Karina Lester (above) and June Lennon are still affected by the fallout from British nuclear tests on their country 70 years later.
The two First Nations women are part of a delegation of atomic survivors and relatives, which includes veterans, visiting Canberra to call on the government to sign an international treaty to ban nuclear weapons.
“We still see the craters and the scars that were left by those weapons tests, both at Emu Field and also at Maralinga Tjarutja,” Ms Lester, a Yankunytjatjara Anangu woman from north-west South Australia, said.
Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John and Labor MP Josh Wilson co-chair the Parliamentary Friends of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which heard from the delegation on Wednesday.
“It was so powerful to hear the stories of lived experience and direct connection to the impacts of nuclear testing,” Senator Steele-John said.
“That makes it viscerally real and really brings home the urgent need to eliminate nuclear weapons.”
Ms Lester’s father, the late Yami Lester, (above) went blind as a young man after the British tested atomic weapons in Emu Field.
“The scars are still felt on our country,” she said.
“And the scars are still evident on our people.”
The group of Australian atomic survivors and relatives are calling on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
In 1953 the British initiated a program of nuclear testing in Australia at the Montebello Islands, off the coast of WA and in Emu Field in South Australia.
Two years later, the British government announced a larger site for the tests at Maralinga.
In October 1953 when the British detonated the Totem I and II nuclear bombs at Emu Field, Yankunytjatjara, Antikarinya and Pitjantjatjara woman June Lennon was only a few months old.
The mainstream media continues to beat the drums of war while voices of truth and reason are being silenced, writes Dr William Briggs.
JOHN PILGER, in highlighting the manipulation of our media, called on people to ‘speak up’.
The drive to war and the demonisation of China have seen many people speak up and speak out. That same manipulated media has muffled those voices and pushed dissent to the margins. Journals and websites like this one are increasingly becoming almost samizdat publications. The mainstream media has played an important role, not only in silencing dissident voices but in convincing the public that there is little effective opposition.
A glance at the anti-AUKUS website shows that over 1,000 individuals and more than 200 organisations have thus far lent their support for a rational and sane response to the rising threat of war with China and obscene military spending.
There are many important voices among the signatories but their voices are not regularly heard in our media. Their words do not appear in the major daily newspapers, regardless of how well-credentialed they might be. Our former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, has effectively been relegated to the sidelines for voicing a position that does not fit with the official line.
And, while the collective wisdom of so many is ignored, the war-mongers of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) are given free rein.
‘In so many ways, the product of ASPI is critically important, not only in informing the Australian public, but those of us in government who seek to play a role in this space.’
Marles states that the Australian public must be informed. He recognises this to be ‘critically important’ but there is an unhealthy degree of censorship that is impossible to ignore. The information that the public is allowed to see, hear and read is the information that is filtered. There is a strong sense of creeping authoritarianism in all of this………………………………………..
The intellectuals, essayists, poets and novelists that might speak up and speak out remain, either silent or silenced by the mainstream media. It is not that they are not there. It is not that many thousands of ordinary people do not share the view that things are terribly wrong. The media has played and is playing a bad role. It is media in name only. It has abandoned any semblance of independence. It is so hard to speak out if you are kept captive; if ideas are filtered and disinformation passes for truth.
Pilger rightly calls on those with a conscience to speak out. What needs to be remembered is that the marketplace for ideas has shrunk……………………..Truth has become the property of those who control the media.
Pilger has been sidelined. Film-maker David Bradbury, twice nominated for an Academy Award, is now touring his latest documentary, The Road to War, screening it wherever an audience can be found. Even so, its circulation and therefore its audience remains limited.
American vengefulness would see WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange die in prison. Successive Australian governments have behaved equally badly, but the USA calls the shots. Assange’s crime? To report the truth. The truth, however, is not what Richard Marles is thinking of when he talks of the ‘critical importance’ of informing the public.
…………………………John Pilger’s call, for us all to speak up, has never had more urgency. The decades since the end of WWII and the proclamation of the U.S.-inspired rules-based order have seen millions die in American-led wars.
Julian Assange’s fate lies in the hands of an appeal judge who is a close friend of Sir Alan Duncan – the former foreign minister who called Assange a “miserable little worm” in parliament.
Lord Chief Justice Ian Burnett, the judge that will soon decide Julian Assange’s fate, is a close personal friend of Sir Alan Duncan, who as foreign minister arranged Assange’s eviction from the Ecuadorian embassy.
The two have known each other since their student days at Oxford in the 1970s, when Duncan called Burnett “the Judge”. Burnett and his wife attended Duncan’s birthday dinner at a members-only London club in 2017, when Burnett was a judge at the court of appeal.
Now the most powerful judge in England and Wales, Burnett will soon rule on Assange’s extradition case. The founder of WikiLeaks faces life imprisonment in the US. ……………………………….
