Tweet of the Week

 

713 Robodebt mentions in parliament, a Centrelink whistleblower in 2016, protests directly to the Member for Aston’s office and tens of thousands of news pieces. But between the 4 Liberals on the Robodebt Royal Commission they’ve said they ‘don’t recall’ anything 140 times. How? pic.twitter.com/UQ78MYQa3P

— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) February 8, 2023

 

Institute of Public Affairs produces yet another dodgy study

 

Pearls and Irritations - Public Policy Journal, 30 January 2021:

The Institute of Public Affairs has scored an epic “own-goal” by calling out the slide in quality of life. A new report by the Liberal Party think tank identifies the drop in home ownership, high incarceration rates, the low level of skills training and debt as the main culprits but declining living standards are a direct result of Liberal Party policies.

It was to much fanfare (at least in some areas) that the Institute of Public Affairs announced the hiring of Tony Abbott to “lead a new movement to defend and revive traditional Australian values”. Such a movement was deemed necessary by the release of the IPA’s report titled “The Fair Go – Going, Gone: The Decline of the Australian Way of Life, 2000 to 2020”. The report and The Australian’s accompanying editorial lamented the “collapse of living standards over the past two decades”.

However, the “collapse of living standards” is the culmination of near two-decades of policy driven by the Coalition and the Institute of Public Affairs and with The Australian as cheer-leaders in chief.

The authors analysed 25 aspects of Australian life that they believe give a representative account of the quality of life of individual Australians, across five major categories: home, work, enterprise, governance and lifestyle. Each measure is tracked across the past two decades in comparison to 2000 standards.

According to the report, major contributors to the fall in living standards include housing affordability, household debt, government debt, underutilisation rate, vocational training, and the incarceration rate.

All part of the Coalition’s plan

But such falls in living standards are all part of the Coalition’s plan. The under-utilisation rate has been driven up, and the vocational training rate down by, in particular, the deregulation of Vocational Education and Training (VET) and TAFE: apprenticeships have fallen from 446,000 in 2012 to 259,000 today……

Housing is less affordable than ever, as the government steadfastly refuses to make key policy changes such as ending negative gearing, introducing the long-promised money-laundering reforms and increasing the capital gains tax…..

Meanwhile, the increasingly punitive justice system of recent years drives the incarceration rate ever higher. In 2018 a Victorian Liberals backbencher even criticised his own party’s “law and order” campaign, warning about the dangers of populist tough-on-crime policies.

Not to mention reductions to penalty rates, and further attempts to strip rights from casual workers through the proposed industrial relations reform, which further contribute further to household debt…..

The report can in fact be summarised as a damning indictment of Coalition policy over the past two decades…...

The report was co-authored by Research Fellows Cian Hussey, Kurt Wallace, and Andrew Bushnell, and Director of Research Daniel Wild.

In research, the title “Fellow” is typically bestowed on employees of university who 1) have a PhD and 2) have a job at the university. None of the four researchers meets the first criteria; the highest degree among them is a Masters, awarded to Bushnell. The highest degree conferred on the Director of Research Daniel Wild, according to the IPA website, is an honours.

Consider the career track for a researcher in academia. It would involve first completing an undergraduate degree, then an honours degree, often followed by a stretch as a research assistant, then applications to PhD programs – which are ever more competitive as government funding falls ever lower. Then comes three years of formal research training completing said PhD, followed by a gruelling search for a job. When successful, only then might one term themselves a “Research Fellow”.

The irony is apparently lost on the Institute of Public Affairs that the Coalition has been the party in government for 14 of the past 20 years during which there has been this “collapse in living standards”.

On this report’s own measures, it makes the IPA’s decision to hire Tony Abbott a strange choice to herald a new movement for “saving the Australian way of life”. 

Read the full article here.

Australia quite rightly boasts that it was there at the genesis of the United Nations , but it is not a member in good standing

Australia quite rightly boasts that it was there at the genesis of the United Nations.

However, Australian government and society never quite evolved apace with this peak international intergovernmental body and our relationship has been strained for some time. Most notably during the years Australia was led by the Howard, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison federal governments. 

