Under current senior management has the Australian Bureau of Meteorology become a cheap servant of international mining giants?

  

Rick Morton writing in The Saturday Paper, 29 June - 5 July 2024:

Bureau of Meteorology executives stared down an internal revolt from their own forecasters to create a “tailored” service for Woodside Energy’s shipping operation at its multibillion-dollar Scarborough gas facility on Western Australia’s Burrup Peninsula, insiders say.

The service was unusual in that the BoM’s internal commercial services team – which usually handles fee-for-service corporate requests – rejected the job due to a lack of staff. The commercial project was then handballed to the agency’s aviation division.

Although the Bureau of Meteorology has an aviation division forecaster looking after northern Western Australia, producing aerodrome forecasts for dozens and dozens of mine sites with fly-in fly-out workforces, Woodside’s dock in WA, where gas is loaded for transport to mostly foreign markets, has nothing to do with air travel.

“What we really hated – and we were really vehemently against it, and they just basically totally ignored us – was that they’ve also got us doing a warning service for Woodside petroleum where they load the ships with gas,” a senior meteorologist tells The Saturday Paper.

“It has nothing to do with aviation. And it’s been our argument all along that that forecaster who’s looking after northern Western Australia, he’s supposed to drop everything and send these very specific warnings to Woodside that there’s a wind gust coming in that might affect your operations.

“And this is 24 hours a day, basically, over the summer when there are storms around.”

The BoM has multiple divisions under its new structure and the forecasters who produce updates for the general public work under the banner of National Production. Aviation Weather Services is a separate division but the organisation draws talent from the same pool of meteorologists, which it is also responsible for training via its accelerated one-year graduate program in Melbourne....

Since Dr Andrew Johnson joined the bureau as chief executive in 2016, the number of forecaster positions across weather, floods and bushfires has grown by just five roles.

When meteorologists in aviation saw the original contract for the Woodside Energy project, they were aghast. It was worth about $30,000 when the contract was signed in 2020. It is not clear how much the agency currently charges the resource giant for the same service.

“It was pretty insignificant, which just made us angrier, because we didn’t want to do it in the first place,” a meteorologist says.

“We didn’t think the bureau should have anything to do with fossil fuel companies, quite frankly.”

Airlines pay tens of millions of dollars each year for similar BoM expertise, although they also employ their own meteorologists in recognition of the critical role weather plays in the conduct of their business. Qantas, for example, has a team of six working rolling shifts covering 24/7 operations. Woodside Energy Group, which recorded a net after-tax profit of US$1.7 billion last year, employs metocean engineers crucial for offshore exploration but has no such dedicated team of meteorologists.

A spokesperson for the Bureau of Meteorology told The Saturday Paper the agency “fully and separately recovers the cost of providing tailored services to its resources sector and aviation customers” but conceded the workforce demands of its commercial work affect the whole organisation.

“The meteorological and other services provided by the Bureau to its fee for service customers in most cases build upon services created for the public,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“As such, they draw on a very wide range of Bureau capability. Without exception, the cost of elaborating, or tailoring, those services is fully recovered from the customer receiving the tailored services.”

Under the Meteorology Act 1955, which governs the BoM, there is a stipulation that the agency’s functions must be performed “in the public interest generally” and in particular for the purposes of the Defence Force, navigation, shipping, aviation and “primary production, industry, trade and commerce”. Nothing forced the BoM to bid for the Woodside contract, however.

“They’re paying pennies to a stretched organisation … it’s a drop in the ocean for Woodside, but it costs us a great deal more in work hours, staff morale and eventually quality.”

In its annual report from last year, the agency crowed about how Woodside Energy “selected the Bureau to provide a suite of critical meteorological services following a competitive tender process”.

“This success is testament to the Bureau’s meteorological skills, customer support capability and deep industry expertise, honed over decades of service delivery to the resources sector,” it said.

“This continues the long-standing partnership between Woodside and the Bureau, with both organisations gaining significant value from working closely together.

