Are Prime Minister Morrison & Co determined to reduce Australia to a hot, barren desert from sea to sea?

Human activities are estimated to have caused approximately 1.0°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, with a likely range of 0.8°C to 1.2°C. Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate. (high confidence) (Figure SPM.1) {1.2}  [United Nations (2018) Global Warming of 1.5°C. Summary for Policymakers]

The global situation.....

United Nations, Sustainable Development, 8 October 2018:

The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC was approved by the IPCC on Saturday in Incheon, Republic of Korea. It will be a key scientific input into the Katowice Climate Change Conference in Poland in December, when governments review the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change.

“With more than 6,000 scientific references cited and the dedicated contribution of thousands of expert and government reviewers worldwide, this important report testifies to the breadth and policy relevance of the IPCC,” said Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC.

Ninety-one authors and review editors from 40 countries prepared the IPCC report in response to an invitation from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) when it adopted the Paris Agreement in 2015.

The report’s full name is Global Warming of 1.5°C, an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty.

“One of the key messages that comes out very strongly from this report is that we are already seeing the consequences of 1°C of global warming through more extreme weather, rising sea levels and diminishing Arctic sea ice, among other changes,” said Panmao Zhai, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group I.

Limiting global warming 

The report highlights a number of climate change impacts that could be avoided by limiting global warming to 1.5ºC compared to 2ºC, or more. For instance, by 2100, global sea level rise would be 10 cm lower with global warming of 1.5°C compared with 2°C. The likelihood of an Arctic Ocean  free of sea ice in summer would be once per century with global warming of 1.5°C, compared with at least once per decade with 2°C. Coral reefs would decline by 70-90 percent with global warming of 1.5°C, whereas virtually all (> 99 percent) would be lost with 2ºC.

“Every extra bit of warming matters, especially since warming of 1.5ºC or higher increases the risk associated with long-lasting or irreversible changes, such as the loss of some ecosystems,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group II.

Limiting global warming would also give people and ecosystems more room to adapt and remain below relevant risk thresholds, added Pörtner. The report also examines pathways available to limit warming to 1.5ºC, what it would take to achieve them and what the consequences could be.

“The good news is that some of the kinds of actions that would be needed to limit global warming to 1.5ºC are already underway around the world, but they would need to accelerate,” said Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Co-Chair of Working Group I.

The report finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require “rapid and far-reaching” transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050. This means that any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by removing CO2 from the air.

“Limiting warming to 1.5ºC is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changes,” said Jim Skea, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III.

Allowing the global temperature to temporarily exceed or ‘overshoot’ 1.5ºC would mean a greater reliance on techniques that remove CO2 from the air to return global temperature to below 1.5ºC by 2100. The effectiveness of such techniques are unproven at large scale and some may carry significant risks for sustainable development, the report notes.

“Limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared with 2°C would reduce challenging impacts on ecosystems, human health and well-being, making it easier to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals,” said Priyardarshi Shukla, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III.

The decisions we make today are critical in ensuring a safe and sustainable world for everyone, both now and in the future, said Debra Roberts, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group II.

“This report gives policymakers and practitioners the information they need to make decisions that tackle climate change while considering local context and people’s needs. The next few years are probably the most important in our history,” she said.

The Denver Post, 8 December 2018:

Global emissions of carbon dioxide have reached the highest levels on record, scientists projected Wednesday, in the latest evidence of the chasm between international goals for combating climate change and what countries are actually doing.

Between 2014 and 2016, emissions remained largely flat, leading to hopes that the world was beginning to turn a corner. Those hopes have been dashed. In 2017, global emissions grew 1.6 percent. The rise in 2018 is projected to be 2.7 percent.

The expected increase, which would bring fossil fuel and industrial emissions to a record high of 37.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, is being driven by nearly 5 percent emissions growth in China and more than 6 percent in India, researchers estimated, along with growth in many other nations throughout the world. 

Emissions by the United States grew 2.5 percent, while emissions by the European Union declined by just under 1 percent.

