Quite rightly NSW Government refuses request not to release environmental flow waters into Shannon Creek - Clarence Valley & Coffs Harbour City councils expected to honour their undertakings

 

Shannon Creek Dam
IMAGE: Clarence Valley Council

The Daily Telegraph, 23 October 2020: 

North Coast local council areas will be forced back onto Level One water restrictions after the State Government refused a request from Clarence Valley and Coffs Harbour councils to keep more than two billion litres of water in the Shannon Creek Dam. 

Clarence Valley Council water cycle manager Greg Mashiah said a one-time exemption to the NSW Government’s license agreement had been requested, however, a verbal response had now been received declining the request. 

“Under our transparent extraction licence we need to release all the water that flows down the Shannon Creek into the dam,” he said. “This mimics the natural flow of the creek – the volume of water flowing into the dam must equal the volume flowing out.” Mr Mashiah said the water that came into the dam from Shannon Creek during the February flood had not yet been released. “We are currently waiting for written advice from the NSW Government with instructions on how they want the release to take place,” he said.

Once again the NSW Premier and her Liberal-Nationals Coalition Government are the subject of corruption allegations

 

On 3 July 2020 a NSW Legislative Council committeee, the Public Accountability Committee (PAC), began an Inquiry into the Integrity, efficacy and value for money of NSW Government grant programs.

Thus far public hearings have been held on 21 September, 16 October and 23 October 2020 with further hearing dates scheduled for 27 November and 9 December 2020.

Six of the seven local government councils in the NSW Northern Rivers region – Tweed Shire, Richmond Valley, Ballina, Kyogle, Lismore and Clarence Valley - made submissions to the Inquiry outlining both satisfaction and frustration with the current grants system. These submission can be found here.

The Inquiry’s public hearings to date have generated media interest given these followed on the heels of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) Operation Keppel public hearings which revealed the six year intimate relationship between NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Daryl Maquire both when he was a member of her government and after his forced resignation from state parliament in 2018.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 October 2020:

Senior advisers from Gladys Berejiklian's office have been called before a parliamentary inquiry to explain why the NSW Premier handed out $250 million in council grants without any signed paperwork.

The grants scheme is emerging as a major issue for Ms Berejiklian on the back of her appearance before the corruption watchdog, which is investigating her ex-lover Daryl Maguire.

Ms Berejiklian will know the direction of findings from the Independent Commission Against Corruption on December 7, when submissions from counsel assisting are sent to "relevant parties".

In an unusual move, Ms Berejiklian's former chief of staff Sarah Cruickshank and present senior policy officer Sarah Lau will give evidence to the public accountability committee on Friday.

Ms Cruickshank also gave evidence at the ICAC hearing into Mr Maguire, which is investigating whether he used his position as an MP for financial gain, including brokering property deals.

Finance Minister Damien Tudehope has confirmed that no signed approvals exist for 249 grants rubber-stamped between June 27, 2018 and March 1, 2019 from the Stronger Communities Fund, established after council amalgamations.

Ms Lau was the author of emails such as one sent on June 28, 2018 which said: "The Premier has signed off further funding for metro councils. Outlined below is what is been approved."

Ms Berejiklian directly approved more than $100 million in grants, but the only records of her approvals are in the form of emails from advisers.

Staff in Deputy Premier John Barilaro's office also emailed approvals, including one dated August 24, 2018 which said: "The DP has approved funding of $600,000 to Edward River Council."

But Mr Barilaro, who returned from four weeks' mental health leave on Wednesday, distanced himself from the fund, and said "everything was correct" in a similar fund for regional councils.

"The Stronger Communities fund is not a fund that I administer. The Stronger Country Communities fund is something that I administer under my department in regional NSW," Mr Barilaro said.

"There's an allocation made to every single local government area so it's not the beauty contest that we normally get, everybody gets a slice of the fund."…...

The government was dealt a humiliating blow late on Tuesday when its most senior minister of the upper house was suspended from Parliament in a rare move last used more than 20 years ago.

Leader of the government Don Harwin was removed from the chamber by the Usher of the Black Rod over a failure to produce documents showing signed paperwork relating to the grants.

