Monday 5 February 2018
The Australian Face of UK-based Noble Caledonia Cruise Line
The Noble Caledonia Limited cruise line would
like the option of extending the number of its cruise days this coming October
when it boards its UK passengers on the MV Caledonian Sky for its Australian
Coastal Odyssey down the east coast of Australia.
This “small”
cruise ship of 4,200 gross tonnage, dead weight of 645t, 90.6m in length, 15.3m
wide, with a 4.25 maximum draft, will enter the Port of Yamba-Clarence River across a difficult bar at the river
mouth in a month where coastal storms and strong wind warnings are not
uncommon.
A ship with a reputation for damaging reefs will attempt this crossing in close proximity to
a culturally important reef protected by Native Title.
It will
ignore potential risk - not just to the ship and marine environment but to
race relations in the Clarence Valley should the ship’s captain collide for a third time with a mapped underwater natural feature.
Noble Caledonia
will be sending its cruise ship into the Clarence River estuary because it can –
reaping the benefit of insistent and persistent lobbying of the NSW Berejiklian Government by the international
cruise industry.
Which included meetings last year between Minister for
Roads, Maritime and Freight & Nationals MP for Oxley Melinda Pavey and Royal
Caribbean (28 February & 8 June), Carnival Australia (10
March, 8 June & 8 July), Carnival Global (21 March), Norwegian Cruise
Lines (8 June), Cruise Line International Association (8 June
& 21 June). As well as meetings between cruise ship industry
representatives and Deputy Premier,
Minister for Regional NSW, Minister for Skills, Minister for Small Business,
Nationals MP for John Barilaro, Minister
for Tourism and Major Events, and Assistant Minister for Skills, Nationals MP
for Northern Tablelands, Adam Marshall. Minister for Trade, Tourism and Major Events and Minister for Sport,
Nationals MLC Niall Blair and, Minister
for Transport and Infrastructure, Nationals MP for Bega Andrew Constance.
However, the then
predominately British and Swedish owner-shareholders of Noble Caledonia Limited
(UK) went one step further when they first contemplated a move into Australian
waters.
They formed a partnership with the APT
Group (owned by wealthy Victorian businessman Geoff McGeary) in 2012 - thereby
providing themselves with a number of Australian beards and the lobbying services of a
political donor to the Liberal Party of Australia who had through this partnership become a significant shareholder in the cruise line.
Meet these
alleged beards………………..
Christopher
Phillips "Chris" HALL – Group Managing Director of Noble Caledonia
Limited and Noble Caledonia Holdings Limited since 7 May 2015, as well as Group
Manager APT Group since July 2014 – allegedly still resident in Australia.
Ross
Malcolm KEMP – Group
Finance Director of Noble Caledonia Limited
and Noble Caledonia Holdings Limited since 9 October 2014, as well as Group
Finance Director APT Group since 2012 – allegedly still resident in Australia.
Sunday 4 February 2018
Russian Dolls 101: news of historic Australian security breaches discovered nested inside a more recent national security breach
Opps, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) permanently lost 707 Cabinet and National Security Committee documents between 2008 and August 2013.
The general public find out about these losses approximately four to ten years later in January 2018, when mention was made of the situation in one file document within thousands of other top-secret and highly classified documents obtained by the ABC after yet another security breach involving Cabinet papers and other classified files found in old government locked filing cabinets sold at public auction in Canberra.
Even John le Carré would have thought this plot line was nigh on unbelievable - but then he didn't know our very own federal bureaucracy.
ABC
News, 31
January 2018:
The Australian Federal
Police (AFP) lost nearly 400 national security files in five years, according
to a secret government stocktake contained in The Cabinet Files.
The Department of Prime
Minister and Cabinet regularly audits all government departments and agencies
that have access to the classified documents to ensure they are securely
stored.
The missing documents
are not the same files the ABC has obtained.
The classified documents
lost by the AFP are from the powerful National Security Committee (NSC) of the
cabinet, which controls the country's security, intelligence and defence
agenda.
The secretive committee
also deploys Australia's military and approves kill, capture or destroy
missions.
Most of its documents
are marked "top secret" and "AUSTEO", which means they are
to be seen by Australian eyes only.
An email exchange
between the cabinet secretariat and the AFP reveals the documents were lost
between 2008 and 2013……
Troop deployments in
Afghanistan and Iraq, counter-terrorism operations, foreign relations and
Australia's border protection were among the top-secret and sensitive issues
decided in the five-year period.
The cabinet
secretariat's general practice was to give up searching and write off lost
documents if they could not be found after consecutive audits, according to
another document in The Cabinet Files.
Of course it is only three or four years ago that nearly 5,000 secret, confidential and restricted documents from two major federal departments held in a "B Class" secure container ended up in a recycling yard in Canberra.
There was an internal inquiry at the time but that obviously didn't translate into accounting for the whereabouts of all secure containers/filing cabinets and safes holding sensitive documents.
Given the fact that Australia's public broadcaster actually had possession of documents in the latest security breach, rather belatedly the secutity services began to care about national security.
ABC
News, 1
February 2018:
ASIO officers have moved
to secure the thousands of top secret and classified Cabinet files obtained by
the ABC, in early morning operations in Canberra and Brisbane.
Officers delivered safes
to the public broadcaster's Parliament House Bureau and South Bank studios
around 1:00am, just hours after the massive national security breach was
revealed.
The ABC still has access
to the documents, now kept in the safes, and negotiations are still underway
between lawyers for the ABC and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet
(PM&C).
