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Rant by Therese Trouserzoff
So we’ve heard this crap before. Unless governments roll over and allow coal seam gas (CSG) exploration and exploitation wherever and whenever these cretins want, they will wreak havoc amongst local consumers.
The latest piece of blackmail is an application to increase the domestic price of natural gas by 20% – and the justification is that the massive new finds are ‘for the export market’ and there will be a shortage locally.
Fuck these people. The natural resources belong to Australia, and any government that allows some piss head energy company to hold it to ransom, threatening to send local businesses to the wall in the name of export commitments, ought to be thrown down a disused well and burnt.
We have gas hot water and cooking. Not a problem to install solar hot water and switch to electric cooking.
While I accept that in general, no business would want to sell at lower prices into a local market when there is a higher return available internationally, there is a point where national interest and preventing environmental degradation have to take precedence as the determinants of corporate and social action.
So, just as the Australian government told Coca Cola Amatil to pull its head in over their SPC Ardmona blackmail attempt, it’s time for ALL Australian jurisdictions to insist on actual serious control over energy extraction. Simple solution – resources tax on the energy producers and subsidies for disadvantaged Australian consumers. Wait – didn’t a previous government talk about something like this ? Isn’t this about looking after your own family before thinking about screwing the rest of the world ?
If there was a natural prime target to attack hateful corporate bastardry, fracking CSG companies would have to be at the top of the list. All power to the farmers and local action groups. Go hard against these fracking mongrel bastards.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Some years ago my husband and I visited a prospecting site. As we were there they struck paydirt-I’ve forgotten the mineral they were searching for. The minute they struck what they wanted the manager of the company said, “Great, we can flog it off to America.”
For me, that encapsulated every strand of Australia’s post colonial history. Every successful mineral discovery had to be practically given away to England or America: nothing retained by Australia. The huge container ships lining up to take our liquid gas at a give away price-I’ve forgotten the price, but it is ridiculously low-yet they save nothing for Australia. It is all sadly reminiscent of those little old people who labour away for years to produce a hideous monstrosity to give to our foreign head of state-the latest example being a reproduction of one of the English royal family’s coaches.
What is it that produces this kind of behaviour, this disregard of what we have? I think that our refusal to become a self sufficient nation-a republic- illustrates this massive lack of belief by the Australian people for Australia. (Unless the thing desired is a sportsman/woman.)
Australia is the land of the future and will remain so
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Of course our bankers – Norway, have a PPP, in their oil production.
We owe them several billion. All from PPP. But wadda they know?
The government controls its petroleum resources through a combination of state ownership in major operators in the oil fields (with approximately 62% ownership in Statoil in 2007) and the fully state-owned Petoro, which has a market value of about twice Statoil, and SDFI. Finally, the government controls licensing of exploration and production of fields. The fund invests in developed financial markets outside Norway. The budgetary rule (Handlingsregelen) is to spend no more than 4% of the fund each year (assumed to be the normal yield from the fund).
In March 2011, the Government Pension Fund controlled assets were valued at approximately US$570 billion (equal to US$114,000 per capita) which is about 140% of Norway’s current GDP. It is the second-largest state-owned sovereign wealth fund, second only to the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Conservative estimates project that the fund may reach US$800–900 billion by 2017. Projections indicate that the Norwegian pension fund may become the largest capital fund in the world. The fund controls about 1.3% of all listed shares in Europe and more than 1% of all the publicly traded shares in the world. The Norwegian Central Bank operates investment offices in London, New York and Shanghai. Guidelines implemented in 2007 allow the fund to invest up to 60% of the capital in shares (maximum of 40% prior), while the rest may be placed in bonds and real-estate. As the stock markets tumbled in September 2008, the fund was able to buy more shares at low prices. In this way, the losses incurred by the market turmoil was recuperated by November 2009.
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So when a dollar gets spent here now, it’s from a PPP.
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I see little merit in any CSG activities. It is too dangerous. We don’t need the gas. We’re exporting too much natural gas already. Enough is enough. Let’s look after our own interests for just bloody once. Way too much potential to eff up underground water supplies. Not forgetting the mess for farmers with pipelines all over the place. It’s there in Queensland and creeping out. Except for ores in WA it is tragic that all coal and csg stuff seems to always be in the fertile farming areas. You can’t replace that. We’ve concreted over enough already. I’m with the farmers Lock the Gate and whatever protests they can muster.
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What, there is no resource tax already? You’re kidding me. Hang on, I’ll just make a conference call to Norway ( a la G.Thomson). Ja, we hav a guutes resource tax belastung in Norge.
BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and other big companies might be grateful they’re not in Norway, which taxes profits from its main natural resource, oil, at up to 78 per cent.
It hasn’t made Norway poor. In fact, a lot richer.
Can you believe it, Australia has no resource tax. Dear, oh dear. Still we are well provided with sticky tape.
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I can’t agree with a resources tax, for many reasons.
What I would vote for, is a party that would take shares in a PPP, thus ensuring a permanent cash flow and a control over environmental decisions.
Poor old gas. just think it had millions of years on its own before humans came along to squabble over it.
Oh, doesn’t on yearn for days of yore, when we were all figments; just floating around in poisonous gas and molten stuff….sigh…those halcyon days; prior amoebaship.
Now we have to march up and down protesting about this and that; burning flags and effigies; yelling on soap boxes; sticking our heads through railings – – and worst of all: ‘proclaiming that we know better than everyone else.’
Some do of course. There is a section of society that just knows what’s best. Aren’t we lucky? They are on both sides of course. If you believe in sides.
