Author Archives: Melanie McCartney

Corporations want to profit from global health with TiSA and the TPP

I recently wrote about the TPP and now I think it’s time that we take a look at the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). It’s a services-only free trade agreement (FTA) that began in 2012 with exploratory discussions between Australia, US and the European Union (EU) for a year and with formal discussions beginning in early 2013. Australia, US and the EU take it in turns to chair the negotiations in Geneva. The services sector accounts for around 70% of Australia’s economic activity and accounts for around 17% of Australia’s total exports. Current countries negotiating the TiSA are Australia, Canada, Chile, Chinese Taipei, Colombia, Costa Rica, The European Union (representing its 28 Member States), Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Republic of Korea, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States. These countries also account for around 70% of global trade in services. China and Uruguay have expressed interest but have yet to be invited, it’s also worth mentioning that the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) bloc have not been invited.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) deals with the global rules of trade between nations and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) came into effect in April 1994, and involves all WTO members. The TiSA’s aim is to be compatible with GATS yet, set a new standard in services trade that covers all service sectors including health and public services; financial services; ICT services (including telecommunications and e-commerce); professional services; maritime transport services; air transport services; competitive delivery services; energy services; temporary entry of business persons; government procurement; and new rules on domestic regulation to ensure regulatory settings do not operate as a barrier to trade in services. The discussions are held behind closed doors as per other trade agreements, Wikileaks managed to leak draft text from the April 2014 round of discussions involving further deregulation of global financial services markets, despite the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The draft Financial Services Annex sets rules to assist the expansion of financial multi-nationals into other nations by preventing regulatory barriers. The leaked draft also shows that the US is particularly keen on boosting cross-border data flow, allowing the uninhibited exchange of personal and financial data.

The Australian government has a web page for it’s involvement in TiSA and in the sixth April/May round that Australia also chaired, more than 140 negotiators and sector-specific government experts attended. There were advanced discussions in all areas of the negotiations, including on new and enhanced disciplines (trade rules) for financial services, domestic regulation and transparency, e-commerce and telecommunications, and maritime transport. TiSA parties also agreed to move to a negotiating text for air transport and market access negotiations also continued. The Global Services Coalition or “Team TiSA” organised a substantial industry presence in the margins of the negotiations and as the name suggests is pro the TiSA for the US. Trading in services has grown at a faster pace than trading in goods since the 1980s. The United Nations Conference on Trade And Development (UNCTAD) estimates that in 2013 global services exports reached $4.7 trillion and grew at an annual rate of 5%.  Overall, the services trade has grown by 95% since 2000. World Bank research shows that the services sector has become the dominant driver of economic growth in developing countries, delivering both GDP growth and poverty reduction.  In 2011, the services sector accounted for a massive 49% of GDP in low income countries and 47% in least developed countries. Team TiSA has every right to be cheering for it as it would benefit the US greatly. The US is the world’s largest single-country exporter and importer of services and they generate more than 75% of their national economic output. In 2013 the US exported over $681bn in services, resulting in a $231 billion surplus. Services exports in 2013 grew by $31.8 bn and services imports in 2013 grew by $12.9bn.

Australia chaired the ninth round early last December and this time it was attended by more than 200 negotiators and sector-specific government experts. Good progress was made in advancing the enhanced disciplines (trade rules) for e-commerce and telecommunications, domestic regulation and transparency, financial services, temporary entry of business persons, professional services, maritime and air transport services and delivery services. There was also further discussion of proposals on government procurement, environmental and energy services, and the facilitation of patient mobility. Parties reported on progress in bilateral market access discussions held since the September round and committed to advance these further in 2015. Besides the vagueness and secretiveness above and what it all means for every day Australians, one thing leaps out and that is the facilitation of patient mobility. Luckily another leak was sprung, the proposal was titled ‘A concept paper on health care services within TISA Negotiations’ and it states there is ‘huge untapped potential for the globalisation of healthcare services’ mainly because ‘health care services is (sic) funded and provided by state or welfare organisations and is of virtually no interest for foreign competitors due to lack of market-orientated scope for activity’. It was allegedly a proposal put forward by Turkey, and was discussed by TiSA members in the September round of discussions. And there are justifiable fears that they want to commodify health services globally as well as to promote “medical tourism” for patients.

Experts, such as Dr Odile Frank of Public Services International (PSI) say, ‘The proposal would raise health care costs in developing countries and lower quality in developed countries in Europe, North America, Australia and elsewhere’. Rosa Pavanelli, PSI General Secretary, also commented that ‘Health is a human right and is not for sale or for trade. The health system exists to keep our families safe and healthy, not to ensure the profits of large corporations’. The proposal could see patients being treated in other TiSA countries for reasons such as long waiting times in their home country or a lack of expertise for specific medical problems. The patients’s costs would need to be reimbursed through their own countries social security system, private insurance coverage or other healthcare arrangements.

The beneficiaries of this are the large health corporations and insurance companies, the ones actually behind the negotiations, that would benefit from an approximate $USD 6 trillion business. Public services are designed to provide vital social and economic necessities such as health care and education affordably, universally and on the basis of need. They exist because markets can’t produce these outcomes. Furthermore, public services are fundamental to ensuring fair competition for business, and they provide effective regulation to avoid environmental, social and economic disasters, such as the GFC and global warming. Even the most die-hard supporters of FTA’s admit that there are winners and losers.

