We'll see what NSW National Party MPs are made of as a party member pushes for Megasco to commence drilling for tight gas on one of his farms

Northern Rivers communities and Bentley in particular need to keep a sharp eye on National Party MPs, particularly those with electorates on the North Coast, as it appears that former Lismore City councillor National Party member Peter Graham may be trying to play the political mates card in order to activate the terms of his access agreement with coal seam & tight gas miner Metgasco Limited.

Echo Netdaily 27 April 2015:

A Bentley landowner is hoping the state government will support any moves by gas mining company Metgasco to begin exploring for gas on his property.

Farmer Peter Graham, a former Lismore city councillor, signed an access agreement with Metgasco in January 2012, which covered his family’s land at Bentley.

Before any drilling could take place, thousands of protestors set up camp on land adjacent to the Graham’s property, vowing to stop any drill rigs from entering.

With reports of up 800 police set to ‘break’ the Bentley blockade, the state government announced that it was suspending Metgasco’s drilling license.

Last week, however, the NSW Supreme Court overturned that decision, describing it as unlawful.

Now Mr Graham wants Metgasco to get on with the job, arguing NSW Premier Mike Baird was supportive of the industry.

‘Throughout the state election both Labor and the Greens were saying that Mike Baird was supportive so I assume that support is still there,” Mr Graham told ABC radio.

He rejected claims that there was no gas shortage, saying NSW was buying gas from Queensland instead of developing a local industry.

Mr Graham said he was concerned that local Federal National MP Kevin Hogan and state National MP Chris Galaptis had spoken out against the industry.

‘It does concern me and I have to talk to my National Party friends.

‘I need to sit down and talk with them, and the industry needs to sit down and talk with them,’ he said......

Was a whistle about to blow regarding Australian Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce misleading Parliament?

A public servant gives evidence at a Senate Estimates Committee hearing on 5 March 2015.

The Guardian 10 March 2015:

The secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Dr Paul Grimes, has gone on unexpected leave after requesting an extraordinary Senate committee hearing in order to provide “highly pertinent” information about a long-running saga over changes to the official Hansard record of answers given by his minister, Barnaby Joyce.

At the heart of the controversy is Joyce’s insistence to the parliament that corrections to the Hansard record of an incorrect answer he gave regarding drought support loans on 20 October had been made by his staff, without his knowledge, and that he had asked for the changes to be reversed when he became aware that they had been made.

The opposition agriculture spokesman, Joel Fitzgibbon, has been questioning whether Joyce did know about, or request, the changes – an allegation which, if proven, would mean Joyce had committed the sackable offence of misleading the House of Representatives.

Fitzgibbon has made freedom of information requests for information and documents relating to the process of changing the Hansard, and Grimes’ “highly pertinent” information related to documents not provided as a result of those requests.

Staff in the Department of Agriculture were advised Grimes had gone on leave on Friday afternoon, without usual information about the duration of his absence. Government and departmental sources said the leave was “unexpected”.

In the letter to the committee chair, obtained by Guardian Australia, Grimes wrote that he had suspected at least one document had not been provided as a result of the FOI request and that he also had “further relevant information”.

“Subsequent actions (in particular, the tabling of the document by the minister in the house of representatives on Tuesday 24 February) and my further inquiries within the department, including new information my officers had not previously provided to me and a telephone call with the minister’s chief of staff, have confirmed by concerns to have been correct,” Grimes wrote on 2 March.

“Without my intervention I considered there was great danger of the committee being inadvertently misled as to the existence of such a document, which it now seems was never released under FOI.

“I have further relevant information that would, I believe, be highly pertinent to the committee’s consideration of the broad context in which I considered that the further evidence I provided was necessary.”

But when the committee reconvened last Wednesday as a result of Grimes’s request – with a much larger turnout of Coalition senators than normal – Grimes did not provide significant new evidence. Some of the committee’s questions were taken on notice, meaning written answers will be provided by mid-April.

During that hearing, Labor’s Doug Cameron, questioning Grimes and indicating that he was reading from Grimes’s letter to the committee chair, said: “But you do also go on to indicate, ‘I have further relevant information that would, I believe, be highly pertinent to the committee’s consideration of the broad context in which I considered that the further evidence I provided was necessary.’ Then you say, ‘This includes specific information relating to the original alterations made to Hansard and the multiple actions I took personally at the time to seek rectification, including a personal meeting with the minister before the alterations became public.’”.....

His minister’s response on Friday 13 March 2015:

NSW Nationals MP for Clarence Chris Gulaptis still trying to excuse his collusion in closing Grafton Gaol

This was NSW Nationals MP for Clarence Chris Gulaptis (left) on the subject of the 2012 closure of Grafton Gaol in The Daily Examiner on 6 March 2015: It was downsized in a time when inmate numbers were in decline. Inmate numbers now are skyrocketing. As soon as inmate numbers reach a threshold, the Grafton Jail will be re-opened.

