Fairfax sacks its editors

The latest salvo in the Fairfax saga was the sacking of three senior members of the editorial team today. In Melbourne, Age editor Paul Ramadge .html “announced his intention to stand down” while at the Sydney Morning Herald publisher and editor-in-chief Peter Fray and editor Amanda Wilson announced “they are leaving the company”. The decisions coming so close together and so close after CEO Greg Hyland’s watershed restructure announced last week can only mean the trio have been sacked. Fray gives it away when he said he said it was an exciting opportunity for him to see what more he could achieve in the profession he loved but “he didn’t have another job to go to” while Ramadge spoke of “divided feelings”.

Their departure clears the way for Fairfax to move to a new management structure. In Hyland’s memo to all staff last Monday entitled “Fairfax of the Future”, he announced the three objectives of his cull of 1900 staff: Move to a digital-only platform, reduce costs and make profits. Hyland said his “Metro Media Business” (the Age and SMH) has grown 30% audience in the last five years. Online visitors now outnumber print by over three to one. But the business costs are predominately in the legacy space. To fix this, they will move to regional printing plants, charge for digital access from next month, reduce the size of their papers and sell a stake in NZ auction site Trade Me.

Hyland said they were committed to a multi-platform strategy. Fairfax Media will become a “digital news media and transactions” company with horizontal media convergence across four platforms: legacy (print/radio), online, mobiles and tablets, and IPTV. Audiences would be “monetised through the day” through a mixture of subscriptions, advertising, digital transactions and events. There is no clear role for an editor-in-chief in this model, hence the departures of Ramadge, Frey and Wilson. The Australian thinks instead there will be five geographical editors-in-chief in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Canberra -- and a handful of "national news editors". The Australian believes there will be 19 "topic" editors, replacing the rounds system. “Some topics will be national, such as federal politics, some local, such as crime, and some hybrid,” they said. “There will also be five ‘platform’ editors: one each for print, social media, tablet, mobile and computer.”

Meade and Jackson also note the massive restructure in their own organisation News Ltd with job losses also expected to exceed 1000. Its 19 divisions will be reduced to five publishing houses in a “one city one newsroom” strategy similar to Fairfax. News is also closing two divisions: News Digital Media, founded in 2006, and News Corp's internal wire service Newscore formed three years ago.

While Australia’s two biggest media companies haemorrhage staff, The Guardian is worried more about losing a plurality of voices. It notes Gina Rinehart is circling Fairfax looking for a board seat and editorial influence. Maybe Rinehart is just smart and figures now is a good time to buy into their stock or maybe she wants more than that. Either way, based on what Hyland is saying, the Guardian’s comment she would “hamper Australia's once-vibrant journalistic culture” is a bit Pollyanna-ish about the our media. Right-winger Gerard Henderson calls the Age the Guardian-on-the-Yarra but the Australian paper is nowhere near as good as its British counterpart.

Whether it will be a choice “between Murdoch and Murdoch on steroid,” as the Guardian claims, the fact is Fairfax were never independent of their owners regardless of their “Charter of Editorial Independence”. Even in the glory days of Graham Perkin, he was rapped over the knuckles for supporting Gough Whitlam in 1972 and had to backtrack in 1974 when the board vetoed his decision to give Labor another chance. Rineharts’s refusal to sign it will have little bearing on the content the new entity provides.

The real danger is elsewhere. This threat is not about political interference but business. The new arrangements will further hasten the collapse of the walls between editorial and commercial departments. Terry Flew notes the big question for Fairfax is what online content to put out. Flew said their websites are “a confusing blancmange of investigative stories, fashion photos, sex tips, celebrity gossip, local news, opinion pieces, sports results, and updates on reality TV shows". These sites challenge Fairfax’s claim to deliver quality journalism and most of it is readily available elsewhere. Flew said Fairfax priorities for its online sites must be“uncluttering its content pages and deciding what it won’t be reporting on, and identifying more clearly who its paying readership are likely to be and what they are uniquely seeking from Fairfax sites.”

Gunggari People get native title

It was a joyous day in Mitchell today. The Gunggari people, traditional owners of the land south and west of town celebrated a native victory yesterday with a march down the main street. “Who are we?” they chanted. “GUNGGARI” was the response. Loud and proud, they were celebrating the first native title determination on mainland Southern Queensland.

The marchers were happy a day after the Federal Court of Australia came all the way to Mitchell Shire Hall  to make a consent determination. Justice John Reeves announced the decision immediately shaking hands with Gunggari elder Wayne Saunders as many people cheered and wept. The determination recognises native title rights and interests over 13,600 sq km of land and waters in central southern Queensland. The area is broken up into parcels, the two biggest of which are in the middle of a triangle between Mitchell (east) Charleville (west) and Bollon (south).

In these areas, the Gunggari People negotiated Indigenous Land Use Arrangements (ILUA) with three local councils (Maranoa, Balonne and Murweh),  electricity supplier Ergon, telecommunications provider Telstra and five pastoral properties. Once the ILUAs are formalised, the Gunggari Native Title Aboriginal Corporation will be the prescribed body corporate to manage the native title rights. Their rights are non-exclusive but allow Gunggari people access to, travel, camp, hunt, teach, light fires and use water in the areas affected. They can also hold religious ceremonies and spiritual activities on the land.

The rights are a long time coming. Queensland South Native Title Services principal legal officer Tim Wishart handed up the list of documents to Justice Reeves on which the claim was based. Wishart made a powerful speech documenting the history of the Gunggari “from time beyond memory”. Wishart said the Gunggari land ran west from the Maranoa River and included the headwaters of the Nebine Creek, Mungallala Creek, Wallam Creek and Neabul Creek which together feed into the greater Murray-Darling basin.  They fought to protect those lands “probably before English developed as a language,” Wishart said.

