.

"I don't think the provision of assistance in this way should be tied to having to attend an event to get it."

In New South Wales, the CWA has distributed more than $16 million of drought aid in recent years, directly depositing funding in the recipients' bank accounts.

"People are given the dignity and respect to make the decision they need to make," Ms Leys said of the CWA system.

"Obviously someone in the federal bureaucracy thinks they know better how to get it out.

"If they know how to get it out, then they should perhaps think about doing it themselves before verballing us and telling us that they're partnering with us.

Ms Ley said there were many questions around the logistics of how people would get the vouchers.

"We absolutely support further investment into drought-affected communities, and vouchers can be helpful for some people, but a $500 voucher at the outset is quite minimal in nature," she said.

"That is not what is needed ... not to sound ungrateful, but more than that is needed."……

Australian Prime Minister Morrison gives full amnesty to employers who have stolen all or part of their employees superannuation

Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), media release, 24 February 2020: 

With daily revelations of wage theft dominating the start of the new parliamentary year, the Morrison Government has today passed a bill which will waive penalties for employers who have stolen superannuation from workers. 

The bill protects employers from prosecution by the ATO for any theft of superannuation back to the birth of the system, regardless of the size of the theft or the intent of the employer. 

This is an unprecedented move by a federal government – blanket pardoning of a serious contravention of federal law, with no caveats or limits. 

The Government has said publicly that if employers cannot determine the extent of their theft before the end of the amnesty, it will be extended.

Quotes attributable to ACTU President Michele O’Neil: “We are living through a national crisis of wage theft and superannuation forms a significant part of this issue. Instead of punishing the employers who have been stealing money from their employees, potentially for decades, the Morrison Government has waved them through without any penalty whatsoever. 

“This law will recover a tiny fraction of the billions in super estimated stolen since the beginning of the system and will do nothing to change behaviour in the business community. 

“The Government has had seven years and has done nothing to help workers with unpaid super. Workers need their right to Super included in the National Employment Standards so that repayment can be easily pursued and have super paid at the same time as wages. 

“The best way to stop wage and super theft is to allow unions to once again conduct compliance checks in workplaces to end this epidemic of ripping off workers. 

“This is a shameful act by a Government which it seems will stop at nothing to cater to employers at the expense of working people. 

“The ACTU will continue to explore all available legal avenues to ensure that working people get the money they are owed and that thieves are held accountable for their actions.”

The amount of unpaid super owed to workers in Australia was estimated in 2018 to be at least $5.9 billion and wages theft by employers was thought to total $12.8 billion.

‘Grant from Auditing’ dropped ‘Scotty from Marketing’ right in it and the net result is a strong stench of corruption emanating from the Morrison government

New Matilda, 14 February 2020:

Summer rains finally fell on large parts of New South Wales this week. They didn’t fall everywhere, and much of inland Australia is still in drought, but enough rain fell where it was needed to allow weary fire authorities to announce that the New South Wales bushfires were finally contained.

For different reasons, Scott Morrison has also had a difficult summer, so the Prime Minister would no doubt have been pleased the bushfire emergency he so badly mishandled is now receding. With Parliament back and the serious matter of COVID-19 Coronavirus to attend to, Morrison could be forgiven for thinking that February would be the month where the government could regain the political initiative.

But that’s not happening, because the government finds itself mired in a series of corruption scandals.

The key issue, as it has been for weeks now, is the sports rorts affair. As we now know, roughly $100 million in sports grants were distributed in a completely corrupt manner by former Sports Minister Bridget McKenzie before the 2019 federal election.

The scandal blew up after the National Audit Office released a devastating report into the orgy of pork barrelling.

The government’s initial response to the Audit was to try and downplay it: a variation of the classic “nothing to see here, folks” line. Morrison himself argued many times that no rules had been broken and that all the projects funded in McKenzie’s dodgy process were eligible.

That approach proved unsustainable, as the media turned its attention to the grants program and uncovered multiple instances of highly dubious decision-making. Huge grants to fancy rowing clubs in Mosman, grants for female change rooms to clubs with no female players, grants to a shooting club that McKenzie herself was a member of, grants that sporting clubs boasted about before even receiving them – the more journalists dug, the worse things seemed.

