Australia's Morrison Government appears to be living proof of that old adage, birds of a feather do flock together

IMAGE: Woodcut illustration of Vultures — Vector by ronjoe

Anyone who has been delving into Scott Morrison & Angus Taylor’s 98 page AUSTRALIA’S LONG-TERM EMISSIONS REDUCTION PLAN: Modelling and Analysis (Dept. of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources: DISER) document and, attempting to pin down where within its content examples of genuine modelling relying on science, fact-based assumptions and realistic projections, might have seen the name McKinsey & Company crop up on no less than 76 occasions.

That name rang a bell. Here is a brief background…….

The New York Times, 28 October 2021, p.6:

….a revolt has been brewing inside the world's most influential consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, over its support of the planet's biggest polluters.

More than 1,100 employees and counting have signed an open letter to the firm's top partners, urging them to disclose how much carbon their clients spew into the atmosphere. "The climate crisis is the defining issue of our generation," wrote the letter's authors, nearly a dozen McKinsey consultants. "Our positive impact in other realms will mean nothing if we do not act as our clients alter the earth irrevocably."

Several of the authors have resigned since the letter, which has never before been reported, came out last spring -- with one sending out a widely shared email that cited McKinsey's continued work with fossil fuel companies as a primary reason for his departure…..[my yellow highlighting]

The Hill, 27 October 2021:

... Since then, some of the letter's authors, who are consultants at McKinsey, have resigned from the company which is considered the world's most influential consulting firm, the Times reported.

Lawsuits, internal documents and interviews with four ex-McKinsey employees showed that McKinsey has advised at least 43 of the world's top 100 polluters in the past 50 years, per the Times.

The investigation by the Times found that those clients alone, excluding some of McKinsey's other clients who also contribute to pollution, accounted for over one-third of global carbon emissions in 2018.

At least one consultant who resigned specifically cited McKinsey's work with fossil fuel companies as his main reason for leaving. The Environmental Protection Agency has noted that "burning fossil fuels changes the climate more than any other human activity."

“Walking away from these sectors might appease absolutist critics,” D.J. Carella, a spokesman for McKinsey, said to the Times, adding that it "would do nothing to solve the climate challenge."…. [my yellow highlighting]

The New York Times, 6 November 2021:

A House committee has requested documents related to the firm's advice to drug makers and potential conflicts of interest with the F.D.A.

In a new assault on the global consulting giant McKinsey & Company, Congress on Friday started an investigation into the firm's role in the opioid crisis, sending a letter demanding records related to its "business practices, conflicts of interest and management standards."

The 12-page letter, which was sent by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, asked for names of McKinsey clients in the health care industry as well as documents connected to its work with opioid manufacturers, distributors and retailers. The committee is also looking at how McKinsey's consulting for drugmakers may conflict with work it has done for the Food and Drug Administration.

By advising opioid makers and "the federal agency regulating their conduct," McKinsey "may have had a significant negative impact on Americans' health," the committee said.

The letter was signed by the committee's chairwoman, Representative Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, who requested that McKinsey produce the documents by Nov. 19. McKinsey has a policy of not identifying its clients or the advice it gives.

A spokesman for the firm on Friday said McKinsey had "received the committee's letter and will engage directly with the committee regarding their requests."

This year, McKinsey agreed to pay all 50 states more than $600 million to settle investigations into how it had helped "turbocharge" opioid sales, focusing mostly on its work with Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. McKinsey did not admit any wrongdoing.

The request on Friday follows a narrower one on Aug. 23, from a bipartisan group of six U.S. senators seeking records from the F.D.A. on its work with McKinsey at the same time that it was regulating opioid manufacturers, calling that relationship "a potential conflict of interest." The senators asked for more information about the firm's work with the F.D.A. division that approved certain classes of drugs, including prescription opioids.

OxyContin and similar painkillers can be addictive and prone to abuse. From 1999 to 2019, nearly 500,000 people in the United States died of opioid overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…..  [my yellow highlighting]

Reuters, 18 August 2021:

… McKinsey earlier this year reached agreements with state attorneys general to pay $641 million to resolve claims it helped drug manufacturers, including OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, to design marketing plans and boost sales of painkillers.

