This unstable individual is a threat to the US-Australia alliance, a serious security risk, as well as danger to world peace and international trade - an erratic politician Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull insists on publicly supporting as an "American patriot", who he is prepared to follow into a war of Trump's own making and, who he will be hosting on a proposed visit to Australia.
Friday 27 July 2018
Turnbull invites Trump to Australia - expected to arrive in November 2018
This unstable individual is a threat to the US-Australia alliance, a serious security risk, as well as danger to world peace and international trade - an erratic politician Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull insists on publicly supporting as an "American patriot", who he is prepared to follow into a war of Trump's own making and, who he will be hosting on a proposed visit to Australia.
The
New York Times,
18 July 2018:
WASHINGTON — Two weeks
before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified
intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had
personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.
The evidence included
texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a
top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the
Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.
Mr. Trump sounded
grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence
briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings
that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have
unanimously endorsed.
The shifting narrative
underscores the degree to which Mr. Trump regularly picks and chooses
intelligence to suit his political purposes. That has never been more clear
than this week.
On Monday, standing next
to the Russian president in Helsinki, Finland, Mr. Trump said he accepted Mr.
Putin’s denial of Russian election intrusions. By Tuesday, faced with a
bipartisan political outcry, Mr. Trump sought to walk back his words and sided
with his intelligence agencies.
On Wednesday, when a
reporter asked, “Is Russia still targeting the U.S.?” Mr. Trump shot back, “No”
— directly contradicting statements made only days earlier by his director of
national intelligence, Dan Coats, who was sitting a few chairs away in the
Cabinet Room. (The White House later said he was responding to a different
question.)
Hours later, in a CBS
News interview, Mr. Trump seemed to reverse course again. He blamed Mr. Putin
personally, but only indirectly, for the election interference by Russia,
“because he’s in charge of the country.”
In the run-up to this
week’s ducking and weaving, Mr. Trump has done all he can to suggest other
possible explanations for the hacks into the American political system. His
fear, according to one of his closest aides who spoke on the condition of
anonymity, is that any admission of even an unsuccessful Russian attempt to
influence the 2016 vote raises questions about the legitimacy of his
presidency.
The Jan. 6, 2017,
meeting, held at Trump Tower, was a prime example. He was briefed that day by
John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director; James R. Clapper Jr., the director of
national intelligence; and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National
Security Agency and the commander of United States Cyber Command.
The F.B.I. director,
James B. Comey, was also there; after the formal briefing, he privately told
Mr. Trump about the “Steele dossier.” That report, by a former British
intelligence officer, included uncorroborated salacious stories of Mr. Trump’s
activities during a visit to Moscow, which he denied.
According to nearly a
dozen people who either attended the meeting with the president-elect or were
later briefed on it, the four primary intelligence officials described the
streams of intelligence that convinced them of Mr. Putin’s role in the election
interference.
They included stolen
emails from the Democratic National Committee that had been seen in Russian
military intelligence networks by the British, Dutch and American intelligence
services. Officers of the Russian intelligence agency formerly known as the G.R.U. had
plotted with groups like WikiLeaks on how to release the email stash.
And ultimately, several
human sources had confirmed Mr. Putin’s own role.
That included one
particularly valuable source, who was considered so sensitive that Mr. Brennan
had declined to refer to it in any way in the Presidential Daily Brief during
the final months of the Obama administration, as the Russia investigation
intensified.
Instead, to keep the
information from being shared widely, Mr. Brennan sent reports from the source
to Mr. Obama and a small group of top national security aides in a separate,
white envelope to assure its security.
Mr. Trump and his aides
were also given other reasons during the briefing to believe that Russia was
behind the D.N.C. hacks.
The same Russian groups
had been involved in cyberattacks on the State Department and White House
unclassified email systems in 2014 and 2015, and in an attack on the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. They had aggressively fought the N.S.A. against being ejected
from the White House system, engaging in what the deputy director of the agency
later called “hand-to-hand combat” to dig in…..
