The Australia Institute’s submission to the inquiry identified serious conflict of interest risks in the consulting industry and polling found most Australians support a ban on PwC receiving new government work.
Key details:
The inquiry into Structural Challenges in the Audit, Assurance and Consultancy Industry was called after serious problems in the consulting industry came to light.
The inquiry report recommends:
Continuing the ban on PwC tenders for government work until all ongoing investigations have been completed.
Limiting partnerships to no more than 400 partners.
Professional standards and regulations for consultants.
Applying the Corporations Act to large partnerships.
Greater alignment of whistleblower protections and applying those protections to large audit, accounting and consulting firms.
“Operational separation” of audit services from other services to the same client.
Most of the recommendations, including some of the most important, received multi-party support.
“Australians have understandably lost confidence in consulting firms following multiple scandals, including mismanaged conflicts of interest, leaking of confidential government information and burying information that reflected badly on the illegal Robodebt scheme,” said Bill Browne, Director of the Australia Institute’s Democracy & Accountability Program.
On this episode of After America, Dr Emma Shortis and Alice Grundy discuss what the Trump victory means for American society and democratic institutions, the soul-searching facing the Democrats after a comprehensive defeat, and the implications for Australia.
This discussion was recorded on Wednesday 6 November 2024 and things may have changed since recording.
Host: Emma Shortis, Director of International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis
Host: Alice Grundy, Research Manager, Anne Kantor Fellows, the Australia Institute // @alicekgt
We’d love to hear your feedback on this series, so send in your questions, comments or suggestions for future episodes to podcasts@australiainstitute.org.au.
The key to taking effective action in a Trump world is to avoid perpetuating the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion and disorientation.
This article was originally published on Waging Nonviolence on the 4th November 2024 (prior to the US election) with the title ’10 ways to be prepared and grounded if Trump wins’.
Introduction
Polls are close and the ultimate election outcome may not be known for some time. Amidst the uncertainty, it’s important we squarely face the possibility of a Trump victory and what we’d have to do about it.
Trump has already signaled the kind of president he would be: revengeful, uncontrolled and unburdened by past norms and current laws. I won’t go through the litany of awful things he’s pledged to do, since that’s been well-established with his words, Project 2025 plans and excellent analyses from authoritarian experts.
Oregon and Washington have commissioned not just one forecast of future traffic levels on I-5 and I-205, but three different forecasts.
IBR officials are clinging to the one forecast that is the least accurate, and most error-prone, and have chosen to ignore two more accurate forecasts.
IBR relies on Metro’s Kate Model, which has an error factor of 14.5 percent and which over-estimates I-5 traffic by almost 20 percent.
IBR’s DSEIS makes no mention of the Stantec Level 2 forecast (with an error factor of 2.5 percent), or the CDM Smith Investment Grade Forecast (with an error factor of 0.8 to 2.5 percent).
The two states have paid $1.5 million for the CDM Smith Forecast and nearly $800,000 for the Stantec Level 2 Forecast.
Using a less accurate forecast and ignoring or suppressing more accurate forecasts in the EIS violates the National Environmental Policy Act.
It is a timely reminder that for all its faults, Australian democracy is a model for the world: with independently administered elections, where voters can list their true preferences without throwing away their vote, and compulsory voting that ensures that the voices of the disadvantaged and disaffected are heard.
The Australia Institute Tasmania Director Eloise Carr and I have identified three key reforms that could improve Tasmanian elections and the integrity and accountability of its government:
Stronger political donations disclosure laws so that Tasmanians know where their politicians get the money from.
Truth in political advertising laws to ensure parties and candidates face consequences for misleading advertising.
Strengthening the Tasmanian Integrity Commission, the state’s underfunded anti-corruption watchdog.
The diversity of voices elected to the Tasmanian Parliament gives hope that these, and other reforms we recommended in the Democracy Agenda for the 51st Tasmanian Parliament, will be taken up.
In fact, there is only a hearing today because one of the recommended reforms has already been adopted: the creation of the Tasmanian Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.
Most other Australian jurisdictions have these committees, which review each election for lessons learned, any problems that occurred and ways to improve the system for next time.
