Please Malcolm, we need another Royal Commission.

PM Demonstrates leadership on BANKS!! And deploys “Serious Face” 2#

We at pcbycp are very glad about the Banks Royal Commmission. Primarily, (and this is the most important point), Because we need another Royal Commission.

Mr and Mrs Mumndad Investor. After the banks had diddled them, this was all they had left!!!

Royal Commission’s are what keep the legal industry going. Without Royal Commission’s, already obscenely highly paid sinecured, ex judges, magistrates and legal hacks would be struggling to keep up the payments on their third or fourth beach property. This is why the banks asked the government to have a Royal Commission. Retired Q.C’s and former Magistrates are just not getting paid enough. And it’s plain to see this restriction of “rivers of gold” is having a trickle down effect upon the economy. These banks are just struggling on what they’re earning now. And since the practise of sending ordinary mums and dads broke with dodgy life insurance and investment schemes has been stilled, (some of them actually topped themselves), there’s still a bit of fat to be gained by priming the legally led economy.

Af that’s the problem. There’s no fat left in the mum and dad investors, they’re all hocked to the eyeballs. They wanted it, and the banks gave em the lot, including the kitchen sinks. And now they’re hurting. They’ll hurt more if interest rates rise, so there’s only one thing the public clamour for; Blame the banks!

The foreign investors have run out of puff also. That’s a double whammy. Until early this year the banks were creaming it, and no-one seemed to mind. But now, wages have stiffed, no one can afford a fourth investment property. And for young people, (under the age of forty) a house in the city is just a pipe- dream.

Typical villainous banker scheming funds from Mum and Dad Investors.

Timely then, to have a Royal Commission and take a good long hard look at the banks, the chicanery, the skullduggery, the foetid pool of high finance. And lift the lid on the snide, mendacious, obfuscation and bastardry of bank execs. And, the banks are imploring the government to do so. Yes indeed we need to look into all of this with a fine tooth comb, and give the public what they want. Yes indeed Its the high water mark for the banks. And they better know once and for all that this is the bitter end.

Not for them, but for the union movement. Those union industry superfunds are well run, they return good profit to ordinary workers. That’s a bloody good reason to close em down. Those workers could be more efficiently fleeced by the big four banks, and Malcolm  was incidentally, (in case you didn’t know) a former banker. Great news for investors, great news for the banking industry and great news for the shareholders of Banks.

Reformed scheming banker. Turned to christianity. And a righteous path in the Liberal Party Kew Branch.

Malcolm, by holding a Royal Commission is demonstrating leadership. Decisive leadership. Though the Royal Commissions terms of reference are more knobbled than a New South Wales greyhound, we know that it’ll be fun and wildly entertaining. The duration of the Commission, (less than twelve months) will ensure that we’ all get a laugh and we know that the findings, at the end of it all, wont be the dead mum and dad investors, the ripped off wasteland of broken mariages and crippled enterprises riven by shonky spiv banking execs, but the union movement, or some other sacrificial self parodying scape-goat.

Good on ya Malcolm . Can we have another Royal Commission soon?

Howsabout the nationality and citizen debacle. Could we put that one up to the Queen for approval?

Is she a citizen?

Anyone for Tennis?

 

Poetry Sunday 3 December 2017

Travel Papers – Poem by Carolyn Forché

Carolyn Fouché

Au silence de celle qui laisse rêveur.
—René Char
By boat to Seurasaari where
the small fish were called vendace.
A man blew a horn of birchwood
toward the nightless sea.

Still voice. Fire that is no fire.
Ahead years unknown to be lived—

Bells from the tower in the all-at-once, then
one by one, hours. Outside
(so fleetingly) ourselves—

In a still mirror, in a blue within
where this earthly journey dreaming
itself begins,

thought into being from the hidden to the end of the visible.

Mountains before and behind,
heather and lichen, yarrow, gorse,
then a sea village of chartreuse fronds.

Spent fuel, burnt
wind, mute swans.

