In the face of the growing threat of climate change sometimes Australian politicians leave me speechless

The Guardian, 9 October 2017:

The New South Wales government will introduce legislation to approve an underground coalmine that was blocked by the courts because it was polluting Sydney’s drinking water.

On Monday the state’s energy minister, Don Harwin, announced the government would overturn a decision by the NSW court of appeal to block the extension of the Springvale colliery.

The mine, owned by Centennial Coal, is the sole supplier to Lithgow’s Mount Piper power station, which provides about 10% of NSW’s electricity.

On Monday Harwin said the mine was “vital for energy security and affordability”.

“My top priority as energy minister is to ensure NSW households and business have an affordable, secure and reliable energy supply – this decision supports that,” he said.

The legislation, which is expected to be introduced to the parliament this week, will change the NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment Act to “clarify” that “projects in the Sydney water catchment seeking to expand must maintain or improve water quality compared to their existing consent”.

It will also specifically validate the Springvale mine’s state significant development consent.

The government’s planning minister, Anthony Roberts, said the legislation would “support the construction of a water treatment plant” which he said would eliminate saline discharges.

“This new treatment plant will see zero mine water discharge into the Coxs river, is supported by the EPA and WaterNSW and has separately been approved by the independent Planning Assessment Commission,” he said.

In August the court of appeal determined that the mine was polluting Sydney’s drinking water and therefore operating on an invalid licence.

After a challenge by environment group 4nature, the court found the commission had erred in approving the licence because it involved discharging polluted water into Sydney’s drinking catchment.

The approval involved saline mine water being discharged into the Coxs river, which flows into Lake Burragorang, Sydney’s major drinking-water reservoir.

Liberal Member of the Legislative Council, Minister for Resources, Minister for Energy and Utilities, and Minister for the Arts, Vice-President of the Executive Council, Donald Thomas HARWIN, BEc(Hons) MLC – parliamentary bio.

Liberal Member for Lane Cove, Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing, and Special Minister of State, Leader of the House, Anthony John ROBERTS, MA (Comms) MP – parliamentary bio.

Political Tweets of the Week

Hey @bobjcarr Welcome to Stasi Australia (metadata, no-charge detention, facial recognition CCTV). You still opposed to a Bill of Rights?

— Quentin Dempster (@QuentinDempster) October 8, 2017

Yesterday over 16,000 people turned out around Aus with a simple message: #StopAdani! Australia, you are awe-inspiring and can do anything! pic.twitter.com/HDaTodY74c

— Stop Adani (@stopadani) October 8, 2017

Quotes of the Week

”Homosexuality was decriminalised in NSW in 1984. The first state or territory to take homosexuality out of the criminal code was South Australia in 1975 and the last was Tasmania in 1997.” [Julie McCrossin writing on ABC News, 23 September 2017]

“There are around 3,000 reported snakebites each year in Australia, resulting in 500 hospital admissions and an average of two fatalities.” [The Flying Doctor Service, 5 October 2017]

“In the first few months of 2017, more than 440,000 Australians have donated to a GoFundMe, demonstrating the staggering increase of people engaging with social fundraising across the country.”  [The Northern Star, 3 October 2017]

WAKE UP, PRIME MINISTER! A Frustrated Voter Calls on the Australian PM to Redeem Himself

Tony Abbott, in speaking arrant nonsense in the speech he delivered to a collection of climate deniers in the UK recently, has given you a great chance to redeem yourself in relation to climate change action and energy policy.  Abbott has shown how idiotic he is and how indifferent he is to the national interest as well as being totally inconsistent with much of what he espoused when he was Prime Minister.  So why do you keep kowtowing to his silliness and the silliness of his mates?  Why are you reluctant to adopt a clean energy target as recommended by the Chief Scientist? 

You’ve kowtowed to Abbott and his cronies incessantly for months and months – and it’s got you ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE.  They are not going to let up on you – and you’ve lost an enormous amount of public goodwill by your craven behaviour.

It’s time that you took charge and rejected the idiocy of the Liberal and National dinosaurs who want to prevent any more movement towards renewables.  How many of these Abbott-loving clowns are there anyway?  Surely the majority of the Liberal members (If not the Nationals - who are another matter entirely) want to have a bipartisan agreement on climate and energy.  Surely the sensible members of the Government want to give the community and business certainty about the way forward. And surely the more reasonable members of your Government can see that it is IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST TO SECURE A BIPARTISAN AGREEMENT ON THESE IMPORTANT MATTERS.  That is really the only way forward – and it’s what the majority of the community and business want.