“Weather is highly impactful for Woodside. With many operating assets in exposed locations and vulnerable to hazardous weather, timely and accurate weather forecasts are key to Woodside’s operational success and the safety of their staff.”

Similarly, the BoM was enthusiastic about its partnership with Rio Tinto after it “started providing Rio Tinto’s Operational Excellence Team with logistics forecasts, particularly tailored rainfall information, aimed at enhancing operational efficiency”.

“Facilitated by the Bureau’s accurate predictions, Rio Tinto reported significant efficiency improvements following a few rainfall events in early 2023,” it said.

“A direct economic impact of approximately $6 million has been associated with the Bureau’s services, as validated by Rio Tinto, over 3 distinct weather events confirming the significant value delivered.”

There is no doubt obligations are imposed on the Bureau of Meteorology by its governing legislation, but senior forecasters who have worked at the agency for decades query whether management needs to be quite so proactive about hawking the skills of overworked staff to the resources sector as the climate crisis grows.

“It would cost Woodside at least half a million dollars a year to stand up a 24/7 warning service through summer, but probably close to millions of dollars, and they’re paying pennies to a stretched organisation for the privilege,” a meteorologist says.

“Either way, it’s a drop in the ocean for Woodside, but it costs us a great deal more in work hours, staff morale and eventually quality. It’s gone downhill so much since I joined. At the time, I believe the Bureau had the highest retention of staff of any section of the federal government and we’re at the stage now where there is so much unhappiness, morale is so low. In aviation, they’re struggling to hold on to people.”

The BoM recently withdrew its specialist Sydney Airport Meteorological Unit (SAMU) from service, despite considerable protest by airlines, ground support companies and the airport itself, and blended its role with the broader aviation division.

Management argued the forecasts could be done by the Brisbane Aviation Forecasting Centre, which historically has been responsible for forecasting from the Cocos Islands north-west of WA, across the northern half of Australia and down the Queensland coast.

Brisbane now handles half of New South Wales, down the coastline, taking in Sydney, while the rest of the state is managed by the Melbourne Aviation Forecasting Centre.

“The eastern half of NSW contains terrible weather generally, and the Sydney basin, which is a huge amount of work. So the bureau, in their wisdom, a few years ago decided to close the Sydney Airport Meteorological Unit,” a forecaster says.

“And there was a huge uproar amongst Sydney Airport operations and air traffic and the airlines, because you had all of these highly experienced people and Sydney Airport is really difficult to forecast. They are so angry if anything interrupts their flow. It’s a huge job.”

Meteorologists warned management at the bureau Sydney Airport was not like any other airport. Fog is a huge problem and wind speed and strength is critical. Closing runways in Sydney causes delays across the national network and fog had the potential to reroute international flights that land in the early morning, costing airlines hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Management didn’t listen.

“So the airlines get pretty angry when the forecast goes amiss, and it’s gone amiss a lot more since SAMU disappeared. And that’s not blaming the forecasters; they just have too much bloody work to do.”

These changes have made meteorologists particularly incensed by the fact the aviation division is now being used to do contract work for the resources sector. In all, the Bureau of Meteorology provides services to 32 fossil fuel clients. [my yellow highlighting]

One of these is Santos, which has operations in the Bayu-Undan gas field, located within the territorial waters of Timor-Leste, the control of which has reverted exclusively to Timor-Leste following a maritime borders treaty decision in late 2017.

Although the BoM provides forecasting expertise and equipment to Pacific nations under the auspices of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, its activities in the gas fields outside Australia are entirely on behalf of Santos.

“We’re also doing forecasts for the planes flying around the Timor gas field between Australia and Dili and a forecast for Dili as well,” says a bureau meteorologist who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“I’m not sure who pays for that but, again, we don’t have any equipment there. It’s a really hard place to forecast, so we’d rather not be doing that either.”

Coincidentally, the bureau’s Brisbane office is now located in the Santos building.

