TEAL/SILKS
Fundraising group Climate 200 has set its sights on Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson, the AFR reports, which is held on a mere 1.7% margin. It’ll back candidates in some 19 seats in total, and just two are held by Labor (ACT’s Bean and Tasmania’s Franklin). Other high-profile Coalition-held seats in the eco-juggernaut’s sights include deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley’s Farrer, Russell Broadbent’s Monash (he quit the Liberals to sit on the crossbench after he lost pre-selection, so the Liberal running will be Mary Aldred), Paul Fletcher’s Bradfield in Sydney’s upper north shore, and former Home Affairs minister Karen Andrews’ McPherson. Climate 200 is raising money to fund a new wave of teal hopefuls — they won six seats at the last election, including then treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s in a massive upset for the Libs.
Meanwhile, the lawyer representing Coalition Senator Linda Reynolds in her defamation battle, Martin Bennett, has been fined for “grossly careless” professional misconduct in a different case, The West Australian ($) reports, after revealing protected mental health information while trying to get a guardian for his client’s father. The State Administrative Tribunal said the info, inside an affidavit, should never have been filed in the Supreme Court. Finally, The Australian ($) reports Bruce Lehrmann’s silk Steven Whybrow said his partner gave him an ultimatum — it’s Bruce or me. “I’ve decided to choose her,” he said to laughter, saying this week’s failed defamation result was “the end of it for me, thank God”. Whybrow also said he hasn’t read the judgment handed down by Justice Michael Lee yet, comparing it to a school textbook for a “subject that you’re sick of”.
A SHOT AT THE BUDGET
Australia is spending more money on Defence than ever before, Defence Minister Richard Marles says. It’ll increase some $50.3 billion over the next 10 years to $330 billion (up from $270 billion under the Coalition), The Australian ($) reports, but that didn’t stop the Coalition’s Defence spokesperson Andrew Hastie from branding it a “very modest boost” (to be fair, just 5.7% of the extra funds will roll out in the next four years). Also in yesterday’s Defence investment program: we’ll claw back some $72 billion from scrapping weapons programs, including ditching plans for an extra 28 joint strike fighters (saving us $3 billion) and two support vessels ($4.1 billion). Marles added that the Australian Defence Force should recruit New Zealanders and Pacific Islanders to fill the 4,400-person staff shortage.
Speaking of budgets — our overall balance is the second strongest in the G20 behind Canada, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) data that Guardian Australia reports on. Ours is -0.9% of gross domestic product, (behind Canada’s -0.6%), way up from 14th in 2021 and seventh in 2022. Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher were stoked, citing the 2022-23 surplus and a possible second one in May’s budget. But the IMF urged Chalmers to trim expenditure fat and beef up revenue to ensure we aren’t exposed if China’s economy, the second largest in the world, falters, the SMH adds. Meanwhile, Labor needs to chuck a uey on its economic agenda, Productivity Commission chairman Gary Banks told AFR, because spending billions subsidising local manufacturing will just prop up “political favourites”. Banks continued that the Made in Australia Act is a “spending more agenda” and lacks regulatory reforms.
DOWN WITH SCHOOL
A brain researcher at the University of Sydney who accused an academic of trying to bribe and blackmail someone says he was sacked for whistleblowing, the SMH reports. But the uni says neuropathologist Manuel Graeber was fired for not showing up for classes and installing a security camera in his office. Prove it, Graeber said — he’s suing the uni in Federal Court for unlawful adverse action and wrongful dismissal. Back to school now and kids in Melbourne’s Docklands have to walk 50 minutes to get to the nearest high school, The Age reports, and locals want one to go in at the site of the departing Costco. Some of the 749 couples with kids living in Docklands are moving because of lacking education access.
Meanwhile, two Melbourne Girls’ College students alleged they were told their faces were “too brown” to have their photos taken, the Herald Sun reports, though the school denies it. It said students were told not to wear make-up or fake eyelashes — but students told their parents they were excluded because of their dark complexion or natural eyelashes. Other allegations include that a student in a hijab was told to remove her long sleeves, and a girl wearing a Christian cross was told to hide it. One school source described it as the “worst day ever at the school” while parents described it as “out of proportion” and “militaristic”. It comes as Australians are actually having fewer babies (1.6) than the international average (2.3), the ABC reports this morning. Respectfully, no shit — we’re living in concurrent housing, cost of living, and climate crises. But the “baby drought” (the broadcaster’s words) could damage our workforce, health system and cultural makeup.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Donald Trump sat hunched over a dark timber table, smallish hands folded neatly, and stared at the startled New Yorkers in front of him. It was day two of trying to find 12 jurors to judge the saffron-stained Trump on a litany of felony charges relating to faking records to hide hush money. No-one was chosen on day one because there wasn’t a single person who could be impartial when it came to one of the most polarising figures in history. How does Trump’s lawyer know this? Some people openly admitted it, while others suffered a fate all perennial posters fear — they had their old social media posts read out loud. In front of Trump.
“Trump invites the Thai boys to the White House, and the boys request to return to their cave,” Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche recounted to its author in a deadpan voice as The Daily Beast reported. Yep, that’s my account, she confirmed. “I’m dumb as fuck,” an AI version of Trump said in a video shared by a prospective juror, who told the courtroom he found the video funny. A glowering Trump didn’t share that amusement, however, as journalist Tyler McBrien observed, at one stage copping a reprimand for muttering. Blanche dutifully read out another post that read: “I don’t think this is what they meant by Orange is the New Black,” an apparent reference to the Barack Obama-Donald Trump presidential pipeline. Oh, mercy. No matter what comes of this trial, there was a joyful karmic retribution that the man known for calling Mexicans “rapists”, sexually assaulting women, and advocating that other men do the same, was getting a dash of humiliation.
