Freedom of Information disclosures show the government favouring Big Media and Big Gambling in lobbying battle to nix gambling ads reform. Rex Patrick reports.

It was recently revealed the Albanese Government insisted that organisations and groups being consulted on gambling advertising reform had to sign a draconian non-disclosure agreement before the Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland would talk with them.

It turns out that this was the only scandalous aspect of the government’s handling of this important issue. Freedom of Information disclosures reveal …

Australians spend more per capita on legal forms of gambling than in any other country, losing $25 billion every year.

Australians also lose the most money to online gambling per capita in the world.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland knows the harm gambling causes to gamblers’ physical and mental health (sometimes leading to suicide). She knows their partners and children suffer. Gambling is a very large industry trading in misery.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority found that $238.6 million was spent on gambling advertising on free‐to‐air TV, metropolitan radio and online (including social media) between May 2022 and April 2023. 

Over two thirds (69%) of Australians believe that gambling advertising is too common.

Opportunity for Change

The House of Representatives inquiry, You win some, you lose more, chaired by the late Peta Murphy, a Labor MP with a lively social conscience, and handed down more than 12 months ago was hoped to be a turning point. 

Gambling advertising reforms emerged has a key priority from the Inquiry. There is widespread community, political and academic concern about the impact of wagering advertisements, their close association with sports, and the normalisation of gambling for children and young people.

But we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for media outlets, and flowing from that, a major source of funding to sports organisations from media rights.

It’s big business revenue versus misery imposed upon gamblers and their families.

Marinated ministers

Of course, it’s appropriate for ministers to consult stakeholders prior to major decisions and implementation on any reform.

But a brand-new Freedom of Information release that dropped this week shows the whole consultation process is a hugely lopsided affair. And it won’t take much to guess who has been getting all of the attention.

One on One Engagement with Minister Rowland (Source; FOI)

Minister Rowland is not engaging those suffering from serious financial, legal, family and relationship consequences, or health and psychological harms, or homelessness.

As one anti-gambling advocate stated to MWM, “Albo and Rowland are marinated in gambling culture”.

Questions in the Parliament

This week in parliament, independent MP Zoe Daniels asked of the Prime Minister at question time;

In the gallery today, we have several people who have tried to meet with you and your ministers to tell you how gambling addiction has ruined their lives. They say that gambling ads constantly triggered them to gamble, and they’re asking you to ban all gambling ads to stop the normalisation of gambling, especially for children. Prime Minister, why have you engaged directly with those who profit from gambling but not with these people, and what do you have to say to them as they sit here today?

The Prime Minister’s answer was a bit cryptic.

I was with [Zoe Daniels] last night. She’s fully aware of where I’ve been and fully aware of who I’ve been with today. So I reject the assertion that I won’t meet with people. The last person I met with on this issue was Tim Costello ten days ago.

Reverend Tim Costello, Chief Advocate of the Alliance for Gambling Reform was the principled member that stood up to the Government’s attempts to wrap their consultations in secrecy, telling the Government he would not meet with them under silence conditions.

Extract from Non-Disclosure Agreement (Source: FOI)

After adverse media reporting on 7 August, an embarrassed Government backed down and Costello met with ministerial advisers (not the Minister though) on 14 August.

Political points

Another unusual thing revealed by the freedom of information request was that ‘talking points’ in the brief provided by the Department to Minister Rowland were left blank for the minister to fill in.

DYI Talking Points (Source: FOI)

Normally, policy is developed by the Department and the Department would provide recommended talking points. The lack of Departmental input alludes to the fact that this is a political ‘hot potato’ where the answers won’t be derived from policy analysis, rather from purely political calculations in the ministerial wing of Parliament House.

No wonder the big-end-of-town is lining up at Rowland’s ministerial suite. And too bad for those suffering from and enduring the scourge of gambling.

Finally, don’t expect much real information to flow from our FOI laws. The real information is marinated in the Albanese Government’s secrecy sauce.

Documents Refused in Full (Source: FOI)

Murphy Report on gambling reform delayed by sports bet lobby

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Privatisation in Australia has been a gigantic transfer of public wealth into private hands. Michael West address to the Academy of Social Sciences conference.

The first time I cracked the front page of a newspaper was in 1991 as a cadet journalist on the banking desk at the Australian Financial Review. Truth be told it was an early mentor, Ivor Rees then banking editor who later become Chanticleer columnist, who wrote most of it.

It was quite the experience however, waiting until 10.30 to pick up the first edition of the AFR rolled off the Broadway printing presses, still warm.

The story was about the gravy train of advisers to the Commbank sale who cleaned up making fees on the float – the bankers, lawyers, brokers and assorted advisers to the sale. This was the first tranche of the sale under Prime Minister Paul Keating. And it was hailed as an enormous success, and for share market investors it was, for many years to come.

Since then, I’ve spent a lifetime in journalism covering privatisations – toll roads, electricity assets, airports, communications, hospitals, property, telcos.

Vultures’ Reprise: MacBankers bob up in takeover battle for hapless Sydney Airport

But cui bono?

To cut to the chase, although I have chronicled myriad rip-offs, and all up a gigantic, relentless transfer of wealth from public hands to private interests over these 30 years, my view is not definitive; that privatisation is always wrong, always a bad thing that is – we prefer to look at things on a case by case basis, and theoretically, privatisation can work. 

We will get to a good privatisation shortly. Suffice also to say that there should be no privatisation of essential government monopolies – airports and so forth, where the temptation to rent-seek is too high, where the public interest is not well served, or where a sell-off of critical health infrastructure such as hospitals means the conflict of interest between human life and profit is too great.

The reality is that the history of privatisation in Australia is a history of privateers having their way with politicians and public servants. Where is the big study on it though? This brings us to another vital point – it is disappointing that the world of academia has not done the definitive analysis on the issue; where is the comprehensive cost benefit analysis of 35 years of privatisations in Australia?

The answer is that universities and academics have been busy being privatised themselves, following the inevitable multi-million dollar payments to the Big 4 for consulting reports telling uni leaderships of the beauties of corporatisation – and by the way, you people at the top who commissioned this landmark yet secret report deserve more money for sure!

For Whom the Tolls Bell: traversing Transurban’s $20 billion debt and tricky tax lurks

So now we have universities under pressure from a business model which has made them reliant on private income from foreign students, we have tollroads flogged to monopoly of monopolies; Transurban where the tolls are so high that governments are now having to subsidise motorists’ tolls just to get to them to work in order to keep Transurban’s profits rolling on – while its stapled security structure means it pays no corporate income taxes.

And we have gas pipelines privatised, sold to China and Singapore, we have the Qantas monopoly which had to be bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of billions during Covid; likewise Virgin the other duopolist in aviation. What is the point of privatisation if the public still carries the risk when things turn pear-shaped?

We have half the electricity grid sold off. More than half in Victoria and NSW. The two biggest personal beneficiaries of these sales are two HK billionaires, Li Ka-Shing and Michael Kadoorie.

They’re not shivering in Honkers: Australians’ electricity pain is two billionaires’ gain

Right here in South Australia, SA Power Networks is 51% owned – controlled that is, by Li’s son Victor Li, chairman of CKI, who lives on the island in Hong Kong. One of the three big national ‘gentailers’, which also has assets across South Australia and the Eastern Seaboard, Energy Australia, used to be owned by a company called Energy Australia in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands, controlled in turn by Hong Kong billionaire Michael Kadoorie.

It is no accident that north American private equity vultures Brookfield have tried to take over the other two gentailers, AGL and Origin Energy, as the profits from owning regulated Australian assets are enormous, especially if you re-domicile them to Bermuda or the Cayman Islands and don’t pay any income tax.

Energy Australia is the piece de resistance of privatisations. It came about via a host of government privatisations of coal mines, gas assets and various bits of the eastern seaboard grid over many years: much of it the sale of poles and wires In NSW and Victoria. And they were happily paying no tax for years, calling themselves Energy Australia and siphoning profits off to the BVI until we exposed them a few years ago and they changed their ownership structure, and took out the BVI bit.

Who is watching?

The point is nobody was watching. Nobody is watching except for those who are in on the scam. And they are hardly going to blow the whistle. If we take a look at CBA, it has been a magnificent performer on the ASX from day one back in 1991. It has recorded the biggest and fattest profits of all for its investors over the years of all the banks. In that sense it has been a success.

Its advocates say Australians benefit through their superannuation as all the super funds own a slice; and this is true, but it is the wealthiest who have the most shares and yet pre-privatisation the government assets belonged equally to all voters. It is foreign investors too.

But what would have happened if – instead of flogging this bank into the effective government licensed Big Four banking cartel, guaranteed to make money from one of the most profitable banking markets in the world and also guaranteed since the Global Financial Crisis by us the public – it can’t fail, as we underpin its risk – what would have happened if they had kept the bank in public hands, kept it competing against the private banks with its sovereign cost of capital?

What would have happened is that mortgages almost certainly have been cheaper for all Australians, and therefore home ownership more accessible as credit was cheaper. We could still do it now, deploy Australia Post’s vast retail network and sovereign credit rating, as bank branches. Alas, the banks and their advisers would not like that.

Qantas: privatise the profits, socialise the losses

Could this have been the same deal with Qantas and airfares had they not privatised Qantas? We don’t know what could have happened, only what did happen. What of the GIO, sold to Suncorp, which was recently sold to ANZ? And the demutualisation of the NRMA, now IAG. We don’t know what might have happened, only what did. Insurance costs are through the roof.

Silver donut for investors, hole in donut for public

A few years ago we received a call from the BBC which was doing an investigation into the Macquarie Bank privatisation of Thames Water, the UK’s largest water utility.

Thames had been busted dropping raw sewage into the Thames, literally. Keep the costs down, keep th costs down. Gobsmacked, the BBC producer asked us if Macquarie had paid for Thames with Thames own money. In effect it had.

River of Tears: how Macquarie Bank profiteering sent Thames Water to the wall

You see the trick with privatisation is to win the bid. And bid high. For ratepayers in the UK, anywhere for that matter, are not suddenly going to stop flushing their toilets. The cuff-linked buccaneers of Macquarie had become the masters of OPM, deploying other peoples’ money to buy public assets, then ripping out the cash, doing sale-and-leaseback on the assets, and injecting debt – the bankers’ money.

Being regulated public assets, you can gear these assets highly, use a lot of debt, and that reduces the tax liability too. And so they did, and Thames is now ‘restructuring’, bankers’ parlance for going bust. These things can’t actually go bust so the bankers know they can take a lot of risk.

They did it too, spectacularly with Sydney Airport. There are better airports in the third world but the gateway to Australia is rickety by comparison with its global peers because … why spend money when it affects returns to shareholders?

The Macbankers retrieved the $5.6B in other peoples’ money spent winning the auction in a couple of years, then raked in dazzling profits before selling it again. As for tax, again, like Transurban, it was structured as a stapled security so super fund unit-holders pay the tax at their marginal rate, which may be 15% compared to the 30% corporate tax rate.

A better way

If privatisation was done properly, hundreds of billions of dollars could have been saved. Back in the day, it was deemed as proper process to have a ‘Public Sector Comparator’, that is, government ought to do the analysis with public consultation of costs and benefits – privatisation versus public funding alternatives. Would rail or road be better in the long run? Let’s have the public debate?

But no, process was hijacked by the bankers. Secrecy is far more profitable when dealing with politicians and public servants. It even got to the point with casinos where they just did a deal in secret with the Packers for Crown Casino in Sydney.

A good privatisation story

As we noted earlier, our view has not been entirely prescriptive. The Manly Ferry service in my home town was privatised, at least the new Fast Ferries service was put out to tender. We were critical at first, but it is a brilliant service, more expensive but it does the trip to Circular Quay in 20 minutes rather than half an hour. It’s efficient and the old government ferries still chug into town as well.

Point being, there is competition – private versus public – and it is not a monopoly as such. You can always get the bus.

In the same neck of the woods however, the Northern Beaches Hospital was privatised to Healthscope with its 40 other private hospitals, and Healthscope was sold to Brookfield via a takeover bid for Healthscope on the ASX. That left the 30,000 residents of the beaches with one hospital – they closed Manly and Mona Vale – ultimately controlled by anonymous directors of a company in the Cayman Islands.

The sale process was secretive, after spending billions on the asset the government vendors and the foreign buyers have refused public disclosure of vital materials relating to both the financial process and the medical breaches. There is finally now a review taking place by the NSW Auditor General into the financial structure following concern by politicians, residents and doctors and nurses.

