A reminder of just how long the fossil fuel industry has been lying about climate change and why this is so important in 2022......

 

In recent years there have been a number of media and legal journals reporting on individuals, communities and classes of people suing multinational mining, oil, gas and coal corporations with regard to the environmental and climate change consequences of their business policies and actions.

One of the telling points being made before the courts is 'what did the company know and when did it know it'.

Although the facts set out below refer to the fossil fuel industry, it is time rural, regional and outer metropolitan communities on the Australian East Coast began a search in the records of federal, state, local governments and their agencies/agents, for all documents, minutes, memos, emails, as well as Hansard and media articles or comments, which reveal 'what governments knew and when they knew it'. 

It's well past time that the level of private litigation increases — because these three tiers of government will not stop: a) giving permission for urban development on floodplains or geologically unstable land; b) all but ignoring high greenhouse gas emissions by industry & business; c) refusing to act on the high rate of land clearance & destructive logging of native forest which exacerbates land mass temperature rise or d) failing to seriously address the climate risk associated with the millions of vulnerable residential dwellings which will not be able to withstand the erratic rolling unnatural disasters anticipated to hit Australia within the next 8-28 years; unless the courts begin to hand down judgments that cumulatively cost them billions in any election cycle and through budgetary pain force government to act.

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

In 1959 — years before some reading this post were born —

the American Petroleum Institute (API) along with the great and good of the oil industry celebrated 100 years of drilling for oil in the USA.

At that centennial celebration nuclear weapons physicist Edward Teller addressed the around 300-strong audience.

According to a later account of this address, in part he stated:

Ladies and gentlemen, I am to talk to you about energy in the future. I will start by telling you why I believe that the energy resources of the past must be supplemented. First of all, these energy resources will run short as we use more and more of the fossil fuels. But I would [...] like to mention another reason why we probably have to look for additional fuel supplies. And this, strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere. [....] Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. [....] The carbon dioxide is invisible, it is transparent, you can’t smell it, it is not dangerous to health, so why should one worry about it?

Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect [....] It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe…..

At present the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 2 per cent over normal. By 1970, it will be perhaps 4 per cent, by 1980, 8 per cent, by 1990, 16 per cent [roughly 360 parts per million], if we keep on with our exponential rise in the use of purely conventional fuels. By that time, there will be a serious additional impediment for the radiation leaving the earth. Our planet will get a little warmer. It is hard to say whether it will be 2 degrees Fahrenheit or only one or 5. [my yellow highlighting]

But when the temperature does rise by a few degrees over the whole globe, there is a possibility that the icecaps will start melting and the level of the oceans will begin to rise. Well, I don’t know whether they will cover the Empire State Building or not, but anyone can calculate it by looking at the map and noting that the icecaps over Greenland and over Antarctica are perhaps five thousand feet thick.

Robert Galbraith Dunlop, Chairman of Sun Oil Co and a director on the API board at the time, was present when Teller informed the oil industry it was contaminating the atmosphere.

In 1965 at an annual API conference its president Frank Ikard gave an address titled “Meeting the Challenges of 1966” which informed his audience of the contents of a recent published report submitted to President Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee titled “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment”.

Ikard stated: “One of the most important predictions of the report is that carbon dioxide is being added to the Earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at such a rate that by the year 2000 the heat balance will be so modified as possibly to cause marked changes in climate beyond local or even national efforts. The report further states, and I quote: “...the pollution from internal combustion engines is so serious, and is growing so fast, that an alternative nonpolluting means of powering automobiles, buses and trucks is likely to become a national necessity.” [my yellow highlighting]

Then again in 1968 an unpublished paper commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute was delivered in final form to API. Again, at this time Robert Dunlop of Sun Oil was still a current director & by now also a former Chair of the American Petroleum Institute (1965 to 1967).

Here are the details of that paper…..

“Sources, Abundance, and Fate of Gaseous Atmospheric Pollutants”, Final Report, Robinson, E. “Elmer” (Author) & Robbins, R. C. “Bob” (Contributor - American Petroleum Institute, Stanford Research Institute). First published in 1968 by Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, Calif. USA, with supplementary information supplied in1969 and 1971, 123 pages with diagram, table & references at:

http://chr.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Exhibit-3H-Sources-Abundance-and-Fate-of-Gaseous-Atmospheric-Pollutants.pdf

Excerpts:

It seems ironic that in our view of air pollution technology we take such a serious concern with small-scale events such as the photochemical reactions of trace concentrations of hydrocarbons, the effect on vegetation of a fraction of a part per million of S0₂, when the abundant pollutants which we generally ignore because they have little local effect, CO₂ and submicron particles, may be the cause of serious world-wide environmental changes….. [my yellow highlighting]

Possible Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

We are concerned with the possible changes in atmospheric CO₂ content because CO₂ plays a significant role in establishing the thermal balance of the earth. This occurs because CO₂ is a strong absorber and back radiator in the infrared portion of the spectrum, especially between 12 and 18. As such CO₂ prevents the loss of considerable heat energy from the earth and radiates it back to the lower atmosphere, the so-called “greenhouse effect. Thus the major changes which are speculated about as possibly resulting from a change in atmospheric CO₂ are related to a change in the earth's temperature….

If the earth's temperature increases significantly, a number of events might be expected to occur, including the melting of the Antarctic ice cap, a rise in sea levels, warming of the oceans, and an increase in photosynthesis. The first two items are of course related since the increase in sea level would be mainly due to the added water from the ice cap. [my yellow highlighting]

Estimates of the possible rate at which the Antarctic ice cap might melt have been made….

Changes in ocean temperature would change the distribution of fish and cause a retreat in the polar sea ice. This has happened in recent time on a very limited scale….

Summary of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere

In summary, Revelle makes the point that man is now engaged in a vast geophysical experiment with his environment, the earth. Significant temperature changes are almost certain to occur by the year 2000 and these could bring about climatic changes…..

