Australia has the highest proportion of prisoners in private corporate run prisons in the world

A Report by the Sentencing Project titled International Growth Trends in Prison Privatization shows that Australia has the highest proportion of prisoners in private (corporate) run prisons in the world. 

The Table shows that the percentage of prisoners held in private prisons in Australia is 19%, compared to 17% in Scotland, 14% in England and Wales and 115 in New Zealand.

Some Australian states, like Victoria, have a higher proportion of prisoners in private prisons. In Victoria nearly one third of prisoners are held in private prisons, giving it the highest level of prison privatization of any jurisdiction in the world.

The US has the highest number of prisoners held in private/corporate run prisons, but the percentage of prisoners in private prisons is 8%.

The population of people held in private prisons in Australia has increased 95% in the past 15 years. In that same period, the number of prisoners in state-run jails grew by 50 per cent and the total prison population increased by 57 per cent. The rapid and consistent increase in the number of prisoners over the last two decades, coupled with a 106% prison occupancy rate, creates an opportunity for private prison corporations to thrive.

Another reason for the growth in the numbers of detainees in corporate run prisons in Australia has been the enormous growth in the number of asylum seekers detained in immigration detention prisons run by Serco (on shore and Christmas Island) and Transfield (Naura and Manus Island).

Private run prisons are seriously profitable, with the corporations involved in running private prisons making increased profits across all jurisdictions in which they operate. 
In Australia three private corporations- Serco, G4S and Geo Group- run private prisons in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia. These three corporations are global giants, in what is a powerful billion dollar industry, and also run prisons in the US, UK, Europe, Israel and South Africa.

Corporate run prisons in Australia are:

• Immigration Detention Centres, onshore and offshore (Serco and Transfield)
• Acacia Prison Western Australia (Serco)
• Wandoo Young Adult Facility, Western Australia (Serco)
• Junee Correctional Centre, NSW (Geo Group)
• Parklea Correctional Centre, NSW (Geo Group)
• Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre, Queensland (Geo Group)
• Borallan Correctional Centre, Queensland (Serco)
• Southern Queensland Correctional Centre (Serco)
• Mt Gambier Prison, South Australia (G4S)
• Fulham Correctional Centre, Victoria (Geo Group)
• Port Phillip Prison, Victoria (G4S)

G4S and Serco also run prisoner transport services, including prisoner transport services in Victoria (G4S) and Western Australian prisoner transport and court security services in WA (Serco).

Even though Australia has the highest proportion of prisoners in private (corporate) run prisons in the world, State Governments have plans to radically expand the number of private prisons. In Queensland the Newman Government has established a secret Task Force to develop an plan to hand over all Queensland's prisons to the corporate sector.

In Western Australia, the Barnett Government and the Minister responsible for Prisons have made it clear that more private corporate run prisons are central to their reform agenda. 

Swiss set their sights on excessive corporate pay

The Swiss people are showing that citizens can organize and take action to address growing income inequality by placing restrictions and caps on executive salaries. 

Since the 2008 global financial crises Swiss citizens have set their sights on excessive corporate pay and rising income inequality.

Already public activism by the Swiss people on executive pay has forced two referendums and efforts are underway to force a third referendum. Under Swiss law citizens are able to organize popular initiatives whereby the Swiss Parliament must hold a referendum on any initiative that has gathered more than 100,000 signatures. 

In March 2013 the Swiss voted overwhelmingly to pass some of the strictest controls on executive pay, requiring that public company shareholders vote on compensation for executives.

In November 2013 the Swiss people will get a vote on another proposal to to cap and limit executive pay. The 1:12 initiative will limit executive pay to no more than 12 times the salary of the lowest paid worker. Compare that to the USA which has among the highest levels of income inequality in the world with a CEO to worker pay ratio of 185:1 and here in Australia where the CEO to worker pay ratio is 100:1

Unsurprisingly, corporations and business groups oppose the Swiss  1: 12 initiative claiming that it will abolish prosperity  and is an attack on freedom. Global multinational corporations like GlencoreXstrata  threaten to move their headquarters out of Switzerland if the proposal is passed.

Now Swiss citizens are trying to establish a guaranteed basic income for all citizens. 

On Friday Swiss citizen activists submitted over 130,000 signatures to the Swiss Parliament- enough to call a vote over whether or not to approve the proposal-  to create a law guaranteeing all Swiss nationals a guaranteed basic income of around $2800 per month.  In a public display of support, advocates of the measure tipped over a truck full of 8 million 5-cent coins (one for each citizen of the country.)

Corporate 'sin-washing' and the London Olympics

Dave Zirin's article on corporate 'sin washing' at the London Olympics exposes the corporate criminality of the major corporate sponsors of the Olympics including Dow Chemicals, BP, McDonald's,  and Coca Cola.

Global corporations like Dow Chemical, Adidas, and McDonald's are paying upwards of $100 million USD to sponsor the 2012 London games and associate themselves with the Olympic brand -- but with their brands already well-established, what do corporations get in exchange for these expensive sponsorship deals?

According to Dave Zirin, sportswriter and columnist for The Nation, the payoff comes through "corporate sin-washing."

"More than any other enterprise, if a company associates themselves with an Olympics, it really creates a positive feeling in the mind of the consumer," he says.