As nations are gathered for climate talks in Poland, the message of Wednesday’s report was unambiguous: When it comes to promises to begin cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change, the world remains well off target.

“We are in trouble. We are in deep trouble with climate change,” United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said this week at the opening of the 24th annual U.N. climate conference, where countries will wrestle with the ambitious goals they need to meet to sharply reduce carbon emissions in coming years.

“It is hard to overstate the urgency of our situation,” he added. “Even as we witness devastating climate impacts causing havoc across the world, we are still not doing enough, nor moving fast enough, to prevent irreversible and catastrophic climate disruption.”

Guterres was not commenting specifically on Wednesday’s findings, which were released in a trio of scientific papers by researchers with the Global Carbon Project. But his words came amid a litany of grim news in the fall in which scientists have warned that the effects of climate change are no longer distant and hypothetical, and that the impacts of global warming will only intensify in the absence of aggressive international action.....

When hard-right, anti-science, fundamentalist ideology in Australia descends into madness………….

The Guardian, 10 December 2018:

 As four of the world’s largest oil and gas producers blocked UN climate talks from “welcoming” a key scientific report on global warming, Australia’s silence during a key debate is being viewed as tacit support for the four oil allies: the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait.

The end of the first week of the UN climate talks – known as COP24 – in Katowice, Poland, has been mired by protracted debate over whether the conference should “welcome” or “note” a key report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The IPCC’s 1.5 degrees report, released in October, warned the world would have to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 45% by 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5C and potentially avoid some of the worst effects of climate change, including a dramatically increased risk of drought, flood, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

The UN climate conference commissioned the IPCC report, but when that body went to “welcome” the report’s findings and commit to continuing its work, four nations – the US, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Russia, all major oil and gas producers – refused to accept the wording, insisting instead that the convention simply “note” the findings.

Negotiators spent two and a half hours trying to hammer out a compromise without success.

The apparently minor semantic debate has significant consequences, and the deadlock ensures the debate will spill into the second critical week of negotiations, with key government ministers set to arrive in Katowice.

Most of the world’s countries spoke out in fierce opposition to the oil allies’ position.

The push to adopt the wording “welcome” was led by the Maldives, leader of the alliance of small island states, of which Australia’s Pacific island neighbours are members.

They were backed by a broad swathe of support, including from the EU, the bloc of 47 least developed countries, the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean, African, American and European nations, and Pacific countries such as the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu.

Australia did not speak during the at-times heated debate, a silence noted by many countries on the floor of the conference, Dr Bill Hare, the managing director of Climate Analytics and a lead author on previous IPCC reports, told Guardian Australia.

“Australia’s silence in the face of this attack yesterday shocked many countries and is widely seen as de facto support for the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait’s refusal to welcome the IPCC report,” Hare said…..

Australia’s environment minister, Melissa Price, arrived in Katowice on Sunday, with negotiations set to resume Monday morning.

 “The government is committed to the Paris agreement and our emissions reduction targets,” she said before leaving Australia. “Australia’s participation in the Paris agreement and in COP24 is in our national interest, in the interests of the Indo-Pacific region, and the international community as a whole.”

Price said a priority for Australia at COP24 was to ensure a robust framework of rules to govern the reporting of Paris agreement targets. “Australia’s emissions reporting is of an exceptionally high standard and we are advocating for rules that bring other countries up to the standard to which we adhere.”

The latest Australian government figures, released last month, show the country’s carbon emissions continue to rise, at a rate significantly higher than recent years.

Australia’s emissions, seasonally adjusted, increased 1.3% over the past quarter. Excluding emissions from land use, land use change and forestry (for which the calculations are controversial), they are at a record high..... [my yellow highlighting]

The Guardian, 11 December 2018:

Patrick Suckling (sitting on panel right), Australia’s ambassador for the environment, waits as protesters disrupt an event at the COP24 climate change summit in Katowice, Poland. Photograph: Łukasz Kalinowski/Rex/Shutterstock

Australia has reaffirmed its commitment to coal – and its unwavering support for the United States – by appearing at a US government-run event promoting the use of fossil fuels at the United Nations climate talks in Poland.

