Tax Office whistleblower, Richard Boyle, stripped of his defence by broken whistleblower laws, has entered plea deal with prosecutors to avoid a trial. Rex Patrick reports from the South Australian District Court.

Richard Boyle’s barristers have advised Judge Kudelka of the South Australian District Court that they are in negotiations with the Commonwealth Government to end his prosecution through a plea in exchange for, hopefully, a non-conviction.

Richard is a Whistleblower.

In June this year, Justice Lovell, with justices Doyle and David of the SA Court of Appeal agreeing, declared:

“The [ATO] accepts that the appellant is a whistle-blower as that term is commonly understood. [Richard] disclosed information to an authorised person pursuant to the terms of the Public Interest Disclosure Act. It was common ground on appeal that [Richard’s] conduct in disclosing the information attracted an immunity from criminal prosecution under the Act. [Richard], however, faces criminal charges, not for the disclosure of information he believed needed to be disclosed, but for his conduct in unlawfully gathering evidence he considered would support his disclosure …”

They went on to explain that Richard Boyle formally blew the whistle.

“It was common ground that [Richard], on 12 October 2017, lodged a public interest disclosure with the ATO and that it complied with the requirements of the Act. Information contained within the [disclosure] attracted the immunity.”

The Justices then confirmed the Australian Tax Office botched the processing of Richard’s disclosure.

“[Richard’s disclosure] was allocated to an authorised recipient for investigation pursuant to s 43 of the Act. His [disclosure] was not dealt with appropriately. By letter emailed to [Richard] on 27 October 2017, the authorised recipient advised that he had discontinued the investigation pursuant to s 48(1)(c) of the Act, having determined that the disclosure did not concern serious disclosable conduct. It is accepted for the purposes of this litigation that this decision was incorrect.”

Finally, they vindicated him:

“On 9 April 2018, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (“ABC”) presented a story called ‘Mongrel bunch of bastards’ as a Four Corners program. It featured taxpayers talking about their adverse experiences with the ATO. [Richard] appeared as a whistle-blower.”

[SUPPRESSED]

“In March 2019, the Inspector-General of Taxation and Taxation Ombudsman released a ‘Review into the Australian Taxation Office’s use of Garnishee Notices’. The review was commenced “to maintain community confidence in the administration of the tax system after serious allegations were made about the [ATO’s] inappropriate use of garnishee notices on small businesses” by a current and former ATO officer on the ABC Four Corners program on 9 April 2018.”

But he was left without any protection as the Court of Appeal confirmed what everyone knew; Australia’s Commonwealth public sector whistleblower protection laws are broken.

https://michaelwest.com.au/the-making-of-a-criminal-from-a-whistleblower/ 

The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But The Truth

Richard has never attempted to deny the actions that he took, rather to explain why he took them. It’s not that he’s now changing his story, just that his legal team recognises he has no legal defence.

Richard has reached the end of a very long road.

Despite him blowing the whistle on the egregious use of power by the Tax Office with an understanding that he was protected, he wasn’t. He’s been caught out by inadequate laws that purported to shield him, but instead lured him into a situation where he and his family has suffered for seven years.

A Failure to Act

Despite knowing that our whistleblower protection laws are broken, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus let the prosecution of Richard continue.

At any time, Mr Dreyfus could have exercised his powers under the Judiciary Act to end the proceedings. The Attorney-General is given those powers by the Parliament, to whom he owes a duty to make sure unfair prosecutions do not occur.

In what will be a sad legacy for Mr Dreyfus, he failed to intervene. He knew the law was broken yet he let Richard be prosecuted under them.

Plea Deal

We’ll have to wait to see the outcome of the plea deal. Surely the Commonwealth will see that Richard acted only with the public interest in mind, as the Court of Appeal recognised.

A non-conviction would be best, with a non-custodial sentence the lesser preferred option. 

If he’s placed on a good behaviour bond, one might hope he can back date it – because all he has ever done is behaved in a manner we might hope others would in the same circumstances.

Richard is no criminal, rather a hero.

---

Editor: story to be updated as developments arise

Afghan war crimes whistleblower David McBride sentenced to prison

This post was originally published on Michael West.

It’s a $20B plus submarine mess, atop the well-known $368B AUKUS submarine mess-in-development. Rex Patrick lifts the lid on the little known financial and national security disaster that is the Collins Class submarines.

Last month, when The Australian reported that five of our six Collins Class submarine were out of action, the Chief of Navy, Admiral Mark Hammond, defended the subs, saying they remained “world class diesel boats” that were “meeting the operational requirements of the Australian government”.

It was a statement that was, at best, disingenuous.

What the admiral failed to say, and what is understood by few, perhaps not even by our bathtub admiral Defence Minister, is that Collins represents a more than $20B national security failure caused exclusively by incompetence.

A troubled life

The Collins submarines have been mired in controversy pretty much for all of their three-decade lives.

The Collins submarines were built in Adelaide between 1990 and 2003. They were plagued with problems at launch, not because of Australian build quality, but because Collins was a new design with a lot of teething issues.

“Dud subs” and “noisy as a rock concert” were labels attached to the submarine in 1998. The diesel engines were unreliable. Poor hydrodynamic design and propellor cavitation made the submarine noisy. The periscopes vibrated and the combat system didn’t work. 

After considerable sums of taxpayer’s money were spent rectifying issues, the submarines proved capable, but unreliable.

On 10 June 2011 the Government woke up to a headline in the Australian; “not a single submarine seaworthy”. Reliability issues started to plague the Collins submarines.

Only after a detailed and brutal investigation, the ‘Coles review’, did submarine availability improve, but again at huge cost to the taxpayer. In the mid 2010’s Collins sustainment costs shot to well over $500M per annum.

Sustainment issues then saw the Collins class submarine listed as a Project of Concern from November 2008 until October 2017.

Australia was paying the price, and it has been a very considerable price, of choosing to have an orphaned submarine design; a submarine that no other nation was using and for which there were no international pool of spare parts.

Present day issues

This year’s allocated budget for sustainment of our Collins submarines is a ‘wallet sapping’ $769M. And for that, we’ve got just one submarine available for operations.

That’s not a reliable or credible military capability.  

And whilst the Navy went into damage control when the current dire situation became public, this week Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy placed the Collins submarines back on the Project of Concern List.

It is likely that the Collin-class will never come off that list. They’ll be on there until they are retired from service, and that could be sooner than the Navy would like and indeed potentially before their planned nuclear replacements are available.

Best laid plans o’ mice an’ men

Understanding the situation is not difficult. Anyone familiar with the life cycle of a car knows what Collins is going through.

When you first buy a car there’s a risk of infantile failure of components. The warranty period covers these failures. Then the car performs reliable for the next decade until wear-out failures start to kick in. That’s the point where most people dispose of the car.

There was a plan to rid the Navy of the Collins submarines before they hit the point where wear-out failures started to increase. It was a particularly important plan noting Australia was the only Collins spare parts source.

The first Collins submarine was supposed to retire in 2026.

Dunning-Kruger leadership at Defence

You do not have to be a scholar to work out that almost all of our Defence Force procurement screw-ups (and the list of screw-ups is long) start with a decision not to go with a low risk off-the-shelf solution.

And yet, that’s what happens over and over again. Defence leaders don’t look back and say, “what’s the key lesson from Defence procurement failures”, rather they think “I can do it better than the last guy”. It’s the Dunning-Kruger effect – a cognitive bias where people of limited ability in a particular domain, in this case project management, overestimate their abilities.

When the future submarine project was first announced in 2009, the plan was to have the first new submarine in the water by 2025, allowing the first Collins submarine to decommission in 2026.

Defence spent seven years from 2009 thinking it would embark on a risky ‘design your own Son-of-Collins’ project before announcing in 2016 that it would instead procure French nuclear submarines, converted into non-nuclear submarines.

Defence had injected 12 years of delay into a Collins submarine replacement and spent $4B buying nothing.

On the day the French submarine program was abandoned Defence had injected 12 years of delay into a Collins submarine replacement and spent $4B buying nothing.

Life-of-type-extension

Defence then recommended to Government that Australia embark on the $368B AUKUS program; a program that will unlikely ever see a delivery of a first US Virginia class submarine in 2035 as planned, and will most certainly not see a UK designed AUKUS submarine before 2040.

Status of AUKUS. US operates its subs from Base Australia?

So, instead of decommissioning the first Collins submarine taxpayers will be hit with an additional $3B to $5B on a life-of-type extension (LOTE) for all six Collins boats. That cost estimate is from Defence and is a fantasy. 

In May this year former US navy deputy assistant secretary Gloria Valdez handed a report to the Government stating that LOTE was a perilously high-risk endeavour that is not guaranteed to succeed. The taxpayers will likely be up for double the Defence LOTE estimate and there’s a real risk we’ll get nothing from it.

MWM has an Information Commissioner appeal afoot to get access to the Valdez report, which Defence is keeping secret – even from ASC, the Government shipyard charged with carrying out the LOTE.

And while the LOTE is underway, taxpayers will still be paying close to $800 million per annum to strive to have our 1990 Holden VN Commodore era Collins submarines at sea. That’s another $8.8B of originally unplanned spend to take us up to the unlikely arrival of a first nuclear powered submarine. 

Meantime the risk of systemic failure for the Collins-class grows, raising the possibility that Australia could be left with no submarine capability at all.

Pure incompetence 

Pure incompetence by Defence leaders has led us to a point in 2024 where we have a circa $20B bill on the table for failing Collins class submarine availability, as we simultaneously spend even more in what is likely to be a failed effort to acquire nuclear submarine capability.

All of this spend is supposedly designed to give us the capability to contribute to a China-Taiwan conflict predicted by the United States to likely take place later this decade.

Leaving aside the question of whether this is a sensible focus for Australian Defence planning and capabilities; if this were Australian Football League, Defence would have us paying for the most expensive football team ever, with the players scheduled to arrive after the grand final has been played.

The Albanese Government has blindly swallowed Defence’s Kool Aid. It’s hard to know whether Defence has spiked the Kool Aid and everyone attending the National Security Committee of Cabinet is drunk, or whether they’re all just plain dumb. It could even be a combination.

Meantime at the sharp end of national security, Australia’s highly professional and capable submariners are condemned to go to sea in elderly boats that may soon be no longer fit for purpose and perhaps worse.  

Dumb Ways to Buy: Defence “shambles” unveiled – former submariner and senator Rex Patrick

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Peter Dutton’s hyperbolic denunciation of Australia reinforcing its existing policy on Palestine, along with most allies, attracts allegations of playing local politics. These claims miss the real dog whistle, writes Michael Pascoe. 

Nobody has ever accused Peter Dutton and his LNP of being subtle. When Australia voted in the UN with nearly every country other than the US and Israel for a pathway to the long-agreed two-state solution, no claim was too much for the headline-dominating opposition leader.

“They’ve completely abandoned the Jewish community, the state of Israel,” Dutton claimed. 

“I think the Prime Minister stands condemned because when you ask yourself, why would the government, why would the Prime Minister sacrifice his credibility and backflip on the commitment he gave?

“It’s for votes. He sold the Jewish community out in this country for green votes in western Sydney and in places like Marrickville.

“That’s what the Prime Minister’s done and I think we should be standing with allies like the United States.”

And Micronesia, Palau and Paraguay?

BREAKING: Today, the United Nations voted 170-6 on “The Right of the Palestinian People to Self-Determination”.

Those voting against:

🇺🇸United States
🇮🇱Israel
🇦🇷Argentina
🇵🇾Paraguay
🇫🇲Micronesia
🇳🇷Nauru pic.twitter.com/VpKEiWKnFG

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) November 14, 2024

There are a number of false claims in this Trumpy spray ranging from the major, such as making up the idea that the government had given a commitment against actually backing the two-state solution, to the minor, such as saying “allies”, plural, instead of “ally”, singular. The US is the only ally we didn’t vote with on that particular motion. 

The Opposition leader is a bit rich in claiming Labor slowly moving in step with the rest of the civilised world (allowing some licence about whether the US is “civilised” in regards to Gaza or where it’s heading under Trump) is all about courting Green and Muslim votes.

All about the votes

As if Dutton’s own policy positions on everything from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ flags to his nuclear gaslighting aren’t all about votes. 

The quality of Australian politics being the quality of Australian politics, Labor of course also does nothing without a view to the votes, how far the electorate will let it move after the disaster of the Voice referendum. 

What is missed in commentary is what votes Peter Dutton is concentrating on.

You don’t have to look very far on social media to find as many allegations of Dutton’s unreserved support of Netanyahu being all about chasing the supposed Jewish vote and financial support as Albanese chasing Green and Muslim votes. 

You’ll also see a simple arithmetic promoted that there are roughly 800,000 Australians saying they are Islamic and 100,000 saying they are Jewish. Very simplistically, those numbers would pretend Dutton is being brave and Albanese obvious. 

Albo and the Labor base

But these are not the votes that it’s about.

Albanese is trying to stem the erosion of faith in the Labor base. 

Dutton is dog whistling his preference for “white” over “brown” to build his hard-right base. If it helps a bit against the Teals in the seats of Wentworth and Goldstein, that’s just a bonus. 

It’s not the 800,000 Muslims, even if they were politically uniform, that Albanese is chasing. It’s the millions who wanted Labor to act on principle, to restore the nation’s sovereignty instead of giving it away. 

It’s not the 100,000 Jews, who certainly are not politically uniform, that Dutton is focussed on. It’s the millions who bark when he whistles on African gangs, Aboriginal flags, boat people, “Chinah”.

Brown v white

He never has to say it out loud. His people see Palestinians and Lebanese as “brown” and Israelis as “white”.

Backing the Netanyahu government all the way and then a bit further is what Peter Dutton says out loud. What he whistles is that he’s 100 per cent for white people in any conflict with brown or black.

That’s why it helps to conflate Jewish people in Australia with the Israeli Government, the good white people we know with colonialists killing scores of thousands of natives.

There was something similar in Dutton’s earlier stance of wanting to preference white South African farmers if they were to seek refugee status. They were the LNP’s sort of people, white, unlike all those other refugees. 

And it’s working for him. The division brought to the surface in the Voice campaign is his guiding light. That 60 per cent who voted “no” weren’t all racists but plenty were, a majority safely suspected of being opposed to “woke”, whatever that is, a majority dismissive of the pantomime elites Dutton suggests, a majority opposed to “pronouns”, as Dutton euphemistically summarised a culture war.

