NSW ICAC Operation Spicer hearings begin today - witness list partial breakdown

On 28 April 2014 at 11:00 am. A NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) investigation, Operation Spicer, will begin public hearings to examine:

…whether, between April 2009 and April 2012, certain members of parliament including Christopher Hartcher, Darren Webber and Christopher Spence, along with others including Timothy Koelma and Raymond Carter, corruptly solicited, received, and concealed payments from various sources in return for certain members of parliament favouring the interests of those responsible for the payments.

The Commission is also examining whether, between December 2010 and November 2011, certain members of parliament, including those mentioned above, and others, including Raymond Carter, solicited, received and failed to disclose political donations from companies, including prohibited donors, contrary to the Election Funding, Expenditure and Disclosures Act 1981.

Further allegations include whether Eightbyfive, a business operated by Mr Koelma entered into agreements with each of a series of entities including Australian Water Holdings Pty Ltd (AWH), whereby each entity made regular payments to Eightbyfive, purportedly for the provision of media, public relations and other services and advice, in return for which Mr Hartcher favoured the interests of the respective entity.

The ICAC is also investigating the circumstances in which false allegations of corruption were made against senior SWC executives (see also the Commission's Operation Credo public inquiry).

Individuals due to appear as witnesses in the first week of Operation Spicer hearings:

Karen McNamara – Federal Liberal MP for Dobell

Jodi McKay – former Labor MP for Newcastle, former NSW Minister for Tourism

Charles Perrottet – NSW Liberal state executive member, former adviser to then NSW Resources and Energy Minister Chris Hartcher, brother of NSW Minister for Finance & Services Dominic Perrottet and Government Affairs Analyst at BP Australia Pty Ltd

Tenille Koelma – Anconna Resources shareholder and wife of Tim Koelma former aide to then NSW Resources and Energy Minister Chris Hartcher

John Caputo - director of First National Real Estate in Dee Why,former mayor of Warringah, committee member of Prime Minister Abbott's Warringah federal electorate conference and vice-president of NSW Premier Mike Baird's Manly state electoral conference

Hollie Hughes - Liberal Party state executive member

Darren Jameson – former NSW police officer and former Liberal pre-selection candidate in Robertson electorate

Aaron Henry – member of the Liberal Party and former staffer with NSW State Liberal Member for The Entrance Chris Spence

Laurie Alexander – former staffer with NSW State Liberal Member for The Entrance Chris Spence

Zaya Toma – Fairfield City councillor and electorate office manager for State Liberal MP for Smithfield Andrew Rohan

Nathan Tinkler – former Patinack Farm horse stud owner and mining magnate

David Sharpe – former executive at BuildDev property developer

Troy Palmer - chief executive of Hunter Sports Group and a Buildev Group director

Matthew Lusted – owner of a Wyong building company and a Liberal Party donor

Tim Gunasinghe – President of the Erina Chamber of Commerce
Timothy Trumble/Trumbull - accountant and Liberal Party donor

Pasquale Sergi – property developer

Angelo Maggiotto –property developer

Iwan Sunito – property developer
Sebastian Reid - nephew of former of NSW Resources and Energy Minister Chris Hartcher
Annette Poole - staff member at legal firm Hartcher Reid

Eric Stammer - General Manager Yeramba Estates property development company

Roy Sergi - Advance Ready Mix Concrete
Peter Hesky - hotelier and property developer
Ekarin Sriwattanaporn - operates IT business Micki-Tech and is partner of Ray Carter former electorate officer for then NSW Resources and Energy Minister Chris Hartcher

Robert Osborne - Liberal Party donor and owner Patonga Beach Hotel

John Abel - Liberal Party member

Marie Neader - receptionist at legal firm Hartcher Reid

John Stevens - owner of the Stevens Group of property development companies

Darren Stevens

Welcome to Hockeynomics - Part One

Hockeynomics - noun

1. Economic calculations having little or no rigour 2. Economic reports in which truth or fact is whatever the Australian Treasurer wants it to be

The Sydney Morning Herald 27 April 2014:

Treasurer Joe Hockey's claims that his wealthy constituents enjoyed some of the highest bulk-billing rates in the country are looking a little washed out.

Mr Hockey said last week the cost of Medicare is growing at twice the speed of the economy and that co-payments are ''certainly something that is in the mix'' for the budget.

''Now I want to emphasise my electorate of North Sydney has one of the highest bulk-billing rates in Australia and I have one of the wealthiest electorates in Australia,'' Mr Hockey told ABC radio. ''To me there is something wrong with that.''

In fact, Mr Hockey’s electorate had Sydney’s fifth-lowest bulk-billing rate, 70 per cent, according to 2010-2011 Department of Health data, the most recent available. This is below the national average.