The strain probably reached its zenith when Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook, Scott John Morrison, blinded by his bromance with then US President Donald John Trump, decided to follow Trump's lead and characterise the United Nations as dysfunctional, in need of reform and further, referred to it as a body which "allowed anti-Semitism to seep into its deliberations – all under the language of human rights".

Since 2017 Australia has been the subject of numerous UN agency reports concerning its treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, the over-incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by the judicial system, failure to meet its obligations under the Convention of the Rights of the Child including those towards children in crisis or in detention and, its failure to meet its obligations under the Convention of the Rights of People With Disabilities including lack of full access to the justice system, lack of access to housing, forced institutionalisation and forced medical medical treatment.

This is not an exhaustive list of matters that have concerned the United Nations when it comes to Australian society.

These are the opening paragraphs of what Australia’s hard-right federal government told the latest United Nations General Assembly, Human Rights Council, Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review, Thirty-seventh session, held on 18–29 January 2021 :

1. Australia’s enduring commitment to protecting and promoting human rights is reflected in our strong domestic laws, policies and institutions and in our active international engagement and advocacy. Australia is proud of its contribution to the founding of the United Nations (UN) and the international human rights framework. Australia’s inaugural membership of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in 2018–20 reflects its continued commitment to this framework. Australia’s laws and institutions function to protect human rights and support robust public debate of human rights issues.

2. Since our second cycle Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in 2015, Australia has made significant achievements in the realisation of human rights. These include significant investments addressing family and domestic violence, human trafficking and modern slavery and the legalisation of same-sex marriage.

3. COVID-19 is presenting new challenges in the protection of human rights across Australia. However, our strong democratic institutions have ensured that our response carefully balances the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health with other rights, such as liberty of movement, which may need to be temporarily curtailed. Particular regard has been paid to the rights of people with unique vulnerabilities……

The Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Summary of Stakeholders’ submissions on Australia told a rather different story. 

Of special interest are the following observations and recommendations:

4. AHRC [Australian Human Rights Commission] recommended ensuring that Australia’s international human rights obligations are comprehensively incorporated into law.

5. AHRC stated that the Government should reform federal anti-discrimination laws to ensure comprehensive protection and improve effectiveness. The Government should also set a timetable for achieving reform of the Constitution to remove capacity for racial discrimination.

6. Racial discrimination was present in society, particularly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. AHRC was concerned about the increase in severe Islamophobic attacks, far-right extremism, and increased racism experienced by people of Asian background during the COVID-19 pandemic and cyber racism.

7. Age discrimination was a major barrier to the participation of old persons in the labour force. Older women were the fastest growing cohort of homeless in 2011–2016.

8. AHRC was concerned about involuntary surgery on people born with variations in sex characteristics, especially infants.

9. The Governments should abolish mandatory sentencing laws and expand the use of non-custodial measures where appropriate.

10. The Governments should raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to at least 14 years, and prohibit the use of isolation and force as punishment in juvenile justice facilities.

11. National security laws and law enforcement powers on metadata retention and encryption, unjustifiably limited freedom of expression and privacy, especially for journalists and whistleblowers. Government should amend national security laws so that they do not unduly limit human rights, particularly freedom of expression and the right to privacy.

12. Some state and territory laws unduly restricted the right of peaceful assembly. Governments should ensure that all laws that regulate protest activity are consistent with the right of peaceful assembly.

13. AHRC recommended ensuring that restrictions enacted to combat the COVID-19 pandemic are proportionate and are removed as soon as the public emergency is over.

14. The main income support payment for unemployed Australians ‘JobSeeker Allowance’ was inadequate. AHRC expressed concerns at punitive welfare programs, notably the ‘ParentsNext’ ‘pre-employment’ program and compulsory income management schemes that disproportionately affected indigenous peoples. Government should ensure that JobSeeker Allowance payments provide recipients with an adequate standard of living, that Welfare support programs be reformed so they are not punitive, and that current models of income management be discontinued or redesigned as voluntary, opt-in schemes that are used as a ‘last resort’.

15. The Government should expand human rights education in all areas of the public sector, particularly for those working with children and in the administration of justice and places of detention, and incorporate human rights more fully in the national school curriculum.