The department launched
an urgent investigation on Wednesday, after it was revealed the trove of
documents had been discovered in two locked filing cabinets offloaded to a
second-hand furniture depot in Canberra.
The Department of Prime
Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) launched an urgent investigation into how the
massive breach occurred, within an hour of the ABC revealing the trove of
documents.
But the ABC understands
the Australian Federal Police (AFP) are yet to join the inquiry.
* Russian Doll pic found at Google Images
Labels:
AFP,
data,
national security,
police
Bellingen Environment Centre (BEC): “The reality is the hardwood native forest industry on the North Coast is in long term decline following the overharvesting of our native forests to meet over commitments in wood supply to North Coast sawmills"
Melinda Pavey's recent comments on forestry issues frequently begin with phrases like " let's consider reality" or "let's listen to the science".
Unfortunately she appears to do neither according to the Bellingen Environment Centre (BEC) and the Nambucca Valley Conservation Association.
"The reality is the hardwood native forest industry on the North Coast is in long term decline following the overharvesting of our native forests to meet over commitments in wood supply to North Coast sawmills . In response the industry is seeking to intensify harvesting to convert remaining available forests into highly flammable matchstick farms, harvested intensely by machines when very young with much of the outputs burnt in 3 biomass plants proposed for Grafton, Kempsey and Taree," BEC spokesperson Ashley Love said.
"The authoritative document for the North Coast forests is the Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) for North East NSW. It is one of nine regional forest agreements covering the majority of the forested regions of Australia.
"The reality and the data shows that North Coast forests have the worst representations of forests in conservation reserves of any of the nine regional forest agreement regions throughout Australia.
The forestry industry is seeking to intensify harvesting to convert remaining available forests into highly flammable matchstick farms
Ashley Love, Bellingen Environment Centre
"Rather than a ratio of conservation reserves to harvestable forest of 6:1 as Ms Pavey claims, the RFA reveals a ratio of conservation reserves to total forest area of 1:3.
"Admittedly, not all the forests are harvestable and not all the reserves are covered in forest, so Ms Pavey must be cautious with figures which she uses."
Mr Love said Ms Pavey's claim that recent field survey work had found high koala occupancy in state forests did not have a broad scientific consensus as "the methodology used for the assessment was largely based on the results from placement of limited numbers of sound recording devices in the field – a very imprecise way of assessing koala populations".
"Her claim that harvested areas of forest regenerate is contradicted by the recent progress report of the RFAs which reports natural regeneration of 70 per cent over of areas harvested during the last 15 years.
"We don't want to see 30 per cent of our forests lost each time they are harvested."
"Ms Pavey's report of 27 timber mills between The Hunter and the Tweed indicates just how much the industry has declined – once there were hundreds of mills on the North Coast and thousands of employees in the timber industry. Logging practices of cutting smaller and smaller trees have meant that the future sawlogs are not being left to grow on."
"She infers that 750 direct jobs in the timber industry are at risk by the establishment of the Great Koala National Park (GKNP) . In so claiming, she is including in her estimate all the people employed in the industry between the Hunter and the Tweed Rivers and is including those working within plantations and private forest areas which are not included in the GKNP proposal."
NVCA president Paula Flack said that regardless of the National Party's continuous exaggeration of timber industry job numbers on the North Coast, they were dwarfed in comparison to the number of direct and indirect jobs which the GKNP would generate.
"One recent study from Victoria indicated that one conservation reserve proposal for the Central Highlands forests would generate an additional 750 jobs," Ms Flack said.
"The establishment of national parks on public land and marine parks at sea is a global phenomenon and one of the universal responses to the increasing recognition of the need to protect and, in many cases, restore our natural environments.
"Unfortunately our current Liberal National Party political leaders are unwilling see the wider environmental, social and economic benefits of the Great Koala National Park and would rather ignore the facts and science by swimming against the tide."
Saturday 3 February 2018
Quotes of the Week
"The Cozy Bear [Russian] hackers are in a space in a university building near the Red Square. The group's composition varies, usually about ten people are active. The entrance is in a curved hallway. A security camera records who enters and who exits the room. The AIVD hackers manage to gain access to that camera. Not only can the intelligence service now see what the Russians are doing, they can also see who's doing it. Pictures are taken of every visitor. In Zoetermeer, these pictures are analyzed and compared to known Russian spies. Again, they've acquired information that will later prove to be vital." [De Volkskrant, on the subject of Russian interference in 2016 presidential election, 25 January 2018]
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"The separation of powers doctrine dictates that the judiciary should not be the subject of improper influence by the other branches of government – being the executive and legislature. Comments by Dutton and other Coalition ministers to the effect that members of the judiciary should be selected on the basis of their ideological leanings and ability to deliver "tough" sentences – rather than independently look at all factors and apply the law – seek to undermine this doctrine and unduly influence both the selection process and practices of the judiciary. Dutton's populist political grandstanding may have some members of the public "egging him on", but the reality is that such rhetoric seeks to undermine one of the central pillars of our democracy."
[Sydney Criminal Lawyers, 23 January 2018]
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“No president in history has burned more public money to sustain his personal lifestyle than Donald Trump” [former George W. Bush staffer David Frum in his book Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic]
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Conversations with members of the campaign’s team continued through the Republican Convention in Cleveland, when it was still hardly possible to conceive of Trumps election. They moved on to Trump Tower with a voluble Steve Bannon—before the election, when he still seemed like an entertaining oddity, and later, after the election, when he seemed like a miracle worker.
Shortly after January 20, I took up something like a semipermanent seat on a couch in the West Wing. Since then I have conducted more than two hundred interviews.” [Author Michael Wolff from his book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” published 5 January 2018]
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