If you get a bipartisan agreement with the opposition, it surely won’t matter if Abbott and his dinosaur cronies cross the floor. 

Another matter you should be considering (as I imagine you would be as a politician and a PM in deep trouble) is how history will see you as a leader and your term as PM.  Currently it’s not looking good.

Wake up, Prime Minister, and redeem yourself!

Climateer

NSW North Coast

GuestSpeak is a feature of North Coast Voices allowing Northern Rivers residents to make satirical or serious comment on issues that concern them. Posts of 250-300 words or less can be submitted to ncvguestspeak AT gmail.com.au for consideration. Longer posts will be considered on topical subjects.

File this one under 'Who's guarding the guards?'

The politicians forming Australian state and federal governments assure us they are upright, ethical people with histories as pure as the driven snow. They tell us their advisors are trustworthy beyond doubt and their senior public service appointees & finance/security consultants ditto. While their big business mates like Gina, Twiggy and Co are genuinely true blue and philanthropic.

Yet, as step by step these same politicians lead us towards authoritarian governance and Big Brother mass surveillance, their feet of clay can’t help but show.

North Coast Voices readers may remember that SMEC Holdings Limited (now SMEC and Surbana Jurong) has been a favourite of Malcolm Turnbull's since he was the Minister for the Environment and Water Resouces in the Howard Government ministry.

This company provided an error-ridden desktop study for Turnbull supporting damming and diverting water from NSW North Coast river systems, with a preference for visiting this environmental vandalism on the Clarence River system.

It is now allegedly a corrupt multinational corpration.

The Age, 4 October 2017:

An arm of the company tasked with advising the Turnbull government on its signature infrastructure project, Snowy Hydro 2.0, has been banned by the World Bank for alleged bribery and corruption, prompting further calls for a federal anti-corruption watchdog……

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull poses for a photo during his announcement of Snowy Hydro 2.0 in March.

Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Engineering company SMEC had five of its subsidiaries banned by the World Bank last week after an investigation into "inappropriate payments" linked to projects in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. 

SMEC was chosen to undertake the $29 million feasibility study back in May and the work is due to be finished by the end of the year. The firm was selected by the state and federal government-owned Snowy Hydro corporation, which runs the current power plant.

Last year, Fairfax Media revealed the details of some of the allegations around improper payments involving SMEC, including allegedly corrupt dealings between the firm and Sri Lankan president Maithripala Sirisena when he was a cabinet minister in 2009.

Those dealings and others are still under investigation by the federal police.

This is one wealthy individual audited by the Australian Taxation Office - venture capitalist and independent consultant to business & government for over twelve years, Anthony ‘Tony’ Castagna.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 October 2017:

Anthony Castagna's company helps protect the cyber secrets and detect financial crimes within the world's most powerful institutions, including the Serious Fraud Office in Britain, US Homeland Security, the Australian defence force, ASIC, even the Office of the President of the US.

Now the Sydney-based co-founder and chairman of Nuix, majority owned by Macquarie Bank, faces a potential 20-year jail term after being charged with tax evasion and dealing with the proceeds of crime.

Dr Castagna, 70, has been the target of two of Nuix's major clients: the Australian Federal police and the Australian Tax Office through Project Wickenby, their long-running tax probe.

The charges relate to payments from Macquarie Bank which were allegedly channelled into offshore companies controlled by his cousin Robert Agius, who was sentenced to a non-parole period of 6 years and 8 months' jail in 2012 for operating unrelated tax avoidance schemes via his Vanuatu-based accountancy firm.

In addition to Dr Castagna's criminal charges, the ATO is pursuing him for unpaid taxes and penalties in excess of $10 million.

For decades, the tech guru has been a rainmaker for Macquarie Bank. The bank has ploughed millions of dollars into his cyber security and forensic services company Nuix. A totally owned Macquarie Group subsidiary owns more than 70 per cent of Nuix and over the last year Macquarie advisors have been talking up a billion-dollar float of Nuix on the Australian stock exchange....

Dr Castagna, who denies any wrongdoing and is vigorously defending the charges....

Donald J. Trump: “Why Isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!”

No matter how hard he tries US President Donald Trump just can't keep the Russia issue behind closed doors.

