HACKING AND GAGGING
The NSW, Queensland and Victorian governments will offer the victims of the Optus hack cheap or free licence replacements, The Australian ($) reports, and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said the federal government was looking at waiving the passport fee. Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said an international investigation into the hack has been launched, including looping in the FBI — it might’ve been enough to scare the perpetrator because a heartfelt apology was posted to an online forum afterwards, as Crikey reports, where they said they’d deleted the data and didn’t want the US$1 million ransom money anymore. The Betoota Advocate wryly noted the hacker probably doesn’t live in Sydney, considering the “modest” ransom figure — the executive at Optus probably “spends that on lunch each year”, the satirical paper mused.
Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin is refusing to resign over the hack, but it’s hard to see how she’d survive it (then again, Alan Joyce is still CEO of Qantas) particularly after it was revealed Medicare numbers were also exposed, as the SMH reports, and after Optus resisted several federal government efforts to tighten cybersecurity, the Oz ($) adds. Last year the embattled telco told the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security that new cybersecurity laws would add “commercial stresses”. Boy, that didn’t age well. So what now? Optus has cyber insurance and will be able to cover the cost of the hack, AFR reports. A class action from customers will probably come next, the ABC reports, where a law firm will act on behalf of all victims to secure compensation.
RACE TO THE BOTTOM
It’s like I’m back in the schoolyard again getting racist taunts from my peers hurled at me, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong told the Senate when speaking about Pauline Hanson telling the Greens’ Mehreen Faruqi to “piss off back to Pakistan”. Wong spoke of the “countless” times she’d received similar comments, The Age reports, describing it as “triggering” and condemning Hanson’s comments without reservation. In Hanson’s speech on the motion, she doubled down and even volunteered to take Faruqi to the airport. Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John responded loudly that Hanson was an “absolute scumbag”, Guardian Australia reports. Censuring Hanson was the “bare minimum” Parliament should do, Wong continued. She didn’t get censured in the end anyway — an amended motion called for people to be respectful and not divisive. That oughta do it!
In Victoria now and top Hawks have been accused of running the football department like a “Russian mafia”, according to Hawthorn’s review of the treatment of Indigenous players. “Two pregnant partners of players lost their unborn children during the ‘traumatic events’, the explosive Hawthorn-commissioned report also noted,” the Herald Sun ($) reports. You can read the allegations of former players and their partners here ($), but just a warning that it is very grim reading. The report also found “bullying and intimidation” as serious as to “amount to human rights abuses”. Former coaches Alastair Clarkson and Chris Fagan both deny any allegations of wrongdoing.
GET TANKED
Fill up your tank today because petrol is about to surge in price. The fuel excise reduction ends today, adding at least 22.1c a litre to petrol. It comes as more than 200 of the nation’s largest industrial emitters have asked the federal government to let them buy international offsets, the ABC reports. The oil and gas sector has to reduce its emissions by 3.5% to 6% a year from July 2023, but says it would be better if it could simply buy credits offshore. What could possibly go wrong? Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has already said it would be allowed only if the government believed “100%” in the integrity of the emissions reductions. Hmm. And three major gas producers are refusing to sign Resources Minister Madeleine King’s heads of agreement, AFR reports, that would cover an impending shortfall of energy next year. Santos’s GLNG, the ConocoPhillips-led APLNG, and Shell’s QGC business say the agreement is “unworkable”.
Meanwhile, the planet continues to warm and the wild weather continues to roll in. Queenslanders should brace for more wet weather today, as a senior meteorologist warned that isolated severe thunderstorms may lead to flash flooding, The Courier-Mail ($) reports. Thousands lost power yesterday when severe thunderstorms pummelled Queensland’s south with large hailstones, strong winds and heavy rain. Indeed there’s a huge rain bomb expected to hit “virtually all” of Australia over the next 10 days, 7News reports via Weatherzone. WA should expect “significant unseasonable rainfall”, which is just another way of saying: none of this is normal.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Tasmanian farmhand Michael Edgerton was browsing online when a post caught his eye — a property had been sold a ways away; could anyone help with relocating some animals? Edgerton jumped on the road and travelled 40 kilometres to Glendevie, where he greeted the new property owner and helped a couple of goats find their forever homes. Job done, Edgerton figured, dusting his hands off. But the owner mentioned there was one other animal, a horse, way out the back, as ABC tells it. The Clydesdale, Edgerton saw, was across a creek and on a steep part of a hill, and when he approached she was a sorry sight: Hazel’s ribs were showing and she was lice-infested. Edgerton gave Hazel a gentle pat and quietly vowed he’d save her. Edgerton checked with the RSPCA and got permission to move Hazel. He figured she could live on a farm property he worked on, quite close to Huonville. But when the day came to help Hazel into the float, she was too frightened.
He tried another time with the help of two local cops, but Hazel just couldn’t bring herself to walk in. Edgerton returned each day for a week, feeding her and thinking hard about what to do. One night, it came to him. He loaded a pack with water and food for himself and Hazel. “And we walked,” he says. They set off at 5:30pm, walking down the highway and onwards towards the farm (some 40km away) in the still night. They had lots of stops so Hazel could catch her breath and eat a little. Edgerton says he was touched by locals pulling over and asking if they were alright. It did look a bit weird, he admitted — a man and a horse walking at night. They ate breakfast in Franklin as the sun rose, and at 8am they walked into the farm, some 14 hours after they had begun their journey. Now Hazel is at a healthy weight again and even got a complimentary nail (hoof) treatment from a local.
Wishing you the patience and care of Michael Edgerton this morning.
SAY WHAT?
I will not, NOT retract what I have told Senator Faruqi or any other Australian that’s come here for a new way of life to disrespect what is Australian to me. And she can … go where I have said. I make the offer as well, to take her to the airport.
