WE NEED A ZERO
Prime Minister Scott Morrison will today tell Queensland voters that the “green-left” claim to be “more virtuous” than them and “deride their jobs as unworthy”, The Courier-Mail ($) reports, in promising 450,000 jobs for the regions. In what even the News Corp paper called “inflammatory language”, Morrison will say regional folks feel “looked down on” and bring up former Greens leader Bob Brown’s convoy to protest Adani in 2019 which led to a big LNP swing at the time. It comes as the Nationals’ Matt Canavan says the Coalition’s net zero by 2050 target is “dead”, news.com.au reports, and that Morrison’s announcement of two (really, one, as AFR qualified) new hydrogen hubs was pointless. Coal-loving Canavan told Sky News “We don’t need hydrogen, hydrogen hubs is [sic] not going to defend us against military bases in the Solomon Islands”. It was not clear who — if anybody — was suggesting they would.
Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce added to the chorus yesterday, saying he rejected Canavan’s comment but that it was “understandable” a Nationals candidate in Gladstone — the site of one of the hydrogen hubs — called the Coalition’s net zero policy “not binding” and “flexible”, the SMH continues. Aside from the fact five blue-ribbon seats are at risk from environmentally-driven independents (and a half-dozen are challenging sitting rural Coalition members, as Crikey reports) there is simply no time left to keep arguing over this. The latest IPCC report, pored over by 1000 top scientists from 25 countries, gave a final warning that it’s “now or never” to stop catastrophic climate disaster, Guardian Australia reports, while Australia has the highest greenhouse gas emissions in the world per capita.
INQUEST BEGINS
A five-week inquest into the death of an Indigenous woman named Veronica Nelson has begun, ABC reports. Nelson, 37, had told officers she was withdrawing from heroin and requested a drink several times, while a nurse recommended she be transferred to hospital. Nelson died alone in a cell that had a sign reading “do not unlock” on it, despite her calls for help — she was also suffering from Wilkie Syndrome. Nelson’s partner of 20 years, a Stolen Generations survivor, says Nelson showed him what a real family is. Since the 1991 Royal Commission into Indigenous Deaths in Custody, Guardian Australia reports 500 Indigenous Australians have died (as of December last year).
Also this morning, a family wants answers after a 14-year-old boy was wrongly jailed as an adult in WA. Erwin Prayoga was arrested on an asylum seeker boat, charged as an adult people-smuggler, and sent to a maximum-security jail — when he was deported back home to Indonesia, he died from illness. He should’ve been sent home immediately under federal policy, Guardian Australia says, but police used a now-discredited technique to alter the date of birth Prayoga gave them.
BANK STATEMENT
You could be $250 richer this week if you’re one of six million eligible Australians — including welfare recipients, veterans, pensioners, and concession card holders, news.com.au reports. The cost of living payments will begin hitting the bank accounts with just 25 days to go before the election — Treasurer Josh Frydenberg boasted that it comes on top of the halved fuel excise, as The Conversation delves into, and claimed low- and middle-income earners would now be up to $1500 better off from July 1. For three months, that is, when the fuel excise is restored to its normal level and petrol prices rise.
Speaking of the treasurer, Guide Dogs Victoria CEO Karen Hayes has been stood down after she popped up in Liberal Party pamphlet and video — with a puppy, no less — endorsing Frydenberg for Kooyong, The Age reports. The charity says the investigation wants to work out why, and “ensure it never happens again” — charities can lose their registration for promoting a political figure. It comes as Frydenberg and his independent challenger Monique Ryan will debate next week after some back and forth — Frydenberg refused to take part in a candidates forum organised by a climate change group for tonight, but then criticised Ryan for “hiding” from a Sky News debate. Ryan says she’ll participate if it’s in Kooyong, with questions from Kooyong voters, instead of an audience-free TV studio.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
If you look up at the sky tonight, you’ll witness an incredible one-in-1000-year event — you will actually be able to see Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn with the naked eye in a sparkly celestial queue, one after the other, finishing with our moon in a lovely crescent. Australia’s astronomer-at-large Fred Watson told the National Geographic you can see the near-perfect formation all week — you could download a star-gazing app that will label them for you, like Sky Guide, but another way to work it out is that stars twinkle, planets don’t.
If your bed is just too comfy this week, wait until June when — no joke — Mercury, Uranus and Neptune will all appear to align too, “the whole suite”, Watson says, which should be visible on June 24, he says (though you’ll need a telescope to see Uranus and Neptune). It’s kind of crazy to think this is happening — all planets rotate the sun at a different speed (eg. Mercury does it in a quarter of an Earth year, whereas it takes Mars nearly double a year, Jupiter nearly 12 years, and Neptune a staggering 164 years). So what could the cosmic treat mean? Will Hades free the titans to snatch Mount Olympus from Zeus? Actually, some believe a planetary alignment signifies a huge shift in energy from a place of war to a place of peace. Here’s hoping.
Wishing you a little wonder and awe about it all today.
SAY WHAT?
You did go to Perth when Marrickville was underwater!
Ray Hadley
Have a look at the map mate … I don’t have any rivers flowing through my electorate, none.
Anthony Albanese
It was a wild ride yesterday listening to an interview between 2GB’s Hadley and the Labor leader where the radio shock jock swerved between yelling at Albanese and being quite convivial — listen to it here — as Albanese attempted to set the record straight on a few things. The part of Marrickville that had minor flooding was in the electorate of Barton, and Albanese continued his response was trips to badly flooded Lismore, Brisbane, Ballina, and Byron.