Lawsuits by cities, counties and others followed, and Breyer now oversees at least 51 cases…. [my yellow highlighting]

The New York Times, 3 December 2019 - updated 24 February 2021:

Just days after he took office in 2017, President Trump set out to make good on his campaign pledge to halt illegal immigration. In a pair of executive orders, he ordered “all legally available resources” to be shifted to border detention facilities, and called for hiring 10,000 new immigration officers.

The logistical challenges were daunting, but as luck would have it, Immigration and Customs Enforcement already had a partner on its payroll: McKinsey & Company, an international consulting firm brought on under the Obama administration to help engineer an “organizational transformation” in the ICE division charged with deporting migrants who are in the United States unlawfully.

ICE quickly redirected McKinsey toward helping the agency figure out how to execute the White House’s clampdown on illegal immigration.

But the money-saving recommendations the consultants came up with made some career ICE workers uncomfortable. They proposed cuts in spending on food for migrants, as well as on medical care and supervision of detainees, according to interviews with people who worked on the project for both ICE and McKinsey and 1,500 pages of documents obtained from the agency after ProPublica filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act…. [my yellow highlighting]

The New York Times, 9 January 2019:

A judge in Virginia reopened a more than two-year-old case on Wednesday to consider accusations that the powerful consultancy McKinsey & Company had defrauded his court while advising a bankrupt coal company…..

McKinsey already faces similar claims of misconduct from Mr. Alix in the bankruptcy of another energy company, Westmoreland Coal, in Texas…. [my yellow highlighting]

Financial Times, 20 February 2019:

McKinsey has agreed to a $15m settlement with the US Department of Justice to resolve claims that the influential consulting firm failed to properly disclose conflicts of interest in bankruptcy cases over two decades.

The settlement on Tuesday is among the largest made by a bankruptcy professional accused of failing to comply with disclosure rules, according to the justice department, and adds to the mounting scrutiny of the professional services giant.... [my yellow highlighting]

Consulting.us, 4 December 2020:

The USTP [US Trustee Program] started the mediation with McKinsey in 2019 after noting that the consulting firm withheld “critical details” about connections to parties with a potential economic interest in the $1.4 billion Westmoreland bankruptcy case.

Westmoreland Coal emerged from Chapter 11 in June 2019. McKinsey, however, will forgo its fees for the advisory work performed, which the watchdog estimates at millions of dollars…. [my yellow highlighting]

"There is no country in the world which does climate change delay quite like Australia" and Prime Minister 'Scotty From Marketing' Morrison will double down on his refusal to act as the federal election draws closer

 

The Guardian, 13 November 2021:

The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the emissions reduction minister,  Angus Taylor. Photograph: Darren England/AAP

In April this year, Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, said that “we will not achieve net zero in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities”. This explains why he turned to the salt-of-the-Earth hard-workin’ rural folk at McKinsey – one of the biggest billion-dollar multinational consulting agencies on the planet – to produce the Australian government’s long-awaited modelling explaining the pathway to “net zero by 2050”.

In some parallel universe, the task may have gone to Australia’s chief science agency, the CSIRO (a former employer of mine). But it was revealed at Senate estimates a few weeks back that despite the CSIRO applying for the tender, the government rejected them and paid McKinsey $6m to model the changes Australian society must go through to decarbonise within 30 years. This choice makes sense in the context of recent leaks to the New York Times that revealed McKinsey has advised 43 of the 100 biggest corporate polluters, including “BP, Exxon Mobil, Gazprom and Saudi Aramco”. 1,100 of its employees signed an open letter pleading the consultancy reveal the carbon impacts of its clients.

We’ll never know exactly what the Australian government asked of the agency, but we finally know what got spat out the other end: an extremely weird document blatantly designed to protect the interests of Australia’s fossil fuel industries while creating the illusion of ambitious climate action. It was delayed until the final Friday of Cop26 to avoid embarrassment during the global deliberations, so we knew it’d be bad. But it’s worse than expected……

.... of the various pathways modelled in this document, Australia’s government picked the one that doesn’t even reach net zero by 2050. Their preferred scenario, “The Plan”, hits 2050 with a whopping 94 megatonnes of emissions remaining, or 215 if you exclude questionable offsets. They reached the point of 85% reduction in emissions, and very simply gave up. This ignored 15% is breezily labelled “further technology breakthroughs” in the document. It’s both amusingly honest and stunningly irresponsible.

As RenewEconomy’s Michael Mazengarb pointed out on Twitter, they also modelled a scenario in which emissions reductions go all the way to zero, albeit also reliant on offsets. That has a near-zero impact on economic growth, but it’s explicitly dismissed because this scenario also results in worse outcomes for the coal and gas mining industries.