On the final pre-election episode of After America, Matthew Bevan and Dr Emma Shortis reflect on an enormous Harris rally in Philadelphia, whether the polls have anything useful to tell us, and the dangers of a contested result.
Guest: Matthew Bevan, host and writer of If You’re Listening, the ABC // @MatthewBevan
Host: Emma Shortis, Director of International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis
We’d love to hear your feedback on this series, so send in your questions, comments or suggestions for future episodes to podcasts@australiainstitute.org.au.
On this episode of Follow the Money, Australia Institute International & Security Affairs Advisor Allan Behm joins us to discuss the “unachievable” AUKUS nuclear submarine deal, Australia’s ‘fear of abandonment’, and how the outcome of the presidential election might change US foreign policy.
Guest: Allan Behm, International & Security Affairs Advisor, the Australia Institute // @Mirandaprorsus
Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebony_bennett
These tiny margins, and the general confusion around American politics today, make it impossible to predict the outcome.
The polls might well be wrong: the electorate may have shifted dramatically since 2020 in ways that will only reveal themselves after the election. The reality is we do not know much of anything for sure, and we may never be able to untangle all of the threads that make up the knot of American politics.
After two assassination attempts on Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden’s dramatic decision to leave the race in August, it is entirely possible this election will throw up more big surprises. But as things stand, there are three broad possibilities for what will happen on Election Day.
All of them throw up their own challenges – for the United States, and for the world.
Possibility 1: the return of Trump
Trump may make history and win back the White House. Only Grover Cleveland has managed to get elected a second time as president (in 1892) after suffering a defeat four years earlier.
If Trump does win, it could be via a similar path to the one he took in 2016 – by once again sundering the “blue wall” and winning the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
This feat will likely mean his campaign tactic of mobilising men has worked.
On the eve of the 2024 Transparency Summit in Canberra tomorrow, the Australia Institute contrasts the United States, where whistleblower rewards have encouraged the recovery of billions of dollars from white collar criminals, to Australia, where corporate malfeasance appears to be rife and protections and support for whistleblowers are limited.
Key Findings:
Under just one of several whistleblower reward schemes in the US, whistleblowers have been awarded over A$1.4 billion, from enforcement actions worth over A$8.3 billion.
Whistleblowers in the US can receive up to 30% of money recovered.
A revenue contingent payment mechanism, modelled on the HECS/HELP scheme, would allow Australia to recover whistleblower rewards and fines from offenders.
Three in five Australians (62%) support rewards for whistleblowers who expose corporate wrongdoing, four times as many as oppose them (16%).
“Many of the worst examples of corporate wrongdoing have been exposed by whistleblowers. It’s time whistleblowers were protected and compensated,” said Professor Allan Fels AO.
“Whistleblowers are brave people who expose the truth about corporate misconduct and wrongdoing. They should be protected and celebrated, not punished,” said Kieran Pender, Acting Legal Director at the Human Rights Law Centre.
“A whistleblower incentive program, alongside improved whistleblower protections, would encourage more people to come forward to hold companies accountable for wrongdoing.
At its meeting today, the Board decided to leave the cash rate target unchanged at 4.35 per cent and the interest rate paid on Exchange Settlement balances unchanged at 4.25 per cent.
Bruce Thompson joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss what it’s like to live in a battleground state in the heat of a presidential campaign, the prospect of legal challenges from the Trump in the event of a Democratic victory, and who Harris might pick as her Secretary of State if she wins the election.
This discussion was recorded on Friday 1 November 2024 and things may have changed since recording.
Guest: R. Bruce Thompson II, Partner, Parker Poe
Host: Emma Shortis, Director of International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis
We’d love to hear your feedback on this series, so send in your questions, comments or suggestions for future episodes to podcasts@australiainstitute.org.au.
Portland’s adopted Regional Transportation Plan commits the Metro area to reduce total vehicle miles traveled by 12 percent over the next twenty-five years.
But the traffic forecasts used to justify the $7.5 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) Project call for more than a 25 percent increase in driving over that same time period
The RTP is required under state law to plan for a reduction in VMT per capita; the RTP is the way that regional and local governments show they comply with these state climate requirements
But the IBR planning is predicated on a world where we drive much more and not any less.
