A CENSURE AND DECLINE
While prime minister, Scott Morrison refused to sign off on a $600 million skills package for NSW because he hated its Liberal Treasurer Matt Kean, according to conversations that people “from both sides of politics” recalled with former employment minister Stuart Robert. Robert reckons he can’t remember saying it, as the SMH reports. It’s one of the many revelations in Niki Savva’s sprawling political exposé, Bulldozed. One of the then PM’s closest allies, Liberal MP Alex Hawke, says Morrison “got addicted to executive authority”, “didn’t really take advice from people” and “wasn’t the greatest listener”. The former immigration minister added that the Liberals would have rolled him for going on a holiday to Hawaii during Black Summer’s bushfires if the pandemic hadn’t hit afterwards (hmm, true or a convenient rewrite? Morrison’s ill-fated holiday was December 16, and the pandemic was declared on March 11, nearly 12 weeks later).
Fast forward to now and Liberal MP Bridget Archer is thinking about crossing the floor to censure Morrison after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the motion yesterday. Either House leader Tony Burke or Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus is expected to move the rare parliamentary action today, The Courier continues — the opposition won’t support it, calling it a “political stunt”. And honestly, it kind of is. There are no legal consequences of a censure motion — it just puts it on the record that MPs don’t approve of that sort of behaviour. It doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing, but the implementation of the six recommendations from former High Court judge Virginia Bell’s report into Morrison’s secret ministries will do more to right the wrong. The Coalition will probably support that transparency reform, Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg said.
GREAT BARRIER GRIEF
The Great Barrier Reef should be added to the World Heritage in-danger list, according to the UN. Guardian Australia reports there are 10 things we must do “with utmost urgency” to save the reef, as per a mission report published yesterday in Paris by experts from UNESCO and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Among them, we’ve got to stop pollution running into the reef from nearby farming, we’ve got to invest in water quality targets, and we’ve got to stop using gillnets in the marine park. Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek stressed that the “World Heritage Centre is yet to make a recommendation” on officially listing it as in danger, however. The March reef mission was at the behest of then environment minister Sussan Ley, who lobbied against a 2021 UNESCO recommendation it should join the list, as the ABC reports, an apparent kick-the-can manoeuvre at the cost of our declining national wonder from the now deputy leader of the opposition. Interestingly, as the SMH says, the report notes the Albanese government still hasn’t passed laws enshrining a target of net-zero emissions by 2050 — a goal that “remains aspirational”, it says.
The UN is also urging Australia to stop detaining asylum seekers and to raise the legal age of criminal responsibility, The New Daily reports. The United Nations’ Committee Against Torture published a report expressing angst about us putting our unauthorised arrivals into detention, noting that Australian laws don’t say how long they can be held for — “reportedly resulting in protracted periods of deprivation of liberty”. The committee, which looked at countries such as Chad and Somalia too, named and shamed us for locking up kids as young as 10, saying they were mostly Indigenous children and children with disabilities who can be held in solitary confinement. In Canada, the age of criminal responsibility is 12, in England and Wales it’s 10, in Japan it’s 14, in Indonesia it’s 8, and in New Zealand it’s 10.
HOME TRUTHS
Melbourne is the country’s most affordable capital city for renters, according to the latest annual rental affordability index (RAI). Renters there have a combined household income of $101,300, the report found, as Guardian Australia reports. Interestingly, Crikey notes, renters generally vote progressive — not just because they are younger, but because they are locked out of home value appreciation. Prahran has the second-highest proportion of renters in Victoria (three in five) and swung even further towards Greens in Saturday’s election. Hobart is the country’s least affordable place for renters because of a lack of supply, and Sydney remains “critically unaffordable” — particularly Bondi, Darling Point and Vaucluse. Out west and rental affordability is at its lowest point in Perth since 2016, as WA Today reports, which has declined 15% in two years, with City Beach, Cottesloe and Peppermint Grove among the least affordable.
The RAI also found two in five low-income households are experiencing rental stress, making it harder to pay for food, heating and healthcare. (RAI defines rental stress as spending more than 30% of your income on putting a roof over your head.) If you were a single pensioner, you’d have to spend more than half of your income on somewhere to live. The ABC has a cracking investigation about our rental crisis this morning. One expert said it’s not just a risk of homelessness — high rent means people get priced out of living near their friends, family and/or workplace, driving disconnection. So what do we do? Pundits are calling for stronger tenancy regulations (realestate.com.au has a really good roundup of renters’ rights, if you’re interested). And landlords may be more open to reform than one might think. Landlords mostly sell their investment properties for lucrative capital gains, not frustration with tenancy law reforms, according to new research that the SMH reports.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
A Seattle-based artist known only as Sunday.nobody has worked for months on a 1360-kilogram concrete sarcophagus to be laid deep in the ground as a time capsule “for future civilisations to find”. It was built from scratch, with exterior detailing and an ornate gold leaf headstone completing the mysterious structure. It wasn’t easy — he used a pry bar and sledgehammer to free the structure from the moulding after waiting a month for it to dry, then flipped the headstone using his car (breaking his work table in the process). Then he spent several hours digging on a local property, using a tractor to place it in the ground. The burial plot was solemnly marked: “Historical artifact buried below. Do not open for 10,000 years. Year buried 2022.” Inside, hermetically sealed, suspended by at least eight taut steel wires and entombed in a block of transparent resin, is a single bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
The project came to the artist after he spent two years dutifully saving money for a rainy day and realised it wasn’t really making him happy. So he started buying shop tools and art supplies on the side. That’s when he realised there’s “nothing else I’d really want to spend my money on. I don’t want clothes or a car or any of that stuff.” But equally, he realised, he didn’t want to be an art salesman either. “I’d rather sell myself to my job rather than sell my art to people,” he said. The headstone, which has a QR code on it, links to a video that shows his whole artistic process. It’s been viewed more than 10 million times, but he doesn’t care. “Once I put my art out online, it’s no longer mine,” he told Insider seriously. One person commented: “They’ll either think we worshipped Hot Cheetos, or that they destroyed us all. Either way, they’ll be correct.”
