Yet another Frydenberg ministerial blunder disclosed which is still reverberating

The Guardian, 11 December 2018:

The Australian government has permitted the export of hundreds of rare and endangered parrots to a German organisation headed by a convicted kidnapper, fraudster and extortionist, despite concerns the birds could be sold at a huge profit.

An investigation by Guardian Australia has revealed that the Berlin-based Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parrots received permission to export 232 birds between 2015 and November 2018 – more than 80% of all the live native birds legally exported from Australia in the same period.

The exports include threatened species such as Carnaby’s and Baudin’s black cockatoos, worth tens of thousands of dollars each.

The head of the ACTP, Martin Guth, has multiple criminal convictions, including a five-year jail sentence for hostage-taking, extortion and attempted fraud in 1996. In 2009 Guth was sentenced to one year and eight months in prison for seven cases of fraud. In one incident Guth kidnapped two men and threatened to cut their fingers off unless they paid a large sum of money.

A six-month Guardian investigation has found:

·    Export permits for Australian birds specified they were for exhibition purposes only, but ACTP has no facility that is freely open to the public.

·    Export permits prohibited the sale of the birds or their offspring, but private messages on social media reveal native Australian birds apparently from ACTP have been offered for sale for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The German federal agency for nature conservation has said it was aware of those offers.

The Australian government was repeatedly warned of concerns about ACTP by international wildlife authorities, private breeders and the government MP Warren Entsch.

International conservation bodies and scientists have raised questions about the organisation’s activities in other countries, including Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Brazil.

ACTP does not publish its financial records and is not registered with any major international zoological association.

Concerns about ACTP in Australia were raised with the former environment minister and now treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, and the office of the former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, as well as the environment department. But the government has continued to allow the exports. The latest shipment of 64 birds to ACTP was approved on 12 November.

In December 2017 the government brokered a deal with ACTP that involved the organisation giving $200,000 to the Western Australian government for projects to protect the endangered western ground parrot.

In response to questions from Guardian Australia, the office of the threatened species commissioner, Sally Box, said no such deal would have been reached had it known of Guth’s record…..

Guth’s criminal convictions do not relate to his involvement with ACTP. But the investigation raises serious questions about the oversight of exports of native species from Australia, and the due diligence conducted by international wildlife authorities on a group that has acquired one of the largest collections of rare and endangered parrots in the world.

The Australian parrots, which were bought openly and legally by ACTP from local breeders and birdkeepers, were exported after the environment department agreed to recognise the organisation as a zoo in 2015.

Documents show ACTP obtained a licence to operate as a zoo in Germany in 2014, only months before its application to Australian authorities.

The organisation told the Australian government it ran numerous centres in Germany. None are freely open to the public. Its main premises at Tasdorf, a village 30km outside Berlin, displays no public information other than a mobile phone number. Its location is not advertised and the buildings display no opening hours nor any other indication that the public is welcome to visit….

Germany’s Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) has confirmed to Guardian Australia it was aware that glossy black cockatoos imported from Australia by ACTP had been offered for sale. It said it had looked into the offers and found the birds had been legally imported and bred, and there were no limits on trade.

But under the terms of ACTP’s Australian permits, the animals and their offspring could only be moved to recognised zoos…. [my yellow highlighting]

The Daily Examiner makes unforgivable factual error

The myriad of typos over the years one can laugh at – after all who doesn’t suffer from fat thumb from time to time.

However, errors of fact are a different matter.

In both its print and online version of the newspaper The Daily Examiner asserted this on 24 February 2015:

[my bolding]

This is sloppy reporting at best and at worst a deliberate distortion of fact. Quite frankly I’m hoping is was some off-site subbing which caused this blunder.

