Clarence River Catchment Fresh Water Diversion: facing today's threat while remembering yesterday's response

2007 bumper sticker

Clarence Valley Council, Ordinary Monthly Meeting Business Paper, 9 August 2016:

Policy or Regulation

Council has previously established its policy position on proposals to divert the Clarence River through various Council resolutions. At its meeting of 18 October 2006 Council resolved (Resolution 12.005/06):

That Council oppose the diversion, damming or re-directing of water from the Clarence River. 

Council again resolved at its meeting of 17 April 2007 (Resolution 05.006/07): That the report on the Clarence River diversion proposal be received and noted and that Clarence Valley Council reiterates its policy position of total opposition to any proposal that would result in any diversion of water from Clarence catchments. 

When the issue of diversion was proposed to be debated at the Local Government & Shires Association (LGSA) Conference in 2007, Council resolved at its meeting of 15 May 2007 (Resolution 05.008/07): 

That the following late Motion be placed before the forthcoming Annual Conference of the Shires Association of New South Wales. “That the Associations approach both the State and Federal Governments expressing their total opposition to any proposal for river diversion.”

As outlined in Report 05.009/07 to the Council meeting of 19 June 2007, it was not possible to put the late motion as the LGSA Conference resolved “That the Association pursue with the Federal Minister for Environment and water, measures to address the current and future concerns with water shortages for inland cities, towns and communities posed by the current drought and future droughts, and that the National Water Initiative consider ways and means of so addressing”.

At its meeting of 16 November 2010 Council again confirmed its opposition to Diversion (Resolution 10.017/10):

The Council again register it strong opposition to any plans to divert waters out of the Clarence catchment.

Clarence Valley Council submission to a NSW Upper House inquiry to which Griffith City Council made a submission asking that an old scheme for damming and diverting freshwater from the Boyd, Mann, Nymboida and Timbarra rivers (Clarence River tributaries) be considered:

10 August 2016

Reference:

DWS#1682591 Contact: Greg Mashiah

The Director

General Purpose Standing Committee No 5 

Legislative Council

Parliament House

Macquarie Street

SYDNEY NSW 2000

Dear Sir

Inquiry into Water Augmentation in Rural and Regional New South Wales - Submission

Thank you for the opportunity for Council to make a submission to the above enquiry. Clarence Valley Council is located on the north coast of NSW and contains most of the Clarence River catchment within its area. The Clarence River is the largest coastal river in NSW. Council is a Local Water Utility (LWU) responsible for sewer and water services to urban area and also provides bulk water to the adjoining Coffs Harbour City Council. Clarence Valley Council is also responsible for floodplain management.

Council’s submission responds to three items in the terms of reference which are considered relevant to Council’s operations:

1b) Examine the suitability of existing New South Wales water storages and any future schemes for augmentation of water supply for New South Wales, including the potential for acquifer discharge.

Clarence Valley and its neighbouring Coffs Harbour City Council have jointly developed a Regional Water Supply (RWS) scheme to provide water security to residents until at least the year 2046. The RWS comprise:

· A “non build” element of water efficiency measures, which commenced in 1997 and is implemented through the joint Water Efficiency Strategic Plan (http://www.clarence.nsw.gov.au/page.asp?f=RES-UHJ-43-64-30), and

· A “build” element, which comprises a pipeline linking the two Council water supplies which was completed in 2004 and construction of a 30,000ML off-creek storage at Shannon Creek which was completed in 2009. The Shannon Creek Dam storage is designed for future raising to 75,000ML capacity to service demand beyond 2046. The storage is “transparent” to its catchment in that all runoff from the catchment is required to be released to match the pre-storage hydrologic.

The RWS project, which was recognised with multiple industry awards including the prestigious International Water Association’s Asia-Pacific Project Innovation Award in the planning category, demonstrates how regional Local Water Utilities can jointly plan and deliver water infrastructure to meet future needs including provision of suitable water storages.

One significant concern for Council is that, while the RWS storage has been designed to be augmented to 75,000ML to provide capacity for development beyond 2046, future legislative changes may adversely impact this option. It is therefore requested that the Committee consider this issue.

1d) examine the 50 year flood history in New South Wales, particularly in northern coastal New South Wales, including the financial and human cost. Since 1966 the Clarence River has experienced 29 floods which exceeded the “minor” flood level at the Prince Street gauge in Grafton (2.10m), and of those 17 were classified as “major” floods (>5,40m). Four floods in a single year were experienced in both 1974 and 1976, and three floods in a single year were experienced in 1967 and 2013.

The town of Grafton is protected by a flood levee which provides protection up to approximately the 5% Average Exceedance Probability (AEP) event, and the town of Maclean is protected by a levee which provides protection up to approximately the 2% AEP event. Since the Grafton and Maclean levees were constructed in the 1970s they have not been overtopped, although in January 2013 at Grafton the flood height was equal to the top of the levee, requiring evacuation of a small area of the town.

