(Julie Bishop gazes in amazement at news that Bill Clinton has a history of fibbing)
Julie Bishop has done the inexplicable. Again.
DFAT's done a deal for a corporate Friend of the Clinton Foundation.
August 2016, and it's a Julie Bishop beauty too!
How much does it cost to change Digicel's light globes in New Guinea until 2018?
$500,000 - courtesy Australian Taxpayers.
Remember the 2006 DFAT magic for CF and PNG, the little country that could?
Nothing was beyond the invoicing of Chief Bill Clinton and his Foundation - proving along the way that one remarkable woman really could do it all.
DFAT money was the catalyst for Ruby Shang, then the sole Clinton Foundation employee in the Asia Pacific. When the invoices said so, Ruby was simultaneously providing AIDS specialist work and corporate start up advisory in PNG, Climate-Change in Indonesia, Paediatric blood-borne specialty work in China and leadership for the family's Caterpillar dozer dealership in Vietnam.
Digicel came from the Cinton-Somare dream-time. Digi-dreaming in PNG started long before it was licensed to operate.
Somare's grateful hand spared the market any competitive overheating back then. He plumbed the outer reaches of the International Corruption Index free-diving to a record 154, 20 points beyond the best effort of Mugabe's Zimbabwe.
Haiti didn't just happen. Its poor didn't hand over their money to Bill and Hillary without help. The Digicell that delivered for the Clintons learned its craft as Sir Michael Somare sold PNG's gold-mine-of-the-air mobile telecoms licences.
It's 10 years since Jackson's International Airport bristled with white vans. It takes a poor village to provide the shuttles for a sufficiency of seafood to a South Pacific Launch Fit for a Clinton. Celebrations were on the mind as Digicell went full-steamrolling ahead into PNG, just as it did with Clinton Aid in Haiti.
The only people who had a problem with that were the regulators, who issue mobile telecoms network operator licences.
While Digicell was the holder of an interim licence (to allow network bidding design and demonstrations) it puzzled the Regulator to see the company publicly announce its network launch and invite 450 of PNG's well-heeled to a gala night to celebrate.
Thursday, 26 July 2007
In one of the biggest corporate launches PNG has seen for a long time, Caribbean-based mobile phone company, Digicel, feted 450 guests at a downtown Port Moresby hotel on Tuesday and ended the night with a gala fireworks show. By Brian Gomez
Only hours before PNG's telecommunications regulatory body, Pangtel, advised Digicel it was withdrawing the company's interim spectrum licence
While the prawns were incoming, so were the regulators to formally end the party.
What sounded such a brand-aligned projection of restless-challenger-energy at the time, takes on a different glow in the context of a corruption hearing.
In his article A Mighty Telecommunications Battle Unravels in PNG, Brian Gomes quotes Lynch,
"I met with the Prime Minister Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare in early March 2007, and he personally gave us the reassurance that our investment and license to operate in this country was protected.
There are many parallels between the Clintons and friends in PNG and the Clintons and friends in Haiti. I am working with others to bring those stories to you. I am indebted to our own Seeker of Truth for the above - and we are all in the debt of Dinesh D'Souza for this.
How the Clinton Foundation Got Rich off Poor Haitians
Dinesh D’Souza
National Review
Monday, Aug 1, 2016
It filtered money through Haiti and back to itself
In 2011, the Clinton Foundation brokered a deal with Digicel, a cell-phone-service provider seeking to gain access to the Haitian market. The Clintons arranged to have Digicel receive millions in U.S. taxpayer money to provide mobile phones. The USAID Food for Peace program, which the State Department administered through Hillary aide Cheryl Mills, distributed Digicel phones free to Haitians.
Digicel didn’t just make money off the U.S. taxpayer; it also made money off the Haitians. When Haitians used the phones, either to make calls or transfer money, they paid Digicel for the service. Haitians using Digicel’s phones also became automatically enrolled in Digicel’s mobile program. By 2012, Digicel had taken over three-quarters of the cell-phone market in Haiti.
Digicel is owned by Denis O’Brien, a close friend of the Clintons. O’Brien secured three speaking engagements in his native Ireland that paid $200,000 apiece. These engagements occurred right at the time that Digicel was making its deal with the U.S. State Department. O’Brien has also donated lavishly to the Clinton Foundation, giving between $1 million and $5 million sometime in 2010–2011.
Coincidentally the United States government paid Digicel $45 million to open a hotel in Port-au-Prince. Now perhaps it could be argued that Haitians could use a high-priced hotel to attract foreign investors and provide jobs for locals. Thus far, however, this particular hotel seems to employ only a few dozen locals, which hardly justifies the sizable investment that went into building it. Moreover, there are virtually no foreign investors; the rooms are mostly unoccupied; the ones that are taken seem mainly for the benefit of Digicel’s visiting teams.
ENDS - but only for now. This is a first instalment.
Last week the ATO and ACNC took overdue action against Islamic sham charities. Islamist support organisations have been subsidised by Australian taxpayers for too long.
The Islamist starting point is that adding the word Muslim to anything makes it above our law and tax system.
We have given too much away already.
On Friday we took a bit back.