“There is a fine line between providing a critical service for the Australian economy and becoming cheerleaders for certain parts of it,” a forecaster says.

“Many of us see it as a particular issue where the organisation is not healthy. We are not flourishing at all, actually, and the weather conditions that lead to our overwork are growing worse every year because of climate change.”

In late 2021, when Woodside announced it would pursue the $16.5 billion investment in the Scarborough gas project off WA’s northern coast, it estimated the total carbon dioxide emissions from the project would soar past 800 million tonnes.

However, a report by the global firm Climate Analytics later found that when all “associated and interlinked projects” were included in the equation, these emissions would top 1.37 billion tonnes over three decades. In all, that is almost three times the total annual emissions produced by Australia.

“That’s what we’re breaking our backs for,” a senior meteorologist says.

Full article can be read at:

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/environment/2024/06/29/exclusive-bom-staff-redirected-work-fossil-fuel-companies

BACKGROUND

Financial status of major resource corporations mentioned in the Morton article.

Santos Limited is an international petroleum and gas exploration, production & supply corporation with interests in Australia, Papua New Guinea, Timor Sea, South-East Asia, the United States & United Kingdom. Having a 2023 full year sales revenue of US$5.889 billion, underlying net profit after tax of US$1.423 billion and free cash flow of US$2.128 billion. It will come as no surprise that its last published Tax Contribution Disclosure (31.12.22) revealed that despite declaring a net profit in the millions, Santos Limited paid no corporate tax in that 2022 reporting period courtesy of Australia's generous corporate taxation policies. [Santos Limited Annual Report 2023]

Rio Tinto Group is a multinational metals & mining corporation based in London UK & Melbourne Australia, with interests in Australia, USA, Canada, Iceland, Madagascar, Mongolia, New Zealand & South Africa. Having a 2023 annual consolidated sales revenue of $54.0 billion, profit after tax of $10.1 billion and free cash flow of $7.7 billion. Corporate tax paid in Australia amounted to $4.1 billion. [Rio Tinto Group Annual Report 2023]

Woodside Energy Group Ltd is an multinational petroleum exploration and production company with its head office in Perth along with five other offices in Australia and, offices in the UK, USA, Canada, Mexico, Africa, the Caribbean & Asia Pacific. Having a 2023 annual operating revenue of US$13.9 billion, underlying net profit after tax of US$3.3 billion and a free tax flow of US$560 million. Income tax expense in 2023 US$653 million. [Woodside Energy Annual Report 2023

NORTHERN RIVERS NSW STATE OF PLAY JANUARY 2023: in 39 days time it will be exactly one year since a catastrophic extreme flood devastated Lismore

 

As this sad milestone approaches for Lismore residents it must often feel as though the pain will never stop.

ABC News, 18 January 2023:

The Energy & Water Ombudsman NSW says it has received dozens of complaints about power bills issued for unoccupied flood-affected homes & businesses on the state's Far North Coast.

Lismore business owner Anne Walker said she had not used her business premises since it was flooded in February 2022, but months later she received messages from her retailer that said she owed more than $700.

"The texts were coming in saying if I didn't pay this amount, they were going to discontinue my electricity, which is ironic because there was no electricity," she said.

Ms Walker spoke to her provider in October to address the issue, but it took until last week to be resolved.

"It was very stressful — extremely stressful," she said.

The ombudsman's office recorded 55 complaints from the Northern Rivers since the start of September, including 28 from the Lismore area.

"Often there's no resident there, the property is not occupied and, of course, the billing doesn't reflect the fact that," said ombudsman Janine Young.

"[There is] either no usage or, where there is some usage, it's overestimated."

Estimated bills to be reviewed

Residents who spoke to the ABC said the incorrect bills they received were based on estimates of their usage.

This occurs when a meter reader is unable to access a property to record the energy usage, so an estimated bill is issued by the energy provider.

In the case of a situation that has led to vastly reduced energy usage, or no usage at all, Ms Young said the rules for bill estimates needed to be reviewed.

