The climate change debate in Australia often focusses on temperature, rainfall and sea levels, but......

There’s more to climate change impacts than living in a markedly hotter, drier continent being nibbled at the edges by encroaching oceans or battered by storms - and it isn’t only the very real threats to the natural environment, biodiversity and water security.

There’s the risk of an increased incidence of disease outbreaks in humans and animals and, the economic and social costs rising levels of disease bring to families, communities, local economies and the nation.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 April 2015:

A range of tropical diseases will become more widespread in Australia due to climate change, including a dramatic increase in mosquito-borne illnesses, scientists warn. Their research has prompted leading doctors to call for a co-ordinated response from the federal and state governments to the pending crisis. 

In a paper released on Thursday, the Australian Academy of Science said diseases currently confined to the tropics would be unlocked and travel south. The incubation period for mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue would also be shortened.

Rising temperatures and changes to water availability were also likely to increase the prevalence of food and water-borne diseases. The scientists forecast an increased risk of respiratory diseases as more people spend time indoors to avoid extreme heat, and population density increases due to population growth.

"A clear problem facing Australia as it prepares to deal with the problem of the rise in infectious illnesses triggered by climate change is its lack of a single centre through which information about communicable diseases can be co-ordinated and disseminated," the paper said.

Excerpt from Australian Academy of Science report mentioned in the April 2015 news article:

Changes in disease burden anticipated in Australia’s future climate are:

* Vector-borne diseases (e.g. dengue, chikungunya) Breeding of vectors like the mosquito will probably alter because of ecosystem change and this will increase Australia’s susceptibility to outbreaks of vector-borne diseases. The expansion of disease ranges will put rising numbers at risk, while reductions in incubation times for vector-borne viruses will worsen the problem.

* Food-borne diseases (e.g. infections with E. coli, Campylobacter, Salmonella) Rising temperatures, changes to water supply and extreme weather events are likely to increase the incidence of human food-borne diseases. In addition, more prevalent animal bacterial infection and associated bio-security costs may disrupt food and livestock export markets. Increasing incidence of food-borne diseases could reduce the productive workforce.

* Water-borne diseases (e.g. Giardia, cholera) Changes to water availability and higher temperatures will increase the prevalence of water-borne diseases, while replication rates of bacteria will increase as temperatures rise, reaching higher densities and posing greater risk to more people.

* Respiratory diseases (e.g. influenza, whooping cough) As temperatures rise, more people will spend time indoors to avoid the extreme heat, increasing the risk they will pass on respiratory diseases. This problem will be exacerbated by changes in seasons, extension of peak transmission periods, and rises in human population density due to population growth. The displacement of people from other regions as a result of climate change will also increase the rate at which new diseases are brought into Australia and could add to population density.

* Zoonotic diseases (e.g. Hendra, leptospirosis) Climate change will alter the density and movement of both wild animals and livestock in Australia and affect human–animal contact patterns. This could promote transmission of existing zoonotic disease or increase the risk of novel diseases emerging.

News.com.au, 5 August 2016:

A FLESH-eating ulcer that can result in limb amputations has made its way to Melbourne’s southeast suburbs, The Age reports.

The Buruli ulcer has hit record levels in Victoria with 45 cases reported this year. The disease has recently spread to inner Melbourne suburbs such as Bentleigh, Hampton and Cheltenham.

It’s believed the ulcer, also known as the Bairnsdale ulcer, can be contracted by contact with bodies of water, mosquitoes and even possums. However the exact mode of transmission remains unknown to researchers.

The disease eats at the skin and capillaries and can lead to gangrene if left untreated, resulting in amputation in extreme cases. It most commonly affects exposed skin areas such as arms and legs.

It was first recorded in Bairnsdale, Victoria in the 1930s, but has more recently been detected in the Mornington and Bellarine Peninsulas.

Austin Hospital’s Professor Paul Johnson told The Age the number of cases was “rapidly increasing. You’ve got this tropical disease in coastal temperate Melbourne.”

The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 September 2016:

Dozens of Australians have been infected with the Zika virus this year and there are concerns more will contract it while travelling in Asia where cases are proliferating.

