FIVE YEARS AGO: https://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/34491

 

A feasibility study into the proposed expansion of the Snowy Hydro scheme has given the project the green light, but says it will cost billions of dollars more than predicted.

The study, supported by Malcolm Turnbull, found the proposed expansion was both technically and financially feasible, and that Snowy Hydro would be able to finance the project itself.

But it says the current estimate for the project is between $3.8bn and $4.5bn, more than the $2bn estimated by Turnbull when he promoted the project earlier this year.

It has withheld details of the cost estimate, saying they include commercially confidential information, but says the larger capital costs take into account the need for “extensive reinforcement” of the project’s proposed structures owing to the challenging geological conditions that were uncovered during the geotechnical drilling program.

If construction gets under way shortly the expanded Snowy Hydro could begin operating from 2024.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/21/snowy-hydro-2-via...

 

In comparison, the Elon Musk battery system in South Australia, can do more storing of electricity that this monster which when one does the sum will not work well and will cost about 40 times the price. Who is an idiot...?

 

CHEAPER STILL AND BETTER CHARGE/DISCHARGE CYCLES: THE AMBRI HOT BATTERIES....

 

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Academy of Science, ANU compromised by government secrecy over damning emissions report

by Rex Patrick

Science and secrecy are two words that rarely go well together. Yet remarkably, our peak scientific institution, the Australian Academy of Science is deliberately engaging in secrecy, aided and abetted by the Australian National University. Transparency Warrior Rex Patrick tells the story.

 Embarrassing FOI refusal

Back in January, knowing the Safeguard Mechanism legislation that underpins Labor’s key climate change policy (which we now know, flawed) would be debated in the upcoming parliamentary sitting, I FOI’ed a paper written by Australian National University Associate Professor, Cris Brack, on ‘the “science” of measuring carbon credits for human-induced regeneration’.

This document was input to an Australian Academy of Science study that was, in turn, a contribution to a review of carbon credit Integrity by former Chief Scientist Professor Ian Chubb (‘the Chubb Review’).

Earlier this week, at the request of the Academy, the ANU refused me access to Brack’s paper, giving elaborate reasoning as to why it wasn’t in the public interest to release the document.

The embarrassing problem for the ANU is that, two days prior to their access refusal, the document was submitted to the Senate’s web site by Professor Chubb himself, ironically, a member of the Academy’s council.

 Integrity failure

‘Human-induced regeneration’ is a carbon capture method. It involves the regeneration of native forests in areas that have previously been cleared. Last financial year, almost 40% of all Australian Carbon Credits issued went to human-induced regeneration projects. 

The model that establishes their carbon offset value assumes the land areas that are credited have no (or very few) mature trees and that they regrow evenly across the site as a consequence of the project activities.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the areas being credited under ‘human-induced regeneration’ have never been comprehensively cleared. They contain intact native vegetation, including substantial numbers of mature trees and shrubs. 

This means the projects are being credited to regrow trees that are already there. 

It’s a fraud on the both the taxpayer and the environment yet there are people making either a lot of money or pollution from it, and don’t want the status quo disturbed.

 

Chubb Review

Following Labor’s federal election win in May last year, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, commissioned the Chubb Review to “ensure Australian Carbon Credit Units and the carbon crediting framework maintain a strong and credible reputation supported by participants, purchasers and the broader community”. 

The Academy was given a $50K government contract to produce a 31 page study onto the four big methods for generating carbon credits. In turn, the ANU’s Associate Professor Brack was asked to produce a paper on ‘the “science” of measuring carbon credits for Human-induced regeneration’ (the document I FOI’ed).

Brack gave a blunt assessment of the ‘Human-induced regeneration’ discussing weaknesses of the method. Brack’s concerns did not make it into the Academy’s report, nor the Chubb review report.

