The Great Darling River Water Heist Part the Second

Waiting for Ronnie Salt to be de-listed by twitter – again.

Thread stored here for safekeeping.

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New conversation
💧Ronni Salt‏ @MsVeruca 20m20 minutes ago

Another day at the farm and another small tale to tell. And this time it’s about Angus Taylor, his other Cayman’s connections, his involvement in water buyback issues – and his extreme dislike of anybody discussing these. #watergate #auspol
1 reply 23 retweets 29 likes

Remember Eastern Australia Irrigation? The one in the Caymans where a large chunk of your $80 million went? On the same day that company was registered in the Caymans – another company was registered. In fact the 2 company’s registration numbers are 1 digit apart.

So who registered that company at the same time as Eastern Australia Irrigation? We do know the name of the company was Agricultural Managers Limited – and it would go on to attempt great things.

But before its ambitious tilt at Australia’s largest irrigation property, AML sat there quietly in the Caymans doing not much at all. Until one day in 2009, when the water buybacks market in Australia really started to fire up. (Remember the $300 million Twynham deal?)

In light of this, the offshore Cayman’s AML decided to act It set up 2 companies in Australia – 1 called Agricultural Managers Australia Ltd (AMA) & another called Australia Agricultural Securitisation Ltd (AASL)* (*At least they could never stand accused of creativity)

Both Agricultural Managers Australia Ltd (AMA) & Australia Agricultural Securitisation Ltd (AASL) were registered in Nov & Dec 2009 by the sole director & secretary – Angus Taylor.

So – AML was the parent company in the Caymans, which owned AMA, which then owned AASL. Got it? Both AMA & AASL were registered with 2 x $1 shareholdings. A good investment it seems.
Millions of $ were flying around, and it appears that was the purpose of establishing these companies – to trade in the commodification of water Because in 2010, the Cayman’s AML popped up in the media for the first time They were making a bold bid to buy Cubbie Station.

In 2010 media reports, a spokesperson for the company bidding to buy Cubbie for $240 million was a Mr Angus Taylor, who self-identified as a director of Agricultural Managers Ltd, the Caymans company. Note they also managed Kia Ora & Clyde, the future water buyback properties

Angus Taylor’s bid to buy Cubbie is also confirmed by a conversation Angus Taylor once had with Simon Holmes a Court. In it, Angus Taylor told Holmes a Court that he, Taylor, had tried three times to buy Cubbie Station. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

By the way, Angus Taylor & his fellow directors were helped along in the Cubbie Station deals by a consultancy & lobbying firm called Fifth Estate.

But before they had signed any contracts for title, the first thing the prospective bidders AML did was to attempt to sell 92,000 megalitres of water back to the federal government. Before they had even bought the property. #watergate #MurrayDarling

 

Now Cubbie Station in Queensland’s Lower Balonne has the capacity to extract, harvest & store over 500,000 megalitres of water. Even at the bargain basement price of $1000 per megalitre, that’s a lot of helpful finance from a federal gov’t with $ billions to spend on water.

In addition, there is no mention of Agricultural Managers Ltd or its subsidiaries in any of the annual reporting that EAA lodges with ASIC, even though the media said it was running the EAA properties. Why no disclosure in any of the annual reports to ASIC?

Now fast forward, to 2017 when Barnaby & the dept do the $80M deal with EAA – a very interesting thing happens. Information released shows that both EAA and AML engaged a lobbyist firm in 2017. And we know what you’re thinking. Yes, it’s our old friends the Fifth Estate.

From 2012 onward, AML has no apparent business interests in Australia. And yet it engages a professional lobbying firm for an undisclosed fee in the same time period as EAA.

In another remarkable coincidence – Tandou the other lucky $80M water Barnaby buyback deal recipients – also engage the Fifth Estate to act for them in 2017.

The entire issue does raise a lot of questions, questions that should be asked it not for one small but very significant detail – Mr Angus Taylor and his wife are very quick to threaten legal action.

We’ve already seen the Wikipedia discussions where Angus Taylor’s wife threatens legal action for minor infringements on his wiki page. What is less known are Mr & Mrs Taylor’s threats to anybody who mentions EAA and the Caymans.

In 2014 a small Goulburn based Facebook page was threatened with legal action by Mrs Taylor for the sin of posting a newspaper article referring to Angus Taylor’s Caymans connections. In turn, the newspaper the Goulburn Post were also threatened & had to issue an apology.

Aoife Champion, ALP candidate for Hume once mentioned the taboo subject of Angus Taylor, EAA & the Caymans back in 2016. The next day a staffer rang her & demanded amateur video of the event be edited to remove any mention of the taboo subjects. An amateur community video.

This may seem reductive stuff to those more focused on carrot picking & sheep shearing, but it goes toward a pattern of silencing members of the public by threats or intimidation. And that behavior continues.

We have legal threats issued to journalists on twitter, Wikipedia, people on Facebook, The Australian newspaper, the Goulburn Post & even community members filming video. And every time it is the off-limits subject – Angus Taylor, the Cayman Islands & his association with EAA.

It is not defamatory to question a cabinet minister in relation to information properly the subject of public scrutiny. We are not alleging any wrong doing. Like many members of the media – we ordinary Australians have questions.

 

We would be happy for anybody to answer these questions: #watergate

And just to finish Mr Taylor, here are Michael West’s questions from April 21 which remain unanswered to this day: #auspol

Because twitter does not allow an addendum: Simon Holmes a Court’s conversation

💧Ronni Salt

@MsVeruca

This thread was compiled with research from the magnificent @jommy_tee – who I forgot to add at the beginning of the thread. He is the king.