Polling blues for Team Turnbull at the end of Week 4 of the 2016 Australian Federal election campaign

The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 June 2016:

It suggests voters are now genuinely considering throwing out a first-term federal government - an event that has not occurred since the dark days of the 1930s depression….

The nationwide phone survey of 1359 residents taken from Tuesday to Thursday , put Labor ahead on 51-49 after preferences, and showed Mr Turnbull's approval continuing to slide towards negative territory after record highs last November. His net approval now stands at plus-3 points - barely inside positive territory - against Bill Shorten who is unchanged on minus-6…..

If replicated at the election on July 2, the 49 per cent return for the Coalition would be the equivalent of a massive 4.5 per cent swing against it - enough to see it bundled from office in a humiliating defeat costing it as many as 23 seats.

While locally The Daily Examiner reported on the odds in the seat of Page, 3 June 2016:

THE BOOKIES are giving the seat of Page to the ALP less than a month out from the Federal election.

Online bookmaking firm sportsbet.com.au has the incumbent, the Nationals' Kevin Hogan, drifting out $1.30 favouritism to $2.15 and Labor's Janelle Saffin firming to $1.65 from $3.50 at the start of the campaign..

The bookmaker says the majority of punter support has been for Saffin, who was the Member for Page from 2007 -2013, with 5:6 bets heading her way.

The Greens have also been wound out from $16 to $51, with not a single bet coming for Kudra Falla-Ricketts.

Minor party candidates Bethany McAlpine, Mark Ellis and Anna Ludvick are all priced at $34 after being wound out from $26.

"Kevin Hogan was considered a lock-in for Page before Malcolm Turnbull called the election, but punters have turned," said sportsbet.com.au's Ben Bulmer.

"Janelle Saffin, who started the campaign as the outsider, is now the punters pick and the clear favourite to win back the seat."

Meme of the Week

Twitter meme

Quote of the Week

....he was in iluka IGA the other day but he had a groupie talking to people while he stood there playing on his phone. he didn’t even look at his 'voters' 20 May at 02:50

[Cavelle Whan's comment on Clarence Forum regarding Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan who is standing for re-election in July 2016]

Major parties accused of ignoring radiology in rebate freeze debate as patient gaps hit $100 on average

Medianet Release

31 May 2016 2:29 PM AEST

Rebate freeze debate ignores radiology as patient gaps hit $100

 Radiologists have accused both sides of politics of ignoring a looming health emergency, with patient gaps for scans such as X-rays, Ultrasounds, CTs and MRIs now averaging $100.

 While election debates focus on rebates for GP visits and pathology tests, the Australian Diagnostic Imaging Association (ADIA) says vital diagnostic imaging services are becoming more unaffordable for everyday Australians.

 "We've hit a regrettable milestone in Australia, with gap payments for diagnostic imaging services now averaging $100," said ADIA CEO Pattie Beerens.

 "People are rightly upset about the three year freeze on Medicare payments to GPs, but no-one is discussing the fact that patient rebates for diagnostic imaging have been frozen since 1998.

 "Bill Shorten is now on record saying that the Liberals' plan will jeopardise Medicare, bulk billing and the ability for people not to have to pay up front fees when they need a mammogram or x-ray - and that Labor will put people first.

 "That is encouraging in theory, but in practice neither side of politics has made a commitment that addresses the enormous squeeze on millions of patients needing scans."

 Ms Beerens said practices across Australia remained extremely concerned that the freeze on patient rebates for diagnostic imaging – which have been stagnant for 18 years and are scheduled to continue past 2020 – will continue to drive more patients away from essential diagnosis and treatment.

 "The fact is that most radiology practices are local businesses operating on thin margins. This squeeze has been going on for two decades, and it has to end," Ms Beerens said.

 "Patients don't just decide to have a scan, they have to be referred, but governments have cut so much money from the system that average Australians are being priced out of health care.

 "Sick people will avoid getting diagnosed, and that will create huge long-term problems for our health system."

Australian Attorney-General George Brandis lists some common breaches of the rights, freedoms and privileges recognised by the common law

Australian Attorney-General and Liberal Senator George Brandis has helpfully listed common breaches of a citizen’s rights, freedoms and privileges – the same rights, freedoms and privileges which coincidentally have been eroded in federal legislation enacted since 2001.

Excerpts from the Traditional Rights and Freedoms—Encroachments by Commonwealth Laws (ALRC Report 129) tabled on 2 March 2016:

Review of Commonwealth Laws for Consistency with Traditional Rights, Freedoms and Privileges

I, Senator the Hon George Brandis QC, Attorney-General of Australia, having regard to the rights, freedoms and privileges recognised by the common law, REFER to the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) for inquiry and report pursuant to section 20(1) of the Australian Law Reform Commission Act 1996 (Cth):

· the identification of Commonwealth laws that encroach upon traditional rights, freedoms and privileges; and

· a critical examination of those laws to determine whether the encroachment upon those traditional rights, freedoms and privileges is appropriately justified.