"When estimates are done, the rules allow an estimated bill based on the same period the prior year, or on what a comparable customer might be," she said.

"When there's been floods & there's been no usage, if you're getting an estimate based on the prior year, that's completely wrong.

"Those rules have to be looked at."

Customers should first try to resolve any dispute with their retailer, but those left dissatisfied could turn to Ms Young's office for help, she said.

"We've had outcomes where we've got the bill waived, where we've had the daily supply charges waived as well," Ms Young said.

"The retailer is much more aware of the customer circumstances & when it's likely that the property can be again inhabited — if it can be."

No meters, no power

Adrian Walsh from Broadwater said he received an estimated usage bill of about $800, despite not having power after the flood.

"When I first rang up & complained [to the retailer] ... their solution was to pay the bill & perhaps I could claim it back later," he said.

"I wasn't really in the mood for that."

Bungawalbin's Keely Patch said metering equipment damaged by the floods was still not working in her area.

Despite having only a single working power point in her home, Ms Patch said she was sent estimated usage bills that totalled $800.

"If estimated bills are based off previous usages, that kind of gets taken out of the picture when, for months, there was no usage at all," Ms Patch said.

"Since the bills have come in, I've only been running a fridge & some lights & that's pretty much all I've got."

The ABC heard from people who were experiencing similar issues across a range of energy retailers.

In a statement, Origin Energy said it was committed to supporting customers affected by floods…...

Red Energy said it stopped billing & debt collection activities in the aftermath of the floods while it assessed the situation…….

Exclusive: Only one-fifth of the $1.6bn promised to flood-ravaged communities in the Northern Rivers region of NSW has been paid out by the Perrottet government, new data reveals. @australian https://t.co/SAmCfpvdxe

— Max Maddison (@maxmaddison) January 18, 2023

....Eleven months ago, an unprecedented deluge swept across the eastern seaboard, inundating towns across southeast Queensland and northern NSW, in one of the worst recorded flooding disasters in the nation’s history.

With communities such as Woodburn, Kyogle and Nimbin in the northeastern corner of NSW facing a monumental rebuild, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet vowed not a dollar would be spared in the recovery effort, saying those who had lost homes were a primary concern.

But of the $1.6bn promised by the government in May last year, Service NSW data reveals only $322.2m has been distributed eight months later.

Inordinately high numbers of grants had been ruled ineligible by the government, with more than 67 per cent of small business grants rejected.

South Lismore cafe owner Tony Zammit said his experience in the aftermath of the floods had been positive, but he had faced issues applying for the small grants program later on, with multiple applications green-lit by Service NSW staff before being subsequently rejected.

“Early on they were helpful but as time went on it became daunting. By the end, honest claims and applicants were treated as criminals,” Mr Zammit, the owner of The Sassy Bean cafe, said.

One near-$50,000 claim was deemed ineligible by Service NSW because assessors could not verify an $1100 electrician’s bill, he said. When he attempted to resubmit his claim, Mr Zammit was told he could not submit any of the same receipts as they had all been deemed fraudulent.

More than 80 per cent of rental support applications have been declined, while of special disaster grants available to farmers and primary producers, only $116m of $302m claimed has been paid out, despite 86 per cent of applications being approved or rejected.

Emergency Services Minister Steph Cooke warned in May last year the government had an “obligation” to ensure the proper processes were in place to filter out fraudulent grant applications. The NSW government’s independent 2022 flood inquiry noted concerns among flood-impacted farming communities that there were “onerous processes for accessing grants, and for submitting development applications”.

An upper house inquiry reached similar conclusions, finding a lack of streamlined grants processes meant applicants were repeatedly interviewed, “leading to frustration and trauma”, while a lack of assessors on the ground “delayed the rollout of grants”…..

