In a landmark Administrative Review Tribunal decision, public servants have been warned their secrecy culture is unlawful and must end. Rex Patrick reports.

The Albanese Government forked out tens of thousands of taxpayer’s dollars in legal fees to Clayton Utz to resist releasing a Ministerial brief on the prospective extinction of the Maugean Skate. That’s public money not well spent.

And the government’s resistance has delayed the release of the brief by more than a year, which will make the information less valuable from a public oversight perspective. That’s not good news for the Skates; and it’s another all too familiar example of political and bureaucratic obstruction of government transparency.

But this decision is very significant. It delivered a massive win for future transparency, sternly warning public servants that

the secrecy culture inside government is unlawful and that public service leaders and managers are responsible for stopping it.

Back in November 2023 I made an FOI request to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) for briefings they had provided Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek in relation to reconsideration of a decision concerning marine farming in Macquarie Harbour, Tasmania.

A brief was identified by Brendan Linton-Smith, an Acting Branch Head in DCCEEW, but he refused access to the entirety of the brief.

I took the matter to the Information Commissioner and asked her not to review the decision, but to allow me to take the matter straight to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (as it was then called). I did not have time for the FOI to sit with the Information Commissioner for several years while a fish species was potentially going extinct.

The Information Commissioner agreed to this, and when the matter was moved to the AAT, the Department assigned Ms Rachel Short, a permanent branch head in DCCEEW, to defend the Department’s secrecy claims.

She drew the short straw and ended up being slammed by the Tribunal.

Saving Tasmania’s Maugean Skate – a victim of extinction politics

Ms Short gave written evidence and was cross-examined by me on the day of the hearing. She protested the brief’s release by suggesting to the Tribunal that “… it was important that those preparing briefs containing opinion and advice based on an analysis of a preliminary nature do so in the knowledge that the brief will remain confidential to the intended recipients …”

(Not so) frank and fearless

Unfortunately for Ms Short, the Tribunal member was Nicholas Manetta, Doctor of Philosophy in Administrative Law (Cambridge), and a part-time lecturer in Administrative Law at the University of South Australia. He wasn’t going to have any of Ms Short’s codswallop.

He started off early in his judgement:

“Ms Short’s contention does not address what I have assumed to be a clearly uncontroversial fact; namely, that, generally speaking, federal public servants must have become used to their documents being made available under the FOI Act. The FOI Act was passed in 1982, more than forty years ago. I do not accept the general premise of Ms Short’s contention; namely, that public servants in the respondent’s Department expect today to work in an environment of confidentiality in relation to their preliminary advice and reports to the Minister.”

He then added:

“To the contrary, I believe I should proceed on the basis that public servants are aware, at least in a general way, that the FOI Act may require disclosure of departmental work, whether of a preliminary nature or otherwise.”

But Ms Short held firm in her belief this it is reasonable to suppose that public servants might restrict the content of their noting briefs because of a fear of successful FOI Act requests.

Dr Manetta, relying in part on my submissions, articulated the situation.

“Mr Patrick submitted that the contention needs to be evaluated carefully against the background of the responsibilities that APS managers and employees have under the Public Service Act 1999 (Cth). Section 10 of the Public Service Act specifies ‘APS values’. Section 10(5) of the Public Service Act provides that the APS is ‘apolitical and provides the Government with advice that is frank, honest, timely and based on the best available evidence.

“Section 13 of the Public Service Act then requires public servants to act honestly, with integrity, with care and diligence, and in a manner that supports APS values. These values include the value to which I have just made specific reference. An employee must also act in accordance with any direction given by a manager: see section 13(5) of the Public Service Act.”

Precedent set

Having spelt out how public servants must conduct themselves, Dr Manetta turned his mind to the responsibilities of senior public servants:

“An agency head is, furthermore, required to uphold and promote APS values: see section 12 of the Public Service Act. I think this latter requirement includes a responsibility to promote a culture of upholding APS values within an agency.”

He then laid down the law (literally):

“If Ms Short’s analysis were correct, it would mean that public servants in her branch could well choose to operate in a way that is contrary to APS values (and, therefore, in breach of their obligations under the Public Service Act) merely because my decision might require disclosure of their preliminary work on this occasion. If there is a risk of the type identified by Ms Short, there appears to be a relatively straightforward way to address it; namely, by reinforcement of APS values within her agency (whether by formal direction or otherwise).”

Rex Patrick’s Federal Court win a victory for transparency and a loss for government secrecy

Dereliction of duty

Ms Short also suggested that if the Tribunal allowed access to the brief, the Department would be less likely to engage in preliminary analysis and provide advice to the Minister or may prefer to provide advice orally rather than in writing.

Dr Manetta has killed that idea off in his decision, further pointing out the clear legal duties of public servants.

“One APS value is, as I have said, the provision of timely, honest, careful and diligent advice to the Minister. That advice will be provided in the manner expected by the Minister and in accordance with proper recordkeeping obligations within the Department.

“Those tasked with the management of the public service and liaising with the Minister’s office can be expected, in my opinion, to ensure that the Minister remains properly informed, and informed in writing where it is appropriate to do so. This is a fundamental aspect of public administration.

“I do not accept the submission that acceding to the FOI request in this case could reasonably be expected to result in a dereliction in the performance of this core task in the ways mentioned by Ms Short.”

Dr Manetta then went on to declare that almost all the briefs were to be released. The Department has the option to appeal the decision to the Federal Court. I suspect that they won’t go there because they won’t want an even higher authority upholding Dr Manetta’s decision and reasoning.

The brief will be made public sometime in the next three weeks.

The full ART decision and the reasons can be found here.

Transparency leadership

Dr Manetta’s decision is a strong one that FOI officers will now have to take regard of. If they dare advance a “chilling effect” excuse in their decisions, they can expect to have those decisions overturned by reference to Dr Manetta’s decision, which is landmark in nature.

The only thing missing in the Manetta’s decision was a reference to the need for transparency culture to be driven from the very top; that is by ministers and the prime minister. That’s been a conspicuous failure of the Albanese Government who went to the last election promising transparency and failed to deliver it.

Indeed, in respect of FOI they have turned out to be as bad if not worse than their political predecessors.

This is something to consider as we approach the polling booths sometime before May 17, although no one should expect, based on past performance, that Dutton and his posse of ministers would do any better on the transparency front.

FOI reform will have to be pushed by the crossbench and independents, perhaps from the vantage point of the parliamentary balance of power, and buttressed by a growing pile of ART and Federal Court decisions that provide the legal scaffolding for improved FOI transparency.

The fish that could bring Snowy Hydro to a permanent stop

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Is the Productivity Commission in breach of international law by its support for Israel lobby Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce? Michael West reports.

Chair of Australia’s Productivity Commission, Danielle Wood, has declined to respond to questions about her agency’s support for Israel lobby group Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce (AICC).

According to lawyers contacted by MWM, Ms Wood and the PC may be in breach of the Commission’s own policy guidelines which state “In the performance of its functions, the Commission must have regard to the need … for Australia to meeting its international obligations and commitments”.

Ms Wood, a respected Australian economist, is due to present before the AICC on February 13, 2025.

AICC flyer featuring Danielle Wood

As reported by MWM last month, the AICC, has been funded by companies such as Elbit Systems whose weapons have been used in human rights abuses in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

Further, the investigation found that AICC associate IACC had been involved in funding illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Investigation: elite Australian big business group monetises Israeli war machine

Legal opinion obtained by MWM questioned whether Mr Wood’s association with the AICC would “be publicly seen as supporting and or tacitly endorsing or otherwise ignoring the many egregious alleged violations of international law and Australia’s international legal obligations as well as the PC’s own legislative/statutory policy guidelines (namely subsection 8(1)(j) of the PC Act), and thus showing public support for, promoting and thereby enriching (via non-member ticket sales/ promoting membership purchases, and general notoriety as a powerful business lobby) for the AICC”.

Money raised by the AICC because of the Wood presentation “may well end up funding violations of international law whether directly or indirectly”.

The opinion cites Israeli companies involved in the “perpetration of war crimes, atrocities and what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has declared to be a “plausible” genocide in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories such as Elbit Systems.

“The Australian government has a positive legal duty to prevent and punish genocide, including investigating and prosecuting persons suspected of being involved in genocide and atrocity crimes at both international law (the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute)) and at domestic law, namely Division 268 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code (as contained in the Schedule to the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth)).”

According to the advice Ms Wood’s “mandatory statutory responsibilities as provided by section 8(1)(j) of the PC Act, as Chair of a statutory body appointed by the Governor-General”, the chair and directors are agents and representatives of the Australian Government.

“Australia has numerous binding obligations at international including with regards to international human rights law, various UN treaties and conventions it has ratified (including by enshrining those obligations in Australian domestic law).

Where it can be proved that the AICC (and its associated entity, the IACC) are involved in various violations of international law in the OPT, arguably, by appearing at the upcoming AICC event on February 13, 2025, Ms Wood would be publicly seen as supporting and or tacitly endorsing or otherwise ignoring the many egregious alleged violations of international law and Australia’s international legal obligations as well as her own legislative/statutory policy guidelines (namely subsection 8(1)(j) of the PC Act), and thus showing public support for, promoting and thereby enriching (via non-member ticket sales/ promoting membership purchases, and general notoriety as a powerful business lobby) for the AICC.

MWM twice approached the PC for comment for this story but there was no response.

Elbit: how Australia helped finance the IDF killing of Zomi Frankcom and the slaughter in Gaza

This post was originally published on Michael West.

We are being sued for defamation in the Federal Court of Australia. This legal action poses an existential threat to MWM and, therefore, a threat to the livelihoods of the journalists and producers, which many of you have supported over the years.

The claim is weak and vexatious, but we have been forced to defend it because the claimant and his lawyers from MV Law have refused to respond to any of our offers to address their concerns. Instead, they served us personally at home with the claim.