We drove the birch-lined
highway from Dresden
to Berlin behind armored
cars in late afternoon,
nineteenth of June, passing
the black cloud of a freight
truck from Budapest.

Through disappearing
villages, past horses grazing vanished fields.

The year before you died, America
went to war again on the other
side of the world.
This is how the earth becomes,
you said, a grotto of skeletons.

In the ruins of a station: a soaked
bed, broken chairs, a dead coal stove.

White weather, chalk and basalt,
puffins, fuchsia and history shot
through with particles
of recognition: this one
wetted down with petrol then
set alight, that one taking
forty rounds, this other
found eleven years later in a bog.

In the station house, imaginary
maps, smoke chased by wind, a registry
of arrivals, the logs of ghost
ships and a few prison
diaries written on tissue paper.

Do you remember the blue-leaved lilies?
The grotto, the hoarfrost, the frieze?

Through the casements of glass hand-blown
before the war, a birch tree lets snow drop
through its limbs onto other birches. Birch twigs
in wind through glass.

Who were we then? Such
a laughter as morning peeled
its light from us!

You said the cemeteries were full in a voice
like wind plaiting willows—fields in bloom
but silent without grasshoppers or bees.
What do you want then? You with your

neverness, your unknown,
your book of things, you
with once years ahead to be lived.

Your father believes he took you
with him, that you are
in an urn beside your sleeping mother
but I am still writing with your hand,
as you stand in your still-there of lighted words.

Such is the piano’s sadness and the rifle’s moonlight.
Stairwells remember as do doors, but windows do not—

do not, upon waking, gaze out a window
if you wish to remember your dream

An ache of hope that you will come back—
the cawing flock is not your coming.

Did you float toward Salzburg? A wind
in the mustard fields?—or walk instead
beside me through the asylum in Krakow?
Hours after your death you seemed
everywhere at once like the swifts at twilight.
Now your moments are clouds
in a photograph of swifts.

In the hour held
open between day and night under
the meteor showers of Perseid
we held each other for the last time.

Dead, you whispered where is the road?

There, through the last of the sentences, just there—
through the last of the sentences, the road—

MDFF 2 December 2017

Hola,

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, or so I was told when “doing” high school geometry.

The people in power have at their beck and call, research departments, advisors, experts, PR people etc.

Us at the Front Line do not have such advice, let alone the power. We are at a tremendous disadvantage.

Some of you may be aware of the grave injustice Australia perpetrated on Timor-Leste when negotiating the boundaries that defined the respective shares of the Greater Sunrise Gas Field.

The Green’s Bob Brown was a lone voice in raising objections to Australia’s ungenerous greedy policies in relation to hydrocarbons in the Timor Gap.

Much more recently, Australia was revealed to have bugged East Timor’s Cabinet Deliberations on the negotiations. As if the Goliath and David relationship between the two nations wasn’t enough, Australia the land of the “Fair Go” resorted to dirty tricks. Goliath had been sprung and was forced to eat humble pie and offer a greater share of the pie.

ABC News 3rd September:
The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague today announced the parties reached an agreement on Wednesday over the disputed territory, which contains large oil and gas deposits worth an estimated $40 billion.

As I mentioned above I don’t have expert advice at my fingertips. The following therefore has a fair deal of deductions and assumptions. I’ll gladly stand corrected if it isn’t 100% accurate.

A gas pipeline is proposed to link the North South pipeline which joins the Mereenie and Palm Valley gas fields to power generators in Darwin with power generators at Newmont’s Tanami Gold Mining Operations. The Amadeus Basin to Darwin pipeline crosses the Tanami Road around 20Km East of Napperby Creek (where Tilmouth Well Roadhouse has been built).

Newmont’s Mine at Callie near the Granites as a result of deep drilling is now believed to have a 20 year mine life in contrast to the 4 year mine life it has been operating under. “Mine life” is based on proven reserves and projected production rates which in turn are based on maximum return on investment projections.

The gas contracts with the Power and Water Authority will or already have expired as Darwin switches to gas from Impex’s huge off-shore Ichthys field.