On Friday, federal health authorities urged Australians to be careful while travelling to Zika affected areas, including Singapore where infections are soaring.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 January 2017:

Dengue fever cases in Australia reached a 20-year high last year, driven by travellers being infected in tropical areas such as Bali and bringing the virus back with them.

More than 2000 cases of the mosquito-borne disease were confirmed in Australia last year, federal Health Department data shows….

Microbiology professor Cameron Simmons, of the Peter Doherty Institute, said dengue fever was endemic (constantly being transmitted) throughout much of south-east Asia and the western Pacific, which were popular destinations for Australian travellers.

"Dengue has been a problem globally for 20 years, and in the last 10 years we have seen epidemic spread of the virus through many countries in our neighbourhood," he said. "The chance of travellers being infected may well be increasing."

ABC News, 9 February 2017:

Ross River virus cases are spiking in parts of Victoria and New South Wales this summer.

The Murrumbidgee Local Health District, which stretches from Albury to central-west New South Wales, has seen 264 reported cases of the mosquito-borne virus since the start of December.

It is a significant increase compared to other years — there were 96 cases across New South Wales over the same period in 2015-16.

Health authorities also are concerned about a potential increase in Barmah Forest virus and Sindbis virus.

"We're seeing a marked increase on what we would normally see," director of public health Tracey Oakman said.

"In January for [the health district] we had 148 cases, and in the month before we had 116, and that's a lot higher than what we would normally see.

There were 622 Ross River virus notifications across the whole of New South Wales in 2016, with 202 in December.

In January, there were 317 cases across the state.

Victoria had 314 diagnosed cases of the virus last year, and so far this year has had 548 cases up until Tuesday.

Heavy spring rainfall across north-east Victoria and southern New South Wales is one of the main contributing factors to the rise of Ross River fever cases.

The Australian, 12 March 2017:

A Victorian farm is in quarantine after a suspected case of deadly anthrax disease, the second case in the area in just over a week.

Agriculture Victoria confirmed on Saturday that a farm in Nyah, in the state’s northwest, has been quarantined and a suspected infected carcass destroyed. Results from testing are expected on Sunday and an Agriculture Victoria team will remain at the property until “no further infected animals are detected”. All at-risk animals have also been vaccinated.

The latest suspected case comes after a 34 sheep died at a Swan Hill farm on March 3, with testing confirming anthrax was present in one of the sheep. Anthrax is a bacterial infection commonly found in the soil during hot, dry conditions and it causes a rapid death once animals are affected. [my highlighting]

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, What is anthrax?:

                        

Anthrax is a serious infectious disease caused by gram-positive, rod-shaped bacteria known as Bacillus anthracis. Anthrax can be found naturally in soil and commonly affects domestic and wild animals around the world…..people can get sick with anthrax if they come in contact with infected animals or contaminated animal products. Contact with anthrax can cause severe illness in both humans and animals.

Anthrax is not contagious, which means you can’t catch it like the cold or flu.

People get infected with anthrax when spores get into the body. When anthrax spores get inside the body, they can be “activated.” When they become active, the bacteria can multiply, spread out in the body, produce toxins (poisons), and cause severe illness.

This can happen when people breathe in spores, eat food or drink water that is contaminated with spores, or get spores in a cut or scrape in the skin.

GAS SHORTAGE! GAS SHORTAGE!: Why on earth do you think we would believe you now, Malcolm?

“Santos now argues that its aim in CLNG was always as much about raising the domestic gas price, and therefore re-rating large parts of the portfolio outside of GLNG, as it was about the project…….What is more, with a ~0.8% drag on Australian GDP from every $2/GJ rise in the domestic gas price, this view certainly wouldn’t have been terribly popular with politicians who approved the project.” [Credit Suisse, Asia Pacific/Australia Equity Research: Santos, 11 March 2014]

The reality for Australian householders is that on on average gas cost the same or more than electricity by 2012.

After managing to artificial inflate the domestic price of gas still further and wanting to reserve as much LNG as possible for the larger export market, now the Australian gas industry is crying shortages in order to blackmail state governments into opening up more conventional and unconventional gas fields across rural and regional Australia.

