Did Whitehaven Coal set out to deceive the NSW Government concerning its Maule Creek mine in the Leard State Forest?

Snapshots from New Matilda 12 September 2014

The Sydney Morning Herald 12 September 2014:

The NSW Department of Planning is investigating the seemingly phantom appointment by Whitehaven Coal of an environmental group to a compulsory oversight committee for its $767 million Maules Creek coalmine.

The department warned Whitehaven in June 2013 after its nominated group, Greening Australia, failed to send a representative to the inaugural meeting of the Community Consultative Committee due to discuss the open-cut mine's biodiversity management plan.

"I would remind you that the intention of including a representative from an environmental special interest group is to ensure sufficient comment and feedback on biodiversity issues," mining projects manager Mike Young wrote to Whitehaven, according to documents obtained by New Matilda and viewed by Fairfax Media.

Despite the request a representative of Greening Australia provide comments "either in writing or at the next CCC meeting", Whitehaven failed to act. Instead, the miner provided "apologies" for the group's absence at all subsequent meetings.

"We haven't offered any apologies because we didn't know the meetings were on," Greening Australia chief executive Brendan Foran said, adding the group had no record of its nomination.

After a phone call about the committee in August 2013, Greening Australia heard nothing from Whitehaven until early last month when the law firm acting on behalf of the miner, Ashurst, requested it attend a committee meeting the following day at Boggabri, near the mine in northern NSW.

"It was extremely short notice," Greening Australia's NSW head, Peter Flottmann, said. "There was quite a deal of urgency."

Without knowing the context nor having any prior knowledge of the event, Mr Flottmann declined the request. Soon afterwards, a separate party acting for Whitehaven rang one of his staff members and asked if he could join a teleconference of the meeting.

"That wasn't an appropriate approach to my company," he said.

Mr Flottmann then emailed Whitehaven environmental manager Daniel Martin formally resigning Greening Australia from a role he had not been aware it had.

"As discussed I was extremely disappointed in Whitehaven`s recent approach to Greening Australia and my staff," the email said. It demanded the miner "strike any reference" of the group being absent, "as clearly we had no knowledge of any meeting being held between August 2013 and August 2014".

Greening Australia is yet to hear from Whitehaven….

New Matilda article here.

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Former member Metgasco Limited's executive team to appear before NSW ICAC Operation Spicer investigation

Between 2011-13 Richard Shields was coal seam gas miner Metgasco Limited’s in-house lobbyist on its executive team as External Relations Manager.

Prior to crossing over to this listed mining company for those two years, Shields served as Deputy Director of the Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division) for over 3 years and also served as the Interim State Director.

It is primarily this political party role which sees Richard Shields included on the witness list for Friday 12 September 2009.

Presumably because evidence given during Operation Spicer hearings is that Shields took a direct hand in fundraising during his time in the party's William Street head office between 2008 and 2011 and, this is a period in which unlawful political donations were allegededly laundered through Liberal Party associated entities.

Women will bear the brunt of the Abbott government's budget cuts

The Sydney Morning Herald 11 September 2014:

Women will bear the brunt of the Abbott government's budget cuts.

New analysis drawing on National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling budget impact models and latest census and Australian Bureau of Statistics data, shows women in low and middle-income households can expect to suffer the biggest financial losses from the Abbott government's budget savings.

And the worst hit – by far – will be women in low-income households.

A single mother in the lowest disposable income group can expect to lose one of every four dollars lost by that group in the budget's aftermath come 2017.

Women in middle-income households will suffer much more than high-income women.

The analysis comes as Prime Minister Tony Abbott released a video on the weekend in which he said one of his government's main motivations in future will be "protecting the vulnerable."

The new slogan marked a deliberate and noticeable change of rhetoric from Mr Abbott's previous public messages, and follows months of criticism that he and his Treasurer, Joe Hockey, have endured for their budget's likely negative impact on poor households…..

A senior economist at the Australia Institute, Matt Grudnoff, said women are, on average, poorer than men in Australia, and the analysis showed the budget would not help matters.

"This budget is reducing gender equality even more. If you look at the pay gap between men and women, it's an issue that's getting worse, not better," Mr Grudnoff said.

Recent figures from Bureau of Statistics show the pay gap between men and women in Australia had widened to 18.2 per cent, up from 17.1 per cent at the start of the year.

Between November 2013 and May 2014, Australian men's salaries increased an average $24.90 per week and women's increased only $7.09.

Read more here.

The lesson Metgasco learnt over the last ten years is that it needs to bully NSW Police into moving against protestors at its direction

Coal seam and tight gas exploration and wannabee production mining company, Metgasco Limited made a 20 minute speech at the RUI Good Oil Conference in Perth on Wednesday 10 September 2014, complete with a 10 slide power point presentation titled Rosella – lessons learnt.

Although the presentation did not make clear what lessons Metgasco thought it had taken from the sustained community opposition to its aim to establish gas fields on the NSW North Coast, oil & gas industry newspaper Upstream obliging told us on the same day that the answer was increased social media propaganda and more police action on the ground at its Northern Rivers drill sites:

He said there needed to be better education of the community in regards to what the impact the industry will have.

Henderson also echoed the message that is pervasive in the Australian industry, which is that operators need to improve their standing on social media.

“We are being absolutely killed in social media by the greens,” he said. “Too many people in the community have been led to believe that we use old technology and that renewables are ready to step in right now and replace them”.

“Unless we start winning the minds of people in the capital city... we’re going to have government’s putting more stringent regulations on us.”

Henderson said he wished at the time of the protest he had pushed for more police action to cut off the resources of the protestors who at times performed “dangerous” acts.

Yes, it seems that Metgasco still believes that way to win hearts and minds at Bentley is with police baton charges.