RACE TO THE BOTTOM
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has rebuffed Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s “offer of friendship” to delay the referendum about the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, calling his 10-minute speech “totally devoid of empathy” and packed with misinformation, The Australian ($) reports. Dutton warned “reconciliation will be harmed” if the referendum fails, meaning it is “incumbent on this prime minister to stop that course of action”, as the ABC reports. Former PM Malcolm Turnbull doesn’t get it — he tweeted this “frenzied ‘debate’ about the Voice is only serving to confuse everybody”, reiterating that the Voice is an opinion body, despite what the Coalition claims, and that it could offer advice on nearly anything, despite what Labor claims, including the Reserve Bank, Australia Day’s date, and the treasurer’s tax laws. “So what?” Turnbull repeatedly asks.
Meanwhile, who are the mystery politicians who bought Nazi artefacts online from Danielle Elizabeth Auctions? It copped backlash after advertising a “Huge Militaria Sale. Get it Before History is Banned & Erased”, Brisbane Times ($) reports, with 240 items including “signed pictures of Hitler, Himmler and Rommel, a striped concentration camp cap, a ‘Jewish winter overcoat’ with yellow star attached, picture albums of dead soldiers and PoWs and personal photo albums of SS officers”, as Guardian Australia lists. But managing director Dustin Sweeny said buyers included “collectors, politicians, lawyers, emergency doctors and history professors”. There’s legislation before federal Parliament to ban the sale of Nazi memorabilia, though owning it will not be illegal under the bill.
LEADING BY EXAMPLE
Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy could replace Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe, the SMH ($) reports, with Finance Department secretary Jenny Wilkinson, Australian Bureau of Statistics head David Gruen and current bank deputy Michele Bullock also in the running, according to sources. Lowe’s tenure will finish in September — but Treasurer Jim Chalmers said he’d make the call on Lowe’s job in July. It comes as the recommendations from the RBA review, including a new agreement on how it targets inflation (presently by raising cash rates), roll out. To other leadership news and senior Air Force commander Darren Goldie will reportedly become Australia’s first cybersecurity boss — or “tsar”, as the SMH ($) somewhat oddly puts it, considering several significant cyberattacks are coming from Russia at the moment.
In Queensland and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has signed a $71 million deal with Vinnies to build 150 social housing homes, The Courier-Mail ($) reports, with 27 homes in Toowoomba, 60 in Bundaberg and another 60 in the Gold Coast suburb of Nerang. The government will pay $59 million; Vinnies $12 million. In NSW, Premier Chris Minns is getting bad press for announcing he’d be requesting a meeting with Facebook, alongside police, to see what they can do to “stop the broadcast of illegal acts”. Not terrorism, as one might think, but climate activists live streaming protests. Give me strength. Minns says he doesn’t want to see “a death broadcast on social media”, but independent MP Alex Greenwich wasn’t falling for it, saying freedom to protest is a fundamental right. In extremely related news, the dates of a slew of climate change tipping points could happen between 30% and 80% sooner, a new study Yahoo reports on suggests.
SUB’S TITANIC ENDING
The five people on board the lost Titanic sub are presumed dead after five major pieces of the Titan submersible were found, the BBC reports. The wreckage indicated the sub experienced a catastrophic failure of its pressure vessel and imploded, US Coast Guard’s John Mauger said overnight, with a nose cone and tail cone found 487m off the bow of the Titanic wreck, The Guardian continues. So when might this have happened? Sonar buoys had not detected any catastrophic events for the past three days — so perhaps earlier in the week. Mauger couldn’t say whether the bodies could be recovered in the “incredibly unforgiving environment”. The people onboard were Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet — “true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure”, an OceanGate statement said.
Meanwhile, at least 30 people are also thought dead after a boat sank in the Atlantic Ocean off the Canary Islands in a story that will no doubt receive substantially less press because they were migrants. That’s according to two organisations that monitor boats and receive calls from people on board or relatives, the BBC reports — Spanish authorities said they didn’t know the actual toll. It comes just over a week from possibly the second-deadliest refugee and migrant shipwreck on record when a boat carrying as many as 800 migrants sank off the Greek coast. The New Republic concedes the Titan story had Hollywood intrigue… but also very rich people facing death. “There’s greater appetite for coverage of lifestyles of the rich and (now) famous than for the deaths of hundreds of anonymous migrants,” it writes, and that’s on the media for elevating one over the other.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Freckles are saving the lives of monarch butterflies as they depart their Canadian summer homes and head south to Mexico some 3200km each year, a new study has found. Or, more precisely, the white spots on their wings. It’s actually the opposite of what Andy Davis, a biologist at the University of Georgia, set out to prove, as The New York Times ($) reports. His working theory that darker-winged butterflies have the advantage came from two facts: dark colours absorb more heat (as anyone who’s climbed into a black car in January knows all too well); and long-distance migratory birds tend to have black-topped wings (the temperature difference between the light and dark feathers can be about 10 degrees). A mechanical engineer at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Mostafa Hassanalian, explained: dark feathers on top of light feathers increase the lift and decrease the drag — making flying more efficient.
So Davis sheepishly asked an undergrad named Tina Vu to help prove his darker-wing theory by meticulously assessing 400 or so photos of monarch butterflies. He knew the task sounded “so stupid”, he told the paper, but Vu wasn’t worried in the slightest, spending hours tracing white spots in Photoshop while listening to gritty true crime podcasts. As it turns out, Davis was dead wrong. Of the three in 10 monarch butterflies who survive the long trip, most have white spotty wings, not darker ones. Why? Maybe because the white spots create nifty little pockets of heating and cooling on the wing edge, which create little eddies of rising air. And this could actually improve our own flying capabilities onboard planes, Davis says: “Imagine how simple it would be to just get some paint and throw it on an aeroplane wing.” If his theory is right this time around, that is.