Projects like the IBR are required by state and federal law to be consistent with the adopted Regional Transportation Plan, but they are being planned for traffic levels that flatly violate that plan and state requirements.
The committee awarded the prize to this article for its exploration of urgent questions surrounding the reform of international financial institutions during conflict, energy provisioning, and its impact on women and households.
The article provides a pathway for integrating feminist political economy with energy security studies, and in doing so offers an important and valuable contribution to IPE. Building on existing theories and research, the article presents a novel perspective, supported by new empirical details from the case of gas reform in Ukraine and its adverse effects on women and households during wartime.
To mark PPE@10 this feature continues a series of posts to celebrate ten years of Progress in Political Economy (PPE) as a blog that has addressed the worldliness of critical political economy issues since 2014.
I had an argument with my best friend a few days ago. This might be a strange way to start this post, but it is related. She hinted that trying to deal with Brazil’s problems while living in Australia, as I am doing during my PhD, sounds “fake”. This comment touched on a fundamental point: bringing Latin America to the conversation, in Oceania, is not easy – we are, literally, worlds apart. However, as a revival of Marxist Dependency Theory asserts, we must insist on not just learning about the periphery but also on how to bring about transformational possibilities. This is particularly relevant when U.S. hegemony is being challenged and the BRICS are becoming too big to be ignored.
The $7.5 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement Project’s two-decade old “Purpose and Need” statement is simply wrong, and provides an invalid basis for the project’s required Environmental Impact Statement.
Contrary to claims by project proponents, the “Purpose and Need” statement isn’t chiseled in stone, rather it is required to be evolve to reflect reality and better information. Yet IBR is relying on a 2005 purpose and need statement that rests on exaggerated traffic forecasts that have been proven wrong.
The IBR’s 2005 Purpose and Need Statement (still forms the basis for the 2024 SDEIS) claimed the I-5 needed to accommodate 1.7 percent more vehicles each year. In reality, traffic growth has been less than a fifth of that amount, 0.3 percent from 2005 to 2019.
For decades, highway builders have been pushing a “predict and provide” paradigm, pretending that we needed to plan for an ever-increasing flood of vehicle traffic, and threatening gridlock if highways weren’t expanded. But these self-serving predictions have consistently proven wrong.
Law and policy require that the “Purpose and Need” statement be reasonable, and not drawn so narrowly as to exclude alternatives, and that the statement evolve over time as conditions change. But IBR is using, nearly unchanged, a two-decade old statement that falsely claims that I-5 must accommodate ever greater traffic.
How can we trust Metro’s model to predict the future, when it can’t even match the present?
Metro’s Kate travel demand model, used to plan the $7.5 billion Interstate Bridge, includes 25,000 phantom cars per day in its base year estimates.
The existing I-5 bridges over the Columbia River carried 138,800 vehicles on an average weekday in 2019, according to ODOT’s official traffic count data.
But not according to Metro’s Kate traffic model: Kate claims the I-5 bridges carried 164,050 vehicles in 2019
The difference shows Metro’s model isn’t accurate: It can’t even replicate current conditions
And yet we’re expected to believe this same model can accurately predict traffic levels decades into the future?
This exaggeration is key to false claims about the severity of current and likely future traffic conditions, and is an illegal basis for the project’s federally required environmental analysis.
Traffic modeling is guided by a series of professional and administrative guidelines. In the case of the proposed $7.5 Interstate Bridge Replacement Project, IBR and Metro modelers did not follow or violated these guidelines in many ways as they prepared their traffic demand modeling. IBR modelers:
Didn’t assess accuracy of their previous modeling
Failed to calibrate their models to observed traffic levels
Failed to accurately account for capacity constraints
Ignored other models and more accurate data that contradicted their conclusions
Failed to exhibit scientific integrity
Failed to document their data and methods
Failed to commission an independent review of their analysis
Each of these errors constitutes a violation of professional standards for traffic forecasting, and invalidates the claims made the the IBR Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement.