It keeps seeping out into the public domain via mainstream and social media.

Reuters, 5 October 2017:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The special counsel investigating whether Russia tried to sway the 2016 U.S. election has taken over FBI inquiries into a former British spy's dossier of allegations of Russian financial and personal links to President Donald Trump's campaign and associates, sources familiar with the inquiry told Reuters.

A report compiled by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele identified Russian businessmen and others whom U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded are Russian intelligence officers or working on behalf of the Russian government.

A spokesman for special counsel Robert Mueller declined comment. The FBI also declined comment.

Three sources with knowledge of Mueller's probe said his investigators have assumed control of multiple inquiries into allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election to benefit Trump, a Republican.

Russia has repeatedly denied any meddling in the election.

Two officials familiar with the investigations said that both Mueller's team and the Senate Intelligence Committee are seeking any evidence that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort or others who had financial dealings with Russia might have helped Kremlin intelligence agencies target email hacking and social media postings undermining Trump's election opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

On Wednesday, the Senate panel's chairman Richard Burr told reporters that the issue of whether Trump's campaign colluded with Russia remains an open question.

Prof. Seth Abramson, University of New Hampshire, 4 October 2017:

FACT: the number of votes Russia needed to flip in Michigan and Wisconsin (out of 7.5 million votes total) to give BOTH to Trump was 16,900. pic.twitter.com/5RfAZGSIOx

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) October 4, 2017

Trump's response is typical……

MEDIA MATTERS for America, 5 October 2017:

President Donald Trump urged Congress to begin investigations into the U.S. media, which he baselessly claimed was fabricating stories in order to damage his presidency, in a Thursday morning tweet with authoritarian overtones.

"Why Isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!," the president tweeted just before 7 a.m. EST.

Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump

Why Isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!

9:59 PM - Oct 5, 2017

 28,38728,387 Replies  12,30112,301 Retweets 48,15748,157 likes

Trump's tweet came the morning after the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- which has been investigating what U.S. intelligence agencies have determined was a Russian propaganda effort aimed at disrupting the 2016 presidential election in Trump's favor --confirmed those conclusions and warned that the Kremlin's effort to influence U.S. elections is ongoing. At a news conference detailing the progress of their investigation, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), the committee's chairman, said that the issue of whether Trump's associates had colluded with Russia "is still open."

Trump has long been defensive about the question of whether Russia aided his election, and has termed the special counsel's investigation into whether his associates participated in that effort a "witch hunt." And his constant attempts to undermine and delegitimize the press are one of the rare throughlines in his chaotic administration. Critics have noted that this effort parallels those made by authoritarian leaders…..

Deaths caused by Australian immigration policies in 2017

Monash University, Border Crossing Observatory:

The Australian Border Deaths Database maintains a record of all known deaths associated with Australia’s borders since 1 January 2000.

The database was begun by Professor Sharon Pickering and Associate Professor Leanne Weber as part of BOb’s Deaths at the Global Frontier project, culminating in the publication of the book Globalization and Borders: Death at the Global Frontier in 2011.

The Border Crossing Observatory continues to periodically update The Australian Border Deaths Database in line with the methodology detailed in Globalization and Borders: Death at the Global Frontier. 

The most recent version records deaths at the Australian frontier for the period 1 January 2000 – August 2017, with a recorded 1,995+ border deaths. [my yellow bolding]

Deaths in 2017 to date:

8-Mar-17 New Zealander, male - suspected suicide by hanging in Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre.

7-June-17 Matthew Taylor, New Zealander, male - committed suicide in New Zealand, a year and a half after his deportation under s501 of the Migration Act. He was in a desperate situation in New Zealand with limited support and ties to the country following his return. He moved to Australia with his family as a toddler and had never left Sydney until his deportation following his prison sentence for a string of minor offences. He has a young child in Sydney and his immediate family still live there.

3-July-17 (week beginning) Majid Hassanloo (brother of Saeed Hasanloo), 39 years old, Iranian, male - found dead in the house he was minding in Sydney from a suspected drug overdose. Majid was released from detention in December 2015 but was not offered adequate support. His psychological deterioration was profound.

7-Aug-17 Hamed Shamshiripour, 31 years old, Iranian, male - found dead in the forest near the Australian-run East Lorengau refugee transit centre on Manus Island. Suspected suicide.