The fact of the matter is that since at least 1975 domestic energy consumption has been lower than energy production and export, while current gas domestic consumption remains significantly lower that current gas production.

According to the Australian Dept. of Industry, Innovation and Science’s Australian Energy Update 2016:

Natural gas production rose by 5 per cent in 2014–15 to 2,607 petajoules (66 billion cubic metres). Western Australia remained Australia’s largest producer of natural gas, producing nearly two-thirds of total gas production in 2014–15. Queensland production grew 45 per cent to become Australia’s second largest producer, overtaking Victoria, where production fell by 11 per cent. Production of coal seam gas increased by 50 per cent in 2014–15, to reach 462 petajoules (12 billion cubic metres), as new wells were drilled in Queensland to support the start of LNG exports from Gladstone. Coal seam gas accounted for 18 per cent of Australian gas production on an energy content basis, and nearly half of east coast gas production.

This Australia Institute graph makes the relationship between 2016 gas production and domestic consumption levels clearer:

Graph retrieved from Twitter

So why the alleged gas shortage?

The gas industry in Australia ignored signs that domestic gas consumption would rise and, in an excess of greed made commitments to export markets which appear to have been predicated on the assumption that it would be able to easily and profitably make up the competitive squeeze between domestic need, client country needs and its own commercial aims - because it would still be allowed open slather to drill or frack every available square kilometre of land with gas reserves beneath it.

This can all be explained in one sentence. The gas industry has been deliberately manipulating and starving the domestic market for years.

Mainstream media is finally looking at this problem a little more closely and explaining how businesses and consumers are being played for fools.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 March 2017:

Let's be clear: there is no gas shortage. Not in Australia, and not around the world. In fact, there's the opposite: a global glut of the stuff. BHP has already admitted there's enough gas in Bass Strait to supply the east coast "indefinitely". And globally, by the end of 2015 the gas industry was capable of producing about 25 per cent more liquefied gas than the world wanted to import.

By 2020, production capacity looks set to increase another 30 per cent. Even if demand is increasing – and that's not absolutely clear – it's not keeping pace with that. The world's biggest importer, Japan, has been reducing its demand for several years, and according to its own government, will be buying 30 per cent less gas by 2030 as it turns its focus to renewables….

So it was all very encouraging to hear Turnbull boasting this week about the size of his constitutional stick. "We have a responsibility – which we do not shirk from"; the industry understands the gravity of its "social licence" to operate. Et cetera. But the government has steadfastly refused to use that stick previously. And when you have gas companies slugging Australians record prices while charging their Asian customers record low prices, it's a little hard to believe they stay awake at night worrying about the terms of their "social licence".

What's much easier to believe, though, is that the gas industry is desperate to get its hands on gas supplies that are off limits – especially controversial ones like, say, coal seam gas. And if they have to offer a little more domestic supply to do it – at a time when global demand is slowing anyway – then it's hardly a sacrifice. Oh, and as it happens, that's exactly what Turnbull would like to offer them, hence his condemnation of the states' bans on further gas extraction.

It's a neat trick, really. Take a country with enough gas to supply itself "indefinitely", send the vast majority of it overseas, refuse to sell locally at a fair price, create a domestic shortage, then demand access to some of our most environmentally sensitive resources as though it's an emergency measure.

The Australian, 18 March 2017:

According to a report compiled by Energy Edge, the $US18.5 billion ($24.1bn) Gladstone LNG project, run by Santos, has at times been buying the equivalent of up to half of the whole east coast’s energy demand to meet a shortfall of gas to put through its two LNG production trains.

It is little wonder then that high up in the gentlemen’s agreement struck on Wednesday were commitments to supply, rather than deplete, domestic gas markets.

It is also clear that only two of the three Gladstone projects could agree to being net domestic gas contributors “as part of their social licence”.

The GLNG project has had to “take the matter on notice”, the agreement said.

The other two LNG projects — Queensland Curtis LNG run by Shell and Australia Pacific LNG run by Origin Energy and ConocoPhillips — have been consistently providing gas to the market (and GLNG, sometimes) on top of their export commitments.

