Is the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association playing dirty online?

This breathtakingly misleading article appeared at Upstreamonline on 23 June 2014:

Click on image to enlarge

Bianca Bartucciotto, who elsewhere describes herself as a journalist-in-training, writes on the oil and gas industry.

However, she obviously hasn’t done her homework as the court has not ruled in coal seam/tight gas exploration and mining company Metgasco Limited’s favour in Metgasco Ltd v Minister for Resources & Energy [2014] NSWSC. 

On the date this Upstream article was posted legal proceedings had not moved much beyond the NSW Government’s formal response to the amended summons, submitted to the court by Metgasco on or about 7 July 2014.

In fact, as Metgasco, APPEA and presumably Ms. Bartucciotto are aware, no evidence will be heard in this matter until October this year at the earliest.

One can be forgiven for harbouring a suspicion that Ms. Bartucciotto relationship with the Australian gas industry is closer than that of a reporting journalist writing for an industry newspaper:

In fact, whether the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association (APPEA) or members of its board are shareholders in the NHST Media Group, which owns the Upstream website she writes for, is a question hanging in the air right now.

NHST Media Group is certainly listed on the website for the forthcoming May 2015 APPEA Conference & Exhibition as its Upstream business was the official supplier of leading events in the sector, e.g. ONS in Stavanger, the World Petroleum Congress in Moscow and Appea in Perth in Australia.

Nationals MP for Cowper and Assistant Minister for Employment Luke Hartsuyker makes a fool of himself on the national stage

ExposureDraft of the Purchasing Arrangements for Employment Services 2015-2020, released 28 July 2014:

ABC News 28 July 2014:

Most unemployed people will be required to look for up to 40 jobs a month and work for the dole, as part of the Federal Government's $5.1 billion overhaul of the job services system.

Details of the Government's draft model and tender information for new five-year contracts, which would take effect in July next year, are expected to be released this morning.

"This new system will focus job service providers on getting people into work, it will cut the red tape, and it will free them up to use their initiatives and innovate in the ways they deliver programs," Assistant Employment Minister Luke Hartsuyker told the ABC's AM program.

"It's going to deliver far better outcomes for job seekers and far better outcomes for employers."

"Job service providers will be rewarded for getting people into work for periods as short as four weeks - so there'll be four-week, 12-week, and 26-week outcomes.

Forty job application a month per person on unemployment benefits?

Did no-one in government bother to look at official ABS statistics?

There were 2,076,666 actively trading businesses in Australia at 30 June 2013. Of which 1,264,298 did not employ staff, 563,412 only employed between 1-4 people and only 3,598 had staffing levels above 200 workers.

This new policy would generate a minimum of 29 million individual job applications nationwide each month (or close to one million per day) for the foreseeable future when there are probably less than 147,000 job vacancies in the 812,368 employing businesses right across the country at any given time.

The human resources departments of companies operating in Australia are going to have a collective nervous breakdown trying to process that many ‘going nowhere’ job applications.

I can see many a giant waste paper basket and numerous overloaded electronic mail boxes in their futures.

The business community was quick to realise this, with The Sydney Morning Herald reporting on 29 July:

''They will be inundated,'' says Peter Strong of the Council of Small Business of Australia. ''It's an embarrassment for everybody and it's going to make people angry. The small business person might be having a lousy day and no customers are coming in, but she'll be getting job-seekers. In the hospitality industry most of the time you know straight away whether someone can pour a cup of coffee. You don't want that person coming back month after month.''

Mr. Hartsuyker (as befits a member of the modern National Party of Australia)  responded  to a complex issue in a simplistic, one-dimensional media grab.

The Australian 30 July 2014:

Unemployed people will be penalised if they indiscriminately spam employers with applications rather than make genuine efforts to find work.

Jobseekers who do not use a range of job search techniques — or approach a range of would-be employers — will face compliance, said a spokesman for ­Assistant Minister for Employment Luke Hartsuyker.

This may include financial penalties or payment suspensions. Under the new employment services 2015 model, which will compel jobseekers to apply for 40 jobs a month, providers will be able to initiate compliance ­actions against those whose ­efforts are clearly unsatisfactory or non-genuine.

Unemployed people can use technology to make jobseeking more efficient, but may be penalised if it can be shown that their use of technology is not part of a genuine effort to find work.

Hartsuyker is proving himself to be a political fool of the first water.

Snapshot taken from The Australian video & graphic found at Google Images

A secret court suppression order? You have to be joking!

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in December 2013 there were 12.3 million Internet subscribers in Australia, of which 9.6 million connections were for home use.