It is a body of people who might be led to think renewable energy is an unnecessary fixation of those rich, woke, pronoun-diverse, city elites, if the LNP can spin its illusion of having a cheaper, easier, quicker nuclear-powered solution. Only woke greenies would oppose such a thing. 

Dutton competing with Trump to be Netanyahu’s biggest supporter is consistent with the rest of the package, the inherent dog whistle as solidly LNP as coal mining. 

That’s what is generally missed. It’s old Australia, unrenovated, happy to bark.  

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Young Australians are subject to powerful indoctrination and enticements to join the Israel Defence Forces. Yaakov Aharon investigates the links between youth group Hatzofim Australia and IDF recruiters. 

While the Scouts typically wear a uniform emblazoned with the flag of their own country, Hatzofim Australia’s khaki uniform only has the Israeli flag. It’s a not-for-profit Zionist youth group and a wing of the Israeli Scouts.

Recently, MWM published an investigation into the Garin Tzabar Australia program, whose staff and services are closely intertwined with Hatzofim Australia. The Garin Tzabar program is the result of a joint venture partnership between the Israeli Scouts and IDF’s recruitment unit.

Hatzofim Australia provides services to children aged 8-25 and is granted special access to children through public and private Jewish schools. Their services include teaching classes and school activities, hosting regular weekend meetings and camps during school holidays, and sending children on Israel study tours.

Sometimes these Israel study tours are a one way trip. After all, Garin Tzabar translates to ‘seeds of Israeli identity’, and seeds are meant to be buried. Israeli immigrants who show they are willing to die for a foreign country are then enticed to stay for a lifetime.

Lone Soldiers. New Australian IDF recruits due to arrive in Israel in January

Criminal army recruiting

It is not a crime if an Australian chooses to join a foreign army.

However, S119.7 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act 1995 states that “a person commits an offence if the person recruits, in Australia, another person to serve in any capacity in or with an armed force in a foreign country.”

It is a further offence to facilitate or promote recruitment for a foreign army and to advertise or publish recruitment materials. This includes information relating to how a person may serve, make applications to serve, or travel to a foreign country to serve with a foreign armed force.

The maximum penalty for each offence is ten years. MWM is not alleging any parties mentioned in this article have broken the law.

Hatzofim and IDF common goal

Hatzofim Australia is the local wing of the Israeli Scouts. Its mission statement says it intends to…

“to operate and develop educational programs and values, in which children and young adults – members of the Jewish-Israeli community in North America, Australia and Western Europe – will engage in a variety of social and educational Zionist experiences, which will help them build knowledge of and love for the Land of Israel. Weekly activities are planned and executed by high school children leading kids grades 3-9.

… [Hatzofim Members] take a meaningful part in Israeli society through our different programs, such as Shnat Sherut [national service volunteer work] Gap Year program and Garin Tzabar IDF service.”

Garin Tzabar is a program for Israel’s Lone Soldiers, or soldiers without parents living in Israel, who qualify for special benefits, including free accommodation, free plane tickets to Israel, better pay for their IDF service, and more time on leave. When they finish their service, they qualify for subsidised accommodation and university scholarships.

The official IDF website states that Garin Tzabar was founded through a joint venture partnership with the Israeli Scouts, the IDF Metav Unit for recruitment, and the Ministries of Defence and Immigration.

Recruiting Australians

The Garin Tzabar website specifically advertises to Australian recruits.

Prior to an MWM investigation into Garin Tzabar, the contact point was listed as Shoval Magal. Her LinkedIn listed her as ‘Executive Director Hatzofim Australia & Garin Tzabar Australia.’

MWM reached out to Magal on multiple occasions through multiple avenues, seeking clarification as to how Magal separates her two roles and at what age Hatzofim’s children are exposed to advertisements for Garin Tzabar’s services.

Magal did not respond to requests for comment, however she did scrub references to Garin Tzabar from her LinkedIn and Hatzofim Australia’s website. Magal was preceded in her Executive Director roles by Michael Manhaim (2018-2023), who continues to live in Australia, where he works as the Growth and Marketing Lead for Tzofim Tzabar Olami (Israeli Scouts and Garin Tzabar International).

Manhaim was also a leading organiser in the 2024 Better Council pro-Israel election campaign. During his army service, Manhaim served in Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s most elite Special Forces unit.

Just ‘Rubbish & Rates’, or is the Israel war lobby interfering in Australia’s local elections?

In his former role as the ‘Shaliach [Emissary] and Executive Director of Hatzofim and Garin Tzabar Australia’, Manhaim wrote an article, ‘Becoming A Lone Soldier’, for an Australian Zionist youth group’s newsletter:

“How can we be Zionists but choose to live in the diaspora? While some will continue to live with this dilemma, some choose to take action. The Israeli Defence Force is the melting pot of Israeli society.

“The program starts with the unique preparation process in Australia.

…It only takes one step; you just need to choose which foot will lead the way. We will be there for the rest.”

Hatzofim Australia

In November 2021, Manhaim posted an advertisement for a job at Hatzofim Australia. The responsibilities included “maintaining mailing lists” for Garin Tzabar and “liaising with Tzofim Garin Tzabar and partners.”

When his 5-year contract as Emissary and Executive Director had finished in 2023, Manhaim wrote a lengthy farewell to those he worked with, reminiscing on how the Australian Zionist Youth Council coordinated with him to:

“Assist dozens of community members who made Aliyah [immigrated] to Israel.

Garin Tzabar [is] undoubtedly the most excellent Zionist enterprise of the 21st century. Young olim [immigrants] who choose to make Israel their home, influence Israeli society from within, and dedicate their best years to defending the land. I’m proud that a program fully supports these inspiring young people.

… To our partners in the Garin Tzabar: the Ministry of Aliyah [Immigration] and absorption, the Jewish Agency, the Israeli Consulate, the IDF Unit “Metav,” the Ministry of Defense.

… Thanks to everyone.”

IDF Service

During her time in the army, Magal worked as an ‘education guide’ for soldiers, but she did not teach them target shooting, fitness, or battle tactics. A job listing on an IDF e-store site describes Magal’s role as teaching the soldiers about Israeli culture, history, and ideology.

There is a concept in Zionism of ‘Hagshama’: that it is the responsibility of all Jews living outside of Israel to ‘actualise’ their ideology by making Aliyah (immigrating).

Some organisations – like the Israeli scouts – take it a step further. An Israeli immigrant of fighting age must respond to the conscription mandate. Therefore, Israeli Scouts ‘rank’ their members according to age groups. Those aged 17 to 18 are addressed as ‘Magshimim’ (‘actualizers’), both in Israel, where their members are subject to the draft and also abroad.

Prior to having scrubbed their website of references to Garin Tzabar, the first words on Hatzofim’s Hagshama page were an endorsement of the program.

Mapping the networks

Every Hatzofim Australia newsletter provides a link, “DONATE NOW – 100% of your donations go to Israel.” The link goes to the Friends of Hatzofim page, a secondary Australian non-profit, where visitors are asked to ‘Give $10,000 – Support a lone soldier full scholarship throughout the entire program.’ The tax-deductible donations are then sent overseas to Tzofim-Garin Tzabar.

The address of Hatzofim Australia and of Tzofim-Garin Tzabar in Australia is the building belonging to NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and the Zionist Council of NSW, the Jewish community’s peak roof bodies in the state.

Michael Gencher is a director of Hatzofim Australia and also served as acting CEO of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies from 2023-2024.

Hatzofim Australia is overseen, alongside nine other Zionist youth groups, by the roof body Australian Zionist Youth Council (AZYC), which is in turn represented and overseen by the peak body Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA).

MWM sought comment from AZYC and ZFA regarding their responsibilities for their constituent organisations, but we did not receive a reply.

The Zionist dream

In August 2020, Michael Manhaim congratulated four Australians who had become IDF recruits through the Garin Tzabar program. He wrote:

“There is nothing more powerful than fulfilling a Zionism dream!
…Those young adults are joining today to the Garin Tzabar program.
…‘For you are about to cross the Jordan to enter and possess the land that your God is assigning to you.’ Deuteronomy 11:31”

In November 2023’s Hatzofim newsletter, Shoval Magal is smiling for a selfie. She is standing next to six Australians who look barely out of high school. “The participants are eager to have Aliya [immigrate] to Israel, start the program and join the army,” Magal said.

These six recruits are the attendees of just one of several seminars that Magal has organised in Melbourne for the summer 2023 cycle, having also organised separate events across multiple cities in Australia.

In Hatzofim Australia’s June 2024 newsletter, Magal said she was “in the advanced stages of the preparation phase in Australia for the August 2024 Garin.” In October 2024, she was “getting ready for Garin Tzabar’s 2024 December cycle.”

The Israeli welcome ceremony for Garin Tzabar participants is on January 12, 2025.

The Government’s response

MWM sought comment from the Australian Federal Police, Australian Border Force, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Only the Department of Home Affairs spokesperson, Tarek Al Issawi, was willing to respond. He said:

• “The Australian Government is alert to the potential for Australians to travel to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories and engage in hostilities.
  • The Australian Government does not track the movement of Australians overseas.

• The Government encourages all Australians who seek to serve with the armed forces of a foreign country to carefully consider their legal obligations and ensure their conduct does not constitute a criminal offence.”

In July, Home Affairs stated it had identified only four Australians whom it suspects of having travelled to Israel since October 2023 with the intention of serving in the IDF. The Australian Border Force intervened with three of the four persons but did not necessarily prevent them from leaving.

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Among the 30 bills elbowed through in the Parliamentary rush were 3 bills agreed by the Government and Opposition targeting refugees. Human rights lawyer Alison Battison says Australia is criminalising refugees. 

In the last Parliamentary session of 2024, the Labor Party pushed through over 30 pieces of legislation, including three bills targeting refugees, asylum seekers, stateless and non-citizen Indigenous people. This rushed suite of legislation was not drafted in response to any pressing concern of national importance. 

Instead, it’s overriding purpose was and is to secure votes, so Labor can claim they are even more strict on border control and community safety than the Coalition. The legislation, however, does not address these areas in any cohesive manner. Instead, it creates great uncertainty for thousands of people who are worried they will be ripped away from their families and homes, detained and removed to places they have never been and have no connection to.

Just weeks before this suite of legislation was passed, I had self-funded travel to the UN in Geneva for meetings with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD). The WGAD is a specialist body within the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly.

The WGAD personally invited me to address them and civil society on developments in Australia regarding the arbitrary detention of refugees, asylum seekers, stateless and non-citizen Indigenous people in Australia’s immigration prisons. 

These are the very people the new suite of legislation targets. Being a legal expert in this area I have submitted scores of complaints to the WGAD over the years. 

A bad record 

Australia has a terrifying record of its treatment of these vulnerable people, in particular for the conditions of, and length of time refugees and others are subject to administrative detention. I have clients who were detained for over 10 years, with the longest being over 13 years.

This is administrative detention at the whim of the Government, the administrative equivalent of being detained at the “Governor’s pleasure.”

Despite a landmark judgment handed down in November 2023, which finally set down the Constitutionally permitted limits of administrative detention, I was at the UN to inform them that situation had not dramatically improved and was likely to deteriorate further.

The legislation has unfortunately proven my point

The passing of the suite of legislation (meant to address the fall out of the 2023 High Court decision) has unfortunately proven my point.

I told the UN and civil society that instead of pro-actively identifying detainees caught by the High Court judgment who should have been released immediately, the Government had left it up to lawyers such as myself to find and identify such people in the detention network and then threaten legal action for unlawful imprisonment.

Many unlawfully imprisoned  

More than 12 months later, I am still identifying multiple people every month who are unlawfully imprisoned, including very vulnerable young and queer people. 

Given their detention is a breach of our Constitution, this is a terrible indictment of the Australian Government’s commitment to our separation of powers. I had expected better of a Labor Government and had expected they would reduce the ease at which people could be administratively detained. I was wrong.

I told civil society (to audible gasps) that Australia’s immigration prisons are not centres in which a person can come and go – they are prisons with high levels of security and monitoring, with razor wire, internal movement restrictions and handcuffing if anyone needs to leave, including for medical or legal appointments. 

Distressingly, the new suite of legislation includes measures to further limit the contact people have with the outside world, by allowing guards (who are presumedly not trained in forensic analysis) to confiscate, check and ban phones from people they believe are committing crimes.

There is no need for suspicion “beyond reasonable doubt”

I told the UN that when people are released, they are fitted with electronic monitoring ankle devices and are subject to nighttime curfews. If they breach their visa conditions, they are liable for 12 months minimum prison time. 

These people, where they have criminal convictions, have already served their terms of imprisonment and are subject to the same monitoring as any other person in Australia. Their treatment is the very definition of criminalising immigration.

They are tagged like cattle for administrative, not criminal, purposes.  

The same suite of legislation also makes it lawful for the Australian Government to pay other countries to take these people, and if the person doesn’t assist with their removal to a place they have never been, they are liable for another round of administrative detention. 

This means that Australia, a wealthy Western country has legislated to use taxpayer funds to pay poorer nations to take the people our Government deems too unworthy to be in our country – including mothers of young children with no criminal records.

Convict history repeating  

Given Australia’s history as the place the British Empire sent its convicts, the people it didn’t want, this move is the height of hypocrisy. 

Some of my ancestors are Luddites and were sent to Australia for their political crimes. They were unwanted and inconvenient in their homeland. History is repeating itself. 

The legislation to send refugees to other nations is built on the “Pacific Solution”, in which Australia sent thousands for regional processing to Nauru and Manus Island, PNG. The irony of this is that remote processing in remote prisons has not stopped irregular migration – it does not address the push factors that cause people to leave their homes. It doesn’t work. 

Useless legislation feeds private contractors

And there is no evidence that the new legislation will work either. Instead, Australia is merely feeding the billion-dollar industry of publicly funded private contracts – it is Australia’s own industrial prison complex.

I am fielding scores of calls from petrified people who worry they and their families will be pulled apart by the new legislation. People with Australian citizen partners and young children. People with no criminal record. 

There appears to be no human right the Government won’t trample on in its race to prove its potentially vote winning cruelty has no bounds.

The WGAD is coming to Australia in 2025. The Government has already delayed its visit due to the forthcoming election. When they eventually arrive, I can’t imagine I will be providing the UN with an update that is anything but a rendition of the steps taken to win votes by victimising some of the most vulnerable in the Australian community.

