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Category: Government

10/03/2026

Iran Attack is another step on a bad road.

10 March 2026

(Warning- long and discursive post).

It is always important to see events in as broad a context as possible.
Prior to the First World War, Germany was rising due the industrialisation of Bismarck, and the US was rising because of its natural advantages. Britain was declining. Britain and France may have been able to defeat Germany, but the US came in at the last minute and affirmed its place as the world’s leading power.
Germany was humiliated, and continued to be shut out of markets, as was the rising Japan. Both became strong and their expansion led to WW2. The US, again remained aloof until the bombing of Pearl Harbour. The US still let the Russians do most of the fighting against Germany (look at the casualty figures if you doubt this), and came in at the end. D-Day was 6 June 1944, but Stalingrad had fallen on 2 February 1943 and the Russians had been advancing ever since.
Between the wars, the League of Nations had been created, which failed to stop German rearming and aggression. After WW2, a meeting a Bretton Woods intended to turn the whole world into one market, so that countries that did well would rise, and those who did not do so well would fall, all without wars. The US, with almost half world GDP would be in a good position, and set up the UN with a veto for the major powers.
The new world order, helped by technological advances in communications and logistics, and some US pressure for free trade treaties have largely turned the world into a market, where the wealthy nations or corporations could buy whatever they wanted. But the legacies of colonialism remained. Many developing g countries had had their resources taken over by colonial countries that were not about to give up those lucrative assets. Diamonds, gold and oil were three commodities where the major Western powers did not want to give up control. A developing country with a government acting for its people would obviously demand that the benefit of its resources would go to its people. The Colonial model was that the foreign power leaned on the government, but left it in place as long as it let the foreign power have the resources. So there was always a tension in the great powers between the rhetoric of freedom and democracy and the reality of making sure that whatever government exists lets the foreign power have the goodies.
How this conflict has played out in the US is documented in the book, ‘The Devil’s Chessboard- Allen Dulles, the CIA and the rise of America’s Secret Government’ by David Talbot. The CIA seems to have continued to get the US to ruthlessly pursue its interests with little care for the consequences for weaker nations. The book chronicles many democratic movements that tried to get a better deal for their people and were ruthless supressed by CIA-backed authoritarian regimes, often with dire consequences for the democratic figures. One of the only examples of the US actually working for democracy seems to have been John F Kennedy, who declined to give US support to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba after the revolution in 1961, saying that the US supported progressive regimes in the belief that it would deal with them in affair and honest trading way. Kennedy sacked the head of the CIA, Allen Dulles after the invasion, and was assassinated shortly thereafter. Talbot does not think that this was a coincidence.
It seems that the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about in his farewell speech of 17 January 1961 has come to pass. Because the armaments industry is private in the US, wars are good for considerable sections of the US economy, and whether the US wins or loses does not matter much as long as the US itself is not significantly inconvenienced. It would seem that the CIA world view is dominant in Washington, and that includes supporting US corporate interests overseas as well as defence. The CIA-dominated policy has continued since Dulles. President Obama may have wished to change this; his slogan was ‘Change is possible’. He initially tried a bipartisan approach and then did not have the numbers in Congress. His epitaph might read, ‘Change was not possible’.
The election of Trump might be seen as a protest vote, even a revolution, against a system that seemed to grind on, as the US declined due to its wage structure making it uncompetitive as a manufacturing base, with corporations keen to manufacture offshore. A lack of money for education, an appalling gerrymander and slanted voting eligibility rules contributed to Trump’s victory, as did skilful use of databases and narrowcasting in social media and the paucity of options in a binary system.
Be all that as it may, the election of a basically ignorant and prejudiced man has resulted in an erratic US foreign policy. Simplistic arrogance and hubris have led to a cavalier disregard for the rules-based order that initially allowed the US to prosper, but the concentration of wealth has moved from national borders to corporations and now individuals. The nation states are still the basis of world order, though increasingly Capital in the form of multinational corporations or even individuals tell them what to do. But the nation states still exist and the US is the largest militarily, though it is declining economically. Climate change will soon mean that Russia and China will be able to trade via the North Pole, so the US wants Greenland, and Trump, with the tact he learned as a shock jock does not mind saying so. (The movie, ‘The Apprentice’ about the rise of Trump has a telling ending about the origin and success of his moral values). It may also be that Con men, lacking any real truths or values are more easily conned themselves.
The simplest reason for the attack on Iran would seem to be that Israel conned him into it. Israel has either subdued countries around it, like Jordan and Egypt or attacked and supressed them, helped by their economic troubles. Israel made deals with the major Middle Eastern economic powers, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, which is why Hamas, seeing the problem of Palestine being ignored, arranged the 7 October 2023 attack. The US and circumstance have neutralised Syria and Iraq, so the only real threat to Israel has been Iran.
Iran is a tragic illustration of CIA-controlled US foreign policy leading to bad outcomes. In 1908 oil was discovered leading to the formation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. In 1925 Reza Khan deposed the nominal monarch and became Shah Pahlavi in 1925. He was nationalist, anti-communist, authoritarian and secularist to the point of being anti-Islam, trying to ban the burqa, which upset the Muslim elements in the country.
In 1941 during the WW2 occupation of Iran by the British and Russians, the Shah’s son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi took over from his father. In 1951 there was a Democratic revolution and the government of Mohammad Mossadeq nationalised the oil industry. But Mossadeq had his problems with opposition from the Clerics, Communists, as well as the Shah and his army supporters. A CIA assisted coup overthrew the democratic government and re-installed the Shah, the deal being that 50% of the National Iranian Oil Company was controlled by foreign companies, BP, Shell, Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf, Standard Oil of California and Companie francais des petroles. The CIA supported the Shah and trained his ruthless secret police. As the Shah’s support waned, we wanted to negotiate a better deal for Iran, so he lost US support and was toppled in 1979. But because all democratic movements had been ruthlessly suppressed, the only organised political force were the most fanatical mosques, which the secret police had not been able to penetrate, and the Ayatollah who had been a figurehead, safely in Paris. In 1980 the US persuaded Saddam Hussein to launch the Iran-Iraq war, on the basis that the Clerics’ purge of the army would leave Iran unable to respond. The war went on for 8 years and killed huge numbers, but resulted in a stalemate. The religious regime has survived ever since, trying to get nuclear weapons which would make it ‘safer’, at least from US or Israeli attack.
The US policy has been to support regimes or movements that support it. They supported and trained the Taliban in Pakistan to get rid of the Russians in Afghanistan, then found that the Taliban did not want them either. They allegedly conned Saddam Hussein into thinking that he could have Kuwait as a reward for the Iran-Iraq war, then invaded Iraq in 1991. Hussain was ruthless to those who were politically active, but he was Sunni on a country which was only about 25% Sunni and many of these were Kurds. He was toppled in the second (2003) invasion because of alleged ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ that the UN Weapons Inspector, Hans Bix said were not there. Free elections would have had a Shia majority, who looked to Shia Iran, and the US had no strategy to create stability. They have supported the gaggle of hereditary autocratic regimes in the Gulf States, which are non-democratic, fundamentalism, repressive of women and supported by secret police, but economically supportive of the US. Fundamentalist religious sects like Wahhabism, almost a throwback to medieval times, are tolerated for the same reason. (Sunni and Shia strands of Islam have had antipathy for years because of a fight over who should succeed Muhammad in 634AD, each side believing that the other is illegitimate).
To return to the current war situation, it seems that Israel has been trying to get US backing for an attack on Iran for years, Iran has also anticipated this and has many drones, that are much cheaper and more numerous than the clever weapons that shoot them down. They have targeted US bases, so while they are accused of attacking many countries, they are mainly attacking the US bases, with some key oil facilities thrown in. They have been very successful in targeting US radar facilities, so the US is no longer sure of what they are doing. The Israelis have no qualms, now carpet bombing.
Australia is now a bit-player, with Foreign Minister Penny Wong taking a call from the recently visiting Israeli President Herzog, and now rushing our airborne early warning aircraft to UAE, needed of course because Iran has successfully bombed all the radar bases.
Trump, who started all this is claiming victory, but if oil stays bottled up, petrol prices will rise, and inflation will increase. His Board of Peace looks like a very bad joke.
Prof Clinton Fernandez thinks that shutting off China’s oil is part of a grand strategy, but this is doubtful. It is true however, that China gets most of its oil from Venezuela and Iran so will be most unhappy. Should they choose to take Taiwan, the US would be preoccupied in the Middle East and has also set the precedent that Great Powers can do what they like.
The British commentator, George Galloway says on Instagram that the US is about to drop a nuclear bomb on the Fordow mountain in Iran because there is a nuclear facility under it. He then predicts that Russia will intervene.
The Australian Peace Movement is strangely silent. How bad does it have to get?
Pine Gap and the new US nuclear submarine base in Western Australia are safe for the moment, but Iran may do terror attacks here.
Here is the Oil explanation from Clinton Fernandez in the SMH of 3/3/26.