They were uninclined to let the European invaders have free run of the place after Sir Thomas Mitchell first explored the area in 1840.  In 1855 an exasperated Crown Land Commissioner Wiseman wrote “No tribe will allow of the peaceable occupation of their country,” The whites fought back and with superior weaponry killed at least 75 Aboriginals along the Maranoa River up to 1862.  In 1880, George Thorn (who served as Queensland premier two years earlier) boasted the inland Queensland Aboriginals were “pretty well shot down and got rid of”.

Thorn was wrong. The Gunggari and other tribes hung on tenaciously even after losing the war to the colonials.  Monitored by the border and native police, They were tolerated as joint owners of the land until the twentieth century when the patriarchal attitudes of the new Commonwealth brought about the Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of Sale of Opium Acts 1901.  Under this act the camps that existed across the Maranoa were dismantled and hundreds of people were moved east and north into alien lands at government reserves and missions at Taroom, Purga, Barambah/Cherbourg, Palm Island and Woorabinda.

Most Gunggari ended up at Taroom settlement established in 1911. They stayed there until 1927 when the site was abandoned for a dam on the Dawson River.  Though the dam never went ahead, they were marched north to a site near Rockhampton called Woorabinda. Here they were among 17 different language groups under the control of the Chief Protector of Aboriginals, an Orwellian title who was supposed to “protect them from acts of cruelty, oppression and injustice.” Instead they turned a blind eye at best, or ran at worst, schemes to rob Aboriginals of what little they had. 

The few Gunggari that remained behind on country didn’t have it easy either. They mostly gravitated to Mitchell town and were housed on the Yumba (“camp”)  on the eastern edge of town near the Maranoa River. At the Yumba, Gunggari elders spoke their language but repressive white attitudes discouraged them from passing on their knowledge to the next generation.  They did pass on the cultural laws and customs and hunting traditions. Yumbas were often shantytowns and many towns such as Mitchell and Surat demolished theirs in the 1960s. The people moved into town and started meeting the whites in school when previously they would only ever meet on the rugby league or netball field.  

The 1967 referendum, the Keating Redfern speech and Mabo and Wik decisions slowly changed attitudes both of the white and black communities. Robert Munn for the Gunggari People first filed a native title application in March 1996 and followed it through despite no legal representation for 11 years. The application was modified in 1998 to reduce the covered areas and the application was split into two parts in 2001.  In 2007 Queensland South Native Title Services became the legal representative  and they registered an ILUA with the Queensland Government in 2008 for the first part which saw parcels of land change hands in the Dunkeld area south of Mitchell.  Friday’s decision was for the second half.  Munn did not live to see it. He died in July 2009 and five others continued the application in their name. 

In December 2010, the State of Queensland began substantive mediation. The applicant and respondents submitted their material to the Federal Court who announced their decision on Friday.  As well as the many Gunggari who celebrated in Mitchell, others celebrated from afar such as Queensland State of Origin star Johnathan Thurston and Opera Australia baritone Don Bemrose. “I am very proud to say I am a member of the Gunggari community,” Thurston said. “It is important that our history with this land, and our customs, have been observed in this way and I congratulate everyone who has fought for this recognition over the past 17 years – almost as long as I’ve been playing rugby league.” 

Bemrose, the first Aboriginal member of Opera Australia, said he was always proud and honoured to represent the Gunggari. “This moment is acknowledgement of our people’s continued bond with the Maranoa and the persistence, dedication and strength of a few to do all possible to again connect our land to all Gunggari past, present and future is amazing,” he said. As Wishart concluded in Court on Friday, the determination has confirmed what the Gunggari already knew: the land was theirs.

Assange and Correa: Welcome to the Club of the Persecuted

For hints on whether Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa would give Julian Assange asylum, I took a look at the May 22 interview between the men for Assange’s self-titled show on Russia Today. Russia Today is a strange beast that will analyse anything in depth except Putin. Its series of Julian Assange Show episodes of interviews with many world leaders who don't get easy access to the western newsrooms, is passable telly.


“Correa is a left wing populist who has changed the face of Ecuador,” Assange announced in his introduction. “But unlike his predecessors he has a PhD in economics.”

Correa is a significant president and Assange quotes US embassy cables released by his own Wikileaks project that say Correa is the most popular president in Ecuadorian history. He was also taken hostage in a 2010 coup d’etat. Assange said Correa blamed the coup on corrupt media and launched a counter-offensive on the grounds the media define what reforms are possible.

Assange asked Correa Ecuador’s relationship with the US. Correa quoted Bolivian president Evo Morales who said the US is the only country in the Americas safe from a coup because it doesn’t have a US embassy. Assange admitted to Correa he liked his jokes. Correa suddenly got serious and said the only way he could eliminate funding US provided to Ecuadorian police was by increasing their salary.  "I'm not anti-American, I got two degrees there but Iwould never allow Ecuadorian sovereignty to bcompromised by the US".  Correa said he wanted Wikileaks to release all the cables as they had nothing to hide.

Assange asked about kicking out the US ambassador after the release of the cables. Correa said Heather Hodges was right wing with 1960s cold war attitudes. Hodges accused Correa of deliberately appointing a corrupt police commissioner. She didn't like the government and her main contacts were leaders of the opposition. The cables confirmed what they already knew. As Hodges was shown the exit door, Correa grew relationships with China, Russia and Brazil in her stead. 

Assange brought the subject back to freedom of information as he reminded Correa why he was 500 days of house arrest. Were Correa’s reforms were a step in the wrong direction for release of information?
Correa replied he was all for release of information. He mentioned an Argentinean book about Wikileaks which said Ecuadorian media did not publish.  He has long supported Wikileaks. “We believe, my dear Julian, that only things that should be protected against freedom of speech are those set in the international treaties,” Correa said. Correa said media power is greater than political power in Ecuador. “They usually have self-serving political, economic, social and above all informative power,” he said. He claimed the government were persecuted by journalists using insults and slander – mass media serving private interests.

