Australia no longer manufactures anything because the Hawke-Garnaut report said so-Albanese says he will be like Hawke

by Ganesh Sahathevan 

Anthony Albanese has declared:

Australia must be a country that makes things. After almost a decade of sending manufacturing offshore and neglecting Australian workers, we’ve seen the consequences: fewer jobs, missed opportunities, and a nation left exposed when coronavirus hit.

Labor has a comprehensive plan to create jobs, boost vital skills by investing in education and training, bring industry expertise back onshore and supercharge national productivity.

An Albanese Labor Government will rebuild our proud manufacturing industry, and build a future made right here in Australia.

Albanese  has also said (according to The Guardian):

Anthony Albanese will bemoan a lost decade of division and policy inertia under the Coalition, declaring he will take his lead from Bob Hawke, lifting productivity, boosting growth and using “cheap, renewable energy to transform our economy” if Labor wins the coming election.

The Labor leader will use a speech to a business summit on Wednesday to present himself as a consensus figure with a “renewal” agenda. Albanese will say if Labor wins office in May, he will revive “the dormant national project to create wealth in a way that produces benefits for all Australians”.

This will be interesting, for it was Hawke relying on the Garnaut Report which he commissioned, and Garnaut's recommendations, who reduced tariffs, and sent manufacturing off to China, thus laying the foundation for the current China trade, where Australia exports raw material to China in exchange for manufactured products,

TO BE READ WITH 

Ross Garnaut: Lessons to be learnt from his last major policy work ( commissioned and adapted by Bob Hawke)?

July 05, 2008

The Garnaut Report on Climate Change puts an economist in charge of determining matters best left to climatologist. Be that as it may, this may be a good time to determine the quality and consequences of Ross Garnaut's earlier policy work , the consequences of which Australians are only now beginning to slowly appreciate.

I am of course referring here to his "Australia and the North East Asian Ascendancy", a work which was within his area of competency.

His work was central to the Hawke government economic reforms of the eighties, which opened Australia to overseas competition and dismantled the protectionist measures around many Australian industries.
(http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2295098.htm)

Having said that his previous work was within his area of competency, the question to ask is; how competent was he in producing that work?.
Many argue that he has been responsible for directing the attention and resources of Australian businesses to the growing North Asian economies, particularly China, buit this is clearly overstating the case. Garnaut himself should agree that ultimately market forces ( in this case lower production and transportation costs) would have led Chinese clients to Australian resources regardless of whether Garnaut wrote his report and regardless of the Hawke government's economic reforms "which opened Australia to overseas competition and dismantled the protectionist measures around many Australian industries".
It may however have occurred without the exposure of Australian industries to Asian competitors who were often state-owned or state controlled corporations able to undercut their Western competitors without making any significant improvements in efficiency.

As Paul Krugman put it:
The newly industrializing countries of the Pacific Rim have received a reward for their extraordinary mobilization of resources that is no more than what the most boringly conventional economic theory would lead us to expect. If there is a secret to Asian growth, it is simply deferred gratification, the willingness to sacrifice current satisfaction for future gain.
http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/myth.html

There was criticism of Garnaut's findings as early as 1990.
These are not freely available on-line, and hence I will provide here the conclusions of his critics , with references.

Accounting for Northeast Asian growth: Garnaut's limited ledger; J McKay, G Missen - Australian Journal of International Affairs, 1990:

Our basic argument is that Garnaut's account of rapid , sustained growth in North East Asia is fatally flawed, in that it is not based on a coherent theory of development. His free market , accounting theory of development is unable to take account of the specific historical, political and social factors that have been vital to the growth paths of each of the countries of North East Asia. By neglecting the international context in which these developments have taken place, and the central role of the state in managing growth, Garnaut ignores what for us are the most important lessons of the North East Asian experience. Until these questions are adequately addressed, predictions about the future development of the Asia-Pacific region, and Australia's place within the region, remain problematic.

NSW Supreme Court has taken a position on sharia; it must now issue directions for matters that involve marriage between Muslims and non-believers

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

The Malaysian Insight has reported: 

THE High Court in Kuala Lumpur was told today that the Perlis Islamic Religious and Malay Customs Council (MAIPs) had direct legal interest in intervening in a divorce petition between single mother, Loh Siew Hong, 34, and ex-husband Muhammad Nagashwaran Muniandy, who converted to Islam and unilaterally converted their three children.