We will publish the legal correspondence, including the claim, in this story in order to be fully transparent in raising money and for readers to make an informed decision as to whether it is worth supporting our defence.

In short, the man making the claim is Geoff Wade who is a researcher in the Parliamentary Library in Canberra. Wade has been a prolific political campaigner on social media, warning about the threat from China and groups and individuals in Australia allegedly aligned with the Chinese Communist Party who are seemingly acting in the interests of a foreign government.

He has threatened us before, along with others including John Menadue of Pearls and Irritations, independent journalist Marcus Reubenstein, and UTS professor James Laurenceson.

Following this claim against five publishers (two of them on Twitter), Geoff Wade was countersued for defamation by Marcus Reubenstein, who added the Commonwealth as a defendant (Department of Parliamentary Services) for vicarious liability as Wade had been tweeting as part of his political campaign during work hours at Parliament House, which is against the DPS Code of Conduct.

The settlement in that matter is confidential, but it emerged in Senate Estimates that the government insurer, Comcover, picked up costs. Costs were therefore borne by the public.

We received a Concerns Notice in this latest matter from Geoff Wade and his solicitors from MV Law: Courtney Noble and Alisa Taylor:

As soon as possible, after receiving this notice, we did what we always do, addressed the concerns of the complainant.

After making two phone calls to Wade’s solicitors MV Law to discuss the concerns of Geoff Wade (they did not return our calls), we promptly responded by email to their Concerns Notice, making an offer to correct any errors in the story (we say there are none) and inviting him to respond:

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Neither Wade nor his solicitors responded. We were later served at home by a process server and required to attend Court.

The Judge, Justice Owens, strongly recommended that we seek legal representation (for the company) and has ordered that we file a defence On February 20. The orders a laid out here:

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So it is that we are already racking up costs while trying to do the journalism, make payroll and deal with lawyers to defend the matter, a matter we had done everything to avoid against a claim which we will contend is full of falsehoods.

We have sought on five occasions (two phone calls and 3 emails) to address the concerns of Geoff Wade and his lawyers, even taking down the central story complained of – something we have never done. This is our initial response to MV Law:

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Having been forced to defend the Wade claim, there is no choice, we are launching a crowdfunding campaign to pay for the legal costs, and also another pitch to the public to support the journalism during this difficult time 

We will publish our defence in due course when it has been completed and attend mediation as instructed by the Judge.

We receive an average of four legal threats a year, mostly defamation. The company has not made one payout or settlement in almost ten years. We deal with complaints promptly and address the grievances of those who complain.

Here is Geoff Wade’s statement of claim:

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We will also publish our defence when that is filed and keep readers and supporters up to speed with events as they occur. Geoff Wade’s claim includes a claim for significant harm as he asserts that he was unable to secure academic posts at places like Princeton University due to our coverage.

We say we have not defamed him, and the story is in the public interest given Wade’s public activities on social media, with more than 60,000 posts on social media, which included doxing of people he suspected were linked to the Chinese Communist Party.

The problem with litigation is not only that it is costly but also that there is high risk of a negative outcome due to legal technical things. So, even if we are convinced that we have published the truth, and have no choice but to defend ourselves via the court process, there is a risk of adverse judgement and costs.

If you can afford to support independent journalism, please contribute here. Conservatively, we are seeking $40,000 in the Chuffed crowdfunding exercise. We opted for Chuffed because it is an Australian company and has no record of freezing fundraisings as Gofundme did in the case of David McBride.

It will be our ten year anniversary in July and it is only with the support of subscribers that we have managed to get this far. Thank you.

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Senator Jacqui Lambie will today introduce bills to cap salaries for senior bureaucrats and university Vice Chancellors at $430,000, just below what Treasurer Jim Chalmers takes home. Andrew Gardiner reports.

If there’s one topic guaranteed to generate suburban ire during tough times, it has to be: “fat cats getting cushy, well-paid jobs to do sweet FA”. The latest lightning rod for this popular vexation is none other than Bill Shorten, who, come March, will be earning over a quarter of a million dollars more as Vice Chancellor at the University of Canberra (UC) than he would have as Prime Minister, the job he missed out on at the “unlosable election” of 2019.

In fairness to the retiring NDIS minister, Shorten actually asked for less money than the current UC Vice Chancellor; his $860,000 per year is well below the seven-figure average at that level of academia. For that sum, he will be (among other things) “a networker and campaigner (who) promotes the University and develops productive and beneficial relationships with government, industry and community.”

Bill Shorten has weighed into the Uni Vice Chancellor’s salary debate using the ‘Goldilocks principle’. $1M+ is too much, Jacqui Lambie’s $430K cap is too little, but $850K is just right. He thinks the wage he’s got is “excellent”, but offers little justification for it 🤷‍♂️#auspol pic.twitter.com/Cos86I1mnK

— Rex Patrick (@MrRexPatrick) February 3, 2025

That’s the kind of gig that generates anger at kitchen tables, and who better to speak for the suburbs than Senator Jacqui Lambie? “Vice Chancellors are paid by the Federal Government, but the spend is overseen by the states – they don’t care because it’s not their money!”

“To add insult to injury, these huge salaries are being paid at the top of an industry that’s engaged in massive wage theft from poorly paid staff who actually teach students,” she added.

“We need a big stick, a federal law to significantly cut and cap the salaries of vice-chancellors, rather than a powerless advisory body (with no legislation or enforcement) which the government wants.”

Academics strike as wage theft spreads, uni executive salaries soar

Today in Parliament, Senator Lambie will introduce two bills aimed not just at academic salaries but at what she calls “the obscene entitlement” at the top of our federal bureaucracy. “I’m still fuming that someone like Catherine Campbell got a nearly million-dollar gig after she presided over Robodebt,” Lambie told MWM.

Two amendment bills

The Remuneration Tribunal Amendment Bill (aimed at senior public servants) and the Tertiary Education Legislation Amendment (for the academics) are right up Lambie’s alley, addressing hot-button issues for struggling families and giving her the chance to vent – as only she can – on the Senate floor.

It’s good politics for both Lambie and smaller players on the Senate cross-bench, but can it get up?

Lambie’s point is clear. Australia’s top public servants and military officers are among the highest-paid in the world, taking home salaries much higher than in the United States.  

Take the new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. His responsibilities dwarf those of our Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary, Jan Adams, but his salary is capped at just US$400,000 ($635,000), while Adams pocketed a cool $1,025,301 in 2023-24.

Lambie told MWM., “Departmental Secretaries have important responsibilities, and their pay should be appropriate to ensure those positions are competitively filled by capable people, but

the present levels of pay at the top of the bureaucratic and academic trees don’t pass the pub test.

Senior salaries out of control

Adding to that consternation is the often-yawning gap between government ministers and unelected department heads or senior academics (see table above).

“The Remuneration Tribunal (which decides public service wages) has simply let these salaries run away, and Senator Lambie’s bill seeks to remedy that,” former Senator Rex Patrick, who is running for election again this year, pointed out.

“As for senior academics, the university boards who fork out these seven-figure packages are either oblivious to, or have no regard for, the struggles of ordinary Australians and don’t have to answer to anyone,” he added. “After all, it’s just taxpayer’s money.”

The bill targeting academic salaries amends existing legislation to set a statutory limit of $430,000 for Vice Chancellors, ensuring compliance by allowing the relevant agency to obtain Vice-Chancellor salary details.

An explanatory memorandum for the bill covering senior public servants also outlines a remuneration cap of $430,000. “Any variation from that limit will be a direct political responsibility of the government of the day and will be subject to parliamentary disallowance.”

MWM contacted both Universities Australia (formerly the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee) and the Remuneration Tribunal in Canberra for a response to Senator Lambie’s comments, but neither had replied by deadline.

Forcing a Senate Inquiry?

Former Senator and South Australia candidate for the Lambie Network at the forthcoming election says, “The bills will be popular in the wider community, and this may lead to a Senate Inquiry, with Vice-Chancellors and senior bureaucrats called to justify their salaries and explain just what it is they do to earn them. It will be a case of ‘you bring the popcorn, and I’ll bring the choc tops’,” he chuckled.

Private member’s bills like these rarely make it through both houses of Parliament and into law, and this pair must run the gauntlet of both major parties (55 Senators out of 76), many of whose alumni wind up in the very same cushy, taxpayer-funded jobs that so irk Australians. One insider told MWM:

They probably won’t get up, but they’ll cause a lot of discomfort in the process.

The tabling of these bills comes as Labor and the LNP look at ‘electoral reform’ legislation described as a “major party stitch-up” which threatens the political futures of independents and minor parties.

An $800,000 cap on spending per lower house electorate would harm both current and prospective cross-benchers, the latter needing to spend big to raise their profiles. Donations or gifts from an individual would be capped at $20,000 per candidate for independents or per state division for parties.

“If it gets up, there will be fewer private members bills like Lambie’s, less diversity and hardly any voices of dissent,” the insider lamented. “At this point in its history, Australia desperately needs dissent.”

The UniParty Reform | The West Report

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The Australian Submarine Agency deals with high-level Defence secrets and fissile material, yet it has been caught ignoring security obligations while threatening Rex Patrick, who reports on their conduct.

Last Friday, government solicitors acting for the Australian Submarine Agency sent me a warning against publishing some embarrassing information about their conduct.

Neither I nor MWM will be subject to their bullying, however.

Nuclear fuel waste

The Australian Government has undertaken to accept responsibility for the spent nuclear fuel from our planned AUKUS submarines. This is no light undertaking. It’s more than a lifetime obligation; indeed,

it’s an obligation that will last tens of thousands of years.

The Government has announced that this high-level radioactive waste will be stored on Defence land.

As reported by MWM, in February 2023, the Australian Submarine Agency awarded a contract for nearly $400K to former Defence Department Deputy Secretary Steve Grzeskowiak to find a suitable Defence location.

The very expensive irony that lurked behind this contract was the fact that Grzeskowiak had, when he was inside Defence, looked for a location on Defence land to store low-level radioactive waste and had been unable to find a suitable site.