Read the full
article here.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
The White House on Monday threatened to strike back at critics of President
Donald Trump’s contacts with Russia by revoking the security clearances of six
former U.S. officials, drawing accusations that he was abusing his power and
aiming to stifle dissent.
Donald Trump is
doing anything he can to hold on to his base ― even employing propaganda tricks
straight out of 1984.
On Tuesday, the
President spoke at a Veterans of Foreign Wars gathering in Kansas City and
told his followers to forget about anything else other than what he tells them.
“Just remember, what you
are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening,” he said.
…ThinkProgress chillingly notes that Trump’s demand
directly correlates to the “final, most essential command” of the ruling
totalitarian regime in George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984: “to
reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.”
Trump decided to jump
headfirst into that belief by telling the crowd, “We don’t apologize for
America anymore. We stand up for America. We stand up for the patriots who
defend America.”
Jake Tapper noted on
Twitter that those comments came eight days after he blamed the U.S. for poor relations with Russia.
Thursday 26 July 2018
Australia 2018: the Coal War continues
It should come as no surprise that in the Coal War being conducted by right-wing ideologues and climate change deniers consumers are predicted to be the losers under the Turnbull Government's National Energy Agreement (NEG) and, that Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is offering the same illusory $550 per annum saving on electricity costs per household promised but not delived by his predecessor Tony Abbott.
A COAG Energy Council Ministers meeting on August 2018 will reveal the final NEG design - a design which won't be published until after this meeting.
What is already broadly known about the NEG design appears to support allegations that the aim of this agreement is to cement the dominant position of fossil fuels in the national energy mix at the expense of renewable energy technologies.
REneweconomy, 20 July 2018:
As pressure mounts for
Australia’s states and territories to finalise their position on the National Energy
Guarantee, a new report has warned the federal government’s policy would fail
to achieve its most basic and important function: to lower energy costs for
consumers.
The report, commissioned
by Greenpeace Australia Pacific, says the Coalition’s NEG would in fact do the
opposite – raise electricity prices; as well as bringing investment in
large-scale renewables to a halt, and do nothing to combat climate change.
Based on analysis
conducted by energy and environment analysts RepuTex, the report models the
impact of the NEG under the government’s 26 per cent emissions reduction
target, compared to a more ambitious 45 percent target.
In both scenarios, as
shown in Figure 17 above, electricity prices are forecast to fall through to
2020 as more than 6GW of renewable energy enters the NEM under large-scale
renewable energy target (LRET).
“The increase in low
cost solar and wind generation will see the electricity supply steadily become
more competitive, with average prices less influenced by high priced gas, and
subsequently falling toward $60 MWh in 2020,” the report says.
But under the NEG, new
investment in renewables falls off a cliff after 2020, while the impact of the
reliability guarantee drives an increase in gas generation, prolongs the
phase-out of coal, and makes it harder for key new technologies, like battery
storage and demand management to compete.
“The result is the
continuation of a coal-dominated market with a fairly static picture for
large-scale renewables investment, with gas providing flexibility to meet
evening ramp ups,” the report says.
“As a result wholesale
prices rise above $70 per MWh after the closure of Liddell, and $80 per MWh
after the expected retirement of Yallourn in 2028.”
A more ambitious
emissions reduction target, however, of 45 per cent, would provide a signal for
investment in more solar and wind, driving prices down by around $20/MWh.
“The competitive
pressure from higher solar and wind energy is modelled to push wholesale prices
lower, eventually resulting in the closure of excess coal capacity” – around
9GW, in total, by 2030 RepuTex says.
Published
on Jul 23, 2018
The
crucial make or break meeting of State Energy Ministers is on 10 August. So if
we want block Turnbull's dirty energy plan, we need to move right now.
Proof positive that money buys government policy?