For the purpose of the inquiry ‘laws that encroach upon traditional rights, freedoms and privileges’ are to be understood as laws that:

· reverse or shift the burden of proof;

· deny procedural fairness to persons affected by the exercise of public power;

· exclude the right to claim the privilege against self-incrimination;

· abrogate client legal privilege;

· apply strict or absolute liability to all physical elements of a criminal offence;

· interfere with freedom of speech;

· interfere with freedom of religion;

· interfere with vested property rights;

· interfere with freedom of association;

· interfere with freedom of movement;

· disregard common law protection of personal reputation;

· authorise the commission of a tort;

· inappropriately delegate legislative power to the Executive;

· give executive immunities a wide application;

· retrospectively change legal rights and obligations;

· create offences with retrospective application; 

· alter criminal law practices based on the principle of a fair trial;

· permit an appeal from an acquittal;

· restrict access to the courts; and

· interfere with any other similar legal right, freedom or privilege.

Scope of the reference

In undertaking this reference, the ALRC should include consideration of Commonwealth laws in the areas of, but not limited to:

· commercial and corporate regulation; · environmental regulation; and

· workplace relations.

The full report can be read here.

Australian Federal Election 2016: right-wing propaganda running wild

This scare campaign is looking suspiciously as though it is being made up as the proponents go along.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 May 2016:

Research intended for use in a bid to discredit Labor's negative gearing campaign was commissioned after a meeting between Scott Morrison and a close friend and senior figure in Australia's property industry.

But the draft report contains a series of factual errors and makes bold claims of a "resale price cliff" and "social dysfunction" that have alarmed some in the real estate industry to whom it has been circulated.

An email obtained by Fairfax Media shows Greg Paramor, the managing director of property company Folkestone, discussed the need for a study critiqueing Labor's policy with Brian Haratsis, the executive chairman of advisory firm MacroPlan Dimasi. Mr Paramor, who is a friend of Mr Morrison and former president of the Australian Property Council, made the request after his encounter with the Treasurer.

"Greg recently had the opportunity to meet with The Hon. Scott Morrison to discuss negative gearing," the email notes. "As a result of that meeting, Greg agreed to provide a report to the Treasurer – he asked Brian Haratsis to undertake a study on the impact of the proposed negative gearing changes."

The email, sent from an unnamed person inside Mr Paramor's company, was sent to senior industry figures last week.

It also asks for feedback as "the Treasurer is keen to get the report next week".

Entitled "Short Memory: Negative Gearing and Capital Gains Tax: Foundations of the New Australian Housing Model," the attached draft report is also presented with an alternative title: "Shortened Memory".

It claims Labor's policy would remove 205,000 dwellings from the rental housing stock over a decade, adding to housing stress. Asked why removing dwellings from the rental stock would add to housing stress when the dwellings would still be available for use, Mr Haratsis said the phrase was meant to refer to low-income rental dwellings.

Illustration: Ron Tandberg

The draft says Labor's policy would both make housing less affordable and create a "resale price cliff" as large numbers of apartments were sold at a loss. Mr Haratsis explained the apparent contradiction by saying the market was bifurcated and that different parts of it would react differently….

The Treasurer's office denied he had asked for a report to be prepared or that he or his office had received copies.

The report also says Australian governments would need to stump up an extra $3.3 billion per year for social housing and rent assistance should Labor's policy became law, more than the $3.2 billion per year it would raise.

The total economic cost of Labor's policy would be $5 billion per year, a reference Mr Haratsis said has since been removed from the document after acknowledging that it was arrived at by adding up payments without subtracting receipts.

"I am writing this as we go, and there are a number of references that you are looking at that won't be there in the final," he said. "I want to go back and recalculate the numbers."

Prepared in haste with what appears to have been a speech recognition program, the draft at one point refers to Labor's promise to "grandfather" the entitlements of existing investors as a promise to create "ground furthered" properties.

The leaking of the report potentially blunts another avenue of attack on Labor's plan to restrict negative gearing to new properties only and halve the capital gains tax discount to 25 per cent, which has been the subject of a fierce government scare campaign.

Mr Haratsis insisted it was his decision to initiate the report after his meeting with Mr Paramor, that he would fund the work himself and that it was planned for release next week - at which point "I could maybe give it to the Treasurer".

The report critiques organisations such as the Grattan Institute, which engages in "Robin Hood economics" and chooses to "ostracise high income individuals" instead of focusing on tax efficiency.

