In Senate Estimates I asked who funded and supplied the electric vehicle charging stations (58 in total) at Parliament House in the Capital. Taxpayers are funding the Canberra bubble’s fling with EVs to the tune of $2.5m in installation costs, with the vague promise that this will be recouped in the future. The reason given for the charging stations is to make it convenient for EVs to visit Parliament House. Despite most Australians owning a petrol or diesel car, there are no immediate plans to install petrol or diesel pumps at Parliament House for their convenience.
As the city with the highest average income in the country (over $100,000/year), the Canberra bureaucrats are truly out of touch with the rest of Australia.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Chair, and thank you for appearing today. The Department of Parliamentary Services has installed 10 electric vehicle charging stations in the public car park. Are they user-pays, or does the ‘Department of the Australian Taxpayer’ fork out for the cost of that electricity?
Mr Stefanic: The user pays.
Senator ROBERTS: Which company owns the chargers, then?
Mr Stefanic: I’ll have to take that question on notice. I’ll correct myself if I have misspoken, but I believe DPS owns the asset that has been installed. We contracted ActewAGL to provide the services with the installation.
Senator ROBERTS: AGL?
Mr Stefanic: ActewAGL, which is a Canberra based joint venture with AGL.
Senator ROBERTS: But DPS owns the chargers?
Mr Stefanic: I believe so.
Senator ROBERTS: How much did you pay for the installation?
Mr Stefanic: The contract for installation is about $2.5 million. We are tracking under budget. When all 58 electric vehicle charging stations are installed we anticipate the cost will be in the order—
Senator ROBERTS: Fifty-eight?
Mr Stefanic: There will be 58 in total. There are 10 in the public car park, 10 in each of the private car parks and eight in the ministerial wing.
Senator ROBERTS: Sorry, what was that again?
Mr Stefanic: Ten in each of the private car parks and eight in the ministerial wing car park.
Senator ROBERTS: How many private car parks?
Mr Stefanic: Four.
Senator ROBERTS: So you’ve got 40 chargers?
Mr Stefanic: Forty in those. Then the 10 in the public and the eight in the ministerial wing make 58.
Senator ROBERTS: So we’re paying for this, but a provider of electricity is making money out of it?
Mr Stefanic: The charges that we are levying for it have two elements: one covers both our administration cost and a recovery of the capital investment, and the other portion of it is the payment for the cost of the energy that goes to the provider.
Senator ROBERTS: So the provider is making a profit out of our—the taxpayers—investment?
Mr Stefanic: The energy provider, as it would for any electric vehicle charging station.
Senator ROBERTS: I didn’t realise that it was within your remit to cover the operating costs of people driving electric vehicles around the Canberra bubble?
Mr Stefanic: It’s not, because it is user-pays, as I mentioned.
Senator ROBERTS: But you’re providing a lot of taxpayer money to enable it.
Mr Stefanic: With the take-up of electric vehicles—and Canberra has, I think, the highest per capita take-up in the country—the range of those vehicles, I guess, necessitates us to lean into the issue and make sure we have availability for charging locally. To the point that Senator Hume raised around people being able to leave the building, sometimes it’s difficult, and having the convenience of a charging facility available at Parliament House is useful. In the public car park in particular, we have around 800,000 visitors a year to Parliament House. With the increase in the take-up of electric vehicles, it enhances our destination from a tourism point of view if people can see that they have access to electric vehicle charging when they arrive here.
Senator ROBERTS: You’re acknowledging that electric vehicles have some inconvenience attached to them, so you’re making provision to supplement that?
Mr Stefanic: No. I’m simply saying it’s a reality. There are electric vehicle charging stations popping up everywhere. We’re simply another building that’s installing them.
Senator ROBERTS: Subsidised by the taxpayer.
Mr Stefanic: They are not subsidised by the taxpayer because we are recovering that capital cost.
Senator ROBERTS: The installation is subsidised but then you recover, which is a pretty good deal for the providers.
Mr Stefanic: We use our capital funds to install the infrastructure, but then we recover the cost from the user.
Senator ROBERTS: How are your plans to install a diesel or petrol bowser progressing?
Mr Stefanic: There are no plans for fuel bowsers.
Senator ROBERTS: Why not?
Mr Stefanic: You need a storage mechanism for those things. So it would be difficult to begin with, given the building, to dig massive holes in the ground to put in storage facilities.
CHAIR: No hydrogen plant then either?
Mr Stefanic: No.
Senator Shoebridge: Next we’ll all get nuclear reactors.
Senator ROBERTS: Is it because diesel and petrol are easier to refuel? You’re saying it’s an inconvenience to use an electric car, so we need to provide services for electric cars so we can make sure we have plenty of visitors to Parliament House?
The President: If I could just correct the record—the department secretary didn’t say it was inconvenient to use an electric vehicle.
Senator ROBERTS: He didn’t use those words; he used other words. Are you aware that electric vehicle sales in the United States and the European Union are plummeting?
Mr Stefanic: No. I’m simply looking at statistics in Australia and in the ACT in particular, which indicate that the take up continues to grow.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s interesting because electric vehicles are inherently much more expensive than diesel and petrol and less efficient overall in use of resources. Canberra has the highest income per capita, as I understand it, of any city in Australia.
Australia is producing less and importing more fuel than before. Australia is obligated to keep a 90 day stockpile of oil by agreements and pure common sense, yet this country hasn’t met this threshold in over 12 years.
Minister McAllister, in a breath of clarity, faces reality and admits that hydrocarbon fuels such as petrol, diesel and jet fuel are essential in our modern economy today, despite the net-zero push. In reserves we have around 38 days or 5 weeks of petrol, 31 days or 4 weeks of diesel and 24 days 3 weeks of jet fuel. Yet Australia’s 90 days of strategic crude oil reserves, which were kept in the United States, are said to have been ‘sold’. Almost all of Australia’s liquid fuel is imported and we are extremely vulnerable to a blockade. Imagine if imports ceased.
We are no longer self-sufficient in fuels, which we should be given what’s under our soil. Imagine if there were no more imports and we had only 4 weeks of fuel left. We should be exploring for and producing more oil instead of relying on China to burn our coal and use up rare minerals like cobalt and copper, to manufacture expensive, unreliable and short-lived “renewables”.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you again for being here today. I refer to a media release from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. It is entitled ‘Australia’s fuel reserves boosted to strengthen resilience and supply’. Can you please tell me how many days in fuel stocks—
Senator McAllister: Senator Roberts, I am so sorry. Would you mind giving us the date? That will help officials track down the document that you are referring to.
Senator ROBERTS: It is 14 November 2022.
Senator McAllister: Thank you.
Senator ROBERTS: Can you please tell me how many days in fuel stocks Australia currently has of petrol, diesel and jet fuel?
Ms Svarcas: Under the minimum stockholding obligation, our industries are required to have 24 days of petrol and jet fuel and 20 days of diesel. As at 16 January—I will convert that to megalitres for you—we had 1,699 megalitres, so more than the required 24 days of petrol. We had 2,780 megalitres of diesel, which is more than the required levels under the MSO. For jet fuel, we had 547 megalitres, which again is above the MSO.
Senator ROBERTS:Thank you. Are those dates of fuel reserves in Australia? Are the reserves in Australia?
Ms Svarcas: They are either in Australia or in Australian waters. Yes, they are in Australia.
Senator ROBERTS:So that count is water stocks or reserves held overseas?
Ms Svarcas: Not reserves held overseas, Senator. They are reserves held in Australia or in Australian waters.
Senator ROBERTS: So it is in Australia and in—
Ms Svarcas: And in—
Senator ROBERTS:How many in Australia?
Ms Svarcas: I’m not sure if my colleague has a breakdown of what is in the country.
Senator ROBERTS: Physically on Australian shores right now.
Mr Cano: The stockholding obligation enables the entities to count stocks that are being held within Australia’s exclusive economic zone, and that’s taken as part of the total number. So they are in Australian waters on their way to shore.
Senator ROBERTS:So the waterborne reserves are inside our economic zone?
Ms Svarcas: Correct.
Senator ROBERTS: We’re obligated to keep 30 days—that’s three months of fuel reserves—by international agreements—correct? And plain common sense says we should be doing that. How many days does the 1,699 megalitres of petrol represent?
Mr Duggan: Are you referring there to the International Energy Agency’s oil stockholding requirement, which I think may be different to the international—
Senator ROBERTS:Could you explain the difference?
Mr Duggan: Yes. With respect to oil, there is a 30-day minimum stockholding requirement through the International Energy Agency, but I’d just distinguish. In fact, three months, or 90 days, of net imports is the requirement. I’d just distinguish that, though, from what Ms Svarcas and Mr Cano just gave evidence of, which is the minimum stockholding obligation domestically imposed by the government to ensure fuel security.
Senator ROBERTS: What is the difference between the international agreement for 90 days or three months and our own, hopefully, commonsense based requirements?
Mr Duggan: Crude oil is 90 days—international energy oil—
Senator ROBERTS: And some of that is stored overseas?
Mr Duggan: Yes, it’s held in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Senator ROBERTS: How is that a reserve for us onshore here? If China or anyone else puts a blockade on us, that’s gone.
Mr Duggan: Senator, I’m just trying to make sure you don’t conflate what are two different frameworks here. The one that Ms Svarcas and Mr Cano were referring to is a domestic fuel minimum stockholding obligation. That applies to petrol, diesel, jet fuel—
Senator ROBERTS:That was in the release from your department on 14 November 2023?
Mr Duggan: That’s correct. And then the International Energy Agency’s 90-days-of-net-imports requirement is around crude oil, and that’s obviously a separate—
Senator ROBERTS: How many days of crude oil are in Australia or within our economic zone on a boat right now?
Mr Duggan: The last reporting was in November, and we reported 50 days of holdings.
Senator ROBERTS:In Australia?
Mr Duggan: No, because as part of that we are able to count the Australian holdings and the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Senator ROBERTS:For someone sitting at home watching this who’s concerned about our oil security in a blockade by a foreign country, what sort of security have we got? Fifty days?
Ms Svarcas: I might just clarify the evidence, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS:Whose evidence? Yours or Mr Duggan’s?
Ms Svarcas: Mr Duggan’s evidence. We don’t currently have any stocks in the US stock reserve. That’s been sold. The IEA days that Mr Duggan has referred to—so the international obligation days—
Senator ROBERTS:The 90 days?
Ms Svarcas: The 90 days. We currently have 55 days of stock in there. I might just explain why it’s 55 days and why we haven’t met the 90 days. The way that’s calculated is on total eligible stocks divided by the net imports. Because Australia has been importing more fuel, it brings down the calculation of IEA days—the 90 days—which is why we’re tracking for 2023.
Senator ROBERTS:Could you explain that again?
Ms Svarcas: IEA days, the 90-day international obligation, are the total eligible stocks divided by daily net imports in the previous calendar year.
Senator ROBERTS:Daily net imports, not daily usage?