In practical terms, this meant the odds on keeping secret the super-injunction imposed by court less than two months ago were slim at best.

So it should have come as no surprise that on 30 July 2014 ABC News online, SBS online, Crikey online and The Sydney Morning Herald all reported that a suppression order been released by Wikileaks.

Overseas media picked the story up and quickly parted the veil of secrecy:

The Guardian UK quotes from and gives date of the super-injunction.

MSN Malaysia News names the Australian companies, foreign countries and broad titles of foreign politicians involved, plus other details.

The Malay Mail Online states the number of heads of state and top government officials covered by the suppression order, as well as naming specific individuals in quotes.

thejournal.ie from Ireland broadly outlines the order.

The Sun Daily from Malaysia outlines the allegations, the number of persons indicted, outlines the suppression order, states the number of foreign politicians and officials covered by the order, mentions some of the politicians/officials titles.

A short Google search based on these articles revealed national/international media reports naming those since charged or other details going back as far as 2007, a still available 2011 Four Corners program on the matter now before the court, video interviews with some of the people who were in that program, a 2011 public statement by the Reserve Bank, as well as the name a journalist from The Age facing contempt of court charges in 2013 for reporting certain facts relating to the matter now before the court.

Hansard records for the Australian Parliament show that the allegations were mentioned/ debated on a number of occasions between 2009 and 2012.

The Abbott Government may wish to keep secret the current matter before the court (as it is obvious from news articles that the issue at hand had its roots back in Iraq in 1998 during the period the Howard Government was in power here) however it would be foolish of it to hope that there will not be mention in the international media of evidence coming before the court on future hearing days.

Because the court, albeit unwittingly, unleashed the Streisand Effect in its full glory and soon there will be nowhere left for the truth to be hidden.

UPDATE

The Guardian 30 July 2014:

Human Rights Watch in New York has been drawn to comment on the Victorian orders, with general counsel Dinah PoKempner saying:

The gag order published by WikiLeaks ... is disturbing on its face as it suggests the Australian government is suppressing reporting of a major corruption scandal to prevent diplomatic embarrassment. The embarrassment of diplomatic partners is not the same thing as a threat to national security, or to the integrity of the judicial process.

The Sydney Morning Herald 31 July 2014:

The Australian government’s attempts to protect international relations by suppressing details of a sensitive court case in Victoria appeared to have backfired, prompting Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to demand an explanation.

Apparently in response, the Australian government released an extraordinary statement late on Thursday saying that the “Indonesian President and the former president are not the subject” of court proceedings which Australian media outlets are otherwise banned from reporting.

A blanket suppression order prevents Fairfax Media and other Australian outlets reporting the contents of the Victorian Supreme Court case, an affidavit in the case, or even the suppression order itself. The order was sought to protect the reputation of international leaders.

But the order was published on international site WikiLeaks, where it can be read.

After the document was uploaded, Dr Yuhoyono insisted that Australia immediately clarify why his name had been mentioned in such a context.

"I ask that Australia issue a statement that both [former president] Megawati [Sukarnoputri]] and my names are unstained, and so they do not defame other Indonesian officials. We want to hear directly from Australia," Dr Yudhoyono said, as reported by news portal Viva.

Late on Thursday, the Department of Foreign Affairs put out a statement headlined: “Suppression orders: Securency court proceedings”, saying the case “names a large number of individuals” but that “the naming of such figures in the orders does not imply wrongdoing on their part”.

A taste of things to come with the Abbott Government unemployment policy or the flimsey excuse that will be used by Abbott & Co to further harry the unemployed?

The Guardian reports on a taste of things to come, 29 July 2014:

I applied for 40 jobs in nine minutes…

I've just tested how fast I could meet the 40 job application requirement and it only took me nine minutes, albeit with ready internet access.

Here's how:

I created a profile on job search website seek.com.au. You can set up a profile with all your details, including your previous employment history and a resume. I created a fake profile (welcome to the workforce, Mr Fakey McName, former CEO of Awesome Corporation) and uploaded a dummy resume.

I helpfully put a line at the top of my resume to let people know that this was not a serious job application, and included a picture of a kitten in a hat to alleviate any feelings of ill will my fake application might create.

Once you've got your profile, you just need to do a search (I clicked on all "marketing" jobs) and shortlist a bunch of job ads. From your shortlist you can click through to apply for each job. Some job ads take you to their own website and application process – I skipped these, and instead only used job ads that made use of Seek's built-in application system.

Seek allows you to then apply for the job with around two clicks. The details of the job application are sent to your email, which you then have on record in case you might need them for a job seeker diary (not that I'm advocating any rorting of the system, this is purely an academic exercise)….