But, "if you look at the main sponsors that the International Olympic Committee has brought on board, you see companies like Dow Chemicals, British Petroleum, McDonald's, Adidas." 

These companies, Zirin tells the Center for Media and Democracy, are some of "the worst corporate criminals" most in the need of an Olympic absolution.

Zirin uses the example of Australian Aboriginal boxer Daniel Hooper to highlight the hypocrisy of the London organizers stance on corporate sponsorship

Zirin's favorite example of odd, corporate-friendly Olympic rules involves Australian boxer Daniel Hooper, who wore a T-shirt with an Australian Aboriginal flag in a recent boxing match to showcase his Aboriginal roots. Hooper could face disciplinary action for making a "political statement" by wearing the shirt, which contains a flag not recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The flag is, however, recognized by the Australian government as an official flag of Australia.

"What's particularly perverse about this is that if Damien Hooper had chosen a shirt that said 'I love British Petroleum' or 'Dow Chemicals is A-OK with me', he would have been allowed to compete." Zirin observes "it's amazing to me that wearing a shirt that says 'Dow Chemicals' is not seen as a political statement, while wearing a recognized flag of your own country is a political statement, because the IOC chooses not to recognize that flag."

 Phil England makes similar points in this piece in Ceasfire where he highlights that the Olympics organisers breached their own guidelines on ethical contracting and ignored concerns and complaints from civil society groups about the corporate sponsors.

The apparent unwillingness to apply any of the Olympics’ supposed ethical principles to the selection of corporate sponsors, brushing aside numerous civil society complaints and campaigns, is certainly one thing that the games can claim to be consistent about.

Why is the London Olympic organising committee (LOCOG) breaching its own Sustainable Sourcing Code? and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) breaching its own Code of Ethics? The former promises to “place a high priority on environmental, social and ethical issues when procuring products and services for the games”, while the latter states that the support of sponsors “must be in a form consistent with the rules of sport and the principles defined in the Olympic Charter” which defines Olympism as “seeking to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example, social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles”.



These are serious questions for the respective committees as well as for the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 (CSL) and its standards and ethics expert David Jackman. Because, as with other forms of cultural sponsorship, these company donations aren’t magnanimous acts of philanthropy, but calculated acts of public relations. At their recent AGM, the BP board outlined how they had made a business case internally for their sponsorship of the Olympics, the costed returns for which included building and protecting their brand. Inside the industry this is understood as maintaining the “social license to operate”.

In a very real sense then, the Olympics are colluding in the public relations campaigns of corporations who are engaged in large-scale environmental and human rights abuses, many of which are the subject of legal actions. The IOC and LOCOG are therefore complicit in normalising and cleansing the image of some of our most heinous corporate criminals and CSL is failing to properly address this.

The danger of corporatised health care

More evidence in this Guardian piece of the dangers of allowing corporations and private business to run health services that should be provided by the public sector.

Six people are feared to have suffered irreversible sight loss because of the failings of a privately run clinic at an NHS hospital, raising fresh fears about the government's plans to open up the health service to the commercial sector.

 

In an unprecedented move, GPs have been advised to consider alternative clinics for their patients because of "worrying concerns" about the services offered at a hospital in Hertfordshire. The surgical clinic, owned by Carillion, a construction firm which was formerly part of Tarmac, has only carried out NHS services at Lister hospital since October but it has already been the subject of criticism from the Care Quality Commission regarding waiting times for a range of services.

The government's drive towards NHS privatisation is leaving patients vulnerable to poor care and support at surgery centres like the one at the Lister hospital. It is potentially the tip of the iceberg in terms of the clinical risk of fragmented health services.

"The Conservatives talk about patient choice, but many patients would have been unaware of the difficulties that they would face by choosing the privately run Surgicentre. These companies see the Health and Social Care Act as a big opportunity to increase their business, but safeguarding patients has to be the number one priority

Another multinational corporation profits from Australia's abuse of children and young people

The corporate takeover of Australia's human and community services continues.

Another multinational corporation is set to profit from Australia's immigration detention system and its abuse of children and young people.

The Gillard Government has signed a new contract worth $29 million with the US based Maximus Solutions to care for  unaccompanied minors held in Australia's immigration detention gulags. The contract was previously held by Life Without Barriers, an Australian not- for- profit organization.

The figure is the nominal amount of a new contract between the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the US based Maximus Solutions to provide ``care and support'' to teenage asylum-seekers who arrive by boat without a parent or a guardian. 

The extract below is from Paige Taylor's report in the Australian (July 12 2012)
 
There are currently 168 such teens, mostly boys, living under guard in ``alternative places of detention'' at Darwin airport, on Christmas Island and at a camp in the West Australian northern goldfields town of Leonora.

 
In the costly context of Australia's immigration detention network, the department finds the $29m contract represents good value.

 
It is a tiny sliver of the size of the five-year contract between the Immigration Department and Serco for the management of Australia's immigration detention centres on Christmas Island and the mainland; in July last year, that agreement, due to expire in 2014, was valued at $1,032,827,276.

 
The contract is one of the measures the federal government has in place to meet its obligations towards unaccompanied minors.

 
``As a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Australian government takes its obligations towards unaccompanied minors very seriously,'' the Immigration Department states on its website.