It was only two days before that The Daily Telegraph, not known to favour Labor, reported:

The indexation change was announced in the May budget. Welfare groups and Labor argue it will cut pensions by $80 a week within 10 years. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, this amounts to a $23 billion cut to the cost of the age pension by 2023. [my red bolding]

A leading seniors advocate COTA Australia issued a media release on 21 August 2014 which stated:

“If only the CPI had been used since 2009 the Pension would already be $30 per week or $1,560 per year less, and that gap grows to over $80 per week / $4,160 per year in 10 years, and keeps growing. That’s a huge amount for Pensioners who already often have to make choices between heating, decent food, medications and a basic gift for their grandchild’s birthday. “This measure is extremely harsh and goes beyond even that which was recommended by the Commission of Audit….” [my red bolding]

On 22 May 2014 The Guardian reported:

The report, A Budget that Divides a Nation, says pensioners on aged and disability support payments would lose about $80 a week by 2024 after having their payments indexed to CPI. [my red bolding]

The Daily Examiner is telling its readers that pensioners will only lose $8 dollars a year when in fact the change in indexation reduces the value of the aged pension by an est. $416 in 2017 when the change come into effect and, this increases to an est. $4,160 per year by 2025.

Gillard would never have brought Australia to the sorry pass Abbott has

If one looks back on the life history of the Federal Member for Warringah, Tony Abbott MP, it is obvious that he operates best as a belligerent. That he thrives on conflict.

Not being known as a creator of good public policy or a builder of lasting parliamentary consensus, he seeks to aggressively oppose as a substitute for effective political action.

No longer being able to oppose the Federal Government because he is now the head of that very government, one has to suspect that Abbott is now casting about for another political enemy – a ‘baddie’ to his own ‘goodie’ - to fight for the sake of being seen to be fighting.

I fear that he seeks to engage Indonesia as his new opponent and that he would not (given his obvious admiration of all things military) be averse to leading Australia into a physical skirmish with this close neighbour.

One senses that Abbott finds the idea of being a ‘wartime’ prime minister an attractive proposition, given his recent rhetoric about the enemy and war with regard to towing/turning back asylum seeker boats.

If the Liberal Party of Australia doesn't swiftly depose this mindless adrenalin junkie he will bring our country to its knees.

The situation thus far.......

The Jakarta Post 23 January 2013:

9:35 AM

With Canberra pressing ahead with its hard-line policy of turning back asylum seekers to Indonesian waters, Jakarta told its neighbor on Wednesday the policy could lead to violations of Indonesia’s sovereignty and that it had increased security on its borders to prevent incursions. 

A number of Indonesian Navy warships have been deployed and four Air Force defense radars have been programmed to closely monitor the southern border, military officials told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday. 

“We are watching four radars in Timika, Merauke [in Papua], Saumlaki [Maluku] and Buraen [East Nusa Tenggara], which all face Australia,” Air Force chief spokesman Air Commodore Hadi Tjahjanto said.

“If we notice any border violations, our air base in Makassar will be ready. Australia is reachable from there.” Hadi was referring to the Sultan Hasanuddin Air Force Base in the South Sulawesi provincial capital, which is the base of the 11th squadron, consisting of 16 Russian-made Sukhoi Su-27/30 Flankers. 

The Flankers have a maximum range of some 3,000 kilometers. The sea border lies some 1,000 km from Makassar. At Mach 1, or the speed of sound, the Flankers would reach the border in little over an hour. 

Navy chief spokesman Commodore Untung Suropati confirmed that a number of warships had moved toward the Australian border. He said these included frigates, fast torpedo craft (KCT), fast missile craft (KCR) and corvettes as well as maritime patrol aircraft. He declined to reveal the precise number and location of the assets.

“All the ships are on the move, patrolling the waters,” he said.

Tension between the two neighbors reached a new height Wednesday after Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that stopping the boats was “a matter of sovereignty” and Jakarta should understand Canberra was taking the issue seriously. 

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who suspended cooperation with Australia following allegations that it attempted to spy on him and members of his inner circle, skipped the Davos meeting to oversee the handling of recent nationwide flooding and the eruption of the Mount Sinabung volcano. 

Abbott’s statement came only days after Australia admitted that its naval ships had entered Indonesian waters. It later apologized to Indonesia for the incursion. 

Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Djoko Suyanto said it was Australia that should respect Indonesia’s sovereignty, “which was violated by the Australian navy.” 

“Asylum seekers that have entered a country, including Australia, must be managed according to the UN Convention on Refugees,” he asserted in a written statement. 

Australia is a signatory to the convention. He added that the country concerned must also handle the problem in cooperation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Yudhoyono’s foreign affairs spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said, “A violation of our national territory for any reason cannot be tolerated.”

