HUGELY EXPENSIVE OFFICIAL BUNGLES UNRAVEL

$300 million of taxpayer money wasted, for what? They never stood to recoup a fraction of that anyway. The bunglers thought they were Eliot Ness but ended up being revealed as Keystone Kops. But no heads will roll. You can rely on that. Three current articles below

The nation's largest tax fraud inquiry has been dealt a major blow with the repayment by the Australian Taxation Office of about $1 million to one of its main targets - celebrity lawyer Michael Brereton. The backdown comes after authorities spent six years and millions of dollars investigating Mr Brereton, whose clients have included Kylie Minogue, Men At Work and Mushroom Records. Mr Brereton's offshore dealings sparked the $300 million Wickenby investigation into tax fraud, which has so far claimed onlyone high-profile scalp, that of music entrepreneur Glenn Wheatley.

The settlement between the tax office and Mr Brereton, pictured yesterday with the ATO repayment cheque, relates to arrangements the tax office once believed were part of a massive tax fraud involving millions of dollars being sent offshore. Mr Brereton, once accused of tax fraud, remains under investigation by the Australian Crime Commission. However, despite receiving the large refund cheque yesterday from the authorities, he is planning to sue the "oppressive" tax office and the "venomous" ACC over their actions.

In an exclusive interview with The Australian, Mr Brereton revealed that he had moved overseas after being pursued by "overzealous" investigators, who he believed made fundamental mistakes early in the inquiry. "They probably thought I was acting for Philip Egglishaw just because I knew him," Mr Brereton said. Mr Egglishaw is the Swiss accountant who came to attention following a raid on his Melbourne hotel room in February 2004. His firm, Strachans, organised offshore structures for hundreds of Australian clients. The raid was conducted in an attempt to find documents relating to Mr Brereton, but it unexpectedly resulted in a treasure trove of documents found on a laptop computer. Names of Strachans clients such as Wheatley, actor Paul Hogan and his artistic collaborator John Cornell, and of other lawyers, entertainers and high-profile business people and files relating to their business dealings, were on the laptop. Hundreds of Australians - many from the top end of town - were said to have used Strachans to send money offshore to avoid paying tax in Australia, sparking the Wickenby investigation.

A record $300 million in additional funding was given to the tax office, the ACC, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to work together to combat tax fraud and money laundering. But despite the promises so far, the only Strachans client of any note to be charged and jailed is Wheatley, who pleaded guilty last year to tax-related offences.

"I think I was a terribly small fish," Mr Brereton said. "They went around saying I was low-hanging fruit. If I was low-hanging fruit it can't be a very good crop." Mr Brereton has long fought against the authorities who targeted him, and controversial retrospective legislation was even rushed through parliament after he won a crucial court victory against the crime commission. Those amendments to the Crime Commission Act have subsequently been the subject of a Senate inquiry, which has recommended they be repealed. A spokesman for Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus said the Government was still considering the matter and consulting with state agencies, and hoped to have a response early next year.

Mr Brereton has never been charged with any criminal offence, although a crime commission officer recently told the Federal Court during a separate matter that its pre-Wickenby investigation, which relates to Mr Brereton, continues.

The crime commission told The Australian yesterday that it was still pursuing nine people, or groups of people, as part of Wickenby. Mr Brereton has, however, been the subject of three tax office revised assessments. Two have been resolved and one is still being negotiated. "They just knocked out everything I claimed," he said.

Yesterday, Mr Brereton received a cheque for the disputed amount for two of those years, plus interest. "They have now agreed to refund the money plus interest on the judgment, and over time I intend to sue them on other things," he said.

One of the disputes with the tax office related to the musical theatre production Jolson, which Mr Brereton produced. An offshore company, Westminster Finance, provided the finance but Westminster, set up by Strachans, was alleged to have been a front for Mr Brereton. "I am not Westminster," he told The Australian.

Although Mr Brereton's life once consisted of a brilliant legal career, glittering opening nights with celebrity friends such as Hugh Jackman, and sitting on the boards of various charities, the Wickenby investigation has put an end to that. Mr Brereton is hopeful this week's tax office settlement is the end of Wickenby for him. "We have settled with them (the tax office) and the objection was ruled in my favour," he said.