 
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen is the legal guardian of all unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in Australia; as of last Friday, there were a total of 310 -- almost half, 142, had been placed in community housing under the care of the Red Cross while the rest were still in detention. ``The contract is for care and support services to unaccompanied minors in the detention network,'' a spokesman for the department said yesterday.

 
``It is also for `independent observer' services on Christmas Island and in mainland Australia.''

Maximus Solutions is a subsidiary of the US based Maximus Inc.

Maximus Inc is a US based multinational corporation that works in the health and human services industries in US, Canada, UK and Australia. It wins Government contracts to provide services previously delivered by Governments or not-for-profit organizations. With a motto Helping Government serve the People Maximus employs 8800 people worldwide.

Maximus is embroiled in controversy wherever it goes. Maximus settled with the US Government over corporate fraud allegations after it (the Government) bought a lawsuit against Maximus for falsifying $30.5 million of Medicare claims.  The Department of Justice statement on the settlement is here.

Maximus was also found to have doubled billed for services in New Jersey.

Maximus makes heavy use of lobbyists and payments to politicians and political parties. Maximus was reputed to have won a $72 million contract after it donated funds to current Presidential candidate Matt Romney when he was Massachusetts Governor.

In the UK Maximus and other other corporate providers have massively increased sanctions imposed on  welfare recipients have developed grassroots campaigns targeting a range of corporations, including Maximus, accusing them of profiteering and exploitation of people on welfare.

Here in Australia journalist Elisabeth Wynhausen has investigated Max Employment's provision of employment support services on behalf of the Australia Government in 84 sites and 71 outreach locations.

Public space in private and corporate hands

This piece from the UK Guardian describes precisely what is happening here in WA.  

 No better example than the $400 m Waterfront redevelopment on Perth's foreshore which is handing over large swathes of prime public riverfront land to private and corporate owners.

What we are seeing is the privatization of public space, the corporate and private takeover of more and more public land and public space and the use of corporate design principles to transform public areas is all part of the corporate takeover of every aspect of our lives.

The Guardian piece continues:

 Over the past decade, large parts of Britain's cities have been redeveloped as privately-owned estates, extending corporate control over some of the country's busiest squares and thoroughfares.

These developments are no longer simply enclosed malls like Westfield in White City or business districts like Broadgate in the City of London – they are spaces open to the sky which appear to be entirely public to casual passers-by.

 It appears from the scale of the change that privatisation of space is now the standard price of redevelopment.

There are, of course, significant benefits to the redevelopments, though some worry that Britain's landscape is being slowly redefined by private ownership in two ways. 

As the Occupy protest highlighted, private owners can refuse right of entry to members of the public, closing off swaths of the city.

Critics also warn that these spaces are being designed on a corporate model which favours ornamental designs – and high levels of footfall for retailers – while community spirit and sustainability are far from a priority.

 

When corporations run nursing homes the quality of care suffers

More evidence of the danger of allowing for- profit corporations to provide human and caring services to vulnerable people.

A major US study  to be published in the Journal Health Services Research has found that for-profit nursing homes deliver significantly lower quality of care than not-for- profit and government run nursing homes.

In the US the 10 largest for-profit corporate providers of hursing homes  operate about 2,000 nursing homes, controlling approximately 13 percent of the country’s nursing home beds.

The study found that the main reason that the quality of care is worse in corporate and for-profit run  nursing homes is that corporate and for- profit providers employ fewer staff  to keep costs down and profits up. In studying staffing and quality in the 10 largest corporate for profit providers of nursing homes the researchers found that the corporate providers  have a strategy of keeping labor costs low to increase profits, with the result that the quality of care suffers and there is a higher number of rated deficiencies.

The researchers found that low nurse staffing levels are the strongest predictor of poor nursing home quality.

The study found that between 2003 and 2008, both the percent of registered nurses and the numbers of all nursing staff were significantly less (30 percent) in the corporate for profit providers than the non-profit homes.  The lower staffing correlated with a considerably higher number of rated deficiencies - the private chains having 36 percent more deficiencies, and 41 percent more serious deficiencies than the non-profits.  Deficiencies include failure to prevent pressure sores, resident weight loss, falls, infections, resident mistreatment, poor sanitary conditions, and other problems that could seriously harm residents.

What is also troubling is that the study found that the quality of care worsened in nursing homes taken over by private equity companies. Nursing homes had more deficiencies after being acquired by a private equity company.This is directly relevant to Australia where private equity companies are increasingly involved in aged care and nursing home provision. The study is the first to make the connection between worse care following acquisition by private equity companies.

"In recent decades, nursing home chains have undergone a considerable expansion.A number of chains were publicly-traded companies until the early 2000s, when five of the country’s largest chains went bankrupt. Following restructuring and ownership changes, as well as increases in Medicare payments, the largest chains became more financially stable. More recently, some of the largest publicly held chains were purchased by private equity investment firms, which invest funds received from investors, with whom they share profits and losses. 

The researchers compared staffing levels and facility deficiencies at the for-profit chains to those at homes run by five other ownership groups to measure quality of care. The 10 largest chains were selected because they are influential in the nursing home industry and are the most successful in terms of growth and market share. 

The study found that for-profit homes strive to keep their costs down by reducing staffing, particularly RN staffing.