It would be interesting to know what this threshold number is, because NSW prisoner numbers commenced to climb in late September 2012, reached “a record high” by March 2014 and are expected to rise by another 17 per cent by the end of March this year [NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Issue paper no. 95 April 2014].

By 16 May last year The Sydney Morning Herald was reporting that; BOCSAR director Don Weatherburn said the rapid rise was ''a matter of significant concern'' not only because each prisoner costs $119 a day but because the prison population was rising faster than the government could build capacity, creating the risk of prison unrest. More than 100 prisoners at Parklea signed a petition in March after management started placing three men in two-man cells, leading to increased tension and violence.

I rather suspect there is no inmate number threshold which would see the Baird Government re-open Grafton Goal in the foreseeable future – it will remain the much smaller remand centre it became on Chris Gulaptis’ watch.

If all you have is Abbott & Forrest's cashless debit card how do you catch a bus to Grafton and back to see a specialist doctor or attend a job interview?

The question in the title of this post is only one of many that will arise if the Abbott Government introduces a debit card which won’t allow disability support pensioners, the unemployed or those receiving  any form of federal government benefit or allowance (other than aged and veteran pensions which appear to be exempt) any cash whatsoever. The plan apparently is to place the entire government cash transfer into a locked bank account which the welfare recipient can only operate through the cashless Healthy Welfare Card.

The Australian 14 February 2014:

THE Abbott government will push ahead with the controversial healthy welfare card to address indigenous disadvantage, along with all but one of the 27 recommend­ations of Andrew Forrest’s sweeping blueprint for welfare reform….

The most contentious of the Forrest reforms is a healthy welfare card, a debit card that would quarantine a person’s welfare payments to prevent their buying alcoh­ol and drugs.

Senator Scullion said the government had considered the Forrest review and now was looking at the “challenge” of implementing them.

“We have adopted every one of the recommendations except for the tax-free threshold for indig­enous businesses,” he said.

“We think the outcomes (in the Forrest review) are the sorts of outcomes that we all desire and we think the recommendations are sufficiently robust to be able to examine and look at how we imple­ment them.”

Other measures recommended in the review included integrating early-childhood services, case management for vulnerable children, tying family tax benefit payments to school attendance and funding only vocational training that is linked to job outcomes.

Excerpt from the Forrest Review, Chapter 2, October 2014:

In summary, the Healthy Welfare Card would:

* allow individuals to use the mainstream banking system to manage their welfare payments rather than the expensive Centrelink income management system

* enable the purchase of all goods and services, with the exception of alcohol, gambling products, illicit services and instruments that can be converted to cash (such as gift cards) and exclude activities discouraged by government, or illegal in some places, such as pornography

* be issued by banks on the basis of a current bank account, which is already required for the current cash payment of welfare support

* use a cashless debit card redeemable at Australian retail stores and accepted at any BPAY or EFTPOS terminals through internet and phone banking with the protection of fraud security be linked to a locked savings account which can accrue savings for major purchases, such as a deposit on a home, whitegoods, furniture or rental bond, or unexpected large costs

* use existing data mining technology to monitor use of the card to detect any unusual sales or purchases, with Centrelink applying on-the-spot penalties on retailers and individuals for fraudulent use of the card

* have the scope to expand to accept other government payments such as funding for care packages under the new National Disability Insurance Scheme.

The Sydney Morning Herald 24 October 2014:

Mr Forrest's welfare management scheme would see all welfare payments to all Australians, other than age or veterans' pensions paid into a savings account, which could be accessed by a "health welfare card"….

More than 20,000 Australians currently have their incomes managed voluntarily or compulsorily around Australia in places including the Northern Territory, Perth, the Kimberley region, South Australia and Cape York, with trials in local government areas, including Bankstown, Greater Shepparton and Ceduna.

Some welfare recipients have their incomes managed to deal with issues around child protection, financial hardship and drug and alcohol dependency. Other people have their incomes managed simply because they have been on a particular benefit - such as Youth Allowance - for three of the previous six months.

The current schemes, which were introduced by Coalition and Labor governments, quarantine at least half of a person's payment for necessary items and prevent spending on things such as alcohol, cigarettes, home brew kits and pornography. At this stage, the various schemes are due to end in mid 2015 and mid 2016 and the government is considering its next move in the area.

UPDATE

The question is only partially answered by Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister Alan Tudge, who says the Government is "very seriously considering a trial but doesn't want to rush a decision.
He says if the Coalition goes ahead with the card it'll be extended beyond Indigenous populations….
Second point I'd make is that, if we proceed at all, it would likely be done on a trial basis in a discrete geographical area, where it probably would apply to everybody who is on income support payments in that geographical area.