A spokeswoman for Mr Hockey declined to provide any data to support the Treasurer’s comments, saying only: ''The electorate has a high rate of bulk-billing for affluent areas.''

The government’s expenditure review committee has reportedly approved a $6 co-payment, capped at 12 GP visits, meaning patients would pay a maximum of $72 extra each a year.

Does Tony Abbott & Co intend to shut down Medicare Locals?

ABBOTT THEN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THg9v2myR1A&feature=share&list=PLn2RjxYNpcawPF8VIJgkcR5IUj115X2iA

ABBOTT NOW

ABC News 22 April 2014:

The ABC has learned a number of Medicare Local chief executives have been told the Federal Government plans to shut down the current system.

Speculation has been mounting that the local health bodies, which were set up under the Rudd government to organise community-specific health programs, will be scrapped in next month's budget.

Late last week chief executives of the 61 community-based health organisations held a series of a conference calls to discuss the Government's plans for the scheme.

Some of the Government's proposals for 2014-15 under serious consideration include:

·         ending funding to Medicare Locals

·         establishing larger statutory agencies to funnel state and federal funding

·         heavier involvement of private health insurers

·         more focus on GP involvement

·         putting services out to public tender

·         abolishing the peak body Australian Medicare Local Alliance

The potential changes have caused widespread angst among the local healthcare organisations.

A circular obtained by the ABC, sent to the heads of each Medicare Local by its peak body, urges each organisation to lobby their local member of Parliament.

"I would urge MLs [Medicare Locals] to continue to engage across the political spectrum and highlight, not only the good work of MLs but what would be lost if MLs were not there," it said.

There are concerns the changes will lead to more centralised control and a move away from the locally driven programs offered by each organisation.

Sources say communities would no longer be involved in deciding what programs would run.

"Many of the programs have been running for two years and are just starting to hit their straps and show results," one industry source said.

Andrew Bolt still incorrectly insisting his articles found to have breached Australia's Racial Discrimination Act were banned.

In September 2011 News Corp journalist Andrew Bolt was found to have contravened section 18C of the Australian Racial Discrimination Act in two published articles and, these articles were not exempt under section 18D of the same act.

Subsequently both Mr. Bolt and the Abbott Government have sought to characterise the judgement in Eatock v Bolt as an attack on a citizen’s right to freedom of speech:

“This is a terrible day for freedom of speech in this country.” – Andrew Bolt

Brandis is stinging about this case. The judge ‘engaged in an act of political censorship’, he says, with a journalist ‘prohibited from expressing a point of view’. – Australian Attorney-General Senator George Brandis 

Both are intent on repealing sections 18b, 18c, 18d and 18e of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975.

This is Andrew Bolt in 2014 furthering the notion that his published words were banned by the Federal Court of Australia.

In the Herald Sun, 12 March 2014:

I could prove that my banned articles argued against racism and racial division by republishing them - but the Federal Court has ruled that I may not. Mein Kampf can be published, but my articles fighting racism cannot.

In The Australian, 2 April 2014:

I should add that in banning two of my articles, the judge ruled my argument to be factually wrong in the case of those I mentioned.

In the Herald Sun, 20 April 2014:

But it’s not just global warming. Brandis said he was then horrified by “an act of political censorship” — a judge’s banning of two articles in which I questioned why certain fair-skinned Aborigines identified solely as Aboriginal.

The truth of the matter is that the original articles in question were neither banned nor their contents censored by the court.

In fact the court specifically allowed those two articles to remain online:

This Order does not prevent the Second Respondent from continuing to publish the Newspaper Articles on the Herald Sun website for historical or archival purposes, provided that such publication is accompanied by an  immediately adjacent and prominent publication of a corrective notice in the form of the annexure to these Orders and of the same or similar size.

Both 2009 articles are still available in their entirety on the Herald Sun website – here and here. The newspaper proprietor has now prefaced both with the court-ordered statement.

Andrew Bolt has used the strike key to alter the first online article, It’s so hip to be black (also titled White is the new black), so that the original despite looking almost as German as her father has turned into despite looking almost as German as her father name and had an English father has been altered to had an English a Scottish father.

However, in neither online article does it appear he has attempted to alter gross errors of fact identified in the judgment summary of Eatock v Bolt [2011] FCA 1103 (28 September 2011).

Therefore, Andrew Bolt’s articles dated 15 April and 21 August 2009 were never censored or banned.

Anyone with an Internet connection almost anywhere in the world can still read the ugly tripe he wrote.

The Abbott Government's response to the Federal Court judgment is a massive over-reaction not supported by a majority of the general public.