Liberal MP for Warringah and soon to be Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, in April 2012 at the Institute of Public Affairs 70th Anniversary celebration promised:
“I want to assure you
that the Coalition will indeed repeal the carbon tax, abolish the Department of
Climate Change, abolish the Clean Energy Fund. We will repeal Section 18C of
the Racial Discrimination Act, at least in its current form. We will abolish
new health and environmental bureaucracies. We will deliver $1 billion in red
tape savings every year. We will develop northern Australia. We will repeal the
mining tax. We will create a one stop shop for environmental approvals. We will
privatise Medibank Private. We will trim the public service and we will stop
throwing good money after bad on the NBN. So, ladies and gentlemen, that is a
big “yes” to many of the 75 specific policies you urged upon me…”
The Sydney MorningHerald on the subject of the IPA, 7 April 2016:
Four months from
election and the people scratch their heads. Why, again, are we destroying the
Reef for some billionaire Indian coalminer? Why fund private schools and
de-fund public ones? Above all, how did Australia go from a country where the
poor occasionally stole the goose from the common to one where the rich are
consistently rewarded for stealing the common from the goose? The answer, at
least in part, appears to be the IPA.
The IPA has three member
senators, David Leyonhjelm, Bob Day and James Paterson, and a fourth-in-waiting
with ex-human rights commissioner Tim Wilson running in the lower house. It
also has several state MPs and members with regular media gigs – like IPA
senior fellow Chris Berg (The Drum and Fairfax) and board member Janet
Albrechtsen, whose recent column in The Ozpuffed Paterson and Wilson as
"outstanding warrior[s] for the freedom cause". They all talk a lot
about warriors – which is also what Abbott called Credlin.
But the IPA's real power
is the charisma of wealth. At its 70th birthday gala dinner in 2013, Rupert
Murdoch gave the keynote. NewsCorp's Andrew Bolt was MC and opposition
leader Tony Abbott called the IPA "freedom's discerning friend". Gina
Rinehart, George Pell, George Brandis and Alan Jones were guests…..
Still, the IPA then
seemed like harmless cranks. Now it seems they're all but writing government
policy. Even that's not bad in itself. The wealthy are allowed their clubs, and
governments must get ideas from somewhere. But when the private interest of Big
Money consistently presents as public interest, it's time to worry. Big time.
We've heard much lately
of illegal developer funding, which caused the NSW Electoral Commission to
withhold $4.4 million from the NSW Liberals. But developers aren't the only
group who might seek influence, and brown paper bags are not the only vehicle.
The IPA has long
insisted NGOs should be transparent, but it's notoriously secretive about its
own sources of money. (Executive director John Roskam says its donors get
intimidated). But revealed sources include all the bad boys of Big
International Money: media, oil, tobacco, genetics, energy and forestry. Who
benefits from IPA policy? They do.
In 2012, the IPA
published "Seventy-Five
Radical Ideas to Transform Australia". I haven't done the math, but
I'd say over a third are now law or seriously discussed.
DeSmog reporting on the IPA, 17 July 2018:
Australia’s richest person,
mining magnate Gina Rinehart, has been revealed as a key funder of the right
wing think tank the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) – a major pusher of
climate science denial.
Rinehart’s company,
Hancock Prospecting Proprietary Ltd (HPPL), donated $2.3m to
the IPA in 2016 and $2.2m in 2017, according to disclosures made to
the New South Wales Supreme Court.
As part of a
long-running legal dispute over the use of company funds, Gina Rinehart’s
daughter Bianca had served a subpoena to access documents that would have shed
light on the two donations from HPPL to the IPA.
The IPA is an
influential right wing think tank with close ties to Australia’s governing
Liberal Party. IPA fellows regularly appear in the media. The
payments suggest that more than a third of the IPA’s income in 2016 and
2017 was from HPPL – majority-owned privately by Gina Rinehart.
According to Forbes,
Rinehart was the seventh richest woman in the world in 2017 and Australia’s
richest person, with current wealth estimated
to be $17.6 billion.
The IPA is a
registered charity but is not legally required to disclose its funders and has
declined to reveal them in recent years, citing concerns that donors could
be “intimidated”.