It's pretty clear that if someone was determined to merely fulfil their 40-job quota, and then concentrate on finding work they would actually like (or not), this new requirement is likely only to create a headache for the people tasked with sorting through job applications.

Liberal Party powerbroker and former Coalition federal minister allegedly caught breaching company law to the tune of $93 million

The Sydney Morning Herald 28 July 2014:

Liberal Party powerbroker Peter Clarke has admitted giving untrue evidence under oath during a lawsuit that found he and others who controlled $500 million retirement village flop Prime Trust breached their duties, a court has heard.

As Mr Clarke and other directors of the company that ran Prime Trust prepared to face the Federal Court on Monday, it also emerged the Australian Securities and Investments Commission wants the group's founder, Bill Lewski, banned for life from running a company.

In other submissions to the court by directors of Prime Trust's responsible entity, Australian Property Custodian Holdings, Howard-era health minister Michael Wooldridge begged to be spared any penalty because of his ''vast'' and ''profound'' contributions to public life and the company boards on which he has served.

Mr Lewski, who received a $33 million fee at the centre of the Federal Court case, told the court his was ''a serious but not worst-case contravention''.

The Federal Court is to begin hearing arguments on Monday as to what penalties - bans and fines of up to $200,000 - it should impose on Mr Clarke, Dr Wooldridge, Mr Lewski, Mark Butler and Kim Jaques, who were directors of APCH in the lead-up to its collapse in 2010.

In December, Justice Bernard Murphy found that the five businessmen breached their duties as directors of APCH by approving Mr Lewski's $33 million fee, paid in 2007 when Prime Trust listed on the ASX, at the expense of Prime Trust unitholders.

Separately, Mr Lewski, and Prime Trust's lawyers and advisers, face a $100 million lawsuit over a second fee, of $60 million, the trust paid to Mr Lewski for retirement village management rights.

The Sydney Morning Herald 26 July 2014:

It's been a long hard slog for investors trying to recover any of the $500 million they pumped into retirement village empire Prime Trust, which collapsed in October 2010.

Since then, they've watched with helpless anger as Prime Trust founder Bill Lewski walked away from the wreck with $60 million reaped by selling management rights over the villages - rights the investors say should belong to the trust.

They've been able to do nothing about the decision by Lewski to gift that money to his sons, who are involved with an online betting operation in tax haven the Isle of Man. But the intervention of an Adelaide-based litigation funder this week gives investors hope that perhaps they will see some money shaken loose from Lewski and others involved in the debacle.

A $100 million lawsuit over the management fee, brought against Lewski, other directors including former health minister Michael Wooldridge and their lawyers and advisers, was sitting moribund in the Victorian Supreme Court until Tuesday, when LCM Litigation Fund agreed to back the action.

LCM's move comes as the litigation sector is under unprecedented scrutiny, with calls from Attorney-General George Brandis for a crackdown on the industry because of its ''ethical and moral hazards'' and scrutiny from the Productivity Commission, which has simultaneously proposed more regulation of existing funders and allowing law firms effectively to become litigation funders - something that is currently illegal.

In the stoush over the future of litigation funding, investors, lawyers and funders who stand to profit from legal actions that would otherwise be impossible, clash with company management and defendant lawyers who say funding promotes frivolous lawsuits that would otherwise never have seen the inside of a courtroom.

The writ kicking off the Prime Trust lawsuit had been sitting in the Supreme Court registry for a year, gathering dust. It hadn't been served on any of the defendants, which would normally have killed it off. But with the prospect of a backer emerging, the court gave extra time for it to be served.

''There's been no payment to investors for certainly the last four years,'' says Steve O'Reilly, one of the heads of the Prime Trust Action Group, which represents more than 6300 investors. ''It's just horrendous what the cost has been to investors - not just the financial cost but the human cost. They're really angry and upset that firstly there's no remorse and secondly that money is shifting over to the Isle of Man and it's business as usual.''….

The NSW Nationals have been whispering about it for quite a while, but this is the first time I have seen it in print

Former Labor MP Janelle Saffin is considering taking on the sitting Nationals MP Kevin Hogan for the federal seat of Page at the next general election.

Snapshot from The Northern Star 29 June 2014

Hat tip to Clarrie Rivers for supplying this.

Rupert Murdoch's plan to cripple public broadcasting in Australia is apparently still on track

The Sydney Morning Herald 27 July 2014:

A secret study of ABC operations has identified $60 million worth of potential savings, a finding the Abbott government will use to justify a new round of cuts to the broadcaster's budget.