Room at the Inn: yet Australia’s asylum seekers face another Christmas in lockdown

This post was originally published on Michael West.

It’s a $368B project getting deserved criticism, with a new negative angle hitting the press almost daily. But in the interests of balanced reporting, Rex Patrick brings us a little bit of good AUKUS news.

It’s only been a week since MWM gave readers an update on the current status of AUKUS. 

Since that time we’ve seen some further damning headlines out of the US – “The Navy’s Virginia-Class Submarine Debacle”, “The Virginia-class Submarines Struggle Under a 139 Percent Cost Increase” and a concerning article on “Why Is the Virginia-Class So Behind?”

And there’s been bad news in Australia too. There was the story of the Australian Submarine Agency scoring second worst for staff wellbeing in the annual public service census working alongside highly paid consultants, calls for a change of plan by a former submarine admiral, and news of a review of the project by former Defence Secretary Dennis Richardson.

Watching AUKUS unfold is a lot like watching a slow-motion shipwreck. But doomscrolling can sometimes be too much. So, here at MWM we’ve been on the watch for a good story; something to make everyone feel a bit better. It’s taken a while, but we found one.

On Time Delivery

When the Prime Minister went to San Diego in March 2023 to commit in full to AUKUS, President Biden presented him with a Shinola wristwatch in a custom wooden box. It’s a nice watch, American made.

Now, MWM want to be really clear in saying that Anthony Albanese declared the watch as a gift and he’s done everything right in respect to the official ‘Guidelines relating to official gifts received’ that apply to him and his ministers.

Under the gifts received policy, ministers are allowed to keep a gift from a foreign government whose wholesale value is less than $750. If it’s more than that it can also be kept if the minister pays the difference between the $750 and the value of the gift (plus GST).

Records show that Albanese rarely keeps gifts from foreign governments. He normally surrenders them to his department. But in this case, he obviously took a shine to the presidential watch and elected to keep it.

Its wholesale value was estimated at $1,122.88 (of course, President Biden gifting the watch probably makes its resale value somewhat higher). In accordance with the rules Albanese duly paid $410.17 to consolidated revenue, which included some GST.

MWM is not trying to make a big deal of the gift. Good on Albanese – he’s got himself an AUKUS watch (and care of Scomo whose deal it was originally). But it is worthy of mention in this project already mired by schedule blowouts and cost blowouts. 

The watch is the first AUKUS deliverable and it’s an on-time delivery. And in contrast to the submarines, at least this bit of American technology was free.

But then again, there’s no such thing as a free watch.

Status of AUKUS. US operates its subs from Base Australia?

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Indonesia and Australia are preparing to ink a deal to send the remaining five of the ‘Bali Nine’ back to Australia. But do they all want to go? Duncan Graham reports from Malang prison in Java.

One of the Bali Five, Martin Stephen, faces a dilemma worthy of a Shakespearean plot.

After almost two decades in overstuffed prisons with men whose values and language he spurns, the 48-year-old prisoner is in Lowokwaroe jail (Malang, East Java) and suddenly getting a mash of messages. So are his four former mates who are locked up in Bali.

Their hopes for an early release were – at least temporarily – dashed this week when Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke met his Indonesian counterpart Yusril Ihza Mahendra. They told journos in Jakarta that neither nation has prisoner transfer laws, so more talks are needed.

Lowokwaroe’s Kasi Bimkemas Lapas (Head of Community Relations) Faishol Nur refused MWM access to prisoner Stephens, referring requests to the Australian Embassy: “He’s only just heard of the deal, so is still trying to decide. The news hasn’t been confirmed.”

‘Significant step’ in push to repatriate Bali Nine

Uncertainty abounds

The yes-no stress on the men and their families in Oz must be acute. And Stephens has an add-on quandary: If the black-letter lawyers contrive a solution, should he stay with his Javanese wife – or head home to his parents in Wollongong and never again see Christine Winarni Puspayanti?

He may have no choice but to be forced to leave under the headline deal brokered by Anthony Albanese with President Prabowo Subianto. If deported, could Christine, 47, follow and settle? Maybe – but it’ll take a labyrinth of bureaucracy and a hill of cash to overcome, for he already owes thousands to the Australian government for jail support.

If he’s released on parole in Australia, will Indonesia allow re-entry? It seems that boarding gate may be forever closed. Minister Yusril reportedly said:

We’re transferring them to their countries so they can serve their sentence there, but if the countries want to give amnesty … it’s their right.

These crims could have been out long ago had they been cuffed on Australian tarmac as the Boeing’s turbines cooled. The Feds knew the conspirator’s plans and were tagging closely. But they could not arrest them before they left, and instead, they were arrested at Ngurah Rai airport en route back to Australia with much more dire consequences.

Martin Stephens

Stephens was originally recruited by Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. They offered the naïve barman an all-expenses holiday and a slice of the expected $4m from selling the drug stash Down Under.

All were tried and convicted for carrying 8.3 kg of heroin. The ringleaders got death – their male mules’ life. The only woman, Renae Lawrence, was deported in 2018. The remaining four are in Bali’s Kerobokan Prison. Stephens was shifted in 2014 to Lowokwaroe in East Java – he says to be closer to Christine.

In a 2020 face-to-face with this journalist, Stephens said: “I did wrong. Smuggling was my big mistake. I’m asking for a second chance. I’d never been convicted before of any crime. Christine is struggling. My parents in Australia are doing it hard because of me. I want to care for them (they visited last year).

Why should they keep paying for my first fault? What’s served by keeping me behind bars? I can do more good warning of the dangers of drugs.

“I’m borderline autistic. That caused problems when I was a kid. Now I’m more mature. I’ve learned the hard way. I got out of my depth. I’ve always taken responsibility for my mistakes. I’m proud of that.”

Stephens, the self-styled ‘baby’ of the Bali Nine, met Christine when she was visiting as a part of a church group, and they married in 2011. Jail staff say, “he’s got fat and has become spiritual.”

The five are serving life for crimes that would have put them inside for maybe a decade had they faced Australian courts. A courier with an otherwise clean record and uninvolved in planning would likely get under ten years, with half spent on probation.

Prisoners plight

It’s hard to find much public sympathy for the prisoner’s plight but reasonable observers may say the men have done their time. They weren’t only casualties of greed and stupidity, but they were victims of police stuff-ups and Indonesian politics – in the wrong country at a tricky time.

A hot ‘Say No to Drugs’ crusade was flaring across the Archipelago when the gang was caught; huge street billboards hammered the English-language slogan propped by pix of stern politicians and police chiefs.

A National Narcotics Agency (Badan Inteligensi Nasional – BIN) claim that 33 users were dying daily went largely unchallenged by the media. It was a pluck-from-anywhere figure.

Into this contrived moral morass tumbled the Bali Nine. Their well-publicised arrests were supposed to intimidate and deter. Nothing changed – new traders filled the gap; they calculated the odds of getting caught, shrugged and carried on recruiting the desperate and expendable.

In one year, 39 death sentences for drug-related offences were handed down by judges basking in public applause. The intensity and acceptance of the BIN crusade suggest a new legal approach is unlikely. Amnesty International campaign manager Puri Kencana Putri wrote that this accounted for

a staggering 81 per cent of all new death sentences.

By comparison, only 17 per cent were for murder, and the remaining two per cent for terrorism.”

Yet Indonesia is creeping towards abolition. Last year, the kill squads reportedly had more than 500 on the wait list, but their M16s have been on safety since 2016. A new law converts an extreme sentence to life if the wicked one has been contrite and well-behaved for two years.

Clemency pleas

Clemency pleas by Stephens were flicked aside by former president Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo. He had no tough-guy military background and perhaps needed to impress the electorate. His successor, former military strongman Prabowo Subianto, doesn’t need a status boost, hence the deportation deal.

Indonesia has a new President. Should we be worried?

Lowokwaroe Prison, where Stephens is held, was built by the Dutch in 1918 and later enlarged to hold 1,300 men. The roll call is now 2,649. Faishol Nur says the Australian has his own cell while locals are packed up to 20 in a room. In the earlier interview, Stephens said the Malang jail was “100 per cent better” than Kerobokan prison in Bali, where the other four remain.

Also known as Hotel K, the Bali clink was designed for 300 but holds five times more, mainly drug offenders. A gang riot in 2015 that spilt outside left four dead.

“I have no complaints about the Australian government and the AFP, which saved my life,” Stephens said in the earlier interview. “If I’d been caught in Sydney and confessed, the drug syndicate would have had me killed.

“I teach English and play the seruling (traditional bamboo flute), but I haven’t learned Indonesian. I want to keep my Australian identity and avoid getting involved in faction fighting.”

Stephens said his family and faith sustain him: “I’ve never contemplated suicide. That’s not me. No one sees your struggles – only your errors. Doesn’t everyone deserve a second chance?”

 

BRICS and Bats: the global world order is changing, but who would know?

 

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Will the government save in a fuel security emergency? After a long FOI fight, the Federal Government’s plan has been made public, and it’s not comforting, Rex Patrick reports.

After a year-long $150K Freedom of Information (FOI) fight to keep secret their plans for dealing with a fuel security emergency, the Australian Government has been forced to come clean and hand them over. Should we be reassured or alarmed?

There’s no single fuel emergency scenario. Australian Governments rightly ‘wargame’ all sorts of possibilities to see how they, the Australian economy and people might cope with a major disruption of liquid fuel supplies. Australia still predominantly runs on petroleum products, without which our nation would come to a crashing halt.

State-based fuel emergency

If the pipeline between the Gore Bay Marine Terminal, west of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the storage tanks at Clyde near Parramatta that feed the nearby road tanker loading facilities were to fail, there would be fuel disruption across the greater Sydney metropolitan area and the State.

This would be an emergency that would engage the NSW Minister for Energy, who has extensive powers under the Energy and Utilities Administrative Act (NSW), and the NSW Department of Planning and Environment, keepers of the Petroleum Supply Disruption Response Plan. The Commonwealth Government might keep a watching brief on the State’s response, and offer assistance where required, but would not formally get involved.

Each State and Territory has their own fuel security legislation and response plans.

National fuel emergency

Only if there was a pending or actual nationwide shortage would the Federal Government step up and take charge.

A range of scenarios exist, mostly external, that could cause a national issue. A scenario in the 2019 Fuel Security emergency report the Government wanted kept from us gave a plausible scenario: a developing conflict in the Middle East where ships were being attacked in the Straits of Hormuz – at the end of an intense Australian bushfire season at which domestic fuel stocks were depleted.

A read of the 82-page ‘National Liquid Fuel Emergency Response Plan’, which is now finally public, tells the planned response story.

Empty tanks and bare shelves. Australia’s fuel and supply security exposed

Light handed measures

At the outset of a crisis, the public would start to hear of an unfamiliar new acronym – NOSEC.  The National Oil Supplies Emergency Committee, chaired by the Commonwealth but including State government officials and large fuel suppliers such as Ampol, BP, Viva (formerly Shell) and ExxonMobil, would meet up and make an initial assessment of the situation.

The response may start off in a light-handed manner. Officials and their political masters would likely seek information on the supply situation and try to avoid startling the horses. Let’s not start a panic would be the mantra.

Rising prices caused by reduced supply will cause a market response whereby less fuel is used. The Government estimates this may cause a 4-6% reduction in consumption.

The Government may also start eco-driving (website information on reducing fuel usage), car-pooling and public transport campaigns.

The ACCC may authorise fuel companies to co-ordinate activities and to give priority to certain customers (normally a breach of the Trade Practices Act, until an emergency has been declared). They would also commence intense monitoring of retail fuel prices against international prices to discourage and, if necessary, prevent price gouging.

Alert phase

Whilst the Government’s preference would be to let industry respond, it may eventually be necessary to invoke powers under the Commonwealth’s Liquid Fuel Emergency (LFE) Act.

Quiet preparation will take place to do this. Consultation with stakeholders will occur. It may be that the states, coordinated through NOSEC to ensure an integrated approach, invoke their own fuel emergency powers first.

The Federal government will watch to see how light-handed market measures and any state responses are working and how the international circumstances that caused the supply issues are playing out. Oficials will advise and prepare for LFE implementation, allocating and placing resources on standby while preparing necessary legal documents and media releases.

State ministers must be consulted (a legal requirement under the LFE Act) before a fuel emergency can be declared.

If Australia experienced a decline in fuel supplies of more than 7 per cent and this decline was not global (e.g. a significant natural disaster), Australia may also consider the merit of drawing on its rights as a member of the International Energy Agency (IEA) to seek additional petroleum supplies from other IEA member countries, if available and feasible.

Hard measures

Once an emergency is declared and announced through the media, other measures may kick in. 

The LFE Act overrides any State measures in play to the extent that they are inconsistent with national measures. The LFE Act allows the government to direct fuel refinery products and quantity outputs. That may have only limited effect as we have only two refineries now. 

All participants in the fuel supply chain may have minimum stock requirements placed on them and be required to provide the government with near-real-time fuel stock data. This would be used to prevent excessive drawdowns.

A temporary reduction in fuel standards to assist with supply may also be considered.

Fuel distribution would be controlled by the Federal Government to ensure even distribution and to direct fuels to certain priority customers. It would likely invoke fuel rationing, e.g. $40 of fuel per customer per day, or odd licence plates one day, evens the next. This would involve an associated media campaign to ensure consumers understood the rules, as per example below.

If the situation worsens, fuels could be directed to particular users: Defence, ships, transport vehicles, police/ambulance/fire, corrective services, public transport, state emergency services and health.

The government co-ordination requirements would be considerable: intra-government (Attorney Generals, ACCC, Agriculture and Water, Communications, Industry, jobs and small business, Defence, Home Affairs, Social Security, DFAT, PM&C, Treasury and Finance), inter-government and with industry.

Media will be engaged to announce the declaration and to keep the nation informed of measures.

There is a plan, but…

The Government has a plan in place. It’s now public, which means it’s available to the media in the event of a looming crisis (to assist in informing the public), and for others to scrutinise. The response to a fuel security emergency requires advanced planning and coordination. The Government has good planning documentation in place.

But the release of the documents, including a 2019 fuel emergency exercise report, reveals some concerning issues that the Government does not seem to have got on top of.

In a 2019 exercise report, it was revealed that it might take 21 days to declare an emergency.