As for criminal charges, Mr Brereton maintains he has done nothing wrong. "You would think if they had something, they would have done something about it," he said. "In reality, I think it's dead. If it's not dead it should be ... I will make it dead in a legal way."

He also pointed out that none of his celebrity clientele was ever charged. "Not one of my clients has been prosecuted in any way as a result of Wickenby, even though they have had the opportunity to go through each and every one of my clients," Mr Brereton said.

Although he has had a victory against the tax office, he is still fighting authorities on other fronts. ASIC recently disqualified him for three years from being a company director. He is appealing that decision in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. "I would be surprised if we don't do well out of that," he said.

Mr Brereton is also appealing the finding that he misappropriated money from his trust fund account. Again, he is confident of a result in his favour. But despite the fighting attitude - and yesterday's cheque - Mr Brereton says the past five years of his life have been destroyed by the Wickenby investigation. "If they wanted to achieve something they have done it; the operation was successful but the patient almost died," he said. "The career of Michael Brereton as it was is no more and can never be. That's a fact and I would be kidding myself if I didn't see that."

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Hoges has a win against the bunglers too

The Australian Crime Commission "exercised exorbitant powers" in pursuing actor Paul Hogan, but did not act illegally and its investigative team could remain in place, a judge ruled yesterday. Although Hogan lost his bid in the Federal Court to have the investigators and lawyers removed -- which if successful would have been a blow to the commission -- he did have a win with regards to the legal costs of the wider court battle.

The commission was ordered by judge Arthur Emmett to pay two years of Hogan's legal costs, which, when combined with its own costs, will probably leave it with a bill of about $1 million. The commission also has to pay Hogan's costs for its unsuccessful defence of an application made by The Australian and Fairfax Media to gain access to documents tendered during the court case.

Hogan, his artistic collaborator John Cornell and their financial adviser, Tony Stewart, are being investigated as part of the $300 million tax fraud probe Operation Wickenby. The three deny any wrongdoing. In Hogan's latest round with the commission, he sought to have investigators thrown off his case because they had seen documents they should not have had access to. The commission said Hogan was trying to deliberately derail the investigation, but his lawyers said they were arguing for an important legal right and that the integrity of the Wickenby investigation needed to be preserved.

Hogan first went to court in 2006 after his lawyers discovered documents had been seized without their client's knowledge from accounting firm Ernst & Young. Hogan's lawyers argued that the commission should not have been using these documents because they were subject to legal professional privilege -- that is, they contained legal advice. The commission spent two years arguing in court that the documents were used to further a crime (tax fraud) and therefore privilege did not exist. But then it mysteriously abandoned these claims in July. The documents have been returned to Hogan, and the commission has destroyed its copies.

Justice Emmett said yesterday the commission had not acted illegally or with any impropriety. "While the commission has exercised exorbitant powers conferred by the (Australian Crime) Commission Act, which override the rights of private individuals to privacy in relation to their own affairs, the commission has not exceeded its powers," he said. The disputed documents contributed to a general knowledge of Hogan's and Stewart's affairs, the judge found, but any advantage gained in seeing them was "ephemeral in the extreme".

The decision by the commission to abandon its case against Hogan "could, in some circumstance, give rise to the inference that the commission acted unreasonably in disputing Mr Hogan's claim to legal professional privilege in the first place", Justice Emmett said, but he ruled that that inference should not be drawn in this case.

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The spooks and the immigration authorities should talk to one-another

That seems to be the main conclusion of a just released official report into another big official bungle. ASIO is Australia's "intelligence" (stupidity?) organization, similar to the CIA

The judicial inquiry into the bungled arrest of Mohamed Haneef on terrorism charges has found he should not have been charged and has recommended sweeping changes to the Australian Federal Police, immigration intelligence and the nation's anti-terrorism laws. The inquiry also found it would have been "prudent" to defer the cancellation of Dr Haneef's visa and his deportation.

The report, which is yet to be released, is critical of the prosecution case against Dr Haneef, identifies failures of criminal intelligence, and recommends a standing review of the anti-terrorism laws and sweeping controls for the AFP and the intelligence services in relation to immigration. But the report, commissioned by the Rudd Government, has cleared the Howard government of any improper behaviour, conspiracy or political motivation in ordering the detention and later deportation of the Indian doctor from the Gold Coast in July last year.

