YEAH NAH MAYBE
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is writing a Yes speech, a No speech, and an “It’s too close to say without postal votes being counted” speech after the referendum for the Voice to Parliament on Saturday night, the SMH ($) reports. He’ll speak from Canberra. A pro-Voice event will be held in Sydney’s inner west and the No side will get together in Brisbane (Opposition Leader Peter Dutton wouldn’t say if he’ll be there). It’ll be nothing like an election party, a No source told the paper — much more “low-key”. It comes as Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong and former deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop united in support of a Yes vote last night, The Advertiser ($) reports, with Bishop wishing it had been around during her long and powerful stint in Wong’s portfolio. She criticised the “If you don’t know, vote No” slogan, saying: “If you wanted to run a case saying there’s not enough information, then every single successful referendum could have been subjected to that campaign.” And Bishop’s not the only one — a former ABC news director tweeted yesterday five former Liberal Indigenous affairs ministers back the Voice, as well as six former Liberal premiers (Berejiklian, Perrottet, Baird, O’Farrell, Barnett and Gutwein) plus a slew of other Liberals.
Meanwhile, current and former staff don’t list employer Whitestone on their LinkedIn or social media profiles — it’s the consultancy quietly working with the No campaign on the Voice to Parliament, Guardian Australia reports, but we don’t know exactly how. The website doesn’t reveal much either, apart from describing its services as “up-to-the-minute technology and campaign clout”, so the Guardian sleuthed metadata that suggested staff have been making “pamphlets, fact sheets and other material”. Wonder what “other material” means. Then the paper FOI’d documents that showed Whitestone had sent invoices to “Price” for work done between January and June 2023. Whitestone’s director is Stephen Doyle, who was former Coalition senator Zed Seselja’s chief of staff before independent David Pocock defeated him.
THE COMPANY THEY KEEP
A “green coal” company owned by former Queensland Liberal National Party (LNP) members David Hutchinson and Brad Carswell got a $5.5 million grant in the last days of the Morrison government. Now Carswell, the biggest shareholder and a former LNP official and candidate, is suing Hutchinson, the director and former LNP president, after the company went into voluntary administration, Guardian Australia reports. It adds that the grant was “the equal largest individual grant to any company”, given to build a biomass plant in Queensland’s Richmond. As for what green coal means — it was going to turn outback weed into woodchip pellets similar to coal.
To more messy corporate drama now and embattled consultant PwC has been accused of misleading the Senate over a plan to sell its consultancy arm, when it told a 2019 inquiry that splitting consulting from auditing would make operating impossible. The ABC reports the consulting arm was valued at $1 billion, the AFR ($) adds, and the plan went as far as former PwC CEO Luke Sayers travelling to the US in 2019 to spruik the sale — but Senator Deborah O’Neill had the receipts. She pulled out a document that showed PwC had said in a 2019 submission that splitting the two divisions would make business untenable. PwC did end up selling the arm — for $1 — to private equity firm Allegro Funds to protect staff during the tax leak scandal.
TURN DOWN THE HEAT
ASIO boss Mike Burgess has warned about “opportunistic violence with little or no warning” in Australia and called on “all parties” to dial down the Hamas-Israel rhetoric, The Australian ($) reports. “Inflamed language and inflamed community tensions” go hand in hand, Burgess said. It comes as the Human Rights Law Centre has warned a “very dangerous precedent” was being set by NSW Police and the government’s “disproportionate” response to pro-Palestine rallies. Police Minister Yasmin Catley warned Sunday’s Hyde Park rally was not authorised and people face arrest. Guardian Australia notes the Morrison government — with Labor’s support — legislated fines of up to $22,000 and jail sentences of up to two years for people protesting illegally. Catley also told Parliament she didn’t tell the Jewish community to stay home from the Opera House march, The Australian ($) reports, but rather relayed info from the assistant commissioner that it would be dangerous.