According to the court judgement, Bianca’s solicitors had been
provided with a schedule of “donations and sponsorships”
from HPPL where it was disclosed, the judgement said,
“that HPPL paid or provided amounts to IPA in a total of
$2.3 million for the 2016 financial year and $2.2 million in the 2017 financial year.”
The donations also raise
questions about the way the IPA has disclosed the nature of
its revenues.
The IPA's 2017 annual report declared $6.1m of income but
said that “86 per cent” had come from individuals. HPPL’s $2.2m donation
constituted more than a third of the IPA’s income that year.
In 2016, the IPA reported that 91 per cent of donations
were from individuals, but that year HPPL’s $2.3m donation constituted
almost half the IPA's income of $4.96m that year.
Labels:
funding,
IPA,
political rort
Wednesday 25 July 2018
Pacific Highway Upgrade has hit a noticeable bump in the road and the fault lies firmly with NSW Roads and Maritime Services, Pacific Complete, the Minister for Roads and the National Party
In July 2018 the NSW Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) was called to account by the communities of Woombah and Iluka for a lack of transparency and only paying lip service to community consultation with regard to the Iluka to Devil's Pulpit Section 6 stage of the Pacific Highway upgrade and, the plan to site a temporary asphalt batching plant and a foamed bitumen plant on a rural lot adjoining the Pacific Highway-Iluka Road T-intersection.
Iluka Road is the only road in and out of both of these small villages whose local economies are heavily reliant on a clean, green, family friendly image and nature-based tourism.
This is the official response of the Pacific Highway upgrade consortium to date:
NSW Roads and Maritime Services, Media Release, W2B Extension to Consultation Period for the Proposed Tempo... by clarencegirl on Scribd
Nationals MP For Clarence Chris Gulaptis in another media release characterised the RMS-Pacific Complete response as Back
to the drawing board for Clarence Pacific Highway upgrade asphalt plant
temporary asphalt batch plant.
It is unfortunate that he did so, as Woombah residents can clearly see that site preparation on the lot is still proceeding for the temporary asphalt plant and foamed bitumen plant.
Which leaves some residents concerned that Chris Gulaptis is primarily focused on commercial needs of the Pacific Complete consortium and, that NSW Roads and Maritime Services having been caught out are now merely going through the motions so that there is a suitable paper trail should the issue become even more contentious and so come to the notice of Minister for Roads Maritime and Freight, Melinda Pavey.
Residents point out that Jackybulbin and the Rest Area approximately five kilometres away are ideal sites. That the Woombah lot is probably the construction consortium's preferred ancillary site simply because they have an existing lease there.
In response to Gulaptis' spin for the consumption of local media, Woombah and Iluka residents opposing the preferred site have stated in an email:
It is unfortunate that he did so, as Woombah residents can clearly see that site preparation on the lot is still proceeding for the temporary asphalt plant and foamed bitumen plant.
Which leaves some residents concerned that Chris Gulaptis is primarily focused on commercial needs of the Pacific Complete consortium and, that NSW Roads and Maritime Services having been caught out are now merely going through the motions so that there is a suitable paper trail should the issue become even more contentious and so come to the notice of Minister for Roads Maritime and Freight, Melinda Pavey.
Residents point out that Jackybulbin and the Rest Area approximately five kilometres away are ideal sites. That the Woombah lot is probably the construction consortium's preferred ancillary site simply because they have an existing lease there.
In response to Gulaptis' spin for the consumption of local media, Woombah and Iluka residents opposing the preferred site have stated in an email:
1. Woombah and Iluka
stand united in expressing 'no confidence' in the Laing O'Rourke/Brinkerhoff
unincorporated consortium known as "Pacific Complete". Laing O'Orurke
is the correct identity for publishing as it is the INSURED PARTY (see
attached). Laing O'Rourke Australian arm is for sale and Brinkerhoff is the
named party in several issues with previous works such as Lane Cove Tunnel.