Nuclear waste. Fifty years of searching, still nowhere to dump it.

According to Grzeskowiak, there wasn’t a single spot anywhere across the vast Defence estate that was suitable for storing low-level radioactive material. Yet he was now the go-to person who would, through some miraculous divination, find the Australian Submarine Agency a location across the very same territory

where it would be safe to dump a pile of the highest level, most radioactive nuclear waste.

Go figure.

Document request

In December 2023, I requested Mr Grzeskowiak’s report under our Freedom of Information laws. I was refused access on the basis the report was a Cabinet document.

But here’s the interesting thing. I knew that the report had been being worked on by multiple agencies, so I requested related documents from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), Geoscience Australia (GA), the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DISR) and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C).

What those documents showed me was the report was not, at least until after I made my FOI request, developed on the Government’s CabNet+ system.

I’m now in a legal fight at the Administrative Review Tribunal, pressing my case for the report to be made public.

CabNet rules

The Cabinet Handbook, the bible for Cabinet’s processes, makes it crystal clear that cabinet documents must be prepared on a special CabNet+ system.

Cabinet Handbook Rules (Source: Australian Government)

The protective security framework of the Government also commands that Cabinet documents are stored on CabNet+.

Despite this, the Australian Submarine Agency didn’t do that.

Why? I can’t publish their evidence in the proceeding until the matter has been heard in the Tribunal, but what I can say is that it’s a case of reckless indifference to the rules.

It begs the question, will the Australian Submarine Agency also play fast and loose with the rules in relation to our highly classified data or our allies’ highly classified data?

The Australian Submarine Agency is under a great deal of pressure to “get the job done”.

There are unquestionably a lot of unrealistic expectations coming down from the top. Will they follow the rules when it comes to nuclear safety, or will they bend and break the rules when they find it expedient to meet a politically driven objective?

Legal arguments

In their legal submissions, the Australian Government asserts: “The fact that the document was not created within the ‘CabNet’ system is not indicative one way or the other as to the intention of the authors.”

Actually, the rules of Cabinet are very strict. A document must meet two tests to qualify as a cabinet document 1) it must have been bought into existence for the dominant purpose of submission for consideration by the Cabinet, and 2) it must have been submitted to Cabinet.

I am satisfied it meets the second test but not the first.

To meet the first test the Government has to present objective evidence to the Tribunal that a minister so commissioned the document for consideration by Cabinet.

They have not done so.

And the fact that the document, in breach of the rules,  just floated around on a government network not authorised to hold Cabinet documents for months on end will work against the Australian Submarine Agency in the end.

Hypocrisy

In response to insistence from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that Peter Dutton should disclose the intended location of seven nuclear power stations, the Opposition Leader did so.

But Albanese is refusing to be transparent about the intended location of a high-level radioactive waste dump. His government wants to block public debate for as long as possible and then present people with a fait accompli.

It’s yet to be seen whether the Government will win on its claim that the report I’m after is a Cabinet document. But in the end, if it were determined that the report is that, there would still be nothing to stop Albanese from being true to his past rhetoric about the importance of government transparency and releasing the report to inform public debate.

Australians have a right to know. The fact that the Prime Minister hasn’t already done this says a lot.

For me, given that the Government has cautioned me against publishing details that reveal security incompetence inside the Australian Submarine Agency, I’ll wait for the knock on the door from the Federal Police. I’m not going to be intimidated.

There’s a vital democratic principle to be defended – the right to publish embarrassing information about government. The only way to protect that right, especially in the face of Government bullying, is to publish.

AUKwardUS: Peter Dutton’s Albo nuclear wedge may cost us hundreds of billions

This post was originally published on Michael West.

After an epic five year FOI battle that involved two court cases and >$400K of taxpayer-funded legal fees, Christian Porter’s ‘legal’ advice to Scott Morrison on Sports Rorts has finally been released. Rex Patrick reports on what it says and why the Government has surrendered in the transparency fight.

The battle has finally been won. The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has released Attorney-General Christian Porter’s advice to Prime Minister Scott Morrison on the legality of Sports Rorts. MWM has reported extensively on the fight.

Rex v the A-G: will Labor keep Liberal dirt under the carpet?

Winners and Losers

The fight has produced winners and losers.

Morrison was the big winner. Without revealing its contents, he was able to use Porter’s letter to legitimise Senator McKenzie’s ‘Sports Rorts’ conduct and defuse the ‘Sports Rorts’ scandal, and the long drawn out FOI fight would ensure that the advice would not be seen until he had left Parliament.

Porter ends up a loser. As described below, his advice is erroneous and will be used by others to assess his legal competence as he engages in his post-parliamentary legal practice.

Current Labor Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has lost what little credibility he had a ‘champion for transparency’ when he took up, and lost, the fight for the right of ministers to shred official documents when they leave office.

The same goes for the Australian Government Solicitor’s office who had to walk into the Federal Court with their tail between their legs, in the middle of a legal fight where the government claimed to no longer be in possession of the Porter’s advice, to confess one of their lawyers had a copy of the letter in his possession all along.

I walk away a winner, having successfully finished a transparency fight that I started in the public interest. But that victory would not have happened without barristers Stephen McDonald SC (now a Federal Court justice), Brendan Lim and Dr Amanda Sapienza and both Maurice Blackburn’s social justice legal team and the Grata Fund.

Regrettably the public are also a big loser, with the taxpayer funded legal fees exceeding $400K.  

But the public share my win on finally seeing the document, but perhaps more importantly from the Full Federal Court’s decision that ministers don’t own their documents, we do, and they are not permitted to shred them.

That’s indeed a pretty important precedent that supports democratic accountability and the integrity of government.  

The political fix

When a Prime Minister wants legal advice, he or she goes to the Solicitor-General. When a Prime Minister wants a political fix, he or she goes to the Attorney-General. This Porter letter is absolute proof of this.

At the time of the Sports Rorts scandal, Morrison needed a counter to an Auditor-General’s report that stated that Sports Minister Bridget McKenzie had acted without legislated authority to direct the Sports Commission in awarding grants.  

Auditor-General’s findings

Auditor-General’s findings

If she had acted within the statutory framework of the Australian Sports Commission Act she would have had to first consult with the Commission’s chief executive and then publish and table her directions in Parliament. She didn’t want that sort of scrutiny for what were very obviously partisan political decisions.  

And Porter gave Morrison the ‘fix’ in his letter by insisting that a minister didn’t have to rely on statutory powers to direct the operation of a government agency.

In Porter’s view, ministers should be free to intervene politically in the work of statutory agencies, regardless of any legislated authority to do so. 

For the first time, Porter’s letter can be found here: 

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Constitutional law professor Anne Twomey has now read Porter’s letter and advised MWM she stands by the submission she provided to the Senate’s ‘Sports Rorts’ 2020 inquiry.

The Australian Sports Commission was created as an independent corporate entity.  It is not a government department created under s 64 of the Constitution. Its existence, functions and powers are determined by legislation. Its relationship with the Minister is also determined by legislation  …

The Australian Sports Commission Act is explicit about the Minister’s powers …

Section 11 gives the Minister power to direct the Commission with respect to the ‘policies and practices to be followed by the Commission in the performance of its functions and the exercise of its powers’. It does not permit the Minister to exercise those powers. It only permits her to direct the Commission in its exercise of them.  Further, any such direction must be in writing, published in the Government Gazette and tabled in Parliament. No such direction was ever made.

This provision is manifestly directed at transparency and accountability in its exercise and evinces the absence of any general or informal power to direct the Commission. There would be no point in requiring that the Minister’s directions be gazetted and tabled if the Minister had an unwritten parallel power to direct the Commission that avoided tabling and gazettal.

Professor Twomey’s full views can be found here. 

Porter was wrong. Senator McKenzie acted beyond power.

Surrender by the Albanese Government

The question must be asked, Why did the Albanese Government belatedly give up a letter that was clearly legal advice?

Lost and found. Porter’s missing ‘Sportsrorts’ advice reappears. What’s the scam?

The answer to this question is political in nature and twofold.

The first reason is … there’s an election coming!

The Albanese Government has already taken a transparency dent with its unsuccessful fight to try to preserve the right of ministers to shred documents. Having been twice defeated in the Federal Court, they’ve lost their appetite for a further highly publicised fight to keep a scandalised document secret.

The second reason is … the Attorney-General doesn’t want a loss of status put on the record.

It might come as a surprise to some, but the Attorney-General has no constitutional or statutory role as government legal adviser. He’s been divested of the responsibility for giving legal advice under various Acts that allocates the legal work of the Commonwealth to the Solicitor-General, the Australian Government Solicitor, the Office of Parliamentary Counsel and the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The Attorney-General has no statutory responsibility for the giving of legal advice. Indeed, there’s no requirement in the Australian Constitution or Federal legislation for the Attorney-General to be a lawyer.

Senator Katy Gallagher, who has no legal degree, was sworn into the role of Attorney-General as part of an interim five-person ministry for nine days, until the full Albanese ministry was commissioned.

An extract from Rex Patrick’s legal submissions

Significantly, the Attorney-General lacks the legal independence to formally give advice.  The Attorney is a member of the party of the government, and indeed the Cabinet to which they purportedly give advice to.

In circumstances where the Cabinet does not agree with or accept the Attorney-General’s legal advice the collective responsibility of Cabinet would cause the Attorney, as a Minister, to have to abandon public support for his own advice.

The Attorney-General’s fortunes are totally at the pleasure of the Prime Minister to whom the Attorney gives the advice. As a political appointee, the Attorney cannot bring a disinterested mind to the task of providing legal advice to the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Rather it will be affected by personal loyalties to the Prime Minister, the Cabinet and his party.

The Australian Government Solicitor was aware of the fight I wanted to have to formally strip the Attorney-General of his purported legal advisor role. That’s not a precedent they want sitting on the public record. That’s why they rolled over and surrendered Porter’s advice without a further battle.