Trump’s attacks are not about Iran. He’s after a much bigger fish

Prof Clinton Fernandes, Academic and former intelligence officer
3 March 2026 SMH

Behind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy. In the short term, he wants to demonstrate leverage over China when he meets President Xi Jinping at a pivotal summit next month. In the long term, he wants a politically submissive Middle East.
China, the world’s largest refiner of oil, purchases about 14 per cent of its seaborne crude from Iran. The true figure is probably higher, disguised as shipments from Oman, the UAE and Malaysia to get around US sanctions. Independent low-margin Chinese refiners in Shandong province, known as teapots, also import high-sulphur fuel oil from Iran. Taken as a whole, China’s enormous plastics sector relies on Iran for almost a quarter of its liquefied petroleum gas. Control over what Iran can export and to whom allows the US to retaliate if China restricts rare earth mineral supplies to the United States.

Trump’s abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January was driven in part by a similar logic; Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and its Merey grade is also high in sulphur, well suited for China’s teapot refineries. Trump wants indirect but politically critical leverage over China through control over Iran and Venezuela.
The key word here is “control”. Control of oil rather than access to oil is the foundation of the United States’ Middle East policy. “Access to oil” implies that the United States simply wishes to buy oil like any other country; that it wants oil at a reasonable price. But the US already has access to oil. Its East Coast oil refiners (PBF Energy, Phillips 66 and Monroe Energy) have no trouble buying oil from West African suppliers. Thanks to its domestic shale revolution, the US is already self-sufficient. It is a major contributor to the global oil supply network.
Control is a very different beast. Control of oil means, among other things, controlling the terms on which its industrial rivals in Europe and Asia can access their oil. After World War II, the reconstruction of Japan required abundant supplies of energy. The United States obtained what it called “veto power” over Japan by controlling its access to these supplies. A price increase can harm the dollar reserves of heavily oil-dependent economies, ensuring they act in accordance with US objectives. Sometimes, a US-induced price rise can help its diplomacy. In 1986, the US requested Saudi Arabia to cut production to drive crude oil prices higher – to improve US relations with none other than Iran, which needed higher prices.
Control also means ensuring that oil-rich Gulf states pour some of their revenues into US Treasury securities, banks and corporations. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has bought $US150 billion ($211 billion) in US Treasury holdings. Kuwait, another family dictatorship, has bought $US66 billion.
These oil-rich states buy US Treasury bonds, make deposits in US banks and otherwise ensure that some of the dollars they earn from oil sales will flow back to US corporations. They also buy advanced US weapons systems. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are among the largest buyers of advanced US weapons systems.
Qatar, a monarchy with the third-largest proven reserves of natural gas in the world, hosts the forward headquarters of US Central Command at Al-Udeid Air Base, which it built at a cost of over $US1 billion. It will spend many more billions to expand it from an expeditionary to a permanent base for more than 15,000 personnel and their aircraft. Its sovereign wealth fund has committed over $US45 billion in investments in US corporations. Qatar Airways is a major buyer of US commercial aircraft.
An Iran with a government more amenable to US influence can be expected to do something similar. This is why Trump says that the war against Iran could take weeks. He isn’t merely interested in ending its uranium enrichment. After all, Iran obtained its original nuclear reactor as well the highly enriched uranium fuel to run it from the US, under former president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program in 1957, when the two countries were friendly.
In the long term, a politically submissive Middle East would likely see a network of states with authoritarian regimes that comply with US objectives. These include rolling back Iran’s membership of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, undermining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and weakening the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. If the US can’t change the Islamic Republic itself, then keeping it weak, divided and preoccupied with its internal affairs is good enough.
Control, not access, is what Trump is after. It is the same strategy Britain had 100 years ago, when Walter Hume Long, the first lord of the admiralty, said that “if we secure the supplies of oil now available in the world, we can do what we like”.

Professor Clinton Fernandes is in the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW. His latest book is Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era.

05/03/2026

Coles and ‘The Market’

5 March 2026

Currently the ACCC is suing Coles over misleading advertising as their promotion logo ‘Down, Down’ was to show customers cheap goods, but some of these had previously had big rises, so that overall they had not fallen, or not fallen much.

When I did Economics 101 a long time ago, the first chapter of the book was about the perfect market, modelled on a European medieval village where each Saturday all the farmers came to the square and sold their produce to the villagers. The farmers all competed with each other, and could not really take their produce home. The villagers had just enough money, so chose wisely which products to buy. The farmers could not raise their prices more than the other farmers and knew roughly how much to bring, and the villagers had complete knowledge of the products that they were buying.

All the other chapters in the book were about how the market was distorted by cartels, oligopolies, innovation, scarcity, lack of knowledge, regulation and doubtless a few other factors that I have forgotten.

In the simple medieval world, people spent all their money on necessities and made rational decisions. Now, a huge percentage of our expenditure is discretionary. Some people are battling to afford food, clothes, services and rent, particularly the last two, which have been badly affected by poor government policies over many years.

But the main area of interest to marketers is the people with discretionary income. Will they buy a branded product, believing it is better or more prestigious? The ‘science’ of marketing at an individual level is a branch of psychology- working out motivations. A marketer told me that people make decisions with their emotions, then justify them intellectually afterwards. This is true and it follows that the model of the rational villager is simply not what happens.

Big decisions, like moving to a more expensive suburb, buying a prestigious brand car taking an expensive holiday, or upgrading to a more expensive seat class, are a combination of emotional and rational; you want this and you can afford that.

Airlines and some accommodations are interesting. If you try to buy an airline ticket online and fall off, when you go back a few minutes later, the fare you had is no longer there. Did it really get sold in that moment, or did the airline find out who you were and up the fare? Fares can vary wildly. I tried to catch a train from Stockholm to a northern Swedish city and the price varied almost tenfold depending on what time I wanted to travel. Were they just trying to even the load, or was there some gross profiteering there?

Some supermarkets charge more in richer suburbs than poorer ones. The products are the same. Presumably the rents in the expensive suburbs are more, but how much is that per item? When Aldi came, I was amazed that the total cost of groceries was about 30% lower than the Coles/Woolworths duopoly. The range of products is less, but it is a big gap. The duopoly lowered their prices on things that are easy to remember like milk and bread and made a great play of the fact that these were price-competitive, but frankly, most of the rest of the wasn’t and isn’t.

At least some good folk have kept a record of what was actually charged and when and it seems in Coles ‘Down, Down’ sometimes means ‘Up, Up’.