While finding flaws in the actions of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, the former immigration minister Kevin Andrews, the Department of Immigration and the AFP, the report finds there was no conspiracy nor political motivation in the decision to cancel Dr Haneef's Australian work visa and send him back to India after the terrorism charges against him were dropped. The report concludes there was insufficient evidence for the CDPP to lay charges against Dr Haneef in the first place.

Former NSW Supreme Court judge John Clarke QC, who chaired the inquiry, has found there should be clearer guidelines for laying terrorism charges, more co-operation between the police and intelligence agencies, direct ASIO advice to the immigration minister on deportation cases and a standing review of the terrorism laws and federal police. Mr Clarke's report is expected to be released this week, with the departments and agencies involved having already received their copies.

While making a key finding that charges should not have been laid against Dr Haneef on the evidence available, the Clarke inquiry recommends the anti-terrorism laws should be clarified on the issue of how charges should be laid. In what official sources described yesterday as a "forensic" and exhaustive inquiry, Mr Clarke recommends changes to the "silo" approach by the AFP and ASIO, suggesting a full-time co-ordinating body for intelligence, and effectively making his style of inquiry permanent to oversee the anti-terror laws and their application. Government spokesmen refused to comment on the Clarke report yesterday.

Mr Clarke finds Mr Andrews did not reflect deeply enough on the Immigation Department's advice about Dr Haneef, but finds he was never given ASIO's report on the case by his department. Another key recommendation is that ASIO advice on deportation cases should go to the minister for consideration before they exercise ministerial discretion in ordering a deportation.

Mr Andrews was roundly criticised last year for his decision to detain and then deport Dr Haneef, "in the national interest", after the terrorism charges against the doctor were dropped. The Howard government was accused of racism and scaremongering over the case.

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New Zealand doctors flown in to fill Queensland hospital staff shortages

Where is all that wonderful government "planning". Last minute patch-ups is more like it.

FLY-IN, fly-out doctors from New Zealand and interstate are filling staff shortages in Queensland's public hospital system, paid at a premium. At least nine of the state's public hospitals have employed NZ doctors on a fly-in, fly-out basis in the past year, mostly to fill vacancies in obstetrics and gynaecology, emergency medicine and anaesthetics. Australian Medical Association Queensland president-elect Mason Stevenson said the doctors were paid premiums of up to 50 per cent more than permanent specialists of similar experience. "This actually creates a certain discontent amongst doctors working very hard in the public hospital system when they do work side by side with the fly-in, fly-out locum doctors from overseas who are being paid substantially in excess for doing exactly the same work," he said. But he said fly-in, fly-out specialists were a necessary "Band-Aid solution" to stop Queensland public hospital waiting lists becoming intolerable.

Bundaberg Hospital has had four fly-in, fly-out doctors from NZ acting as its emergency medicine director in the past year, each working for 10 days a month. However, a permanent director will take up the position in February. The hospital has also employed a NZ anaesthetist on four occasions, for about a week at a time, in the past 12 months.

Queensland Health deputy director-general of policy, planning and resourcing, Andrew Wilson, said fly-in, fly-out doctors were only employed as temporary locums to fill staffing shortages. All were suitably registered to work in Australia. "They are employed to fill critical vacancies on a temporary basis while recruitment efforts are under way," Dr Wilson said. "Queensland Health does not have any services or facilities staffed on an ongoing fly-in, fly-out basis." Besides Bundaberg, affected hospitals include Caboolture, Redcliffe, Toowoomba, Rockhampton, Clermont, Mackay, Nambour and Caloundra.

Sylvia Andrew-Starkey, of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, said Queensland Health also employed interstate doctors on a fly-in, fly-out basis to fill senior emergency department positions throughout the state. "I know that Hervey Bay, Bundaberg and Rockhampton are relying on interstate people," she said. Dr Stevenson said the practice was expected to continue for another five to 10 years until recent medical graduates were able to fill specialist shortages. Queensland Health Minister Stephen Robertson could not be contacted yesterday for comment.

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Muddle-headed greens see themselves starring in a Thoreauvian romance

Our age presents itself as a historical hall of mirrors. Every new turning reminds us disconcertingly of somewhere we've been before. New songs on the radio have the obscure savour of melodies from times past; new movies seem to reproduce older ones, like ghostly tableaux vivants. No wonder young people often seem nostalgic for the blurred images of movements that expired long before they were born. After all, they're staggering into this mirror maze unaided. So perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that the grand spectacle of outrage last week against the Rudd Government's emissions trading scheme white paper had such a familiar appearance.