  Transparency failure

On 27 February 2023, at the Senate Inquiry into the Safeguard Mechanism, Senator David Pocock raised questions about the concerns over ‘Human-induced regeneration’. Witness Dr Megan Evans responded, 

“It was strange that that wasn’t even addressed, at all, in the Chubb review, even though their terms of reference required them to look at the integrity issues that have been raised, and this was one of our No.1 issues.”

She went on to observe, “ … there’s a list of five reports that we are aware of regarding the human induced regeneration method that have been commissioned by either the Clean Energy Regulator or the Department and that are not in the public domain. I would urge you to consider seeing whether you could find these reports, because they should be in the public domain.”

Three days later, Professor Chubb, clearly concerned about the look, made a very quick submission to the Senate inquiry saying, “ … I have followed the evidence given to the Inquiry in its public hearings … “, defended his report, and went on to add, “… I have Associate Professor Brack’s permission to attach the paper to this submission.”

 Transparency knock-back

Brack’s paper had been passively held secret by Government. That is, they just didn’t publish it.

But the ANU, complicit to the wishes of the Academy desires and inconsistent with FOI law, actively held Brack’s paper secret in response to an FOI request.

When I made the request in January for the Brack’s report, the ANU sought an additional 30 days on top of the standard 30, to consult on the 2 page document. The University said “We did approach the commissioning organisation to seek its permission to provide the report, but this was denied. ANU takes objections from partner organisations and third parties into consideration when making determinations on FOI requests”.

However, FOI law makes it clear it was the University’s choice, even if the Academy objected, to release the document. The exemptions claimed was subject to a public interest override. 

How could releasing a report that went to the integrity of a multi-billion public carbon credit program not be in the public interest? How could releasing a report relevant to the Labor Government’s key climate change legislation, just as it was about to be debated in the Parliament, not be in the public interest?

 Australian Academy of Secret Science

I asked a series of very specific questions of the Academy, an organisation that, in its own words, exists to “to promote, declare and disseminate scientific knowledge’ about why they wanted the taxpayer funded document hidden from public view.

The Academy resorted to a very general and political answer.

There is no place for secrecy at the Academy. There is no place for politics either. Neither of those features would be reflective of the multitude of genuinely eminent scientists that lend their name to that important institution.

 ANU shallow answers

ANU’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Brian Schmidt, knowing I was going pen this article, wrote to me on Friday, claiming “we were unable to release the report”. But that’s just not true. They chose not to.

Strangely, departing from his confident ‘we couldn’t’ assertion, he went on to say “The University’s FOI office also works independently within the University” as if to say, “don’t blame the University”.  

Sorry Professor Schmit! As Vice Chancellor it’s your responsibility to ensure your FOI delegates are trained in the Act and appreciate the importance of a pro-disclosure culture (which it clearly doesn’t exists if you’re minded that the report couldn’t be released).

The ANU is a great university, but events like this rightfully put a dent in its reputation and the university’s leadership needs to reflect on what has happened here, appreciating that the community is sick and tired of secrecy.  They could do much better.  

 

READ MORE:

https://michaelwest.com.au/academy-of-science-anu-compromised-by-government-secrecy-over-damning-emissions-report/

 

WHICH JOURNALIST WORKING FOR A MEDIA CORPORATION SAID :"AUSTRALIA IS THE MOST SECRETIVE COUNTRY IN THE WORLD."?

SEE ALSO: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/world/australia/journalist-raids.html

 

 

Australia dropped five points in the latest index as national security laws and loss of independence both chip away at journalism in the country. SEE: https://thediplomat.com/2020/04/australia-drops-in-press-freedom-index/

 

ONE OF THE MAJOR PROBLEM IS THAT "WE, THE AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC, ARE TOO COMFORTABLE." THUS WE DON'T KNOW AND DON'T REALLY CARE ABOUT THE TRUTH OF WHAT'S WHAT, AS WE READ OUR MEDIOCRE MEDIA WITH FOGGY GLASSES BUT DON'T CARE, EVEN IF WE KNOW THEY LIE....

 

WE ALSO SUSPECT THAT Professor Schmit IS A RIGHT-WING THINKER.....