 These are the types of issues that  Malaysia's civil courts have to deal with given the country's dual sharia-common law system. 

The NSW Supreme Court has made it known that sharia and the common law are compatible. It must now issue directions with regards matters such as those above.

TO BE READ WITH 

Sunday, April 17, 2022

NSW Supreme Court position in favour of sharia not matched by any statement in favour of other faiths-Perception of bias among adherents of other faiths justified

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

The. NSW Supreme Court's  position in favour of sharia   is  not matched by any similar statement in favour of other faiths.  There is at least a perception of bias, especially given the somewhat sanitized version of sharia that the Court describes, which  it says is  not incompatible with Australian law. 

TO BE READ WITH 

Sharia: The Sultan Of Brunei & the Governor designate NSW Margaret Beazley's views compared.;the official position of the Government Of Brunei vs that of the Supreme Court NSW 

by Ganesh Sahathevan

Readers are referred to the article published earlier on this blog about the views of the Governor designate NSW, the former President Of The Court Of Appeal NSW Margaret Beazley AO.
The Governor designate's views are contained in a speech that continues to be broadcast (or "published")  to the whole world on the NSW Supreme Court website:

Governor designate Margaret Beazley AO  will have to clarify her position on Islam very soon.:Her silence in the case of the Malaysian lesbians punished by caning maybe acceptable among judges but not from the Queen's representative

The story above includes this paragraph which the Legal Profession Admission Board NSW, whose chairman is the Chief Justice NSW Tom Bathurst, have deemed to be defamatory ,and lacking "insight": 


The Hon Justice M J Beazley AO, President Of The Court Of Appeal ,State Of NSW, Australia ,said in a speech delivered in 2014, but not widely reported:
"...despite a perception that Islam and the Australian law are incompatible, this is not borne out by the caselaw"
She did so in conjunction with the Affinity Intercultural Foundation, the Australian arm of the Fetullah Gulen movement. While Gulen and his followers have been recently victimised by former friend and ally Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey who they helped install, Gulen and his people are not innocent of jihadi activity.
They are nevertheless quite adapt at recruiting Western "intellectuals" to promote their, cause, Her Honour is only the most recent.



Now , compare the views of the highly learned justices to that of the Sultan Of Brunei, an absolute monarch of a Muslim country:

A Powerful Message From Brunei to the World

Why do you care so much what's happening here in an Islamic nation when you didn't even bat an eyelid about the Syrians, Bosnians, Rohingyas, Palestinians, etc.

“In your countries you practice freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, etc. It’s in your constitution. It’s your political system, your national identity, your rights, your way of life. In my country, we practice a Malay, Islamic, Monarchical system and we’re going to start practicing the laws of Islam, Shari’ah Law. Islam is in our constitution, our national identity, our rights, our way of life. We may find loopholes in your laws and justice system, and you may have found ours, but this is our country. Just like you practice your right to be gay, etc. for this world you live in now, we practice our rights to be Muslims for this world and the Hereafter. This is an Islamic country practicing Islamic Law. Why don’t you worry about your kids being gunned down in schools, worry about your prisons being unable to accommodate convicts, worry about your high rate of crimes and DUIs, worry about your high suicide and abortion rate, worry about whatever it is that you should be worried about there. Many religions are against homosexuality, it’s nothing new. The moment you hear that Islam and Muslims making a stand and trying to reaffirm their faith, you judge, you boycott, you say that it’s wrong, it’s stupid, it’s barbaric. Again, go back to those worries that you should focus on I’ve mentioned earlier. Is it not wrong to legalize deadly weapons, is it not wrong to allow unborn babies to be killed, is it not wrong to allow a lifestyle that results in AIDS and discontinuation of the next generation? Why do you care so much what’s happening here in an Islamic nation when you didn’t even bat an eyelid about the Syrians, Bosnians, Rohingyas, Palestinians, etc. Thousands are being killed there and you don’t care, not one is killed here under this Shari’ah Law, and you make a big fuss, even when the citizens here who are directly affected by it, accepts it with peace. Punishments may be harsher but it does not mean it’s easier to be carried out. There are processes to go through before an actual conviction. We are fine with it, we are happy.”