[my yellow highlighting]

The following year saw this report sent to API, “Sources, Abundance, and Fate of Gaseous Atmospheric Pollutants: Project PR-6755, Supplemental Report” (1969) at:

http://chr.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Exhibit-3I-Sources-Abundance-and-Fate-of-Gaseous-Atmospheric-Pollutants-Supplement.pdf

Yale Environment 360, 30 November 2022:

The Center for International Environmental Law, an advocacy group Muffett now runs, published excerpts in 2016. Now, the paper — along with a follow-up that Robinson and Robbins produced in 1969 — is playing a key role in a wave of lawsuits seeking to hold oil companies accountable for climate change.

Minnesota, Delaware, Rhode Island, Baltimore, and Honolulu are among about two dozen U.S. states and localities suing the industry. Some of the cases seek compensation for the damage wrought by climate-driven disasters like floods, fires, and heat waves, plus the cost of preparing for future impacts. Others allege violations of state or local laws prohibiting fraud and other deceitful business practices, or requiring companies to warn consumers of a product’s potential dangers. The defendants, which vary from case to case, include the American Petroleum Institute as well as major companies such as ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips.

The suits’ common thread is the charge that the industry has long understood emissions from oil and gas combustion would drive warming — and create a host of major global risks — but carried out a decades-long misinformation campaign to confuse the public and prevent a shift to cleaner fuels. Most cite Robinson and Robbins’ work. The pair’s reports have been proffered internationally too, most notably in a Dutch case in which a court last year ordered Shell to slash its carbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030; the company is appealing. European courts have been more favorable for cases seeking to force such reductions or push governments to strengthen climate policies, while U.S. suits generally aim at extracting financial penalties or compensation from companies….. [my yellow highlighting]

Read the full article here.

Further reading

https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Smoke-Fumes-FINAL.pdf

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/162144/Presentation%20Geoffrey%20Supran.pdf

“Assessing ExxonMobil’s climate change communications”, Geoffrey Supran, PhD, History of Science, Harvard University

Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme is slowly but surely revealing the nastiness at the core of what was an extreme federal government & an increasingly politicized public service

 

Details of Scott Morrison's seven year war on the poor and vulnerable are being exposed.... 

The Saturday Paper, 5-11 November 2022:

Robo-debt: Liberals knew it was illegal before it started

Rick Morton, senior reporter.

@SquigglyRick

November 5, 2022

David Mason was the first person to give advice about a thought bubble program that would become robo-debt. In an email, he called it for what it was: a program with no legal basis that would result in serious reputational harm if it was allowed to go ahead.

His assessment should have been the end of the perverse experiment. Instead, this algorithmic program was used to terrorise welfare recipients for more than five years.

Mason was an acting director within the Department of Social Services (DSS) means testing policy branch when he was asked, in October 2014, to provide the advice. The service delivery arm of government, then known as the Department of Human Services (DHS), had cooked up a potential budget savings proposal that involved splitting taxation data into fortnightly blocks, when social security benefits are also paid, and using this to figure out if a welfare recipient had earned too much money and needed to pay back a debt.

“We would not be able to let any debts calculated in this manner reach a tribunal,” Mason warned. “It’s flawed, as the suggested calculation method averaging employment income over an extended period does not accord with legislation, which specifies that the employment income is assessed fortnightly.”

Again, Mason reiterated that the team could not “see how such decisions could be defended in a tribunal or court, particularly when DHS have the legislative authority to seek employment income information from employers”. He stressed that “the approach could cause reputational damage to DHS and DSS”.

On October 31, 2014, the team asked for a second opinion from within the DSS’s legal branch. The same person who had sought advice from Mason, Mark Jones, emailed principal lawyer Anne Pulford to note that the two departments were working together on payment assurance, as was normal, but noted “a strategy is being considered that requires legal advice prior to proposing it to government”.

This is important in establishing a provenance for the controversial robo-debt idea: although governments enthusiastically set expectations for savings in budget cycles, the robo-debt scheme itself was the brainchild of someone or some group within the DHS.

The legal advice from DSS, provided by lawyer Simon Jordan on December 18, 2014, was almost as unambiguous as David Mason’s: “In our view, a debt amount derived from annual smoothing or smoothing over a defined period of time may not be derived consistently with the legislative framework.”

This advice was a co-opinion from Pulford, who features repeatedly in the years to come.

“Unemployed people are… almost by definition, they have vulnerable cohorts within them. There would be people who would enter into agreements to repay debts which they had not incurred in the first place.”

Five days later, Scott Morrison became the minister for Social Services.

The end. Or there things might have rested were it not for a gruesome lack of imagination on behalf of dozens of players across government. It is not that they lacked the ability to conceive or design this wicked hunter’s trap of a debt policy – that is well recorded – but that these figures apparently possessed an inability, at all levels of the public service, to wonder what the final outcome of such a hideous program might be.

And it was this: at least seven families believe the suicide of a loved one was connected to the receipt of a robo-debt letter. Hundreds of thousands of Australians were hounded by government officers and debt collectors for money they never owed.

To be clear, these people owed no debt – not because of some administrative technicality but because the Department of Human Services concocted a system that literally made them up, despite the above advice being provided before the program even made it into pilot form.

“Commissioner, we anticipate that the evidence to be adduced may be sufficient to show that the reason why no authoritative advice on the legality of the robo-debt scheme – and by that I mean from the solicitor-general or other eminently qualified counsel external to the department – the reason why no advice was obtained prior to the advice of the solicitor-general in September 2019 was because advice in one form or another within the Department of Social Services or Services Australia [formerly DHS] created an expectation within those departments that the external and authoritative advice may not be favourable in the sense that it may not support the legality of the scheme,” senior counsel assisting the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, Justin Greggery, KC, said on Monday.

Indeed, what has emerged in an explosive first week of full hearings is information that has been actively hidden from the public for almost six years. This includes multiple rounds of “advice” seen by the most senior people in both departments over many years before officials finally scurried to ask the solicitor-general for advice in 2019. The answers to questions sought by Services Australia in September of that year should have surprised nobody who had been paying attention.