Short Memory Alternative Title – Shortened Memory by The Guardian

Australian Federal Election 2016: the lengths to which an Abbott-Turnbull Government will go

As the end of Week Three of the federal election campaign drew near a little plausible deniability was obviously called for………..

News.com.au, 27 May 2016:

THE FEDERAL government has had the nation axed from a UNESCO report on climate change and world heritage sites.

Every reference to Australia has been scrapped from the final version of the 87-page report, which detailed the impact of global warming on 31 natural and man-made world heritage sites around the world.

The initial “World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate” report included a key chapter on the Great Barrier Reef. It also referenced Kakadu and the Tasmanian forests.

But the Australian Department of the Environment made sure every mention of Australia was removed, even though it lists other sites in the Asia Pacific region and says coral reefs are “particularly vulnerable” to climate change.

This means Australia is the only inhabited continent on the planet with no mentions in the report.

In a statement to news.com.au, the Environment Department confirmed it asked for references to Australia to be removed, saying it would have a negative impact on tourism:

“Recent experience in Australia had shown that negative commentary about the status of world heritage properties impacted on tourism.

“The department was concerned that the framing of the report confused two issues — the world heritage status of the sites and risks arising from climate change and tourism……

Here is the Department’s full statement:

The World Heritage Centre initiated contact with the Department of the Environment in early 2016 for our views on aspects of this report.

The Department expressed concern that giving the report the title “Destinations at risk” had the potential to cause considerable confusion. In particular, the World Heritage Committee had only six months earlier decided not to include the Great Barrier Reef on the in-danger list and commended Australia for the Reef 2050 Plan.

The Department was concerned that the framing of the report confused two issues – the world heritage status of the sites and risks arising from climate change and tourism. It is the World Heritage Committee, not its secretariat (the World Heritage Centre), which is properly charged with examining the status of World Heritage sites.

Recent experience in Australia had shown that negative commentary about the status of World Heritage properties impacted on tourism.

The Department indicated it did not support any of Australia’s World Heritage properties being included in such a publication for the reasons outlined above.

The Department of the Environment conveyed these concerns through Australia’s Ambassador to UNESCO.

The Department did not brief the Minister on this issue. [my red bolding]

I’m not impressed Team Turnbull! Not only was it a foolish move when the world's media has been reporting on the effects of climate change on Australia's reef systems - there is no way that a government department is going to pressure the United Nations to alter a report without relevant ministers right up to the foreign minister and prime minister being aware.

Neither was lead author of this United Nations report, Adam Markham, the deputy director of climate and energy with the Union of Concerned Scientists impressed by the Turnbull Government's actions.

He issued this statement on behalf of the UCS:

Australia’s Iconic Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Site at Risk from Global Warming

Adam Markham, deputy director, Climate & Energy Program | May 26, 2016, 3:06 pm EDT

A lot has changed since Captain Cook became the first European to try to navigate the Great Barrier Reef in 1770. It was the reports of Cook and naturalist Joseph Banks on their return to England that first alerted the scientific world to the existence of this biological marvel. The Great Barrier Reef is now one of the world’s most important coastal and marine tourism areas, but its future is at risk, and climate change is the primary long-term threat.

A World Heritage site since 1981, the Great Barrier Reef is one of the world’s most complex and diverse ecosystems, with at least 400 species of hard coral, 150 species of soft corals and sea fans, and more than 2,900 individual reefs and some of the most important seagrass meadows in the world. It teems with marine life of all sorts, including more than 1600 fish species, seabirds, seahorses, whales, dolphins, crocodiles, dugongs and endangered green turtles. The reef extends for 2,300km along the coast of Queensland in Northeast Australia and has evolved over a period of 15,000 years. The region is important for the indigenous heritage of First Australians who are Traditional Owners including Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander people. Climate change threatens hunting and fishing as well as other traditional and cultural practices. Some sacred sites are also at risk for the more than 70 Traditional Owner groups for whom natural resources are inseparable from cultural identity.

Tourism is an important economic driver

Today, tourism (including touring, diving, beaches, sailing, fishing and cruising) is the most important economic sector in the GBR communities, contributing $5.2 billion dollarsto the Australian economy in 2012 and supporting 64,000 jobs, or about 90% of the total economic activity in the region. Visitors spent nearly 43 million total nights in the GBR region in 2012, of which nearly 2 million nights were on the reef, mainly at Cairns and the Whitsunday Islands. Direct reef-related tourism alone contributes 4,800 jobs. Approximately 500 commercial boats operate bringing tourists out to dive and snorkel on the reef, and there can be negative impacts associated with this, including damage from fuel spills and walking and dropping anchors on fragile corals. Tourism infrastructure, along with other coastal developments, can cause habitat degradation and damaging pollution and sediment run-off. Australia is the world’s fourth largest coal producer and debate currently swirls around the risks embodied in plans to expand coal mining and coal shipping near the Great Barrier Reef.

