Australian Politics
Thursday, July 20, 2023
PM confirms his department suspended robo-debt bureaucrat from $900k job
A bureaucrat made accountable! How refreshing
Former top public servant Kathryn Campbell has been suspended without pay from her $900,000-a-year job with the Defence Department less than a fortnight after the robo-debt royal commission made damning findings against her.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed on ABC radio in Melbourne the decision was made by his department to suspend Campbell following commissioner Catherine Holmes’ findings against the senior bureaucrat, who played a key role in the unlawful debt recovery scheme championed by the Coalition.
“This was a decision made by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and appropriate bodies. It’s not appropriate, given the potential legal matters that are involved, to go through all of the detail here, but certainly there’s been an appropriate response from my department and from the public service to the Royal Commission findings,” Albanese said.
Asked by host Virginia Trioli how long Campbell was suspended for, and whether it would progress to a dismissal, Albanese declined to disclose further details, “because individuals do have rights as well, and we’ll go through appropriate processes.”
“One of the things the royal commission was about was making sure we get proper processes so we don’t have the sort of governance arrangements, whether it be some of the actions of the public service, but more particularly as well, the actions of government ministers from the time that robo-debt was introduced and then kept going for four-and-a -half years in spite of the fact that it was an illegal scheme.”
Campbell went on leave shortly before the royal commission made a range of scathing findings, including that she repeatedly failed to act when the scheme’s flaws and illegality became apparent. Campbell has yet to comment on the findings of the royal commission. She is being contacted for comment.
Senior government sources who cannot be named because they are not authorised to speak publicly said Campbell had been suspended without pay on July 10, three days after the royal commission delivered its findings.
Campbell served as secretary of the Department of Human Services between 2011 and 2017, the period in which the illegal income averaging scheme was introduced.
The royal commission found that Campbell kept the true nature of the income-averaging scheme secret when advising cabinet because she knew then-social services minister Scott Morrison wanted to pursue the program.
It also found Campbell deliberately instructed her own legal team to discontinue a request for legal advice on the scheme and that she shelved a damning $1 million audit by PwC into the welfare crackdown just as it was about to finish because she feared its contents would be damaging.
The Albanese government technically demoted Campbell last year from the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to a senior role within Defence advising on the AUKUS agreement.
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End of ‘a 40-year-old fad’ as NSW shuts door on open-plan classrooms
The construction of open learning classrooms in NSW public schools will cease after repeated complaints from students, parents and teachers about a “40-year-old fad” they say created noisy environments unsuitable for learning.
Some new public schools built over the past decade were designed with flexible or open-plan classrooms. The large spaces intended to combine multiple classes in one room to facilitate collaboration and group work, while students were supervised by numerous teachers.
Research published this year found children who learn in open-plan classrooms have slower reading development and spend more time disengaged from educational activities because higher noise levels mean students find it difficult to focus.
The department wrote to the NSW Teachers Federation in May saying the classrooms would no longer be built.
“Current and future new and upgraded school projects will not include the construction of open-plan classrooms that cannot function as an individual space for a single class group,” the letter to the union said.
NSW Teachers Federation vice president Henry Rajendra said they had been fielding complaints about the unsuitability of the classrooms since about 2018.
“The department at the time did not engage with the profession [and] the union about its usefulness, that it would lead to lower student engagement in the classroom,” he said.
“We had a lot of complaints from teachers and parents and students that it was a very difficult environment to learn.”
Rajendra said it was a misnomer to describe many open-plan learning classrooms as “flexible learning spaces” because they had not been built with sound-absorbent walls which could be moved to create smaller spaces.
“The layout of our schools was in the hands of architects, and not teachers, and the result of that for many was that it didn’t work ... it is a 40-year-old fad, they introduced it as something new and innovative,” he said.
Open-plan classrooms originally proliferated when “team teaching” became fashionable in the 1970s. That practice of two teachers working together with a larger group of students dwindled in popularity over the following decades.
The rise of “student-led” and “21st-century learning” put an increased emphasis on doing work in groups, collaborative projects and fewer lecture-style lessons.