It appears that the rot set in at the Bureau of Meteorology within a few months of Scott Morrison becoming prime minister and sadly when BOM was needed most it is alleged in had become highly dysfunctional

“There absolutely needs to be a royal commission into what happened at Lismore. I saw grad mets barely off course in charge of things they would never have been in charge of up until that point. Lismore happened right in the short-staffing period. We go into that event, everyone is already fatigued and working long hours.” [The Saturday Paper, 22 October 2022]

The Saturday Paper, 22 October 2022:

The workplace culture at the Bureau of Meteorology is so toxic that a man was hospitalised twice for psychiatric care, another had a heart attack while working extreme overtime, and was asked to come back earlier than a doctor advised, and at least five more staff took stress leave because of panic attacks and anxiety regarding management oversight.

More than 20 staff have left the media and communications division at the BoM in the past 18 months. The entire marketing team at the agency was “bloodlet” and removed during a restructure and rebranding effort that consumed the time and resources of the weather office during a period of intensifying calamity relating to climate change and natural disasters. Senior meteorologists have also left.

Since June last year, the bureau has spent more than $260,000 with Elm Communications Canberra Pty Ltd, just trying to plug gaps in its public affairs workforce.

Although many of the concerns relate to the media division, meteorologists and other staff have complained of “the severe dysfunction” in this area infecting other parts of the service. Gag orders have been issued to prevent forecasters from speaking to journalists unless their comments are pre-approved. Media managers have explicitly banned the mention of climate change in connection with severe weather events.

In one case during major New South Wales flooding in March last year, an edict was issued that BoM forecasters and other specialists were not to speak to any media after a meteorologist was accused of “fluffing” his lines on climate change.

A spokesperson for the BoM denies this.

In addition to the above concerns, The Saturday Paper can reveal the Commonwealth agency admitted some months ago to staff that it has not been paying overtime correctly and has so far failed to reimburse employees. Indeed, it stopped communicating with them in August about the issue.

The bureau says, in a response to The Saturday Paper, that a “discrepancy” was identified and “an audit of overtime payments is currently under way and all payments made dating from 1 June 2021 are being reviewed”.

The Saturday Paper has spoken with 20 current and former staff members at the bureau to establish a distressing and farcial account of a government agency’s response to a changing climate.

Details in this account that do not appear within quotation marks have nevertheless been provided by individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals…..

“There is so much focus on rebranding efforts like this and all of this window dressing and, in the meantime, the staff are really struggling to get the work done. We have lost so many people due to the [public service] transition to national production.”

Under these reforms, which began after the appointment of Andrew Johnson as director of the BoM, regional forecasting centres in every state and territory have been shuttered. State managers have been sacked and a national desk has been created instead. Johnson has pushed the project with fervour. The new branding, complete with public insistence that the Bureau of Meteorology be referred to respectfully as the Bureau, was, according to sources at the BoM, “completely driven by him”……

The Saturday Paper can reveal that the planned name change and new “corporate presence” began more than three years ago and cost far more than has been reported. In December 2018, the BoM paid almost $90,000 to brand specialists The Contenders for work on the new “positioning project” between then and April 2019. When a new general manager of communications – Emma Liepa – took over in April 2020, she “canned the project” and restarted it using her preferred contractor, The C Word Communications Agency Pty Ltd, owned and operated by Jack Walden. The BoM has characterised this contract as a “preliminary analysis” of perceptions about the agency and its “position in the marketplace” and not part of the “Brand project”.

Walden’s The C Word agency won a $70,000 contract in September last year in a “limited tender” to progress this project. Walden is now a senior manager of communications delivery at the BoM, having started in late November last year.

The Saturday Paper understands that Walden was hired as an EL2 “upper”, the same pay band as his boss Liepa, and is an ongoing public service employee. Walden also worked with Liepa in her previous role at the Victorian Healthcare Association. The Saturday Paper is not suggesting there is anything inappropriate in his employment.

“In this case, a conflict of interest was advised,” a BoM spokesperson said.

“There was no overlap between the work as a consultant and work when he [Walden] commenced as an employee with the Bureau.”