Bolt's freedom of speech is intact. His right to use words to publicly offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people¹ based on race, colour or national or ethnic origin² and, to employ untruthful facts and the distortion of the truth³ in order to do so, is not.

1. & 2. Wording found in Racial Discrimination Act 1975

3. The statement untruthful facts and the distortion of the truth is taken from the judgment summary of Eatock v Bolt [2011].

Future Fund Board of Guardians spends $12,000 on two Christmas parties while Abbott Government takes budgetary razor to Australia's most vulnerable

Last week was another public relations fail for the Abbott Government as went about selectively hinting at the range of cuts it intends to introduce to funding for Australia’s most vulnerable people and communities.

Herald Sun 26 April 2014:

Former treasurer Peter Costello’s Future Fund spent $8000 of taxpayers’ money on a Christmas party at a venue called La Di Da that offers burlesque evenings; but it insists there were “absolutely not’’ any strippers….

Mr Costello, Australia’s longest-serving treasurer, established the sovereign wealth fund in 2006 and was appointed as chairman by Joe Hockey in February.

No other candidates were considered for the $198,000-a-year part-time job. According to documents tabled in Parliament, a second Christmas party was then organised for the fund’s seven board members and 75 staff at an extra catering cost of $4000.

Since Tony Abbott was elected the Future Fund has spent nearly $5000 a day on airfares, $900,000 on ­recruitment costs and $15,500 for “human chemistry” consultancies….

Australian Treasurer and millionaire Joe Hockey photographed after a Spectator Magazine function at the somewhat luxuriously appointed Doltone House in Sydney on 23 April 2014, during which he gave a scaremongering speech on the need for us all to live within our national means.

N.S.W. Premier vs Newstart Recipient

I was wondering what would have happened if Mr. Barry O’Farrell was a Newstart recipient instead of the Premier of New South Wales on the 15th of April this year.

Centrelink Employee: Barry we have a report of you receiving a “gift” worth $3,000. Do you have anything to say about why you did not mention this on your dole form?

Mr O’Farrell: I never received such a gift, I deny all knowledge of ever receiving any gift.

Centrelink Employee: Barry; here is the delivery notice and a note written by you to the person who gave you the gift where you thank them for the gift. Do you deny that this is your hand writing?

Mr O’Farrell: That is my writing, but I cannot remember receiving the gift, I was very busy at that time.

Centrelink Employee: Really Barry do you expect us to believe that - you have wilfully defrauded the government. I wonder what else you have forgotten to tell the department ?

Mr O’Farrell: It was an oversight on my part, I’m sorry it won’t happen again.

Centrelink Employee: I’m glad that you have admitted you guilt but your payments have been cancelled while we investigate your case and proceed with the fraud charges against you.

If Mr Barry O’Farrell was the average older aged Newstart recipient he would be long term unemployed, renting a house and have little to no additional resources to see him through these difficulties. There is a good chance he would lose his house and he and his family would join the many homeless in N.S.W.

If the conviction of fraud is proven in the court, which it will be since he has admitted receiving the gift, his chances of gaining employment have diminished. Who wants to employ a convicted criminal?

Such are the differences in our classless society.

George Brandis talks the talk on unfettered free speech but has not always walked the walk

NOW: Australian Attorney-General Senator George Brandis trying to defend the indefensible changes proposed to the Racial Discrimination Act.

Spiked online 17 April 2014:

Brandis says he’s been a fan of free speech for ages. He reminds me that in his maiden speech to the Australian Senate, given 14 years ago when he was first elected as senator for Queensland, he let everyone know that ‘one of my most fundamental objectives would be to protect freedom of thought and expression’. He tells me he has long been agitated by ‘the cultural tyranny of political correctness’.

But there were two recent, specific things that made him realise just what a mortal threat freedom of speech faces in the modern era and that he would have to dust down his Mill, reread his Voltaire, and up the ante in his war of words against, as he puts it, the transformation of the state into ‘the arbiter of what might be thought’. The first thing was the climate-change debate; and the second is what is known down here as The Andrew Bolt Case.

THEN: Parliamentary Representative on the Council of the National Library of Australia Senator George Brandis wanting to ban a book.

Courier Mail 24 October 2006:

A federal Government senator is demanding the withdrawal of a school library book which paints his political hero and Australia's longest-serving prime minister as a tyrant.

Sir Robert Menzies is listed alongside the likes of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, Cambodian ruler Pol Pot and the deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the children's reference book 100 Greatest Tyrants, which is used by students at a Mount Isa high school.

Senator George Brandis has slammed the book, by British author Andrew Langley, describing it as offensive and inappropriate for history studies in any Australian school….