Hoping karma is in your favour, today and always.
SAY WHAT?
The judgment written by Justice Lucy McCallum in the NSW Supreme Court trial of Simon Gittany, who was accused of throwing his fiancée Lisa Harnum off their apartment balcony, remains one of the most gripping pieces of legal writing I’ve ever read.
Annabel Crabb
The ABC columnist described judgments as “cliffhangers whose ending is known only to the person on the screen”, though one might point out that the people involved in the case and the many affected by a similar crime might not find them to be such page-turners.
CRIKEY RECAP
“When Crikey gave Stokes and Seven a touch-up after the embarrassing Ben Roberts–Smith defamation judgment in June 2023, the stock was still at 40c, giving Seven West Media a market capitalisation of around $600 million.
“Since then it has cratered further and closed at a miserable 19.5c yesterday, giving the whole company a value of just $287 million. As Bernard Keane and Glenn Dyer pointed out in February, Seven West Media is also carrying $257 million in net debt. And that’s after not paying a dividend since October 18, 2017. Compare that with Seven Group Holdings, which was valued at $14.4 billion when its shares closed at $38.69 yesterday.”
“Australian journalists have access to ethical guidelines on reporting complex mental health conditions in the context of violence and crime, as laid out by the media organisation Mindframe, which stipulate that mental illness cannot be presented as the sole cause of violence and that professionals should ideally be interviewed about what can be done to prevent similar incidents occurring again in the future.
“Despite this, reports will still often stray into sensationalising and dehumanising language. While many of us have been primed by movies, television and media to believe that schizophrenia, a mental health condition characterised by delusions and hallucinations, is an inherent risk factor for violence, this is largely untrue.”
“We now have considerable evidence of online ‘misogynistic extremism’ or ‘male supremacy’ radicalising men and boys in Australia. It can start while our sons are sitting at our kitchen tables watching content produced by malevolent grifters manufacturing male shame for profit. It ends in a spiral of shame and self-loathing vented onto women’s lives and bodies. Innocuous videos on how to shave or style hair are only five hops from violent incel content that paints all as a threat to be violently suppressed.
“Incels (short for ‘involuntarily celibate’) started in the early 2000s as a niche group of young men who gathered in the dark corners of Reddit to share their sullen rage against the women who denied them what they saw as their rightful entitlement to sex.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Pakistan says it blocked social media platform X over ‘national security’ (Al Jazeera)
Russia’s meat grinder soldiers — 50,000 confirmed dead (BBC)
Boeing whistleblower: ‘They are putting out defective airplanes’ (CNN)
Donald Trump mulls middle-class tax cut as he eyes return to office (Reuters)
EU urges Georgia not to pass ‘foreign influence’ law (euronews)
Desert city of Dubai floods as heaviest rainfall in 75 years hits UAE (The Guardian)
Record number of [NZ] home owners fix on one-year terms as they bet on interest rates falling (NZ Herald)
THE COMMENTARIAT
What Justice Lee has to say about ‘vindicated’ Linda Reynolds — Samantha Maiden (Herald Sun): “It’s also important to remember from the outset that Senator Reynolds was not a witness to the defamation trial. Unlike her chief of staff Fiona Brown, who did give evidence and was expressly praised by the judge, Senator Reynolds did not give evidence in the defamation case. She was not cross-examined. And yet, one of the striking moments in the criminal trial of Bruce Lehrmann was always the contradiction in the evidence of former Defence minister Linda Reynolds and her chief of staff. Both women were asked when they first became aware of a potential sexual element after Brittany Higgins was found naked in a ministerial office.
“They gave two different stories. Remember, the Morrison Government was quick on the day that Higgins’ allegations emerged to admit it was a mistake to hold an employment meeting with Higgins in the room where the incident allegedly occurred. During the criminal trial in November 2022, Senator Linda Reynolds said that she was never told by her chief of staff Fiona Brown that Brittany Higgins had disclosed ‘I remember him on top of me’ before that meeting. Had she known she wouldn’t have had the meeting there … But in a statement to news.com.au in August 2023, Senator Reynolds revealed for the first time that she now accepts that her chief of staff Fiona Brown‘s evidence at the trial was correct …”
Subs ahoy! Marles defends Labor’s record in defence — Jennifer Hewett (The AFR): “Yet, funds for what Marles calls Labor’s ‘historic mission’ to fix the mess it inherited are mainly back-ended over the next decade, with even the most optimistic timetable for delivery of key projects well beyond that. Consider the bipartisan dream of eventually building AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines. Other cheaper and more immediate weapons that have so transformed military capability globally — such as armed drones — receive far less attention, with an additional $300 million allocated over the next four years and $1.1 billion over a decade. That’s in the context of $330 billion-plus in capital spending on defence in that time.
“Despite some additional funding for missiles, Australia’s surface fleet will also continue to be similarly short of the sophisticated missile systems that have become increasingly key to modern offensive and defensive naval warfare. The contrast between saying and doing has only been sharpened by the military assessment — repeated by Marles — that Australia no longer has the luxury of a 10-year window of warning time for conflict. Not that the minister concedes any of the regular criticism that — like the Coalition — the Labor government is also failing to match the urgency of the threat with adequate funding or additional capacity.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
-
Author Jill Valentine will speak about her new book, High Heels and Low Blows, at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.