Ms Svarcas: Correct. This is why they’re two different calculations. The IEA days are about imports. Because Australia is producing less fuel and importing more, it means, just by basic mathematics, that the IEA day count will start coming off. But that does not mean in any way that we are fuel insecure, because the government has made a number of interventions—measures to ensure our fuel security—including through, as I described, the minimum stockholding obligation that means that our importers and producers must hold a certain amount of stock in Australia. So in fact we are more fuel secure now, despite the IEA days not being the 90 days.
Senator ROBERTS:So we’ve basically got three weeks or four weeks of processed fuels: diesel, petrol and jet fuel? Either on our ground or on ships near our coast?
Ms Svarcas: In our waters.
Senator ROBERTS:That’s all?
Mr Duggan: It’s 38 days of petrol, 24 days of jet fuel and 31 days of diesel.
Mr Fredericks: Senator, can we take something on notice which might help you? I’m pretty confident those numbers are reasonably higher than they have been in the past. I don’t have it here; it’s just a recollection I have. So to give you the full picture—
Senator ROBERTS: You’re saying these numbers are higher than what we’ve had in the past?
Mr Fredericks: Yes. But I’d like to test that, and I’d like to come back to you on notice with that.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. Minister, has the government done any work to determine what a reasonable and safe level of jet fuel stocks, diesel stocks and petrol stocks is? The country runs on hydrocarbon fuel. Like it or not, that’s a fact—transport, food, agriculture production.
Senator McAllister: You’re right that it’s extremely important. It has been an area of work for the government, and the secretary can talk you through the details.
Mr Fredericks: Yes, I was going to say, Senator, just to be clear, that back in, I think, the middle of last year, 2023, the government set what it regarded as the appropriate minimum stockholding obligations.
Senator ROBERTS:The current government in 2022?
Mr Fredericks: Correct, and my team can correct me if I’m getting this wrong. To answer the question you have posed, it made a judgement about what the appropriate minimum stockholding obligations for those three fuels were. To give you an example, the minimum stockholding obligation for petrol is 24 days. I understand it increases at some stage to 27, but at the moment the country holds 38. So petrol is one where the judgement—and the answer to your question, ‘What’s the minimum required?’—is 24, and current holdings are 38. So that’s a pretty good picture—
Senator ROBERTS:All the figures I’ve just been given are above the requirements?
Mr Fredericks: Correct.
Senator ROBERTS:But there’s still only a maximum of around three weeks, four weeks and five weeks, respectively?
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, we’re going to rotate the call. I believe they’ve taken on notice—
Senator ROBERTS: Could I put something on notice?
CHAIR: I was going to say we can come back to you.
Senator ROBERTS:Can I get the derivation of those figures on notice, please?
At this year’s Davos, less government officials were present than usual, yet Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, was not only present, but she was also an agenda contributor, pushing for greater online safety.
I asked in what capacity Ms Julie Inman Grant was present at Davos for the World Economic Forum 2024 annual meeting, what was the cost to Australian taxpayers and whether staff travelled with her on this trip at public expense. As an independent statutory authority, Commissioner Inman Grant is planning to embrace global opportunities to help achieve the outcomes she perceives necessary for online safety. The Commissioner is seeking broader powers to achieve her agenda, for our own good of course, and once again this begs the question exactly who is deciding what is ‘good’?
Listening to her speak about online safety regulations, the one word conspicuous by its absence is censorship. The other missing words were freedom of expression.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for being here today. Did you attend the World Economic Forum planning session in Davos last month? If so, was that in your personal capacity or as the eSafety Commissioner?
Ms Inman Grant: I attended the world economic global summit as the eSafety Commissioner. I achieved more in four days than I could in four years because I was meeting with senior technology executives. I was talking directly to the people who are building AI and immersive technologies and asked directly the decision makers what they are doing to make their platforms safer. I was sharing really our leadership and our model in terms of how we’re tackling online safety.
Senator ROBERTS: Well, I think we’re the ones who should be assessing whether or not you’re justified. How many staff accompanied you? What was the cost to taxpayers?
Ms Inman Grant: I will take that on notice. I had one staff member accompany me. I supplemented that with trips to Brussels, where I met with European Commission officials, and to Dublin to meet with my fellow regulators in Ireland and the UK. So it was a very productive trip.
Senator ROBERTS: Now can I have the justification, please? What did taxpayers get for their money? How did attending help in the discharge of your duties?
Ms Inman Grant: Well, I had access to the presidents of most of the major technology companies, including the CEO of OpenAI. I was able to ask him what they were planning to do to build safety into this. Any time that we can influence the decision-makers at this level to make technology safer is better.
Senator ROBERTS: You run an online agency, right?
Ms Inman Grant: I run—
Senator ROBERTS: Couldn’t you have done this online?
Ms Inman Grant: I run a real agency that has real people and capital equipment. I couldn’t engage in this forum online and not have those kinds of meetings to make a real difference for Australians in terms of getting real change happening.
Senator ROBERTS: You are referencing your panel session at Davos. Your office has just sent Twitter a notice regarding them allowing hate on the Twitter platform, including allowing previously suspended users back on the platform.
Ms Inman Grant: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Can you give me examples of Australian accounts that X has allowed back on that your office objects to?
Ms Inman Grant: Well, the online hate notice looked at the range of trust and safety governance steps that they had taken, including firing 80 per cent of their safety engineers, more than half of their content moderators and 80 per cent of their public policy personnel—so the people who actually look after the safety. We did ask them. It was reported that there were 62,000 previously banned users. To be permanently banned on Twitter, you have to have violated the policies pretty egregiously a number of times. We asked them the question. They responded. We asked about the 62,000. They responded with 6,100. We assumed that meant they reinstated 6,100 previously banned Australian accounts, which wasn’t in the manner and form of the notice and the question that we asked them. They didn’t name what those specific ones were, but they did tell us that there are no additional safety provisions even though they have been permanently banned for online hate in some cases.
Senator ROBERTS: It seems to me, Ms Grant, that you’re assuming the previous bans were in order. Had you explored those previous bans before coming to that judgement?
Ms Inman Grant: Twitter, as the company, had a whole range of policies, including a hateful conduct policy. They remove or—
Senator ROBERTS: So you haven’t? What you’ve done is you’ve gone off their interpretation of their policy, even though we know they were biased.
Ms Inman Grant: That’s the only thing we can do, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: Could you come back to my question—
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, please allow Ms Inman Grant to answer.
Senator ROBERTS: and give me examples of Australian accounts?
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, I appreciate that you are somewhat agitated. Could you please respect the witnesses and allow them to answer the questions.
Senator ROBERTS: I would like the witness to give me examples of Australian accounts that X has allowed back that her office objects to. That’s my question and you haven’t answered it.
Ms Inman Grant: I didn’t ask them specific questions about which accounts they were. I asked for the quant the numbers.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Are you setting yourself up as an arbiter of what should and should not be seen online?
Ms Inman Grant: No. I am not. I have been designated by the government to serve as the eSafety Commissioner and to remediate harms of online individuals who have experienced online abuse and, in most cases, have reported that abuse to the platform. The platform hasn’t enforced their terms of policy, so we are there as a safety net or a backstop to help remediate that harm.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Your remarks included this comment, and I quote: There are lots of different tools in the toolbox we’ll be using. What are those tools? Under what explicit power do you possess them? Who supervises how you use them?
Ms Inman Grant: All our powers are designated under the Online Safety Act. We have a range of complaints schemes that deal with youth based cyber bullying, image-based abuse, adult cyber abuse and the online content scheme. We have systems and process powers under the basic online safety expectations. We have now six codes registered and two standards that we’re working on. They are the primary tools.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Who supervises how you use them? Who assesses whether or not you’re being effective or overextending?
Ms Inman Grant: Well, we are held to account. We have lots of reporting and transparency and accountability measures ourselves. If there’s ever a question about any decision that is made, it can be challenged through internal review, the ombudsman, the AAT or the Federal Court. So we are accountable to the people and the government.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. At the World Economic Forum planning session in Davos, you said, and I quote: We have started something called the Global Online Safety Regulator. Who is ‘we’? Did you receive ministerial permission to involve Australia in another globalist power sink hole? You may laugh, but we are facing a big threat.
Ms Inman Grant: I am an independent statutory authority. The Internet is global. Most of our regulatory targets are based overseas. For more than seven years, we were the only online safety regulator in the world. Now, we use the tools we have and we can be effective, but we know we’re going to go much further when we work together with other like-minded independent statutory authorities around the globe. So with the UK, with Ireland and with Fiji in November 2022, we launched the global online safety regulators network. That has now grown to seven independent regulators, including France, South Korea and South Africa. A number of countries are serving as observers. That is so we can achieve a degree of regulatory coherence for the technology industry and make sure that we’re working together to achieve better safety outcomes for all of our citizens.
Senator ROBERTS: Did you get ministerial approval for that?
Ms Inman Grant: I don’t think it was required. Certainly the minister was aware.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. This is a further remark you made—this is how it was reported:
We have reached a tipping point where technology is neither good nor bad. We need to be pushing towards the forces of good. That comment seems steeped in hubris. Who decides what the forces of good are? You?
Ms Inman Grant: Well, the Online Safety Act does define thresholds for harm. Certainly our research looks at the benefits and the drawbacks in terms of how people experience technology and whether it helps them to create, to connect, to work and to communicate versus the harms that they experience, whether it’s—
Senator ROBERTS: How do you listen to people?
Ms Inman Grant: How do I listen to people?
Senator ROBERTS: You just said it’s the people who decide.
Ms Inman Grant: I listen to people in many different ways. We have citizen facing complaints schemes. We’re out in forums all the time. We correspond. We also have about two million people who visit our website every year so they can access resources or report forms of online abuse.
Senator ROBERTS: This is my last question, Chair. Thank you for that. You state: Deepfakes are covered under our world leading image-based abuse scheme, which has close to a 90 per cent success rate. How do you measure 90 per cent objectively? This is your statement.
Ms Inman Grant: We look at the number of complaints that we receive. The 90 per cent success rate is because in the vast majority of cases people just want the intimate imagery and videos taken down, mostly through informal means. We measure the 90 per cent based on how many complaints we receive and how many we get down.
Senator ROBERTS: So the images reported and the images removed? Ninety per cent of them would be removed?
Mr Dagg: When we investigate a complaint about image-based abuse, for example, or any of the other harms set out in our complaint schemes, we measure the response to our requests for removal or our formal interventions. We find, as the commissioner said, requests to be far more efficient and produce a faster turnaround, so they constitute the bulk of our interventions. Ninety per cent of those in the case of image-based abuse succeed. That measure of success is whether or not the images are taken down.
In Senate Estimates, Snowy Hydro Chief, Dennis Barnes, revealed that the tunnel boring machine, Florence, has finally started boring again after being bogged for most of the last year. Florence became bogged because the planning for Snowy 2.0 was rushed and designed to meet a political timetable under Prime Minister Turnbull. A critical review of the Turnbull thought bubble would have never authorised work to start. The scheme has now run into problem after problem that should have been foreseen.