Mr. Tudge also does not anticipate Health Care Card holders not being able to access a small amount of cash, but doesn’t know how much this will be or how the amount will be decided.

What is clear is that those on Centrelink benefits or allowances will have little input into the development of this new income management scheme on steroids.

Day 12 of Good Government in Australia

During a press conference on 9 February Prime Minister Tony Abbott declared to the world that good government starts today in Australia.

On Day 12 of his new leaf The Australian reported:

Abbott sits for much of the day in his office in Parliament House pondering national security, Islamic State and reading Winston Churchill. He has 50 staff in his office but he insists on writing many of his speeches as Credlin, sitting in the office next door, works the phones, managing the detail.
She is, as Abbott himself has said, “the fiercest political warrior” he has ever worked with.
This is the Australian duumvirate, a new form of government in which Abbott and Credlin run the country. They are, in reality, co-prime ministers.

Call goes out to put Gulaptis last on the March 2015 state election ballot paper

The candidates may be acting coy five weeks out from the NSW state election but voters may be beginning to force the pace, if this open letter published in the Clarence Valley Review is any indication:

This open letter to Member for Clarence, Chris Gulaptis, was sent on behalf of all community Groups Against Gas within the Clarence electorate.

Mr Gulaptis,

Do you honestly think a few slick Gas Plan ads will woo us outraged voters back? Nationals’ entire track record indicates your real plan is to ignore our concerns and roll gas mining out across the North Coast.

Even your most loyal voters were shocked when Dart’s massive North Coast licence was renewed just before Christmas. Our shock turned to outrage when we realised that the 25% of Dart’s original leasehold that it had to forfeit, included Ballina. What a sly attempt, at the expense of our long-term future, to lure back voters left hanging by Don Page’s retirement!

That shameful action came hot on the heels of the retirement of your Minister for Resources and Energy, after allegations of corruption by ICAC. Then, just one year after Nationals passed a bill making ‘Public Interest’ legal grounds to refuse or limit gas licences, your party back-flipped and cancelled it!

And now, just weeks before the elections, you refuse to answer four simple questions about your own commitment to protect us voters from the dangers of gas mining.

Every other Clarence candidate answered with honesty and integrity, but you arrogantly responded with your own four questions! Well Mr Gulaptis, let’s see if the answers speak for themselves:

You ask:

1. Which State Government issued the petroleum exploration licences in NSW?
Try as you may to shift the blame back to when CSG was thought safe, but it was Nationals who renewed licences in NSW, even after you knew the real risks. Other parties will implement Gas Bans, not just plans.

2. Which State Government suspended Metgasco’s license in the Northern Rivers?
Not yours! Even after widespread protests from rural communities, plus Police warning the Premier that breaking Bentley blockade could result in local deaths, he only suspended drilling at that site, not the Licence covering the much greater lease! And now, because ‘Public Interest’ no longer counts, the Supreme Court may award Metgasco millions from our taxes!

3. Which Federal Government approved the CSG mine at Gloucester?
Your party has disbanded its own exclusion zoning to trash Gloucester AND your Gas Plan is to push through Narrabri and Camden as well!
4.Which State Government has reduced the CSG footprint across the Northern Rivers and NSW? Not yours! In fact, last month you actually renewed the largest licence in the Northern Rivers!

Many once-loyal Nationals voters have had enough lies! They know gas mining will destroy their precious bores, their family’s health and their kids’ future unless they act now. Gas will be the decider when they lodge their vote. Gas will come way ahead of loyalty to people they no longer trust. Almost 90% percent have said they want gas bans. They don’t want toxic plans…and they will be heard!

When they see four candidates on the lower house voting form, they will know to vote Gasfield Free they simply need to number every box and put ‘Gulaptis’ last!

Lynette Eggins (Clarence Alliance Against Gas), Leonie Blain (Knitting Nannas Against Gas Grafton Loop), David Irving (Yamba Group Against Gas), Deb Whitley (Pillar Valley Group Against Gas), Tony Belton, Annie Dorian (Iluka Group Against Gas), Jeniffer Lewis (Mid-Clarence Group Against Gas), Dr Eric van Beurden (Richmond Valley Group Against Gas)

Run! There are terrorists on the NSW North Coast

He's also kept up the fight against the bats, which continue to terrorise a number of towns on the north coast. [http://www.nswnationals.org.au/chris_gulaptis]

On the NSW North Coast it is easy to spot the many ‘terrorists’ in our midst.