Duncan served as foreign minister for Europe and the Americas from 2016-19. He was the key official in the UK government campaign to force Assange from the embassy.
As minister, Duncan did not hide his opposition to Julian Assange, calling him a “miserable little worm” in parliament in March 2018.
In his diaries, Duncan refers to the “supposed human rights of Julian Assange”. He admits to arranging a Daily Mailhit piece on Assange that was published the day after the journalist’s arrest in April 2019.
Duncan watched UK police pulling the WikiLeaks publisher from the Ecuadorian embassy via a live-feed in the Operations Room at the top of the Foreign Office.
He later admitted he was “trying to keep the smirk off [his] face”, and hosted drinks at his parliamentary office for the team involved in the eviction.
Duncan then flew to Ecuador to meet President Lenín Moreno in order to “say thank you” for handing over Assange. Duncan reported he gave Moreno “a beautiful porcelain plate from the Buckingham Palace gift shop.”
AUKUS dinner guests at the Cosmos Club, Washington: US Secretary for Navy, Carlos Del Toro; Republican Congressman Rob Wittman; Labor MP Meryl Swanson; Australian ambassador, Kevin Rudd; Liberal senator James Paterson; ex-Minister for Defence, lobbyist Christopher Pyne. (Photo: Pyne & Partners)
Declassified Australia reveals the feast for lobbyists, US defence contractors and hangers-on which is the AUKUS $370bn submarines deal, Kelly Tranter reports.
The defence lobbying firm Pyne & Partners – chaired by the former Australian Defence Minister Christopher Pyne – co-hosted an AUKUS reception and dinner in Washington at the swanky Cosmos Club on Embassy Row, with Northrop Grumman Corporation, on 3 April 2023.
Northrop Grumman is one of the largest defence companies in the world, and is the parent company to spin-off Huntington Ingalls, the US’s largest naval shipbuilder and one of the builders of the Virginia-class submarines destined to come to Australia.
The meeting was ‘private’ even though it concerned Australian defence contracts and arrangements and was attended by the Australian Ambassador and two Australian MPs, and senior US defence officials. Without public disclosure of what happened at the gathering, the Australian public once again is left in the dark.
However, Declassified Australia has been able to prise open the locked shutters on the private event to shine in some needed light. With hundreds of billions of dollars at stake through the AUKUS submarine deal, what calibre of people could be expected to attend such an event and what could possibly be their interest?
Documents produced pursuant to Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, by this writer, confirm that Australia’s Ambassador to the USA, Kevin Rudd, was invited to provide a speech, the contents of which journalists had previously reported to be ‘off the record’.
Declassified Australia has obtained the Ambassador’s briefing notes – though somewhat redacted due to national security considerations, ‘for the security of the Commonwealth’ and to avoid ‘damage to the defence, or international relations, of the Commonwealth’.
Rudd’s address was scheduled to follow those of the US Secretary for Navy, Carlos Del Toro, and Congressional Representative Rob Wittman. Rudd was allowed a period of five minutes for his remarks, ‘in between the main course and dessert’.
Congressman Wittman was among a bipartisan group of members of the US House of Representatives who in January sent a letter to President Joe Biden expressing support for the AUKUS deal. He unsurprisingly welcomed the huge AUKUS submarine spend as ‘a unique opportunity to leverage the support and resources possible under AUKUS to grow our industrial base to support both US and Australian submarine construction’.
In January he also was suggesting sending a jointly operated US submarine to Australia, saying, “I think it would be dual-crewed. I think too, that the command of the submarine would be a dual command”. These remarks, of course, raise sovereign control issues.
Another claim to fame of Representative Wittman was being named in a September 2022 analysis by The New York Times as one of at least 97 members of Congress who bought or sold stock, bonds or other financial assets that intersected with their congressional work or reported similar transactions by their spouse or a dependent child.
Rob the insider trader
Although the Times noted that U.S. lawmakers are not banned from investing in any company, including those that could be affected by their decisions, the report confirmed that Congressman Wittman traded shares of three defence contractors while he was a member of the House Armed Services Committee, which incidentally included the AUKUS event co-sponsor, Northrop Grumman
The Congressman’s response to the media revelation was to say: “I have consistently believed members of Congress should not improperly benefit from their role, and I support measures to avoid conflicts of interest.” He went on to say, “This is why I relinquish all control of my investment decisions to my financial adviser to use third-party investment managers who implement trades at their own discretion without my consultation or input,” which, he noted, is allowed under House ethics rules.
The new FOI documents confirm that Congressman Wittman is currently the Vice Chair of the US House Committee on Armed Services, Chair of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Committee and Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, is on the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the US and the Chinese Communist Party (sic), and is on the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee of the US Congress.