New South Wales (NSW) Australia, Nurses and Midwives’ Association organiser Michael Whaites said: “Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey have been saying that healthcare expenditure is unsustainable, but Trade Minister Andrew Robb is quietly engaged in negotiations that could potentially see scarce healthcare dollars going overseas,”. And that “You can ask whether the government is working in a co-ordinated manner, and indeed what is their real intention on the future of Medicare?” Professor Jane Kelsey, an expert on trade in services at the University of Auckland, warns that health-service-exporting countries such as Australia could find qualified staff being diverted to health export services “that often have better pay and facilities, eroding the personnel base for public facilities and perpetuating inequalities in the health care system”. Education and training investments could also be diverted “to benefit foreign healthcare users, rather than local citizens and taxpayers”.

In August 2014 the Australian Health Department called for expressions of interest from private players interested in taking over the payments of $29bn each year in health and pharmaceutical benefits currently being managed by the Human Services. Human Services Minister Marise Payne said much of the Department of Human Services (DHS) IT infrastructure for processing the payments was old and needed to be replaced and that the private sector might have cheaper solutions. The government claims it is merely testing the market with an initial expression of Interest process, not via cost analysis or efficiencies already provided. Australia Post stuck it’s hand up from the get go and other Australian corporations that are keen are – Eftpos and Stellar (Telstra) with overseas companies being Oracle, Fuji-Xerox, SAP, Accenture and Serco.

It’s hard not to feel that we are being attacked at from all angles with corporations eying off developing and developed countries public health services for profit. With an Australian government seemingly hell bent on dismantling it’s Medicare system with outsourcing payments while introducing co-payments, it’s looking clearer now as to what the current Australian government has planned. The rise of corporations and their lust for profits no matter what the cost is, has to stop. Our public services are not the latest money making scheme for corporates, whom no doubt once plundered and ruined will be nowhere to be found or at the very least held accountable for their actions. Governments must get out of bed with them and understand that they don’t know best and an even mix of private and government is required sometimes, but not all of the time. The people elect governments to govern and make decisions, we do not elect corporations. Take some advice from them but if you give them an inch they will take a mile as we have been seeing in recent years. Greed is worming it’s way in globally under the guise of competition and job creation. I find this very hard to believe for your average person, for the corporations yes, they keep getting richer and the equality gap wider. Low income countries delivering GDP growth and poverty reduction will be hardest hit and that’s not fair with many only just recovering from the GFC. The US has the most to benefit from this and all other FTA’s, this also needs to stop, they aren’t the biggest power anymore and even if they were why should they get all of the advantages? People over profits, after all you can’t make profits without us and there’s no need to ruin everyone globally once again for it.

We can not allow Free-Trade-Agreements without any transparency

Updated: 18/08/2016

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was conceived in 2003 as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Partnership Agreement TPSEP as a path to trade liberalisation in the Asia-Pacific. The original participating countries were Chile, New Zealand and Singapore with Brunei joining in 2005. In 2008 the United States of America (USA), Australia, Peru and Vietnam joined, followed on by Malaysia, Mexico, Canada and Japan. Free Trade Agreements (FTA) deal mostly with goods being imported at a certain price with certain environmental and labour standards met. What’s different about the TPP is that the treaty has 29 chapters, dealing with the whole scope of tariff and agricultural quota removal and market access on sensitive products, but in particular agricultural goods. It also includes provisions over non-tariff issues such as intellectual property rights, the environment, state-owned enterprises, and investment.

Japan was the last to join in 2013, as agriculture as well as the auto industry have long been a sticking point in Japanese trade liberalisation and had held up the TPP negotiations with the USA. However agricultural reforms made by Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has tipped the power of balance back into the governments favour and away from Japan’s most powerful farm lobby, the Japan Agriculture Cooperative. Japan offered to import more rice from the USA while keeping existing tariffs in place, and the USA agreed to stop demanding that Japan ease its car safety standards. Progress was also made on issues such as state-owned enterprises, environmental protection, and investment. This not only paves the way for greater market liberalisation and deregulation in Japanese agriculture but was meant to enable Mr Obama’s plan to “fast track” push for Congress approval to conclude the TPP before the end of his Presidency.

What is of the most concern is the provisions over not only the aforementioned non-tariff issues of intellectual property rights, the environment, state-owned enterprises, and investment but the Investor State Dispute Settlements provisions (ISDS). ISDS allows multinational corporations to sue governments if they’re deemed not to be acting in their best “interests”. It can potentially place limits on governments being able to develop their domestic laws and policies in areas such as public health, patents on medicine, the environment, food labeling, Internet use and privacy and even local media content. Australia had a long-running investor-state dispute with Philip Morris Asia, due to the introduction of the ‘Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011′ in 2011. The laws were introduced by the former Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s Australian Labor Party (ALP) government as a health measure but Philip Morris Asia amongst the many breaches, believes that it infringes their intellectual property. Previous ALP and Liberal National Party governments had in the past only included ISDS in trade agreements with developing countries that didn’t have any investments in Australia and they were not included in the US-Australia FTA. American corporations are the most frequent users of ISDS and the safeguard clauses that countries employ to protect themselves in FTA’s can and have been re-interpreted and over-turned through the arbitration process. Philip Morris International Inc in an Australian case for example, challenged the tobacco plain packaging legislation under a 1993 Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of Hong Kong for the Promotion and Protection of Investments.

