Created 1 31 pm 13/3/12
Gonski Future Fund farce
Once again the Gillard government has managed to act irresponsibly - at least improperly by nominating favoured son David Gonski ''as a special adviser to talk to the board about who to appoint as chairman, only to make him a leading candidate for the position.';
Plainly Labor is keen to have a friendly chairman to enable them to further raid the funds the Howard government worked so hard for - having cleared Keating's created deficit.
And worse - they do not even care about being seen to have acted appropriately.This is how far they have gone.
Whilst Iceland government is proffering absurd criminal charges against their former government ostensively for ''failing to safeguard the economy''
The Australian - GFC puts Iceland's ex-pm in the dock
The Australian 7/3/12
- I wonder how Gillard's actions in the Thompson affair, the NBN and Climate Tax scams and a remarkable range of other deals where justice and fair play were not even remotely done - contemplate what an Abbott government could produce in court.
I predict the shredding machines will be running full - time when her electoral numbers finally put an end to this pathetic, tragic, parodic farce of a government.
That too will be an illegal act- yet is regularly done by governments with matters material to hide!
I wonder whether anyone in Labor understands that they are deliberately creating a Carbon Tax / trading system with ever greater opportunities for rorting it?
They will effectively will legalise buying pollution permits for well under $10 from the collapsing European exchange and selling it to plaintivelocal manufacturers .at huge discounts at under $23!!
And the morons have prudly announced that the tax will forever increase - creating ever greater opportunities!
Sometimes I exhaust my vocabulary..
GS
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EX per below
Outgoing board member Brian Watson has blasted the government for failing to follow good business practice in nominating the fund's next chairman, amid expectations that senior businessman David Gonski will be named to the position.
Central to the concerns is the way the government appointed Mr Gonski as a special adviser to talk to the board about who to appoint as chairman, only to make him a leading candidate for the position.
"In most circumstances, this would be regarded as pretty poor practice I would have thought," Mr Watson told The Australian yesterday.
"I think we've been misled by the government as a result."
Others described the government's conduct as a "serious governance failure" that could undermine the way the board works with Canberra.
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Future Fund role slammed as 'sham'
- The Australian
- March 13, 2012
Future Fund Board member Brian Watson has blasted the government for failing to follow good business practice. Picture: Chris Crerar Source: The Australian
Outgoing board member Brian Watson has blasted the government for failing to follow good business practice in nominating the fund's next chairman, amid expectations that senior businessman David Gonski will be named to the position.
Central to the concerns is the way the government appointed Mr Gonski as a special adviser to talk to the board about who to appoint as chairman, only to make him a leading candidate for the position.
"In most circumstances, this would be regarded as pretty poor practice I would have thought," Mr Watson told The Australian yesterday.
"I think we've been misled by the government as a result."
Others described the government's conduct as a "serious governance failure" that could undermine the way the board works with Canberra.
The Australian has learnt of widespread frustration within the Future Fund over the government's handling of the appointment, when there was a year to plan for the transition after chairman David Murray had his term extended one year ago.
The outcry is focused on the government's actions rather than Mr Gonski's suitability for the position, with some at the fund hoping the incoming chairman can forge a new sense of co-operation on the board after tensions between some board members and Mr Murray.
A private equity expert and investment banker at JP Morgan for 16 years, Mr Watson came to the Future Fund board in 2006 and is due
to retire from it next month. He will be replaced by Morgan Stanley's local managing director, Steve Harker.
Mr Murray will leave the fund in early April, about a week after the next board meeting.
Mr Watson made no criticism of Mr Gonski but said the government should not have made him a special adviser on the board appointment if it considered him a candidate for the position. "I think they have been very naive if they think this is an acceptable business practice," he said.
"If Mr Gonski was a candidate for the job, he should not have accepted the role as an independent adviser. Secondly, having accepted the role of independent adviser, he should have disqualified himself as a candidate."
Mr Gonski's report to the government on the fund board was leaked last week and reportedly found that an insider should be made chairman. When the government chose to appoint an outsider instead, it emerged that Mr Gonski was the frontrunner.