Years ago in the BUGA UP days (early 1980s) when they had an ‘Advertising Standards Council’ and you complained to it, absurd claims were dismissed as ‘puffery’ that no one believed, so of course it was OK to make them. When the heat from BUGA UP and the consumers went off, the Advertising Standards Council simply disappeared and the nonsense continues unabated, (not that it ever was abated). The ACCC (Aust. Consumers and Competition Commission) seems either to have collected the data or has had it collected for them, so is able to take action at last.

It might be noted that government-owned Sydney Markets at Flemington had cheap stalls and most retailers and the public went there to buy their groceries. Liberal Premier Nick Greiner privatised the markets, putting the stalls up for sale based on their turnover. This created a huge overhead for the stallholders, who naturally had to buy their spaces for large sums. All the market prices naturally had to rise, and the big supermarkets by-passed the markets, buying direct from the farmers and squeezing their prices down. This was a significant move from the previous free market, done so that the NSW government could flog off as asset. The duopoply and buying power of the supermarkets further distort the price structures.

Allan Fels was a former head of the ACCC and has written the piece below in the SMH of 4/3/26. Late in the article he mentions one of the technologies that already exists, which is people simply visiting supermarkets, picking what they want and leaving, having been identified by face recognition and charged as per their card on a database. An idea that he foreshadows is digital pricing, where the goods do not have a price, but the price can be set for each individual customer, presumably based on their profile. Currently, there are loyalty schemes that collect our appearances, personal details, locations, shopping habits, and credit details. Free apps want access to our contacts lists and photos, so our friends are all linked together, and now technology companies listen to our conversations and can scan our emails. All this data is saleable for marketing, security or anything else. Presumably, as we come out of our future supermarkets with no prices on the goods, no checkout and no dockets but the bill visible on our phones, we can compare what we paid with strangers in the street, and see what their prices were compared to our own. Then a bevy of lawyers can make a fortune arguing with the supermarkets who will allege that were not ripping some customers off, they were subsidising the poor ones.

It’s a Brave New World.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/our-supermarket-duopoly-needs-to-tell-not-just-the-truth-but-the-whole-truth-20260303-p5o6yk.html

04/03/2026

Politicians Property Ownership- a Big Obstruction to Tax Reform

23 February 20265

It is important not to see this as just a Liberal v Labor issue. Tax deductible property has been a no- brainer way to make money in Australia for 50 years and has distorted the national investments and directed most of our capital into non-productive static assets. We need major tax reform, and what this shows is how difficult it will be to get the politicians to vote against their personal financial interests.

Histogram coming!!!

04/03/2026

Tax Reform at Last?

23 February 2026

At last, a significant financial commentator has stated the need for major tax reform to improve inter-generational equity.

Death duties are a major way to achieve this. Stopping negative gearing, abolishing the Howard discount of capital gains tax, and taxing static wealth, so that the family home cannot be a tax haven, no matter how huge it is.

Whether Prime Minister Albanese has the balls to do any of it is the question, and whether Tim Wilson, Liberal Opposition Treasurer who says he is for inter-generational equity will support a bipartisan approach rather than opposing all tax cuts is even more uncertain.

Two big tax holes are perpetuating Australia's wealth inequality

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-23/reducing-inequality-means-taxing-capital-more/106369480

04/03/2026

Protest Against Visit of Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, in Sydney 9 February 2026

9 Feb 2026.

I was at the protest against the visit of Israeli President, Isaac Hertzog, at Sydney Town Hall and would like belatedly to share some thoughts.

The Jewish lobby has always been very strong in Anglo politics and it is a brave politician that opposes them, given their economic clout.

The Sydney Peace Foundation had supported the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and in 2003 awarded the Sydney Peace Prize to Hanan Ashrawi. She was a Palestinian Christian, academic, poet and member of Parliament who had worked in Education for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, but later left it due to objecting to its corruption. The then CEO, Prof Stuart Rees had checked with the Foundation’s sponsors that they would continue to back the Foundation if a Palestinian were given the Prize. They assured him, Yes, but the Jewish lobby protested loudly and demanded that he withdraw the Prize. He declined to do so, saying that the Sydney Peace Foundation would have no credibility if it withdrew an announced prize. But almost all the corporate sponsors who had promised to continue their sponsorship withdrew. That is power.

Jewish schools get the tax deductibility of all religious schools and raise the Israeli flag. The official organs have been very silent throughout the Gaza genocide, and are keen to talk about centuries old antisemitism, while ignoring the genocide and the opprobrium associated with it. It remains the ‘elephant in the room’.

Meanwhile the number of Middle Eastern Muslims has been rising, and some significant politicians in Western Sydney are depended on the Muslim vote for their seats. Australian Muslim leaders are contributors to our multicultural society, but we might wonder what they think of the Israeli flag being raised. One might also wonder what would happen if an Islamic private school raised the Palestinian flag and sang their anthem. Since the time of ISIS recruitment some radical preachers have been quietly doing harm. (I saw a film made about this, but I have not been able to find it anywhere online now. It alluded to a certain preacher, but did not name him. It was briefly in Australian cinemas).

The Bondi Terror attack was a tragic demonstration of the extent to which radical forces build up, unnoticed by existing law enforcement organs. It was a failure of both Australia’s gun laws and its intelligence services, so Anthony Albanese wanted to have an Inquiry into these failures, done by a retired security chief.

The Jewish lobby was outraged and demanded a Royal Commission, blaming Albanese for the terror attack. They had been smarting from Australia’s recognition of a Palestinian State and pressured him to hold a Royal Commission on anti-Semitism, rather than the shorter and more practical security inquiry. They then invited the Israeli President to Australia. This invitation was then taken up by Albanese. Apparently it is common practice for groups to invite prestigious people, and then the Government takes over the invitation. Labor for Palestine, a group within the Labor party claimed that there was a picture of Hertzog signing a bomb to be dropped on Gaza in December 2023. Herzog had been elected President in 2021. His father had also been President and he had been head of the Labor Party in the Knesset. The Israeli President is separated from the government and is in a similar role to Australia’s Governor-General. Hertzog had been in Opposition to Netanyahu in party politics, but as President naturally supported him as the Prime Minister of Israel . When the International Criminal Court (ICC) cited Netanyahu and his Defence Minister for genocide, Herzog criticised the ICC. Herzog spent a lot of time maintaining ties with the Jewish diaspora world-wide, frowned on marriages with non-Jews, and worked to improve relations between Israel and other countries, notably Turkey, the US and the UAE (United Arab Emirates).

After the Bondi terrorist attack NSW Premier Chris Minns was quick to announce a State Inquiry and to pass the ‘Terrorism (Police Powers) Act 2026 that empowered Police to act with impunity at demonstrations.

Herzog was to address Australian Jewry at the International Convention Centre (ironically also I.C.C.), at Darling Harbour on 9 February.

Last July, the Palestinian Action Network had been banned by the Police from holding a March across the Harbour Bridge, but appealed the Police decision in the Supreme Court, had a significant victory in August 2025, and held a major ‘March for Humanity’ on a very wet and windy day, 3/8/25 which was attended in huge numbers.

They similarly applied for permission to hold a rally outside the Sydney Town Hall at 5.30pm on 9 February and to march to NSW Parliament. The Police banned the March, and the PAN again appealed to the Supreme Court. This time they lost, but the decision was not handed down until 5pm, just before the rally was about to start.