 

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Snow Job – Snowy Hydro 2.0 in a fathomless crevasse of costs

 

by Rex Patrick

 

 

Malcolm Turnbull’s Snowy Hydro 2.0 project was touted as $2 billion bargain in 2017. It now shapes as a $10 billion abominable snowman. Peering through a Kosciusko/Canberra snow storm of FOI brush-offs, Rex Patrick asks what is really going on.

When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced Snowy Hydro 2.0 in March 2017, it was a $2B scheme. By the end of 2017, it was an ‘up to $4.5B’ project. In April 2019, the price had risen to $5.1B, and now the number is looking more like $10B. And it’s not just Florence the (drilling machine) causing the cost overruns.

The basic concept behind Snowy 2.0 is simple. Topography, hydrology and engineering are brought together to create a giant battery north of Kiandra in the Snowy Mountains to support the renewable energy needs of Australia’s east coast.

During off-peak periods, electricity is used to pump water ‘uphill’ from the Talbingo Reservoir east to the Tantangara Reservoir. The storage capacity of the higher reservoir is approximately 350,000 megawatt hours of power. During peak energy demand periods will be allowed to flow ‘downhill’ and westwards to turbines producing 2,000 megawatts of renewable energy for the national electricity grid..

The basic ingredients required:

• 27 km of underground tunnels to transport the water uphill and down,
• A power/pump station (in a 250 metre long, 50 metre wide and 80 metre high cabin 800 meters underground).
• Lots of transmission poles and wires to shift the power around the grid.

Not that simple

Although it’s not that simple. The project needs a lot more than the basic ingredients.

It’s a big project that takes a lot of engineers, managers, and workers, materials, technical skill and knowhow, time, and money. And it’s certainly won’t (and didn’t) take only four years, as originally announced by Turnbull in 2017.

Even if all the stars align (they haven’t) you start with very large capital cost and finish with a system’s that just not that efficient – a lot of energy is wasted in the scheme pumping water uphill.

The idea that is Snowy 2.0 has been around since at least the mid-sixties.

On several occasions, studies were carried out, but the concept was rejected.

On 16 March 2017, Frontier Economics Managing Director and Energy Market expert Danny Price was walking into the ABC to talk about a completely different topic. But when Turnbull made his announcement, the topic changed to Snowy 2.0.

Price, who knew of the past studies, stated up front the proposal would be “diabolically difficult” to deliver and opined that there was “a very good chance it would never happen.”

Federal Government buyout

One obstacle in the proposal’s pathway was control; the fact that Snowy Hydro Limited was collectively owned by the Federal, NSW and Victorian governments. In May 2017, the Federal Government made a budget announcement that it would buy the two state government’s share in Snowy Hydro Limited.

By March 2018, agreement was reached for the Federal government to acquire the states’ shares for $6 billion. The agreement was finalised over the next 3 months and by mid-year, Snowy Hydro Limited had become a 100% Commonwealth owned corporation.

Secret business case

In December 2018, with an equity injection of $1.38 billion dollars from the taxpayer, Snowy Hydro Limited made a final investment decision to proceed with the project.

The remainder of the Snowy Hydro budget, which had grown to $6 billion, was to be financed from debt funding.

Much of the documentation around that final investment decision was made available publicly, but the business case was not (and still hasn’t been). That meant no-one outside of Government really knew if the business case stacked up. Many experts were adamant that it could not.

The business case should have been made public. Snowy Hydro Limited is 100% owned by the taxpayer, and so it is the taxpayers (combined with Australian energy users) who are underwriting the economics of the project.

Sadly, the Federal Government went into its default secrecy mode, wrapping a snow blanket over much of the program. Over time, as the problems with the program emerged, the snow blanket has just gotten thicker … but I’ll come back to that.

Climate investment

The secrecy surrounding the business case was unnecessary. Most taxpayers would accept that there is a public benefit in the project that needs to be factored into decision making; it isn’t just about economics.