Islamists play for keeps. They are an amoral enemy committed to expansionism by the sword, terror, institutional duplicity and stolen resources.
It's hard work for us just to hold our ground against them. Every inch Islamism moves forward is an inch taken from us.
Our tax, regulatory, legal and cultural settings should default to halting Islamist moves. Any ground we cede should come at the greatest cost possible to them. The idea we should be obliged to subsidise Islamism is an anathema to our way of being.
The least worst response to domestic Islamism is to deny its hate preachers platforms, to criminalise its promoters and to deal with their actions. Blandishments about a benign global movement of peace do no one any good.
In June this year the prime minister triggered an unnecessary and destructive confrontation by inviting mainstream Muslim preachers to a dinner in our Kirribilli House, a symbol of our democracy.
The most senior of Australia's mainstream Muslim hate-preachers Sheik Shady was there in the loving embrace of friends. A Google search for his videos is all it takes to find his promotion of Islamic punishments like stoning for adultery and homosexuality. That is his incitement to commit serious crimes in Australia.
If Turnbull's stupidity delivered the inevitable confrontation he's amplified it since by appeasing the crooks.
After Shady stared Turnbull down, the Grand Mufti escalated the mainstream Muslim response suggesting it's we who criticise Shady who should be punished. With death.
Turnbull just smiled. Weakened he limped away.
Now the charity regulator and tax office are doing Turnbull's clean-up work with Islamists who treat our tax laws like Shady does gay rights.
Just months ago Keysar Trad took over as President of the Federation of Islamic Councils of Australia.
The Council could not have made a better choice to continue on the way of Mohammed.
Australian courts have proven Trad personifies Mohammed's chief attributes.
Trad is a disgraceful person who incites others to commit acts of violence; he incites racist attitudes; he is a vexatious pest at best and a person who is dangerous in Australian society.
Here is his monocultural mono-gendered patriarchical extension of the life of Mohammed in the Board of the Australian (I know) Federation of Islamic Councils.
In February this year I wrote to the Australian Government with the first of dozens of requests that it investigate our $100M in donations to the Clinton Foundation.
While DFAT built its stonewall I made the requests more and more pointed.
I gave up in October, convinced that Julie Bishop is a part of the problem.
One month ago I published this, based on information I knew to be true at the time - ie before Trump won and irrespective of who gets inaugurated next January.
THURSDAY, 27 OCTOBER 2016
Clinton Foundation Corruption investigations to catch out Australian Ministers
When authorities want to interview Alex Downer, Julie Bishop, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Penny Wong and others they won't be able to say they weren't warned.
Each of the them has caused Australian taxpayer money to be diverted to a conman as donations to his Foundation. Each of them has been made aware before today that he's a shonk, that the Foundation doesn't deliver and that our money has been donated for dubious returns. Yet they persisted and in the case of Julie Bishop - continue in spraying our money for favours up until today.
Every cent of our $80-$100M that went to the Clinton Foundation was a donation. It may have had MOUs, AIDS work, climate change, carbon accounting or Clinton Global Initiative sponsorship as a fancy description on an invoice - but that's just cover. Every cent we sent was a donation to the Foundation.
God knows where our money went - because it was spent precisely as the Clintons wanted it spent. Amongst other things that included private jets, parties - lifestyles of the rich and famous. Courtesy of Australian taxpayers!
Foreign governments will be encouraged to investigate the Clinton Foundation’s finances, as many are already turning off money spigots to the scandal-scarred group, The Post has learned.
A source close to President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team told The Post that the new administration plans to pressure the US ambassadors it will name to bring up the foundation with foreign governments — and suggest they probe its financial dealings.
But Trump’s statement didn’t preclude the backroom moves to investigate the group.
“Haiti and Colombia will be key diplomatic posts for this because of all the money involved,” said the source.
In Haiti, recently leaked e-mails indicate “Friends of Bill” Clinton may have been given priority from the State Department as it prepared to spend some $10 billion in aid after a devastating earthquake hit the country in 2010. The State Department has denied any special treatment.
In Colombia, Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra pledged $100 million to the foundation in 2005 and later benefited from the foundation’s philanthropic work in the country, where he acquired large parcels of land and set up an oil business, according to watchdog groups.
The Clinton Foundation, headed by Donna Shalala, the former health and human services secretary in the Clinton administration, has received millions from dozens of foreign governments including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Canada, Sweden and Ireland.
Days after Hillary Clinton’s election defeat, French federal comptrollers began following a trail of tens of millions in government money that ended up in Clinton Foundation coffers, according to a document reviewed by The Post.
The Australian government last week announced that it would end its decade-long affiliation with the Clinton Foundation — a commitment that had amounted to as much as $25 million, according to the foundation’s Web site.
Norway is also scaling back. The country donated about $25 million in 2015.
Hillary Clinton left the foundation to run for president in April 2015 but Bill and daughter Chelsea Clinton remained on the board of directors. It’s not clear whether Hillary will resume her role on the board.
Extract from the Rockefeller Foundation's final report:
"The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) under the William J. Clinton Foundation has accounted for $7m to establish and test a National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS) at the policy level (in Kenya)".
