Fossil Fuel Subsidies and Free Market Hypocrisy

In an almost unbelievable report released on the 18th of May, the International Monetary Fund has shown that subsidies for fossil fuel companies have reached $10 million dollars a minute. The companies are benefitting from global subsidies of 5.3 trillion dollars a year, more than the total health spending of all the world’s governments. It seems that polluters have been failing to foot the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas, which include the adverse environmental effects of climate change such as floods and droughts, and the harm caused to local settlements by air pollution.

Quoted in an article over at The Guardian, climate economist Nicholas Stern of the London School of Economics said that the figure was likely an understatement.

“A more complete estimate of the costs due to climate change would show the implicit subsidies for fossil fuels are much bigger even than this report suggests.”

The IMF’s projections for outcomes should the subsidies be cut are astounding. It has claimed that ending the subsidies for fossil fuels companies would cut global carbon emissions by a fifth, and slash premature deaths from outdoor air pollution by 50%, equivalent to some 1.6 million lives annually. Resources freed by ending the subsidies could also drive economic growth and reduce poverty through a redirection of the wasted funds into infrastructure, health and education.

A report from February 2015 by the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Global Subsidies Initiative of IISD found that “the removal of fossil fuel subsidies to consumers and to society could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by between 6-13% by 2050.”

So who’s doing all the subsidising? China comes in on top with around 2.3 trillion per year, with the United States trailing not far behind at around 700 billion annually. Other large contributors include India, at 277 billion, Russia at 335 billion, and Japan, with 157 billion spent every year on subsidies to fossil fuels. A quarter of the total costs result from climate change driven by emissions, amounting to 1.27 trillion per year.

The official response in the past to the skyrocketing figures has been typically blustery but without a great deal of effective action. World leaders called for an end to the subsidies at the 2009 G20 conference, but little progress has been made since. While there are economic factors at play, as well as the political influence of big business, governments committed to fulfilling their role as representatives for their citizenry should not balk at the prospect of taking a hard line with organisations harming those they have sworn to advocate for, in fact, it should ideally be their defining characteristic. Whatever short term losses Rio Tinto and Shell can threaten, they pale in comparison to the very real and likely irreversible costs of continuing to throw money at what ultimately amounts to a vehicle for our own extinction.

We are especially culpable, with Australia leading the world in per capita emissions at 28 billion tonnes of CO2 per annum and our political treatment of the issue ranging from toothless opposition to fervent bankrolled support. The president of the World Bank told the Guardian in April that it was ridiculous that governments were still driving the industry. He notes that fossil fuel subsidies effectively act as encouragement for unsustainable practices. “Fossil fuel subsidies send out a terrible signal: burn more carbon.”

With many detailed assessments showing that the world’s energy needs can be met adequately with existing renewable technologies, the cheap, paid-for-by-industry rhetoric of conservative governments is wearing paper thin. A study published by the University of Melbourne claims that Australia could be fully powered by wind and solar alone in around a decade by spending approximately 3% of GDP along the pathways outlined in the report, pathways which are predicted to create some 80,000 jobs. According to the study, the main obstacle to this is a lack of political will. To follow through with a project of this sort would be to join the ranks of Germany, the United Kingdom and Denmark among others in investing in a sustainable and healthy future for ourselves and generations to follow.

In addition to the progressive policymaking of the aforementioned nations, in 2014 almost 30 countries, including Indonesia, India and Egypt, had delivered some form of fossil fuel subsidy reform. Other countries that support the reform of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies are Costa Rica, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland.

As a nation, Australia has denied that it subsidises fossil fuels, however there is strong and compelling data demonstrating that this is not the case.

This 2010 report by the Australian Conservation Foundation suggests that the annual value of fossil fuel subsidies in Australia is currently valued at 7.7 billion, the largest of those subsidies being the Fuel Tax Credits program, which rebates fuel excise tax on diesel fuel consumption for many business users. It is worth 65% of total fossil fuel subsidies, or around 5 billion per annum. Other subsidies include tax concessions for “private use of company cars” and “car parking”, meaning that the people of Australia are effectively paying the travel costs of the wealthy in addition to propping up their failing businesses.

Now, granted, all these figures do seem shocking, but you’ll recall that so far I’ve only given them to you without any direct context. Here’s where your knuckles are going to whiten. This is costing you around a hundred and eighty two dollars a year. That money you probably needed for rent, food or bills is literally lining the pockets of someone who by any honest standard doesn’t need it, so they can continue to grow their personal fortunes with money that you’ll never see a cent of. As stated above, this isn’t even beneficial to you in a roundabout way, as the funds used to subsidise these industries and the people who profit from them could be redirected into services that would confer a tangible benefit to your everyday lives, whether from improved healthcare or simply better infrastructure.

Typically, businesses have been outraged at the notion that they may have to take part in the free markets they so commonly evangelise. The Minerals Council of Australia claims that government funding and tax breaks for exploration are not “subsidies”, which has obviously become a dirty word for corporations, but “legitimate tax deductions for business”. Innes Wilcox of the Australian Industry Group, a blatantly neoconservative organisation that seems to exist almost solely to legitimise illegitimate business practices, has called for subsidies to natural gas export facilities, stating that “the Commonwealth and the states took the decision to allow the eastern gas market to be linked to the high priced Asian and east Asian gas market. Government should not escape responsibility for the unintended consequences of that decision.” Apparently businesses should, according to Mr. Wilcox.

The main argument from those who would see subsidies continued or even expanded is that the practice “supports jobs”. The subsidies are deemed necessary because because if it were not paid, and here comes the kicker, the industry would fail. Ironically these same supporters of what are, in effect, welfare payments to failing businesses from the population of the country they do business in, are also the biggest critics of government intervention. Gina Rinehart, owner of Hancock Prospecting, has argued for Australia to cut it’s “entitlement” mentality. Penning a piece of surrealist fiction Dali would have been proud of, Rinehart claims that “Australians have to… work harder and smarter to pay [the bill created by welfare payments].”

In a remarkable display of cognitive dissonance, Rinehart points out that “we are living beyond our means” and that “we all have a role to play in mitigating the thinking that’s not helping our country’s future, including the entitlement mentality of individuals, companies — and our leaders.” These statements came not six months after Rinehart suggested that parents buy their children books from the likes of Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand, two historical supporters of free market ideology that would have looked down their noses in disgust at the hypocrisy of a woman who preaches the ideals of free market capitalism yet owes her success and fortune to the parasitic relationship she has forged with the Australian government.

Technically speaking, a free market economy is free of subsidies by definition. A subsidy introduced to a previously free market transforms it into what is known as a mixed economy. The authors that Rinehart and her contemporaries cite as major influences would argue that subsidies unnecessarily distort markets and divert resources from more productive uses to less productive uses. Conveniently, the leaders of business in this country and abroad have managed to characterise these arguments as product of scheming leftoids and “greenies”, and it seems no-one in our media or government has the stones to point out how dishonest a statement that actually is.

So what could possibly motivate such staunch supporters of free market ideology to bat for the opposing team? I think this short statement says it all:

“To the extent subsidies raise the profits of those receiving beneficial treatment, a new political incentive is created to lobby for the subsidy even after its usefulness runs out. This potentially allows political interests and business interests to create a mutual benefit at the expense of other taxpayers or competitive firms.”

That mutual benefit seems to be the driving principle behind government relations with fossil fuel companies in Australia, and it stands out like a sore thumb despite bungling efforts to minimise its visibility to the public. In 2013, Barnaby Joyce claimed that Gina Rinehart fronted the cost of a flight to Hyderabad for the wedding of the granddaughter of Rinehart’s business partner. Another story from the Sydney Morning Herald shows Rinehart meeting a small group of Coalition members in her private hotel suite, including Speaker Bronwyn Bishop and Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi. I’m sure there is an infinite stream of spurious justification just waiting to dribble forth from the maws of their respective supporters, but I fail to see how secretive meetings between the captains of industry and the leaders of government can result in anything but a conflict of interest.

One of the world’s leading public intellectuals, MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, has spoken at some length about the relationship of the idealist notion of free markets and their real world counterparts. Chomsky states in his talk, Free Market Fantasies, that the overarching political rhetoric of our age is that the poor and needy must learn responsibility through exposure to the pressures and forces of the free market, while the rich demand a nanny state to protect them from market discipline, minimise competitive risk and maximise profits. What Chomsky notes is that when something goes wrong in the affairs of one of these large businesses, the state intervenes using tax dollars to “bail out” the corporation. According to Fortune magazine, not a single one of the top one hundred transnational corporations missed out on such beneficial state intervention. Here’s a short excerpt from his talk:

“Well “subsidy” is another interesting word, kind of like reform. It’s a subsidy if public funds are used for public purposes. That’s called a subsidy. It’s not called a subsidy when they go to private wealth. That’s reform. So they’re cutting down subsidies for public transportation. Well, that’s just a tax. If you pay 20 percent more for getting on the subway, that’s a tax. Same if you pay higher tuition at City College. And that’s a highly regressive tax. So, who rides the subways, and who goes to City College?

