HOT AND BOTHERED
Climate change will cost us up to $423 billion in the next four decades, the sixth intergenerational report has found, via the SMH ($), but Treasurer Jim Chalmers has declared Australia is now a “global leader in how we’re responding to the threat of global warming”. Australia is not a global leader in responding to the threat of global warming. We are not on track to reduce our emissions by 43% by 2030 — indeed, they’ve risen since 2021, as The Australia Institute shows — even though the government is working on a 2035 target now. Reuters reminds us we remain the world’s second-biggest coal exporter, the Albanese government continues to approve coalmines or expansions against UN advice (at least three so far), and our offsetting scheme has been dubbed “the world’s first government-mandated greenwashing system”. But we could be a leader — Australia is one of the windiest and sunniest places on earth, and home to half the world’s lithium, a renewable tech mineral. The report found global demand for it — as well as other critical minerals such as cobalt, manganese and rare earths — will surge by 350% by 2040.
Meanwhile, we need the private sector to save us from climate doom, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has told the Business Council of Australia. His speech was centred around a “working together” theme, naming “energy policy or migration reform, skills, trade” as areas government and business need to lean forwards on, The Australian ($) reports, assuring the room: “We do it because we want you involved in the design and detail.” It comes as political and civil leaders of Pacific nations have slammed visiting Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s efforts to have Australia host the world’s biggest climate conference, COP31, as hypocritical. Australia’s response to “natural disasters, sea level rise, heat, food insecurity” has been “more gas and coal projects”, a full-page ad in The Fiji Times reads, as The Age ($) reports. “Australia has ignored our pleas for years.”
ON FOR YOUNG AND OLD
Then-government services minister Stuart Robert awarded Infosys $191 million for a welfare payment calculator that could calculate only one type of payment, Guardian Australia reports. The project was paused when Infosys said it was actually a pretty hard project — and again when Services Australia took over. In June, Services Australia revealed the calculator had processed just 784 claims in three years — all aged-care related — and Government Services Minister Bill Shorten quickly ditched it. Meanwhile Treasurer Jim Chalmers has told big super to do better, the AFR ($) reports. “People are living more frugally than they need to,” he said, pointing out half of retirees draw down the minimum, continuing: “There’s not enough confidence in their balances.” He’s issuing a discussion paper on it soon.
Meanwhile, won’t somebody think of the children! The Australian ($) is scandalised after the ACT health minister revealed how to decriminalise hard drugs such as cocaine, MDMA and ice. Use a private member’s bill, Rachel Stephen–Smith told “activists” — the paper’s word — at Labor’s national conference, because it’s super fast. It comes as the Queensland government railroaded the Human Rights Act in allowing the cops to hold children as young as 10 who haven’t even faced trial in watchhouses indefinitely, The Courier-Mail reports. How? Police Minister Mark Ryan’s 48 pages of amendments were moved on a piece of legislation that had already gone through the committee process — that means the government could pass the laws without scrutiny. A “dog act”, a bitter Greens MP Michael Berkman said, and this Worm writer couldn’t agree more.
PUTIN ON A BLITZ?
Overseas now and the Wagner leader who led an armed mutiny to overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government is dead after a private jet he was on crashed into a fiery heap, as this BBC video shows. Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was listed as a passenger along with nine others on an Embraer business jet flying between Moscow and St Petersburg, as The Guardian reports. There’s speculation from the Wagner-linked Telegram channel Grey Zone that a Russian air defence missile had shot down the plane, but no confirmation yet.
Prigozhin, 62, seized the Russian city of Rostov on Don in June before threatening to march to Moscow, but brokered a deal instead to see Wagner troops (including himself) go to Belarus. But he didn’t — he had been spotted in Russia and this week in Africa, where he said he was “hiring real bogatyrs [ancient Slavic warriors]”. CNN couldn’t confirm the video was shot there, though. It comes as Moscow sacked head of the air force Sergei Surovikin after he disappeared from view during the mutiny, the ABC reports. All this has happened while Putin told the BRICS summit of emerging economies (that’s Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) he wants to end the war in Ukraine that was “unleashed by the West and its satellites”, as Al Jazeera reports.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
An email dinged in the inbox of a London classifieds worker making ends meet selling ads for carpet cleaning and psychic readings in the pages of scrappy newspaper the Hackney Gazette. It seemed to be just another ad prolonging the slow death of print news as the advertising dollars flocked online during the noughts to chase a better bang for their buck. The ad was a quarter-page, with a bold red background, for a biz called Hackney Diamonds (Specialists in Glass Repair) opening a new store on Mare Street in September. Nothing out of the ordinary, though the text might’ve left the worker scratching their head. “Our friendly team promises you satisfaction,” it read. “When you say gimme shelter we’ll fix your shattered windows.” Huh, they thought, and placed the ad.
Turning the page of the paper, Clash magazine founder Simon Harper was stunned by the ad. Was that a tiny Rolling Stones’ lips logo as the dot above the letter? Was it a coincidence that the business says it was established in 1962, the same year Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, the late Brian Jones, Bill Wyman and the late Charlie Watts started jamming? And why did the text sound like a mash of several songs? He called the number listed, and was directed to www.hackneydiamonds.com to register his interest. The smoking gun — the fine print of the form reads: “Emails will be sent by or on behalf of Universal Music.” A new Stones album would be their first since Blue and Lonesome in 2016, as the BBC says. The paper’s editor Simon Murfitt admitted he had no idea until people started requesting copies of the page as a souvenir. Now he’s waiting for a call from Jagger and Richards for an exclusive interview. You can’t always get what you want.
Hoping something surprises and delights you today.
SAY WHAT?
To prove my working-class credentials I think I’ll do a shoey later on!