STEP THREE
Gillard's Climate Change Minister approved a dodgy $500K contract to design exactly what the Clinton's had been paid by the Rockefeller Foundation to deliver in Kenya. That was just the teaser. The rest of the money is hidden in Step Five.
Greg Hunt, how about maintaining a bit of the rage.
STEP FOUR
On Monday 24 September 2012 Julia Gillard was in New York with a full diary. She was chaperoned by the top tier product in the Clinton Foundation Government for sale catalogue, Hillary Clinton. Clinton guided Gillard into a heap of education announcements at the UN and related sources of big money.
STEP FIVE
Hide it.
The Fast Money for Dumb Ideas fund was part of the money for mates deal the Greens extracted in handing Gillard the 2010 election.
No one thought to include a news bulletin in the plans for ABC television's opening night. After hearing from everyone who played a part in bringing you the news there was no time left to report it.
Newspapers editors tell their stories using as many pages as sales let them have. The term slow news day reflects the speed of newsprint chew-through at the presses.
Broadcasters go at 60 minutes per hour fixed.
The ABC's 1956 management had plans for those priceless few hours on opening night.
Proven, time-honoured plans, honed by successful public servants dating back to Roman Times.
Their opening night was dedicated to the cause of sucking up to politicians..
On 1 July 1932 Conrad Charlton introduced PM Joseph Lyons for the inaugural ABC radio broadcast.
On 5 November 1956 his son Michael Charlton carried on the family tradition, introducing a planned night of "aren't we great" from the Prime Minister Robert Menzies down.
Hard news and gutsy editors changed that at the last minute. The decision made at the ABC that night set much of the tone for the broadcaster's next 30 years.
The ABC can thank a young newsreader for making the powerful first impression that stuck right through Channel Two's life for the next 30 years.
The late James Edward Dibble AM MBE.
Careerists might have been miffed, but we were spared forgettable political waffle and self-important opinions as the ABC cleared the soft stuff out of the way because there was news to report.
The BBC's On This Day for 4 November 1956 gives context to the decision to put the news on that night.
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave Soviet satellite countries like Poland and Hungary new hope of democratic freedom. This prompted mass anti-Soviet demonstrations in October 1956.
In Hungary the protests became a full-scale revolt. Ordinary Hungarians battled with Soviet troops and the hated state security police.
Thousands of political prisoners were freed and the Central Committee elected the popular Imre Nagy as prime minister. He began to dismantle the one-party state.
Encouraged by an apparent promise of help, Nagy appealed to the UN and Western governments for protection. But with the Suez crisis in full swing and no real appetite for fighting the USSR over a crisis in Eastern Europe, the West did not respond.
The Soviet military's response was swift and devastating. Some 30,000 people were killed in Budapest alone and about 200,000 Hungarians sought political asylum in the West.
Over the next five years, thousands were executed or imprisoned under Janos Kadar's puppet regime.
Nagy and others involved in the revolution were secretly tried and executed in June 1958.
Soviet troops finally withdrew from Hungary in 1991.
That situation bears some similarities to the position the world is in today. Moscow is expansionist and Russian aircraft are bombing cities. Australians were killed when a Russian missile brought down a Malaysian civilian airliner. There is talk of a 2nd Cuban-style Missile crisis looming.
But the news today isn't treated like the news was when James Dibble delivered it.
60 years ago James Dibble had no video clips, no audio and no autocue. Just a script with just the right words and no more.
That night Mr Dibble set the tone for the ABC's next 30 years.
James Dibble broke into the talking head gabfest because his editors thought it more important that Australians should hear about this (reconstructed from ABC news sources including the BBC):
This is the ABC News for Monday the 5th of November, 1956, read by James Dibble.
The Soviet air force has bombed part of the Hungarian capital, Budapest, and Russian troops have poured into the city in a massive dawn offensive.
At least 1,000 Soviet tanks are reported to have entered Budapest and troops deployed throughout the country are battling with Hungarian forces for strategic positions.
The Soviet invasion is a response to the national uprising led by Prime Minister Imre Nagy, who has promised the Hungarian people independence and political freedom.
Mr Nagy's anti-Soviet policies, which include withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, have been worrying Eastern Bloc countries and Moscow has demanded his government's capitulation.
Despite an apparent withdrawal only last week, Soviet troops deployed outside Budapest swept back into the capital with Russian and Romanian reinforcements between 0400 and 0800 local time.
News of the attack came at 0515 local time on Radio Budapest in an urgent appeal by Mr Nagy himself for help from the West.
The Times newspaper reports that artillery units pounded Budapest from the surrounding hills as Soviet MIG fighters bombarded the capital from the air.
Sources say Soviet infantry units stormed the Parliament building, a key strategic and symbolic target, early this morning.
Reports that Mr Nagy and other members of his cabinet were captured in the attack have not been confirmed.
But in an unscheduled newscast on Moscow radio shortly after 1200GMT, Russia claimed to have "crushed the forces of reactionary conspiracy against the Hungarian people".
We were prepared when James Dibble told us about the next and most serious flash point in the Cold War, the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
On July 1962 Fidel Castro met with Khrushchev and asked for Soviet help to protect Cuba from the US forces of reactionary conspiracy 90 miles away in Florida. The USSR was already concerned about US missile bases in Turkey and Italy and its interests were served by nuclear war heads within spitting distance of the US mainland.