The bogging of Florence is just one of many problems that has seen the costs rise from $2 billion when announced, to a staggering $12 billion today. This does not include $5 – $10 billion in poles and wires to get the power out. Those lines will carve a scar through the Kosciuszko National Park, which for some reason is okay with “greenies”.
Hydro needs water. If the scheme has to rely only on water being pumped up to the top dam, the scheme will never generate enough power to pay for itself and will become a white elephant. The Snowy Hydro Authority are relying on a 2002 water agreement that gives them access to water, however there are many agreements, notably the Murray Darling Basin Plan, that now lay claim to that same water. It is criminal that the Authority has not sorted out its water supply at this late stage.
In the second video I asked about local information received that the tunnel drilling machine will encounter natural seams of asbestos, which will result in more cost and delays. I was surprised to have this confirmed, as asbestos has not been mentioned so far. I can only wonder what else they are hiding. This project is 100% funded by the taxpayers who I think are about to lose a very large sum of money. It will be cheaper to stop the project now than throw good money after bad.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing here today. I said in 2018 that this is a dog: no cost-benefit analysis, no transparent business case and no basis. From your January 2024 project update, it seems that Florence has started moving again, drilling the headrace tunnel at Tantangara. How much distance has been made since the machine became bogged?
Mr Barnes: As of this morning, 241 metres.
Senator ROBERTS: How many weeks is that?
Mr Barnes: That’s about eight weeks.
Senator ROBERTS: Let’s move on to the water. Once completed, how much water will the project require to operate, and what will the losses be to evaporation and seepage?
Mr Barnes: The Tantangara Dam reservoir will contain 350,000 gigawatt hours of water equivalent, which is around 700 gigalitres.
Senator ROBERTS: How many gigalitres?
Mr Barnes: Sorry, 240 gigalitres, two-thirds of that. The losses on moving the water uphill and bringing it downhill is in the order of 20 per cent.
Senator ROBERTS: And evaporation and seepage?
Mr Barnes: There’s no additional evaporation caused by the operation of Snowy 2.0.
Senator ROBERTS: I appreciate you can access Talbingo water, but I’m looking at issues around Tantangara, the top dam. Tantangara Dam has a poor catchment design, as I understand it, holds a nominal 250 gigalitres—you said 240—and is currently at 19 per cent capacity, so roughly 47 gigalitres. You must be watching the water closely, since water is essential to your project. Can you tell me the latest capacity and how much of that is that is dead storage?
Mr Barnes: Tantangara reservoir allows us to store 240 gigalitres. Obviously, before we were to operate Snowy 2.0, we would ensure that it was more full than 19 per cent, but there’s no lost storage in effect.
Senator ROBERTS: What is the effective storage that you’re counting on?
Mr Barnes: It’s 240 gigalitres, which turns into 350 gigawatt hours.
Senator ROBERTS: The long-term weather forecasts say it’ll be fairly wet until it starts becoming dry around 2032, when Snowy 2.0 starts. Tantangara, as I understand it, is used to store and release all of the environmental water going into the Murrumbidgee River. What happens if the 40 gigalitres available after dead water—unless there’s another figure in there; dead water being the amount of water that’s basically inaccessible because it’s below the outlet—are required for environmental flow? Who owns the water that you pump from Talbingo to Tantangara? Can you show me the water use agreement between your project, the federal government and the NSW government, please?
Mr Barnes: We don’t own the water; we operate under the terms of our water licence, which is a public document. Perhaps Mr Whitby can—
Mr Whitby: Senator, I think you’re not taking into account the natural inflows that occur into the upper Murrumbidgee, which, from memory and off the top of my head, is about a similar amount to that 240 gigalitres of storage.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s a fairly small catchment, though, as I understand it.
Mr Whitby: There’s still quite a bit of water that comes in there.
Senator ROBERTS: Quite a bit—how much?
Mr Whitby: I just said, off the top of my head, that it’s around 240 gigalitres of natural inflows.
Senator ROBERTS: So that’s in addition—
Mr Whitby: And, additionally, when Snowy 2.0 is operating, depending on the balance between pumping and generation, you can take water out of Talbingo, the lower storage, which is the whole point of the arrangement.
Senator ROBERTS: My understanding is that the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder owns and controls every drop in that dam.
Mr Whitby: No.
Senator ROBERTS: The Snowy Water Inquiry Outcomes Implementation Deed, SWIOID—which was some years ago—is currently under review based on the upper Murrumbidgee River running dry recently. Will any outcome from that review lead to your water entitlement being reduced or affected in any way?
Mr Barnes: I think it’s too early to say that; it has some time to go.
Senator ROBERTS: That would be a significant risk to the whole project. Surely you’ve done some assessments of it.
Mr Barnes: I think the review will take into account and balance the needs of our stakeholders, including the national electricity market. There are times, of course, where—if we go back to the 2019 drought and bushfires—the flows through the upper Murrumbidgee were higher than naturally would have occurred, as a result of our operations. So it can have a positive effect.
Senator ROBERTS: According to an ABC article, Snowy Hydro has previously stated that the regulation governing water allocations for the scheme is independent of it and that the government owns the water; is that correct?
Mr Whitby: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: So there’s no agreement at risk here—or anything subject to an agreement?
Mr Barnes: We operate under our water licence. The implementation deed you referred to from 2002 is the instrument that’s under review.
Senator ROBERTS: From 2002—that’s SWIOID.
Mr Barnes: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Three weeks ago, the New South Wales government announced temporary water restrictions on Murrumbidgee water licences, specifically water sources I and II, high-flow river licences. Are you confident you’ll always get your water? Everyone seems to be claiming the water—the farms, the towns, the environment—but who actually gets it in the water brawl?
Mr Barnes: I might leave that one to Mr Whitby, but we don’t consume any water.
Mr Whitby: I’m not sure I really understand the question, Senator. Are you asking if we’re confident that we will get future inflows?
Senator ROBERTS: Yes.
Mr Whitby: That’s a matter for the gods; I’ll leave it there.
Senator ROBERTS: So we’re leaving it to the gods.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Of the now $12 billion projected cost, how much of that is private money?
Mr Barnes: I’m not sure I understand the question, but—
Senator ROBERTS: Is it all taxpayer money?
Mr Barnes: Snowy will finance its debt position, because of course we have debt for the purposes of our operating cash flows, from the bank market or the bond market, and I think we’ve been public that the $6 million increase will require some equity support from the Commonwealth. That level hasn’t been determined yet.
Senator ROBERTS: So its component is privately funded; the debt will be privately funded and then paid back through the revenue?
Mr Barnes: Well, we pay a dividend, obviously, to the Commonwealth and over the last 10 years we’ve paid $2 billion in dividends and $1 billion in taxes, so it is an investment that the Commonwealth get a return on.
Senator ROBERTS: I understand that in answer to Senator Cadel earlier on, you said the net present value is now $3 billion.
Mr Barnes: That’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: Is that with a $5 billion cost or $12 billion cost?
Mr Barnes: A $12 billion.
Senator ROBERTS: Could you provide on notice the price of the power you sell that you envisage? Your selling price? We’d like to get a feel for the cost.
Mr Barnes: The Snowy 2.0 concept is that its revenue comes from two sources: the provision of insurance to all the participants in the market—so that doesn’t have a power price; it has a fee—and then the difference in the cost of pumping the water up, which will likely occur when there is excess renewables, and the revenue from generating electricity as the water comes down. So there isn’t what you would call a translatable energy price that results.
Senator ROBERTS: On what basis is the project calculated to give a net present value of $3 billion? If we could have the basis for that.
Mr Barnes: We’ve done market modelling on those two revenue streams. Bear in mind that that is an activity we undertake today for our current 5,500 megawatts. We have seen increasingly, with the increase in variable and renewable electricity, that the market value of those two services has gone up.
Senator ROBERTS: Can we get access to your costs, please, so that we can understand how the $3 billion net present value is calculated?
Mr Barnes: We haven’t released the detailed business case on the present value of the project.
Senator ROBERTS: So we can’t get it?
Mr Barnes: I think we have taken on notice in the past that we would consider what business case could be provided. But the business case essence is no different to when it originally went to FID.
Senator ROBERTS: A lot of the key assumptions back then were redacted.
Mr Barnes: A business case was released a number of years ago, and all of the same dynamics apply, except that the market for the services we provide has increased.
Senator ROBERTS: Can we get a feel for the revenue from the guarantee—the insurance if you like—as well as the profit on the price difference?
Mr Barnes: I think I’ve said publicly before that—and one can calculate this—the revenue from Snowy 2.0 is in the order of a billion dollars a year. One-third is from capacity sales, and one-third is from a shift in electricity from low-price times to higher price times.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, it seems to me the taxpayer is taking a big risk here so far with what we’ve seen of the performance of Snowy 2.0. Why can’t the taxpayers see what they’re paying for and the risk they’re being exposed to?
Senator McAllister: I think the history of this project is well understood. We’ve asked Snowy management to take a more active role in assessing and responding to project risk, and we’ve talked already about the reset. I think, as part of the reset, Snowy management—Mr Barnes and his team—released quite an amount of information and the results of their analysis of their position, and they’ve made clear their assessment about the value that sits within the project. If there’s any further information we can provide, we’re happy to consider it.
Senator ROBERTS: Could you take that on notice, please. What are your annual maintenance costs in your net present value calculations?
Mr Barnes: I don’t have the number off the top of my head, but it’s relatively small.
Senator ROBERTS: Could you take that on notice.
Mr Barnes: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: This is my final question. We’ve heard reports from someone who’s local, so we’re not saying it’s definite—I haven’t got a publication; it’s just reports from a local. Have you encountered natural asbestos as part of land clearing, drilling or construction of Snowy 2.0?
Mr Barnes: I’m not sure we have to date, but we do expect to—
Mr Whitby: I would phrase it as there is a risk that we may encounter naturally occurring asbestos.
Senator ROBERTS: What sort of risk is that? Is it from geology projecting forward? What’s the basis of it?
Mr Whitby: From projection, geological models based on the geological surveying that we’ve done.
Senator ROBERTS: And drilling as a part of that?
Mr Whitby: Correct.
Senator ROBERTS: Where is it, what are the costs, and what delays will this cause?
Mr Barnes: We don’t know exactly where it may occur, but the design of Florence is such that, were it to be encountered, Florence would convert into its closed or slurry mode and be able to handle the excavation. It’s a risk that’s already been planned for.
Senator ROBERTS: So it’s incorporated in the cost?
https://img.youtube.com/vi/IZ-wzdjIUQE/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-02-22 15:12:472024-02-22 15:12:53Snowy 2.0 Will Never Dig Itself Out of a Hole
Jim Chalmers has said the government has no idea how many homes bought by overseas investors are sitting vacant in Australia.
I asked in senate estimates how the government plans to fine foreign owners of empty houses if they can’t even find that out. It’s just a thought bubble so Labor can try to look good without actually doing anything.
Just ban foreign ownership altogether!
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing today. My questions are on Treasury’s plans to find foreign investors who leave properties that they own vacant. How you going to enforce that? Even Treasurer Jim Chalmers said we have no idea how many are being left vacant. Are you going to send people around doorknocking to see if there are any empty homes? It sounds like headline grabbing to me.