This comes as ABC’s Middle Eastern correspondent, Tom Joyner, said reports of beheaded babies were “bullshit” in a WhatsApp group, The Australian ($) reports. He apologised about the wording after other journos reacted, but reiterated we have not seen evidence (Israel’s government has said it can’t confirm the claim). Meanwhile, the BBC will not call Hamas terrorists. World affairs editor John Simpson said the broadcaster regularly features guests or quotes governments that do, but “we don’t say it in our voice” because BBC gives audiences “the facts, and let them make up their own minds” — here’s its style guide. Otherwise, Simpson said, we’d be “abandoning our duty to stay objective” — same as when BBC didn’t call Nazis evil or wicked, and didn’t use the t-word when the IRA bombed Britain, much to Thatcher’s fury. But the pressure is on, as Variety continues. Reporter Noah Abrahams resigned in protest, Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick told a Jewish vigil the Beeb should “should say it as it is”, and a stern Foreign Affairs Secretary James Cleverly told a BBC morning show “these are not militants, they are terrorists”.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Once a day, on either side of hard-hitting news spanning war, love, fears, accomplishments, endings and beginnings, radio listeners across Canada heard 10 seconds of dead air. Preceding it was a statement as frayed as your grandmother’s old tea towel: “The beginning of the long dash indicates exactly one o’clock, eastern time.” On the other side of the silence, the long dash. For 85 years, sailors used it for navigation, trains were more punctual for it, and the average person would take a moment to check their wristwatch to it. But the long dash provided something else, something trickier to define. In 2019, a homesick Canadian living in Hong Kong admitted to the CBC he’d stay up until midnight just to hear the sound. Artist Sa Boothroyd described the long dash as a “punctuation mark in my life … a heartbeat-type thing”.
Until Monday. The CBC that day announced it would no longer broadcast the time signal — it’s not quite accurate anymore because of more advanced satellite and internet-based transmissions — but the broadcaster admits it hurt. We share that nostalgia, a spokesperson said, but there were also concerns when the 10 seconds of silence confused our fandangled modern systems. Technology spelled its demise, Boothroyd said, but: “What is technology offering us to replace what we’ve lost?” More than the accurate time, what the “beautiful heaviness” of the long dash gave us was that it made us pause. And we need to stop, she continues, even if it’s just for 10 seconds at the top of the hour, once a day, to be still as the world rushes onwards around us.
Hoping you get a moment of pause today, and have a restful weekend.
SAY WHAT?
Come Sunday, we will either see ourselves as measured, generous people, ready to set aside the daily woes of our lives — only for a few minutes — to consider the place and state of Indigenous Australians, prepared to say Yes to something which will cost us nothing, but could measurably improve their lives. Or as a frightened, resentful people unable or unwilling to see through the scares and the lies, prepared to use the ballot box to punish the government and in the process punish Indigenous people trapped in cycles of poverty and abuse.
Niki Savva
In a blazing op-ed, the Nine newspapers columnist said we live in dangerous times when Ray Martin “cops more abuse from the Noes for using words like dinosaurs and dickheads than does a neo-Nazi who threatens to kill a senator”. But the responsibility for the result, and what it delivers, “resides with us”.
CRIKEY RECAP
“Addressing an event in Bunbury, Western Australia, in early September, prominent Yes campaigner Professor Marcia Langton said this of the No campaign: ‘Every time the No case raises one of their arguments, if you start pulling it apart, you get down to base racism. I’m sorry to say it, but that’s where it lands — or just sheer stupidity.’
“The story is written up under the headline ‘RACIST OR JUST STUPID’ by the local paper on September 12, and picked up by The Australian the following day under the headline ‘No voters branded ‘racist and stupid’ by prominent Yes campaigner’. After a backlash about the disjuncture between the headline and story, the piece was altered. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s Facebook post was never taken down.”
“Or NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman who, like Dutton, made the internet nervously giggle when he demanded Labor MP Mark Buttigieg be sacked should he fail to publicly condemn his son for attending Sydney’s pro-Palestinian rally on Monday. The demonstration in question had inspired ugly scenes after being briefly hijacked by some individuals who lit flares and chanted anti-Semitic slogans as police watched on, refusing to intervene.