This is a health monopoly which should never have been privatised as the conflict of interest is too great between the demands for profits from shareholders and the vital public service which is keeping people alive.

Personally, as a regular customer of this hospital we have received highly professional care but that observation is as useful in reality as the climate change denier remarking how cold it is today so therefore climate change science must all be a big con.

All this talk of privatisation without even going into telcos and the sale of Telstra, the NBN, massive state property sales, or the very privatisation of government by the sharp rise of outsourcing of government to the Big 4 consultancy firms and others.

In a philosophical sense, the problem is the neoliberal creed of government held by both major parties still, the idea that things must be more efficient if held in private hands. There is no credible evidence for it because the exhaustive work on the subject has never been done.

But there is no alternative creed of government to oppose it right now. And so communities across the country are stuck with it for now, fighting at all three levels of government against secrecy and the sale of public assets on a case by case basis.

Caymans Privatisation: Northern Beaches Hospital limps into financial triage

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Attorney General Dreyfus looks to spend thousands more taxpayers’ dollars to appeal a Full Federal Court decision that denied the right of ministers to shred politically sensitive documents as they leave office. Transparency Warrior Rex Patrick reports.

In correspondence to me, the Attorney General’s Department has given a strong signal that the Federal Attorney-General, the Hon Mark Dreyfus KC, will appeal his recent loss in the Full Federal Court to the High Court.

In May this year I won a case in the Federal Court against Mr Dreyfus that effectively prohibits ministers who leave office from sweeping their dirty secrets under the carpet on the way out – killing off any FOI rights for public access to controversial documents.

In her decision, Justice Charlesworth declared:

“I accept that there may be very strong political resistance to an outgoing Minister transferring documents forming the subject of a pending FOI request to a new incumbent, particularly on a change of Government. 

“This Court was told that it was common practice for documents not to be transferred. But the FOI Act is not concerned with party-political matters other than to the extent provided for in respect of documents correctly described as falling within certain exemptions. To the contrary, it is a regime devised to enlarge scrutiny of Government activities in accordance with its terms, including in cases where scrutiny is not wanted. If there be a common practice of the kind suggested to this Court in submissions, it is not one that is authorised or contemplated by the FOI Act and it should stop. 

“The balance between maintenance of secrecy and public access is one that is struck by the Parliament. It is legislation, not political or administrative convention, that is determinative of Mr Patrick’s rights in the present case.”

In short,

There were to be no more shredders used in ministerial offices on a change of minister.

However, Dreyfus, who is relying on the taxpayer to stump up the more than $400K spent on the case so far, lodged a misguided appeal. Last month, the Full Federal Court dismissed that appeal.

Rex Patrick v Mark Dreyfus court battle a big win for political integrity

That’s not stopping Dreyfus, though.

Another appeal

Perhaps at the insistence of ministerial colleagues who don’t want pesky citizens to be able to scrutinise them, and perhaps because his own ministerial career will sooner or later come to an end, the Attorney-General appears to want to appeal the matter again.

In response to the Information Commissioner complying with the Federal Court’s order to finally progress the review, the Attorney-General’s department has foreshadowed a High Court appeal.

Slow Down Letter (Source; Attorney General’s Department)

The Attorney-General’s Department has pointed to ground two of the judgement, which is where the Court determined that there exists an implied duty for a minister not to frustrate the right of the [FOI] requesting party to have the request determined, including on review or appeal. That includes an obligation not to shred documents.

An appeal will likely add more than $100K to the legal costs – shifting it up to a cool half million. It’s OK, Dreyfus is not paying – you are.

Dreyfus is hanging on tight to that shredder and his dustpan. Shred and sweep, Shred and sweep.

Slowing down transparency

If he loses, at the very least, he will have delayed by another six months the release of former Attorney General Christian Porter’s ‘sports rorts’ document that I’m seeking access to. The review of this matter by the Information Commissioner has already been in progress for five years – what’s another six to 12 months going to do apart from delaying an already long overdue FOI review?

If nothing else, if Dreyfus does seek special leave to appeal to the High Court it will guarantee this FOI matter will span three parliaments. It began in the 46th Parliament, has gone unresolved through the 47th Parliament, and will now likely extend into the 48th Parliament.

It’s remarkable that a Labor Attorney-General should go to such lengths to try to keep a document written by a Liberal predecessor secret,

a document that, when in opposition, Dreyfus loudly demanded scrutiny over.

But he’s clearly thinking about Labor’s dirt as much as that of the Coalition.

If Dreyfus wins, ministers will be safe again, and taxpayers will, for the sum total of $500K, continue to be left in the dark.

Richard Marles concealed war crimes report, denying justice for David McBride

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Years of political and bureaucratic failure on fuel security policy is about to hit the cost of living for all Australians. Preventable fuel price rises are about to occur. Using information contained in a previously secret Australian Government document, Rex Patrick explains.

An attack on Iran by Israel is imminent – retaliation for Iran’s recent missile attack and part of the escalating conflict in the Middle East. Such an attack would engage one scenario that was considered as part of a secret study into Australia’s liquid fuel security – a large regional war in the Middle East.

We’ve already seen oil prices spike in recent days after Houthi rebels attacked a British oil tanker in the Red Sea and US President Joe Biden indicated that his administration had discussed with Israel an attack on oil production facilities in Iran to cut off that country’s major revenue source.

Goldman Sachs is predicting prices will rise from the current $US70 per barrel to $US90 per barrel in the short term. Global gas prices track the oil price, and electricity prices in Australia are largely influenced by the price of gas.

While it would be impossible to isolate Australians from the consequences of the scenario playing out, prudent policy, planning and implementation could have softened the blow in the middle of an undisputed cost of living crisis.

Liquid Fuel Security Review

In 2018, the Morrison Government commissioned a Liquid Fuel Security Review which was completed in October 2020. In its reasoning for justifying the Review the then Government stated:

Liquid fuel is the backbone of the Australian economy and this is unlikely to change much in the short term. For many Australians, fuel security means having confidence that there will be enough fuel for our journey to work or so businesses large and small can keep running day to day. It also means knowing that, when things go wrong, there is a plan in place that takes all reasonable steps to minimise the impacts for fuel users.

The Coalition Government didn’t publish the review. Indeed, they kept it secret from Australians, and so did the Labor Government that took office in May 2022. 

I first requested access to the review using Freedom of Information laws in December 2020. Four years later, under the pressure of an AAT proceeding, the current Government capitulated and provided me with almost all of the document.

Australian Government Fuel Security Review (Source: FOI)

Large Scale Middle East Conflict

In 2019, the Middle East supplied around 17% of Australia’s crude oil imports around 1% in refined products. However, the three largest suppliers to Australia of refined products, Singapore, South Korea and Japan, sourced 20, 35 and 44%, respectively, of their crude oil from Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The review looked at what would happen in the event of a large-scale conflict between two countries in the Persian Gulf and determined that this had the potential to stop their contribution to the global market for a period of time. It could also impede supply from other gulf majors that would potentially account for a large share of total Middle East production.

The immediate effect of such a conflict could be mitigated somewhat by a number of measures; increased prices resulting in reduced global demand, an increase in US shale oil production capacity, the availability of other countries commercial stocks (15 to 30 days) and International Energy Agency (IEA) emergency stock releases.

Notably, all of the mitigation strategies are external and dependent on international cooperation. Such cooperation can be very fragile in the context of a major crisis. Australia has no sovereign buffer. 

The Fuel Security Review predicted that global oil prices could increase by $100 per barrel to bring oil supply and demand into balance. 

Retail prices in Australia could rise by $1 per litre.

Mitigation failure

Australia is supposed to, by international agreement, have 90 days of petroleum reserves. Even using dodgy calculations by the Australian Government (the IEA does not accept them as proper), which includes in its reserves the fuel at sea on its way to Australia, our current reserves are 51 days. 

Our real current reserve figures are at 31 days for petrol, 24 days for diesel (which keeps the country supplied with food and medicines) and 21 days for aviation fuel.

Fuel Statistic (Source: DCCEEW)

The Morrison Government invested taxpayers’ money to increase our storage capacity to 30 days, but the projects to implement the increase are moving very slowly. In any event, it comes nowhere near the required 90 days.

Government betrayal

If Australia had 90 days reserves, not only would that have positive national security impacts in the event of war closer to home, the reserves could be released to soften price increases in Australia in relation to current events taking place.

As things stand, a major war in the Middle East and consequent disruption of petroleum supplies could put Australia in a very difficult position.  

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

With very little reserve in the tank, the Australian Government will need to move immediately to seek international cooperation to ensure continuing supplies from overseas. 

If such cooperation is not immediately forthcoming, and in a context of grave international tension and conflict it’s far from guaranteed, there will be no time at all before the Government might have to take some hard decisions on fuel rationing.  

This is the risk that comes from grave policy failures and distorted priorities.  

Instead of investing in fuel storage, the Defence Department has been busy wasting tens of billions in failed procurements, including $4 billion spent not buying French submarines.

Instead of investing in fuel storage, the Albanese Government has been, as part of AUKUS, pouring billions into US and UK shipyards to improve those country’s sovereign resilience.

None of that will help if Australia’s logistic chains grind to a halt thanks to fuel shortages. It’s dumb, and dangerous.

Hip pocket pressure

As things start to unravel further in the Middle East, everyday Australians will suffer on a cost-of-living front. And they will suffer because of the failure of our leaders on energy. 

On top of high gas prices, which drives electricity prices – all caused by the old parties not adopting a gas reservation scheme on account of the fact it would upset the gas cartel – Australians will be hit again on fuel prices thanks to fuel security incompetence. The price of gas tracks the price of oil.

Cone of Silence. Government hides gas Cartel’s dirty secrets in Clayton Utz fee-fest

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The Government did not want you to know of its gas betrayal of Australians, so when FOI legal costs shot up eight-fold, they didn’t bat an eyelid. It’s just part of the cost of protecting the cartel. Rex Patrick reports.

It was just one document that I was seeking: a departmental options paper for a gas reservation scheme on the east coast of Australia. I wanted it knowing that a gas reservation scheme is a sure-fire way to deflate gas prices and, flowing from that, reduce electricity prices for businesses and consumers.

But the Australian Government didn’t want the options disclosed or their reasons for rejecting anything other than the status quo for the gas cartel, and so they engaged top end-of-town law firm Clayton Utz in their fight for secrecy in the Administrative Appeal Tribunal (AAT).

Clayton Utz told the Government they would defend their secrets for $27K.

Questions on Notice asked by Senator Jacqui Lambie show that the final price for legal advice and representation paid to Clayton Utz was $213K – a great win for the law firm at the expense of the taxpayer.

Answer to Question on Notice (Source: Senate)

Apart from the lawyers, there were no winners in these proceedings.

Loss for the Government

The Government suffered a loss. Some of the Department of Industry, Science and Resources’ dirtiest secrets were revealed as Clayton Utz failed to hold the line against transparency.

The primary secret revealed was a betrayal of Australians by the Department’s bureaucrats recommending to the Government that Australia not adopt a reservation scheme – a recommendation based on a blatant skewing of the data they had on hand, relying on a flawed Peruvian gas reservation model to say such schemes don’t work (while ignoring the very successful reservation scheme in Western Australia).

The Department disgracefully described the effects of a gas reservation by reference to the interests of the gas cartel. “Gas reservation acts as a tax on gas production, paid as a subsidy to domestic gas users”, they advised.

Explosive FOIs – gas cartel conned Government, fixed high energy prices for all Australians

Loss for businesses and consumers

Apart from the $213K hit to consolidated revenue, Australians also lost from the proceedings as the AAT ordered that options for domestic gas reservation remain secret because their release would upset Australia’s international energy trading partners.

After an argument presented by a middle-ranking bureaucrat from the Department of Foreign Affairs, the AAT ruled, “Whilst Australia has a strong relationship with Japan, Korea and Singapore, their reliance on energy from Australia provides the contextual setting for potential damage arising from disclosure of information relating to gas reservation in Australia because of the very real economic impact that Australia’s domestic policies could have on those countries”.

It’s a finding that seems so wrong.

Australians were denied access to information that would facilitate informed debate on domestic policies because that information might upset our trading partners.

The AAT is not to blame – the law only requires the Government to establish potential harm to international relations – public interest plays no part in the international relations exemption claimed by the Government.

