POST HASTE
Liberal candidate for Warringah Katherine Deves described a diversity celebration day as “grooming tactic” promoting “extreme body modification” on her now-deleted website, Guardian Australia reports. Deves is spearheading efforts to keep trans women out of women’s sports — something which Prime Minister Scott Morrison described as “common sense” — but yesterday apologised for describing children as “surgically mutilated and sterilised” and saying she was “triggered” by the pride flag. Independent incumbent Zali Steggall can’t believe it — calling for Deves’ disendorsement, she says Morrison either knew about Deves’ comments before he handpicked her for Warringah, or didn’t do his due diligence. Morrison says it was the latter. In a strange twist, SMH reports this morning that Steggall’s ex-husband’s new wife was acting as Deves’ campaign manager.
Meanwhile, a Liberal candidate in Adelaide Hills named Allison Bluck has apologised after a campaign letter seemed to claim she was Alison Buck, the manager of the Kangaroo Island Wilderness Trail, ABC reports. Bluck sent a letter out to Mayo voters spruiking her climate credentials, saying as the “manager” of the “Kangaroo Island Nature Trail” (which doesn’t exist) she is passionate about the environment, as The Advertiser ($) revealed. Bluck apologised on social media, and a Liberal spokesperson added it was an early draft sent to the printers by mistake. The letter also referenced Hahndorf Road — which also doesn’t exist, the broadcaster adds.
Speaking of deception, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is warning voters to be aware that sites like postal.vote and howtovote.org.au (which let you apply for a postal vote) are owned by the Liberal and Labor parties, respectively, ABC reports — it doesn’t mean they’re dodgy, but it can mean the parties are storing your personal data too, the AEC continues. You can register for a postal vote this way, or go through the AEC, the choice is yours. Yet voters are being inundated with mass text messages and Facebook advertisements directing them to the sites.
NOT GOING TO BUDGET ALL
Folks, yesterday your newsletter read that JobSeeker was $642.70 a week — that was wrong. Staggeringly it’s actually $642.70 a fortnight which is $321.35 a week. Yet Labor Leader Anthony Albanese says our budget can’t afford to boost it, SBS reports — he says our debt is hurtling towards a trillion dollars (it will reach $631.5 billion this year and $864.7 billion over forward estimates). Advocates are gutted — the Antipoverty Centre called Labor’s reticence to review it a “devastating blow”, and the Australian Council of Social Service says recipients of the payment are the victims of a budget “scare campaign”. It affects more of us than one might realise — even though unemployment is at 4%, there are actually more people on JobSeeker now than before the pandemic, Crikey adds.
A bunch of independents — like Liberal MP Tim Wilson’s challenger Zoe Daniel, Warringah’s Zali Steggall, and Centre Alliance’s Rebekha Sharkie — all say they’ll push for it, Guardian Australia reports. Albanese says he’s not ruling it out — it just wouldn’t be in his first budget. The Coalition isn’t reviewing it either, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison calling $46 a day “appropriate” to live on last year — even though it’s only 50% of the Henderson Poverty Line measure, the bare minimum we need to not live in poverty.
OK — so let’s get some perspective: how has it been done elsewhere? In New Zealand, a single person older than 25 with no kids gets $358.97 a week — and the average weekly rent in Auckland is $557.50 (for a unit). In Finland (the happiest place in the world for the fifth year running) it’s 241.5 euros a week and the average rent in Helsinki is 150 euros a week (for a unit). But in the UK, it’s 77.08 pounds a week, though it doubles if you have limited capacity to work. The average rent in London a week is 365 pounds — dismal. Of course, it’s not cut and dry — variables like different living costs, different additional payments, and scaled payments for dependents all change things slightly. But hopefully a helpful summary nonetheless.