Education academics from Latrobe University in 2013 noted flexible learning spaces promoted flexibility, visibility and scrutiny and were a reaction against the “industrial-era enclosed and authoritarian classroom”.
By 2016, the Department of Education had established its Futures Learning Unit which was focused on rethinking and redesigning the way teaching and learning was conducted.
It said flexible learning spaces reflected the environments students may encounter in the workforce where there is an enhanced focus on self-direction, self-reflection, evaluation and collaboration.
A University of Melbourne study published this year said students found it more difficult to learn in open-plan classrooms because of the high noise levels.
“This increased cognitive effort to suppress the distraction, in turn, creates additional working memory load and thereby impacts on the learning occurring,” it said.
Students with poorer attention skills were also “found to be at increased risk of either spending more time disengaged from educational activities in the open-plan environment or requiring more cognitive resources to maintain attention, leaving fewer to facilitate their learning”.
Plans for new public schools use “learning hub layouts”, which are used as a starting point for school designs. They include learning spaces which allow for movement and collaboration across classes.
A Department of Education spokeswoman could not say how many open-plan classrooms had been built over the past decade, but work was being done to identify them in schools.
“The vast majority of recently completed new and upgraded schools have traditional classroom spaces that include breakout areas,” she said.
“The department is identifying the number of schools with open-plan classrooms. If schools have concerns that these spaces are impacting student learning, the department will work with each school.”
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Surging global steel demand puts focus on metallurgical coal
While the energy coal sector is out of favour with many major investors, the outlook for coking coal is as robust as ever as global steel demand recovers post-pandemic.
With its burgeoning economy, India is expected to play a leading role in demand for the crucial steel-making ingredient. And as the dominant supplier of the critical material, Australia is expected to benefit from strong export earnings for years to come.
The respected resource consultancy Wood Mackenzie forecasts global steel output to increase from 1.8 billion tonnes in 2022, to 2.2 billion tonnes by 2050.
Coking coal demand is expected to rise at a sharper pace: AME Research forecasts global export demand of 548 million tonnes (mt) in 2040, compared with 327mt in 2022, a 68 per cent increase.
Every electric vehicle requires 900 kilograms of steel, which requires 690kg of met coal to make, according to the World Steel Association. The average wind turbine requires 285 tonnes of steel, and 220 tonnes of met coal.
Of the 2040 number, India is forecast to account for 228 million tonnes. This is 42 per cent of forecast total export demand and reflects a 226 per cent increase from 2022 demand levels of 70mt.
In the shorter term, Wood Mackenzie expects global steel production to grow by 2.9 per cent in 2023. Last year, output retreated 3.7 per cent, the result of China’s prolonged pandemic lockdowns and raw material shortages stemming from the war in Ukraine.
But overall steel output does not tell the whole story of coking coal, which is ultimately used in traditional blast furnaces.
As its name suggests, coking coal is converted into coke, the key source of carbon that is vital for the process of converting iron ore into steel.
Electric arc furnaces – which produce steel mainly from scrap – are increasingly popular. But as Wood Mackenzie notes, blast furnaces are likely still to account for more than 50 per cent of production by 2050 – underpinning demand for high quality metallurgical coal.
An Australian lens
In 2022, Australian ‘met’ coal producers have been affected by wet weather-related disruptions. But they have also strongly benefited from record prices that saw premium hard coking coal briefly soar above $US600 a tonne in March 2022.
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‘Recklessly indifferent to truth’: Linda Reynolds blasts DPP Shane Drumgold over Brittany Higgins case
Drumgold is gutless slime
Former Defence Minister Linda Reynolds has launched a blistering attack on ACT chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold, accusing him of making “baseless and unsubstantiated allegations” that she was motivated by political forces to suppress Brittany Higgins’ rape complaint.
In a submission to the Sofronoff inquiry obtained by The Australian Senator Reynolds asks chairman Walter Sofronoff KC to find that Mr Drumgold “was recklessly indifferent to the truth of this mistaken belief, and was otherwise prepared to assert a position that had no evidentiary basis despite being an officer of the Court with ethical and prosecutorial duties that attach.”