Labor's leader in the upper house Adam Searle told Parliament the government's failure to produce signed approvals could amount to "maladministration, corruption or illegality"…...

The grants, which Labor's MP John Graham told the house were worth "two-and-a-half times the federal sports rorts" scandal, were distributed almost exclusively to councils in Coalition-held seats…...

The head of ICAC Peter Hall QC has said the methods used by the government in its administration of the council grants fund could open the door for corrupt conduct.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 October 2020:

An inquiry wants answers as to whether Premier Gladys Berejiklian declared a conflict of interest in her position on a committee that signed off on $30 million for a Wagga Wagga conservatorium following lobbying by former MP Daryl Maguire.

The NSW upper house inquiry into allegations of grant rorting on Friday heard the the Regional Cultural Fund awarded $10 million and $20 million to the Riverina Conservatorium of Music, for the construction of a new recital hall, in 2017 and 2018.

Chris Hanger from the Department of Regional NSW said the latter portion was a pre-byelection commitment from the government following the exit of Wagga MP Mr Maguire, who resigned in disgrace after a corruption inquiry heard he sought commissions from a developer.

After Mr Hanger testified that the funding was signed off by the Expenditure Review Committee, of which Ms Berejiklian is a part, Greens MLC David Shoebridge asked, "are you aware whether or not a conflict of interest was ever placed on the record by the Premier, given she was in a close personal relationship with Mr Maguire?…..

Jonathan Wheaton, executive director of regional programs at the department, told the parliamentary inquiry that, given the ERC was a subcommittee of the cabinet, he was unsure whether that level of information could be shared publicly.

The Sydney Morning Herald has sought comment from the Premier's office about whether or not she was obliged to declare a conflict of interest, and whether or not she had…..

The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 October 2020:

Gladys Berejiklian gave her lover Daryl Maguire's Wagga Wagga electorate six grants totalling $40,000 from her discretionary fund, while an inquiry heard one of her advisers shredded documents showing the Premier's approval of projects under another scheme.

In a parliamentary speech made before resigning from the Liberal Party in disgrace in 2018, Mr Maguire thanked Ms Berejiklian for providing $5134 from the special fund to the Ladysmith Tourist Railway, near the regional city, to cover the cost of replacing railway sleepers stolen by "scoundrels".

"It was a cowardly act to steal the sleepers, but I thank the Premier for helping to replace them," Mr Maguire said in June, also announcing the receipt of $5000 for the erection of a memorial to World War I Victoria Cross recipient Jack Ryan in Tumut. That money had also come from the fund.

Other grants included $10,400 for the Wagga branch of the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia for a firearm cleaning safety enclosure, which Mr Maguire announced to local media in October 2017, and $5000 towards the Talbingo Men's Shed……

ABC News, 23 October 2020:

Documents which Premier Gladys Berejiklian used to approve millions of dollars in grants to local councils were later shredded, a NSW parliamentary inquiry has heard. 

One of the Premier's senior policy advisers, Sarah Lau, told the inquiry she also deleted electronic copies of the notes.....

Nearly all the grants were awarded to local councils in Coalition-held seats.

The inquiry heard that $141.8 million of the grant funding was allocated by the Premier, with $61.3million allocated by the Deputy Premier John Barilaro and $48.9 million by the Minister for Local Government.

In addition to the ICAC and PAC inquiries, the NSW Auditor General has announced an intention to review a selections of grant programs and, the Commonwealth Fraud Prevention Centre has also announced a new project regarding grant programs, highlighting the need to better understand key fraud risks and learn about effective fraud prevention methods particularly given there are elevated integrity risks for government grants in times of crisis or emergency.

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Violent rats in police ranks

 

ABC News, 19 October 2020:

Domestic violence workers say they come in “waves” — women who, three or four at a time, step forward for help escaping a special class of abuser experts deem particularly high risk: police officers.

Often they’ll call from out of town. A woman living in a rural community in one of Australia’s eastern states recently got in touch with a domestic violence service in a busy city, hundreds of kilometres away. She told support workers her husband — a cop with specialist training and connections — had assaulted her in front of his colleagues, enlisted friends and relatives to help stop her leaving, and warned her that if she ever tried to run, he’d track her down, kill her and bury her some place her body would never be found.