In the March 2001 and May 2009 floods, evacuation of all of Grafton was ordered due to uncertainty about whether the flood levee would be overtopped if the predicted flood heights were reached, and how the flood would behave once the levee was overtopped. As well as the evacuation having a significant financial and social cost for residents, as the levees were not overtopped it also increases future risk of people not evacuating when ordered. In 2011 Council completed a detailed flood levee overtopping study which included extensive 2-D computer modelling. The flood levee overtopping study is considered to have given excellent value for money as in 2013 it enabled evacuation to be confined to the immediate affected area.

A significant human cost of flooding on all residents is post flood clean-up. To reduce the impact on residents Council generally collects flood damaged items which are put on the kerbside by residents, waives its tip fees for disposal of flood damaged items and also offers residents affected by flood mud a rebate on their water bills. Council also assisted with the provision of the Flood Recovery Centre for residents, which provided a “one stop shop” for flood impacted residents.

A significant issue for Council is the increasingly limited and narrow interpretation of Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements (NDRRA), which have left the full cost of much essential infrastructure flood damage repair with Council.

As one example, a flood levee damaged in the 2013 flood incurred repair costs of $710,000 but only $98,625 funding was received for this item. The apparent basis for the reduced funding was that under the NDRRA the works were assessed as “riverbank” works; notwithstanding that detailed geotechnical and engineering reports supported Council’s position that the riverbank formed an integral part of the levee at this location and should therefore have qualified as essential public infrastructure. It is requested that as part of this item of the terms of reference the committee consider the NDRRA arrangements as the current interpretation results in cost shifting of repairs to essential public infrastructure to Council.

There are financial and human costs of flooding beyond Council’s costs. Financial costs are common for industries such as agricultural, transport and tourism. The financial impacts on these industries has been repeatedly mentioned after the three recent major flood experiences in the Clarence Valley in 2009, 2011 and 2013. Agricultural financial impacts are usually associated with the loss of crops, livestock, fences, machinery, etc. Transport impacts are associated with the closure of key transport routes resulting in the very long truck ‘parking’ areas either side of locations such as Grafton. The tourism industry impacts are both short-term (cancellations of bookings) and longer term with potential of a tarnished tourism image. Regarding human costs, a recurring theme in the post flood recovery mental health problems related to flooding. The NSW State Government established Clarence Valley Flood Recovery Committees after the 2009 and 2013 floods which comprised representatives from state government agencies and Council, and the final reports from these Committees should assist the Inquiry with further information on the financial and human cost of flooding.

1e) examine technologies available to mitigate flood damage, including diversion systems, and the scope of infrastructure needed to support water augmentation, by diversion, for rural and regional New South Wales. The diversion of the Clarence to west of the Great Dividing Range has been suggested by some people as a possible way that flood damage could be mitigated, with a supposed benefit of providing water for western areas. Council has considered this issue and its position has consistently been that diversion of the Clarence is opposed, as summarised by Council resolution 10.017/10 at its meeting of 16 November 2010:

The Council again register it strong opposition to any plans to divert waters out of the Clarence catchment.

Council’s position in this matter has not changed, and Council considers that any proposal to divert the Clarence River cannot be justified from an economic, environmental or social perspective.

If you require further information please contact Council’s Manager Water Cycle, Mr Greg Mashiah, telephone 6645-0244 or 0428-112-982.

Yours faithfully

Scott Greensill 

General Manager

The assault on the water security of NSW coastal rivers is not just head on. Murray-Darling Basin councils are also now lobbying to change the federal Water Act so that more weight is given to their social and economic arguments when freshwater augmentation or inter-basin water transfer is considered.

Naranderra Shire Council, Committee Minutes, 21 June 2016:

Item 6.1 - Final Report of the Commonwealth Senate Select Committee into the Murray Darling Basin Plan

The Final Report titled “Refreshing the Plan” was tabled in the Senate on 17th March 2016 and is currently the subject of review through the Minister for Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources the Hon Barnaby Joyce MP and the Departmental Officials, with a response due by mid June 2016.

RESOLVED that RAMROC continue to strongly advocate to the Commonwealth Government the merit and value of the recommendations contained in the Final Report of the Senate Select Committee into the Murray Darling Basin Plan, particularly Recommendation 25 relating to proposed amendments to the Water Act 2007 to provide for a triple bottom line equal balance of environmental, social, and economic outcomes. (Moved Albury and seconded Hay)

Now that local governments in the Murray-Darling Basin are again discussing raiding Clarence Valley fresh water, it is worthwhile remembering 2007......

The Daily Examiner, 23 April 2007:

BY JOHN McGUREN

Clarence River Professional Fishermen's Association

STORM clouds continue to gather over the Clarence River, but sadly they are the type that threaten its ruin rather than rain.

In comments reported in The Daily Examiner on Tuesday, federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull made it very clear the Howard Government was now virtually committed to the diversion of water from northern NSW into Queensland.

Alluding to the imminent release of results from his feasibility study into such a concept, Mr Turnbull also said a water diversion from NSW would be far cheaper than one from anywhere in Queensland.