So what they’re doing is shifting- is cutting taxes for business — for the rich, and increasing taxes for the poor, which are going to compensate for that. And that’s called fiscal conservatism, and cutting government. Well, so it is across the board. Take a close look at the things that are called cutting government, and you notice that they quite characteristically have this property.”

So what are we going to do about this? There are numerous avenues for interested persons to organise and present a united front against these practices. 

On the side of politics, the Australian Greens count among their principles the notion that “subsidies to the fossil fuel sector, including funding for research and development, should be transferred to the renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable transport sectors.” There are other minor parties that support an end to fossil fuel subsidies and run on a platform including other targets for sustainable and renewable energy practices.

For a more direct approach, non-governmental organisations such as 350.org and Market Forces offer ways for the average citizen to get involved and take direct action to affect change in business and government.

Finally, simply talking about the issue with friends and family can be an invaluable way to spread awareness about the reality of our situation with regards to fossil fuels. Social media groups and online communities are a great way to network with likeminded people and organise activism in your local area.

Although the situation seems grim, and it is, all hope is not lost. We are at a point in the history of our species where our access to information is as free as it has ever been, where democratic structures exist and can be used for their intended purpose with enough popular support. We have thrown off the shackles of the church and hereditary leadership, and made enormous progress in securing the rights of marginalised sections of the human population. We have been to space.

I have no doubt that an informed and motivated citizenry can bring about radical change despite moneyed opposition from big business. We are an incredible phenomenon of life. Let’s not let the least of us snuff that out.

The Maintenance of Madness: New Troop Deployments in Iraq

The Federal Cabinet has approved the deployment of about 300 additional Australian troops to the Middle East to help train Iraqi forces in their fight against Islamic State. The deployment will be for two years from the middle of may, and the troops join 200 existing special forces troops already in deployment in the region.

The Australian contingent will be joined by more than 100 New Zealand military personnel. They will be based at Taji military complex north of Baghdad, which is considered an “enduring base” by the United States Military, one of 14 such bases in the country.

Prime Minister Abbott made statements regarding the deployment at a press conference on the 3rd of March this year.

“We won’t have a combat role. It’s a training mission, not a combat mission. This is not just about Iraq, this is about our national security.”

A casual glance at the history of conflict in the Middle East will show that military intervention does not, as the government claims, increase national security, in fact it performs the exact opposite function, creating heavily armed and motivated militia groups with the spurious justification of prior Western aggression for their continued aggression.

Defence Department secretary Dennis Richardson has let it slip that highly trained military personnel, likely indirectly trained by US or Coalition forces, make up the leadership of ISIS:

“[ISIS] is led by experienced former Iraqi generals and others with substantial military experience.”

ISIS is, in effect, the current incarnation of AQI, or Al-Qaeda in Iraq, a branch of the central body of Al-Qaeda with links to Osama Bin Laden and notable members of the terrorist organisation. Older readers and the more historically astute will remember that the United States was responsible for training and arming mujahideen forces against the then Soviet Union during its war in Afghanistan, including Bin Laden and his compatriots, who later became instrumental in forming the modern day iteration of Al-Qaeda.

The official reason for deployment is to help the Iraqi government prepare sufficient forces to maintain the momentum of the counter-attack against Islamic State and regain control of its territory.

Abbott noted that Australian personnel will “not be working with irregulars, we don’t work with informal, armed groups.”

It turns out that this statement is entirely false and doesn’t accord with the documentary record.

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Around November 2010, under the then Gillard government, six senior militia fighters loyal to Afghan warlord Matiullah Khan were flown to Australia to train with elite special forces as part of a “covert strategy to strengthen military operations against the Taliban.”

Matiullah Khan is known in the press as “Australia’s biggest ally in Afghanistan”. His uncle is former Uruzgan governor Jan Mohammed Khan, who has a reputation for corruption, brutality and double dealing.

In a few short years he went from being a taxi driver to a millionaire running security for NATO convoys in the area. He was appointed chief of police in Uruzgan province, despite numerous allegations of human rights abuses. There are reports that he has dealings with drug smugglers and Taliban insurgents.

We have contracted with his private army, Kandak Amniante Uruzgan, to provide security services to the bases around his compound in the Uruzgan province.

Under an arrangement with the Ministry of the Interior, the Australian Government pays for roughly 600 of Matiullah’s 1,500 fighters, including Matiullah himself, despite the fact that the force is not under government control or oversight.

Matiullah Kahn was killed in Kabul earlier this year in March by a suicide bomber.

From the Pakistani Daily Times:

“Khan’s militia has been involved in mass murder, rape and abductions of men and women.

The New York Times reported that he was earning $ 2.5 million a month through highway robbery, abduction, drug trafficking and extortion. Once, Khan warned his opponents that he could eliminate them by purchasing suicide bombers with the money he received from the Australian army.

WikiLeaks of the US embassy pinned him as a stand-over merchant, a wealthy warlord and drug trafficker.

Australian intelligence knew he was a corrupt war criminal but, despite the US army’s opposition, the Australian army and intelligence corps lobbied to make him an inspector general of the Uruzgan police in 2011.”

From Green Left Weekly, citing a story published in the Dutch Daily, De Pers:

“The extent of Matiullah’s brutality was shown in a massacre reported on by the July 18 Dutch daily De Pers.

The paper said the previous month, Matiullah’s army made a surprise attack on a meeting of 80 people in Shah Wali Kot district in Kandahar province. Five people were killed in the ensuing shootout.

The remaining 75 were knifed to death.

Mohammed Daoud, the district chief of Chora, told De Pers: “As torture, they were first stabbed in the shoulders and legs. The corpses were treated with chemicals to make them unrecognisable.””

In this interview released several days before his death, the contents of Matiullah’s office suite are described as containing “plaques of appreciation from the Australian Federal Police” and a “boxed boomerang – a gift from Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, formerly head of the Australian Defence Force.

From the same interview, detailing a raid on a nearby village by Jan Mohammed Khan and Matiullah Khan:

“One man told me how his son was made to lie on the ground – and then they drove a truck over his head.”

These accounts are horrifying, and our complicity in them more so. Indirect involvement in these abuses, though despicable, could be rationalised as a product of the idea that we are working towards some greater good, and indeed, it seems this is the justification for our involvement from many of the sources mentioned in the above interview and publications.

Our direct involvement in war crimes in the region however, cannot be rationalised away.

Reports from The Age in 2009 describe cover-ups by the ADF of attacks on civilians by SAS soldiers in Iraq around 2006-7. The attacks in November 2007 resulted in the murders of three men, two women and one child in a house that allegedly belonged to an insurgent.

In the same month, the newspaper reported the use of SAS patrols as death squads, carrying out assassinations in Afghanistan.

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One has to ask the question: how exactly does action of this sort confer an increase in our national security? If the Iraqi military is to be trained by the same forces responsible for the financial support of a local warlord and who have engaged in war crimes of their own, I don’t see it as unreasonable to suppose that ethics and adherence to international law will be covered as an afterthought, if at all.

The approach of fighting fire with fire has been an abject failure in stemming the tide of radicalised Islamic extremism in the Middle Eastern theatre, and this new deployment of troops into the region is simply more of the same.

We cannot hope to bring peace to the Middle East with the sword.

Snowy Hydro, Neoliberalism and the NSW Government: The Ugly Visage of Privatisation Rears Again

Hazelwood power station in Victoria’s LaTrobe Valley

Australia’s energy policy is subject to regulatory and fiscal influence from all three levels of government, however only the State and Federal levels determine policy for primary industries such as coal.

Coal, natural gas and oil-based products are currently the primary sources of Australia’s energy usage, despite the fact that 38% of Australia’s total greenhouse emissions stem directly from the coal industry. In the year 2000, Australia was the highest emitter of greenhouse gases per capita in the developed world.

After the Second World War, New South Wales and Victoria began integrating the formerly small and self-contained local and regional power grids into state-wide systems, run centrally by public statutory authorities. Workers were able to confer with one another and pass legislation with the consent and input of the public through these statutory authorities.

Enter the Snowy Mountains Scheme: a hydroelectricity and irrigation complex in south east Australia, sixteen major dams, seven power stations, pumping station and 225 km of tunnels, pipelines and aqueducts. It was largely constructed by European immigrants and is seen by many as “a defining point in Australian history, a symbol of multicultural, resourceful, independent Australia.”

A map of the Snowy Mountain Scheme, note Canberra, top right, and Thredbo, bottom left.