That concern has to be understood in the context of typical in-country diesel supplies of 24 to 26 days. It’s not clear how the government estimated that period, but it’s hugely problematic.

It may be an accumulation of the need to approach a crisis in an iterative manner, determined by legislative requirements, the number of Federal agencies involved, the number of stakeholders beyond the Federal government, a lack of clear understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the various players, the lack of clear guidance on the order things ought to be done and a lack of clear thresholds for steps to be taken.

In April 2019, the Morrison Government announced a review of the LFE Act to address the issues with the LFE Act. However, the review of the LFE Act did not proceed beyond scoping and planning because it was overtaken by events, mainly the COVID-19 pandemic. Nothing seems to have happened under the Albanese government. It’s quite focussed on AUKUS, it would seem.

One must presume this 21-day implementation timeframe still exists and that’s a big vulnerability while our national fuel stocks remain so low.

Panic stations?

Another deficiency in planning is the presumption that Australians will act rationally if a fuel emergency commences. COVID toilet paper hoarding showed us that citizens acting rationally is not to a given.

If diesel were to run out, food would quickly run out. We have just over a week of dry goods consumption available at our supermarkets and about a week for chilled and frozen foods. Pharmacies will start running out of medicine in about a week.

The thought of not having food in cupboards and fridges or prescription medicines would likely exercise people’s minds a lot more than not having toilet paper.

The planning needs to consider this and clearly doesn’t.

Fuel security is an important national security issue. The most recent forced release of information under our FOI laws shows that on top of the limited supplies we have in-country at any time, we’re likely to have a three-week delay before full response measures can be put in place.

But by that time, the bulk of our national buffer may already be depleted. Things could turn ugly fast and rapidly move beyond the scenarios the Federal and State governments have war-gamed.  

But it’s not obvious anyone cares. It’s not just a muck-up; it’s an inexcusable national security failure for which we could all pay a heavy price in troubled and uncertain times.

Forget toilet paper — try no food, fuel or medicine. Why Canberra needs to act on fuel security

 

This post was originally published on Michael West.

On Thursday 32 Bills passed in the Senate in an abrogation of the chamber’s role of scrutiny – and in an attack on democratic process. Rex Patrick provides a former insider’s perspective on what happened and who has democracy’s blood and follower betrayal on their hands.

Proper Process

Parliament is nothing without procedure. It might be mainly of interest to political junkies, but it’s a critical part of our democracy. Parliament makes laws and the processes of the Parliament are intended to ensure the democratic, orderly and transparent consideration of those laws. Let’s start with proper process for the passage of a Bill through the Senate.

Step 1: When a Bill is first introduced, along with an explanatory memorandum, it’s “read a first time”. At this point the Bill can be referred to a Senate Committee for detailed examination; stakeholders and members of the public can have their say via submissions and senators can ask all sorts of questions of officials and subject matter experts.

Step 2: The next stage is the second reading debate. During this stage, senators can choose to make a 15-minute speech to express their opinions about the Bill. The speech might persuade some senators to change their own views, especially independents. It’s also useful for putting a particular position on the record for later consideration by voters. 

The second reading is an important democratic step. At the conclusion of the debate, a vote is taken on the question “that this bill be read a second time“. The Bill can be killed at this stage if the Government doesn’t have support for it.

Step 3: The third reading, or ‘committee stage’, is a Q and A session around the Senate chamber. Senators ask questions of the minister on how the Government intends the Bill will work, and answers can even be used by Courts to later resolve any ambiguity in the law. The committee stage is also where amendments are moved and senators point out the purpose and benefits of them.

Once the Bill leaves the ‘committee stage’, a vote is taken on the question, “that this bill be read a third time” If agreed to, the bill has passed all stages and assuming the House of Representative is willing to accept any Senate amendments, will go on to become law.

A parliamentary ‘guillotine’

A physical guillotine is an apparatus designed for cutting off a person’s head. A parliamentary guillotine is a procedure designed to cut off debate on a Bill. 

The guillotine can be used legitimately for an urgent Bill, or if senators are filibustering in debate. It’s not supposed to serve as a way to abrogate scrutiny and prevent advocacy for amendments.

A guillotine can occur with majority approval of the Senate. That’s important, because Labor doesn’t have a majority in the Senate; Labor’s guillotine on 32 Bills on Thursday needed support from either the Liberals or the Greens.

The lead-up to this week’s Guillotine

With Prime Minister Albanese desperate to get movement on legislation, a guillotine this week was as predictable as taxes. MMW did exactly this on Tuesday.

To guillotine, or not to guillotine? Labor’s tactical nightmare in last Parliament week

On Wednesday evening, around 7:30 PM, the Government circulated a guillotine motion. At 8:30 PM independent senator Jacqui Lambie posted on BlueSky, alerting political die-hards that the Government had signalled ‘game on’, saying:

The mother of guillotines – this is not democracy

The dealing commenced.

Senators’ advisors, who were struggling through the end of a long sitting fortnight went on alert. A furious Lambie was to stand up in the Senate the following morning to rightfully hit out at the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Wong.

“Last night Minister Wong said all people in this place deserve a safe workplace, and, just an hour later, they sent a guillotine through like that. How is it safe for the employees in my office to go through 41 bills in a matter of about 12 hours? How is that safe? How bloody hypocritical. What about the right to disconnect?” 

Morning disruption

Thursday morning would have seen deals being close to settled.

At 9:03 AM, after morning prayers, Lambie stood in the Chamber and sought permission of senators to move a motion to scold the Government for their persistent guillotining of Bills – Labor had already dropped the guillotine blade on no less than 160 Bill thus far in this Parliament and was about to add to that tally. Permission was denied (any single senator can deny permission).

Lambie then sought to ’suspend standing orders’ to ask the entire Senate if she could move her motion. Debate occurred. The interesting thing was – the Greens sat silently – and when it came to the vote that would allow Lambie to admonish Labor for their excessive guillotines, the Greens voted with the Government to stop her in her tracks.

Greens’ opposition to Guillotines

The Greens have long expressed strident opposition to the use of the guillotine. They understand it chops up democracy. 

This was expressed strongly through Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi on 28 October, a month prior. 

“The Senate is a place where a huge diversity of political views are heard and it is important that the Senate is facilitated by people who can also represent that plurality. But what we see again and again is a stitch-up between the two major parties, the Liberals and the Labor Party, and we see it again today. This is not the first time it has happened. We talk about democracy here—this is the chamber of review—but again and again democracy is shut down. How many times have we seen, just in the last couple of years, debate being shut down by guillotine motions? …”

So, back to last Thursday, one might have been surprised at what happened next. 

At 9:46 AM Labor’s Senator Gallagher rose to set up a guillotine. And the Greens supported it!

The Government lost the vote 33 (yes) and 34 (no). The business of the Senate would, at least for a short while, take its ordinary course.

If at First You Don’t Succeed

At 12:20 PM Wong rose to her feet in the Senate to again seek to set up a guillotine. After 30 minutes of proposals and counterproposals across the chamber, a 30 Bill guillotine was put in place. The vote was won 34 (yes) to 32 (no).

The Greens again supported the guillotine.

But before putting the guillotine motion to the vote Wong foreshadowed adding two more Bills to the guillotine, one of which was the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 – a Bill that the Greens purportedly bitterly opposed.

Further principles abandoned

Wong then acted to include the further two Bills. The Greens knew that the Government, with Coalition support, had the numbers to pass the Social Media Minimum Age Bill, but supported it being included in the guillotine.

That was despite the earlier words of Senator Sarah Hanson-Young on the Social Media Minimum Age Bill. 

Firstly, let me say what a disgrace it is that this bill, only tabled in the House of Representatives last Thursday, has been railroaded and rushed through the process here across the parliament.

It was tabled in the House Thursday, sent to a Senate inquiry that sat for only three hours on Monday. Submissions from stakeholders and interested parties were open for less than 24 hours on Friday—talk about putting out the bins, taking out the rubbish! That’s exactly how this whole bill has been treated by the major parties.

The reason that this bill is being rushed without scrutiny and without appropriate review is both the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Dutton, and the Prime Minister are worried that if people really knew about what the consequences of this piece of legislation meant, they wouldn’t support it.

The Government’s deal with the Greens must have been a good one to flush away Hanson-Young’s concerns. And that includes the concern she had express about young and vulnerable children.

They’ll be pushed into the darkest parts of the web and they won’t want to tell their parents what’s going on because they’ll be worried their phone will be taken away, so they will spiral further and further into isolation from their friends, their family, medical experts who may be able to help them, school counsellors and teachers. They’ll become even more isolated and vulnerable.

Too bad, so sad kids!

Air thick with betrayal

Hypocrisy and betrayal was thick in the air. Those watching the Chamber though would have seen the Greens opposing the Social Media Minimum Age Bill at the third reading stage – looking like they were fighting the good fight. But the reality was, they passed the Bill the moment they voted for the guillotine. What happened visually after that was just a swindle.

Social Media Minimum Age Bill final vote

For the Greens, as with Labor and the Coalition, commitment to democratic process all too often falls by the wayside as partisan interests prevail.  

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Hundreds of climate protestors disrupted the last sitting week of the Federal Parliament on Wednesday, with 24 of them arrested, two spent the night in custody, the rest released on condition they stay away for two years. Wendy Bacon reports.

Rising Tide travelled from Newcastle to Canberra on Monday and set up camp at the invitation of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, which is supporting the climate activists. Their forty-eight-hour vigil ends today. Protesters are demanding an end to new or expanded fossil fuel projects and a 78% tax on fossil fuel profits to support communities that are currently dependent on fossil fuel jobs.

Protesters are already bitterly disappointed with what they see as a Labor betrayal of a promise to improve climate policy. Instead of decreasing, coal exports will rise back over 200 million tonnes per annum in the next two years, while gas exports have settled at levels 60% higher than in 2016.

The Australian taxpayer also continues to subsidise the fossil fuel industry while the Labor government actively entertains the illusion of carbon capture and storage.

Labor’s hat-trick: three coal mine approvals in one day

On Wednesday, Rising Tide protesters occupied the foyer and also the road in front of Parliament House, chanting: “Flood, fires famine, we are terrified. But we will overcome, like the Rising Tide.” They held up a large banner that said, “Albo: Stop new coal and gas, or we will.” Police ejected protestors one by one.

One protester, Sally Novak, a primary school teacher from Newcastle, said:

I’m here to take action because our government haven’t done what they promised they would when they were elected.

Twenty-four people were arrested, and two spent the night in custody; others were released on the condition that they do not go near the Australian parliamentary precinct for two years, is bound to be challenged in court as anti-democratic and amounting to extra-judicial punishment.

The Canberra protest followed Australia’s largest climate civil disobedience protest in which the Port of Newcastle was disrupted for several days, and 173 people were arrested.

Climate protests to continue despite 170 charged in Newcastle ‘protestival’

Many of them have been charged under the draconian anti-protest section of the NSW Crimes Act. A large alliance of civil and human rights groups are campaigning to have the section repealed.

The anti-protest laws have already been found to be partly unconstitutional by the NSW Supreme Court, so some of these cases are likely to be strongly fought by a team of pro bono lawyers who support civil liberties.

A protest for the age and for all ages

Two of the under-18-year-olds arrested in Newcastle marched defiantly back into the Rising Tide camp after their arrests, and 16-year-old student Niamh Cush told the rally in Canberra that before the Rising Tide event, she wrote to Prime Minister Albanese asking him to meet her on the lawns. “I asked him to explain why he has approved 28 new coal and gas projects on stolen land since coming into power. I’ve heard nothing. His silence says it all.”

Young people demand to know when Albanese is going to stop jeopardising the future of our generation by approving new coal and gas projects.

“Governments have been warned about the danger of the climate crisis for long before I was born. It’s unforgivable that those who swore to protect are choosing to betray the youth of Australia by continuing to prioritise the profits of coal and gas billionaires. The Government is burning my future by allowing new fossil fuels – when is it going to stop?”

Thirteen-year-old Han, also arrested on Sunday, told other protesters, “I was one of 31,000 people who lost their homes in the 2022 Northern Rivers flooding. I’m here today because I’m really, really angry that our government is sitting in their air-conditioned board rooms watching our future burn and doing nothing about it.”

Rising Tide has a grassroots model for growth that involves local groups conducting many meetings in community centres and churches to build support and momentum. This enabled them to escalate and grow between 2023 and 2024: protest numbers in Newcastle almost tripled, and arrests increased by 60%.

As Rising Tide volunteer teams wrap up their Canberra camp, they are warning that they plan to further escalate civil disobedience actions on climate, coal and gas in the lead-up to the Federal Election and beyond.

Older people who feel they have failed younger generations are also joining the movement in significant numbers. After several failed attempts in Newcastle, June Norman, 84-year-old great-grandmother from the Noosa Hinterlands, QLD, was also arrested on Wednesday,

I fear so much for the future of my 8 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren and their generation who are facing great hardships as we grapple with sea level rise, floods, fires and droughts.

“I have a duty to protect the environment so that my grandchildren and great-grandchildren can live in peace with a healthy environment. I became an activist at 65. I want my grandchildren to know that I did everything that I could so that they could live in peace with a healthy environment.”

Labor looks the other way

Labor is not visible at the climate protests. But the Greens have seized this opportunity.

“We are with the Rising Tide,” Deputy Leader Mehreen Faruqi declared in the Senate yesterday. “And the greens are with the rising tide. It was a real privilege to join the rising tide with 1000s of courageous climate warriors in Newcastle on the weekend. Right there, we saw the best example of people power.”

No amount of over-policing or cracking down on our right to dissent will stop these climate defenders from showing up to protect our planet and our future.

Greens politicians, from leader Adam Bandt to Greens Councillors from around Australia, were out on Newcastle Harbour at the weekend. As it heads for the end of this term of parliament, Labor is completely absent from the Rising Tide movement. It offered promise on climate but has bitterly disappointed many as it continues to new and expanded coal mines and gas fields.

If all that was not enough, the WA Premier boasted yesterday that he had personally lobbied Prime Minister Albanese not to pass the Nature Postive bills in this term of parliament. As this news broke, protesters were occupying parliament.

Protesters v Carbon scammers | The West Report

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Australia’s supply security in the event of a crisis goes way beyond toilet paper hoarding. And the Government doesn’t want us to know about it. Rex Patrick in another battle for transparency.