The Audit report was always going to be difficult to wriggle away from. The report set down, in black and white, a devastating series of findings about the sports grants program.

An established funding program was subverted by a “parallel process” of political decision making inside McKenzie’s office, quite transparently driven by political interest. Questions were raised about the program’s probity by senior bureaucrats, only to be batted away by McKenzie and her staff. A colour-coded spreadsheet was even drawn up, one that had nothing to do with the merits of the funding applications, and everything to do with the Coalition’s re-election strategy.

As former senior New South Wales judge Stephen Charles QC argued, this was not just ministerial misconduct; it was corruption.

So, after weeks of defending her, Morrison bowed to the inevitable and sacked McKenzie. After a hastily convened investigation by Morrison’s hand-picked Secretary of the Department of Prime Minster and Cabinet, Phil Gaetjens, McKenzie was sent on her way.

On the day he sacked McKenzie, Morrison announced that Gaetjens’ report found that McKenzie had erred, but that the program itself was sound. Exactly how Gaetjens managed to come to that conclusion is something that has puzzled journalists and onlookers. If the program was sound, why was McKenzie sacked for rorting it? And if McKenzie rorted it, how could the program be sound?

Just to make matters more opaque, Gaetjens’ report was never released, with Morrison claiming that it was a cabinet document. He therefore kept it secret. It’s marvellous stuff, this open government business…..

In scathing testimony, Auditor-General Grant Hehir and senior auditor Brian Boyd demolished the government’s position with a few well-chosen lines.

Were all the grants eligible, Senator Eric Abetz asked Boyd? No, answered Boyd.

In fact, as many as 43 per cent were not eligible. Boyd went on to explain why. Some applications were late. Some projects had started their work before they signed the funding agreement. Some had actually finished the work.

As Boyd told the Committee, “If you’ve completed your work, or in some cases — as in this one — you’ve even started your work before a funding agreement is signed, you’re not eligible to receive funding.” Oops.

It got worse. We also found out that the Prime Minister’s office was intimately involved with McKenzie’s office in drawing up the dodgy list of grant recipients. Auditor-General Hehir told Senators there were “direct” communications between Morrison’s office and McKenzie’s, including at least 28 versions of the now-notorious colour-coded spreadsheet that laid out the various sports grants by marginal seat.

The Auditor-General described a process where key advisors from Morrison and McKenzie’s offices haggled over which projects to fund, using the spreadsheet as the basis for their decisions.

To say this looks bad for the Prime Minister is an understatement. He has been caught out in a particularly ham-fisted cover up, one that looks all the more ill-judged now the facts have come to light. Given the level and detail of communication between his office and Bridget McKenzie’s, it’s hard to see how he can plausibly argue he wasn’t privy to the rorts…..

Read the full article here.

Quotes of the Week

"The big issues for anyone interested in a future on this continent – energy, water and climate – remained unaddressed. Mining and Murdoch maintained their vice-like grip on Australian politics and the minds of the masses. The rich got richer, and the poor got homeless.”  [Journalist David Lowe writing in Echo NetDaily, 17 January 2020]

"Right now the government is indulging in the equivalent of responding to polio by promising to invest in more iron lungs. And bizarrely, it is getting credit for it. Adaptation is not mitigation." [Journalist Greg Jericho writing in The Guardian, 19 January 2020]

FIGHTING BACK AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE DENIALISM: a hit, a palpable hit!

Putting the fallacious argument against lowering Australia's greenhouse gas emissions into perspective.......

The Age, letter to the editor,17 December 2019, p.20:

State of the Australian economy as it enters 2020

On 16 December 2019 Australian Treasurer and Liberal MP for Kooyong, Josh Frydenberg, put out a glowing media release concerning the health of the national economy which bears little resemblance to data his own department released on that same day.

Treasury on behalf of the Morrison Coalition Government informed Australia that it now has less income than was anticipated just prior to the 2019 federal election and, that economic growth is now slower.