According to the NSW Nationals MP for Clarence, Chris Gulaptis, they all look like this:

Photograph from  http://www.bats.org.au/

And they are lurking with intent to terrorise.

Can't you just tell there's a state election in a little over five weeks time?

The path down which Tony Abbott so recklessly trod

The Daily Telegraph political cartoonist Warren Brown 

 Part One: Team Abbott

The Guardian 8 February 2015:

Team Abbott sailed to victory, extraordinary gusts of hubris filling their sails. If opposition had been conducted within the confines of a box, the prime ministership was to become a fortress. The victors disdained the cultural moment and thumbed their noses at the zeitgeist with a towering kind of arrogance.

The coterie around the prime minister brought their conflict addiction, their brittle tribalism and their self-reinforcing insularity into government. The prime minister’s chief of staff stood sentry at the door, and the prime minister wanted the security blanket of the old rituals, like an elite sportsman insisting on his lucky socks.

Abbott then insisted that the entire government cede its freedom just as quiescently as he had. The culture of freedom and managed dissent in the Liberal party was to be replaced with command and control from his office. The Abbott cabinet lacked the talent and firepower of the Howard cabinet, and Abbott lacked the finesse and accumulated wisdom of Howard – so perhaps this was a gesture of insurance more than an outburst of gratuitous authoritarianism. But talent within government ranks did exist. It was just banished to the bleachers if it was mouthy. It wasn’t just ministers. Friends and confidants had the door closed in their face if the feedback was unpalatable.

The backbiting began almost immediately. The take-no-prisoners culture imposed inside the government created the bizarre cult of Peta Credlin, which was both vexed reality and collective mythology. The “witch in the office” began to loom larger than ministers, and project as a proxy for the prime minister rather than a conduit. The prime minister was rendered a sock puppet, and consented to his diminution.

Politics has a high tolerance for bastardry as long as the strategy is working. But the edifice began crumbling very slowly right from the start. The whole enterprise felt strangely vacant and unconvincing.

There was no real clean break, no fresh start. How could there be? Abbott began his life as prime minister knee deep in the wreckage he’d imposed on the polity. All the things to resent about politics since 2010 were not past tense because one of the main protagonists was still on his feet. Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard had faded, sensibly, into history.

Abbott has always been a contrary figure, a complex person, and his stock in trade, aggressive simplicity, could only resonate when it was delivered in broad brushstrokes. The devil was always going to be in the detail. The basic contradictions started early. The man who’d elevated trust and competence to moral imperatives in national politics quickly proved himself neither trustworthy nor particularly competent. Small-target politics in opposition was replaced by an agenda the voters didn’t expect, and then Abbott blamed onlookers for failing to read the tea leaves.

At budget time the new Coalition government unleashed an ambitious referendum. Would we tolerate a society that was less fair? This was not supposed to be a surprise because Joe Hockey once made a speech about ending the age of entitlement. The answer to the question was a resounding no. Again, very little made sense. Low and middle-income earners copped the pain disproportionately, only to see savings spent on thought bubble priorities rather than directed to repairing the deficit. How could a genuine budget emergency produce net savings of only $3bn over four years? It was bollocks, and the voters knew it.

The agenda in Abbottland whipped around in the prevailing wind. Abbott didn’t know if he was freedom Tony, or security Tony, or austerity Tony, or double the deficit Tony. The treasurer thought poor people didn’t drive cars and high-income earners paid half their income in tax. Apart from gaffes and thought bubbles and brain explosions, there was a basic and persistent level of identity confusion.

In government, Abbott had relished the daily combat but his officials complained he wasn’t enamoured by detailed policy work. Government can’t just be a culture war, a raised fist against modernity, it requires focus and direction. It requires an intellectual core. Rather than soothing persistent anxiety in the community, Abbott heaped on the surprises to the point where it was impossible to define the government’s character. What was Abbott’s core? Why does Tony Abbott want to be prime minister? It is entirely unclear. Does he even want to be prime minister? That is also, sometimes, unclear.

Looking through the self-interested anecdotes various protagonists are feeding to journalists in order to deepen this current crisis in order to force a resolution, understanding that in a leadership crisis everybody lies and everything is quicksand – the simple facts are Abbott’s leadership is on death watch because he has lost, comprehensively, in the court of public opinion.

Full article here.

*************************

Part Two: Fiscal Frolics

AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT GENERAL GOVERNMENT SECTOR MONTHLY FINANCIAL STATEMENTS December 2014

Crikey 3 February 2015:

The Coalition that promised in 2012 to reduce Australia's debt by $30 billion delivered in 2014 an increase of more than $60 billion. Clearly Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey have failed spectacularly to reduce Labor's "skyrocketing debt".

