looks like apple got access to a bunch of Australian business regos and just dumped them into maps without validation. Now everyone’s ‘retirement trusts’ (SMSFs) are showing up... pic.twitter.com/2etZKaTYMA— Maxwell Swadling (@mxswd) July 21, 2018
Monday 23 July 2018
Clifton Gardens-Mosman residents, you have a data breach......
I spy with my little eye a former "young broker of the year", a number of Self-Managed Superannuation Funds and a slew of private corporations whose registered addresses are not so private anymore.
Labels:
data breach,
information technology,
Internet
One of the reasons why local government, traditional owners and communities in the Clarence Valley should be very wary of home-grown and foreign lobbyists, investment consortiums and land developers – Part Three
In July 2018 the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) continues to hear evidence in Operation Skyline.
An organisation called United Land Councils Limited was mentioned as allegedly sending its then sole director Richard Green around New South Wales to talk with local aboriginal land councils concerning certain proposals.
These trips appear to have commenced sometime in 2015.
At least one trip taken in 2016 by Mr. Green was to Yamba in the Clarence Valley, allegedly at the behest of Nicholas Petroulias.
The subject of the alleged discussion/s with the Yaegl community in Yamba was the creation of a large port in the Clarence River estuary.
It shoud be noted that by July 2016 Yaegl elders and the Yaegl Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation were strongly opposed to a mega port being created in the estuary.
Mainstream media has been following current events as they unfolded.....
The Daily Telegraph, 13 July 2018:
AUSTRALIA’S youngest
ever tax chief is behind bars after allegedly being caught with a wallet full
of counterfeit cash, bank cards in different names and dodgy driver’s licences.
Nick Petroulias,
once the nation’s second most powerful tax official, appeared before Burwood
Local Court as Michael Nicholas Felson earlier this week having been pulled
over by police while driving his luxury black BMW X5.
When the officers
stopped him in inner-west Sydney on June 20, the 50-year-old is alleged to have
handed them a current New Zealand driver’s licence in the name of another
alias, Nicholas James Piers.
Police will allege that
inquiries revealed Piers was a permanent resident of Australia and allegedly
had a number of aliases including Nick Petersen, Michael Felson as
well as his real name — Nick Petroulias.
Under his various
aliases he is alleged to have held one NSW driver’s licence, three Queensland
licences, one from Victoria and another from Tasmania, only two of which were
current. He has not been charged over those licences.
Once a Melbourne legal
whiz-kid, Petroulias (pictured left) was made assistant commissioner
of the Australian Taxation Office at the age of 30. In 2014 he was declared
bankrupt with eye-watering estimated debts of $104 million.
On Tuesday he appeared
in court via videolink from Silverwater Jail dressed in prison greens as he
used his fingers to flatten the “comb-over” hiding his bald head.
Court documents show he
has pleaded not guilty to knowingly possessing seven counterfeit Australian $50
bank notes and two counts of possessing bank cards with the intention of
committing fraud. He was refused police bail on June 20 and refused bail in
Burwood Local Court the next day.
His case has been
adjourned to August 14 when the court was told he will make a fresh bail
application.
Newcastle
Herald, 17
July 2018:
A member of the Awabakal
Local Aboriginal Land Council has admitted to giving false evidence to the
Independent Commission against Corruption and disobeying orders not to discuss
its inquiry with other potential witnesses, after an intercepted phone call was
played in which he told former tax official Nick Petroulias about an
inquiry into land deals with which the pair were involved.
But Richard Green,
former deputy chair of Awabakal, denied he was “tipping off” Mr Petroulias
about the ICAC inquiry.
He was reprimanded by
Commissioner Peter Hall QC for failing to answer questions directly.
“Mr Green if you're
going to obstruct this commission you could be putting yourself into real
trouble,” Commissioner Hall said.
On Monday, Mr Green was
questioned about whether he spoke to anyone after receiving a summons from the
ICAC in January, telling him he would be required to appear before its
Operation Skyline public hearings and warning him not to discuss the matter
with any other person.
When pressed by counsel
assisting the commission, Nicholas Chen SC, Mr Green admitted he had a brief
conversation with Mr Petroulias about the summons, but said it was because he
had not read the warning contained within the letter.
However minutes later, a
phone intercept was played where Mr Green was heard to read the contents of the
letter to Mr Petroulias, including the direction to keep the summons
confidential.
“That was contrary to
the clear and express statement of what you were not permitted to do. Isn't
that right?” Mr Chen said. “What's your excuse, Mr Green, for doing that?”
“Like I said before I
don't – I haven't got an excuse,” Mr Green responded.
The inquiry heard that
Mr Petroulias is in custody on unrelated charges.
The former tax office
high flyer is accused of playing a "central role" in four deals to
sell off Awabakal land. The ICAC is investigating whether the deals were a sham
to benefit Mr Petroulias, his lawyer partner Despina Bakis, and Awabakal board
members Mr Green and Debbie Dates.