“QCLNG and APLNG are currently either net long or balanced to the market, whereas GLNG is significantly short on equity supplies and must rely on third-party contracts,” Energy Edge said.

That was known by most observers.

But, using a range of public sources, Energy Edge says GLNG has sometimes bought a staggering 500-600 terajoules a day of gas on top of its own production.

Illustrating how substantial that volume is, the combined domestic demand from the pipeline-connected eastern states of Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania is about 1250 terajoules a day.

GLNG appears to already be averaging the use of about 300-400 terajoules a day of third-party gas — that is, gas outside the coal-seam gasfields it has developed specifically to feed its LNG project — for its LNG export.

With APLNG and QCLNG ­already fulfilling the demand, any short-term change will need to come from Santos and its GLNG partners Total and Kogas, although it might pay the rest of the industry to somehow provide some assistance.

After the meeting, Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher, who was brought in last year to fix the problems, would not comment on exactly what the GLNG response could be.

“As an Australian company that has supplied the domestic market since its inception, we look forward to working with and supporting the government on this issue,” Mr Gallagher said.

“We are committed to working across all of our joint ventures to free up gas as well as continue to identify and develop new resources for the domestic market.”

As recently as December, at the company’s investor day, Mr Gallagher said the aim was to ramp up GLNG volumes to fill 6 million tonnes of the plant’s 7.8 million tonnes of annual LNG export capacity.

This could be potentially expanded by offering tolling services to other Australian gas producers who might want to export their gas but didn’t have the facilities, he said.

Enthusiasm for toll-treating has probably eased off in the wake of the meeting with Mr Turnbull and the current alarm around contract prices that Australian Competition & Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims said this week “are apparently being offered at $20 a gigajoule, if they receive supply offers at all”.

East coast gas contract prices were $3 to $4 per gigajoule before the export plants were committed to and are said to now average $8 to $10, except in extreme cases.

The $70bn worth of Gladstone gas freezers and associated coal-seam gas wells have rapidly tripled east coast gas demand and opened the market up to international buyers.

This has ended an era of cheap Australian domestic gas supply, although the industry says this would have happened anyway because the cost of developing required resources was rising.

But the expected price hike has been exacerbated and come with shortages thanks to external factors and industry and government missteps, many of them flagged by observers before they were committed to.

Despite calls for industry to collaborate, three separate, almost identical plants were approved by Queensland and federal governments and, from 2010, built by the gas industry on Curtis Island.

This resulted in increased capital costs because infrastructure was not shared, cost blowouts as the remote construction market heated up and the building of six LNG production trains when the associated coal-seam gasfields could only really supply enough fuel for five.

To achieve efficiencies of scale, GLNG built two trains when it only had enough gas to comfortably fill one, admitting it would need to buy an unspecified amount of third-party gas to fill the second train.

After this, much that could go wrong has gone wrong.

Oil prices crashed, robbing gas developers of cash flow and investor funds that would have been used for extra LNG-related and domestic gas development, while community opposition to onshore gas production grew, resulting in bans or restrictions on new development in NSW, Victoria and now the Northern Territory.

At the same time, coal-seam gas resources did not perform as well as hoped at some Santos GLNG grounds, Santos’s Narrabri project in NSW (which was also hit by community opposition) and at the Bowen Basin ground of the Arrow joint venture between Shell and PetroChina.

It is not clear what the options are for GLNG, but Credit Suisse analyst Mark Samter has made repeated calls for it to close down one of its two trains — something Mr Gallagher ruled out last year.

Now an incredibly rich Liberal Party politician heading a Liberal-Nationals federal government – who was a failure as Minister for the Environment and Water, an abject failure as Minister for Communications and is a profound disappointment as Prime Minister of Australia – expects voters to believe that there is a genuine gas supply emergency which will leave local families and businesses going without unless the states allow indiscriminate gas mining.

Indue Limited, the Healthy Welfare Card and IBM

Image from Crikey.com.au

Indue Limited has been awarded at least $324 million in Dept. of Human Services and Centrelink contracts since 2009, including contracts to supply the infamous Basics Card and Healthy Welfare Card income management cards.