"The overwhelming feeling of the board was that an internal candidate should have been given the job for all the normal reasons," Mr Watson said. "So for an outsider to be given the job was definitely against the feeling of the majority of the board."
One of the complaints against the government is that the board members expressed their views frankly to Mr Gonski on the assumption that he was an adviser and not a candidate. "The board made it clear it wanted to be consulted, but it seems the consultations have been a bit of a sham," Mr Watson said.
While there has been some concern about Mr Gonski taking the chairmanship after advising the government, it is understood he was independently identified by Future Fund board members on a shortlist of preferred external candidates.
Others on the list included Reserve Bank director Jillian Broadbent, former Commonwealth Bank chief executive Ralph Norris and Commonwealth Bank director Andrew Mohl.
The list was drawn from names identified by the board members as potential external candidates for the chairmanship in their discussions with Mr Gonski. Mr Gonski had no role in assembling the final shortlist.
One of the leading internal candidates was former treasurer Peter Costello, who set up the fund during the Howard government. Mr Costello would not comment for this article and other board members declined to comment.
Mr Gonski is expected to give up his chairmanship of the ASX to ease his heavy workload. He resigned his advisory position at investment bank Morgan Stanley two months ago.
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Render unto Caesar...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Render unto Caesar…" is the beginning of a phrase attributed to Jesus in the synoptic gospels, which reads in full, "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" (Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ Matthew 22:21).
This phrase has become a widely quoted summary of the relationship between Christianity and secular authority. The original message, coming in response to a question of whether it was lawful for Jews to pay taxes to Caesar, gives rise to multiple possible interpretations about under what circumstances it is desirable for the Christian to submit to earthly authority.
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Showing results for GFC puts Iceland's ex- PM in the dock geir Haarde is charged with failing to safeguard the economy
No results found for GFC puts Iceland's ex- PM in the dock geir Haaaede is charged with failing to safeguard the economy
No results found for GFC puts Iceland's ex- PM in the dock geir Haaaede is charged with failing to safeguard the economy
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News for GFC puts Iceland's ex- PM in the dock geir ...
New York Times- IIGFC puts Iceland's ex-PM Geir Haarde in the dockThe Australian - 6 days agoTHE former prime minister of Iceland has warned a court that it is ...the banks were transforming the country's small fishing-based economyby gorging on debt. ... Mr Haarde is charged with failing to ensuresafeguards were in...###########################################################
GFC puts Iceland's ex-PM Geir Haarde in the dock
- The Australian
- March 07, 2012
Geir Haarde, 60, told the first day of his trial in Reykjavik that no other government leaders or financial regulators had seen the GFC coming and that the charges against him - carrying a two-year jail sentence - were based on hindsight. The case is being watched by many Western government leaders who are uncomfortable with the idea that a politician can face jail for failing to show foresight and caution."Nobody predicted that there would be a financial collapse in Iceland" in 2008, Mr Haarde said yesterday, insisting the small country's debt-hungry banks had hidden the extent of their liabilities."We knew about the crisis, but not the banks' lack of accountability and their illegal activities, which not even the Financial Supervisory Authority seems to have realised," he said.