President Kennedy was concerned about intelligence reports. He ordered U2 "spy planes" painted in USAF colours to fly high over Cuba and bring back evidence. When he saw the photos he ordered a naval blockade cutting off Castro's Cuba and escalating an already dangerous cold war.
And on 22 October he shared that photo when he shared his fears and said,
“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the western hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”
Australians understood the context for the stand off that followed as US Forces went to DEFCON 2, one step below all out war.
When a Russian Surface to Air missile shot down a USAF U2 and killed Major Rudy Anderson near Guantanamo Bay it looked like the trigger for armageddon.
The same tone of authority that frightened the daylights out of us calmed our fears when the ABC and James Dibble reported Khrushchev had ordered the missiles be dismantled and returned home on Soviet ships.
The next year James Dibble told us that the young President who sent Khrushchev packing had been shot and killed in Dallas.
I remember my family turning to Dibble's ABC for news on Prime Minister Harold Holt (1967), the Apollo 11 Moon landing (1969), the lost mission of Apollo 13 and the destruction of Darwin by Cyclone Tracy (1974).
On 1 March 1975 the ABC brought us colour TV. James Dibble brought the same no nonsense manner to that announcement as he did to every piece of unvarnished news he told us about.
Later that year Mr Dibble told us that Prime Minister Whitlam's government had been dismissed.
The editorial authority and tone never shifted. We trusted James Dibble and the editorial standards which were embedded in the culture he started that first night in November 60 years ago.
That culture was still dominant in 1983 when Mr Dibble retired.
Like the late Mr Dibble, it lingered in the corridors and internal symbols of the ABC until the early 90s and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
On the 40th anniversary of that first broadcast Mr Dibble spoke about the changes he'd seen in the 40 years to 1996.
He spoke of his pride in being a news reader. Implicit in what he said was the notion that a newsreader should know what he's talking about. He also spoke of the difference between news-reading and the coiffed personalities in the age of the auto-cue who present segments.
"I had to read what people said in the news because there often wasn't any sound, and describe people and places, so I could be speaking all the time from 7pm to 7.25pm. Now they're only there for a fraction of the time," he said.
In 2006 Mr Dibble was at the ABC's Sydney studios at Ultimo. He stood perhaps a little wistfully for this photo in front of one of the last commemorations of the culture that owed so much to him.
He's not with us for the 60th anniversary of ABC News's first night on television. Nor is the culture he stood for.
And the ABC hasn't reported a word about the anniversary.
The late James Dibble died on 13 December 2010.
If he'd been watching ABC breakfast television in November 2010, he would have caught the moment that the ABC culture breathed its last and died on our screens.
Neil Mitchell in the guise of Tracey Grimshaw made this commentary about Virginia Trioli in the guise of Michael Rowland.
Virginia Trioli tested the culture for signs of life that morning. Mark Scott killed it by keeping her on.
A few weeks after he'd administered the coup de grace, Mark Scott spoke about Mr Dibble's time with the ABC.
What came out was a Twitter grab from PR, "James Dibble was 'the face and voice of the ABC' for generations of Australians".
The same man who had just promoted Trioli spoke of Dibble "He was the figure of trust that we all turned to at 7 o'clock every night, bringing the great events of the world and the great events of Australia."
Not a moment of reflection on why we trusted him. Nor when we stopped trusting the ABC.
Just after Mr Dibble died, the ABC radio presenter John Cleary told us about a part of James Dibble's make up that jarred with me. The man who was front and central in telling me the stories that framed my conservative outlook was a trade union leader.
"James Dibble was a trade unionist and a strong supporter of his colleagues. He was president of the ABC staff association when it amalgamated with the public sector union" said Mr Cleary.
Dibble attended St Brigid's Primary School and De La Salle College in Marrickville, Sydney. He joined the air force at the beginning of World War II and served in the Pacific.
Blokes who trusted each other with their lives were a different style of trade unionist from the people like Thomson, Ludwig and Gillard who sold them out.
As John Cleary said, "He was a good trade unionist".
He was also a fortunate trade unionist, spared the pain of watching the movement's death throes as people like him were replaced with Craig Thomson and friends.
This month the ABC TV News turned 60.
It didn't run a single story about its milestone. It was as if an iron curtain had descended on its history.
What started with a man reading us the news over the table is now this.
Not one of those programs ran any research or told today's bright young things about how the ABC came to be hosting their commentary on social media.
It's not that the ABC thinks 60 year milestones unworthy news.
Penu the Orangutan's special Indonesian fruit on the occasion of his 60th wore the ABC News Brand.
The 60th anniversary of Darwin's first backyard swimming pool got a run too.
So did some hard news milestones from 60 years ago - framed with an ABC of today editorial approach - like the Suez crisis and the Maralinga nuclear tests.
But despite the platorms, the programs, the staff and more webspace than the world has newsprint, there are still some things the ABC never finds time to investigate. Like the search warrant executed on the former office of the Prime Minister whose generosity with taxpayer money worked so well for her at the Clinton Foundation. Which is another story the ABC finds difficulty talking about.