A repugnant saga

This whole repugnant saga, executed across both Liberal and Labor governments, has been an improper attack on the transparency and accountability of Government and a disgraceful waste of taxpayer’s money. 

While the advice has now been released, it’s historical information that can’t be used to hold a current government to account.

That’s what both major parties like. It’s been a five year legal battle that’s revealed very clearly their underlying opposition to transparency and their unity ticket on avoiding accountability.  

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The Government commissioned an official history of our operations in Timor and then censored the historian, removing an entire chapter. The partially redacted chapter obtained by MWM confirms lies told by the Howard Government. Rex Patrick reports.

In 2015, the Australian Government commissioned the War Memorial to write an official history of our peacekeeping operations in East Timor. UNSW history professor Craig Stockings was engaged as the War Memorial’s official historian and spent the next two years writing Volume One. It took another three years for it to be cleared for publication by Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) bureaucrats.

The official history was embroiled in controversy, resulting in a series of exchanges between Stockings and DFAT in late 2019, with DFAT seeking to censor the document. The then head of DFAT and now Governor of South Australia, Francis Adamson, wrote to Professor Stockings warning that an “honest history” of Australia’s peacekeeping role in Timor would touch “raw nerves”.

To eliminate information that DFAT didn’t like, Adamson suggested that the first nine chapters of the book dealing with the lead-up to Timor’s vote of independence be reduced significantly. Indeed, she thought a couple of chapters ought to do the job, deftly glossing over Australia’s tortured diplomatic acquiescence to Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor and two decades of downplaying atrocities and human rights abuse.

Stockings resisted, and hence, we ended up with a no-thrills launch of the book in December 2022 that DFAT hoped no one would notice.

Neither confirm nor deny. Head officially stuck in the sand on East Timor spy scandal

We know about DFAT’s efforts at censorship because I FOI’d the correspondence, and after a five-year fight in the Information Commissioner’s domain, an order was made for the release of all the documents.

The Government has appealed, and in the last month, they have filed their arguments in the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART), with one affidavit heavily redacted and a second completely redacted, with the Government even seeking to suppress who their witness is or what Agency he or she comes from.

Secret Witness (Source: Government Submissions in the ART)

Entire chapter missing in action

What had been disclosed in the documents that have been released was the fact that one part of the official history, Annex 2, so offended the Government that they wanted it removed in its entirety.

This was an astonishing revelation. There was no such chapter in the published version of the official history. Remarkably, DFAT has succeeded in suppressing a major part of the story. Our troops were sent to deal with a violent militia, and the official history of the deployment excludes a chapter that explained who they were fighting and the strategy that the enemy employed.

It’s almost a Faulty Towers moment. As far as DFAT was concerned, it was a case of “Don’t mention the war”, or rather “Don’t mention the enemy”!

I therefore sought access to the expunged book under FOI.

On the eve of Christmas, a redacted version was reluctantly released. Whilst some of the document is redacted, it confirms that,

in 1999, the Howard Government engaged in acts of lying and deceit upon the Australian public.

A quarter of a century after pro-Indonesian militias massacred and burnt their way across East Timor, DFAT has been covering up the Indonesian military’s control over the violence and former Foreign Minister’s deceit on his knowledge of the situation.

Background to the censorship

In 1971/72, Australia and Indonesia negotiated their seabed boundaries. The outcome was very favourable to Australia, with the boundary drawn well north of the median line between the two countries. This was purportedly achieved by Australia in return for support for the concept of “archipelagic waters” in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

In 1974, when Portugal announced its intention to withdraw from its colonial possessions, which included East Timor, a number of indigenous political parties formed in Timor, with the two most popular, UDT and Fretlin, forming a coalition in 1975 with a unified goal of self-determination. A third party, APODETI, had a goal of integration with Indonesia. Internal disputes saw the coalition split, and violent grabs at power eventually resulted in a short civil war in August/September 1975, from which Fretlin emerged with control.

In September, Indonesia deployed as many as 200 special forces soldiers into Timor, and in October, a conventional assault commenced. Five Australian journalists, the ‘Balibo Five’, were executed by Indonesian troops in the border town of Balibo on 16 October 1975.

The Balibo Five

On 7 December 1975, Indonesia invaded Timor. Previously secret DFAT files show that the Whitlam Labor Government encouraged the action. It meant the favourable sea boundary line would be extended between Australia and Timor, delivering Australian and multinational oil and gas companies a bonanza prize.

Between 1975 and 1999, successive governments from the duopoly, Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard, quietly supported the Indonesians to the benefit of the oil and gas companies.

Over the same period, between 90,000 and 202,000 Timorese died as a consequence of resisting the Indonesians and pursuing freedom.

Disrupting the Independence Referendum

By 1998, a financially troubled Indonesian Government were spending significant funds dealing with the resistance in Timor. They decided and announced that the United Nations would be called in to hold a referendum to determine whether Timor was to have greater autonomy within Indonesia or independence.

Along with Australia (until pressure for supporting independence from the international community overwhelmed the Australian Government’s loyalty to the oil and gas companies), the Indonesian military, the TNI, opposed independence. They were worried about other ‘independence’’ trouble spots in Irian Jaya, Aceh, Ambon and Kalimantan but had also spent 15 years and lots of casualties trying to quell the Timorese.

And so the TNI decided that the prospect of an independent East Timor was unacceptable, and they set about disrupting the referendum, creating, organising, directing and supporting an on-ground militia. They targeted known supporters of independence for detention, assault, sexual violence, torture and murder. Their families were often destroyed, and family members faced sustained violence themselves, including sexual assault.

The strategy was to suppress the independence movement and serve as a signal as to what might happen if they voted for independence.

While all of this was happening, and despite the Australian government knowing otherwise, the government was denying TNI’s involvement.

Then foreign minister Alexander Downer told ABC Radio in February 1999 that the government could not confirm reports the Indonesian military was arming militias in East Timor. “The Indonesian military are denying this,” he said. “It’s obviously very hard for us to verify one way or the other.”

According to Downer the problem was one of a few “rogue elements” – local pro-Indonesian militias – and that the Indonesian military could be trusted to provide security for the self-determination ballot.

Alexander Downer’s lies

However, a series of leaked Defence and DFAT documents, reported through 1999 by The Age, ABC Radio and TV, the Bulletin magazine and other media outlets, told a very different story.

For example, a secret Defence Intelligence Organisation brief, dated 4 March 1999 and reported by the ABC AM program on 23 April, reported that “The [Indonesian] military in East Timor are clearly protecting, and in some instances operating with the militias … [Indonesian military chief] General Wiranto is at least turning a blind eye … the military will continue to support intimidation and violence or at least won’t prevent it. Further violence is certain and Dili will be a focus.

Although still heavily censored, especially in regard to DFAT and Australian intelligence community assessments of TNI activities, the expunged but now released draft chapter from the official history

confirms the Government knew about the Indonesian military’s orchestration of militia violence.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the Howard Government knew the truth, and Foreign Minister Downer’s refusal to tell that truth helped take diplomatic pressure off Indonesia.

This wasn’t by accident. It was by design.  Another leaked document, a DFAT cable first published in 1999, showed the Howard government was not merely reluctant to argue for an international peacekeeping presence in East Timor but actively worked against the idea. Then DFAT Secretary Ashton Calvert told the US State Department that talk about peacekeeping was “defeatist”.

In any case DFAT’s preferred outcome was for East Timor to move towards “autonomy” but remain part of Indonesia.

The newly released official history chapter shows those arguments were made in full knowledge of the Indonesian military’s orchestration of atrocities in an effort to prevent East Timor from becoming independent and with a clear expectation of the violence that would follow an independence vote in the absence of an international peacekeeping presence.

Read the full (redacted) chapter here.

Despite the obvious risks, the East Timorese people did vote for independence, and Australia eventually did send in peacekeepers, though only after the Indonesian military had torched Dili, thousands of people died, and tens of thousands were forcibly removed to squalid camps in West Timor.

Between the text and the documents that DFAT held, as evidenced in the footnotes, it is impossible for any honest person to deny that the Government knew what was happening on the ground in East Timor prior to the independence vote.  It wasn’t a few “rouge elements” as Downer claimed.  It was the Indonesian military pulling the strings.

DFAT and Downer knew this, but told a different story to the Australian public and the world.

An inconvenient truth

DFAT has been covering up for Downer for a quarter of a century. They’ve been denying the truth about Australian policy toward Timor for half a century – all the way back to Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s acquiescence to the prospective Indonesian invasion in 1975 and the duplicity of both the Whitlam and Fraser Governments over the Indonesian military’s murder of the Balibo Five journalists.

It’s a track record of shame that’s continued to the present day with the 2004 spying on the new Timorese government’s sea boundary negotiating team, defrauding Timor for the benefit of Woodside, and the current Labor Government’s refusal to support Timor-Leste’s plans for energy development in favour of schemes that would maximise Australia’s exploitation of gas reserves for the benefit of Japanese and Korean industry.

All along, it’s been about a grab for oil and gas, pursued through the most cynical realpolitik diplomacy shrouded in deceit and secrecy – even to the point of attempting to censor and re-write history.

More to come

I’m still fighting in the ART for the complete exchanges between DFAT and the official historian, even if I can’t currently see their evidence or who their key witness is, and will now commence a new fight against the extensive redactions in the expunged chapter.

But there’s even more censoring underway with Volume Two of the official history stuck in purgatory as the War Memorial refuses to exclude elements of history from that volume. That controversy sits with Prime Minister Albanese at the moment.  Will he have the courage to do the right thing and let the truth be told?  I fear not. Time will tell, but I’ll be keeping up the fight.

Spies Like Us: how Timor’s oil and gas delivered justice to Bernard Collaery

This post was originally published on Michael West.

A new report suggests that the number of GP clinics offering bulk-billing to adults without concessions is in sharp decline, but is bulk-billing more broadly on life-support? Zacharias Szumer investigates.