2. "Pacific
Complete" has been negligent in [failing to notify] the affected members of the communities (all road
users of these communities including children on buses and visitors and
assessing the proposed shared access roads) and the lack of experience by the
"Pacific Complete" Project Team has caused serious distress to the
residents of Woombah and Iluka due to two failed communications engagements.
3. "Pacific
Complete" and the Roads & Maritime Service NSW has pursued it's
objectives and shown complete disregard toward the genuine safety and security
issues that will be faced by residents using Iluka Rd to the Iluka Road Pacific
Highway turn-off.
4. "Pacific
Complete" failed in its duty to correctly identify and assess all viable
sites for the asphalt plant.
5. At this time
"Pacific Complete" and RMS have offered no traffic solution in the
event that no other suitable location of the plant can be identified.
6. Should "Pacific
Complete" and the RMS pursue the Woombah site for the Asphalt Batch Plant
with no dedicated route for construction/plant vehicles, residents of Woombah
& Iluka will consider forming a class action lawsuit against the parties
for wilful endangerment.
7. Objectives now are to
monitor Pacific Complete to take the preferred site as one of other now five
options that do not affect traffic, local residents and the environment.
8. January is Pacific
Complete peak movement of trucks month for the Asphalt Plant. They did not consider
this ….would affect our peak Holiday period?
Research by local residents also suggests that RMS and Pacific Complete may not be fully compliant with guidelines for the establishment of ancillary facilities when it comes to the Woombah site.
Of particular concern is; (i) the south west flow of surface water on the lot and, whether during any high rainfall event over the next two and a half years, contaminated water might escape and flow from the batching plant infrastructure into the 80ha Mororo Creek Nature Reserve and then along the final est. 2.5km length of the creek which empties into the Clarence River estuary and (ii) the proposed shared access road for heavy trucks and residents' cars and school buses now intersects with the proposed ancillary site at a point which is a known koala crossing.
Of particular concern is; (i) the south west flow of surface water on the lot and, whether during any high rainfall event over the next two and a half years, contaminated water might escape and flow from the batching plant infrastructure into the 80ha Mororo Creek Nature Reserve and then along the final est. 2.5km length of the creek which empties into the Clarence River estuary and (ii) the proposed shared access road for heavy trucks and residents' cars and school buses now intersects with the proposed ancillary site at a point which is a known koala crossing.
Image contributed
The next NSW state election will be held on 23 March 2019 in just eight months time.
If the Woobah site remains the preferred site, by then the asphalt batching plant (and possibly the foamed bitumen plant) will have been operational for at least five months and up to 500 heavy truck movements a day will have been occurring over that time with peak activity coinciding with the Woombah-Iluka annual summer tourism period
One wonders what the Berejiklian Government down in Sydney and the NSW National Party were thinking.
Do they really believe the dust, noise, odour and disruptive traffic will endear Chris Gulaptis to voters in these towns on polling day?
The two very different faces Facebook Inc presents to potential advertisers and lawmakers
Australian Newspaper
History Group Newsletter, No 98, July
2018, pp8-9:
98.2.3
Facebook described itself as a ‘publisher’ in 2013
Facebook
described itself as a “publisher” as far back as 2013, leaked documents
obtained by the Australian reveal. This contradicts the message that chief
executive Mark Zuckerberg gave to US Congress, in interviews and in speeches (Australian,
9 July 2018). A 71-page PowerPoint presentation prepared by the then managing director
of Facebook, Stephen Scheeler, outlines how the tech giant was the
“second-highest reaching publisher in Australia” when compared with traditional
media companies such as Nine and Seven. The internal sales document is partly
based on data gathered by measurement firm Nielsen as well as confidential
internal figures including quarterly revenue targets. There is no mention of
Facebook being a publisher in Nielsen’s original report; it categorises
Facebook as a “brand” in its Online Landscape Review published in May 2013. A
slide in the presentation produced by Scheeler, the most senior executive at
Facebook’s Australia and New Zealand business at the time, changed Nielsen’s
description of Facebook from a brand to a “publisher”, showing that the social media
giant views itself as such.