The 10 largest for-profit chains in 2008 were HCR Manor Care, Golden Living, Life Care Centers of America, Kindred Healthcare, Genesis HealthCare Corporation, Sun Health Care Group, Inc., SavaSeniorCare LLC, Extendicare Health Services, Inc., National Health Care Corporation, and Skilled HealthCare, LLC.

From 2003 to 2008, these chains had fewer nurse “staffing hours” than non-profit and government nursing homes when controlling for other factors. Together, these companies had the sickest residents, but their total nursing hours were 30 percent lower than non-profit and government nursing homes. Moreover, the top chains were well below the national average for RN and total nurse staffing, and below the minimum nurse staffing recommended by experts.

 The study also found that the four largest for-profit nursing home chains purchased by private equity companies between 2003 and 2008 had more deficiencies after being acquired. The study is the first to make the connection between worse care following acquisition by private equity companies.

There is now a growing body of evidence that demonstrates conclusively that for-profit corporate run nursing homes deliver lower quality care than not-for profit nursing homes.

A study in the British Medical Journal  compared quality-of-care measurements in 82 individual studies that collected data from 1965 to 2003 involving tens of thousands of nursing homes, mostly in the United States. It found that

The authors' meta-analysis, i.e. their integration and statistical analysis of the data from the multiple studies, shows that nonprofit facilities delivered higher quality care than for-profit facilities for two of the four most frequently reported quality measures: (1) more or higher quality staffing and (2) less prevalence of pressure ulcers, sometimes called bedsores.

The results also suggest better performance of nonprofit homes in two other quality measures: less frequent use of physical restraints and fewer noted deficiencies (quality violations) in governmental regulatory assessments.

"The reason patients' quality of care is inferior in for-profit nursing homes is that administrators must spend 10 percent to 15 percent of revenues satisfying shareholders and paying taxes..... For-profit providers cut corners to ensure shareholders achieve their expected return on investment."

When the charitable sector takes money from the mining sector

Sometimes artists and charities who take money from mining companies in Western Australia give the game away.

This story Mining Company cash creates movie making boom  appeared on the ABC TV program Stateline WA on Friday November 4 and demonstrates that the primary reason for the "philanthropic" activity of the mining industry in WA is self interest.

The message is very clear- we will sponsor you but you must not speak certain truths about the industry. In other words the mining industry buys the silence and acquiesence of those it sponsors.

Listen to the journalists and artists in the ABC story who make it very clear that with the money comes conditions and the expectation is that you must show the mining industry in a favourable light.

Show the mining industry in a less than favourable light in their eyes or speak certain truths about the industry and you can say goodbye to the sponsorship.

One interviewer put it this way:

" We can't say we want you to sponsor us but the script says you are unscrupulous swines who rape and pillage the land..... they see the first draft of the script....... they don't want the industry shown in an unfavourable light..... you don't bite the hand that feeds you".

Of course this story reflects a much larger issue- the way that the mining industry and corporations in WA are using their money and power to shape the arts and cultural industry and the charitable sector to serve their corporate interests.

This article by Rosemary Neill provides an insight into the corporate takeover of the arts and cultural industry and charitable sector in WA:

In a harbinger of this, some of the country's most powerful businesspeople have teamed up with artists and launched a new, turbo-charged arts lobby, the Chamber of Arts and Culture, aimed at developing a coherent cultural vision for WA. Among the chamber's founding members are Rio Tinto iron ore chief executive Sam Walsh, prominent arts patron and businesswoman Janet Holmes a Court, former WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry boss John Langoulant, KPMG national executive director Helen Cook and former Australia Council chairwoman Margaret Seares.

An alliance of high-powered executives -- some drawn from the blokey resources and engineering sectors -- intent on proselytising for the arts is a first not just for the West but, arguably, for the nation. Walsh says this move signifies that "the state is growing; there is a need for a more creative and vibrant community and arts and culture will help us deliver that and help us attract people. I think the stars are aligned . . . we have a unique opportunity in Perth and WA's history, building on the mining boom, to work on these things." The unfailingly courteous Rio Tinto boss says the chamber has received "very strong support" from Day and federal Arts Minister Simon Crean. He stresses it is not merely an arts lobby; that it will engage with governments, the regions, schools and untapped audiences to spread the word about culture.

Corporate power, corporate criminality and secret lobbying: Goldman Sachs

It has not been a good couple of weeks for Goldman Sachs.

A report by a bipartisan US Senate Committee  into US investment banks has recommended criminal charges be bought against Goldman Sachs . Goldman Sachs and other Wall St firms were described by the Senate Report  as a "financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing." 

Goldman Sachs, the nation's fifth-largest bank by assets, systematically misled clients, sold them financial instruments it knew to be junk, bet against them and profited off of their losses, according to a Senate report released this week.

The report, the product of a two-year investigation, paints the firm as Exhibit A of Wall Street's evolution from a place that raises and deploys capital to worthy businesses into a vulturous creature that preys on unwitting investors.

Goldman's conduct in the two years leading up to the near-implosion of the financial system show a firm dedicated to "sticking it to their own clients," said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the panel that produced the report. "Goldman gained at the expense of their clients, and used abusive practices to do it."

In the UK a  report published  by SpinWatch UK  exposes  Goldman Sachs political and financial lobbying muscle in the UK and Brussels (The European Parliament).

