Announcing the Scam of the Year awards in Australian business and politics. What an embarrassment of rorting riches it is. Michael West with the countdown of elite scams, the creme de la creme, unvarnished, what you will not read in fossil media.
Source: Scam of the Year 2023: nine of the niftiest scams in Australian business and politics – Michael West
“Cormann was issued equity in Sayers Group in ‘December 2020’, just weeks after leaving Federal Parliament”
Welfare advocates claim Australia’s unemployment system has rewarded job service providers, even when they have not helped jobseekers.
When some 10 Liberal MPs under Abbott were found either receiving undeclared Rolex’s or raiding their Government expense accounts they were all let off. Except for Peter Slipper, once Abbott’s bestie, wanted gone. Peter Slipper was the brutal victim of James Ashby in a political, LNP conspiracy of which he was ultimately proven innocent. Accused of claiming a $300 petty cab charge when the others even Abbott took 1000s and were let off unpunished.
KMPG tried has been caught trying it on for $100 million and nobody has been jailed or even made it to the front pages of the News Corp press like Peter Slipper did. These were the LNP’s most favored consultants, the moneymen regarded as more honest than our Public Service, our Treasury when it came to auditing budget figures. Just ask Joe Hockey. They were the perfect political party accountants who got caught with a fist full of Australia’s dollars. But has anyone been jailed? We sat and watched Stuart Robert untouched for slipping backhander contracts to his mates. He was a serial offender regularly caught but never charged.
A Defence data project involving a $100 million contract issued to KPMG is rife with serious governance failures, conflicts of interests and a “lack of accountability”, according to an external review.
Source: $100m Defence contract with KPMG rife with governance failures, review finds – ABC News
According to Shane Dowling
Billionaire Kerry Stokes is Bruce Lehrmann’s puppet master for all his media interviews for 12 months which shows up in a contract Lehrmann signed with Stokes’ Channel Seven on either the 2nd of April or the 21st of April 2023.
Kerry Stokes’ Seven, as per the video below, is also the one driving a compensation payout of $12 million for Bruce Lehrmann for the claimed damage that has been done to his reputation and life by the Brittany Higgins rape allegation.
Bruce Lehrmann’s contract with Kerry Stokes’ Seven is similar to the contract that Ben Roberts-Smith signed with Seven to get funding for his defamation case against Nine Entertainment’s newspapers. Once Ben Roberts-Smith’s dodgy deal with Seven was exposed the deal was transferred to Kerry Stokes’ private company Australian Capital Equity.
Part of the Ben Roberts-Smith / Kerry Stokes deal stated that if Ben Roberts-Smith won his defamation case Kerry Stokes would get his costs back as well as 15% of the damages paid to Ben Roberts-Smith.
Given the above, there has to be a real possibility that Seven and/or Kerry Stokes are funding Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case which would help explain why Seven are pushing an ever-increasing compensation payout amount for Lehrmann which is currently sitting at $12 million.
A new report exposes Australian electricity networks’ supernormal profits of $11B, on top of ‘normal’ profits of $16B since 2014. In 2022 alone, the super profit represented between $80 and $400 annually per customer. What’s the scam?
Source: Consumers made to pay for electricity networks super-profits. What’s the scam? – Michael West
The drawn-out saga of Dixon Advisory – the superannuation managers who enticed their clients into investment assets they managed – has come to an end. Four cents to the dollar for the superannuants; millions for lawyers, accountants and ASIC. What’s the scam?
The scam is how Dixon Advisory enticed their superannuation clients into investing in assets that they managed, in many cases without properly considering their client’s circumstances when making those investments.
Stopping this sort of Corporate Colonisation of Australia is a definite “No” vote. Our shame those found guilty won’t be punished. Indigenous Australians didn’t steal anything but will be if “No” passes and the world will judge us all as citizens of a shameful nation.
Stolen Australian Government tax policy information was shared between two top-level groups of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Australia’s controversial “Transfer Pricing” tax division, documents reveal.
The NSW government’s Landcom has sold a hectare of prime bushland in Sydney for just $41k to shopping centre developers but has declined to respond to questions about the number of people at the auction. Callum Foote reports.
Last month, the NSW Government’s land and property developer Landcom sold a hectare of bushland in Sydney’s Shire for just $41k. The median house price for the area is $1.4 million, with the sale going to shopping centre developer Revelop.
Source: Did you miss the auction? Shucks. Government sells a hectare of Sydney for just $41k – Michael West
Busted by ASIC for accounting shonkery and rebuked by the Court for duping its clients, what’s the scam with law firm Shine Justice (and its auditor PwC)?
Source: Shine Justice – the law firm which breaks the law – bailed up by ASIC – Michael West
When the tax scandal could no longer be ignored, the PwC board commissioned an “independent review” into its “governance, culture and accountability,” appointing former Kodak, Telstra and Optus CEO Ziggy Switkowski to conduct it. So what’s the scam?