Uni students in dreadlocks and cheesecloth sandbagged ministers' electorate offices, as if miming the apocalyptic imagery of the unilateral disarmament movement in the death throes of the Cold War. Green leaders called for a human chain to surround Parliament House for the first sitting day of 2009 as if, like those yippies and hippies who encircled the Pentagon 40 years ago, they might cause it to levitate by collectively incanting the word om.

Most strikingly of all, green groups called for a national campaign of civil disobedience, roughly after the manner prescribed by the earliest hippie of them all, 19th-century American solitary sojourner Henry David Thoreau. Like their orange boiler-suited colleagues in Europe, activists plan to shackle themselves to existing power plants or disrupt the building of newones. Then, like the sage of Walden Pond, they can act out the belief that, under an unjust government, "the true place for a just man is also a prison".

Green groups have been channelling the spirit of Thoreau for some time. In September the inimitable Al Gore made headlines by calling for Thoreauian civil disobedience on a global scale. Why, if only he were young again, he told us, he'd be chaining himself to coal-fired power plants, too. Greenpeace's Indian division, inevitably, has invoked the spirit of Mohandas Gandhi, the most famous of Thoreau's acolytes and a well-known enemy to all types of industry.

Now Greenpeace Australia's climate change campaign co-ordinator tells us that, by lamentably failing the planet on climate change, Kevin Rudd has sent conscientious activists everywhere "a clear signal that our political system is not up to the task". This means "people who are demanding action on climate change have little choice but to take matters into their own hands". Thoreau and Gandhi all rolled into one.

No doubt, if you're caught up in our hall of historical mirrors, it's gratifying to gaze into the glass and see in your reflection the image of those noble souls who ended the slave trade in the 1830s, opposed chattel slavery in the decades leading up to the American Civil War or brought down the Goliath of British colonialism. The problem with channelling the past in this purely intuitive way, though, is we necessarily do so through the distorting glass of our imaginations.

For Thoreau, my ineffable human conscience is always the most important thing, and I'm not fully human until I choose freely to express it in all of my deeds and words. However, the mass of men, being mere dutiful citizens, are not like this. Because they refrain from freely exercising their moral sense and subsume their will to the wishes of the magistrate, "they have the same sort of worth only as horses or dogs". At the same time, Thoreau insisted, any and every man could experience this special insight themselves, would they but take the time. Just exile yourself to a lonely pond and the essential truths of life will unfold. This spiritual vocabulary is still alive in the grand oratory of climate change. Simplicity v excess. Purity v impurity and cleanliness v dirt. The moral integrity of the individual v the snares and wiles of the wicked world.

Yet the Thoreauian analogy works only up to a point. You can look into your heart and see that the slave trade and chattel slavery are offences against human nature simply because we're all humans and our god (whichever they may be) has decreed us all to be free and equal. Yet like most Australians, I expect, I have no capacity to judge the scientific debates on climate change and its causes in any fashion that would satisfy my inner voice. In practice, I'm forced to rely on my commonsense intuition that so many scientists and public authorities wouldn't be expending so much time and money on the issue unless they were sincerely worried about something. In Thoreau's terms, I'm forced to subordinate the call of my conscience to the expertise of others, like it or not.

None of the alternatives to this posture are particularly credible. You can lapse into a kind of political mysticism, according to which the voice of Gaia somehow speaks through you, regardless of your personal competence. Or else you can simply echo the instincts of others around you who happen to think and dress much as you do, who have the same tastes in interior furnishings and who choose to live in the same neighbourhoods. But that's hardly an expression of individuality.

In the end, the most troubling aspect of the bluster on climate change policy is that, in its implausible claim to have some private access to the truth, it devalues the currency of truth altogether. Perhaps the most striking table in the white paper is the one that compares emission projections with projections for population growth. If that table is correct, the Government's 5 per cent to 15 per cent targeted reductions are broadly in line with those of the European Union and significantly in advance of the promises of president-elect Barack Obama. I have no idea whether the data in that table is reliable. But I haven't yet seen any of those uttering howls of outrage contesting it.