As the National Energy Market shifts from fossil fuel power stations to renewable energy sources, there’s a need for ‘base-load’ sources to deal with situations where the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. Snowy 2.0 contributes to that with its potential 350,000 megawatt hours of power stored in the water in the upper reservoir. It was to be like a big battery, storing and releasing energy as needed.

But of course, there’s a point where the cost really does become too high. And that’s exactly what’s happening now.

Stuck on you, Florence

In April 2019, a contract was signed for engineering, procurement and construction of the project. Tunnel boring work started in December 2020.

Meanwhile COVID hit, material costs increased with global supply chain issues, labour shortages and ongoing adverse weather conditions. At least that’s the public explanation provided by Snowy Hydro Limited management as the costs have started billowing.

In March 2022, the main tunnel boring work commenced. ‘Florence’, a specially designed 143 metre tunnel boring machine weighing 2,400 tonnes (more that the displacement of many conventionally powered submarines), is supposed to drill an 11 metre diameter tunnel at a progress rate of around 30 metres a day. But it ground to a halt in December 2022, having created a huge sinkhole in the mountain surface 70 metres above her.

An avalanche of cost increases

The $6B revised budget has blown out with the project’s lead contractor making an additional $2.2B claim on Snowy Hydro Limited.

Then there’s the denial by all involved that a significant upgrade to poles and wires is required to distribute Snowy 2.0’s electricity around the national energy market. It’s a cost not recognised in the project’s budget. Those poles and wires will ultimately have to be paid for by either the taxpayer or electricity consumers.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a project cost review underway.

Whilst the company asserts it hasn’t asked for more taxpayer funding, it’s likely going to need a significant injection of public funds to allow the project to proceed.

Under the snow blanket

In a Freedom of Information request that I made to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water in April, I asked for all 2023 ministerial briefs prepared for Minister Bowen in relation to the status of the project. I also asked for any 2023 project ‘earned value management reports’, which would detail the known project cost and schedule variances.

Lots of documents that matched my request were identified, but I was refused access to all of them. Even talking points prepared for the Minister were withheld from me.

It’s quite beyond belief that, despite Snowy Hydro Limited being a 100% taxpayer owned company, spending taxpayers’ money, with a budget spiralling out of control,

the department that oversees it doesn’t want a single word released into the public.

There’s been a complete transparency failure around the whole thing. It’s nothing short of a snow job from public servants that are supposed to serve the public.

The taxpayer is going to end up paying a lot more for Snowy 2.0 than was ever originally planned and they are currently committed to, but they’re being kept in total darkness.

Saving Florence Grace

There are more than a few lessons in the story of Snowy 2.0 for the vastly bigger AUKUS project that’s now unfolding under Prime Minister Albanese. At the beginning there are big statements, bold declarations and an optimistic schedule and cost estimates.

Later, the going gets tough when a hollowed out bureaucracy and self-serving consultants can’t deliver what’s been promised. Secrecy and avoiding accountability then come to the fore, and those responsible usually exit the scene long before the final reckoning is made. Taxpayers always take a hit.

The only saving grace for Snowy 2.0 is that, next to the $368B price tag of AUKUS, $10B seems like a bargain. And it will, at least, leave us with a long-lasting asset to the national economy. That too will be a positive, especially when viewed alongside 100,000 years of radioactive waste that AUKUS will leave us with.

 

https://michaelwest.com.au/snow-job-snowy-hydro-2-0-in-a-fathomless-crevasse-of-costs/

 

 

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Pumped hydro storage: the neglected, stifled no-brainer

 

By Geoff Davies

 

 

 

Pumped hydro storage is the ideal complement to wind and solar electricity generation: versatile, modest in scale, cost and build-time, little environmental disruption, mature component technologies, few toxic chemicals, durable. Yet it is consistently overlooked in mainstream discussion in favour of gas-fired power stations, batteries and the nuclear zombie. It is also shackled by out-of-date regulations, short-sighted financial criteria and the business models of privatised entities.