The ABC news of the Dibble Culture ploughed on with the news regardless of considerations like those that so clearly affect the laissez faire editorial policy at the ABC today.
Vale James Dibble AM MBE
I'm glad you were not here this month for the 60th anniversary of that first night you read us the news.
Yesterday Fidel Castro died. I'm writing this now because one ABC news report told us Castro's death marked the passing of "a visionary who stood up to US domination of Latin America, brought healthcare and education to the poor, and inspired socialist movements across the world".
They wouldn't understand Jim. I wouldn't bother trying.
There's as much chance of them changing as there is of hearing,
"This is the ABC News, read by James Dibble.
"How does your lady garden grow?
"Is a designer vagina the same as female genital mutilation?
That is the word coming out of the UK this week as prosecutors consider whether doctors who allegedly performed the procedure on three adult women should face criminal charges under laws banning female genital mutilation (FGM).
"So-called designer vagina surgery is classed as FGM when it comes to rules on mandatory reporting," a source told the Evening Standard. "The question is whether it is in the public interest to prosecute."
So that's the question arising out of that story, is it?
Why should the prosecutors cop it when we no longer question whether it's in the public interest to let the self-publishing ABC continue on its merry way into la la land.
Thanks for your service Jim.
Happy 60th Birthday ABC, long may you relive the first 40 or so.
It was used to fool Royal Commissioner Dyson Heydon.
And it's smearing a good man's reputation right now.
Incorporating an entity is like making babies only less fun.
Once it's incorporated it can borrow, own land, sue or be sued.
Like a person. It's a big deal.
Ray Neal exercised that power diligently and strictly within the law.
To put this forgery into context - think of the Corporate Affairs Commissioner as a Immigration Officer deciding whether or not people get into Australia.
People come here as tourists, workers, family reunions - all different classes of entry and all with different rules.
Different people
Different visas on the left
Diverse groups - range of reasons
for being incorporated on the right
You wouldn't go to work in a new country on a tourist visa.
And if you lied and tried you'd expect serious consequences.
I
For a person, it's the passport
matching identity
and class of Visa
and personal record
For incorporated entities
The Commissioner has to be satisfied
that requirements have been met too
It's not difficult to explain what happens
if you arrive at immigration with no passport.
Or a false passport
Arrive at the Incorporated Associations office
With objects like the AWU assocition
and it's game over.
Once Ray Neal read the Objects of the AWU WRA
It was rejected just like a person arriving with the wrong passport.
Bruce and Gillard were keen to get the AWU WRA up
But it did not pass this point until a Minister intervened.
Ray Neal had no discretion and no other choice.
Ms Gillard had been operating in the shadows for Bruce Wilson and Bill Ludwig since October 1989.
And she could have stayed there without involving the Slater and Gordon name in the under-the-table work if it were not for the rejection.
Once the bank accounts were established, the invoices issued, cheques paid and cashed it was too late to stop.
Gillard was owed a lot for the work she'd done already for Bill and Bruce.
Once they rolled Joe Keenan it was time to collect.
The disaster of the failed Heydon Royal Commission told us:
11. From 1989 or 1990 a firm of solicitors named Slater & Gordon had been acting for the Victorian branch of the AWU.11 On the recommendation of Victorian AWU officials, in September 1991 the West Australian branch executive appointed Slater & Gordon to provide legal services for that branch. One of the solicitors in the industrial unit of the firm was Julia Eileen Gillard.12 She had risen fast in the firm to the rank of salaried partner. She had been in practice for four years.13 But she had done some work related to the West Australian branch of the AWU a little earlier. In an interview on 11 September 1995 Julia Gillard told her partners, Peter Gordon and Geoff Shaw, that in 1991 Bruce Wilson ‘was ... basically stalking the then WA secretary [Joe Keenan] with a view to getting him out and taking his position, and he needed some legal advice about arrangements to do with that’.14 At the request of another Slater & Gordon solicitor she stayed in Perth after conducting some litigation in order to meet and advise Bruce Wilson. Who, if anyone, was paying for this advice to the young pretender? That is unclear. But that was how she and Bruce Wilson first met in about April 1991. They commenced what they called ‘a personal relationship’ in late 1991.15
That is not good enough from Mr Stoljar.
But Mr Stoljar's incompetent investigation doesn't excuse the Commissioner's lack of rigour. The Commissioner was presented with different evidence from Bernard Murphy
The Commissioner didn't pursue a line of enquiry that would have led him to the heart of Australia's problem with unions and unionism.
The failure of Heydon to deliver upon his Commission is disclosed at this point - not because he failed properly to investigate the AWU Scandal. That is a wretched failing of a failed and costly Commission in itself.
Heydon had before him the evidence of a potentially complicit conspirator in Gillard. He has given weight to her evidence and dismissed evidence to the contrary from Murphy by saying
Bernard Murphy testified that the events transpired in the opposite order: Bernard Murphy, 9/9/14, T:587.10-12. But he was not in the best position to know.
Had he exercised the open unclouded mind we paid for he could have settled the conflict in the evidence he had before him. Evidence he had a duty to consider and Stoljar had a duty to guide him to.
At the tail end of this post I will give you some of that evidence.