"None of us realised at the time that there was something fishy within the banking system itself, as now appears to have been the case. I think it's illogical to think that I or anyone else in the government could have reduced the size of the banks to a greater extent than was done."Noting that international auditors had helped the banks to hide the state of their balance sheets, Mr Haarde said the charges were a political vendetta by centre-left MPs who now controlled the government.The global crisis, triggered by the collapse of US subprime housing debt and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, led to the implosion ofIceland's three main banks, plunging the country of just 330,000 people into recession.Fierce protests drove Mr Haarde's coalition from power and a truth commission into the crisis then accused him and three other politicians of having failed to take proper safeguards in the years before 2008 when the banks were transforming the country's small fishing-based economy by gorging on debt.The parliament voted in 2010 for charges against only Mr Haarde and referred the case to the Landsdomur, a special tribunal created in 1905 to hear charges against MPs that has never before heard a case. It has 15 members - six judges, a constitutional law professor and eight people chosen by parliament. Mr Haarde is charged with failing to ensure safeguards were in place to stop the collapse of the country's banks, and failing to keep his ministers informed about the scale of the crisis.Prosecutors said Mr Haarde had failed to implement recommendations by a government committee in 2006 aimed at strengthening Iceland's economy but he replied that those measures would not have prevented the crisis."We did everything possible to urge the banks to downsize their balance sheets," he said. "It wasn't until the last few days before the collapse that we, or certainly I, realised how interlinked they all were, they were more or less one and the same. By then, of course, it was too late."The trial is expected to run for two weeks.################################################Warning of $30bn hit from high carbon price
- The Australian
- March 13, 2012
- 27 comments
The modelling, by the Centre for International Economics consultancy, warns that keeping the $23 fixed price regime and the floor price of $15 a tonne - key elements of the current package - will have almost twice the impact on economic growth by 2018 as allowing the Australian price to track international prices.A higher price in Australia than in comparable international markets could also cost the mining industry a cumulative $4bn and durable manufacturers $1.5bn over six years, the CIE modelling predicts. In a blow to the Coalition's direct action policy alternative, leading CSIRO researcher Michael Battaglia has warned that the abatement figures in Tony Abbott's alternative policy are "ambitious". The centrepiece of the policy - sequestering 85 million tonnes of carbon in soil by 2020 - might only achieve abatement of between 5 million and 20 million tonnes, he said yesterday.
The CIE research, commissioned by the Minerals Council of Australia, comes amid projections that slow growth in Europe will mean international carbon prices will not rise significantly above the $10 around which they are currently sitting.
When Australia's carbon package was announced, Treasury assumed an international carbon price of between $29 and $61. But the European credit crisis caused prices to slump. The research will amplify calls by key business backers of carbon pricing, including the Australian Industry Group's Heather Ridout and the Business Council of Australia's Jennifer Westacott for the policy to be rewritten.Last week, Ms Ridout said the difference between the Australian and European prices was effectively "a tax on industry", while Ms Westacott described the disparity as a concern for the competitiveness of Australia's industries.Kevin Rudd, during his failed leadership challenge to Julia Gillard, reignited the debate last month when he said if he again became prime minister he would examine the implementation of the carbon tax within six months and that the scheme should move to a floating price as quickly as possible.The CIE modelling said that, if global carbon prices remained low, there was a risk the Australian fixed price or the Australian minimum price (in the subsequent three years) would be above the accessible international price and this would have "important implications for the cost effectiveness of the Australian scheme". "An important consequence of this is that the cost of abatement in Australia could be higher than necessary as the administrative arrangements do not allow the use of relatively low cost international abatement," the report says. "In 2018, for example, the Australian GDP loss is around two times higher with a fixed and minimum price in place compared with what it would have been without the minimum price (-0.9 per cent compared with -0.5 per cent)".Treasury modelling last year as part of the government's Clean Energy Future Package put the reduction in GDP compared with business as usual at -0.3 per cent in 2020.Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Mitch Hooke said the CIE modelling "further confirms Australia will have the world's biggest carbon tax and that the proposed system is a long way from least cost abatement". "The current carbon tax is being introduced at the wrong time and is the wrong design for our economy," Mr Hooke said. "It is
simply a revenue churn that imposes massive costs without reducing global . . . emissions."A spokesman for Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said the initial fixed-price period would provide certainty before the transition to an emissions trading scheme, under which carbon prices would be determined by the market. "The government is including a price floor and ceiling for the first three years of emissions trading to avoid sharp price spikes or plunges," the spokesman said. "This will reduce risks for businesses as they gain experience in having a market set the carbon price."The government was providing a multi-billion-dollar Jobs and Competitiveness Program to provide aid to firms that emitted a lot of pollution and faced strong competition from imports or on export markets, the spokesman said."It shields those industries from the full carbon price; in fact, the most emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industries will only face an initial effective carbon price of $1.30 a tonne once you take this assistance into account," he said.Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said the $30bn hit was "an extraordinary indictment of the government's approach".
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