However, the practical effect is to subordinate Australian domestic debate to foreign sensitivities. The diplomats in DFAT like this. Government ministers like this. The gas cartel likes this.  But it’s a betrayal of democratic principles.

Australia has censored the easy fix for electricity prices – Rex Patrick gets gas FOIs back

Media censorship at public expense

Part of the costs that Clayton Utz charged the taxpayer arose from preparations of a supporting affidavit to a complaint made to the AAT that I was tweeting about the case and that MWM was reporting on it.

Affidavit sworn by Clayton Utz Solicitor (Source: AAT)

The Government didn’t like the publicity. There was clear sensitivity to the arguments being advanced in the proceedings they wanted no reporting on them. They wanted to shut it down. Censorship is their preferred position.

There is no risk of sub-judice in a preliminary report of proceedings that are not being decided upon by a jury. Judges and tribunal members are professionals who are trained to ignore media commentary and only rely on evidence formally brought before them.

Clayton Utz should have advised their client, the Government, of this rather than spend time and taxpayers’ money preparing and filing affidavits the AAT had no interest in.

Ka-ching for the lawyers, though.

Salt in the wound

In opposition, Anthony Albanese promised to “reform Freedom of Information laws so they can’t be flouted by the government.”

He also stated, “We need a culture of disclosure. The current delays, obstacles, costs and exemptions make it easier for the government to hide information from the public. That is just not right”.

And yet we’ve seen the Albanese Government waste $213K fighting the FOI (and with only limited secrecy success).

The legal costs are small by comparison to the billions upon billions that are being milked from Australians by the gas cartel selling our gas overseas while inflating prices domestically.

Secrecy has been essential to this rorting. For years, policies that are an absolute betrayal of the national interest and the interests of Australian consumers have been developed and implemented in a cone of silence.

The gas cartel has never wanted to debate it. The old parties haven’t wanted to talk about it – why would they? The mainstream media have been largely silent. It’s only through a series of FOI disclosures and the work of independent media that the full extent of the subordination of both the Coalition and Labor to the gas cartel has been revealed.

That $213K was the bounty paid to lawyers in an attempt to conceal a great betrayal.

The vastly bigger price comes from the betrayal itself.

Climate Betrayal: how backroom deals with Japan locked Australia in for decades of gas

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Australia’s Special Advisor to the International Criminal Court was given $50k for war crimes advice “settled” by the Attorney-General and Foreign Affairs officials. Stuart McCarthy investigates the conflict of interest.

A new scandal has emerged over the government’s failure to hold Australia’s top generals to account for high-level command failures in Afghanistan, mere weeks after Defence Minister Richard Marles “closed out” the government’s response to the 2020 Brereton report on alleged SAS war crimes.

The Australian Office of the Special Investigator (OSI) awarded war crimes academic Professor Tim McCormack a “limited tender” contract in 2022 for legal services on the condition his advice was “settled in consultation with” officials from the Attorney-General’s and Foreign Affairs departments.

OSI is the “independent” law enforcement agency established in the Attorney-General’s portfolio in January 2021 to investigate alleged war crimes by Australian special forces troops in Afghanistan. McCormack, a Professor of International Law at the University of Tasmania, is also Special Advisor to the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor in The Hague, a role that includes providing advice on command responsibility for war crimes.

Documents obtained under freedom of information (FOI) by the administrator of the @musoriandigger2.0 social media account show McCormack was engaged by the OSI initially in mid-2021 for training in international humanitarian law, then in a 12-month contract for the provision of legal advice beginning in mid-2022. The value of the contract is redacted from the FOI documents, but the publicly available contract notice shows it was worth $52,800. A condition of the contract for McCormack’s legal advice to OSI was :

“The advice must be settled in consultation with, and reflect any comments made by, a tied third provider. Under Appendix A to the Legal Services Directions 2017, the Office of International Law in the Attorney-General’s Department, the Australian Government Solicitor and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (excluding matters involving domestic litigation involving a significant public international law issue) are tied providers for public international law work.”

Office of Special Inactivity

The OSI’s inaction on command responsibility provided the trigger for Tasmanian Senator and former soldier Jacqui Lambie’s referral of some of Australia’s top generals to the ICC last year.

Emails between McCormack and OSI officials prior to signing the contract do show McCormack declared his conflict of interest with the ICC to OSI officials, who included a “conflict of interest management plan” in the contract, but key details of that plan are redacted on the grounds their disclosure could “cause damage to the international relations of the Commonwealth.”

The redactions also beg the question as to how effectively McCormack’s clear conflicts of interest were actually managed, beyond simply “declaring” them.

Australia’s Afghanistan war crimes a serious challenge for Albanese government

In essence, an Australian law enforcement agency whose inaction in pursuing Australian generals for command responsibility for war crimes provided the trigger for a referral to the ICC has paid for advice from an expert advisor to the ICC on the condition his advice was pre-vetted by an Australian government also under heavy criticism for its inaction in holding Australian generals to account.

McCormack’s contract and conflicts of interest have reignited anger from veterans over what many see as double standards and a culture of impunity among Australia’s top brass. The November 2020 report from Major General Paul Brereton’s four-year Afghanistan inquiry recommended criminal proceedings against 19 special forces soldiers up to the rank of Sergeant for serious misconduct, including alleged murder, but found senior officers from Major General and above,

did not have a sufficient degree of command and control to attract the principle of command responsibility.

In the service of distinguished cushiness

Administrators of the @musoriandigger2.0 account told MWM:

“From [former Defence chief] Angus Campbell reviewing honours and awards given during the time he was the commander of all Australian forces in the Middle East, to Defence Secretary Moriarty creating a new job for Kathryn Campbell in AUKUS, to the Paul Brereton led NACC deciding not to prosecute her over Robodebt, and now this.”

The award of the Distinguished Service Cross to Campbell and others for “command and leadership in action” is already the subject of a Senate inquiry into the integrity of the Defence honours and awards system.

Marles announced two weeks ago that he had “closed out” the government’s implementation of Brereton’s recommendations “to the letter” by stripping distinguished service decorations from up to nine current or former officers from Captain to Lieutenant Colonel rank who served in Australia’s Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) on the ground in Afghanistan, during the period where Brereton found credible evidence dozens of crimes had taken place including the killing of civilians or detainees.

Brereton’s inquiry was conducted under the auspices of the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF), which many defence personnel regard as “a cover-up shop for the generals.” IGADF uses an administrative law framework which the recently concluded Defence and Veteran Suicide Royal Commission (DVSRC) found was “weaponised” against complainants, witnesses and the next-of-kin of defence personnel.

Royal Commission into Veteran Suicide confronts lawfare, cronyism and a bureaucratic nightmare

Indecent suppression obsession

The DVSRC also recently published a controversial 20-year review into the IGADF as an exhibit on its website. Suppressed by Marles for six months until attempts were made by Senators to table the review in Parliament last week, the report was deleted from the DVSRC website by a government official purporting to have the authority of the DVSRC. The suppression drew criticism from Lambie of “a toxic, cover-up culture” in the Albanese government.

The FOI documents from OSI also show McCormack offered to introduce OSI Special Investigator Mark Weinberg and Director-General Chris Moraitis to ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, other ICC officials in The Hague and various high-level contacts in the UK.

McCormack’s contract with OSI has raised concerns over his possible involvement in advising Khan on his consideration of Lambie’s formal request last year for a preliminary examination into command responsibility for Australia’s most senior generals. He has not responded to our requests for comment.

In August last year, McCormack told a public lecture on the ICC and national responsibility for war crimes:

“Given my ongoing role as special Advisor on war crimes to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court … I obviously needed Karim Khan’s approval to provide some support to Mark Weinberg and the Office of the Special Investigator. I have Karim’s approval on the basis that if he decides he needs to investigate the conduct of coalition forces on Afghanistan at any stage in the future, I’ll have to recuse myself from any advice, and all the parties understand and accept that.”

MWM has also approached Khan’s office for comment on McCormack’s conflicts of interest and the progress of Lambie’s request for a preliminary examination.

Under Article 28 of the ICC’s Rome Statute, commanders can be held criminally liable for the actions of their troops if they knew or should have known war crimes were being committed but failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the commission of those crimes.

For those following (or covering) yesterday’s Kerr review into IGADF, this isn’t only about “military justice.” IGADF is also used as a political figleaf. See for example Stephen Smith boasting of his “confidence” in IGADF James Gaynor on the release of the IGADF Brereton report.… https://t.co/yAoQwWfKHI pic.twitter.com/aAr7a4Jzc7

— Stuart McCarthy (@StuartMcCarthy_) September 19, 2024

In September 2012, then Defence Chief General David Hurley and Defence Minister Stephen Smith were publicly informed of the apparent murders of civilians Haji Raz Mohammad and Abdul Jalil during an Australian SAS raid at Sola village, Afghanistan, but Smith told a national press conference that the two men were “confirmed as insurgents.”

Less that two weeks later, one of the soldiers involved in the alleged Sola killings was then involved in further alleged war crimes at Darwan village, including one of the notorious incidents dissected in last year’s ruling by Justice Anthony Besanko that dismissed former SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation case against Nine Media.

Within hours of the Brereton report’s publication in November 2020 Smith – who became Australia’s High Commissioner to the UK in January 2023 – boasted on ABC Radio National:

“I was always confident in the run up to the report that there would be nothing that would indicate that either I or any of my ministerial colleagues of whatever political persuasion were ever alerted to anything which they should have taken any action on. [The report] makes it clear that the rumours started to emerge after the tempo had finished in about 2015-2016 …”

The war crimes command responsibility provisions of the Australian criminal code that provide the legal basis for OSI’s investigations require a higher “recklessness” standard of proof than the “knew or should have known” standard under the ICC’s article 28. A 2023 PhD thesis by former Army lawyer Dr Glenn Kolmeitz, who served in SOTG in 2009, found:

“This divergence establishes differing scopes of criminality which, in turn, adversely impacts the necessary coherence, credibility and legitimacy of the system of international criminal justice.”

Marles, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus have not responded to MWM‘s requests for comment.

“But Now He’s Dead”: bittersweet reaction to Royal Commission into Veteran Suicide

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The Inspector-General’s review of the Australian Defence Force, kept secret for six months, turns out to be an in-house report into a military justice “cover-up shop”, Stuart McCarthy reveals.

The report, accidentally published yesterday, is at odds with the Royal Commission report that called for sweeping reforms of what they call a “weaponised” system contributing to a suicide epidemic throughout the Australian Defence Force (ADF).

Secret report not so secret anymore. Inspector-General’s ADF report emerges.

Even before it saw the light of day, the report sparked accusations by firebrand Tasmanian Senator and former soldier Jacqui Lambie of a “toxic, cover-up culture” in the Albanese government. In extraordinary scenes in the Senate chamber on Tuesday, Greens Senator David Shoebridge attempted to table the unredacted report, but leave was not granted by Senate President Sue Lines.

An earlier motion by Lambie for Marles to “commit to a firm timeframe” for the report’s release was supported by cross-bench and opposition Senators but opposed by the government. Amid vocal interjections, Lines threatened to eject Lambie, who in recent days has “begged” for the report to be made public.

Just tried to table in the Senate the independent review of the Inspector General of the ADF that Senator Lambie has been fighting to make public for months.

The Government just stopped us.

Sometimes, it is hard to believe this government’s addiction to secrecy.

More to come. pic.twitter.com/3OHVBGsNEM

— David Shoebridge (@DavidShoebridge) September 17, 2024

Jointly commissioned by outgoing Chief of the Defence Force General Angus Campbell and Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty in September last year, the review was undertaken by former Minister for Justice and Justice of the Federal Court Duncan Kerr, assisted by former Defence Secretary and Australian Ambassador to the US, Dennis Richardson.

Flaws in the military justice system

Angus Campbell’s final two years of tenure as Australia’s uniformed military chief – extended by the Albanese government soon after coming into office in 2022 – has been mired in the controversial aftermath of the IGADF inquiry into alleged crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan.

In May last year, Campbell was accused of marking his own homework to keep the distinguished service cross he was awarded as the Australian military commander in the Middle East in 2011 after demanding mid-ranking special forces officers down the chain of command “show cause” as to why they shouldn’t be stripped of the same decoration.

At the heart of these controversies is the “independence” of the “military justice system” from that same chain of command.

Last week’s Defence and Veteran Suicide Royal Commission final report found that the military justice system had been “weaponised” after numerous witnesses provided evidence of the IGADF’s abuse of administrative law, mistreatment of witnesses and lack of support for the families of ADF personnel whose suicides were investigated by the peak military justice body.