Outcomes for the full calendar year 2014 are now online at the Finance Department's website. Commonwealth monthly financial statements show year-to-date net debt and the projection for the full financial year. Hence it is simple to calculate the debt incurred — or repaid — each month.

Australia's net government debt — that is, money borrowed minus money loaned out — was $239.16 billion at the end of December. This was a hefty increase over the level a month earlier of $224.35 billion. In just one month, the debt rose almost $15 billion, or 6.6%. Compounded, that rate would double the debt in less than a year. Fortunately, the December rise was abnormal.

So what was the full-year increase through 2014?

At the end of 2013, the actual net debt was $177.74 billion. Hence the increase over the full year was $61.42 billion ($239.16 - $177.74). That's a rise of 34.6%.

That December 2013 actual figure is pretty close to the level that can reasonably be attributed to Labor. As Crikey explained last October, the best measure of Labor's debt is the projection for the end of the full year 2013-14 at the September 2013 election. At that time, projected debt at year end was $178.1 billion, although actual debt then was marginally lower. That year-end projection of $178.1 billion was affirmed in Finance's statements for October and November 2013. It did not shift until well after Joe Hockey had taken control of the levers.

So is it possible that debt has peaked and will soon tumble, as promised? No — Friday's figures also show a higher estimate for total debt at year end, still six months away. This is now projected to be $244.84 billion.

If $178.1 billion is the debt level attributable to Labor, then it can be argued that by the end of this financial year the Coalition will have blown out Labor's debt by $66.7 billion ($244.8 billion to $178.1 billion) or 37.5%. In one budget.

Full article here.

Cecil drank the Kool-Aid while John held his nose

In what may be his one and only letter in recent years, retired local businessman Cecil Denis White regurgitates the Liberal-Nationals party line with gusto in The Daily Examiner on 16 January 2014.

The other side of the political coin was represented by another Northern Rivers resident, history buff John Drydale, who registered his disgust in the same newspaper five days later on 21 January.

Abbott on the nose

OVER the past several months I have sat down to write letters about the current Federal Government's latest atrocity: on refugees, the unemployed, the ADF, Medicare, the universities, education.

Each time my concerns have been overtaken by yet another Federal Government stuff-up.

In the cabinet reshuffle at Christmas, Tony Abbott, the country's worst prime minister since Billy McMahon, could have done the right thing and fallen on his sword. Alas, for the LNP and the nation he did not.

He continues to blunder along, promising more money for the unwinnable war in Iraq while denying the ADF a sensible pay rise; supporting the "latest" changes to Medicare the day before his recently promoted minister scraps them while local National Party members, who obviously have not been told anything, try to defend the indefensible.

They just do not understand the people they claim to represent.

The Gillard Government was a model of order and purpose compared with this rabble.

John Drysdale

Clunes

You had one job........

A sharp-eyed reader pointed North Coast Voices in the direction of one of NSW Nationals MP for Clarence Chris Gulaptis' 2014 newsletters.

Mr. Gulaptis is not so important to parliament or his party that he wouldn't have had ample time available to approve this newsletter and, one wonders why he let these three sentences pass on to publication.

[Chris Gulaptis Clarence Valley Newsletter, 30 June 2014]

Did Gulaptis really mean to say that the National Party and its Liberal Party partner had prevaricated and failed to fund this second bridge for sixteen years?

Surely he was intending to have a dig at the former NSW Labor Government instead?

Does he also mean to say that he alone convinced the NSW Government to fund this new bridge?

Can he have forgotten that his own party in Opposition had promised Grafton this bridge in 2005, seven years before he stood for election? This pledge was repeated again in 2011 when in government and, seventeen months before the surprise by-election which saw Gulaptis elected, the then Member for Clarence told parliament that; Planning is well on the way: at present, possible sites are being considered. Indeed the NSW Dept. of Planning & Environment as well as Roads & Maritime Services have been progressing the second crossing for years.

NSW Premier Baird, Energy & Resources Minister Roberts and local MPs Gulaptis, George and Page are spinning the Northern Rivers a dishonest unconventional gas tale

This is the advertisement which appeared in local newspapers this month spinning the pro-coal seam gas line that the NSW Baird Government and National Party MPs in North Coast electorates would like us to believe.

The NSW Gas Plan is the government’s new strategic framework to protect our water and environment while delivering vital gas supplies for the state.

Our water resources are protected through the most comprehensive regulatory controls for the gas industry in the nation.

The NSW government has introduced important protections, including an Aquifer Interference Policy, code of practice for well integrity and fracture stimulation and banned the use of harmful volatile organic compounds, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX chemicals), and evaporation ponds.

The NSW Gas Plan is the next step. It outlines the path to achieving a world class system to protect our water, environment, critical agricultural land and communities.