The Scheme generates 67% of all renewable energy in the mainland National Electricity Market and provides approximately 2100 gigalitres per annum to the Murray-Darling Basin, providing additional water for an irrigated agriculture industry worth around $3 billion, representing more than 40% of the gross value of the nations agricultural production

Workers inside tunnels making up part of the Scheme

The project at the time of it’s implementation was rumoured to be unconstitutional, and eventuated in the deaths of 121 workers. This excerpt from a discussion paper on the Scheme goes into some detail around the political concerns at the time of development and planning:

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“Perhaps more daunting than the engineering challenges were the political ones… [then Prime Minister Ben] Chifley saw in the Australian Constitution a simple solution to the bickering that was occurring between the States. Each State wanted the greatest benefit to lie, understandably, within their own borders… There was one ready made solution for the Prime Minister, to invoke the 1909 agreement made between the Commonwealth and NSW, however that would still leave Victoria and South Australia to deal with. However, lurking in the Constitution was a solution, and that was to make the Scheme a national defence issue.

A conversation related by the Governor-General between himself and the Prime Minster summed up the attitude of the day;

McKell – The Snowy is a national work and as Prime Minister I think you should do it as a national work,
Chifley – Yes, but you know I haven’t got the constitutional authority.
McKell – I know you haven’t, but do it. Go ahead and do it. And let’s see what will happen. Don’t forget this Ben, under this Scheme we are going to build generating stations thousands of feet under the earth.
Chifley – What are we going to do that for?
McKell – So the bombs can’t get at them. This is a defence job. This is for the defence of Australia.

Indeed, the Act was introduced into the Federal Parliament under the Commonwealth’s defence power. It was fortunate that the validity of the Act was never challenged, as it would very probably have proved to be unconstitutional. It was not until 1959, ten years later, that the Act was underpinned by appropriate State legislation, with the Snowy Mountains Agreement becoming effective from the 2nd of January 1959. It was during this time of constitutional limbo that the Australian Workers Union secured more favourable working conditions under the threat of a constitutional challenge to the Authorities validity.”

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From the same document:

“7. Degree of Public Interest

The possible level of public controversy over the Scheme would be examined under this heading, as well as the possible generation or maintenance of social inequity.”

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This is relatively unsurprising except for the obviousness of the language. Statements like these can be found scattered through reports generally only read by rich men whose interests are covered within them.

Tumut 3 Generating Station

The Scheme, despite being rated by the American Society of Civil Engineers as being a “world class civil-engineering project”, is in the process of being considered for privatisation. In December 2005, the NSW government announced it would sell its 58% share in Snowy Hydro, a publicly unlisted company that operates the Scheme, expecting to yield a billion dollars. This proposal was effectively vetoed by the Federal government in June 2006, by an announcement that the Federal government would no longer sell its 13% stake in the project, which forced the states to follow suit. Interest in privatisation was renewed in Feb 2014, when the National Commission of Audit recommended in its Phase One Report that the Commonwealth sell its interest in Snowy Hydro.

The National Commission of Audit was a commission formed by the Abbott Government on 22 October 2013 as an independent body to review and report on the performance, functions and roles of the Commonwealth government. The Commission has recommended slowing in the increase of the aged pension, an increase in retirement age to 70 by 2035 and the inclusion of the family home in new means testing from 2027. The commission was behind the recommendation of the Medicare copayment, also suggesting cuts to Newstart, NDIS, carers allowances, foreign aid, students, and homeless funding.

In this article over at The Guardian, states that the NCoA’s “few recommendations that affect revenue would pit states against each other with an ultimate aim of further reducing tax revenue in the hope that there will need to be more cuts to services similar to what has happened in the US over the past 30 years.”

These policy recommendations rest on a foundation of abject mythology. Baseline assumptions in the reports include: Australian governments have a lot of debt, that we are a high taxing country, with big spending from government and large deficits. In reality, Australia’s debt levels are historically small, out of 30 OECD countries only six have a lower net debt to GDP, on top of which we are the fourth-lowest-taxed country, paying around 26 percent in tax. We spend around 25% on average of the GDP, and our budget balance, according to this SMH article, is “around the middle to low end of observations elsewhere in the world at 1.8 per cent of GPD.’

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SnowyHydro Discovery Centre

So who are Snowy Hydro?

The mission statement at Snowy Hydro reads: “To deliver superior financial returns by being the preferred supplier of risk management products; developing our people, utilising and developing our water resources, physical assets and dual fuel capabilities, and exceeding customer and stakeholder expectations while demonstrating best practice in safety and health, asset and environmental management.”

Noel Cornish on his yacht

BlueScope Steel’s former Australian and New Zealand steel manufacturing businesses chief executive Noel Cornish is now Interim Chairman of the Board at Snowy Hydro. Cornish is currently on the board of directors for AIG, or the Australian Industry Group, the purpose of which is to represent business interests. It has ties to the mining industry in the form of a partnership with MESCA, the Mining and Energy Services Council of Australia.

Innes Wilcox

Its chief executive Innes Willox penned an opinion piece on the “bogus scourge of job insecurity”, proposing that the situation does not exist and that it is some kind of concerted effort by “misguided” academics, the Greens and labour unions to pursue restrictions on business. It is clear that Willox, and Cornish, subscribe to a neoliberal ideology and that workers rights are, in their minds, considerably less important than the rights of employers.

“Manufacturers in particular are facing considerable headwinds due to the combined impacts of the strong dollar, intense competition from the emerging economies, a legacy low productivity growth, relatively high unit labour costs and considerably higher energy prices. “While there are very exciting opportunities – particularly in the growing markets of Asia – taking advantage of these will require a new phase of investment and innovation,” Mr Cornish said.

In effect this is a stement that rising pay rates for workers and competition from worker run businesses are considerable challenges to the interests Cornish represents. He seems to advocate moving manufacturing to cheaper third world economies in Asia, undercutting the “relatively high unit labour costs” here in Australia. This seems like business speak for moving jobs offshore until Australian workers are prepared to work for third-world pay at third-world conditions.

It seems that the corporation has sought legal indemnity from any “liabilities” incurred by their members:

Consolidated Financial Report for the Reporting Period 30 June 2013 to 28 June 2014, Page 6, Indemnification of Officers and Auditors:

“During the financial year, Snowy Hydro paid a premium in respect of a contract insuring the directors of the Company (as named above), the company secretary and all officers of the Company and of any related body corporate against a liability incurred by a director, secretary or officer to the extent permitted by the Corporations Act 2001(Cwlth). The contract of insurance prohibit disclosure of the nature of the liability and the amount of the premium.”

Even if there was unethical or illegal conduct going on in the upper levels of Snowy Hydro, it seems in my opinion that there would be no way to prosecute those involved, or to legally request details about the offences.

Snowy Hydro was involved in a court case with the Australian Energy Regulator over claims that the company had contravened aspects of the National Electricity Rules. On the 12th of February 2015 the Federal Court of Australia declared that Snowy Hydro had breached clause 4.9.8(a), “A Registered Participant must comply with a dispatch instruction given to it by AEMO unless to do so would, in the Registered Participant’s reasonable opinion, be a hazard to public safety or materially risk damaging equipment.”

The Court declared by consent that the company had breached these rules on nine occasions in 2012-13, by failing to comply with dispatch instruction issued by the AEMO. On each occasion Snowy Hydro generated more power than the dispatch instruction required.

From aer.gov.au:

“The Australian Energy Market Operator issues dispatch instructions to generators, based on offer prices and other market conditions. AMEO’s instructions ensure supply and demand is safely balanced every minute of the day… Compliance with dispatch instructions is essential to maintain power system security. Market outcomes may also be distorted if these instructions are not followed. Where a generator is advantaged by not following dispatch instructions, one or more other players may be financially disadvantaged.”

It seems, in my opinion, that Snowy Hydro have been testing the waters to see how much they can distort the market without attracting suspicion.

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A view of the Snowy Mountains from Perisher

What effect could this have on the environment?

The Snowy Scientific Committee is a key body set up through legislation to advise the governments on how to achieve the greatest benefits from the environmental water. The committee’s existence has come under threat from the NSW government, which wants to reform it into an advisory committee funded by Snowy Hydro. According to Environment Victoria, a document published by the NSW government critiques the SSC for being independent from government (which is, in fact, it’s legislated role), for it’s “inflexibility”, and lack of broad expertise. The report also singled out the single source of the committee’s funding and the focus of the committee on environmental issues as being problematic. This is despite the same report admitting on the first page that “projected water recovery entitlements have been achieved, some substantial environmental releases have been made and the Snowy River is showing signs of improved river health.”

The reshuffled committee would boast, instead of it’s current chair who according to Environment Victoria has expert knowledge of aquatic environments, a chair appointed by the NSW Minister for Primary Industry. It seems to me that this is a way to increase industry influence and potentially drown out environmental concerns about development of the region that stem from the public and it’s representatives.