Put simply, gas at half the cost of the diesel used by Newmont’s Tanami operations would yield far greater gas sales to the owner of the Amadeus Basin gas fields than selling no gas at all. Such is known as a win-win situation. Of course there are many other factors involved not least the cost and profitability of the pipeline.

The pipeline construction, operation and ownership is a third “business” which would join in the price negotiations. All three parties would bring experts to the table and after fierce negotiations come up with contracts which will be a win-win-win scenario.

So far so good- except sky-hooks have not yet been invented and a pipeline runs on land (or the sea floor). It just happens to be Aboriginal land. One would think a wonderful opportunity to inject some real wealth into Remote Aboriginal Australia, to enable it to be involved in defining and “Closing the Gap”. But neo-liberal capitalism doesn’t function that way. Just look at the Timor Gap.

The pipeline is proposed to run along the Tanami Road. Is this the shortest distance between the North South pipeline and power generation at the Newmont Mine?

Not by a long shot! How many millions would be saved by using the shortest route? Offering the Traditional Owners of the shortest route, say half the savings, in a perfect world would make sense. It would be a win-win-win-win situation!

Just as Australia missed the opportunity to be generous and do the right thing by the new nation of Timor-Leste, so are the proponents of the pipeline missing the opportunity to be generous and do the right thing by the unrecognised Warlpiri Nation. 

How so? you ask… The Tanami Road runs in the middle of an easement through Aboriginal Land which gives the Northern Territory Government control of access.

The people of the NT (black and white) can expect no more than peppercorn rent from access for the pipeline, and it will make no difference who is in power.

All the same the pipeline proponents are going through the motions of obtaining “consent”. So far in Yuendumu we’ve had two meetings organized by the Central Land Council. The CLC, bearers of the poison chalice.

Both meetings, I’m told, descended into noisy chaos as those attending competed for the expected bounty. I suspect the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow is nothing but a pipedream.

A Notice headed “Decision Meeting for the Proposed Tanami Gas Pipeline Agreement” contained the following:

“… The CLC  held an information meeting in Yuendumu on 26 September 2017 and traditional owners told the CLC to continue talking with the company about the project. The CLC wants to present information on the discussions with the company and take instructions from traditional owners on the terms and conditions negotiated with the company.

Make of that what you will. To me it reeks of a fait accompli.

I repeat a song from the other side of the world …. Calexico’s Across the Wire….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkryXbJ14dE

…. Those with so much, No show of heart …

Neo-liberal capitalism is not distinguished by its generosity nor desire to “do the right thing”. It has no show of heart.

Chau,
Frank

PS- Have I told you what is my favourite graffiti? From a book by my favourite Latin American writer- Eduardo Galeano-:

Basta de hechos, Queremos promesas” (Enough of deeds, we want promises!)

ANOTHER POST SCRIPT

Gremlins disappeared the highlighted bit. (re-highlit above, in red by the postmaster)

I think most if not all of you were able to read between the lines….such being a pre-requisite skill when deriving the most from these Dispatches.

I offer further clarification:

Yuendumu is 290Km north-west of Alice Springs

Napperby creek crosses the Tanami Road 100Km south east of Yuendumu. The north-south pipeline crosses the Tanami Road on the Alice Springs side of Napperby Creek.

The Tanami Road is on Anmatjere land from the pipeline to app. 10Km east of Yuendumu. Thereafter it is on Warlpiri land all the way to Newmont’s Gold Mine and beyond.

The shortest distance new pipeline I think would be mostly if not all on Warlpiri land.   

The Granites is 260Km north-west from Yuendumu. The Callie mine is 35Km west of the Granites.

Between the Granites and the West Australian border there is a lot of Gold exploration happening by several companies.

If successful, these companies would most likely negotiate access to this supply of gas. There would be big winners. The “natives” will again be little winners.

As a Canadian drilling supervisor on an oil drilling rig I worked on used to say “Better’n a smack in tha moosh with a cold mackerel”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8XeDvKqI4E

Chau again,
Frank