Total receipts have been revised down by about $3.0 billion in 2019-20 and $32.6 billion over the four years to 2022-23.

These falls are due to less money coming into Treasury from individuals taxes, company tax and superannuation tax, as well as less dollars being collected through the tax on goods & services (GST) and lower non-tax income.

Federal government net debt is expected to be $392.3 billion in 2019-20 (19.5 per cent of GDP). Gross debt now stands at over $560.8 billion.

Slower economic growth is explained as due in part to decreased production and lower export levels in the farming sector, a decline in iron ore prices, softer wages growth, diminished business confidence & investment uncertainty.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) nominal growth is 3.25 per cent but is expected to fall to 2.25 per cent in the coming financial year.

Wages growth is still under performing at 2.5 per cent and, there is no guarantee that the revised projection of 3 per cent wage growth by 2022-23 is achievable.

Unemployment is beginning to rise.

The number of people who had jobs fell by 19,700 individuals between the May federal election and October 2019. Employment numbers are projected to fall over the next 5 years in Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing, Manufacturing and Information, Media & Technology.

Cost of living (CPI) is not coming down. CPI rose 1.7 per cent through the year to the September 2019 quarter. This followed a through the year rise of 1.6 per cent to the June 2019 quarter. Retail prices, particularly for clothing, footwear, meat, dairy, bread and cereal products, have risen.

As for the much lauded budget surplus for 2019-20, it has shrunk from $7.1 billion to $5 billion. While the rubbery figures in forward estimates see the expected surplus for 2020-2021 reduced from $11 billion to $6.1 billion, then from $17.8 billion down to $8.2 billion in 2021-22, with the fiscal year after that supposed to bring in a surplus of only $4 billion instead of the projected $9.2 billion.

One can almost hear Morrison ordering a funding red pen through even more health, disability and welfare services/programs in a vain attempt to avoid intensifying the economic squeeze his flawed political ideology is imposing on the nation.

Notes:

* Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg 16 December 2019 media release at 

http://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/josh-frydenberg-2018/media-releases/2019-20-mid-year-economic-and-fiscal-outlook

* Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) December 2019 at https://budget.gov.au/2019-20/content/myefo/download/MYEFO_2019-20.pdf

* Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook (PEFO) April 2019 at https://treasury.gov.au/publication/2019-pefo

* Australian Office of Financial Management (AOFM) federal government debt updates at https://www.aofm.gov.au/

* Cost of Living data at https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/6401.0Media%20Release1Sep%202019?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=6401.0&issue=Sep%202019&num=&view=

* Labour Market Information Portal, “Industry Projections – 5 years to 2024” (Excel) at http://lmip.gov.au/PortalFile.axd?FieldID=2787734&.xlsx

Few Liberal-Nationals politicians have ever understood the strength of community in the NSW Northern River region

Few Liberal-Nationals politicians have ever understood the strength of community in the NSW Northern Rivers region or the passion of locals to protect their families, neighbours, the land, rivers, forests and native animals from those who threaten all six. Including those who threaten by refusing to take meaningful action to mitigate climate change.

Here is yet another Northern Rivers resident speaking up.....

The Guardian, 2 December 2019:

Melinda Plesman stands with the remains of her burnt-out house, destroyed in the NSW bushfires, outside Parliament House in Canberra. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Melinda Plesman and her partner, Dean Kennedy, lost their family home of 35 years after bushfires tore through Nymboida, south of Grafton in NSW, last month.

Plesman said she wanted to show Scott Morrison the direct result of climate change.

“It’s happening now and this is what climate change looks like,” Plesman said.

“I’m losing my home, whole communities are losing their homes ... and the prime minister said we’re not allowed to talk about it.

“He said he was going to pray for us. And that was the last straw.”.....

Morrison Government's union busting 'Ensuring Integrity Bill' defeated in the Senate

Prime Minister Scott Morrison's pride and joy, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019, intended to weaken and perhaps even destroy registered unions in Australia was negatived in Committee of the Whole by the Senate.