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Sydney ‘strategic cycle corridors’ may prove to be as useless and disruptive as the Epping Road bike corridor

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

The SMH has reported that the NSW Government has formulated a new bicycle corridor plan.

Absent from the plan is any attempt to address the disruption caused and lack of use of the Epping Road bicycle lane which was created by narrowing Epping Road at the Pacific Highway exit. The then Labour Government insisted that it was part of the campaign to fight global warming,  but most could see that it was an attempt to force traffic into the Lane Cove Tunnel, a project that failed despite that strategy. 

Meanwhile traffic along what was once a good six lane highway has been slowed to a crawl especially  during peak hours. 

How or why bicycle corridors in other parts of Sydney will do better is hard to see. 

The new plan will incorporate e-scooters but how these will co-exist alongside bicycles has not been explained.

END 

Sydney University research students signing a Declaration of External Interests exposed to risks of adverse findings based on contrived evidence, confected paper trails

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

SMH columnist Brian Toohey reported recently: 

In an unprecedented step, students enrolled in a higher degree by research at the University of Sydney will now have to fill out a wide-ranging Declaration of External Interests form that has more intrusive questions than an ASIO security clearance at the height of the Cold War. These students must declare their personal relationships, including sexual partners, de facto partners, ex-partners, close friends and family members broadly relevant to their candidature (see story below).

The University  has a history of contriving evidence to suit its own ends. 

This writer for example has had his alumni email service first suspended for illegally connecting the email service to a third party (paraphrase) and when that reason was questioned, finally suspended (for more than 17 years) for attempting to contact "John Howard" presumably the former prime minister, via the alumni system. University General Counsel Richard Fisher and the University have never explained why that would be a crime, but have demanded that this writer provide an undertaking to not abuse the alumni email system. 

While the circumstances above remain unexplained, it is known that the University's decision had been communicated to one Adrian Ong Chee Beng, whose business activities  this writer had investigated, and who was then convicted for fraud. Ong was informed even before the suspension had been communicated to this writer.

The University has recently hired a former Executive Officer of the NSW LPAB, and it does appear that  the Declaration of External Interests has been adapted from the NSW LPAB's failed disclosure requirements used to determine if persons seeking admission to practise in NSW are fit and proper (see story below from The Australian). The NSW LPAB also has a history of contriving evidence, including confecting paper trails.

TO BE READ WITH 

Monday, May 24, 2021

Sydney University adapts the failed NSW LPAB disclosure method to address security issues - USYD General Counsel, VC run risk of resembling Johnny English while pretending to be George Smiley

by Ganesh Sahathevan 

Sydney University has not said anything about how this incident where Indian students were threatened on campus;and said nothing 

about how this type of threat will be prevented. USYD now wants students and the public to believe it can deal with more complex 

security issues.

From Brian Toohey in this morning's SMH: 

In an unprecedented step, students enrolled in a higher degree by research at the University of Sydney will now have to fill out a wide-ranging Declaration of External Interests form that has more intrusive questions than an ASIO security clearance at the height of the Cold War. These students must declare their personal relationships, including sexual partners, de facto partners, ex-partners, close friends and family members broadly relevant to their candidature. The information required goes back to 36 months ago.

The form says, “If there is any uncertainty, it is better to declare the relationship than not to do so.” It is uncertain, for example, whether students should declare a sexual relationship with a staff member at another university in the same research field.

The form ...... says that access (to the information provided)  is “at the discretion” of the university’s general council (sic). However, the spokesperson said the information on the declarations from HDR students will “only be made available to officers of the university.

Lawyers in NSW will probably recognise the wording of the declaration, its form and reported substance.It is almost an exact  copy of the NSW LPAB declaration required of anyone seeking admission to practise in NSW. The NSW LPAB declaration system is flawed, and survives despite incidents such as the one reported below by Ben Butler in The Australian. 