The report made a series of recommendations to reform the IGADF, including the provision of information to the next-of-kin of deceased defence personnel, the conduct of IGADF inquiries into ADF suicides, and improving the transparency of its inquiries.

Royal Commission into Veteran Suicide confronts lawfare, cronyism and a bureaucratic nightmare

Justice Kerr’s terms of reference were to review the statutory basis for IGADF’s establishment and examine “the functions, operation and composition of the office established to support the IGADF.” His review was apparently commissioned in-house by Campbell and Moriarty mere days before current IGADF James Gaynor was grilled by the DVSRC in a public hearing.

Today the Royal Commission is delving deeper into institutionalised dysfunction and abuse in the @DefenceAust portfolio including the misuse of “administrative law”, with Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force James Gaynor under questioning by Counsel Assisting. https://t.co/4lM0tcaxYN pic.twitter.com/37irtPB71q

— Stuart McCarthy (@StuartMcCarthy_) September 7, 2023

IGADF recommendations

The report states that community expectations of a defence force includes “prioritise[s] the physical, mental and emotional health of those who serve in its armed forces.” Among the “key propositions” in Kerr’s 139-page report are that the duties and functions of the IGADF be “excised” from the Defence Act to become an independent entity under a new standalone act but still within the Defence portfolio.

The report says the “perception” of a lack of independence from the military chain of command “degrades the confidence that government can place on the institution as a guarantee to the community that members of the ADF have rights they can securely rely upon.”

Kerr’s 47 recommendations, in essence, amount to a rebranding exercise; indeed, one of the actual recommendations is that IGADF changes their email addresses from “defence” to “IGADF”.

This morning in parliament, Lambie said,

The IGADF might be a statutory office, but they are not independent, and for most veterans, they see the IGADF as an agency that just runs interference for defence.

The sources MWM spoke to tend to agree.

Dr Glenn Kolomeitz says “propositions” in the Kerr review “are a nice touch, but the recommendations lack substance.” The former military lawyer and defence analyst has an extensive background in defence, including as a military police officer and a military prosecutor, and in NSW Police, including as a coronial investigator.

The lack of substance, Kolomeitz told MWM, “is likely down to the terms of reference set by the IGADF organisation itself.” He says of the Kerr review’s “stark contrast” to the DVSRC: “The findings of the Royal Commission go to the heart of the problems with military justice – all roads lead to the IGADF. That disparity tends to explain why the internal review was hidden from public view for so long.”

Misuse of law

The IGADF has been the source of simmering controversy for many years, including concerns over the misuse of administrative law as a proxy for criminal justice.

Under its administrative legal framework, IGADF has the power to compel testimony from witnesses, even where that testimony may be self-incriminating. The inadmissibility of self-incriminating or compelled testimony from witnesses to the IGADF’s Brereton Inquiry into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan saw criminal proceedings against former SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith dropped by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions in June last year.

A stronger criticism previously made by military whistleblower David McBride is that the IGADF is “a cover-up shop for the generals.” Major General Paul Brereton’s Afghanistan Inquiry into as many as 39 unlawful killings in Afghanistan cleared the senior ADF hierarchy of wrongdoing while recommending criminal proceedings only against soldiers of Sergeant rank or below.

Numerous sources close to Brereton’s inquiry believe it was part of a campaign of “plausible deniability” around direct knowledge of war crimes allegations among top ADF generals and Rudd-Gillard government ministers at least as early as mid-2012.

They didn’t know, really? Pursue top brass over alleged war crimes in Afghanistan, says veteran

Kolomeitz, who authored last year’s referral of some of the ADF’s most senior generals to the International Criminal Court Prosecutor in The Hague, says, “The Royal Commission has recommended root and branch reform of the IGADF – that’s appropriate. A recommendation that the IGADF initiates an inquiry into the weaponisation of the military justice administrative system by 2024 is sound, but

should be viewed through the lens of the failings of the IGADF identified by the Royal Commission.

Deflecting accountability

On Friday last week, Defence Minister Marles “closed out” the Brereton Inquiry’s recommendations by stripping distinguished service decorations from a number of mid-ranking ADF special forces commanders in a final act of what many defence personnel and veterans say is a scapegoating campaign to deflect command accountability from the ADF leadership and government for any wrongdoing in Afghanistan.

The 2015-16 IGADF inquiry into the notorious Australian Army antimalarial drug trials in Bougainville and East Timor at the turn of the century also cleared senior ADF leaders and medical officers of any wrongdoing.

MWM can reveal that the terms of reference for that inquiry, conducted by Assistant IGADF Brigadier Andrew Dunn, excluded the most serious allegations made against a senior ADF medical officer who was the subject of the original written complaint. That officer was promoted to Brigadier while he was under investigation by the Assistant IGADF, and since his departure from the defence force has been employed in a senior role in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Fmr Commando Kevin Frost, a witness to the IGADF inquiry into allegations of unlawful killings, suicided in December. He was also subjected to unlawful @AustralianArmy drug trials. What happened to the other ~50 witnesses to that previous IGADF “inquiry”?https://t.co/9fLvfZ9mCD https://t.co/pk7Mgj2ZuE pic.twitter.com/HUat2fIkVJ

— Stuart McCarthy (@StuartMcCarthy_) February 25, 2020

Former Army Warrant Officer Colin Brock, one of the witnesses to the IGADF inquiry into the drug trials, told MWM,

That inquiry was a bloody rockshow, designed to cover-up the officers’ cover-ups.

Among the casualties of the East Timor drug trials was former commando Kevin Frost, who later served in Afghanistan and then died by suicide in December 2019 after being interviewed by the Brereton Inquiry. A decade-long advocacy campaign for improved medical care for the Army drug trial subjects last week finally saw the DVSRC recommend the government establish a brain injury program for the affected veterans.

Significant numbers of the soldiers subjected to the East Timor drug trials – involving a drug the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns can cause “lasting or permanent” neurological or psychiatric side effects linked to numerous suicides – went on to serve in Australian special forces units deployed to Afghanistan.

The secretive Richard Marles

Kerr’s IGADF review is only the latest in a string of reports concealed by Marles for months, only to be released when politically convenient.

These include a review of a report critical of Brereton’s flawed findings on higher ADF command responsibility for the alleged Afghanistan war crimes. Marles released that report the same day McBride was sentenced earlier this year to more than five years in prison for leaking documents to the ABC that were likely to have incriminated senior ADF officers and members of the Rudd-Gillard government.

McBride made a formal complaint to the IGADF in 2014 regarding the handling of investigations into some of the war crimes allegations before eventually leaking classified documents that were selectively covered in ABC’s 2017 ‘Afghan Files.’

From here, the Albanese government has not one dilemma but two. Back a three-year Royal Commission recommending an overhaul of a “weaponised” military justice system contributing to suicides, or an in-house report commissioned by defence chiefs that recommends a re-brand of the status quo.

And, to rush through a “band-aid” veteran affairs reform bill, or extend a Senate inquiry to give the Royal Commission’s main advocates their say to the democratic institution they risked their lives for.

“Band-Aid Bill”: expert advice ignored in tepid response to Suicide Royal Commission

This post was originally published on Michael West.

They refused to release it to the Senate or under FOI. But it turns out it was on a public website until the Government found out and deleted it. Rex Patrick reports on the latest secrecy absurdity in Canberra.

The Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force’s (IGADF’s) job is to promote and justice in the ADF and to ensure all defence personnel have access to a fair and impartial military justice system.

But the IGADF is not trusted by the very people it’s supposed to serve; members of the ADF. There’s a widespread perception that the IGADF is too close to the ADF’s senior commanders.

Given these concerns, and because there had not been a review into the IGADF since its inception in 2003, in August 2023 Prime Minister Albanese commissioned a “Twenty Year of the IGADF” review to be conducted by former Justice Duncan Kerr. The review was completed in March 2024 and handed to the Government.

Senate Request

In July this year, Senator Jacqui Lambie sought access to Justice Kerr’s report using the Senate’s subpoena powers. The government refused, stating in a letter presented to the Senate:

“The Review was wide-ranging in respect of the IGADF’s structure, operations and functions, and makes recommendations about whether the IGADF in its current form is fit for purpose. In considering the Review the Government is consulting widely across stakeholders, including Defence, other agencies, and the families of Australian Defence Force personnel who have lost their lives while serving. It is important that this consultation and the finalisation of the Government’s response is completed and further time is needed to undertake this work.

“Accordingly, the Government will respond to the Order once this process is complete.”

That response was completely improper. Whilst the government can resist providing a document to the Senate on public interest grounds (e.g. national security, international relations, law enforcement, etc), there is no ability to withhold a document just because the government is considering it. Administrative convenience doesn’t cut it as a reason to withhold information from Parliament.

Our system of responsible government requires the Senate to observe, criticise and check the government as they perform the task of governing, not conduct a historical review.

The Government’s refusal was out of order.

Rex Patrick: has the Australian Senate lost its mojo?

Freedom Of Information request

I had separately used Freedom of Information laws to try to get access to the report.

My FOI was lodged on 2 June 2024. I was also refused access to the document on the basis that the Government “is yet to make or announce decisions on material contained within the report”.

The FOI Act specifically states that the purpose of the laws is to “increase public participation in Government processes, with a view to promoting better informed decision making”. Again, delaying access to a document so that the Government can act unilaterally, without public input, is improper.

In response I requested an Information Commissioner review of the refusal decision.

Ruckus in the Senate

In August, the Senate again pressed for the document, with the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Penny Wong, representing the Minister for Defence, being ordered to provide an explanation as to the improper claims. Wong again advanced the idea that they did not want to release the report until a response had been finalised.

Lambie and Senator David Shoebridge led the charge in condemning the government’s refusal and improper explanation.

Yesterday in the Senate, further ruckus occurred. At a time when Wong was trying to push the Government’s ‘Help to Buy’ bill through the Senate, Lambie again called for release of the IGADF review report.

This time, the entire Chamber weighed in behind Lambie: Senators Birmingham, Shoebridge, Roberts and David Pocock. Under pressure Wong compromised by agreeing to provide the Senate with a time frame in which the document would be released.

Government attempt at takedown

After the commotion in the Senate had died down and the Senate had returned to normal business, someone in Senator Shoebridge’s office found the IGADF review report had actually been posted on the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide website, buried deep in the mass of information published by the Royal Commission.

On contacting the Royal Commission secretariat to find out when the report had been uploaded, no answer was provided. But the document was then quickly removed. “Page Not Found” the website now says. Of course, it was all too late.

Shoebridge entered the Senate. At just before 6 PM, Shoebridge walked into the Senate and sought to table the report. The Government denied him the right to do so.

Secrecy for the sake of it

The contents of the report are not particularly explosive. But here are the key findings and recommendations the Government doesn’t want you to see.

The controversial parts of the report are hardly surprising to the public.

IGADF report extract

The bigger story is the arrogant secrecy of the Government. The report was paid for by the public and was for public purpose. On request from the Senate or under FOI it should have been released, if not of the Government’s own free will when it was first received.

It’s secrecy for the sake of secrecy utterly at odds with democratic principles.

And it’s the second time in as many weeks that the Government has been caught engaging in improper secrecy with the Senate.

Special treatment: Jim Chalmers covers for super fund lobby on property fees

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese came to Government on a promise of greater transparency. He promised to be better than the last guy. In what can only be described as an “own goal”, he’s failed in clearing what was a pretty low bar.

The full ‘secret’ report below.

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This post was originally published on Michael West.

They refused to release it to the Senate or under FOI. But it turns out it was on a public website until the Government found out and deleted it. Rex Patrick reports on the latest secrecy absurdity in Canberra.

The Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force’s (IGADF’s) job is to promote and justice in the ADF and to ensure all defence personnel have access to a fair and impartial military justice system.

But the IGADF is not trusted by the very people it’s supposed to serve; members of the ADF. There’s a widespread perception that the IGADF is too close to the ADF’s senior commanders.

Given these concerns, and because there had not been a review into the IGADF since its inception in 2003, in August 2023 Prime Minister Albanese commissioned a “Twenty Year of the IGADF” review to be conducted by former Justice Duncan Kerr. The review was completed in March 2024 and handed to the Government.