It was simple intellectual laziness that allowed HEYDON to resolve the central matter of how Wilson engaged Gillard to act for him, a low level employee, in an act of sabotage against Joe Keenan who by popular vote exercised only the year before came to be the democratically elected office holder and thus the only authorised contact so far as acting in the union's interests is concerned.
John Heydon was negligent in allowing the central question of who paid to be settled by "it's unclear". For a Commissioner with his powers directed by our head of state to enquire into these things and paid by us handsomely for that work to:
1. dismiss Judge Murphy's evidence because he wasn't in the best position to know
2. fail to take into account the records procured and maintained over the years at cost and personal risk to Ian Cambridge
3 to allow further unsatisfactory answers to questions from Gillard to pass without comment or more importantly analysis like this is inexplicable.
Q. 10
Coming down the page, this is page 133, you say:
Yes, that's right.
He introduced Mr Wilson to the firm as a client?
Mr Droppit worked in Western Australia. He was
He was at that point basically stalking the
then WA secretary with a view to getting
him out and taking his position, and he
needed some legal advice about arrangements
to do with that.
11
12
13
14
15
16
17 What did you mean he was stalking the then Secretary?
18 A. At the time I met Mr Wilson, he had already been
19 involved in the Australian Workers Union. He was seeking
20 to become Secretary of the Western Australian branch of the
21 AWU.
22
23 Q. He was seeking to remove Mr Keenan; is that right?
24 A. As I understood it, there was disputation within the
25 branch including about the performance of the then
26 Secretary.
27
28 Q. Do you recollect what the legal advice was that you
29 gave to Mr Wilson at the time about those matters?
30 A. No, I don't recall.
31
32 Q. You say that you stayed on - I am just continuing to
33 travel through page 133 - in Perth for the purpose of
34 meeting with him and then you say you became involved in a
35 personal relationship with him in, in effect, 1991 or late
36 1991. That's all accurately summarised as the course of
37 events, I take it?
38 A.
39
40 Q.
41
Yes, that's right.
Then you mention further down the page.
... when Bruce came to Victoria ... he came
alone ...
42
43
44
45 This again is on 133:
46
47 He was subsequently joined by an organiser
Yes. I will just call it the interview. In any
42 event, you say in paragraph 13 of your statement that you
43 provided advice to Wilson and Blewitt in relation to the
44 setting up of an incorporated association. That was some
45 time prior to April 1992, was it?
46 A. Yes, that's correct.
47
.10/09/2014 (9) 770 J E GILLARD (Mr Stoljar)
Transcript produced by Merrill Corporation
He was an organiser, I believe.
Did he report to Mr Wilson?
Mr Wilson was Acting Secretary and then subsequently
1 Q. Did you have any discussions with Mr Wilson about that 2 when he was stalking the WA Secretary? 3 A.No. 4
5 Q.
6 A.
7
8 Q.
9 A.
So that came up after he had moved to Melbourne?
It came up in 1992, not 1991.
Mr Wilson raised it with you?
Mr Wilson raised with me wanting to have a fund in
10 Western Australia that would support him and his team and
11 their re-election in Western Australia and, you know,
12 regularising arrangements amongst the team.
13
14 Q. Could you come to page 134 in the bottom right-hand
15 corner. You are dealing with this sequence of events.
16
17 MR CLELLAND: What is the page of the document? We don't
18 have the folder yet.
19
20 THE COMMISSIONER: Page 4 at the top.
21
22 MR CLELLAND: Thank you, Commissioner.
23
24 MR STOLJAR: Mr Gordon says:
25
Heydon did not examine and report on the court proceedings of the time. They were many and they were illuminating. They describe in exquisite detail what Gillard did and when.
So do several magazine and newspaper reports of the time.
Not a scrap, not a shred, not an iota of independent evidence exists to support Gillard's claim to have met Wilson for the first time in April, to have assisted him in the stalking of Keenan, to have been introduced to Wilson by Graham Droppert and to have been there because of a full bench hearing in which the clothing union was involved.
Wilson deal with Keenan for Wilson to become WA State Secretary
Deal completed.Feb date referred to at May meeting of Exec ratifying dec
Gillard said she and Wilson had been stalking Keenan with advice on how to do the deal
Legal advice must have predated Feb 1991 agreement date
Further he would have found the April event she was perhaps most conscious of was this one
15 April 1991
Bruce Wilson
27 Hampton
Burswood
Signs Contract purchase
Transfer of LandE602960
$257,000
Christine Campbell to rent
17 April 1991
Julia Gillard
36 St Philips St Abbotsford
Signs Contract purchase
Certificate of Title Vol. 2004 Fol. 400711
$152,000
He would have noted the Caveat placed on that property on the same day.
17 April 1991
Julia Gillard
36 St Philips St Abbotsford
Caveat
Registered by unknown
This property was conspicuous in the circumstances leading to Heydon's appointment.
It was a part of the central and long standing allegation against her - that Wilson was the conduit for the money that went into it.
Had he turned his mind to other events brought into scope by her own evidence - ie that she was engaged in acting for the branch in 1991, he might better have explored this announcement
And he might have discovered the cheque from Thiess made out to the AWU WRA Inc but banked into the Members Welfare Association account. That gave the whole game away.