The solicitor-general was very clear: the use of smoothed or apportioned tax office data “cannot itself provide an adequate factual foundation for a debt decision”. Further, his advice noted that the government couldn’t use the same data in the same way to essentially shake down past or current welfare recipients by presenting it to them and demanding they provide evidence that they did not incur a debt.

This advice continued a piece-by-piece demolition of the entire framework for robo-debt, noting that – as Greggery put it – compliance officers are required to investigate other sources of information, such as employer records, to justify the assumption that a debt exists. They cannot simply outsource this to welfare recipients by issuing threatening letters.

“Failure to respond does not provide positive proof of a debt, and the decision-maker cannot speculate about why a person may have failed to respond and to treat that speculation as evidence of a fact,” Greggery said on Monday, summarising some of the solicitor-general’s reasons.

“The question raised by the solicitor-general’s advice is whether the Commonwealth government was, prior to that point, recklessly indifferent to the lawfulness or otherwise of the use of averaged PAYG ATO data obtained from the taxation office to allege and recover debts.”

“Reckless indifference” is a phrase no barrister uses lightly. It is also a crucial element in the civil law of misfeasance in public office. In its own advice on the tort, the Australian Government Solicitor notes that the element of “bad faith” requires one of two things: either intentional harm caused by knowingly acting beyond their legal power or the defendant having been “recklessly indifferent to whether the act was beyond power and recklessly indifferent to the likelihood of harm being caused to the plaintiff”.

The story of robo-debt is one in which those responsible for it gradually knew less and less, and with less certainty, about its dimensions, about what it was going to be used for and how. What happened between 2014, when departmental advice cast near total doubt over the legality of robo-debt, and 2019, when the solicitor-general’s advice was finally delivered and led to the scheme’s ultimate end, is a collective act of leaning in to a studied ignorance.

We now know, from the evidence so far, that departments had all the legal power needed to compel information from businesses but that, apparently, the government “didn’t want [the] burden to be on employers”, according to a senior official at the DHS.

We know that design decisions were made in relation to the debt letters sent to robo-debt victims, which shunted them deliberately online rather than providing a contact number, because “past experience shows that if an alternative phone number is provided a significant proportion of recipients won’t engage online”.

We know the DSS, faced with an investigation by the Commonwealth ombudsman in early 2017, considered withholding the 2014 legal advice from that office and, even though it appears to have relented, had new advice drawn up by the same co-author of the 2014 document, Anne Pulford, which was used to hoodwink the ombudsman’s office and “show” robo-debt was legal.

We know that, once this convenient deception was established in the eyes of the ombudsman, its subsequent reports declaring robo-debt to be consistent with the legislative framework were used by the DSS as de facto legal justification for a scheme that was – and that they had every reason to expect was – illegal.

“You must have understood,” Justin Greggery put to Pulford during questioning on Wednesday, “that you were being asked to walk back the clear terms of the 2014 advice in the context of what was happening in the public arena with the robo-debt scheme.”

It was Greggery’s contention that nothing had changed in the question put to Pulford in 2014 and again in 2017, but somehow the answer had.

“This was the most hypothetical advice that could be provided to legally justify some aspect of the scheme then in existence,” he pressed, adding that it had no practical application at all.

Pulford agreed it was “hypothetical” but said she believed she was answering a “quite narrow and quite technically focused general question” put to her by acting group manager Emma Kate McGuirk, who emailed on January 18, 2017, and asked: “As discussed, I am looking for advice, please, regarding a last resort method of debt identification for income support recipients … is it lawful to use an averaging method as a last resort to determine the debt?”

Pulford says she does not recall the robo-debt program being mentioned in this context. That being the case, Greggery pushed, why did emails written by Pulford mention a “business need” to “justify” the question being asked?

“The difficulty with you saying that you don’t believe the robo-debt scheme was raised is the evidence that you have given that you simply cannot recall the context of what was occurring socially, or politically, or within the office, or within your department, at the time that you were asked this question,” Greggery said.

“As a purely academic question about administrative decision-making, one doesn’t need to have regard to a business need do they?” No, Pulford agreed. She was then asked if she felt pressure from above to massage her advice.

“I believe I felt pressure from Ms McGuirk to provide an answer that justified taking action in circumstances which the broad general advice in 2014 would not have supported on its face,” she said.

“I now cannot recall whether that was done in full awareness of the robo-debt scheme being in full flight or not.”

McGuirk, who had involvement with robo-debt for only a matter of weeks and who took the stand briefly on Wednesday afternoon, said she could not recall this conversation with Pulford but accepted one must have happened, as it is referred to in the email.

Greggery and Pulford argued back and forth about whether the 2017 advice was just a “rehash” of the same 2014 question with a different answer. Greggery’s view concluded like this: “Despite all the investigation in the world, if all you’re left with is smoothed income, you still arrive at the same answer that you gave in 2014. Legally, the absence of evidence doesn’t amount to positive proof of a debt, correct?”

Pulford wrote a separate email in February 2017 to a colleague in which she noted that “DSS policy has become more comfortable with the DHS approach of using smoothed income, given it is being applied as a last resort”.

She continued, “This appears to represent a change in DSS position, although it doesn’t represent a change in the legal position.”

On the stand, Pulford accepted that this meant the robo-debt scheme was, and remained, “legally flawed”.

In isolation, it is conceivable that the different cogs in the social service machine really had become aligned with the original DHS proposal. After all, despite early and significant doubt over its legality, the idea still made it to the minister’s office in a joint executive minute alongside a bundle of options presented for the 2015-16 budget.

A new minister at that time, Scott Morrison, with his eyes on the Treasury, liked the “PAYG” element. Once he had seen it, there was apparently no turning back.

“Minister Morrison has requested that the DHS bring forward proposals for strengthening the integrity of the welfare system,” DSS branch manager Catherine Dalton wrote to Pulford in January 2015.