We regret to inform dear readers of MWM that, in order to explain what the hell is going in with bulk-billing in Australia, we’re going to have to get mildly statistical. 

Trying to get your head around this stuff can make one feel like piñata being bludgeoned by five baseball-bat wielding statisticians – all of whom have to be pressed to go behind their well-rehearsed lines. 

Nonetheless, your correspondent has selflessly dedicated his weekend to taking on the role of this piñata, so let’s get down to it. 

Australia’s Cleanbill of health?

Since 2023, a small organisation called Cleanbill has been releasing statistics on the number of GP clinics in Australia that offer to bulk-bill people without concession cards.

This outfit rings up every clinic they find and asks if they’re taking on new patients and how much it will cost. 

According to Cleanbill’s latest report, the method attempts to replicate what many adults looking to see a GP without bankrupting themselves do on a regular basis. 

“It aims to provide the best understanding of what every GP clinic around you would say if you, as an adult without concessions, asked for their pricing and availability information for a standard consultation during regular, weekday business hours.” 

In addition to feeding this info into a public directory for people looking for accurate info about GP clinics in their area  (as an aside: why have governments left it up to a tiny organisation to provide this quite useful service?), Cleanbill also puts out an annual report. 

So, what do the latest numbers say?

Depends where you live 

For one, those in NSW will on average find it a whole lot easier to see a GP with no out-of-pocket costs than someone in Tasmania. 

Source: Cleanbill

Obviously, there’ll be a lot of variation within an area as large as NSW, and people out in Murrumbidgee – or in one of the nation’s many ‘bulk-billing deserts’ – probably won’t have the options of someone in Parramatta. 

In fact, MWM has heard that NSW’s high-rate of bulk-billing GPs is largely attributable to a massive concentration of such clinics in Western Sydney, but don’t quote us on that. 

Cleanbill’s data also shows that the proportion of clinics across the nation offering bulk-billing to non-concession holders has declined pretty steadily since 2023. 

Because the decision to bulk-bill a patient is at the discretion of a GP, these figures could be somewhat of an overcount – or so we hear from unnameable, top-secret, off-the-record types in government. 

Different measurement, different result

As you might have guessed, the Labor government isn’t exactly the biggest fan of the Cleanbill data – or so they will tell you in top-secret, off-the-record comments.

Looking at total visits to a GP – a metric which does include under-16s and concession card holders – their numbers show an increase in bulk-billing over the previous year. 

Just over 77 per cent GP visits across the country were bulk-billed in November 2024 – a 1.6 percentage point increase from October 2023, according to a November 2024 press release by Health Minister Mark Butler. 

Butler’s call

Butler attributed the rise to their tripling of Medicare incentives for GPs to bulk-bill people with concession cards and under-16s, which came into effect in November 2023.

Essentially this is a payment that GPs get for not charging a concession card holder or a child for a visit; it’s not rebate that applies to general patients. 

Source: Cleanbill. First year of Medicare data shows increase to bulk billing

While the government’s data does include are people with concession cards and under-16s, it doesn’t show the degree to which this uptick is largely just an uptick in these particular cohorts.

However, Grattan Institute health program director Peter Breadon told MWM  that it was “likely” that this was the case. 

Given the targeted nature of Labor’s incentive-tripling, this wouldn’t be a surprise.

Breadon also suggested Labor shouldn’t focus support solely on these groups. 

“I think if they do make an investment to further increase bulk billing, it would be good to look at something broader than something that just targets people on concession cards and children,” Breadon said. 

Free-falling facts

In a statement provided to MWM, Mark Butler said the government’s investments in Medicare have “stopped the free-fall in bulk billing that was created under the Liberal and Nationals government”. 

Now, that particular choice of wording – “created under”, rather than “occurring under” – may have been intentional, because the Australian Associated Press (AAP) fact-checked one of Butler’s “free-fall” claims earlier in 2024 and found it was misleading.

The figures that the government was crowing about in the 29 April 2024 media release that AAP examined related to the proportion of GP visits that did not involve any patient payments – a  bulk-billing measure known as ‘GP non-referred attendances’. 

As the following graph shows, there was a net increase in such bulk billing rates during the Coalition’s decade in power. 

While bulk-billing rates had started to fall prior to Labor’s 2022 election victory, they continued to drop after Labor took government.

Of course, arresting a trajectory in a system as massive as Medicare isn’t something one would expect a newly elected government to achieve overnight.

Still, the graph above doesn’t show anything an intellectually sound speaker of English would call a “free-fall” happening between 2014 and 2022. 

When the AAP asked Butler how exactly bulk-billing was in “free-fall” under the Coalition, one of his spokespeople pointed to “a different measure of bulk billing that was not mentioned in the media release”.

AAP didn’t say what this measure was.

MWM asked the minister’s office about it but didn’t receive a response before deadline. 

A ‘Mediscare’ redux?

The record of the Coalition and Peter Dutton on Medicare will become a key plank of Labor’s pitch to voters in the upcoming federal election, according to anonymous party figures backgrounding Nine-Fairfax journos in early January. 

During Dutton’s tenure as health minister, the Coalition government attempted to slash Medicare rebates and introduce a mandatory fee for GP visits. 

Labor proceeded to weaponise the Coalition’s record on public health to great effect in the 2016 election, running a highly effective campaign that the conservative side of politics planned to privatise Medicare. 

There was no publicly available evidence that the Coalition planned to do this, but Labor pushed their opponents onto the back foot and forced then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull into declaring that “Medicare will never, ever, ever be privatised”.

While the conservatives clung on to government, Labor did far better than many predicted and took 14 lower house seats from the Coalition, reducing them to a one-seat majority. 

GP payment overhaul on the cards

According to the Labor sources quoted by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald journos, Labor is also considering an overhaul of how GPs are paid under Medicare.

This is something that Breadon agrees with. 

“The way we do it now is very crude, where you’re a concession card holder or you’re not, and you get this subsidy for bulk billing those concession cardholders.

“But there’s lots of people who are struggling with out-of-pocket fees who aren’t concession card holders. 

“And there’s lots of people that GPs are struggling to see quickly because of the funding model.” 

“So, there’s a bigger structural issue here about how we pay GPs.” 

Makes pathological sense. Mark Butler ignores lobbyists cries on atomic data

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Aspiring PM Peter Dutton could find himself in a three-cornered contest against Ali France and a Teal independent. Andrew Gardiner reports on Peter Dutton’s woman problem. 

Conservative commentator Andrew Bolt sees 2025 as “the year woke finally dies,” the Albanese Labor government one of many to be drowned, he predicts, in a tsunami of culture war conflict and economic angst.

“America has already swung right; next will be Germany and Canada in elections this year (plus) Australia, too, in our own election in probably April or May,” Bolt foresaw. 

But are Bolt and the man he sees surfing this purported tsunami into The Lodge, Peter Dutton, getting ahead of themselves? Dutton, the member for marginal Dickson in Brisbane’s north west, will for the first time face a Teal independent candidate for the seat. MWM has learnt the candidate is expected to be announced on January 27.

Dutton’s Labor opponent in Dickson, Ali France, came within a little over 3,000 votes of victory, two-party preferred (2PP), at the 2022 federal election.

The seat’s marginal status renders the Teal candidate a real threat to Dutton’s career as an MP (less as an aspiring PM) potentially siphoning moderate LNP voters away from him on what many see as his ‘Achilles heel’ issues: the treatment of women, the environment and – notably – honesty in politics. 

PM in waiting 

Bolt’s ‘PM-in-waiting’ in fact faces a make-or-break 2025. While Dutton will be comforted by a national 2PP swing of 2.4 per cent to the coalition in polls over the past 18 months, Queensland was by far the LNP’s strongest state in 2022, producing a ‘ceiling affect’ that has capped gains there to roughly half the national average. 

In Dickson (Qld.) that number could be dwarfed by Dutton’s haemorrhaging of votes to the Teals, meaning he must fight on two fronts, including a rearguard action in Dickson. After all, in our Westminster system of government, you can’t be PM if you’re not an MP. 

John Howard is testament to that.

Peter Dutton has a contentious history on women’s issues, highlighted by a 2016 faux pas with journalist Samantha Maiden. Image: X

Like other groups promoting a community independent, Dickson Decides sells itself as a grassroots movement with the goal of bringing “transparent, community-focused representation to Dickson”. According to sources, the group is founded on community engagement principles and eschews ‘party politics as usual,’ adhering broadly to policies promoting the environment and integrity in government.   

Locally, it’s expected Dutton’s opponents will call him out on the issue of honesty in politics. As Michael Bradley of Marque Lawyers points out, Dutton “says things that are objectively untrue, things he cannot possibly believe (and) he does so often, with increasing frequency and flagrancy”.

Dutton’s opponents can be expected to exploit this directly at the mid-campaign Dickson debate for which they will be pushing. How it plays with locals in an electorate of contrasting surrounds and demographics may ultimately determine who wins the seat. 

Environment, women, integrity, nuclear

On the environment, readers are no doubt aware of Dutton’s spruiking what he calls the ‘net zero’ option of nuclear energy, to be delivered by seven proposed nuclear power plants and two small modular reactors at a cost of $331 billion, with a promised reduction in power bills of 44 per cent.

His opponents say Dutton’s numbers are based on flawed modelling, “won’t pass the pub test” and will prolong our dependence on energy from fossil fuels. 

How does this debate impact the result in Dickson? In a Redbridge survey taken last year, women strongly disapproved of lifting bans on nuclear power (men not so much) with Dutton’s opponents counting on a large number of women ‘defecting’ from LNP to ‘Teal’ and withholding their preferences from him.    

Therein lies Dutton’s biggest problem: women, both across Australia and locally. In a three cornered Dickson contest against two female opponents including the popular and accomplished Ali France (Labor) Dutton’s many stumbles on women’s issues will be centre stage locally during the campaign.  