MANUFACTURING FAVOUR
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is taking a $220 million forestry pledge to win the hearts of northern Tasmania, The Australian ($) reports. Morrison says it makes sense considering the wood shortage (plus, global demand is set to quadruple by 2050, AFR says) and the pressures on the building industry, as The New Daily reports on this morning. And it’ll secure 73,000 forestry jobs, the PM says. Male-dominated jobs, the SMH qualifies — Katina Curtis writes that Morrison is spruiking his 1.3 million job promise but has not bothered to visit healthcare or social service organisations yet, even though two-thirds of the half-million jobs created since the 2019 election were in these sectors. Curtis points to government data that shows less than a third of manufacturing’s workforce are female.
Meanwhile, Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce is in the Top End promising big things — he’s promoting a $440 million pledge for new logistics hubs in Tennant Creek, Alice Springs, and Katherine to unlock critical minerals, calling it a “planned investment” not a “frolic” (his word). But it mostly benefits the marginal seat of Lingiari, the NT News adds. Meanwhile, a bit of a furphy — Joyce was spruiking the Coalition’s $1.5 billion plan to build a new port in Darwin but told Solomon voters it had already been approved by law. The SMH points out that was a falsehood — the appropriation bills haven’t been passed yet. In any case “the handout is simple pork-barrelling,” Crikey continues — and so what if Labor backed it too? “Bipartisan pork-barrelling is still pork-barrelling”.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Could the secrets to health and happiness really be locked up in cold water and breathing correctly? That’s what Wim Hof reckons — so The Guardian’s Sam Wollaston spent some time with Hof to find out. Hof’s an extreme athlete, an “Iceman” with an arsenal of insane stories starring himself — he scaled part of Mount Everest completely naked, set records for swimming under ice, and even went up and down the Spanish Pyrenees — an eight-hour hike — in one hour (he says). But the Wim Hof method itself is no folly — he has trained Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Oprah Winfrey, and Orlando Bloom, and 40 million people have downloaded his guide.
So Hof gets Wollaston on the sofa to breathe — the Hof way — and an astounded Wollaston finds himself able to hold his breath for 2.5 minutes. He thinks he’s capable of maybe a few push-ups, but after 20 more Hof breaths, Wollaston manages 20 push-ups, no dramas. But then, the ice bath. Hof slips into the adult-sized slurpee with ease, but all the air rushes out of Wollaston’s lungs as he immerses himself. “Let the body do what the body is able to do, you are so much stronger than you think, you are going to be happy, the cold is real, it’s a force, your inner power, also your neurological networks, hormones, it all works for you, let it awaken …” Hof proclaims, sparking a slight eyebrow raise. But Wollaston says he really does feel amazing once he’s out — oddly invigorated. Is he a changed man? Well, Wollaston muses, he’ll give cold showers a go. As for the nude mountain climbing…
Wishing you a restful Easter break ahead — I’ll chat to you again next Tuesday morning.
SAY WHAT?
Google it mate. If you want to know why people are turning off politics it’s because [of] what happens when you have an election that increasingly becomes this basic fact-checking exercise between a government that deserves to be turfed out and an opposition that’s got no vision.
Adam Bandt
Here’s hoping Bandt’s return serve will put an end to journalists asking five weeks of gotcha! questions of our leaders to get the next sensational headline. The Greens leader, confident he will have the balance of power after the election, also said he’d tax Clive Palmer to pay for our teeth — the Greens want to add dental to Medicare using its 5% super profits tax proposal which targets 130 billionaires in Australia.
CRIKEY RECAP
“Vote Compass does not tell people how to vote”: ABC defends online policy tool
“Each election cycle, the ABC works with international Vox Pop Labs to provide an Australian version of the Vote Compass, an online tool that uses a brief questionnaire to graph a person’s political views relative to Australia’s major parties.
“The Vote Compass tool is upfront about only taking each party’s policies into consideration and not other factors such as representation and track record. These policy positions are prepared by a team of political scientists who then check with the political parties to ensure they are accurate, according to the Vote Compass methodology.”
Ask the thousands queued at Sydney Airport about ‘insecure work’
“As well as standing down 20,000 staff during the pandemic, Joyce sacked 6000 workers as part of a major cost-cutting exercise over 2020-21. Now people wanting to make inquiries or speak to Qantas, which was privatised by the Keating government, have to endure seven-hour waits on the phone.