Even where corporations do lose they have dragged governments through lengthy and expensive legal processes with dispute settlement cases that are heard by tribunals of three private-sector lawyers. The tribunals tend to be more concerned with assessing potential damage to corporate investments rather than the protection of the government’s or public’s interest. In December 2015 Australia won its four year international legal battle with Phillip Morris Asia and there are now currently 608 ISDS cases globally. More than $3bn has been paid by out governments, or taxpayers, to corporations under existing US trade and investment agreements alone. African countries are increasingly becoming involved in ISDS cases with the majority of these in the gas, oil and mining sectors. According to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), out of the ISDS cases registered with them until 2014, 26% were concentrated in the oil, gas and mining sectors. It was 35% for the year 2014 alone, compared to 2000 when there were only three pending cases. Investors have challenged many government measures such as: licenses that are revoked in mining, telecommunications and tourism; alleged breaches of investment contracts; the withdrawl of previously granted subsidies and changes to domestic regulatory frameworks in gas, nuclear energy, the marketing of gold and currency regulations.

An examples of an ISDS case against a government is one from Canada by Lone Pine Resources which filed a $250m lawsuit against the Canadian government when Quebec placed a moratorium on it and banned drilling and fracking processes for oil and gas underneath the St. Lawrence River for an environmental evaluation. “Based on the principle of precaution, the Quebec government’s response to the concerns of its population is appropriate and legitimate,” said Martine Châtelain, president of Eau secours! (The Quebec based Coalition for the responsible management of water). “No companies should be allowed to sue a State when it implements sovereign measures to protect water and the common goods for the sake of our ecosystems and the health of our peoples” Ms Châtelain added.

And there is the case of Eli Lilly and Company when an American global pharmaceutical company (and it’s fifth biggest), filed a $500m law suit against Canada. It was for allegedly violating its obligations to foreign investors under the North American FTA for allowing its domestic courts to invalidate patents for two of its drugs. Canadian courts had found that there was a lack of evidence supporting the drug’s alleged benefits.

According to Forbes in 2013 the biggest profit margins produced be USA corporations are in the pharmaceuticals. In 2013, US pharmaceutical Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company, made a 42% profit margin. As one industry veteran put it: “I wouldn’t be able to justify [those kinds of margins].” In the UK that year, there was widespread anger when the industry regulator predicted energy companies’ profit margins would grow from 4% to 8% for the year. In 2014, five pharmaceutical companies made a profit margin of 20% or more, these were – Pfizer, Hoffmann-La Roche, AbbVie, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Eli Lilly. And in 2015 Johnson & Johnson was named the world’s largest drug and biotech company, edging out Pfizer and Swiss company Novartis once again. In 2015 Johnson & Johnson made $16.3bn in profits, held $131bn in assets and it’s market value was $276bn.

The problem isn’t just with the massive amounts of profiteering but the fact that the drug companies spend far more on marketing drugs than on developing them. Johnson & Johnson’s total revenue for 2013 for example was $71.3bn with a profit of 13.8%, it spent 8.2% on research and development and 17.5% was spent on sales and marketing.  Drug patents in the US are usually awarded for 20 years, but 10-12 of those years are spent developing it at a cost of up to $2.5bn, leaving eight to ten years to make money before the formula can be taken up by generic drug companies. Once this happens, sales fall by over 90%. Joshua Owide, director of healthcare industry dynamics at research company GlobalData, explains, “Unlike other sectors, brand loyalty goes out the window when patents expire.” This is why pharmaceutical companies go to such extraordinary lengths to extend their patents, a process known as “evergreening”, employing “floors full of lawyers” for this express purpose, one industry insider has said. And with a drug raking in $3bn a quarter, even a one month extension can be worth a lot of money. Some drug companies, including the UK’s GSK, have been accused of more underhand tactics, such as paying generics to delay the release of their cheaper alternatives. This is a win for both industries, as it has been said that the loss of the big pharmaceuticals far outweighs the generic industries revenue.

The source of contention between Australia and the US to seal the TPP deal now in 2016, is the difference in the monopoly period (the time-frame that it can’t be taken up by generic companies) for medicines or biologics between the two countries. Biologics are “next generation” drugs and Australia’s time-frame to protect medical intellectual property is five years whereas the US had been bargaining for eight years. Meaning that no generic or cheaper drugs could come onto the market for nearly a decade. Last month TPP supporter, US Senator Orrin Hatch, accused Australia of trying to steal American medicine patents and said that he wants it to be changed to twelve years.

The former Abbott government and the current Turnbull government have an appetite for signing FTA’s with their eyes on more with India, Indonesia and an Asian trade deal to rival the TPP called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. The TPP has been many years in the making and has been fraught with difficult negotiations that could impact on us really hard in an already uncertain economic environment. The secrecy in our Australian political environment in particular around FTA’s and the public’s growing unease with them needs to be heeded. If the government won’t listen we need the opposition, independents and the senate to come together and put the countries future and needs first, no matter how big the opportunities are for for a few investors in this country. Can you imagine what could be in store for us if we allow multinational corporations and trade ministers to ultimately decide our economies, laws and policies? With the global spend on medicines projected to be worth up to $1.2 trillion for 2017, low global growth and profit hungry corporations, the stakes are too high.