It is clear from the actions of NSW Premier Mike Baird, who has authorised fracking programs that are likely to not only poison the water supplies that feed into major urban areas of NSW, but also permanently contaminate the enormous artesian well underneath the state, that environmental and public safety are not high on the priority list of the current government. There have been reports of children suffering nose-bleeds in towns and suburbs where the fracking has been implemented. Narelle Nothdurft, a farmer hailing from Queensland, in statements to the ABC, said that “I have 11 children and the little children have nose bleeds along with headaches and a metal taste in their mouth all the time and the noise is horrendous.”

It seems unlikely that a NSW government plan for the Snowy River Scheme will result in much more than expanded profits for corporations and further public health and safety risks for the majority of residents.

Privatisation: Just Who Is It For?

New South Wales is following Canberra’s lead in adopting what the Abbott government is referring to as “asset recycling”, which in practice translates to privatisation, securing 2 billion dollars under the deal.

Abbott’s five billion dollar scheme encourages states and territories to sell assists to fund infrastructure development.

The Baird leadership intends to funnel the money garnered from leasing 49% of the state’s electricity network into road and rail projects, though it is unclear as to whether this will actually take place and if it does, whether the decision is in the public interest.

Proponents of privatisation describe it as conferring a multiplicity of benefits to the public by boosting the efficiency and quality of remaining government activities, reducing taxes and shrinking government. The argument rests on the presumption that the profit seeking behaviour of private sector managers and owners will produce ever more efficient, cheap and customer focused services.

We mustn’t forget that the raison d’être of a business is to provide profit. People do not start up or buy a business for the sole purpose of serving the public, that sort of behaviour is more likely to be found in a monastery than in McDonalds. This basic profiteering function of business is primary in capitalist society, and we often see that rather than being customer or human centric, the businesses that make it to the big time cut corners when it comes to ethics and the treatment of their employees and customers.

It is not unreasonable to assume that the same profit hungry managers and owners the evangelists of privatisation refer to may have no second thoughts about implementing practices that make service unaffordable to large segments of the citizenry. Profit seeking organisations may decide that spending on the disabled or the poor is money wasted, and those affected may find it far more difficult to seek accountability than they would were the services government owned.

It is worth noting that efficiency is not the only goal of services like electricity, healthcare and water. One must also take into account quality, ease of access and sustainability when building a picture of what a successful service should look like.

Privatization was billed under Jeff Kennett’s Victorian government as leading to a more efficient and productive industry, passing on the savings to consumers. Despite Kennett’s comments to the contrary, electricity prices in the state have remained consistent with non-privatised states, only falling below the mean between 2004 and 2008.

There is evidence that companies running Victoria’s electricity services increased prices by up to 175% for “off-peak” periods, a decision which affects a sizeable portion of the populace who conduct their business during those times, perhaps the most notable example being agriculturists and farmers.

The notion that productivity would increase under privatisation has fallen apart, with the industry becoming an anchor on national productivity since the turn of the century. The private sector’s tactic of employing a higher percentage of managers and salespeople has contributed to further bureaucracy rather than having the intended effect of streamlining the industry.

Selling off government assets is typically coupled with the promise of the revenue being funnelled into new and needed infrastructure such as roads and rail networks, however the promise does not always carry through to reality. Economist John Quiggin noted that investment in infrastructure did not occur in Queensland under Bligh’s leadership despite almost ten billion dollars being made from the sale of government assets.

A 1991 report from the Harvard Business Review raised three key conclusions on the issue of privatisation that may help us frame the issue a little better:

1. Neither public nor private managers will always act in the best interests of their shareholders. Privatisation will be effective only if private managers have incentives to act in the public interest, which includes, but is not limited to, efficiency.

2. Profits and the public interest overlap best when the privatized service or asset is in a competitive market. It takes competition from other companies to discipline managerial behavior.

3. When these conditions are not met, continued governmental involvement will likely be necessary. The simple transfer of ownership from public to private hands will not necessarily reduce the cost or enhance the quality of services.

There are hidden costs of privatisation rarely spoken of by the politicians and their friendly counterparts in business. When a public service is privatised, much of the time employees are paid less on average and lose their existing benefits. On the surface this seems like a saving, but the costs of poverty and ill health must fall somewhere, and it seems it’s generally into the waiting arms of another state agency. The profits increase for those at the top of the pyramid, and those underneath carry an ever-increasing burden to support them.

It is also unclear as to whether privatisation actually does save governments money, with a study by the Project on Government Oversight finding that in 33 of 35 occupations, using contractors cost the United States Federal Government billions of dollars more than using government employees.

This seems yet another example of cosy relationships between politicians and businessmen taking priority over the wellbeing of the public. A more thorough, nonpartisan investigation into the history of privatisation in Australia, a cost benefit analysis and a public debate over the issue would go some ways to clarifying the relationship of privatisation to the people it affects.

Offshoring Our Future: Sinking Australian Jobs and the Great Barrier Reef

In spite of government lamentations about rising rates of unemployment, the NSW government is considering a plan to outsource around 240 human resources, IT, finances and payroll jobs to India.

The positions likely to be sent offshore belong to ServiceFirst, a company providing the above services to several government departments including the Office of Finance and the Treasury.

The irony of the situation is palpable. To the public, the government is styling itself as a stalwart defender of the livelihoods of its people, fighting to keep jobs in the hands of needy Australians, and curbing immigration because, as South Park so succinctly put it, “they took er jerbs!!!”

In reality, the government is seeking to cheapen its expenditure by moving those jobs to poor second and third world economies. This is not only reprehensible in a patriotic sense, leaving hardworking Australians to fend for themselves, but also in an ethical sense. The pay rates and working conditions of workers in India are some of the worst in the world, with nationals in the country working on average 8.1 hours a day as of 2011, with 191 minutes of that spent on unpaid work.

Call centre workers make on average 15,000 rupees, or 300 USD per month, which is about thrice that of employees in other sectors.

Over 94% of India’s workforce in considered unorganised, meaning unlicensed, self-employed, or unregistered economic activity such as rural traders and hand loom workers. This sector offers low productivity and lower wages. Even though it accounted for ninety four percent of workers, the unorganised sector created only 57% of India’s national domestic product in 2006, or around nine times less per worker than the organised sector.

There are reprehensible ethical issues in this sector, including debt bondage, where labour is forced from outstanding debt (otherwise known as slavery), and child labour to the tune of nearly five million children according to a 2009-10 nationwide survey.

For a government that counts human rights among it’s strongest priorities, this behaviour is woefully hypocritical.

The Public Service Association of NSW general secretary Anne Gardiner, in statements published in the Sydney Morning Herald, said that up to 30,000 of the state’s 400,000 public servants perform similar corporate service work to that targeted for outsourcing, leaving the future employment of many Australians hanging precariously in the balance.

Unemployment in the region is at a six year high, and this proposal seems to show that the government has no solid plans to turn those figures around, despite their blustering to the contrary.

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In a continuance of this fine form, the Australian government has invited journalists worldwide to participate in an all expenses paid trip to the Great Barrier Reef (or should we say, areas of it that haven’t been utterly destroyed by corporate greed) in an obvious attempt to bribe the media to keep the Reef off the Unesco world heritage committee’s “in-danger” list.

It seems our government is prepared to sit on its laurels with regard to doing anything about the Great Barrier Reef other than allowing it to earn the coveted title of “understated problem of the century”, for which literally no expense is being spared.

An article by Guardian Australia reports that journalists from Germany, France, the Phillipines, Japan, India and Portugal are being flown in for a week long stay, where they’ll get to see the reef and meet “officials” who will “explain” Australia’s conservation efforts. How it’ll take a week to explain a literal absence of those efforts is beyond me.

The trip is being organised by the “Great Barrier Reef Task Force”, an organisation established not to actually prevent damage to the reef, but to prevent damage to those damaging the reef by keeping it off the Unesco “in danger” list. The government argues that it’s efforts on this front are necessary to counter “misinformation” about the state of the reef, a phrase which seems to mean any actual video footage, photography and scientific data that might jeopardise the business partnerships of government officials.

Let’s put this into perspective. One of the world’s most lucrative sources of tourism based income, a natural phenomenon that can be seen from space and that has taken at the least 10,000 years to form, is being reduced to a cloud of silt to line the pockets of men who will probably die of their cholesterol before 2030.

Rio Tinto is Moving Towns, Literally

A small town in rural New South Wales faces relocation after a bid by mining company Rio Tinto to extend the Mount Thorley-Warkworth mine.

The proposed move should be given “serious consideration” according to a New South Wales government review. What exactly can be taken seriously about the prospect of an entire town being shunted to the side to fulfil the desires and fill the wallets of companies routinely involved in poisoning just about every surface they touch is a mystery. It seems patently absurd.

The toll of Rio Tinto’s operations in the area is already disturbingly high.

The mine runs all night and throughout the day, disrupting the sleep patterns of residents. Ancient dunes to the west of the mine, the last known such landform of their kind on the planet, have been progressively destroyed. Now only 13% of the original 465 hectares remain. Endangered native fauna living in this environment is at high risk of being wiped out entirely.