Pauline Hanson
The One Nation senator refused to apologise for her comments, which received condemnation from the Senate, including the Greens’ Mehreen Faruqi who said “it never gets easier to deal with racist attacks”, and that it is “insulting and humiliating”.
CRIKEY RECAP
Alleged Optus hacker deletes extortion threat and apologises after releasing more personal data
“Crikey has not been able to independently verify the data with any of the individuals purported to be in this data set. Over the weekend, Optus said it would not confirm or deny whether the data in the sample is real. Security researcher Jeremy Kirk noticed that the released data contained what appeared to be Medicare numbers. Email addresses included suggest that a number of government employees, including members of the Department of Defence, are included in the breach.
“Optus said the company has contacted individuals whose details were compromised because of the cyber attack. Yesterday it said it would pay for a year of credit monitoring and identity protection for all current and former customers included in the breach.”
Thank God, Equifax is here to help Optus data victims. Wait, where have I heard that name before?
“Of course, it’s the right thing that Optus are being more hands-on than it previously has been regarding the breach, and we’re sure Equifax has done some serious work on its security in the intervening five years — if for no other reason than to avoid another fine of more than half a billion dollars.
“But it points to a problem with most solutions offered after a massive data breach. Like the proposal floated by Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil that companies provide banks with details of stolen data after a breach — they always seem to involve handing one’s data to yet another company which could in turn be compromised.”
Sisterhood curiously silent on election of far-right nationalist girlboss even though she’s (get this) a woman
“Yeah, if you don’t support Meloni, it can only be because she fails your woke tests by being the leader of… Italy’s first far-right government since it fought on the wrong side of World War II. Yep, just because her party, the Brothers of Italy, morphed out of the remnants of a Nazi puppet government, use the same logo as the defunct neo-fascist group Italian Social Movement, campaigned under the Mussolini-era slogan ‘God, homeland, family’, and whose leader before Meloni once said ‘We are all heirs of Il Duce‘, the so-called tolerant left is acting like her win might be a bad thing.
“The fact that she campaigns against the ‘LGBT lobby’ apparently out to destroy the family unit, and does a lot of suggestive talk about George Soros apparently financing ‘mass immigration’ and a plan for ‘ethnic substitution’, is all it takes for the sisterhood to abandon one of their own, conveniently ignoring the fact that she has said she’s not a fascist.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Taliban official calls for schools to be reopened for girls (Al Jazeera)
Children removed from Jewish sect’s jungle compound in Mexico (BBC)
Gas leaks in Russian pipelines to Europe trigger sabotage probe (Reuters)
Hurricane Ian: Florida braces for powerful storm amid evacuation orders (The Guardian)
Meta removes Chinese effort to influence US elections (The New York Times)
Iran protests: death toll rises to 76 as crackdown intensifies — rights group (BBC)
Could volcanos in Canada be used to generate green energy? Scientists are hoping so (CBC)
THE COMMENTARIAT
The election of Italy’s fascist-adjacent Giorgia Meloni is a public reminder that women can be just as awful as men — Van Badham (Guardian Australia): “It’s become a familiar bait and switch to insist that the left’s ideological commitment to representative diversity — and feminism, in particular — is a hypocritical shibboleth. Feminists failing to fall in politically behind Meloni, Truss, Marine Le Pen, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Pauline Hanson — all of whom strike patriarchal bargains aligning themselves to male power — is somehow a greater betrayal of all women than any policy decisions they themselves may make.
“This dog-whistles to the old right-wing merit myth, in which the systemic and traditional overpromotion of white men from cashed-up backgrounds is made to look natural and deserved because proportionately under-representative handfuls of women or people of colour occasionally make it through. Note: Truss may be prime minister, but a shocking 75% of her Conservative Party colleagues in the UK Parliament are men. What the right aren’t ever bothered to understand about feminism is that the campaign for gender equality isn’t about supremacy, or replacement, or any of the paranoias that provoke misogynists to sweat into their keyboards late at night whenever a woman has an opinion on the internet.”
A global recession looks increasingly likely — but here’s how Australia could escape it — Peter Martin (The Conversation): “Australia avoided recession during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, we escaped the 2001 US ‘tech-wreck’, and we avoided the ‘great recession’ during the global financial crisis. In part, this has been due to excellent judgment. Our Reserve Bank was able to take clear-eyed decisions about when to follow the US on rates and when not to. At times it was helped by high commodity prices, which are high again following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and which are supporting our currency, even though we are increasing rates less aggressively than the United States.
“At the right moment, Australia’s Reserve Bank would be wise to decouple from the US. If the Fed pushes up rates to the point where it is about to bring on a US recession, Australia would be well advised to stand back and not lift rates, letting the collapse of the US economy bring down inflation by itself. If Australia’s Reserve Bank thinks that moment is approaching, it should consider shrinking the size of its rate rises (the last four have been 0.5 percentage points). Its next meeting is next Tuesday. Because of its importance, the Bureau of Statistics is bringing forward the publication of its new monthly measure of inflation to this Thursday, publishing the results for both July and August at once.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Online
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Reason Party MP Fiona Patten, human rights advocate Nyadol Nyoun and the Victorian Pride Lobby’s Liam Elphick will discuss laws against hate speech in Victoria in a webinar.
Kaurna Country (also known as Adelaide)
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Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney and the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium’s Elmer Guy will give keynote addresses at the World Indigenous Peoples’ Conference on Education at Adelaide Convention Centre.
Yuggera Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will give a “State of the state” address at an event held by CEDA at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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South Australian Liberal Party Senator Alex Antic will host a discussion with British politician Nigel Farage at Parliament House.
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Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus will speak to the National Press Club.