To hear project officials tell it, traffic projections emerge from the immaculate and objective Metro “Kate” traffic model
But in reality, IBR traffic projections are not the outputs of the Kate travel demand model. Instead, IBR consultants have altered the Metro numbers, something the label “post-processing.”
But what they’ve done, doesn’t meet the professional standards for post-processing—they cooked the books.
Post-processing of Kate’s estimates isn’t needed because Kate produces detailed, daily and hourly estimates for the I-5 bridges
IBR made contradictory, and unexplained adjustments to Kate predictions: moving thousands of daily vehicles from I-5 to I-205, and hundreds of peak hour vehicles from I-205 to I-5.
IBR consultants failed to follow the accepted and required practice of fully documenting their so-called “post-processing” calculations
IBR traffic estimates can’t be replicated using the post-processing steps described in the DSEIS
The Interstate Bridge Replacement project has been caught fudging its traffic numbers. While IBR officials repeatedly claimed their traffic forecasts came directly from Metro’s supposedly authoritative regional travel model, internal documents reveal IBR consultants secretly altered these numbers without proper documentation or justification.
The $7.5 billion plan to widen the I-5 bridges across the Columbia River is being sold, in part, based on claims that it will be used by millions of phantom trucks.
Metro’s biased truck modeling over-states current I-5 truck traffic by almost 70 percent: more than 2 million phantom trucks per year. Metro’s model says more than 17,000 trucks crossed the I-5 bridges each day in 2019; ODOT’s traffic data shows fewer than 10,000 truck crossings.
Truck traffic on the I-5 bridges is going down, and has declined almost half since 2005
Previous truck growth predictions for the CRC proved to be wildly wrong; the project’s EIS predicted truck traffic would grow more than 2 percent per year between 2005 and 2030; instead, it has declined at an annual rate of nearly 5 percent.
The decline isn’t an anomaly: statewide, Oregon truck freight volumes have declined 22 percent in the past 13 years, according to federal statistics
Metro’s truck traffic forecast isn’t based on a model: It just appropriates a growth factor based on an unrealistic and inaccurate federal data series that US Department of Transportation officials concede is used for political purposes, not actual decision-making.
The Interstate Bridge Project proposes spending $7.5 billion to widen I-5, but misses the real bottleneck.
A new, independent analysis by national traffic expert Norm Marshall of Smart Mobility, Inc., shows that the proposed IBR project fails to fix the real bottlenecks affecting I-5 traffic.
Traffic problems on I-5 are caused by bottlenecks outside the project area, that aren’t affected by the IBR project.
IBR will make traffic problems worse, especially in the morning peak hour, by funneling more traffic into these bottlenecks.
The limited 3 lanes of I-5 in each direction between the Fremont Bridge and Lombard will continue to cause daily congestion.
The Oregon and Washington highway departments are planning to widen the freeway to ten or more lanes on a stretch of I-5 between Portland and Vancouver, rebuilding seven intersections and five miles of highway. The community group Just Crossing Alliance retained national traffic modeling expert Norm Marshall of Smart Mobility, Inc., to conduct a detailed review of the IBR’s traffic modeling. But Marshall’s analysis shows this added capacity doesn’t address the real bottlenecks on I-5, which are actually further south of the actual project area.
IBR re-wrote the definition of congestion to make I-5 traffic look worse
For decades, Oregon DOT has defined traffic congestion as freeway speeds below 35 MPH.
Now, for the Interstate Bridge project, IBR has moved the goalposts: now any speed under 45 MPH is counted as “congested.”
The definition of “congested” matters because its central to claims that in the future there will be more “hours of congestion” than there are today. But by changing the yardstick to count traffic traveling at up to 45 miles per hour as “congested,” IBR has artificially inflated the problem.
The determination is based on an unpublished, incomplete ODOT study that was supposed to be finished a year ago. The new 45 MPH threshold contradicts WSDOT research showing freeways like I-5 maximize vehicle flow at 38.5 to 47 MPH.