Pumped hydro is a straightforward way to store energy and to regenerate electricity when required. It comprises two ponds, one high and one low, a pipe between them and a pump/generator at the lower end. When electricity is abundant, water is pumped from the lower to the higher pond, thus storing energy. When electricity is scarce, water can be run down through the generator to regenerate electricity, and the water then held in the lower pond, to be used again.

Crucially, the system does not have to be on a watercourse, in fact it is much simpler if it is not. The ponds are much smaller than giant water-supply dams and the water is recycled, so the system requires only small amounts of water to replace losses.

Snowy 2.0 is the worst possible way to do pumped hydro. It requires 17 km of tunnelling and expensive links to the grid, it pollutes the national park, is already well behind schedule and has suffered huge cost blow-outs. It diverts huge resources, perpetuates misconceptions about the essence of pumped hydro, and gives it a bad name.

Engineers had decided years before that Snowy 2 would not be financially viable, but Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull needed a gigabuck announceable to pretend he had some kind of global warming strategy. Perhaps subsequent prime ministers have let it run because it is so slow and expensive it does not seriously threaten the fossil fuel industry.

Groups at University of Melbourne and ANU have identified hundreds of sites suitable for medium-scale pumped hydro (a few hundred megawatts). If a dozen or twenty of those were located around the country, closer to grid connections and population than Snowy 2, a more versatile storage system could be more quickly built for less money, pollution and disruption.

Once built, pumped hydro systems can be brought online within minutes or less. They could easily cover the limited peak times for which gas-fired plants are often mooted. There should be no more talk of building gas-fired power stations to cover limited peak times.

They can perform much of the role to stabilise the grid that batteries have been found to excel at. If a quicker response is required (seconds or milliseconds) then a quite small battery plant could be installed in conjunction with pumped hydro.

There are some government programs to promote a few pumped hydro systems, but they are slow to emerge and they play little role in national discussions. The Labor government seems to have little appreciation of their potential to quickly and economically transition our electricity system. There need be no fossil fuels in our electricity system within the decade. Or perhaps Labor isn’t serious about reducing emissions.

Public discussion is heavily skewed by vested interests, the gas and battery industries and the wannabe nuclear industry. Nuclear is laughably inappropriate: slow, extremely expensive, dirty, dangerous, a potential route to nuclear weapons. The latter aspect, bombs, is presumably a major hidden agenda behind the otherwise ludicrous promotion of nuclear power.

Big, centralised electricity generation plants are from an era now past. Sun and wind spread across the landscape. It makes sense to capture their energy locally and use it locally. That is one reason why regional pumped hydro systems make sense. Smaller, localised systems also make sense for communities currently near the end of long power lines. Such local systems would also enhance resilience during fires and other emergencies.

Attempts to promote a small pumped hydro system for the small town I live in (Braidwood NSW, which was threatened for weeks during the Black Summer fires) have met multiple obstacles, despite its clear advantages. Major investment funds demand a 7% p.a. return, in other words a ten-year payback. Detailed modelling of our system fell short of this criterion.

Yet a pumped hydro system has a long life: at least fifty years is quite plausible. Payback over twenty years would be financially quite feasible, and over a fifty-year life the system would pay off handsomely. Our short-sighted financial system is not interested. A community might raise funds (some do) but that is not easy and there would be some risk.

Our situation is prime for government investment or support. The original Snowy Mountains Scheme was of course a government-funded project, featuring a big up-front investment and a long payback. But governments don’t want to do that any more – despite evidence all around us of the failure of privatised services that used to be supplied by governments.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) might provide support funding for a medium-scale system (over 30 MW), but not for our small system (5-7MW). They also are driven by financial-system criteria, and ideology, rather than longer-term net benefit.

Another obstacle is that retail prices are closely regulated and the potentially lower cost cannot be passed on to our local customers. That regulation is from the big, centralised era, so people distant from giant power plants don’t pay excessively for transmission. It makes no sense in the era of wind and sun.

