The
Sydney Morning Herald,
14 November 2018:
Australia is becoming
more corrupt because successive federal governments have failed to create an
effective national anti-corruption body similar to the NSW Independent
Commission against Corruption, a leading jurist has argued.
Writing in support of a
national anti-corruption body, David Harper, a former Court of Appeals justice
at the Supreme Court of Victoria, noted that in 2012 Australia ranked seventh
in Transparency International’s global corruption index, but that today we were
ranked 13th.
“The lack of a federal
anti-corruption agency remains a reason why we have never come close to being
corruption-free,” he has written in an opinion piece for the Herald.
Mr Harper writes that
the lack of an effective federal anti-corruption watchdog had allowed corruption
to flourish undetected and, in turn, allowed federal politicians to hide behind
the myth that the federal sphere is free of corruption.....
One can see Mr. Harper's point. Allegations of federal corruption regularly surface and are never fully addressed.
Take the allegations that one Liberal MP when minister borrowed money to buy into a proposed coal seam gas field (a proposal he supported in the parliament) and another Liberal minister inappropriately handed federal funding to his mates.......
ABC
News, 14
November 2018:
A Northern Territory
consulting company that employs Country Liberal Party president Ron Kelly was
awarded more than $1.4 million through federal grants intended to tackle
Indigenous disadvantage.
North Australian Remote
Management Consultants (NARMCO) was given the money by Indigenous Affairs
Minister Nigel Scullion over a three-year period through the Indigenous
Advancement Strategy and the Aboriginal Benefits Account.
The Indigenous
Advancement Strategy is a $4.9 billion federal fund that was designed "to
improve the way that the Government does business with Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander people to ensure funding actually achieves outcomes".
NARMCO is not an
Aboriginal-owned company, but has previously said it works with Indigenous
companies.
It is unclear how the
award of funds achieves the stated aims of the IAS fund.
Mr Scullion has recently
faced criticism for his allocation of IAS funds, with Indigenous groups calling
for an investigation into the awarding of hundreds of thousands worth of Indigenous grants to a variety of non-Indigenous groups
to assist their legal opposition of land right claims.
The NT Amateur
Fishermen's Association, the NT Cattlemen's Association and the NT Seafood
Council received funds.
Mr Scullion told the ABC
he issued NARMCO with a "show-cause notice" about how it intended to
manage the perceived conflict of interest, but the company declined to comment
on how it handled that and said it was following proper processes.
ASIC records show NARMCO
was established by longstanding CLP member John Jansen in 2003.
According to Government
records, the company received its first IAS payment in June 2015 — nine months
after Mr Scullion assumed the role of Indigenous Affairs Minister.
Mr Scullion was
president of the CLP until October when he was succeeded by Mr Kelly, who
formerly worked as Mr Scullion's chief of staff.
Mr Kelly began working
for NARMCO in February 2018.
He previously worked as
former NT chief minister Adam Giles's chief of staff before being handed a
lucrative role as chief executive of the NT Department of Mines and Energy in
2015.
NARMCO 'supporting
regional and remote people'
NARMCO's first grant
through the Indigenous Advancement Strategy was awarded in June 2015.
It received $385,000
for a 12-month project that was later amended by the Department of Prime Minister
and Cabinet to $330,000 for a 36-month project in Katherine, under the heading
of "provide employee management and support".
Later in June 2015, the
company received $225,000 listed as money "to provide Indigenous
employment and economic development and business support services to indigenous
Australians".
It was later changed to
a 13-month contract from a 28-month term, which is permitted under the grant
rules.
On September 13, 2017,
NARMCO was again awarded $251,453 for a 10-month project in Katherine, but this
time through the Aboriginal Benefits Account to "deliver outcomes by
getting adults into jobs, fostering Indigenous business and assisting
indigenous people".
On December 7, 2017, the
company received $289,300 for "VRD Quarry Enterprises — Indigenous
Business Entity Establishment" to run until June 2018.
