Be Shark Smart This Summer

  

Was about to have a quick swim at Lennox Head but came across this only a few feet from shore.
Changed my mind!

Mark Thomas, Lennox Head NSW, Monday 3 October 2016

Reported in  The Huffington Post, 6 October 2016

The NSW Government has a Twitter account @NSWSharkSmart (hash tag #SharkSmart) which tweets rolling alerts when aerial patrols or a NSWDPI shark team sight sharks in New South Wales coastal waters.

A useful inclusion on that mobile phone tossed into the beach bag as you head out for a day of sun, sand and surf.

Political Cartoon of the Week

Cathy Wilcox

Headline of the Week

The lights go out in SA and Turnbull flicks the switch to peak stupid

[The Guardian, 1 October 2016]

Australia's two most senior legal officers square off

Attorney-General George Brandis is making the news again for all the wrong reasons.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 October 2016:

Attorney-General George Brandis is facing calls to resign after the government's top legal adviser accused him of misleading Parliament, in a dramatic escalation of a toxic row between the country's two most senior legal officers.

Senator Brandis has come under fire over a contentious move to restrict his ministerial colleagues' ability to seek independent legal advice directly from Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson, SC.

Documents released at a Senate inquiry on Wednesday suggest same-sex marriage laws and a proposal to strip dual nationals involved in terrorism of Australian citizenship were flashpoints in a simmering feud between the two men.

Mr Gleeson, the government's top legal adviser, said in an explosive submission to the inquiry that he had not been consulted about a change requiring all ministers – including the prime minister – to obtain the written approval of Senator Brandis before seeking his advice.

Senator Brandis claimed in Parliament Mr Gleeson was consulted about the legally binding change, made days before the election.

Mr Gleeson said he had taken steps to have the change "withdrawn and for a proper consultation process to commence" but they had "proved futile".

"Had I been consulted ... I would have made a submission to the Attorney-General, in the strongest terms, that [the change] should not be made," Mr Gleeson said.

Legal experts have expressed concern the change is a power grab that restricts the independence of the Solicitor-General.

Mr Gleeson said there had been times since his appointment in 2013 when he had been asked directly by "persons, such as a Prime Minister or Governor-General" to provide confidential advice and it was "critically important" this should continue.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 October 2016:

Mr Gleeson wrote to Senator Brandis in November 2015, raising concerns the Australian Government Solicitor (AGS) rather than his office was consulted on a marriage equality proposal that was "under active consideration by the government".

Mr Gleeson also said he was not consulted about significant changes to a proposal to strip dual nationals involved in terrorism of Australian citizenship. Senator Brandis later made public statements that Mr Gleeson had advised there was a "good prospect" the law would withstand a High Court challenge….

The Guardian, 5 October 2016:

So what did George Brandis tell the Senate? He tabled an unequivocal statement that he had consulted the solicitor general in relation to the Legal Services Direction:

“Section 55ZF of the Judiciary Act 1903 empowers the attorney general to issue directions, which are to apply generally to Commonwealth legal work, or are to apply to Commonwealth legal work being performed, or to be performed, in relation to a particular matter. As the Direction relates to the process for referring a question of law to the solicitor general, the attorney general has consulted the solicitor general.”

A document obtained under Freedom of Information by The Guardian newspaper demonstrates that the Attorney-General has a rather odd notion of what consultation entails.

This letter clearly highlights the fact that there had been no prior consultation on changes to Legal Services Direction 2005:

Unfortunately for Senator Brandis the current Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs' inquiry into the Nature and scope of the consultations prior to the making of the Legal Services Amendment (Solicitor-General Opinions) Direction 2016 allows the Solicitor-General of the Commonwealth to give a full and frank explanation of the circumstances surrounding the Attorney-General's blatant power grab.

Something Justin Gleeson SC avails himself of in Submission No. 3 to the inquiry:

Evidence given at the 5 October 2016 inquiry hearing supports the contention that the Solicitor-General was only consulted about a guidance document (now superseded) not the directions document.

It  would appear that the Attorney-General has indeed knowingly mislead the Australian Parliament.

A position that sections of the mainstream media support.

Crikey.com.au, 6 October 2016:

George Brandis has blatantly misled parliament and has to resign. And his reluctance to use a better lawyer than himself for advice is behind the debacle……

Brandis has clearly, plainly misled Parliament, and on a very important issue. There’s no wriggle room or get-out clause for the provincial lawyer from Brisbane. He’s got to go.