If we want to use the existing poles and wires to deliver locally-generated electricity over short distances we pay an extra 12c/kW hour in each direction, removing our price advantage and delivering extra profit to the effectively privatised entity (Essential Energy) that now manages them. Had the NSW government retained control of the poles and wires it would be easier to design policies to facilitate local, clean electricity.

At every level, political, financial, ideological and bureaucratic, the clear advantages of pumped hydro energy storage are stifled. Our communities, our society and the planet need this straightforward, non-polluting energy storage option to be unshackled and rapidly promoted.

https://johnmenadue.com/pumped-hydro-storage-the-neglected-stifled-no-brainer/

 

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Dear (expensive) Ministers – why do costs and timelines for Snowy 2.0 keep shifting yet are so readily approved?

 

   by Rex Patrick 

 

It took just a day for two ministers to approve another Snowy Hydro $6 billion dollar cost blow-out and further delays to completion. Rex Patrick looks at how the project is travelling.

If you’ve ever tried to get a $250K, or even $50K, grant from the Federal Government to support a much-needed local community project, you’ll know the paperwork you must go through to get approval and then get the money flowing.

The bureaucratic red tape makes a funnel-web’s lair look inviting. After dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s and then submitting the application with voluminous attachments, there are months and months of waiting while the relevant Department(s) does its due diligence and value-for-money checks.

But if you’re Snowy Hydro Limited (‘Snowy’), all it takes is a 10-page ‘reset’ letter and a wait of just one day. On 29 August this year, the Chair of Snowy Hydro Limited, David Knox, sent a letter to Energy Minister Chris Bowen and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher proposing that $6B of additional Snowy 2.0 project costs be approved. Approval was granted the very next day.

Thinking to myself – wow, that must have been an extraordinarily convincing letter – and noting that the two shareholder ministers had written to Snowy in their approval and talked up the corporation’s new transparency approach, I thought I’d FOI the letter.

Despite the letter creating a $6B imposition on taxpayers, most of it has been withheld from the public.

We don’t get to see the rationale for the doubling of Snowy 2.0’s cost.

The 29 August redacted letter is embedded at the bottom of this article. Because it’s heavily redacted, it’s impossible to work out just what the compelling argument presented to the shareholder ministers could have been, MWM is going to tell you what should have been in the frank and fearless, or at least very honest, advice to the Ministers.

So here goes …

Dear Ministers,

It’s not a renewable project

Ministers, before we kick off with the merits and financial argument, we thought we’d better come clean on a grand deception. Despite us regularly presenting Snowy 2.0 as “Australia’s largest renewable energy project”, that’s just not true.

Snowy 2.0 is planned to work by pumping water from the low-lying Talbingo Reservoir up to the high-set Tantangara Reservoir when electricity prices are cheap and letting the water flow back down through power-generating turbines when electricity prices are dear.

We’ll need power to do the pumping – lots of power. We’ll be taking that power from the grid … that is, the grid that’s a mix of coal-fired, gas-fired and renewable energy.

The strict truth is that the water is recycled, and the process is repeatable, but it’s not renewable energy.

It’s an energy storage system agnostic of where the energy comes from.

But to be clear, we’re not suggesting this be explained to anyone because you’ll continue to get away with a clear, simple, and straightforward explanation that it is renewable, and no one’s going to raise a twig.

As Sir Humphrey Appleby once said:

you don’t need the truth, you just need something to tell the Parliament.

It’s inefficient

This is a little bit complicated Ministers, but complicated is great. You can spin your way out of complicated.

Our project is very inefficient. Water is pumped from the lower reservoir to the upper reservoir, which at a later time returns to the lower reservoir, with a round-trip efficiency of about 75%. In other words, about 25% of the electricity generated is lost in the pumping process.

Then there are the losses associated with getting the power over transmission lines to and from Snowy 2.0, which is not exactly located close to the big centres of energy demand.

Inefficiency means cost. Snow 2.0 power will be expensive. It’s only ever going to be used as power-of-last-resort.