This is despite the permit issued to the corporation, which stipulates that it’s activities must never destroy historic and precious landforms. It seems the focus is on the timeframe allowed for operations, which extends to 2021, rather than any legitimate ethical or environmental concerns. It seems that Rio Tinto’s regard for this contract mirrors its regard for the land it is pillaging, now wanting operations in the area to continue until at least 2032.

The New South Wales government stands to gain an extra $680 million in royalty payments from the additional coal that the mine would produce. It’s little wonder then that the decision seems likely to go ahead.

The relocation idea has not been canvassed with residents during the five years of debate over whether the mine extension is a viable option. Disconnect between governments, corporations and the people their decision affect is unfortunately the norm, but when the scale of the decision involves uprooting the contents of an entire postcode, it almost beggars belief that the populace hasn’t been informed.

It’s likely that many residents will be forced to make do with smaller properties and inadequate recompense, due to the size and sparsity of their existing homes.

A spokesman from Rio Tinto, in statements made to Guardian Australia, said that “We have followed due process at all times”.

This glib comment seems to indicate that due process to the mining giant literally equates to doing “whatever the fuck we want to.”

Metadata and You

A galaxy slowly turns in the vast blackness of the cosmos. The scale is breathtaking. Boundless. Slipping past stellar nurseries light years high, we come to a bright patch of sky suspended on an enormous spiral arm. Deeper still, ice worlds and gas giants flash by, and the luminous mother of life flickers in the approaching distance.

A sudden speck of blue catches our eye, and in an instant we are watching the earth turn. Clouds trail lazily over the Himalayas as the eyelid of dusk creeps across the Indian subcontinent. There is a glow from the night side, and squinting we can make out miniscule flecks of light, our human cities.

Here we all are. Every man, woman and child that has ever lived, every war fought, cheque cashed, every first kiss, last goodbye and longed-for embrace, every kingdom and every church, on this ball of rock orbiting a giant nuclear furnace, spiralling endlessly through space.

We move closer still, to a wide and barren continent, past cloud cover and before us lies a city, relatively small on this planet, populated by low office buildings and distinguished by a sizeable lake. We swoop in, birdlike, through the window of one of these buildings, which sits squat on a hillock, and breathing heavily behind an expensive looking desk is none other than our own Attorney General, George Brandis, who, blissfully unaware of his situation in the universe, is hard at work pushing new legislation to capture and retain the metadata of his fellow countrymen.

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(This article contains many references to the Report of the Inquiry into Potential Reforms of Australia’s National Security Legislation Parliamentary, where there is a number or text enclosed in brackets like so: (5.17), refer to the appropriate section of the report.)

What is metadata? 

It seems the Attorney General, despite the fervency of his evangelism for the cause, is himself unsure. A strange situation no doubt, to find one of the most powerful men in the country advocating for changes to the fabric of society while being out of the loop as to what those changes actually entail.

Metadata is data about data. There are two types, structural metadata, about the design and specification of data structures or “data about the containers of data”; and descriptive metadata, about individual instances of application data or the data content.

Descriptive metadata is typically used for discovery and identification, as information used to search and locate an object such as title, author, subjects, keywords or publisher. Structural metadata gives a description of how the components of an object are organised. An example of structural metadata would be how pages are ordered to form the chapters of a book.

In the case of government data retention, the data most commonly stored is that of telephone calls made and received, emails sent and received, location data and websites visited.

What is “telecommunications data”?

Nicola Roxon, to the Attorney General: “Telecommunications data is information about the process of communication, as distinct from its content. It includes information about the identity of the sending and receiving parties and related subscriber details, account identifying information collected by the telecommmunications carrier or ISP to establish the account, and information such as the time and date of the communication, its duration, location and type of communication. (5.7)

The proposed legislation, based on the definitions above, would give the Australian government unprecedented access to nearly every aspect of the online activity of it’s citizens, and the ability to infer a disturbingly accurate “pattern of life” from the collected data.

For example, you may have your cellphone’s GPS services enabled to use Google Maps. That data, in conjunction with your phone records and timestamps on the above data could clue in a security agency as to your most likely whereabouts on any given day. This poses an enormous risk to freedom of the press, as governments could use these capabilities to track journalists and their sources to frequented meeting places, limiting concerned parties’ abilities to bring sensitive information to the public for democratic review.

“The database will contain every page they accessed – every article they’ve read on a newspaper site, any online political activity, any purchases on ebay, books bought from amazon, Facebook pages visited etc.” – Ian Quick (5.68)

The collection of metadata could and likely would reveal highly intimate details of a persons life, including religious and political affiliations, sexual orientation, health issues, a person’s circle of friends, their address, partner, their age and any affairs being conducted by the individual. (5.70-71)

Electronic Freedom Australia notes that the distinction between metadata and content is spurious at best when metadata can be used as content [and in many cases can provide more detailed information about a target.] (5.69)

This is supported by former NSA contractor Ed Snowden’s comments at an Amnesty Intl. event in the US , where he stated that metadata collection is more intrusive than listening in on calls directly: “Metadata is what allows an actual enumerated understanding, a precise record of all the private activities in all of our lives. It shows our associations, our political affiliations and our actual activities.”

In the words of former NSA/CIA Director Michael Hayden:

“We kill people based on metadata.”

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So what exactly do the new laws propose?

According to the Report of the Inquiry into Potential Reforms of Australia’s National Security Legislation Parliamentary, by the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, the legislation may grant ASIO and related security organisations the ability to use third party computers and devices to access information on a first party machine. This has been categorically denied by the Attorney General’s department, stating that “the warrant would not authorise ASIO to obtain intelligence material from the third party computer or the communications in transit”.

All well and good, but considering the implementation of laws late last year that prevent journalists from “disclosing information relating to ‘special intelligence operations’”, how would the public find out if abuses of these powers were taking place? It’s unlikely a journalist will risk ten years imprisonment to bring that information to light. This imposition on the freedom of the press serves to make the activities of intelligence agencies entirely opaque to the people affected, and has grave implications around the ability of government to abuse it’s citizenry without accountability.

It’s also unclear as to whether information about potential abuses could be used to prosecute those involved, with a recommendation proposed that would involve “amending the ASIO Act to create an authorised intelligence operations scheme. This will provide ASIO officers and human sources with protection from criminal and civil liability for certain conduct in the course of authorised intelligence operations.” (xvi, 10)

The legislation also allows security personnel to use “reasonable force” at any stage in the execution of a warrant, recommends establishing an offence for failure to assist in the decryption of communications (xvii, 15) and tailored data retention periods for up to 2 years (xvii, 15), among other provisions in order to “enable interception and access to communications in order to investigate serious crime and threats to national security.” (Page 23)

Fears about the above stated powers and the implications thereof have been echoed by several EU countries. The Romanian Court, with regards to local metadata retention, held that a “continuous legal obligation” to retain all traffic data for six months was incompatible with the rights to privacy and freedom of expression. (5.26)

In Germany, the Constitutional Court described metadata retention as a “serious restriction of the right to privacy” and stated that a “retention period of six months [was] at the upper limit of what should be considered proportionate”. (5.27)

The Czech Constitutional Court, in analogous statements, described misgivings about the potential abuses of these powers: “Individual citizens had insufficient guarantees against possible abuses of power by public authorities.” (5.28)

The EU Court of Justice found that the 2006 European Data Retention Directive violated citizens “fundamental rights to respect for private life and to the protection of personal data”.

With such strident international condemnation, it seems to go without saying that any committee responsible for review of similar legislation would be given express access to details of the proposed changes and sufficient resources to complete a sincere and detailed examination of the material. Oddly enough, these criteria were not met: “Having commenced the inquiry at the beginning of July 2012, the Committee was asked to report if at all possible by the end of the calendar year. This afforded the Committee a highly compressed and unachievable time frame of less than six months to examine what is an extensive list of potential reforms, some of which are far reaching.” (Introduction, Page 3)

It seems that the government also failed to provide the committee with the relevant draft legislation, leaving those involved to rely on speculation and inference rather than an appraisal of the raw data: “The Government sought the Committee’s views on a mandatory data retention regime. The Committee did not have access to draft legislation. Furthermore, the inadequate description of data retention in the terms of reference and discussion paper also impaired both the public discussion and the Committee’s consideration of the data retention issue.” (1.29)

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What do the public have to say about it?