Coal and gas sent overseas is responsible for roughly three times Australia’s annual domestic emissions. If the 72 coal projects and 44 oil and gas projects in Australia are realised, this will become six times Australia’s domestic emissions. They won’t all be realised, but you get an idea of their wide-eyed fantasies of growth. It’s this massive engine of planetary warming that the net zero plan ring-fences. Snarling at threats to fossil fuel companies feels like the only imperative this document takes seriously.

There is a reserved concession to the possibility that the coal export industry may shrink, with one graphic showing future coal exports dropping by 50%, by 2050. But in the same chart, gas exports increase by 13%. Both are laughable, considering the International Energy Agency’s “net zero by 2050” global scenario sees the total global consumption of both coal and gas drop to near-zero by 2050.

Part of why this discrepancy exists is that the IEA’s net zero scenario is limiting warming to 1.5C, but the government is targeting 2C, which allows for worse emissions into the future at the cost of more severe and catastrophic impacts of warming, particularly in the Global South. In fact 1.5C is not mentioned a single time in the hundreds of pages of the report. Like the 85%, it just breezily gives up part-way there.

Fundamentally, what McKinsey has laid out for us is that if you take the laziest, slowest and most bad-faith approach to climate action, it’s very cheap and not immediately disruptive. Take credit for technological advancements that occur in other countries, continue extracting and emitting in the interim, and slap it all with a counterfeit climate action label to avoid scrutiny. Being a tech free rider while worsening the problem you claim to be solving is a wonderfully tempting climate philosophy.

Of course, McKinsey’s modelling buries an important caveat in the guts of the PDF: the physical consequences of climate change are not included in their modelling. That means they count the benefits of falling back to slower action and worse emissions, and ignore the consequences.

In reality, we cannot ignore the consequences. Climate change is a physical problem in which the accumulation of greenhouse gases heats our habitat and hurts us, very badly. A tower of greasy tricks deployed to protect the fossil fuel industry changes nothing about the laws of atmospheric physics, and the pain we experience when governments don’t act fast enough…..

Truly, though, there is no country in the world that does climate delay quite like Australia. The hammy nationalism, the role of fantasy and trickery in its climate and energy rhetoric, and the total absence of shame in defending its role as a key cause of significant physical damage to Earth. It’s only going to escalate as the next federal election inches closer. Better strap in: it’s going to get even weirder. [my yellow highlighting]

Read the full article here.

Equivalent of 5 people a day are falling ill with COVID-19 in Northern NSW since NSW Premier Perrottet lifted public health order restrictions on travel into the region

By now North Coast Voices readers would be aware that 5 of the 7 local government areas in Northern NSW had been effectively COVID-19 free until after 13 September 2021 when the SARS-CoV-2 Delta Variant entered the region from Greater Sydney and community transmission began.

Up until then these 5 LGAs having only had overseas travellers and other visitors test positive to the virus before they left the area without infecting local residents. 

The 6^th and 7^th LGAs were the outliers – one recording two presumed locally acquired COVID-19 cases on the same day in July 2021 which did not lead to local infection spread and, the other recording three separate presumed locally acquired cases between March 2020 and June 2021 – again not leading to infection spread.  

With those exceptions, from 25 January 2020 up to that Monday morning in September 2021, the region had experienced no community transmission of the COVID-19 virus within a population of est. 307,047 men, women and children.

The global pandemic was seemingly passing by without calling in. Until Morrison and Berejiklian insisted that rural and regional communities should be forced to 'live with COVID' just as their metropolitan cousins did.

As of 8pm on Friday 12 November 2021 according to NSW Health there have been 171 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Northern NSW Local Health District in the 60 days since the Delta Variant Outbreak reached the region.  At least 170 of these confirmed cases were the result of community infection now within the region.

A total of 58 of these confirmed COVID-19 infections (33.91 per cent of all Northern NSW cases since 13 September 2021) have been recorded in the first 12 days since NSW Premier & Liberal MP for Epping Dominic Perrottet opened up Northern NSW to Greater Sydney, interstate & overseas travellers.

That figure is roughly equivalent to 5 people a day falling ill with COVID-19 since 1 November 2021.