Remember Dutton’s ‘she said, he said’ comments regarding Brittany Higgins, his description of journalist Samantha Maiden (above) as a “mad f___ing witch,” or his claim that refugee women were “trying it on” with rape claims as part of a ploy to get to Australia? Women remember stuff like that, and it may cost him.

Peter Dutton can expect staunch support in Dickson from billionaire Gina Rinehart (right). Image: X.

Where the money is

Those keen to write Dutton’s Dickson epitaph need to keep in mind both his survival skills and, now, his billionaire ‘ace in the hole’. Dutton has won this marginal seat at eight straight elections since 2001, utilising an array of clever methods over the journey, and has recently forged a powerful relationship with the wealthiest Australian, Gina Rinehart. 

Illustrating what some call his fealty to the Hancock Prospecting matriarch, Dutton has as Opposition Leader: 

• travelled to the Pilbara as Rinehart’s guest (June 2022); 
• flown to Sydney courtesy of Rinehart to (he says) attend a Bali bombing memorial (October 2022);  
• jetted, courtesy of billionaire Tim Roberts, to a Rinehart party at Roy Hill in WA (November 2023, see photo above) and, most remarkably: 
• taken time out from an important Melbourne by-election campaign for a 40 minute Perth pit stop at Rinehart’s birthday party (March 2024).  

That’s quite a friendship, in which Rinehart “appears to have been rewarded with a key role in developing what passes for Dutton’s policy positions”, wrote Crikey’s Bernard Keane.

Dividends include Dutton’s embrace of Rinehart-supported policies like an increase in the income threshold pensioners can earn without losing payments, migration cuts and, of course, the spruiking of nuclear energy. 

Doing a Josh

Anyone prepared to turn Rinehart’s most coveted outcomes into government policy can likely count on substantial support should, say, his seat be under real threat from a pesky, Teal-clad booster of “bird-killing wind generators and massive solar panel stretches”. Certainly, sources close to the Teal campaign expect as much. 

In 2022, massive resources were poured into the battle for Kooyong (Vic.). Is this what Dickson’s in for? Images: Monique Ryan campaign.

“There’s no depth to which (Rinehart’s) pockets don’t reach. I expect saturation advertising – just like Kooyong in 2022 – if it’s close,” one source told MWM.  

In many respects, Dickson in 2025 does indeed mirror Kooyong (Victoria) three years ago. Back then, Josh Frydenberg, an aspiring Liberal Prime Minister beloved by big time donors, found himself caught in the cyclonic headwinds of another Teal-adorned grassroots movement. 

In Dickson, we see all these elements and more, with Australia’s society (and environment) at a clearly-defined crossroads and one candidate – Dutton – determined to take a hard right turn.

The people v the money

“It’s the biggest campaign in the country, with an unprecedented ability to attract volunteers and donors, made even spicier by the fact Dutton divides us like few others,” a Teal source told MWM.  

Three years ago, money poured into Kooyong to save Frydenberg, but this came at the expense of other, needy electorates where it might have been better-spent. Could the LNP and its backers make the same mistake twice?  

“That’s the bonus, even if we happen to lose in Dickson,” the source told MWM. “There are community independents running in 36 seats across Australia and no matter how many oligarchs chip in to stop us, their resources are finite.” 

“We, on the other hand, rely on people power, and there’s no shortage of volunteers ready to work for us.”  

MWM sought comment from the Teal, Dutton and France campaigns, but had not heard back by publication time.  

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The US is mired in its biggest naval battle since WW2 and Australia is commanding its Red Sea Task Force against the Houthi rebels of Yemen who are trying to stop the genocide in Gaza. Michael West reports.

It is the quintessential case of being dragged into war, by stealth, without the consent of the people. Australia is at war with Yemen, or to be precise the Houthis, but you won’t hear much about it from the government or the media.

Since October, Australia has led the “Combined Task Force (CTF) 153” to combat the Iran-backed Houthis in the Red Sea. It is not going well. In fact, hostilities are escalating this week. The Houthis repelled an attack by the USS aircraft carrier Harry S Truman and fired another round of missiles into Israel.

With the US navy now mired in their biggest naval battle since the Second World War, overnight US President Elect, Donald Trump, upped the rhetoric:

“If those hostages [in Gaza] aren’t back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East. And it will not be good for Hamas. And it will not be good frankly for anyone. All hell will break out.”

Yet the might of the US military, alongside naval allies from the UK, France, Australia and other nations, have been unable to defeat the impoverished rebel forces of the Houthis firing off drones to disrupt shipping in the Red Sea and landing a few missiles in the heart of Israel 2,000k away.

The problem is that disinformation is rife. The Red Sea operation is mostly a secret. MWM put questions to Defence as to Australia’s involvement in the Red Sea task force but no response was forthcoming. 

In the wake of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel’s extreme retaliation in Gaza, the Houthis of Yemen declared war on Israel. Their demands are simple. They vowed to attack Israel and any ship connected to Israel until the IDF stopped its genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.

The Suez Canal accounts for 10-15% of world trade. The war has therefore taken a toll on world shipping, and on the allies military resources as it has dragged on for a year.

Amid the failure of the allies to publicise their activities and the propaganda on both sides of the conflict, finding an accurate account of the war is difficult. This is the best we could find, from James Angell on Substack, who goes through a year of claims and incident reports to pull together a comprehensive account of the Red Sea mission.

“US Navy fighter pilots and sailors returning to the US after months of being deployed to shoot down Houthi missiles and drones over the Red Sea have spoken of the trauma of what is now the navy’s most intense sea fighting since World War II. US pilots tell of ‘traumatising’ deployment to stop Red Sea attacks by Houthis,” writes Angell.

USS Harry S Truman repelled in Yemen attack. Image X

“According to The Associated Press (AP), sailors would see incoming missiles just seconds before being destroyed by ship defence systems. Most on the ships were not used to being attacked, Commander Benjamin Orloff, a Navy pilot, said.

“‘I’ll be honest: It was a little traumatising for the group. It’s something that we don’t think about a lot until you’re presented with it,’ he said. A US aircraft carrier strike group deployed to the Red Sea in mid-October. After months of operations to shoot down missiles and drones, the deployment was twice extended placing additional stress on the crew of roughly 7,000 sailors, the AP reports.”

Australia’s involvement

Amid the sparse disclosures by Australian Defence it was announced in October that Australia would head up the Combined Task Force.

“Air bases in Australia have helped with this week’s United States air strike on underground Houthi weapons stores in Yemen, an attack that has been seen as a warning to Iran,” said the ABC.

“The Department of Defence confirmed Australia provided support for US strikes on October 17, targeting the Houthi facilities ‘through access and overflight for US aircraft in northern Australia’.

And in another story: “Acting Prime Minster Richard Marles announced earlier that the country would send a “significant number” of ADF troops and two RAAF aircraft to the Middle East.” Apart from that, not much information is publicly available.

We can assume the secretive Pine Gap surveillance facilities are being used to help Israel in its brutal Gaza campaign. We can also assume that it is likely that casualties of the war will escalate. Notwithstanding Trump’s bellicose rhetoric about Gaza, the Houthis by all accounts are fiercely determined to escalate against Israel.

Back-channel efforts by the Allies to negotiate with the Houthis have yet failed. The Houthis position has remained steadfast, that Israel has to cease its ‘seige of Gaza’. And amid the IDF’s atrocities against the Palestinians, world opinion is not behind the Allies.

Australia’s Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, jetted off to meetings in Israel this week, to “mend the factured relationship” with the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Imagine “patching up relations” with a state perpetrating genocide…👇
Israel-Palestine: Mark Dreyfus plans trip to Israel to patch up relations https://t.co/A9CmKf3rhH

— Dr Sheep Person Podge (@noplaceforsheep) January 6, 2025

This news did not go down well on social media with almost ubiquitous condemnation that an Australian minister would travel to Israel to kowtow to the government of an alleged war criminal whose activities in Gaza had led to world condemnation and a case in the International Court of Justice for plausible genocide.

Meanwhile, reports by US think tanks claim China is funding the Houthis, as well as Iran, as the Houthis are allowing Chinese ships safe passage in the Red Sea. Civilians in Yemen continue to die in aerial bombardments by US and Israel fighter jets, and the Houthis continue to hit Israel with missiles and Red Sea shipping is down as much as 90%.

The Allies’ rhetoric that the Houthis are a primitive rebel group is wearing thin, such is the success of their drone warfare which has endured for more than a year. The Houthis had previously survived a decade long war from the US-backed Saudi regime (with weapons supplied by Australia) and their popularity in Yemen as only grown with their determination to fight Israel.

For Australia, the stakes are rising. If it is the duty under the Genocide Convention of nations to oppose genocide, what is the legal position of countries engaged in war against people trying to uphold the Geneva Convention and stop a genocide?

Questions put to Defence Media last week:

Could you please provide an update on how the Yemen operation is travelling? 

Is Australia still leading the Combined Maritime Force’s Combined Task Force (CTF)? 

How many Australians are deployed, and from what branches of the military?

What is Australia’s legal position/advice in regards of the impact of our military involvement in this operation and the risks associated with the Genocide Convention and proceedings in the ICJ?

Australia defies UN pleas over atrocities in Yemen, escalates weapons exports to Saudis

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Government advertising is always a controversial topic. Is it in the public interest, or just political party spruiking at taxpayer expense? Rex Patrick on the government’s huge advertising spend.

News that the Federal Government has spent a record of $251 million on advertising last year has raised integrity questions, and accusations of vote buying.

Naughty and nice

Of course, some Government advertising is needed and there have been a number of campaigns that would squarely pass the test of being necessary and appropriate.

Defence Force recruitment advertisements, asbestos awareness campaigns and child safety campaigns fit this category. They are ads that seek to encourage individuals to do something; sign up to the ADF; avoid putting themselves in harm’s way in relation to asbestos; or, for parents to talk to their children about inappropriate touching or the inappropriateness of tweens and teens sending naked pictures to ‘friends’ and ‘internet acquaintances’.