The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) went in hard to defend secrecy around Australia’s preparedness to deal with a fuel security emergency. But they’ve been dealt a total defeat in the Administrative Review Tribunal, sadly at your expense.

In 2013, retired Air Vice Marshal John Blackburn produced a report into Australia’s Liquid Fuel Security for the NRMA. The report spelt out what would happen if Australian freight operations and logistics were shut down due to a lack of fuel.

Food would quickly run out. We have just over a week of dry goods consumption available at our supermarkets and about a week for chilled and frozen foods. Pharmacies will start running out of medicine in about a week.

And that’s if there isn’t panic buying, which COVID shows us would be highly likely. The thought of not having food in cupboards and fridges or prescription medicines would likely exercise people’s minds a lot more than not having toilet paper.

For hospitals, it’s even worse. Hospitals typically hold a three-day reserve. Local petrol stations would run out of fuel in three days.

Putting food and medicine aside, this would cripple the country economically.

Our “just in time” economy and society is absolutely dependent on uninterrupted fuel supplies. And yet Australia has only 26 days of in-country supply of diesel.

Scrutiny required

In May 2023, I requested access to fuel security emergency documents. To be honest, I did it because I was preparing to write a fuel security article for MWM. My request entailed three documents:

1. A report from a 2019 national fuel security exercise
2. The minutes of two (then recent) meetings of the National Oil Supply Emergency Committee (NOSEC)
3. The National Liquid Fuel Emergency Response Plan (NLFERP) Manuals

With fuel security being such an important issue, I wanted to see how well the Federal and State Governments fared on their most recent fuel security exercise and what was being discussed at the national gathering dealing with fuel security.

I also wanted to be able to see how the Government might react to a fuel supply emergency.

DCCEEW refused me access to everything. Not a single word was to be released to me.

I appealed their decision to the Administrative Review Tribunal. Throughout the year-long battle, the Department trickle-released a few and then more of the documents. It was like a slow-motion strip tease. But even then, the Department said the sky would fall in if some documents were released.

The Tribunal has now handed down its decision. Everything – except the names and contact details of officials, which I did not press for – is to be released to me.

The cost of secrecy

Answers to Senate questions-on-notice by Senator Lambie show that the Department has spent $110,000 in their failed secrecy fight. That cost does not include the commercial counsel and two lawyers present for the hearing and the work in the immediate lead up to the hearing, A more reasonable estimate of the final bill to the unfortunate taxpayers will be closer to $150,000.

The arguments the Department and their lawyers adopted had more holes in them than a fuel strainer.

In relation to the fuel security report (Document 3) the Department argued that it might reveal vulnerabilities in our fuel security. The Tribunal did not agree, particularly noting the age of the report.

When it came to to the minutes of the National Oil Supply Emergency Committee meetings, the Department argued that State officials might abandon their statutory duties to best represent their State if there was a risk of transparency. The Tribunal rejected that shrinking violet proposition.

Regarding the National Liquid Fuel Emergency Response Plan Manuals, DCCEEW argued that releasing them would enable a foreign state actor to interfere with the national response to a fuel security emergency. The Tribunal was highly critical of the Department advancing this just on a vibe.

In response to my submission that the cause of toilet paper panic during COVID was the result of a lack of public appreciation that toilet paper is actually made in Australia, the Tribunal recognised the benefit of the plan being publicly available, including to the media.

All up, DCCEEW has faced a humiliating defeat that has sadly cost the taxpayers significant money in commercial legal fees.

The largest frustration in all of this, and perhaps the biggest scam in the story, is that there will be no consequences for the erroneous decision made, the high cost to the taxpayer of the proceedings and the year long delay that’s been experienced in the release of the documents to the public.

There really needs to be some accountability here.

Bureaucrats who are found to have wilfully obstructed the release of information under the Freedom of Information regime and have had their decisions overturned should be subject to penalties including suspension without pay, demotion or other financial penalties.

A few heads on pikes might encourage a more positive culture of openness and transparency in the Australian Government.

Forget toilet paper — try no food, fuel or medicine. Why Canberra needs to act on fuel security

 

 

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Despite draconian anti-protest laws, the world’s biggest coal port was closed for four hours, 170 protestors were charged and climate demonstrations will continue. Wendy Bacon reports.

Newcastle port, the world’s biggest coal port, was closed for four hours on Sunday when hundreds of Rising Tide protesters in kayaks refused to leave its shipping channel. 

Over two days of protest, 170 protesters have been charged. Some others who entered the channel were arrested but released without charge. Hundreds more took to the water in support. 

Thousands on the beach chanted, danced and created a huge human sign demanding ‘no new coal and gas’ projects. Rising Tide is campaigning for a 78% tax on fossil fuel profits to be used for a “just transition” for workers and communities, including in the Hunter Valley where the Albanese government has approved three massive new coal mine extensions since 2022. 

Labor’s hat-trick: three coal mine approvals in one day

Bleeding the 5,000 as protest size doubles

The NSW Labor government made two court attempts to block the protest from going ahead. But the ten day Rising Tide protest doubled in size from 2023 with 5000 people participating so far and more people arrested in civil disobedience actions than last year.

The ‘protestival’ continued in Newcastle on Monday and a new wave will start in Canberra at the Australian Parliament on Wednesday. Here Rising Tide will stage an overnight occupation of the lawn outside Parliament House and a demonstration at which they will demand to meet with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

News of the ‘protestival’ has spread around the world with campaigners in Rotterdam in The Netherlands blocking a coal train in solidarity with this year’s Rising Tide protest.  

138 of those arrested have been charged under S214A of the NSW Crimes Act for disrupting a major facility, which carries up to two years in prison and $22,000 maximum fines. This section is part of the NSW government regime of ‘anti-protest’ laws designed to deter movements such as Rising Tide. 

The rest of the protesters have been charged under the Marine Safety Act which police used against 109 protesters arrested last year. Even if found guilty, these people are likely to only receive minor penalties.Those arrested in 2023 mostly received small fines, good behaviour bonds and had no conviction recorded. 

Executive gives bird to judiciary

The use of the Crimes Act will focus more attention on the anti-protest laws which the NSW government has been extending and strengthening in recent weeks. The NSW Supreme Court has already found the laws to be partly unconstitutional but despite huge opposition from civil society and human rights organisations, the NSW government has not reformed them. 

Two protesters were targeted for special treatment: Naomi Hodgson, a key Rising Tide organiser, and Andrew George who has previous protest convictions.

George was led into court in handcuffs on Monday morning but was released on bail on condition that he not return to the port area. Hodgson also has a record of peaceful protest. She is one of the Rising Tide leaders who have always stressed the importance of safe and peaceful action.

The police prosecutor argued that she should remain in custody. The magistrate released her with the extraordinary requirement that she report to police daily and not go nearer than 2 kilometres from the port.  

Planning for this year’s protest has been underway for 12 months with groups forming in Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne and the Northern Rivers as well as Newcastle. There was an intensive program of meetings and briefings of potential participants on the motivation for protesting, principles of civil disobedience and the experience of being arrested. Those who attended last year recruited a whole new cohort of protesters.

Last year, the NSW police authorised a protest involved a 48 hour blockade which protesters extended by two hours. Earlier this year, a similar application was made by Rising Tide. The first indication that the police would refuse to authorise a protest came earlier this month when the NSW police successfully applied to the NSW Supreme Court for the protest to be declared “an unauthorised protest.”

But Justice Desmond Fagan also made it clear that Rising Tide had a “responsible approach to on-water safety” and that he was not giving a direction that the protest should be terminated. Newcastle Council agreed that Rising Tide could camp at Horseshoe Bay. 

Minns’ bid to crush protest

The Minns government showed that its goal was to crush the protest altogether when the Minister for Transport Jo Haylen declared a blanket 97 hour exclusion zone making it unlawful to enter the Hunter River mouth and beaches under the Marine Safety Act last week.

On Friday, Rising Tide organiser and  2020 Newcastle Young Citizen of the year, Alexa Stuart took successful action in the Supreme Court to have the exclusion zone declared an invalid use of power. 

An hour before the exclusion zone was due to come into effect at 5 pm, the Rising Tide flotilla had been launched off Horseshoe Bay. At 4 pm, Supreme Court Justice Sarah McNaughton quashed the exclusion zone notice, declaring that it was an invalid use of power under the Marine Safety Act because the object of the Act is to facilitate events, not to stop them happening altogether. 

When news of the judge’s decision reached the beach, a big cheer erupted. The drama-packed weekend was off to a good start. 

Friday morning began with a First Nations welcome and speeches and a SchoolStrike4Climate protest. Kayakers held their position on the harbour with an overnight vigil on Friday night. 

Midnight Oil performs

On Saturday, Midnight Oil front singer Peter Garrett, who served as Environment Minister in a previous Labor government, performed in support of Rising Tide protest. He expressed his concern about government overreach in policing protests, especially in the light of all the evidence of the impacts of climate change.

Ships continued to go through the channel, protected by the NSW police. When kayakers entered the channel while it was empty, nine were arrested.

84 year old great-gran not charged

By late Saturday, three had been charged and the other six were towed back to the beach. This included June Norman, an 84 year old great-grandmother from Queensland, who entered the shipping channel at least 6 times over the weekend in a peaceful acts of peaceful civil disobedience.

 

She told Michael West Media that she felt a duty to act to protect her own grandchildren and all other children due to a failure by the Albanese and other governments to take action on climate change. The police repeatedly declined to charge her.   

On Sunday morning a decision was made for kayakers “to take the channel”. At about 10.15, a coal boat, turned away before entering the port. 

Port closed, job done

Although the period of stoppage was shorter than last year, civil disobedience had now achieved what the authorised protest achieved last year. The port was officially closed and remained so for four hours. By now, 60 people had been charged and far more police resources expended than in 2023, including hours of police helicopters and drones. 

On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of kayakers again occupied the channel. A ship was due. Now in a massive display of force involving scores of police in black rubber zodiacs, police on jet skis, and a huge police launch, kayakers were either arrested or herded back from the channel. When the channel was clear, a huge ship then came through the channel, signalling the reopening of the port. 

On Monday night, ABC national news reported that protesters were within metres of the ship. MWM closely observed the events. When the ship began to move towards the harbour, all kayaks were inside the buoys marking the channel. Police occupied the area between the protesters and the ship. No kayaker moved forward.

A powerful visual message had been sent that the forces of the NSW state would be used to defend the interests of the big coal companies such as Whitehaven and Glencore rather than the NSW public.  

By now police on horses were on the beach and watched as small squads of police marched through the crowd grabbing paddles. A little later this reporter was carrying a paddle through a car park well off the beach when a constable roughly seized it without warning from my hand.

When asked, Constable Pacey explained that I had breached the peace by being on water. I had not entered the water over the weekend.  

Kids arrested too in mass civil disobedience

Those charged included 14 people under 18. After being released, they marched chanting back into the camp. 16 year old Newcastle student Niamh Cush told a crowd of fellow protesters before her arrest that as a young person, she would rather not be arrested but that the betrayal of the Albanese government left her with no choice.

“I’m here to voice the anger of my generation. The Albanese Government claims they’re taking climate change seriously but they are completely and utterly failing us by approving polluting new coal and gas mines.See you out on the water today to block the coal ships!”

Each of those who chose to get arrested has their own story. They include environmental scientists, engineers, TAFE teachers, students, nurses and doctors, hospitality and retail workers, designers and media workers, activists who have retired, unionists, a mediator and a coal miner.

They came from across Australia – more than 200 came from Adelaide alone – and from many different backgrounds. 

Behind those arrested stand volunteer groups of legal observers, arrestee support, lawyers, community care workers and a media team. Beside them stand hundreds of other volunteers who have cleaned portaloos, prepared three meals a day, washed dishes, welcomed and registered participants, organised camping spots and acted as marshals at pedestrian crossings. Each and every one of them is playing an essential role in this campaign of mass civil disobedience.

Many participants said this huge collaborative effort is what inspired them and gave them hope, as much as did the protest itself. 

Threat to democracy

Today, the President of NSW Civil Liberties Tim Roberts said, “Paddling a kayak in the Port of Newcastle is not an offence, people do it every day safely without hundreds of police officers. A decision was made to protect the safe passage of the vessels over the protection of people exercising their democratic rights to protest. 

“We are living in extraordinary times. Our democracy will not irrevocably be damaged in one fell swoop – it will be a slow bleed, a death by a thousand tranches of repressive legislation, and by thousands of arrests of people standing up in defence of their civil liberties.”

Australian Institute research shows that most Australians agree with the Council for Civil Liberties – with 71% polled including a majority of all parties believing that the right to protest should be enshrined in Federal legislation, including a majority across all ages and political parties. 

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is a fear of accelerating mass civil disobedience in the face of a climate crisis that frightens both the Federal and State government and the police. 

As temperatures rise

Many of those protesting have already been directly affected by climbing temperatures in sweltering suburbs, raging bushfires and intense smoke, roaring floods and a loss of housing which has not been replaced, devastated forests, polluting coal mines and gas fields or rising seas in the Torres Strait in Northern Australia and Pacific Island countries.

Others have become profoundly concerned as they come to grips with climate science predictions and public health warnings.

In these circumstances and as long as governments continue to enable the fossil fuel industry by approving more coal and gas projects that will add to the climate crisis, the number of people who decide they are morally obliged to take civil disobedience action  will grow.

Rather than being impressed by politicians who caste them as disrupters, they will heed the call of Pacific leaders who this week declared the Cop 29 talks to be a “catastrophic failure” exposing their people to “escalating risks”. 

Wendy Bacon is a Rising Tide supporter 

Draconian: South Australia just topped NSW, Tas, Victoria, Queensland with new laws penalising peaceful protesters

This post was originally published on Michael West.

It’s the biggest and most controversial Defence project in the country’s history with $368B worth of eggs put in the one basket. The Government would have you believe it’s all going well. Former project manager and submariner Rex Patrick serves up the truth.

In April 2024, MWM set out the high-level risks associated with the AUKUS nuclear submarine program; political, economic, technical and management, with the article delving into some of the risks already in play.

AUKUS risks unveiled – is Australia sleepwalking into a submarines disaster?

But with the project having passed its third birthday, it’s worth looking at the various stages of the plan on record to see how things are unfolding.

Housing US submarines from 2027

The first stage of the AUKUS sub program is the forward deployment of four US Navy submarines to operate out of HMAS Stirling in WA. This is likely to happen, but not without some considerable community pain.