The disclosure system allows NSW LPAB staff, and USYD's  General Counsel and his staff, to pretend to have forensic and investigative skills they simply do not have. Like the chairman of the NSW LPAB, USYD's General Counsel, and Vice-Chancellor (who must take ultimate responsibility) run the risks of looking like Johnny English while trying to play at being George Smiley.

TO BE READ WITH

Bizarre blog claims used to deny man right to practise law
F

BEN BUTLER
BUSINESS REPORTER
12:00AM JANUARY 17, 2019
2 COMMENTS

The body overseen by Chief Justice Tom Bathurst responsible for deciding who can practise law in NSW relied on a wildly defamatory Malaysian blog depicting ABC journalists, former British prime minister Tony Blair, financier George Soros and others as part of a global conspiracy when deciding to deny a would-be solicitor a certificate to practise.

Chief Justice Bathurst and Legal Practitioner Admission Board executive officer Louise Pritchard declined to answer The Australian’s questions about how the article came into the board’s hands and why its members felt the conspiracy-laden material could be relied upon as part of a decision to deny Sydney man Ganesh Sahathevan admission as a lawyer. Nor would either say which of the 10 members of the LPAB, three of whom are serving NSW Supreme Court judges, was on the deciding panel.

Ms Pritchard has left her role at the LPAB since The Australian began making inquiries in September. The article, published in December 2017 on website The Third Force, accuses Mr Sahathevan of engaging in a conspiracy to attack then Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak.


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EXCLUSIVE
Would-be lawyer denied by blog
BEN BUTLER

Mahathir Mohamad, who returned as prime minister after toppling Mr Najib in elections held last May, is also smeared as a participant in the globe-spanning conspiracy.

Mr Najib was under pressure at the time over the country’s sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB, which the US Department of Justice says has been looted of billions of dollars that was spent on property, art, jewels and the Leonardo DiCaprio film, The Wolf of Wall Street.

Malaysian authorities have charged Mr Najib with dozens of corruption offences that could attract decades in jail over his role in the 1MDB scandal, which allegedly included the flow of about $US1 billion through his personal bank account.

The article’s author, Malaysian political operative and Najib loyalist Raggie Jessy, also accused Rewcastle-Brown, Stein and Besser of receiving money, totalling millions of dollars, to participate in a Four Corners program exposing the 1MDB scandal that aired on the ABC in March 2016.

There is no suggestion any of Mr Jessy’s bizarre allegations are true. However, the LPAB cited the piece when denying Mr Sahathevan admission as a lawyer in an undated and unsigned set of reasons sent to him on August 3 last year.

It used the article as evidence in a passage dealing with legal conflicts between Mr Sahathevan, who has largely worked in the past as a journalist, his former employer, Malaysia’s Sun Media Group, and the company’s owner, tycoon Vincent Tan.

In that context, the board said the Third Force article reported “that Mr Sahathevan was investigated for blackmail, extortion, bribery and defamation”. While the article claims that blackmail, extortion, bribery and defamation “are but some of the transgressions many from around the world attribute” to Mr Sahathevan, The Australian was unable to find any reference in it to an investigation into him on these grounds.

It is unclear why the board felt the need to rely on the article, as it also made adverse findings about Mr Sahathevan’s character based on a series of other allegations including that he used “threatening and intimidating” language in emails to the College of Law and the NSW Attorney General and did not disclose his sacking from a previous job to the board.

Mr Sahathevan has denied the allegations in correspondence with the board.

The board also cited evidence that one of Mr Sahathevan’s blogs on Malaysian politics was banned by the Najib regime as indicating his poor character.

In an email to Chief Justice Bathurst, sent on August 30, Rewcastle-Brown said her site, Sarawak Report, which exposed much of the 1MDB scandal, was banned by the Malaysian government.

“I along with other critics of the 1MDB scandal (which includes Mr Sahathevan) became the target of immense state-backed vilification, intimidation and online defamation campaigns on behalf of the Malaysian government,” she said.

She said the board’s use of the Third Force article against Mr Sahathevan displayed “a troubling level of misjudgment and poor quality research, giving a strong impression that someone seeking to find reasons to disqualify this candidate simply went through the internet looking for ‘dirt’ against him”.