“DHS has developed the attached minute and, given the quick turnaround required to the Social Security Performance and Analysis Branch, has provided comments highlighting the need for legislative change, as well as the shift away from underlying principles of social security law.

“We would appreciate your scrutiny of the proposals and advice on any legal implications/impediments. What action would need to be undertaken to resolve legal issues, as well as some indication of the lead time required to obtain legislative change?”

This, of course, was never done. After the PAYG option was cleared for advancement by Morrison, DHS drafted a “new policy proposal”, including a checklist that indicated “no legislation is required”.

So far the inquiry has heard only from DSS public servants.

What began as an idea floated within the public service to please political masters had done exactly that. Now that it involved the knowledge of those politicians, the pressure to deliver was many orders of magnitude higher than before. All of this was happening despite additional “legal questions” being identified in 2015 by internal DSS lawyer David Hertzberg. Handling a jarring disconnect between what was now being asked, and the ever-growing certainty that robo-debt had no legislative basis whatsoever, required an unlearning of unhelpful facts or the almost comical evasion of knowledge.

Take the events of mid-2018, when the DHS referred an Administrative Appeals Tribunal to DSS to consider an appeal. At stake was a robo-debt case that threatened to derail the program, or at least add to mounting and sustained public backlash.

The AAT decision so alarmed DSS officials that they punctured a longstanding refusal to get outside legal counsel regarding the legality of robo-debt and enlisted the private law firm Clayton Utz to provide an opinion on the matter.

In the eyes of those same officials, it was not a good opinion.

“In our view, the Social Security Act in its present form does not allow the Department of Social Services to determine the Youth Allowance or New Starts recipient fortnightly income by taking an amount reported to the ATO for a person as a consequence of data-matching processes and notionally attributing that amount to or averaging that amount over particular fortnightly periods,” the draft advice says.

This draft advice was sent to DSS principal lawyer Anna Fredericks on August 14, 2018, and must have produced an extraordinary cognitive dissonance among legal officers there.

Fredericks emailed colleagues and said the advice from Cain Sibley and John Bird was “somewhat unhelpful”.

“[They] called me to discuss as the advice is somewhat unhelpful if the mechanism is something that the department wants to continue to rely on,” Fredericks said in the email, sent to Melanie Metz and Pulford. “Cain advised that they might be able to rework the advice subtly if this causes catastrophic issues for us, but that there is not a lot of room for them to do so.”

Backed into a corner, someone within DSS decided to deal with the problem by pretending it didn’t exist. The Clayton Utz invoice was paid but the department never asked for the draft advice to be “converted” to final, more “official”, advice.

Was this not extraordinary? No, Pulford said, because this kind of thing happened all the time. If the advice on any given matter was not favourable or judged as no longer needed, it would not be finalised.

Commissioner Catherine Holmes, who has shown herself to be a fair but direct chair of the inquiry, simply said: “I am appalled.” ……

After the first full week of her royal commission, a few things are clear. Robo-debt was a wicked scheme. It was illegal, and many people knew or ought to have known it was illegal from its conception. Despite this understanding, which never vanished, it was rolled out in such a way as to herd past and current welfare recipients, like cattle, through deliberately designed gateways that maximised the amount of money they could be forced to pay.

For many, they never owed a cent. This was a particularly cruel abuse of the Australian public, at scale, by their own government, which persisted – indeed, which was covered up – for five years against truly overwhelming evidence that it should never have been allowed to begin.

Read the full article here.

"Since Premier Dominic Perrottet was appointed NSW treasurer in January 2017, he has presided over an unprecedented, $106 billion surge in taxpayer debt" and "has been systematically misleading" NSW voters about how he created this multi-billion dollar debt mountain

What the Premier is telling the people of New South Wales

We have transformed our state - and we will keep transforming it.

We are going to build our way forward.#SMHInfrastructure

— Dom Perrottet (@Dom_Perrottet) May 31, 2022

Another perspective on the "transformation of our state" 

From the pen of Financial Review contributing editor, Christopher Joye, @cjoye, Portfolio Manager & Chief Investment Officer at Coolabah Capital…...

Live Wire, 25 June 2022:

In the AFR I write that after 12 years of Liberal leadership, encompassing four premiers and four treasurers, NSW is sadly degenerating into one of the worst run states in Australia.

Since Premier Dominic Perrottet was appointed NSW treasurer in January 2017, he has presided over an unprecedented, $106 billion surge in taxpayer debt. That means Perrottet and his fierce internal rival, Treasurer Matt Kean, will have saddled NSW residents with $13,000 of extra debt per person. One day, that debt has to be repaid.

If the annual interest rates on this debt converge to current levels around 4.2 per cent, NSW taxpayers will be paying almost $7 billion a year in interest alone. Put differently, NSW residents will be spending the equivalent of seven new hospitals each year in interest.

It is ironic that supposedly imprudent Labor leaders are running rings around NSW, with resource-rich states like Western Australia and Queensland reporting budget surpluses, which has allowed them to slash debt issuance as the economy rebounds post pandemic. Even Victoria is starting to look more fiscally conservative. In the coming financial year, NSW will issue twice as much debt as Queensland, one-third more than Victoria, and about six times more than Western Australia. It is also more than quadrupling South Australia’s debt supply.

In a desperate attempt to cling to power, Treasurer Matt Kean has blown a $7.1 billion improvement in NSW's budget with $8.8 billion in new spending next financial year alone. This means that NSW will issue almost $10 billion more debt in the 2023 financial year than it did in 2022 when the budget was smashed by COVID-19. Perrottet and Kean are literally stealing from future generations to bribe the current one to allow them to remain in power.

While some of this debt was unavoidable due to the pandemic, Perrottet’s government increasingly resembles a degenerate gambler, addicted to spending money they don't have.

As a lender to the state, my worry is that that this tale of mismanagement gets worse. It turns out that Perrottet’s government has been systematically misleading taxpayers. The 39 year old Premier promotes himself as the great "asset recycler". Perrottet claims he is selling taxpayer-owned infrastructure to invest this money in new infrastructure….

