THE STATE OF THINGS
The former safe Labor seat of Ipswich West has flipped blue, Sky News Australia reports, after the Liberal and National Party’s Darren Zanow scored a 15-point swing in the seat’s by-election (Labor held onto former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s seat of Inala, but support dropped by nearly 30% as the Brisbane Times reports). Is it a sign of things to come in the state election? Journalist Joe Hildebrand thinks so — he compared it to the 2010 Penrith by-election when Kristina Keneally’s NSW Labor government lost the seat to the Liberal party, as AFR reported, then lost the 2011 state election. Hildebrand went as far as to infer a federal Labor leadership spill, saying Penrith’s polling was shown to Labor MPs before they knifed then PM Kevin Rudd in favour of Julia Gillard.
Meanwhile, Liberal health spokesperson Anne Ruston was booted from South Australia’s top Senate spot in favour of conservative Senator Alex Antic, 108 votes to her 98. There are only nine women in the lower house and 10 in the Senate, the paper says, with this latest move raising eyebrows about whether the Libs will solve their “women problem” with their 50-50 by 2032 target. David Fawcett was third and Guardian Australia notes the top three spots are “winnable for the Liberals”. Staying in state politics a moment and Labor’s Dunstan candidate Cressida O’Hanlon was referred to as a “senior associate” of her husband’s company Citadel in documents The Advertiser FOI’d — but she denied accusations she used her job as a part-time adviser for a former Labor state secretary to help him get meetings.
UP IN THE AIR
Australian politicians are claiming interstate travel for parliamentary duties that happen to occur during major sporting events, Guardian Australia reports. For example, opposition whip Bert van Manen flew from Brisbane to Melbourne for a Melbourne Cup luncheon with the Australian Hotels Association, costing $2,200 in flights and $570 in transport costs (van Manen said the lunch involved businesses in his electorate). It’s within the rules, but should they change? Independent Senator David Pocock, together with Transparency International Australia boss Clancy Moore, says taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill for the footy, with Pocock adding you’d think our well-paid pollies would pay for themselves.
Speaking of travel — broadcaster Alan Jones is back on Australian soil from the UK after the SMH reported on indecent assault allegations against him. In a video, he told News Corp that he won’t be hosting on his online site ADH TV right now owing to recent “medical assessments” to “address traumatic pain” but vowed to return. He said he had been prescribed opioids, the AFR adds, including liquid morphine. Jones denied the allegations brought by several men and threatened legal action at the time — in this video he said he wouldn’t “dwell here” on the claims other than to refute them. It was thought he was in the UK to meet with ADH’s co-founder Jake Thrupp, but Jones said he mostly hung out with his godson.
HOME RUN
Eight of the 11 Gazans who had their visas cancelled mid-flight to Australia have had them reinstated, the SMH reports, while Palestine Australia Relief and Action’s Rasha Abbas said work continues on the other three. They were cancelled because either the Gazans left their home without explanation or there’d been a big change in their circumstance, a government source told the paper. Meanwhile, the Together Home program that supplies accommodation for up to 1,000 rough sleepers in NSW hasn’t had its government funding renewed ahead of the June deadline, the ABC reports. The Centre For Social Impact found the COVID-era program had left two-thirds of people battling homelessness feeling safer and more well. Minister for Homelessness Rose Jackson said NSW is working on a longer-term strategy in what she called a “homelessness and housing crisis” in her state.
It comes as The West Australian ($) calculates that 229,000 people (out of 2.3 million aged care users) will pay more for their care by 2042 if self-funded retirees have to pay more of their daily living costs. It was the recommendation of an expert panel led by Aged Care Minister Anika Wells — the government would pay most of age care costs, but wealthy retirees would chip in more for food, cleaning, and gardening. Interestingly, Treasury says retirees who don’t get a pension will nearly double from 24.6% now to 43.2% in the next four decades — that’s because people will retire with an entire career’s worth of super saved. Folks, it appears that The Australian’s site is down this morning, so no news from that masthead in your Worm today.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Darcy McGaffic was settling into her seat on a flight to California feeling quite chuffed with herself. At six foot tall with legs up to here, plane seats aren’t exactly a comfortable fit for her, so she’d chosen an aisle seat in the exit row. That’s when someone tapped her on the shoulder. The man’s wife was seated next to her, and she was deathly afraid of flying — any chance of a switcheroo? Sighing and gathering her hand luggage, McGaffic trudged to the back of the plane to take the man’s seat — a middle seat, no less. The man who moved for her to enter the row leaned over. I would never have done that, he said, smiling at her. The pair got talking and didn’t stop for five hours, except when he — Scott Germond — asked as to her marital status. Pausing, she thought of her boyfriend, the guy who had been droning on about his ex-wife last night, leading to her post-call resolve to split up.
She responded to Germond, a twinkle in her eye: “Well, I’m dating somebody, but I’m thinking about dumping him because I might like you.” In the movie Big Fish, the protagonist says time stops when you meet the love of your life, but then it moves extra fast to catch up. The plane landed and the pair were swept into the arrival gates, throwing looks at each other as McGaffic’s waiting boyfriend carried her bags. Weeks later, newly single, she could not stop thinking of that missed connection. So her mum encouraged her to put a note in the classifieds of the local paper. Days before it was published, her ex rang her in a rage. You cheater! he said as The Guardian tells it. She was mystified until she checked the paper. “Met you on a plane,” read the classifieds ad she didn’t write. “I need a replay”. Turned out Germond had the very same idea mere days before. The couple has been married 24 years.