The FOI documents reference that, ‘Rep Rob Wittman was first elected to serve the first congressional district of Virginia in December 2007. His district is adjacent to Naval Base Norfolk as well as the major shipbuilding facilities in Newport News, Virginia – including one of the shipyards that builds Virginia-class attack submarines (Huntington Ingalls). Many of his constituents are employed either by the shipyards themselves, or by the supporting industry in the region.’
So it’s all just hunky-dory that through his investment advisor he can invest to profit from the success of defence contractors.
As to Secretary of the Navy, The Hon Carlos Del Toro, the FOI document suggests under the sub-heading, ‘Industrial collaboration’, that Ambassador Rudd was specifically tasked to ‘seek Toro’s ongoing support and endorsement’, and to recognise that ‘we continue to work with the US government agencies to overcome barriers to industrial base, supply chain and technology collaboration’.
China’s military modernisation program and its operation of nuclear-powered submarines, including both nuclear and conventionally armed, are mentioned in Ambassador Rudd’s ‘briefing notes’ obtained under FOI, along with this acknowledgement:
‘We do not oppose any nation’s right to invest in and develop defence capabilities. However, a lack of transparency around military capabilities can fuel insecurity.’
Transparency debacle
The stated concern about lack of transparency is at odds with the Australian government’s own lack of transparency to Australian citizens in relation to the entire AUKUS deal. They have yet to make signed copy of the agreement publicly available.
As to the effect of AUKUS on Australia’s defence sovereignty, Rudd’s briefing notes confirm Australia’s generous desire to ‘ease pressure on the US supply chains’ and provide the US submarines with their long-desired Indian Ocean naval base:
‘Australia will build new maintenance and repair capabilities that will directly benefit US submarines rotating through HMAS Stirling [naval base near Perth]’.
The language of the FOI document – ‘aligning national priorities’, ‘collective strength’, ‘mutual strategic benefit’, ‘deeper cooperation’ – all seems to be geared towards a fully integrated strategic and industrial base with little room for Australia’s sovereign defence issues.
And what does it say when a private Australian defence lobbyist funds eight-day international trips for the attendance of two Australian ‘non-Defence’ politicians to a private Washington event it is co-hosting with one of the largest defence companies in the world? And what does it say when the lobbyist invites a US guest speaker who trades in defence company stocks while holding political defence offices? And what does it say when input by senior US military officials and by our own ambassador to the US, until this FOI application, we’re not even permitted to see?
Transparency and integrity of decision-making in relation to AUKUS ought not be shrouded in lavish invitation-only discussions where private interests eye-off the billions in potential profits — and where Australia’s future is on the table.
This story was first published by Declassified Australia
Mining giant BHP has urged the Federal Government to remove its prohibition on nuclear energy to help meet the energy needs of transitioning to a low-carbon economy.
In what Paul Keating has described as ‘the worst deal in all history’, we’ve decided to buy into more second hand military hardware from the US; this time Virginia class nuclear submarines.
ED note – and we are left with their toxic wastes, also
Former submariner Rex Patrick looks under the hood of the second-hand Virginia-class nuclear submarines to see what Australia has bought. Even AUKUS fans might not like what they see.
February 2011 is a time many in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) would certainly prefer to forget. Within the month, the Defence Minister Stephen Smith had announced a number of trouble-plagued military landing craft would be disposed of and a review would be conducted into Support Ship Repair and Management Practices. Four months later Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Russ Crane, was gone.
On February 3, 2011, the biggest storm to have ever hit Queensland crossed the Australian coastline and carved a swath of destruction across the state. The storm displaced 10,000 people and caused $3.5 billion in damage. And the Navy was unable to respond with any amphibious ships to help Queenslanders.
On September 26, 2010, the Defence Minister had been advised that two former US Navy ships, HMAS Manoora and HMAS Kanimbla, were in what was described as an ‘operational pause’. By December the decision was made that Manoora would be decommissioned, although that news never made it to the Minister until January 28, 2011, when a tropical depression was forming off Queensland. The Minister was also advised that Kanimbla was to be unavailable to the RAN for 18 months.
That left HMAS Tobruk, a 30 year old ship, as the standby ship. On February 28, the Navy advised the Minister it was on 48 hours’ notice to go to sea. By February 2, with Yasi now a category 5 cyclone, Tobruk entered dock for emergence repairs. It left the dock two days later but was unfit to sail for any of the Yasi response.
The Navy had failed Australians.
Rust buckets
Manoora and Kanimbla were naval clunkers. The two elderly ships had been picked up from the US Navy as an ‘opportunity buy’. There’s normally a reason things come at a bargain basement price. (Our Air Force made the same mistake after it bought second hand C-27J Spartan light tactical aircraft from the US Air Force that don’t do the job… we never learn.)
The Auditor-General detailed the saga in his September 2000 Amphibious Transport Ship Project Audit. After the RAN inspected the two ships in early 1994 the ships were bought for the grand price of $61 million. A $55 million contract was immediately signed with Newcastle’s Forgacs shipyard to do a quick overhaul.