As to a motive imputed to Brandis by the Crikey journalist - I suspect that the Solicitor-General holds a similar view although more diplomatically worded here:

Political Career Path by ‏tweeter @interrogativus

House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics' Review of Australia's Four Major Banks - Days 1 & 2

On 15 September 2016 the Australian Treasurer asked the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics to inquire into and report on a Review of Australia's Four Major Banks.

Public hearing were conducted on 4 to 6 October.

News.com.au reporting on the Commonwealth Bank appearance on 4 October 2016:

Commonwealth Bank chief Ian Narev to face parliamentary inquiry into banking system…..

On Tuesday Mr Narev admitted an independent review found one in 10 customers received “inappropriate financial advice” from the bank.

Speaking to MPs, he said an independent report last week found of 8000 customers who asked for their financial advice to be reviewed, 6000 had been completed.

It found more than 10 per cent of those were given inappropriate advice. The bank had paid out $11 million in claims since its initial payout of $52 million several years ago.

Mr Narev defended the time it had taken to resolve the matter and said it would be wrapped up by the end of the year.

“We’ve gone back a large number of years in this program to statements of advice that go back prior to the global financial crisis,” he said. “So yes it has taken a period of time to do that but we’ve done it thoroughly, with independent oversight.”…

When asked by Labor’s Pat Conroy about whether there had been disciplinary consequences for CommInsure officers who rejected insurance claims from terminally ill people or refused to pay out life insurance, Mr Narev said there had been no terminations of employment.

“There are certainly individuals where we know enough about them that they’ve had some consequences related to remuneration but at this stage we have not had individuals terminated because of this because we’ve not seen the need to do that,” he said.

Independent committees within the bank will decide on disciplinary action after the review is completed.

Mr Narev said he expected there would be more cases of poor customer outcomes, but said this would be followed by more announcements regarding compensation due to customers…..

This was The Canberra Times commenting that same day:

Power is a funny thing.

It shifts and flows, is both tangible and vague.

Often, it is most identifiable when it is missing. 

As Ian Narev, the Commonwealth Bank CEO who received $12.3 million in pay last financial year, fronted the first of what are to be annual parliamentary committee hearings, who held the power was clear.

And it wasn't the government.

As far as Narev was concerned, everything he needed to say was said at his opening statement - the bank had not always done right by customers, but it was learning and changing and on the whole, its customers were "the most satisfied they've been".  

It was all, he said, about being strong and fair.  Strong banks equalled a strong economy. And that was almost an excuse for anything, even if they needed to work on being a little more fair.

Throughout the three-hour hearing, he often referred to what he said at the beginning, to the point where it became a mantra, no matter how many cases were mentioned.

On 5 October it was The Sydney Morning Herald which noticed what is probably a Brian Loughnane-inspired evidential trend:

This time, it was Shayne Elliott, the ANZ chief executive officer, who was very sorry.

He was very sorry for the issues within its wealth management division and its rural lending business, which saw ANZ foreclose on drought-stricken farmers.  

He was very sorry for not supplying all the promised services to thousands of financial planning customers, resulting in $30 million compensation. 

Very sorry for overcharging fees.

Very sorry for errors of a "reasonable magnitude" which saw more than 1.3 million customers within the OnePath financial advisory and life insurance arm suffer, including 1400 who had their superannuation directed to the wrong account.

These apologies are the opening moves.

But they were "mistakes", and the bank has since "put it right".

Processes have changed, systems have been put in place.  There's no reason to push further, Mr Elliott implied.  He's "proud of the culture of the bank", because when it's made aware of problems, it fixes them.

There's nothing more to see here.

Herald Sun, 5 October 2016:

Regarding the treatment of customers, Mr Elliott said ANZ had “not always met the standards we set for ourselves or that the community rightly expects of us”. He revealed the bank had seen off 40 financial planners in the past year after the bank breached regulatory rules.

Mr Elliott also admitted the bank had “poorly managed” an incident when 1400 customers had superannuation directed into the wrong account.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 October 2016:

So how remiss had the banks previously been in dealing with their indiscretions?

Let's take ANZ. Last year it reported 45 breaches by its financial planners to the regulator. That is one in 20 and in one year. But the year before there were only six reported.

As Pat Conroy noted,  that was a 750 per cent increase in reported breaches in the space of a year so either there was a massive jump in adviser breaches or they had not been reported in the past.

Elliott had to admit the latter was more likely.

Thus far the big banks have been all but laughing openly at parliament and the general public.  