The report, entitled, Doing God’s Work: How Goldman Sachs Rigs the Game details Goldman Sachs’ secret lobbying activities in the UK and Brussels and links to politicians. It exposes:

• The extensive links between Goldman Sachs and the Conservative Party;
•   Political donations totalling £8.5million to British politicians in the past decade from Goldman and ex-Goldman people;
•    Goldman Sachs’ immense lobbying machine in Brussels, including active membership of over a dozen financial sector lobby groups;
•    Extensive meetings between Goldman Sachs and Conservative MEPs including: 9 meetings in six months with a key MEP on the Parliament’s Economics and Monetary Committee; and a total of 36 meetings between just four Tory MEPs and Goldman Sachs, its lobby groups or PR companies acting on their behalf;
•   The bank’s lobbying campaign to undermine political reform on derivatives and alternative investment funds including: private dinners and unminuted "after office hours” meetings, high-level conferences and targeted campaigns to Commission officials, MEPs and their assistants;
•   How Goldman Sach’s lobbyists tried to undermine amendments in a key report on derivatives, seen as “financial weapons of mass destruction”; 
•   The bank’s lobbying enabled them to gamble on food futures and drive up prices.

Report author, journalist Andy Rowell said: “A year ago, David Cameron said that lobbying was the next big scandal waiting to happen. This report shows that banks like Goldman Sachs – who are intricately connected to the Tories – continue to lobby to get what they want."

Rowell continued: "The entire regulatory process - and the lobbying activity that surrounds it - has to become significantly more transparent and accountable. If it is allowed to be captured by bankers, the next financial crisis will only be a matter of time.”

This is what privatization delivers: systemic crises in immigration detention

photo courtesy of the ABC

So another privatized detention centre burns. Only weeks after the Christmas Island detention centres erupted in protests, riots and fires, the unrest has spread to Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre.

Former staff of Serco, the UK multinational corporation that runs the privatized detention centres, are already pointing the finger directly at the corporation, claiming that it contributed to the crises. Serco whistle blowers claim that at Villawood (like Christmas Island), Serco's incompetence and mismanagement were a primary cause of the riots.

The whitleblower claims that:

• Serco management threw raw and untrained recruits into the detention centre without proper training
• Training courses for new staff were dropped
• Serco staff lack basic training and are forced to learn "on the job" 
• Serco management constantly understaff the centre
• Serco has no effective emergency management procedures for such events.

These are precisely the claims made against Serco at Christmas Island; claims that are now the subject of multiple investigations into Serco's management of the Christmas Island Centres, and it looks likely that the investigations will be extended to include Serco's management of Villawood.

The ABC reports that:

The detention centre was set on fire, while asylum seekers overwhelmed staff from the detention centre service provider, Serco.

The former guard says there would have been 11 staff members rostered on the night the asylum seekers rioted. 

He says his former employer, Serco, does not train staff properly and would not have known what to do when trouble starts. 

"From what I've seen, new recruits are basically put on the floor with no training whatsoever," he said. 

"They were told that they would be trained as they worked and that also has never happened before. Basically what is supposed to happen is, they go through at least a six-week minimum course and then have a year of on-the-job training. 

"Serco basically got rid of the six-week course using staffing levels as an excuse and basically threw the staff onto the floor and expected experienced staff to train them as well as do their normal jobs."

He says Serco has never emphasised emergency response training for incidents like fire and riots experienced on Wednesday night. 

"I am led to believe they still don't have any real effective emergency operational procedures. So basically (Wednesday night) would have been every man for themselves," he said.

In a statement, Serco acknowledged an increased number of arrivals and longer periods of detention have placed significant pressures on their operations. 

The company said its staff training program meets it contractual requirements and that it has provided additional training beyond what is contracted and has invested $1.5 million in staff training.

This is the second Australian immigration detention to be set on fire this year. Riots at the Christmas Island detention centre in March led to tear gas and bean bag rounds being fired at asylum seekers.

The former Villawood guard says the Federal Government should review Serco's contract. 

"They've had pretty poor performance. Basically the spate of incidents, major incidents, under Serco's control have been ... there's just been too many. So I really think that the contract should be reassessed," he said.

Canadian corporation to transport uranium through WA cities and towns

In Western Australia mining and resource companies can pretty much do whatever they like. They talk a lot about world's best practice safety standards and social license to operate, but ultimately what they want they generally get. Here is a perfect example of how it works.

Australian Greens Senator for Western Australia Scott Ludlam has slammed provocative plans by Canadian uranium mining company Cameco to truck uranium through several WA cities and towns.

The Cameco planned course will see up to 3,600 tonnes of uranium oxide concentrate from the Kintyre project trucked past Port Headland and though Newman, Meekatharra, Mount Magnet, Leonora and a number of other towns en route to the proposed Parkeston travel hub outside Kalgoorlie each year. If the hub is not completed by 2013, the uranium will be transported though Kalgoorlie itself.

“There are a significant number of freight truck accidents in Western Australia each year, but that’s just part of the concern. This is a project that goes wrong at every turn, planned by a company with an appalling history,” said Senator Ludlam.

“The mine itself is proposed for a site right next to Rudall River, alongside the Karlamilyi National Park. The site of the uranium deposit was originally part of the park and was excised in 1994, so as you can imagine it is a pristine natural area and it has environmentally sensitive wetlands in the vicinity,” said Senator Ludlam.