Senate Request

In July this year, Senator Jacqui Lambie sought access to Justice Kerr’s report using the Senate’s subpoena powers. The government refused, stating in a letter presented to the Senate:

“The Review was wide-ranging in respect of the IGADF’s structure, operations and functions, and makes recommendations about whether the IGADF in its current form is fit for purpose. In considering the Review the Government is consulting widely across stakeholders, including Defence, other agencies, and the families of Australian Defence Force personnel who have lost their lives while serving. It is important that this consultation and the finalisation of the Government’s response is completed and further time is needed to undertake this work.

“Accordingly, the Government will respond to the Order once this process is complete.”

That response was completely improper. Whilst the government can resist providing a document to the Senate on public interest grounds (e.g. national security, international relations, law enforcement, etc), there is no ability to withhold a document just because the government is considering it. Administrative convenience doesn’t cut it as a reason to withhold information from Parliament.

Our system of responsible government requires the Senate to observe, criticise and check the government as they perform the task of governing, not conduct a historical review.

The Government’s refusal was out of order.

Rex Patrick: has the Australian Senate lost its mojo?

Freedom Of Information request

I had separately used Freedom of Information laws to try to get access to the report.

My FOI was lodged on 2 June 2024. I was also refused access to the document on the basis that the Government “is yet to make or announce decisions on material contained within the report”.

The FOI Act specifically states that the purpose of the laws is to “increase public participation in Government processes, with a view to promoting better informed decision making”. Again, delaying access to a document so that the Government can act unilaterally, without public input, is improper.

In response I requested an Information Commissioner review of the refusal decision.

Ruckus in the Senate

In August, the Senate again pressed for the document, with the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Penny Wong, representing the Minister for Defence, being ordered to provide an explanation as to the improper claims. Wong again advanced the idea that they did not want to release the report until a response had been finalised.

Lambie and Senator David Shoebridge led the charge in condemning the government’s refusal and improper explanation.

Yesterday in the Senate, further ruckus occurred. At a time when Wong was trying to push the Government’s ‘Help to Buy’ bill through the Senate, Lambie again called for release of the IGADF review report.

This time, the entire Chamber weighed in behind Lambie: Senators Birmingham, Shoebridge, Roberts and David Pocock. Under pressure Wong compromised by agreeing to provide the Senate with a time frame in which the document would be released.

Government attempt at takedown

After the commotion in the Senate had died down and the Senate had returned to normal business, someone in Senator Shoebridge’s office found the IGADF review report had actually been posted on the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide website, buried deep in the mass of information published by the Royal Commission.

On contacting the Royal Commission secretariat to find out when the report had been uploaded, no answer was provided. But the document was then quickly removed. “Page Not Found” the website now says. Of course, it was all too late.

Shoebridge entered the Senate. At just before 6 PM, Shoebridge walked into the Senate and sought to table the report. The Government denied him the right to do so.

Secrecy for the sake of it

The contents of the report are not particularly explosive. But here are the key findings and recommendations the Government doesn’t want you to see.

The controversial parts of the report are hardly surprising to the public.

IGADF report extract

The bigger story is the arrogant secrecy of the Government. The report was paid for by the public and was for public purpose. On request from the Senate or under FOI it should have been released, if not of the Government’s own free will when it was first received.

It’s secrecy for the sake of secrecy utterly at odds with democratic principles.

And it’s the second time in as many weeks that the Government has been caught engaging in improper secrecy with the Senate.

Special treatment: Jim Chalmers covers for super fund lobby on property fees

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese came to Government on a promise of greater transparency. He promised to be better than the last guy. In what can only be described as an “own goal”, he’s failed in clearing what was a pretty low bar.

The full ‘secret’ report below.

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This post was originally published on Michael West.

Campaigners for the Suicide Royal Commission have slammed a federal government reform bill responding to the landmark inquiry’s first urgent recommendation two years ago as a “threat to ADF capability”. Stuart McCarthy on the “rushed” Senate inquiry.

A week after the final report of the “once in a generation” Defence and Veterans Suicide Royal Commission (DVSRC) was tabled amid lofty speeches in Parliament, controversy has already emerged over the government’s consultation process in overhauling the “not fit for purpose” veteran support system.

Taxpayer-funded lawfare against seriously injured veterans pursuing rehabilitation and compensation claims through a “toxic” veterans’ affairs bureaucracy has been identified as a contributory factor in veteran suicides.

Royal Commission into Veteran Suicide confronts lawfare, cronyism and a bureaucratic nightmare

Documents obtained by MWM now reveal key recommendations from a panel of eminent experts convened by Veterans’ Affairs Minister Matt Keogh last year were largely ignored during the drafting of a Veteran Entitlements, Treatment and Support (VETS) Bill now under scrutiny in the Senate.

The report from the Legal and Other Experts Consultation Group was sent to Keogh in April this year, identifying eight “key issues” to address an earlier “legislation consultation pathway” that comprised the government’s response to DVSRC’s August 2022 interim recommendation,

to urgently develop a “new legislative model.

The DVSRC interim report criticised the current “byzantine” system and recommended against “incremental piecemeal change.” The reform bill that emerged from the government’s “consultation pathway” instead proposes to retain the most complex and adversarial of the three existing legislative acts and omits most of the consultation group’s key recommendations to Keogh.

Simon Hill @DVAAus Assistant Secretary Legislation Reform, reassuring Senate FADT Legislation Committee chair @SenRaffCiccone on Friday that the VETS Bill consultation forums held by #auspol Veterans’ Affairs Minister @mattkeogh across the country did not identify “systemic or… pic.twitter.com/uCELaJKSax

— Stuart McCarthy (@StuartMcCarthy_) September 14, 2024

Keogh’s consultation group included Australian National University’s Emeritus Professor Robyn Creyke AO, Flinders University’s Professor Ben Wadham and several other experts, including University of New England’s Adjunct Professor Bernadette Boss. Dr Boss served as the Interim National Commissioner for Defence and Veteran Suicide Prevention before being controversially dumped by the Morrison government in 2021.

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“A band-aid”

One member of the group, Slater and Gordon’s Brian Briggs told MWM the VETS Bill “is a rushed through, band-aid job … that doesn’t address fundamental problems the [group] recommended be fixed.”

Briggs wrote to Keogh in April to reinforce several of the group’s recommendations in a letter highlighting:

The proposed legislative reform does not go far enough to ensure our military service men, women, and veterans have access to justice in a simple and straightforward manner.

Keogh has not responded to MWM’s request for comment on his consultation group’s report, or concerns their recommendations were disregarded.

Briggs and others are now seeking to testify to the Senate legislation committee inquiry into the bill chaired by Labor’s Raff Ciccone and set to wind up by 3 October, after a submission deadline set the day after the DVSRC final report was published last week.

In his written submission to the inquiry, Briggs criticises an apparent “priority to rush this legislation through parliament, ignoring many of the recommendations from interested stakeholders,” and says “the current Bill will not simplify veterans entitlements but result in more uncertainty for the veteran community.”

Breach of contract?

Key veteran advocates who long campaigned for the DVSRC’s establishment, some of whom have since been labelled as “security threats” in an alleged vendetta by the former intelligence officer who heads the Veterans Affairs department’s security section, say the VETS Bill constitutes a “breach of contract” between defence personnel, the government and the public.

They cite a keynote speech delivered by Army Chief Lieutenant General Simon Stuart last Thursday at the land warfare expo that drew protests in Melbourne. Stuart said defence personnel accept they have a contract of “unlimited liability,” but last week’s DVSRC report “should give us pause to reflect” on how well the nation is meeting its obligation to ‘honour the commitment’ for all who serve in the defence force.”

Veterans Affairs refers unlawful spying investigation to … its HR department

Stuart’s testimony to the DVSRC’s final hearing in March included an emotional apology, admitting defence chiefs have “failed along the way” in supporting personnel vulnerable to suicide. Sources have told MWM that Stuart is a proponent for genuine institutional reform to improve the well-being of defence personnel and veterans and is “untainted” by Defence’s recent scandals and cover-ups.

MWM spoke to several advocates who made written submissions highly critical of the VETS Bill to Ciccone’s inquiry and are now also hoping to testify at public hearings before it concludes.

Former paratrooper Martin Rollins, a target of veterans’ affairs lawfare and “bureaucratic bastardry” exposed by the ABC in 2018 and among those labelled as a “security threat” for his public advocacy, says the bill was written by unaccountable public servants, not party to the contract described by Stuart. He told MWM:

The VETS Bill poses the single biggest threat to Australian Defence Force capability, by undermining recruitment and retention, and threatening the destruction of the defence service contract.

Veteran advocate Julie Anderson says the VETS Bill “is not a new model at all … it’s not fundamental reform and would result in many veterans being worse off,” pointing out that the inherent complexity and adversarial nature of the existing laws is being retained in the so-called reform bill. She told MWM, “It’s crucial for this inquiry to hear from veteran advocates on the ground who know what the problems are.”

Aside from the @DVAAus bureaucrats who drafted the “band-aid bill”, @SenRaffCiccone‘s inquiry has thus far heard from a sum total of three witnesses (RSL, TPI Fed, Legacy), who all publicly opposed the establishment of the @roycommDVSRC that recommended a “new legislative model.”… https://t.co/qw0wqvquzt pic.twitter.com/kyGZwDtbgi

— Stuart McCarthy (@StuartMcCarthy_) September 16, 2024

In a statement to MWM, Ciccone says the VETS Bill “delivers on the Albanese Government’s commitment to implement the first recommendation of the Royal Commission’s interim report,” emphasising his inquiry has held two public hearings involving “representative organisations of the veteran community including RSL Australia, Legacy Australia and the TPI Federation of Australia.”

The RSL, Legacy and TPI Federation all publicly opposed the campaign to establish the DVSRC. Not one advocate who supported the years-long campaign has been called to testify.

The statement from Ciccone also says “it is not practical for Senate committees to call every individual or organisation who makes a written submission to attend an in-person hearing,” and emphasises his inquiry’s reporting date is “a matter determined by the Senate.”

Ciccone is also the deputy government whip in the Senate.

During the early years of the campaign to establish the DVSRC, the Turnbull government committed more than a billion dollars to a so-called veteran-centric reform program with the explicit aim of avoiding legislative reform. Almost $80 million in consulting fees alone were paid to PwC, the big four firm at the centre of the tax leaks scandal.

Julie-Ann Finney, whose petition signed by 400,000 members of the public ultimately convinced the Morrison government to establish the inquiry in 2021, has publicly called for every MP and Senator to oppose the VETS Bill, vowing to continue the fight with the government to properly reform the “broken” veterans’ affairs system “for however long is necessary.”

“But Now He’s Dead”: bittersweet reaction to Royal Commission into Veteran Suicide

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The promoters behind the Land Forces weapons expo are registered as a charity. This charity, AMDA, pays no tax but does pay high salaries and just tripled its income to $35m. Michael West reports. 

It was rubber bullets and tear gas for peace protestors but special police mollycoddling and a Victorian Government sponsorship for the merchants of death.

What do we know about the promoters of the Land Forces weapons fair which the Victorian government so avidly protected from anti-war protestors this week with a $15m police presence, stun grenades, pepper spray and batons?

We know from regulatory filings the promoter behind Land Forces is a charity called AMDA Foundation. We know from AMDA’s financial disclosures that this charity is highly profitable. Its income shot up from $13m in 2022 to $34.6m last year.

Vic Police inciting violence, msm misreporting it – they planned a public subsidised weapons fair in middle of Melbourne in middle of a genocide … what the hell were they thinking?#DisruptLandForces #auspol https://t.co/dJYRDta0Fp

— 💧Michael West (@MichaelWestBiz) September 12, 2024

That was for the year to June; at which point it was sitting on a financial investment portfolio of $43m in cash, stocks and bonds. AMDA even gets government grants – grant revenue is booked at $6.6m over the past 2 years. The principal sponsor for Land Forces expo this year was none other than the Victorian Government, which went to extraordinary lengths to protect and promote its investment.

The mainstream media was bizarrely strident in its anti-protest coverage, running the story (not disavowed by the government and Victoria Police) that protestors sprayed police with acid. That was later downgraded to ‘irritants’ and ‘low-level acid’ bringing speculation it might have been orange juice (citric acid) or maybe the chemicals in the bubble liquid from the bubble machine with which the outnumbered protestors entertained the police blockade at one point.

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

It’s all a rort on the public, on the very taxpayers and citizens the Victorian government had its police assaulting this week, because weapons companies – the likes of AMDA’s exhibitors BAE, Lockheed Martin, Thales and Boeing – are funded by governments globally.

