Posts Tagged ‘ANZ Bank’

ANZ in breach of IFC 2012 Equator Principles

Sunday, February 19th, 2012
This article was initially posted by Tigerquoll 20120202 as a comment on the Tasmanian Times newspaper to an article entitled ‘Gunns’ Pulp Mill lifeline extended – community will protest‘ by Anne Layton-Bennett, Friends of The Tamar Valley (20120201).

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The ANZ Bank publicly claims it has adopted the Equator Principles of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC).

These are ‘voluntary standards designed by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) to help banks identify and manage social and environmental risks associated with the direct financing of large projects‘ – i.e. Natural Resource projects like Gunns Pulp Mill.

[Source:  ANZ Bank website, ^http://www.anz.com/aus/values/environment/Equator.asp]

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“ANZ has voluntarily committed to fund only new projects that can be developed and operated according to sound social and environmental standards.”

~ ANZ website

ANZ Bank’s new brand represents a bank “for the people”
For the people or for its executives?

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As at 1 Jan 2012, the IFC’s Equator Principles Performance Standard 3 ‘Resource Efficiency and Pollution Prevention” states that its aim is

  • To avoid or minimize adverse impacts on human health and the environment by avoiding or minimizing pollution from project activities.
  • To promote more sustainable use of resources, including energy and water.
  • To reduce project-related GHG emissions.

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ANZ’s prominent project finance client, Gunns and its planned Tamar Valley Pulp Mill project seems set to fail each of these objectives in its airborne emissions and waste water.  In September 2007, the ANZ was ranked the most sustainable bank globally by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.  So what is the ANZ Bank not telling the IFC?

A Gunns Woodchip Mill at Longreach, Tasmania

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IFC’s Sustainability Framework – 2012 Edition:

 

Performance Standard 6:    ‘Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Management of Living Natural Resources’

 

Clause 14:   The client will not significantly convert or degrade natural habitats, unless all of the following are demonstrated:

  • No other viable alternatives within the region exist for development of the project on modified habitat;
  • Consultation has established the views of stakeholders, including Affected Communities, with respect to the extent of conversion and degradation;8 and
  • Any conversion or degradation is mitigated according to the mitigation hierarchy.
.Gunns Clearfell of Tasmanian Heritage
© Photo by Alex Wise
Source:  ^http://www.alexwisephotography.net/blog/2008/11/08/tasmania-clearfelling/

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Clause 17:  In areas of critical habitat, the client will not implement any project activities unless all of the following are demonstrated:

  • No other viable alternatives within the region exist for development of the project on modified or natural habitats that are not critical
  • The project does not lead to measurable adverse impacts on those biodiversity values for which the critical habitat was designated, and on the ecological processes supporting those biodiversity values
  • The project does not lead to a net reduction in the global and/or national/regional population13 of any Critically Endangered or Endangered species over a reasonable period of time;
  • A robust, appropriately designed, and long-term biodiversity monitoring and evaluation program is integrated into the client’s management program.

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Back to ANZ’s website…
‘ANZ will comply with the Principles for all project finance proposals, regardless of their size, and apply the same Equator Principles standards to all projects in all countries.’
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These people don’t think so..

Pulp Mill protest, Launceston Tasmania
A pulp mill for the people?
 

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Grassroots community action group in Tasmania,  Pulp the Mill Alliance, continues to oppose Gunns’ proposed Tamar Valley Pulp Mill for the following reasons:

  • Toxic effluent in Bass Strait
  • Threats to the livelihood and lifestyle of thousands of Tamar Valley residents
  • Fresh water usage
  • Possible future use of native forests
  • The draconian and undemocratic Section 11 of the Pulp Mill Assessment Act
  • Lack of an independent, transparent assessment of a “critically non-compliant” mill
  • Lack of public hearings and community consultation
  • A complete lack of integrity on Gunns’ part

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The No Pulp Mill Alliance is undertaking a national campaign to warn the ANZ that if they renew their debt facility to Gunns Ltd then we will renew our national campaign targeting ANZ as the bank that is financing the corruptly approved, environmentally destructive, divisive, and financially risky Tamar Valley pulp mill.

‘We will be placing national advertisements, undertaking direct actions, sending letters/petitions, and anything else it takes to let ANZ know that we don’t want them to finance the Gunns’ Tamar Valley pulp mill.’

With Gunns’ share price at its lowest ever and a capital equity of only $82 million, Gunns Ltd is in serious financial trouble. It is selling everything to try and get its pulp mill built. In fact, the name Gunns Ltd could now be considered as synonymous with the Tamar Valley Pulp Mill.