With most TV stations owned by bankers and no public station in Ecuador, he faced merciless opposition to any banking reforms. “These people disguised as journalists are doing politics for fear of losing the power they always had,”  Assange said he agreed with his market description of the media which had censored Wikileaks material for political reasons. However he said the correct way to deal with monopolies or cartels to break them up. He asked could Correa have made it easier for new entrants. Correa said that was what they were trying to do was making one third of TV stations for the community and non-profit, one third commercial and the final third state owned by governments and councils. He said his 2008 law has been systematically blocked by big media and their lobbyists. 

Correa said Ecuador and Latin America are moving from the Washington Consensus.  “The policies dictated by the US had nothing to do with our needs in Latin America,” Correa told Assange.  Correa said governments had to put people before economic politics. He told Assange it was a pleasure to meet him in this way,
“Cheer up, welcome to the club of the persecuted,” Correa said.
“Thank you,” Assange replied. “Take care and don’t get assassinated.”
“That’s something we have to avoid every day," Correa replied.

Fairfax news is good news

I’m reading Ben Hills’ monumental biography of the great Age editor Graham Perkin “Breaking News” and it makes me break into a wry smile when I hear of the 1900 job losses and other sweeping changes announced today at Fairfax. A smile seems harsh when so many livelihoods are at stake in something in many quarters seen as a disastrous loss to Australian media. Yet I see it as a natural step of an industry that must change to avoid death.

Reading Hills’ account of The Age in the stultifying days before Perkin took over in the 1960s, the real wonder is how the newspaper has lasted this long.  The paper was moribund, uninteresting, under the thumb of the government, hamstrung by libel laws, and almost bled to death by the dull Syme family who cared more about dividends than the paper. Perkin. with the aid of his go-getting equally young managing director Ranald McDonald (a Syme who broke the mould) turned the Age into a vibrant newspaper. I believe both Perkin and McDonald would have supported today’s moves by Fairfax CEO Greg Hyland. 

The matter came up on ABC’s PM tonight where Mark Colvin interviewed David McKnight, senior research fellow at the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales and Andrew Jaspan, former editor of the Age. After joking about George Brandis’s comment in parliament the redundancies were the work of the carbon tax, they introduced a serious tax issue.  The discussion was around Colvin’s point the financial papers, such as the Financial Times, the Economist and the Wall Street Journal, have made money because of their specialist readerships. Jaspan continued:

“I'm glad you mentioned that because the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times are seen as expenseable costs,” Jaspan said.” So if you work anywhere in London, or New York, US you can charge to your credit card the cost of those services. So they are really fundamentally different to the likes of generalist papers.” 

No-one picked up on Jaspan’s point: why can’t generalist papers be like the WSJ and the FT and be expenseable costs? This is intervention thats governments – like Australia's – could make without compromising the independence of the publications. Make subscription to a news publication a tax expense. Why wouldn’t a businessperson in Sydney not want a subscription to the Sydney Morning Herald? Even with its now denuded newsroom, it is still the biggest source of journalism in Sydney and would have access to information – not just financial information - vital to the success of any local enterprise. Wouldn’t governments and big business want to encourage this information sharing by making buying a newspaper a taxable and/or expenseable item?

Yet ultimately newsprint is not a practical way to deliver news in the resource-conscious 21^st century. Why should trees die for newsprint? And then there is the distribution costs —trucking all those newspaper copies to newsstands and homes, then back to recycling centres or worse still landfills.  Slate argues the jury is still out whether online is more energy-friendly but the fact remains more people now prefer to get their news online. There is no lessening of thirst for news. People will pay for it. No longer according to the rivers of gold of old but they will pay for it. Fairfax have done the right thing to recognise where the future is. Now they have to make sure there are enough content makers to provide the niche content for their markets. They may or may not make it but that is not our concern. I would not mourn Fairfax’s passing if it dies.

Jason Wilson in Restless Capital calls it a collapse but I call it changing times. 20^th century newspaper companies are like carmakers, only without the subsidies. Companies that cannot understand that, deserve to die. There may be a small deficit of news if Fairfax disappears but something will fill the gap. Maybe we will lose investigative journalism but that didn’t exist much before Graham Perkin anyway.  The much loathed – but still popular - Today Tonight and A Current Affair programs show current affairs is still popular in tabloid form. The death of big journalism is not the end of the world and it won’t end investigative journalism.  People will still flock to to newsmakers and also come to those who tell the story behind the news. Someone, somewhere – if not Fairfax – will learn how to do that digitally with a profit. Newsrooms may come and go but news will always survive.

Slavery is as old a curse as humanity

The issue of slavery doesn’t seem like an important topic to be discussing the 21^st century but it is still a real issue in many parts of the world, including Australia.  Attorney-General Nicola Roxon recognised the fact this week when she announced new laws to criminalise forced marriage, forced labour and organ trafficking.  Roxon said Australia wasn’t immune from slavery and people trafficking. The new bill tackles worker exploitation, ensures those who help to enslave or traffic can be charged as well as those who keep slaves and allows for reparations with up to 12 years in prison for forced labour charges.

The news comes a week after an Irish publication revealed the news slavery exists today in Ireland and is exported to Australia. The Cork Independent quoted from a new book called ‘Open Secrets: An Irish Perspective on Trafficking & Witchcraft' based on data from the Trafficking in Persons Report issued annually by the US Department of State. Book co-author David Lohan said the data was available for several years but the issue was under-reported. 

The report found that Irish and Filipino people on 457 visas were “fraudulently recruited to work temporarily in Australia, but subsequently are subjected to conditions of forced labour, including confiscation of travel documents, confinement and threats of serious harm." It quoted a $174,000 fine issued to a Perth construction company in 2008 for violations of the Workplace Relations Act for “the deliberate exploitation of Filipino and Irish migrant workers.” The workers were not entitled to move between employers and presented with undated work agreements while being denied the required documents outlining their rights.