In Australia, the Defence budget is soaring amid rising weapons sales; so it is a fair bet that the income of AMDA will be higher in 2024.

Banned: MWM too ‘aggressive’ for the merchants of death but we won’t shut up

And these ‘charitable’ weapons promoters certainly look after themselves personally with their ‘charitable donations’ income and their government grants.

AMDA’s $30m in expenses last year included $8m in pay for its 31 employees (FTE equivalent), which averages out at almost $260k per employee. The 5 KMP – the crew at the top of the charity – shared $1.5m or almost $300k apiece in ‘charity pay’.

Landforces’ brothers in arms: how a weapons peddler qualified for charitable status

Editor’s Note: Tomorrow on The West Report’s Scam of the Week we check out the Victorian government’s $20m Land Forces PR stunt.

This post was originally published on Michael West.

“A catastrophic failure of leadership at all levels” says the Royal Commissioner into Defence and Veteran Suicide. Veteran Stuart McCarthy reports on the RC and reaction by Australian soldiers. 

The long awaited report of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide has recommended the government establish a brain injury rehabilitation program to include the victims of notorious Army antimalarial drug trials conducted in East Timor and Papua New Guinea at the turn of the century.

Decrying “a catastrophic failure of leadership at all levels,” former deputy NSW Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas and his fellow Royal Commissioners Peggy Brown and James Douglas yesterday handed their seven volume final report to Governor-General Sam Mostyn.

The report includes 122 recommendations and says that from 1985 to 2021 there were 2,007 confirmed deaths by suicide among those who had served in the defence force since 1985. That figure, says the report, underestimates the problem because it excludes deaths where the intent of the individual could not be determined, such as single motor vehicle accidents.

The Final Report of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide has now been tabled in Parliament and is available to the public. It contains 122 recommendations for reform. Read more:https://t.co/Oi9rDyb8WH pic.twitter.com/ukuDWWsPy1

— Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide (@roycommDVSRC) September 9, 2024

One such suspicious accident involved former Army medic and East Timor veteran David Whitfield, who died in a single vehicle crash in February this year.

Yesterday’s Royal Commission report was bittersweet for David’s widow Alison. The couple appeared on the ABC’s QandA program last year, literally begging Veterans’ Affairs Minister Matt Keogh for help in dealing with his department’s bureaucrats.

David told a live national audience about his severe mental health problems and multiple suicide attempts, dating back to his involvement in one of the Army’s ant-malarial drug trials in East Timor in 2001. His Army medical records confirm he was prescribed mefloquine, a drug linked to numerous documented suicides, suicide attempts, psychosis and chronic neurological health conditions since the 1990s.

A 2014 report from the European drug safety regulator says “there is a strong suspicion that mefloquine can cause different kinds of permanent brain damage” at the same preventative doses used by the Australian Army.

Alison says David was traumatised by his involvement as a medic in a drug trial involving fellow soldiers under his care. “I fucked up or killed those blokes … they are dead or head-fucked like me,” David told Alison some time before his death. The couple both testified to the Royal Commission, in two of almost 900 private sessions held across the country over the past three years.

One of the key recommendations in yesterday’s report is that the defence and veterans affairs departments “should establish a brain injury program that covers, at a minimum, relevant … serving and ex-serving members exposed to mefloquine and/or tafenoquine.”

Both drugs were developed by the U.S. military, and trialled on thousands of Australian military personnel in East Timor and Papua New Guinea at the turn of the century. The latter drug – tafenoquine – was approved by the Australian drug safety regulator, based in part on the results of the Australian Army drug trials, at the same time dozens of witnesses were questioning the integrity of the drug trial reports during a 2018 Senate inquiry.

The drug was then used in a U.S. Army-funded post approval safety study involving Perth university students.

The Royal Commission’s report also raises concerns about the ethics of the drug trials and the conduct of a 2015-16 Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force inquiry into complaints from the drug trial subjects, which cleared the senior military and medical hierarchy of wrongdoing.

To bring the Royal Commission’s recommendation to fruition, advocates for the affected veterans and families now face the prospect of re-engaging a toxic veterans affairs bureaucracy labelled as “byzantine”, “archaic” and “not fit for purpose” in this and a multitude of previous inquiry reports.

MWM can reveal that a pilot “Mending Military Minds” neuro-cognitive health program, cited in the Royal Commission report, aimed at providing brain injury rehabilitation for the adversely affected drug trial subjects and other veterans affected by blast or other head injuries, was dumped without explanation during the controversial, billion-dollar veteran centric reform program, amid allegations of gaslighting and corruption.

A 2018 Senate inquiry into the defence force’s use of the drugs recommended the program be “prioritised”, and key advocates were invited to co-design the program with senior officials from the Open Arms veterans counselling service.

Charles Sturt University’s Professor Jane Quinn welcomed the Royal Commission’s report and is hopeful the recommendation will see the program resurrected, saying she “was surprised it was discontinued in the first place, given its early success.”

Re-establishing the program that had previously been built by co-design, and was being successfully delivered, seems low-hanging fruit to me @DVAAus

— Prof Jane Quinn🧑🏼‍⚕️🐂🐂🐂 (@JaneCQuinn1) September 9, 2024

The widow of a British Army officer who died by suicide after experiencing a severe adverse reaction to mefloquine in 2006, Quinn is a neuro-toxicologist who has published numerous academic papers on the toxic effects of the quinoline class of antimalarials, and her expert testimony is quoted in yesterday’s Royal Commission report. She told MWM:

“Re-establishment of this program, and widespread extension of its remit, should be a key outcome of the Royal Commission and would benefit veterans and their families nationwide.”

Sources involved in the program have told MWM they were initially positive Mending Military Minds would see much needed help for chronically ill veterans and their families, including those vulnerable to suicide. But after years of delays, the program simply “disappeared” without explanation.

The head of Open Arms who led the earlier co-design process has since left the organisation, replaced by another veterans affairs official at the centre of a scandal involving referrals to the National Anti-Corruption Commission and allegations of gaslighting targeted at recruits of the Mending Military Minds program.

Well….. so very angry this was not implemented when Stuart first took it to an inquiry. Maybe just maybe Dave would be living a life he deserved. Happy our future hero’s will be cared for and get the help we begged for and didn’t

— Alison Whitfield (@AlisonW13896068) September 9, 2024

MWM can also reveal that advocates begged Veterans Affairs Minister Matt Keogh to restore the program and other initiatives to support veterans involved in the drug trials, at an April 2023 meeting in Brisbane after the Whitfields’ appearance on the ABC.

“I don’t know whether to be happy or angry,” Alison Whitfield said yesterday, in response to the Royal Commission report. “Keogh could have helped Dave,” she told MWM, “but now he’s dead. At least if they finally make this program happen now, it might help some of the other veterans Dave wanted to help.”

Royal Commission into Veteran Suicide confronts lawfare, cronyism and a bureaucratic nightmare

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Estimates suggest that there are only140 Maugean Skates left in the world. Despite this, it appears there’s something fishy going on as the Government avoids dealing with its extinction. Rex Patrick reports.

The skate, a stingray-like creature that only lives in Macquarie Harbour in Tasmania, is at high risk of extinction, so much so that the Government’s independent Threatened Species Scientific Committee (TSSC) is urgently considering whether the skate should be uplifted from ‘endangered’ to ‘critically endangered’ in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act listing.

The TSSC’s draft assessment shows that they consider it faces a high risk of extinction in the near future and action is clearly needed.

However, evidence given by a senior official in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) this week indicates that the Government neither cares nor wants to address it.

It’s all in the water

No one disputes the danger the skate species is in, just the specific cause. The TSSC has pronounced in its preliminary determination:

“The species has a restricted distribution with continuing decline in habitat quality with ongoing threats. The primary threat to the species is degraded water quality, in particular, substantially reduced levels of dissolved oxygen throughout Macquarie Harbour. There is a significant correlation between the reduction in dissolved oxygen levels and increases in salmonid aquaculture due to fish respiration and the bacterial degradation of organic material introduced into the water column from fish feed and fish waste…”

The science could not be clearer: the mechanism of impact from aquaculture on the Maugean skate is well understood. The greatest risk to the skate is reduced water quality from salmon and trout aquaculture operations in Macquarie Harbour.

However, salmon farmers dispute their operations are the key cause.

The fish that could bring Snowy Hydro to a permanent stop

Review of Salmon farmers’ operations

In June last year, the Australia Institute (TAI) wrote to Minister Tanya Plibersek seeking a formal reconsideration of the current operations of salmon farmers in Macquarie Harbour. Their application under the EPBC Act was quickly backed up with an independent application in July from the Bob Brown Foundation and, in August, from the Environmental Defenders Office.

That started a formal process, which requires a decision from Plibersek as to which way to go: the way of the skate … who are backed by scientists, environmentalists and a broad cross-section of the community … or the way of the foreign-owned salmon farmers … who are backed by a grab bag of politicians including Tasmanian Premier, Jeremy Rockliff, Minister for Resources, Eric Abetz, and the Mayor of the West Coast Council, Shane Pitt.

Extinction politics

Macquarie Harbour sits in the Federal Electorate of Braddon. The current Federal member is Gavin Pearce, who has been in the House of Representatives since 2019. Prior to that, it was a Labor seat.

At the last election, Pearce was re-elected with a 6.2% swing in his favour on primary votes and retained power with a two-party preferred vote of 58% compared to Labor’s 42%. It’s a large margin.

However, the recent State election saw the Liberal vote fall away significantly from 40K in 2021 to 32.4K in 2024, with their representation going from 4 to 3 seats. Labor also fell but not as much, from 18.5K to 17.K. They retained their two seats. The Jacqui Lambie Network got one seat, as did Independent Craig Garland, a commercial fisherman and staunch anti-salmon advocate. The Greens also increased their vote.

It’s a hard result to pull apart, but Labor will have noticed the significant swing from Liberals to the Jacqui Lambie Network, Garland and the Greens and might be thinking there’s a small chance of winning the seat back in the next Federal election.

The choice that Plibersek makes on the skate may well have an effect on the election outcome.

Cross-examination in the AAT

This brings us back to the cross-examination of a senior Departmental official in an AAT hearing on Wednesday. Ms Rachel Short, Branch Head, Environment Assessments (Victoria and Tasmania) and Post Approvals Branch, Nature Positive Regulation Division of the Environment Department (DCCEEW), was in the AAT assisting the Government to keep a procedural brief secret and was asked the question … does the Minister have the decision brief?

Departmental lawyers objected to the question on grounds of relevance to the proceeding but withdrew the objection once the relevance was explained.

Ms Short proceeded to give me a ‘Senate Estimates answer’ (that is, an answer to a different question).

“That’s very interesting”, I said. “But that’s not the question I asked. Has the Minister been provided with the decision brief”.

Ms Short gave me another Senate Estimates answer (that is, an answer to a different different question).

I looked at the AAT presiding member and said, “I’m entitled to an answer”. The presiding member spoke to Ms Short and asked my question for me.

Ms Short answered, “The Minister does not have a decision brief.”

A poisoned chalice

What’s going on, I thought. This reconsideration has been in play for over a year, and the minister doesn’t yet have a decision brief. That makes no sense.

Relevance to the AAT processing prevented me from asking her what the delay was. I had to move on to secrecy issues around a different procedural brief.

But there can only be one reason. The Minister doesn’t want the brief. It’s a poison political chalice. It’s much better for her and the Labor Party, but not the skate, if the decision is not made until after the next election.

That offers an explanation for Ms Short’s reluctance to answer the question.

Senator Whish-Wilson agrees, “Everybody wants the minister to make a decision, but Labor is clearly kicking the can down the road for cynical political reasons.”

The only better political outcome for Labor would be if the skate became extinct before a decision had to be made.

I don’t really know if the minister doesn’t want the brief, but I lived in the world that is politics with my 4.5-year stint in the Senate. A saying I learned and observed in my time there:

Always back the horse named self-interest. It’ll be the only one trying.

It’s quite unbelievable, except when politics are factored in, that the minister doesn’t have in her hands what is needed to make a clearly important and pressing decision. As Whish-Wilson says:

We shouldn’t be playing politics with the extinction of a species – delaying this decision for political gain is abhorrent.

The situation is not OK and pressure needs to be bought to bear on the issue. Plibersek needs to get her skates on.