In terms of infrastructure at HMAS Stirling to support the deployment, in June Assistant Minister Andrew Leigh referred a $738M HMAS Stirling upgrade project to the Federal Parliament’s Joint Committee on Public Works including upgraded berthing facilities, dredging for nuclear-powered submarines, construction of a Radiological Controls Technical Field Office, a radioactive waste facility, power stations (including for nuclear sub shore supplies) and a pure water processing plant.

This work was rubber-stamped by the Labor-Coalition controlled joint committee and will commence in 2026 and complete in 2027. It’ll proceed without significant risk.

But there’s a huge problem which will only end up in pain and suffering. 

Defence estimates 700 new Australian AUKUS related positions will be established over the coming few years and an additional 700 US military personnel will move to WA. Defence has estimated an additional 500 houses will be required to meet US personnel needs.

Perth, like other major cities across Australia, is facing a housing crisis. In the last 12 months 15,000 new dwellings were constructed in Perth while the population increased by 94,000 – resulting in severe undersupply conditions.

Defence doesn’t seem to have a plan on record of how they intend to address these needs. The cash loaded AUKUS project team will likely solve this problem by simply outbidding the locals, denying everyday West Australians housing opportunities. Suffer the people.

HMS Phantom from 2027

The optimal pathway also has the United Kingdom operating one of the Royal Navy’s Astute Class nuclear subs out of HMAS Stirling from 2027.

Whatever advice Defence Minister Richard Marles is getting on this aspect of AUKUS, if it’s honest it’ll start with the idiom, “tell ‘em they’re dreaming”.

There’s been periods over the last year where the Royal Navy has been unable to put any of its Astute subs to sea. The situation has improved over the past month, but there’s some very challenging problems arising from the run-down of the UK’s defence industrial base meaning low availability is likely to be a feature moving forward.

In the last week we’ve also heard the UK Government is considering mothballing the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers to ease their budget pressures.

Britannia once ruled the waves, but that’s not been true for a century. Today’s Royal Navy is a shadow of its former self, barely hanging on to middle power status with little sustainable global power projection. One would have to bet against any consistent and sustained UK sub presence at HMAS Stirling in the years to come.

Virginia Class hopes

From around 2035 and beyond the Australian Government hopes that the US Navy will transfer between three and five Virginia class submarines to the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Laws passed in the US Congress a year ago prohibit such transfers if they would have a negative outcome on US national security or foreign policy.

The US Navy currently has 49 nuclear attack submarines in service (with actual availability of subs in the low 30s). To meet their national needs, they need 66 subs by 2054. To meet that need, and the higher priority nuclear ballistic submarine requirements, and Australia’s AUKUS needs, they must have a production rate of at least 2.3 subs per annum.

They’re nowhere near that target – since 2022 they’ve only been building somewhere between 1.1 and 1.4 boats per annum. This has resulted in a backlog.

To address their submarine industrial capacity shortfall the US Government is investing $US14.7B. Australia agreed to pour (a non-refundable) $US3B subsidy into US industry as well. But that total still falls well short of the $US28.4B the US Administration deemed was required for the work.

The construction dial is not moving. Talk of building a third US shipyard has evaporated and the US Navy is only seeking funding for one Virginia class sub next year, recognising the impossibility of building two. 

US priorities

Meanwhile, the US Government Audit Office has assessed the Columbia ballistic missile submarine program as running at least 12 months behind schedule and the US Navy is already planning and scheduling extension programs for a number of the Ohio Class submarines the Columbias are to replace.

That nuclear deterrent program will get priority over AUKUS and US Virginia Class subs. And there’s talk that the US Navy might call for more ballistic missile subs, increasing pressure further.

abandon any nuclear submarine ambitions and instead purchase other defence capabilities

The US Congress is being advised that a more realistic proposition for Australia and AUKUS moving forward is for the number of US Navy subs based at HMAS Stirling to be increased from four to eight, with none transferred to the RAN. The highly respected Congressional Research Service is proposing we abandon any nuclear submarine ambitions and instead purchase other defence capabilities.

Vice Admiral Mead, the head of the Australian Submarine Agency, has buried his head in the sand in respect of the US not reaching 2.3 subs per annum, purporting to know more about US submarine construction than the US Navy itself. His blind faith, some say arrogance, on the issue has been apparent to all who watch Senate Estimates.

Submarine crewing

The crew of a Collins Class submarine is about 50. A force of six submarines means we need a theoretical 300 submariners, but in reality (considering training pipelines, sea-shore rosters, medical issues) we need about 800 submariners.

The crew of a nuclear-powered sub is about 140. Eight submarines would require a theoretical 1,120 submariners, but in reality, we’d need 3000 submariners; an increase of 2200 from current numbers.

But ADF numbers have been going down (they were about 4,400 below authorised levels mid-year) with no real sign Defence has any solid plan to get the numbers up generally, let alone to fill the more challenging roles such as submariner.

Nuclear workforce

Documents released to MWM under FOI show that there are also problems building up the civilian nuclear workforce required for AUKUS. That’s another challenge for the Defence Department.

Secret Defence docs: we need a large civilian workforce for AUKUS nuclear submarine reactors

 

Nuclear weapon proliferation risk

The Government spent $35M last financial year trying to negotiate a change to Article 14 of our Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement to the Nuclear (weapon) Non-proliferation Treaty to allow us to take possession of nuclear-powered subs. $40M was allocated for FY 2024/5.

But there is resistance among the member countries of the International Atomic Energy Agency, with China stridently against Australia securing modification of Article 14.

Many non-aligned members have little inclination to do Australia and the US any favours. Arms control and non-proliferation experts warn modifying nuclear safeguards to accommodate AUKUS would create a dangerous precedent whereby nuclear weapon States could transfer weapon grade uranium to another country (e.g. Russia to Iran) via a submarine program.

There’s no guarantee that agreement will be reached and a failure to do so will bring the entire project crumbling down – neither the US or UK are prepared to transfer nuclear material to Australia without agreement being reached.

The Government seems, at least from the outside, to be oblivious to the risks. They’re adopting a ‘she’ll be right’ view.

SSN-AUKUS delivery

I won’t bury the lede on the final item. The chance of the UK delivering its own SSN-AUKUS submarine to the Royal Navy on time is zero, nil, zilch. And that means the chance of an Australian built SSN-AUKUS submarine being delivered on time is zero, nil, zilch.

The Royal Navy’s current order of battle would have Horatio Nelson turning in his grave and a generous description of the UK’s naval shipbuilding industry would be ”a basket case” – a national endeavour infested with delays and cost overruns.

Choosing the UK to design a next generation submarine for Australia has to be the dumbest move by Australian Defence in recent memory. 

One might have thought the Government would have looked to the UK Hunter class frigate program we signed up to. It went from a very expensive $30B for 9 frigates, to $45B for 9 frigates, to $45B for 6 frigates. On top of which the program is several years behind its original schedule resulting in the Navy running a separate off-the-shelf construction program (called SEA 3000) with an undisclosed (but more likely unknown) 

The chance of an SSN-AUKUS project being continued by a future government must realistically be close to zero.

Adult supervision required

Risk, cost, loss of sovereign control; AUKUS is a mess.

But as far as the major party politicians in Canberra are concerned, it’s a project too big to fail. The Liberal/National Coalition came up with the idea and then the Labor Party swallowed it, hook, line and sinker.

No-one in Canberra, with the exception of Senator Shoebridge and Senator Lambie, are conducting any oversight of the project. There are very few adults in the room, but none with a real understanding of submarines. And that should have every Australian worried. 

Too big to fail? Folk once said something like that about a ship called ‘Titanic’.  

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Stealth and surprise are related tactical characteristics that are key to a submarine’s success in battle. They are also, it seems, key tactical characteristics for the Government advancing a highly controversial AUKUS submarine program. Ex-submariner Rex Patrick explains.

Those familiar with the classic work of Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, will remember the scene where Arthur Dent lies in front of a bulldozer to stop his house being demolished to make way for a new freeway bypass. Arthur complains that he has only just learned of the project. Mr Prosser, the manager in charge of progressing the bypass, points out that the plans have been available for Dent to examine for several months:

Mr Prosser: But, Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.

Arthur: Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything.

Mr Prosser: But the plans were on display…

Arthur: On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.

Mr Prosser: That’s the display department.

Arthur: With a torch.

Mr Prosser: The lights had probably gone out.

Arthur: So had the stairs.

Mr Prosser: But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?

Arthur: Yes, yes, I did. It was on display at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying beware of the leopard.

The arrangements for public consultation on AUKUS-related developments bear a great deal of resemblance to this.

Low-level waste in Perth and Adelaide

It would be unfair to suggest that the Albanese Government wasn’t up-front in its plans to base nuclear submarines at HMAS Stirling on Garden Island, near Perth, from 2027 and to build nuclear submarines at Osborne, in the Adelaide metropolitan area in the late 2030s.

But it is fair to say that the communities of Perth and Adelaide weren’t engaged on the issue, and certainly not on details that may have direct impacts on them. The first revelation to the public that Garden Island would become the home for the storage of low-level nuclear waste was after an FOI was released to me in December 2023.

Marles is wrong – Australia is taking US and UK nuclear waste!

After a very short consultation a license to store waste in a facility to be built on Garden Island was approved by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency.

And it’s only just breaking news in Adelaide this week that low level radioactive waste will also be stored at the naval shipyard at Osborne. The media only became aware of the issue after the passage of the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023 brought out some protest by local interest groups and a nearby council.

Adelaide nuclear environmental checks

As might be expected, before a nuclear submarine construction yard can be built, the Australian Submarine Agency needs to jump though federal environmental hoops in relation to protected matters. Protected matters include; World heritage, wetlands, threatened species, marine environment, migratory species and nuclear actions.

The Submarine Agency initiated a process to address legislated environmental requirements in November 2023. They started a public consultation as part of that process. In January 2024 the Port Adelaide Residents Environment Protection Group made a submission highlighting the fact that there were no plans to address ‘nuclear actions’.

However, on 22 June 2023, the Parliament passed the Defence Legislation Amendment (Naval Nuclear Propulsion) Bill. Most were oblivious to the fact that the Bill created a carve-out for naval nuclear propulsion plants from regular environmental approval and regulation.

The parliamentary library was alert to the potential implications, warning senators:

It is also unclear to what extent existing exemption provisions in the ARPANSA Act and the EPBC Act exempting declared activities from approval requirements could be utilised at the discretion of the relevant decision-makers at some future point in time on the grounds of defence or national security. This would exempt SSNs and associated infrastructure and facilities from the approval requirements under these Acts, leaving the yet-to-be-established ANPSSR as the principal regulator of SSNs and their supporting infrastructure and facilities.

We now understand there will be no EPBC Act nuclear action approvals for the new Osbourne Site. Rather, environmental issues will be handled by the Director-General of the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulator – a bureaucrat sitting inside the Defence portfolio.

Nuclear reactors in Perth and Adelaide

Along with the lack of consultation on low-level waste, perhaps of greater significance is the lack of consultation on the fact that nuclear reactors will be operating not far from Rockingham in WA and the Adelaide metropolitan area.

Parliament formalised that fact with the passage of the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023.

The Government cast the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023 as “a Bill that establishes a framework to regulate the nuclear safety aspects of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine enterprise”. It sounds a little innocuous, but the Bill did a lot more than that.

Section 10 of the Bill declared both HMAS Stirling and Osborne designated zones for naval nuclear production facilities. In 15 years, when nuclear reactors go critical for the first time at Osborne, residents will have to look back to the afternoon of Thursday, 10 November 2024, when the Bill was passed in the Senate.

And if they look hard they’ll see that the Bill was passed in a blitzkrieg Labor guillotine manoeuvre, supported by the Coalition, which saw it go through the Senate without any debate. Thirty amendments were put to the vote without any senator being allowed to explain or speak to their amendments.

Perfect for a decision that would otherwise have invoked considerable public debate.

For those in opposition to AUKUS, the show is effectively already over.

East Coast nuclear submarine base

Stealth and surprise are the preferred modus operandi of a Prime Minister whose constituent base opposes the $368 billion AUKUS nuclear project.

So, it’s little wonder the Government has not moved to reveal the East Coast basing location for future nuclear submarines. Port Kembla is the likely location, but no one is saying anything definitive and certainly won’t do so before next year’s federal election.

Prime Minister Albanese was quite insistent on opposition leader Peter Dutton revealing his future plans for seven nuclear power station sites,

but he’s utterly unwilling to apply the same transparency upon himself.

In some sense, the arrival of enough nuclear submarines to warrant a second base is decades away (as are Peter Dutton’s power reactors). Hence, there’s only political harm in announcing a base. That will likely be left to some future government after Albanese has left the Parliament.

High-level nuclear waste facility

This week, I had a first direction hearing in the new Administrative Review Tribunal as I challenged the Albanese Government’s secrecy around a report on how a future high-level nuclear facility site will be selected. It was refused to me under FOI.

The Government refused to release the report on the basis that it is a cabinet document. However, now that we’re in the big FOI league they’re backing up their claim with other exemptions, including national security exemptions. While we’ll have to see how the Government’s legal arguments play out, in some sense, it might be all moot.

When the Parliament declared HMAS Stirling and Osborne designated zones for nuclear submarine activities, it also passed into law the ability for a Minister to declare any other area a designated zone – for example, to store high-level waste.

There is no requirement for public consultation about a High-Level Nuclear Waste Facility location. As the selection of Kimba as the site of a low-level National Radioactive Waste Management Facility at Kimba proved, that might all be a bit too hard. Better then, at least as far as the Government is concerned, to have an unconstrained selection power tucked away for when the need arises.

Surprise and stealth is the AUKUS way.

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

The big picture obscured

On 5 April 2023, I made an FOI request for the “Analysis of likely/necessary legislative change associated with the AUKUS program”. The idea was to get access to the big picture of the new legal measures the Government might want to enact to push AUKUS through.

Access was refused and an appeal of the decision is currently buried in the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. It will, as the Government would understand, take another few years before a decision on the appeal is made. By that time, it will be of historical interest only.

That suits the Government just fine. Imagine the big picture being available to the public up-front. On a contentious project like this, transparency would just be a little too dangerous.

The Defence Department and its nominal political masters rely on a broken FOI system to preserve their options for surprise and secrecy. They might as well have requested a sign to put on that FOI file: Beware of the Leopard.