Gunns has a net debt of $616 million, of which the primary financing facility – a $350 million senior debt facility – is maturing in January 2012. ANZ is the primary financing facility and thus is the Aussie Bank that keeps Gunns standing. Current site works taking place to prepare for construction of the proposed pulp mill are directly financed by the ANZ bank.
Gunns’ Chairman stated in his Annual General Meeting speech in November 2011 that Gunns Ltd is in discussion with ANZ to extend the debt with the: “objective of these discussions is to provide financing terms which facilitate the completion of the asset sale program and financial close of the Bell Bay pulp mill project.”

Gunns’ pulp mill site on the Tamar River, Tasmania

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We demand that ANZ do not extend the debt facility for Gunns Ltd, and warn ANZ that if it does announce an extension of the debt facility, then our national campaign will result in letting its customers know worldwide that it is backing a polluting project that does not comply with the Equator Principles.’

[Source: ANZ Campaign to stop funding the Pulp Mill, ^http://www.pulpthemill.org/]
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The current ten banks committed to Gunns in a syndicated loan are gambling solely on the go ahead and profitability of the proposed Pulp Mill.

Whereas Gunns once had a reliable cash inflows stream from multiple revenue streams – plantation sales including interstate, sawmilling, and hardware earlier on, all non pulp mill assets are being treated as “non-core”.

This strategy has already shown to be poor by the fire sale desperation of these assets in order to maintain operating cash flow to remain solvent, while the myopic focus on the proposed $2.3 billion Bell Bay pulp mill drives the Gunns’ Board.  Gunn’s revenue strategy is hedged on one big risky pulp mill – risky from the point of view of fickle international market demand and pulp commodity prices, mired by political controversy and considerable community opposition to the mill.

It’s equivalent to gambling all the $340 Million on the red to win on the roulette wheel.

These banks must be privy to some revenue guarantees and that is likely from ‘commercial in confidence’ assurances from the Tasmanian Labor Party.
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Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Victoria

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Further Reading:

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[1] World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) Equator Principles ,  ^http://www.equator-principles.com/

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[2]  Pulp the Mill Alliance Inc. ^http://www.pulpthemill.org/

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[3]  Friends of the Tamar River, ^http://ftv.org.au/

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[4]  TAP,  ^http://www.tapvision.info/

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[5]  The Wilderness Society (Tasmania),  ^http://www.wilderness.org.au/regions/tasmania

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[6]  Tasmanian Times (forum), ^http://tasmaniantimes.com.au/,  ‘Tasmanian Times is a forum of discussion and dissent – a cheeky, irreverent challenge to the mass media’s obsession with popularity, superficiality and celebrity’.  Article:  ^http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/article/gunns-pulp-mill-lifeline-extended-community-will-protest/

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[7]   Tasmania Clearfelling, Alex Wise Photography,  ^http://www.alexwisephotography.net/blog/2008/11/08/tasmania-clearfelling/

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Shortsighted ‘airport gate immigration’

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

This is a UK International Airport

Such crowding makes humanity a commodity, so wrongly destructive,

but then the British Government has reneged public transport accountability to Walker Guidelines.

Australia seems hell bent on trying to become more like overpopulated countries.

Why?  The selfish guise of  ‘economic growth’  by those who stand to financially benefit at others expense

Shortsighted ‘Airport Gate Immigration‘ ignores the triple bottom line cost of  ‘Fully Settled Immigration‘ into any country.

What I mean by this is that the Growthist Lobby’s  open door encouragement of immigration just to the airport, simplistically views a one-sided benefit –  that more foreigners immigrating can only positively bring more foreign dollars and so add economic demand by numbers to a host nation.  But it is as simplistic a view.  A tour operator seeing tourists arrive and seeing them as tour revenue – only revenue, no cost.

But immigration is not tourism. Immigrants stay forever.  Unlike tourism, immigrants represent not just revenue, but cost – Triple Bottom Line cost – a phrase that has been little used since the 1980s. ‘Sustainability‘ is more euphemistically malleable.

The economic, social and ecologial costs of immigration are selectively ignored by growthists, particularly government short-termism which just looks as quick fix employment – aka 457 Work Visas for the mining industry, too mean to invest in training the local population. Meanwhile corporate miner profits are at record levels. The banks are making a killing with more mortgage loans and their profits are soaring.

ANZ Bank’s new brand represents a bank “for the people”

The new logo has a central human shape representing ‘customers and staff’.

The marketing cost is $15 million to roll-out with the tagline “We live in your world”
Meanwhile, ANZ this month has sacked 1000 of its employees, and raised its mortgage rates, selfishly ignoring Australia’s Reserve Bank policy

All Australia’s greedy four big profit banks are set to sack 10,000 over the next year or so.

