The Utegate Affair. When rumours of an alleged email started circulating, IT was requested to scan the Prime Minister’s Office and the Treasury networks with the keyword search “Grant”. When several emails surfaced indicating direct correspondence between the Prime Minister and the Treasurer on the keyword subject, a hastily convened meeting refined the “scope” to only include emails between Andrew Charlton and Godwin Grech on a particular afternoon. The subsequent search, widely reported in the media, not surprisingly found no incriminating email. Which proves the old adage, want the right answer, ask the right question.
Please note the date of this article … how did they know before it was officially announced?????
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Is Alliance Resources undervalued based on Four Mile Uranium project upgrade?
Alliance Resources (ASX: AGS) unveiled the news the market was waiting for, and the shot in the arm the uranium market needed.
The Four Mile uranium joint venture project in South Australia will become the next major global uranium producer in January 2010. Alliance shares were up 10%.
At the Four Mile Project, the inferred mineral resource estimate has increased to 61 million pounds of uranium oxide grading 0.35% or 3500 parts per million uranium oxide – an increase of 90%.
The reason for the large increase? A maiden resource estimate for the Four Mile East deposit. It has an initial resource of 4.1 million tonnes grading 0.31% uranium oxide for 29Mlb of uranium oxide.
Alliance has a 25% interest in the project and will provide $22.5 million in funding. The combined grades from Four Mile East and Four Mile West have the potential to make the Four Mile uranium project the highest-grade operating uranium mine in Australia.
Alliance managing director Patrick Mutz said that the project had the potential to be the highest grade and largest in-situ recovery operation in the world.
Drilling at Alliance Resources’ Four Mile uranium joint venture with Quasar Resources.
Production at Four Mile in January 2010 will commence at an initial rate of 2.6Mlb per annum, before increasing to 3Mlbpa within three months.
The project has estimated development costs of $A90 million.
Quasar Resources, affiliate of Beverley uranium mine owner Heathgate Resources, holds the remaining stake in Four Mile and is the manager of the JV.
(Read the original here.)
Seen yesterday wandering the halls of Parliament at Westminster — the Victorian uber-stacker George Seitz MP. Lobbying for a job in his post-Parliamentary life, or having his last crack at a junket? Perhaps a post-career epiphany on democracy beckons…
Coles Supermarkets has a big Christmas in July function planned for July 29 in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs where an announcement of a linking with a big name in Australian cooking is promised. As a big advertiser and supporter of MasterChef Australia, will the big name be the winner that will be known next Sunday night?
Why would a high profile Victorian Government Statutory authority, with close links to Workcover and TAC, be hiring a wine expert to “facilitate” a session for staff at $200 an hour plus travel expenses? Hope they all cabbed it home! Another fine example of taxpayer money well utilised. See “recommendation” from the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority here.
Anti-war protestors crash Talisman Saber. Not surprising. Shoalwater Bay has around 60kms of unpatrolled borders and authorities are kidding themselves if they think they can keep every protestor, no matter how crazy, out of there. It would be like fighting the Taliban in the Tora Tora. I can assure you they won’t be the last trying to break in.
No more free copies of The Australian in my building. Not sure if anyone else has mentioned it but — the stand and (high) pile of free copies of The Australian has disappeared from my building’s foyer — and our neighbouring building. Same for anyone else? No more freebies from Murdoch?
Searching an email data base for “Grant”will, as any regular computer user knows, bring up every every document containing the word or even where it is part of a word in some circumstances. In any case “grant”can be a noun or a verb which no doubt is widely used in government communications. So why the innuendo? At least your correspondent is right in one respect. If you want to get a useful answer out of any data base you must ask the right question. Any user of Google would know this.
Adrian Ryan
I think it’s really unfair to rail at public servants’ in-kind pay. Most public servants get paid a fraction of what they would in the open market, especially those at financial and insurance corporations like VMIA, TAC and WorkCover and the top boffins inside Treasuries and First Ministers’ Departments. Most of the public servants I have worked with are paid at what is really a bargain to the taxpayer (although there are exceptions that prove the rule). If pay was benchmarked against each department’s industry standard, taxpayers would feel more of a pinch than the odd massage or “thank you for a job well done” event. There’s not a hue and cry when shareholders’ are slugged for company parties, cocktail parties, and the like. It should also be noted that public servants no longer have the benefits that used to compensate for lower pay, such as defined benefits superannuation, job security, promotion on seniority, etc. And there are no bonuses. Public servants are by no means the fat cats of legend.
Thanks Adrian, the point I was going to make as well. Its very easy for the column author to throw nudge nudge wink wink porkies in the style of several News Ltd employees but to write crap due to ignorance or just being bloody minded belongs in the pages of the Australian, Tele and Herald, not here. Dragging Crikey down to their level is dumb.