There are other better and cheaper last-resort solutions. But, just stick with “it’s renewable”. That ought to do it.

But wait, there’s more

When it comes to total cost Ministers, it’s important to hold the line that it’s $12B.

As you know, in order to simplify approvals and to minimise oversight, Australian taxpayers bought out the NSW and Victorian Government’s shares in Snowy Hydro in March 2018 for $6B. It’s of no benefit to anyone to include that number in the total.

The reality is when it eventuates that we’re significantly in the red and unable to get a return on this ‘investment’, the Commonwealth can always cut its losses and privatise Snowy. No one will remember the squandering of public money, and if you’re still in power, you can spin the $1B ‘fire sale’ as a huge windfall for the public purse.

Snowy Job

But one final word of caution Ministers, don’t mention transmission lines. There are a couple of problems with that.

We’ve spent a bit of effort to distance the cost of transmission lines from the cost of Snowy 2.0. ‘Snowy Link North’ and ‘Snowy Link South’ have been renamed to ‘HumeLink/Sydney Ring South’ and ‘VNI West’. We don’t want the original estimate of $1B to $2B transmission line cost, now blown out to more than $12B, to be added to the $6B share buyout and $12B new project cost.

That would reveal Snowy 2.0’s real cost to taxpayers/consumers as a gobsmacking $30B. That is an embarrassment we just don’t want to deal with.

Oh, and the other thing you need to understand, but not promote, is that there’ll be no underground transmission lines, rather 8 kilometres of 120 to 140 metres wide easements running throughout Kosciuszko National Park. For the first time in 50 years, we’re going to see overhead transmission lines built in a NSW National Park. Over 100 hectares of pristine national park will be cleared.

And whatever you do, don’t mention the noxious fish and pathogens that will be transferred from Talbingo to Tantangara and from there to the Murray, Murrumbidgee, Snowy and Tumut Rivers, devastating native fish.

Lotsa’ jobs

Wherever you confront dissent over the outrageous cost of this project, just mention the 2700 jobs that we say are created by this project.

We know there’s a shortage of skilled workers across Australia and that using workers on inefficient projects just drives inflation up. Stay away from that issue because it’s a hard argument to walk away from in one piece.

No transparency

Don’t worry Ministers, nothing in this letter is likely to come out, thanks to our broken FOI system.

If anyone asks for this letter, you can deny them access under FOI, saying it’s all commercial-in-confidence.

Nation-building

Finally Ministers, if there’s one thing we can’t emphasise too much, it’s that we should keep talking about this being a “nation-building” project.

The original Snowy scheme was nation-building, so something the marketing team labelled Snowy 2.0 must be nation-building, too.

The ghosts of Ben Chiefly, Bill McKell, William Hudson, and so many tireless workers from distant shores are still pretty serviceable stage props for the political mythology draped over the shambles of a project we’re trying to run.

Don’t worry about Florence, the tunnelling machine that’s bogged down in our still very, very short tunnel; when we move a bit more, we’ll put up a plaque for one or both of you to unveil at a new media event.

We’ll whip up a speech about how we’re all “nation-building”.

This project is not value-for-money. This project makes no sense. It’s not nation-building. You already know that. But, Ministers, this project really is too big to fail, so please send us your approval to proceed.

 

https://michaelwest.com.au/dear-ministers-why-do-costs-and-timelines-for-snowy-2-0-keep-shifting-yet-are-so-readily-approved/

 

 

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What’s the scam with Snow Hydro 2.0 Chris – are they boring a secret bottomless money pit?

by Rex Patrick

 

It’s a document that purports to explain $6 billion in public expenditure. Yet Minister Chris Bowen is putting every hurdle in the way to stop public scrutiny. What’s the scam with this $2B, sorry $4.5B, sorry 5.1B, sorry $12B project?

The scam is the latest example of self-interested government secrecy.