And 457 Work Visas keep being handed out to foreigners.

ANZ has become only for its CEO and its selfish shareholders.

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National government economic numbers look good because demand is up with its multiplier effect on consumer demand, housing demand and numbers employed. But it twists the definition of unemployment. It conveniently ignores the society and liveability metrics and ecological health indicators – these are worsening.

So ‘Airport Gate Immigration‘ has these hoards arriving. Australia’s Immigration Department handballs all the costs to the states and urban local governments, where most of these immigrants mainly end up settling.  ‘Migration to Australia has the potential to alter population dynamics, within and across cities and regions. In practice, almost 90% of new migrants settle in cities.”   [Source: Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) 2010].

‘The population projections affirm the dominance of our largest two cities, Sydney and Melbourne, which are projected to each nudge seven million people at mid century and the very significant growth anticipated for both Brisbane and Perth, which are each expected to more than double in size over this period.’

[Source: ‘Contemporary Urban Australia’, Australian Government – Infrastructure Australia,  ^http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/infrastructure/mcu/files/NUPBP_Ch3_Contemporary.pdf]

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Look at the statistics for Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth – the main destinations of choice by most immigrants into Australia by far.

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SYDNEY:    “With a population that is expected to reach around 9 million by the year 2031, NSW will require additional housing, more jobs and a host of critical infrastructure to meet demand.  Meeting the transport demands of that growing population is one of the biggest challenges facing NSW.”

[Source:  New South Wales Government, 2011, Transport for NSW, ^http://haveyoursay.nsw.gov.au/faq/index/21]

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BRISBANE:  “Brisbane’s Lord Mayor says the city could support significant population growth if more investment was made in infrastructure and services.”

[Source: ‘Brisbane’s infrastructure can’t support growth: mayor’, ABC News, 20100722, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-07-22/brisbanes-infrastructure-cant-support-growth-mayor/915594]

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MELBOURNE:   ‘Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle said population growth within the capital cities was a big challenge to infrastructure and planning.’

[Source:  ‘Population growth challenges capital cities’, by Stephen Lunn, social affairs writer, The Australian, 20100614, ^http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/population-growth-challenges-capital-cities/story-e6frg6nf-1225879194354]

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PERTH:   ‘Royal Automobile Club head of member advocacy Matt Brown says Perth’s road network is stretched and in need of urgent attention. “There is clear evidence that our road system is under considerable stress and it is struggling to cope with the traffic we already have, and with the population growing rapidly, these problems are going to get worse,” he said.  “Perth’s freeways and highways are becoming carparks at rush hour and this is only going to get worse. Creating a better and more accessible public transport system is just one way to help solve the issue of congestion.’

[Source:  ‘Traffic congestion adding to city’s growing pains’,  by Kent Acott and Geoffrey Thomas, The West Australian, 20010124, ^http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/latest/8699963/traffic-congestion-adding-to-citys-growing-pains/] .

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And so in these places social and governent infrastructure has exceeed capacity – road congestion, public transport congestion, hospital waiting lists, propert demand is through the roof (which contiunues to make growthist property developers richer).

Past PM Kevin Rudd and his infamous  ‘Big Australia Mein Kampf’:
…”I actually believe in a big Australia I make no apology for that. I actually think it’s good news that our population is growing”
The Labor national government still is pushing for Australia to have more than 35 million people by 2050.

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Australia’s public utilities are overloaded (water, electricity, public transport, roads) and so major capital investment is being undertaken, robbing treasury resources away from locals who have long funded government coffers from decades of paying taxes. So the taxes now go into multi-billion dollar desalination plants in these cities. Electricity transmission infrastructure can’t cope with the population increases in Australia’s major capital cities. Traffic congestion is undermining Australian traditional lifestyles as more people have to dedicated more of their day commuting.  The Australian Dream – owing a quarter acre block, has all but disappeared and now some growthists even curse it as a folly. Escaping to the backyard is now denied to most young Australians.

Try getting a job and see the queues!

Try finding affordable child care in an Australian capital city!

Try renting a flat in an Australian capital city!

Try buying a house in these cities where one’s parents live and like one’s parents once could. Children reaching adult age are forced to more away from their parents to more affordable areas, often to the country and interstate. Immigrant demand for urban housing is segregating established local families.  The children are forced to move out of the cities their grew up in.