Why is he saying that? Because he already knows the outcome of the study and is simply being too cute by half in playing politics with its release and treating us all like little mushrooms.

No surprise there as he hasn't even bothered to speak to any of the tens of thousands of NSW residents who will be directly affected by his fool hardy scheme.

The National Water Commission (NWC) has confirmed this week a desk top study by the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation (SMEC) will show it is technically feasible to divert water from both the Clarence and the Tweed rivers into Queensland.

Commissioned by Mr Turnbull and due to be released in the coming weeks, an early draft of the SMEC report has ruled the Clarence and Tweed rivers in as potential diversion candidates, while rejecting the Richmond River.

The outcomes of the SMEC study are focused on engineering feasibility and costs, including constructing dams and other infrastructure and derived from a review of existing information and previous studies.

As we have feared all along, this study has been commissioned for the express political purpose of giving Mr Turnbull's grand act of environmental vandalism economic credibility.

The report estimates up to 100,000 mega litres ? roughly enough water to fill Sydney Harbour twice ? per year could be harvested from the Clarence at a cost of between $1.60 and $2.05 per kilolitre, giving a total supply cost of around $160million to $200million. Mr Turnbull knows all this already.

In his Droplets newsletter, Mike Young, of the University of Adelaide, suggests on average Murray Darling system high security water allocations ? which can include municipal, industrial and irrigation uses ? cost around $1,500/ML, which is just below the SMEC report lower estimate of supply costs for water diverted from the Clarence.

This would seem to put the whole diversion concept very much in the ballpark from a cost and feasibility standpoint and should shake us all out of any complacency stemming from misguided and outdated misconceptions that it's all just too expensive and too difficult.

Add to that the growing willingness of the states to cede powers to the Australian government and this nightmare starts to look very much more like a frightening reality.

Figures like that also give added credence to the growing concerns of state premiers regarding who will ultimately have their hands on the Australian water cash register as it rings up billions of dollars of water allocations into the future.

Just how high might the selling price of water go and just who exactly stands to pocket the wealth generated off the back of the Clarence River being plundered for profit, like the Murray, the Darling, the Snowy and so many other great river systems before it?

Make no mistake, this proposal is as much about money and profits as it is about any notion of pulling together for the national good.

As a community and as responsible Australians are we really prepared to stand by and see the ecology of the Clarence River and the vital industries and unparalleled quality of life that it underpins sold off to the highest bidder?

I sincerely hope we are made of better stuff than that and can look back in years to come and say with pride that we saw through all the politics and fought hard to save the magnificent Clarence River.

The Daily Examiner, 5 June 2007:

Renee Ford

TWO prominent Clarence Valley leaders made their voices heard yesterday, giving submissions opposing any damming or diversion to the Clarence River at an inquiry into water supplies for south-east Queensland.

Clarence River Professional Fishermen's Association industry representative, John McGuren told the Senate Standing Committee a dam in the upper reaches of the Clarence would adversely affect the fishing industry, which he described as the 'engine room of the Clarence Valley'.

"Numerous studies have clearly shown the positive correlation between water flows and catches of key commercial and recreational species, both estuarine and ocean," he told the inquiry. "These relationships don't just exist in the river themselves."

He explained productivity of Australian fisheries was heavily reliant on the terrestrial nutrients delivered by large rivers such as the Clarence.

"It's a key driver to fisheries productivity generally up and down the East Coast," he said.

By overlaying data Mr McGuren was able to illustrate a strong correlation existed between critical environmental flows and Clarence River school prawn catches.

"It's not the percentage of overall total flows to be removed that is the critical factor here, and it is misleading to describe any flow extraction and its potential impacts in these matters," he said.

Clarence Valley Landcare chair, Brian Dodd told the inquiry via teleconference, the upper reaches of the Clarence River were experiencing drought, much like south-east Queensland and Western NSW.

"Damming just doesn't work.

It's been proven around the world, that if you build large dams on streams, it always causes more problems than what they are worth," Mr Dodd said. During the next two days, the NSW Annual Shires Association conference will debate two motions put forward by Western Divisions supporting the diversion of the Clarence River catchments to western NSW.

Clarence Valley mayor Ian Tiley and general manager Stuart McPherson are attending the conference and hope to gain support to squash both proposals put forward by Cobar and Bourke Shire Councils.

The Government for Billionaires and Bankers is saving money by screwing over the poor again

Worried that you soon may be unemployed and not feeling depressed enough by your situation yet? Well read on………

The Australia Institute, media release, 5 August 2016:

Cuts would push dole to record low under poverty line

New research released by the Australia Institute today shows that government moves to cut unemployment benefits will put recipients at 32% below the poverty line.

The research also highlights staggering inequality in Australia where the 10 richest Australian families have the same wealth as the poorest 3.9 million Australians combined.

"At the time of the Sydney Olympics, a couple on unemployment benefits had enough income to put them on the poverty line. They are now 26% below it,” Executive Director of The Australia Institute, Ben Oquist said.