Ms R Kelley: As we’ve mentioned before, the Australian Taxation Office does have a compliance function that specifically deals with the vacancy issue. I have a colleague here from the ATO who can assist in answering the question, but they have a very well-established compliance program. They do look at the vacancy rate and they do enforce that when houses are left vacant for more than 183 days per year; they do actually follow up. I’m sure we can get some numbers, if you like, in terms of recent action by the ATO, but part of the government’s announcements around the increase in fees was also that increased resources were being given to the ATO to assist in strengthening that compliance approach.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Ms Kelley.
Mr Thompson : That’s correct. I thought I might briefly explain how we enforce the existing vacancy fee rules. Obviously, these are amendments to the rates, but they don’t change our enforcement approach. People who are in scope—in the population in 2022-23 that was about 12,500—that we track are required to lodge a vacancy fee return every year. Some of those foreign investors declare to us that the property is vacant, in which case we levy them the vacancy fee. We also conduct compliance activities on the remainder of the population. For those foreign investors who don’t lodge a return, we deem a vacancy fee on them and they need to contact us if they think that we have deemed that fee incorrectly.
Senator ROBERTS: How accurate is your register of foreign owners? Have you done any testing on it to make sure all the foreign owners are in fact registering?
Mr Thompson : Yes. As we explained in some questions on notice following the last estimates, we get the full data set for the real property transaction registry. For example, in 2022-23 the number was around 2.4 million individual entries. We work through a range of data-matching techniques to get that down to a potential compliance pool in the thousands and then we publish our compliance numbers, and they’re generally in the hundreds. In that sense, we’re very confident about the in-scope population under the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act rule.
I would make the point that there is sometime debate about the exact numbers, and I think that goes to the different definitions that different regimes use. For example, we’re aware that the rule of the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act is slightly different from state and territory land tax acts. There’s also a NAB survey that is run every so often, and that asks the question about overseas buyers, as opposed to foreigners. When people talk about the numbers—I’d say we’re very confident of the numbers under the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act definition, but that’s not to say that, if people are using different definitions, you might not come up with different numbers.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s a question I’ll ask later, in another session. When it made its release, the government said it expects to collect $500 million a year in these extra changes—$170,000 per person. If the charge is $170,000, that’s less than 3,000 homes, and many of those 3,000 will probably still stay vacant because foreign buyers are rich and can probably afford to just pay the charge. Has Treasury conducted any modelling on how many of those 3,000 they expect to become occupied because of this thought bubble? You just mentioned 12,500 vacancies.
Ms R Kelley: I think we need to clarify that the predicted revenue is based on the total application fees as well as the vacancy fees.
Senator ROBERTS: How many houses do you expect to be trapped in this scheme?
Ms R Kelley : It depends. Every year there are different numbers. In the last financial year, 3,542 houses were purchased by foreign investors, so they would definitely be captured. The people who are purchasing are captured. The application fees have been tripled. They range with the value of the property, and the application fee increases with the increase in the property value. Then you have the numbers that Mr Thompson was talking about in terms of the number of houses that are already purchased and registered and that the vacancy fees apply to. The calculation around the revenue are based on those sorts of numbers as well. It’s both factors.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, it makes it really simple, doesn’t it? Why not ban all foreign ownership of housing? That would solve the housing crisis.
Senator Gallagher: I am not sure it would when we look at the numbers involved in the evidence that’s just been given, and that is not the government’s position.
Senator ROBERTS: Why isn’t it the government position? There are Australians in caravans, tents and cars.
Senator Gallagher: Again, there are a number of reasons why there is pressure in the housing market at the moment, whether you be renting, homeless or seeking to buy your first home. Not all of that can be attributed, as I think you would like to argue, to foreign ownership.
Senator ROBERTS: I am not saying ‘all,’ but I am saying massive immigration is driving up housing prices.
Senator Gallagher: That, again, is a different issue to the subject of foreign ownership. You’ve been given the numbers today.
Senator ROBERTS: We’re concerned about Australians residents and citizens in tents, caravans, cars, under bridges—
Senator Gallagher: That is why we have all the effort on the housing side to generate supply.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/Aa-nY1-R2TM/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-02-22 15:09:022024-02-22 15:09:08Foreign-Owned Homes Vacant as Growing Numbers of Australians Are Made Homeless!
Why is the ADF so secretive and unwilling to answer straightforward questions? The refusal to provide information is endemic in Defence, and there is no justification for it.
The answer to why three ADF vessels were involved in a photo shoot instead of participating in the search and potential rescue of victims of the downed Taipan helicopter could have easily been provided when I first asked. It could have been given when the question was put on notice. Instead, it was treated as though cloaked in secrecy, despite the fact that the answer was not classified information.
Since these questions, we have discovered that Defence deleted all images of the photo shoot from their website. If it was a simple answer, why the cover-up?
We also know that General Campbell’s assertion that these ships couldn’t operate in the area is nonsense, given that the HMAS Adelaide, according to Defence -“has been designed with the shallowest possible draft to allow her to… manoeuvre tactically in the shallow waters common in the littoral regions”.
The Minister and the ADF need to realise that we are all on the same side and stop trying to withhold information from the Australian public, whom they are employed to serve.
It might be embarrassing, but the cover-up is always worse than the initial crime.
Despite General Campbell’s initial claim that this type of boat couldn’t navigate the waters around the Whitsundays, it turned out to be untrue. General Campbell later clarified that HMAS Adelaide was, in fact, tasked to the search and rescue operation after the photo was taken. Why is it so hard to get a straight answer out of Defence?
Transcript
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, you have the call.
Senator ROBERTS: General Campbell, initially you said that you were unfamiliar with a question on notice; then one of your staff handed you the question on notice this morning. You then had lunch; presumably you chatted. I concluded that you were saying, ‘There’s not a single person in this building right now’—at the time—’in the waiting rooms that can answer whether there was a single vessel on the Exercise Talisman Sabre 2023 maritime photo shoot on 29 July, when the other vessels in the area were searching for the downed Taipan.’ I’ve already asked this four months ago and, while I have a response, I still do not have an answer. You did not answer it on notice; now you want to take it on notice again. I wonder where the Chief of Navy was. Could he explain? Could he have been brought to the table? This is a question about Navy vessels. I’m wondering whether there was no-one in this room or in the waiting rooms who could have answered that question. I’d like to table these documents, Chair.
CHAIR: I’ll have a look at them first.
Senator ROBERTS: The United States Navy has taken a photo and it’s dated 29 July. It’s an obvious photo shoot of the Talisman Sabre fleet and, in it, they say that the American ships are sailing in formation with the Royal Australian Navy Canberra class landing helicopter dock ship HMAS Canberra as part of the Talisman Sabre photo shoot. I’ll wait until you get the photo.
CHAIR: We’re just going to circulate it for information only because we need to be able to verify the photo. I know that there’s other information there, but we need to be able to verify it before we actually agree to table it. For the benefit of the witnesses, I’ll agree for it to be circulated as information only at this stage. As I said earlier, in my opening statement, it would be great if senators could send us an email with an electronic copy so that we can ensure that the secretariat can do what they do in a more efficient manner.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m sure that they’ll be watching.
CHAIR: I’m sure they have other things on, too. Who were you directing your question to?
Gen. Campbell: We have the photographs. What is your question?
Senator ROBERTS: There are several questions. First of all, this shows an Australian vessel at the photo shoot on the 29th and it wasn’t searching for the wreckage or the bodies from the downed Taipan. Why is that the case?
Gen. Campbell: I’ll let the Chief of Navy explain in more detail, but senators will see this photograph is out in open water, in an extended area. There are some ships in the Australian fleet and, indeed, in the US and international partner fleet, that are not suited to the work required in confined waters and with variable depths to deal with searching for a lost helicopter and crew. There’s a distinction here between what is suitable and hence applied to the search and what is not suitable and not considered for the search. I’ll turn to the Chief of Navy, as perhaps he would wish to speak further.
Vice Adm. Hammond: The CDF has laid it out precisely. That large array of ships in the photograph is in open water, some distance from land. It is routine to mark the beginning or the end of a large naval exercise with a group photograph. You’ll see there are aircraft carriers in there of the United States Navy—multiple vessels. There are Australian ships that are not in that photograph, because they were engaged in the search and rescue effort in confined waters inside the Whitsunday Islands. I submit that, had all of those ships been in that search area, we would have had a problem; there just isn’t enough sea room. The focus was on conducting a surface search initially for survivors, as I understand it, and for signs of wreckage. There were civilian craft involved and there were aircraft, rotary wing and fixed-wing, and there was no shortage of assets for that search—that very tragic incident.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for your explanation. I understand your explanation. I’ll read the two responses that we got to questions on notice. I was specifically asking about a schedule of ships and boats that were available. The answer was: During Exercise Talisman Sabre 23, two maritime photographic activities were held on 22 and 29 July 2023. These activities included vessels participating in the exercise from Australia, the United States, Japan and the Republic of Korea. Nowhere did it give the explanation that you’ve just given—nowhere.
Vice Adm. Hammond: As the Chief of Navy, I’m not involved in the conduct of the Chief of Joint Operations. I suspect that request did not come to me.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m not saying that it did. I’m saying that it came from Defence, and Defence were very guarded in what they said. They said, ‘We were sincere, and we are sincere, in pursuing this issue.’ I got another answer, to question No. 23, which stated: There were six Royal Australian Navy warships in the area of operations on the night of the incident. Defence does not comment on the operational tasking of its assets. When we’ve seen what we’ve seen with the Taipans and been horrified by the loss of life on those Taipans, and then we see the nice photo shoot that we were on, we have a duty to ask those questions. We didn’t get the damn answers. We were led astray. It was suppressed. What you have said makes sense to me. You’re not going to have a US aircraft carrier ploughing around in the Whitsundays looking for a helicopter; I get that. You had at least one boat out in open waters; I get it. Why couldn’t we have been told that? What is Defence repeatedly trying to hide? We have seen issue after issue which Defence seems sensitive about.
Vice Adm. Hammond: I understand your frustration. I am not in a position to answer why there was not a more fulsome response. I stand by my testimony. The resources available that had the necessary capabilities were applied at speed—that is my understanding—the minute the accident was known, which was at night; the night of the accident. I don’t recall being asked for comment in response to your inquiries.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I accept your testimony, but we will be putting further questions on notice about this issue. Chair, I draw to the committee’s attention that there seem to be so many things that this chief of defence forces is either not open about or is hiding.
Senator McAllister: Senator—and Chair, perhaps—is it necessary to make general ad hominem attacks on the officials before the committee? Officials are here to answer questions about the budget. Officials—I think you have observed this morning—are willing to speak, as they have done now, when asked questions about particular matters. I am not sure it assists anyone to make broad and general accusations which are not substantiated against individuals in the room. I am not sure that helps the Senate in its work.