“If Prime Minister Abbott asks President Yudhoyono and the Indonesian people to understand Australia’s seriousness with regards to its sovereignty, in the same vein, Indonesia also asks Australia to understand our firm commitment to our vital interests.”

Novan Iman Santosa contributed to the story.

4:08 PM

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s statement saying that Australia would continue to stop the boats carrying asylum seekers was a defiant stance against the 1951 Refugee Convention, an expert says.

“Abbott’s statement which used Australia’s sovereignty as the ground of his policies to turn back the boats is not in line with the convention. The asylum seekers were labeled as illegal immigrants without scrutiny first,” University of Indonesia international law expert Hikmahanto Juwana said in a statement sent to The Jakarta Post on Thursday.....

Calling Abbott’s statement as “very unfriendly to Indonesia,” Hikmahanto also slammed Australia’s decision to unilaterally address the boat people issue using military forces.

“It is a pity that such a nation that as developed as Australia still has policy makers that tend to violate human rights. Traditionally, it is nations like Australia which are supposed to preach developing nations how to respect human rights,” he said....

Jakarta has recalled Indonesia’s ambassador to Australia since November and it is not yet known when he would be returned to Canberra.

BACKGROUND

The Sydney Morning Herald 15 January 2014:

Navy personnel carrying out border protection were quietly stripped of some workplace safety protections and obligations last month in an apparent preparation for dangerous operations such as turning back boats.

The Chief of the Defence Force, General David Hurley, used his powers under workplace safety laws shortly before Christmas to exempt Navy sailors from their obligation to take ''reasonable care'' to ensure their own safety and that of other sailors and asylum-seekers.

The change aims to give sailors legal protection, meaning they would ''not face individual criminal sanctions under the Act for giving effect to Government policy'', an explanatory statement issued by General Hurley states.

General Hurley acted in consultation with Employment Minister Eric Abetz to make the change, which effectively puts the sailors on a similar footing to military personnel fighting in battle.

The change, made on December 19, came as the government enacted its hardline election promise of turning back asylum-seeker boats, which critics have warned poses dangers to Navy personnel and asylum seekers. As many as six are believed to have been turned back to Indonesia in recent weeks.

EXPLANATORY STATEMENT, Work Health and Safety Act 2011, Work Health and Safety (Operation Sovereign Borders) Declaration 2013,ISSUED BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHIEF OF THE DEFENCE FORCE

When the stupidity bug strikes a television station

 

 

Posted on YouTube on Jul 12, 2013 were the alleged pilots' names aboard crashed Asiania Flight 214 revealed during televised broadcast by KTVU.com, a member of the Cox Media Group: 

Sum Ting Wong (something wrong)
Wi Tu Lo (why too low)
Ho Lee Fuk (holy f*ck)
Bang Ding Ow (bang, ding, ouch)

 

The apology by KTVU for incorrectly naming the pilots later that same day – also captured for posterity on YouTube.

 

KTVU went on to blame the US National Transport Safety Board:

 

In KTVU’s Noon newscast on Friday, July 12th, the station misidentified the pilots involved in the Asiana Airlines crash at SFO.

Prior to air, the names were confirmed by an NTSB official in the agency’s Washington, D.C. office. Despite that confirmation, KTVU realized the names that aired were not accurate and issued an apology later in the newscast.

The correct names of the pilots in the cockpit were Lee Gang-guk and Lee Jeong-Min.

“We sincerely regret the error and took immediate action to apologize, both in the newscast where the mistake occurred, as well as on our website and social media sites,” said Tom Raponi, KTVU/KICU Vice President & General Manager. “Nothing is more important to us than having the highest level of accuracy and integrity, and we are reviewing our procedures to ensure this type of error does not happen again.”

In its turn the National Transport Safety Board blamed a summer intern.

How not to grow the worth of your .au domain name

Clarrie Rivers sent me at link to lcreview.com.au which in turn was the starting point for this post.

Originally people on the NSW North Coast knew lcreview.com.au as a digital address associated with the free weekly community newspaper The Lower Clarence Review, until it broadened its horizons to become the Clarence Valley Review accompanied by an online presence at www.cvreview.com.au.

This eventually left its original digital address an unclaimed orphan wandering out there in cyberspace.