“Unbelievably the government plans to actually cut unemployment benefits as one the first acts of the new parliament with the removal of the clean energy supplement for all new welfare beneficiaries.

“Despite years of work and reports arguing for the need to increase the dole - including from the BCA- the government is going to cut it by $8.80 per fortnight for singles and $7.90 each for couples, sending their income to an historic 32% below the Henderson poverty line.

The cuts would affect pensioners, the unemployed, students, people with a disability and carers.

The report shows the level of financial support for the unemployed has fallen sharply since the early 90’s and is now 30% below the poverty line.

Figure 1: Government benefits versus poverty line

“The Coalition’s position is contrary to the growing consensus across business and the community sector calling for income support to be increased, not decreased.

“Business groups, from KPMG to the BCA, recognise that unemployment benefits have reached such chronically low levels that it is diminishing opportunities to effectively bring people back into the workforce.

“But the Coalition seems intent on cutting Australia’s shamefully low welfare support. It’s cruel, out of touch and will not benefit the Australian economy.

The cuts would see a single pensioner hit for $366 dollars per year (see table 1).

Table 1: Rates of the clean energy supplement for selected government payments

Living Situation	Proposed cut
Newstart single, no children	$8.80
Newstart Single, with a dependent child or children	$9.50
Newstart Partnered	$7.90 (each)
Age pension single	$14.10
Age pension partnered	$10.60 (each)
Parenting payment single	$12.00
Parenting payment partner	$7.90

“In contrast, the pre-election budget gave tax cuts exclusively to the highest income earners.

High income earners were given a $315 a year tax cut in addition to those on more than $180,000 having the budget repair levy cut.

“A policy which gives more to the richest while cutting support for people below the poverty line will only increase inequality in Australia,” Oquist said.

Download Publication: 

 TAI Briefing Note - Poverty Line - August 2016.pdf

It's 9 August 2016 and at 5:21pm in Australia it will be Where's Wally O'Clock

Google Images

As public service demographers wait for the personal and collective response to increased sensitive personal data retention to unfold tonight - one last word on #CensusFail from Oecomuse: Musings from home and hearth, posted 7 August 2016: 

There are many valid concerns about the census this year. These include data security and encryption and privacy and data linkages across government agencies and retaining our names and addresses for a longer period (18 months up to four years) than last census, especially when Data Retention legislation has been passed in the meantime.

These issues have been thoroughly covered by far better minds than mine, such as Ross Floate here and Richard Chirgwin here and the indefatigable Asher Wolf and Rosie Williams’ Little Bird Network.

The legal implications of not complying with Census instructions are set out here.

But what is really getting to me are people who say that a robust and accurate Census count will be of great benefit policy-wise, and cite Indigenous health and the homeless population to support their argument.

This is a typical tactic. We saw it when Josh Frydenberg said the superannuation changes would benefit older women. Does anyone really believe that the Liberal Party cares more about older women living in poverty than the pressing need to have just one policy to hang claims about ‘governing for all Australians’ on?

The other typical feature of this argument is that the people making it – demographers, bureaucrats and other academics – are absolutely guaranteed to benefit from data linkages. In contrast, there is no guarantee whatsoever, and not a shred of evidence, that Census data produces benefits for Aboriginal people’s health or for homeless people.

In the ham-fisted way that neoliberal government is done these days, the Census trust problems continue unaddressed. Instead, a glaringly obvious problem is blundered and stumbled through, blasted and blustered at, urgently plastered over, in a make-shift, ad-hoc, amateurish way.

Why? Because the problem is not a significant problem for comfortable middle Australia. It is the tyranny of the majority writ large – a phrase that should be familiar to Liberal Party politicians.

Here are a few of the questions I would put to academic and bureaucratic defenders of the census changes:

Is public schooling a necessity for your children, or a choice? What about hospital cover? Is the GST that a sole parent pays on her child’s school shoes, upfront and at the point of sale, subsidising your investment property? While you judge her? Have you ever been subject to years of Centrelink compliance measures? Have you feared for your life at the hands of your ex/partner?

Do you know anything at all about people in situations you have never encountered, let alone what is best for them?

But science

Why are demographers and other social scientists saying sciency things without any evidence?

Indigenous people on dialysis and with other co-morbidity diagnoses were counted in the last Census. Are they better off? Has anyone asked them? What is the link between data matching and their well-being, whether as individuals or a population?

How is we will know more about your death rates a convincing argument for people who are under more surveillance than any other peoples on earth?

That is not science. It is disgusting and exploitative.

Homeless people were counted last Census too, or at least there was a genuine attempt to reach rough sleepers. But housing is a state responsibility. Has anyone seen a propensity of Mike Baird to fund housing services based on data? Or on the number of men who kill women?

Baird has zero regard for evidence-based policy. This is a claim backed by evidence.

Similarly, merely counting the number of people in prisons and detention centres does absolutely nothing for the conditions for people in those places; and does absolutely nothing to decrease the rate of incarceration and detention (which are different things, according to the High Court of Australia; see Al-Kateb, critiqued here).