She believed him.

At one point in the elaborate escape plan the service devised, the woman put her phone on a truck heading north, climbed into a car booked under a fake name, and sped off in the opposite direction. “Hers was a particularly tricky case,” one of the staff involved explained, “because of how isolated she was.”

But the abuse she experienced — and the powerlessness to leave she felt — is similar to what other women in violent relationships with police say they endure. Where do you turn when your abuser is part of the system meant to protect you?

An ABC News investigation has found police in Australia are too often failing to take action against domestic violence perpetrators in their ranks, fuelling a culture of impunity in law enforcement agencies across the country and putting victims’ safety at risk.

In public, senior police have consistently claimed they hold serving officers to higher standards and even “more accountable” for committing domestic violence. But behind closed doors, police concede they’re treating badged abusers differently to offenders in the broader community.

National data on the number of police officers charged with domestic violence — the first time such a snapshot has been compiled — shows state police forces have taken criminal action against relatively few officers. Documents obtained by the ABC under Freedom of Information reveal at least 55 police officers around Australia were charged with domestic violence-related offences in 2019, with charges ranging from breaching protection orders, assault with a weapon and reckless wounding, to strangulation, stalking, sexual assault and making threats to kill.

The rank of officers charged ranged from probationary constable to inspector and the majority were male; of 41 cases in which the officer’s gender is known, four were women. (In most cases the information obtained does not identify how many were found guilty of their charges or had convictions recorded.).

With evidence suggesting police are at least as likely to perpetrate domestic violence as the general population, experts say the figures are likely to be just “the tip of the iceberg”, and highlight how difficult it can be not only for victims to report abusers in police ranks, but to get police to take action against their own. In the year ending June 2019, for instance, there were roughly 37 domestic and family violence offenders per 10,000 persons in NSW. Yet of more than 17,000 officers employed by NSW Police, last year just 11 were charged.

“The number of police officers charged is strikingly low given the extent and severity of the [alleged] violence and what we, even as a small project, hear from the people we support who experience this kind of abuse,” said Lauren Caulfield, coordinator of the Policing Family Violence project in Melbourne.

Because police do not publicly report information about employees involved in domestic violence matters, it’s difficult to get an accurate sense of the scale of the problem, Ms Caulfield said. Information about officers who were charged, for example, doesn’t include family violence callouts, police named as respondents on protection orders, or instances where victims have tried to report abuse and been discouraged or not taken seriously.

• Family and domestic violence support services:

• 1800 Respect National Helpline: 1800 737 732

• Women’s Crisis Line (NSW): 1800 656 463

• Safe Steps Crisis Line (Vic): 1800 015 188

• Men’s Referral Service: 1300 766 491

• Mensline: 1300 789 978

• Lifeline (24-hour Crisis Line): 131 114

• Relationships Australia: 1300 364 277

Read the full article here.

ABC News, 21 October 2020:

Dozens of Victoria Police officers were charged with family violence offences in the five years to 2019 but only one was found guilty and none had convictions recorded. 

Documents obtained by ABC News under Freedom of Information show Victoria Police brought family violence charges against 82 officers between 2015 and 2019, with more than twice as many charged in 2019 than in 2015. 

The charges, against 68 male officers and 14 female officers, ranged from contravening family violence intervention orders and recklessly causing injury, to rape, false imprisonment, aggravated assault and making threats to kill. 

Of those 82 officers, 10 senior constables and senior sergeants went on to appear in court, nine of whom had their charges withdrawn and just one was found guilty, though no conviction was recorded. 

For context, 11 per cent of defendants finalised in Victoria's criminal courts in the year to June 2019 had their matters withdrawn by the prosecution, and 84 per cent of family and domestic violence defendants had their charges proven. 

Documents show some of the officers were subjected to internal disciplinary actions including performance monitoring, transferral to other duties, reduction in rank and suspension without pay, however none were sacked or dismissed......

Relatively few officers have been charged with family violence offences in recent years, a trend experts partly attribute to policing bias and conflicts of interest which can make it difficult for police to conduct impartial investigations into their colleagues. Now, the new data casts a harsh spotlight on how courts are responding to abusive police, whose service as officers may be shielding them from more severe punishment. 

