Monday 3 October 2016

Stuart Robert MP - the archetypal Liberal Party politician


Stuart Rowland Robert, Liberal MP for Fadden (QLD) since 2007, is truly the archetypal Liberal Party politician - in parliament for his own personal financial advancement, less than transparent about his investments and business connections or gifts he receives, as well as being quite comfortable with those dodgy political donations schemes operating at state and federal level.

Now it seems that the LNP Fadden Forumwhich reportedly has a $12,000 annual membership fee, is in the news again.

The Australian, 30 September 2016:
A well-connected lobbyist gave more than $110,000 of her “own money’’ to the fundraising entity of federal Liberal MP Stuart Robert as her company was being wound up with unpaid debts.

Simone Holzapfel, a former longtime adviser to Tony ­Abbott, owed more than $430,000, including $355,000 to the Australian Taxation Office, when she donated $114,000 in 12 separate payments to Mr ­Robert’s “Fadden Forum’’ in mid-2013, ahead of the federal election.

Ms Holzapfel was then a lobby­ist for Gold Coast developer Sunland Group, now at the centre of the latest controversy to embroil Mr Robert, the Gold Coast MP sacked last year from the Turnbull ministry.

Months before the donations were made, Mr Robert had ­defended Sunland in parliament over its involvement in the ­detention of two Australians in Dubai, with a speech largely lifted from briefing notes supplied by Ms Holzapfel.

The notes had been sent to both Mr Robert and Mr Abbott’s chief of staff, Peta Credlin, on the morning of the November 26, 2012, speech to parliament.

It can also be revealed that Ms Holzapfel sent the notes to Mr Robert and Ms Credlin while working as Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate’s media officer.

She left the council in February 2013 to pursue “commercial ventures’’ and reboot lobbying and PR company Shac, which had been set up in 2005.

The $114,000 donation in 2013 and Mr Robert’s bankrolling of “independent’’ candidates ahead of the Gold Coast council elections in March this year — as revealed by The Australian — are now part of an investigation by Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission.

Ms Holzapfel has previously told The Australian the donations were her “own money’’ and rejected suggestions she had given the money to Mr Robert’s Fadden Forum on behalf of clients.

“I ­donated because I wanted my ­former boss (Mr Abbott) to ­become prime minister, and that is my right to do,’’ she said then.

It has now been confirmed that at the time of making the donations — between July and September 2013 — Ms Holzapfel’s company was in external administration, with $437,000 in debt.

Ms Holzapfel was the sole directo­r of the company, Coolabird, which had changed its name from Shac months earlier and was eventually wound up.

Administrators confirmed yesterday that the company had debts of $437,000 when it was put into ­liquidation, including a debt of $355,000 to the ATO……

The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 September 2016:

A speech Turnbull government MP Stuart Robert gave to Parliament defending the Gold Coast property developer Sunland was substantially written by the lead lobbyist for the company.

Fairfax Media can reveal that former Tony Abbott staffer-turned-developer-lobbyist Simone Holzapfel was the true author of whole sections of the speech that Mr Robert delivered in November 2012.

Ms Holzapfel wrote a four-page defence of Sunland after a November 17 newspaper article scrutinised the company's dispute with an Australian man who spent five years trapped in a legal nightmare in Dubai.

Seven sections of that response - provided to various government officials and obtained by Fairfax Media - subsequently found their way into Mr Robert's adjournment debate speech on November 26.

Ms Holzapfel's words make up more than half of the speech.

Mr Robert has refused to comment on the revelation, which once again puts the spotlight on his connections with Sunland. Mr Robert's links to the company have come under scrutiny as part of a Queensland corruption inquiry into political donations to Gold Coast City Council candidates, which involves his fundraising body, the Fadden Forum......

UPDATE

The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 October 2016:

Turnbull government MP Stuart Robert has close ties to an African church that supports harsh anti-gay laws and is run by a preacher described as "one of the most homophobic people in the world".

Mr Robert was a founding director of Watoto Australia, an offshoot of the Ugandan-based pentecostal Watoto Church, and has called church leader Gary Skinner one of the "great influences" on his life…..

Gay and lesbian activists say Watoto and Mr Skinner are virulently anti-gay and have contributed to violent homophobia in Uganda. Mr Robert – who was also a member of Watoto's International Board – has travelled to the Ugandan capital Kampala many times to meet Mr Skinner, who says homosexuality is "degrading" and an "inhuman sin" that brings disease and destroys families.

Sunday 2 October 2016

Just in case you thought the Australian Minister for the Environment and Energy retained the brains he was born with.....


The 1 in 50 year storm, 28 September 2016

This is Liberal MP for Kooyong and Minister for the Environment and Energy, Josh Frydenberg, writing in The Australian on 30 September 2016:

Public expects energy security

The total loss on Wednesday of South Australia’s electricity supply was a seismic event.

People were stuck in lifts, there was chaos on the roads and residents were huddled around candles while they were confined to their homes.

This is unacceptable in modern Australia and there must be a better way.

Energy security is non-negotiable and we are unapologetic in making it our foremost priority.