At the time of the case, Australian Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans welcomed the fine and warned that the exploitation of workers would not be tolerated by his Government. The Cork Independent said slavery exists in Ireland today because of a demand. “Irish people are willing to use, abuse and exploit their fellow human beings for economic benefit or their own gratification,” it said.

But this is not just true of Ireland or Australia. Slavery is as old as organised human society. It was codified in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi 3800 years ago and accepted in the Old and New Testaments. Exodus 22:2-3 allows for a thief to be sold if they cannot redress their theft.  Ephesians 6:5 cautions servants “who are owned by someone must obey your owners”. The classical Greek definition of democracy glossed over slavery and it was a key component of the Roman Empire economy until it was gradually replaced by serfdom.

Slavery continued in many societies and gained a new lease of life in Western Europe with the opening up of the Americas in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. The Atlantic triangular slave trade brought textiles, rum and manufactured goods from Europe to Africa, slaves from Africa to the Americas and sugar, tobacco and cotton from the Americas to Europe.  Merchants of Liverpool and Bristol combined with the big American cotton producers and the slave-trading kingdoms of western and central Africa to move 12 million Africans across the Atlantic in three hundred years. 

American-based British historian Simon Schama addressed the subject in his blood Rough Crossings:  Britain, Slaves and the American Revolution. The book tells the story of black Americans who sided with the British in the War of Independence because King George III embodied the idea of freedom for them better than George Washington.  The framers of the new American constitution had a bold plan for taxation and representation but behind the rhetoric of freedom, the reality of slavery was their Achilles heels. Tens of thousands of Black Africans looked to Britain to deliver them from the slavery.  When Boston lawyer James Otis called out the contradiction and said slavery diminished the idea of American freedom,  Founding Father John Adams could only “shudder at the consequences of such premises.”

The fact was the trade in humans kept the American cotton industry in profit and this was something the southern colonies were not to give away lightly. Slave rebellions in the sugar islands of the Caribbean created a terror the cotton economy was next and thousands of white Americans signed up for the revolt to protect their livelihood. 

But Britain was a dubious saviour for the blacks. Slavery was still legal in the British Empire and repeated attempts in parliament to ban it were always rejected on the economic grounds it would give bitter enemy France too much of an advantage in the Caribbean sugar trade. The notorious case of the slave ship the Zong where the captain threw 122 sick slaves overboard to get £30 a head compensation for their loss at sea spurred campaigners such as Granville Sharp (a founding father of Sierra Leone) and Thomas Clarkson to lobby for change. But even when revolutionary France rejected slavery (Napoleon re-established it in 1802), a suspicious British parliament would not immediately follow suit.

It wasn’t until 1807 the slave trade was made illegal in Britain and also in the US.  But the economic benefits of the institution of slavery continued in both countries until Britain made it illegal in the Empire in 1834. The internal contradictions of the US system were brilliantly exposed by 28-year-old runaway slave Frederick Douglass who wowed Britain when he toured in 1846. The articulate, witty, handsome and charismatic Douglass gave a dramatic account of cruelty in the plantations and lived constantly under the fear of re-capture. The book on his life was an immediate best seller.

Back home, many called Douglass anti-American but he defended his criticisms. “I have no love for America, What Country have I? The institutions of this country do not know me.” The contradictions tore the US apart leading to a reluctant Lincoln declaring war on the south in 1861.  The war claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and led to Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Declaration. When Lincoln was murdered, Douglass said Lincoln “shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, [but] it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery.”

And while the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery after the South was defeated in 1865, the attitudes Douglass saw in Lincoln, lingered on in others. Slavery continued but went under a different name abetted by Jim Crow Laws.  Australia too enslaved its blacks by making them wards of the state.  While most of these schemes were wound back by the 1960s, slavery continues to be a worldwide issue.  In an article about South African slavery during the 2010 World Cup, Time said there were more slaves around today than ever. “Slaves are those forced to perform services for no pay beyond subsistence and for the profit of others who hold them through fraud and violence,” said Time. Slavery is likely to continue as long as humans have economic value.

Draft Surat Underground Water Impact Report - part 3: Bubbling gas issues

In the last couple of days, the Lock the Gate Alliance which represents a coalition of landholders opposed to coal seam gas in the Surat Basin released a video called Condamine River Gas Leak. It shows footage from an organisation called Gasileaks taken along the River at an “undisclosed location”. There was bubbling activity at the surface of the river and some kind of meter that went berserk when placed near the bubbles.

Frackman in Roma July 2010

The footage was filmed by local landholder Dayne Pratzsky who has been a long-term vocal critic of the industry. I remember Pratzsky as “frackman” for his wonderful attention-grabbing outfit he wore  when he heckled the State Government Community Cabinet in June 2010.  When we published the Lock the Gate footage on our Facebook page today (without comment),  a local man named Andrew Thomas pointed out this phenomenon was not uncommon in the gasfields region. “I grew up at a location near Orallo and all the bores would light up if you wanted them to - the gas comes out of most bore holes,” Andrew said. “It has been happening for well over 150 years around Roma and Surat and lots of other places - get a life and move on.”

It might be difficult for Pratzky and other blockies in the Lock the Gate Alliance to do exactly that. This is their life and they don’t want to move on. Yet I fear they – and others who want a moratorium of the industry – are placing themselves too far outside the conversation about how the industry should evolve. Origin Energy, the petroleum tenure holder in the location where Pretsky filmed (a fishing spot south west of Chinchilla known as the "coal hole") confirmed what Thomas told the Western Star on Facebook “According to local knowledge it goes back at least 30 years and naturally occurring gas has been a phenomenon in the Queensland Western Downs region for more than 100 years,” Origin said.