Mr Green conceded that
his signature appeared on a number of the sales agreements. However he insisted
he could not read well and had not read through documents when they were given
to him to sign by either Mr Petroulias or Ms Bakis.
He could not explain why
he signed the documents without telling other board members about them, despite
board approval being a requirement of land sales. He agreed his behaviour was
"reckless in the extreme" but denied he benefited financially from
it.
"When you've got a
person acting like Nick you take notice of them," he said. "And I
keep saying over and over if people understand how Aboriginal land councils
function they will understand what I'm talking about.''
Newcastle
Herald, 19
July 2018:
Luxury cars, gold
jewellery, and Foxtel subscriptions were among the items that Richard
Green bought with money disgraced former assistant tax commissioner Nick
Petroulias provided to him, allegedly for helping facilitate the sale of
Aboriginal-owned land in the Lower Hunter.
The Independent
Commission Against Corruption heard on Wednesday that Mr Green, a former
land council board member, is alleged to have received an estimated $145,000
between 2014 and 2016 for his personal benefit from
Mr Petroulias.
The money was received
via several bank and credit card accounts that were operated in Mr Green’s
name, but which appear to have been opened on behalf of him by
Mr Petroulias.
Mr Green appeared
confused when presented with statements from some of the accounts and denied
any prior knowledge of others.
The commission is
investigating whether a series of deals to sell Awabakal land to
developers were a “ruse” to benefit former board members Richard Green
or Debbie Dates.
It is also probing
whether the first of the deals was a sham set up by Mr
Petroulias – using a company he allegedly controlled called Gows
Heat – so he could on-sell his interests to other buyers.
BACKGROUND
25 September
2016 What's
in a name?
9 February 2018 One
of the reasons why local government, traditional owners and communities in the
Clarence Valley should be very wary of home-grown and foreign lobbyists,
investment consortiums and land developers – Part Two
1 April 2018 UNITED
LAND COUNCILS IN THE NEWS AGAIN: Nicholas Petroulias appears before NSW
Independent Commission Against Corruption and represents himself at hearings
16 April 2018 One
of those asssociated with the company behind the second push for a Yamba Mega
Port allegedly used an alias when giving sworn evidence before a NSW parliamentary
committee
Sunday 22 July 2018
Former Murdoch journalist in charge of MyHealth records –what could possibly go wrong?
Former news editor of the notorious Newscorp
publication The Sunday Times which was involved
in the UK hacking scandal, former
Executive Director of Transparency and Open
Data
in the UK Cabinet Office and then National Director for Patients and
Information and head of the toxic
government Care.data project which
stored patient medical information in a
single database. before ending up as
the commercial director of Telstra
Health in Australia, Tim Kelsey, was appointed as CEO of
the Australian Digital
Health Agency by the Turnbull Coalition Government to progress the
stalled My Health Record national
database in 2016 with a salary worth $522,240 a year.
A curriculum vitae
which may go some way to explaining why
reports
are beginning to emerge of individuals seeking to opt-out of My Health Record
finding out they have been registered by stealth in the Australian national
database some years ago.
Crikey.com.au, 18 July 2018:
The
bureaucrat overseeing My Health Record presided over a disaster-plagued
national health record system in the UK, and has written passionately about the
belief people have no right to opt out of health records or anonymity.
Tim
Kelsey is a former British journalist who moved into the electronic health
record business in the 2000s. In 2012, he was appointed to run the UK
government’s national health record system, Care.data, which was brought
to a shuddering halt in 2014 after widespread criticism
over the sale of patients’ private data to drug and
insurance companies, then scrapped altogether in 2016. By that stage,
Kelsey had moved to Telstra in Australia, before later taking
a government role. There was considerable criticism about the lack of
information around Care.data, and over 700,000 UK people opted out of the system.
Kelsey
vehemently opposed allowing people to opt out — the exact model he is
presiding over in Australia. In a 2009 article, “Long Live The Database State”, for Prospect…..
For
Kelsey, this was necessary for effective health services…….
Kelsey
also expressed his opposition to the anonymisation of data, even of the most
personal kind…...
Kelsey’s
vision was of a vast state apparatus collecting, consolidating and distributing
private information to enable an interventionist state.
Moreover,
he stated others should have access to data…..
ADHA,
Kelsey is doing little to fix his reputation for controversy. On Saturday,
ADHA released an extraordinary 1000-word attack on News Corp health journalist Sue
Dunlevy who correctly pointed out the strong risk to privacy
in the My Health Record system. The statement repeatedly criticised Dunlevy,
accusing her of “dangerous fearmongering” and being “misleading and ignorant”.
Dunlevy
had rightly noted the lack of any effective information campaign about My
Health record (exactly the criticism made of Care.data), prompting ADHA to
boast of its $114 million campaign at Australia Post shops, Department of Human
Services “access points” and letters to health practitioners. It makes you
wonder why even News Corp’s Janet Albrechtsen said she’d never heard of My Health Record until last week….