Then there is other advertising that is little more than self-promotion. It’s “hey, look at how good a government we are” vote buying advertising.

Tax cuts and FMIA campaigns questionable

Stage 3 tax cuts changes and Future Made in Australia campaigns fit into this second highly questionable category. These campaigns were about increases in the amount on money that automatically went back into a person’s bank account when they received their pay or about a government manufacturing policy. Neither required citizens do anything.

it’s not okay just because the major parties both do it

This is victory lap advertising designed to tell what the Government has done in the hope that voters might be more inclined to vote them back into power.

This is not just the current Labor Government doing this. Coalition governments have done the same when they were in power. But it’s not okay just because the major parties both do it.

But there’s an extra smell to the Albanese Government’s approach.

Cabinet role

In order to understand the smell better, it is necessary to understand the purpose of Cabinet and Cabinet confidentiality.

Australia has a cabinet system of government. That is, a government made up of ministers, drawn from parliamentarians of the party that hold the numbers necessary in the House to pass supply bills. From these ministers the Prime Minister (PM) nominates senior ministers to form Cabinet.

The Cabinet is the central decision-making body of the executive government bound by two conventions; all members are bound to support the collective decisions of Cabinet, and the discussions in Cabinet are absolutely confidential.

All major policies of a government are approved by Cabinet and all major decisions of Government are taken by Cabinet. They are taken secretly and collectively – any revelation of a division in Cabinet (caused by a breach of secrecy) or split in solidarity can give rise to a loss of confidence in the government, which could in turn cause a vote of no confidence in the House of Representatives to discharge a government.

The secrecy of cabinet is really important; but not because of the content being deliberated by cabinet, rather because of the need for collective responsibility.

Federal Court Justice White ruled that PM Scott Morrison’s (and, flowing from that, PM Albanese’s) National Cabinet is not a Cabinet deserving of secrecy, because it is not a body which has collective responsibility; State Premiers and Chief Ministers can walk away from National Cabinet not agreeing with its decisions. (as we saw divided decisions on the closure of schools and borders during COVID).

There are, however, sub committees of Cabinet that enjoy Cabinet secrecy protections – the National Security Committee and the Expenditure (Budget) Review Committee of Cabinet are examples.

Informal and powerless

Cabinet is not mentioned in the constitution and it has no formal power – its decisions are implemented by the executive powers of the Governor-General through recommendations of Cabinet, the powers of ministers on instruction from Cabinet and through legislation (assuming a government can get the legislation through the Parliament).

Cabinet is a creature of convention only, with the membership, structure and rules determined by the PM, within the bounds of the constitution and the law.

Cabinet abuse

The lack of formality around Cabinet, coupled with its accepted secrecy status, can give rise to abuse.

Putting aside the issue of Scott Morrison’s erroneous claims as to the status of National Cabinet, motivated by his default desire for government secrecy, he provided us with a much more sinister abuse; his Governance Committee of Cabinet.

The Governance Committee of Cabinet was set up by Morrison to provide advice and oversight of governance and integrity issues, which included, but were not limited to, the Statement of Ministerial Standards and issues arising from the Lobbyist Code.

It consisted of Morrison himself, Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce then Micheal McCormack then Joyce again, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and attorneys-general Christian Porter then Michaelia Cash.

Issues of governance and integrity are ones that require absolute transparency. By setting up this committee all scandals including Sports Rorts, Car Park Rorts or breaches of ministerial standards could be referred to the Governance Committee of Cabinet so they became Cabinet secrets and could be buried in the vaults of the National Archives for at least 20 years.

Morrison’s dirty little secrets committee

It was Morrisons ‘dirty little secrets committee of Cabinet’ serving as a vacuum cleaner for all manner of scandal.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised higher standards of governance and transparency and he did not set up such a committee when he formed Government in 2022.

On day one of his new government Albanese did set up a new Cabinet Committee structure, and in doing so set up a new dirty little government secrets committee one dealing with the vexed issue of government advertising – the “Government Communications Subcommittee” of Cabinet.

Albo’s advertising secrets sub-committee

The designated function of the Subcommittee is to provide oversight and coordination of Government advertising. 

The Subcommittee’s members are Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, Education Minister Jason Clare, Special Minister of State Don Farrell, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister Patrick Gorman. 

The normal government advertising governance regime has been for a department to propose a brief to a minister, the minister endorses it and the Independent Communications Committee reviews it for compliance with the Australian Government Guidelines on Information and Advertising Campaigns by non-corporate Commonwealth entities.

Importantly, both the Parliament and citizens using Freedom of Information (FOI) rights could request access to the brief to the ministers, the minister’s endorsement documents and the Independent Communications Committee’s documents to conduct their own scrutiny of government advertising decisions.

But under the Government Communications Subcommittee of Cabinet regime set up by Anthony Albanese, the briefs that went to the Minister are now effectively Cabinet briefs, the minister’s endorsement is now the endorsement of Cabinet and the Independent Communications Committee is left dealing with Cabinet documentation.

All of this is now beyond the reach of the Parliament and the FOI regime.

I know this because in April 2023 I requested Independent Communications Committee documents using FOI and got a response littered with (FOI Act Section 34) Cabinet exemption claims.

Results for Independent Communications Committee documents FOI

The Government Communications Subcommittee of Cabinet does not deal with major policies or major decisions of Government. It’s a deliberately crafted vacuum cleaner for all manner of advertising scandal constituting abuse of taxpayer funds.

It’s a smelly road-block on integrity checking.

And a corruption incubator

Many people think that corruption by politicians involves the receipt of some form of financial benefit. But that isn’t the case.

Politicians, including ministers, are not only chosen by the people but exercise their legislative and executive powers as representatives of the people. They have a fundamental duty to serve and, in serving, to act with fidelity and with a single-mindedness for the welfare of the community’. These are not my words, rather words adopted by Justices Gageler, Nettle and Gordan in the High Court case of Day [No 2] [2017] HCA 14.

Ministers stray from their duty when they do anything which involves conscious self-interest. That self-interest includes the desire to stay in power. And when it involves the use of public money, the breach of duty turns into one of corruption.

The UniParty Reform | The West Report

No-one can say Anthony Albanese’s ministerial colleagues are engaging in corruption in spending taxpayers’ money on advertising with the goal of winning votes (note that decisions of the Government Communications Subcommittee of Cabinet need to be endorsed by the Cabinet).

That would need to be evidenced by specific facts. But those facts are not available to anyone wanting to know, and won’t be until 2044/5 when knowledge of it will be of no practical accountability use.

What we can say is that Albanese has, in a considered decision early in his reign as PM, set up a corruption incubator. He promised better, but went another way. As government advertising surges in the run-up to this year’s federal election, voters should think about that.

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The new Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) just ruled the $2B, no $6B, no $12B Snowy 2.0 project immune from public scrutiny. The decision paves the way for secrecy over Peter Dutton’s nuclear ambitions. Rex Patrick reports.

In April 2023, I made a Freedom of Information (FOI) application for access to Snowy Hydro Limited project reports about Snowy 2.0 pumped storage power scheme to the Minister of Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen. I also asked for the briefs on Snowy 2.0 prepared by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) for the Minister.

Suspecting things were off the rails, I wanted to see what Snowy Hydro was saying to the DCCEEW in relation to Snowy 2.0’s progress, or lack thereof, and what DCCEEW was then saying to Minister Chris Bowen.

In August 2023 the Government announced a Snowy 2.0 ‘reset’; a marketing label for a massive cost blowout and schedule delay. That caused me to made a further request for the Snowy Hydro Corporate Plan update sent to Bowen and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher to convince them to back the project cost doubling from $6B to $12B.

Dear Ministers – why do costs and timelines for Snowy 2.0 keep shifting yet are so readily approved?

Access to the project reports and ministerial briefs was flatly refused and so I appealed the matter to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, now repackaged by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus as the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART).

Tribunal rejects transparency

In a decision made by Deputy President Peter Britton-Jones, the Tribunal has affirmed the access refusal decisions, effectively shutting down any FOI scrutiny of Snowy 2.0. This mega-project, which has blown out by $10B, is now shrouded in secrecy, blocking the gaze of members of the public, who are paying for the project.

The ART decision has blown a huge hole in government transparency and accountability because it creates a model that could, and almost certainly will, be used to exempt Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s $331B nuclear power program from any future public scrutiny. It’s a secrecy barn door that’s big enough to drive a nuclear reactor through.

Protecting business information

How did this happen? 

The FOI Act has some reasonable protections in it to ensure sensitive business information is protected from release. 

Section 47 of the FOI Act protects trade secrets or commercially valuable information from being disclosed; a company’s ‘11 secret herbs and spices’ stays just that, secret. No other consideration; it’s a full stop exemption from the requirement to disclose.

Section 47G of the FOI Act protects more general business information which, if released, could adversely affect the business in some way. But this particular disclosure exemption clause is conditional on whether the disclosure would be contrary the public interest.

And that’s fair enough – when a company starts taking money from the public for public purposes, if there’s public interest in disclosing the information (like project cost and schedule blowouts), that just sits as a cost of doing business with the Government.

These are important provisions in our FOI law. Last year eighty-three thousand businesses provided their services or products in exchange for $99.6B of public money.

Government Contracts Over the Last Decade (Source: AusTender)

Removing the public interest

There’s another FOI exemption, Section 45, inserted into Act to prevent a “breach of confidence”; that is a promise to keep information confidential – like Aboriginal tribal secrets provided to government in native title matters; artistic assessments by experts of works of art under consideration for purchase – things that need confidentiality but are not business information.

That’s how the Section 45 exemption was presented to the Parliament way back in 1982 when our FOI law was first debated and legislated. In past decisions of the Tribunal Deputy President Britten-Jones has decided not to give that presentation any weight. Instead, Section 45 is interpreted as an unbreakable secrecy clause whenever government and a business agree that it should apply to information that the business has provided to government.