The public face of Lock the Gate Alliance is its media-savvy president Drew Hutton. He was the one who publicly announced  the Chinchilla leak.  Hutton, a prominent member of Queensland Greens, said he was unconvinced by Origin’s response and challenged them to prove it. Hutton said Origin should “release its seismic and other data...to establish whether or not the leak is linked to the company's coal seam gas operations.” Hutton said he consulted “several highly competent hydrogeologists” who told him there was a good chance the leaks were “linked to the de-watering of the coal seam aquifers and possibly fracking opening up pathways for the methane.” 

With neither Origin nor Hutton willing to offer their sources, it is difficult to know who is right. And water quality remains one of the great unknowns of this massive new industry. Yet this problem can be solved just as land access and now water depletion. The 2010 Queensland land access laws redressed the power imbalance between gas companies and landholders and the new Draft Surat Basin Underground Water Impact Report  which I reported about on Monday (Part 1) and Tuesday (part 2) deals with the water depletion issue. The report specifically ruled out a role for monitoring water quality. That prompted an anonymous respondent to my Tuesday piece to ask the legitimate question: if "It will not monitor water quality (eg for contamination from fracking)", who WILL monitor water quality?  

The answer to that question is the same as the answer to who will monitor water depletion: a mix of the Queensland Government Department of Natural Resources and Mining and the petroleum tenure holders themselves. Many in the Roma forum on the report I attended asked if this was not leaving the fox in the charge of the henhouse. The Queensland Water Commission’s response to that was to say, if they did something wrong, they’d be found out. There would be anomalies in the results that would stand out.

If this is correct then we need to maintain trust. Trust of the companies to do the right thing and trust of the regulator to pick up the anomalies if the companies don’t do the right thing. The gas majors all have the profit imperative but are bound by a number of strict rules and environment conditions they have to satisfy to get the green light for their enterprises. With the pressure to meet their export commitments once the gas comes online in 2014, those companies will need to ensure they are squeaky clean so the regulator does not have a reason to hold them up.

What does need to be looked at is the quick gobbling up of Australia’s natural resources.  According to mining critic Paul Cleary, Australia has the 12^th largest reserve of gas but is the world’s second largest exporter and heading towards number one. Gladstone Port in Queensland is the home of four of the eight big LNG plants and Incentives by the Bligh Government drove gas consumption for the local market. Now the high price of oil is driving this massive investment in coal seam methane for LNG. The problem is the price of natural gas on the New York-based Henry Hub has been declining for over a year and will mean the companies will have to reforecast earnings or else dig for more gas.  

With governments greedy for the royalties, knowing when that saturation point comes will be critical for the success of the industry and the regions they serve. As the Surat DWIR proves, having good legislation supported by science will be critical in keeping an even keel.

Surat Underground Water Impact Report - part 2

This is the second post on the subject of the Draft Surat Underground Water Impact Report now out for review after the Queensland Water Commission today took its finding to Roma yesterday and Chinchilla today. See yesterday’s post on the background to the report and the geological formations involved.

This post looks at how the model was derived and examines the monitoring regime put in place by the QWC.  There were three key steps in designing the flow model: conceptualisation, construction and calibration.  In the conceptualisation phase, the designers took into account geological data and formation contacts in databases held by the Geological Survey of Queensland and the Department of Natural Resources Groundwater Database.

They also took into account the distribution and depth of the geological layers of the Walloon Coal Measures based on previous studies and developed hydraulic parameter estimates based on pump and drill tests, existing models and reported results.

They devised 19 model layers based the formations from the shallowest (Condamine Alluvium) to the deepest (Permian Sediments) and mapped out the groundwater flow between the layers. The layers are recharged by rain in the outcrop areas on the edges of the Basin. The model is further complicated by the Walloon Coal Measures (the main CSG bearing formation in the Surat Basin) which itself contains various layers of sediment of varying permeability. The model allocates three layers to the Walloon for simplicity.

The model covers an area 550km x 660km each divided into a 1.5sq km cell stacked into 19 layers.  Once constructed with initial hydraulic parameters, the model was calibrated to replicate pre-CSG conditions in 1995.  It was calibrated using groundwater levels from 1,500 bores in the groundwater database.  The model was designed to make predictions from the 1995 data both including and excluding petroleum impacts.  They added uncertainty analysis to provide 200 different predictions of drawdown for each model cell at different time periods. The upper and low five percent of the 200 were discarded as outliers and the maximum value of the remaining predictions was used in the report. 

The report estimates the CSG industry will draw an average of 95,000 megalitres of water a year over the life of the industry.  It will be higher in the next three years as the industry expands with the QWC with an average of 125,000 ML a year over the period.  This is why getting the water monitoring strategy right is so important. 

The water monitoring strategy involves monitoring of water levels in coal seams and surrounding aquifers. It will not monitor water quality (eg for contamination from fracking) or the volume of water extracted from wells. QWC will not conduct the monitoring – that will be left to the gas companies. Someone said to me today that was like leaving Ned Kelly in charge of the bank vault but the QWC assures us the companies have legal responsibilities and any anomalies will quickly be exposed.

The monitoring has six broad objectives. 1. Establish background trends not attributable to CSG. 2.Identify changes in aquifer conditions in petroleum development areas. 3. Identify changes in aquifer conditions near critical groundwater use (eg towns that rely on groundwater), 4 Identify changes in aquifer conditions near springs. 5. Improve future groundwater flow monitoring 6. Improve understanding of connectivity between aquifers.

There will be a regional monitoring network which will have 142 monitoring sites across the region (27 already exist) which will have 498 monitoring points (104 already exist). These sites will target different strata of the Surat and Bowen Basin including the Condamine Alluvium, Main Range Volcanics, Mooga Sandstone, Orallo Formation, Gubberamunda Sandstone, Westbourne Formation, Springbok Sandstone, Walloon Coal Measures, Hutton Sandstone, Evergreen Formation, Precipice Sandstone, Clematis Sandstone and Bandanna Formation.