Fairfax Media can also reveal the government is considering issuing directions to the ABC and SBS on managing their budgets - a move that would have the government exert greater influence over the broadcasters' operations.

The proposal is contained in the Abbott government's efficiency study into the ABC and SBS, which cherish their operational independence from government.

The government cut the ABC's budget by $35.5 million over four years in the May budget - a cut the government described as a ''downpayment'' on the results of the efficiency study.

The efficiency study, led by former Seven West Media chief financial officer Peter Lewis, says the government could encourage belt-tightening at the broadcasters by issuing a regular Ministerial Statement of Expectations to the ABC and SBS boards.

The study acknowledges the idea is ''controversial'' and could spark concerns the government is intervening in the ABC and SBS for political reasons….

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has insisted any future cuts should affect only back-office operations, not programming. ABC and SBS insiders dispute this and argue many of the study's savings proposals - such as moving SBS in with the ABC - are short-sighted and impossible to implement.

Earlier this month the ABC announced it would axe 80 jobs in its international division following the government's termination of funding for its $223 million Australia Network international broadcasting service.

How the Australian Broadcasting Commission competes with the Murdoch media empire according to Crikey on 3 December 2013:

The full extent of the ABC threat to News Corp isn't clear until you closely examine their competing activities.

First there's television, and the years-long saga of the ABC's Asia Pacific service, a national vanity project costing tens of millions a year, which the Howard government begged Jonathan Shier to take on in 2001. After the ABC began producing a reasonable, if low-cost, service, News coveted it for Sky News (of which News Corp has an interest via its holding in one-third owner BSkyB) to improve its international clout at taxpayer expense and tried twice, in 2005 and 2010, to win it, getting knocked back both times, although for very different reasons the second time around.

Then there's ABC News 24, a direct rival to Sky News itself and to News Corp's half-owned Foxtel, which carries Sky News. News 24 reaches about 14% of metropolitan audiences a week, far ahead of Sky News.

And free-to-air: Lachlan Murdoch's Ten Network has been regularly losing its third spot in the evening television ratings to the ABC. The ABC pointed out yesterday that it had lifted its prime-time share to a 14.6 share, up 1 percentage point from 2012 and the best performance of any free-to-air network this year. Ten's share fell and in fact spent all of 2013 behind the ABC, consigning it to fourth in metro markets, while its regional performance was even worse. ABC management has simply outclassed Lachlan's conga line of executives. The former head of ABC TV, Kim Dalton, was behind the suite of programs that enabled the ABC to have programs that viewers wanted to watch when Ten imploded in August of 2012, and continued to slide this year. Lachlan Murdoch has removed two CEOs and is now on his third in three years. Ten's problems are as much his problems as those of the poor decision making by former management.

Lachlan Murdoch also slashed and burnt the previous Ten management's carefully developed news and current affairs presence, at a time when the ABC was strengthening its position as the most trusted source of news for Australians across radio and television, far ahead of commercial broadcasters and newspapers — with News Corp's increasingly biased mastheads bringing up the rear as Australia's least-trusted newspapers.

"Plainly there are good leaks involving government secrets, which embarrass the ALP, and bad leaks, which make life difficult for the Coalition."

The ABC's online iView service is also a threat. It's now the most popular TV replay source online, and it competes directly, and for free, with Foxtel.

ABC Radio also competes directly with Lachlan's DMG radio stations in each state capital; Nova FM only beats the ABC's metropolitan local stations in Brisbane and Perth. And ABC Radio is planning a development that will not be greeted warmly by News or Ten or DMG Australia. Fairfax won't be happy either. In an email to staff two weeks ago, ABC Radio head Kate Dundas revealed that, among a long list of changes and new ideas, were state-based online news editions planned for 2014, a new e-mag for Radio National, a huge revamp of the Triple J Dig multiplatform, and a second online music stream for Classic FM.

Probably the most important will be the first version of the ABC audio player — the audio equivalent of iView. Podcasts for programs such as Conversations (which attracts hundreds of thousands of listeners a month) and RN programs will move to this new player site. ABC Radio Multiplatform also has a lot planned for 2014, with mobile versions of key sites like ABC Rural, Dig Music and ABC Local news sites.

The Sydney Morning Herald 12 June 2014:

Commercial television networks have leapt on the release of a Department of Communications research paper into Australian media ownership to renew calls for a relaxation of laws on media mergers and acquisitions.

The Abbott government is considering scrapping media ownership laws, including the law which prevents owners from controlling a newspaper, television station and radio station in the same market.