Hoping you feel inspired to start a new project today.
SAY WHAT?
I have been mocked every day because of my faith because I am a Pentecostal. I have surrendered this battle to God now. I have said, over to you.
Scott Morrison
The then PM made the comments, according to Niki Savva’s new book Bulldozed, after the religious freedom laws failed to pass Parliament in February after five Liberals sided with Labor. The laws would have allowed religious schools to expel transgender children.
CRIKEY RECAP
Has the media ever gotten an election this wrong before?
“To anyone watching the actual results coming in, The Sydney Morning Herald’s early contention that Premier Dan Andrews’ Labor government had clinched a ‘narrow’ victory in Saturday’s Victorian election might have been baffling.
“Even at this premature stage, it was abundantly clear Labor was to hold its majority, with the Coalition picking up well under 30 of the 45 seats required. It was in keeping with the strange disconnect between the media narrative around the election and what the reality turned out to be.”
Morrison, liar to the last, can’t get his story straight about multiple ministries
“Morrison, through his lawyer, told Bell his public statements and Facebook posts were answers to her questions. In those statements, Morrison said he didn’t want ministers second-guessing themselves so he kept Mathias Cormann, Josh Frydenberg and Karen Andrews in the dark …
“And he didn’t want the public to know because it would be ‘misinterpreted and misunderstood, which would have caused unnecessary angst’. Morrison should have left it there. But consistent with his long history of lying even when he doesn’t have to, he then went further.”
RIP, freedom movement 2020-22
“The conspiracist Freedom Party has won less than 2% of the vote so far, with other similar groups like the Angry Victorians Party and the Health Australia Party trailing far behind. The upper house looks to be no different. Catherine Cumming, an active participant in Victoria’s freedom protests while serving as an MP, looks set to lose her seat.
“For all the noise in the seat of Mulgrave — which became ground zero for the war on Andrews — the premier easily retained his seat on first preferences, even with a swing against him. While signs were pointing towards the Australian freedom movement’s collapse earlier this year, the movement’s leaders promised victory up until polling day.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Hawaii volcano, world’s largest, erupts for first time in decades (Al Jazeera)
Cocaine ‘super cartel’ controlling a third of Europe’s trade is busted (EuroNews)
US weighs sending 100-mile strike weapon to Ukraine (Reuters)
BBC journalist ‘beaten and kicked by the police’ as protests spread across China (CNN)
Netanyahu strikes Israeli coalition deal with far-right homophobic leader (The Guardian)
WHO renames monkeypox to ‘mpox’ to avoid racial stigma (Stuff)
Ex-Comoros president given life sentence over passport scandal (Al Jazeera)
THE COMMENTARIAT
In my rugby locker I wrote DWYSYWD. In politics, I’m doing the same — David Pocock (The Age): “I know not everyone will be happy with where we have landed, and I am happy to cop that criticism. I’ve listened, I’ve consulted, and my team and I have worked around the clock to land an outcome that strikes the right balance. I’m not in Parliament as a representative for big business, or to be a rubber stamp for government. I’m here to consult and weigh up issues and then vote on behalf of the people of the ACT. There was a bit of a running joke with my local paper about how many stadiums I could get out of this IR deal, but this was too important to horse trade on. I didn’t get anything out of my agreement with the government, but the people doing it toughest in our community did. Those on low wages, those in highly feminised industries, and people who are out of work.
“I’m not going to apologise for pushing for a pay rise for workers in a cost-of-living crisis as well as a pathway to stop the most vulnerable in our community being left behind. People like one of my constituents, Ben Lawton, a cleaner at Canberra hospital, who has to live in a caravan park because that’s all he can afford. I understand there is real anxiety from small business, and protecting them and their workers — as well as subcontractors — was front of mind for me throughout this entire process. That’s why there are a heap of new safeguards in the amendments that will be moved in the Senate. As well as a commitment from the PM to address security of payment for subbies.”
Protests against strict COVID-zero policy are sweeping China. It’s anyone’s guess what happens now — David SG Goodman (The Conversation): “Protests in China have actually become quite common in the last couple of decades, though they almost always centre around a specific issue and are highly localised. Workers in a factory may protest over lack of payment or deteriorating conditions. Villagers forced to resettle so that their land can be redeveloped attempt resistance, sometimes even to the extent of refusing to be moved away. Residents in new housing estates become mobilised to complain about the lack of promised roads, retail outlets and services. These kinds of protest are usually resolved reasonably and quickly not least by state officials intervening to ensure solutions in the name of maintaining stability.
“Less capable of such instant solution are protests about more general principles, such as freedom of expression, legal representation, or governmental responsibilities. In such cases, government responses have tended to suppress the concerns. But such protests have almost always been localised and not led to any sense of a regional or national movement. This has even been true of industrial disputes where workers have protested in one or more factories under a single brand or owner. There’s no evidence at this stage that this is an organised national movement. But it seems protesters in each city have been emboldened by the actions of demonstrators in others. Reading China’s social media it’s clear, for example, that demonstrators in Beijing and Shanghai report on each others’ protests, as well as commenting on the initial protest causes in Urumqi.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Online
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Guardian Australia’s Katharine Murphy and Essential Media’s Peter Lewis will unpack the fortnight’s political news in a webinar for the Australia Institute.
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic will speak to the National Press Club.
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Author Richard Fidler will speak about his new book, The Book of Roads & Kingdoms, at Glee Books.
