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.

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.

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."

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

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"

Gross hypocrisy and BHP Billiton

The London Mining Network has published this piece on BHP Billiton's London AGM. The report reveals the huge gulf between BHP Billiton's rhetoric about corporate social responsibility  and sustainable development and the reality of its actions on the ground that destroys communities, local economies, environments and livelihoods. 

There is no better example of BHP's hypocrisy than its stance on climate change. CEO Marius Kloper says that BHP  accepts the science and believes that greenhouse gas emissions need to be limited so that the increase in average atmospheric temperatures can be held at two degrees above the pre-industrial average. 

But BHP Billiton believes that it is up society and governments to decide on the way forward. (That is unless society and governments come up with a strategy unacceptable to BHP, in which case they will oppose  and destroy it like they did the Rudd Government proposal to introduce a Super Profits tax here in Australia).

BHP will continue to ramp up its plans to increase production of coal, oil and gas in the hope that currently unavailable technical solutions might one day help limit the effects of burning them. And BHP claims that its increased investment in uranium mining will be beneficial for global warming. 

The report concludes with this:

"BHP Billiton sees itself as indispensable to the prosperity of the world. Millions of the world’s poor are apparently relying on it to help them embrace the urbanised life of high consumption which it believes to be their destiny. Those who have a different view – like Indigenous communities in Kalimantan or small farmers in Colombia – have to be moved out of the way. BHP Billiton plans to continue mining, burning and irradiating its way towards a vision of the future that its board finds inspiring and which many of its critics reject as apocalyptic".

 A protest against BHP  in Perth is to be held at the Perth Exhibition and Convention Centre on Tuesday 16th November between 10.100am-2pm.

The most important West Australian book published in 2010

The book Under Corporate Skies, A struggle between people, place and profits by Martin Brueckner and Dyann Ross is the story of a West Australian community torn apart and people's lives destroyed by the power of a multinational mining company protected and supported by the WA government. 

 In WA we are used to State Governments actively protecting and promoting the interests of large mining and resource companies, but the story of Alcoa, the small southwest town of Yarloop and the WA Government is deeply troubling. In this review to be published in Online Opinion Professor Gavin Mooney concludes that this important book shines the light on the shocking state of democracy in WA. 

A community versus a corporation … while government looks on

Gavin Mooney, Co-convenor WA Social Justice Network, Honorary Professor University of Sydney

‘It seems that whatever Alcoa says the government has to do, they’re too scared to disobey…. I think Alcoa’s got all the control. They tell the government what to do.’  Yarloop resident.

The above is a quote from this book* which tells the David and Goliath story of the struggle between the small West Australian community of Yarloop and the multinational corporation, Alcoa World Alumina, which has a refinery at Wagerup, just next to Yarloop to the south of Perth. The win by David in the original version is pretty much story book stuff. In this real world version from Brueckner and Ross, David has lost out big time. And the original story is nowhere as poisoned as this one – with poison occurring at two levels – as perceived by residents through the pollution in the air at Yarloop and through the bastardry of government (and other institutions such as local universities).

Brueckner and Ross tell the story of this ‘struggle between people, place and profits’ in a remarkably dispassionate way. But it is all the more savage in its telling as a result of that.

The authors take us through the problems faced by the local community as a result of the pollution – air, noise and visual – from its corporate neighbour. They tell how so many local residents have had their lives destroyed and not just their health as a result of both the presence and the behaviour of Alcoa. Perhaps inevitably, given how these things work, the local neighbour when it comes to decision making was not truly local at all as the real power in Alcoa is in a far off board room in the US. It seems that at least some of the local Alcoa management were human in responding to the problems being created for the local community. But they had little power to act.

Thus the authors argue (p 245): ‘As a US-based multinational corporation with executive managers able to influence decisions of governments across borders, Alcoa exercised placeless power while at the same time maintaining a ‘powerful place’ at Wagerup by occupying the territory and pursuing its commercial interests.

One aspect of all of this that comes over strongly is that there is a degree of cleverness, one might say deviousness, with corporates that can be quite breath taking. In this case Alcoa set up voluntarily a ‘Land Management Plan’ which created a buffer zone around Wagerup which involved some financial compensation/relocation for residents in that zone. Sounds good. But it did not include all Yarloop residents and split the town in terms not only of compensation but also emotionally. Deliberate on the part of Alcoa? Who knows but it certainly resulted in weakening the community position vis-a-vis Alcoa.  Then because Alcoa did this voluntarily ‘the government refrained from being involved when residents fell foul of the voluntary relocation as proposed by Alcoa’ (p173). Deliberate on the part of Alcoa? Welcomed by the government? Who knows but it certainly resulted in weakening the community vis-a-vis not just Alcoa but also the government.

Scary stuff and heartbreaking to read about the desperate and despairing fight of the Yarloop residents. 

The book exposes a number of intriguing issues. Just a couple. The question of what constitutes scientific evidence (especially in epidemiology) and how and by whom that is interpreted is discussed and science and epidemiology do not emerge well.