The duopoly of Woolworths and Coles is killing small business

It wasn’t that long ago that the aisles of the two major supermarkets in Australia were full of products other than the Coles and Woolworths (WWs) “private brands”. Now our choices are limited to their brands competing with few other brands for shelf space. WWs offers ‘Select’, ‘Homebrand’, ‘Macro, ‘Gold’ and ‘free from’. While Coles offers ‘smartbuy’, ‘Coles’, ‘organic’, ‘finest’, ‘simply less’ and ‘green choice’. This is not new and they model their business models on Tesco in the United Kingdom (UK), right down to their recent convenience store trials in Victoria but we will get more into that shortly. Not only do they control over 70% of the supermarket share out of the $82.5bn grocery sector, but they both have their fingers in many other pies. WWs for example is not only the largest operator of hotels and poker machine venues in the country, but it’s also the largest take-away liquor retailer in Australia. WWs and Coles also make up half of the Australian petrol retail market, combine this with their discount shopper dockets for alcohol, petrol and food and their strangle hold is clearly apparent. Interestingly there are no links to either company on labels of wine brands that are owned by either of the two like they do with their “private brands”, some brands include Cradle Bay, Bay Estates, Oak Lane, Iron Hill and South Island. Out of every dollar that is spent in a retail store in Australia 88c is spent at WWs or Coles. In comparison to the USA where 12c out of every dollar is spent at their largest retailer which is Wal-Mart, and it commands around 30% of the market share.

In August 2006 Coles attempted to make inroads into the pharmacy market, where it wanted to establish a presence by purchasing Pharmacy Direct. They ended up selling it in 2009 at a reported loss of $28m or more after a three year battle with the Pharmacy Guild of Australia (PGA), which concluded with legislation preventing Coles and the like from operating pharmacies within supermarkets. At the end of June 2014 however, WWs announced it’s intention of offering in-store “free health checks” by hiring final year pharmacy students, graduating pharmacists and nurses to conduct health checks such as blood pressure and cholesterol. Six stores have been trialling the system in New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland (QLD) with the intent of expanding the scheme nationally, and the idea being that if any customers have readings outside of the normal range, they will be directed to a doctor or pharmacist for medical advice. But the PGA is concerned about the move, saying it is an attempt by the supermarket to “hoodwink consumers into believing they can get professional pharmacist advice and products from a supermarket”. And: “It’s a hypocritical and frankly a public disservice that a supermarket giant which profits so heavily from retailing tobacco and alcohol products – which are the biggest preventable causes of ill health and death – is claiming to be interested in health care,” the Guild’s George Tambassis said. The next five-year pharmacy agreement between the government and the industry is due this year in 2015.

The Australian Labor Party (ALP) sold and privatised the NSW lotteries to the Tatts Group (Tatts) in 2010, a condition of privatising it was a five year moratorium that prevented the big two from selling lotto tickets and scratchie tickets. It also ends in 2015 on the 31st March, not long after the NSW state election, with no review of the agency protection period being undertaken to identify a future strategy, Tatts will have free rein from April 1 to sell through any retailer it chooses. NANA presented a petition to NSW Parliament, the petition read: “To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales in Parliament assembled. The privatisation of NSW Lotteries in 2010 was accompanied by a five year Agency Protection Period during which all existing arrangements with agents were to be maintained. The Agency Protection Period will expire on 1 April 2015 at which point the protections for existing lotteries agents will cease. This is likely to have long-lasting and devastating consequences not only for the existing agencies, but also for the broader local small business community. We the undersigned call upon the NSW Government to indefinitely extend the Agency Protection Period and enshrine the protective measure to support the viability of key community small businesses.” The petition garnered many signatures was handed to the NSW government upon popular demand this one was set up too, if you would like to sign there is only a few hundred or so to go.

As mentioned in the first paragraph, convenience store trials have begun in Victoria and Sydney and the initial branding for the “Woolworths’ corner store” push is “Woolworths Small Format”. WWs is reportedly snapping up land for smaller corner stores in the centres of our capital cities, taking on 7-Eleven and other similar-style operators. 7-Eleven has done very well selling Tatts products and no doubt the multinationals want some of the action. Tatts wants to introduce a new Franchise Agreement to Newsagents in NSW in July this year and it is also demanding a corporate branded Tatts shop fit-out from all of the 1,500 agencies (including 300 small retailers selling lottery tickets), using only Tatts approved shop fitters who have to buy Tatts acquired components. With a minimum cost of $22k and “with no contribution from Tatts“, if you want to remain a lottery agent, things look very dire indeed. Tatts also wants to increase “direct debit” access to newsagents accounts for payments from once a week to twice a week. Cash flow is integral and with prize payments, card transactions and the reimbursement of them to consider, what will this achieve exactly? Is it a designated push against small business or a lack of forward thinking? NANA Chief Executive Andrew Packham says the flow-on effect could be devastating for newspapers and that the new Lotteries Franchise Agreements would be economically disastrous. He said: “From the April 1 next year, the government oversight of a huge part of newsagents’ business will no longer be there and the operator will be able to do whatever it wants.” “The newsagent system was created to ensure low cost home delivery of newspapers. That entire system is under threat.” Mr Packham also said that removing income from lottery tickets would render 60 – 70% of businesses non viable. A mediation with Tatts and the Newsagent Association of NSW and ACT (NANA) in November last year produced no results. The five year moratorium rule was meant to include meetings every six months between Tatts, NANA and the NSW state government, this did not occur. What has eventuated is Tatts having talks with the major players about lottery sales, following lottery tickets trials in Victoria at eight Coles Express stores recently. Mr Packham said, “we will undertake other measures” and that “We’re now relying on a political solution to a commercial problem.” NANA are lobbying state members of parliament and forwarding their concerns to the small business commission.

