Man acquitted of murdering his wife claims police ignored evidence

The W.A. cops are a rough lot so this is all highly believable. Bashing Aborigines is their chief skill.  The Rayney affair is a huge scandal.  All the police involved should be dismissed

A man who was wrongly accused of killing his wife is calling for 'the injustice to end' and for investigators to find her killer.

Barrister Lloyd Rayney was awarded more than $2.6 million in damages against the Western Australian government last year in one of the state's largest defamation payouts.

The payout came after he was publicly named by police as the prime and only suspect in the death of his wife Corryn Rayney in August 2007.

Evidence has since come to light places two violent sexual predators within just blocks of the Rayney's home at the time of the murder.

Corryn Rayney, 44, went to a boot-scooting class on August 7, 2007 and never returned home. Her body was found days later in a sandy grave in Perth's King's Park.

In an interview with 60Minutes, Mr Rayney said there were holes in the investigation.  'It's now been 11 years, it's 11 long years, and someone has literally gotten away with murder,' he said. 'Nothing gets better until her killer is prosecuted.'

Convicted rapist Ivan Eades lived in the same suburb as the Rayneys and a cigarette butt covered in his DNA was found by police outside their house on the day Corryn disappeared.

Eades' cousin, violent paedophile Allon Mitchell Lacco,  lived in an apartment near the Bentley Community Centre, where Ms Rayney was last seen alive.

On the day that Ms Rayney disappeared, phone records show that Lacco had allegedly used the phonebooth near the home.

When Lacco was pulled over by police the day after Ms Rayney's body was found, police found sand in the boot of his car, as well as a knife.

A year later investigators tracked Lacco in Sydney, where they found a diary page for August 2007, the month Ms Rayney was killed, with map of Kings Park and the floor plan of the supreme court - where Ms Rayney was a registrar.

Lacco was interviewed by police but detectives did not take the investigation any further.

A resident of an apartment block near Kings Park also reportedly heard a loud scream from the park on the night Ms Rayney disappeared. Police reportedly discounted the claim.

Police based their case on Mr Rayney on the idea that his wife had been killed in their family home and driven in her body in her car to the park.

But their daughter was home at the time he supposedly killed her and their other daughter was expected home at any time. 

Mr Rayney said the case made no sense but the public had formed the opinion that he was guilty based on a police press conference where he was named the main suspect.

Mr Rayney says his life was changed forever from that day, saying his reputation will never survive the trial by media that he faced.

'(The police) did it for maximum humiliation, to cause me maximum embarrassment,' Rayney told 60 Minutes.

After the announcement Mr Rayney had his house egged, had sanitary waste tipped over him at a bar and was publicly vilified.

Three years after the press conference Mr Rayney was charged with murder, and two years after that he was acquitted.

Mr Rayney was awarded more than $2.6million in defamation damages. The damages include nearly $1.8 million in loss of income and $846,000 in damage to his reputation and distress.

He won an appeal and had charges of phonetapping thrown out of court.

His lawyer Martin Bennett said police did not follow the leads they had and had caused irreparable damage to Mr Rayney's reputation.

'This damage will continue for the rest of his career. It hasn't been expunged. All that occurs is people…adjust their view to ''he must be very clever to get away with it''.'

Mr Rayney broke down in tears as he spoke about the moment he had to tell his daughters that their mum had been killed.

'We just put our arms around each other, I tried to comfort them but how do you comfort two girls who have lost their mum?'

Police have not confirmed whether they are investigating Allon Lacco or Ivan Eades in relation to the murder.

Locco is currently behind bars, waiting to be sentenced for unrelated charges, including assault.  Eades' whereabouts in unknown.

SOURCE 







Despite political difficulties, the coalition government has delivered a strong Australian economy

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics today tabled the report of its Review of the Reserve Bank of Australia Annual Report 2017 (Second Report). The report provides a summary of issues raised at the public hearing with the Reserve Bank in Canberra on 17 August 2018.

The Chair of the committee, Mr Tim Wilson MP, said ‘the Governor’s testimony highlighted the strength of Australia’s economy. The RBA expects GDP growth to average around 3¼ per cent by the end of 2018 through to the end of 2019.’

‘Australia’s strong GDP growth is being supported by a pick-up in non-mining investment, strong commodity prices, growth in investment in energy projects and public sector infrastructure, low interest rates and the tax cuts already in place for small and medium businesses.’ Mr Wilson said.

Mr Wilson commented ‘Australia’s labour market has continued to strengthen with the labour force participation rate close to its historical high. Strong, continued growth in employment is expected to further reduce spare capacity in labour markets and generate a gradual increase in wages and inflation.’

‘While growth in average wages has been relatively low, we have turned the corner on wages growth. The wage price index increased by 0.6 per cent in the June quarter, which is the fastest quarterly increase since March 2014.’ Mr Wilson added.
   
For information about the inquiry visit the committee’s webpage at: www.aph.gov.au/economics

Media release from Committee Chair Mr Tim Wilson MP







Business tax cuts fast-track designed to damage Bill Shorten

The trap for Bill Shorten has been set. In fast-tracking company tax cuts for businesses with a turnover of up to $50 million, Scott Morrison has hit the former union boss where it hurts.