The quick upgrade went from 14 months to 44 months and the price went to $203 million. As the Auditor finished up his work at the turn of the millennium, the price was closing in on $450 million.
That Defence bought rust buckets and spent almost 10 times the purchase cost repairing them just meant It was ‘operations normal’.
Second hand Virginias
Fast forward to 2023. Have we learned any lessons? It appears not.
In what Paul Keating has described as ‘the worst deal in all history’, we’ve decided to buy into more second hand military hardware from the US; this time Virginia class nuclear submarines.
Under questioning from Senator Jacqui Lambie at Estimates last week, the Navy revealed that the submarines we’ll likely get in the mid-2030s are boats built from 2020.
The estimated reactor life of the Virginia-class boats is 33 years. So we will hope to get about 20-years out of these second-hand vessels. The actual time they’ll be available for operations will be much less when you take into extended maintenance and refits.
The head of the nuclear submarine program, Vice Admiral Mead, suggested that we might get one new boat, if we’re lucky (we’ll get what we’re told by the US Congress).
The Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Hammond, assured the Senate that we won’t see a repeat of the Manoora and Kanimbla debacle, saying the Navy’s ‘subsafe’ program won’t allow that.
Getting a grip
But even if Admiral Hammond is right (and Defence’s credibility on procurement is pretty well shot), the fact is that the Virginia Class program has some problems Australia is unlikely to be able to deal with.
The first highly noticeable issue with the Virginia class is a problem that has surfaced with the submarine’s acoustic coating that’s designed to reduce the ‘target strength’ of the submarine (how much sound energy from an enemy active sonar bounces off the submarine, back to the enemy).
The coating is prone to peeling off at high speed leaving loose cladding that slaps against the hull, making dangerous noise, and causes turbulent water flow, which also causes dangerous hull resonance (where the hull sings at its resonant frequency, like a tuning fork) and extra propulsion noise. I know a bit about this as a former underwater acoustics specialist.
The issue, reported in 2017 and again in 2019, is easily seen on the side of the submarine andalmost certainly without a fix at this stage.
Admiral Hammond tried to brush off the issue in the Senate. In response to Senator Lambie, he claimed that the photos she had tabled were of submarines that had come to the end of long patrols. But submarines are designed to do long patrols. I wonder how comfortable the Admiral would be landing at Heathrow Airport in London from Sydney, with the aircraft captain advising the parts of the wings normally fall off on long haul flights.
It’s not OK for our submariners to find that the boats they are using to keep us safe become noisy, and thus increasingly vulnerable to detection and destruction, halfway through their deployment.
Lack of availability
The bigger problem for Australia is the challenge the US Navy is encountering keeping (particularly) aging Virginia-class submarines at sea. Part of the problem is parts supply difficulties, with cannibalisation (taking parts from other submarines) regularly happening to keep a diminished number of boats at sea.
A November 2022 press report stated, “The U.S. Navy has nearly twice as many submarines sidelined for maintenance than it should, and those boats in maintenance ultimately require three times more unplanned work than they should, the program executive officer for attacks subs has said”.
It went on to say, “Of the 50 attack subs, [Rear Admiral] Rucker said 18 are in maintenance or waiting for their turn. Industry best practice would call for just 20% to be tied up in repairs, or 10 boats instead of 18”.
If the US Navy is having difficulty with keeping its boats at sea, with significant in-country industrial capability, how will Australia hope to keep our Virginia subs at sea? Our second-hand, ageing boats may spend as much time undergoing maintenance at Australian dockyards, or more likely waiting in a queue at a US dockyard, as they might be available for operations.
We may be eventually end up getting eight AUKUS submarines, only to find we can only keep two, instead of three in a fully operational state.
Absurdity
That would be $368 billion to have only one or two submarines are sea. And that’s just absurd. There were, and still are other, more sensible and cost-effective paths available.
Sometime in the future Australia may face the strategic equivalent of Cyclone Yasi, a defence contingency in which the number of operational submarines we have available will be of vital importance to our national security.
Tragically, however, absurd is ‘operation normal’ for Defence procurement. SNAFU
A bill introducing harsh penalties and extending the scope of a law applying to those who obstruct public places has been passed after an all-night sitting by the South Australian Legislative Council this week. Veteran investigative journalist (herself twice imprisoned for free speech) Wendy Bacon reports.
South Australia now joins New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria and Queensland, states which have already passed anti-protest laws imposing severe penalties on people who engage in peaceful civil disobedience. South Australia’s new law carries the harshest financial penalties in Australia.
Thirteen Upper House Labor and Liberal MPs voted for the Bill, opposed by two Greens MPs and two SABest MPs. The government faced down the cross bench moves to hold an inquiry into the bill, to review it in a year or add a defence of ‘reasonableness’.