The end result is that now, despite the Parliament determining that business information should be disclosed if that disclosure is not contrary to the public interest, that legislated provision should not be honoured.

Section 45 is, as a result of past Tribunal decisions, the ‘go to’ exemption from departments trying to protect their projects from any scrutiny.

Quacking like a duck

The only reason I actually challenged DCCEEW and the Minister’s FOI decision in this instance is because there’s a carve out in the FOI Act that says Section 45 does not apply if the disclosure of the document would constitute a ‘breach of confidence’ owed to the Commonwealth.

So, one question before the Tribunal was, is Snowy Hydro ‘the Commonwealth’?

To me, the answer was clear. 

While Snowy Hydro is a distinct legal entity, it is an 100% government-owned corporation, and is largely funded by the public (the Snowy 2.0 ‘basket case’ project is funded by the taxpayer to the tune of $7B and the rest of the money comes from electricity customers – you). 

Snowy Hydro has its board appointed by shareholder ministers and remunerated in accordance with a determination of the Commonwealth’s Remuneration Tribunal.

Snowy Hydro is subject to control by the Commonwealth, is obliged to surrender information (unfettered by any confidentiality obligations) requested by a shareholder minister or the Auditor-General  or the Senate.

I summarised this legal situation in my submissions to the Tribunal, stating, “If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks like a duck – it’s a duck!”

The lawyers arguing the government’s case insisted none of that mattered. It might look like a duck, it might even be a government duck but it somehow wasn’t a Commonwealth duck.

Britton-Jones decided it was an elusive night owl, declaring that Snowy Hydro Limited is not the Commonwealth.

Dutton’s Nuclear Power Limited

If the ART decision stands, Snowy Hydro will be effectively excluded from FOI scrutiny. That means an impenetrable wall of secrecy, barring investigation of this government owned and controlled company’s mismanagement of the Snowy 2.0 project and its huge cost to taxpayers.  

But that may well be only the beginning of things.

The pieces are all in place for the Coalition’s nuclear power plans to be shrouded in secrecy – thanks in large measure to arguments presented by the Albanese government’s lawyers.

That’s right, Minister Bowen’s legal team has opened the nuclear barn door for Peter Dutton.

Modular Reactors. Peter Dutton hasn’t done his nuclear homework

Here’s how Dutton will do it. He just has to follow the Snowy Hydro model and he can ensure than no project reports will ever make it into the hands of the public. The steps are as follows:

1. Legislate to set up ‘Nuclear Power Limited’ by way of statute – the ‘Nuclear Power Limited’ Act – with two Ministers to be shareholders in behalf of government.
2. Include the following words in the Act – “‘Nuclear Power Limited’ is not, and does not represent, the Crown”.
3. Subject ‘Nuclear Power limited’ to a policy requirement to report project status to the shareholder ministers (so they at least know what’s going on).
4. Enter into an agreement between Nuclear Power Limited and the government that states “each party agrees to keep the confidential Information confidential and not to disclose it to anyone without the consent of the other party” provided the information is marked as “confidential” (the actual confidentiality of the information does not matter – the key is that the pages are marked “confidential”).

Boom! Secrecy heaven.

Financial meltdowns can be secret

Nuclear Power Limited will be Snowy Hydro Limited on radioactive steroids. If the similar magnitude $2B to $12 billion blowout to Snowy 2.0 were to occur with Dutton’s (already understated) $331B Nuclear Power Program, the blowout could amount to trillions of public money burned up building reactors that may never be economically viable.

In that regard, ART Deputy President Britten-Jones may have made the most dangerous decision ever made by an administrative review body (even without reference to Dutton’s plans, it casts a secrecy blanket over $100B of annual government procurement).

As such, I’ve put my hand into my pocket and spent $6K initiating a Federal Court Appeal. This secrecy decision can’t be allowed to stand.

And in the meanwhile, we can all just wonder how many more billions Snowy 2.0 will cost us.

The LNP’s nuclear policy is working just fine

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Is pouring concrete a way of the rich getting richer? Vertical seawalls along the New South Wales coastline are extending the frontage of multi-million-dollar residential properties, while taking the beachfront away from the public. Marcus Reubenstein reports.

Post massive storm surges, and significant coastal erosion, in 2016 residents of Collaroy on Sydney’s northern beaches have been forced to endure a solution that many have dubbed the ugliest wall in Australia. A seven-metre-high vertical seawall has been erected along part of the beachfront between Collaroy and Narrabeen, the next beach north.

In addition to being an eyesore, it’s robbed locals of beachfront while enriching millionaire property owners by, in effect, substantially increasing the usable size of their properties.

The vertical concrete seawall has been erected at the original boundary of waterfront properties; in places, filling in land that was once a natural dune between the beach and the property. Now property owners are free to build pools and expansive grassed areas, leaving behind a public amenity boxed in by a massive concrete wall.   

The justification for vertical seawalls is that they hold back tidal swells protecting the properties and the coastline. Says Angus Gordon, former general manager of the Pittwater Council on Sydney’s northern beaches, “These seawalls are a brutalist solution from the past century. Furthermore, because they have a shelf life, they simply don’t work.”

He points out that seawalls eventually fail, citing events at iconic Manly and Bondi beaches as examples.

Manly seawall collapse 1950. Image: Northern Beaches Council

A highly respected coastal engineer with more than 50 years of experience, Gordon says a far simpler and more practical solution is in wide use across the world and in particular Queensland’s Gold Coast.

“Rock revetments are the obvious and inexpensive solution to erosion and they have been successfully used at Collaroy to the south of the current vertical walls, he says.”

A revetment is a sloping installation of rocks that can absorb major storm events while preventing erosion. “The beauty,” according to Gordon, “is that sand blows up into the revetment, natural vegetation grows, and you’re left with what looks like a dune that doesn’t destroy the natural aesthetic of the waterfront but the underlying rock revetment is there to protect properties if a major storm event occurs.

“Furthermore, revetments can be altered and reinforced, whereas once you’ve built a vertical seawall that’s it.

Dunes build resilience. Gold Coast revetment. Image: International Coastal Management

“You wouldn’t know it, but much of the Gold Coast coastline is protected by a rock revetment buried under the sandy beach and dunes that have been artificially built by pumping sand from offshore onto the beach.”  

While storm surges and beachfront sand erosion are still an issue on the Gold Coast there’s no proposals from any stakeholders to replace revetments with vertical seawalls. 

New South Wales residents hoodwinked

A major issue says Brendan Donohoe, president of the Northern Beaches Branch of the Surfrider Foundation is that self-interest is behind the push for vertical seawalls. “For councils and state government it’s buck-passing as local property owners are footing much of the bill for the seawalls,” he says.

“But an individual landowner contributing $250,000 to the building of a vertical seawall gives them an immediate return on investment as at least that amount is added to the value of their property. It’s a solution of protecting private properties at the expense of community space.”

Brendan Donohue at Collaroy. image: supplied

Aside from its mission to preserve coastline, the Surfrider Foundation is campaigning against what it says is conflicted advice, with a number of waterfront property owners presented with the vertical concrete seawalls as the only option to protect their properties from ocean surges. 

At a meeting of owners of the Marquesas beachfront apartment complex in Narrabeen, recorded by one of the owners, a council officer was seen to be advocating for the construction of a vertical seawall. Aside from issues over its long-term effectiveness and impact on the beachfront landscape, it would also be a far more expensive option.  

Says Donohoe, “Owners were apparently being told a vertical wall had to be constructed and they would have to pay for it. Various alternatives, including sand nourishment, were not put to them.”

Silencing dissenting voices

Following changes to New South Wales planning laws, the state government has effectively pawned off the decision-making process, leaving the hard choices to be made by councils.

Says Gordon, “Local councils have incredibly high staff turnovers and council officers cannot keep up with changes, they are too easily swayed by outdated coastal engineering thinking, nor do they have any idea of the history of the coastal areas they are responsible for.”

It seems that lack of knowledge has come to play with coastal protection works at Wamberal on the New South Wales Central Coast. There are plans to build three sections of vertical seawalls and Gordon had been appointed to the NSW Planning Department panel to review the proposals.

He was removed from the panel, being informed in writing that, “It has been raised with us that you may have had some previous involvement in this project including media comments and presentation of material to the Save our Sands group and may therefore have a reasonably perceived conflict of interest.” 

In a written response, he hit back saying he had no conflict of interests, adding, “I believe this attempt to disqualify me is because I have been interested in coastal matters, including at Wamberal for 50 years. Hence, I have what could be seen to be an arguably unmatched knowledge of the issues at Wamberal and any proposal to undertake coastal works.” 

Neilson Park seawall. Image: Marcus Reubenstein

According to Gordon the issue was most likely that the panel was giving consideration to a seawall and did not want a dissenting voice coming from a prominent coastal engineer who might advocate a far less costly solution with significantly lesser impact on the environmental landscape.

The Surfrider Foundation has written to the planning panel asking it to confirm rumours that Gordon will be replaced by an engineer who may have a conflict of interest in advising on the seawall approvals. Whilst the panel hasn’t responded a proposed preliminary meeting, at which Gordon was originally listed to attend, has been cancelled. Says Gordon, “I believe the panel has all but fallen over, the whole process has been compromised.” 

More to come

In another baffling planning move, one of Sydney’s most iconic harbourside beaches has endured a two-and-a-half-year transformation that was billed as delivering Shark Beach at Nielsen Park an upgraded reinforced seawall. With cost and time blowouts, and the original engineering firm being sacked halfway into the project, the beach only reopened this month.

Now Shark Beach is missing one thing—a beach. At high tide the water is literally lapping at the base of the new seawall, beachgoers have been hived off onto concrete steps and a pristine piece of harbour foreshore has been destroyed. 

With poor planning, conflicted stakeholders and a lack of proper oversight, says Gordon, “it’s concrete by stealth,” that has the potential to engulf significant areas of the state’s coastline. 

Global warming’s huge and endless cost of rising seas

This post was originally published on Michael West.