Senator ROBERTS: There are many issues that have not been talked about openly. Senator Shoebridge, Senator Lambie, other senators and I have raised serious issues, and we don’t seem to be getting the answers. Minister, you should have been at least doing a PII when you didn’t. I put the same question to you: there seems to be something that the defence department runs over the top of you—
Senator McAllister: Senator Roberts, I am happy to answer questions. If you have questions, please put them to us; to the officials and to me—
Senator ROBERTS: I am happy to do so. It is not just my frustration; it is my deep sadness at the loss of life which seems to have been unnecessarily lost in those Taipans.
CHAIR: I don’t think anyone would dispute that. We are all very sad about what has happened—
Senator ROBERTS: It borders on anger, though, when it could have been avoided.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing today. I turn to the MRH-90 Taipan crash in the Whitsundays. We remember the aircrew of 6th Aviation Regiment: Capital Danniel Lyon, Lieutenant Maxwell Nugent, Warrant Officer Class 2 Joseph Laycock, and Corporal Alexander Naggs. Lest we forget. The MRH-90 helicopter crashed into waters around Lindeman Island late Friday night, 28 July 2023—around 10.30 pm, from reports. On 29 July, the search and rescue operation were still looking for missing aircrew and trying to locate the helicopter. At sometime on 29 July the Navy was off on a maritime photoshoot. General Campbell, were there any Australian vessels at the Talisman Sabre 24 maritime photographic exercise on 29 July, 2023; yes or no?
Gen. Campbell: I haven’t come prepared for that question. I will see whether any of my colleagues can answer, otherwise I will have to take it on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: I want to be clear, General Campbell. Late on Friday night the helicopter crashed. On Saturday, the next day, it seems that you could have had maritime assets, tasked on a photoshoot, off and away. What vessels were tasked to the Talisman Sabre maritime photographic activities on 29 July, if any were, and why the hell weren’t they tasked to the search and rescue operation? That is what I would like to know.
Gen. Campbell: We will take it on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: I asked you in October to give me a schedule of all vessels in the area of operations and exactly when each one was tasked to assist with the search-and-rescue operation. You said in question on notice No. 23: Defence does not comment on the operational tasking of its assets. You are not in the middle of a war. This tasking isn’t sensitive information; it is a peacetime search and rescue operation. Why won’t you answer that?
Gen. Campbell: I will have to return to that question on notice to understand the background, for me to be able to your question.
Senator ROBERTS: Were you embarrassed about the ship not being engaged in the search area, but off on a photoshoot?
Gen. Campbell: That has never crossed my mind. I can get the answers for you, but I know that our people engaged in that exercise were very conscious of how to be of assistance in supporting that downed aircraft and, at that stage, the missing aircrew.
Senator ROBERTS: In regard to the failure to provide the schedule of vessels, you don’t get to say, ‘I am not answering that question’ to the Senate. It is time you were reminded of that. You have refused to provide information to this committee, and you do not have any public interest immunity claim lodged. You are, therefore, in contempt of this committee.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, you may want to withdraw that, unless there is some evidence you are trying to put forward. I suggest you rephrase that line of questioning.
Senator ROBERTS: Chair, a witness is required to produce to this committee any information or documents that are requested. There is no privacy, security, freedom of information or other legislation that overrides this committee’s constitutional powers to gather evidence. Witnesses are protected from any potential prosecution as a result of their evidence or of producing documents to this committee. If anyone seeks to pressure a witness against producing documents, that is also a contempt.
CHAIR: I understand that, but it is a matter for the Senate to determine that. You can put forward the case. I ask if you could withdraw the assertion that the general is in contempt, because that would be a matter for the Senate to work out, if we were to go down that path. Please withdraw that aspect.
Senator ROBERTS: Chair, the general has not provided a public interest immunity claim yet—
CHAIR: It is not a debatable point. I am asking you to withdraw so we can move on, and you can continue your line of questioning.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay; I withdraw.
CHAIR: Thank you.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, you are well aware of the procedures around estimates. Witnesses cannot just refuse to answer questions or refuse to hand over information. They must ask you, the minister, to raise a public interest immunity claim. It is up to the Senate whether to accept that answer or insist otherwise. Why are you letting Defence run rampant and refuse to hand over information, without even the courtesy of a public interest immunity claim?
Senator McAllister: I do not accept the assertion, or that characterisation of the behaviour of Defence. All senators are aware of the standing orders. That is true for the senators on this side of the table, and the senators sitting before us. The CDF has indicated that he is willing to review the answer that has been provided. He has taken your question on notice. Your question went to the grounds on which the information was not provided. He has indicated that he will examine that. You have asked him to do so, and he has taken it on notice. He will come back to you when he has the information.
Senator ROBERTS: I asked you to give me on notice a list of every report or briefing provided to Defence or created internally raising issues with the Taipan helicopter. Your answer was that this would take too many resources to collate together. That sums up the Taipan, doesn’t it?
Senator McAllister: Again, that question essentially invites speculation on your rhetorical position. If there is a specific question of fact or policy that you wish to address to officials, you should do so. Asking them to speculate about a rhetorical characterisation of a project is not reasonable.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, are you aware that Defence had said it would take too many resources to collate a list of every report or briefing provided to Defence or created internally raising issues with the Taipan helicopter?
Senator McAllister: Is there a particular question you are referring to?
Senator ROBERTS: Are you aware?
Senator McAllister: This committee asks many questions on notice, and many answers are provided. Is there a number, or a particular question on notice, for which an answer has been provided in these terms that you can point me to?
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, I just explained it.
Senator McAllister: Do you have a number? It is difficult for me to respond if you cannot even tell me which question we are talking about. I am happy to look at it.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ll get back to you on that one.
Gen. Campbell: I refer to the question on notice Senator Roberts was referring to, from 25 October, 2023 on page 52 of the Hansard proof. The answer was: ‘There were six Royal Australian Navy warships in the area of operation on the night of the incident. Defence doesn’t comment on the operational tasking of its assets.’ That is correct—we don’t. But I want to reinforce the assurance that every asset that could be of assistance from Australia or from any of our partner nations in that exercise was tasked to be of assistance.
Senator ROBERTS: General, were any Australian Navy vessels tasked at the same time on a photoshoot?
Gen. Campbell: That is what I will have to come back to you on. You are talking about the next day, the 29th perhaps.
Senator ROBERTS: Correct, while the other vessels were engaged in search and rescue.
Gen. Campbell: I will come back to you on that, Senator.
If you get audited by the Tax Office and you’re missing documents, you could go to jail. The Hunter Frigates program is a $45 billion purchase yet Defence didn’t keep records of key decisions. Will anybody be held accountable for this mess of a program?
It’s been revealed that the cost of nine Frigates has blown out to $65 billion and the government is still proceeding with building three fewer ships for the same price we were supposed to get nine for. Defence is also outsourcing its recruitment drive with a $1.3 billion contract, yet 7 months of recruitment has gone down. The Generals in Defence are leaving us in a huge mess.
Regarding the Arafura Offshore Patrol Boats, why would the Defence department buy a military ship that can land a helicopter on it, but not actually use this feature? It doesn’t make sense to pay $300 million per boat while cutting essential features to save minimal costs.
Would the two heads of Defence, each on $1 million a year, take responsibility for the abysmal Hunter Frigate program? The response appeared to be, “Not my fault”. At four times the Prime Minister’s wage, we deserve better.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: My first set of questions is about the Arafura-class offshore patrol vessels. Going to the design of those vessels, the Navy website listing the capabilities of SEA1180 does not include a mention of a helicopter. The Brunei version of our offshore patrol vessel has a deck than an 11-tonne helicopter can be landed on. Were any changes made throughout the SEA1180 which downgraded the strength of the helicopter deck?
Rear Adm. Malcolm: Senator, the requirement for our offshore patrol vessel did not include a helicopter as part of the top-level user requirements.
Senator ROBERTS: And what is the reason for that?
Rear Adm. Malcolm: I might ask Chief of Navy if he’d like to speak to that.
Vice Adm. Hammond: The Arafura was designed for constabulary roles to replace the Armadale-class patrol boats, which do not operate helicopter capability. It was a minimum viable capability off-the-shelf solution to provide that constabulary effect.
Senator ROBERTS: So the Brunei version would have been upgraded to handle a helicopter?
Vice Adm. Hammond: That’s reasonable speculation, but I’m not sure, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: You did not derate or reduce the strength of the deck; you just wanted the base model?
Vice Adm. Hammond: I’d characterise it as the Navy did not specify helicopter capability as a requirement.
Senator ROBERTS: Turning to the $45 billion Hunter-class ship acquisition, Mr Moriarty, Australian taxpayers have already hand over $4 billion, and we still don’t have a boat. At the joint committee inquiry you accepted that there had been design flaws in the process and that records needed to be formalised and recorded. How is it acceptable that, on a $45 billion project, proper records weren’t kept? How did this happen, where were the records and why weren’t they kept?
Mr Moriarty: Senator, there has been a lot of work done on examining the history of the Hunter-class program, which goes back to 2014. Certainly the ANAO and subsequent internal departmental work identified that some key records were not retained. That is a flaw in our system, and the deputy secretary has been putting in place a number of initiatives to enhance overall compliance with Defence records management policy. There are of course a number of other initiatives which we’ve put in place.
Senator ROBERTS: Mr Moriarty, during the joint committee inquiry you stated you were not aware that standard procedures were not being followed. How is it possible that you weren’t aware?
Mr Moriarty: Senator, after I assumed the position of secretary of the Department of Defence the process was already in flight. I delegate authorities to subordinate committees to bring forward work to decision-making committees. The fact that some of what I would regard as appropriate procedures had not been followed was never brought to my attention.
Senator ROBERTS: Isn’t it something you would make sure of, in a project worth $45 billion? You’re paid more than $1 million a year, as I understand it. General Campbell is paid more than $1 million a year. That’s each of you almost double what the Prime Minister is paid. Between the two of you it’s four times what the Prime Minister is paid. With that amount, surely the Australians that pay you expect you to know what happens in your department. Why don’t you know?
Mr Moriarty: Senator, there has a great deal of work done to talk about the inadequacies of some aspects of the Hunter procurement, but I think it’s also reasonable, when you delegate authorities to subordinate committees or to capability managers to bring forward, that they will pursue government requirements and procedures and internal Defence procurement procedures. The Defence committee structures that lead ultimately to these investment committee and Defence committees are intended to ensure that I, as the accountable authority, can effectively govern. You have to assume that the authorities below you understand their obligation and will comply with our own procedures and the requirements of in particular the PGPA.
Senator ROBERTS: Let’s delve a bit deeper then. You blame Defence for not following the proper process of developing advice, tender evaluation and source evaluation for the Hunter frigates, because of an accelerated time frame. Yet the government brought forward process to three years. Do you still maintain that reasoning? The government, as I understand it, accelerated the process.
Mr Moriarty: It did indeed, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: Did the time compression affect the department’s process and the government advice that resulted from it?
Mr Moriarty: I think the ANAO report and subsequent work done within the department suggested that, yes, had there been more time available to do some of that work, then there would have been more validity.
Senator ROBERTS: Did Defence ask for more time?