AUKUS ‘JobGiver’: a non-recourse handout to overseas companies and workers

 

 

This post was originally published on Michael West.

An alleged plot involving firearms and threatening the life of New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens when held hostage in Papua this year is being investigated by the Australian Federal Police. Duncan Graham reports.

An alleged plot involving firearms and threatening the life of Kiwi pilot Philip Mehrtens when held hostage in Papua this year is being investigated by the AFP.

The case involves “advancing a political cause by the separation of West Papua from Indonesia … with the intention of coercing by intimidation the governments of New Zealand and Indonesia.”

Named in the AFP search warrant seen by MWM is research scholar Julian King, 63. He’s told others his home in Coffs Harbour, Queensland, was raided violently earlier this month by police using a stun grenade and smashing a door.

During the search, the police seized phones, computers and documents on contacts with the West Papua rebel group Organisasi Papua Merdeka, OPM (Free Papua Organisation), and to seek weapons and ammunition.

So far it is believed that no arrests have been made or charges laid.

King, a former geologist and now a PhD student at Wollongong University, has been studying Papuan reaction to the Indonesian takeover since 1963. He has written that West Papuans

live under a military dictatorship described by legal scholars and human rights advocates as systemic terror and alleged genocide.”

Also named in the warrant alongside King is Amatus Dounemee Douw, confirmed by MWM contacts to be Australian citizen Akouboo Amatus Douw, who chairs the West Papua Diplomatic and Foreign Affairs Council, an NGO that states it wants to settle disputes peacefully.

Risk to Australia-Indonesia relations

The allegations threaten to fragment relations between Indonesia and Australia; it’s widely believed that human rights activists and church organisations are helping Papuan dissidents despite Canberra’s regular insistence that it officially backs Jakarta.

Earlier this year, Deputy PM Richard Marles publicly stressed: “We, Australia, fully recognise Indonesia’s territorial sovereignty. We do not endorse any independence movement.”

In August this year, Douw grabbed headlines for alleging Indonesian troops shot Kiwi Glen Conning on August 5 in Central Papua. The government version is that the pilot was killed by “an armed criminal group” after landing his helicopter, ferrying local people who fled unharmed.

When seized by armed OPM operatives in February last year, Mehrtens was flying a light plane for an Indonesian transport company.

He was released unharmed this September after being held for 593 days by the West Papua National Liberation Army (Tentara Pembebasan Nasional Papua Barat – TPNPB), the military wing of the OPM.

The shameful Australian silence on human rights atrocities next door

Terrorist group?

OPM is designated as a terrorist organisation in Indonesia but isn’t on the Australian list of proscribed groups. Jakarta bans foreign journalists from Papua, so little impartial information gets out.

After Mehrtens was freed, TPNPB spokesman Sebby Sambom alleged that a local politician had paid a bribe, a charge furiously denied by the NZ Government.

However, West Papua Action Aotearoa (NZ) spokesperson Catherine Delahunty told Radio NZ the bribe was “an internal political situation that has nothing to do with our government’s negotiations.”

Sambom, who has spent time in Indonesian jails for taking part in demos, now operates out of adjacent Papua New Guinea – a separate independent country.

Australia was largely absent from the talks to free Mehrtens that were handled by NZ diplomats and the Indonesian military. The AFP’s current involvement raises the worry that information garnered under the warrants will show the Indonesian government where the Kiwi was hidden so the locations can be attacked from the air.

At one stage during his captivity, Mehrtens appealed to the Indonesian military not to bomb villages.

It’s believed Mehrtens was held in Nduga, a district with the lowest development index in the Republic, a measure of how citizens can access education, health, and income. Yet Papua is the richest province in the archipelago; the Grasberg mine is the world’s biggest deposit of gold and copper.

OPM was founded in December 1963 as a spiritual movement rejecting development while blending traditional and Christian beliefs. It then started working with international human rights agencies for support.

The indigenous Papuans are mainly Christian, while almost 90% of Indonesians follow Islam.

Chief independence lobbyist Benny Wenda lives in exile in Oxford. In 2003 he was given political asylum by the UK government after fleeing from an Indonesian jail.  He has addressed the UN and European and British Parliaments, but Jakarta has so far resisted international pressure to allow any form of self-determination.

Questions for new President Prabowo

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto is in the UK this week, where Papuans have been trying to stir opposition to the official visit. In a statement, Wenda said:

Prabowo has also restarted the transmigration settlement programme that has made us a minority in our own land.

“For West Papuans, the ghost of (second president) Suharto has returned — (his) New Order regime still exists, it has just changed its clothes.”

Pleas for recognition of Papuan’s concerns get minimal backing in Indonesia; fears of balkanisation and Western nations taking over a splintered country are well entrenched in the 17,000-island archipelago of 1,300 ethnic groups where ‘unity’ is considered the Republic’s foundation stone.

US President beware. Indonesia embraces Russia, BRICS to build trade … and military

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The Albanese Government is already pouring $9.1B of taxpayers’ money into the US and UK submarine industrial base. Yet a new FOI release from Washington reveals a secret deal that means there’s even more money to be dispatched. Rex Patrick reports.

Make Australia Make Again?

The future of Whyalla’s steelworks is of vital national importance and should matter to all of us. It is critical to Australia’s manufacturing, construction and national security and resilience. 

Being frank, the steelworks are in dire straits. They are 60 years old and have been on a rocky road for well over a decade. Its blast furnace has been out of action for over six months now, and whilst there is some optimism that they will get it back up and running it will not change the fact that the steelworks have been in operation for some six decades.

In 2016 when the previous owner, Arrium, went into administration with $4 billion in debts, UK billionaire Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance bought the steelworks making lots of big promises for a bright future, but it was not to be. At the turn of the decade Greensill Capital, GFG’s financier, collapsed and there’s been trouble ever since.

As it stands, the future of the steelworks, and Whyalla, is in the hands of a court entangled foreign billionaire with a gaping chasm between his promises and delivery. Those promises of a 21st century industrial transformation look very much like ever receding mirages

The Federal Government needs to have the SA Government bring matters to a head by putting GFG’s South Australian operations into administration (by calling for unpaid and overdue mining royalties), taking an equity stake in the steelworks alongside someone like BlueScope Steel, and investing the necessary billions to build a new green steel industry for Australia. 

It would be a part of Make Australia Make Again.

But that’s not happening. Instead, it’s

Make America Great Again!

Prime Minister Albanese’s focus is on investment in US industry, not Australian industry.

In September 2023 the Federal Government announced it was pouring $4.7 billion ($US3B) into the US submarine industrial base to assist the largest economy in the world get their submarine production rate up to 2.3 subs per annum (from the current rate of 1.4 subs).

Some $1.5 billion will be paid to the US this financial year, and $1.8 billion next financial year. The remaining $1.4B will follow thereafter.

The geniuses in the Department of Defence have set up a regime where, if for any reason the US can’t deliver (it is highly unlikely they will ever make the 2.3 subs required) or won’t deliver (more on that possibility below), we get exactly none of the money back.

The Government is shy on spending money on a steel works which they would have complete control over, in terms of success, but are happy to recklessly throw money at US shipyards.

Go figure!

Make Great Britain Great Again Too!

That’s not the end of the story though.

The British are in on this deal of a lifetime too. They’ve managed to pull $4.4B (£2.4 billion) over the next decade from Australian consolidated revenue.

There is no clawback on payment to the United Kingdom either.

Everyone must be feeling pretty chuffed in Groton, Connecticut, and Barrow-in-Furness, England.

But Wait, There’s More!

Whilst the Federal Government has been open about the totals, albeit with a little ‘encouragement’ from Green’s Senator David Shoebridge at Senate Estimates, there’s a dark secret being withheld from the Parliament and the public.

There’s more ‘shared’ cost to come.

FOI returns from the US Department of the Navy reveal that behind the scenes the three AUKUS government participants have been negotiating trilateral cost sharing principles to guide future cost sharing negotiations.

The principles were worked up by the AUKUS Submarine Executive Group and presented to Defence Minister Richard Marles earlier this year. It’s been all strictly hush hush. Noting how naïve Australia’s approach has been to date to date, these cost sharing principles really ought to be subject to scrutiny.

Senator David Shoebridge backed this in telling MWM, “Why on earth do cost-sharing principles need to be secret? Of course they should be made public.”

He went on to comment, “Once again, we get more transparency on AUKUS out of the US than Australia.“

“The one-sided secrecy is because the US has a whole lot less to be embarrassed about than Australia. They are the ones getting all our money after all.”

Transactional Trump

The approved appropriations in the US for enhancing their submarine industrial base through upgrades as well as recruitment and training of thousands of additional workers amount to $US14.7B. Australia adds another $US3B to that. But the total the US administration is seeking for this work is in the order of $US28.4B.

Of course, there is some quid quo pro in all of this with the Australia Government having committed to spending $8 billion upgrading HMAS Stirling near Rockingham to support the operations of UK and US nuclear powered submarines from 2027, and possibly Australian nuclear submarines from 2035.

There is a danger under the incoming Trump administration that the President will seek a greater contribution from Australia – just as he has demanded that members of NATO pull their weight. And it will be a case of having no choice but to pay, no matter the cost sharing principles negotiated, because our Defence Department simply has no Plan B.

They have literally bet our national security future on one, single, vastly expensive project to acquire just eight conventionally armed submarines.  

Senator Shoebridge commented, “The AUKUS submarine deal is a non-refundable $368 billion gamble on the goodwill of some future US President, and the US just elected Donald Trump. You only need to put these two facts side by side to realize what a disaster the whole thing is.”

Ships and Steel

Meanwhile, as Australian money is being tossed around the US and UK like it’s free, Albanese is sitting on his hand on the issue of green steel manufacturing in Whyalla.

As steel workers in Whyalla worry over their future, and for very good reason, shipbuilders in the United States are like pigs in gravy, wallowing in cash and looking forward to a lot more of that coming their way from Australian taxpayers.

Anthony Albanese says he wants to revitalise manufacturing and Make Australia Make Again. But in this topsy-turvey world, he’s instead working to deliver on Donald Trump’s slogan to Make America Great Again.

Studious Ambassador Rudd and his “big careful” AUKUS shipyard cost study

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The PwC multinational tax avoidance scandal has led to a slew of parliamentary inquiries, reports and much handwringing. The latest includes no less than 40 recommendations. But will anything change? Kim Wingerei reports.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services has published its report. That committee’s remit is ASIC and the operation of corporate legislation.

Back in June, the Senate’s Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration’s reported from its “Inquiry into Management and Assurance of Integrity by Consulting Services Management.”

PWC – a slap on the Wrist | The West Report

Both reports go wider than the scandal that precipitated them. Neither do much to address the core issues of how the Government has made itself dependent on consultancies, reduced the public service to contract management functionaries while outsourcing competencies to rent-seekers, and failed to put in place appropriate checks and balances.

According to a 2024 Parliamentary report, “In 2022–23, the Australian Government published 83,625 procurement contracts with a combined value of $74.8 billion. Management Advisory Services, typically provided by consulting firms, had a value of $3.272 billion in 2022–23, which represents 4.37 per cent of the total value of procurement contracts.”

The vast majority of the consulting contracts go to the ‘Big 4’ consultancies, EY, Deloitte, KPMG and PwC, who are all large donors to both Liberals and Labor.

The Morrison Government spent $20.8B on consultants. Labor claims to have reduced that spending by $624m a year since coming to power.

The Corporations and Financial Services Committee commenced its inquiry “ethics and professional accountability” in June 2023, receiving 83 submissions plus follow-up questions and met 12 times between October 2023 and September 2024. The resulting report includes 40 recommendations, the first being that PwC should continue to be banned from tendering for government work until all the other investigations into its practices have been concluded.

So far, so good. Except, of course, that PwC “spun off” its government practices to new company Scyne Advisory, who, according to the AFR ($), quickly clawed back a third of the contract revenue that PwC lost. Former PwC CEO Luke Sayer, one of the senior partners deeply mired in the scandal, is also known to continue to benefit from government contracts at the consultancy he now runs, the Sayer Group, which in June has 28 contracts with the federal government and its agencies, according to the Austender portal.

Partnership or corporation?

Another recommendation is that the number of partners in partnerships be limited to 400 to align with legal partnerships. That would cause some pain for PwC, which has over 900 partners in Australia, especially for the 22 new partners admitted in July this year. EY has 738 partners, KPMG ‘over’ 600, with Deloitte the only one under the proposed new bar with 360. They’ll have five years to comply and be “subject to review”, so we’re guessing that nobody’s partners have been losing sleep at the prospect of a demotion just yet.

The Opposition members of the committee, Alex Hawke and Paul Scarr, dissented strongly from this recommendation, noting that “a cut in the number of partners would cause great disruption to those firms which currently have more than 400 partners.”

The Greens representative, on the other hand, wanted to go further, suggesting a cap of 100 partners, citing Mr Adam Powick, CEO of Deloitte (who) has acknowledged that “once a partnership gets above 100 equity partners, it becomes too complex to manage.”

The partnership model has many benefits. In particular, they are exempt from the governance and accountability requirements of the Corporations Act. Recommendation 5 suggests that this ‘should’ change for partnerships with over 3,000 staff. But only if it’s OK by ASIC, who, as we know, has so many other complicated matters to attend to, including the fending-off of government reports calling for it to be abolished.

ASIC obfuscates, dithers and delays at Senate Estimates. What’s the scam?

There are several other recommendations along the same lines of making the ‘Big 4’ subject to disclosure, transparency and audit requirements similar to those applying to large corporates and other government contractors. Why they are not already has long been a point of conjecture here at MWM.

The most obvious recommendation of all is that “the Australian Government consider requiring audit firms, or the audit section of multidisciplinary firms, to incorporate.” ‘Big 4’ lobbyists are no doubt ready to take that fight to Canberra.

Structural or operational separation

One of the major issues laid bare by the PwC scandal was the muddled lines between the company’s divisions of audit, tax advice and consultancy.

Recommendations 8 and 9 suggest that “multi-disciplinary large accounting firms should not be permitted to supply both audit and non-audit/consultancy services to the same client” and that they “should be required to implement operational separation of their audit practice from their non-audit practice.”

The firms themselves, of course, will insist that this is not necessary because that is already their practice. As is the flying of pigs.