Internally, the rebranding has been prosecuted with fervour by Liepa and her colleagues but resisted and mocked by more junior staff. This is at odds with a BoM statement that says the sentiment, and feedback, from employees has been “overwhelmingly positive”.

“Recently Andrew Johnson launched the new 2022-2027 strategy and rounded off the presentation by telling us all that we had to print off the strategy, read it and he would be testing us if he bumped into us in the office,” a staff member says. “He was dead serious.”

A forecaster who cannot be identified because they still work with the BoM said the “reaction around me on shift over the last few weeks to the new branding announcements has been somewhere between exasperated laughter and anger”.

They continue, “That this is prioritised by management, over severe long-term understaffing of mets [meteorologists] – seemingly not of management and consultants – combined with a huge top-to-bottom restructure of the public service hitting the really hairy stages.

“All of this at the tail end of three La Niñas in a row with the potential for most of the east coast to flood so easily. Meteorologists are tired and overworked. The public reaction today was honestly wonderful and heartwarming. I’m so happy the public saw the bullshit instantly.”

Neither Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, whose portfolio includes the BoM, nor her office, was aware the agency was about to launch its controversial edict and new look publicly in the middle of a flooding crisis across Victoria. When she demanded an urgent briefing, the response from senior bureau managers was “cagey” and “unsatisfactory”, according to people familiar with the exchange. Internally, BoM staff were told that they were to move full steam ahead and that the minister’s office was happy.

But what the minister’s office did not know, because the BoM did not tell them, was that the full cost of this rebranding was closer to $750,000, with some of that cost completely unnecessary after the banishing of The Contenders and early work done by that firm.

When Plibersek’s people demanded a full list of contracts, this was not mentioned. The Saturday Paper has confirmed this separately using information provided by concerned employees. Bizarrely, the BoM hired EY Sweeney on a $93,000 contract in March to conduct market research regarding the rebrand. What the consultants found was that just 15 per cent of people recognised the Bureau of Meteorology as “the Bureau” – the preferred name for brand recognition in the now-failed repositioning. More than 60 per cent, however, associated “BoM” with the agency.

What matters, according to every staff member who spoke for this piece, is that this side quest isn’t just a bad look. While these dramatic restructures and fiddly public relations exercises unfolded, some of the worst flooding in Australian history happened in northern NSW.

Residents in Lismore in particular were trapped after catastrophic flooding appeared to catch officials off guard. While the SES, itself struggling with a new centralisation plan, is responsible for issuing evacuation orders, they rely on information from the national meteorologists and hydrologists at the bureau.

“The BoM went into this PST [Public Sector Transformation] understaffed, and only lost countless more staff during PST, not realising that not everyone wants to uproot their lives and move to Melbourne or Brisbane,” a meteorologist said.

“There absolutely needs to be a royal commission into what happened at Lismore. I saw grad mets barely off course in charge of things they would never have been in charge of up until that point. Lismore happened right in the short-staffing period. We go into that event, everyone is already fatigued and working long hours.”

At this time – when a meteorologist was due to speak at a press conference about the unfolding flooding emergency in NSW, next to Premier Dominic Perrottet – there was a particular sensitivity within the agency about the warnings provided to the public. This forecaster was told they could speak only from pre-approved lines.

A separate source, who is no longer with the BoM, told The Saturday Paper that the organisation was “down 24 or 25” meteorologists and there were “no meteorologists in management”. The source said good people were slowly forced out, especially meteorologists: “There is such a strangled culture there now.”

After being appointed by the former Coalition government to head the BoM, Johnson set about an aggressive reform program, parts of which former employees concede were much needed. But it happened so fast it caused serious issues across the business.

“The rate of change, ineffective change, that has happened has been a huge problem because there are so many conflicting priorities, that the bureau basically just ground to a halt,” a source says.

“All the money just got funnelled into [PST] and squandered through massive use of contractors and people who didn’t have core knowledge of the bureau, so it took lots of time to ramp up to speed and the like.