Mr Moriarty: The government took a decision about the time line it wished to pursue. The government was aware and made aware by this department that pursuing an accelerated time line increased risk.
Senator ROBERTS: In the inquiry, as I understand it, you said:
I think we did not seek more time. The government’s time line was very clear, but, as I said, that does not absolve us of the requirement to have made a value-for-money judgement…
Why? Isn’t it your responsibility to ask for more time if you know accelerating the time line is going to compromise the process?
Mr Moriarty: I am required to comply with lawful and reasonable directions of the elected government of the day. When the elected government of the day tells me that it wishes to proceed in a certain period of time, I can alert them to risks and risk-mitigation strategies. Government was alerted to the risks of an accelerated time line.
Senator ROBERTS: You alerted them?
Mr Moriarty: The department, of which I’m the secretary, alerted the government to the risks of an accelerated time line.
Senator ROBERTS: You’re also quoted as saying at the inquiry:
I’d say the government was aware that bringing forward a program of this scale and complexity by three years obviously introduced additional areas of risk.
I’m wondering if you’re being evasive. You say it’s the government’s fault for speeding up the time line, yet you never provided advice to the government such that it would make you essentially break your own rules around processes. Are you trying to have a bob each way to make sure you have a job later when Hunter falls over?
Mr Moriarty: The government was dealing with a range of complex pressures. One of them was the need to build and have a continual shipbuilding program in South Australia. In order to do that it wished to hit some milestones in the project decision so that work could get underway. In order for work to get underway it needed to have the department contribute to advice to government by a certain period of time. The department was made very well aware of what the government’s time line was for when it wished to make a decision.
CHAIR: Senator, I’m not disputing what you you’re saying is in the transcript, but maybe in the future it would be great to get the full context and a printout of that so that other senators and the witnesses can have a look at the context of what was said and asked at the time.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you Chair; I will.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Mr Yannopoulos, you outlined a series of measures the department is taking to ensure procedures are followed & records are properly kept. Yet you said at the inquiry on 20 Novr 2023, page 8:
I would be reluctant to give a guarantee that record keeping is fixed. What I can do is update the policy and update the learning.
I would think it was your and your department’s responsibility to guarantee this does happen. While I take your point from your previous evidence that it’s not easy to guarantee perfect performance across 100,000 people involved in the process, it’s ultimately your job to ensure things run quick properly and such a bureaucratic mess does not happen again. Why won’t you guarantee that the next time the government enters a $45 billion contract, acquisition records will be properly kept, assessment for value for money be made and proper processes followed?
Mr Yannopoulos: Senator, I’m happy to guarantee for the next $45 billion project that a government will consider we will ensure there is effective recordkeeping. Indeed we are, across all of our major projects. What I was asked at that inquiry was to guarantee there would be no further instances of record-keeping issues, and I just cannot do that. As much as I can update policy, train 23,000 people in a new e-learning and record-keeping practices, we are a large organisation with a lot of staff that join us each year, so it would be silly of me to guarantee we’ll see no recurrence.
Senator ROBERTS: So who’s going to be held accountable for the mess of the Hunter frigate program?
Senator Shoebridge: Nobody.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, will the government scrap the Hunter frigate program, as One Nation has called for, and arm our Navy with ready-made mature solutions already in the water? Is the government committed to delivering all nine Hunter frigates under the current plans? Do you have no plan? That’ll do for now.
Senator McAllister: Senator, we spoke this morning about the review of the surface fleet. I’m not sure if you were in the room.
Senator ROBERTS: No, I wasn’t.
Senator McAllister: The government’s response to that review is expected in the early part of 2024. I’m not in a position here to pre-empt any of the outcomes of that. More broadly, of course we expect all the procurement across Defence represents value for money for the Australian public. We are in a very challenging strategic environment, and that means we need to use the resources we have well. That is a project that is underway, and we’ve talked quite a lot today about the work that has been going on across the department and across the ADF to make sure that is the case.
Senator ROBERTS: I have two questions on Adecco. Defence has entered into contract CN3923195 with Adecco Australia for consulting on personnel recruitment. This is a $1.3 billion contract. I can’t recall coming across a bigger contract during my time in parliament. Defence entered into the contract on 27 October 2022. What was Defence’s headcount on that date when the contract started?
Lt Gen. Fox: That contract was signed on 22 October but did not take operative effect until 1 July this year.
Senator ROBERTS: What was the headcount then?
Lt Gen. Fox: In October?
Senator ROBERTS: Yes.
Lt Gen. Fox: I’ll have to get that for you from an October headcount time frame.
Senator ROBERTS: And also when the contract started, please.
Lt Gen. Fox: As at end of financial year 2022-23 the average funded strength was 58,642.
Senator ROBERTS: What does funded strength mean?
Lt Gen. Fox: The department has the average taken over people coming in and out each pay for the average funded strength we have. It’s not a headcount; it is very close to it, but it’s the funded strength.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s now 2024. What’s the latest headcount for Defence personnel?
Lt Gen. Fox: Can I answer that again in an AFS construct?
Senator ROBERTS: Yes.
Lt Gen. Fox: The average funded strength is 58,427.
Senator ROBERTS: So you’ve gone down by 215.
Lt Gen. Fox: Yes, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: We’ve had Adecco in place now for seven months, and we’ve gone backwards.
Lt Gen. Fox: Yes, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: And we’re going to pay them $1.3 billion?
Lt Gen. Fox: That’s for the life of the contract, Senator, but the performance management framework will determine what they are paid in accordance with the performance of the contractor.
Senator ROBERTS: Could you describe the performance pay provisions?
Lt Gen. Fox: I’ll defer to my colleague to provide an indication of the performance management framework.
Major Gen. Stothart: There are a series of performance indicators, performance measures and health indicators for this contract. We are transitioning from a centralised model of recruiting to a decentralised model of recruiting in difficult circumstances, and the three major key performance indicators for this contract are the volume of target achievement, the velocity by which we can take an application and then issue a letter of offer to a candidate and, thirdly, the timeliness and quality of the deliverables we receive from Adecco to ensure we are seeing the business intelligence of their system. The contracts, noting there are some contract-in-confidence measures, are assessed quarterly. There are at-risk amounts tied to the achievements for them to acquire the targets linked to incentive payments, and the value of those payments are contractually in confidence.
Senator ROBERTS: Are you able to tell us a percentage?
Major Gen. Stothart: No, I don’t think I can, and I don’t have that with me at the moment. I would need to take that to confirm what I could share. I can talk about the performance measures and the health indicators. But I don’t want to underestimate the scale of the difficulty of the transition from a model that, over a long period of time, was not delivering the volume or the velocity we needed in our recruiting and the difficult shift to a new model that we still have confidence will deliver, with some adjustments, what we need. It is a difficult process we’ve asked Adecco to go through. They’ve had to pick up a model that was not theirs, the previous contract arrangement which the Commonwealth Defence Force recruiting was running, and shift it through a transition period to get to their model that we selected as the preferred model of recruiting through that securement process.
Senator ROBERTS: Excuse me, are you designing the process and they’re implementing it, or are they involved in the designing too?
Major Gen. Stothart: I could defer to chief of personnel for a detailed answer on that question, Senator.
Lt Gen. Fox: For the model that was selected the Commonwealth went out to tender for innovation in delivering volume, the speed of recruiting and the care of candidates. We had a number of tenderers come in, there was a competitive tender evaluation process and Adecco’s model, data and solution were evaluated to be the best in that period of time against the tenders Defence was requiring in volume, care and speed of recruiting.
Senator ROBERTS: Major General, you mentioned there’s a need for a dramatically increased volume—or velocity, I think was your word. Why is that? Is that because retention is decreasing?
Major Gen. Stothart: Senator, there are a various number of reasons. We need to achieve our targets more consistently than we’ve done previously, and the speed it takes us to conduct our recruitment processes needs to be much shorter. We know the target demographics of young and not-so-young Australians that may have some propensity to join the ADF have more choices around employment, study and travel now than they’ve had previously, and speed of offer to those candidates is key.
Senator ROBERTS: What is the attrition in the armed forces at the moment?
Lt Gen. Fox: At 1 January it was 10.1 per cent. CDF mentioned this morning in his opening statement that as at 1 February it’s 10 per cent.
I questioned the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment & Water (DCCEEW) about a recent report from the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO). The report was critical of the department.
The report from ANAO on Governance of Climate Change Commitments states that the DCCEEW CANNOT demonstrate the extent to which specific policies and programs have contributed, or are expected to contribute towards emissions reduction.
We are turning our entire economy upside down to chase this net-zero lunacy and no one can even say if it’s going to do anything.
Even though it was reported that the department agreed with all five ANAO recommendations, the Minister and staff, in response to my estimates’ questioning, said that they do not agree with ANAO’s findings and read out a long list of projections and guestimates.
I asked again for evidence of human-induced climate change and was told the government is committed to the United Nations 2050 Net Zero. I will continue asking about a cost-benefit analysis on Net-Zero, which appears not to exist. And finally, I will request how much this new Labor Department for Climate Change is going to cost the Australian taxpayer.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you all for being here today. The Australian National Audit Office said in January—this is from its own report:
DCCEEW reports annually on progress towards targets, however is unable to demonstrate the extent to which specific Australian Government policies and programs have contributed or are expected to contribute towards overall emissions reduction.
I find that incredible. We see that solar and wind have taken Australia from lowest cost electricity providers to amongst the highest. There are dramatic impacts on cost of living and adverse effects on inflation and grocery prices. Everything is impacted by energy and electricity, including security and international competitiveness. I’ve just come back from North Queensland, where I’ve seen massive destruction of the environment up there. Some of the large solar and wind projects in Western Victoria and in North Queensland are not even connected to the grid, but we’re paying for them. At your behest, the government is completely upending our entire economy. You are destroying the cheap power grid we had. You’re going to make it nearly impossible to buy a new Toyota Hilux. You’re trying to force everyone into electric vehicles. You’re spending $20 billion on Snowy 2 and you can’t tell anyone whether anything the government has done has actually made a difference. I think that is because it hasn’t made a difference. What quantifiable difference have these solar and wind and other so-called policies made?
Mr Fredericks: Senator, if it’s okay with you, I might take up the ANAO issue. There was quite a detailed response from the department to that. If it is okay with you, I might ask Ms Evans to give you a response.
Senator ROBERTS: A response to the ANAO findings. I would also like to know the quantifiable difference these policies have made to our country.
Ms Evans: I will answer both. In the first part, the department disagrees with the finding that you read out from the ANAO report. We do, in fact, have quite a comprehensive way of reporting on policies and programs and what they contribute to our emissions reductions, which Ms Rowley will be able to take you through in a moment. With regard to the overall outcomes, you can see that—in fact, it is part of the same answer—in our annual national greenhouse gas inventory and all of the results that come from that there is a definite decline in Australia’s emissions over the period that we’ve been looking at. Again, Ms Rowley can give you the specific details on that. I think we are up to about 24 or 25 per cent below 2005 levels at this stage. All of those policies that you were referring to have contributed to those reductions in emissions, which are contributing to a global response to climate change. Ms Rowley will take you through the very substantial way in which we track our policies and programs.