16. The gender pay gap was 14 percent, contributing to the significant gap in retirement savings for women. Government should implement targeted strategies to close the gender pay gap and ensure women’s economic security later in life.

17. AHCR noted that domestic and family violence against women remained endemic. The Government should increase prevention and early intervention initiatives on domestic and family violence.

18. Rates of children in out-of-home care increased, with Indigenous children significantly over-represented. Governments should prioritise early intervention programs to prevent children entering child protection systems.

19. The National Disability Strategy 2010–2020 remained underfunded, with key commitments not achieved. There was limited progress in addressing the sterilisation of persons with disabilities without consent, and implementing a nationally consistent supported decision-making framework. Rates of labour force participation of persons with disabilities had not improved. Little progress were made in addressing the indefinite detention of persons with disabilities who were assessed as unfit to stand trial or not guilty by reason of mental impairment.

20. The Closing the Gap strategy aimed to ‘close the gap’ between Indigenous and nonIndigenous Australians across a range of life outcomes. In 2020, two of the seven targets-early childhood education and Year 12 attainment - were on track to be met by 2031. Other areas such as employment and school attendance had not seen improvements, and the life expectancy gap persisted.

21. AHRC recommended ensuring that immigration detention is justified, time limited, and subject to prompt and regular judicial oversight. Government should reduce numbers of people held in immigration detention to maintain safety during COVID-19 pandemic. Government should amend the Migration Act 1958 to prohibit placing children in immigration detention.

22. AHCR recommended conducting refugee status determination consistently with international obligations, and providing permanent protection for refugees and family sponsorship. Government should provide sufficient support to asylum seekers to ensure an adequate standard of living.

The Summary of Stakeholders' Submissions on Australia also noted:

63. JS1 explained that cashless debit and income management schemes expanded in recent years despite their discriminatory impact on indigenous peoples and single mothers, their restriction on individual decision making, and weak evidence of effectiveness. SHRL explained that the Community Development Program required welfare recipients in remote communities to undertake work or training in order to access social security payments, with indigenous peoples heavily overrepresented in the program and in financial penalties resulting from non-compliance, further plunging them into poverty. JS1 stated that Australia must replace compulsory cashless debit and income management schemes with voluntary models which are non-discriminatory in design and implementation.

The final United Nations Human Rights Council review report is yet to be published. Its findings are unlikely to overly complimentary, given on 20 January 2021 so many other member nations voiced their concerns about Australia's human rights record.

No you weren't imagining it - wages are stagnating in Australia

Whenever the Fair Work Commission reviews the minimum wage, one of those making a submission* to keep any increase in the minimum wage a modest one will be the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government.

By way of example:

https://www.fwc.gov.au/documents/sites/wagereview2014/submissions/ausgovt_sub_awr1314.pdf

First 5 points in a 12 point statement of Australian Government's position
https://www.fwc.gov.au/documents/sites/wagereview2015/submissions/austgov_sub_awr1415.pdf

This is the result.......

The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 July, p.9:

As the asset-driven wealth gap has widened, incomes generated by employment have failed to keep up.

Average weekly disposable household incomes have grown just $44 over the past decade. In the four years to 2007-08, average weekly household incomes grew by $220. They dipped in the immediate wake of the global financial crisis before reaching $1067 in the 2013-14 survey. They fell in the next survey and rose $8 a week to $1062 in the 2017-18 survey.

In NSW, those in the lowest 20 per cent of income earners have seen their incomes go backwards in real terms since 2015-16, from $412 a week to $397 a week. They are only $6 a week higher than in 2011-12. The biggest increase has been for people in Tasmania, where disposable incomes jumped $83 to a record-high $922, with households across all income ranges boosted. The largest slump has been in Western Australia, where disposable incomes are $157 lower than their peak in 2013-14. [my yellow highlighting]

However, lest Australian voters seek to blame the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison or any employer lobby group for paltry wages growth, the Australian Treasury and participants at a recent conference organised by the rather esoteric Economic Society of Australia - est. in 1925 and delighting in producing articles such as "Community and Expert Wine Ratings and Prices" and "Non‐monotonic NPV Function Leads to Spurious NPVs and Multiple IRR Problems: A New Method that Resolves these Problems" - have rushed to the defence of both government and the business community.