The response to the legislation from organisations and citizens across the nation has been almost uniformly negative. Usually sympathetic to the Liberal government’s aims due to ideological crossovers, the Institute of Public Affairs commented that “[the] imposition of such an extraordinary, systematic and universal program would render any presumed or existent Australian right to privacy empty,” going on to say that “data retention would be a continuous, rolling, systematic invasion of the privacy of every single Australian, only justified because a tiny percentage of those Australians may, in the future, be suspects in criminal matters. Indiscriminate data retention is an abrogation of our basic legal rights.” (5.42-43)

Many of the criticisms directed at the legislation came from civil rights groups and other parties interested in maintaing internet security and privacy. A selection of these criticisms reveals that the opacity of the legislation, its potential to be indefinitely expanded, and the relationship it has to public interest were among the concerns expressed:

From the Human Rights Law Centre : ”the Government has not provided any significant information to show that there is an overriding public interest in implementing a data retention system.” (5.46)

From Liberty Victoria: “it is inevitable that, once a database of retained communications data is established, efforts will be made to extend its use for new purposes.” (5.50)

Courtesy of Ms. Stella Gray: “Pre-emptive surveillance of an entire population does away with the legal principle of the presumption of innocence.” (5.53)

A former iiNet lawyer noted that “the Data Retention Bill does not impose any limitation on access to the data retained by other legal avenues. This means there’s nothing stopping your ex-husband, your employer, the tax office or a bank using a subpoena to get access to that data if it’s relevant to a court case.”

Additional concerns were raised about the potential of the stored data to become a ‘honeypot’ for criminals and identity thieves. The database would appear to criminals, identity thieves and foreign states, and even terrorists themselves as a veritable bounty of useful information, and thus increase the likelihood of non-state intrusion into citizens privacy, the potential for theft of information and the potential for criminal misuse of the information gathered. Reports of “significant data breaches” occur “almost daily”, which almost guarantees that the retained data would be compromised. In recent months, Twitter, Yahoo and LinkedIn have had customer data stolen. (5.122)

The Australian Privacy Foundation has made statements to the committee to that effect, saying that “Mandating the creation and storage of records of communications that would not otherwise be kept increases risk and vulnerability, creating additional ‘honeypots’ of valuable personal information that would be a target for hackers and risk multiple abuses.” (5.114)

Members of the public have aired similar concerns: “Data retention measures make our society less secure, by creating enormous silos of identifiable information in readily attackable locations. One single security breach risks losing everything, on a scale that leaves the United States’ experience with Wikileaks in the shade. It is contemptible that the Government has learned no lessons from its own Wikileaks exposure, and still believes that concentrating large troves of leakable, attackable private data is a good idea.” (5.129)

It seems that the government is reticent to speak about the potential for identity theft in public, at speeches and conferences. This seems indicative of a strong bias towards the implementation of the laws. What other reason would the government have in tacitly omitting potential downfalls of the legislation?

The public may be left in the dark as to the nature, scope and consequences of any data breaches that do occur, as under the law there is no requirement to notify the OAIC (Office of Australia Information Commissioner) or any other individual or organisation in the event of such a breach.

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Will it work?

The question of how efficacious metadata retention is in solving and preventing crime is a raging debate. Electronic Freedom Australia noted that it was “highly questionable” whether data retention would aid in the investigation of terrorism, organised crime or other serious illegal activities: “It is worth noting that determined criminals will have little difficulty disguising or anonymising their communications. There are many relatively simple and effective tools available that allow for the protection of communications from surveillance.” (5.167)

This is an excellent point. The proposed legislation is no secret. Those in the criminal world will have no doubt heard of the potential for their activities to be monitored and have likely already taken steps to anonymise their online behaviour. Even in the event that the scope of the metadata retention reforms is so broad that it includes tools for opening encrypted chats and messaging services, it is not unlikely that tech savvy individuals on the wrong side of the law will be developing tools to combat this unwanted intrusion, rendering the legislation effectively useless in dealing with its raison d’être: combating terrorism and serious crime.

An unintended consequence of the introduction of metadata retention could be the opposite of what it is designed to achieve: a progressive opacification of the internet, with more and more users turning to encrypted browsing and communication, thereby shrinking the usable pool of data.

“Why do we imagine that the criminals of the greatest concern to our security agencies will not be able to use any of numerous available means to anonymise their communications or indeed choose new services that are not captured by legislated data retention rules?”

This quote from Communications Minister Macolm Turnbull, in addition to his recently revealed use of the messaging app Wickr, which provides a platform for anyone to send and receive self-deleting encrypted messages, seems to indicate that the reforms are likely to bring about little change in the positive ability of law enforcement agencies to stop criminal activity.

Add to this comments made by Blueprints for Free Speech, indicating that “there is no evidence to suggest data retention would assist with the prevention of crime or terrorism. A 2011 study of Germany’s Data Retention Directive found it had no impact on either the effectiveness of criminal investigation or the crime rate. Further, the study specifically found that countries without data retention laws are not more vulnerable to crime.”

The official rhetoric around this issue builds a picture of the nation as fundamentally imperilled by the absence of data retention. Are we to accept that we are, and have been since the rollout of the internet in the mid nineties, in a situation of extreme risk from technologically adept criminals? The fact that the fabric of our society has not been eroded over the last twenty or so years seems to indicate that the risk may not be as pressing as the advocates of metadata retention would have us believe.  According to one analysis conducted by Arbeitskreius Vorratsdatenspeicherun of the effectiveness of data retention in Germany: “Blanket data retention can actually have a negative effect on the investigation of criminal acts. In order to avoid the recording of sensitive and personal information under a blanket data retention scheme, citizens increasingly resort to internet cafes, wireless internet access points, anonymisation services, public telephones, unregistered mobile telephone cards, non-electronic communications channels and suchlike. This avoidance behaviour can not only render retained data meaningless but even frustrate targeted investigation techniques (eg wiretaps) that would possibly have been of use to law enforcement in the absence of data retention. Because of this counterproductive effect, the usefulness of retained communications data in some investigation procedures does not imply that data retention makes the prosecution of serious crime more effective overall.” (5.171)

These comments stand in stark opposition to statements made by major Australian law enforcement agencies, claiming that “loss of access to such data, for technical or legal reasons, would result in a loss of fundamental investigative capability and the ability of security and law enforcement agencies to function effectively.” (5.183)

If this is the case, are we to infer that currently and until the metadata laws are passed, and extending back to the point of their creation, Australia’s major security agencies have been functioning ineffectively? That they have had no fundamental investigative capacity? That, according to the Australian Federal Police, they have been suffering from a “ limited ability to conduct thorough and complete investigations?”

This is obviously nonsense. If it were so, one could make the case that all taxpayer funding of these agencies should be refunded to the citizenry due to the inability of these agencies to perform as intended. It seems impossible to reconcile statements made by Tony Abbott that Australia boasts the most advanced and efficacious security agencies in the world with the above statements. They cannot be true simultaneously.

There is a logistical side to the storage of vast amounts of data that must be considered alongside ethical and administrational concerns. The data must be stored securely, with no chance of a breach. It seems the only way to accomplish this would be to use air gapped machines (computers that have never been connected to the internet) and limit access to on site retrieval with appropriate security clearances. The cost of transferring data collected from the web securely to such a facility would be immense. If the computers are connected to the internet in order to avoid this logistical nightmare, there is a risk of intrusion by non-state actors.

According to the Pirate Party, backing up the data collected would involve a more complex system than the norm, including a means of ensuring that backups could not be ‘restored’ to another system by someone familiar with the system in order to freely access that data. (5.140)

The sheer volume of data collected could also “swamp” law enforcement agencies, rendering them less able due to the constraints of having to sift through mountains of information. (5.154) Ms. Stella Gray noted that “dozens of analytic trackers (measuring page view stats) and advertising servers all run in the background of many websites people visit on a daily basis. That is a lot of data that CSP’s will be trusted to store, and a lot of data that law enforcement will need to sift through every time they are suspicious of someone.”

Answering the questions posed by the Australian Law Council seems to be a good start in addressing some of these concerns. The questions are as follows:

• Once the data has been retained, how will it be matched with a particular person on communication?
• How will it be verified, and if it is used as evidence in court, how will it be protected from public disclosure?
• In addition, how will authorised agencies deal with the sheer volume of data retained when attempting to identify and request the data need for a particular investigation?”

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Can we trust our government to use these powers responsibly?

In an article on The Intercept by investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, who Edward Snowden selected to report on his world-changing revelations about the mass-surveillance systems being created by the NSA and other international partners, documents released by Snowden indicate that the government of New Zealand worked in secret to initiate a new metadata collection program while publicly denying any such activity.

The documents demonstrate that the GCSB, New Zealand’s spy agency, implemented Phase I of the mass surveillance program codenamed “Speargun” at some point in 2012 or early 2013. “Speargun” involved covert installation of “cable access” equipment, which appears to refer to surveillance of the Southern Cross cable, the nation’s main undersea cable link, which carries the vast majority of internet traffic in and out of New Zealand.

Upon completion of Phase I, the program moved to Phase II, whereby metadata probes were to be inserted into those cables.

Contrary to prior statements, NZ Prime Minister John Key admitted that the GCSB did, in fact, plan a program of mass surveillance aimed at his own citizens, but claimed that he rejected the program prior to it’s implementation. This is again in contradiction with the actual documents, which can be viewed on Greenwald’s article linked above. The documents, from 2012, state that the project was at that time “underway”, and that Phase I had been achieved.