Ms Rowley: Thanks you, Ms Evans. The ANAO was essentially seeking measure by measure modelling and tracking the impact of every policy over time, which we consider is neither practical nor efficient given that different policies and measures interact, particularly as the policy mix changes over time. They are also impacted by structural changes in the economy. However, we evaluate the impact of policies and programs on emissions during their development. That is part of the public consultation on the design of the policies ex ante, so ahead of time. In general, we prioritise policies that are going to have a material impact on Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. That analysis then becomes part of the cost-benefit analysis to inform government decisions.
In terms of reporting on progress, this occurs through a number of channels. The department and government report progress against the 2030 target transparently and independently through channels such as the Climate Change Authority’s annual progress report, the minister’s annual climate change statement to parliament and Australia’s annual emissions projection report. As Ms Evans said, we also report on Australia’s actual emissions over time each year through our national inventory report and every quarter through the quarterly update. Both the inventory—
Senator ROBERTS: Just a minute. So what you’re saying, as I understand it, is that various other entities report on this?
Ms Rowley: Other entities, including the independent Climate Change Authority and the department through its work on the national inventory and the annual projections.
Senator ROBERTS: But they actually report on aspects of it—bits of it, not the whole lot?
Ms Rowley: No. Particularly documents like the emissions projections, which are one of our signature reports—
Senator ROBERTS: Emissions projections?
Ms Rowley: Emissions projections. It’s an annual report. It tracks and projects Australia’s progress towards its 2030 target. I could use that as an example to illustrate how we look at the impact of specific policies. The 2023 projections, which were published in December last year, include detailed analysis of the abatement arising from some of the government’s key mitigation policies. For example, the safeguard mechanism reforms are estimated to deliver just over 50 million tonnes of abatement in 2030. The projections report provides detail, including the projected mix of onsite abatement and the use of credits over time as well as how that policy impact is distributed across the different sectors, which are covered by the safeguard mechanism. It also includes details of the Australian carbon credit unit scheme, estimating that it will grow from delivering 17 million tonnes of abatement last year, 2023, to 30 million tonnes in 2033. Again, the projections provide reports on the types of projects, price forecasts and the sectoral split of activity.
With the additional measures scenario, which is also part of that 2023 projections report, there are reports on the potential impacts of some of the policies that are still under detailed design and development. For example, the government’s 82 per cent renewable electricity target is supported by measures such as the capacity investment scheme and the Rewiring the Nation program, which is estimated to deliver 21 million tonnes of abatement in 2030. The projections report provides detail across the different electricity grids covered by that target. It also provides quantitative estimates for the fuel efficiency standard for new vehicles, which the government is currently consulting on. Whilst that was a relatively stylised analysis given that the policy is still being designed, we estimated that would deliver a net six million tonnes of abatement in 2030.
Senator ROBERTS: That is a lot of alphabet soup. Thank you. The point is, though, you have no evidence. The ANAO is not convinced you have any evidence. You can’t demonstrate how a specific policy has made any difference to the production of carbon dioxide from human activity. That is not me saying it; that is the ANAO.
Ms Rowley: Senator Roberts, you will recall that Ms Evans noted that the department disagrees with that finding. As I outlined, there is a range of analytic work and public reports that the department and other entities across government conduct to ensure that there is a careful analysis of the emissions implications of key policy reforms that have a material impact on Australia’s emissions. I have given you some examples of that.
Senator ROBERTS: I don’t know whether you are aware of it or not, Ms Rowley, Ms Evans or Minister McAllister, but no-one anywhere has been able to provide me with a quantified specific effect of cutting carbon dioxide from human activity on climate. What basis is there for tracking policy when there’s no fundamental foundation for it anyway? So is anyone able to tell me the impact of carbon dioxide from human activity on any aspect of the climate specifically in a quantified way? How are you able to track that when there’s no basis for it?
Senator McAllister: There are two things. One is that this is a well-worn path between you and me.
Senator ROBERTS: Yet, Minister, I still haven’t seen that.
Senator McAllister: Perhaps I can answer. It is a source of fundamental disagreement. You do not accept the science that human activities—
Senator ROBERTS: Correction. I do accept the actual empirical scientific evidence.
CHAIR: Okay. Let’s not cut across each other.
Senator ROBERTS: I want to make sure the minister doesn’t—
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, there is a difference of opinion here, a difference of interpretation of which science is whose. Can we stick to asking the questions and listening to the answers? You can probe it as much as you like. Let’s keep it civilised here.
Senator McAllister: To assist Senator Roberts, I will put my answer in different terms. This government does accept the science that human activities are inducing global warming. That presents a threat to human systems and the biodiversity that our human activities depend upon. I understand from comments you’ve made previously, Senator Roberts, that is not your position. But that is the government’s position. As a consequence, we are committed to reducing Australia’s contribution to anthropogenic emissions to 2050. That is a position that, as I understand it, is bipartisan. I believe that remains the position of the coalition as well. It is the basis on which we are also committed to that by way of our participation in the processes of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Minister.
Senator McAllister: The second point I wish to make is that this is not a feature of the ANAO’s assessment of the department. The question the ANAO sought to answer was whether the department is using its resources well to meet those emissions reduction targets. The evidence that has been provided to you by now Ms Evans and Ms Rowley goes to the way that the ANAO engaged with that question.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Minister. Can you tell me or anyone in the department, because you are driving this, the cost per unit of carbon dioxide decrease to our economy? What is the cost to individual Australians? I have never seen a cost-benefit analysis or a business case for this ever. No-one has ever said that they’ve done that.
Ms Evans: We might take on notice to put down a response that adequately reflects the costs and benefits of climate action in Australia.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Ms Evans. Specifically I would like to know the cost per unit of carbon dioxide decreasing.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, I’m going to rotate the call.
Senator ROBERTS: I would also like to know your total annual budget, please.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/IO0iy-ZT0pg/0.jpg360480Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-02-14 18:46:102024-02-23 08:14:54Damn the Economy – Net Zero at All Cost!
I questioned Home Affairs about the detainees released into the community. As many as 149 detainees have been released and none have been returned to immigration detention. Home Affairs is unaware if any have been arrested for crimes in the states and territories. 113 are being electronically monitored.
A list of 26 visa conditions have been imposed on these people to maximise the safety of the community, such as curfews and notification of changes to addresses. None have a history of terrorism. There are a number of prosecutions already underway regarding the release of these detainees, brought about as a result of the high court decision.
The government has made zero effort to lock any of the detainees back up, despite rushing through emergency legislation last year. 24 detainees have committed offences in the Australian community as a result.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: This is in regard to the High Court decision releasing detainees. How many detainees have now been released from custody due to the High Court decision?
Ms Foster : It is 149.
Senator ROBERTS: How many of those released detainees have been returned to custody?
Ms Foster : None have been returned to immigration detention. The question of custody is a different matter where there are offences that might put them into the state and territory system.
Mr Outram : That being the case, I don’t have that information, because the states and territories, of course, are responsible for arrest, charge and prosecution of state-based offences. I would need to check and take on notice whether we were aware of any cases where, for example, somebody may have been charged and bail refused. Off the top of my head I don’t have that information with me, but I’ll take it on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: How many of the released detainees are being closely monitored, and in what circumstances are they being monitored?
Ms Holben : Of the current cohort, 113 are being electronically monitored.
Senator ROBERTS: Remotely monitored?
Ms Holben : Electronically monitored.
Senator Watt: Am I right that there are other forms of monitoring that are occurring as well?
Ms Holben : That’s correct. Within the visa itself there are 26 conditions. One of those conditions is that a person could be monitored by an electronic device. There are other conditions that are placed on the person which entail reporting, in terms of daily reporting to the department, also notifying a change of address and circumstance. There are 26 conditions that are imposed on this particular cohort.
Senator ROBERTS: Is it possible to get that list and the conditions under which each are applied?
Ms Holben : Yes, we can do that on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: We have seen the minister acknowledging the gravity of the situation, but how safe is the Australian community from immigrants with a known history of terrorism or criminal activity?
Ms Foster : This cohort does not relate to anyone with a terrorist history. You have just heard the ABF describe the regime, which is designed to maximise protection of the community, of those people that the High Court decision required us to release.
Senator ROBERTS: I understand that. But my understanding is also that the states have prosecuted at least three. Is that the case? Or arrested at least three?
Mr Outram : There are a number of cases—
Senator ROBERTS: You’ll take it on notice, I assume.
Mr Outram : I will take it on notice. Again, the states and territories are running prosecutions. They may decide to drop the case. There will be different stages. We will take it on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s what I was referring to. You’ve already taken it on notice. I’m not expecting you to know the details, but how safe is the Australian community from immigrants with a known criminal history? Are you monitoring them?
Ms Foster : If we are speaking about the cohort that had to be released as a result of the High Court decision, the process that the commissioner and the deputy commissioner have been describing is all about putting in place conditions to maximise the safety of the community. And that goes to the sort of things that they were talking about, restrictions on their visa, monitoring—
Senator ROBERTS: How confident are you that people are safe?
Ms Foster : We are putting all of the elements in place that are within our power legislatively to provide for community safety. I’m very confident that we are doing all we can.
Senator ROBERTS: Do you need any additional legislative powers?
Ms Foster : Not at this time.
Senator Watt: Can I just add—I don’t know if you were here when we talked about this—many of the actions that are being taken to protect the community, for example installing electronic bracelet or a curfew or something else like that, those decisions are being made on the recommendation of the Community Protection Board, which includes former police commissioners and corrections commissioners. We have attempted to ensure that the community is well protected by seeking the advice of people with a vast amount of experience in this space.
Ms Foster : And draws very heavily on state and territory law enforcement agencies, for whom this is their bread and butter.
Senator ROBERTS: So you meet with them, listen to them and involve them in the process?
Mr Outram : The day after the High Court decision was handed down, the law enforcement coordination group was stood up, which is each state and territory police force or service with the Australian Federal Police and ourselves, walking through these cases weekly, pushing information to each other about these cases so if circumstances change, because of course some people may be subject to state and territory regimes—reporting regimes, parole requirements, bail requirements, domestic violence orders, those sorts of things. So there’s a combination of controls, not just the controls that we apply at the Commonwealth level. We also, of course, refer offences under the Migration Act to the AFP for investigation. But that coordination between states and territories and the Commonwealth is really important. It adds another layer of protection for the community.
Senator ROBERTS: So immigration—federal—is responsible for it, and law enforcement and states are responsible. I get that.
Mr Outram : We’re sharing the effort here because there are a whole range of different laws, powers and regimes that intersect with each other.
Ms Foster : The mechanism that the commissioner established and is running ensures that things aren’t dropping between the cracks—that we are making sure that we know what effort needs to be applied, whether that needs to be by state or territory or by the Commonwealth, and we’re talking about it and sharing information relating to it.
Senator ROBERTS: Going to the root cause, Ms Foster, what vetting was done of each of the released detainees to determine their risk profile when living in the community?