I went to the rally, entering from Bathurst St behind the cathedral. The Police were very aggressive, forming a cordon and certainly giving the impression that they were sparring for a fight. Town Hall Square was very full and the sound system was not good, so it was hard to hear some of the speeches. Grace Tame spoke extremely well and very clearly. Perhaps she used the microphone more skilfully. People around me also could not hear, judging by the way they joined in on the chants, but were otherwise silent. Chants were ‘Free, Free Palestine, ‘Arrest Herzog’ and ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine Shall be Free’. (It was interesting that this last chant is to be considered to be a terrorist slogan with an appropriate penalty while the Israeli government merely implements it for their settlers with no slogan at all). The Cathedral rang its bells so frequently without apparent reason throughout the rally, which made it seem a deliberate strategy. There was a mood that we were going to march, as we had not come merely to hear speeches. The speeches went on too long and seemed repetitive , though not hearing well it was hard to be sure about this last. At about 7pm, after an hour and a half Josh Lees, the chief rally organiser said that there were ‘conversations’ ongoing about whether we were marching. I presumed that he meant conversations with the demonstrators, but this was not so. He was apparently referring to conversations with the Police. Presumably the speeches were continuing to allow the negotiations.

I concluded that the Police had won, that there would not be a march and left at about 7.10pm, so I missed the confrontation, which happened at about 7.25pm

It seems that the Police strategy was to keep the rally within the precinct of the Town Hall until the Jewish rally was over so that there was no possibility of the rally participants meeting the Jewish rally.

The Jewish meeting was told by a uniformed policeman to sit down for half an hour so that the protest rally could be cleared, so it seems clear whose side they were on. The Police had tried to stop the late arrivals even entering the protest rally, which had led to chants of ‘Let them in.’

The Police then said that here would not be a march, and everyone had to leave from behind the Cathedral via Bathurst St and were not allowed to go via George St. This seems to have been the catalyst for resistance as the Police tried to clear the Square.

The Police had been sparring for a fight, arrested 17 people and pushed other to the ground and on the ground. They used pepper spray and horses. I was shocked when a patient, a 70 year old woman came to me as a patient the next day and said that she had stood up on a plantar box to see what was going on and was thrown to the ground. She had grazes on her hand and arm and bruising of her chest wall. Below is some footage of the confrontation. A 2 hour comprehensive film of the rally is available at ConsortiumNews.

There has been a lot of discussion about Police powers since the rally, but it’s certainly frightening to know that there are considerable elements of the NSW Police that are willing to attack citizens with immunity from prosecution, very similar to ICE in the USA. It seems that the ‘Riot Squad’ see themselves as an elite in this role.

Time to renew subscriptions to the Council for Civil Liberties!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH1BZa27XAw

12/10/2025

Vehicle to Grid electric power is being discussed at last!

12 October 2025

Those following EV sales figures may be cheered up by a recent article stating that Hyundia, Kia, BYD and other EV manufacturers are exploring how EV batteries can be used to store electricity and top up the grid at peak times, earning power bill credits for their owners.

This has been possible for a long time, and one can only wonder if the existing big players in the electricity market have been delaying progress to keep prices high and let them develop their own batteries. Note that the energy companies are now doing deals with the car companies- I guess that was the reason for the delay- they want some of the money. They are pontificating on what was obvious years ago, as if they are Santa Claus.

Whether this article in the SMH on 25/9/25 means that there has been real progress remains ot be seen, but another recent article n Carsguide of 11/10/25 says that BYD is overtaking Tesla in sales and may bring new cheaper models including the Seagull (Atto 3), which might sell for as little as $25,000 before on-road costs. I had read in the financial pages that the Seagull costs as little as $US10,000 (which is about $A15,500) overseas so we can only wait to see what price we get.

Turning your EV into a giant battery is a step closer

By Nick Toscano SMH 25 September

Hyundai, Kia, BYD and other major automakers are exploring how batteries in electric vehicles can be used to store surplus renewable energy and top up Australia’s electrical grid at critical times, earning power bill credits for their owners.

In one of the biggest trials of its kind in Australia so far, power supplier AGL has begun working with car manufacturers to test technologies that could turn plugged-in electric vehicles into “two-way energy sources”, ready to inject rapid discharges to keep the grid stable and smooth out swings in supply and demand.

Connecting an electric car to a bidirectional charger, so its battery can feed the grid in peak periods, could be a powerful tool to support decarbonisation of Australia’s electricity system as it shifts from coal to less predictable sources such as wind and solar, energy companies say.

It could also make it more appealing for Australians to make the switch to electric vehicles by giving owners the ability to earn money from selling power in their batteries back to the grid, offsetting their higher upfront cost compared with traditional petrol cars.

The Climate Change Authority calculates that every second light vehicle sold over the next decade must be electric for the Albanese government to meet its new 2035 emissions-reduction target. However, achieving that goal may prove difficult due to a recent slowdown in electric car sales and persistent worries about the cost of living.

To unlock electric vehicles’ full potential, their owners should think about them not just as cars, but as “home batteries on wheels”, said Renae Gasmier, AGL’s head of innovation and strategy.

Electric car batteries, typically several times larger than household batteries, can store enough energy to comfortably power the average home for around three days, she said. But adding vehicle-to-grid functionality could deliver even greater benefits, enabling the battery to be charged when electricity prices are low and renewable energy is plentiful, and using that energy to power the owner’s home or export surplus power back to the grid.

AGL said its trial, launched in Melbourne on Wednesday, would bring together electricity distribution and network service providers, electric vehicle equipment suppliers and carmakers including Hyundai, Kia, BYD and Zeekr. Other automakers are in talks with AGL about the program but are yet to sign on.

The trial will assess the level of potential savings consumers could expect from using vehicle-to-grid functionality and seek to ease concerns that bidirectional charging may wear on car batteries, causing them to degrade more quickly.

Kia Australia chief executive Damien Meredith said bidirectional electric vehicle charging was a “game-changer”.

“Amid cost-of-living pressures, this unlocks the potential for Kia EV owners to transform their cars into mobile energy assets,” Meredith said.

Other energy companies are also pursuing similar initiatives. Amber Electric, a retailer that enables customers to buy and sell electricity at wholesale prices, launched a vehicle-to-grid trial last year with funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. Some participants in the trial were said to have earned hundreds of dollars in credits a month after feeding power back to the grid at times when prices were spiking.

Origin Energy, the largest Australian power and gas retailer, is building its own new retail offering around vehicle-to-grid technology.

The company this week said it had teamed up with BYD and StarCharge for a trial in which participants would receive a BYD Atto 3 subscription, a vehicle-to-grid bidirectional charger and access to a free charging tariff.

03/10/2025

Trump’s ‘Peace’ Deal

3 October 2025

Trump met Netanyahu and then announced his Peace Deal for Gaza.

Hama surrenders control totally, Trump or Tony Blair run the show for a while until the Palestinian Authority is ready.

The Gazan get not to be thrown out or killed.

Any hostages still alive go back to Israel.

Albo supports this.

What is wrong?

Look at history. Israel used terror to kill the British, and the war-weary British let them migrate from being refugee in post-War Europe in large numbers. A land without people for a people without land’. Palestine had been a colony of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years, and then after WW1 a British ‘protectorate’. (?Colonial state, ?Spoils of WW1). The fact that it wasn’t a country did not mean that people did not live there. Jewish settlers piled in, and when they got to 36% of the population declared the ‘State of Israel’ in 1948, declaring all land title invalid and killing a few villagers. Many Palestinian inhabitants fled to refugee camps and their lands were expropriated. Arab countries tried to invade Israel, but Israel bought some cheap tanks and with good generals survived.

Israel talked about a 2 state solution, but as they did so they gradually moved settlers into the West Bank on all the high ground, linking them with roads, so that if the settlers were attacked by ‘terrorists’, i.e, the people who had had their land taken, they could be defended by the IDF (Army).

