Thursday, 5 December 2019
Angus Taylor's staffer tries to slide out from under claims the minister made about Naomi Wolf
House of Representatives, Hansard, 10 December 2013:
Mr TAYLOR (Hume) (16:40):
....At the same time, we must protect our basic values and bedrock institutions. I first encountered political correctness as a student at Oxford. It was 1991, and a young Naomi Wolf lived a couple of doors down the corridor. Several graduate students, mostly from the north-east of the US, decided we should abandon the Christmas tree in the common room because some people might be offended. I was astounded. My friends from Oklahoma, Alaska and Oregon explained this new kind of moral vanity that was taking hold in America. A few of us pushed back hard. In the end we won, because we were mainstream. But we must resist the insidious political correctness that would have us discard those core values that have made us great. In our times, the world over, the foundation of democracy—free speech—and the foundation of capitalism—property rights—are being chipped away by shrill elitist voices who insist that they know what is best for people who are not remotely like them. I can tell you, I will always defend property rights and free speech. And in this place I will back the parliament over the executive and the judiciary, because it is through this parliament that each of us here is accountable to our constituents.
The Australian, 3 December 2019:
The story was also paraphrased in a Financial Review profile on Taylor the next year, on December 5, 2014: “Taylor was awarded a Rhodes scholarship and went to Oxford University, where left-wing writer Naomi Wolf lived a few doors away. When she proposed banning the traditional Christmas tree, Taylor, a Christian, led a successful counter rebellion.”
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's cruel war on asylum seekers continues.....
On 4 December 2019 the Leader of the Morrison Government in the Senate, Mathias Cormann, moved to suspend standing orders to consider the for the remainder of the day.
According to the Government; The Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Bill 2019 (the Bill) amends the Migration Act 1958 (the Migration Act) to repeal the provisions inserted by Schedule 6 to theHome Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Act 2019 (the medical transfer provisions). As the medical transfer provisions do not provide for any return or removal mechanism, the Bill also amends the Migration Act to extend existing powers in relation to persons transferred to Australia under the medical transfer provisions to allow for their removal from Australia or return to a regional processing country once they no longer need to be in Australia for the temporary purpose for which they were brought.
Thus Morrison wanted to ensure doctors did not retain more say in the medical treatment of offshore asylum seeker detainees and intended to remove those detainees already transferred to Australia in the last eight months as soon as possible. He and his government saw this as compatible with Australia's human rights obligations.
At 10.08 am Cormann moved that; That a motion to provide for the consideration of the Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Bill 2019 may be moved immediately and determined without amendment or debate.
This motion passed 38 to 36 with a majority of 2.
By 11.21am the bill was passed 37 to 35 with a majority of 2.
Those voting in support of the bill were:
Abetz, Eric (Lib-Tas) Antic, Alexander (Lib-SA) Askew, Wendy (Lib-Tas).
Bernardi, Cory (Ind-SA) Bragg, Andrew J (Lib-NSW) Brockman,
Slade (Lib-WA).
Canavan, Matthew J (Lib-Qld) Cash, Michaelia C (Lib-WA) Chandler, Claire (Lib-Tas) Colbeck, Richard (Lib-Tas) Cormann, Mathias (Lib-WA).
Davey, Perin (Nats-NSW) Duniam, Jonathon (Lib-Tas).
Fawcett, David J (Lib-SA) Fierravanti-Wells, Concetta (Lib-NSW).
Hanson, Pauline (ON-Qld) Henderson, Sarah M (Lib-Vic) Hughes,
Hollie (Lib-NSW) Hume, Jane (Lib-Vic).
Lambie, Jacqui (JLN-Tas).
McDonald, Susan (LNP-Qld) McGrath, James (LNP-Qld) McKenzie,
Bridget (Nats-Vic) McMahon, Samantha (Lib-NT) Molan, A "Jim" (Lib-NSW).
O'Sullivan, Matthew A (Lib-WA).
Paterson, James (Lib-Vic).
Rennick, Gerard (LNP-Qld) Reynolds, Linda (Lib-WA) Roberts,
Malcolm (ON-Qld) Ruston, Anne (Lib-SA) Ryan, Scott M (Lib-Vic)
Scarr, Paul (LNP-Qld) Seselja, Zdenko (Lib-ACT) Smith, Dean A (Lib-WA) Stoker, Amanda J (LNP-Qld).
Van, David (Lib-Vic).These are the politicians who (along with their counterparts in the House of Representatives) returned Australian society to the days when, as a mattter of policy, offshore detainees were refused medical transfer to Australia unless they were on the brink of death.
In the past this policy resulted in avoidable detainee deaths such as that of Hamid Kehazaei - it will likely do so again.
As soon as the Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Act 2019 receives assent, Prime Minister Morrison will in all probability quickly move to return the 179 medevac detainees back to Nauru and Manus Island.
