NUCLEAR FAMILY
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said SA Premier Peter Malinauskas is “wrong” to argue in favour of nuclear energy, The Australian ($) reports. Labor right-leaning Malinauskas said the eight AUKUS nuclear submarines expected to be built in his state should open our minds to the “zero carbon emissions” power source — Albo was like, I respect you, Mali, but everyone can get “one or two things wrong” sometimes. The PM countered that the economic analysis of nuclear energy has proven it a dead end, time and time again. Why? Nuclear reactors take ages to build, they’re really bloody expensive, and where would we put the waste? Albanese asked. It comes as Coalition MP Ted O’Brien is running a “grassroots” survey facilitated by a company that works with nuclear projects in the US, Guardian Australia reports. Consulting company Helixos developed O’Brien’s website, but the MP says he paid for the grassroots community campaign himself.
Meanwhile, the team behind teal MP Kylea Tink’s election success is planning a takedown of NSW Planning Minister Anthony Roberts who once spruiked a lump of coal in Parliament, the SMH reports. The teal machine is backing in local Victoria Davidson in the blue-ribbon seat of Lane Cove, which has a hefty 14% margin. Roberts is the second Liberal cabinet minister to be challenged by a Climate 200-backed independent — Environment Minister James Griffin’s seat of Manly will also be contested by the teals. The NSW Liberals have a better climate track record than their federal counterparts, as Independent Australia reports, but Climate 200-backed Joeline Hackman said one environmentally minded MP — namely now Treasurer Matt Kean — ain’t enough to save the planet.
FOR YOUR INFORMATION …
Liberal MP Stuart Robert told a lobbyist not to donate to his party because it’d need to be declared and “it will hurt you”, Guardian Australia reports this morning. Synergy 360s CEO David Milo emailed Robert’s Gmail account asking whether he should join MP Angus Taylor’s support network, but Robert replied advising against it. It comes after Bill Shorten confirmed an investigation into contracts awarded by the government services portfolio after the SMH reported last week that Robert had allegedly given secret advice to Synergy 360 about how to get contracts and woo MPs. (Robert denied the allegations in the “strongest possible language”.)
Meanwhile, the McGowan government in Western Australia has spent a record amount on consultants in the first half of this year — some $12.2 million on 75 contracts. WA Today reports it is double what McGowan spent ($6.5 million) in the first half of 2021. So who’s scoring these lucrative government contacts? PwC got $1.7 million for a business case for the women and newborn hospital relocation project, while the abandoned TAB sale saw $377,000 go towards a new funding model that’ll “gather dust”, the paper says. It’s a bit of a sore spot for WA taxpayers, who forked out at least $3.5 million to sell the bookmaker — News Corp-backed online betting agency Betr was going to buy it reportedly for about $1 billion, but pulled out supposedly because of a stoush over branding.
MR UNPOPULARITY
A sweeping report from Labor heavyweights has found former prime minister Scott Morrison’s unpopularity was “the single most significant factor in Labor’s victory” at the federal election, The Courier-Mail reports. Former minister Greg Combet and former WA Labor assistant secretary Lenda Oshalem, working with Victorian Senator Linda White and former minister Craig Emerson conducted the review — it found Labor must speak to Queenslanders better, and stop underestimating the Greens. Labor’s “rising star” Terri Butler was unseated in Griffith by a Green, a major blow for Labor, and the Greens also took Ryan and Brisbane. Why? The minor party pounded the pavement, speaking to voters on climate change and hyper-local issues such as Brisbane’s airport noise. Labor has just five of the 30 electorates in the Sunshine State.
The review suggested Labor should look to Western Australia as a shining example of what to do, as The West ($) reports. It noted ads in WA included images of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with Premier Mark McGowan or linked Scott Morrison and Clive Palmer’s failed challenge to the state’s closed borders during the pandemic. That hyper-local approach was a “compelling pitch” to voters, the review found. The Liberals did end up in their worst position since 1946, but Labor’s primary vote of 32.58% was the lowest since 1934, the team concluded. It’s clear Labor cannot afford to be complacent, ALP national president Wayne Swan said.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
UK woman Virginia Lynch was 72 when she met the love of her life. When she first spotted him at a chamber music concert in Kent, she felt a tiny lightning bolt in her heart. When she saw him a second time out of the blue in London, she just went for it. Alan looked up at her face, broke into a smile, and “everything suddenly came alive”. The pair dated, and soon after, she was sure they were meant to be. “I had never been in a relationship with somebody who just enclosed me with love,” she tells The Guardian. There was this sense of healing in it. Virginia, a psychotherapist, channels Carl Jung when she describes our growth as a “golden string going through our lives” that we never reach the end of. However — if we’re lucky — we meet people along the way who make the string shine a little brighter.
Virginia and Alan married in 2010, her in a green ensemble the colour of springtime, with their chocolate labrador and golden retriever by their sides. The senior newlyweds were holidaying in Switzerland when Virginia noticed Alan seemed a little vague. Sitting in a doctor’s office upon their return, life careened off-track as Alan was told he had Alzheimer’s. In 2018, Virginia said goodbye to her Alan for the last time. But she says she still feels completely enfolded in his love, even today. “I’m a much more contented person than I would have been without Alan,” she says. Before meeting him, she always had this doubt in the back of her mind about whether people really cared about her. But she hasn’t felt it at all since. “He gave me something that was really missing,” Virginia, now 87, explains. “He gave me this feeling that I was lovable.”
Hoping you feel the love around, or within, you today.
SAY WHAT?