Higher temperatures and ocean acidification threaten reefs

The biggest threat to the GBR today, and to its ecosystems services, biodiversity, heritage values and tourism economy, is climate change, including warming sea temperatures, accelerating rates of sea level rise, changing weather patterns and ocean acidification. Coral reefs worldwide are being directly impacted by warming waters and ocean acidification, and climate change is exacerbating other localized stresses. Ocean acidification is occurring because of increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A significant portion of this CO2 is being absorbed by the oceans and the resulting increases in seawater acidity reduces the capacity of some marine life, such as corals, to build their calcium carbonate based skeletons. Significant drops in coral growth rate have been recorded in the last two decades for massive Porites corals on the Great Barrier Reef.

Worst ever coral bleaching

Other significant threats to the reef include coastal development, agricultural run-off pollution, port-based shipping activities, illegal fishing and outbreaks of the coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish. Assailed by multiple threats, the status of the GBR has been assessed as being poor and deteriorating. Half of its coral cover has been lost over the last three decades. Unusually high sea temperatures have caused nine mass coral bleaching events on the GBR since 1979, and until this year, the worst had been in 1998 and 2002 (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority 2012, Steffen et al 2009, Hughes et al 2015). But higher water temperatures and a severe El Nino have been pushing corals into the danger zone all over the world in 2015-16, and the Great Barrier Reef is currently suffering the most severe bleaching episode ever recorded.

Coral bleaching occurs when higher than usual maximum temperatures disrupt the relationship between corals and the photosynthetic zooxanthelae algae that live in their tissues in a vital and mutually beneficial biological relationship. Bleaching can kill corals, but depending on the severity of the impact and local factors they can also recover. The same is true for coral damage from storms, but damaged or bleached corals and reefs need time to recover. All indications are that bleaching events will become more frequent and tropical storms more intense with continued global warming, and that this combined with a continued trend in warming water and ocean acidification will be massively detrimental to the GBR. The current bleaching episode has affected more than 90% of the reef, with the worst damage being in the northern region where surveys have confirmed 50% mortality in some places.

Without global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions coupled with local management responses to increase resilience, current projections suggest that coral cover could decline to 5-10% of the GBR by the early 2020s from 28% in 1985—a potential loss of 80% in just 40 years. Similar fears are associated with one of the other keystone ecosystems of the GBR, seagrass meadows representing 20% of the world’s 72 seagrass species. These shallow-water habitats provide vital nursery areas for fish and shrimps, critical food resources for turtles and dugongs, and act as carbon sinks, sequestering organic carbon in marine sediments. The combination of agricultural runoff, fishery impacts and climate change may exceed seagrass beds’ natural ability to adapt. Sea turtles too are at risk from climate change as high temperatures and sea level rise impact their breeding and nesting beaches.

A need for action

Spurred by the direct evidence of climate change already impacting the GBR, degradation of the reefs and the likelihood of much worse to come, the Australian government has begun to plan and implement actions to reduce the risk of future damage. At the core of the adaptation strategy are efforts to build ecosystem resilience, fill gaps in scientific knowledge, and monitor environmental, social and economic impacts of climate change. Collaborative management strategies are also being developed and tested with local communities, Traditional Owners, as well as with business and industry. The GBR was also the first World Heritage property for which a comprehensive Tourism and Climate Change Action Strategy was developed. The strategy recognizes the vital importance that a healthy GBR ecosystem plays for the Australian economy and that the tourism industry must quickly come to grips with the problem. Recommended actions include reducing direct impacts and greenhouse gas emissions from tourism companies operating on or near the reef; increased training and awareness for guides and operators; helping to raise public understanding of the threat, and; supporting scientific research and monitoring activities. The plan also calls for the industry itself to plan adaptive responses for declining reef conditions and to contribute to risk management strategies for climate disasters.

Despite these measures, international concern has continued to grow, however, that without a comprehensive response more in keeping with the scale of the threat, the GBR’s extraordinary biodiversity and natural beauty may lose its World Heritage values. The World Conservation Outlook 2014 published by IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) assessed the status of the World Heritage values of the GBR as of “high concern” and experiencing a deteriorating trend. The most recent strategy from the Australian government, the Reef 2050 Long-term Sustainability plan addressed this issue head on and has been designed to “ensure the Great Barrier Reef continues to improve on its Outstanding Universal Value every decade between now and 2050 to be a natural wonder for each successive generation to come”.

The full UNESCO report, World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate, can be read here.