Trotting out some feel-good claim about more accurate measure of Aboriginal life expectancy and twinning this with generalised projections about data and better policy implies that the data collection will somehow improve morbidity rates for Aboriginal people.

But it won’t. The claims are disingenuous at best. Some would say such statements are grossly misleading. It is also harmful. This messaging is designed to create the impression that government cares about Aboriginal lives – when the opposite is true.

Some reflections on Homelessness an(d) the rough sleeper count

In 2011 I was employed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics as a Special Area Supervisor – Homelessness. The homelessness collection was an attempt to count as many rough sleepers as possible. There was no strategy to identify secondary homelessness. The ABS assumed that people who are couch-surfing would be counted in the households where they were staying that night.

This is naïve at best. A significant proportion of couch-surfers stay with friends or family whose rent is linked to the number of residents in the household. Those tenants are at risk of accumulating a debt, or even eviction, for extending a helping hand.

The causes of homelessness are complex, with multiple overlapping issues such as escaping violence, mental illness, and chronic addiction. But ultimately, homelessness can be traced to the breakdown of relationships, whether that is relationship with family, a landlord, an employer, or the state.

Couch surfing is tenuous and fraught, it raises a strong presumption that many relationships have already broken down.  Few people in this situation can afford to add more risk to relationships with a host or landlord or the state. To assume that vulnerable people are in a position to take on more risk for the sake of government data collection is to lack insight into their situation.

One of the worst types of homelessness is created by government: TA. Temporary accommodation is when the state pays for housing applicants to stay in a motel. It is very widespread, not a one-off stop-gap but a systemised response – and a miserable and expensive failure.

TA creates anxiety. People are compelled to spend every day applying for housing and must re-apply for TA eligibility every week. It creates gross discrimination. Many motel owners split their accommodation and provide vastly inferior services – plastic cutlery, no toilet paper – to TA guests, as though somehow government money buys less service for no reason other than exploitation of the poor – and the taxpayer.

It is a terrible dehumanising system that creates mini-ghettoes and resentment while motel owners net huge profits on the government purse. Motel owners who are of course small business and thus eligible for the $20,000 immediate write-down at our expense while touting their community as entrepreneurial and innovative and not at all like those lazy bludgers getting rich on Newstart.

No census can or will change this entrenched inequality, whether people in TA are counted or not.

For the 2011 rough sleepers count the ABS consulted widely and recruited the supervisors from the social housing sector.  The training was better than the consultation but both were predictably paternalistic. It seems it is virtually impossible for white middle class professionals to not reproduce unrealistic and ill-informed assumptions and stereotypes about the population with whom they work – yet it is the homeless who keep them in a job and their mortgages paid.

Some of those assumptions were around trust in authority. It is a familiar line – homeless people, or Aboriginal people, or young people, lack trust in authority. This is presented as some kind of deficit in the individual member of this or that community.

But the most cursory glance at the facts reveals that people who do not trust authority have reached an evidence-based conclusion: authority has, does, and will treat them badly. Violently. Brutally. Ignore their human rights. Deny their humanity. Be condescending and paternalistic and judgmental.

All of these are horrible experiences, and all are meted out, often, by government employees such as police; or government-funded employees, such as job agency staff.

So a mistrust of authority is a product of authority being oppressive; yet in the great Australian tradition this mistrust is framed as a deficit in members of the community to which government, historically and contemporaneously, has actively caused harm – usually under the guise of providing help.

The ABS had developed a two-tiered message for the homelessness count. The first was ‘trust us, we are trustworthy’. The second was ‘the data will assist government to make better policy which will benefit the homeless population’.

Fast forward to 2016 and the rules have changed, but the message is that same as that which informed our training for the homelessness count.

Using the same message for a different set of circumstances is lazy and complacent at best. At worst, it reeks of misleading the public: if there is a case to be made for the changes, why not make it? Why fall back on exactly the same message designed to engender a trust relationship with homeless people five years earlier?

Like all good tweeps, I put out a twitter poll: do you trust the government? There were two yes votes (n = 254). One person tweeted me to say she accidentally tapped yes.  Either way the yes vote was basically a margin of error. (No, I am not going to insult readers by spelling out the unscientific nature of a Twitter poll.)

Ironically, the failure to make the case for retaining names and addresses for a longer period is eroding trust in the ABS because the argument is so weak and the government so mistrusted.

The ‘better policy’ argument is specious for political expediency reasons already mentioned. The gap between the data collection and analysis and actual policy decisions, which are based on neoliberal ideology and electoral chancing, is huge. In addition, people most likely to not be counted are the people most likely to need government services to survive. Not government money in the form of research grants and public service jobs and immediate tax write-downs and public housing guests, but actual resources to feed and clothe and house themselves in a wealthy society.

Yet the line about better directing government policy based on census data is widely accepted… by people who do not rely on government services. The academics and bureaucrats pushing this line are not grounding it in evidence of better homelessness services, or identifiable improvements in the lives of welfare recipients. They are not doing this because the evidence is not there.