But this was untrue. Instead of funding new infrastructure, Perrottet took $7 billion of the $9.3 billion in WestConnex proceeds and put it in a speculative investment vehicle called the NSW Generations Fund (NGF). Technically, the money was actually allocated to a subsidiary fund inside the NGF called the Debt Retirement Fund.

Since 2018, not a single cent of the $7 billion has been used to pay for infrastructure. It has instead been gambled on stocks and illiquid junk bonds, amongst other risky assets. Amazingly, this has involved lending money to Russia ($75 million), Saudi Arabia ($45 million), China ($225 million), UAE ($15 million), Cayman Islands ($30 million) and Angola ($15 million).

Perrottet might have actually helped build President Vladimir Putin’s new palace rather than NSW roads, schools or hospitals. (After we expressly warned this was nuts last year, NSW has had to write-off $30 million of the money it lent to Russia.)…. [my yellow highlighting]

Yet in 2022, NSW taxpayer’s $7 billion still sits in the NGF. It is still invested in listed equities, private equity, and junk bonds. And it has lost money in 2022 (as it did in 2020) as markets have tumbled. In fact, since its 2018 inception, the NGF has now formally failed to meet its own performance benchmark of a return in excess of inflation plus 4.5 per cent.

The question is who benefits from this scheme? Who has a vested interest in it? Unsurprisingly, it is the folks punting the money. That is, TCorp. The NGF represents about 15 per cent of TCorp’s assets. Former Perpetual CEO David Deverall, who runs TCorp, has been desperate to turn it into a global asset manager, and aggressively grow its capital.

While TCorp blames NSW Treasury for the now-discarded plan for NSW to issue tens of billions in extra debt to enable TCorp to speculate on markets, the truth is that TCorp are the ones who directly benefit. Across TCorp’s 180 staff, the average compensation cost in 2021 was a staggering $323,000 per person. That is almost double the average pay of the RBA’s 1,300 plus employees.

The NGF is currently worth $15 billion, partly because it has been bolstered by the asinine decision to divert billions of NSW taxpayer royalties and income to it, and due to a debt-funded transfer of more than $2 billion to the NGF in 2020, despite the NSW budget being in record deficit.

This revenue had to be replaced with extra NSW debt, which explicitly contradicts the legislated objectives of the Debt Retirement Fund. These focus on three goals: maintaining NSW’s AAA rating, which Perrottet lost in 2020; reducing the cost of NSW borrowing, which has soared; and repaying NSW debt.

After widespread criticism last year, NSW suddenly stopped diverting taxpayer revenue to the NGF and then belatedly committed to using $11 billion from the sale of the second-half of WestConnex in 2021 to repay taxpayer debt.

Yet Perrottet and Treasurer Kean still refuse to invest the original $7 billion from the sale of the first half of WestConnex in 2018 into the infrastructure they promised. They also refuse to use this money, and the NGF’s remaining (partially debt-funded) $8 billion, to meet the Debt Retirement Fund’s legislated mission of repaying taxpayer debt.

We can quantify the cost of this madness: Perrottet and Kean would rather NSW taxpayers spend $630 million a year in extra interest on the $15 billion in new debt they will issue next year (but could have avoided) just to allow their TCorp pals to gamble this money on markets…..

Our interest in this matter is that as a fund manager, we lend money to all Australian states, including NSW. And we expect them to behave ethically from an ESG (specifically the “g” or governance) perspective. The huge ESG conflict of interest at the heart of the NGF—whereby NSW taxpayers have to pay $630 million a year in extra interest to allow TCorp to continue to punt their money—is unacceptable to all stakeholders.

Kean says he cares about ESG concerns. Time will tell if this is actually true.

Read the full article here.

The Kitching saga is one stoush an increasingly belligerent Morrison should have avoided

The Sydney Morning Herald, 24 March 2022, excerpts from article by Niki Savva, political commentator, author, former staffer to past prime minister John Howard and past treasurer Peter Costello:

Scott Morrison is kidding himself if he thinks the South Australian election was decided only on state issues, that his standing had no bearing on the vote, and that what happened last weekend can’t be replicated federally.

The Morrison factor was definitely there, and it was big enough to unsettle even more Liberals about their prospects with him at the helm. The result has increased the muttering about regime change.

“He is definitely on the nose here,” one South Australian Liberal said, adding Morrison was a drag on their ticket. Sure Steven Marshall was up against an articulate, charismatic young leader who ran a clever campaign. It still doesn’t explain the extent of the swings in Liberal seats, an omen perhaps for inner urban federal Liberals under threat from independents or Labor.

It’s no good Morrison saying Anthony Albanese is no Mark McGowan and no Peter Malinauskas. Nor is he.

The Prime Minister needed clear air before and after that morale-destroying result to set the scene for the federal budget, which remains the government’s last hope to recover ground. Instead, the focus has been the sordid campaign following the untimely death of Kimberley Kitching.

With so many other issues demanding his attention, including sorting the cost-of-living package in the budget, flood reparations, additional help for Ukraine, uncompleted Liberal NSW preselections, not to mention the bullying accusations levelled against him, Morrison should have kept his distance……

As well as being smart and ambitious, Kitching was a tough player who revelled in political intrigue, making enemies as easily as she made friends. She loved the nickname “Mata Hari” bestowed on her by a Labor MP, a mate, who admired her for not toeing the line, who also warned her to be careful she did not cross that line.

He reckons she never complained to him about her treatment, except that she wanted to be restored to Labor’s Senate tactics committee, from which she had been dismissed. “She was tough, she didn’t want people holding her hand,” he said. “She didn’t ask anyone to feel sorry for her.”

Kitching lost the trust of many on her own side. She was suspected of leaking and undermining colleagues, not only by briefing media – so far Chris Uhlmann and Andrew Bolt have publicly revealed Kitching told them she was concerned Wong would be weak on China – but Coalition MPs, former Liberal Party officials and even senior staff in the Prime Minister’s office.