Christopher Pyne
The former defence minister, who now works as a lobbyist in the lucrative defence sector, joked about downing a beer from a shoe at an event on Tuesday night. The SMH ($) notes it’s a far cry from his 2019 speech, where he admitted he had no rags-to-riches story but he “did have to get my own lemon for a gin and tonic” once.
CRIKEY RECAP
“Webb said the nation’s coming bushfire season will be worse than the three wet summers past, but not on a par with the catastrophic 2019-20 summer that devastated south-east states. In short: above-average rainfall has stimulated grass and groundcover growth, but a rapid swing into hot and dry conditions is making all this excess fuel ripe to burn …
“Turner said wet conditions, often preceded by hot weather, have dramatically reduced the window of opportunity for Indigenous peoples to properly burn country: ‘They know the right time to burn to protect natural and cultural assets and prevent large fires. A lack of people on country in remote central Australia means that the country’s not being managed as it always has, leading to hot landscape-scale fires.’ “
“Australia was spared the worst of the darkening turn. There was even a brief moment in the late 1980s when it looked, with the 1987 takeover of the Herald & Weekly Times, that the company’s tabloid model would evolve towards a sharper, more centrist mid-market version like the HWT’s flagship The Sun News-Pictorial.
“But as the company struggled out from under its near-death debt crisis in 1991, it re-engineered its Australian papers, closing the afternoon mastheads and merging the rest into an increasingly look-alike network of city-based tabloids. (In COVID-struck 2020, most of the company’s regional and community network would be rolled into the city masthead.)”
“If, as the Reserve Bank and the business lobby reckon, there’s no link between rising profits and inflation, shareholders in Woolworths won’t care — they’ll be getting an inflation-beating 13% lift in full-year dividend after the supermarket giant revealed today a solid rise in revenue and earnings for the year to June 25.
“Woolies’ revenue rose 5.7% to $64.3 billion — less than the 6% rise in the consumer price index (CPI) for the year to June and less than the 7.5% rise in the cost of food and non-alcoholic beverages. But the giant’s earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) — the key measure of retail profitability — rose 15.6%, more than twice the rate of inflation (CPI and food) to a record $3.116 billion.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft lands on the moon in ‘victory cry of a new India’ (Reuters)
German government approves law to make legal gender change easier for trans, intersex, non-binary (euronews)
Rumours swirl after Xi Jinping fails to give key BRICS speech (The Guardian)
Ontario court rules against Jordan Peterson, upholds social media training order (CBC)
Amazon’s emissions ‘doubled’ under first half of Bolsonaro presidency (The Guardian)
Trump co-defendants begin to surrender in Georgia election case (BBC)
Juul to lay off 30% of staff as vaping pioneer seeks more cash (The Wall Street Journal) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Losing One Nation MPs is Pauline Hanson’s special skill — Alexandra Smith (The SMH) ($): “There would be very few political leaders who could match Pauline Hanson for consistency. Since bursting into Australian politics 25 years ago on an anti-Asian immigration platform, the former fish-and-chip shop owner has managed single-handedly to alienate her lieutenants one by one, from her party’s co-founders to her biographer and even her webmaster. Amazingly, her current right-hand man James Ashby, a one-time media adviser to federal speaker Peter Slipper, is still by her side. The political apparatchik, who has the title chief of staff, even steps in to do her media interviews. But if history tells us anything, the pairing will surely implode.
“…One Nation in NSW now has a lone ranger in Tania Mihailuk, a former NSW Labor MP who quit the party in a blaze of glory before this year’s state election with a searing parting shot that the ALP was not ready to govern in NSW. But Mihailuk was not elected as a One Nation MP by voters. Rather, she was slotted into the vacancy created when [Mark] Latham quit and recontested his spot. She is loud and sometimes angry, but her profile will not drag One Nation over the line in 2027 … Latham is an angry white man and Hanson is an angry white woman. For a while, the pairing looked liked a masterstroke. But history repeats itself and One Nation’s star is on the wane again. The party will struggle to exist without Hanson at the helm but as long as she remains, it will not only be the voters that call time on One Nation. Her unique ability to lose MPs means One Nation is on a path to self-destruction.”
[UK] Labour’s new deal for workers could be transformative, but unions fear Starmer won’t stick to it — Owen Jones (The Guardian): “What we’ve seen so far is not promising. No longer is the party committed to ‘create a single status of “worker” for all but the genuinely self-employed’, which would address the misclassification of gig workers. Rather, a consultation will be held to ‘simplify’ the workers’ rights framework … Even among unions that voted for the diluted package in July — and all did, except for Unite — there is anxiety that a consultation is merely an excuse to leave the policy to rot. Some union officials fear an internal contradiction: of the party committing to good policies — such as expanding access to parental leave — without dealing with structural issues that lock workers into insecurity.
“Blame is directed particularly at the office of the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, for seeking to weaken the offer in an effort to woo big business in what she has described as a ‘scrambled eggs and smoked salmon offensive’. Another key union aspiration is sectoral bargaining, where a collective agreement covers all workers in each sector of the economy, as is the norm in Denmark and Sweden. But Labour is only committed to its introduction in social care, with a review of its performance before being extended elsewhere. In a sector defined by precarity and a higher turnover of staff, this could prove hard to pull off. And the fear, again, is that it will go no further. Most unions voted for the package for two reasons.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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Writer Dennis Glover will talk about his new book, Thaw, at Avid Reader bookshop.
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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University of Tasmania’s Tim McCormack will give the 2023 Annual Kirby Lecture in International Law at the Australian Centre for China In the World Lecture Theatre.
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Minister for Employment Tony Burke will deliver the 30th annual Kingsley Laffer Memorial Lecture at the University of Sydney Business School.