The case for the $7.5 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement project is based on deeply flawed traffic models that ignore the bridge’s capacity limits, and predict plainly unrealistic levels of traffic growth if the bridge isn’t expanded. These grossly overestimated projections make future traffic look worse and overstate the need and understate the environmental and financial costs associated with freeway expansion.
The current I-5 bridge can carry no more than 5,000 vehicles northbound in the afternoon peak hour. All of the available statistics, and every one of the experts that has looked at the bridge has concluded that it is already operating at its maximum capacity.
But, Metro’s regional travel demand model, Kate, pretends that the bridge now carries more than 6,200 vehicles per hour–a thousand more cars and trucks per hour than can actually fit across the bridge.
And the Kate model, used for the IBR environmental analysis, makes the absurd prediction that peak hour PM traffic will increase further beyond its capacity—even if the IBR project isn’t built.
And IBR officials altered the outputs of the Metro model to produce an event higher—and more preposterous–prediction that the “No-Build” version of the bridge would somehow carry 6,900 vehicles per hour in the northbound peak in 2045.
The case for the $7.5 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement Project is based on traffic projections from Metro’s “Kate” travel demand model. But there’s a huge problem: Kate doesn’t accurately model even current levels of traffic.
The model has a high overall error factor, and importantly, consistently over-estimates traffic on the existing I-5 bridges.
Metro has prepared a validation report—not published on its website—showing the Kate model assigns vastly more traffic to I-5 than actually use the bridge.
The model essentially adds 20,000 non-existent cars and trucks to I-5 each day in 2019—more than 6 million vehicles annually.
The Metro forecast prepared for the Columbia River Crossing showed the same problems, over-predicting traffic growth by a factor of four between 2005 and 2019. The model claimed growth would be 1.3 percent per year; the reality was 0.3 percent growth.
Ironically, Oregon and Washington have paid private sector firms to develop much more accurate models of regional traffic–but they’ve excluded these more realistic models from the IBR environmental impact statement–in likely violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.
On this episode of After America, Timor-Leste President José Ramos-Horta joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the US-China relationship and his disillusionment with the Western response to the Israel’s actions in Gaza.
This discussion was recorded on Wednesday 9 October 2024 and things may have changed since recording.
Guest: His Excellency José Ramos-Horta, President of Timor-Leste and Nobel Peace Laureate // @JoseRamosHorta1
Host: Emma Shortis, Director of International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis
In this article Brett Davidson explores lessons and gives practical advice about the role of storytelling in political advocacy.
*Note: This article has been modified with formatting changes e.g. quotes, bullet points, headings, images and weblinks.
Abstract
A number of authors interested in how to translate evidence into policy identify the importance of policy narrative and argue that advocates of scientific evidence need to tell good stories to grab the attention and appeal to the emotions of policymakers. Yet, this general call for better narratives is incomplete without concrete examples and evidence of their effectiveness.
This article shows how these processes are described in the “grey” literature—defined as literature which is produced by all levels of government, academics, business and industry, but which is not controlled by commercial publishers.
This literature is often missed by scientists but more important to activists and advocates within social movements and the non-profit sector who frequently engage with or seek to influence policymakers.
To improve the health and well-being of communities oppressed by racism and white supremacy, advocates for justice need to challenge some deeply held cultural assumptions, values, and practices.
This prerogative raises a series of questions:
How can we disrupt the narratives that perpetuate racism and white privilege?
What counternarratives and stories need to be told to shift cultural consciousness?
What kinds of alliances, infrastructure, and institutions are necessary?
During a two-day convening, health practitioners, race theorists, academics, activists, community organizers, and cultural and media strategists met to examine these questions, reflect, learn, and share ideas.
This convening report summary seeks to spark wider conversations—particularly in this fraught political moment—and mobilize people and resources in an effort to advance narratives that promote racial justice and expand our understanding of health, human rights, and the public good.
‘Narrative change’ seems to be a catch-phrase at present. A number of foundations—including the Open Society Foundations—have engaged in narrative change work and a number of donors have funded narrative change projects. Hardly a conversation or meeting happens without the term ‘narrative change’ being used.