The Summary Offences (Obstruction of Public Places) Amendment Bill 2023 was introduced into the House Assembly by Premier Peter Malinauskas the day after Extinction Rebellion protests were staged around the Australian Petroleum and Exploration Association (APPEA) annual conference on May 17. The most dramatic of these protests was staged by 69 year old Meme Thorne who abseiled off a city bridge causing delays and traffic to be diverted.
Meanwhile the gas lobby APPEA which is financed by foreign fossil fuel companies has stopped publishing its (public) financial statements. Questions put for this story were ignored but we will append a response should one be available…………………………………………………………
The new law introduces maximum penalties of $50,000 (66 times the previous maximum fine) or a prison sentence of three months. The maximum fine was previously $750, and there was no prison penalty. If emergency services (police, fire, ambulance) are called to a protest, those convicted can also be required to pay emergency service costs. The scope of the law has also been widened to include ‘indirect’ obstruction of a public place.
This means that if you stage a protest and the police use 20 emergency vehicles to divert traffic, you could be found guilty under the new section and be liable for the costs. Even people handing out pamphlets about vaping harm in front of a shop, or workers gathering on a footpath to demand better pay, could fall foul of the laws. An SABest amendment to the original bill removing the word ‘reckless’ restricts its scope to intentional acts.
Peter Malinauskus told Radio Fiveaa yesterday that the new laws aimed to deter “extremists” who protested “with impunity” by crowd sourcing funds to pay their fines.
In speaking about the laws, Malinaukas, Maher and their right wing media supporters have made constant references emergency services, and ambulances. But no evidence has emerged that ambulances were delayed. The author contacted SA Ambulances to ask if any ambulances were held up on May 17, and if they were delayed, whether Thorne was told. SA Ambulance Services acknowledged the question but have not yet answered.
The old ambulance excuse
Significantly, the SA Ambulance Employees Union has complained about the “alarming breadth” of the laws and reminded the Malinauskas government that in the lead-up to last year’s state election, Labor joined Greens, SABest and others in protests about ambulance ramping, which caused significant traffic delays.
The constant references to emergencies are reminiscent of similar references in NSW. When protesters Violet Coco and firefighter Alan Glover were arrested on the Sydney Harbour Bridge last year, police included a reference to an ambulance in a statement of facts.
The ambulance did not exist and the false statement was withdrawn but this did not stop then Labor Opposition leader, now NSW Premier Chris Minns repeating the allegation when continuing to support harsh penalties even after a judge had released Coco from prison. It later emerged that the protesters had agreed to move if it was necessary to make way for an ambulance.
…………………………………………………………. Early this year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez declared, “2023 is a year of reckoning. It must be a year of game-changing climate action. We need disruption to end the destruction. No more baby steps. No more excuses. No more greenwashing. No more bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers.”
Meanwhile climate disasters mount
Since he made that statement, climate scientists have reported that Antarctic ice is melting faster than anticipated. This week, there has been record-beating heat in eastern Canada and the United States, Botswana in Africa, South East China and New Zealand. Right now, unprecedented out-of-control wildfires are ravaging Canada.
An international force of 1200 firefighters including Australians have joined the Canadian military battling to bring fires under control. Extreme rain and floods displaced millions in Pakistan and thousands in Australia in 2022. Recently, extreme rain caused rivers to break their banks in Italy, causing landslides and turning streets into rivers. Homelessness drags on for years as affected communities struggle to recover long after the media moves on.
Is it any wonder that some people don’t continue as if it is ‘business as usual’. Protesters in London invaded Shell’s annual conference last week and in Paris, climate activists were tear gassed at Total Energies AGM. In The Netherlands last weekend, 1500 protesters who blocked a motorway to call attention to the climate emergency were water-cannoned and arrested.
On Thursday 30, Rising Tide protesters pleaded guilty to entering enclosed lands and attempting to block a coal train in Newcastle earlier this year. They received fines of between $450 and $750, most of which will be covered by crowdfunding. Three of them were Knitting Nannas, a group of older women who stage frequent protests.
This week the Knitting Nannas and others formed a human chain around NAB headquarters in Sydney. They called for NAB to stop funding fossil fuel projects, including the Whitehaven coal mine.
Knitting Nannas, Rising Tide
Two Knitting Nannas have mounted a legal challenge in the NSW Supreme Court seeking a declaration that the NSW anti-protest laws are invalid because they violate the implied right to freedom of communication in the Australian constitution. A similar action is already been considered in South Australia.
In this context, fossil fuel industry get togethers may no longer be seen as a PR and networking opportunity for government and companies. Australian protesters will not be impressed by Federal and State Labor politicians reassurances that they have a right to protest, providing that they meekly follow established legal procedures that empower police and councils to give or refuse permission for assemblies at prearranged places and times and do not inconvenience anyone else.