Australia was the only country apart from the host represented at the event, entitled “US innovative technologies spur economic dynamism”, designed to “showcase ways to use fossil fuels as cleanly and efficiently as possible, as well as the use of emission-free nuclear energy”.

Its panel discussion was disrupted for several minutes by dozens of protesters who stood up suddenly during speeches, unfurling a banner reading “Keep it in the ground” while singing and chanting “Shame on you”.

Patrick Suckling, Australia’s ambassador for the environment, and the head of the country’s negotiating delegation at the climate talks, spoke on the panel. His nameplate bore a US flag…..

…Simon Bradshaw, Oxfam Australia’s climate change policy adviser, said it was “extremely disappointing” to see Australia line up behind the US in pushing a pro-coal ideas.

“It is a slap in the face of our Pacific island neighbours, for whom bringing an end to the fossil fuel era is matter of survival, and who are working with determination to catalyse stronger international efforts to confront the climate crisis. And it is firmly against the wishes of an overwhelming majority of Australians.”

Bradshaw said continuing to use coal was not only uneconomic, but would “be measured in more lives lost, entrenched poverty, rising global hunger, and more people displaced from their land and homes”.

He said the advice of the IPCC showed emphatically there was no space for new coal and that Australia’s position on coal was isolating it from the rest of the world.

The Climate Vulnerable Forum, a group of 48 countries most acutely affected by climate change, has committed to achieving 100% renewable energy production by the middle of the century at the latest. Other developed countries, including the UK, France, Canada and New Zealand, have committed to phasing out coal power by 2030.

Wells Griffith, a Trump administration adviser speaking alongside Suckling on the panel, said the US would continue extracting fossil fuels, and warned against “alarmism” about climate change…… [my yellow highlighting]

Greenhouse gas emissions in Australia to date.....

Trend emissions levels are inclusive of all sectors of the economy, including Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF)

Reading Quarterly Update of Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory: June 2018 [PDF 39 pages] released on 30 November 2018 it is highly unlikely that the Morrison Govenment will be able to meet Australia's commitments under the Paris Agreement.

Australia was closer to meeting Paris Agreement goals in 2013 under a Labor federal government than it is today under a Coalition federal government.

Do you know whose hands have harvested your medical information?

The Medical Republic, 7 December 2018:

An investigation by The Medical Republic has revealed state, territory and federal police forces have sent around 2,600 requests a year for this sensitive health data to the Department of Human Services over the past two years. The department can legally disclose private health records to the police without a court order.

The department would not reveal how many of these requests were granted, but said the number of disclosures per year had remained stable over the past decade.

Once linked, Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) data, can paint a very detailed picture about a person’s medical history.

PBS data includes every rebatable medication purchased at a chemist. MBS records show which Medicare item numbers were billed for during each consultation, and what tests were ordered.

This information is as sensitive as MHR data, although it lacks the granularity of laboratory test results or GP notes, which can be included in a MHR. In November, the federal parliament passed legislation requiring police to produce a court order to access MHR data.

“This begs the question as to why similar protections are not being enacted in the MBS and PBS legislation,” Malcolm Crompton, a former privacy commissioner of Australia and founder and lead privacy advisor of Information Integrity Solutions, told The Medical Republic.

The legislative inconsistency was an “undeniable oddity” especially because most of the content of a MHR would, at least initially, simply be MBS and PBS data, he said.

Data sharing between the Department of Human Services and the police is shrouded in secrecy, with decisions being made behind closed doors by unnamed officials using an undisclosed set of public interest guidelines, which were issued by the secretary of the Department of Health in 2003.

The human services department has refused to make its 18-page privacy guidelines public under FOI laws, citing concerns that agencies might use their knowledge of the guidelines to trick the department.

“Specifically, with the benefit of having reviewed the document, requestors may construct their requests in a manner that undermines the department’s procedures (e.g. by misleading the delegate) in order to secure the disclosure of the requested information,” an FOI decision maker said…..

The department eventually provided a single case study for police use of private health data, four months after initially being asked about the purpose of disclosing this data, and only after The Medical Republic’s investigation exposed the scale of police requests.