The NSW government has adopted all the recommendations by the independent NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer, Professor Mary O’Kane, to ensure the new regulatory framework for the gas industry is based on science and is world’s best practice.

This new science-based regulatory framework adopts a strong compliance and enforcement regime, enhanced environmental monitoring, improved protections and benefits for landholders and communities.

The NSW Gas Plan introduces a new strategic release framework, which is a system that puts the government back in control of the release of title areas for exploration. 

This will allow the government to identify the most appropriate areas for exploration through a careful examination of economic, environmental and social factors with community consultation conducted up-front. 

Exploration for gas will be done on our terms.

The Environment Protection Authority, Office of Coal Seam Gas and the NSW Office of Water all monitor and supervise gas operations to ensure companies comply with the high engineering and environmental standards which now apply in NSW.

The independent Environment Protection Authority (EPA) will be proactive and fearless in its new role as the lead regulator for compliance and enforcement of conditions of approval for gas activities.

A project to provide baseline information about the state’s groundwater has been started by the government. The Groundwater Baseline Project is mapping and gathering data on the water used by agriculture, industry and mining.

This will ensure we have the critical data to ensure the use of our water is sustainable and available for future generations, while ensuring any changes to our water supplies are detected early.

The first areas to be analysed are the Gunnedah, Gloucester and Clarence Moreton basins. More information on these and other water projects are available from water.nsw.gov.au 

The NSW Gas Plan signals a new era for the gas industry and NSW. 

The government’s new science based regulatory framework protects our precious water and environment, ensures communities have a voice and we have a world-class regime to secure vital gas supplies for the state’s manufacturers, businesses and households that rely on gas every day.

For more information, please visit gasplan.nsw.gov.au

This is the reality for the Northern Rivers – under the NSW Gas Plan coal seam gas exploration tenements cover most of its land mass and span all its major river systems.

NSW Government Trade & Investment: Energy & Resources mapping as of 8 January 2015
Click on map to enlarge

The state government’s pro-coal seam gas advertisement states that; This new science-based regulatory framework adopts a strong compliance and enforcement regime, enhanced environmental monitoring, improved protections and benefits for landholders and communities. Actually there is no new science-based regulatory framework in place. This is something the Baird Government says it will start to put in place at an as yet unspecified time, which may possibly be in the second half of 2015.

It asserts Exploration for gas will be done on our terms as though this is a new and innovative stance. Mineral and petroleum mining within the state has always been done on the government of the day’s terms. The government’s right to decide is found in the NSW Constitution and state legislation, particularly the Mining Act 1992.

It goes on to say that the NSW government has adopted all the recommendations by the independent NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer. In fact the current NSW Gas Plan clearly shows it has not. 

In particular it has not fully explained the rationale/need for CSG extraction beyond a cursory attempt to talk about non-existent gas shortages and, the advertisement avoids that issue entirely.

The Baird Government’s gas plan certainly doesn’t fully encompass this recommendation in the NSW Chief Scientist’s September 2014 Final Report of the Independent Review of Coal Seam Gas Activities in NSW:

Recommendation 3

That Government investigate as a priority a range of practical measures for implementation (or extension of current measures) to allow affected communities to have strengthened protections and benefits including fair and appropriate:

• land access arrangements, including land valuation and compensation for landholders

• compensation for other local residents impacted (above threshold levels) by extraction activities

• funding (derived from the fees and levies paid by CSG companies) for local councils to enable them to fund, in a transparent manner, infrastructure and repairs required as a consequence of the CSG industry.

Nor is there any adequate mention of this:

Recommendation 4

That the full cost to Government of the regulation and support of the CSG industry be covered by the fees, levies, royalties and taxes paid by industry, and an annual statement be made by Government on this matter as part of the Budget process.

In fact where the gas plan briefly speaks of royalties, it does so in terms of ensuring that these are favourable to the advancement of the commercial interests of mining companies.

As for the recommended appropriate and proportionate penalties for non-compliance, apart from one 21-word 'motherhood' sentiment, the concept of penalties is missing in action.

The Liberal-Nationals broadly-worded Gas Plan also appears to deliberately avoid this statement contained in the Chief Scientist’s Independent Review:

There is a need to understand better the nature of risk of pollution or other potential short- or long-term environmental damage from CSG and related operations, and the capacity and cost of mitigation and/or remediation and whether there are adequate financial mechanisms in place to deal with these issues. This requires an investigation of insurance and environmental risk coverage, security deposits, and the possibility of establishing an environmental rehabilitation fund. Doing this is essential to ensure that

the costs and impacts from this industry are not a burden for the community.

A promise of community consultation conducted up-front is found in the advertisement, but the Gas Plan itself is silent about how and when this will occur in any instance.