CRIKEY RECAP
Solomons failure reveals a government and intelligence service way out of their depth
“The problem of an incompetent government, however, is a temporary one: Morrison might lose in May, or his party might dump him thereafter, and he may be replaced with someone more competent at basic administration … What is of arguably equal or greater seriousness is the culpability and attempts to evade responsibility of our intelligence agencies.
“The Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) — the least accountable of our major intelligence agencies — clearly failed to keep the government apprised of developments between China and the Sogavare government. That is, it failed in its core business in a region where Australia is the dominant economic, diplomatic and military power — and where our Five Eyes partners rely on us to keep across events.”
Too close to call? Mackellar needs a 13% swing, but it’s still going to be close
“Warringah was amalgamated with Pittwater and Manly councils in 2016, rebirthed as the Northern Beaches Council. It’s now the fourth-largest LGA by population in NSW. And the Manly Daily (a News Corp publication), after more than a century in print, went online in 2020 and is now behind a paywall. No more copies in the mailbox or at the front desk of the surf club, the RSL, supermarket or… well… anywhere really. You couldn’t escape the damned thing!
“So where did all that passionate debate go in the federal electorate of Mackellar in 2022, which takes in postcodes across the Daily’s old stomping ground? Answer: to start-up local news outlets, many doing tidy business in this part of the world. After 73 years in Liberal Party hands, could Mackellar go independent?”
Paedophiles, traffickers and opportunistic criminals arrive to prey on the misery of refugees
“The centre I visit in Korczowa in southeastern Poland isn’t pretty. Roller beds have been pushed against the wall in large, open areas. Abandoned shops, their sagging roller doors thrust upwards, house mini-centres for medical care, veterinary services and phone credit. Refugees wander through the halls, their voices echoing across the expansive space. Children play a ball game, their shoes squeaking on the linoleum floor.
“Up until very recently, anyone could come into the shopping centre. Now police patrol the doors, looking out for new faces … Volunteers wander in and out; a scrappy fluoro vest is the only form of identification they wear. No background checks have been conducted on any of them. Between 2017 and 2020, at least 600 Ukrainian individuals were trafficked into Poland.”
THE COMMENTARIAT
There are 4 economic wildcards between now and election day. The first gets played this week — Peter Martin (The Conversation): “The first is this Wednesday at 11.30am eastern time, when we get the official update on inflation. We’re likely to see a figure so large it will take many of us back to the 1990s, to a time before anyone under 30 was born. With the exception of a short-lived blip following the introduction of the goods and services tax in 2000, inflation has scarcely been above 5% since 1990.
“After a series of extremely large interest rate hikes in the early 1990s succeeded in taming inflation, it has been close to the Reserve Bank target of 2-3% ever since — so much so that even those of us who remember the 8% inflation of the 1980s and the 18% in the 1970s have come to regard fairly steady prices as normal. When ABC Vote Compass asked voters to name the issue of most concern to them in the 2016 election, only 3% picked ‘cost of living’. Only 4% picked ‘cost of living’ in 2019. With inflation so low it had dropped below the Reserve Bank target band, and a good deal below slow-growing wages, there was nothing much to be concerned about.”
Time for the big guns over ABC’s vigilante journalism — Janet Albrechtson (The Australian) ($): “To date, the Morrison government has been complicit in the ABC’s poor performance by doing nothing to hold the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster to account. Yet here’s how it could be done. In Britain, Ofcom can impose sanctions if the BBC has ‘seriously, deliberately, repeatedly or recklessly’ breached the fairness provisions in the Broadcasting Code. Sanctions include a decision to issue a direction not to repeat a program; a direction to include a correction to a statement of Ofcom’s findings; a direction to provide additional information; and/or impose a financial penalty.
“In Australia, we are lumped with the Australian Communications and Media Authority. Its powers over the ABC are the equivalent of pointing a feather at a crocodile. Witness its recent decision to dismiss a complaint against Q&A’s Trauma and Truth-Telling episode that aired in May last year, soon after the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas. The Q&A panel included four people who sided with the Palestinian perspective and one government MP, Dave Sharma, who defended Israel. ACMA said the ABC had not breached impartiality rules or those that require a diversity of viewpoints.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Pakistan: Chinese nationals among four killed in Karachi blast (Al Jazeera)
Oasis guitarist Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs diagnosed with tonsil cancer (The Guardian)
Was Jacinda Ardern’s trip to Singapore and Japan worth the money? (NZ Herald)
Buying Twitter, Elon Musk will face reality of his free-speech talk (The New York Times)
Five things to know about Russian-backed Transnistria (Al Jazeera)
North Korea: Kim Jong-un vows to step up nuclear weapons programme (BBC)
Harvard pledges $100m for fund to redress ties to slavery (The Wall Street Journal) ($)
Most Americans have been infected with the coronavirus at least once, the CDC says. (The New York Times)
Abraham Bolden: Ex-Secret Service agent pardoned by Biden (BBC)
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Online
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The Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) Andrew Turley will speak about the future of gas in Australia in a webinar held by the Grattan Institute.
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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Minister for Emergency Management and National Recovery and Resilience Positions and Minister for Regionalisation, Regional Communications and Regional Education Bridget McKenzie will speak to the National Press Club.
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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Independent candidate Monique Ryan, The Greens’ candidate Piers Mitchem, and Labor’s candidate Peter Lynch will do a panel debate as they battle it out for Kooyong. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg declined to take part.
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Boothby independent candidate Jo Dyer will speak about her new book, Burning Down the House, at The Wheeler Centre.
Yuggera Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Author Ross Daniels will discuss his new book, The Journey, at Avid Reader bookshop. You can catch this one online.