This
is significant because Facebook has long argued it is a tech platform, not a
publisher or a media company, when questioned about how it has generated vast
profits by siphoning off billions of dollars from the news industry. The
admission in the document contrasts with Facebook’s recent public contribution
to a high-powered Australian inquiry into the local digital media market. The
company repeatedly calls itself a “platform” in a 56-page written submission to
the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission.
Zuckerberg
has persistently rejected the suggestion that Facebook is a publisher,
presenting the company as a neutral platform that does not have traditional
journalistic responsibilities. In April, Zuckerberg was asked by US senators
investigating the Cambridge Analytica data scandal to explain whether his
company was a tech company or publisher. Dan Sullivan, a Republican Senator for
Alaska, said: “That goes to an important question about what regulation or action,
if any, we would take.” Asked by Senator Sullivan if Facebook was a “tech
company or the world’s largest publisher” during his second day of testimony on
Capitol Hill, the Facebook co-founder responded: “I view us as a tech company
because the primary thing that we do is build technology and products.” Senator
Sullivan pressed further: “You said you’re responsible for your content, which
makes you kind of a publisher, right?” Zuckerberg did not admit Facebook was a
media company or publisher, but did say it was responsible for what is posted
on its platforms after it emerged that the company allowed Russia to spread
disinformation in the US presidential election.
“I
agree that we’re responsible for the content. But we don’t produce the content.
I think that when people ask us if we’re a media company or a publisher, my
understanding of what the heart of what they’re really getting at is: do we
feel responsible for the content on our platform? The answer to that I think is
clearly yes. But I don’t think that that’s incompatible with fundamentally at
our core being a technology company where the main thing that we do is have
engineers and build products.”
Labels:
Facebook,
information technology,
Internet,
media
Tuesday 24 July 2018
Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt is not being truthful about My Health Record and he knows it
On 16 July 2018 the Australian Minister for Health and Liberal MP for Flinders, Gregory Andrew 'Greg' Hunt, characterised My Health Record as a "secure summary" of an individual's key health information.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) tells a rather different story.
One where at least 242 individual My Health Records have been part of mandatory data breach reports in 2015-16 to 2016-17, with nine of the 51 reported breach events involving "the unauthorised access of a healthcare
recipient’s My Health Record by a third party".
A story which also involves at least 96 instances of Medicare uploading data to the wrong digital health records and also uploading claim information to another 123 My Health Records apparently without the knowledge or consent of the persons in whose names these My Health Records had been created.
There were other instances where MyGov
accounts held by healthcare recipients were incorrectly linked to the My
Health Records of other healthcare recipients.
Prior to the database name change and system change from opt-in to opt-out there had been another 9 data breaches of an unspecified nature reported, involving an unknown number of what are now called My Health Records.
More instances are now being aired in mainstream and social media where My Health Records were created by DHS Medicare Repository Services or other agents/agencies without the knowledge or consent of the individual in whose name the record had been created.
Prior to the database name change and system change from opt-in to opt-out there had been another 9 data breaches of an unspecified nature reported, involving an unknown number of what are now called My Health Records.
More instances are now being aired in mainstream and social media where My Health Records were created by DHS Medicare Repository Services or other agents/agencies without the knowledge or consent of the individual in whose name the record had been created.
Healthcare IT News 16 July 2018 |
If this is how the national e-health database was officially functioning malfunctioning by 30 June 2017, how on earth is the system going to cope when it attempts to create millions of new My Health Records after 15 October 2018?
On the first day of the 60 day opt-out period about 20,000 people refused to have a My Health Record automatically created for them and at least one Liberal MP has also opted out, the Member for Goldstein and member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport Tim Wilson.
Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull has stated his view that mass withdrawals will not kill the national digital health records system - perhaps because he and his government are possibly contemplating adopting the following three coercive recommendations found amongst the thirty-one recommendations included in the Siggins Miller November 2016 Evaluation of the Participation Trials for the My Health Record: Final Report:
NOTES
OAIC annual reports:
On the first day of the 60 day opt-out period about 20,000 people refused to have a My Health Record automatically created for them and at least one Liberal MP has also opted out, the Member for Goldstein and member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport Tim Wilson.
Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull has stated his view that mass withdrawals will not kill the national digital health records system - perhaps because he and his government are possibly contemplating adopting the following three coercive recommendations found amongst the thirty-one recommendations included in the Siggins Miller November 2016 Evaluation of the Participation Trials for the My Health Record: Final Report:
20. Use all mechanisms
available in commissioning and funding health services as vehicles to require
the use of the My Health Record to obtain funds where practical.
21. Consider ways to
require the use of the My Health Record system by all healthcare providers and
how to best use the Government’s purchasing power directly (e.g. in the aged
care sector), via new initiatives as they arise (such the Health Care Home
initiative) or via PHNs commissioning clinical services (e.g. require use of
the My Health Record system in all clinical and aged care services that receive
Commonwealth funds). Such requirements should have a timeframe within which
healthcare providers need to become compliant.
22. Explore with health
insurers how they could encourage preferred suppliers and clients to use the My
Health Record system as part of their push for preventive care and cost
containment.
That the My Health Record is not about improving health service delivery for individual patients is indicated by the fact that a My Health Record is retained by the National Repositories Service for between 30 and up to 130 years after death and, even during an individual's lifetime can be accessed by the courts, police, other government agencies and private corporations listed as research organisations requiring medical/lifestyle information for what is essentially commercial gain, at the discretion of the Secretary of the Department of Health or the Digital Health Agency Systems Operator. See: My Health Records Act 2012 (20 September 2017), Subdivision B - s63 to s70
To put it bluntly, this national database will allow federal government to monitor the personal lives of Australian citizens more closely, enforce civil & criminal law, monetise collated data for its own benefit and, weaponize the personal information collected anytime it feels threatened by dissenting opinion.
NOTES
OAIC annual reports:
The Guardian, 22 July 2018:
Australia’s impending My
Health Record system is “identical” to a failed
system in England that was cancelled after it was found to be selling
patient data to drug and insurance companies, a British privacy expert has
said.
My Health Record is a
digital medical record that stores
medical data and shares it between medical providers. In the UK, a similar
system called care.data was announced in 2014, but cancelled in 2016 after an
investigation found that drug and insurance companies were able to buy
information on patients’ mental health conditions, diseases and smoking habits.
The man in charge of
implementing My Health Record
in Australia, Tim Kelsey, was also in charge of setting up care.data.
Phil Booth, the
coordinator of British privacy group Medconfidential, said the similarities
were “extraordinary” and he expected the same privacy breaches to occur.
“The parallels are
incredible,” he said. “It looks like it is repeating itself, almost like a
rewind or a replay. The context has changed but what is plainly obvious to us
from the other side of the planet, is that this system seems to be the 2018
replica of the 2014 care.data.” [my yellow highlighting]
North Coast
Voices , 22 July 2018, Former
Murdoch journalist in charge of MyHealth records –what could possibly go wrong?
UPDATE
Australian
Parliamentary Library, Flagpost,
23 July 2018:
Section 70 of the My Health Records Act
2012 enables the System Operator (ADHA) to ‘use or disclose
health information’ contained in an individual’s My Health Record if the ADHA
‘reasonably believes that the use or disclosure is reasonably necessary’ to,
among other things, prevent, detect, investigate or prosecute any criminal
offence, breaches of a law imposing a penalty or sanction or breaches of a
prescribed law; protect the public revenue; or prevent, detect, investigate or
remedy ‘seriously improper conduct’. Although ‘protection of the public
revenue’ is not explained, it is reasonable to assume that this might include
investigations into potential fraud and other financial offences involving
agencies such as Centrelink, Medicare, or the Australian Tax Office. The
general wording of section 70 is a fairly standard formulation common to
various legislation—such as the Telecommunications
Act 1997—which appears to provide broad access to a wide range of agencies
for a wide range of purposes.