He had before him a forgery incapable of explanation.
If he had no regard for the truth or the pain caused to so many or the expense, I had hoped the one remaining motivation left unexercised would engage him. That is his duty to the law and his brethren to deal with this premotivated act of a contempt so wantonly - well to quote John himself, of such insensate folly as to render it beyond imagining.
The forged letter wasn't necessary to Wilson and Gillard or Ludwig. I don't know who else was sitting on the sidelines holding it, having been presented with it at some time convenient, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit to hear that Martin Ferguson had it put before him too.
As briefly as I can, this is the relevance of the forgery.
On 23 April 1992 the Application to Incorporate the ineligible incorporation was lodged with the Office of State Corporate Affairs. Each of the Application, the Certificate accompanying it and the first page of the rules was stamped and by deduction the first of a series of numbers was written thereon.
Those numbers tell the true story of the Application which the failed Heydon Commission didn't come close to.
Firstly to the knowingly false and misleading evidence from GILLARD.
there was an inquiry about whether or not
11 this was a trade union. I responded to it. The personnel,
12 Mr Neal, the assistant director of the Office of State
13 Corporate Affairs, then said that there should be an
14 amendment to be known as new rule 3A and then the document
15 appearing on the next page of the folder details what that
16 rule is and it is to clarify that the Association is not
17 doing the kinds of things one would associate with a trade
18 union.
And that's a lie.
I thanked Blessed Mary of the Cross, Mary MacKillop last time we had a breakthrough.
Well we held on to this one for a little while.
You have bullshitted your last Ms Gillard.
Every touch leaves its trace.
To our beautiful modest reader Seeker of Truth it was just a matter of time.
Seeker had the patience to find the truth.
And here it is.
On 23 April the application went in.
We knew that. Guess who was incorporated on that day.
You see Ms Gillard, the numbers don't lie. The times, the dates, the places don't lie. Eventually the truth catches up with you.
While they share the same date of lodgement one was incorporated and the other stopped. Rejected.
And a stopped file does not generate Enquiries.
The Act says a few things. Where upon the application he is satisfied.
Associations are incorporated upon the application. On the day the application is made. If it's knocked back, like your sham was, twice, then it's:
1. Goodnight nurse
2. Memorable - and unlikely to trigger the successive repetition of your "inquiry" instead of "rejection" that really happened, and
3. The reason this is empty:
Files don't empty themselves. People do that. With memories.
Ignore the letter at the end, that has to do with the activity the association was under taking.
See they're the same number? That's because this second time with the same name and objects didn't last one second before it was, as intended, knocked back.
But the gang was all there by that time. Ralph with the cheque for $22 for it to go up to the Minister.
Some members of the staff there have good memories too. Not fond, not fond at all, but good.
Ralph Minief's already on the tape recorder, crystal clear, this one's going up to the minister.
Thiess too with the letter to the BCITF.
And the MOU with Michael Forshaw and Martin Albrecht. Coming back now?
No it's not "coming back now" because no one whose house depends on it forgets that stuff.
There was never any inquiry. You made that up. You made that up because when the sham was eventually incorporated:
On 24 June, 1992, after the application was lodged in April and after the May payment of a fee for Ministerial Review (just before Yvonne went on leave), the AWU WRA Inc was finally incorporated.
'Every workplace should have one' - that is the slogan that will be on billboards all around Perth from today.
The billboard goes on to say: 'Elect a health and safety representative'.
Workplaces in Western Australia have the right to a health and safety representative, but there is a serious lack of them.
Today Productivity and Labour Relations Minister Yvonne Henderson helped paste the first message on a billboard in Yokine.
"This striking message is part of the Government's campaign to encourage the appointment of health and safety representatives, who play a vital role in making workplaces safe and healthy," Mrs Henderson said.
"It is the right of every workplace to have a representative, and when this right is not exercised, the health and safety of those in the workplace is not fully guarded.
"Among other things, health and safety representatives help consultation between workers and management. They alert management to possible problems and help to resolve the problems through consultation.
"It is easier for workers to understand health and safety laws through these representatives.
"There can be many reasons why some workplaces do not have health and safety representatives, including management which does not give sufficiently high priority to these concerns, and workplaces which have a big number of workers whose first language is not English."
Department of Occupational Health, Safety and Welfare figures show that, out of some 80,000 workplaces in this State, around 6,200 health and safety representatives have been trained.
"There are more representatives in unionised workplaces, but non-unionised workplaces need to be aware that they, too, have a right to representatives," Mrs Henderson said.
"The law provides protection for workers and supports their requests for health and safety representatives.
"The Government is keen to support the representatives in their efforts to lessen the incidence of injury and disease in the workplace, and supports approved training once those people are elected.
"WA's occupational health, safety and welfare legislation is working well, but thousands of workplaces could be safer with an on-site representative.
"Once workers at any worksite request a health and safety representative, the process of electing one is mandatory."
Because with amazing prescience, the AWU WA Branch knew all about the campaign in June, 1992 and was there ready to back Yvonne up to the hilt!
You just forgot about all that did you?
That's why the file was filleted. The nerves.
But what the missing files meant, was that some story for someone at some point had to be supported by at least something.