Hope you put yourself out there today.
SAY WHAT?
I’m not advocating a ban for TikTok and WeChat. What I’m advocating is removing the Chinese Communist Party control over all of these apps.
James Paterson
What the shadow home affairs spokesperson is urging — that Beijing should change its laws at the behest of the West — should be fairly straightforward, no?
CRIKEY RECAP
“A credit-card-abusing cop from the Australian Federal Police, a person who accessed tax records without permission, and an Australian Tax Office employee who accepted a bribe are the first three people to be convicted after investigations linked to the new federal corruption watchdog, Crikey can reveal.
“All three were convicted after probes by another federal investigative body that was subsumed into the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) upon its creation last year, but nevertheless represent the first three scalps claimed by the commission.”
“Even if we did manage to abolish the grossly inequitable privatised model we currently have, our schools would still be segregated by postcode; by the capacities of parents to pay ‘top-up fees’ to give their local public school an edge.
“But unless our leaders dare to acknowledge the injustices baked into the system, more kids will leave the public system, more burnt-out public school teachers will leave the profession, and more of our next generation will leave the education system feeling as though it wasn’t designed for kids like them.”
“Back in June last year we noted the incredibly elastic quality of the word ‘woke’ in the pages of The Australian. Watching the term evolve — from its original context in Black American activism, coming into wider use to mean a broad alertness to the impact of structural forms of oppression, to what it is now, which is apparently anything to the left of Franco — has been quite the dispiriting journey.
“But it occurred to us that it was unfair to only set out the Oz’s achievements, when its stablemates at News Corp have done such great work contributing to this degradation of language. Here’s a new, updated, expanded and still probably non-exhaustive list of subjects …”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Niger suspends military cooperation with US: Spokesman (Al Jazeera)
Iceland violent volcanic flare-up triggers state of emergency (BBC)
Russia sees polling station protests as Putin set to extend long rule (CNN)
Musk’s SpaceX is building spy satellite network for US intelligence agency, sources say (Reuters)
European Union announces €7.4 billion package of aid for Egypt (euronews)
Trump says some migrants are ‘not people’ and predicts a ‘blood bath’ if he loses (The New York Times) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
How eco-anxiety preachers prey on ‘generation unwell’ — Nick Cater (The Australian) ($): “Challenging such errant nonsense leads us to wonder if there might be something missing in the kids themselves, the grit and resilience that enabled Australia’s wartime generation to experience five years of deprivation, hardship and loss without succumbing to the debilitating despair common in today’s young people. The solution to eco-anxiety, to the extent that is a thing at all, may not be to ‘validate their feelings’, as Charlesworth claims. It may be to tell Gen Z to pull themselves together and do what others have done before them: work hard and take risks with the confidence that they can right wrongs in an imperfect world. Abigail Shrier makes the case for tough love in Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up. The book was released earlier this month and became number one on Amazon in its first week. Elon Musk posted that ‘every parent should read it’.
“Shrier begins with a paradox: How does a generation that has received more psychological counselling than any in history turn out to be the loneliest, most anxious, depressed, helpless generation on record? How did adolescents who grew up in a period of unprecedented affluence with the enabling power of digital technology become so pessimistic, fearful and fatalistic? Shrier looks for an explanation in the prevailing therapeutic culture and the influence of parents who have gone to extreme lengths to keep their children from harm, including the perceived damage inflicted by putting children in their place, criticising poor behaviour or marking them down for mistakes. In doing so, a generation has been inadvertently robbed of agency. Previous generations grew up with what psychologists called an internal locus of control, the belief in one’s ability to improve one’s circumstances. The therapeutic culture has encouraged an external locus of control, attributing events to external things, like other people, climate change or bum luck.”
Birmingham’s cuts reveal the ugly truth about Britain in 2024: The state is abandoning its people — John Harris (The Guardian): “In 2023, Birmingham city council — which is controlled by Labour, and is reckoned to be Europe’s largest local authority — effectively went bankrupt. There were three key reasons: massive cuts in funding from Whitehall, the cost of the belated resolution of the council’s gender pay gap, and the mind-boggling mishandling of a new IT system. In the midst of the rising need for council services — much of which was rooted in all the dislocation and disaster of the COVID crisis — all this spelled disaster. Now, many of the city’s services must be either hacked down or done away with, in pursuit of savings of about £300 million over two years. As far as anyone understands it, this is the deepest programme of local cuts ever put through by a UK council.
“All of this has been widely covered in the national media, but what has not quite come through are the visceral injustices that sit at the story’s centre. Payback for the failings of politicians and bureaucrats is falling most severely on children, whose provision will be cut by £52 million in 2024-25 and £63 million in 2025-26. Among other savings, the council is ending its annual £8.4 million contribution to an ‘early help’ service that provides families in crisis with everything from emergency financial assistance to advice on breastfeeding, and thereby threatening its survival. For kids aged over 16 who have special educational needs, there will be no more taxis or minibuses to schools and colleges: as part of a quest to claw back about £7 million a year from transport costs, they are being offered such grim consolations as ‘personal travel budgets’ and something called ‘independent travel training’.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Whadjuk Noongar Country (also known as Perth)
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Former government architects Steve Woodland, Geoff Warn and Rebecca Moore will speak alongside former president of the Australian Institute of Architects Warren Kerr in a panel led by journalist Victoria Laurie held at The Mark.
Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Forest expert David Lindenmayer will talk about his new book, The Forest Wars, at Avid Reader.