The case study describes a scenario where the police are making an enquiry about a missing person whose safety is in question, and are using MBS and PBS claims information to determine whether the missing person had seen a doctor, obtained medications or updated their contact details.

The Medical Republic contacted each state, territory and federal police force for this investigation, but only the NT Police confirmed how many times the department had provided patient information.

The NT Police, Fire and Emergency Services made an average of 26 requests per year for private health data, including current contact details, next of kin, MBS or PBS records.

All of these requests were successful, and all were made without a court order. “Requests are not made under court order but rather must satisfy certain criteria,” Detective Acting Superintendent Peter Kennon said.

“That is it must be for a missing person or in relation to an offence with a penalty of two years or more imprisonment or 44 penalty units (about $6,000), and be in the public interest.”

The department is obliged to report the number of times it has disclosed linked PBS and MBS data to law enforcement authorities on an annual basis to the Office of Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

The Medical Republic obtained a copy of the OAIC reports, which showed that the DHS gave linked MBS and PBS data to police five times in 2016-17, but did not disclose data given to police in the previous three years.

“Most of the public interest disclosures the department makes to law enforcement agencies do not need to be included in our annual reports to the Privacy Commissioner,” a department spokesperson said.

The department only has to report the disclosure of “linked” MBS and PBS data to police. The word “linked” is not defined in the legislative instrument, so in practice, the department appears able to apply a definition that minimises its reporting obligations.

MBS and PBS data was only “linked” if the information was “combined, joined or merged”, a department spokesperson said. “The mere extraction of an individual’s MBS and PBS claims information into separate documents does not constitute linking for the purposes of the guidelines, even if those documents are sent to the same email address,” the spokesperson said.

“The department seems to be playing with semantics in order to avoid complying with the intention of the guidelines,” Dr Robertson-Dunn said.

Just three months out from a state election and the NSW Berejiklian Government decides to introduce a new punative public housing policy guaranteed to upset a good many voters

In 2016 est. 37,715 people in New South Wales were recorded as homeless on Census Night.

The following year the NSW Berejiklian Coalition Government had a public housing stock total of 110,221 dwellings and an est. 60,000 people on the Dept. of Housing 2017 waiting list.

Below is the state government’s answer to the effects of decreasing public housing stock and federal Coalition Government cuts to public housing funding allocations to the states - introduce a new initiative under the 'Opportunity Pathways' program which will cut the housing waiting list by increasing eligibility restrictions, privatise service delivery to certain categories of public housing applicants and tenants in order to ensure that vulnerable individuals and families are discouraged from seeking housing assistance.

The Daily Telegraph, 7 December 2018, p.2:

Public housing applicants will have to get a job if they want a taxpayer-funded home under a tough new test to be introduced in NSW.

The state government is overhauling the public housing system by stopping residents who languish on welfare for decades feeling entitled to a cheap home, paid for by the taxpayer, for their entire life.

Currently less than a quarter of social housing tenants are in the workforce. There are about 55,000 people on the public housing waitlist in NSW, and under the new program they will be able to skip the queue if they agree to get a job.

But if they get into the home then fail to get a job or maintain work they will be booted from the property.

Once they are secure in a job they will then move into the private rental market and out of the welfare system.

Social Housing Minister Pru Goward said the program will “help break the cycle of disadvantage”.

“This is about equipping tenants with the skills they need to not only obtain a job, but keep it over the longer term and achieve their full potential,” she said.

“We also want to set to a clear expectation that social housing is not for life and, for those who can work, social housing should be used as a stepping stone to moving into the private rental market.” The new program will be trialled in Punchbowl and Towradgi, near Wollongong, for three years across 20 properties. Its success will be evaluated over this time and it’s likely the program will be expanded across the state.

Homes will be leased for six months at a time, with renewal dependent on the resident maintaining their job or education, such as TAFE, and meeting agreed goals within the plan.