Other recommendations expand on this theme, with suggestions for better audit practices (sic) and more transparency, while the Greens stressed the importance of structural over just operational separation, with Barbara Pocock stating, “structural separation is an alternative, firmer way to ensure the integrity of the audit system and guarantee that audits are not compromised by non-audit services, creating conflicts of interest.”

The problem with PWC and the Big 4 – treason is the business model

Fragmented oversight

The fragmented regime of corporate regulation and oversight in Australia is on display in the report in recommendation 22:

“The committee recommends that the Australian Government consider additional mechanisms to ensure the Financial Reporting Council and any related standards boards, the Companies Auditors Disciplinary Board, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the Tax Practitioners Board, and the Australian Taxation Office and other government regulatory bodies are independent and are seen to be independent, including by ensuring that the bodies do not include individuals with a current financial interest in entities under the direct governance of the body.”

That’s a lot of bodies with overlapping interests and people to control not to mention their ability to claim “not in our purview” – and the list doesn’t even include the Professional Standards Council and its cousin, the Accounting Professional and Ethics Standards Board.

The Committee even suggest that there should be another such body, “creating a consultancy code and associated consultancy code compliance body (with sufficient powers to ensure compliance with the code).”

They’ll need more consultants to sort it all out!

Or maybe that’s the reason for recommendation 33, that the “Australian Government and professional bodies develop mechanisms to enhance the transfer of misconduct information between regulators and all relevant professional bodies.”

Whistleblower protections

The PwC scandal took many years to surface and only came to light when journalists got wind of a determination made by the Tax Practitioners Board, censuring PwC tax partner Peter Collins. Collins turned out to be just one of many who knew about PwC providing advice to clients based on confidential material from the ATO.

The committee recognises that there were a large number of people who were either involved or who knew what happened long before it became public, suggesting that a stronger whistleblower regime is paramount.

It recommends greater alignment of whistleblower protections across public and private sectors, applies to audit, accounting and consulting firms, and offers greater protection and support for whistleblowers.

We second that and wait with bated breath…

Lendlease whistleblower and lawyer Tony Watson – the law is failing to protect whistleblowers

 

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The world knows, the Timorese know, and all Australians know we spied on the Timorese to steal their oil and gas, yet DFAT is denying official history because that history alleges Australia spied on its neighbour. Rex Patrick on the endless cover-ups.

In 2015, the Australian Government commissioned the Australian War Memorial (AWM) to produce the official history of Australian operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and Australian Peacekeeping Operations in East Timor. In 2016, UNSW history professor Craig Stockings was engaged as AWM’s official historian, and work commenced, first up, on two volumes covering Australia’s East Timor Operations.

Despite the title, the official histories are not the Government’s view of events; the Official Historian is independent, free to research, write and give their historical account as they see fit. The official histories are not government publications; they are published by UNSW Press.

The “official” part of the official history refers to access to government records, many of them still secret.

Access to classified information means that the official history has to go through a formalised clearance process. It goes to Defence, who forward relevant parts to Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and the intelligence organisations, and then finally the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security and the Australian Federal Police.

The clearance is supposed to take six months and makes it clear that any editorial comment provided by government agencies involved is ‘advice’, not required changes.

East Timor – Volume One

Volume One of the Timor History took two years to write but became a hugely controversial affair when it then took three years to ‘clear’.

DFAT didn’t like the history as written. Letters revealed under a previous FOI show that DFAT was uncomfortable with the first nine chapters of the book – they thought that these focussed “inordinately” on the events leading up to the 1999 Timorese independence vote.

DFAT’s agitation arose from the fact that the Department was the lead agency in determining Australia’s controversial East Timor policy over nearly half a century, with successive generations of senior diplomats deeply involved in orchestrating Australia’s acquiescence to Indonesia’s invasion of Timor in 1975.

It turned a blind eye to a quarter of a century of Indonesian military atrocities and human rights abuses, refusing to support East Timorese self-determination, delaying and foot-dragging on Australia’s intervention following Timor’s independence vote in 1999.

It then engaged in bad faith negotiations through the 2000s as DFAT worked with Woodside and other energy giants to rob Timor-Leste of their share of the energy resources under the Timor Sea.

This was a shameful record that DFAT had no desire to have documented in detail, indeed a story they had no wish to publish at all.

In order to broker a compromise, former Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, then head of the AWM, proposed the first nine chapters be truncated to just two chapters. DFAT liked the idea, but Nelson quickly retreated from his unsustainable position.

Then head of DFAT and now Governor of South Australia, Francis Adamson, wrote to Professor Stockings emphasising that an “honest history” of Australia’s peacekeeping role in Timor would touch “raw nerves”.

From DFAT’s perspective, it was best if history was twisted to suit their narrative and should be censored when the topic was just too hot for them.

The AWM stood its ground.

UNSW Professor of International and Political Studies Clinton Fernandes paid tribute to Professor Stockings. “It would have been easy to have given in and just written a whole book full of stories about larrikin diggers and ruminate on our national character – bronzed ANZACs, all of that stuff. He has taken his task as an official historian seriously, and a lesser person would easily have not only gone along with it but then justified the action.”

Volume One was published in December 2022. The publication was also mired in controversy after the launch of the book was abruptly cancelled after invitations had been issued. Instead, a more discreet “in conversation” event was held, featuring AWM board chairman Kim Beazley interviewing Stockings.

DFAT were no doubt pleased that publicity was minimised.

East Timor – Volume Two

A similar controversy has now arisen over Volume Two.

Newly obtained FOI documents, reluctantly released after the AWM capitulated when I appealed another access refusal decision to the Administrative Review Tribunal, show that DFAT doesn’t want Volume Two making any mention of the spying that ASIS did on the Timor Sea boundary negotiating team.

The official history team are drawing the spying information from public sources, and DFAT has wanted to remove even that in the clearance process!

Neither Confirm Nor Deny

The spying is an established fact.

• Timor was confident enough to institute proceedings in the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in relation to the 2006 treaty, which was the subject of the spying. 
• The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, on national security grounds, raided the offices of the lawyers who represented Timor-Leste in the Arbitration and the home of a material witness in the proceedings for security-related reasons, giving credibility to the fact that the spying took place.
• The Australian Government welcomed the PCA proceedings being discontinued.
• The Australian Government’s negotiation of a new maritime boundary treaty with Timor-Leste subsequent to the disclosure of the spying operation was more favourable to Timor-Leste than the earlier treaty, showing that the disclosure of the spying affected Australia’s approach to the negotiation of the second treaty.
• Witness K was sentenced for his role in disclosing the spying operation.
• The Australian Government also brought charges against lawyer Bernard Collaery for disclosing the spying operation.

Yet DFAT, in an approach everyone can see through, neither confirms nor denies the spying took place.

But in relation to Volume Two of the history, they don’t even want the fact of an allegation of spying to be mentioned.

No resolution

As the official history team work to resolve the issue, the FOI release shows that a DFAT censorship wand is still being waved around. On the 15th of April this year Professor Stockings met with DFAT where officials added two more request to remove information about the Timor Sea boundary negotiations. Stockings stated:

“The argument is that [the official history team] are not qualified to make judgements in this regard as insufficient evidence exists. We respectfully disagree. The quality of the history is up to us. It is not a clearance issue.”

Stockings then goes on to state of the unresolved issues:

“We cannot make these changes on the basis that to do so would fundamentally risk the credibility of the volume. No serial was described as a problem of [security] classification (indeed most only have unclassified sources) but rather that their inclusion may cause some degree of offence to former and/or current East Timor politicians/leaders. Given nothing that is said is not already in the public domain, and given the necessity of this context for the volume to make sense to a reader, we do not agree.”

The released FOI documents show that the Volume Two clearance process is now at an impasse.

In May this year the impasse was escalated to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in a supposed effort to resolve differences.  This may not help much. Historically, PM&C and DFAT have been joined at the hip regarding Timor policy. Most of PM&C’s international experts have come from DFAT and have been just as complicit in Australia’s shameful behaviour towards our neighbour as their diplomatic colleagues. Unsurprisingly, the Prime Minister’s Department failed to respond to questions from MWM.

Time to come clean

Most Australians are highly embarrassed about our general conduct towards Timor-Leste. The spying on Timor-Leste for the purpose of stealing their oil and gas is the centre-piece of that embarrassment.

The official historian is not trying to put on the record the actuality of the spying, just that allegations were made. A failure to include this in the history of the two countries would stand out like a sore thumb.

The history must tell the truth. Indeed, the Australian Government should tell the truth and apologise for what it did.

The continued desire of DFAT to blot out the Howard government’s conspiracy to defraud the newest and one of the poorest countries in the world is pointless and just picks at the scab of shame and embarrassment. DFAT need to own their history, apologise to all and reflect on their immoral and unethical legacy, so that we can all move on.

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The NSW Supreme Court has issued orders prohibiting a major climate protest that would blockade ships entering the world’s largest coal port in Newcastle for 30 hours. Despite the court ruling, Wendy Bacon reports that the protest will still go ahead.

In a decision delivered on Thursday, Justice Fagan ruled in favour of NSW police who applied to have the Rising Tide ‘Protestival’ planned from November 22 to 24 declared an ‘unauthorised assembly’.

Rising Tide has vowed to continue its protest. The grassroots movement is calling for an end to new coal and gas approvals and imposing a 78% tax on coal and gas export profits to fund and support Australian workers during the energy transition.

The group submitted what is known as a “Form 1” to the police for approval for a 30-hour blockade of the port and a four-day camp on the foreshore. If approved, the protest could go ahead without police being able to use powers of arrest for offences such as ‘failure to move on’ during the protest.

Rising Tide organisers expect thousands to attend of whom hundreds would enter the water in kayaks and other vessels to block the harbour. Last year, a similar 24-hour blockade protest was conducted safely and in cooperation with police, after which 109 people refused to leave the water in an act of peaceful civil disobedience. They were then arrested without incident. Most were later given good behaviour bonds with no conviction recorded.

The price of peaceful protest: 109 arrests, but the Newcastle Port blockade will be on again

Following the judgement, Rising Tide organiser Zack Schofield said that although the group was disappointed, “the protestival will go ahead within our rights to peaceful assembly on land and water, which is legal in NSW with or without a Form 1.”

“The main public safety issue here is the climate pollution caused by the continued expansion of the coal and gas industries. That’s why we are protesting in our own backyard: the Newcastle coal port, scene of Australia’s single biggest contribution to climate change.”

In his judgement, Justice Desmond Fagan affirmed that protesting without a permit is lawful.

In refusing the application, he described the planned action as “excessive”. “A 30-hour interruption to the operations of a busy port is an imposition on the lawful activities of others that goes far beyond what the people affected should be expected to tolerate in order to facilitate public expression of protest and opinion on the important issues with which the organisers are concerned,” he said.

During the case, Rising Tide’s barrister Neal Funnell argued that in weighing the impacts, the court should take into account “a vast body of evidence as to the cost of the economic impact of global warming and particularly the role the fossil fuel industry plays in that.“

But while agreeing that coal is “extremely detrimental to the atmosphere and biosphere and our future, Justice Fagan indicated that his decision would only take into account the immediate impacts of the protest, not “the economic effect of the activity of burning coal in power plants in whatever countries this coal is freighted to from the port of Newcastle.”

NSW Police argued that the risks to safety outweighed the right to protest. Rising Tide barrister Neal Funnell told the court that the group did not deny that there were inherent risks in protests on water but pointed to evidence that showed police logs revealed no safety concerns or incidents during the 2023 protest.

Although he accepted the police argument about safety risks, Justice Fagan acknowledged that the “organisers of Rising Tide have taken a responsible approach to on-water safety by preparing very thorough plans and protocols, by engaging members of supportive organisations to attend with outboard motor driven rescue craft and by enlisting the assistance of trained lifeguards.

The Court’s reasons are not to be understood as a direction to terminate the protest.

Student protests echo Vietnam as pro-war lobby cracks down on peaceful protests

NSW government opposition

Overshadowing the case were statements by NSW Premier Chris Minns, who recently threatened to make costs of policing a reason why permits to protest could be refused.

Last week, Minns said the protest was opposed because it was dangerous and would impact the economy, suggesting further government action could follow to protect coal infrastructure. “I think the government’s going to have to make some decisions in the next few weeks about protecting that coal line and ensuring the economy doesn’t close down as a result of this protest activity,” he said.

Greens MP and spokesperson for Climate Change and Justice Sue Higginson, who attended last year’s Rising Tide protest, said, “ It’s the second time in the past few weeks that Police have sought to use the Court to prohibit a public protest event with the full support of the Premier of this State…”

Higginson hit back at Premier Chris Minns. “Under the laws of NSW, it’s not the job of the Premier or the Police to say where, when and how people can protest. It is the job of the Police and the Premier to serve the people and work with organisers to facilitate a safe and effective event. Today, the Premier and the Police have thrown this obligation back in our faces. What we have seen are the tactics of authoritarian politics attempting to silence the people,”

“It is telling that the NSW Government would rather seek to silence the community and protect their profits from exporting the climate crisis straight through the Port of Newcastle rather than support our grassroots communities, embrace the right to protest, take firm action to end coal exports and transition our economy.”

Limits of police authorised protests

Hundreds of protests take place in NSW each year using Form 1s. Many other assemblies happen without a Form 1 application. But the process places the power over protests in the hands of police and the courts. In a situation in which NSW has no charter of human rights that protects the right to protest, Justice Fagan’s decision exposes the limits of the Form 1 approach to protests.

NSW Council for Civil Liberties is one of more than twenty organisations that supported the Rising Tide case.

In response to the prohibition order, its Vice-President Lidia Shelly said, “Rising Tide submitted a Form 1 application so that NSW Police could work with the organisers to ensure the safety of the public. The organisers did everything right in accordance with the law. It’s responsible and peaceful protesting. Instead, the police dragged the organisers to Court and furthered the public’s perception that they’re acting under political pressure to protect the interests of the fossil fuel industry.”

Ms Shelly said, “In denying the Form 1, NSW Police have created a perfect environment for mass arrests of peaceful protestors to occur ….The right to peaceful assembly is a core human right protected under international law. NSW desperately needs a state-based charter of human rights that protects the right to protest.”

“The current Form 1 regime in New South Wales is designed to repress the public from exercising their democratic rights to protest. We reiterate our call to the NSW Government to repeal the draconian anti-protest laws, abolish the Form 1 regime, protect independent legal observers, and introduce a Human Rights Act that enshrines the right to protest.”

 

This post was originally published on Michael West.