The ABC asked Senator
Scullion and NARMCO to explain how the grant money was spent for each project
listed.
NARMCO said it supported
"regional and remote people to establish and develop sustainable
businesses and implement Indigenous employment programs", but would not
release the names of which companies they worked with, citing confidentiality
issues.
It said it could not
comment on how it spent the money, and added that it does not distribute the
funds to Indigenous companies on behalf of the Commonwealth Government.
ABC
News, 31
October 2018:
The Indigenous
Advancement Strategy was established in 2014 to improve employment, economic
development and social participation in Indigenous communities, and has been
funded to the tune of $4.9 billion.
Senator Scullion told
the hearing the money would help speed up longstanding land claims in the
Northern Territory by allowing non-Indigenous groups affected by the claims to
submit "detriment" applications to the Aboriginal Land Commissioner.
The commissioner is due
to make recommendations by the end of the year about 16 outstanding land claims
which have previously been recommended for grant, but never finalised.
"I'm sure many
Aboriginal people wouldn't be happy with their public money being used by third
parties who are effectively trying to cease or alter an Aboriginal land
claim," NLC chairman Joe Morrison told the ABC.
"I think it's a
poor look."
But during the hearing,
Senator Scullion rejected concerns from Labor senator Malarndirri McCarthy that
the funding would be used to oppose land claims.
"It is about making
their position about how they use the land at the moment and about how
different determinations may affect their industry in different ways," he
said.
"It certainly
wouldn't be about opposing land claims … this is a process about establishing
what detriment they will have.
"The land
commissioner can then cross-examine or question or ask for more evidence about
that, but it is a requirement under the act that the land commissioner take
detriment into consideration."
Funding to educate
members and represent interests
Senator Scullion pointed
out that the Northern Land Council had received $7.5 million in federal funding
to progress the claims, and that another $1 million had gone to the land commissioner.
But Mr Morrison said
AFANT, NTCA and NTSC should not have received their funding from the IAS.
"There's a process
under the Land Rights Act that if people require assistance to submit detriment
claims then that's dealt with by the Attorney-General's department, not by the
Indigenous Affairs Minister," he said.
The
Australian,
16 February 2018:
Barnaby Joyce owns land
near a coal-seam gas project he promoted as resources minister, despite
admitting it could be seen as a conflict of interest and pledging to sell it 4½
years ago.
The land, at Gwabegar in
central NSW, is covered by the same petroleum exploration licence as Santos’s
Narrabri Gas Project, which could supply up to half the state’s gas needs for
the next 20 years.
Santos is seeking
approval to drill up to 850 wells on 425 sites in the Narrabri project area,
about 25km to the east of Mr Joyce’s land. If approved by the NSW government,
the project could make way for further LNG developments in the area including,
potentially, on Mr Joyce’s property.
The Deputy Prime
Minister and his wife hold the land in two blocks totalling 970 hectares. They
paid $230,000 for the first, on Heads Road, Gwabegar, in July 2006. They
purchased an adjacent block for $342,000 in 2008.
Mr Joyce is on record as
saying he didn’t realise the blocks — in The Pilliga region between
Coonabarabran and Narrabri — were subject to a petroleum exploration licence
when he bought them.
He told Fairfax Media
before the 2013 election that he would sell the properties, acknowledging it
could be “viewed as a conflict of interest”.
But the register of
members’ interests, updated in January, shows he still holds the blocks.
Mr Joyce’s office
told The Australian the Deputy Prime Minister was open to offers on
the land, but declined to say what steps he had taken to sell it.
Real estate agents in
the area said the properties were not currently listed for sale. Mr Joyce
grazes cattle on the land, but locals say it is marginal farming country.
Mr Joyce advocated
strongly for the project to go ahead in September last year, when, as resources
minister, he and Malcolm Turnbull met with Santos and other gas companies.