Ramallah was set up as the capital of the West Bank, not that there would even be a Palestinian state there, but it allowed them to move Palestinians out of Jerusalem. The international NGOs, wanting to help the Palestinians set up in Ramallah, building large comfortable buildings. This raised land values so that Palestinian s had trouble affording to live there, but also the Palestinian Authority lined their pockets arranging development approvals until they were totally compromised and just patsies of the Israelis.
Gaza was a Palestinian enclave, but its ability to grow was entirely dependent on Israeli goodwill as they had the border controls, so Gazan industries could not import or export reliably.

Palestinians are not particularly religious, but they voted for Hamas because Hamas would stand up to the Israelis. The Palestinians were in a totally apartheid situation, inferior in their own land. The menial jobs that they used to do in Jerusalem were given to imported Sri Lankans so they were deliberately forced out.
The other Arab states offered verbal support to the Palestinians , but were making peace with Israel. The endpoint was going to be that money ruled in international politics, Palestinians would have no money, no assets and no land. This is why Hamas launched its attack on October 7th; to put their issue back on the world stage.

Netanyahu, facing corruption charges, has had to rely on the right wing, who still have a Biblical view of slaying the Philistines. So in Gaza, the object was to destroy any Palestinian society. The universities and libraries were targeted so there was no culture, doctors were targeted so that4 there was no health care; Aid was targeted so that there was no food and then journalists were targeted for telling the tale. Finally the whole place was rendered uninhabitable- a demolition site. It seems that the object was to make the Palestinians either dead of fleeing into the Sinai. Egypt was aware that if they left Israel they would never be allowed to return, and that may still be the end point the Israelis seek. They now say that a 2 State solution is impossible- an object that they have had for years as they gradually took over the West Bank, while pretending it was the displaced Palestinian ‘terrorists’ that were stopping the negotiated settlement.

Everyone has been happy to demonise Hamas as a ‘terrorist organisation’. This means that it is justified never to talk to them, or indeed hear their point of view. One forgets that they were the legitimately- elected government of Gaza. A terrorist is someone who uses terror in civilian populations to further their political ends. It is almost always used by a weaker power against a stronger one. Naturally the stronger power would rather that the weaker fight in a conventional way- they would very quickly win. Israel tried to assassinate Hamas leaders in Qatar- surely an act of terror and complete break of any sort of international law.

Israel wants the Palestinains to have no one to represent them; homeless and starving, they are to be pathetically grateful that they are being allowed to live and not to have to go to any third country that can be bribed to take them. Will Gaza be a development site for some Trumpian Monaco with some welfare housing tacked on for the Gazans?

Jeff Halper in 2010 in his book, ‘An Israeli in Palestine’ stated that there was no possibility of a 2 state solution. There are now 750,000 Jewish settlers in the West bank, strategically positioned on the high grounds and linked by a road network. The only language many were taught is Hebrew, just to inhibit their ability to move or integrate. But if there cannot be 2 states, there has to be one with a reconciliation like that of South Africa after apartheid or Rwanda after their intertribal genocide. How that can possibly be achieved after what the Gazans have gone through is hard to imagine, and that attitude of many of the Jewish Israelis is strikingly similar to the attitudes to white South Africans in the apartheid era. (Yes, I have been to both).

Israel seems to have learned from the Nazis. They have pretended publicly for 70 years that there would be peace and a 2 state solution, while systematically undermining any possibility of it until now, when Netanyahu states it is impossible. They have taken the Palestinian land, while demonising them as terrorists who could not be negotiated with. Now, having destroyed their homes and their culture with the whole world screaming ‘genocide’, they will offer these starving people a ceasefire and survival entirely on the terms that they dictate, which seems to be ‘food and allowed to stay in Israel at present’. If Hamas leadership is totally defeated militarily and are being offered ‘safe passage’ to wherever, will they abdicate and take it?

Trump and Netanyahu call this a Peace Plan and Australia stands up and salutes. Probably the rest of the world sees it as it is. And what the Gazan survivors and children think and feel is currently irrelevant, but is not likely to remain so.

28/09/2025

Submission to the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into Compulsory Third Party (CTP= Motor Accident) Insurance

There is an inquiry into some types of legislation every Parliamentary term.
It tends to be routine. There are calls for submissions, but no publicity and usually vested interests merely state their positions.
In this case insurance for people injured in Motor Vehicles is under the Law and Justice Committee rather than the health-orientated Social Issues Committee, which shows the government’s priority; keeping the premiums down rather than actually making the insurance companies treat people fairly.
Here are the Terms of Reference- submissions are accepted until 7 October 2025.
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/inquiries/3131/Terms%20of%20Reference%20-%202025%20Review%20of%20the%20Compulsory%20Third%20Party%20insurance%20scheme.pdf
Here is my submission to the inquiry, with suggestions as to what need to be done.

‘Transparent Competition and Fair Go for NTDs Needed in CTP’
A Submission to NSW CTP Inquiry September 2025