Shorten tied himself in knots this year cooking up Labor’s company tax policy on the run. Morrison has finally turned the tables on Labor after months of pain trying to push through Malcolm Turnbull’s company tax cuts for larger companies — including the big banks.

The test for Shorten is clear. Will he support accelerated company tax cuts for more than three million small businesses or continue Labor’s anti-business crusade? Aided and abetted by the trade union movement, Shorten has crafted policies that hurt small business. Cracking down on discretionary trusts, lobbying to restore penalty rates and opposing further tax cuts for companies has created a narrative that a Shorten government will be no friend of Australian businesses.

While that may consolidate his union base, it distances him from hardworking mum and dad small business owners trying to put food on the table, pay the bills and keep their employees in jobs.

Shorten can’t bank on winning the election off the back of negative sentiment from voters seeking to punish the Coalition.

Labor’s big taxing agenda — worth almost $160 billion over a decade and headlined by clamps on negative gearing and dividend imputation — has targeted the so-called “wealthy” and self-funded retirees.

As the policy war between Shorten and Morrison heats up ahead of Christmas, Shorten will use his war chest to claw back votes from the very same taxpayers he targeted in Labor’s cash grabs.

With the major parties positioning themselves before entering the election zone, Labor’s policy to subsidise preschool for kids aged three and four represented a shift away from Shorten’s class war rhetoric, and signalled a move to win over young families and middle Australia. Both sides face internal pressures, with Morrison confronting the reality of slipping into minority government, with the Coalition bracing itself for a potentially devastating loss in the Wentworth by-election.

But as Shorten, ahead in the polls but behind Morrison in personal approval ratings, moves to present himself as a viable alternative prime minister, he will need to ignore distractions and concentrate on executing clear messaging in key policy areas. Beholden by the unions and left-faction powerbrokers on the hot-button issues of coal, trade and company tax cuts, Shorten is under pressure to avoid the curse of complacency.

Australians aren’t mugs. It’s time for Shorten to stop dividing voters into groups, and begin mapping out his vision for the nation.

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Renewable investment boom tipped to slow

One of the world's biggest lenders to green electricity projects says rapid growth in Australia's renewable energy investment is likely to slow, as banks become more cautious about the financial impact of electricity grid congestion.

After a record $10 billion poured into renewable projects last year, Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) Bank, a global banking giant and a major lender to renewable energy in Australia, said it was becoming harder for green energy projects to get finance.

Geoff Daley, the bank's head of Australian structured finance, said one reason for this was because the sheer number of renewable projects built in some areas meant the grid lacked the necessary capacity.

This happens because wind farms or solar farms are often located in parts of the power grid that have not previously had large amounts of generation, such as far north Queensland.

One result of congestion, if the grid is not augmented, is that energy generated may not be able to reach the customers.

"There's greater uncertainty at the moment around that issue and that will mean the lenders are more cautious," Mr Daley said.

Earlier this year, a number of renewable projects also suffered big cuts in their revenue because of changes to ratios used by the regulator in an attempt to apportion how electricity is lost as it flows through the distribution network.

Mr Daley said some generators were likely to make less revenue than projected, which was causing banks to be more cautious in their lending decisions.

"What that means for projects now is that it's much, much harder to get finance unless there's a strong contract," he said.

MUFG Bank was the world's largest arranger of renewable energy finance in 2017, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Industry figures show 2017 was a record-breaking year for renewable energy investment in Australia, with more than $10 billion in projects reaching financial close. But Mr Daley said there would be a "slowdown in the speed of investment".

The director of energy finance studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, Tim Buckley, said some slowdown in renewable investment was inevitable, but it was likely to be a "pause." There had been "massive solar boom,"  he said, but little planning around where the projects would be located.

"There's no over-arching plan. If you don't have an over-arching plan, renewables will swamp parts of the grid," Mr Buckley said.

"The willingness of the investment community to invest in renewables in Australia is going to wind back, because we need to take a pause. We've had five years of energy policy chaos which means the grid isn't yet prepared to accommodate ever more renewables."

The government's energy policy was thrown into disarray with the change of prime minister in August. The government has dumped the National Energy Guarantee which aimed to address the problems of high  power prices, carbon emissions and grid reliability.

National Australia Bank's global head of energy, Andrew Smith, acknowledged the bank was monitoring issues raised by grid congestion closely, but he said this was not unique to Australia. "It's certainly an area of focus for banks," he said.

Mr Smith said the issue had not dented the availability of finance for renewable projects. "Certainly now there's significant demand for banks to participate in these projects," he said.

Speaking at the AFR National Energy Summit, AGL interim chief executive Brett Redman said renewable energy investors are concerned about the country’s changing policy landscape and the falling investment costs of renewable generation.

“If I talk about offshore investors, they get very worried over the stability of long-term targets,” Mr Redman told Fairfax Media

Mr Redman said the "biggest issue" for investing in renewables was that costs of developing projects were coming down rapidly.

“So the wind farms we built 10 years ago now look really expensive compared to what it would cost you to build wind now; the solar we built three to four years ago looks really expensive now.

SOURCE 

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