Gerringong Newsagency co-owner Janet Ware has been running her business for nearly 12 months and said: “We’re distressed by the state government’s lack of support for our small business, especially when they are a government that says they are for business,” she also said. “They’ve had five years to make some decisions on this, and nothing has happened so far. “I find it very distressing. “The tireless enthusiasm of newsagents has built Lotto up; we’ve built their business up to where it is now. “Lotto is gambling, and this will put it into supermarkets and normalise it.”

The Australian Newsagents Federation (ANF) has written to Bruce Billson Minister for Small Business, and Malcolm Turnbull Minister for Communications, to outline how the newsagency channel is well-placed to take on more of the Australia Post services following reports in the Australian Financial Review that Australia Post will require government assistance to urgently restructure its letter service in the New Year in order to remain viable. ANF CEO Alf Maccioni said: “The ANF was shocked to see how Australia Post is looking for a government hand out to help with their struggling retail outlets. We have written to both Bruce Billson and Malcolm Turnbull reminding them again that there is a network of retailers, larger than Australia Post out in the Australian Retail landscape that already runs a large amount of LPO and are willing to help take on more business. Let’s look at saving the government some money by using the largest independent retail network in Australia.”

In June 2013 Bob Katter introduced the Reducing Supermarket Dominance Bill 2013, it didn’t get anywhere but had the support of Independent senators Andrew Wilkie and Nick Xenophon. The bill sought to reduce the market share of Coles and WWs from their combined market share of around 80%, to no more than 20% each. “The Americans are screaming blue murder because WalMart and their competitor have now reached about 23 per cent market share. Here we have two supermarkets with a market share of over 80 per cent, so if they decide to cut down the amount of money they are going to pay farmers and jack up the price to the consumers, they can, because there is no competition,” said Mr Katter. No competition perhaps with the two majors but you would think plenty of employment, right? Well according to a Price Waterhouse Coopers report on the state of the Australian grocery industry shows that despite controlling most of the market share, WWs, Coles and Aldi only employ 43% of all grocery employees. In contrast, independent retailers with a 20% market share employ 57% cent of our nation’s grocery staff.

Clearly this can’t go on for much longer, we haven’t even touched on the other brands that they own and fairly recent moves into the financial markets. The Australia Post idea is good as was Mr Katter’s Bill above but who will have the mettle to tackle them? Please “Shop small” whenever you can, or we may end up with only two choices to do our entire shop at.

Is Uranium the Asbestos of the 21st Century?

After reading about incoming Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, and his interest in nuclear power today, I remembered that it wasn’t too long ago that Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said similar things of which I wrote about back in December 2014.

The minister for foreign affairs Julie Bishop, reignited the nuclear energy debate in Australia saying that it remains an option and a way to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions after 2020. “It’s an obvious conclusion that if you want to bring down your greenhouse gas emissions dramatically you have to embrace a form of low or zero-emissions energy and that’s nuclear, the only known 24/7 baseload power supply with zero emissions,” she told Fairfax Media. A “baseload power supply” is basically a continuous power supply. “I always thought that we needed to have a sensible debate about all potential energy sources and, given that Australia has the largest source of uranium, it’s obvious that we should at least debate it,” she said.

In 2006 businessman and nuclear physicist Ziggy Switkowski, headed the Review of Uranium Mining Processing and Nuclear Energy in Australia (UMPNER). Mr Switkowski is mostly known for being the former Telstra CEO that oversaw the initial privatisation of Telstra. He stepped aside controversially in 2005 with a “golden handshake” two years shy of his contract ending amid share prices slumping, and the fallout from risky financial decisions. Recently he is back in telecommunications after nearly a decade when the minister for communications Malcolm Turnbull, appointed him as Chairman of the national broadband network (NBN) in October last year. Ms Bishop was minister for education, science and training and minister assisting the Prime Minister for women’s issues, in the Howard government when the UMPNER review was released. She expresses dismay at the end results of the review: “The debate didn’t go anywhere. It descended into name calling about which electorates I intended to place a nuclear reactor in, and would I rule out Cottesloe Beach – that kind of puerile debate. So it didn’t ever get off the ground,” she said. Mr Switkowski’s review was pro-uranium mining and pro-nuclear power but many critics did not agree and felt that the narrow terms of reference set by the federal government restricted the panel to a study of nuclear power, not a serious study of energy options for Australia. And that there was already existing research indicating that meeting energy demand and reducing emissions can be done with a combination of renewable energy and gas to displace coal, combined with energy efficiency measures, without needing to use nuclear power. Another critic Dr. Mark Diesendor said that the report has no basis for its claim and that: “Nuclear power is the least-cost low-emission technology …” “How can the panel assert that nuclear is least cost, when it has neither performed any analysis nor commissioned any on this topic? To the contrary, wind power is a lower cost, lower emission technology in both the UK and USA and would also be lower cost in Australia.”