While this should mean
that requests for data by police, Home Affairs and other authorities will be
individually assessed, and that any disclosure will be limited to the minimum
necessary to satisfy the request, it represents a significant reduction in the
legal threshold for the release of private medical information to law
enforcement. Currently, unless a patient consents to the release of their
medical records, or disclosure is required to meet a doctor’s mandatory
reporting obligations (e.g. in cases of suspected child sexual abuse), law
enforcement agencies can only access a person’s records (via their doctor) with
a warrant, subpoena or court order....
It seems unlikely that
this level of protection and obligation afforded to medical records by the
doctor-patient relationship will be maintained, or that a doctor’s judgement
will be accommodated, once a patient’s medical record is uploaded to My Health
Record and subject to section 70 of the My Health Records Act 2012. The
AMA’s Guide
to Medical Practitioners on the use of the Personally Controlled Electronic
Health Record System (from 2012) does not clarify the situation.
Although it has
been reported that
the ADHA’s ‘operating policy is to release information only where the request
is subject to judicial oversight’, the My Health Records Act 2012 does
not mandate this and it does not appear that the ADHA’s operating policy is
supported by any rule or regulation. As legislation would normally take
precedence over an agency’s ‘operating policy’, this means that unless the ADHA
has deemed a request unreasonable, it cannot routinely require a law
enforcement body to get a warrant, and its operating policy can be ignored or
changed at any time.
The Health
Minister’s assertions that no one’s data can be used to ‘criminalise’
them and that ‘the Digital Health Agency has again reaffirmed today that
material … can only be accessed with a court order’ seem at odds with the
legislation which only requires a reasonable belief that disclosure of a
person’s data is reasonably necessary to prevent, detect, investigate or
prosecute a criminal offence…..
Although the disclosure
provisions of different agencies may be more or less strict than those of the
ADHA and the My Health Records Act 2012, the problem with the MHR system
is the nature of the data itself. As the Law Council of Australia notes,
‘the information held on a healthcare recipient’s My Health Record is regarded
by many individuals as highly sensitive and intimate’. The National Association
of People with HIV Australia has
suggested that ‘the department needs to ensure that an individual’s My
Health Record is bound to similar privacy protections as existing laws relating
to the privacy of health records’. Arguably, therefore, an alternative to the
approach of the current scheme would be for medical records registered in the
MHR system to be legally protected from access by law enforcement agencies to
at least the same degree as records held by a doctor.
Counting Donald Trump's words and how he uses them......
The
Star, 14 July
2018:
Click on image to enlarge
There’s a lot of
dishonesty: Of all the words Trump said and tweeted as president as of
July 1, 5.1 per cent were part of a false claim.
Expressed differently: Trump uttered a false word every 19.4 words.
Expressed differently: Trump uttered a false word every 19.4 words.
Trump’s dishonesty
density is increasing: The issue isn’t just that he’s talking more these days.
It’s that what he’s saying is less truthful.
In weeks that started in
2017, 3.8 per cent of Trump’s words were part of a false claim. In 2018, it’s
7.3 per cent.
Expressed differently: in 2017, Trump said about 26 words for every one false word. In 2018, it’s down to about 14 words per one false word.
The analysis assessed
the first 30,000 words each president spoke in office, and ranked
them on the Flesch-Kincaid grade level scale and more than two dozen other
common tests analyzing English-language difficulty levels. Trump clocked in
around mid-fourth grade, the worst since Harry Truman, who spoke at nearly a
sixth-grade level.
Expressed differently: in 2017, Trump said about 26 words for every one false word. In 2018, it’s down to about 14 words per one false word.
Newsweek, 8 January 2018:
President Donald
Trump—who boasted over the weekend that his success in life was a result of
“being, like, really smart”—communicates at the lowest grade level of the last
15 presidents, according to a new analysis of the speech patterns of
presidents going back to Herbert Hoover.
Labels:
Donald Trump,
lies and lying,
statistics,
US politics
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