Too long, too long — and there’s too much risk in doing it on our own. We need to get a boat in the water, or two boats in the water, and at the same time be building the capacity here.
Andrew Hastie
Build our nuclear submarines offshore, the opposition defence spokesman has declared, because things are getting way too dangerous off our waters. The Coalition MP said he actually agrees with former Labor PM Kevin Rudd that China will seize upon Taiwan in the next decade and we need to act fast.
CRIKEY RECAP
On Twitter, Elon Musk chats with right-wing trolls like Australian YouTuber Avi Yemini
“Musk’s vague claim — a half-accusation based on unspecified tweets made by a man who has access to Twitter’s entire backend and the capacity to investigate — gives oxygen to defeated far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro’s campaign to overturn the Brazilian presidential election where he was defeated by left-wing candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
“Much like many of the decisions made during his Twitter takeover, Musk’s response reeks of a knee-jerk reaction based on the little information that he’s picked up from his right-wing filter bubble. His enormous audience and influence means that even one tweet can be enough to amplify an idea or an individual much, much further.”
The criminal justice system fails complainants like Brittany Higgins every day, everywhere
“What is the measure of success of a legal system response to a crime? Whatever you think it may be, it is not being met in the context of sexual violence. The incidence is not going down; rape remains endemic. The probability that a rapist will be charged, prosecuted and convicted is so close to zero it might as well be that. To put it more gallingly, rapists have a near-perfect chance of getting away with it.
“Here’s something else I know. The rate of reporting, since brave women like Higgins stepped forward, has gone through the roof. The rate of prosecution has not. The consequence of this is simple: many more survivors subjecting themselves to the system and being disappointed by it. By disappointed, very often I mean broken.”
‘I will never get my life back’: how one man’s disability carer is fighting NDIS lawyers to keep her job
“Zoran Pelovski’s case in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) should be simple. He wants to revert a decision made by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) to have the agency manage his disability funding. The 60-year-old instead wants to be supported to make his own choices about who he can hire as his support workers …
“Coupled with the tribunal case and Pelovski’s complex mental health history, this means he hasn’t been able to find paid disability support — or use his funding — since the decision was made in September 2021. He’s relying instead on an unpaid family friend, Antoneta Krzeva.”
THE COMMENTARIAT
No shame in NBN’s blowout, Labor was on the right side of history — Paul Smith (AFR) ($): “It has been 13 long years, so surely it is time to admit that not everything said and done was 100% right. Regardless of write-offs, Labor got a lot less wrong on broadband policy than the Coalition. The public has both paid for large chunks of the network, and largely supported the spending whenever push has come to shove, so let’s give it to them straight. In 2009, the free market failed to provide Australians with the telecommunications infrastructure they needed, so the government stepped in, and it has ended up costing us a significant amount of money.
“Those who criticised the economics of the NBN — such as Financial Review editorials lamenting a lack of cost-benefit analysis — were right. It has cost a lot more money to get where we are today, and it looks like the public purse will not see it returned any time in the foreseeable future. However, defenders of the original vision of an all-fibre network, have also proved to be right. The Coalition’s decision to tear up the original plan and pursue its multi-technology mix looked wrong at the time, and was proved to be a dud, when it belatedly got on board with Labor’s full-fibre vision in 2020.”
We thank doctors for their COVID response. Why do we bash Philip Lowe? — Jessica Irvine (The Age): “Let’s get one thing clear: governor Philip Lowe never promised rates would not rise until 2024. But you could be forgiven for thinking he did, given media coverage of his remarks, which took his heavily caveated statements and turned them into ‘no rate rises til 2024’. Lowe has now apologised to borrowers who took out loans thinking they did have his personal assurance rates would not rise until 2024, admitting: ‘We weren’t clear enough.’ But is Lowe really solely to blame?
“… In ordinary times, Australians are used to hearing the more waffly type of ‘qualitative’ guidance, meaning only general hints are dropped on future rate moves, and usually only after much cajoling and questioning from journalists. For the journalists who regularly cover Reserve Bank decisions, it’s a complex process of learning to read the tea leaves. In contrast, Lowe’s language during the crisis was like a double shot of espresso delivered straight into the veins. If Lowe and co are guilty of anything, I think it’s a degree of naivety about how the media would receive their bold — if heavily caveated — statements about future rate rises.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
New faces win Nepal polls, vow to ‘change political discourse’ (Al Jazeera)
China set to ease COVID curbs further as markets cheer change of tack (Reuters)
Here is what’s happening in the Georgia runoff (The New York Times)
South Sudan to send 750 troops to join regional force in DRC (Al Jazeera)
Same-sex marriage fight continues Monday at the Supreme Court with challenge from website designer (CNN)
2016 Brussels bombings: ten men go on trial over airport and metro attacks (EuroNews)
Amber Heard files appeal against Johnny Depp’s US libel win ruling (BBC)
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Online
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Guardian Australia’s Katharine Murphy will talk about her new Quarterly Essay, Lone Wolf: Albanese and the new politics, online.
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will give the 2022 Bradfield Oration, and then NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and NSW Opposition Leader Chris Minns will talk about Sydney’s future.
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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Journalist Niki Savva will talk about her new book, Bulldozed: Scott Morrison’s fall and Anthony Albanese’s rise, at the Australian National University.
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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Writers, performers and music lovers including Claire G Coleman, Carly Findlay, Amy Remeikis, Em Rusciano, Myf Warhurst and more will be at the Wheeler Centre’s 2022 end-of-year gala.