“The Third Force has consistently been by far the most outlandish, libellous, vicious and frankly ludicrous of all the publications that were commissioned as part of former prime minister Najib Razak’s self-proclaimed ‘cyber army’ which he paid (and continues to pay) to defame his perceived enemies and critics,” she said.

Besser, who now works in the ABC’s London bureau, told The Australian: “It’s clearly nonsense and comes from the darkest corners of some pretty wild Malaysian conspiracy theorists.”

Mr Sahathevan’s application is to be reconsidered at an LPAB meeting next month (Admission has since been denied, for the same reasons, but without explicit reference to the Thirdforce story).


BEN BUTLER
BUSINESS REPORTER
Business reporter Ben Butler has covered everything from tractors to fashion to corporate collapses. He has previously worked for the Herald Sun and as a senior business reporter with The Age and Sydney Morning... Read more

Cellos Software, backed by members of Singapore’s elite , including members of a church, put into liquidation in Australia.

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

CELLOS-NOTICE OF DEEMED SPECIAL RESOLUTION TO 

WIND UP A COMPANY

Cellos Software Ltd, a company incorporated in Australia but with its business in Singapore, has been put into liquidation.  The Australia described the company's problems in these words: The company says one use of its technology is to replace expensive hardware at mobile phone base stations with software, saving telco operators vast amounts of money. This helped propel CellOS to valuations in the billions of ­dollars, but its research and development efforts required heavy funding and the company suffered from a lack of income. In a witness statement filed with the court, (former director Constance  Peck) says she sold cheap shares to parishioners of her church. She said she asked them to pledge 10 per cent of any profit reaped in an expected IPO back to the church. While her statement does not identify the church, Ms Peck names as receiving cut-price shares Thio Gim Hock (deceased), a pastor at Singapore’s City Missions Church and the chief executive of OUE Limited, a hotel operator and property developer in the city state. Mr Thio, who was a director of CellOS for a month last year, is married to Thio Su Mien, a former dean of law at the University of Singapore. He is not a party to the proceedings and is not alleged to have done anything wrong.

 TO BE READ WITH 

CellOS Singapore execs, Jason Huber in battle for control




CellOS says its technology can revolutionise mobile network.

· BEN BUTLER


BUSINESS REPORTER




· 12:00AM SEPTEMBER 11, 2017


Australian businessman Jason Huber has accused members of Singapore’s elite of robbing him of control of CellOS — a company building a revolutionary mobile phone network technology potentially worth billions — in a Federal Court trial set to begin today.

CellOS and the remaining members of the company’s board in turn accuse Mr Huber of defrauding it through two loans he provided to fund operations, and share trading involving a network of offshore entities — accusations Mr Huber denies.

The company says one use of its technology is to replace expensive hardware at mobile phone base stations with software, saving telco operators vast amounts of money.



This helped propel CellOS to valuations in the billions of ­dollars, but its research and development efforts required heavy funding and the company suffered from a lack of income.

Efforts by both sides to raise the millions needed to keep CellOS going are at the core of the Federal Court lawsuit.

Documents before the court paint a picture of a thriving grey market in Singapore for shares in CellOS, which is registered in Australia as an unlisted public company.

The court is set to hear of shares being sold as “Kingdom Work” to benefit a church connected to a CellOS director and of a plan to get rid of Mr Huber as chief executive, dubbed “Project D”.

In an unusual turn of events, the company also initially included as a target of its lawsuit a sitting director, well-connected Singaporean executive trainer and businesswoman Constance Peck. However, Ms Peck resigned from the board in March this year and has provided evidence to the court that in part supports Mr Huber’s version of events.

In a witness statement filed with the court, Ms Peck says she sold cheap shares to parishioners of her church.

She said she asked them to pledge 10 per cent of any profit reaped in an expected IPO back to the church.

While her statement does not identify the church, Ms Peck names as receiving cut-price shares Thio Gim Hock, a pastor at Singapore’s City Missions Church and the chief executive of OUE Limited, a hotel operator and property developer in the city state.

Mr Thio, who was a director of CellOS for a month last year, is married to Thio Su Mien, a former dean of law at the University of Singapore.

He is not a party to the proceedings and is not alleged to have done anything wrong.