The one thing I can say with certainty about the Baird Government’s intentions towards the Northern Rivers region is that its Gas Plan is nothing more than a document without force of law. It is a public statement of intent vaguely promising a fair go, which was obviously written with the March 2015 state election in mind.

* The Daily Examiner image courtesy of Yuraygir Coast and Range Alliance

Abbott Government now considering telling different sets of political lies to Australian electorates based on the states in which they are located?

Simon Letch 28 November 2014

The voice of political desperation can be heard in this article in The Australian on 30 December 2014, as the Abbott Government begins to reap what it so assiduously sowed in both Opposition and Government under Tony Abbott and, one MP floats the idea of tailoring the rationales put forward, perceptions aired, arguments used, lies told, as a magic political antidote to Liberal-Nationals woe:

Victorian Liberal MP ­Michael Sukkar, who holds the marginal Melbourne seat of Deakin, said the electorate had a “misalignment of expectations’’ about the government’s ability to turn around the economy in just over a year. He said the government needed to communicate its agenda to voters better and tailor the political argument differently when addressing the southern and northern states.

“We all just have to explain our rationale for the decisions we’ve made a lot better,’’ he told The Australian.

Based on the current anti-Abbott backlash in Victoria, Liberal strategists believe the seats of Deakin (3.2 per cent), Corangamite (3.9 per cent), La Trobe (4 per cent) and Dunkley (5.6 per cent) will fall. That could leave the Coalition holding just 12 of Victoria’s 37 federal seats. Casey (7.2 per cent) is also at risk.

In South Australia, Hindmarsh (1.9 per cent) would be a Labor gain on current voting intentions and the safer seats of Boothby (7.1 per cent) and Sturt (10 per cent) are also at risk amid angst over the collapse of the car industry and broader economic uncertainty. This could leave the Coalition with just three of South Australia’s 11 federal seats.

Labor has not held Dunkley since 1996, Sturt since 1972 and Boothby since 1949.

Sturt is held by Education Minister Christopher Pyne, who is one of the government’s most prominent members, and he is set to be targeted by unions over his support for budget cuts.

Senior Liberal strategists have told The Australian that anti-­Abbott sentiment is “profound’’ in Victoria and was key to last month’s state election defeat. “You are looking at a bloodbath in Victoria,” a senior Liberal said. “Seats will fall and any gains we made in 2013 will be wiped out.”…..

In South Australia, both major parties accept that three federal Liberal seats are vulnerable if Mr Abbott’s popularity does not vastly improve.

The seat most at risk is Hindmarsh, which covers Adelaide’s inner western suburbs. Hindmarsh had been held by Labor’s Steve Georganas since 2004 but was wrested away at the last election by Liberal Matt Williams.

Mr Williams said he was concerned about the impact of anti-Abbott sentiment in South Australia and said funding cuts, including to industry, had been having a negative impact.

“We have to address that negative perception and get the facts out there so the public become better aware,” he said. “The agenda is dominated by a state Labor government and ministers constantly speaking about federal issues. In regards to defence shipbuilding, I have raised the issue of defence projects for South Australia with the Prime Minister. We have to be a bit more optimistic in terms of what opportunities there are going forward.’’

The comments come after an analysis of Newspolls from October to December showed a marked shift over 12 months.

The analysis found the Coalition ahead only in Western Australia and trailing 60 per cent to 40 per cent in Victoria.

If Newspoll were replicated at a federal election, seven seats would fall in Victoria alone. The Coalition holds 90 seats in the 150 seat parliament, Labor 55.

The Australian Minister for Women is clearly not capable of understanding his role

The Australian 26 March 2011

On 30 December 2014 The Sydney Morning Herald reported:

The number of women on government boards has slipped below the 40 per cent target and a new report says men made up 75 per cent of new appointees within Tony Abbott's own Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet this year.

The Prime Minister, who is also the Minister for Women, has assured voters he is committed to the gender diversity target but the opposition says the statistics should "set the bells ringing".

The annual Gender Balance on Australian Government Boards Report says overall female representation slipped from its peak of 41.7 per cent under Labor in 2013 to 39.7 under the Coalition in 2014.

The Coalition drastically slashed the number of board positions from 4039 to 3206 when it came into government as part of its deregulation agenda.

The report, prepared by the Office for Women, which sits in the Prime Minister's Department, PM&C, said there were 639 new appointments to boards as of June 2014.

63.5 per cent of those positions were offered to men, meaning 36.5 per cent went to women……

"The government is committed to the 40:60 target and the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women is working with colleagues to ensure this target is achieved," said a spokesman for Mr Abbott….

Not only has female board representation slipped significantly, the self-appointed Minister for Women clearly does not understand the gender diversity policy he is supposed to support.