Considering Australian and New Zealand involvement and complicity in the “Five Eyes” network of communications data collection, it is not unlikely that a similar situation is taking place within our own borders as you are reading this article. If that is the case, then the question we must ask of ourselves and our government is not necessarily, “can they be trusted”, but rather, “how deep does the rabbit hole go?”.

We should also not divert our attention from the long term potentialities of abuse. This comment from Dr. James Dowty perfectly illustrates why that is.

“Once the data retention begins, legislative change could immediately give an unscrupulous government access to the web histories, emails and text messages of their political opponents and constituents. While the current government might be staunchly opposed to such misuses of the retained data, there is no guarantee that the government of 2050 will be as trustworthy.” (5.78)

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Make no bones about it, metadata retention is mass surveillance. It can be used to form a dataset, a pattern of life indicating your movements, interests, affiliations and beliefs. You will be paying for this intrusion of privacy through rises in service bills, a kind of “tele screen tax” if you will. You will be at a higher risk of identity theft through the creation of ‘honeypots’ of data, irresistible to organised criminals and foreign actors. Your basic rights to privacy, to freedom of speech, to live as a dignified human person, are being infringed upon in ways that do not preclude a broadening of the scope of these abuses.

The connections between ASIO and the NSA mean that the strengthening of Australia’s surveillance capabilities is a by proxy strengthening of the NSA, an organisation which has used the Five Eyes and PRISM projects to conduct economic espionage, among other ethically questionable behaviours.

Even the supporters of the legislation don’t buy into their own rhetoric, with members of the Liberal party using Wickr on a daily basis, showing the world that privacy is of the utmost importance even to those who adamantly maintain that it isn’t.

With unanimous condemnation from leading human rights groups around the world, with a public backlash on a scale almost never witnessed, with the potential for so much to go horribly wrong, we simply must put a stop to this.

You and I, human beings in the vastness of the cosmos, on the precipice of becoming a spacefaring civilisation have a duty not only to each other but to our children, and their children, to uphold the freedoms and rights of our fellow men and women.

Here we all are. We are all authors of the human story.

Let’s write one we can live in, in peace, and freedom.

Assault and Battery: Government Policy on the Homeless, Unsafe Homes and Those Without a Homeland

Workchoices may be making a sly return under a secret Abbott government plan to abolish minimum wage and penalty rates in Victoria, according to Premier Daniel Andrews.

If the Abbott government decides to change penalty rates, hundreds of thousands of Victorian workers could face wage cuts of up to 33%. A significant number of these employees work weekends, overtime and night shifts on a usual basis. While the nature of the proposed changes remains unclear, if the government decides to cut penalty rates it will be an enormous burden to shoulder for hard working Australians already struggling to make ends meet.

By reducing the rights of workers, we allow businesses and employers to create an environment of coercion and unfairness in the workplace. If an employee is just barely making enough money each week to cover their rent, food and bills, it is unlikely that individual will risk their job by asking or demanding for better working conditions or overtime pay. I have personally spoken to people who have been asked to stay past business hours without remuneration, and these individuals expressed concerns that were they to challenge the decisions of their employer, they would have their employment terminated.

In a job market where the ratio of jobseekers to jobs available is around ten to one, employers are in a position where replacing a difficult member of staff is easier than ever, and if we remove protections for workers we’re likely to see the quality, safety and honesty of workplaces deteriorate across the country.

In my recent article on the welfare system in Australia and the potential for Basic Income as a replacement, I outlined the way in which a guaranteed income for every citizen gives workers the freedom to negotiate better workplace conditions with their employers. Without the threat of financial ruin, employees are secure in the knowledge that even if their contract is terminated should they make a complaint about the conditions of their employment, they do not face bankruptcy or financial ruin. This allows, and encourages, honest and open dialogue between employer and employee, and would almost certainly improve workplace standards across the board for both business owners and workers alike.

Whatever direction we choose to take, it seems clear that protecting the rights of workers is instrumental to a dynamic, progressive and safe economy.

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In the wake of the mudslinging directed at Gillian Triggs over her, in my opinion, necessary report on the state of care in our detention camps, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists has released a new position statement, claiming that children in immigration detention should be held for no longer than three days, and that the practice should only be used as a last resort.

As of last October, the average length of detention of a child in Australia was 14 months.

The statement goes on to describe the policy of mandatory detention as “detrimental to development and mental health and has the potential to cause long-term damage to social and emotional functioning”.

Dr Murray Patton spoke to the potential long term damages of the policy, saying that “the level of mental health disorders recorded indicates there will potentially be an ongoing need to support and treat these children even once they leave detention whether in Australia or elsewhere. Traumatic events, such as being detained for a prolonged period, can lead to mental illness in adults.” It seems likely then that current policy is likely to cost Australia more over time than the government is willing to admit or consider.

The detention of children is in contravention of Australia’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was ratified by parliament in 1990, with article 37(b) stating:

“Detention must be a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time; children must not be deprived of liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily.”

It seems clear that the deprivation of liberty the current government is responsible for is at the least arbitrary. What threat do children possibly pose to the social and economic status of the nation? How is a policy that has been demonstrated to cause long term damage to social and emotional functioning forging a secure social and economic future for Australia.

If we, as a matter of policy, are engaged in the psychological abuse of children, there must be immediate review into those responsible for the creation of said policy and the departments they oversee and represent. The treatment of asylum seekers and political refugees under Australia’s immigration policies has drawn condemnation and criticism from human rights advocacy groups across the globe, it has well passed the time that we started listening.

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Agencies responsible for the care of homeless Australians have reported a proposed cutting of $115 million in federal funding, putting the lives of women feeling domestic violence and rough sleepers at risk.

This comes less than a fortnight after Tony Abbot’s proposal to earmark around $400 million for mandatory data retention, despite the EU Court of Justice ruling that almost identical programs overseas are a serious threat to human rights and privacy concerns, and are woefully ineffective in preventing terrorism and related acts of violence.

To put the situation into perspective, in 2013 there were 44 family violence-related deaths in Victoria, over 65,000 related calls to Victoria Police and an estimated cost as of 2009 of $3.4 billion dollars. Violence against women remains the biggest contributor to illness and premature death in women between the ages of 15 and 44, according to the Royal Commission into Family Violence.

Terrorism related deaths of Australian citizens, not per annum, but across the entire history of the nation, including those not on Australian soil number at 108 as of 2014.

How much has the government set aside for an issue affecting tens of thousands of Victorians, and likely hundreds of thousands if not millions nationwide? Thirty six million dollars. Less than a tenth of what Abbott’s administration proposes to spend on spying wholesale on its own people.

Last week’s Q&A was a poignant and necessary broaching of the subject of domestic violence and the effect it has on Australian women, yet the lack of senior government officials was telling. For a problem as severe as this, which affects more than one in three women, the government’s lack of a targeted response is not only insulting to the citizenry, it is downright dangerous.

The National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, an agreement between the states, territories and the federal government, will expire on the 30th of June, with Canberra notably silent on the continuation of the agreement. If the funding is not renewed, more than 3,000 staff who provide support for over 80,000 homeless Australians will be affected. These staff help to provide food, shelter and counselling for the homeless, an invaluable service that not only aids people in dragging themselves out of abject poverty, but helps to prevent theft and violence as a result.

The urgency of the situation has been communicated to the government at Senate estimates, with Glenda Stevens, chief executive of Homelessness Australia stating that they “spoke clearly about the number of people who are in need, about the women and children escaping domestic violence. It’s disappointing that the government is not giving priority to the most vulnerable people in Australia.”

More than fifty homeless organisations have made an unprecedented move on the issue, sending an open letter to Social Services Minister Scott Morrison, pleading with him not to end funding to the sector.

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In a representative democracy, when a unanimous call to action from the people supposedly being represented by the government is ignored, faith in government is eroded. The state has a responsibility not just to those most desperately in need of assistance, but also to those who provide that assistance. Again, it seems that the cries of generous and selfless Australians in the support of human rights are falling on deaf ears.

Pudgy Figures and Figures Fudged: George Brandis, Education Reforms and the Penal System

Figures used to produce secret government modelling on university fees were “invented by department officials” according to the education department’s associate secretary, Robert Griew.

“In each case, while presented as assumed facts and informed by departmental analysis and research, these figures were essentially invented by departmental officials for the purpose of providing material for analysis based on assumed patterns of behaviour,” he wrote.

The government did not want to release documents detailing the impact of deregulation on regional higher education and the potential cost of cuts on individual institutions.

While largely unsurprising, this is another example of failure to live up to even the most basic forms of transparency and accountability by the Liberal government. A few questions that need answering:

Why were the figures invented rather than being based on actual data?