Senator Reynolds alleges multiple breaches by Mr Drumgold of the Barristers Rules, the Legal Profession Act, the Director of Public Prosecutions Policy, the Freedom of Information Act and the Human Rights Act over the trial of Bruce Lehrmann.
The allegation that she had tried to pervert the course of justice would have remained unchallenged, she submitted, but for the intervention of Mr Sofronoff, who elicited from Mr Drumgold the startling admission during the inquiry that he no longer believed his own claims.
“The evidence of the DPP at the Inquiry demonstrated that there was no basis to make such a serious allegation during the trial or at any time before or after the trial. It was a baseless and unsubstantiated allegation made irresponsibly and has damaged the reputation of Senator Reynolds irreparably,” her submission states.
The Liberal MP reveals her shock at being declared a hostile (or “unfavourable”) witness in the trial by the DPP who, without warning, suddenly cross-examined her on her credibility.
That included questioning about the presence of her partner, Robert Reid, sitting in the courtroom, even though no one had suggested there was anything wrong with this, including the DPP, who had met and was aware that Mr Reid was her partner. An ODPP solicitor had even approached Mr Reid in the court to ask if Senator Reynolds could appear sooner than previously scheduled.
Senator Reynolds was also cross examined over a text message she sent to Bruce Lehrmann’s defence counsel, Steve Whybrow, requesting a transcript of the trial. She said she had not been aware this was not permitted.
She says Mr Drumgold “ambushed” her in the trial and had given her no indication beforehand in discussions that he intended to do this, even though he was already well aware that Ms Higgins’ was claiming political interference to suppress her complaint.
“I was shocked and frustrated at this approach as it appeared the DPP was seeking to undermine my credibility (and that of Senator Cash) in an effort to re-assert the credibility of Ms Higgins and increase his prospect of securing a conviction. Alleging that a politician was motivated by ‘political forces’ was an easy line to run.”
The DPP repeatedly asked questions which alleged Senator Reynolds was motivated by “political forces,” she said, even though he was well aware from her statement that it was she who had suggested to Ms Higgins she should talk to the police and assured her the AFP had expertise in handling sensitive personal matters.
In his summing up Mr Drumgold told the jury that “it is abundantly clear from the evidence and actions of Senator Reynolds during this trial that those political forces were still a factor.”
Senator Reynolds alleges Mr Drumgold had breached the Barristers Rules as his allegations were made “principally in order to discredit or embarrass” her and requested that Mr Sofronoff recommend the DPP’s conduct be investigated by the ACT Bar Council.
Senator Reynolds said that contrary to the requirements of the FOI Act she was not consulted before Mr Drumgold released a copy of his letter to ACT police chief Neil Gaughan complaining about the conduct of police in the Lehrmann investigation and trial.
In the letter Mr Drumgold had presented his personal characterisation of Senator Reynolds’ actions as statements of fact, she said, including allegations she had solicited trial transcripts “to tailor her evidence” and had “engaged in direct coaching of defence cross-examination of the complainant”.
Senator Reynolds asked the Inquiry to find that the DPP breached Barrister Rules by “knowingly making a misleading statement to the court” when he suggested that Senator Reynolds was not co-operating in accordance with a subpoena served on her to give evidence.
Senator Reynolds also submitted that the ACT Crimes Act should be amended to deter individuals from using the media and/or Parliamentary forums in relation to an alleged criminal offence that ought properly be the subject of the criminal justice processes.
She pointed to a section of the NSW Crimes Act that makes it an offence for anyone who knows or believes that a serious indictable offence has been committed and fails to report it to police.
Senator Reynolds said Labor Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus had declined to approve her applications for legal assistance at the Inquiry, meaning she had been unrepresented despite volumes of evidence that concerned her, including some taken in closed session, to which she still had no access.
Mr Sofronoff is due to hand down his report on potential misconduct by the DPP and the AFP by 31 July.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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