Dominic Perrottet has today refused to engage with suggestions factional feuds led to his revelation that he wore a Nazi uniform to his 21st birthday, but that hasn’t stopped the speculation.
Two days before Perrottet made the explosive disclosure, he received a call from his transport minister, David Elliott, warning him “someone was planning to use it against him”. Elliott has been critical of the premier’s stance on pokies, but says he was only cautioning Perrottet that an attack could be imminent.
So was the revelation linked to the premier’s stance on pokies? Or – as senior Liberal sources suggested today – did it come from disgruntled members of Perrottet’s own rightwing faction angry about preselection battles?
Perrottet has had 11 years in politics to disclose the Nazi incident. Given this is all unfolding only now, three months before an election, “the timing is fascinating”, as my colleague Michael McGowan writes.
Top news
Lisa Marie Presley dies aged 54 | The sole child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley passed away today after suffering a reported cardiac arrest. “She was the most passionate strong and loving woman I have ever known,” her 77-year-old mother said in a statement.
WA hit with class action over youth detention | A 13-year-old autistic girl was allegedly subjected to seven months of continuous solitary confinement while detained at Western Australia’s notorious Banksia Hill Detention Centre. It’s one of hundreds of horror claims submitted in support of a class action against the WA government. Australia has come under international pressure for detaining children under the age of 14, with Human Rights Watch warning this week it damaged the nation’s credibility on human rights.
Mammoth wait list for elective surgery | The number of people waiting for elective surgery could balloon to more than 500,000 by June without government action, the Australian Medical Association has warned. The current national backlog stands at 306,281.
George Pell slammed Pope Francis in memo | The conservative cardinal apparently condemned the papacy of Pope Francis as a “catastrophe” where political correctness held sway while global wrongs were ignored. Released last year under the pseudonym Demos, the document accuses the pope of silence on moral issues, including the German Catholic church’s openness to the LGBTQ community, female priests and communion for the divorced.
Covid cases drop post-Christmas | New Covid cases are seeing a decline after the holiday season, as predicted. But deaths and hospitalisations in Victoria and New South Wales remain high. Victoria recorded 149 deaths and 473 hospitalisations in the last recording week, while NSW recorded 112 deaths and 1,458 people were in hospital.
Exxon predicted global heating | The oil giant knew of the dangers of global heating from at least the 1970s, predicting our current predicament “correctly and skilfully”, new research has found. That didn’t stop Exxon, however, from spending subsequent decades publicly rubbishing the science in its quest for profits.
US lawmakers want Bolsonaro kicked out | Dozens of Democratic lawmakers have written to the US president, Joe Biden, demanding the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s diplomatic visa be cancelled in the wake of the rampage in Brazil’s capital by his supporters. Bolsonaro currently resides in Florida.
Full Story
Finding Australia’s most beautiful bookstore
Where is Australia’s most beautiful bookstore? And how would you go about deciding what makes a beautiful bookstore? Our reporter Rafqa Touma attempts to find it in this 17-minute episode.
What they said …
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“Poverty in the bottom decile is particularly entrenched.” – Treasury report
Children born into the poorest households in Australia will have a 12% chance of becoming top earners in their lifetime, according to new Treasury research. But migrants tend to outperform locals from similar poor backgrounds in moving up the income ladder, with the report noting the “striking success of second-generation Australians”.
In numbers
Last year was one of the warmest years ever recorded and the past eight years are now collectively the hottest documented by modern science. See that temperature rise in the below graph from the World Meteorological Organization.
Before bed read
If you have a lawn and want to help combat global heating, you might consider replacing it with trees and shrubs. A new study from the Auckland University of Technology found that more than a gigatonne of carbon could be removed from the atmosphere over two decades if a third of the world’s city lawns were planted with trees.
I actually did this to my lawn last year by using black builders plastic and solarising that dreadful kikuyu lawn for several months. And it worked! It’s now a glorious garden with trees, native shrubs and friendly bees and birds. If you want to know more about how I did this and the plants I’ve used, reply to this email and drop me a line.
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