Queensland Government gives Adani Group an early Christmas present worth up to $900 million in royalty deferrals
INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY ECONOMICS AND FINANCIAL ANALYSIS (IEEFA):
29 November 2019 (IEEFA Australia) – Queensland Treasury are expected to sign off on a massive early Christmas present worth up to $900m packaged as a seven-year royalty deferral – another term for a capital subsidy – for the Adani Group on 30 November 2019 (likely to be announced on 29 November), ironically on the one-year anniversary of Adani declaring it will self-fund its Carmichael thermal coal mine in the Galilee Basin, Queensland.
Adani Australia – part of the Adani Group of India – announced the Carmichael thermal coal mine would ‘stand on its own two feet’, without any subsidies, in November 2018.
One year later and the Adani Group is not only expected to receive a $900m royalty present from the Queensland government, but the Adani Group is also set to receive over $4.4 billion in total tax exemptions, deferrals and capital subsidies from taxpayers for the life of the Carmichael mine.
“If you give enough subsidies, anything becomes viable.”
“If you give enough subsidies, anything becomes viable,” says Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
“Global and domestic banks and insurers have turned their back on financing the Adani Group, joining the massive global financial exit away from thermal coal. To-date, 111 globally significant banks and insurers have implemented formal thermal coal restriction policies, including the latest just this week, being UniCredit, the largest bank in Italy.
“Yet the Queensland government still wants to give an early $900m Christmas present to the Adani Group for a product that faces technological obsolescence, is reliant on ongoing subsidies, and is only viable absent a price on carbon emissions.”
Under existing arrangements, Adani will effectively receive 17% of their coal for free compared to the royalty regime applying in NSW, according to The Australia Institute.
Any deal should be publicly transparent given rising stranded asset risks
“Queensland’s generosity in providing such a lavish gift to India’s richest man means local Queenslanders will NOT see royalties from Adani’s Carmichael thermal coal mine for a decade,” says Buckley. “Any deal should be made transparent to the public, and credible financial assurance needs to be put in place as a minimum to ensure eventual payment, given rising stranded asset risks....
Read the full article here.
BACKGROUND
ABC News, 14 March 2017:
Up to $3 billion from Adani's planned Carmichael coal mine will be shifted to a subsidiary owned in the Cayman Islands if the controversial project goes ahead, an analysis of company filings shows.
Key points:
- 'Royalty deed' gives shell company rights to recieve $2-a-tonne payment beyond first 400K tonnes mined for two decades
- Entitlement owned by company registered in Cayman Islands, controlled by Adani family
- Carmichael coal mine's production capacity means payment ammounts to about $120 million per year
An "overarching royalty deed" gives a shell company rights to receive a $2-a-tonne payment, rising yearly by the inflation rate, beyond the first 400,000 tonnes mined in each production year for two decades.
The company with this entitlement is ultimately owned by Atulya Resources Limited, a secretive entity registered in the Cayman Islands, and controlled by the Adani family.
"In plain English, the upshot for the Adani family is [that] if the mine goes ahead, they receive a $2-a-tonne payment, so up to $3 billion, via a Cayman Islands company, a company owned in a tax haven," says Adam Walters, principal researcher and Energy Resource Insights.
With a production capacity of 60 million tonnes or more a year, that amounts to about $120 million per annum in payments, increasing each year in line with the CPI, potentially flowing offshore.
"I would describe it as a structure that means that the Adani family enriches themselves if the mine goes ahead but that other shareholders are impoverished," associate professor Thomas Clarke, director of the Centre for Corporate Governance at UTS told the ABC.
"The worry is that this may be just the beginning.
He said the billions flowing to the Adani private company would come at the expense of minority shareholders in the company listed on the Bombay stock exchange which ultimately owns the Carmichael mine.....
Read the full article here.
ABC News, 21 December 2016:
Giant Indian conglomerate Adani, which plans to build one of the world's largest coal mines in Queensland's Galilee Basin, has set up a complex network of companies and trusts in Australia which are owned in one of the world's major tax havens, the Cayman Islands.
The Adani Group is also attempting to shift ownership of the existing Abbot Point coal port — which it bought for $1.8 billion — to a Singaporean company ultimately owned in the Cayman Islands.
An exhaustive search of company filings and documents across the globe has cast light on this opaque structure of ownership and control.
It has alarmed environmental activists and legal experts, who fear it could make it harder to gain compensation from Adani in the event of an environmental disaster from Adani's planned mine and port expansion on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef.
"I've been a businessman for most of my life, as well as an environmental activist, and the risks are great," said Geoff Cousins, former Optus CEO and chairman of the George Paterson advertising agency, now a board member of the Australian Conservation Foundation.
"With these kinds of approvals of big mining operations or port operations, you always get a set of conditions that the Government puts on.
"But those conditions aren't worth anything if, when something goes wrong, you try to find the company responsible and either it has no money or if it has money it's in a tax haven and you can't reach it."
It is a view echoed by David Chaikin, a professor of business law at the University of Sydney.
"The advantage of having the money in tax havens is that you are able to conceal the source of money, the use of money, and also to minimise tax," he said…..
Adani has created four companies and two trusts in Australia for the rail project.