With Treasury in particular pointing a finger at employees, who are reluctant to quit their current jobs and chance their arm in an uncertain labour market, as a possible cause of low wages growth.  
So there you have it. Despite both the federal government and employer groups constantly pushing to limit wages growth, it's really the fault of workers. 

Regardless of the fact that productivity growth mainly from workers' efforts has averaged 1.4 percent a year since the end of 2010 having risen at a relatively steady rate since 1991.

Note:
* See https://www.fwc.gov.au/awards-agreements/minimum-wages-conditions/annual-wage-reviews/annual-wage-review-2017-18-3. Go to right hand sidebar, open a wage review link, select Submissions &  then click on Initial Submissions.

Will the Australian Government continue its policy of harrassment and intimidation in relation to Australia's national public broadcaster?

This was the situation before Malcolm Turnbull was politically beheaded by the hard right of the Liberal Party and Scott Morrison installed as the new Australian Prime Minister.....

Lenore Taylor is Guardian Australia's editor. She has won two Walkley awards and has twice won the Paul Lyneham award for excellence in press gallery journalism.

She has been a journalist for over thirty years and covered federal politics for over twenty-two years. 

Despite being invited onto the ABC "Insiders" program as a political journalist and editor, she found that pressure appeared to have been placed on that program to remove its video of her one of comments from its Twitter feed.

Do not retweet - @JoshFrydenberg and @TurnbullMalcolm don't want this seen and told @InsidersABC to delete this clip. #auspol #reefgate pic.twitter.com/Xf4B0J7p5B

— EBA Truth (@ebatruth) August 13, 2018

I raised a question on #insiders yesterday about how the reef foundation could have been so surprised by the grant if the govt had already done due diligence on it, as Josh Frydenberg revealed in the interview - this from @InsidersABC about why a tweet of my comment was removed https://t.co/VsJ2Swc4HF

— Lenore Taylor (@lenoretaylor) August 13, 2018

“The comments bring into question remarks by the environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, on the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday, that the government did “extensive due diligence” on the foundation before awarding it close to half a billion d…” https://t.co/LSSn7ixjlw

— Ellie (@elliemail) August 13, 2018

This was my call yesterday and on reflection it was a mistake. I should have quote tweeted the original tweet and provided the new information given to me by government. Apologies to @lenoretaylor. Her comments remain on iview and on the Insiders website. https://t.co/3iJHHxm6hc

— Samuel Clark (@sclark_melbs) August 13, 2018

The Great Barrier Reef Foundation denies there was any prior due diligence conducted concerning the $487,633,300.00 grant.

Marsden told ABC radio on Monday [13 August 2018] the foundation had to submit a retrospective application after learning in April it would receive the money.

“We had to certainly demonstrate value for money and our track record,” she said.

Once this particular cat was out of the bag ABC "Insiders" decided on 360 degree change of direction or suddenly remembered what being an independent public broadcaster actually means - readers can make up their own minds as to motive.

We’ve republished this tweet. It was my call on Sunday to take it down, and that was a mistake. My apologies again to @lenoretaylor. https://t.co/NyivO2sJaL

— Samuel Clark (@sclark_melbs) August 14, 2018

Remembering that as federal treasurer Scott Morrison led the charge to savagely cut ABC funding, the question that needs answering now is "Will he continue to bash the ABC by allowing minsters to apply inappropriate pressure on management and staff to alter editorial decisions?"

The real reason Turnbull gave the Great Barrier Reef Foundation $487.6 million with few strings attached and a short deadline on the spend

The Saturday Paper, 18-24 August 2018:

Picture the scene: three men in a room, two of them offering the third the deal of a lifetime.

The pair say they will give the man’s little outfit – which has assets of only about $3 million, turnover of less than $8 million and just a handful of staff – a $444 million contract, under terms yet to be negotiated. The offer comes out of a clear blue sky, totally unsolicited by the lucky recipient. For this little organisation, it is like winning the lottery, except they didn’t even buy a ticket.

Such a deal would be exceptional, even in the corporate world. It would have been exceptional even if the pair making the offer had been, say, investment bankers, and the third man the head of a tech start-up.