In it 2015-16 annual report it boasted a $5.1 million profit before tax.

According to Indue it exists to deliver financial payment products and settlement services that impress our clients and holds an Authorised Deposit-taking Institution (ADI) licence.

Its subsidiaries are:

Indue Securitisation Pty Ltd

Indue Aggregation Services Pty Ltd

Indue Data Services Pty Ltd Australia

Ivey Pty Ltd

Trinity Securities Pty Ltd

Lynx Financial Systems Pty Ltd

Although the company’s 2015-16 annual report lists director on pages 12-14 and key personnel elsewhere in the document, it is rather coy about the names of shareholders.

From 2008 to 2013 National Party member Larry Anthony sat on the Indue board and for much of that period he was also Senior Vice President Australia of the Nationals.

The company also remains coy about its future direction:

Information on likely developments in the operations of the Group and the expected results of operations have not been included in this annual financial report because the Directors believe it would be likely to result in unreasonable prejudice to the Group.

Indue Limited currently operates the Centrelink Cashless Debit Card Trial (CDCT).

The Indue cashless debit card hold 80% of a Centrelink client’s pension, benefit or allowance and can be used for purchases via eftpos or online, but cannot be used to buy alcohol or to gamble.

On 9 February 2017 Orima Research reported:

Participation in the Trial is mandatory for all working age ISP recipients in the selected Trial sites. In addition, wage earners, Age Pensioners and Veterans’ Affairs Pensioners who live in the Trial sites can opt in to the CDCT.

More participants said the CDCT had made their lives worse than made it better (49% compared to 22%). Family members of trial participants gave a similar pattern of answers….

participants and family members both felt that the overall level of humbugging had gone up since the Trial started….

The Turnbull Government is extending this trial and there is talk of eventually rolling the cashless debit card out nationally.

On 23 February 2017 Indue was delighted to announce a strategic partnership with IBM, and its intention to offer IBM Safer Payments for the protection of real-time payments on Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP). IBM Safer Payments is the industry’s first true cognitive fraud detection solution, and will complement Indue’s Orion Financial Crimes NPP Service. This represents a significant step in Indue’s strategy of providing a multi-channel, fully outsourced, 24×7 fraud and financial crimes monitoring service.

International Business Machine Corp (IBM) is developing a global history of failure.

Currently IBM ‘expertise’ and software supports programs including the hapless myGov interface for the Australian Taxation Office, Centrelink, Medicare and My Health Record.

Welfare payments and a company using yet more IMB software?

What could possibly go wrong for Centrelink clients?

A little Indue background

The company has its representatives on the following:

Boards

eftpos Payments Australia Limited (Indue has formed an alliance with Cuscal for representation on this board – Cuscal is representing both organisations until the October 2016 AGM)

ATM Access Australia Limited

APCA Committees

Australian Payments Forum

APCA Management Committee 2 (BECS)

Card not Present Fraud Implementation Steering Committee

APCA Fraud in Banking Forum

BPAY Committees

BPAY Management Committee

BPAY Fraud Sub-Committee

BPAY Marketing Sub-Committee

Visa Committees

Visa Client Operations Committee

Visa Regional Risk Executive Council

MasterCard Committees

MasterCard Advisory Council

New Payments Platform

Program Delivery Authority (PDA)

Design Authority (DA)

Planning and Reporting Working Group (PWG)

Testing Working Group (TWG)

Operational Procedures Working Group (OWG)

ICS Working Group (IWG)

Transition to Live Working (T2L)

Other Committees and Working Groups

Cashcard Network Advisory Council

Australasian Card and Risk Council

Cashcard Network Members Forum

Industry Security Steering Committee

eftpos Payments Australia Limited Member Advisory Council

Major partners

First Data International – Indue partners with First Data International for card switching and processing.

Visa – Indue is a principal member of Visa and licensed to issue all Visa card products including credit, debit, prepaid, commercial and premium cards. These cards can be used in ATMs and eftpos terminals throughout Visa’s global network of 24 million point-of-sale terminals and 2.1 million ATMs.