Greens Senator David Shoebridge likened PwC advising the Government to “Dracula at the blood bank” after it was discovered that PwC also still has access to the Defence Secret Network.
Greens Senator David Shoebridge likened PwC advising the Government to “Dracula at the blood bank” after it was discovered that PwC also still has access to the Defence Secret Network.
The PwC disaster — Neoliberalism on steroids
Independent Australia By Michelle Pini | 1 June 2023
Australians are tired of neoliberalism. We are sick of that much talked about and ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots.
The idea that endless privatisation and unfettered corporate greed will somehow leave us all better off no longer appears to be swallowed by the vast majority of Australians. Certainly, public confidence in our political leaders as well as in our institutions has been severely eroded in recent years.
PUBLIC PAIN FOR PRIVATE GAIN
This week, the Pricewaterhouse Cooper (PwC) scandal – in which nine (as yet unidentified) partners of the consultancy firm enlisted to help the Coalition Government design tax laws, leaked confidential Treasury information to benefit PwC’s private clients – has left Australians outraged.
And if that’s not enough, it was revealed on Tuesday (30 March) that PwC is also:
“…The internal auditor of both Treasury and the AFP.”
This adds another level of complication to an already convoluted matter, given the Australian Federal Police (AFP) chose not to investigate the matter, despite being urged to do so by the Australian Tax Office (ATO) over a period of two years.
Appearing before Senate Estimates, ATO Commissioner Chris Jordansaid:
“After sharing the information with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) over the period 2018 and 2019, and providing a number of documents upon their request after our initial sample of the emails, we had to ultimately formally refer the matter to the Tax Practitioners Board in July 2020.”
Jordan explained that once the AFP investigation was closed the only option was the Tax Practitioners Board, since:
“There was nowhere else to go.”
But an AFP spokesperson said there was “insufficient information” to proceed.
he AFP assessed, based on the material that the ATO provided, was that there was insufficient information in the material, to support a formal referral … In consultation and agreement with the ATO, the matter was closed in 2019.”
Greens Senator David Shoebridge likened PwC advising the Government to “Dracula at the blood bank” after it was discovered that PwC also still has access to the Defence Secret Network.
SHARING BUT NOT CARING
And Australians watched, mouths agape, as the PwC tax scandal finally exploded, resulting in nine directors being “stood down” and our government institutions – to which the firm still consults – were left exposed. Of course, since PwC is a private company, no information has been shared with the public as to who these directors may be, what is meant by “stood down” or what redundancies they may take with them if their directorships are ever severed — never mind disciplinary action.
It’s a pity sharing information about its own lack of accountability does not appear to be a likely move from the consultancy firm that has received eyewatering amounts of taxpayer funds for advising the Federal Government — before also sharing confidential government information with its own client base.
The Defence Department has reported seven contracts with PwC, worth a total of nearly $6 million, since the firm’s tax scandal broke, Crikey can reveal.
Greens Senator David Shoebridge told Crikey that Parliamentary Library research showed the single contract worth the most money — $4.6 million for “management advisory services” — started on February 1.
That’s just over a week after the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB) issued a media release revealing PwC’s former tax partner Peter-John Collins had been deregistered as a tax agent over integrity breaches……………………………
Crikey can reveal the Defence Department entered into the following contracts with PwC after January 23:…………………………………………………. In total, the Defence Department has 54 contracts with PwC, also known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, worth a total of $223,299,943, the department’s Associate Secretary Matt Yannopoulos told Senate estimates on Tuesday. …………..
The senator, who is the Greens’ defence spokesperson, told Crikey the tax scandal hadn’t stopped the department “signing contract after contract with PwC”.
Our Government has done the homework and the results are in. Renewables are the cheapest form of power, they are available right now. We have doubled approvals of renewable projects and the sector is already supporting thousands of jobs across the country. And no matter which way you try to add up the numbers that is the truth.
If Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy plan was a school assignment, he would get an ‘F’ for Fantasy. It’s all about make-believe mathematics and empty promises.
I know being honest with numbers is a strange concept to the Liberal National Party, but if they want to to keep pushing a nuclear plan in regional Queensland they need to be honest about the facts, especially about the costs.
We know that nuclear power is the most expensive form of power. It costs a bucket load. Instead of driving costs down, it would drive costs up.
One small reactor would cost $5 billion to build. Doing the maths on the 80 small reactors that would be needed under the LNPs plan, that would cost $400 billion.
That’s the same as building 1600 Townsville Stadiums. Or put another way, it’s like paying for the NDIS 13 times over in one year. What essential services in regional Queensland would Peter Dutton cut to pay for this plan?
The other thing they don’t mention is the time it would take to get dispatchable power under this plan. Because even if they could find the funds, it will likely be decades before the first nuclear reactor would be operational. Anyone who thinks you could switch on nuclear energy tomorrow is living in la la land.