I very much welcome this Inquiry and would be happy to appear before your Committee to elaborate on and/or to clarify any other questions that you may have. I also have patients who would be more than willing to give evidence, some of whom would have difficulty doing this is in writing, but would be able to speak to the Committee.
I am a medical practitioner (GP) with a special interest and expertise in Workers Compensation (WC) and Compulsory Third Party (CTP) insurance since 1983. I have a current practice of at least 100 patients. Many of my patients are from socioeconomically disadvantaged or NESB backgrounds with the worst jobs and the highest injury rates.
My initial qualifications were in medicine and I am a Fellow the Royal College of Surgeons of England and have a Master’s degree in Applied Science in Occupational Health from UNSW. I had considerable experience in intensive care medicine and became active in the anti-tobacco movement because I realised that prevention was better and cheaper than cure. As an Australian Democrat MLC, 1998-2007, I initiated consequential inquiries into DOCS (now Dept. of Community Services), and Mental Health.
Thus, I understand health policy at both a political and coal-face level. The key problem is that the major unstated policy of our fragmented health system is that the main objective for each participant group, Federal government, State Governments, insurers and Patients is to minimise their costs without regard to the total cost of the system. This is especially true in the Workers Comp and CTP area. There is theoretical competition in the CTP area between insurers, but it is not real competition as consumers are not able to tell which insurers give them a better deal and are left to judge by the TV ads. What happens in practice is that the insurers delay, deny and dispute claims, so that patient will go elsewhere for treatment. Claims with ongoing problems are classified as ‘minor injuries’. This means that if treatment is delayed for 6 months, the insurers are free from further liability. The tactic is therefore to accept the claim, but deny investigations, so that the diagnosis can be disputed and treatment not initiated. Since there is no penalty for denials and disputes, the worst that can happen to insurers is they are compelled to do the treatment that they should have paid for, months or even years before, given the glacial pace of the legal system. It is likely that insurers have calculated that if a high percentage of denials are successful, even if they lose a few they are still better off financially with a ‘denial’ policy.
Insurers also produce ‘Injury Management Plans’ which might be considered farcical. They are 5 pages long on thick paper (clogging up any paper-filing system that retains them). They take absolutely no notice of the NTD’s diagnosis on the Certificates of Capacity and merely state the insurer’s medical code names for what they have accepted liability for. The IMPs then state the responsibilities of all parties as they would have them understood, with the obligations of the patients to do as they are told by the insurer, the NTDs to provide certificates and ;input’ to the Management plans, which remain the prerogative of the insurers. Their obligation to pay for ‘reasonable and necessary’ treatments seems neglected. I have had patients with very serious leg injuries after falls, who also sustained back or neck injuries in the falls. The leg injuries got all the attention in the EDs at the time, but the back injuries were what stopped them working in the medium term. Yet the insurer would not acknowledge liability for these contemporaneous injuries and maintained that they must have happened at a later date, as if this would happen as they convalesced with their legs up. The injuries may miss scrutiny because EDs concentrate on the most serious immediate problem and the strong pain killers given may mask other injuries. What needs to happen is that the insurers must either accept the diagnoses on the NTDs certificates or have it disputed through a medical panel immediately. The IMPs could be thought of as a complete waste of medical time, but NTDs are paid $100 to read and accept them (easy money) and they serve to reinforce the insurers’ right to ignore diagnoses that they may have to pay to treat later and reinforce their right to have the final say on management.
Most GPs do not dispute the denials and some Rehabilitation practitioners engaged by the insurers see the insurers as the client rather than the patient, push the patient back to work when they are not yet ready and try to bully the GPs to do the same. I have had two insurer-hired Rehab companies tell patients to change their GPs when the GPs did not do where they wanted.
The system of using Independent Medical Examiners (IMEs) by insurers has to be changed. These IMEs have a strong financial interest in coming to clinical assessments that favour insurers. Medical problems are minimised or attributed to age or other factors that were completely unnoticed until the date of the accident. Their assessments very frequently result in treatment denials or withdrawal of liability for diagnoses with consequent withdrawal of benefits. The impecunious patient then appeals to a lawyer, who arranges another IME, a dispute results and the PIC has to sort it out with yet another IME. This delay is immensely detrimental to the patient’s finances, psychological state and often their long-term outlook. A better system would be to have the insurers obliged to pay the NTDs management plan or appeal to a Medical panel. The ideal would be a medical panel chosen by the relevant college without insurer input, so that it is a medical decision what is ‘reasonable and necessary’ treatment. An alternative that might save time would be an IME agreed by both insurer and the patient’s lawyer, but most patients do not have lawyers, and obviously it is better if they do not need them.
It might be noted that the legal system redress processes are so slow that in many cases the damage is often irreparable before they even have a hearing. My disadvantaged patients are often paid in cash and have less than 3 weeks before they are unable to pay for food and rent. The time taken by insurers to approve cases and Nominated Treating Doctors (NTD) requests is extremely destructive to patients. The denial of a large percentage of treatment requests is not monitored by the State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA), despite my request for them to do so, and my providing evidence to them that up to 61% of treatment requests are denied. I have had a number of patients who have been strung along with treatment denials for over 5 years; my longest who actually won was 14 years.
Delays are allowed in the NSW legislation. My own statistics for CTP, which I gave to the Hayne Royal Commission on Financial Services showed that in an unacceptably large percentage of cases treatments were denied by insurers. NRMA was the worst at 61%, Allianz at 43%, QBE 36% and Suncorp (GIO and AAMI) at 19%. Another source, which I am not at liberty to disclose, had a sample size 10 larger than mine, with similar results. These figures were from 2016, but I do not believe the situation has changed significantly. It might be noted that insurers have ‘accepted’ a very high percentage of the claims, but then refuse the treatment of these claims without this being noted or sanctioned by SIRA. It seems that SIRA functions as a senior insurance clerk to minimise payouts, but not in any way as a patient advocate. Our CTP system, which started as a means of getting top rate care motor accident victims in NSW, is now examined in terms of ‘the impact of the bill on cost and economic conditions’. It is significant that it is the hands of the Law and Justice committee rather than the any health-related committee. If our current situation is viewed merely as a cost to be minimised by the insurers, employers and NSW Government, we can only expect to see ever-declining health outcomes for my patients and our NSW community. It seems that there has been an immense influence into the systems of algorithm-generated management plans and US input so that CTP and WC systems are training and preparing for the days when insurance companies decide what treatments will be done, and doctors do what they are permitted to do by insurers. I first encountered this in 1983 when discussing treatments with American doctors at a conference. While all the non-US doctors discussed the subject in terms of optimum drugs and protocols, the US doctors talked about what they were allowed to do in terms of individual patient’s insurance schemes. It is now normal there and coming here by stealth.
The best way to save costs is to optimise treatment. Generally this means empowering GPs, who are the Nominated Treating Doctors (NTDs) actually to do their jobs without insurer delays and denials. It might be noted that GPs do not make any money from investigations or referrals. There may also be an insurer prejudice against GPs, on the assumption that if an accident were serious it would go to an Emergency Department (ED). While it is true that serious accidents usually go to EDs, whiplash injuries and back pain are very common after non-fatal accidents and the problems from these may be ongoing for years, which is presumably why insurers do not want them investigated.
It would appear from an NTD medical perspective that treatments are still denied according to either an algorithm or a protocol to save money, and these algorithms or protocols are presumably based on statistics. The point about medical practice is that every case is an individual and that probability is not certainty. Every case is individual and must be assessed on its merits. Insurer decisions must be transparent, and if they are made by a computer algorithm or protocol these must be made transparent for a medical discussion, not merely a financial one.
It must be acknowledged that the current system is immensely adversarial. The insurance clerks who are responsible for cases are somewhat pretentiously called ‘case managers’, which of course should be the role of the NTD. They are rotated frequently, and it must be asked why this is. The suspicion is that they must not be allowed to become too close to the ‘clients’, i.e. patients that they are managing. They use first names in all their correspondence, but only the first initial of their surnames, presumably so that they can remain anonymous as they refuse reasonable treatments of those who absolutely need them. . One would have thought that they would be proud to have their names on their work as all health professionals are, but in practice, this is the land of ‘deny, delay and dispute’ rather than that of Help.
The medical notes are so available as to make ‘medical confidentiality’ a farce, yet insurer records are entirely opaque, protected by ‘legal privilege’. So while the NTD have to justify any decision or even a long consultation, insurers do not have the same rules applied to them. NTDs are often not even informed of treatment denials- their correspondence is with the patient. Insurers seek to replace NTD medical management with insurance clerk management. Phone inquiries from NTDs are difficult and calls are not returned more often than not. Calls are recorded supposedly for ‘training and quality purposes’, but I have had experience where the questions asked by the case manager were clearly written by lawyer as a cross examination, so I am now reluctant to answer questions or have the conversations recorded. Interestingly most insurance clerks are unable to turn off the recording. Some offer to ‘delete it later’- clearly an unacceptable alternative. Liaison between insurers and employers also seems to be poor, communication being via rehabilitation professionals late in the case management. If the doctors’ records are to be available for perusal and judgement, then the insurers’ cases records should be similarly available for subpoena. Perhaps the reasons for unconscionable delays might be elucidated.
Two non-medical aspects are worthy of the Committee’s attention:
1. The CTP system now has some degree of wage substitution, which is a good and necessary thing. However, many students and migrant workers are paid in cash for at least part of their work. When they are injured the wage substitution only encompasses the part that was taxed. Currently employers are happy to understate incomes to keep their premiums lower and insurers are happy to accept these low numbers as it lessens their payout. The victims need to have their incomes maintained and should be assessed by what they had received, though this naturally has practical problems.
2. Police should be required to make a report in all accidents that are reported to them, and note that the accident took place, who was in the wrong and some degree of the severity of the accident. I have had people with significant whiplash injury denied compensation because the insurer considered that he dent in the bumper bar was not deep enough and have had people significantly injured where the other party denied that the accident took place at all. A person made racist slurs and deliberately ran into another car (which caused immense psychological injury).
(There is also some fraud where independent assessors hugely overstate the damage done to cars and repairers do needless repairs, sometimes buying ‘courtesy cars’ which they loan to the owners and charge the insurers exorbitant hire charges to pay off the courtesy cars. Naturally this scam affects insurers rather than my patients, but attention needs to be given to accreditation of assessors. This is a motor accident matter, but not a CTP matter. Having police attend would also make this less likely).
The solutions for the Medical management of CTP are:
1. To recognise that the problem of the CTP system is that it is a dysfunctional medical insurance system which minimises short-term treatment costs, which perpetuates the medical problems while maximising the administrative, investigative, medical reassessment and legal costs. The delays adversely affect outcomes. Improving treatment should be the first step in lessening costs;
2. To put the NTDs at the centre of the system, allowing them to organise treatments as happens with all other forms of health insurance. This needs to be mandated by law or regulation or insurers will not do it.
a. NTDs should be able to order the same investigations, referrals or treatment that are reasonable and standard in private practice, and the insurers should be obliged to pay for them as any other health insurance fund does. Appeals against this by insurers should be to a panel of doctors appointed by the specialist colleges. It might be noted that published protocols for emergency department management of cases require immensely more investigations than are suggested by GP NTDs.
b. NTDs should choose the rehabilitation professionals. If insurers feel that rehab is needed, they could suggest this to the NTDs;
c. NTDs should be notified of approvals or denials of medical investigations or treatments at the same time as the patient, and be able to comment on these and appeal the decisions.
d. NTDs should be given copies of the reports of IMEs (Independent Medical Examiners) used by either insurers or defendant or plaintiff lawyers within a week of their being received by the insurer or lawyer, and be given an opportunity either to use the opinion for the patient’s benefit, or to respond to it.
3. To have a significant treating doctor input to the management of iCare and SIRA, both at an administrative and a case management level;
4. To make SIRA collect and make public figures on treatment delays and denials from all insurers;
5. To make SIRA a true regulator that acts for patients and sanctions insurers for unreasonable decisions. Sanctions for unreasonable treatment denials should be able to be initiated by plaintiff solicitors and ruled in the Personal Injuries Tribunal to lessen treatment denials; and finally
6. To make insurer case records as transparent as medical records are, so that the basis of decisions and their timeliness and origins are transparent and accountable.
7. To make insurer algorithms transparent and vetted by specialist colleges, who may be asked to prepare their own algorithms or flow diagrams for common conditions, so that what is ‘reasonable and necessary’ will be disputed less. This must be done by Medical Colleges without insurer input, as it might be noted that the whiplash guidelines were made by a SIRA committee which had insurer input but no input from emergency physicians or neurosurgeons, the two specialties that had the most interest in the outcome.
This is a complex area and I would be willing to appear and answer any question that the Committee might have on the working of the CTP scheme and possible alternative systems.
I attach two Appendices from my submission to the Hayne Royal Commission:
First, a 2- week survey of my patients to show the extent of insurer interference in reasonable and necessary treatments (Appendix 2);
Secondly, figures for radiology and specialist referral denials by insurers (Appendix 4).