At each site, water data is collected at least once a fortnight.  Queensland’s regulatory requirements provide for the UWIR to be updated every three years but there will also be an annual report.

Draft Surat Underground Water Impact Report - part 1

Surat Cumulative Management Area

I had much underground water on my mind today.  That was because I attended both sessions today in Roma where the Qld Water Commission were explaining their Draft Underground Water Impact Report (pdf, 8 meg) for the Surat Cumulative Management Area to the public.  The quick and dirty bottom line is that I don’t think the data supports a moratorium of the industry and as a worst-case scenario says the impact is moderate and manageable. However this is the first of several posts that will drill down into the report in some detail.  

The Surat Cumulative Management Area is a rough triangle drawn between Emerald in the north, Roma in the west and Toowoomba in the south-east. The geology of the region is complicated as the nature of the water. I had several concepts challenged including what are the Bowen and Surat Basins, what is the Great Artesian Basin and where is the gas stored. The Great Artesian Basin is not a continuous geological formation but a hydrogeological basin across many alternating geological layers. Similarly I used to think the Bowen Basin as the land roughly inland of Mackay including all the big coalmining areas of Emerald and Moranbah. The Surat Basin roughly went from Dalby to Roma.  But it turns out my understanding is that is faulty too. The Bowen Basin lives below the Surat Basin, it is only in the strip-mining areas at Moranbah where its coal formations come to the surface. 

Petrol and gas is a different mining process to coal and covered by different legislation.  The Draft Underground Water Report was required because the law allows petroleum tenure owners to explore for petrol and gas on private property and by necessity, there is some interference with the water on those tenures including the removal of the water. This is particularly so in coal seam gas production which works by reducing water pressure in the seams to release the gas. In the Surat Cumulative Management Area most of the mining is done in the Walloon Coal Measures (Surat Basin) or Bandanna Formation (Bowen Basin) which are geological layers of the Great Artesian Basin which have low permeability rocks alternating with high economic value aquifers and feed important springs.

The problem is that when water is removed, it affects a wide area around the gas well. This is compounded if there are a number of nearby wells also drawing out water. Today most of the groundwater in the Surat Region that comes to the surface is used by agriculture, industry, stock and domestic – some  215,000 megalitres a year. CSG is only responsible for 17,000 ML at the moment but that will rise sharply in the coming years as the four big projects (Santos GLNG, Origin APLNG, British Gas QCLNG and Arrow Surat Gas Project) take off.

When water is removed from the coal formations, water from surrounding aquifers will flow in.  So when the water pressure is reduced, it doesn’t necessarily mean less water. However it does mean there will be a decline in the water level of the bore that taps that aquifer.  The question is by why how much and to answer that question the Queensland Water Commission developed a groundwater model to predict the impacts of the CSG industry. They used vast reams of already known data on water levels and bores which they added to the known plans of tenure holders plus some science about the way underground water moves through the region.

The resulting flow model was complex. There are 19 interacting layers and three million individual cells in the model. It was calibrated to get close matches with known 1995 results from bores giving the team a high degree of certainty they were in the ballpark. They also added ‘uncertainty analysis’ taking the 95 percentile of 200 different predictions for each well. In other words,  they were taking the worst case scenario in 20.

For each well the QWC set a trigger threshold of drawdown.  For consolidated aquifers such as sandstone, the trigger was five meters, it was two metres for unconsolidated (shallow alluvial) aquifers such as the Condamine Alluvium and just a 0.2 metre drop for springs, including watercourses connected to springs.

If the modelling showed the “Immediate Affected Area” (an IAA) of that well exceeded that threshold in the next three years, then the responsible CSG company must undertake restoration measures to restore the bore’s capacity to supply water, or provide the bore owner with an alternative water supply.  This is known in the legislation as “make good" requirements. It could mean adjusting the bore, improving the pressure, drilling a new bore or finding an alternative source. QWC have identified 85 bores in the Surat Region which will exceed the trigger, all of them in the Walloon Coal Measures.

There was also a secondary measure of long-term impact if an IAA exceeded the threshold at any time in the future. This modelling identified 528 bores affected, mostly in the Walloon but some in the Springbok Sandstone (104), Hutton Sandstone (23) and Gubberamunda Sandstone (1).  It is less clear what the Commission expects to happen with these bores though the Roma session talked about gas tenure holders being “proactive” with bore owners in this category.

Part 2 of this will discuss the monitoring regime QWC is putting into place to determine the trigger points.

Manne bites Australian

Not that it should be a surprise to anyone but Australia’s national daily newspaper The Australian has been wasting scarce journalist resources on a vendetta again. The latest victim is one of the country’s leading media writers Margaret Simons whose 2007 book The Content Makers remains the definitive account of the geography of Australian media (though someone needs to update it for the last five years). In recent weeks, The Aus has unleashed its attack dogs over claims Simons has somehow caused a breach of practice by her actions in the recent Finkelstein Review into media which in turn was inspired by the serious criminal behaviour of one of The Australian's sister publications in the UK.  There are many ways in which this attack on Simons is risible and they are all brilliantly exposed in Robert Manne’s new Monthly essay.

The point Manne is making about the tactics of the newspaper is twofold. Firstly, it doesn’t matter if your allegations are true or false you just have to make enough of them and some of the mud will stick. Secondly, it is another shot across the bows of anyone who dares be critical of the newspaper with treatment similar to Julie Posetti and Larissa Behrend which will be dragged out time and time again whenever a punchbag is needed.

The newspaper fulfils a crucial function in our democracy as one of the few media outlets with a truly national outlook. But it would appear the power conferred by being one of the central squares of Australia's public sphere has gone to the broadsheet’s head. In its constant efforts to defend itself against critics, it has warped in on itself and forgotten what it is there for: to give Australians enough information to give them a useful perspective on the important news of the day.