“Really important projects like ours just got buried and not funded because all the money just got funnelled off into these other areas.”

One of the projects that was delayed and underfunded was the upgrade of the bureau’s warning systems – a multi-part program with many moving parts – which was left in disarray.

As science was censored or relegated to the sideline and messages became more tightly controlled, the culture at the BoM deteriorated even further. In July and August this year, tens of thousands of dollars were paid to the conflict resolution firm Momentum, which promised to mediate workplace disputes and teach staff how to get along…….

The full article can read here.

The centrepiece of the Morrison Government’s “Living with Covid” program is a call centre outsourced to former robo-debt collectors and staffed by workers on casual contracts with no medical experience

 

“On January 17, as the nation recorded another 39,000 cases of the disease, with hundreds of thousands of active cases, the first phase of the “transitioning to Living with Covid” plan went live at the national hotline…..Health Minister Greg Hunt first announced what was then an information line for people worried about the novel coronavirus on January 31, 2020. Although hosted by healthdirect – a sort of national cabinet for government health advice across every jurisdiction in Australia – the call centres were set up by Stellar Asia Pacific Pty Ltd, now a wholly owned subsidiary of its former rival Probe Group.” [Journalist & author Rick Morton writing in in The Saturday Paper, 5 February 2022]

The Saturday Paper, 5 February 2022:

The centrepiece of the federal government’s “Living with Covid” program is a call centre outsourced to former robo-debt collectors and staffed by workers on casual contracts with no medical experience.

A cache of documents and testimony obtained by The Saturday Paper reveals the inner workings of the National Coronavirus Helpline, which is being run by private-equity owned Probe Group and its subsidiaries on contracts worth more than $270 million.

This information hotline has now been asked to triage people who have tested positive for Covid-19, or who believe they are infected, as part of the Commonwealth’s pivot to managing the disease in the community.

In practice, it has outsourced a key front-line health service to a small battalion of low-paid, poorly trained workers on insecure contracts. People staffing the hotline do not have medical qualifications. Many were previously unemployed and subject to the welfare system’s “mutual obligations”, which threatens penalties and payment suspensions if they refuse reasonable offers of work.

Training offered to new Probe recruits lasts only two hours.

Accounts obtained by The Saturday Paper show workers have described being placed under extreme stress while managing an overwhelming variety of callers, with limited information or ability to actually help them.

For instance, the coronavirus helpline is listed as the No. 1 point of contact on almost every government department, including Home Affairs and for disability and Aboriginal health services, despite there being no specific resources for team members to even provide advice.

Although scripts for call centre operators advise patients to seek rapid antigen tests if they are available, it is not part of the helpline’s remit to actually provide these tests or information on where they might be obtained.

Helpline workers are also fielding calls from people who are experiencing family violence, poverty or other types of extreme stress and are expected to arrange welfare checks or talk them through complex problems with little support.

Where problems do arise, employees are encouraged to phone their team leaders and not put anything in writing to ensure a “quick response”. Employees have requested access to more resources and training but in some cases have had no response from management or, where concerns have been heard, a two-page “cheat sheet” is provided.

There have been frequent occurrences of callers who have been given incorrect isolation advice from the National Coronavirus Helpline or who have complained about misleading public statements by politicians compared with the advice for different jurisdictions offered by the hotline.

In other cases, callers have been directed to see a doctor but have been sent away from GP clinics and even emergency departments, contrary to the advice offered over the helpline…..

Read the full article here.

Calls for a royal commission into the Morrison Government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic are not going away

 

Crikey, 27 January 2022:

CROSS AND BOTHERED

Three Coalition senators have broken ranks to side with Labor (and the crossbench) in questioning the government’s pandemic approach, Guardian Australia reports.

Nationals Matt Canavan and Sam McMahon along with Liberal Gerard Rennick are backing a royal commission or inquiry into the Coalition’s handling of COVID-19 (incidentally, those three also crossed the floor to vote against vaccine mandates, as Sky News reported). Independent Rex Patrick wrote to Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week to ask for one, while independent Zali Steggall is working on draft terms of reference.

