Cone of Silence. Government hides gas Cartel’s dirty secrets in Clayton Utz fee-fest

The Government did not want you to know of its gas betrayal of Australians, so when FOI legal costs shot up eight-fold, they didn’t bat an eyelid. It’s just part of the cost of protecting the cartel. Rex Patrick reports.

It was just one document that I was seeking: a departmental options paper for a gas reservation scheme on the east coast of Australia. I wanted it knowing that a gas reservation scheme is a sure-fire way to deflate gas prices and, flowing from that, reduce electricity prices for businesses and consumers.

But the Australian Government didn’t want the options disclosed or their reasons for rejecting anything other than the status quo for the gas cartel, and so they engaged top end-of-town law firm Clayton Utz in their fight for secrecy in the Administrative Appeal Tribunal (AAT).

Clayton Utz told the Government they would defend their secrets for $27K.

Questions on Notice asked by Senator Jacqui Lambie show that the final price for legal advice and representation paid to Clayton Utz was $213K – a great win for the law firm at the expense of the taxpayer.

 

Apart from the lawyers, there were no winners in these proceedings.

Loss for the Government

The Government suffered a loss. Some of the Department of Industry, Science and Resources’ dirtiest secrets were revealed as Clayton Utz failed to hold the line against transparency.

The primary secret revealed was a betrayal of Australians by the Department’s bureaucrats recommending to the Government that Australia not adopt a reservation scheme – a recommendation based on a blatant skewing of the data they had on hand, relying on a flawed Peruvian gas reservation model to say such schemes don’t work (while ignoring the very successful reservation scheme in Western Australia).

The Department disgracefully described the effects of a gas reservation by reference to the interests of the gas cartel. “Gas reservation acts as a tax on gas production, paid as a subsidy to domestic gas users”, they advised.

Explosive FOIs – gas cartel conned Government, fixed high energy prices for all Australians

Loss for businesses and consumers

Apart from the $213K hit to consolidated revenue, Australians also lost from the proceedings as the AAT ordered that options for domestic gas reservation remain secret because their release would upset Australia’s international energy trading partners.

After an argument presented by a middle-ranking bureaucrat from the Department of Foreign Affairs, the AAT ruled, “Whilst Australia has a strong relationship with Japan, Korea and Singapore, their reliance on energy from Australia provides the contextual setting for potential damage arising from disclosure of information relating to gas reservation in Australia because of the very real economic impact that Australia’s domestic policies could have on those countries”.

It’s a finding that seems so wrong.

Australians were denied access to information that would facilitate informed debate on domestic policies because that information might upset our trading partners.

The AAT is not to blame – the law only requires the Government to establish potential harm to international relations – public interest plays no part in the international relations exemption claimed by the Government.

However, the practical effect is to subordinate Australian domestic debate to foreign sensitivities. The diplomats in DFAT like this. Government ministers like this. The gas cartel likes this.  But it’s a betrayal of democratic principles.

Australia has censored the easy fix for electricity prices – Rex Patrick gets gas FOIs back

Media censorship at public expense

Part of the costs that Clayton Utz charged the taxpayer arose from preparations of a supporting affidavit to a complaint made to the AAT that I was tweeting about the case and that MWM was reporting on it.

The Government didn’t like the publicity. There was clear sensitivity to the arguments being advanced in the proceedings they wanted no reporting on them. They wanted to shut it down. Censorship is their preferred position.

There is no risk of sub-judice in a preliminary report of proceedings that are not being decided upon by a jury. Judges and tribunal members are professionals who are trained to ignore media commentary and only rely on evidence formally brought before them.

Clayton Utz should have advised their client, the Government, of this rather than spend time and taxpayers’ money preparing and filing affidavits the AAT had no interest in.

Ka-ching for the lawyers, though.

Salt in the wound

In opposition, Anthony Albanese promised to “reform Freedom of Information laws so they can’t be flouted by the government.”

He also stated, “We need a culture of disclosure. The current delays, obstacles, costs and exemptions make it easier for the government to hide information from the public. That is just not right”.

And yet we’ve seen the Albanese Government waste $213K fighting the FOI (and with only limited secrecy success).

The legal costs are small by comparison to the billions upon billions that are being milked from Australians by the gas cartel selling our gas overseas while inflating prices domestically.

Secrecy has been essential to this rorting. For years, policies that are an absolute betrayal of the national interest and the interests of Australian consumers have been developed and implemented in a cone of silence.

The gas cartel has never wanted to debate it. The old parties haven’t wanted to talk about it – why would they? The mainstream media have been largely silent. It’s only through a series of FOI disclosures and the work of independent media that the full extent of the subordination of both the Coalition and Labor to the gas cartel has been revealed.

That $213K was the bounty paid to lawyers in an attempt to conceal a great betrayal.

The vastly bigger price comes from the betrayal itself.

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