The biggest problem with the Australian is that appears not to want to learn from its mistakes. It never admits it is wrong. Under Chris Mitchell in particular (editor in chief since 2003) it has been front and centre in a culture war.  The newspaper and its Saturday companion have built up an armada of columnists which can recite the party line in their sleep who regularly trot out the house rules. 

There are still enough good writers at the paper to provide the news function. They cover politics, business, law and international affairs in some detail (with the help of good Murdoch sister papers such as the Wall St Journal and The Times). But their editorial and opinion pages have become barren wastelands of News groupthink where writers like Greg Sheridan, Chris Kenny, Dennis Shanahan and Christopher Pearson flourish. Even when turning to unorthodox opinion it favours those who unorthodoxy is mostly directed against the left and the greens (Brendan O’Neill, Frank Furedi, Bjorn Lomborg) .

As Manne said (and as I can corroborate from discussions with News journalists) there are many within the organisation that are appalled by the blatant and biased political tone set by the editor and his inner team. Manne reckons they should speak up which would be a better way of dealing with the issue than any outside body Finkelstein could recommend. Indeed there is a precedent when journalists at the Australian went on strike in 1975 in protest as Murdoch’s open support of Malcolm Fraser in the lead up to the election.

But it is unlikely any uprising will come from within. News is one of the last 20^th century media empires and most workers there fear for their future. It is not making a graceful transition to the digital age though it remains an extraordinarily wealthy company and very powerful in the local market. The Australian, often described as a Murdoch vanity project, is not driving any of this wealth. But it remains very influential with its high demographic readership and its access to power. Politicians of both major parties are wary of criticising it though the Greens have dubbed it hate media.

This is unsurprising as much of Mitchell’s vitriol is reserved for the party which his paper has openly called to be destroyed at the ballot box. Why it even feels it has a right to make such a recommendation is a revealing aspect of its DNA. “We know best,” it screams, and we will punish anyone who has the temerity to think otherwise. No wonder it cannot deal with the sharing tools of 21^st century social media when its views are steeped in 20^th century paternalism. It prefers intimidation to trust as a way of maintaining its authority. But The Australian is on borrowed time and not just because Murdoch will sooner or later die. Its thrashed brand is a tragedy as much of Chris Mitchell’s making as Rupert's and one which must not be repeated by whatever colonises its habitat when it is gone.

Ireland set to vote a grudging yes on Fiscal Treaty

Ireland is set to vote in no less than its ninth European referendum next week. As they have done in the previous eight, the major two parties are supporting the yes vote. But as in the past, this is no guarantee the ayes will have it. This is because like many of the previous ones the issue on the table is obscure and Austere Ireland has long since lost its romance with Europe. Those supporting the treaty have issued dire warnings of a “no” vote. 

The latest vote is on the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economicand Monetary Union more commonly known as the EU fiscal compact or EU fiscal treaty. The treaty tries to put in place a number of measures to get EU countries to balance their books and put an end to excessive borrowing.  Ireland is one of the worst offenders though is slowly on the mend. The Irish economy has stabilised after three years of contraction. The European Commission forecasts a GDP rise of 0.5% this year and all the quarterly fiscal targets under the bail-out program have been met.

Ireland needs a constitutional change to ratify the compact.  Article 29 of the 1937 Constitution deals with international relations.  Article 29.4 has been modified a number of times to signify the various EU treaties Ireland is a signatory to. If passed, the 10^th subsection of Article 29.4 of the Constitution will add a clause to the effect that: “The State may ratify the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union done at Brussels on the 2nd day of March 2012.”

Irish Broadcaster RTE has published a detailed breakdown of the 16 articles of the treaty and how they affect Ireland. The key article is Article 3 which sets out the requirements how to run balanced or surplus budgets and how it will be monitored and reinforced. The article defines an upper structural deficit of 0.5% of GDP where a structural deficit is defined as one where an economy is losing money despite operating at full potential.

Each country must meet a medium term objective which is a program of action to reduce their debt. The original Maastricht Treaty had a Stability and Growth Pact which had targets for public debt which had to be supported by annual programs. It had a 3% rule for budget deficits but it went out the window after both heavyweights Germany and France breached the upper limit in 2003-2004.

That caused a rule change in 2005 to make it more flexible. Many countries hid the true extent of their budget situation – none more so than Greece so that by the time the truth emerged the damage was done. In response, the EU introduced the Six Pack in 2011 of five regulations and one directive and the Fiscal Compact builds on this. The Six Pack has strict enforcement of debt limits with countries subject to monitoring and penalties for breeches. These penalties would kick in earlier before countries could no longer afford to pay them. It also clamps down on property bubbles and makes it easier for countries to vote for sanctions against those who break the rules.

The Six Pack had an upper structural deficit of 1.0% of GDP which the Treaty reduces by half. Those against it such as Sinn Fein have dubbed it the Austerity Treaty. Party president Gerry Adams said it surrendered “significant control of Irish fiscal and budgetary matters to unelected and unaccountable EU officials.”

Those in favour have issued the usual warnings to the consequences of a no vote. Sean O'Driscoll, chairman of the Glen Dimplex manufacturing group said failure to support the treaty would mean Ireland leaving the euro. “Ireland signed up to the currency in 1999 [and] that brought rules – rules which we broke by allowing our economy to become inflated,” he said. “We now need to stay within the system and we need to argue our case within the system.”

The Economist described the referendum as a battle between conflicting emotions among voters. “The fear of many that rejecting the treaty will mean no access to EU finance, potentially sending Ireland hurtling down the Greek path to ruin, against the anger of many about the hardship imposed by four years of austerity,” The Economist said. But in the knowledge that Ireland has grudgingly supported all the other recent Treaties, the Economist was prepared to grant a narrow victory to the “yes” vote. “At the moment it looks as if fear will trump anger,” they said.