How corporations can act to protect themselves and infiltrate social institutions is fascinating and worrying as again the book exposes. The authors write of how (p227) Alcoa ‘secured a Professorial  Chair and gave its name to a new research centre  - Alcoa’s Centre for Strong Communities (sic - or sick?) - at Curtin University of Technology’ in Perth.  When the authors questioned the company about this initiative they were told ‘there was to be no relationship (with Yarloop) as the new Centre was not going to be addressing the specifics of the Wagerup issue.’

This particular point is close to my heart. I was a member of staff at Curtin at that time and was invited on to local radio to talk about the fact that this ‘Centre for strong communities’ was being funded by Alcoa who were at the same time perceived by the Yarloop community as weakening them! On the afternoon of the interview I was summonsed by a senior manager at the university and had my fingers rapped for daring to speak out as I had in the media.

The influence of the corporations on government and other of our key institutions like our universities needs to be exposed again and again and again. This book does an excellent if frightening job of doing that.

So where does this leave us? There is a risk in the wake of the “success” of the mining corporations in destroying the tax on super profits that we grow to accept that this sort of behaviour by corporations is all fine and that business interests and the national interests as implied at the weekend by Michael Chaney are often synonymous.

Acceptance of that places our democracy at risk.

We need the Brueckners and the Rosses of this country to tell this sort of story and we must be glad that they do. But telling the story aint enough. We must read their story! Please do that. Their tale is horrendous so be sure to have a stiff drink before you start – especially if, as I do, you live in WA. 

 

*Under Corporate Skies, A struggle between people, place and profits. Martin Brueckner and Dyann Ross.  Fremantle:  Fremantle Press, 2010 $26.95. 316pp.

Corporatization of War

Christian Miller reports that in the last 6 months more private contractors than soldiers were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the first time in history that corporate casualties have outweighed military losses. Corporate casualties now make up 25% of total US deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

The wars fought on behalf of the American empire are increasingly fought by private contractors working for large corporations, supplied and supported by logistical operations run by other large corporations. Modern warfare has become another way for large corporations to make money and extend their reach and power over governments and countries.

the lie of corporate social responsibility

Great piece by Russell Mokhiber from Corporate Crime Reporter on why corporate social responsibility is not just an oxymoron but a sham:

"Corporate social responsibility has been used by companies to ward off both the activists and to reduce the probability of more onerous government regulation,"

"And companies pretend to be socially responsible, but they really don't do very much. This keeps the activists at bay. And it might serve to keep government regulators at bay by saying - see, we are doing it on our own."

Event in Fremantle on the harm caused by markets and corporations

Great to see this event The Global Economy and Human Wellbeing  being run by Rob Lambert* at the Edmund Rice Centre for Social Justice in Fremantle this Saturday 4 September, 2010 between 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM.

The event is designed to provide people with a deeper understanding of what global free markets are doing to persons, families and societies;  the nature of corporate restructuring of work, and its social and psychological impacts for families and communities; - basic analytic techniques of ‘political economy’ necessary for understanding these changes; - the values underlying these changes, and how they might be ethically assessed; and - how to envisage (imagine) alternative models of work, and the process of realising such change.

 *Winthrop Professor Rob Lambert is based at the University of Western Australia’s Business School, where he specialises in labour studies. He is co-author of the award-winning book, Grounding Globalization: Labour in the Age of Insecurity (Oxford, Blackwell, 2008),a critique of the free market economy that identifies destructive impacts for the environment, society, families and persons. Rob is the founder and coordinator of the Southern Initiative on Globalization and Trade Union Rights (SIGTUR), founded some 20 years ago. This movement brings together democratic trade unions across 15 countries and four continents in the global south. Rob has a background as a South African activist, and was National Secretary of the South African Young Christian Workers and then advisor to the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference before coming to Perth.

The power of corporations over the political process

"Recent events have shown how much the interests of corporations now dominate the political process. Mining companies mobilized more quickly than the government to challenge the resource rent tax, and effectively bought down a Prime Minister...... But political systems merely reflect the society which gives rise to them. And we live in a society- and a world-where the power of corporations is much greater than that of "ordinary"people. Corporate power can readily be seen in our homes, our workplaces, our public spaces and our national debates."
Josh Fear

The Nemesis Project aims to support efforts to wrest power back from corporations. We seek to connect the dots between issues to show the extent to which corporate power and corporate interests dominate across a wide range of policy issues and influence every part of our daily lives.

Josh Fear from the Australia Institute has written a fine piece about the extent of corporate power in Australia. His argument is that the power and interests of corporations dominate and control government decision-making.

He shows the ways that corporations now dominate the political process in Australia. Fear's point is that across a range of public policy issues- the super profits mining tax, emissions trading, carbon tax, executive salaries, banking profits and fees and superannuation- the interests of corporations have dominated.

As Fear points out, and as recent events show, corporate power played a major role in the overthrow of an elected PM and manufactured the demise of a Federal government who were seen to threaten corporate interests. Politicians heed that message, meaning that no real reform is likely when corporate interests are threatened.