MasterCard – Indue is a principal member of MasterCard and licensed to issue MasterCard card products including credit, debit, prepaid, commercial and premium cards. These cards may be used in ATMs and eftpos terminals throughout MasterCard’s global network of 32 million acceptance locations, including 24 million point-of-sale terminals and in excess of one million ATMs.

eftpos – Indue is a member of eftpos and licensed to issue eftpos card products. These cards may be used in ATMs and eftpos terminals throughout the domestic Australian eftpos network.

Placard – We have partnered with Placard for the manufacturing and personalisation of all card products.

Computershare – Our statements and mail house services are provided by Computershare.

Westpac – Westpac provides clearing and settlement facilities to Indue as well as cheque reading services.

BPAY – Indue is a member of BPAY allowing us to offer both payer and biller facilities to our clients.

The relationship between Monsanto & US regulators

“For once in your life, listen to me and don’t play your political conniving games with the science to favor the registrants……For once do the right thing and don’t make decisions based on how it affects your bonus.” [then EPA senior toxicologist Marion Copley writing to Jess Rowland as quoted in Meridian Institute article, 8 March 2017]

Bloomberg, 15 March 2017:

The Environmental Protection Agency official who was in charge of evaluating the cancer risk of Monsanto Co.’s Roundup allegedly bragged to a company executive that he deserved a medal if he could kill another agency’s investigation into the herbicide’s key chemical.

The boast was made during an April 2015 phone conversation, according to farmers and others who say they’ve been sickened by the weed killer. After leaving his job as a manager in the EPA’s pesticide division last year, Jess Rowland has become a central figure in more than 20 lawsuits in the U.S. accusing the company of failing to warn consumers and regulators of the risk that its glyphosate-based herbicide can cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“If I can kill this I should get a medal,” Rowland told a Monsanto regulatory affairs manager who recounted the conversation in an email to his colleagues, according to a court filing made public Tuesday. The company was seeking Rowland’s help stopping an investigation of glyphosate by a separate office, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, that is part of the U.S. Health and Human Service Department, according to the filing.

A federal judge overseeing the glyphosate litigation in San Francisco said last month he’s inclined to order Rowland to submit to questioning by lawyers for the plaintiffs, who contend he had a "highly suspicious" relationship with Monsanto. Rowland oversaw a committee that found insufficient evidence to conclude glyphosate causes cancer and quit last year shortly after his report was leaked to the press……

The plaintiffs’ lawyers say Rowland’s communications with Monsanto employees show the regulator who was supposed to be policing the company was actually working on its behalf.

The unsealing of the court documents "represents a huge development in public health," said Tim Litzenburg, one of the lawyers suing Monsanto. Regulatory agencies, scientists, consumers and physicians "can see some of what Monsanto was actually engaging in behind the scenes, and how they have manipulated the scientific literature to date. That’s important to their decision-making, not just our lawsuits."

After the phone conversation with Rowland, the Monsanto head of U.S. regulatory affairs, Dan Jenkins, cautioned his colleagues not to “get your hopes up,” according to an email cited in the court filing.

“I doubt EPA and Jess can kill this,” Jenkins wrote. He may have spoken too soon. Another internal Monsanto memorandum unsealed on Tuesday said the ATSDR, as the federal toxics agency is known, "agreed, for now, to take direction from EPA."…..

The ATSDR announced in the Federal Register in February 2015 that it planned to publish a toxicological profile of glyphosate by October that year. It never did. The agency’s press office didn’t respond to multiple phone messages seeking comment. EPA representatives also didn’t immediately respond to phone messages seeking comment.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers said in another filing made public Tuesday that Monsanto’s toxicology manager and his boss, Bill Heydens, were ghost writers for two of the reports, including one from 2000, that Rowland’s committee relied on in part to reach its conclusion that glyphosate shouldn’t be classified as carcinogenic.

The EPA “may be unaware of Monsanto’s deceptive authorship practice,” the lawyers said.