Commencing at 9.15am this morning it's NAB and Westpac's turn to pretend to care tuppence.

Hearing transcripts can be found here.

Using tax offsets as a principal funding device to encourage self-assessing corporations to conduct research and development. What could possibly go wrong?

Providing a tax incentive for industry to conduct, in a scientific way, experimental activities for the purpose of generating new knowledge or information in either a general or applied form. [C’wealth Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 - SECT 355.5]

What could possibly go wrong when a federal government primarily funds business research and development (R&D) by offering private corporations tax offsets for conducting such activities, while at the same time allowing them to self-assess whether they are eligible for these tax incentives and whether their research is genuine?

Well for a start, the companies involved tend to employ less science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates to conduct their R&D.

Given that on 15 June 2016 The Australian reported that; the Productivity Commission says STEM graduates fare poorly in the job market, apart from those who have studied healthcare, mining engineering and surveying. The outlook for mathematics and computer science qualifications are only slightly below average, however there are big gaps for graduates in life sciences, chemistry and the physical sciences. Employment outcomes improve three years after graduation, but 20 per cent of people with bachelor degrees in natural and physical sciences have still not got a job. Of those who do get work, many are in an unrelated field. About a quarter of people with science degrees say their qualifications are not relevant to their employment, one has to wonder why business and industry in Australia are not availing themselves of these qualified graduates.

Then there is the fact that it appears that this government program is not always well targeted.

Another flaw in this system is that voters have no way of knowing which companies are receiving these tax incentives and how much they are receiving, or of assessing what government foregoing so much tax income annually actually achieves as outcomes for the economy.

If science actually matters to the Turnbull Government it should matter not just in universities and identified research institutes but in all its aspects – including allegedly market-driven R&D.

One has to suspect that a little more academic discipline in business research and development might lead to better outcomes.

BACKGROUND

Dept. of Industry, Innovation and Science, Review of the R&D Tax Incentive (Ferris, Finkel and Frasier) 4 April 2016:

The R&D Tax Incentive (the Incentive) is the largest component of Australian government support for innovation, with around 13,700 entities performing $19.5 billion of R&D at an estimated cost to government of $2.95 billion in 2013-14. The Government commissioned this review to:

‘identify opportunities to improve the effectiveness and integrity of the R&D Tax Incentive, including by sharpening its focus on encouraging additional R&D spending.’

Reviewing the programme against these terms of reference involves the evaluation of the programme against its objectives, weighed against the costs, to measure the net social benefit.

The objectives, as stated in the programme’s legislation, are to ‘encourage industry to conduct research and development activities that might otherwise not be conducted…to benefit the wider Australian economy’. In other words, the Incentive seeks to encourage additional R&D (additionality) that benefits others (spillovers).

Most OECD countries have incentive schemes for R&D. Australia and most other countries use tax incentives as part of their public support, but Australia, Canada and the Netherlands are unusual in having tax measures as the principal form of support for business R&D. Countries such as Finland, Germany and Sweden are examples at the other end of the spectrum, in that they do not use tax incentives at all but rather support business R&D through direct measures such as competitive grants.

Overall assessment

The review panel finds that the programme falls short of meeting its stated objectives of additionality and spillovers. There are a number of areas where improvements could be sought in order to improve the effectiveness and integrity of the programme and achieve a stronger focus on additionality.

Based on the best estimates of additionality and spillovers, the panel found that the programme could be better targeted. The areas of improvement identified in this review would be likely to generate greater benefit from the programme for the Australian economy.….

The panel notes that there is a modest amount of collaboration with publicly-funded research organisations (PFROs) within the programme, but it is not an explicit focus. The panel also notes the low employment level of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) PhD graduates in Australian industry relative to other OECD countries. This represents a lost opportunity for greater spillovers of knowledge between larger companies, PFROs and the broader marketplace…..

The panel notes that despite the level of coordination between AusIndustry and the ATO, the significant growth in the scale of the programme is placing increasing strain on the administrative and compliance model for the programme. The Government should consider options to improve administration. These could include: adopting a single application process rather than the current separation of registration and claims, introducing a single database for the entire programme, reviewing whether both AusIndustry and the ATO should continue to administer the programme jointly and closer collaboration and streamlining around review and findings. Either or both agencies may require additional resourcing to enable such improvements.

To place the programme into alignment with modern expectations and to allow public visibility of companies receiving public support for their activities, tax secrecy provisions should be adjusted to allow the publication of the names of companies claiming the Incentive and the amounts of R&D they have claimed…..