NSW eTendering:

RFT ID FACS.18.30

RFT Type Expression of Interest for Specific Contracts

Published 23-Aug-2018

Closes 27-Sep-2018 2:00pm

Category (based on UNSPSC)
93140000 - Community and social services

Agency FACS Central Office

Tender Details

The NSW Department of Family and Community Services (FACS) is seeking Expressions of Interest (EOI) from non-government organisatons with the capability to deliver the Opportunity Pathways program.

Opportunity Pathways is designed for social housing tenants and their household members, approved social housing applicants and clients receiving Rent Choice subsidies who aspire and have the capacity to, with the appropriate support, gain, retain and increase employment.

The program is voluntary and uses a person-centred case management approach to provide wrap-around support and facilitate participant access to services to achieve economic and housing independence (where appropriate).

The objectives of the program are to:

assist participants to gain, retain or increase employment, by accessing supports and practical assistance, and by participating in education, training and work opportunities

encourage and support participants to positively exit social housing or Rent Choice subsidies to full housing independence, to reduce their reliance on governement assistance, where appropriate

Please refer to the Program Guidelines for further details.

Opportunity Pathways will run for three years and delivered across NSW in those locations where a need and service gaps are identified.

The program will be delivered by one or more providers following an EOI and Select Tender.

Location

NSW Regions: Far North Coast, Mid North Coast, New England, Central Coast, Hunter, Cumberland/Prospect, Nepean, Northern Sydney, Inner West, South East Sydney, South West Sydney, Central West, Orana/Far West, Riverina/Murray, Illawarra, Southern Highlands

Estimated Value

From $0.00 to $36,100,000.00

RFT Type

Expression of Interest for Specific Contracts - An invitation for Expression of Interest (EOI) for pre-registration of prospective tenderers for a specific work or service. Applicants are initially evaluated against published selection criteria, and those who best meet the required criteria are invited to Tender (as tender type Pre-Qualified/Invited). [my yellow highlighting]

As of June 2018 in NSW there were 200,564 people registered with Centrelink whose income was Newstart Allowance and, by September there were only est. 82,400 job vacancies available as the Internet Vacancy Index had been falling since April 2018. The number of job vacancies were still falling in October 2018 to 66,000 job vacancies.

Just three months out from a state election and it doesn't appear that the Berejiklian Cabinet or other Liberal and Nationals members of the NSW Parliament have thought this new policy through to its logical conclusion.

US President Donald Trump aka "Individual-1" named in relation to presidential election campaign violations & contact with Russian President's office

On 29 November 2018 attorney Michael Cohen plead guilty to charges of tax evasion, making false statements to financial institutions, lying to the US Congress and facilitating illegal campaign contributions totalling US$255,000 in the 2016 US presidential campaign.

His plea agreement can be found here.

US President Donald J. Trump is identified in the US Government's Sentencing Memorandums, the first of which recommenfs that Cohen be gaoled for up to three and a half years.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA  -v.- MICHAEL COHEN: 18 Cr. 602 (WHP)

THE GOVERNMENT’S SENTENCING MEMORANDUM, filed 7 December 2018, excerpts:

1. Background

Cohen is a licensed attorney and has been since 1992. (PSR ¶ 149.) Until 2007, Cohen practiced as an attorney for multiple law firms, working on, among other things, negligence and malpractice cases. (PSR ¶¶ 156-157.) For that work, Cohen earned approximately $75,000 per year. (Id.) In 2007, Cohen seized on an opportunity. The board of directors of a condominium building in which Cohen lived was attempting to remove from the building the name of the owner (“Individual-1”) of a Manhattan-based real estate company (the “Company”). (PSR ¶ 155.) Cohen intervened, secured the backing of the residents of the building, and was able to remove the entire board of directors, thereby fixing the problem for Individual-1. (Id.) Not long after, Cohen was hired by the Company to the position of “Executive Vice President” and “Special Counsel” to Individual-1. (Id.) He earned approximately $500,000 per year in that position. (Id.)

In January 2017, Cohen formally left the Company and began holding himself out as the “personal attorney” to Individual-1, who at that point had become the President of the United States…..