But they weren’t. Two of them were the prime minister of Australia and his environment minister, and the third was the chairman of a charitable organisation called the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. All three do have backgrounds as bankers, however: Malcolm Turnbull, Josh Frydenberg and the foundation’s John Schubert worked with Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Commonwealth Bank respectively.

The question is why it was done this way. Why solicit this little organisation, of which most people would never have heard, to be the recipient of the biggest such grant ever made in Australia? Why was the money given without tender and without any prior grant proposal? Why, instead of providing the money a bit at a time, subject to satisfactory performance as assessed on an annual or biannual basis, was six years’ worth of funding provided in one lump on June 28, less than three months after that first meeting?

Geoff Cousins thinks he knows the answer.

Cousins is a former president of the Australian Conservation Foundation. Perhaps more importantly, he is a corporate boardroom heavyweight. For 10 years, he was an adviser to John Howard.

“It’s a most cynical piece of accounting trickery,” he says of the Barrier Reef grant. 

“A piece of chicanery. That’s the only way I can describe it.”

To explain why, he traces back several years, to the government’s desperate attempts to persuade UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, that it was a good steward of the Great Barrier Reef, and that the reef World Heritage area should not be declared to be “in danger”.

To that end, the government had promised, under its Reef 2050 Plan, to invest more than $700 million in measures to protect one of the world’s great natural wonders.

“For the Department of the Environment and Energy to grant over $440 million to a small charity that didn’t even prepare an application form or ask for the grant is inconceivable!”

“They made a commitment, the Australian government, to the World Heritage listing committee, to spend $716 million on the Barrier Reef, prior to 2020,” Cousins says. 

“But they have spent just a fraction of that, and there is no way that in the remaining 18 months or less that they can reach that target, which raises the potential of the reef being put on the endangered list.”

In Cousins’s view, someone must have realised the trouble the government faced in meeting its spending targets on time. His guess is Frydenberg.

“Even if you started now, you couldn’t actually spend that money. There’s not a list, not a pipeline of projects approved and ready to go,” Cousins says.

“So Malcolm, then putting on … his business head, his accounting head, says ‘Well, all we’ve really got to do is make sure the money moves from the government’s accounts to the bank account of some other private or not-for-profit institution, then the money is spent.’ But the money hasn’t really been spent at all. Even the CEO of the foundation says it won’t all be spent for six years.”

If you tried that kind of dodge in the corporate world, Cousins says, “your accounting firm would say … they would have to qualify your accounts”.

Cousins makes a very strong circumstantial case. It is true the federal government has grossly underspent on its UNESCO commitment, and that the money given to the reef foundation will go much of the way to making good on that funding promise.

It is true also that UNESCO has become increasingly critical of the government’s performance protecting the reef. Last year’s meeting of the World Heritage Committee noted in particular that progress on achieving water-quality targets was too slow to meet the agreed time frame. As it happens, the largest single item on the reef foundation’s to-do list is improving water quality, with $201 million allocated to it.

Read the full aticle here.

Waiting for home care in Australia in 2018

There are now 108,000 older Australians on the waiting list for Home Care Packages.

On this list are individuals who have:

* not yet been approved for home care;

* been previously assessed and approved, but who have not yet been assigned a home care package; or

 * are receiving care at an interim level awaiting assignment of a home care package at their approved level.

Waiting time is calculated from the date of a home care package approval and this is not a an ideal situation, given package approval times range from est. 27 to 98 days and the time taken to approve high level home care packages is now than twelve months - with actual delivery dates occurring at least 12 months later on average.

Labor’s Shadow Minister for Ageing and Mental Health issued a statement which pointed out that “With the waiting list growing by almost 4,000 older Australians in just three months, the 3,500 new home care packages a year committed in the Budget won’t come close to keeping pace with demand”.

With more than half the applications for permanent entry into residential aged care taking more than 3 and up to 8 months to be met, this is not going to be a go-to first option in any solution for this lengthy home care waiting list - even if enough older people could be persuaded to give up the last of their independnce and autonomy.

By June 2017 New South Wales had the largest number of persons on the home care waiting lis at 30,685.

Given the high number of residents over 60 years of age in regional areas like the the Northern Rivers, this waiting list gives pause for thought.