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Interesting call, Jules. PPPs sound good – collective ownership and control. That way, both citizens and governments can get greedy at the same time as the corporates. And I think experience shows that governments getting into bed with businesses has similar characteristics to someone getting into bed with a gorilla. They get to do pretty much what the gorilla wants.
As for sides, I like sides. I like to be clear about which way to move the ball to score, who to pass to and who to deny and what net to defend. Otherwise I’d risk running around in circles and see everyone except me and my side score.
I do like your sympathies with the gas itself. Think of it like this…. when we kill off all carbon-based life forms, where will the decaying mess go ? It’ll be the next chapter in the coal, oil and gas cycle – a new layer in the future rock strata, that subsequent new life forms might refer to as the Chevronaceous Period.
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I prefer partnerships to sides.
Sides lead to wars. partnerships only result in back stabbings.
In a football game it is a team, and often the players are from diverse religions and political viewpoints.
As in stricken plane, the instructions are crystal clear: put on your mask first so that you can help, women children and the injured. You can’t help them, if you stand up and lecture everybody while the air pressure changes and the plane plummets. that is not to suggest that you grab all of the oxygen and pray that you survive, seulement !
We have only been flying since the early 1900s. Imagine all of the boffins and panels of inquiry that mulled over all of the situations that were lifesaving to the most people?
..
Going back to PPPs; the beauty is that the government can change (between libs and labs/democrats, ect), but the arrangement endures, without silly changes. The changes would have to be for the citizen’s benefit…So you avoid the possibility of a dunce getting up on a podium and yelling, “We’re going to introduce an MRRT, that won’t produce anything”.
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Heya, J, I don’t understand the acronyms and appreciate that might sound dumb. What’s a PPP and what’s a MRRT (sorreee). Thanks in advance.
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o, Mineral Resources something Tax but can’t image PPP. 😦
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Private Public Partnership. Greiner started that off – it’s where the Public guarantee the Private a return on their investment. Private can’t lose. Supposed to be a way of getting some infrastructure or a hospital here or there. All have been failures. They’ve effed up the salinity plant near Sydney via similar route. It’s nuts basically.
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Shoe, some of the other massive PPP fuck ups include Sydney’s Cross City Tunnel – where the government had to block off all the above ground ways of avoiding it to get people to pay what is now $5 or there abouts – each way – to avoid 22 sets of traffic lights. When there was a public outcry and they had to remove the roadblocks, predictably, nobody except the desperately rushed use it. The PPP arrangement allowed the private owners to charge like crazy and the few times FM and I’ve driven down it, there were maybe one or two other cars within line of sight of us. The dumbest dunce could see that several thousand cars per day paying $1 each using automated tagging was going to produce a better result than three cars each paying five bucks.
And there are probably many more failed PPPs that we don’t know about because of “confidentiality” in contracts that “prevent” governments from telling citizens how badly we are getting screwed.
I think there is a bit of common sense that should suggest that a bunch of people who are not competent to instigate a project to build and operate infrastructure (that only has to cover costs) are not likely to be able to manage a shark business who will provide the service at a profit to themselves – and hang the paying punters and stuff the service quality. Doesn’t seem to make sense to me.
Did I mention outsourcing, like say – prisons, prison transport and detention centres ? All wonderful privately-sourced services. NOT !!!
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I worked for the company that ran the M4 and who was part of the consortium that won the M2. I remember the person who negotiated the M2 contract with the then LNP government telling us all how it would milk and honey for years to come with these buckets of gold. The M2 was negotiated to go from nowhere to basically nowhere so that every extension would mean and extension to their exclusivity. But the best bit was any railway built to the north west meant liquidated damages to the company. With the widening of the M2 to three lanes each way, that was negotiated away.
After that all PPP’s swung the other way where the private parties relied on the forecasts without doing a proper due diligence, then found the high toll and the traffic volumes didn’t equate to what the though.
Now I see there will be a shed load being poured into the Parramatta Road Gutter and for what.
Pour the money into public transport instead.
As for CSG beware of people bearing gifts. Once the water table is contaminated its contaminated irrevocably.
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Many thanks, people. I appreciate the fulsome response. Thank you and I will read all of that on the morrow.
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Hopefully The Royal Commission, headed by former High Court judge Dyson Heydon, will get some answers about corruption in the corruption and mismanagement that Algernon and Therese Trouserzoff, have alluded to.
The corruption in Australia appears to be like a cancer in these large projects.
The terms of reference will look at the management (on the private sector too), so expect to see some changes and charges recommended.
This has nothing to do with PPP in the resource fracking (proposals) sector, especially in relation to the article that Mrs Trousersdown wrote.
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I didn’t say there was corruption Jules, I was saying there was sheer incompetence in the first instance. The person who was gloating has a plumb job at the moment with the Federal government. He did nothing wrong back then, he was just dealing with fools.
As for the later PPP’s, the then government probably over estimated the cars per day. The privates didn’t do their due diligence. For PPP’s to work there needs to be a meeting of equals so to speak.
There were some real disasters for the taxpayer out of the Greiner/Fahey PPP’s.
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We have had a resource tax on oil stuff for a long time. You say ‘for many reasons’ – how about you tell us what those reasons are Jules. Ta.
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If I were a Norwegian, I’d go for a PPP, because the Norwegians are so bloody good at it. Here, the government has no bloody idea, and would let the private ‘partners’ run everything. This is why I thought the original Super Resource tax was a pretty good compromise, tax the buggers for digging stuff out of the ground that belongs to the Commonwealth, and stop subsidizing them to the nth degree.
As for fracking, they can frack off. Totally toxic, agriculture destroying, rape of the land. Do they realise that there are places where the stuff just bubbles up, outta the ground??
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