A typical Melbourne real estate auction
The beneficiaries of high property values are the wealthy
and the banks who suck massive mortages foir life out of stretched family incomes

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Demand for housing is ruining urban amenity as more high-rise towers become imposed upon established locals. When new housing is built, the necessary public infrastructure is ignored by both the developer and national government – no new schools, child care, public transport, hospitals, etc. Local and state governments are unfairly expected to absorb the cost burden. Housing demand is also driving urban sprawl which is destroying arable land for vital food production. Sprawl is bulldozing ecology and reducing vital remnant habitat into smaller islands, with more species closer to the brink of extinction.

Coomoora Woodland
In outer Melbourne’s Keysborough this important ecology is threatened by urban sprawl
Ecology has no voice, no union, no political representation – because like all ecology before,
it is denied a right to exist, to have a say, to vote…like human slaves before.
(Photo by Damon Anderson)

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Airport Gate Immigration‘ is like burning down you house to keep warm, or eating you arm off because you’re hungry. Traditional Australia is seeing death by a thousand immigrants.

‘Marvelous Melbourne’ it used to be called
Now its Mega Melbourne – quantity sucking out the quality

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Fully Settled Immigration on the other hand, is about the full accommodating of immigrants until their are fully settled into their new country. They have work, a home, education, and have happily integrated into Australian society. Fully Settled Immigration respects the full needs and full costs of immigrants, rather than saying: ‘ok, your own‘ as one exits the international airport for the city.

In Australia, history since World War II has shown integration generally takes at least two generations. This is a realistic timeframe for Australian Govermment’s immigration responsibility and accountability.

It is time for a moratorium on all immigration until the full settled cost of immigration is known, made public and accepted by the Australian national government and the Australian people.  It necessitates nationalising all transport, housing, education, health and all the demands of immigrants in order to alleviate the immigrant cost burden from overstretched state and local governments. The growthist industries need to pay their way too with appropriate infrastructure levies and employment training levies for each on an immigrant per capita basis.

Melbourne’s Westgate Bridge
Now even the four-lanes can’t cope
Developers and governments keep building more sprawl in the west
Count the buses.  Where’s the bus lane?

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Take the regional Victorian township of Alexandra with its 12,000 residents for instance. For every 12,000 immigrants, the national goverment needs to replicate the same infrastructure that Alexandra enjoys in order to maining Australian social standards. But it needs to do this with no ecological footprint, because ecology is already disappearing with the 26 million already insatiable humans here.

Victoria’s regional township of Alexandra
An Australian triple bottom line urban design standard
(click photo to enlarge)

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Further Reading:

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[1]   ‘Can An Immigrant Logically Oppose Immigration?‘, by ‘Tim, 20120214,^http://candobetter.net/node/2777

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[2]  ‘We can keep our leafy suburbs and still save the planet‘, 20091122,^http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/we-can-keep-our-leafy-suburbs-and-still-save-the-planet-20091122-isqz.html

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[3]  ‘Rudd welcomes big australia‘, 20091023, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-10-23/rudd-welcomes-big-australia/1113752

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[4]  ‘The Cars that Ate Melbourne‘, by Friend of the Earth Melbourne, ^http://www.melbourne.foe.org.au/?q=sc/the_issues

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[5]  ‘New brand and logo to cost ANZ 15 million‘, ^http://www.news.com.au/business/new-brand-and-logo-to-cost-anz-15-million/story-e6frfm1i-1225790269154

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[6]  ‘ANZ cuts substantial number of jobs in Melbourne‘, Herald Sun, 20120213, ^http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/anz-cuts-substantial-number-of-jobs-in-melbourne/story-fn7j19iv-1226269646858

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[7]  ‘The Impact of Mass Immigration on Canadian and Global Overpopulation‘, Marvellous Melbourne.org, ^http://marvellousmelbourne.org/drupal/?q=node/1205

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[8]  ‘Carrying capacity: can a big country with very few people be overpopulated? – Currents‘,  by Phoebe Hall, The Environment Magazine, Mar-Apr 2003, via ‘Find Articles,   ^http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1594/is_2_14/ai_98469934/

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[9]   CanDoBetter.net Immigration articles, ^http://candobetter.net/immigration

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[10]   CanDoBetter.net Overpopulation articles, ^http://candobetter.net/taxonomy/term/134

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Melbourne’s growing water supply for uncontrolled immigrants inflicted upon local country residents of coastal Wonthaggi.

 

This has been forcibly paid for by decades of Melbourne local taxpayers.

They stand to benefit nothing but cop population invasion from foreigners and government legislated destruction of Australian valued amenity.

This is the epitome of treason.

Yet Australia’s Liberal-Labor alternating time-swap governments say to Australians: cop it sweet, you are a tolerant society so be tolerant!

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Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia

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