After hearing Ms Bishop’s comments, Mr Switkowski said: “It’s a big call for our leaders to engage in this debate, but a good one because it will take some time for communities and industries to get comfortable again with the current and future generations of nuclear technology.” He is of the belief that Australian community sentiment has been warming since the Fukishima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011, where the aftermath is ongoing, with 100 thousand people still displaced. The disaster occurred due to a major earthquake and a 15-metre tsunami that disabled the power supply, cooling three Fukushima Daiichi reactors causing the accident. Mr Switkowski appears to have his hopes pinned on advances in Small Modular Reactors (SMR), which are part of a new generation of nuclear power plant designs being developed in several countries. “The small modular reactors will provide a real opportunity to consider nuclear power again because they are a tenth of the size of a nuclear or coal-fired powered station.” He also hoped that they could address concerns most people held about the reactors being waste, their closeness to residential areas and the risk of accidents such as the Fukishima or the Chernobyl nuclear power plant catastrophe in 1986. He admits however, that if there were improvements in wind and solar technology over the next twenty years, renewable energy sources could be more viable. “It’s a bit of a race, given the time that’s been lost due to Fukushima,” he said.

I would hope that we are on a race to come up with the best alternative energy options including renewable energy, rather than putting all of our eggs into one nuclear basket.

The 5th Annual SMR conference in Washington D.C. was held in May this year. Senior Policy Adviser, National Resources Defence Council (NRDC) Christopher Paine, commented that “no speaker even mentioned the swiftly emerging reality that in 2025, potential SMR deployments will be competing against cleaner simpler renewable electricity plus energy storage systems – nuclear power will no longer be able to market itself by playing on customer fears of the “intermittency” of renewable energy sources.” Mr Paine also noted that no presenters at the conference had made a case that the economics of an SMR power plant would be better than those of an advanced conventional nuclear plant. On average a nuclear plant takes between 5-7 years to build, not including the planning and licensing. The initial outlay is very high and up to 75% total of it’s lifetime which is around 40-60 years. Exact figures for the construction of nuclear power plants are often commercially sensitive and hard to provide. Recent examples in the United States though have been priced from $5-$12bn per reactor over a relatively short construction time span. Even though the running costs of a nuclear plant are fairly low, the upfront costs associated with the construction and financing of it make it much more expensive than fossil fuel power, or coal. Mr Paine mentioned “energy storage systems”, this would solve the “baseload power supply problem” that is used to explain why nuclear is better than renewable energy. In fact, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) researchers are working on new battery technology promising more efficient and affordable solar and wind energy. The three year project has received a $750k investment from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (AREA) as well as $1.24m industry support. “The focus of this project is to find a storage solution. Solar energy is not continuous; it is only when you have sunshine that you can generate electricity. The same goes for wind and other renewable energy sources. We intend to develop a rechargeable battery that can store these renewable energy sources and make them available for later use.”

Australia supplies between 12-20% of the global market and we have around 30% of the world’s reserves of uranium. Prior to the Fukushima disaster, Japan bought around 2,400 tonnes of uranium from Australia, our second largest market next to the European Union. The former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, came to tour Australia this year at the end of August for a week and to campaign for large-scale renewable energy. It’s of note that the current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Australia and where he addressed the Australian Parliament a month before hand. Mr Kan, a trained physicist, was once convinced that nuclear power was the future but this changed in March 2011 with the Fukushima nuclear disaster, when he faced the prospect of evacuating 50 million Japanese citizens from their homes. “Japan as a country would have lost its capability to function for decades,” he said, adding that only luck and “the mercy of God” stopped the crisis from reaching such a scale. He started his tour in the Northern Territory (NT), where the Ranger uranium mine is located, and most likely the source of some of the uranium oxide that found its way to the Fukushima plants. Energy Resources Australia (ERA) and it’s majority owner, Rio Tinto, won’t confirm this, citing commercial confidentiality. What is known is that Australia was the largest supplier of uranium to Japan; ERA produces more than half our uranium ore; and that Canberra’s nuclear safeguards office confirmed in October 2011 that Australian uranium was present in the Fukushima plants. Mr Kan doesn’t doubt some of Fukushima’s pollution originated at Ranger. ERA insists it abides by the world’s best environmental safeguards and practises, that are policed by both the NT government and the federal government’s supervising scientist, who is the federal regulator of the site. There has been more than 200 safety breaches and incidents over the past 30 years at the site, according to the Environment Centre NT. The worst one to happen was last December and the third mishap that month, when a leach tank with a 1.5 million litre capacity burst and spilled out a radioactive and acidic slurry. Mine operations were closed for several months before the Abbott government declared no harmful effects had been detected from the spill.