“Tellingly, the former attorney-general declined to withdraw his loopy demand, even in the absence of any suggestion Buttigieg’s 19-year-old son was a party to the vile anti-Semitism displayed, and notwithstanding the fact the rally’s organisers had denounced the conduct as ‘not only vulgar but completely selfish’.”
“Domestic violence advocate, Warlpiri and Arrernte woman Shirleen Campbell detailed the NT’s increasingly high rates of domestic and family violence (outstripping the rest of the nation by a factor of seven), slow police responses, and inundation of women’s shelters as reasons why Indigenous people need a Voice: ‘The No vote means to vote more of the same — more women and children lost to family and domestic violence. To vote Yes means hope and change.’
“Tilmouth, an Arrernte man, gave three reasons for a Yes vote. He said it was owed to those Elders who fought for Indigenous rights but never got to see their voices heard in Parliament, because the status quo had failed, and he was tired of the ‘negative diatribe’ pouring out of Canberra and the southern states day in and out: ‘It is wrong.’ “
READ ALL ABOUT IT
France bans all pro-Palestinian demonstrations (BBC)
Israeli official says government cannot confirm babies were beheaded in Hamas attack
(CNN)
Philip Morris lobbying to stop WHO ‘attack’ on vapes and similar products (The Guardian)
Canada could lead the world in oil production growth in 2024 (CBC)
US House in limbo as Steve Scalise struggles to unify Republicans behind him (Reuters)
IOC suspends Russian Olympic Committee for incorporating Ukrainian sports regions
(euronews)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Tony Abbott and the meeting of minds at Fox — Calum Jaspan (The SMH) ($): “Despite Abbott’s limited media experience, Fox’s board says he has the necessary skills and experience required, as noted in its AGM proxy statement. Abbott ticks seven of the 10 boxes, according to the board, and is likely to earn anywhere between $467,000 and $543,000 depending on his extra duties, a similar return to his earning power for two years as prime minister. After losing his electoral seat of Warringah in 2019, Abbott was appointed as a trade adviser to the UK government in 2020.
“The decision to install Abbott may not be based on his relevant media qualifications, says Stephen Mayne, Crikey founder and shareholder activist, adding the Murdochs have form appointing former conservative politicians. ‘It’s more than an anomaly now,’ Mayne says. If Abbott is successful, he will replace Jacques Nasser, a former CEO of Ford and chair of BHP. Mayne says Abbott replacing ‘Rupert’s most credible director’, having served 22 years, is telling of the direction of Fox. [José María] Aznar serves as the best comparison to Abbott, a former senior executive in Rupert Murdoch’s team says. The former Spanish president’s appointment in 2006 to the News Corporation board is ‘a kind of pat on the back’ for like-mindedness …”
An open letter to mob about after the referendum — Luke Pearson (IndigenousX): “After the referendum, with or without a Voice, the work of achieving our rights as Indigenous peoples will continue. And sure, right now we are split along the lines of Yes or No, and there is a lot of hurt and anger… and confusion about how anyone could possibly be on the other side … But soon enough we will go back to being split along the lines of those who support Indigenous rights and those who do not. We will be split against those who openly oppose our very existence as Indigenous peoples and it will bring us together, as a common enemy tends to do.
“There will be a further split between those who would call themselves our allies, a split between those who will speak out, those who will speak over us, and those who will stay silent. We will be split between those who see the ultimate goal as being our assimilation and absorption into the colony, and those who dream of Indigenous futures, where we once again are free to exercise our rights as Indigenous peoples, on our own terms, as sovereign peoples. So this week, with what little time there is left before we have all voted, do what you need to do to fight for the means you believe, but don’t forget that once it is done not all of those on your side today will be on your side tomorrow …”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Singer-songwriter Deborah Conway will talk about her new book, Book of Life, at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.
Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Cheek Media Co’s Hannah Ferguson will talk about her new book, Bite Back, at Avid Reader bookshop.