Hoping you’re not deterred by a knockback today, and have a restful weekend.
SAY WHAT?
There are lots of politicians, but I can’t divulge names or what they buy, or how much they spend. Quite often we have buyers’ agents who make purchases for people’s collections, where they don’t want people out there screaming about it … It’s legal, it isn’t illegal, we aren’t selling drugs to kids.
Dustin Sweeny
Don’t get angry at us for auctioning signed pictures of Hitler, Himmler and Rommel, Danielle Elizabeth Auctions’ managing director bleated, because your elected politicians are buying them.
CRIKEY RECAP
“Independent MP for Kooyong Monique Ryan smiled awkwardly at a suggestion that her staff might have been unable to make the evening, instead locked up in Ryan’s office pulling an all-nighter (a tablemate was heard shouting ‘Come on, it’s funny’). There was the expected Greens v Labor fracas on housing, which elicited boos and groans from the back-left corner of the room (where some Greens sat).
“And then, of course, there were jokes made at the expense of Crikey, including a crack at Guy Rundle and quips about the Murdoch lawsuit. Crikey was referred to as a newsletter that readers only open half of the time (which one keen observer noted was actually a pretty good open rate).”
“So the RBA admits that firms are pushing prices up higher than inflation, causing persistent high inflation. Of course, it doesn’t say this is about maintaining profits, the implication is mere carelessness on the part of firms — oops, we’ve increased prices by 2021 levels! Damn!
“That this leads to higher profits is, presumably, a mere byproduct of that carelessness. Insert shot of a shocked, shocked, Claude Rains being handed his winnings in Casablanca. But the fact that firms are doing this to the extent that even big business’ mates on the RBA board noticed it only comes after the possibility that wages growth might push inflation up is discussed yet again.”
“Against a tide of deepening discontent with AUKUS among Labor rank-and-file, which may prove the undoing of the security pact, defence appears to be quietly clothing the supposed benefits of the contentious submarine deal in neutral terms to schoolchildren.
“According to a seemingly anodyne media statement released with little fanfare this week, defence has introduced a nationwide ‘nuclear-powered submarine propulsion challenge’ in high schools to reveal, among other things, how nuclear propulsion ‘makes submarines more capable’.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Bolsonaro faces uncertain political future as Brazil trial starts (Al Jazeera)
Moscow court rules US reporter Evan Gershkovich must remain in jail until late August (euronews)
Turkish central bank raises interest rates to 15% after two-year freeze (The Guardian)
George Santos’ family members identified as bond backers (CNN)
Air New Zealand plane struck by lightning en route to Rarotonga, returns to Auckland (NZ Herald)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Labor’s ‘Godfather’ seeks deal on electoral reform — but some fear changes could disadvantage community candidates — Michelle Grattan (The Conversation): “Special Minister of State Don Farrell, who’s also minister for trade and tourism and the government’s deputy leader in the Senate, is a numbers man from way back. A powerbroker of the right, in 2012 Farrell (a parliamentary secretary at the time) had the numbers to be placed top of the South Australian Senate ticket, relegating the left’s Penny Wong, who was a senior minister, to the second spot for the 2013 election. Sometimes, however, the numbers don’t prevail. Amid the ensuing controversy, Farrell stepped down to second place.
“As a result he lost his seat at the 2013 election. He turned his hand to establishing a vineyard, before being returned at the 2016 election and becoming deputy opposition leader in the Senate. Then he had to cede that position to Kristina Keneally after the 2019 election. Farrell and Anthony Albanese were long-time factional opponents. But under Albanese’s government, Farrell is prospering. With the thaw in China-Australia relations, it’s a very good time to be trade minister. Now Farrell is set to wrangle sweeping changes to the donation and spending rules for federal elections. Those changes have the potential to affect parliamentary numbers in future elections.”
The climate crisis is this century’s biggest threat. We need a global finance pact that reflects the task ahead — Chris Bowen, Steven Guilbeault and James Shaw (The Guardian): “We, the climate change ministers of Australia, Canada and New Zealand, hold hope that it is still possible to urgently correct course and see deep, rapid emissions reductions across all sectors and systems. But it is critical we create the right conditions for all nations to thrive, and not be left behind. We need a global financial architecture that helps address the existential threat of climate change, while supporting countries’ development ambitions, responding to the millions slipping back into poverty and maintaining stability in the global financial system.
“Pacific and Caribbean Island nations are showing us the way. Their leadership has been instrumental in driving global climate ambition, including to advocate for adequate and predictable flows of climate finance. The prime minister of the Cook Islands and chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, Mark Brown, recently called for ‘transformation in our multilateral development funds and institutions’. This reflects the shift that we agree is necessary. We are also inspired by the leadership of Barbados, whose prime minister, Mia Mottley, is a tireless advocate for international financial architecture reform to support the most climate-vulnerable nations. This includes small island states who face multiple, cascading challenges to their economic prospects because of climate change.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Author Samantha L Valentine will talk about her new book, Normal Functioning Adult, at Avid Reader bookshop.
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Podcaster Michael Thompson will talk about his new book, How To Be Remembered, at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.
Kaurna Country (also known as Adelaide)
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There’s a state funeral this afternoon for Sir James Hardy OBE, the Olympic yachtsman known as ‘Gentleman Jim’, at St Peter’s College Memorial Hall.
