“Life is not about how fast you can run or how high you can climb, but how well you can bounce”
– Tigger (Winnie the Pooh)
The Hon Mark Dreyfus KC MP
Over
500,000 fraud attempts blocked by Credential Protection Register
The Albanese Government’s Credential Protection Register has
blocked over 500,000 attempts to use stolen credentials, protecting Australians
personal data from being stolen and misused by cyber criminals.
For All APS Staff: APS Data and Analytics Expo 2024: ATO Commissioner, Rob Heferen, opening
Proudly sponsored by the ATO, the APS Data and Analytics Expo 2024 is open to all APS employees and features speakers from across the APS delivering fun and informative presentations on all things data and analytics (D&A).
Data in Action
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The NACC delivered to Australians was “watered down and watered down” by Anthony Albanese and Mark Dreyfus.
Says highly regarded top former judge Dr Margaret White:
“It is very distressing”
“If I weren’t so old, I think I would weep, but it’s not good for the make-up”.
Robodebt NACC hearings must be public: Top judge
Investor, attorney general, and activist lawsuits seek to curb cynical do-nothing and delaying climate action tactics like greenwashing.
Complexity is the enemy of quality.
Israel’s new defense minister, Israel Katz, is even more bloody-minded than the one Netanyahu sacked.
How Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s writers decided each companion’s romance arc
…and how they decided which NPCs would get together
Ten years ago, a major ICIJ investigation helped open the public’s eyes
to an influential tax haven in a very unexpected place — right in the
heart of the European Union.
Indeed, there were no palm-fringed beaches or billionaire’s luxurious
estates adorning our Luxembourg
Leaks investigation, first published in November 2014.
Instead, reporters were digging through complex corporate network
charts, uncovering rows of letterboxes and nameplates in nondescript
office buildings, and, most importantly, exposing an official stamp
from Luxembourg tax authorities endorsing tax arrangements that would
allow some of the world’s best-known corporations — think Amazon, Ikea,
Pepsi, Disney — to funnel money through shell companies in the tiny EU
member state and slash their tax bills to almost nothing.
A decade later, one of the lasting
impacts of the investigation remains an important shift
in public awareness, according to one of the whistleblowers at the
heart of the issue.
“Before Lux Leaks when you talked about tax evasion, people thought
about only rich individuals with yachts, but not about corporations,”
former PwC worker and whistleblower Antoine Deltour told ICIJ in an
interview marking the 10-year anniversary of the investigation.
“Now, when you talk to anyone in the streets, when you talk about tax
avoidance, the allegedly legal part of tax avoidance by big
corporations, I think it’s much better known.”
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Image:
Timothy Meko / Shutterstock
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It wasn’t
just the general public suddenly paying attention to the issue, either.
Ten years ago, Pascal Saint-Amans, then the director of tax for the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, was in
Australia presenting a series of proposed tax reforms to the G20 when
the Lux Leaks investigation exploded onto front pages. The instant
public outrage meant that plans to close down tax loopholes, already in
the works, suddenly became unstoppable — there was “no way for
politicians to escape” the momentum.
“Because of the articles, behaviors which were legal but clearly wrong
were shamed and therefore political action was taken to stop them,”
Saint-Amans said.
For journalist Edouard Perrin, who was taken to court by Luxembourg
authorities and faced potential jail time for his part in working with
leaked PwC documents, Lux Leaks heralded a new era of journalistic
collaboration. Now acquitted, he maintains that despite the hardships
he faced he would still do it all again.
“It definitely was worth the effort, not only personally but
collectively,” he said. Read more.
WORLD BANK
CLIMATE FINANCE SCRUTINY
A new report by advocacy group Oxfam estimated that up to $41 billion
of the World Bank’s spending on climate finance is impossible to track,
thanks to poor record-keeping practices by the bank.
ICIJ HONORS
NEW ALUMNI MEMBERS
ICIJ's founder Chuck Lewis is among five members who have been made
alumni of the ICIJ network as a way to honor the former reporters'
contributions to journalism.
Thanks for reading!
Hamish
Boland-Rudder
ICIJ's head of digital and product
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