Politicians leak. And they do have friends across the aisle. But the breadth and depth of hers fed the distrust. The crunch came in June last year when then defence minister Linda Reynolds said in Senate estimates she had been forewarned by a Labor senator she would face questioning over the alleged rape of former staffer Brittany Higgins.

In private meetings later, to prove she was not making it up, Reynolds went so far as to produce for Wong, Gallagher and Keneally, video footage from the Senate chamber showing Kitching approaching her months before in early February before prayers. Reynolds told them this was when Kitching first told her the tactics committee had discussed it and planned to weaponise the alleged rape.

Reynolds also showed them subsequent text messages she had received from Kitching effectively confirming their initial conversation.

The matter had not been discussed in tactics, something Reynolds later accepted, so Kitching’s leak was actually not true. This was a sackable offence in anyone’s language. Kitching was dropped from tactics. Fearing ongoing leaks to their opponents or media, it was no wonder they restricted her access and contact with her……

The final words on this belong to Liberal backbencher Russell Broadbent, first elected to Parliament in 1990, who lost in 1993, was re-elected in 1996, defeated again in 1998, then came back in 2004.

He knows how brutal politics can be, particularly for those like himself who go against the leader or the party line on issues, in his case, on refugees. Broadbent knew and liked Kitching, but has been dismayed such odious insinuations and allegations have flowed from her death.

“Politics breaks people’s hearts. It doesn’t stop their hearts from beating,” he said.

“Questions remain for Albanese and Labor despite his insistence that there was no complaint from Kitching about bullying, however, there is still something unseemly about a prime minister facing so many critical issues getting embroiled in a brutal fight ignited by the death of an opposition politician, particularly as one of his cabinet ministers was a central figure in Kitching’s dismissal from the tactics committee.

One Quote, One YouTube Video & four Tweets of the Week

“I’m still wearing the same glasses, and the same suits,” Morrison said, in reference to Albanese’s new look. “I’m happy in my own skin … When you’re prime minister you can’t pretend to be someone else.” [Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, quoted in The Guardian, March 2022]

I know what you mean...boring. Dyou like his new spectacles?
Morrison:
‘does my brain look big in these?’

😂😂😂😂 he’ll try anything.

— ✳️✳️✳️Marydoll (@heyjimmy299) December 23, 2018

"I’m still wearing the same glasses." Says Scott Morrison, who has changed them at least four times. pic.twitter.com/gckq3VFBlj

— Möbius Ecko 💉💉💉 (@MobiusEcko) March 17, 2022

#ScottyTheGreatPretender….

pic.twitter.com/eyZcJdJvDp

— Cranky Jo🇺🇦 (@JoJSharpe) March 15, 2022

. @ScottMorrisonMP says he’s not pretending to be anyone else …. And yet that seems to be his life’s work pic.twitter.com/jfYd55RM7w

— Patricia Barraclough (@PMBarraclough) March 15, 2022

 

Morrison Government did not finish the 2021 Australian Parliamentary year in a blaze of glory

 

The Australian Parliament House Of Representatives and Senate now stand adjourned until 12 noon on 8 February 2022.

This is how the parliamentary year ended for the Morrison Government – women both inside and outside the parliament were openly critical of the Prime Minister and the government he leads.

Political commentator and author Niki Savva writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 December 2021:

The last time Bridget Archer alerted the Prime Minister’s office in advance that she was considering voting against the government, she says she had two senior members of his staff literally standing over her in her office.

Archer told colleagues at the time, and has since confirmed it to this columnist, that for almost two weeks she felt bullied, threatened and intimidated by the staffers – one male, one female, both of whom have been around politics a long time who should know better – seeking to persuade her to vote with the government.

Archer spoke against the cashless welfare card legislation, then abstained from voting. Her decision triggered a campaign of online abuse …..

Lately, constituents in her notoriously fickle Tasmanian seat of Bass, which she holds with a margin of 0.4 per cent, have been stopping her on the street, saying: “we like you Bridget, but...” The “but” drips with portent for Scott Morrison and the government.

So last Thursday Archer crossed the floor to second a motion by independent Helen Haines for a national commission against corruption. Archer regards the right to stand up for a principle, even if it means going against the government and the Prime Minister, as the defining feature of the party. It’s what makes people like her become a Liberal.

To avoid a repeat of her experience last year, the only people she told in advance of her intention were her staff and Haines. She did not even tell the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, two nights before when she and other MPs ate takeaway pizza and pasta in his office.

When she burst into tears in Morrison’s office, after Frydenberg had escorted her there like an errant schoolgirl, it was an emotional release, not a sign of weakness.

Archer had no problem with Morrison expressing his displeasure. He said his piece. After composing herself, she said hers. She owned her actions. She did not apologise for supporting Haines, she did not take a single backward step. She told Morrison she was neither a “drone” nor a “warm body” – words he later appropriated to describe rebellious backbenchers and convey to the media his tolerance of them.

Archer told Morrison about his staff, pointedly asking that “they stay away from me”. She also made clear she would cross the floor again if necessary. Archer’s experience underlines the importance of Kate Jenkins’ finding that cultural change to tackle bullying and sexual harassment in Parliament House has to come from the top.

Archer reckons the government has got its priorities all wrong. Although she empathises with Gladys Berejiklian, she believes the ICAC was doing its job, arguing such a body – rather than a religious freedom bill – is essential to help restore people’s faith in politicians.

One is a problem which exists that needs to be fixed, the other looks like a fix for a problem which doesn’t exist, as the deeply religious NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet implied on Sky by asking “why now?”

Archer fears the religious discrimination bill could be a “slippery slope”. She says she will vote against it if it impinges on the rights of others, particularly the LGBTIQ community.

At least she will have company with Trent Zimmerman, Dave Sharma and Warren Entsch expressing similar views, which explains why Morrison is in no rush to put it to a vote.