Bring our yer Dead! Amid nuke hype Tanya Plibersek approves Gina Rinehart’s gas pipeline

This post was originally published on Michael West.

As trucking fatalities rise, whistleblowers and other industry activists allege that trucking regulations are not working and the regulators are failing drivers. Andrew Gardiner with the story.

Deaths involving large trucks constitute 27% of all road fatalities in Australia, according to the latest report (June 2024) from the Department of Infrastructure, an increase from last year of 3.5% (12 deaths). Trucking industry whistleblowers claim regulators must take some of the blame.

Veteran truckie and Victorian beef cattle grazier ‘Witness 20’ (as they called him at the 2019 Senate’s Road Transport Inquiry) thought he was on to something when he made his road safety pitch to the Senate. He was alarmed at the number of what he called ‘up at the front’ suspensions and shoddy tyre installations – poorly placed and dangerous, but entirely legal – which could potentially cost lives.

“Trucks were rougher to ride and had much less driver road feel, which was especially alarming when cornering quickly or driving close to the verge,” said Witness 20, referring to road tests of ‘up at the front’ suspension set-ups in which air bag modules were high at the front end. “It wasn’t much of a difference (in height), but it was life-threatening when compared to properly configured systems,” he told MWM.

“What was very clear when leaning into a corner was the sideways rotation of the trailer, setting up a chain reaction that could be deadly.” He added:

Official trials were needed to confirm this, laws, regulations and their enforcement needed to change, and trucking companies had to toe the line.

However, after sympathetic hearings at the Senate inquiry and with state-based authorities like VicRoads (all of which seemed keen to move forward on his proposal). Witness 20 says he “hit a brick wall” in the form of the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) and the National Transport Insurance (NTI) group. “I had teleconference meetings with NHVR, and they brought in an expert from New Zealand, but all of a sudden, he declared ‘case closed’.”

Senate inquiry to nowhere

“Nothing’s happened in the five years since, save for a taxpayer-funded NTI study focusing on milk tankers, called ‘spilt milk’. They concluded the instability was caused by liquid loads sloshing around, but I’ve seen instability when trucks had a solid, stationary load, and it’s clearly a suspension issue,” according to Witness 20.

“Something happened after that first (NHVR) meeting, and I’m left wondering who gained from all the inaction,” Witness 20 concluded. There are three main manufacturers of suspension kits – BPW, Hendrickson’s and Kenworth Trucks – serving the Australian market.

Witness 20’s grievances and those of whistleblowers like Roxanne Mysko share common themes of lethargy, stonewalling and cosiness with trucking companies, insurers and manufacturers. “It seems like our regulators only spring into action on the part of truckies when there’s a death involved,” Roxanne said.

You’ve got to wonder why they’re there sometimes.

As trucking fatalities rise, the whistleblower finds herself under arrest 

Criticism of NHVR

Criticism of NHVR, its funding and the powers at its disposal comes from many quarters. Trucking executive Ryan Howison from DSE Transport sees the aftermath of a deadly 2020 trucking accident in Melbourne’s east as illustrative of broader problems.

“NHVR laid charges against Connect Logistics in September 2021 (resulting in an unprecedented $2.31 million in fines) following an in-depth investigation by Victoria Police’s Taskforce Paragon, after a heavy vehicle tragically struck and claimed the lives of four police officers” who were booking a motorist, Howison wrote in transport newsletter Big Rigs. “The evidence established Connect Logistics had been breaching laws for ages – and it took the death of four police officers for this to finally come to light,” he pointed out (emphasis added).

In June, MWM published independently sourced claims of systematic safety violations at Port Adelaide-based Express Cargo Services (ECS). While MWM is not suggesting NHVR or ECS have acted unethically by violating or failing to enforce workplace or transport safety regulations, we note the contrast between the speed and dedication of NHVR’s response to a high-profile tragedy in which police died, and – according to sources – the regulator failing to take any meaningful action when two separate individuals associated with the trucking industry, Roxanne Mysko and Witness 20, came forward on their own and without the benefit of large-scale publicity.

Trucking deaths on the rise but safety whistleblower ignored then prosecuted

Howison believes that in its current form, NHVR has three major flaws:

• It rarely, if ever, shows up at a trucking company’s yard unannounced and cedes a lot of the enforcement work one might expect of it to police forces, state road authorities and state-based work health and safety authorities – with many of the latter stretched for resources as it is; 
• It “cannot have heavy vehicle inspection stations everywhere” and: 
• It “cannot enforce the way a company instils a safety culture within its workforce.”

His suggested solutions include stronger enforcement and inspection powers, the ability to elect or appoint “Heavy Vehicle Representatives” with the power to trigger an NHVR investigation for failure to comply with regulations, and giving drivers and other workers the right to stop work (without retaliation) if what they’re being told to do is not safe.

Many of these issues go to the resources available to NHVR, while others speak to a need for more regulatory powers. Still other claims, as yet unsubstantiated, could point to a preference for investigating higher-profile cases involving deaths and – some claim – a certain cosiness with trucking companies or (in Witness 20’s case) manufacturers.

NHVR and TWU responses

In a statement to MWM, the NHVR insisted it takes every incident involving a heavy vehicle seriously. “Whether the case is ‘high or low-profile’, we are committed to investigating every incident thoroughly,” the regulator’s Jesse St Ledger stated.

“While there is no requirement for the NHVR to provide advanced notice of our attendance, there is little advantage to be gained by attending unannounced in (most) circumstances.”

One of the primary issues plaguing road transport is the convoluted Chain of Responsibility (CoR) system. Image from Facebook.

Regulators aside, trucking companies and truckies alike say the laws governing heavy vehicles are themselves in urgent need of overhaul. The Transport Workers Union (TWU) has long raised concerns about a focus on what it calls “symptoms” (like poor and dangerous driving, blamed solely on drivers) over the “proven root causes” of accidents like companies cutting corners on safety (often under financial pressure from giant corporate customers) in violation of Chain of Responsibility (CoR) rules.

As reported by MWM, such corner-cutting has allegedly led to fatigue among drivers, said to have worked up to 26 days straight. The relevant law states drivers must have a 24-hour break every seventh day, but some say the law’s being routinely flouted.

“CoR as originally conceived was supposed to proactively reduce pressure (from big businesses at the buyer’s end of the supply chain) that lead to corners being cut,” TWU’s Emily Mead told MWM. “In reality, the law (remains) a reactive post-CoR-breach regime that ends up focusing enforcement activity on drivers and some operators.”

Trucking exec Howison agrees on the need for a proactive approach: “Companies can only implement significant structural changes and safety measures after (an accident) has already happened,” he wrote in Big Rigs. This means “preventable accidents can occur” in the meantime.

The ‘it won’t happen to us’ mindset prevails until disaster strikes.

Hopes for safety improvements

Fresh hope for trucking safety emerged last week with the addition of a road transport division to the Fair Work Commission (FWC). The TWU is confident this new body will “set enforceable standards to make the industry safe” as it can set safety standards “that apply to every participant in the supply chain, including retailers, manufacturers and oil companies at the top,” TWU’s Mead told MWM.

“During the first week of this legislation, the TWU submitted the first contract chain application to ensure fair payment terms and prevent financial risk being passed onto operators and drivers on razor-thin margins. With a new system to tackle those root causes, we hope to see NHVR take up the role of monitoring supply chains effectively … and making roads safer,” Mead concluded.

Of course, at this early stage, it’s unlikely such changes will immediately help Witness 20 and his now five-year-old submission on safe suspensions.

“I have to wonder whether improving suspension technology is an established part of the FWC’s purview,” he joked.  “Maybe that’s a reform for another day.”

Editors note: MWM contacted NTI for its position on this story, but had not received a reply by publication time.

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) advised Minister Penny Wong in June the situation in Gaza was “catastrophic”, the killing of Zomi Frankcom “outrageous, unacceptable”, “mass graves” around hospitals, and rising starvation and disease. Michael West reports Freedom of Information responses.

As Parliament wound up for its recess a week ago, the usual data dump lobbed on Friday night. Among the disclosures was the response to an FOI request by Rex Patrick about the Government’s advice on Israel’s war on Gaza.

It reads like a litany of war crimes. We have published it below for readers’ consideration. “The impact on civilians has been immense,” DFAT advised Foreign Minister Penny Wong. “The UN reports that as of 13 May 2024, nearly 35,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 78,000 have been injured. Of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, approximately 1.7 million have been displaced.”

After deliberations with DFAT as to the scope of the request, it was agreed by Rex Patrick to accept just one month of DFAT briefings to the Government, such was the volume of information. And it is ironic that during this period the former Labor senator Fatima Payman broke ranks with her party over Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. On May 24, she publicly broke ranks with Labor in a speech to the Senate accusing Israel of genocide.

On June 17, Payman wrote an article for Al Jazeera English supportive of Australia recognising Palestine. On June 25 she crossed the floor to vote against the Opposition and the Government in favour of Palestinian statehood.

On June 30, she she was suspended indefinitely from Labor caucus.

It seems that Payman, although not privy to the DFAT advice, surely took more decisive action than the Government.

Israel had already violated international law on 28 occasions and this week it dramatically stepped up its illegal campaign in the West Bank, which is not Gaza and which Hamas does not control.

DFAT advice on crisis in Gaza

The FOI material shows the Government condemned the humanitarian situation in Gaza and urged continued humanitarian assistance, yet there was no action, and there still has been no action taken, against the brutal regime of Benjamin Netanyahu despite the genocide case at the International Court of Justice earlier this year (in which Australia declined to participate).

The export of weapons parts to Israel continues, as do normal diplomatic relations, and Pine Gap communications assistance, and Israeli Australians continue to fight with the IDF, although the government has refused to respond to FOIs on this.

Bear in mind that this DFAT advice (published in full below) was for the month of June and things have deteriorated sharply since then in both Gaza and the West Bank. Still, Australia continues to pursue trade with Israel’s biggest weapons maker Elbit Systems while our Future Fund continues to be an investor in Elbit Systems.

Zomi Frankcom and World Central Kitchen

Since the June briefings, the Binskin Report into the death of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom has been handed down. The report has been criticised by the family of Frankcom and others for failing to include the audio recordings of the IDF personnel involved in the drone strike – and Israel has not apologised not prosecuted the soldiers involved.

According to the DFAT advice: “The deaths of Ms (Zomi) Frankcom and her six World Central Kitchen colleagues was outrageous, unacceptable and should not have occurred – humanitarian workers in a conflict zone delivering aid must be protected.” 

The advice also says, “At least 2,527 Australian citizens, permanent residents and their families have now left Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territories – of the registered individuals that have departed 2,186 have returned to Australia (assisted and independently).”

This was in June, prior to the recent outcry by the Opposition about allowing Palestinians visas into Australia.

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

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and a dozen ASIC officials face serious questions following a bungled investigation into the activities of a gold bullion dealer. Kim Wingerei with the story.

Economist John Adams has been a vocal critic of ASIC; one of the principal drivers of Senator Andrew Bragg’s report which recommends the corporate regulator be scotched, or at least broken up. Its failure to conduct investigations into corporate crime and misconduct is Adam’s main concern.

And he cites, in support of his calls for a break-up, a failed investigation into a gold and precious metals dealer. From July 2022 to August 2023, ASIC investigated the directors of ABC Bullion for possible breaches of their corporate director duties following a 608-page report of alleged misconduct lodged with ASIC by Adams.

The report of alleged misconduct was a 10-month pursuit by Adams after an ABC Bullion employee, who would later become a whistleblower, raised serious allegations as to the integrity of ABC Bullion’s physical bullion storage services.

On 10 August 2023, ASIC concluded its 13-month investigation, costing approximately $300,000, by writing to Adams that “ASIC did not find evidence which establishes a contravention of the law.”

Albanese’s endorsement

However, ASIC’s investigation became marred by controversy when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese held a national media conference on 14 October 2022 with representatives from ABC Bullion and its parent company, Pallion Group.

The event resulted in the Prime Minister providing the directors of the corporate group an explicit personal endorsement – which included photographed in front of ABC Bullion logo banner – all of which was later splashed across social media.

The national media conference coincided with the official opening of a purported manufacturing building located at 2 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville.

While the Prime Minister’s state of knowledge regarding ASIC’s investigative activities remains unclear, the Albanese media conference raised such significant concerns with Adams that he lodged a formal submission with the then Senate inquiry chaired by Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg that was examining the investigation and enforcement performance of ASIC.