A 40:60 target? One presumably giving 40 positions to women and 60 to men?

No, the real target is 40:40:20.

Where women hold at least 40 per cent of Australian Government board positions, men hold another 40 per cent of these positions and the remaining 20 per cent can be held by either gender.

That he doesn’t understand or chooses to ignore this target is clearly demonstrated by his own Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet with its 16 boards and 170 active positions, where only 50 women (29.4%) hold any of these positions, and of the 87 new board appointments in this particular portfolio in 2013-14 only 21 were female.

The gender imbalance becomes more pointed when one realises that the Gender Balance On Australian Government Boards Report 2013-14 only includes those boards covered by the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (PGPA Act) which have some level of input or sign-off from particular representatives of the Government.

That is:

* the Prime Minister alone;

* one or more Australian Government ministers;

* the Governor-General in Council; and

* the Cabinet.

Overall the Abbott Government is exceeding the gender diversity target’s set quota for male government board members and failing to meet the set board member quota for females.

Here is the breakdown of gender diversity by portfolio:

The Sydney Morning Herald 14 December 2014

What will Abbott's Australia look like in 2015?

So what will Abbott's Australia look like in 2015?

Taxpayers will be footing a conservatively estimated bill of $400 million this year for the Abbott Government’s participation in the war against ISIL, with little practical effect on either the political situation or the fighting in Iraq and Syria.

At the same time taxpayers will also be paying out an estimated $5.3 million a month this year because the Abbott Government assumed full responsibility for the continuing search for missing Malaysian Airlines commercial flight, MH370, which disappeared into the ocean ten months ago with 6 Australians amongst the 239 passengers. 

Purchase of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s personal VIP jet will possibly be completed during 2015. This purchase is estimated to cost at least $250 million.

http://militaryaircraft-airbusds.com/Missions/MissionsMilitary/Transport/VIP.aspx

By July this year the budget deficit will probably have blown out past the December 2014 MYEFO predictions.

Childcare fees are predicted to rise again and an est. 74,400 families are expected to hit the rebate cap and be cut off from further childcare assistance sometime during the year and, therefore be ineligible to apply again until the following financial year.

Increased GP fees are expected to commence this month and increase again in July for over 15 million Australians, many of whom will be paying an upfront fee of $80 or more for a simple visit to their local doctor.

Changes to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) will probably be presented to the Australian Parliament by the Abbott Government and, an increase in the base rate or widening of this tax (effective in 2017-18) is likely to be tagged onto the end of these changes to compensate states which would otherwise lose a percentage of existing GST income under these proposed changes.

Wages for ordinary workers are not expected to increase markedly and real wages may even fall further than the September 2014 annual growth low of -0.01% which was due to cost of living rises outstripping the 2.29 % wages growth.

There will be an estimated 803,952+ people without a job.

Affordable housing stock will continue to decline for the estimated 2.3 million Australian who rent their housing. On 5 April 2014 there were only 808 properties for rent on the NSW North Coast and none were affordable by an unemployed single parent (with one child over 8 years of age) receiving the Newstart Allowance and only 25 rental properties were affordable by a single person on the minimum wage .

On any given night this year there will be more than 100,000 homeless men, women and children living on the streets or without a permanent roof over their heads.

Mainstream media is expected to begin reporting deaths said to be related to the Abbott Government’s ongoing funding cuts to health/social services delivery and eligibility changes to safety net welfare payments.

Near El Niño conditions are predicted to continue in the first part of this year which means drier and warmer than average weather is likely in many areas.

Treasurer Joe Hockey will be careful not to be photographed doing a victory dance before presenting the 2015-16 Budget Papers to the Australian Parliament.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott will in all likelihood increase the frequency of his formal televised statements in an effort to lift his own polling numbers and yet still manage to be caught by professional photographers inappropriately touching women in public.

http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-culture/abbott-under-fire-for-awkward-unwelcome-photo-op-with-new-female-cabinet-minister-sussan-ley-20141224-12d8sd.html

Voters may also hear more about the Prime Minister’s alcohol consumption and further allegations concerning drinking binges by the admitted “Grog Monster”.

Questions will continue to be raised concerning entitlement expenses lodged by Prime Minister Abbott and his ministers, with a possible focus on cash refunds from taxpayer pockets for what is essentially party political campaigning.

Activities of the Coalition Advisory Service, headed by Government Whip Phillip Ruddock with a staff of ten and ultimately financed by the taxpayer, may begin to come under scrutiny as unofficial electioneering heats up ahead of the 2016 federal election.

#Libspill rumours on Twitter and in mainstream media will possibly continue throughout the year, due in part to a persistent and deep sense of anger and frustration among Coalition supporters.