“Especially given the sordid and sorry history of uranium mining in Australia contaminating ground water and wetlands, this is one of the worst possible sites for a uranium mine.”

It is estimated 2,500 to 3,600 tonnes of uranium oxide concentrate will be trucked through the state each year by Cameco. The company says it will send between 55 and 70 truck convoys a year along the estimated 2000km route.

“The residents along this uranium trail will no doubt be very concerned,” said Senator Ludlam. “They have the right to say no to Cameco’s plan to transport radioactive material through their neighbourhoods.”

Nuclear safety sacrificied for corporate profits

Rosa Moussaoui writes in Truth Out that the crises unfolding in Japan's nuclear reactors demonstrates the destructive power of corporate capitalism and the neoliberal logic. 

Moussaoui argues that nuclear security is far too important to be left in the hands of private corporations. She is right.

Since 2003, the big Japanese private group aimed at "reduction of costs of maintenance" in order to render profits "secure".

Profit at Any Price. This could be the motto of Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the multinational that exploits the nuclear power plants at Fukushima. The largest producer of electricity in the world illustrates the excesses of an industrial sector in which neo-liberalism has unfurled to the last extremities of its destructive logic.

Poof. At the beginning of 2010, Tepco announced net earnings of 157.7 billion yen (1.19 billion euros) for the period from April to December 2009, as compared with a loss of 137.7 billion yen (1.04 billion euros) a year earlier. Miraculous recovery, for a multinational company whose annual turnover decreased, at the same time, by 14%. In order to restore profits, the officers of the company affirm, Tepco had to restrict its "current expenses", which dropped by 22%. Officially, this was due to a drop in the price of petroleum needed for the functioning of its thermal power plants. The explanation is a bit thin, for an industrial outfit that insisted, in a financial document in August 2003, on the necessity of "a rationalization of the totality of operations, including a reduction of the costs of maintenance" in order to render its profits "secure".

Has performance of maintenance, and thus the security of equipment, become a variable for adjustment? Tepco has not hesitated to do this in the past. Between September 2002 and April 2003, the multinational was constrained to shut down its 17 nuclear reactors. This was a consequence of revelations concerning the falsifications of some thirty inspection reports on three nuclear power plants in the group. It involved, among other aspects, the electro-nuclear giant’s act of disguising three incidents that had occurred in the nuclear facilities in Fukushima and Kashiwazaki-Kariwa.

This scandal implicating Tepco is not an isolated one. In March 2007, to cite but one example, the company Hokoriku Electric Power admitted having knowingly hidden a nuclear incident that occurred at the plant in Shikamachi eight years earlier, the 18 June 1999.

But who cares about security, when the race for profits takes command? With 28 million clients in Tokyo and in the region, Tepco announced triumphantly last 30 July that it wished to multiply by 5 its projections of profit for 2010-2011. Between April and December 2010, the multinational banked a net profit of 139.8 billion yen (1.27 billion euros). Surfing on the green wave, the group, already in the lead with its parks of wind turbines, planned to invest heavily in renewable energies. Ever so ready to threaten whole countries, the stock and bond rating company Standard and Poors granted Tepco an AA- on its long term debt, which is its fourth highest rating.

At the Heart of the Catastrophe, Tepco Remained Obsessed by Financial Considerations

Even at the heart of the current catastrophe in Fukushima, TEPCO remained obsessed by financial considerations. "It seems the the company waited until the last possible moment to drown the heart of the reactor by pumping sea water. In fact, if you drown the heart of the reactor, it becomes no longer usable," observes the Energy branch of the CGT [1]. Clearly, public ownership is not an all-risk insurance policy in these matters. But to what horrifying excesses can we be lead by the shameful acts of profit-taking. In 2005, in his essay From Tchernobyl to Tchernobyls [2], the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, Georges Charpak put us on our guard: "The problem of security in the nuclear power plants is too crucial to be left only in the hands of financiers, those champions of stock market optimization". Cruelly premonitory.

Corporate ownership of UK blood supply

What is that saying about putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank?. 

Well it's becoming a reality. Soon the UK blood supply will be privatized. Market madness!

From the UK Independent;

The proposed privatisation of NHS Blood and Transplant service, or parts of it, will instinctively make people shudder and we are right to be concerned about how commercial motives will change the service.

From Unite

Staff representatives from the National Blood Service (NBS) have written to chief executive, Linda Hamlyn, and to NBS board members warning that the privatisation of the NBS could have serious effects on the fragile relationship between the service and its donors.
 

Around three million UK citizens give their blood every year.  Unite says it is the ultimate "big society" service but the essence of the service would be fundamentally altered if a profit-motive was introduced to any part of the service.

Unite is demanding a full written report from the NBS board setting out what discussions have taken place with potential bidders, what decisions have been made and what time scales there might be regarding possible privatisation.

The union also wants MPs currently scrutinising the Health and Social Care bill to look seriously at ways to preserve the NBS so that profit-making companies are not handed parts of the service to operate, arguing that the only motive for the service ought to be the collection and distribution of blood for the common good.

On 16 February, the Health Service Journal learned that the Department of Health's commercial directorate held talks with private providers about running parts of the NHS Blood and Transplant service. Capita and DHL are understood to be interested in taking over parts of the service (see notes to editors).

Unite, Britain's biggest union which represents staff working for the NBS, resolutely opposes any privatisation of the service arguing that it goes against the very ethos of giving blood.