4. Cohen’s Illegal Campaign Contributions

On approximately June 16, 2015, Individual-1, for whom Cohen worked at the time, began an ultimately successful campaign for President of the United States. Cohen had no formal title with the campaign, but had a campaign email address, and, at various times advised the campaign, including on matters of interest to the press. Cohen also made media appearances as a surrogate and supporter of Individual-1. (PSR ¶ 39). 

During the campaign, Cohen played a central role in two similar schemes to purchase the rights to stories – each from women who claimed to have had an affair with Individual-1 – so as to suppress the stories and thereby prevent them from influencing the election. With respect to both payments, Cohen acted with the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election. Cohen coordinated his actions with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments. (PSR ¶ 51). In particular, and as Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1. (PSR ¶¶ 41, 45). As a result of Cohen’s actions, neither woman spoke to the press prior to the election. (PSR ¶ 51)…..

First, Cohen’s commission of two campaign finance crimes on the eve of the 2016 election for President of the United States struck a blow to one of the core goals of the federal campaign finance laws: transparency. While many Americans who desired a particular outcome to the election knocked on doors, toiled at phone banks, or found any number of other legal ways to make their voices heard, Cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows. He did so by orchestrating secret and illegal payments to silence two women who otherwise would have made public their alleged extramarital affairs with Individual-1. In the process, Cohen deceived the voting public by hiding alleged facts that he believed would have had a substantial effect on the election. It is this type of harm that Congress sought to prevent when it imposed limits on individual contributions to candidates. To promote transparency and prevent wealthy individuals like Cohen from circumventing these limits, Congress prohibited individuals from making expenditures on behalf of and coordinated with candidates. Cohen clouded a process that Congress has painstakingly sought to keep transparent. The sentence imposed should reflect the seriousness of Cohen’s brazen violations of the election laws and attempt to counter the public cynicism that may arise when individuals like Cohen act as if the political process belongs to the rich and powerful…..

in a secretly recorded meeting Cohen took credit for the payment and assured Individual-1 that he was “all over” the transaction. And after making the payment to the second woman, and after Individual-1 was elected President, Cohen privately bragged to friends and reporters, including in recorded conversations, that he had made the payment to spare Individual-1 from damaging press and embarrassment.....

GOVERNMENT’S SENTENCING MEMORANDUM, filed 7 December 2018:

The Special Counsel’s Office (“SCO”) provides this memorandum in connection with the sentencing of Michael Cohen scheduled for December 12, 2018. On November 29, 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to Congress, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a). The government does not take a position with respect to a particular sentence to be imposed but submits that it is appropriate for any sentence of incarceration to be served concurrently to any sentence imposed by the Court in United States v. Cohen, 18-cr-602 (WHP).

The defendant’s crime was serious. He withheld information material to the investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election being conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (“SSCI”), the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (“HPSCI”), and the SCO. The defendant lied to Congress about a business project (the “Moscow Project”) that he worked on during the 2016 presidential campaign, while he served as Executive Vice President at a Manhattan-based real estate company (the “Company”) and as Special Counsel to the owner of the Company (“Individual 1”). The defendant admitted he told these lies—which he made publicly and in submissions to Congress—in order to (1) minimize links between the Moscow Project and Individual 1 and (2) give the false impression that the Moscow Project had ended before the Iowa caucus and the first presidential primaries, in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations being conducted by Congress and the SCO.....

The defendant’s false statements obscured the fact that the Moscow Project was a lucrative business opportunity that sought, and likely required, the assistance of the Russian government. If the project was completed, the Company could have received hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees and other revenues. The fact that Cohen continued to work on the project and discuss it with Individual 1 well into the campaign was material to the ongoing congressional and SCO investigations, particularly because it occurred at a time of sustained efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the U.S. presidential election. Similarly, it was material that Cohen, during the campaign, had a substantive telephone call about the project with an assistant to the press secretary for the President of Russia.....