The parent company for all these entities is Carmichael Rail and Port Singapore Holdings Pte Ltd, a company registered in Singapore where the corporate tax rate is 15 per cent.
This Singapore parent company is in turn owned by Atulya Resources Limited, a private company controlled by the Adani family and based in the Cayman Islands.
The port expansion has a similar structure: five companies and two trusts in Australia, ultimately controlled by Atulya Resources in the Cayman Islands……
The Guardian, 29 August 2018:
Mining conglomerate the Adani Group is trying to prevent Indian authorities from accessing its business records as part of an investigation into an alleged $4bn fraud by power companies.
Lawyers for Adani on Tuesday filed a plea asking the Bombay high court to quash a formal request by Indian investigators to Singaporean authorities to force the company to produce information regarding its coal imports from Indonesia.
The request is part of an investigation by India’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) into a $4.4bn alleged fraud by 40 power companies including six Adani subsidiaries.
According to DRI documents, the companies allegedly used fake middlemen to inflate the price of coal they were importing from Indonesia. The scheme allowed the companies to charge higher tariffs by exaggerating their production costs, the DRI claimed.
If true, the alleged scam would also have allowed the companies to siphon billions of dollars from India into offshore bank accounts where Indian authorities would struggle to tax or account for the money....
Wednesday, 4 December 2019
Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan told he has ‘blood on his hands’
Echo NetDaily, 29 November 2019:
Around 200 people have joined together outside Kevin Hogan’s office in Lismore this morning declaring he has ‘blood on his hands’ as the federal government continues to refuse to take real action on climate change.
Red hand prints are covering the pavement and the front of Hogan’s office. Around 20 kids and students are currently in his office writing him letters about their climate concerns.The police have been in attendance and asked protestors to remove themselves from the road. They said that if protestors remain on the road they would be back with more staff.
One local parent with two children, Ivy Young, was there to point out that politicians need to listen to the experts on climate change and take action.
‘We live on Wallace Ridge which is the ridge dividing Tuntable and Terania Creeks. The fire got to within about two or three properties from us, about 5km up in the forest,’ Ivy told Echonetdaily.
‘I’m here today because I care. I see the urgency to act. I’m worried for the future. We have a window of time where we can actually take the steps to mitigate the worst effects of climate change before we reach tipping points where the sea levels rise and temperatures become too high for many of the places in the world to become habitable......
Few Liberal-Nationals politicians have ever understood the strength of community in the NSW Northern River region
Few Liberal-Nationals politicians have ever understood the strength of community in the NSW Northern Rivers region or the passion of locals to protect their families, neighbours, the land, rivers, forests and native animals from those who threaten all six. Including those who threaten by refusing to take meaningful action to mitigate climate change.
Here is yet another Northern Rivers resident speaking up.....
The Guardian, 2 December 2019:
 |
| Melinda Plesman stands with the remains of her burnt-out house, destroyed in the NSW bushfires, outside Parliament House in Canberra. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP |
Melinda Plesman and her partner, Dean Kennedy, lost their family home of 35 years after bushfires tore through Nymboida, south of Grafton in NSW, last month.
Plesman said she wanted to show Scott Morrison the direct result of climate change.
“It’s happening now and this is what climate change looks like,” Plesman said.
“I’m losing my home, whole communities are losing their homes ... and the prime minister said we’re not allowed to talk about it.
“He said he was going to pray for us. And that was the last straw.”.....Tuesday, 3 December 2019
Terania Creek Rainforest needs saving again - this time from climate change
In November 2019 wildfire burnt into the World Heritage Listed rainforests of Terania Creek. The community stood up to protect these rainforests from logging 40 years ago, now they need to stand up to protect them from global heating.
Gondawana Land formed around 250 million years ago and began the slow process of breaking up to form South America, Africa, Madagascar, India, Antarctica, and the Australian mainland an est. 165 million ago.
Australia split off est. 65-75 million years after the land mass break up began with Tasmania the last piece to break way from the continental remnant which became Antartica and that occurred around 45 million years ago.
Inside the remnants of ancient Godwana rainforests in Australia can be found plant species that are direct decendants of plants that existed before Gondwana Land ceased to be.
The toll on New South Wales as of 1 December 2019 flowing from the Morrison Government's refusal to take meaningful action on climate change
If one looks at media records the year 2019 commenced with the odd isolated bushfire fire and continued in the same manner through to July when fire outbreaks began to increase.
By early September major fire activity was occurring in the Clarence Valley and, by October it was obvious that northern NSW was going to go up in flames.
When November came along many other regions were also battling huge unprecedented bushfires.
The state toll as of 1 December 2019 was:
It is hard to calculate accurately - but at this time it appears that at least 36% to 38% of the 10,441 sq. km Clarence Valley Local Government Area has experienced bushfires, with est. 100 homes and two irreplaceable lives lost.
I hope that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, every member of his Cabinet, each and every Liberal and Nationals MP and Senator are proud of what their negligence over the last six years of Coalition rule has brought about.
The bushfires continue with no sign of stopping.
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