Then there is this side effect of the waiting list and home care start dates identified by Leading Age Care Services Australia (LAGSA):

Consumers with unmet needs and unspent funds

LASA has undertaken an extensive review of the disparity that exists in the current release of HCP assignments, noting that there are substantial numbers of consumers on HCPs with either unmet needs or unspent funds . This bimodal distribution of home care package assignments reflects a mismatch between consumer package assignment and a consumer’s current care needs. The mismatch appears to be a function of the extended lapse of time that exists between approval assessments and package assignments. Until this dynamic is sufficiently addressed by Government, LASA expects that providers will be faced with a unique set challenges in 2018 when providing care to HCP consumers. This is likely to increase the need for regular care plan reviews in the context of unmet needs and unspent funds. This dynamic could be considered more closely within the context of developing a single assessment workforce.

Thus far Australian Minister for Aged Care and Liberal MP for Hasluck  Ken Wyatt is offering no insight into federal government thinking on this issue.

Sources:

https://gen-agedcaredata.gov.au/Topics/Admissions-into-aged-care

https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports-statistics/health-welfare-services/aged-care/overview

https://agedcare.health.gov.au/sites/g/files/net1426/f/documents/09_2017/assessor_fact_sheet_-_home_care_package_wait_times_v1.0_0.pdf

https://gen-agedcaredata.gov.au/Resources/Home-care-packages-program-data-report-2017

https://lasa.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/270218-Consumer-directed-care-in-home-care-packages.pdf

Federal Labor promises to pursue return of dodgy grant to Great Barrier Reef Foundation

Excerpt from email sent out over Labor Senator Kristine Keneally's signature on 17 August 2017:

On April 29 Mr Turnbull announced the largest donation of taxpayers money to a private foundation in Australian history.

Half a billion dollars was given to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, a private foundation with only six full-time staff at the time.

That's why we're calling on Mr Turnbull to return the reef money. Here's what we know so far:

• There was no tender process for the donation and the foundation never applied for the money.
   
• The Prime Minister was present at the meeting with the foundation and he personally told the chair, Dr John Schubert about the donation. It appears no public servants were present.
   
• Before receiving the donation the budget for the foundation was only $9 million and it only employed six full time staff.
   
• The negotiations for  the contract that governs the half a billion dollars of taxpayers' money only began after the money had been announced and committed by the government.
   
• The foundation has acknowledged the biggest threats to the reef include climate change and land clearing, yet the foundation has made clear none of its work goes to act against climate change or land clearing.
   
• All the probity checks and balances which ordinarily apply to expenditure by government agencies will not apply to spending decisions made by the foundation.

Effectively, half a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money has been given away without process, probity or policy justification.
 
The future of the reef should not be determined behind closed doors by Mr Turnbull’s mates......

Labor will continue to pursue this through the Senate Inquiry process and all other avenues available to the opposition.

Australian Attorney-General releases a draft bill which will allow the gaoling of Australian citizens for 10 years if they refuse to reveal passwords or encryption codes

According to Crikey.com.au on 15 August 2018:

In addition to its village idiot approach to undermining end-to-end encryption in new surveillance laws, the government is also seeking a blunt-force trauma approach: it wants to jail people for a decade if they refuse to give up the password to their devices.

Under the draft Assistance and Access Bill 2018 unveiled yesterday, the government is giving police, spy agencies and regulators like the ATO the power to demand that tech companies help them plant malware on computers and phones to help it defeat end-to-end encryption.

See Exposure Draft for Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018: A Bill for an Act to amend the law relating to telecommunications, computer access warrants and search warrants, and for other purposes

Political Cartoons of the Week

Nick  Anderson

David Pope

Cathy Wilcox

Hands off! The ABC pays its own way, says ABC boss

The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June 2018:

ABC boss Michelle Guthrie has dramatically hit back at the Liberal Party over its call to privatise the public broadcaster, vowing the ABC will not be a "punching bag" for political and vested interests, and labelling the attacks as cynical, misplaced and ignorant.

In a provocative speech intended to "call out" the ABC's critics, Ms Guthrie also presented new data showing the broadcaster generates as much annual economic activity as it receives from taxpayers.

And she declared the public views the ABC as a "priceless asset" that should not be sold, no matter how much a commercial buyer might be prepared to fork out.