In September last year, I asked Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen for access under Australia’s Freedom of Information law to the ‘Snowy Hydro 2.0 Corporate Plan Update’ that had been provided to him (and the Minister for Finance, Katy Gallagher) to justify a blow-out in the project’s costs from a massive $6 billion to an astounding $12 billion.

It wasn’t the first blowout. When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull first announced Snowy Hydro 2.0 in March 2017, it was a $2B scheme. By the end of 2017, it was an ‘up to $4.5B’ scheme. In April 2019, the price had risen to $5.1B.

And Australian taxpayers are now on the hook for at least $12 billion.

 

READ MORE: https://michaelwest.com.au/snowy-hydro-2-whats-the-scam/

 

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Snowy Hydro 2.0 keeps being delayed and keeps costing taxpayers more money. Yet, finding out how much and what the billions are being spent on is difficult. Rex Patrick on his fight for information.

Last financial year the Australian Government spent $100 billion of taxpayers’ money buying and building stuff. But Ministers and bureaucrats don’t like scrutiny of how that money’s spent. My fight to get access to Snowy 2.0 project performance information, evidence and argument has exposed how the Government puts a secrecy shroud over all major projects.

The refusal of the Australian Government to disclose project performance reports for the troubled Snowy 2.0 project can only be offensive to the average Australian.

Snowy Hydro Limited, the builder of Snowy 2.0, is a 100% Commonwealth-owned corporation. Snowy 2.0 is being funded by a $4B taxpayer equity injection, a further $4.5B taxpayer loan and from Snowy Hydro’s dividends that would otherwise be paid to Treasury. Summary – you’re paying for it, all of it.

And yet, as the project has gone from $2B to $6B and now to $12B, a secrecy blanket has been pulled across the project.

It’s a secrecy blanket supported by its shareholder ministers, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW – the Department that oversees the Corporation) and Snowy Hydro itself.

I can say they’re all opposed to transparency and scrutiny because they were all parties in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) fighting to stop the release of project performance information in response to an MWM Freedom of Information request.

Having just spent three days in a hotly contested AAT hearing, it’s only now I can legally reveal the way in which the Government and Snowy Hydro seek to protect themselves from scrutiny.

A Three-Step Trick

The secrecy blanket is woven through a simple three-step process.

Step One: Agree by way of contract that everything that is communicated between Snowy Hydro and the Government that is marked “confidential” is to be treated as confidential.

Step Two: Mark everything “confidential”. It doesn’t matter if the information is actually confidential, as long as it’s marked “confidential”, then everything’s OK.

Step Three: When a member of the public makes an FOI request for information related to project performance, simply claim that the release of the information would constitute a ‘breach of contract’.

Boom! Scrutiny killed!

 

Under cross-examination, Leonie Horrocks, the head of DCCEEW’s Energy Enablers Branch, admitted that she never pushed back when documents arrived marked as “confidential”. Apparently, in DCEEW’s view, it’s up to the originator (Snowy Hydro) to determine the classification of the material.

I took Ms Horrocks, the FOI decision maker, to a document that was claimed to be confidential and exempt from access.  The document in question was titled “Dennis Barnes Bio” (the new CEO of Snowy Hydro) and asked her how his biography, which is available on the corporation’s website, could be confidential. No answer was forthcoming.

The Tribunal has now adjourned the matter for six weeks, ordering the Government to provide an argument as to why Snowy Hydro should not be considered part of “the Commonwealth”, a classification that would, for legal reasons, kill their opportunity to claim ‘breach of contract’.

Along with other arguments pressed by me in the Tribunal, there is a possibility that the Tribunal will lift the secrecy blanket on Snowy Hydro 2.0.

A Very Small Win

If the Tribunal does open up Snowy 2.0 to scrutiny, it will be a small but significant win.

Last year the Government spent $100B on procurement. $67B of that was on projects that were for more than $20M.

Because these larger projects likely involved tailored contracts, the three-step trick will likely be built into them.

 

READ MORE:

https://michaelwest.com.au/snowy-hydro-performance-shrouded-in-secrecy-the-three-step-trick/

 

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