Globally there are delays in building these reactors, and in Australia, we don’t have the specialised workforce or regulatory or safety framework to run them. It just won’t meet the urgent need for power that we have now.
The other thing Peter Dutton won’t say is how many jobs this form of energy would support. And there’s a reason for that. Barely a quarter of the jobs post-construction would be blue-collar jobs. The other three-quarters of the jobs in nuclear would be office jobs offsite – mainly in capital cities or overseas.
Our Government has done the homework and the results are in. Renewables are the cheapest form of power, they are available right now. We have doubled approvals of renewable projects and the sector is already supporting thousands of jobs across the country. And no matter which way you try to add up the numbers that is the truth.
The Albanese Labor Government has already started working to ensure Australia is positioned to become a renewable energy superpower. Our Government doesn’t need to make up a fairytale energy plan because we’re doing it right now.
We are investing in our Powering Australia plan and providing support for Clean Energy Apprenticeships to ensure that we have a skilled workforce for the thousands of jobs the sector would create.
And we are investing $2 billion in this Budget for Hydrogen Headstart, providing revenue support for large-scale renewable hydrogen projects right now.
Ultimately, our country’s energy future shouldn’t be about fake plans or fighting about the facts. It’s too important for all Australians that we get this right and we act with urgency. Australians voted to end the energy wars and get on with the job of reducing emissions and building the industries of the future. That’s what our Government is focused on and that is what we are delivering.
The undertakings made by Australia regarding the AUKUS security pact promise to be monumental. Much of this is negative: increased militarisation on the home front; the co-opting of the university sector for war making industries and defence contractors; and the capitulation and total subordination of the Australian Defence Force to the Pentagon.
There are also other, neglected dimensions at work here: the failure, as yet, for the Commonwealth to establish a viable, acceptable site for the long term storage of high-grade nuclear waste; the uncertainty about where the submarines will be located; the absence of skills in the construction and operational level in Australia regarding nuclear-powered submarines; and, fundamentally, whether a nuclear-powered Australian-UK-US submarine (AUKUS SSN) will ever see the light of day.
One obstacle, habitually ignored in the Australian dialogue on AUKUS, are the rumbling concerns in the US itself about transferring submarines from the US Navy in the first place. These concerns are summarised in the Congressional Research Service report released on May 22, outlining the background and issues for US politicians regarding the procurement of the Virginia (SSN-774) submarine. “One issue for Congress is whether to approve, reject, or modify DOD’s AUKUS-related legislative package for the FY2024 NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] sent to Congress on May 2, 2023.” This includes requested authorisation for the transfer of “up to two Virginia-class SSNs to the government of Australia in the form of sale, with the costs of the transfer to be covered by the government of Australia.”
A laundry list of concerns and potentially grave issues are suggested, and the report is clear that these are not exhaustive. They are also bound to send shivers down the spine of the adulatory Canberra planning establishment, so keen to keep Washington interested. There is, for instance, the question as to whether the transfer of the Virginia-class boats should be authorised as part of the 2024 financial year, or deferred “until a future NDAA.”
There is also the matter about how many submarines should be part of the request, whether it remains up to two as per the current request, or larger numbers. With those numbers also comes the dilemma as to what vintage they will be: those with less than 33 years of expected service life, or newly minted ones with the full 33-year period of operational service. (We can already hazard a guess on that one.)
The issue of cost also looms large. What will Australia, for instance, pay for the Virginia-class vessels, and furthermore, the amount that would be needed as “a proportionate financial investment” in Washington’s own “submarine construction industrial base.” Such a potentially delicious state of affairs for US shipbuilders, who will be receiving funds from the Australian purse to accelerate ship-building efforts.
Other issues suggest questions on operational worth. What would, for instance, be the “net impact on collective allied deterrence and warfighting capabilities of transferring three to five Virginia-class boats to Australia while pursuing the construction of three to five replacement SSNs for the US Navy.” The transfer of US naval nuclear propulsion technology would come with its “benefits and risks” and should also be cognisant of broader implications to US relations with countries in the Indo-Pacific, not to mention “the overall political and security situation in” in the region.
The report takes note of sceptics who claim this “could weaken deterrence of potential Chinese aggression if China were to find reason to believe, correctly or not, that Australia might use the transferred Virginia-class boats less effectively than the US Navy would.” This is a rather damning suspicion. Will Australian sailors either have the full capacity and skills not only to use the weaponry in their possession, but actually comply with US wishes in any deployment, even in a future conflict?
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The report is particularly interesting from the perspective of assuming that Australia will retain sovereign decision-making capacity over the use of the vessels, something that can only induce much scoffing. “Australia might not involve its military, including its Virginia-class boats, in US-China crises or conflicts that Australia viewed as not engaging important Australian interests.” On that score, the report notes remarks by Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles made in March 2023 that are specifically underlined to concern Congress. Of specific interest was the claim that “no promises” had been made by Australia to the United States “that Australia would support the United States in a future conflict over Taiwan.”
