PRIME MINISTERS PAST AND PRESENT
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is set to announce candidates in a series of target seats over the next month, The Sydney Morning Herald reports, as Labor prepares for the next federal election.
Asked if the move was a sign of an early election, the PM declared: “This [candidate announcement] is a sign that we’re prepared.”
Albanese announced Rebecca Hack as Labor’s candidate for the Queensland seat of Ryan on Thursday as well as Rowan Holzberger in the seat of Forde. The prime minister will also announce today Ali France in Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson.
Dutton, for his part, spent yesterday calling out former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
At the weekend, Turnbull called Dutton a “thug”. Responding on 2GB Dutton said: “I just think people can see through it and I wish him the best. I think he’s diminishing himself by making these comments… Malcolm’s got an axe to grind. I think it’s sad.”
Someone else with a few words to say about Australia’s 29th prime minister is a certain Rupert Murdoch who when asked, in an interview to mark The Australian’s 60th anniversary, what he thought about Turnbull’s previous criticism of him, said: “I think Malcolm’s nuts. I mean he’s paranoid. He didn’t like the fact that we supported Tony Abbott versus him. That’s all.”
To mark its anniversary, The Australian also spoke to former prime ministers John Howard, Julia Gillard and Paul Keating on the topic of leadership.
Asked if Australia had the leadership it needs today, from either of the main parties, Keating declared the country currently lacked creativity and boldness.
A morale boost for all I’m sure.
$250M FOR UKRAINE
At the NATO summit in Washington, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles is set to announce $250 million in military support for Ukraine. The ABC reports it is the largest single aid package Australia has provided to Ukraine in its defence against Russia to date.
Marles will unveil the fresh investment during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, The Age reports. The meeting will also include leaders of other Indo-Pacific nations, including Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
Elsewhere at the summit, a joint declaration from the 32 members of NATO called China a “decisive enabler of Russia’s war”, The Guardian reports, and said Beijing’s deepening ties with Moscow were of “deep concern”.
Beijing fired back, saying the declaration was “provocative with obvious lies and smears”.
Meanwhile, US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell told The Australian China was actively seeking to establish a military base in the South Pacific.
“They’re looking across the Pacific. This is something where we’re never going to be able to rest,” he said.
And what of the Joe Biden circus? The US president is due to give a solo press conference in a few hours as part of the NATO summit. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was criticised this week for repeating language used by a Bloomberg journalist calling it Biden’s “big boy press conference”, Forbes reports.
NBC News meanwhile reports the Biden campaign is quietly assessing the viability of Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy against Donald Trump in a new head-to-head poll.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
Remember when we all used to post letters? What a wonderful time that was.
Anyway, if you’re a stamp collector with a bit of spare cash, you might be interested to learn a dealer is preparing to sell a Plate 77 Penny Red from 1864 for a mere $1.2 million (£650,000), The Mirror reports.
Paul Fraser Collectibles chief executive Mike Hall said: “This stamp is legendary among collectors because it shouldn’t exist.
“While most people know the Penny Black was the first stamp, it’s actually Plate 77 Penny Reds that send collectors into a frenzy.”
The stamp has been declared the UK’s “rarest and most valuable”, euronews said.
Apparently only nine examples of the Penny Reds from the printing plate 77 exist today after authorities noticed a defect in the plate and destroyed it.
Three of the stamps are in private hands, with the others housed in museums.
Say What?
“It looks like it!”
Soccer fan and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer
While sat next to US President Joe Biden in the Oval Office, the new UK prime minister was rather predictably asked by the British press pack if it was “coming home” after England’s men’s soccer team progressed to the Euro2024 final. Biden also chimed in with: “It’s because of the prime minister”. Rishi Sunak is probably adding the moment to his rather large list of regrets in calling the early election.
CRIKEY RECAP
The long-term decline in the major party vote ought to change how they approach independents and minor parties, not as one-off aberrations but as permanent features. After all, Julia Gillard’s government had the second-highest percentage of passed legislation, ranking only behind John Howard’s 41st Parliament in which Howard won control of both the House and the Senate (a very rare occurrence).
The next federal government might include Greens, it might include teal independents, it might even include “Muslim candidates from Western Sydney”, as Dutton so disdainfully put it. But there is no reason to believe it will be a disaster, with plenty of Australian examples of how successful power-sharing governments can be, for those who wish to heed them.
During the past three years, detention not only deprived Cheng Lei of physical freedom but also to some extent muted her voice. Against her wishes, she had indeed become “fodder for China hawks” as well as “an unfortunate existence for China doves”. In detention, she had little control over how her story was told and whose interests were being served. She was mostly spoken to by the Chinese authorities and about by the media and commentators. She has been represented as either a hapless victim or an icon of martyrdom.
In the meantime, she has also been denounced and pilloried by some commentators on Chinese-language platforms, who literally called her a “traitor”. Now, she is back in Australia and free to write and to speak her mind. And as it turns out, what she has to say does not always make a “good story”.
The AJI documented 89 attacks against Indonesian journalists in 2023 alone. That was the highest number in the past decade, the organisation said, noting physical assaults, online harassment, criminalisation and sexual violence were among the types of intimidation used.
Out of those cases, 33 attacks came after reporting on corruption, 25 after reporting on social issues and crime, and 14 after reports on environmental issues and agrarian conflict.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
France is busing homeless immigrants out of Paris before the Olympics – The New York Times ($)
Israeli weapons packed with shrapnel causing devastating injuries to children in Gaza, doctors say (The Guardian)
Shelley Duvall, Robert Altman protege and tormented wife in ‘The Shining,’ dies at 75 (The Hollywood Reporter)
Hundreds of thousands of Texans could be without power a week after Beryl (Washington Post)
Zelenskyy urges Nato leaders to ‘drop all limitations’ on striking military targets in Russia (BBC)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Political rifts have left the US haunted by fear of civil war. Here’s how France can do better — Alexander Hurst (The Guardian): Outside Parliament, perhaps there is another way to change the rules of the game and create something new. According to Mathieu Lefèvre at Destin Commun, when it runs a focus group it often finds that participants request to come back the next day for nothing because they are so relieved to have had the chance to listen to, and be listened to by, other people in their communities.
What if focus groups weren’t just run for campaign purposes, but in every one of France’s 36,000 communes? What better way to feel respected than listening and being listened to?
Yes, Biden’s descent is a cover-up. But who will take the blame? — Josh Szeps (The Australian): But the most infuriating blame will go to Biden’s inner circle of loved ones and White House staff who persuaded an old man that he could bluff his way through the most consequential election of our lifetimes.
When they lose, it’ll serve them right. The infuriating thing is, they’re taking the rest of us down with them.