The Prime Minister pretended to be as relaxed about Archer’s actions this time as he was last time, saying what close friends and colleagues they were and what a grand old party he led which allowed members to express themselves freely.

He does that often. Boasts about being good friends with people when really it’s just heavy duty Spakfilla patter, sealing up the cracks or covering his own poor behaviour.

He has done it with Berejiklian too, even though she confided several times to friends he tried to bully her, and while Premier she got her office to tell Morrison’s office to stop undermining and backgrounding against her……

ABC, “7.30” program, 2 December 2021:

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Laura Tingle is with us from Canberra. Laura, as much as governments like to clear the decks at the end of the year, especially going into an election year, there is always unfinished business. What are the leftovers this year that are likely to be significant going into 2022?

LAURA TINGLE, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the leftovers are things that probably never now see the light of day before the election, Leigh.

The big ones are the election promises for an anti-corruption commission - not going to see the light of day at the rate we are going. The government hasn't even tabled its proposed legislation on that and has baulked at letting a debate go on about Helen Haines' alternative model.

The other one is the religious discrimination bill, another election promise. It got about an hour's worth of debate this afternoon in the House of Representatives but will be really struggling now to get debated, if Parliament does indeed come back, and it's losing friends as we go. The Christian lobby today signalled that it was not all that keen on the way the debate was going.

And finally, there was this very last-minute proposal about voter ID legislation which offended a lot of people and outraged them. That's now been dumped very unceremoniously, and Labor insists there wasn't a deal on this, but one of the things that has come up as a bit of a surprise is a move that really puts incredible pressure on charities to declare themselves as political campaigners and that is going to have a huge impact, particularly, I think, in the area of environmental charities.

LEIGH SALES: As we know, trust has been an issue for the Prime Minister in recent times, how did that play into a matter that made headlines today regarding the awarding of a quarantine contract?

LAURA TINGLE: This is a story that's sort of come up a few times since September, Leigh, including when the ABC's Andrew Greene reported it. These are contracts to set up a private quarantine hotel arrangement and it was let by a limited tender to two of Scott Morrison's closest friends, including a former Liberal Party director or deputy director called Scott Briggs.

Now, the Prime Minister was really outraged at the suggestion that he had somehow intervened in this policy or was somehow involved in the letting of the contracts, but once again, because this issue of trust has become such a terrible one and I think separate questions, there's been this focus right through the whole year about transparency and accountability in the awarding of grants, that this is the last thing the Prime Minister needs, particularly on an issue like quarantine where things haven't really gone all that well for the Government this year anyway.

LEIGH SALES: Just to switch the focus to Labor, stakes are also high for Anthony Albanese going into an election year. What do you think are the issues Labor is going to need to get in order over the summer break?

LAURA TINGLE: I think they'll have to look at making sure that they have a sound story on the economy. I think the Government's now vulnerable on that.

They have obviously got their climate policy coming out over this next few days and those are the two really big things that they are going to have to sort out, other than that they have got to look, a bit like Kevin Rudd in 2007, they are sort of like the government, only trustworthy.

LEIGH SALES: Laura Tingle, thanks very much.

LAURA TINGLE: Thanks, Leigh.

Last week 2 MPs crossed the floor to vote against the government - George Christensen & Bridget Archer. Only one of these Members was hauled into the Prime Minister’s office & reduced to tears.

Australian women know why Ms Archer received this special treatment. #auspol pic.twitter.com/L4B14h3rzH

— Senator Jenny McAllister (@jennymcallister) November 29, 2021

 

ABC, “7.30” program, 2 December 2021:

RACHELLE MILLER, FORMER COALITION STAFFER: Today I want to stand in my former workplace and to say again that what happened to me was not okay.

LAURA TINGLE, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Today former political staffer Rachelle Miller said she wanted to tell her story. It involved someone much more powerful and famous - Alan Tudge - currently the Federal Minister for Education and Youth.

Miller first disclosed a relationship with Tudge, her former boss, on Four Corners ‘Inside the Canberra Bubble’ report late last year.

(Excerpt from Four Corners - Inside the Canberra Bubble)

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Rachelle Miller says her affair with Alan Tudge, now acting immigration minister, was completely consensual.

(End of excerpt)

LAURA TINGLE: But today she had a lot more to say and the world has changed considerably since she first spoke out. This week Australians were shocked by the anonymous stories of sexual assault, harassment and bullying in Parliament House.

Today Rachelle Miller put a face to those stories and those stories were not just about assault but about culture and power imbalances.

RACHELLE MILLER: I am fully aware that a year ago I said that my relationship with Minister Alan Tudge was a consensual relationship, but it's much more complicated than that.

When I spoke out, not a single person from this Government contacted me to see if I was okay. One female chief of staff sent me a text and that was it.

LAURA TINGLE: Miller said this was a story about Parliament House and she spoke at exactly the same spot where Scott Morrison commented about the case of another political staffer - Brittany Higgins.

SCOTT MORRISON, PRIME MINISTER (February): Jenny and I spoke last night, and she said to me you have to think about this as a father first. What would you want to happen if it were our girls? Jenny has a way of clarifying things.

LAURA TINGLE: Miller’s intervention today, challenging the voters of Aston to consider the behaviour she alleges of Tudge - a man she claims physically kicked her out of bed because her phone had disturbed his sleep - is a suitable coda to a political year dominated by the issue of the treatment of women in politics.

Mr Tudge quote “completely and utterly” rejected Miller’s version of events today and said he deeply regretted the consensual affair.

But despite the denials, Miller’s statement still posed big problems for the Prime Minister.

After all, earlier this week, he had described the Jenkins reports’ findings of what goes on in Parliament House as ‘appalling’ and ‘disturbing’.

SCOTT MORRISON: But given the seriousness of these claims that have been made by Ms Miller, it is important that these matters be resolved fairly and expeditiously.