Source: Ziggy Switkowski’s “independent” review of PwC is out – missing the obvious – Michael West
What’s the scam with the powerful and secretive lobby group APPEA? The lobbyists who tout for Santos, Shell, BP, Exxon, Origin and Woodside have been hiding their financial accounts for two years.
Requests for an interview with chief executive Samantha McCullogh have been ignored. The APPEA PR guy has told Michael West Media he would not be disclosing them.
APPEA got the South Australian government to push through the most draconian anti-peaceful-protest laws in the country in the wake of its annual conference in Adelaide this year.
Source: What’s the scam Sam? ASIC is wondering too – Michael West
A new report confirms that Big Business in Australia is totally dominated by foreign owners, particularly the fossil fuels export sector now whining, make that ‘always whining’, about modest tweaks to curb their profiteering. What’s the scam?
Source: Business Council of Australia … or Business Council of Foreign Multinationals? – Michael West
Consulting firm PwC pulled off a remarkable feat as Adani pushed to open its Carmichael Coal Mine — it got paid by both the miner and its government overseer. Rod Campbell reports on the maestros of conflicts of interest.
Source: PwC and the Adani mine triple dip. A conflict of interest? Surely not – Michael West
The great scientific scam promoted by the Fossil Fuel Industry
Doubts have been raised about the long-term viability of two of the world’s most-celebrated and most-studied offshore carbon capture and storage projects, raising new concerns over massive government subsidies for the controversial method of removing carbon from the atmosphere
Source: Michael West Media – investigative journalists – always independent
What’s the scam with the Qantas board letting CEO Alan Joyce dump $17m worth of his own Qantas shares into the share buy-back?
The scam is buy-backs. They simply prop up the share price using shareholders’ own money, not to mention, in the case of Qantas, the public’s bail-out money. And this buy-back is already in the red so Qantas shareholders have helped Alan get out for a higher price. Meantime, not one new aircraft was bought under the Joyce regime, so the fleet ran down, customer service ran down and now Alan’s successor faces a massive capex bill to fix things.
If they had nationalised Qantas when the Pandemic hit, the government would be floating it again for $12bn now.
Source: Alan Joyce selling his own Qantas shares into the buy-back, que? – Michael West
The Centre for Public Integrity has published analysis of political donations and government contract work for Big 4 firms EY, KPMG, Deloitte and PwC. What’s the scam?
Source: Government gutted as PwC, Big 4 pick up $1.4b a year for giving advice – Michael West
Taxpayers stump up for “man shot in buttocks” journalism as Google Australia pays a pittance in tax again thanks to “world first media reforms”. Michael West reports on a joke.
Source: Google Australia pays pittance in tax, pays media moguls instead – Michael West
Documents tabled by MP Andrew Wilkie claim to show church used jobkeeper funds to help purchase Melbourne’s Festival Hall
Wow $12 and everybody is happy while we the people get screwed and pay
Be suspicious, be very suspicious! Albo is capping off Labor’s first year in office triumphant, his deal to cap gas and coal prices even lauded by the pro-gas corporate media. What’s the scam?
Source: Be suspicious: behind Albo’s masterstroke to cap fossil prices, ease power bills – Michael West
From flights to rewards QANTAS is not performing but is profiting how is that?
If the airline sector is so essential – and it clearly is in a vast country like Australia that is so far from other nations – healthy competition is vital. The federal government is happy to hand over billions of taxpayer dollars to Qantas to “save it” during the pandemic. Its surging return to record profits has made something of a lie of its pandemic era pleading.
Far better to place some restrictions on Qantas regarding landing rights, put some protections in place for Bonza – and perhaps Rex, consider forcing Qantas to divest Jetstar and give the industry the regulator which it has long needed.
Customers also need a no-nonsense legislated regime of money-back guarantees for cancellations, delays and other issues as they have in the EU, UK and New Zealand.
Catherine King, it’s your move.
Qantas is pulling back capacity to keep airfares up despite a lacklustre ACCC report which found ‘nothing to see here’ in airline competition
What’s the scam? It’s the fossil fuel corporations again, the usual suspects, paying no income tax despite billions in income. For yet another year: Exxon nought, Shell nought, Ampol, BP and APLNG nought, and Chevron putting them all to shame with the $30 in income tax paid on its $9bn in revenues.
Source: The Usual Suspects: tax office dump lays bare Australia’s biggest tax dodgers – Michael West
What began as an informal arrangement between neighbouring farmers, where one farm’s surplus water could be transferred to another, has over the past two decades morphed into a complex set of commodity markets whose annual turnover exceeds A$1.8 billion.
Source: Robber barons and high-speed traders dominate Australia’s water market
Advisors Consultants what do MPs really do in their hammocks other than memorising their talking points? (ODT)
via Government spending on consultants still soars despite economic calamity – Michael West
The universities that are the hardest to get into may not be delivering the best experience or employment outcomes for their students, new research shows.
Source: The Australian universities with the worst employment outcomes
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