The traditional owners were opposed to the mining of uranium on the site, yet a 1976 act of Parliament allowed mining to go ahead on Mirarr lands anyway. Justice Russell Fox, the chair of the evironmental inquiry into Ranger, and who recommended that the mine go ahead also noted that “the evidence before us shows that the traditional owners… are opposed to the mining of uranium on that site”. Nevertheless, he said, “we form the conclusion that their opposition should not be allowed to prevail”. He also expressed hope that the mine would improve the “general happiness and prosperity of the region”, he also acknowledged that “the arrival of large numbers of white people… will potentially be very damaging to the welfare and interests of the Aboriginal people there”. Based on his recommendations, the Kakadu National park came to be, with its boundaries carefully drawn to exclude the Ranger site. Toby Gangali, was a Mirarr man, and his documentary was shot more than thirty years ago, and was shown to former Japanese PM Mr Kan during his visit. Mr Gangali talked of ancient sacred sites nearby, and of his fears that “something might go wrong if the mine goes ahead… snake might come… big rainbow… he might kill all over the world”. Downstream from Ranger, inhabitants of the small Aboriginal settlement of Mudginberri are worried about what the mine may one day send their way. Mark Djandjomerr and May Nango, who spoke through an interpreter, said they live in “constant fear there could be an accident. We know that a lot of jobs have been created by the mine. But we are the people who have to live downstream from it, we are always frightened something could go wrong”. 

As traditional landowners, the Mirarr take responsibility for the impacts that activities such as mining on their land, has on others. The possibility of uranium being incorporated into a nuclear weapon or present at the site of a nuclear accident is of enormous concern to Mirarr. In April 2011, after the Fukishima disaster, Yvonne Margarula wrote to UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon and expressed her sorrow at the impacts radiation was having on the lives of Japanese people. She noted that, ‘it is likely that the radiation problems at Fukushima are, at least in part, fuelled by uranium derived from our traditional lands. This makes us feel very sad.’ It was confirmed by Dr Robert Floyd, Director General of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), that, “Australian obligated nuclear material was at the Fukushima Daiichi site”.

David Sweeney is a long-standing nuclear free campaigner with the Australian Conservation Foundation and he poignantly said: “Australia did not stop extracting and exporting asbestos because we ran out of the resource, we stopped because the resource ran out of social license and the companies involved in this toxic trade ran out of excuses. The same will happen with the uranium sector.”

We do have a moral obligation and a humanitarian responsibility for the potential hazards posed by the uranium we sell. Once it leaves our shores, there are so many dangerous risks that we are taking and the ramifications of proliferation, nuclear waste and nuclear disasters could all have catastrophic impacts, on not just our country and economy but our neighbour’s countries and economies.

Japanese PM Shinzo Abe’s government, is set to restart at least two nuclear power plants operated by Kyushu Electric Power early next year, but is facing resistance from local lawmakers concerned that the evacuation plans in the event of an accident were inadequate, as one example. Other power companies would like to follow Kyushu Electric Power’s lead and reopen reactors next year, however many of the nation’s 48 reactors are aging or located in seismically sensitive zones. In a poll conducted in October 18-19 this year by Kyodo News, 60% of respondents said they were against restarts, while 31% were in favour. Japan has also just re-entered a recession and is using quantitative easing as an economic measure to counteract it, which I have written about as well and the link is included in this sentence for ease. When Mr Abe made his case in late 2012 that he was the man to save the economy and revive Japan, including tackling Japan’s national debt, which currently stands at around 240% of their Gross Domestic Profit (GDP); voters handed him a landslide win. Just two years on out of a four year term, Mr Abe has dissolved the Japanese government and declared a snap election for December 14th this year. “We cannot”, he thundered, “let this chance go.” Many Japanese think they are being asked to buy the same horse twice. Mr Abe’s popularity has tumbled from the levels that he enjoyed early on and analysts believe he is seeking another four-year term now before issues begin next year over defence policy and the restarting of Japan’s closed nuclear plants and more grow.

Prices for uranium however have been depressed since the nuclear crisis in Japan in 2011 and most of the Australian uranium miners haven’t made a profit since then. Exploring all of the sides of nuclear energy is pause for thought, before we can even contemplate using nuclear energy in Australia. That is not to say that we can’t keep on exploring better ways to harness nuclear energy safely, because let’s face it, it’s great emission wise, just really bloody dangerous, but it would be great as a back up plan. We can never have too many of those.

An example of ‘reading between the lines’

This morning I went through the news on various sites as I usually do, when I happened across a Sydney Morning Herald header that caught my attention. The headline was ‘The ABC has flab to cut’ and it was written by Louise Evans. It starts off with “Good luck trying to change anything around here, there are too many lifers.” Ms Evans continues that this was the advice given to her when she started as manager of ABC’s Radio National (RN) in April 2013. Please note that the first sentence is the only one that has any quotation marks by Ms Evans, I’m assuming that the rest is paraphrased from Ms Evan’ initial advice and will bold the text for ease of reading. The next paragraph details Ms Evans experience as a journalist, foreign correspondent, editor and managing editor at media companies that included the Australian Associated Press, Fairfax and News Corp over the last twenty years. Ms Evans goes on to make claims that after working at lean, efficient and editorially robust media companies it came as a shock for her to see the culture, waste, duplication and lax workplace practices exercised in some pockets of Radio National. And that I was even more shocked by the failure of the executive to want to do anything about it.