"[Australians] regard the ABC as one of the great national institutions [and] deeply resent it being used as a punching bag by narrow political, commercial or ideological interests", Ms Guthrie said.

"Inherent in the drive against the independent public broadcaster is a belief that it can be pushed and prodded into different shapes to suit the prevailing climate. It can't. Nor should it be."

Ms Guthrie said she wanted to respond specifically to the motion passed by the Liberal Party federal council at the weekend calling for the ABC to be sold off, "even if others are keen to downplay it".

ABC Managing Director, Michelle Guthrie, speech at the Melbourne Press Club, 19 June 2018:

For those who prefer an abacus-type approach to this debate, I have some fresh information. How do you put a price on the value of the ABC? In pursuit of that answer, the ABC has commissioned Deloitte Access Economics to do some research. Their report is still being compiled and will be released next month. The early findings are interesting. They show that the ABC contributed more than $1 billion to the Australian economy in the last financial year - on a par with the public investment in the organisation.  Far from being a drain on the public purse, the audience, community and economic value stemming from ABC activity is a real and tangible benefit.....

Deloitte calculates that the ABC is helping to sustain more than 6000 full-time equivalent jobs across the economy. It means that for every 3 full-time equivalent jobs created by the ABC, there are another 2 supported in our supply chain – local artists, writers, technicians, transport workers and many more. In hard figures, the research shows that the ABC helps to sustain 2,500 full-time equivalent jobs in addition to the 4000 women and men who are directly employed by the public broadcaster.

The Turnbull Government and the Liberal Party are well aware that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) generates income and the government is a beneficiary.

The 2016-17 annual report, which like all the public broadcaster's annual reports is tabled in parliament, shows the ABC received $1.03 billion in federal government funding.

It also received $70.4 million in own-source revenue (sale goods/rendering services etc.) and recorded a total of $1.03 billion in own-source income.

In addition, that same financial year the ABC paid the Turnbull Federal Government a one-off dividend of $14 million.

But then again, the repeated funding cuts have never been about the ABC living within its means or paying its own way, 

The Liberal and Nationals only ever seem to want to privatise government agencies which return money to treasury - after all their silvertail mates are not interested in cheaply buying businesses that aren't capable of being turned into private enterprise cash cows.

At last! A way to gaol the entire Turnbull Government

Excerpts from the  Explanatory Memorandum for CRIMINAL CODE AMENDMENT (IMPERSONATING A COMMONWEALTH BODY) BILL 2017

The Criminal Code Amendment (Impersonating a Commonwealth Body) Bill 2017 (the Bill) will introduce new offences and a new injunction power to prohibit and prevent conduct amounting to false representation of a Commonwealth body….

It is essential that the public can trust in the legitimacy and accuracy of statements made by Commonwealth bodies. The amendments are critical to ensure the public has confidence in the legitimacy of communications emanating from Commonwealth bodies, thereby safeguarding the proper functioning of Government…..

The Bill introduces a primary offence where the person is reckless as to whether their conduct will result in, or is reasonably capable of resulting in, a false representation. These amendments also create a new aggravated offence where a person engages in such conduct with the intent to obtain a gain, cause a loss, or influence the exercise of a public duty.

This bill finally passed both house of the Australian Parliament on 18 June 2018.

Of course the bill doesn’t actually allow the gaoling of every member of the Turnbull Coalition Government for two to five years.

A government whose members have turned the uttering of outright lies and the continual misrepresentation of fact into art forms. Who only pretend to be governing in the interests of the people.

But a voter can dream, can't she?

This bill was created with the sole purpose of providing the Turnbull Government with a weapon to use during the forthcoming election campaign.

Over $4 billion of taxpayers money being spent on Snowy 2.0 and they get what?

The Turnbull Coalition Government in Canberra and the Hodgman Liberal Government in Tasmania have laboured to produce two new energy schemes - Snowy 2.0 and the "Battery of the Nation".

These schemes are being touted as ‘clean energy’ providing stability across the nation’s power networks, supply into the future and cheaper consumer costs.

One small problem……

Both are pumped hydro systems which will actually use more power than they generate as their electricity consumption will be high.