Ms Peck said she and her husband, Alan Peck, first bought shares in CellOS in March 2013, after a meeting with Mr Huber during which the prospect of a listing on the Nasdaq exchange within six months at $100 a share was raised.

The couple bought 600,000 shares from Mr Huber at $US2 a share. Ms Peck said she then sold more shares to friends, family and members of her church.

“In or around April 2013, I came up with the idea of a profit ‘pledge’ which would involve a commitment by investors to donate or tithe 10 per cent of the net profit of the CellOS investment that was expected to be realised at IPO to Kingdom Work,” she said in her witness statement.

However, Mr Huber refused to provide her with any more cut-price shares so she instead started to obtain them from CellOS’s broker, Melvin Tan.

CellOS accuses Mr Huber of undermining its share price by selling his shares to fund two loans to the company by entities associated with him in 2013 and 2014.

It also accuses him of selling more shares through a complex network of companies registered in exotic locations including Belize, Samoa and the British West Indies — an umbrella term that takes in a swath of Caribbean islands.

However, Mr Huber has told the court CellOS’s board approved the loans, which raised much-needed funds to keep the company going. And he claims he did not control all but three of the offshore companies named by CellOS.

He claims they were instead in the control of lawyer Harveen Singh Narulla, a former CellOS company secretary who worked as a “strategy consultant”.

Ms Peck told the court she became concerned after the IPO did not happen within six months and began considering a move against Mr Huber.

A research paper entitled “Project D”, prepared for Ms Peck in April 2015, and attached to her witness statement, claims the company was running out of cash and management viewed Mr Huber as running a Ponzi scheme.

It then set out a plan to get rid of Mr Huber and restructure the company by slashing costs.

Mr Huber lost his place on the board at an extraordinary general meeting in September 2015.
BEN BUTLER

Cellos won its case against Huber. 

Caeser's Wife and Justice Choo Han Teck of Singapore : Would Caesaer's wife Pompea feel vindicated, ashamed, or confused?

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

First,  let us be clear that Caeser divorced his wife Pompea because he was embarrassed by the mere allegation that she had been the object of a seduction.  This incident is thought to be the origin of thr proverb,   " Caesar's wife must be above suspicion."

The memory of Pompea's shaming was recently raised in Singapore's courts in a matter involving cheating in exams by law graduates seeking admission to practise;  Singapore's Straits Times reported last week: 

"In a profession in which every member must be like Caesar's wife - beyond reproach - dishonesty is a big problem. But it would also be harsh to have one's professional career ended before it has even begun," said Justice Choo Han Teck.

The reference to Caeser's wife is intriguing  for  in  1998  Pompea was resurrected  in defence of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Senior Minister  Lee Kuan Yew  in the HPL affair. The Hansard record states: 


Mr S. Dhanabalan (Toa Payoh GRC): Mr Speaker, Sir, I would like to first declare that I work in a corporation whose shareholders own property development companies in Singapore

What is important is that Ministers and civil servants who may have dealings with a developer must make sure that there is no hint that they have been singled out for special favours so that  they will be obligated to the developer. Like Caesar's wife, they must be above suspicion.



A lesson here, one is sure, but what might that lesson be, and for whom? Would Caesaer's wife Pompea feel vindicated,   ashamed, or confused? 

END 

A federal ICAC is required to investigate the TEQSA-Zhu Minshen affair

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

   Zhu Minshen being introduced to Xi Jinping .Zhu passed away earlier this year. He has been replaced by Susan Cao as principal.

As reported  TEQSA's Nicholas Saunders granted Zhu Minshen's Top Group self accreditation rights despite Zhu granting academic credits for defying an AFP directive. 

That incident was just one in a series of events that commenced with TEQSA and the NSW Legal Profession Admission Board granting Zhu Minshen what still looks like a special favour, which Zhu himself described as a "first and only".

TEQSA is a Commonwealth entity, and NSW ICAC seems unwilling to pursue the NSW LPAB. Only a federal ICAC can overcome these problems. 

SEE ALSO 

Can Andrew Bell, new NSW CJ and Chairman NSW LPAB, avoid referring his NSW LPAB staff to NSW ICAC- NSW LPAB favours granted Zhu Minshen and his Top Education Group Ltd remain a live issue