For too long much of the debate in this country regarding energy policy has focused on emissions reduction, namely how to reduce our carbon footprint to meet our climate change goals, as well as an ideological debate about increasing renewables, whatever the cost.

While a lower emissions future is undoubtedly important, it counts for little to the public if they are sitting in the dark.

We cannot trade away the reliability of the system as we transition to a low-carbon future because to do so would be far costlier in the long run.

This is why we need to understand what exactly took place in South Australia and the reasons behind it.

The preliminary advice to me from the Australian Energy Market Operator is that a once-in-50- years weather event, which included more than 80,000 lightning strikes across the state in one day, blew over more than 20 electricity transmission towers and “tripped” the two interconnectors — Heywood and Murraylink — that send electricity from Victoria to South Australia. But for that weather event, the blackout would never have occurred.

Questions, however, will be asked as to why the initial outage couldn’t be contained, preventing the blackout cascading across the state, and what measures should now be implemented to enhance the resilience of the system.

But regardless of the specific cause of this event, there are significant broader questions about the impact of the changing energy mix on the stability and reliability of the grid; in particular, how the increasing percentage of power generation from intermittent sources such as solar and wind creates large fluctuations in voltage and frequency, challenging the system.

In the words of the Australian Energy Market Commission earlier this month, “the system strength has been reducing” as wind and rooftop solar “have low or no physical inertia and are therefore currently limited in their ability to respond to sudden large changes in electricity supply or consumption”. This is unlike hydro, gas and coal, which by their nature “maintain a consistent operating frequency and maintain the strength of the system in localised networks”.

It was this issue that AEMO identified as most acute in South Australia, as its reliance on wind and solar at 41 per cent of power generation is extremely high and coal and gas-fired power stations at Northern and Pelican Point recently closed.

With South Australia and other states hurtling towards ever higher and aggressive state-based renewable energy targets, it is now time they heed the warnings of our independent energy market experts.

It is quite irresponsible for the Queensland government, with 4.4 per cent of the state’s power presently generated by renewable energy, to commit to a 50 per cent target by 2030; or for the Victorian government, with 12 per cent renewable energy today, to commit to a 40 per cent target by 2025 without a clear and practical road map for getting there with energy security guaranteed.

At the last Council of Australian Governments energy ministers meeting, the commonwealth, states and territories agreed to work on better understanding the impacts state-based renewable targets are having on stability and pricing in the system.

This work may be very important in the federal government’s attempt to harmonise the renewable targets…..

What an utter load of political tosh. Renewable energy targets had nothing to do with what went down in South Australia on Wednesday, 28 September 2016.

It was a large and violent weather event that took out the means of power transmission which led to that widespread power outage not the method by which energy is generated.

In other words, electricity transmission towers were being turned into scrap metal by the mega storm (including three out of the four transmission lines moving power between Adelaide and the north of South Australia), sub stations were being fried by lightning strikes and electricity poles and wires connecting homes/farms to the grid were being brought down by destructive wind gusts up to 130km/h and falling trees.

Images found on Twitter


UPDATE

The Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed that the mega storm included several confirmed tornadoes.

A look at US presidential candidate Donald Trump








Saturday 1 October 2016

Hopefully the Yamba Mega Port proposal is dead in the water for the foreseeable future


After five years of wondering if the NSW Government would be mad enough to consider an unsolicited proposal to industrialise the Clarence River estuary by constructing a privatised international mega port built on the back of foreign investment, concerned Clarence Valley native title holders, residents, business owners, commercial fishers and farmers now appear to have an answer.

After a number of local people decided to make their concerns as visible as possible through word of mouth, the creation of a credible Facebook presence, distribution of factual leaflets outlining the proposal, the sale of bumper stickers,  a pop-up protest, a science-based information night, writing letters to politicians and lobbying to make the mega port scheme a local issue at both the July 2016 federal election and recent local government election, many more people began to discuss the issue and three things came to pass:

* eight of the nine recently elected Clarence Valley councillors have stated their opposition to the mega port proposal and, both state and federal MPs representing the valley also publicly indicated their lack of support for the scheme;

* the unsolicited proposal is in disarray with Australian Infrastructure Developments Pty Ltd having to admit that it cannot progress the proposal due to state government planning policies and strategies relating to NSW ports; and

* the NSW Minister for Roads, Maritime and Freight, Duncan Gay, has now stated the following.


This letter expands on a previous letter from Minister Gay to a NSW Greens member of parliament advocating on behalf of yet another concerned local resident.

As the contents of both letters correspond with the view of the Dept. of Premier and Cabinet directly put to a Lower Clarence resident on 17 August 2016, I am hopeful that the proposal for an international mega port in the Clarence River estuary - as envisaged by either Australian Infrastructure Developments Pty Ltd or United First Peoples Syndications Pty Ltd in conjunction with United Land Councils Ltd - will not be considered during the life of this current state parliament.

Once again Clarence Valley communities have demonstrated that when it comes to protecting the Clarence River system on which we all depend; they can act swiftly, with purpose and to effect.