Labels:
Big Brother,
big data,
information technology,
privacy,
safety
Saturday 21 July 2018
Quote of the Week
“There’s
also a profound lack of class or dignity. Trump’s narcissism diminishes the
presidency and America’s prestige around the world.”
[Former Australian
high commissioner to the UK Mike Rann,
The
Age, 14 July 2018]
Labels:
Donald Trump
Friday 20 July 2018
Trump-Putin Helsinki 16 July 2018 Press Conference: the matter of a curious admission and omission
The mainstream media carried transcripts of the 16 July 2018 US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin joint press conference held in Helsinki, Finland.
Video of this press conference is available online.
There is one specific exchange between President Putin and an American reporter.
It went thus:
REPORTER: Did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any
of your officials to help him do that?
PUTIN: Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S. Russia
relationship back to normal.
The White House also posted a transcript of the joint press conference.
This is how that exchange between Putin and the American reporter is presented on the White House website:
Snapshot captured on 19 July 2018 |
The Kremlin English version transcript omits this question and answer in their entirety.
The Atlantic spoke with the reporter in question, Reuters' Jeff Mason:
But recordings of the
exchange were muddled for two reasons. First, the English translation of
Putin’s previous response was concluding as Mason began to speak. Second, the
microphone seemed to pick up Mason’s question halfway through—making the latter
half of it easier to hear. (Mason told me that he had held on to the microphone
even though an official had tried to pull it away so that he could ask Putin a
follow-up question. “I don’t know if they turned the sound off during the time
when each of the presidents were speaking, or if it got flipped on and off. I
certainly didn’t touch anything.”)
That the question could be heard clearly at the press conference is demonstrated at 6:10 mins in on this MSNBS The Last Word video.
So why the differing editing of the press conference video and transcripts by the White House, the Kremlin and media outlets.
It is possible that many news outlets took their video and transcripts directly from the White House press office and presumed that any discrepancy was an instance of lost in translation.
The possibility also exists that the 'reshaping' of this question and answer was deliberate on the part of both the Oval Office and the Kremlin because it was realised that, albeit unintentionally, Russian President Vladimir Putin has just publicly admitted that not only did he want Donald Trump to win the 2016 US presidential campaign, he had directed Russian officials to help Trump win.
Labels:
lies and lying,
spies,
US-Russia relations
Too warm, too dry as Winter draws closer to Spring in Australia 2018
Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), 12 Jly 2018:
Warmer days and nights favoured
for August–October
August to October days
and nights are likely to be warmer than average for most of the country, with
high chances (greater than 80%) in eastern Victoria and NSW, and southern
Tasmania.
Days and nights in
August are likely to be warmer than average for most of Australia, with high
chances (greater than 80%) of warmer days in the southeast.
Historical accuracy for
August–October maximum temperatures is moderate for eastern and northern parts
of Australia, as well as southern WA. Elsewhere, accuracy is low to very low.
Historical accuracy for minimum temperatures is moderate for the northern half
of Australia, SA, and Tasmania, but low to very low elsewhere.
Temperature - The chance
of above median maximum temperature for August to October
Drier than average
August–October likely in northeast and southeast mainland
August to October is
likely to be drier than average in Victoria, NSW, southeast SA and northeast
Queensland
The August outlook shows
most of Victoria, NSW and Queensland are likely to be drier than average.
Historical outlook
accuracy for August to October is moderate over most of the country, except for
interior WA, where accuracy is low to very low.
Rainfall - Totals that
have a 75% chance of occurring for August to October
Drought
June rainfall was below
average for most of Australia, and very much below average for parts of the
east coast
The start of the
southern wet season has been drier than average
Rainfall deficiencies
persist in both the east and west of the country, increasing in the east at the
6- and 15-month timescales, and along the west coast at the 15-month timescale
Lower-layer soil
moisture was below average for June across most of New South Wales, the
southern half of Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory, the
Kimberley and the south of Western Australia
Soil Moisture
Soil moisture in the
lower layer (from 10 cm to 100 cm deep) for June decreased over
eastern Australia, and increased over parts of northwest Western Australia
following above average rainfall for June.
Lower-layer soil
moisture was below average for the Kimberley and southern Western Australia
away from the west coast, most of South Australia and the Northern Territory,
New South Wales and eastern Victoria, southern and eastern Queensland south of
a line between Birdsville and Townsville, and along the coastal fringe of
eastern Cape York Peninsula.
Map of lower level soil moisture for the previous month
NSW Dept. of Primary Industries, NSW State Seasonal Update - June 2018. Click on map to enlarge:
The entire Northern Rivers region is considered drought affected.
Labels:
Australia,
BOM,
drought,
New South Wales,
Northern Rivers,
weather
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