Ms Foster : The High Court decision required us to release the affected detainees as soon as we formed a view that that release was legally necessary. The process that then was established was the one that the commissioner has been describing, which is to provide all of the information we have about those individuals who were required to be released to state and territory counterparts so that appropriate risk could be put in place and also so that visa conditions could be imposed, which would give the highest possible level of assurance of safety to the community.
Senator ROBERTS: Has there been any review of the immigration vetting in the first place?
Ms Foster : If you mean the granting of the visas—
Senator ROBERTS: Yes.
Ms Foster : We have been looking at our system end to end to make sure that we are looking at every touchpoint so that we can prevent having people who are going to cause risk. It may be that there are ways that we can relook at, say, the granting of visas in particular cohorts or cases.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s what I was getting at.
Ms Foster : So we’re looking at, as I said, the whole process.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/ZsgNGUrMlMk/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-02-14 17:16:242024-02-23 10:08:46Labor is Asleep at the Wheel When it Comes to Illegal Immigration
I spoke with the Tom Rogers of the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) about the recent referendum and how the same shade of purple was used by the ‘Yes’ campaign.
One Nation calls on the Special Minister of State, Senator Farrell to introduce legislation to grant the AEC control over their own colourway, to prevent attempts to confuse voters in the next election or referendum.
I also asked about the failure to include the entire proposed change to the Constitution on the ballot paper, as required by S128 of the Constitution. Mr Rogers’ answer was not acceptable.
I call on the Minister to clarify this Constitutional provision by enacting legislation to require the full text of the amendment to be included on future referendum voting papers.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Firstly, Mr Rogers, thank you very much and congratulations on a successful referendum. You produced an accurate result and very quickly. I want to pass on comments from a friend of mine who is fairly fussy and interested in accuracy. He volunteered to be one of your workers. He said the process of training and running the booth was first class. He had no problems, and he’s a fussy bugger. We do question the format of the ballot paper, but that’s history now. I wouldn’t take it personally about getting some nice messages. I think, after the last three years of the COVID response and the confusion around some of the Voice campaign, people are sick and tired of governments, so it wasn’t directed at you. I also noticed that ticks and crosses weren’t a thing. A Queanbeyan booth had 1,281 votes. Only one of those was a cross, and there were no ticks. However, in forms completed at the booth for declaration voting, I believe the elector was required to indicate their answer with a cross.
Chair: So no cause for conspiracy theory, then, but I’m interjecting.
Senator ROBERTS: Not at all. But please consider eliminating ticks and crosses from your own paperwork as a way of ensuring they are not used on polling day. That’s just a suggestion from one of the constituents. In the referendum, the Australian Electoral Commission allowed the use of AEC purple by the ‘yes’ campaign. That decision was correct in law, but let’s review that for the next time. Is that possible?
Mr Rogers: I might just talk about the purple signs issue because it’s a complex matter. We don’t own the colour purple. Legislatively, the AEC does not own the colour purple. I wish we did. I’d be very happy—
Senator ROBERTS: Despite the tie!
Mr Rogers: Indeed. There are only limited circumstances in which we can intervene with the use of the colour purple. In a lot of commentary that we saw both online and in the media, there’s this sort of thing about, ‘Oh my god, there are purple signs, and the AEC’s not doing anything about it.’ When you’re doing something like a short-form radio interview or a TV interview, it’s very hard to say, ‘Let us take you through the half hour of complexity of case law and legislation about this issue and why we don’t have power to do it.’ People just want to know about purple signs. Before the referendum, in fact I think before the last election, we’d made clear we would prefer that campaigners and parties do not use the colour purple. But that’s a legislative matter, and that would be a matter for parliament rather than for the AEC. But I can tell you that, wherever purple signs were deployed in those circumstances where we thought they would breach the legislation, we asked for those signs to be moved. By and large they were and in a fairly timely manner. We are satisfied with that, but again I make a plea to parties and campaigners in the future: please avoid the colour purple with white writing.
Senator ROBERTS: Was there a ruling regarding Josh Frydenberg’s campaign using purple with Chinese people?
Mr Rogers: There was a court case—Garbett v Liu—and, from memory, it found in very limited circumstances where the sign is indeed in purple with white writing, where that sign is placed in very close proximity to an ACC sign, almost next to it, and, as the third element, where it contains a message which says, ‘The right way to vote is X,’ it may breach the legislation. It’s that specific.
Senator ROBERTS: It is fairly specific. Thank you. Simon Frost worked for the ‘yes’ campaign in the area that created those deliberately misleading purple signs. Those signs did not pass the pub test, as I think you are implying. I also understand that Simon Frost worked for former treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s campaign. He was a senior adviser. Is there any comment there? It’s difficult.
Mr Rogers: No. As I’ve said, where those signs popped up, where we thought they were at risk of breaching the legislation, we took action. But we don’t own the colour purple and have no mandate over it.
Senator ROBERTS: So you’d support it if we put forward legislation on that?
Mr Rogers: Whatever bill passes through parliament is legislation I support in any case.
Mr Pope: We’d certainly welcome further clarification and widening of section 329, which I think is at the heart of your questioning.
Senator ROBERTS: The ballot paper, as I said a little while ago—we disagreed on that—did not include a full reproduction of the proposed change to the Constitution, as required by section 128 of the Constitution. I understand that you don’t agree it has to be presented accurately in full and that the short description is sufficient. Is that still your position?
Mr Rogers: I understand that the argument was put by a legal academic in South Australia. I point out that this is absolutely a matter for the Attorney-General’s Department, not the AEC, but for the record I also note that a large number of other scholars dismissed that particular interpretation. For the record so that people understand: the form of the ballot paper followed exactly the form of the ballot paper in the legislation. The matter you are talking about is more of a constitutional and legal issue to be resolved by others, not by us.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes. As I understand—but I’m not a legal expert—the Constitution takes precedence over any legislation. Have you sought legal advice on that issue?
Mr Rogers: No, because that’s not my issue.
Senator ROBERTS: Attorney-General.
Mr Rogers: I have a number of other issues. I don’t need that one as well. But that would be the Attorney-General’s.
Senator ROBERTS: The Kennedy prepoll voting centre in Cairns was located in a shop in a shopping centre. Centre management initially refused both sides permission to hand out how-to-vote cards and display signage, instead offering a location off their property and down the street. As owners of the property, this is their prerogative, except the point of doing that was to set stalls in front of the voting centre for the bargain price of $250 a day, so they made a deal out of it. ‘Yes’ took up the offer, allowing them to position copious signage and poll workers in front of the prepoll voting centre. ‘No’ didn’t have the money and were prevented from handing out. Is it okay to have that operation of poll workers controlled by a private shopping centre management company?
Mr Rogers: It’s not actually unusual for this sort of thing to occur. I was saying before to Senator Liddle, we get four weeks notice to find whatever venues they can. They have to meet certain criteria as well, as you know. You have to have a number that have access for disabled Australians, and there are a range of other requirements such as security, so the number of venues that we get to choose from is quite small. Occasionally it comes down to either taking that one or there being no polling premises in that area. Occasionally, we’ve noticed before in certain large shopping centres and in airports when we’ve used those, there’s no ability for political parties to hand out material. We do try to advocate on behalf of the parties. As I said at the very start of my opening statement, we think scrutineers and campaigners play an important part in the process, but there will always be the odd event where the parties are unable to gain access rather than us arranging it. That was one of those very unfortunate circumstances. Of the over 7,000 polling places, there may have been only one or two that were like that.
Senator ROBERTS: Surely there’s a benefit for the shopping centre because your voting booth becomes a draw card for them. Can there be something written into the contract?
Mr Rogers: Sadly, I know that shopping centre—in fact, I think I visited that place last week, and I know Mr Pope has found some other issues up there as well and tried to secure polling premises, but it was difficult.
Chair: Can you write that into the contract?
Mr Rogers: Some of them will not write that into the contract. They say, ‘Either you sign the contract that we’re providing you or you or go somewhere else.’ I know that’s complex—
Mr Pope: I think we could suggest.
Mr Rogers: And we do suggest. With that particular one, I understand, we did try to work with the centre management, and they flat-out refused.
Chair: Can you perhaps write it into their legal obligations?
Mr Rogers: They won’t sign it.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s a free world. Finally, the AEC has been criticised for responding to a question from a voter with regard to what happens to a voter if he votes twice? The response was accurate: that, well, you just count them. Could that have been more sensitively done in the sense of, ‘Well, we have to count them, but have precautions to make sure people don’t vote twice’? In hindsight it’s always easy.
Mr Rogers: Actually, I do have a view of this. I’m conscious of time, but I think I mentioned before that we were tagged in 145,000 comments in social media in the middle of delivering a referendum. We were trying to serve information to the community as quickly as possible. As you yourself said, that was highly accurate. But it was picked up by a few individuals and weaponised deliberately to try and denigrate Australia’s electoral system. I don’t understand why you’d do that. The electoral system isn’t owned by the AEC; it’s owned by all Australians. I was reflecting the other day on a section of the act—I think it’s 365—which contains a piece of information that, effectively, immaterial errors shouldn’t vitiate an election outcome. It was put in there by smart people. It says, effectively, elections are complex and minor issues shouldn’t be used in any way to denigrate election outcomes. What we’ve seen is that there are a few dedicated individuals online who want to pick up the most minor of issues and create it as a huge event to try to undercut citizens’ trust in electoral outcomes. Let me tell you that, going back in time, we’d do exactly the same thing because it was an accurate answer. What I can’t control is the manner in which people react. As I read out earlier—and I’ve read out two per cent of some of the nutty stuff that barrels down at us, where people seize on the most minor of issues. The whole thing we’ve said before about Dominion voting machines, which emerged again at this—we even had groups of people standing outside at least one polling place in Melbourne in an organised way, handing out pens to voters who were going in, saying, ‘The AEC are going to rub your votes out.’ It’s insane. I don’t know where this comes from. I never thought I’d see this sort of thing in Australia where these minor issues about one comment on a social media page are then used to weaponise such a ridiculous thing.
I’m sorry for the long answer, but I’m very proud of the work that our social media team did in serving up information to Australians in such a timely and informative fashion. I read out some statistics before about our overarching awareness campaign. It was the biggest campaign we’ve run. I’m very proud of that. I’m proud of the work that our individuals do. I know you know this, but our social media team and the AEC in particular have copped a torrent of abuse from idiots online who should know better, including threats to our staff, including death threats to our staff. It is utterly ridiculous. I’m sorry for using that as a vehicle to point out that our staff do a great job, our social media team do a great job and I’m extraordinarily proud of the work that they do.
Senator ROBERTS: Fortunately, the number of people who do that is very small. Sometimes they get magnified. It’s just that some people latch on to what you didn’t say, which was that we have adequate precautions to make sure people don’t vote twice. That’s all I’m suggesting.
Mr Rogers: That actually was put there; but, again, I am just pointing out that these minor issues are occasionally blown out of all proportion. I’m also just using that—and I know you won’t mind, because our staff are so good—to thank our staff who put up with some of that abuse that they get on a very regular basis.