As it happens, Greenpeace recently commissioned its own proposal for a global energy revolution. Figure seven of the document's executive summary compares energy output from different sources, if Greenpeace's own recommendations are accepted. On these figures, renewable energy sources would almost double as a percentage of output between 2005 and 2020. But coal-fired power output (now with capture and storage, presumably) would stay more or less constant. This sounds plausible but also rather spiritually unsatisfying.

And it's hard to see how exactly it can be reconciled with Greenpeace's other call, the one that asks for a new generation of Thoreaus to chain themselves to the gates of the world's coal-fired power stations. Before they stride out on their private journeys to Walden Pond, I'd suggest those earnest, idealistic young folks prepare themselves a few packed lunches.

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Vouchers can boost university student numbers, says official report

This is not vouchers as libertarians usually conceive it. It is just a proposal to give students a wider choice of which government university they attend

Vouchers could give universities the incentive they needed to lift student numbers towards ambitious targets set by the Bradley higher education report. "Scale will suddenly become a positive option and that will drive increased participation rates," according to Simon Marginson of the University of Melbourne. He said deregulation of student volumes, a key proposal in the Bradley report, which will be presented formally today to federal Education Minister Julia Gillard, would offer universities a new incentive to expand, thereby boosting participation rates.

The review, led by former University of South Australia vice-chancellor Denise Bradley, warns that Australia is falling behind in higher education and needs to train and educate more young people, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds, to secure future prosperity and wellbeing. "It's not just about universities. This is an absolutely critical economic and social issue for this country," Professor Bradley told the HES. Her report says that by 2020, 40 per cent of those aged between 25 and 34 should have at least a bachelors degree. The present figure is 29per cent. "It's quite a big increase; it would need to come from a mix of improving completion rates and increasing the numbers coming in," Professor Bradley said.

Monash University's vice-chancellor Richard Larkins said he would welcome a system driven more by student demand. "Universities would like more flexibility in relation to the number of students and the distributions between courses," Professor Larkins said. But he and Professor Marginson agreed this reform would put pressure on rural and regional universities.

National Union of Students president Angus McFarland worried there would be a "massive increase" in popular courses, such as law and accounting, at the expense of the student experience and subjects such as education, maths, science and languages. But Andrew Norton, from the Centre for Independent Studies, doubted that deregulation of student places alone would make much difference, given that many universities made a loss on so-called commonwealth-supported places. "The huge weakness in the report is the lack of attention to the issue of pricing places," Mr Norton said.

The report says there is "no general case" to boost investment by increasing the student contribution, a view applauded as a "HECS freeze" by MrMcFarland. He also welcomed a liberalisation of student income support, eliminating the so-called "gap year rort" and targeting payments at needier students.

The report urges creation of a super-regulator for higher and vocational education. This independent national agency would oversee accreditation, carry out quality audits and offer advice to the minister. Universities Australia chief executive Glenn Withers said he wanted to see the detail but it might be "jumping a bit too far too fast" to create such an agency. The report notes state opposition to a national agency but makes a case based on complaints of inconsistency, overlap, complexity and delay caused by a mishmash of state and federal regulation.

University of Melbourne higher education expert Lynn Meek said Australia was too small to justify so many "tertiary education fiefdoms" but he wondered whether the national agency would become just another force for bureaucratic conformity.

Cengage Education general manager Alan Bowen-James said Australia urgently needed a national regime of accreditation and quality control to succeed in a much tougher, more discerning international market. "It will be only a few years before Australian students will be competing for places in Chinese universities," he said. "They are racing ahead in terms of their standards and their investment in education."

Although largely deferring on research to the Cutler innovation review, the Bradley report urged a $300million annual boost in the Research Infrastructure Block Grants program, increasing the contribution for indirect costs from 20c to 50c in the dollar. "This is a very positive step towards the full costing of research by arguably the simplest mechanism available," said Merlin Crossley, acting deputy vice-chancellor for research at the University of Sydney. He welcomed a proposal to increase the postgraduate award stipend to $25,000 and extend the term to four years.

The Bradley report justifies a boost in RIBG money partly to stop teaching funds being taken to pay for indirect research costs. This tendency had helped blow out student-staff ratios and affected the quality of the student experience. Professor Bradley told the HES that students had an "is there anyone there?" feeling. "Students don't necessarily want face-to-face contact but they do want personal attention," she said.

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