The vote was tied at 34-all, with One Nation's two senators along with Senator Jacqui Lambie voting with the Greens and Labor.

It took 147 days for political commonsense to prevail but on 28 November 2019 the Senate politely told the prime minister and his hard right cronies where to go.

Another bill Morrison is reportedly hoping to pass before the parliamentary Christmas break is the Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Bill 2019 which removes provisions for asylum seeker detainee medical transfers to Australia from Manus Island and Nauru ('medevac').

BACKGROUND

Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), media release, 26 November 2019:

In a blow to the Morrison Government’s arguments for the Ensuring Integrity Bill currently before the senate the Federal Court has ruled the union regulator, the Register Organisations Commission (ROC) investigation into the AWU was invalid. 

Justice Bromberg has ruled that the ROC did not have grounds to order an AFP raid on the offices of the AWU and has ordered the return of the documents that were seized on behalf of the regulator in their first act after being established by the Liberal Government in 2017. 

The decision comes as the Morrison Government attempts to pass the Ensuring Integrity Bill in the Senate which would give the ROC the extreme power to determine which unions are deregistered and which officials are disqualified under the dangerous and hypocritical new union-busting law. 

Under the EI Bill the ROC would have the power to begin deregistration proceedings against a union which had made a handful of paperwork mistakes over a period of 10 years. 

Quotes attributable to ACTU President Michele O’Neil: 

“The Morrison government has been telling Senators that the ROC is an impartial body which can administer the extraordinary powers granted under EI. The Federal Court has just found it conducted an illegal raid on a union office. 

“Giving union busters more power to drag unions into courts over minor paperwork breaches, some that would only cost a company an $80 fine, Will cost members and the taxpayer millions in legal fees. This is before accounting for the cost of not being able to campaign for higher wages, better working conditions and safer workplaces. 

“To defend themselves from the ROC’s harrassment the AWU was forced to expending significant resources over two years to get justice. If the Ensuring Integrity Bill passes, all unions could face this harrassment over paperwork breaches. 

“Questions also need to be asked of the ROC who is continuing to waste tax payer’s money to challenge this finding. “This ruling gives the crossbench senators a stark example of how the Morrison government targets unions and will stop at nothing to try and bust unions. Ensuring Integrity will become another tool for union busters and should be rejected. 

“The Federal Court decision is a vindication for the AWU but also a warning for the Senate crossbench who weighing amendments which would give this discredited body even more power.”

BACKGROUND

On 20 October 2017, Mr Chris Enright, the Executive Director of the Registered Organisation Commission (ROC) and a delegate of the Commissioner decided to conduct an investigation.

Judgment in Australian Workers’ Union v Registered Organisations Commissioner (No 9) [2019] FCA 1671 was delivered on 11 October 2019. The judgment concluded that; "the decision to conduct an investigation as to whether ss 285(1), 286(1) and 287(1) of the RO Act had been contravened was affected by jurisdictional error and is invalid."

Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 was introduced by the Morrison Coaltion Government in July 2019 and was currently before the Senate for the second reading debate when the ACTU penned the aforementioned media release.

*Images of ROC document come from the published Federal Court judgment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Bill 2019  is apparently scheduled for a second reading before 5 December 2019.

This bill removes provisions in Schedule 6 of the Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Act 2019. These provisions (commonly referred to as the medical transfer, or medevac, provisions) established a framework for the transfer of transitory persons from regional processing countries to Australia for the purpose of medical treatment or assessment. The Bill also amends the Migration Act to allow for the removal of people brought to Australia under the medical transfer provisions back to a regional processing country once they no longer need to be in Australia.

On 27 November 2019 a nonconforming petition was tabled in the Senate asking for medevac provisions to be saved. It contains 51,299 signatures.

On the same day Professor David Isaacs, Clinical Professor, Paediatrics & Child Health, Fellow, Royal Australasian College of Physicians was joined by doctors in Canberra urging senators to reject the medevac repeal bill. Professor Isaacs carried an open letter signed by 5,040 doctors urging Senator Jacqui Lambie to save medevac.