The person who gave Ms Evans the “lifer” advice is referred to as “one insider pointed out” and that they told her that one of the problems was a pocket of predominantly middle-aged, Anglo-Saxon staff who had never worked anywhere other than the ABC, who were impervious to change, unaccountable, untouchable and who harboured a deep sense of entitlement. Furthermore that they also, didn’t have a 9-5 mentality. They had a 10-3 mentality. They planned their work day around their afternoon yoga class. They wore thongs and shorts to work, occasionally had a snooze on the couch after lunch and popped out to Paddy’s Market to buy fresh produce for dinner before going home. They were like free-range chickens, wandering around at will, pecking at this and that, content that laying one egg constituted a hard day’s work. It also infers that the “lifers” knew that they couldn’t be sacked or officially sanctioned because the executive didn’t want to make waves, take on the union or make a case for any more redundancies.

Next is a couple of sentences on the RN budget that touches on more “shock” and the wages of 150 people being tied up in it. I’m guessing 150 is considered a large number to her because there is no other detail as to why it’s a bad thing. There was precious little budget to do anything new or innovative and you couldn’t turn any program off, no matter how high its costs and how poor its audience share and reach. Again light on detail but she clearly believes there is no innovation and that she doesn’t think that RN understands programming that turns a profit. The media industry was actually surprised by Ms Evans appointment last year, as she had plenty of experience in print journalism and commercial media but not radio and public broadcasting. Six months later there was another surprise for the industry when former ABC’s Director of Radio Kate Dundas announced “I am writing to let you know that Louise Evans has decided she does not wish to continue in the Manager role at Radio National.” “While Louise has emphasised to me how much she has enjoyed her time with RN to date, the Manager’s role has not turned out to be one she wants to continue with over time. As such we both think it’s best for Louise to step aside now.” ABC insiders at the time said that she had not found her home in the bureaucratic, resource-limited world of RN. An ABC insider also said: “There was much more upward referral in the ABC than she was used to.”

Ms Evans also complained of “archaic systems” and “blatant waste”, citing taxi dockets being left in unlocked drawers for the taking and “elephantine” leave accrual as well as them not knowing what “constitutes work.” Allegedly attempts by herself to tighten taxi use and leave, the norm in the corporate world, were frowned upon by the ABC executive and actively discouraged as “not the main game”. Programming and content generation was another “shock”, with other media organisations living and dying by their ratings, circulation and readership figures, but some ABC programmers according to Ms Evans, consider ratings irrelevant. Some producers also allegedly strongly resisted editorial oversight and locked in segments lacking relevance.

The ABC can be “leaner” and remain editorially strong and independent as ABC’s NewsRadio proves, says Ms Evans. Note the introduction of “leaner”, which is one half of American media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s and the current federal Abbott governments favoured term at the moment – “lifters and leaners.” It gets switched to “slackers” if it involves the unemployed or Mr Murdoch’s point of view on “young adults” that aren’t rich. Ms Evans waxes on lyrically that the winds of change that have swept through media companies around the world can reinvigorate our ABC. And that’s why these ABC budget cuts announced by Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull are not just necessary but vital to the ongoing health of the corporation. Pockets of the ABC have been allowed to get too fat, flabby, wasteful and unaccountable. And lastly that the same efficiencies and workplace practices that are the norm in corporate Australia need to be front and centre at the ABC so that it remains a strong, independent voice that is both editorially robust and reflects who we are – a culturally, geographically and socio-economically diverse nation that doesn’t believe anyone is entitled to a job for life at the taxpayer’s expense.

If we look at this article on a whole without much analysis it appears fairly unbiased however the line praising Mr Turnbull and the last line struck me as odd as they sounded familiar. A culturally, geographically and socio-economically diverse nation that doesn’t believe anyone is entitled to a job for life at the taxpayer’s expense. I noted that we had gone from critiquing RN after six months of working there which ended over one year ago to subtly commenting on job entitlements at the “taxpayers expense.” It does mention her past work history at the end of the article as – Louise Evans is a former manager at ABC’s Radio National and former managing editor at The Australian. It is deceptive however as nowhere in the article does it mention how long she was working there for and it gives the air of authority of more time than six months. The current manager Michael Mason, of RN today responded to Ms Evans piece saying that “RN undertook an efficiency review in recent years, which reviewed and reset production benchmarks and we believe it represents an outstanding return on investment. “We are very satisfied with the results and RN staff frequently tell us how we are producing a great deal more content, much more efficiently. One of our most respected presenters Dr Norman Swan recently remarked to me ‘people are unaware of just how much work is being done now with less resources’. And “the drive for efficiency at the ABC has an impact on all divisions and departments, RN included. RN generates an enormous amount of original, agenda setting influential content and staff work as hard in RN as in any part of the ABC. Lastly “we acknowledge some of the views expressed today were the result of a very unhappy period at RN for all involved.”

In conclusion, Ms Evans may have her sights set on working back there again in a position of more control, to steer it in the corporate way that she believes fit. The imagery of “lifers” and Anglo-Saxons going to yoga and wearing thongs to work, complete with the “organic chickens” comment, is only missing the oft mentioned main stream media (MSM) quote of left leaning voters as “latte sippers.” Ms Evans has worked for Mr Murdoch a lot in the past but I find the timing and apparent support for Mr Turnbull likely to be the motive behind this article. We should never accept things at face value, not now especially in the times that we live in. Why be told what to think? That is what this article is doing, “telling you” what to think, there are no links or any evidence to back up her claims just information from an alleged “insider.”