However, when a term becomes a trend, there is the danger that it starts to become shorthand for thinking—a term without precision—where everybody thinks they know what it means, but nobody really does for sure. Therefore, we need to be able to define the concept of ‘narrative change’ more precisely, to understand what it is and what it is not, why it is important, and how we go about it.
Firstly, what do we mean when we talk about narrative? A narrative consists of a collection or body of stories of characters, joined in some common problem as fixers (heroes), causes (villains) or the harmed (victims) in a temporal trajectory (plot) leading towards resolution within a particular setting or context (Jones & McBeth 2010; Frank 2010).
These stories together or collectively convey a common worldview or meaning—an interpretation of the world and how it works (Frank 2010; Fisher 1984). This worldview embeds within it particular power relationships.
For communicators, activists, advocates, and content creators to understand what kinds of stories they can tell to convey the realities of poverty, they need first to understand what existing narratives they’re up against.
This report identifies the major poverty narratives found in the existing body of narrative research and offers practical advice about how to deploy counter-narratives to create better stories—and, ultimately, create social change.
Contents
Introduction 3 Existing Poverty Narratives 6 Counter-Narratives and Strategies for Shifting Poverty Narratives 18 Outstanding Questions and Areas for Further Research 28 Summary Recommendations: How to Tell Effective New Stories 30 Endnotes 34 About FrameWorks 46
Summary Recommendations
How to Tell Effective New Stories
There are still questions about the larger counter-narratives discussed above, and more research is needed to answer these questions. Future research should focus on refining and supplementing the counter-narratives reviewed above in order to understand how these narratives can be used most effectively, including how they might be combined.
On this episode of After America, Yanis Varoufakis joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the prospect of a grand deal between the US and China on climate, how Trump emerged from the Obama presidency, and why America isn’t a real democracy.
This discussion was recorded on Friday 1 November 2024 and things may have changed since recording.
Guest: Yanis Varoufakis, economist, politician, author and the former finance minister of Greece // @yanisvaroufakis
Host: Emma Shortis, Director of International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis
Funders may be reluctant to support narrative work because progress is difficult to evaluate. Are these objections valid?
The article “Measuring Narrative Change: Moving from Theory to Practice” by Brett Davidson in the Stanford Social Innovation Review SSIR discusses the importance of measuring narrative change in social impact work.
It highlights how narratives shape perceptions and behaviours influencing societal change. It emphasies the need for practical frameworks and tools to assess narrative shifts effectively. Overall, the piece advocates for a systematic approach to understanding and measuring narrative change, enabling organizations to enhance their impact in social movements.
The question about assessing progress in narrative change has to become less theoretical and much more applied. How does a small organization with a limited budget assess progress? What sort of evidence is appropriate and “good enough” for them while being compelling enough to convince funders to invest in their work? What tools might we develop or adapt that would enable such an organization to gather useful evidence to help it learn and become more effective, without imposing a huge extra burden?
Sustainability scientists challenge the dominant economic system Mark Diesendorf It is a rare event whenever scientists directly challenge the theory, political power and cultural embeddedness…
Redlands is the latest Southern California town to fall victim to right-wing efforts to turn the historically blue state red… but these bad actors are having a hard time keeping their neuroses in check!
This report by The Frameworks Institute introduces a model of narrative form for use in social change work, defining the elements and identifying the patterns in stories that comprise the narrative form.
Calls for narrative change abound in social change work. But what kinds of patterns qualify as narratives, and how narratives are embedded within particular stories, remains hazy. We developed a model of narrative, defining the elements and identifying the patterns in stories that comprise the narrative form. Our model identifies a set of features that make up a narrative, offering a practical tool for those working to change narratives within and beyond the issue of poverty.
There is widespread agreement that cultural narratives are “patterns of stories,” but thinkers and strategists in the narrative change space—including FrameWorks—generally haven’t explained what kinds of patterns qualify as narratives. As a result, it’s no surprise that narrative is frequently conflated with other types of frames, like values, metaphors, and emphasis frames.
This report, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, develops a model of narrative form for use in social change work. We think delineating the contours of narrative form is the key to unlocking a clearer understanding of narrative change. Focusing on form allows us to identify the types of patterns in stories that comprise narratives.