So like the trust argument acting to erode trust, the evidence-for-better-policy argument fails to point to evidence of better policy outcomes derived from the previous Census.

Meanwhile the evidence of a benefit to the academic or bureaucrat is there for all to see: there they are on the telly, with their job and media platform, well remunerated and recognised, as an expert in data capture and analysis.

Leaving aside identifiable groups of academics and bureaucrats, is the Census beneficial to homeless people? Unemployed people? Sole parents, carers, people with disabilities?

Are any of these groups better off than in 2011 because their status was counted and analysed by the ABS and other social scientists?

Why not ask them? I could easily find people who were counted as homeless in 2011. Pay me and I’ll let you know if any are better off, and if so how many. The government has moved many Centrelink recipients on to cashless welfare this year. Why not ask Alan Tudge if this policy is linked to census data? Ask people on the Basics card what they think of the alleged link between their Census form and having access to only 20% of their payment in cash?

#CensusFail: Dear Magistrate, sincerely Anna

Well this is one of the guarded front doors for all the world to see......

Alternative names:

www.census.abs.gov.au

stream00.census.abs.gov.au

stream10.census.abs.gov.au

stream20.census.abs.gov.au

stream12.census.abs.gov.au

stream13.census.abs.gov.au

stream21.census.abs.gov.au

stream22.census.abs.gov.au

stream23.census.abs.gov.au

stream31.census.abs.gov.au

stream32.census.abs.gov.au

stream33.census.abs.gov.au

stream41.census.abs.gov.au

stream42.census.abs.gov.au

stream43.census.abs.gov.au

cdn1.census.abs.gov.au

cdn2.census.abs.gov.au

Excerpt from High Tech Bridge, www.census.abs.gov.au SSL/TLS Security Test, 29 July 2016:

The server does not prefer cipher suites providing strong Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS). We advise to configure your server to prefer cipher suites with ECDHE or DHE key exchange.

The HTTP version of the website does not redirect to the HTTPS version. We advise to enable redirection.

The server does not send the HTTP-Strict-Transport-Security. We advise to enable it to enforce the user to browse the website in HTTPS.

The server does not send HTTP-Public-Key-Pinning header. We advise to enable HPKP in order to avoid Man-In-The-Middle attacks.

TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV extension prevents protocol downgrade attacks. We advise to update your TLS engine to support it.

Preferred cipher suite for each protocol supported (except SSLv2). Expected configuration are ciphers allowed by PCI DSS and enabling PFS:

TLSv1.0 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHAMisconfiguration or weakness

TLSv1.1 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHAMisconfiguration or weakness

TLSv1.2 TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256Misconfiguration or weakness

Third party content (such as images, JavaScript, or CSS) is loaded from external resources. Despite that for some web applications it can significantly improve loading time, it may also put website visitor's privacy at risk, as information about website visitors become accessible to these third-party content providers. ​Moreover, a third-party content delivered via HTTP and not HTTPS channel may also expose your privacy.

HTTP methods (or verbs) that are allowed by the server. Some may be dangerous if not handled properly by the application.

Now where are those back doors to all that sensitive personal information? Hmmmm....

Salinger Privacy, 6 August 2016:

Dear Magistrate,

In case the ABS is prosecuting me for non-completion of this year’s Census, I thought I should explain to you my reasons why I have decided that a boycott is the only moral position I can take.

The short version is this:  Yes to a national snapshot.  No to detailed data-linking on individuals.  That’s not what a census is for.

I have wrestled with what my personal position should be.  I am normally a fan of the Census.  It has an important role to play in how we as a people are governed.  As a former public servant with a policy and research background, I believe in evidence-based policy decisions.  As a parent and a citizen, I want good quality data to help governments decide where to build the next school or hospital, or how to best direct aged care funding, or tackle indigenous disadvantage.

But as a former Deputy Privacy Commissioner, and a privacy consultant for the past 12 years, I can also see the privacy risks in what the ABS is doing.

Months ago I wrote an explanation of all the privacy risks caused by the ABS’s decision to keep and use name and address information for data-linking, in the hope that reason would prevail.  I was assuming that public and political pressure would force the ABS to drop the proposal (as they did in 2006 when I was Chair of the Australian Privacy Foundation and we spoke up about it).  Lots of people (as well as one penguin, the marvellous Brenda, the Civil Disobedience Penguin), are now coming to realise the risks and speak out against them, but right now, just a few days out, it looks like the ABS is pushing ahead regardless.

There are those who say that we shouldn’t boycott the Census because it is too important.  To them I say:  Bollocks.  (If you pardon my language, Your Worship.)  We know where that ‘too big to fail’ argument leads: to more arrogance, more heavy-handed treatment of citizens, more privacy invasions.

And there are the demographers who say the Census data should be linked to other health records like PBS prescription records, because if we as patients were asked for our identifiable health data directly, we would refuse to answer.  To them I say:  Hello, THAT’S THE POINT!  It’s my health information, not yours.  You should ask me nicely, and persuade me about your public interest research purpose, if you want access to my identifiable health records.  Maybe then I will say yes.  But going behind people’s backs because they would refuse their consent if asked is not what the National Health & Medical Research Council’s National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research is about.