It comes amid warnings that the rapid antigen test shortage could stick around for “many months” — industry heavyweights told the SMH this morning that we could make two million of the RATs a week by spending $20 million — chump change for the government — on production lines. Pathology Technology Australia’s boss added that 99% of RAT kits sold here are imported, even though Australian companies Ellume, Lumos Diagnostic, and AnteoTech have all developed tests (which are sold overseas).

Also this morning the National Retailers Association says staff are only trickling back into work amidst the relaxed close contact rule for essential workers, The Australian ($) says. Employees are returning to distribution centres at a rate of 2% a day, while about 30% of staff at meat processing centres remain absent at the moment. National cabinet is meeting today to discuss supply chain issues, as well as the country’s rate of hospitalisations and deaths.

*

Cartoons of the Week

Cathy Wilcox

Matt Golding

On 11 January 2022 Australia's cumulative total of COVID-19 cases reached 1,042,293 infected men, women and children since the global pandemic began

State of Play in Australia on Day 716 of the COVID-19 Scourge.

 

"Outbreak management has failed" [Professor Mary-Louise McLaws, UNSW, Twitter, 11 January 2022]

Professor Mary-Louise McLaws (UNSW), is an epidemiologist with expertise in hospital infection and infectious diseases control. Her COVID-19 related activities include: member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Program Experts Advisory Panel for Infection Prevention and Control Preparedness, Readiness and Response to COVID-19 and member of the NSW Clinical Excellence Commission COVID Infection Prevention and Control taskforce. She is the Focal Point for the WHO Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) in the School of Population Health.

A graph showing the world what happens to an economy when a nation allows fundamentalist ideologues to run its pandemic public health response

 

ANZ graph Week to January 2020 to Week to January 2022
via Laura Tingle, @latingle 7 January 2022

Consumer spending in Sydney, New South Wales is the lowest it has 

ever been over the entire course of the COVID-19 pandemic to date and, 

there is no prize for guessing that what caused this was Australian Prime 

Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison's favourite three-word 

slogan, 'living with COVID'.

Which he so disastrously urged fellow Liberal & NSW Premier Dominic 

Perrottet to put into high-gear action by further reducing key protective 

elements of the public health response in NSW while at the same time 

opening up the state, then doubling down on dismantling what remained 

in place after the Omicron Variant entered Sydney and began to spread.

.

Might as well go to the cricket pic.twitter.com/vbC8T5vuIw

— Laura Tingle (@latingle) January 7, 2022

 

ABC News, 6 January 2022:

Escalating COVID-19 cases in New South Wales have not reduced appetite for travel, with tourist hotspots across the state still buzzing with activity.

However, many regional hospitality businesses are missing out on the potential windfall because staff shortages are preventing them from operating at full capacity…..

It's a similar scenario on the state's north coast.

Ballina RSL chief executive Bill Coulter said they had to reduce trading hours due to a lack of staff.

"It's challenging in terms of rostering. We're down about 20 per cent in staffing numbers and have been for quite some time now," Mr Coulter said.

"I think there is ongoing uncertainty about hospitality. When there's a COVID outbreak or issue, then it gets knocked out pretty quickly. And I think people's uncertainty in that space has heightened their anxiousness and they've sought alternative employment."

He said it was a problem across the region.

"We've had visitors in the club in the last week … and they say they just can't get into any business in town because nothing's open."….

Jane Laverty, regional manager of the NSW Business Chamber, said the latest surge in COVID cases had been a huge challenge for regional businesses.

"Our hospitality businesses … did see this as the time that they would be able to claw back some of the losses that they had previously, and they've been looking forward to this holiday period."

She called for government support to be reinstated for businesses across the state.

"We're certainly not back to any level of normal … we're still very much in the grips of COVID pain.

"That support will give the businesses and their employees some level of hope and support and dollars in their accounts during the period of time where we've still got such instability."