Unite's regional officer, Owen Granfield said: "On behalf of the staff working for the blood service who are very proud and dedicated, we have written to the chief executive of the NBS demanding to know just how far discussions with the private sector have progressed. Unite is not prepared to allow the private sector to profit from a voluntary service which was in existence even before the NHS was founded.

"People who give blood for free because they believe it is in the common good will be shocked to learn the Department of Health is considering allowing the private sector to profit from their blood. This is blood money and it is totally wrong.

"The very essence of the blood service is about people giving their blood for free to help and save lives. The blood service is always short of donors and privatisation could have serious effects on the fragile relationship between the service and voluntary donations."

Privatization: when corporations and government profit from human suffereing

So this is how privatization and contracting out of public services works.

Serco the operator of Australia's immigration detention centres, is paid nearly $400 million by the Federal Government to run immigration detention. But Serco breaches its contract so much that it has been fined $4.5 million for contract breaches over a 2 month period (November and December). Information suggests that Serco were fined $2 million dollars in November and $2.5 million in December for breaches that include poor practice, incompetence, inappropriate treatment of detainees, incidents in centres, and escapes.

But the Government refuses to release any detail of the breaches, citing commercial confidentiality.

As Antony Lowenstein points out  rather than demand that Serco improve the treatment of detainees, or even rescind Serco's contract for constant breaches, the Federal Government simply pockets the money Serco pays in fines.

The immigration department has fined the company that runs its detention centres for contract breaches, including a series of breakouts.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship contracts the UK-based Serco to run its detention centres. The latest contract – worth about $370 million – was signed in 2009.
“Under the contract between Serco and DIAC there are provisions for the imposition of fines and sanctions against Serco for lax practices or incompetence,” a DIAC spokesman said.
The fines reportedly exceeded $4 million, but the department has refused to reveal the figure.
“The details are commercial in confidence,” the spokesman said.

 Here is yet another example of Serco's incompetence. Just what is Serco's risk management strategy for managing a disturbance in detention centres? Call the Police.

This extract is from the Sydney Morning Herald:

Concerns whether NT Police would have the capacity to deal with a large-scale disturbance emerged on Friday, after it was announced late on Thursday that a new 1,500-bed detention facility would be developed at Wickham Point, on Darwin Harbour - opposite the CBD - to house single men.

The move, along with plans to almost double the bed capacity at the Darwin Airport Lodge Detention Centre, will take Darwin's immigration detention capacity to 2,900, eclipsing Christmas Island's 2,600 capacity.

 

NT Police Association president Vince Kelly told AAP he understood that Serco, the private security company that manages Australia's immigration detention centres, had no real plans to handle a major disturbance other than to telephone the police.

"It would seem that there has been no contemplation of the impacts this might have on the NT police, or about the capacity of NT Police to deal with a large-scale disturbance involving 1,500 people who are held in these facilities," he said.

"The safety of NT police officers is something that should be considered."

Corporate crime and no punshment

Great piece by Russell Mokhiber comparing the case of Leandro Andrades, a man imprisoned for life for stealing five videotapes worth $150, with the the failure of the US authorities to pursue criminal charges against any of the corporate executives responsible for two of the biggest crimes in US history- the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the financial meltdown of 2008-2009.

Two recent reports of inquiry into the Gulf Oil Spill and the 2008-2009 Financial crises failed to make any mention about corporate crime or criminal liability, despite finding massive systemic breaches of the law.

As Mohkiber writes:

"We live in a country with two systems of justice. One for the Leandro Andrades of this world and one for the Wall St Banks and their executives and the oil companies and their executives.... We have two systems of justice. One for the corporate class.. and one for the rest of us"

Woodside personifies corporate power in Western Australia

When you are the most powerful corporation in Western Australia you can pretty much do what you like. Here are two examples:

• Don Voelte, the CEO of Woodside was paid just $2,694,276 in 2009 (gee that must have been tough!). In 2010 his pay increased by a miserly 210% to $8,343,339.
• The body of 55 year old man who died at Woodside's Pluto Project Gap Ridge Camp in Karratha was not discovered for two weeks. The body remained in his donga without being discovered for two weeks. Police are investigating the death and will provide a report to the Coroner. Worksafe cannot look at the death because " it was not work related".

I am currently writing a longer piece about the power that Woodside is able to exercise over this state. Very happy to receive suggestions and ideas.  

The forgotten history of WA's sacrifice zones

The story of the Esperance lead pollution scandal has been consigned to the "dustbin" of Western Australian history. Hopefully, new research by the Conservation Council of WA might focus attention on the contamination of the town by a mining company and its state government partners.

Over 2 years (2005- 2007) Magellan Metals and the Esperance Port Authority allowed lethal lead dust to escape from storage facilities and contaminate the town of Esperance and surrounds. Over 9500 birds died of lead poisoning and hundreds of children suffered lead poisoning from elevated lead levels.

A Western Australian Parliamentary Inquiry found that the Esperance Port Authority and Magellan Metals (and 2 other government agencies) were guilty of "critical failings" in their handling of toxic material in allowing lead carbonate particles to escape during Port operation.