This morning I suddenly realised: the ABS is behaving like a very, very bad boyfriend.  He keeps on breaking promises, pushing boundaries and disappointing you, but you forgive him each time.  You don’t want to call him out in case then he gets angry and dumps you.  So you just put up with it, and grumble over drinks to your girlfriends.

And this bad boyfriend keeps saying these reassuring things, like “oh we’ll only keep the data for four years”, and “the names and addresses are in a separate database”.  To that I say:  Nice try, but that’s a red herring.

Although there are certainly heightened privacy and security risks of accidental loss or malicious misuse with storing names and addresses, the deliberate privacy invasion starts with the use of that data to create a Statistical Linkage Key (SLK) for each individual, to use in linking data from other sources.  Please don’t believe that SLKs offer anonymity.  SLKs are easy to generate, with the same standard used across multiple datasets.  That’s the whole point: so that you can link data about a particular individual.  For example, Malcolm Turnbull would be known by the SLK URBAL241019541 in the type of datasets the ABS wants to match Census data against, including mental health services (yes, mental health!) and other health records, disability services records, early childhood records, community services records, as well as data about housing assistance and homelessness.

Anyone with access to these types of health and human services datasets can search for individuals by generating and searching against their SLK.  All you need to know is their first and last names, gender and date of birth.  Scott Morrison is ORICO130519681.  Kylie Minogue is INGYL280519682.  Deltra Goodrem is OOREL091119842.  Now tell me that their privacy will be absolutely protected if their Census data is coded the same way.

Never mind four years; the ABS could destroy all the actual name and address data after only four days or four seconds – but if they have already used it to generate an SLK for each individual Census record, the privacy damage has been done.

(Oh, and that line about how “we’ve never had a privacy breach with Census data”?  To that I say:  Great!  Let’s keep it that way!  DON’T COLLECT NAMES.)

So I say no.  No.  I am not putting up with that bad boyfriend any longer.  I believe in the importance of the Census, which is why I am so damn pissed off (sorry again Your Worship) that the ABS is being such a bad boyfriend to the Australian people: trashing not only our privacy, but the value of our data too.  It’s time to break up with them.

I have come to this decision with a heavy heart.  I am normally a law-abiding citizen.  Plus, I don’t really fancy facing a $180 fine for every day that I refuse to comply with a direction to complete the Census, with no cap on the number of days.  (Seriously, what kind of heavy-handed law is that?  Are you really going to keep hitting me with daily fines for the rest of my life, Your Worship?)

I know that I could give the ABS misinformation instead.  Say my name is Boaty McBoatface and that I am a 97 year old man living with 8 wives, that I have 14 cars, my language at home is Gibberish and that my religion is Jedi.  Giving misinformation is a common, rational response by about three in ten people who want to protect their privacy when faced with the collection of personal data they have no choice about.  Of course, that is also a crime in relation to the Census, but at least that one maxes out at an $1,800 fine.

But I won’t do that, because I do believe in the integrity of the census data.  I don’t want people to have to give misinformation in order to protect themselves.  We shouldn’t be placed in that position.

The definition of ‘census’ is “an official count”.  I actually want to stand up and be counted.  Butonly counted; not named or profiled or data-matched or data-linked, or anything else.  The privacy risks of doing anything else are just too great.

I have thought about just refusing to provide my name.  But even if I don’t give my name, if the ABS is determined to link my Census data with other datasets, there would be enough other information in my Census answers (sex, age, home address, previous home address, work address) to let them proceed regardless.  It won’t be enough to protect my privacy.

So until the ABS reverses its decision to match Census data about individuals with other datasets about individuals, I am not going to answer the Census questions at all.

I am sorry, Your Worship.  I don’t like being forced to choose, because I believe Australians deserve to have both good quality statistical data for government decision-making, AND their privacy respected.  But on Tuesday night, I will choose privacy.

The Census should be a national snapshot, not a tool for detailed data-linking on every individual.  Now convict and fine me if you disagree.

Yours sincerely,

Anna Johnston

There is no place for racially offensive cartoons in mainstream or social media

Serial offender professional cartoonist Bill Leak crosses the line once more.

NSW Aboriginal and Council:

Fishers not in favour of Australian Infrastructure Developments' plan to industrialise the Clarence River estuary

Fishing World, 2 August 2016:

THE Clarence River port of Yamba in Northern NSW has been proposed for a huge development that would see it potentially become one of the country's biggest ports.

The $12 billion takeover would see about 36 sq. km of infrastructure development along the Clarence covering approximately 27 per cent of the estuary system, according to the No Yamba Mega Port Facebook page.

River dredging would be required to a depth of 18m from the mouth through to Harwood Bridge with the complete removal of Turkey, Gourd and Palm Islands.