THE CONFIRMED LOCALLY ACQUIRED COVID-19 CASE LOCATION BREAKDOWN IN NORTHEN NSW BETWEEN 13 SEPTEMBER & 12 NOVEMBER 2021 APPEARS TO BE:

Tweed Shire - 7 cases + 2 infections contracted elsewhere in NSW

Byron Bay - 7 cases + 2 confirmed infections within the LGA not entered into NNSWLHD records as these individuals were no longer in the region.

Ballina - 14 cases

Kyogle - 21 cases

Richmond Valley - 25 cases + 1 case confirmed on 10 Nov 2021 where infection was contracted overseas

Lismore City - 40 cases

Clarence Valley - 57 cases.

Quote of the Week

 

' Neil Mitchell: "Have you ever told a lie in public life?"

Scott Morrison: "I don't believe I have, no. No." '

[sound of Prime Minister's laughter]

[Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in a 3WA radio interview with Neil Mitchell on 12 November 2021]

Cartoons of the Week

 

Cathy Wilcox

David Pope

David Rowe

Tweet of the Week

Today a dozen dancing dinosaurs descended on the Coffs Harbour office of @PatConaghanMP warning him of the risk of extinction for #FossilFools 🦖 It ended with 2 good dinosaurs being arrested for peacefully demanding action on the #ClimateCrisis. Enjoy the highlights video 👀 pic.twitter.com/aNx5dHmmK2

— Coffs Coast Climate Action (@CoffsCoastCAG) November 5, 2021

Well done, Clarence Coast Climate Action! 

So what do you know about the people behind management of the Morrison Government's punitive Cashless Debit Card? Perhaps it's time to meet Indue Limited's board of directors & their industry partners

 

IMAGE: news.com.au, 30.01.2019

Just as night follows day, if Scott John Morrison and the Liberal-Nationals Coalition win the federal government election, by the last quarter of 2022 he will announce all government cash transfers to citizens will in future come via the highly restrictive and punitive cashless debit card scheme.

So who has been milking the cash cow as they constructed the mechanism for Morrison's dream of a frightened, deprived and suppressed working class he could strut before?

Well that an easy question to answer - just hit this link 

https://www2.indue.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/J0982-Indue-Annual-Report-2021_WEB.pdf  and scroll down to pages 14-15 to see their six self-satisfied faces along with a brief bio.

A bit of background......

Sometime in early 2016 the Australian Government through its agency the Dept. of Social Services entered into a contract with Indue Limited, currently valued at $70,340,628.60 (original value: $7,859,509). This contract period now extends from 26-Feb-2016 to 31-Dec-2022.

Indue Limited documents clearly state that its investors-shareholders are “the owners of the company” and that those who contract the company’s services are its “clients” or “customers”.

In relation to the cashless debit card scheme it administers, it appears that the relatively large class of mandatory users of this card during this extended trial period & the somewhat smaller number of voluntary users are simply end product consumers.

How Indue Limited sees itself:……..

Indue Limited ABN 97 087 822 464 (“Indue”) is a bank and Authorised Deposit-Taking Institution (“ADI”) that is regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority. Indue is owned by financial institutions, each of which is also an ADI. Indue provides transaction processing and settlement services to credit unions, building societies, church funds, mortgage originators, commercial clients and the Australian government. Many clients would be too small individually to be able to provide a competitive alternative financial services offering without Indue.

Indue has over 40 years’ experience in the payments industry and as a financial product issuer since 1992. Indue is a principal member of Visa, MasterCard and eftpos, and holds an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL). It is also a reporting entity pursuant to the Anti-Money Laundering (AML)/Counter-Terrorism Financing (CTF) legislation. [Submission to the Australian Treasury. 7 September 2018, excerpt]

Indue Limited has 7 major partners which includes it being a principal member of Visa licensed to issue all Visa card products including credit, debit, prepaid, commercial and premium cards; ia member of eftpos and licensed to issue eftpos card products. These cards may be used in ATMs and eftpos terminals throughout the domestic Australian eftpos network; and, ia member of BPAY allowing us to offer both payer and biller facilities to clients.

2019-20

Indue’s vision is to be the leading partner of payment solutions to our customers. Indue’s mission is to drive competitive advantage for our customers by helping people pay….

Wholly owned Group

The Company does not have significant restrictions on its ability to access or use its assets and settle its liabilities other than those resulting from the supervisory frameworks within which Authorised Deposit-taking Institutions operate.

Transactions with related parties are conducted on an arm’s length basis….