The Inquiry concluded that the deaths of 9500 native birds in December 2006 and March 2007 resulted from lead poisoning from Magellan Metals lead carbonate concentrate which had been handled by the Esperance Port Authority from April 2005 until March 2007. A quarter of the children under 5 years of age who were tested showed a blood lead level over 5 µg/dL. The Committee concluded that the exposure of the Esperance community to lead was a result of:

• the ongoing transport to, and inloading practices at, the Esperance Port which occurred almost every second day over some 23 months;
• the escape of lead dust during the usual out loading practices at the Esperance Port, which occurred on 22 occasions; and
• a number of key dust incidents occurring during ship-loading of the Magellan lead concentrate at the Esperance Port, which released significant lead pollution into the environment, and in the absence of any containment or clean up, caused on-going exposures to lead.”

The Report found that the Esperance community had been let down by the actions of the Esperance Port Authority, Magellan Metals and the WA Department of Environment (DEC).

The Esperance Port Authority was fined over half a million dollars after admitting responsibility for the lead poisoning. Magellan Metals escaped without any serious penalty after agreeing to a $9 million settlement to clean up the town. As part of the agreement the State Government agreed not to pursue any criminal or legal charges against the company.

The scandal is back in the news this week as a result of resarch by the Conservation Council of WA. The Council reports that even though the lead pollution problem scandal was supposedly fixed, local research shows that local insect eating birds have lead levels in their feathers about 8 times background lead levels. The birds are at threshold level for lead pollution in birds.

These levels raise serious questions about the effectiveness of the cleanup. A State Government report released earlier this year claimed that three years after the crises the poisonous lead dust still present in the town  remained a major threat to bird life and animal life but presented no "serious threat to human health"  

But why should we believe a report commissioned by a State Government agency that has utterly failed in its job to regulate mining companies and their Government partners and has failed time and time again protect the community. During the Esperance crises, Government agencies, including the Health Department, continually downplayed the seriousness of the problem and denied any serious risk to human health.

Like many other places in WA, Esperance is what US author Steve Lerner calls a "Sacrifice Zone"- communities forced to live with the harmful social and environmental impacts of poorly regulated mining and industrial activity. 

Martin Bruckner's remarkable book Under Corporate Skies tells the shocking story of another Western Australian "Sacrifice Zone"- this time the struggle between the community of Wagerup and the multinational mining corporation Alcoa and its ally over three decades- the WA Government. Brueckner tells a story also consigned to the dustbin of Western Australian history. His book describes the the same pattern of denial, protection of mining and industrial interests, collusion by State Government agencies and  dismissal and trivialization of community concerns that has been evident in the Esperance scandal.

These "sacrifice zones" exist all over WA, in towns and communities where mining and industrial activity are dominant.  These are places and people sacrificed on the alter of corporate profit and economic growth. 

The harms caused by poorly regulated mining and industrial activity- ill health and death, scarred land, polluted, air and water, despoiled environment and human landscape and a fraying social fabric- are trivialized, and denied, and if proven, they are simply dismissed as a cost of economic prosperity or considered not serious enough to warrant attention

Missing in action: An economic vision for the "common wealth" not corporate wealth

For US author David Korten the lesson of the US Congressional elections is that financial and corporate interests have strengthened their hold over US politics. Korten argues that no US President or party is willing to break their hold over democracy. The result is that neither party has a credible vision for the economic future of the nation.

Korten argues that the banking and financial industries and their corporate allies are the big winners from the US congressional elections and now hold an even more dominant role over democracy. This is despite the fact that they were the  cause of the economic crises that has devastated the US economy and left over 15 million people unemployed. 

In the latest elections the banking and financial services industry and their corporate allies used their massive spending power to ensure the election of candidates that serve corporate interests.

Korten calls for a fundamental economic restructuring and a long term vision for a New Economy that

• is based on sound market principles
• is rooted in community and life values rather than financial values  and is built from the bottom up
• is accountable to community interests
• is aligned with values of solidarity, compassion and caring for others
• locates the power to create and allocate money in people and community rather than the banking and financial industry
• ensures that sustainable living and sustainable livelihoods for working people are the highest priority of economic policy rather than increased corporate profits, reduced taxation and growing wealth for the already well off.

Ralph Nader and the steamroller of corporate power

"Not withstanding the latest corporate crime wave, the devastating fallout on workers, investors and taxpayers from the greed and corruption of Wall Street, and the abandonment of American workers by US corporations in favour of repressive regimes abroad, the Democrats have failed to focus voter anger on the corporate supremacists.........

The giant corporate control of our country is so vast that people who call themselves anything politically- liberal, conservative, progressive , libertarian, independent or anarchist- should be banding together against the reckless Big Business steamroller"

Ralph Nader, legendary US consumer advocate, lawyer and author on corporate power in the USA

Public sector reform=bosting corporate profits

George Monbiot on exactly what "public sector reform" really means in David Cameron's vision of the UK Big Society. 

Lesson to be learned- when Conservatives and Liberals, like Colin Barnett, talk about reforming the public sector this is what they mean:

"Public bodies whose purpose is to hold corporations to account are being swept away. Public bodies whose purpose is to help boost corporate profits, regardless of the consequences for people and the environment, have sailed through unharmed. What the two lists suggest is that the economic crisis is the disaster the Conservatives have been praying for. The government’s programme of cuts looks like a classic example of disaster capitalism: using a crisis to re-shape the economy in the interests of business"