And the forgery doesn't correlate with anything. Except a long sentence. Starting with will the prisoner please rise.
Into this little gold mine - here is its most recent publication.
19 September 2008
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd today announced a $100 million Global Institute to speed up the development of carbon capture and storage technology.
Developing and commercialising this technology is vital for Australia’s future.
The Institute will aim to accelerate carbon projects through facilitating demonstration projects and identifying and supporting necessary research - including regulatory settings and regulatory frameworks.
Imagine the world if he hadn't taken urgent action to speed it up back then. We'd still have our $100 M to manage for a start.
Did I say $100M. Kev grew it a bit.
One launch wasn't enough for Rudd. The G8 was meeting in L'Aquila, Italy the following July. The lure of Obama et al was too much for the star-seeker to resist.
It's painful to watch his fawning - and his dismissal by contemporaries.
12 June, 2012 - this report from Lenore Taylor in the Sydney Morning Herald:
Kevin Rudd's decision to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on technology to capture and store carbon has failed to deliver.
Lenore TaylorGlobal Carbon Capture and Storage Institute has not achieved very much.
In his grandiloquent style, Rudd promised $400 million to a new not-for-profit company, the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, which would get CCS up and running at home and also "lead the world".
To June 2012, more than $235 million has been delivered to the institute, $122 million of it already spent and another $113 million in its bank account, beyond the reach of Treasury's razor, information provided at a Senate estimates hearing reveals.
Treasury managed to claw back more than $80 million of the promised $400 million before it was handed over. Only about $80 million remains to be paid over the next five years.
The institute has 78 staff, including nine permanent employees overseas - two in Washington, three in Tokyo and four in Paris. Former senior employees say its first chief executive, the British businessman Nick Otter, was paid well over $500,000 a year - more than the Prime Minister.
The first members' meeting was in Canberra, where the institute is based, in early 2009. But its second, in November 2009, attended by more than 15 Australia-based staff, was in the luxurious ballroom of the InterContinental Hotel in Paris, opposite the Paris Opera and decorated in similar ornate style.
Both industry sources and former staff concede the jaw-dropping opulence sent "all the wrong messages" to the 180 members who attended.
"The spending was very difficult to justify," said one former employee.
And it did not end in Paris. In 2010 when they met in Kyoto, they enjoyed a dinner cooked by a celebrity Iron Chef ( the institute says his services were thrown in for no extra charge by the hotel).
Documents released under freedom of information show a staggering $54,257,000 was spent on "operational expenses" in the first two years.
The spending began before the institute even existed. Rudd - who decided at a G8 meeting in Japan in 2008 that the success of CCS was vital to Australia's interest - set it up on advice from Boston Consulting, rather than the public service, at a cost of $1.5 million. By September 2008, he summoned business leaders to Canberra for a 30-minute presentation unveiling his plan.
Many were nonplussed, unsure about its aims or how it would be different from the CO2 co-operative research centre set up under the Howard government ( with almost $50 million in federal funds), Dick Wells's National Low Emissions Coal Council ($400 million in federal funding) or another international body set up by the US, the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum.
''I still have no real idea how it will work or what it will do," one chief executive said at the time.
But the public service was already doling out $65 million to future institute "partners", including $21 million to the Asian Development Bank, almost $20 million to the International Energy Agency, $10 million to the Clinton Foundation headed by the former US president, and a grant to a body called the Climate Group to "advance" CCS. The Sun-Herald understands there is deep concern about what Australia is achieving from these contracts.
The institute was soon seeking global members and now boasts more than 300, including foreign governments, corporations, industry organisations and research bodies. There was no reason not to sign up. There is no joining fee.
In July 2009, the grand idea was paraded on the international stage, its reannouncement the key initiative at the G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy. It was a heady moment for the Australian prime minister, who shared the podium with the US President, Barack Obama, the leaders of the developed world listening behind him.
At the time, Australia's $400 million was termed "seed funding" with hundreds of millions from other governments also anticipated. But it took years for the US government to come good with $1 million and the European Union has only this year contributed €3 million ($3.8 million) for the institute to take over work it had previously contracted elsewhere.
Its advisory panel included the world's best and brightest, among them former World Bank boss James Wolfensohn and influential climate economist Sir Nicholas Stern. Wolfensohn has since left.
Despite all its money, it took the institute some time to clarify exactly what it would do to meet its ambitious brief. At its inception, a spokesman for Rudd said the institute would not "actually fund demonstration projects overseas" but would "provide expertise … and research".
However, in its first report to the Minister for Resources, Martin Ferguson, revealed under freedom-of-information laws, the institute said it was planning to "make approximately $50 million per annum available to support a substantial portfolio of CCS projects around the world''.
And in a letter to Ferguson in February 2010, institute chairman Russell Higgins wrote proudly that the initial offer to support international projects received an "extremely encouraging" response. The institute had received requests from overseas projects asking for a total of $500 million of Australia's money. So far, the institute has spent $37 million on projects, mostly overseas. Several have failed. Only about $6 million has been spent on projects in Australia.
And that is Rudd's fatal flaw. The lure of celebrity is irresistible to him. He had no hope of resisting the Clintons.