Against this backdrop [global COVID-19 pandemic] Indue delivered a before tax profit of $3.127 million, a solid result given the prevailing headwinds…..

Events Subsequent to Balance Date

At the date of approving these financial statements, the Directors are of the view the effects of COVID-19 do not change the significant estimates, judgements and assumptions in the preparation of the financial statement…..

Likely Developments

Information on likely developments in the operations of the Company and the expected results of operations have not been included in this annual financial report because the Directors believe it would be likely to result in unreasonable prejudice to the Company. [NOTE: Likely relying on s299A(3) of the Corporations Act 2001 in order to conceal expected future progression of the federal government cashless debit card scheme]

[Indue Limited, Annual Report 2019-2020]

2020-21

It is pleasing to report a lift in profit, despite the ongoing influence of the COVID-19 pandemic. ….

A more positive outlook has contributed to our improved performance, with a Profit Before Tax (PBT) result of $3.6 million, an increase of 24% over the previous year….

An operating profit after tax of $2.583 million (2020: $2.091 million) was achieved this year….

Indue’s capital position remains sound. Our Tier 1 ratio rose to 15.5% at the end of FY21, an increase of 35 basis points on last year.

In relation to dividends, we have a good record of rewarding owners for providing investment capital. With an improved economic outlook and stronger financial performance, we are pleased to be able to declare a fully franked dividend of $7.50 per share for FY22….

After nearly 50 years, our partnership with Westpac is coming to an end in 2022. We are moving to become a Tier 1 provider for Direct Entry services, which is well-aligned to our strategy. We look forward to continuing to support our clients in this important payment channel.

Our core focus continues to be delivering sustainable value for our clients and shareholders….

We will continue to support our clients, so they can focus on growing their businesses – while we navigate the changed world of payments on their behalf….

The constitution of the Company provides for two Groups of Directors, both elected in accordance with the constitution. Group One Directors, referred to as ‘Industry Directors’, must be officers, employees or associates of a member. Group Two Directors, referred to as ‘Independent Directors’ must not be officers, employees or associates of a member. Industry Directors are not remunerated by the Company. Independent Directors are remunerated by the Company, with shareholders determining the maximum annual aggregate amount of remuneration that may be provided to them ….

The following persons were Directors of Indue Ltd during the financial year:

Chair – Non executive [Independent]

F[rank] Gullone (appointed 28 August 2020)

R Burns (resigned 27 November 2020)

Non executive Directors [Independent]

S Collier (resigned 27 November 2020)

M[ichael Francis] Currie

P[eter Robert] Townsend

P[eter Hooper] Wright

A[nthony] De Fazio

S[usan] Rix (appointed 8 January 2021) [my yellow highlighting]

A Cheadle (appointed 8 January 2021, resigned 27 May 2021)....

The Company’s Authorised Share Capital is $17.265 million. All issued shares [total of 126,182] are fully paid ….

In August 2021 Indue entered into a share buyback arrangement for a small number of issued shares….

Total Contributed Equity, Reserves, Retained Earnings, Balance at 30 June 2021 = $58,650,000 ” …..

Government grants

Government grants, including JobKeeper, are recognised when there is a reasonable assurance that the Company will comply with the conditions attached to the grant, and the grant will be received.

The Company became eligible for JobKeeper in June 2020 after meeting the specific obligations, and remained eligible until September 2020. All expected grant payments were received by October 2020…...

[Indue Limited, Annual Report 2020-2021, excerpts]

The Guardian, 4 November 2021:

*The company contracted by the federal government to run the controversial cashless debit card claimed $2m in jobkeeper payments before increasing its revenues during the pandemic.

Payments firm Indue, which was handed a $26m, two-year extension to its contract to keep running the scheme late last year, received about $2.1m in jobkeeper wage subsidies in total. That comprised $632,700 in June 2020 and $1.49m between July and September 2020, according to its annual report.

The company’s revenue increased in 2019-20 and 2020-21, leading to profit of $2.1m and $2.5m, the report shows.

Under the jobkeeper program, businesses were required to estimate whether their turnover would decrease by 30-50% when compared to the previous year, depending on their size. There is no suggestion Indue did not qualify for the payments under the rules of the scheme.

Controversially, the government elected not to include a clawback provision to recoup money from those companies that outperformed expectations…..

https://www.scribd.com/document/538531113/INDUE-LIMITED-Current-Historical-Company-Extract