To this end, the Minister has agreed to my request to stand aside while these issues are addressed by my department, but I wish to stress that this action, in no way seeks to draw a conclusion on these matters, Mr Speaker, but this is the appropriate action for me to take under the ministerial standards.

LAURA TINGLE: In a statement, Mr Tudge said he intended to submit written evidence to the inquiry that would contradict Ms Miller’s position.

The PM seemed to be very aware today that he needed to be seen to take these allegations very seriously. He announced that Vivienne Thom would be conducting the inquiry - the woman who ran the High Court inquiry into former Justice Dyson Heydon.

Standing Minister Tudge aside only added to the sense the Government is disintegrating around him with a growing list of departures ahead of next year’s election.

Late yesterday, former attorney-general Christian Porter announced, via Facebook, that he would not contest the next election.

FACEBOOK POST FROM CHRISTIAN PORTER: Even though I have experienced perhaps more of the harshness of modern politics than most, there are no regrets.

It’s now time to give more of what is left to those around me whose love has been unconditional.

LAURA TINGLE: Porter’s departure has been reported very much in terms of the allegations and controversy he has faced this year.

But the policy issues over which he presided are perhaps more important signposts to the history of this government, and the policy controversies - and approach to accountability - in which it has often been embroiled.

As minister for social services, he played a key role in establishing the controversial Robodebt scheme, which saw hundreds of thousands of people facing devastating claims of overclaiming welfare benefits.

Porter was occupying the office of attorney-general when the Government was later forced to concede that the scheme had ‘no legal basis’ and was ‘unlawful’. The government eventually repaid $720 million of the falsely raised debts

Also as attorney-general, Porter would not rule out prosecuting journalists, and sending them to jail, for publishing public interest stories.

He also made the decision to proceed with the prosecution of the man known as Witness K and his lawyer Bernard Collaery. Witness K was the whistle-blower who revealed Australia had bugged a room in the offices of Timor Leste’s Prime Minister at the time the two countries were negotiating resource rights in the Timor Gap.

Last year, Porter used his national security powers to have the court hearing of this case held in the strictest secrecy.

KERRYN PHELPS: There is an urgent medical crisis in Australia's offshore detention centres.

LAURA TINGLE: In 2019, the government lost an historic vote when Labor and the crossbench forced through what was known as the so-called medevac laws - designed to more easily allow seriously ill asylum seekers to be evacuated from Australia’s offshore detention centres.

During that process, Christian Porter resisted attempts to have advice on the legislation from the Solicitor General tabled in the Parliament.

TONY SMITH, SPEAKER (2019): I'll advise the Attorney-General that, as Speaker, it's important I ensure, in this instance, all material available to me is also available to all members of the House.

LAURA TINGLE: After the 2019 election, Porter oversaw the repealing of those laws.

The former attorney-general also released the original proposal for religious freedom legislation - subsequently dumped.

And his proposed model for a national anti-corruption commission has been derided as a toothless tiger.

Late this afternoon, Health Minister Greg Hunt told Parliament he will be leaving Parliament at the election.

GREG HUNT, HEALTH MINISTER: On Sunday, they looked at me, and said, "Dad, this is your last chance to be a proper dad and it's time to come home, Dad.”

LAURA TINGLE: That’s a senior cabinet minister leaving, a former senior cabinet minister - once seen as a future PM - leaving, and another senior cabinet minister with his future under a cloud.

There are also seven other MPs leaving at a time when the Government has gone from eyeing seats it can win from Labor to having to defend seats across the country

In the PM’s home state of New South Wales, bitter divisions within the Liberal Party have seen pre-selections delayed for both House of Representatives and Senate seats.

Incumbency is supposed to give governments a political advantage. As this ugly political year ends and we approach a federal election campaign, that advantage is far from clear.

Kate Jenkins' Independent Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces has been released. It is damning.
- 1 in 3 people in parliament experienced seuxal harrassment
- 1 per cent suffered attempted or actual sexual assault
- 77 per cent witnessed or experienced bullying

— Clare Armstrong (@ByClare) November 30, 2021

Liberal and Nationals MPs who have stated they are not standing in the 2022 federal election

Kevin Andrews (disendorsed by party) – Menzies Vic – Margin 7.0 LIB

George Christensen – Dawson Qld – Margin 14.6 NATS

Andrew Laming – Bowman Qld – Margin 10.2 LIB

Greg Hunt – Flinders Vic – Margin 5.6 LIB

Christian Porter – Pearce WA – Margin 5.2 LIB

Tony Smith – Casey Vic – Margin 4.6 LIB

Nicolle Flint – Boothby SA – Margin 1.4 LIB

John Alexander – Bennelong NSW – Margin 6.9 LIB

Steve Irons – Swan WA – Margin 3.2 LIB

Ken O'Dowd – Flynn Qld – Margin 8.7 NATS

Damian Drum – Nicholls Vic – Margin 20.0 NATS

Then there was this in the House of Representatives during Question Time on 2 December 2021…..

Mr BRENDAN O'CONNOR (Gorton) (14:02): My question is to the Prime Minister. Yesterday, Sky News reported two of the Prime Minister's best mates received $80,000 of taxpayer money, without a tender, to set up their own private sector quarantine business known as Quarantine Services Australia. Sky News also reported that Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo told business leaders that this was a really important project for the Prime Minister. Is Mr Pezzullo right?

The SPEAKER: The Leader of the House, on a point of order?

Mr Dutton: There is an imputation that's implied quite clearly in the question that's been asked, and that is against the standing orders. That's the first point, Mr Speaker. If there are allegations to make, then those allegations should be put in another forum, not here in this House.

The SPEAKER: The Manager of Opposition Business?

Mr Burke: Ministers are expected to be across media reports; that's in Practice. The question specifically goes to a media report and describes the source. It then refers to that particular payment being a priority for the Prime Minister as being attributed to the secretary of a department. It simply asks whether that is accurate. It goes no further than asking whether it was a really important project for the Prime Minister. So the extra layers that the Leader of the House is referring to are not in the question that was just asked.