It appears to have been snapped up by Publishing Australia Pty Ltd (formerly Netfleet Pty Ltd) - a buyer and seller of Australian domain names.

This company is reportedly owned by David Lye and his brother Mark.

Now the new owner of the domain name apparently decided to position it in such a way that it might take whatever advantage there maybe in developing site content to draw traffic numbers which in turn enhance the possibility of re-sale. The site collects as much information as possible about its visitors as well.

This is where the exercise becomes amusing for Northern Rivers residents.

Not only did the web designer not realise that Grafton is not in the Lower Clarence Valley and so is not a direct match for the domain name; the very generalised desciptions of this regional city and the Clarence River area (along with the links) leave one wondering if the website is speaking about Clarence Valley in New South Wales or some other valley in an alternate universe.

The air of unreality is made worse by two of the photographs used on the homepage as seen here:

These are clearly not images of Grafton, NSW Australia, but of Upper Grafton Street in Dublin, Ireland (pictured below) in the Northern Hemisphere.

This is one of the many images of the real NSW North Coast City of Grafton's main shopping street which can be easily found on the world wide web:

Is it any wonder that Alexa: The Web Information Company gives the site a global three-month traffic rank of 8,788,387 - a number which probably hasn't altered all that much since it was owned by local media.

Being kind, I personally rate the value of lcreview.com.au at $1.

Opposition Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey exposed

Peter Martin on 1 December 2011:

The two Perth accountants who costed the Coalition’s 2010 election policies breached professional standards and will be fined, a disciplinary tribunal has ruled.

The ruling is an embarrassment to the Coalition which claimed during the campaign the costing was “as good as you could get anywhere in the country, including in Treasury." In recent months it has threatened to use private accountants once again.

Geoffrey Phillip Kid and Cyrus Patell, both of the Perth office of WHK Horwath produced a one-page report for the Coalition two days before the election which Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey tendered as an audit, saying the pair had certified “in law that our numbers are accurate".

“If the fifth-biggest accounting firm in Australia signs off on our numbers it is a brave person to start saying there are accounting tricks,” he told ABC radio. “I tell you it is audited. This is an audited statement.’’

In fact the document was the result of a carefully-worded agreement between the accountants and the Coalition to produce work primarily "not of an audit nature".

An audit would examine the assumptions used by the Coalition and whether they were reasonable.

Kidd and Patell’s unpublished agreement with the Coalition explicity required them to make no inquires about “the reasonableness of otherwise of the assumptions used"...

A professional conduct tribunal established by the Institute of Chartered Accountants ruled in July that Kidd and Patel were liable to face disciplinary action because their one-page report failed to contain “a statement that the procedures performed do not constitute either an audit or a review” and so failed to properly describe the limited nature of the agreed upon procedures…

Read the rest here.

Just by putting itself out there @Centrelink invites unhappy comment

Can't wait to see how many unhappy Centrelink 'clients' home in on this Twitter account once the word spreads that the Oz government agency everyone loves to hate is offering its head for the washing.

Snapshot 19th April 2011

As skennedybooks said: Who the hell would want @Centrelink tweets showing up in their stream? about 2 hours ago via Echofon
(http://twitter.com/#search?q=%40Centrelink)

The Failed Estate does Bolt over

Had to laugh at this response from Mr. Demore of The Failed Estate to the Channel 10 announcement that Andrew Bolt will get his own Sunday morning show. I'm predictng that Ten is shaping up for a monumental ratings disaster after the first few weeks.

Hey, Google! Give me back my ability to do a decent search or I walk

I only lost Google Search Engine’s Search Within Results option last week when using Internet Explorer – AND I WANT IT BACK NOW! It was more than annoying when Google decided to install Web History which automatically modified search results on a predictive basis thus limiting deliberately wide searches. It was simply awful coping with that intrusive low IQ Instant Search until I managed to permanently switch it off. However, the last straw was finding the search within option deleted by those increasingly highhanded geeks at Google Inc. Now looking about for a new search engine to be my ‘best friend’ in cyberspace.

Browned Off
Bangalow

* Guest Speak is a North Coast Voices segment allowing serious or satirical comment from NSW Northern Rivers residents. Email ncvguestpeak at gmail dot com to submit comment for consideration.