The defendant, without prompting by the SCO, also corrected other false and misleading statements that he had made concerning his outreach to and contacts with Russian officials during the course of the campaign. For example, in a radio interview in September 2015, the defendant suggested that Individual 1 meet with the President of Russia in New York City during his visit for the United Nations General Assembly. When asked previously about these events, the defendant claimed his public comments had been spontaneous and had not been discussed within the campaign or the Company. During his proffer sessions, the defendant admitted that this account was false and that he had in fact conferred with Individual 1 about contacting the Russian government before reaching out to gauge Russia’s interest in such a meeting. The meeting ultimately did not take place…..

Australia 2018: Is long-term rental destroying the wellbeing of low income households?

Choice 2018, DISRUPTED The consumer experience of renting in Australia:

Across the nation, people who rent are living on insecure tenancies. Almost 9 in 10 Australians who rent (88%) are on leases of a year or less, and are not certain of where they will be living in a year’s time. This impacts a person’s ability to feel part of the local community and establish roots.

The Land, 1 May 2018:

AFFORDABLE rentals on the state’s North Coast are increasingly few and far between, but the continued rise of the Airbnb-model now sees 3000-plus homes sit empty while low-income and government-assisted tenants are shut out. 

Anglicare’s latest Housing Affordability Snapshot says the region’s rental crisis has worsened as property owners in Ballina, Byron Bay, and the Tweed are incentivised to target short-term holidaymakers through web-based booking companies instead of potential long-term renters. 

The Anglicare report, released on Sunday, showed available North Coast rental properties were in steep decline (down from 795 in 2017 to 660 in 2018) with all family groups on income support, and single households on minimum wage, likely to struggle to find housing for themselves and their children.

Clair, A. et al, 24 May 2016, The impact of housing payment problems on health status during economic recession: A comparative analysis of longitudinal EU SILC data of 27 European states, 2008–2010, excerpt:

Transitioning into housing arrears was associated with a significant deterioration in the health of renters…..

Housing arrears is one of the so-called ‘soft’ ways in which housing influences health (Shaw, 2004), especially mental health, alongside the ‘hard’, physical impacts of the infrastructure itself, such as damp, mould, and cold. A growing body of scholarship indicates that people who experience housing insecurity, independent of other financial difficulties, experience declines in mental health (Gili et al., 2012, Keene et al., 2015, Meltzer et al., 2013, Meltzer et al., 2011, Nettleton and Burrows, 1998). 

In Australia, analysis of the longitudinal HILDA dataset found that those in lower income households who had moved into unaffordable housing experienced a worsening in mental health (Bentley, Baker, Mason, Subramanian, & Kavanagh, 2011), with male renters faring worse (Bentley et al., 2012, Mason et al., 2013).

One has to wonder if being a long-term renter affects quality of life to such a degree that on average renters die earlier than home-owners.

Loss of nearly every wild oyster in the Richmond River estuary more than two years ago became a catalyst for action

Echo NetDaily, 5 December 2018:

Recently Rous County Council voted unanimously to prepare a proposal for a $150 million bid to the State’s Snowy Hyrdo Legacy Fund to ensure long term water security, natural flood mitigation and improved river health for the Northern Rivers region.

Rous County Council Chair, Cr Keith Williams, said the idea for the Northern Rivers Watershed Initiative was born with the realisation that flood risk and river health are interrelated. ‘Slowing water flow in strategically selected streams by revegetating and fencing off stream banks, can reduce downstream flood peaks, improve water quality and provide habitat,’ said Cr Williams after the vote. ‘Similarly, by better understanding ground water flows and recharge zones, we can target efforts to revegetate and increase soil moisture retention and improve infiltration rates in important ground water source areas.

‘By having a wholistic view of water within the combined Northern Rivers catchments the Initiative can deliver multiple benefits from the same dollar of investment.’

‘It would be a fitting legacy of the Snowy River Scheme to restore some of the natural function of the Northern Rivers of NSW and ensure a sustainable water supply for the region.’

Cr Williams says that the Initiative will need the support of the Northern Rivers Joint Organisation to progress and the first step of this process is to formalise the proposal and engage with all Councils in the region. ‘I think most people are aware of the dire state of the Richmond River. The loss of nearly every wild oyster in the estuary more than two years ago has been a catalyst for action.’