Among the documents unsealed was a February 2015 internal email exchange at the company about how to contain costs for a research paper. The plaintiff lawyers cited it to support their claim that the EPA report is unreliable, unlike a report by an international agency that classified glyphosate as a probable carcinogen…..

Note

Jess Rowland was Associate Director- Health Effects  Division, Office of Pesticides Program at the US Environmental Protection Agency. He appears to have retired in the first half of 2016.

Apocalypse then, but what now?

“Political reforms are mostly ineffectual, in part because they are often aimed at the balance of power between the straightforwardly wealthy and the politically powerful, rather than the lot of the have-nots.”

Walter Scheidel, Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, Catherine R. Kennedy and Daniel L. Grossman Fellow in Human Biology and Director of Graduate Studies in Classics at Stanford University, delivers the bad news…….

The Economist, 2 March 2017:

As a supplier of momentary relief, the Great Depression seems an unlikely candidate. But when it turns up on page 363 of Walter Scheidel’s “The Great Leveler” it feels oddly welcome. For once—and it is only once, for no other recession in American history boasts the same achievement—real wages rise and the incomes of the most affluent fall to a degree that has a “powerful impact on economic inequality”. Yes, it brought widespread suffering and dreadful misery. But it did not bring death to millions, and in that it stands out.

If that counts as relief, you can begin to imagine the scale of the woe that comes before and after. Mr Scheidel, a Vienna-born historian now at Stanford University, puts the discussion of increased inequality found in the recent work of Thomas Piketty, Anthony Atkinson, Branko Milanovic and others into a broad historical context and examines the circumstances under which it can be reduced.

Having assembled a huge range of scholarly literature to produce a survey that starts in the Stone Age, he finds that inequality within countries is almost always either high or rising, thanks to the ways that political and economic power buttress each other and both pass down generations. It does not, as some have suggested, carry within it the seeds of its own demise.

Only four things, Mr Scheidel argues, cause large-scale levelling. Epidemics and pandemics can do it, as the Black Death did when it changed the relative values of land and labour in late medieval Europe. So can the complete collapse of whole states and economic systems, as at the end of the Tang dynasty in China and the disintegration of the western Roman Empire. When everyone is pauperised, the rich lose most. Total revolution, of the Russian or Chinese sort, fits the bill. So does the 20th-century sibling of such revolutions: the war of mass-mobilisation.

And that is about it. Financial crises increase inequality as often as they decrease it. Political reforms are mostly ineffectual, in part because they are often aimed at the balance of power between the straightforwardly wealthy and the politically powerful, rather than the lot of the have-nots. Land reform, debt relief and the emancipation of slaves will not necessarily buck the trend much, though their chances of doing so a bit increase if they are violent. But violence does not in itself lead to greater equality, except on a massive scale. “Most popular unrest in history”, Mr Scheidel writes, “failed to equalise at all.”

Perhaps the most fascinating part of this book is the careful accumulation of evidence showing that mass-mobilisation warfare was the defining underlying cause of the unprecedented decrease in inequality seen across much of the Western world between 1910 and 1970 (though the merry old Great Depression lent an unusual helping hand). By demanding sacrifice from all, the deployment of national resources on such a scale under such circumstances provides an unusually strong case for soaking the rich.

Income taxes and property taxes rose spectacularly during both world wars (the top income-tax rate reached 94% in America in 1944, with property taxes peaking at 77% in 1941). Physical damage to capital goods slashed the assets of the wealthy, too, as did post-war inflations. The wars also drove up membership in trade unions—one of the war-related factors that played a part in keeping inequality low for a generation after 1945 before it started to climb back up in the 1980s……..

Read the rest of the article here.

Flood warnings still being ignored while intense storms over parts of the New South Wales north coast have flooded farmland and damaged crops

ABC News, 20 March 2017:

PHOTO: The community of New Italy, near Woodburn received 445 millimetres of rain on Saturday alone.(Supplied: Keryn Clapham)

Intense storms over parts of the New South Wales north coast have flooded farmland and damaged crops.

The community of New Italy, near Woodburn, received almost half a metre of rain on Saturday alone, while Dorrigo had 430 millimetres over the weekend.