How does invented data provide a reliable and accurate set of prediction on which we can model changes to the education system?

Why were the documents relating to the impacts and potential costs of these reforms not available to the public, whom they affect, for review?

Answers to these questions would be a step in the right direction for our Prime Minister, whose actions of late have landed him in hot water not just with the electorate but also with many of his own party members, as evidenced by the spill several weeks ago.

The ABC and the Seven network have both reported that Malcolm Turnbull has been advised that he has the numbers to slide into the top job without much turbulence. Whether this is wish-thinking on the behalf of the source and/or the networks remains to be seen. Turnbull himself refused to comment on the issue, telling reporters that he’s “a member of parliament… I’ll leave [the press] to speculate about all that stuff.”

And speculate we will.

If Turnbull does move up the ladder in the Liberal Party, he’ll certainly have his work cut out for him. Dealing with a large body of people at the best of times is difficult to say the least, dealing with a party of strong minded ideologues, most of whom fall almost entirely to the right of the political spectrum, is likely to be a management nightmare. If Turnbull can elicit some sense of collegiality within the party, and force compromise out of some of the more extreme members, we may see a turn around in the party. He has already made statements defending Gillian Triggs after her vilification by fellow party members, and seems to support a push for more transparency around sources of funding and internal activities in general. At the very least, if Turnbull becomes Prime Minister we can wave goodbye to the madness the pious Roman Catholic reminiscer extraordinaire has wrought on this country over the last two years.

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Another interesting piece of information the government would rather keep hidden away from the public eye is the apparent failure of the Australian Bureau of Statistics to accurately report the amount of prisoners in the penal system. The ABS records only the number and characteristics of people in custody on a single day – 30th June – each year.

This is despite more than $3bn being funnelled into the system per annum.

Without accurate data showing the demographics of prisoners, their behaviour, length of imprisonment, whether they are first time or repeat offenders, what socio-economic and lifestyle factors contributed to their incarceration and so on, it seems unlikely that any improvement can be made in the system. It is essentially being run blind.

If reforms need to be made in any area of our society, surely the penal system is a prime candidate. Countries like Norway have implemented rehabilitation oriented systems of incarceration, lowering recidivism rates to just 16% in some areas, as opposed to 38% according to “SCRGS 2006. Report on government services 2005”, the results of which were published in this study on recidivism by the Australian Institute of Criminology. Rather than following the predictable and tired governmental response of “doing it our way”, perhaps we can adopt a humble attitude and admit that we have much to learn from the successes of other nations.

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George Brandis has come under fire from ex- Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes, who stated in this article written for The Guardian, “I was a human rights commissioner under five attorneys-general from both sides of politics, Brandis [has been] the only one to question my integrity.”

Staffers for Brandis apparently berated Innes for his criticism of retail giant Myer’s CEO Bernie Brooks, who had made comments disparaging the National Disability Insurance Scheme, stating that the money that was earmarked for the project “could have gone through [his] cash registers.” In addition to the callousness of the comment, having previously worked for Myer and being privy to the internal culture there I find that scenario highly unlikely.

Innes went on to say that “Part of our democratic system, and the rule of law, provides that a key duty of any attorney general is to defend judges and statutory officers doing their jobs, because they are not in a position to easily defend themselves. Far from defending, Brandis has attacked. It is he who has made the serious error of judgement. He has “shot the messenger”. Triggs has advocated human rights compliance by Australia – she has done her job.”

Along with his support for mandatory metadata retention, a program which has been slammed in courts across the EU for being a serious threat to human rights and the privacy of citizens, these revelations paint a picture of Brandis as being wholly unconcerned with fulfilling the role he is employed to, seeming instead to be more focused on supporting schemes to expand the influence and control of the state in the lives of every-day Australians.

It is for this very reason we are in desperate need of transparency when it comes to funding and the internal activities and correspondence of our elected officials. We cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the monetary forces and concealed influences that shape policy in this country. Urgent reforms in this area are not only important, but necessary for the country to progress and grow into the exponentially increasing complexity of the digital age.

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I had to cut todays update short due to time constraints, so some important information was omitted. Rest assured, I’ll be publishing a more extensive review of current affairs in Australian politics tomorrow, but until then, have a wonderful night friends.

The Higginson Leaks: Who’s Really Funding Our Political Parties?

New leaked documents from the office of Phillip Higginson, the Federal Treasurer, seem to indicate that the Liberal Party of Australia may have been receiving donations of a “million pounds Sterling” and up to “several tens of millions of US dollars” from “within the USA”, with the Treasurer stating that he “can now quite confidently ask individuals and their advisors for a donation”.

A few questions immediately spring to mind. If there are donations from overseas, are they being disclosed transparently? If so, is it healthy for our democracy to be influenced by foreign money? Does this phenomena cover both sides of the political spectrum?

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It seems fairly obvious from Higginson’s letters that this information was not intended to come to the awareness of the public. In closing the first of his letters, sent on February 22nd of this year, he asks his colleagues to keep the contents of the letters within the party.

“I do hope the recipients will respect my privacy and treat [this] letter with the utmost confidentiality, and debate it only internally. It will serve little purpose to hang out our dirty linen.”

What exactly is the “dirty linen” being referred to? From the Treasurer’s comments about asking for party donations from foreign interests, it seems likely that the statement is indicative of this international involvement in the funding of the Liberal Party. Whether he is referring to this case only as “dirty linen”, or whether that comment is indicative of a broader corruption within the party’s funding remains to be seen.

We know that donations to the Liberal Party were more than four times the amount given to the Labor Party in 2012-13, and with more interested parties one can surmise that the potential for ideological interference in government from donors would likely be concurrently higher.

This seems to be reflected in the sources of Liberal Party funding from our own backyard. Donors to the party in the period of 2011-12 include British American Tobacco, with a donation of $12,000, Roslyn Packer, widow of Kerry Packer, whose company owned a controlling interest in Channel Nine, who donated a huge sum of $580,000, shareholders in The Age, DSAH Holdings, who donated $55,000, and Mineralogy Pty Ltd, a mining company owned by the then Liberal Party supporter Clive Palmer, who donated a total of $203,700.

These, along with a long list of additional donors, seem to indicate a strong vested interest from conservative media outlets and big business. It is then little wonder that the governments policies reflect a sympathy for right-wing conservative values and the interests of oligarchs.

In May, 2006, the Howard Government increased the disclosure threshold for political donations from $1,500 to $10,000. Upon announcing the laws, the administration at the time stated that they would result in a “fairer” and “more competitive” electoral system, however, failed to discuss how the changes achieved these goals.

Critics of the change claimed the new laws would increase the chances of corruption, by making political donations harder to track, and by making conflicts of interest harder to detect.

As evidence for this, Senator Kerry Nettle pointed to a $92,400 donation from defence company Tenix, which used former defence minister Peter Reith as a consultant, and Tenix being awarded a $920 million government contract. Tenix’s funding on both sides of the political spectrum goes back at least as far as 1998, as shown in this inquiry into political funding from the House Committee.

The change allowed corporations to secretly donate up to $90,000 spread across the national and the eight state/territory branches of political parties without public disclosure of that funding.

Since 2006, the threshold has increased two or three hundred dollars per annum (adjusted for inflation) so that by 2014 the threshold was $12,400, and up to $111,600 can be received by political parties from each donor (spread across the national and state/territory branches) without a need for disclosure.

Despite the Australian Electoral Commission annually publishing a list of political donors, it is often difficult to ascertain who made the donation, as it is not uncommon for political parties to use “associated entities” as front organisations to hide the source of the donations.

Front organisations such as the Cormack Foundation and John Curtin House Limited provide individuals and corporations with a means of passing funds to the major parties anonymously. Under the current electoral act, these organisations are not required to disclose where the donations came from. Associated entities have become huge political donors in Australia, in 2003-2004 donating $72.6 million to political parties.

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It seems that if foreign money is being paid to local political parties, that the economic and political goals of foreign states may be being unfairly represented in Australian politics. If that is the case, we may see decisions being made based not on what is best for Australians, but rather what is best for Washington or London.

As for local donations, it would appear that donors money has been helping businesses to secure lucrative government contracts at the very least. Corporations are not required to adhere to the same standards of transparency as government under the law, and as such the ability of Australians to hold any employees who may be involved in corrupt activity with the government accountable for their actions doesn’t seem to be clearly defined. Citizens may find it exceedingly difficult under current legislation to trace the ideologies and world views of those financing their chosen party, or for that matter, to know who these individuals are.

So how much of the funding for our major political parties can be traced to international donors? There seems to be no avenue for civilian inquiry into the matter, a situation that should raise red flags in even the most die-hard supporters of both parties.

Democratic governance, in order to function as a truly democratic process, requires an informed citizenry. If our citizenry is not able to freely access information about potential conflicts of interest in their elected parties, to understand in objective terms the amount and source of funding given, then we cannot claim to be a democracy in any real sense of the word.