"Given the severity of the violence [alleged] in these matters, the fact that no convictions have been recorded for police officers found guilty of family violence charges is staggering," said Lauren Caulfield, coordinator of the Policing Family Violence project in Melbourne. 

"These statistics really illuminate the pervasive and chilling culture of impunity that police officers operate within. Police know the system — they know how to do plea negotiations and consolidate and reduce charges, and at every step of the way concern for their role and reputation continues to protect them."......

Read the full article here.

Drought and water sustainability remain issues for the NSW Northern Rivers region in 2020

 

The Clarence Valley remains on Level 1 water restrictions. These restrictions are on top of the regions permanent water conservation measures imposed by Clarence Valley Council. 

Currently restrictions are:

• No outside watering between 9am and 4pm 
• No sprinklers or unattended hoses 
• Water efficient drip or spray systems – 15 minutes every 2 days* 
• Hand held hoses - 1 hour every 2 days* 
• No restriction on commercial/industrial use 

*If your house address is an even number you can water on even numbered days. If your house address is an odd number you can water on odd numbered days.

The aim of Level 1 water restrictions is to reduce water demand by 5-20%.

According to the NSW Dept. of Primary Industry rainfall in north-eastern New South Wales was below average for the six months up to end of September 2020 and, despite the improvements experienced since early autumn, follow-up rainfall is needed to maintain confidence of longer-term recovery.

As of 21 October roughly one-third of the Clarence Valley is drought affected or in drought and the situation is worse in other parts of the wider Norther Rivers region.

Shannon Creek Dam (a 30,000ML off-stream storage commissioned in mid-2009) is currently listed on Clarence Valley Council's website as at 89% capacity.

However roughly 9% of this current capacity appears to be what remains of local runoff from Shannon Creek's catchment and, as the dam license only allows water from the Nymboida River to fill the dam, this water must be returned to the creek as environmental flow.

The current season of dry weather has caused water levels in the Nymboida River to fall near or below levels where extraction is permitted and Clarence Valley communities are now relying solely on the water stored in Shannon Creek Dam to meet their water needs. 

Clarence Valley Council's Preliminary Drought Management Plan (September 2020) can be accessed at 

https://www.clarence.nsw.gov.au/file.asp?g=RES-EWH-40-34-15.

An audit of the funding arrangements for the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has found they threaten its "independent status"

 

ABC News, 20 October 2020:

An audit of the funding arrangements for the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has found they threaten its "independent status" because the Premier can "restrict access" to the money it receives.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian ordered a review into funding models of the ICAC along with other key agencies including the Electoral Commission, the Ombudsman and the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission.

The Auditor-General Margaret Crawford has handed down her findings, a week after Ms Berejiklian gave evidence to the ICAC which is investigating her former boyfriend and MP Daryl Maguire.

"The current approach to determining annual funding for the integrity agencies presents threats to their independent status," the report concluded.

"The report argues these risks are not mitigated sufficiently under the current financial arrangements."

The Auditor-General also found that the funding was not "transparent" and "there are no mechanisms for the agencies to question or challenge decisions made".

The ICAC, along with the other agencies, receives its revenue through the annual budget process.

But the Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) and the NSW Treasury have restricted its funding through "efficiency dividends" and budget-saving measures.

The report says the DPC and NSW Treasury have interpreted legislation so that the full funding approved by Parliament doesn't have to be provided.

"This interpretation leads to the view that a Premier can restrict access to appropriation funding that was approved by Parliament," the Auditor-General found.

The agencies can ask the DPC for additional money to conduct its investigations and the ICAC has made requests on several occasions, mostly to cover large scale public hearings.

The Auditor-General has raised concerns with this model, noting that it’s "the only mechanism available" and "it could be seeking additional funding to investigate a senior government official".

The report found there were no criteria or guidelines for seeking extra funding, so "very little transparency".

"The process available to ICAC to request additional funding outside the annual budget creates further risks to its independence," the Auditor-General said.

"Some of these proposals were rejected without reasons being provided."....