Woodburn State Emergency Service (SES) unit controller Jim McCormack, also a beef farmer in the district, said it had been more than 40 years since a rain event like this.

"The system just sat over the top of us for a number of hours and just belted us with everything it had," Mr McCormack said.

"It was so intense for that five or six hour period on Saturday morning, it caused all sorts of issues for our SES unit as well, but people are seeing water where they have never seen water for a long, long time."

Mr McCormack said a fall of 443 millimetres at New Italy resulted in water backing up in places that had not been flooded for years….

FLOOD WARNINGS STILL BEING IGNORED

The State Emergency Service says warnings about staying out of flood waters are still being ignored by some.

There were several reports of children playing in flood waters across the Northern Rivers at the weekend.

The reports follow the death of an 11-year-old boy who was playing in a flooded park in Wollongong last week.

Clarence-Nambucca SES regional controller Caroline Ortel says people have been found in flood waters swimming, playing and paddling on surfboards.

"We have to ask them to move on and where they won't listen to the advice of our members, we're having to call the police in to ask them to move on," she said.

The Richmond-Tweed SES received 168 calls for help and carried out 15 flood rescues over the weekend.

Between #Yamba and #Macksville there were 337 call outs and 10 flood rescues, with the majority in the #CoffsHarbour and #Bellingen areas.

The SES says despite river levels dropping across the region some residents, mainly in the #CouttsCrossing and #Orara River areas, will remain isolated for the next few days.

UPDATE

9 News, 20 March 2017:

More than 4000 people remain isolated in northern NSW due to heavy rain, with wet weather forecast for much of the state during the week.

Eleven rivers in the Northern Rivers and Mid North Coast regions have flooded, with the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) issuing severe thunderstorm warnings on Monday for those areas, along with the Central West Slopes and Plains, and Upper Western and Northern Tablelands.

Significant rainfall has eased in these areas but showers will persist this week due to a humid air mass hovering over the state.

The SES said on Monday about 4200 residents around the Clarence and Nambucca regions remain isolated, the majority of those around Iluka.

Since the wild weather began last week, the NSW State Emergency Service has responded to more than 3300 jobs - a concentrated number of those call-outs coming from Coffs Harbour, Gosford, Hornsby and Sydney's Hills area.

The SES has also carried out 85 flood rescues.

While the rain may have eased for Monday, the SES is warning NSW residents around swollen rivers, especially the Orara and Macintyre rivers, to take care.

"We're asking people not to be complacent with the fact these river systems are starting to drop, there's a lot of water around," SES spokeswoman Sue Pritchard told AAP on Monday said.

Clarence Valley Council advises risk of landslips in Yamba NSW coastal zone - see map

Clarence Valley Council, media release, 20 March 2017:

Mayor: Jim Simmons LOCKED BAG 23 GRAFTON NSW 2460

A/General Manager: Ashley Lindsay Telephone: (02) 6643 0200

Fax: (02) 6642 7647

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 20, 2017

Yamba hill residents notified of landslip risk

SOME residents on Yamba hill have been advised to watch for potential landslips following heavy rain in the area over the past five days.

Clarence Valley Council works and civil director, Troy Anderson, said council monitored rainfall events on the hill so it could warn landowners and property managers of any increased risk of landslip in an area known as the Yamba landslide risk zones (see attached image).

“With the heavy rain over the past few days, we have now reached red alert levels,” he said.

“If landowners or other occupiers notice any sign of soil movement they should consider evacuating the site and should notify council immediately.

“We have an engineer on standby to investigate any concerns, but at the moment there have been no problems reported.

“We notified the occupiers of the 15 affected properties with this information on Saturday.”

Below is a chart indicating trigger levels for the Yamba landslide risk zones.

Rainfall Period (days)	Orange Alert Level (Total mm)	Red Alert Level (Total mm)
1	180	200
2	200	280
5	215	325
8	250	370
15	310	425
30	425	560
45	500	675
60	600	800
90	740	955

Note: 1 day = 24 hours

Release ends.

The highlighted area shows properties in the Yamba landslide risk zone