Arthur Moore, oil man

Arthur Moore pictured in 1910

On October 10, 1931 it was the Western Star’s solemn duty to report some sad news. The news had reached Roma from Longreach that Mr Arthur Moore, superintendent of Longreach’s Oil Bore had been killed in an explosion. Known as a careful man who rarely took a drink and who was intimate with the science of boring for oil, his death was a mystery.

From reading Moore’s log books, the coroner deduced he was making a third attempt to shoot the bore and had a consignment of caps newly arrived from Brisbane and a metre-long torpedo with six plugs of gelignite. The mixture exploded prematurely as he tried to place a battery cap. It was likely a faulty explosives timer concocted with a pocket watch brought an end to the life of one of Roma’s great but unheralded oil men.

Arthur Moore was an Englishman, born in Lime Regis, Dorset in 1876. How he spent his early years is not known but he arrived in Australia in 1910 thirsting for adventure in a new land. He entered into the service of the International Boring Company and was posted across Queensland boring artesian water for the state’s growing demands. Aged 40, he signed up in 1916 for the AIF and went off to Europe with the newly formed Australian Flying Corps.

After the war finished he stayed on in England to train in oil development. On his return he came to Queensland’s growing oil capital: Roma. Here he was placed in charge of the government oil bore on Hospital Hill in 1920 as the first non American to hold this position. It was Moore who released a big flow of oil at QG Number 4 well while removing casing and this was the first oil to be condensed in Roma.

It was here he met local woman Esther “Essie” Nind, the only daughter of two well-known Roma residents. Moore married Essie in 1921 aged 45 (she was 27) and they had one daughter. After visiting America, Moore was convinced there was oil in commercial quantities in Roma. “Prospecting in Queensland,” he said in 1923, “should be carried out on the same type of plant used for drilling artesian water.”

In 1924, the Western Star reported Moore was made manager of the newly formed Queensland Petroleum Limited who secured prospecting permits over Forest Vale and Mitchell Downs. Moore was hired to be superintendent for three years but the plan failed and Moore went to Texas to learn more about drilling. He later took charge of drilling operations in New Guinea. Roma’s booming oil business lured him back in 1928 to become manager of Roma Cornwall Dome oil operation until it went bust.

Moore went back to England where he was accepted into the Institute of Petroleum Technologists of London. He would also drill in New Zealand before heading to Longreach. He was remembered as one of the first non Americans to be feted in the field of drilling and someone who kept meticulous notes on all aspects of oil exploration.

The extinction of Pityus Mancityus

Manchester City’s stunning Premier League triumph was achieved in typically Madchester style. As someone wrote in the aftermath, the second half of their final game at home against Queens Park Rangers was a microcosm of their season. Comfortably winning the league, then almost throwing it away before finally snatching it back at the end.  It was an astonishing climax to a wild ride and probably just as well they won as the alternative would have been one calamity too far for a side renowned for its ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

It was an expensive triumph. Abi Dhabi's Sheik Mansour has poured almost a billion pounds into his expensive toy but he has achieved his first target of winning the Premier League within four seasons. As well as their expensive assemblage of players, Mansour also recruited a hardnosed winning manager in Roberto Mancini who took Inter to three Italian titles before adding the English crown to his collection. The talk now is of moving forward to collect European silverware, a task that fellow billionaire Roman Abramovich has found beyond him in his reign as Chelsea moneybags – though he has one more chance in Munich this weekend.

As a Liverpool fan, I remain a fully paid up member of ABU (Anyone But United) for at least one season.  I have to say I enjoyed the way the title was snatched from Manchester United’s grasp on Sunday. I thought they were a poor team but I thought the same in 2003 and 2011 when they also managed to win the league. Sir Alex Ferguson has long ago proved himself the best manager ever to grace the British game and time after time he has come up with the goods to coach United sides in the fine art of grinding out victories.

I might be persuaded to leave ABU if City put together a run of title successes but I’m not convinced that will happen. I certainly wouldn’t bet against United coming back next season, having just lost out on goal difference this year. Defensively they are almost impregnable while the ageless pair of Giggs and Scholes will be back for another season, playing as well as ever. Wayne Rooney appears at the peak of his considerable powers well supported by the likes of Hernandez and Valencia though their midfield needs bolstering.  The memory of that 6-1 shellacking at Old Trafford (the size of the victory ultimately decided the title) should be enough motivation to do better next time round.

City meanwhile may struggle to keep up the momentum next season and could be distracted by a longer European campaign.  They will have money to spend in the summer but there will be much to spend it on with bad boys Tevez and Balotelli and relative failure Dzeko all likely to move on.  They also rely too much of Yaya Toure which is great when he is on the park, but a risky policy as shown when he limped off injured against QPR. Like United however, Mancini has drilled them into a formidable defensive unit with Kompany and company backed up by Joe Hart who has the chance to earn back the good name of English goalkeepers that was lost around 20 years ago. 

Chelsea and Arsenal will continue to flip around for third and fourth with Tottenham there or thereabouts. Redknapp has proved a shrewd acquisitor of talent in the transfer market with Van der Vaart and Modric both inspired signings while developing the considerable talents of Bale before the inevitable transfer to Old Trafford (or maybe the City of Manchester stadium). I’m not sure if Newcastle’s season is a one-off or they are back in the mix. Papiss Cisse was a sensation at the end of the season as was Demba Ba at the start and getting them both to click at the same time will be crucial to their chance.

My own team Liverpool look an absolute shambles and it is probably just as well they did not win the cup final as a second trophy would have disguised the fact it was their worst season in living memory. The fact is if they keep their 2012 form into next season, they would have to be among the relegation candidates. Their new stadium plans are in disarray, King Kenny’s crown is in tatters and they are a long way from getting back into the Top Four let alone making a title challenge. Gerrard is looking past it, Suarez and Carroll is not working, and none of Downing, Adams or Henderson have risen to the challenge. It’s difficult to see anything but hard times for the Reds in 2012-2013.