That is, the total megawatts of electricity from other sources required to pump the water into the hydroelectric plant will exceed the megawatts of electricity produced by the plant.

Not all the potential electricity produced by the plant is realised, because pumping water uphill and, the conversions of the potential energy to kinetic energy to electricity is less than 100% efficient across each stage of the entire process. It seems efficiency loss would run somewhere between 20% to 40%.

Then there are the environmental effects.

According to Union of Concerned Scientists:

Hydropower projects can reduce the flows in rivers downstream if the upstream flows are trapped behind a reservoir and/or diverted into canals that take the water off stream to a generation unit. Lowering the flows in a river can alter water temperatures and degrade habitat for plants and animals. Less water in the river can also reduce oxygen levels which damage water quality.

Water is typically stored behind a dam and released through the turbines when power is needed. This creates artificial flow patterns in the downstream river that may be very different from the flow patterns a river would naturally experience. For example, rivers fed mostly by snowmelt may experience much higher flows in the winter and spring than the summer and fall. Hydropower operations may differ from these natural flow patterns, which has implications for downstream riparian and aquatic species.  If water levels downstream of a hydropower project fluctuate wildly because of generation operations, fish could be stranded in suddenly shallow waters. If operations cause a more static flow schedule throughout the year than what the river would normally experience, the movement of sediment along a river section could be disrupted, reducing habitat for aquatic species. Fewer seasonal flow events could also cause a riparian corridor to thicken into a less dynamic channel as saplings that would usually be seasonally thinned by high flows are able to mature.

Dams can also block the migration of fish that swim upstream to reach spawning grounds. 

In addition, large dams created in heavily forested areas have been known to produce high levels of methane into the water and air in the period following construction.

The Snowy Mountains Scheme already contains one power station which includes capacity for pumped hydro - Tumut 3 Power Station at Talbingo Dam. It has a maximum 600 MW capacity and reportedly rarely uses its pumped hydro due to at least 30% efficiency loss. For every 1MWh of pumping the amount of generation that results is only 0.7 MWh of electricity. Operating hours when storage full is 40 hours.

The proposed Snowy 2.0 hydro scheme will have a maximum 2,000 MW capacity and will run an energy deficit as there will be an est. 24% difference between the amount of energy required to pump the water in and turn it into electricity and the amount of electricity the scheme actually produces. Operating hours when storage full is expected to be up to 7.3 days.

Its pumping storage is expected to have a life time of 40-60 years and for that the Australian taxpayer is expected to watch at least $4.5$ billion leave general revenue and go towards its construction.

It will the eighth power plant constructed within the Snowy Mountain Scheme.

Snowy 2.0 will be inserted 1km underground somewhere between Talbingo and Tantangra reservoirs. 

Rivers which feed the Snowy Mountain Scheme are the Tumbarumba, Tooma, Tumut, Eucumbene, Snowy, Jindabyne and Goodradigbee - their flows are expected to decrease over time due to climate change and, it is predicted that median water runoff into the scheme will be 13% lower within the next 50 years.

The bottom line is that the entire Snowy Mountains scheme (including 2.0) will very likely be water hungry in the lifetime of today's primary school kids and operating on ageing infrastructure. It is also likely that by that time the amount of electricity it can produce will have fallen.

It is a continuing marvel that the Howard, Abbott and Turnbull governments all only seriously considered those energy schemes which are at the higher end of the negative impact scale. 

The 2006 Howard Government's Switkowski report into the feasibility of nuclear power generation is a case in point. Now in approaching a large-scale renewable energy project this current federal government again choses one with a long list of potential negatives.

For the life of me I cannot see why solar, wind and wave power frightens Liberal and Nationals MPs and senators so much, when overseas experience shows just how successfully these can be harnessed by national governments that believe in climate change and the need for mitigation measures.

Reference Material

Snowy Hydro:

Snowy 2.0 feasibility study information and reports:

A short summary booklet on the feasibility study is available, click here.

To view the publicly available chapters of the feasibility study, go to the 2.0 Feasibility Study page here.

The Marsden Jacob Associates report (an independent expert economic analysis of the changing energy market) commissioned as part of the Snowy 2.0 feasibility study is available, click here.

Map found at Wikipedia