The project would also require the removal of two of NSW's most iconic fishing breakwalls, Iluka and Yamba walls, which lie on the North and South Banks of the Clarence River.

The company behind the proposal, Australian Infrastructure Developments (AID), states on its website that the first stages of the Port Development Plan will be open for trade by 2023 and be in full operation by 2028.

The website also lists “unconstrained land-side access for future long-term expansion” as a location specific advantage for the Port of Yamba project.

Poor fella, my country: composition of the Australian Senate post-July 2016

This is a great day for democracy, Mr Speaker

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on the passing of Senate reforms

Hansard,17 March 2016

The Turnbull Government’s legislative changes to how Australian senators are elected and its subsequent calling of a double-dissolution federal election in the face of a disillusioned and mutinous electorate, has resulted in this.....

The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 August 2016:

Pauline Hanson's One Nation party is now a pivotal force in Australian politics, having secured a total of four senators and consequently a crucial balance-of-power role in the new Parliament.

The Turnbull government will require the support of the One Nation bloc - as well as the three Nick Xenophon senators - to pass any legislation blocked by both Labor and the Greens.

But already there are questions over how long the four Hanson senators will remain united, with election-watcher Antony Green pointing to the party's abysmal record of keeping MPs in line.

The anti-Islam party benefited from a strong flow of voter preferences to win two Queensland Senate seats, including Ms Hanson's, and one in NSW, when results were finalised on Thursday. Farmer Rod Culleton has also been elected in Western Australia…..

One Nation spokesman James Ashby said the party's senators would be bound by the party's official policy manifesto. 

The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 August 2016:

One of Australia's new senators, One Nation's Malcolm Roberts, sent a bizarre affidavit to then prime minister Julia Gillard in 2011 demanding to be exempt from the carbon tax and using language consistent with the "sovereign citizen" movement.

Mr Roberts has also written numerous reports claiming climate change is an international conspiracy fostered by the United Nations and international banks to impose a socialist world order. At least one report cites several anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, including notorious Holocaust denier Eustace Mullins among its "primary references".

Anti-government, self-identified "sovereign citizens" claim to exist outside the country's legal and taxation systems and frequently believe the government uses grammar to enslave its citizens.

NSW Police say such people "should be considered a potential terrorist threat".

In an affidavit he sent to Ms Gillard in 2011, Mr Roberts identified himself as "Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts., the living soul", representing a corporate entity he termed MALCOLM IEUAN ROBERTS.

In the document, Mr Roberts demanded to be exempted from the carbon tax and compensated to the tune of $280,000 if Ms Gillard did not provide "full and accurate disclosure" in relation to 28 points explaining why he should not be liable for the tax.

Mr Roberts addressed the affidavit to "The Woman, Julia-Eileen: Gillard., acting as The Honourable JULIA EILEEN GILLARD" and presented her with a detailed contract he expected her to sign.

That stylisation of names is commonly used by "sovereign citizens" who believe the use of hyphens and colons is a way to evade governments' use of grammar to enslave their citizens.

When the largest Senate cross bench since Federation is combined with a one seat government majority in the House of Representatives - reduced to 75 votes on the floor once The Speaker is installed - then this country is now at the mercy of the cross benches. 

One of which is riddled with far-right, opportunistic, xenophobic, anti-science, anti-immigration, conspiracy theorising, zealots and political berserkers.

The composition of the Senate until 2019……

NSW Senators elected:

1.Payne (Lib)

2.Dastyari (ALP)

3.Sinodinos (Lib)

4.McAllister (ALP)

5.Nash (NAT)

6.O’Neill (ALP)

7.Fierravanti-Wells(Lib)

8.Cameron(ALP)

9.Rhiannon(GRN)

10.Williams(NAT) 1

11.Burston(PHON)

12.Leyonhjelm (LDP)

Queensland Senators elected:

1. Brandis (LNP)

2. Watt (ALP)

3. Hanson (PHON)

4. Canavan (LNP)

5. Chisholm (ALP)

6. McGrath (LNP)

7. Moore (ALP)

8. McDonald (LNP)

9. Waters (GRN)

10. O’Sullivan (LNP)

11. Ketter (ALP)

12. Roberts (PHON)

Victorian Senators elected:

1. Fifield (Lib)

2. Carr (ALP)

3. Di Natale (GRN)

4. McKenzie (Nats)

5. Conroy (ALP)

6. Ryan (Lib)

7. Collins (ALP)

8. Paterson (Lib)

9. Marshall (ALP)

10. Hinch (DHJP)

11. Rice (GRN)

12. Hume (Lib)

South Australian Senators elected:

1.Birmingham (Lib)

2. Wong (ALP)

3. Xenophon (NXT)

4. Bernardi (Lib)

5.Farrell (ALP)

6. Griff (NXT)

7. Rushton (Lib)

8. Gallacher (ALP)

9. Fawcett (Lib)

10. Kakoschke-Moore (NXT)

11. Hanson-Young (GRN)

12. Day (FF)

Elected senators for other states and territories:

Tasmania

Western Australia

Northern Territory

ACT