Let us hope the days of the cargo cult are over:
The story of Gunns is a parable of corporate hubris. You can, as they did, corrupt the polity, cow the media, poison public life and seek to persecute those who disagree with you. You can rape the land, exterminate protected species, exploit your workers and you can even poison your neighbours. But the naked pursuit of greed at all costs will in the end destroy your public legitimacy and thus ensure your doom. Gunns was a rogue corporation and its death was a chronicle long ago foretold. The sadness is in the legacy they leave to Tasmania—the immense damage to its people, its wildlands, and its economy.
Photo Damian Kelly
ACTION OF THE DAY
A MAJOR national bank has been forced to remove more than 100 misleading out of order signs from its ATMs after being targeted by anti-coal activists.
A MAJOR national bank has been forced to remove more than 100 misleading out of order signs from its ATMs after being targeted by anti-coal activists.
A score of ANZ Banking Group machines sprawled across six capital cities were plastered with "out of order" signs on Sunday after campaigners launched their latest bid to draw attention to the bank's funding of the coal industry.
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Twiggy,Gina.Clive - are not spoilt children - Greenies are !
ReplyDeletehttp://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/14970029/greenies-like-spoilt-children-forrest/
"I think extremism and over- regulation are very real issues," he said. "When you spend your life going for everything you need down to Coles, and after a generation or two you are separated from where all that came from, you are separated from the reality that the food in your belly and the roof above your head all came from primary industry, you tend to take things for granted a lot like spoilt children will take things for granted."
Is he talking about Aboriginals ?
Delete"When you spend your life going for everything you need down to Coles, and after a generation or two you are separated from where all that came from,
But then he says...
you are separated from the reality that the food in your belly and the roof above your head all came from primary industry
??? WTF?
We would hope Voelte has more success with FLNG than he had with his poor selections of land based sites.
ReplyDelete(Fowler)
The platform is now set with a smaller and strong board and management inclusive of a unique portfolio of assets, particularly Crux with both LNG and liquid rights to be developed by Shell's world-leading FLNG capability in a comparatively lower cost environment,” he said.
Colemans admission that Browse at JPP will cost close to $60 billion and other LNG players making statements about soaring costs,should see FLNG become the way of the future.
The money saved by going FLNG would pay for the pipe to the Burrup.They have 3 new and 3 old trains there, all need gas,refurbishing the 3 old trains should be a breeze compared to a disaster at JPP.
The biggest resources boom in our history - and look at us.
ReplyDelete"They've been spending on big projects - on building the quay, the Premier's office," she said.
"I think people are asking why do we need to build? Meanwhile, I'm stuck in heavy traffic congestion, there's not enough $$ in public transport infrastructure, I can't get my kid in to see the school dentist for two years because waiting lists have blown out.
"We think their priorities are wrong."
Further cuts are expected.
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But the savings would not be enough to save the Government's skinny $196 million Budget surplus, Mr Buswell conceded.
"If we don't target these sorts of savings now, the WA public sector will ultimately face more severe measures such as those we have seen in the Commonwealth, in Queensland and in NSW," Mr Buswell said yesterday.
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THE nation's superannuation industry has been rated among the best in the world at the same time as the Gillard government is warning the $1.4 trillion sector that it will be the target of billions of dollars in budget savings.
Industry sources who have been canvassed by Superannuation Minister Bill Shorten for suggestions on potential savings have been told "nothing is off the table" and that government is looking to raise additional "billions" from the sector.
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Resources Minister Martin Ferguson and Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury on Thursday announced the inquiry into non-financial barriers to mineral and energy resource exploration.
The Productivity Commission inquiry will begin this month and ahead of draft report and public hearings before the final report is delivered in 12 months.
"The inquiry will examine exploration approvals systems and processes, within and across jurisdictions, to assess their effectiveness and efficiency," Mr Ferguson said.
...
Native title and indigenous heritage is also outside the scope of the inquiry because there are separate processes already underway.
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And when the bill comes in it wont be the polititions and bankers who take pay cuts - you can bet your shirt on that - it will be the poorest and most disadvantaged who will be expected to cop it.
Police officials estimated the demonstration was the largest since a May 2011 protest and among the biggest since Greece first resorted to aid from international lenders in 2010.
"We can't take it anymore - we are bleeding. We can't raise our children like this," said Dina Kokou, a 54-year-old teacher and mother of four who lives on 1,000 euros a month.
"These tax hikes and wage cuts are killing us."
"We have a unique case in economic history where banks that are insolvent and states that are insolvent are caught in a death embrace with one another bringing the whole society down with them," he said.
"The people who were least responsible for this debacle being required to pay the bill for it."
The bulk of those cuts is expected from cutting wages, pensions and welfare benefits, heaping a new wave of misery on Greeks who say repeated rounds of austerity have pushed them to the brink and failed to transform the country for the better.
Corruption bursting at the seams.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theage.com.au/world/tenix-out-of-its-depth-and-all-at-sea-20120928-26qs8.html
As police dig into Tenix's affairs, the massive taxpayer loans that underpinned its Philippines deals and its close relationships with respective federal Labor and Coalition governments are being closely scrutinised.
The billions of dollars Tenix earned from Australian defence contracts and its reputation as a generous employer of retired politicians, diplomats and naval officers are also being examined. The case has the potential to join the Reserve Bank bribery affair as one of the biggest corporate scandals Australia has seen. Today, Peel, who delivered Tenix its first 1998 Philippines contract before being sacked by the company, speaks publicly for the first time about how that deal was made and why Tenix's subsequent arrangements in the Philippines turned sour.
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http://www.smh.com.au/national/papers-refute-rba-chief-20120911-25q6x.html
Key parts of Mr Stevens' testimony about the RBA's knowledge of the scandal - he has claimed bank officials knew nothing of Securency's alleged corruption before Fairfax's expose of the scandal in 2009 - conflict with newly uncovered documents.
The scandal involves RBA companies Securency and Note Printing Australia, charged last year with bribing foreign officials to win banknote contracts.
The sensitive documents that contradict Mr Stevens' parliamentary testimony, and raise further questions about the governance standards at the RBA and its subsidiaries, come from the central bank's files.
They show that in 2007:
■Reserve bank assistant governor Frank Campbell was told how Securency engineered a dodgy business deal to hide a $492,000 payment to an allegedly corrupt Malaysian arms dealer.
■The arms dealer's company wrote to Mr Campbell demanding further payments and stating it had convinced the ''prime minister and the Malaysian cabinet'' to give out contracts.
■RBA auditor John Klincke allegedly queried a Securency manager about payments to an agent working for Vietnam's spy agency, and was told in response: ''Well, if I asked you if you worked for ASIO, you wouldn't tell me, would you?''
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Ever wondered why oil /petrol prices vary so much?
James Burgess
On June the 30th 2009 oil mysteriously jumped by more than $1.50 a barrel during the night, to reach its highest price in eight months, the kind of swing that is caused by a major geopolitical event.
The amazing, true cause of this price spike has now been released by a Financial Services Authority investigation (FSA).
Although not authorised to invest company cash in trades Steve Perkins, a long standing, senior broker at PVM Oil Futures, had managed to spend $520 million on oil futures contracts throughout the night.
On the morning of the 30th an admin clerk called Mr Perkins to ask why he had bought 7 million barrels of crude during the night. Mr Perkins had no recollection of the transactions, and it turned out that he had made the trades during a "drunken blackout."