This is a charming admission that members of the US Congress may well be pushing for a quid pro quo: we authorise the boat transfer; you duly affirm your commitment to shed blood with us in the next grandly idiotic battle.
There is also a notable pointer in the direction of whether an individual SSN AUKUS should even be built. Sceptics, it follows, could argue that it would be preferable that US nuclear submarines “perform both US and Australian SSN missions while Australia invests in other types of military forces, as to create a capacity for performing other military missions for both Australia and the United States.”
This is exactly the kind of rationale that will confirm the holing of Australian sovereignty, not that there was much to begin with. But those voices marshalled against AUKUS will be able to take heart that Congress may, whatever its selfish reasons, be a formidable agent of obstruction. President Joe Biden, his successors, and the otherwise fractious electoral chambers certainly agree on one thing: America First, followed by a gaggle of allies foolishly holding the rear.
“Former prime minister ScottMorrison has denied knowing of links between conservative lobbyists the Crosby Textor group (C|T Group) and the giant US company General Dynamics, which builds nuclear-powered submarines.“He has also denied knowing that General Dynamics was the lead constructor for the US Navy’s fleet of nuclear-powered submarines as he pondered cancelling Australia’s contract for conventional submarines in favour of nuclear-powered submarines.
Australian officials have told foreign diplomats that the Aukus submarine plan is “expensive” and not “easy to replicate”, as part of an effort to play down concerns about the risks of other countries racing to do the same, a newly released tranche of documents reveals…..
Briefing notes obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws lay bare the arguments the government is using to defend and explain Aukus to foreign diplomats posted to Canberra………………………………………
China’s mission to the UN said in March that “two nuclear weapons states who claim to uphold the highest nuclear non-proliferation standard” – the US and the UK – “are transferring tons of weapons-grade enriched uranium to a non-nuclear-weapon state”.
The new documents show that many of the answers given by Australian officials at the Aukus briefings aimed to reassure countries about nuclear non-proliferation issues.
The first assistant secretary of Dfat’s Aukus taskforce, Sarah deZoeten, told those in attendance that Australia would retain control of operational waste and spent fuel.
A report prepared for Congress on the US Navy’s Virginia Class nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) procurement program has highlighted what issues need to be considered and overcome to allow the transfer of US submarines to Australia.
Under Pillar 1 of the AUKUS construct with the US and UK which was announced by the leaders of all three countries in March, Australia is slated to receive between three and five Virginia class nuclear-powered submarines to begin replacing its own Collins Class conventional submarines from 2032.
After this, Australia plans to switch submarine classes and acquire eight SSN-AUKUS submarines under a cooperative program with the UK from 2041……………………………….
The report says Congress needs to consider several factors relating to the legislation, including whether the legislation needs to be considered under the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) or can be deferred, whether the authorisation should be provided for just the first two boats or can be expanded to up-to five SSNs, and when the SSNs would be removed from US Navy service to prepare for the transfer.
While this seems to confirm Australia will receive former US Navy SSNs instead of new-build boats, the report also asks Congress to consider whether that would be the case, whether new-build boats could be made available, or a combination of the two.
It says Congress should also decide, apart from the cost of the submarines, how much of a “proportionate financial investment” Australia will be required to make into US shipyards to expand the US’s submarine industrial base. Despite a plan for two Virginia boats to have been built per year since 2011, this has not been achieved due to ongoing workforce and materials issues, made worse in recent times by the COVID-19 pandemic………………..
The ability of the US shipyards to ramp up sufficiently to cover the sale of Australian boats appears to be somewhat questionable. ……………………………
The report further asks Congress to consider what will be “the net impact on collective allied deterrence and warfighting capabilities of transferring Virginia Class boats to Australia while pursuing the construction of replacement SSNs for the US Navy”.
It points out that supporters of transferring SSNs to Australia rather than keeping them in US Navy service might argue that “the deterrent value of introducing SSNs to Australia’s navy would be greater than the deterrent value of keeping those SSNs in US Navy service because a newly created force of Australian SSNs would present China with a second allied decision-making centre for SSN operations in the Indo-Pacific, which would complicate Chinese military planning”.
Conversely, it says opponents of the proposed transfer might argue that “it could weaken deterrence if China were to find a reason to believe, correctly or not, that Australia might use [its] Virginia-class boats less effectively than the US Navy would have, or that Australia might not involve its military … in a US-China crises or conflicts that Australia viewed as not engaging important Australian interests”.
As if to support this viewpoint, it points out that “Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles in March 2023 reportedly confirmed that, in exchange for the Virginia-class boats, Australia’s government made no promises to the United States that Australia would support the United States in a future conflict over Taiwan”. https://the-riotact.com/transferring-us-nuclear-subs-to-australia-far-from-smooth-sailing/664701
Antinuclear 