MWM submitted a series of questions to the Prime Minister’s Office asking what the Prime Minister knew at the time of the announcement but has not received a reply. Moreover, the Office of the Prime Minister has earlier refused to release documents on the basis that no joint press conference with Pallion took place (even though everyone else, including the PMO agreed that it took place).

This is the same inquiry that paradoxically Adams helped trigger when he published his own independent analysis of ASIC’s handling of reports of alleged misconduct on 6 October 2022.

Alleged misconduct

Central to Adams’ concern in 2022 were two core issues.

Firstly, the Prime Minister’s explicit public endorsement would improperly influence ASIC’s investigation, which was already in mid-stream.

Secondly, according to Adams, “even if the Prime Minister had no knowledge of ASIC’s investigation, he should have known, given extensive media reporting, that the Australian Taxation Office has been in a long pursuit of the directors of Pallion Group for an array of alleged contraventions.”

Dissatisfied with the conclusions reached by ASIC, Adams began a self-financed critical review of ASIC’s official investigation of ABC Bullion over an eight-month period. 

Via a barrage of freedom of information (FOI) requests and parliamentary questions on notice posed by One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts, Adams was able to reconstruct a detailed day-by-day chronology of ASIC’s investigation, “uncovering multiple inconsistencies and unusual investigative practices,” according to Adams.

ASIC flawed investigations

First, Adams discovered that ASIC investigators did not conduct any physical inspection of ABC Bullion’s precious metals storage holdings for over 9.5 months from when the investigation first started on 4 July 2022, a delay that provided ample opportunity for critical physical evidence to be altered.

Second, ABC Bullion, after being notified by ASIC it was under investigation on 7 July 2022, was allowed to move an undisclosed quantity of physical bullion within weeks to the same building in which the Prime Minister would hold his national media conference at 2 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville.

In an email to an investor, ABC Bullion claimed that this building, commencing in July 2022, was their new storage facility for their premium and secure storage products. The fact that this coincided with the commencement of ASIC’s investigation was purely coincidental.

Third, while ASIC engaged Deloitte Australia to undertake a forensic audit of ABC Bullion’s precious metal holdings across its premium, secure and pool-allocated products, ASIC failed to obtain a search warrant to conduct the audit. Instead, ASIC obtained Pallion Group’s permission to access four physical locations (three in New South Wales and one in Western Australia).

This approach provided ABC Bullion with months of advanced notice to prepare for the audit.

If this wasn’t enough assistance, ASIC also controversially provided ABC Bullion 10-day advanced notice ahead of the first site inspection, which was conducted on Friday, 28 April 2023, in Sydney. An additional six days’ notice was provided prior to the last site inspection, which would later be held on 11 May 2023.

Fourth, a new whistleblower, who at the time of the Deloitte Australia forensic audit was employed by the Pallion Group, has emerged with claims they were personally instructed to transport a significant quantity of physical bullion that was company inventory within the space of 24 hours back to Sydney in late April 2023 prior to the first site inspection.

If such claims of co-mingling and substitution can be substantiated, then it would strongly suggest that the results of the Deloitte Australia forensic audit were heavily manipulated.

Unlawful building activity

Also among these discoveries, the movement of physical bullion by ABC Bullion to 2 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville, approximately 3.5 weeks after being notified by ASIC that an investigation had commenced, became an intense point of focus for Adams.

According to Adams, “the building had previously been used as a food processing facility and the building’s current tenants, Pallion Equipment Pty Ltd (another subsidiary company within the Pallion Group) had only lodged a development application to the Inner West Council on 3 June 2022 seeking consent to both change the use of the building and undertake a full-scale redevelopment of the building.”

Adams went on to discover that Pallion Equipment’s development application was only approved by the local council on 23 January 2023, that unauthorised building works had been performed on the building in July and August 2022 without development consent, the appointment of a principal certifying authority or a construction certificate,

and that the building had been occupied without an occupation certificate.

More than two years since ASIC started their investigation into ABC Bullion’s storage services, the Inner West Council has yet to issue an occupation certificate for the building purportedly holding the physical assets, in some cases the life savings, of investors.

In the past week, Michael Ryan, who is the Inner West Council’s Senior Manager of Health and Building, confirmed in a letter to Adams that upon investigation of his claims, 2 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville, had indeed been occupied without an occupation certificate and that this constituted “unlawful activity”.

Moreover, Mr Ryan confirmed that “there is sufficient evidence that breaches occurred for Council to undertake successful enforcement activity.”

This formal declaration of unlawful activity by the Inner West Council has significant implications for ABC Bullion, their clients, ASIC and Prime Minister Albanese.

ABC Bullion: altered storage

The directors of ABC Bullion must explain why they dramatically altered the configuration of the company’s storage program 3.5 weeks into an ASIC criminal investigation that resulted in hauling physical bullion from at least one lawfully occupied building to a building that was illegal, says Adams.

“For investors, they must quickly ascertain to what extent has the now confirmed unlawful activity been communicated to ABC Bullion’s and Pallion Equipment’s insurers, given federal statutory duties of the utmost good faith and disclosure and whether the insurers have a legal basis to void all insurance contracts relating to the Marrickville building.”

Investors also need to ascertain what other legal and financial ramifications flow from the confirmed unlawful activity.

Has ASIC skirted its responsibilities?

ASIC must answer the question as to how it gave ABC Bullion, a company with established ties with the Prime Minister, a clean bill of health while unlawful activity was occurring under its very nose.

This question is particularly relevant to Deputy Chair Sarah Court, who, on several occasions over the past 12 months, sought to reassure Federal Parliament that ASIC’s investigation was both “extensive” and conducted “with the utmost seriousness”.

“Lastly, for the Prime Minister, did he know that he was officially opening an unlawfully occupied building during a criminal investigation under his government, and did his public intervention have any direct or indirect influence on the investigative methodology and outcome of ASIC’s investigation?” Adams asks.

NACC submission

Given ASIC’s well-documented track record of secrecy and obfuscation, as noted by the recent Senate inquiry, the only entity that can get to the bottom of ASIC’s bungled investigation and whether any improper political influence played a role in ASIC allowing unlawful activity to go unchecked, is the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC).

Will they bust up ASIC? | The West Report

For this reason, Adams submitted his new 206-page Critical Review Report on 31 May 2024 to the NACC, which remains under assessment some 80 days later.

John Adams contends, “Given the plausible possibility of improper political influence over an ASIC investigation amidst easily identifiable unlawful activity central to allegations emanating from a former employee turned whistleblower, we may expect the Prime Minister of Australia and senior ASIC officials to be under investigation for possible corruption very shortly.”

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ASIC v ASX? Corporate regulator sues stock exchange. What’s the scam?

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Snowy Hydro 2.0 keeps being delayed and keeps costing taxpayers more money. Yet, finding out how much and what the billions are being spent on is difficult. Rex Patrick on his fight for information.

Last financial year the Australian Government spent $100 billion of taxpayers’ money buying and building stuff. But Ministers and bureaucrats don’t like scrutiny of how that money’s spent. My fight to get access to Snowy 2.0 project performance information, evidence and argument has exposed how the Government puts a secrecy shroud over all major projects.

The refusal of the Australian Government to disclose project performance reports for the troubled Snowy 2.0 project can only be offensive to the average Australian.

Snowy Hydro Limited, the builder of Snowy 2.0, is a 100% Commonwealth-owned corporation. Snowy 2.0 is being funded by a $4B taxpayer equity injection, a further $4.5B taxpayer loan and from Snowy Hydro’s dividends that would otherwise be paid to Treasury. Summary – you’re paying for it, all of it.

And yet, as the project has gone from $2B to $6B and now to $12B, a secrecy blanket has been pulled across the project.

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

It’s a secrecy blanket supported by its shareholder ministers, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW – the Department that oversees the Corporation) and Snowy Hydro itself.

I can say they’re all opposed to transparency and scrutiny because they were all parties in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) fighting to stop the release of project performance information in response to an MWM Freedom of Information request.

Having just spent three days in a hotly contested AAT hearing, it’s only now I can legally reveal the way in which the Government and Snowy Hydro seek to protect themselves from scrutiny.

A Three-Step Trick

The secrecy blanket is woven through a simple three-step process.

Step One: Agree by way of contract that everything that is communicated between Snowy Hydro and the Government that is marked “confidential” is to be treated as confidential.

Step One (Source: Evidence filed in the AAT by Snowy Hydro Limited)

Step Two: Mark everything “confidential”. It doesn’t matter if the information is actually confidential, as long as it’s marked “confidential”, then everything’s OK.

Step Three: When a member of the public makes an FOI request for information related to project performance, simply claim that the release of the information would constitute a ‘breach of contract’. (Source: Evidence filed in the AAT by the Government)

Boom! Scrutiny killed!

Step Three (Source: Evidence filed in the AAT by the Government)

Under cross-examination, Leonie Horrocks, the head of DCCEEW’s Energy Enablers Branch, admitted that she never pushed back when documents arrived marked as “confidential”. Apparently, in DCEEW’s view, it’s up to the originator (Snowy Hydro) to determine the classification of the material.

I took Ms Horrocks, the FOI decision maker, to a document that was claimed to be confidential and exempt from access.  The document in question was titled “Dennis Barnes Bio” (the new CEO of Snowy Hydro) and asked her how his biography, which is available on the corporation’s website, could be confidential. No answer was forthcoming.

The Tribunal has now adjourned the matter for six weeks, ordering the Government to provide an argument as to why Snowy Hydro should not be considered part of “the Commonwealth”, a classification that would, for legal reasons, kill their opportunity to claim ‘breach of contract’.

Along with other arguments pressed by me in the Tribunal, there is a possibility that the Tribunal will lift the secrecy blanket on Snowy Hydro 2.0.

A Very Small Win

If the Tribunal does open up Snowy 2.0 to scrutiny, it will be a small but significant win.

Last year the Government spent $100B on procurement. $67B of that was on projects that were for more than $20M.

Because these larger projects likely involved tailored contracts, the three-step trick will likely be built into them.

Procurement Value by Financial Year (Source: AusTender)

I say that with some certainty. Earlier this year I lost an access case to documents related to the cancelled $90B Attack Class (French) submarine project. I lost on the same grounds – disclosure of how that taxpayer project he’d been performing would be a breach of contract.

Overriding the Will of Parliament

The Parliament granted all Australians a right of access to Government documents. The FOI Act does provide protections for truly harmful information under two separate business-related exemptions.

The separate ‘breach of confidence’ exemption was never intended for business information (as expressed in the Government’s explanatory notes to the original bill) but has now become the ‘go to’ exemption for any documents related to major projects.

The Parliament wanted scrutiny over these contract activities, but officials have taken the view that they can override the will of the Parliament just by signing a contract that says “everything is confidential”.

Let’s hope the AAT agrees that Snowy Hydro is part of the Commonwealth, but more particularly that the way in which the FOI Act is being used in inconsistent with the terms of the FOI legislation.

Transparency Must Be Restored

It’s ironic that one of the documents that I did unmask in the course of the AAT hearings revealed that government are acutely aware that Snowy 2.0 still has a lot of risk involved (we see they have now had to buy a 4th tunnel boring machine) and transparency was essential. This was stated in a letter from Minister Bowen and Gallagher to the Chair of the Snowy Hydro Board.

29 March 2023 Letter from Minister Bowen and Gallagher to the Snowy Hydro Chair (Source: FOI)

But the letter only commanded transparency between Snowy Hydro and the Minister, not the public at large. And we all know how little Government ministers are inclined to share information with the people that pay their salaries.

29 March 2023 Letter from Minister Bowen and Gallagher to the Snowy Hydro Chair (Source: FOI)

I don’t know how much the AAT proceedings have cost the Government (that means you), but there have been at least 8 lawyers and 2 barristers involved. The fight in the AAT has occurred despite Ministers Bowen and Gallagher criticising the secrecy of the Morrison Government about Snowy 2.0 and promising “to provide full and transparent updates”. When it comes to secrecy, I’m finding it difficult to distinguish between the Morrison and Albanese Governments.

#Tip: The Auditor-General is conducting a review into how a $282K government legal services contract with law firm King & Wood Mallesons grew to $3.53M.👇This email👇 serves as a tip to the Auditor on the sort of thing to look for. #8LawyersVsRex #FOI #GravyTrain #auspol pic.twitter.com/GkQKC0bP24

— Rex Patrick (@MrRexPatrick) June 29, 2024

This post was originally published on Michael West.