“The bigger queueing problem is at the airport itself, of course, with massive queues outside the door at domestic terminals due to a lack of airport security staff. The NSW government today admitted that people unlucky enough to have to use Sydney Airport were stuck with nightmarish waiting lines.”
George Christensen still exploits our worst impulses and weaknesses for personal gain
“Christensen stands to gain more than $100,000 if he runs for reelection. Sitting MPs who are defeated at an election or unendorsed by their party are given a taxpayer-funded “resettlement allowance” equivalent to 12 weeks’ pay. Earlier this year, Christensen tried and failed to get the LNP to disendorse him. Standing for One Nation, even if he loses, will guarantee that he gets that six-figure payout.
“Although he is a prolific social media user and influencer (more on that shortly) his biggest ally in the search for attention has always been the mainstream media. Case in point: his reelection announcement came first to The Courier-Mail. He still hasn’t published about his new tilt to social media.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Finland, Sweden veer closer to NATO in historic policy shift (Al Jazeera)
What’s happening with abortion legislation in states across the [US] (The New York Times)
South Africa: Death toll reaches 259 in KwaZulu-Natal floods (Al Jazeera)
Climate change: COP26 promises will hold warming under 2C (BBC)
Brooklyn shooting: Police name Frank James as suspect, manhunt continues (The Wall Street Journal) ($)
World’s top oil trader will stop buying Russian crude (CNN)
Bank of Canada hikes benchmark interest rate to 1% (CBC)
Bolsonaro faces hard scrutiny over military’s purchase of penile implants (The Guardian)
Sir David Amess murder: Ali Harbi Ali given whole-life sentence (BBC)
Dozens dead or missing after tropical storm hits the Philippines (The New York Times)
THE COMMENTARIAT
With Morrison’s campaign on the offensive, can Albanese sharpen up after his bruising brain freeze? — David Speers (ABC): “The Morrison campaign also went on the offensive. The prime minister popped up in Labor-held marginal seats: Gilmore, Macquarie, Parramatta and Corrangamite. No defensive sand-bagging in Liberal seats — yet. This was partly a show of early bravado and partly a reflection of the reality that the Coalition’s only chance of winning is to take seats from Labor wherever it can, given the inevitable loss of some of its own.
“Morrison appears more comfortable campaigning than he often does governing. He pivots with ease from an uncomfortable question to the headline message he wants to deliver. Albanese, by contrast, is yet to strike the right balance between exhaustive, detailed answers and punchy slogans … Wise heads on both sides know things will calm down after the flurry of the first few days and many disengaged voters still aren’t tuned in. The Easter break will be a chance to regroup and reassess. The contest looks closer now than it did only a week ago.”
I can’t eat childcare or lower taxes. Australians in poverty have been thrown to the wolves by both parties — Melissa Fisher (Guardian Australia): “It seems no one cares about us until the economy needs to be stimulated and then we are used to do it. As soon as it recovers we’re thrown back into poverty. It’s like drowning and being thrown a lifesaver then having that yanked away again, leaving you once again in a sea of bills you can’t afford to pay … It’s harder to learn when you’re focused on hunger pains and how you’re going to pay the internet bill so you can study.
“So far I feel that both the Liberals and Labor have ignored those of us who are living on welfare and living below the poverty line. It’s not exactly a small problem, with an estimated 2.5 million people and their children relying on these payments. We hear from both sides that “jobs” will be the solution. Yet many jobseekers like myself are disabled, or live in an area they can’t move from, or have caring responsibilities. Just because a job is created doesn’t mean we can work it. So we’re left in soul-crushing poverty. You’re caught in a cycle and, no matter how much you try, your circumstances don’t change.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Yuggera Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Author James Wayne will discuss his novel Finding Amelia at Avid Reader bookshop. You can catch this one online.
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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The Custom Sneaker Co’s Audrey Palupi and Jeremiah D’Souza, and SoundSmith’s David Hartley and Michael McSweeny will speak about innovation on a panel held by StartSpace (and backed by State Library Victoria).