Yours sincerely,

Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans M.B, B.S., F.R.C.S. (Eng.), M.Appl.Sci. (OHS), M.Pol.Econ.
636 New Canterbury Rd, Hurlstone Park 2193
0419 428 019 (m)

30/07/2025

‘Delay, Deny, Defend’; A Submission to NSW Workers Compensation Inquiry July 2025

22 July 2025

I very much welcome this Inquiry and would be happy to appear before your Committee to elaborate on and/or to clarify any other questions that you may have. I also have patients who would be more than willing to give evidence. I am a medical practitioner (GP) with a special interest and expertise in Workers Compensation (WC) and Compulsory Third Party (CTP) insurance since 1983. I have a current practice of at least 100 patients including a number with PTSD or stress related to workplace psychological trauma. Many of my patients are from socioeconomically disadvantaged or NESB backgrounds with the worst jobs and the highest injury rates.

My initial qualifications were in medicine and I am a Fellow the Royal College of Surgeons of England and have a Master’s degree in Applied Science in Occupational Health from UNSW. I had considerable experience in intensive care medicine and became active in the anti-tobacco movement because I realised that prevention was better and cheaper than cure. As an Australian Democrat MLC, 1998-2007, I initiated consequential inquiries into DOCS (now Dept. of Community Services), and Mental Health.

The key lesson from our successful tobacco campaign and those inquiries, and those since, is that money spent at the end-stage will not produce the most effective, efficient and equitable results. It is like having the only health services as intensive care units – no matter how much money is expended, no effective improvement will be produced, and costs will only be saved by reducing services, naturally leaving some people untreated, thus generating additional pain and suffering, as a consequence of shifting costs elsewhere. It would be tragic if this were to be the case with WC in NSW at the current time.

I am currently treating at least 6 long-term workplace psychological trauma patients where timely industrial relations (IR) interventions would have resolved the situation far more quickly, effectively and cheaply, had adequate advocacy been available. The chance of these workers’ compensation cases returning to work is
now frankly poor despite the fact that they have had the best psychological and psychiatric attention.

It might be noted that the legal system processes are so slow that in psychological cases the damage is often irreparable before they even have a hearing. My disadvantaged patients are often paid in cash and have less than 3 weeks before they are unable to pay for food and rent. In my extensive experience the time taken by insurers to approve cases and Nominated Treating Doctors (NTDs) requests is extremely destructive to patients. The denial of a large percentage of treatment requests is not monitored by the State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA), despite my request for them to do so, and my providing evidence to them that up to 61% of treatment requests are denied. I have had a number of patients who have been strung along with
treatment denials for over 5 years; my longest was 14 years. (While it took 14 Years for my Workers Comp. patient to have back surgery approved, by then he was reluctant to return to work (RTW) as he feared being re-injured).

The UnitedHealthCare insurance executive who was gunned down in New York had the words, ‘Delay, Deny, Depose’ [sic] written on the cartridges from the fatal shots, a corruption of the title of the book, ‘Delay, Deny, Defend’, which critiqued the US health insurance industry. It has been reported that about 33% of the cases
were denied by his Company, one of the biggest health insurers in the USA. Delays are allowed in the NSW legislation. The percentage of denials of NTD treatment requests and the delay of approvals is not monitored, despite my requests for same. My own statistics for CTP, which I gave to the Hayne Royal Commission on Financial Services showed that in an unacceptably large percentage of cases treatments were denied by insurers. NRMA was the worst at 61%, Allianz at 43%, QBE 36% and Suncorp (GIO and AAMI) at 19%. Another source, which I am not at liberty to disclose had a sample size 10 larger than mine, with similar results. These figures were from 2016, but I do not believe the situation has changed significantly. It might be noted that
insurers have accepted a very high percentage of the claims, but then refuse the treatment of these claims without this being noted or sanctioned by the State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA). It seems that SIRA functions as a senior insurance clerk to
minimise payouts, but not in any way as a patient advocate. Our Workers Comp system, which started as a means of getting top rate care for injured workers in NSW, is now examined in terms of ‘the impact of the bill on cost and economic conditions’. If our current situation is viewed merely as a cost to be minimised by the
insurers, employers and NSW Government, we can only expect to see ever-declining health outcomes for my patients and our NSW community. The best way to save costs is to optimise treatment.

You may be aware that John Nagle, the Ex-CEO of iCare was sanctioned for his use of algorithms. It would appear from an NTD medical perspective that treatments are still denied according to either an algorithm or a protocol to save money, and with no sanctions and so few disputed it is economically advantageous for insurers to deny on any pretext. The system is immensely adversarial. The medical notes are so available as to make ‘medical confidentiality’ a farce, yet insurer records are entirely opaque, protected by ‘legal privilege’. So while the NTDs have to justify any decision or even a long consultation, insurers do not have the same rule applied to them. Rehabilitation companies are chosen by insurers so that most of them see their client as the
insurer, rather than the patient. The ‘case managers’ (i.e. insurance clerks) who rotate frequently, try to use first name terms, but will not give their surnames as the callous messages that they have to deliver might put them in physical danger. NTDs are often not even informed of treatment denials- their correspondence is with the patient. Insurers seek to replace NTD medical management with insurance clerk management. Phone inquiries from NTDs are difficult and calls are not returned more often than not. Liaison between insurers and
employers also seems to be poor, communication being via rehabilitation professionals late in the case management.

Given my extensive medical knowledge and experience the solutions are:

1. To recognise that many of the Psychological workplace problems could be solved by a better IR disputes system. Perhaps doctors could directly refer for IR mediation in such cases;

2. To recognise that the problem of the WC system is that it is a dysfunctional medical insurance system which minimises short-term treatment costs, which perpetuates the medical problems while
maximising the administrative, investigative, medical reassessment and legal costs. The delays adversely affect outcomes. Improving treatment should be the first step in lessening costs;

3. To put the NTDs at the centre of the system, allowing them to organise treatments as happens with all other forms of health insurance. NTDs should also choose the rehabilitation professionals;

4. To have a significant treating doctor input to the management of iCare and SIRA, both at an administrative and a case management level;

5. To make SIRA collect and make public figures on treatment delays and denials from all insurers;

6. To make SIRA a true regulator that acts for patients and sanctions insurers for unreasonable decisions. Sanctions for unreasonable treatment denials should be able to be initiated by plaintiff solicitors and ruled in the Personal Injuries Tribunal to lessen treatment denials; and finally

7. To make insurer case records as transparent as medical records are, so that the basis of decisions and their timeliness and origins are transparent and accountable.

I attach two Appendices from my submission to the Hayne Royal Commission:

First, a 2- week survey of my patients to show the extent of insurer interference in reasonable and necessary treatments (Appendix 2);

Secondly, figures for radiology and specialist referral denials by insurers (Appendix 4).

Yours sincerely,
Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans M.B, B.S., F.R.C.S. (Eng.), M.Appl.Sci. (OHS), M.Pol.Econ.

14/04/2025

AI and Trump

11 April 2024

I use AI (Artificial Intelligence) to do some medical work.. The program is called Heidihealth. It is free, remarkably enough and records the consultation, transcribes it, and then puts out the results according to a template. I have no idea how to make a template, but the one for GP consultations is very satisfactory. It records the history, the examination findings as I state them or even mention them, then the diagnosis, plans and next appointment. If there is a discussion about the cricket, or an interruption such as a phone call or an interpreter talking a foreign language, it can ignore all this and still come up with a summary.

I am sure that AI could replace 95% of what I do, and pick up a couple of percent by forgetting nothing and responding in a few seconds. AI will soon be far superior to human thinking.

Here is an SMH article on Trump’s policies:

Did an AI chatbot help draft the US tariff policy?
By Tim Biggs
April 10, 2025

As Donald Trump’s tariff turnaround sends global economies reeling, there’s as much discussion online about how the US president came up with his plan as there is about why he’s now pausing it.
Among many theories, one recurring idea is that Team Trump simply asked ChatGPT or some other large language model to come up with a solution for its trade woes and then ran with it.
The thought has some intuitive appeal given how confidence in the US government’s ability to balance technology use with responsible governance is at an all-time low. But does it hold any water? And, if true, why would that be a terrible thing?
Some Trump-watchers cried ChatGPT almost immediately as the president unveiled his reciprocal tariffs this month, but mostly because they seemed to make little sense at first. Why were countries where the US has a trade surplus still being hit for 10 per cent? How can small island nations with barely any US trade be whacked in the mid-70s?
Journalists and analysts soon found that, despite US government claims that it had calculated the tariffs for each nation and considered existing non-tariff barriers, the list of tariffs actually followed a set and elementary formula; trade deficit divided by exports, with a minimum 10 per cent tariff. The government denied this, but then provided its calculations which showed that’s precisely what it had done.
This kicked speculation about AI usage into high gear, and in a thread on X (plus a summary essay), we see engineer Rohit Krishnan make a convincing argument. After Krishnan asked several large language models to provide a formula for calculating tariffs on each country, with the goal of putting the US on an even playing field, each one returned a formulation very similar to the one Trump’s administration is using.
Krishnan also suspected that the administration had used AI to set the list of domains to be hit by tariffs — given weird inclusions such as Nauru and Reunion Island — as well as the 400-page report justifying it all, which he claimed could be largely generated by a deep research tool if fed enough data.
Of course the fact that the US government and chatbots came to similar conclusions is not proof that one used the other. And we can’t be sure that the chatbot’s output today hasn’t been influenced by the past week of discussion following the tariffs’ announcements. Plus, similar tariff calculations were discussed by Trump in his first term, and by adviser Peter Navarro, so the chatbots could just be accurately predicting what the US would do.
But whether Team Trump used AI or not, asking the likes of ChatGPT and others to come up with the plan does elucidate the situation in some interesting ways.
The road test
I submitted the following prompt to a number of chatbots:
Please come up with a formula that the US government could use to impose tariffs on each nation. The goal is to put the US on an even footing when it comes to trade deficit.
Google’s Gemini immediately cautioned that “designing a formula that is economically sound, fair, and doesn’t trigger harmful retaliations is incredibly complex”, and even though it provided a formula, it additionally worried that it was “highly simplified and potentially problematic”. The formula finds the difference between imports and exports, and expresses it as a percentage of total US imports.
Gemini then delivered a very long and detailed explanation of why the wording of my question was problematic, and why implementing the plan was dangerous. Humorously, it suggested a better strategy would be to focus on US competitiveness by investing in education and infrastructure, while working constructively with other nations to address economic imbalances.

The beginning of Gemini’s very long response.
DeepSeek went further, suggesting the same base formula but adding additional penalties for undervalued currencies and for exports that “exploit weak labor/environmental standards”. That way, it said, the nations engaging in unfair practices would be hit hardest but there would be ways for them to reduce the tariff through negotiating. It did warn US consumer prices would rise.
ChatGPT again suggested a similar base formula, with an adjustable level of aggression and a global correction factor “if the overall trade deficit is persistent”. It noted that its formula meant that balanced or surplus countries face would face no tariffs, so to get to Trump’s calculations I would have had to ask for a 10 per cent base level for all nations.
ChatGPT also gave a long list of reasons the formula would not work, explicitly advising that the US would be shooting itself in the foot, and handily summed the implications up as: higher consumer prices, damaged trade relationships, legal blowback, and slower economic growth. I asked for mitigation ideas, it listed an upper limit on tariffs, a gradual phase-in, exemptions for critical goods or those not available in the US, carve-outs for allies and reinvestment of tariff revenue. The Trump administration is not adopting any of those.

ChatGPT lists some reasons to be cautious in rolling out retaliatory tariffs.
So it seems likely that even if the Trump administration did use AI, it took the formulation and ran with it despite the chatbot itself spelling out why that would be such a bad idea. Krishnan wrote that asking language models about governance might not be a bad idea in absolute terms, but that this case pointed to a lack of chatbot literacy; the user asked a bad question filled with wrong assumptions, then ran with the answer ignoring the qualifications.
He called it “vibe governing”, a spin on the recently coined phrase “vibe coding”, in which a user describes a desired output to an AI and lets it do the coding.
RMIT’s Dr Samar Fatima said that directly using the output of an AI chatbot to craft public policy design or governance could have lethal results, and that the responses from large language models (LLMs) — broad and based on data indifferently scraped from the public internet — were not reliable enough for government use.
“There are so many factors which are contextual, which need that human insight, which have to cover those small nuances of a country’s economy, the geographical position, the political environment, the overall international trade environment,” she said.
“An LLM will not be able to comprehend those unspoken factors, which are there but they are not quite published, or part of the data set.”
So could the Trump administration have taken a chatbot’s word for it and tanked the global economy by accident? It’s impossible to know. And with AI advancing so quickly Fatima said that regulation was unlikely to catch up, but that changes which obliged policymakers to disclose AI use could help mitigate some of the worst impacts.
“In terms of transparency, AI systems are still a black box. And if the output’s used in a system where it is not even disclosed that it was generated by AI, then the black box goes to another level of blackness,” she said.
“Then we cannot even really figure out how the decision was made, while it’s affecting the lives of billions.”