ISOLATE AND DESTROY
Isolating when you have COVID could be become a thing of the past when national cabinet gets together today. NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet is pushing for the five-day mandatory period of isolation to be scrapped, arguing “personal responsibility” should replace it, the SMH reports. Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff is reportedly backing it too, The Australian ($) reports. It comes as new research into COVID patients who died from the virus showed DNA damage to their bodies similar to diabetes or cancer, the Brisbane Times reports. But it didn’t look anything like the results from the people who died from the flu or a control group. Researchers say it can help us understand why the heart is affected by COVID — so far it’s been hard to look into it, because it’s tricky to get tissue samples from a living person’s heart.
To another interesting COVID study this morning and there’s research to suggest the virus changes our personalities, The Guardian reports. It’s weird because in the past we haven’t been able to conclude stressful events like earthquakes or hurricanes change a person, but the losses or social isolation of COVID seem to. Younger adults copped it the worst, according to the study of 7109 people — they became “moodier and more prone to stress, less cooperative and trusting, and less restrained and responsible”, one researcher found. By the way, Queen Elizabeth II may have tested positive to COVID seven months before she died this month, but it doesn’t seem to be the reason for her demise. Her official cause of death has been confirmed as “old age”, the BBC reports, adding that cause is permitted only in “very limited circumstances”.
CORRIDORS OF POWER
The prime minister’s phone could be tapped by the federal ICAC, The Australian ($) reports, according to legislation introduced into Parliament. No one is excluded from the telecommunication and surveillance powers under the bill. It also says the national anti-corruption commission (NACC) could raid Defence and Treasury without a warrant — although the attorney-general could block searches of agencies if he or she thought it might threaten our security or defence. NACC won’t be able to search ABC or SBS without a warrant, the Oz adds, nor other media outlets. The crossbenchers are still iffy on the line that says public hearings would be held only in “exceptional circumstances”, as Michael West Media reports, but Opposition Leader Peter Dutton confirmed the Coalition’s provisional support for the bill yesterday.
Speaking of power — the AFR has revealed Australia’s 10 most powerful people in 2022. In top spot is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who took Labor to victory in May, its “first majority victory in 15 years”. Also notable is his climate legislation and jobs summit, as well as his good performance overseas. Former foreign affairs minister and long-time deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop was on the panel and commended him as “one of the most experienced people ever to come to the position of prime minister”. Bishop couldn’t resist a dig at her old foes, however: “After a few recent Labor leaders, that is a welcome change.” “Few” being Bill Shorten, Kevin Rudd, and Julia Gillard? Anyway, the AFR continues Jim Chalmers was voted second, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong came in third (“a trailblazer for women and minorities in public life”), the teal independents Kate Chaney, Sophie Scamps, Allegra Spender, Kylea Tink, Zoe Daniel and Monique Ryan came in fourth (“the Liberal Party’s DLP”), Richard Marles fifth, and ACTU secretary Sally McManus sixth.
BUDGETS AND BLOWOUTS
Treasurer Jim Chalmers says the budget will include a big rewrite of budget guidelines, the ABC reports. Budget guidelines are the fiscal strategy, the broadcaster explains, that guide our targets — like reducing debt, “controlling” growth in spending, keeping a lid on tax and making “productivity-enhancing” investments. Chalmers confirmed we’ll see the Coalition-era strict cap on total tax receipts of 23.9% of GDP in there (even though he called that number arbitrary), as well as the divisive stage three tax cuts. Actual tax receipts were more like 23.4% last year, the broadcaster notes. And our unemployment forecasts will change, Chalmers confirmed. This week the OECD said the global economy growth would be more like 2.2% next year — that’s way down from their previous figure of 2.8% — and Australia’s was slashed from 2.5% to 2%. Yikes.
Speaking of big bucks, Spain has sent a group to meet Defence Minister Richard Marles to promise him it will deliver three new air warfare destroyers for $6 billion, The Australian ($) reports. But the Spaniards’ audacious bid will probably put noses out of joint at the problem-ridden British shipbuilder BAE Systems, which is supposed to be building nine Hunter-class frigates in Adelaide. Marles hasn’t said yet whether he’ll take up the offer from Spain, but there’s no doubt things are heating up in the Pacific. This week Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare refused to sign an 11-point declaration between his nation and the US, the ABC reports, which was supposed to solidify more US engagement in the region. But it seems the Albanese government is making noticeable strides to fix things with Beijing — China said there were “positive signals” our relationship was getting back on the “right track”, the Daily Mail reports, after Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong met with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in the Big Apple this week.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
It’s happening, folks. The four falcon eggs on top of 367 Collins in Melbourne. Are. Hatching. Falcons have been nesting at the top of the skyrise building for about 30 years, but they gained a cult-like following when a webcam was set up to offer live-streaming in 2017. Recently the livestream has shown the daily life of a falcon couple soaking up a million-dollar view across the bright city lights of Melbourne from their love nest. And last month those who regularly tune in were scandalised, outraged, dismayed and astounded. Another male was trying to edge his way into the marital home, some sort of brazen hotshot falcon who fancied himself a more fitting suitor for Ms Falcon. Victorian Peregrine Project founder Victor Hurley told the ABC that someone had told him the two males had been seen brawling in broad daylight in Federation Square for the lady’s hand (claw?). And it seems like the new guy did a real number on Mr Falcon because he hasn’t been spotted since.
Mr Hotshot has since moved into the nest, but he doesn’t seem to be ready for fatherhood. Whereas Mr Falcon spent half of his daylight hours dutifully plopped on the eggs to incubate them, the new guy hasn’t spent “as much as a second” doing the same, Hurley declared disapprovingly. It seems he was only in it for the tail. Ms Falcon isn’t letting him near her eggs any more, spending all her time lovingly warming them after the first cracks showed. Any day now they’ll open — and more than 40,000 viewers will be watching eagerly in the meantime, hoping to see it. The babies will stick around at home for six weeks before flying the coop. Her daughters will take about 10 days longer to leave, Hurley adds, because they’re 30% bigger and need the wing strength to support themselves. In the falcon world of philanderers and uneven domestic labour, it seems a woman has got to be.
Wishing you the strength of a female falcon today, and a restful weekend ahead.
SAY WHAT?
I believe we need to get to a point where if you’re sick you stay at home, and if you’re not, you get out and about and enjoy life.
Dominic Perrottet
The statement from the NSW premier, who will ask national cabinet today to axe the mandatory five-day isolation period for COVID, may send a shiver down the spines of those with comorbidities, the immunocompromised, the elderly, and many others. Too soon or time to move on? You be the judge.
CRIKEY RECAP
Adults intervene to save the UK economy as Tories play ideological games
“The near collapse of the UK financial system yesterday is one of the biggest economic stories of the year. It should be a hard lesson for politicians the world over about economic policymaking and the importance of independent central banks.
“Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous, debt-fueled £45 billion tax cuts package didn’t just send the pound plummeting — it also started an interest rate surge that sent every major UK financial institution to the verge of halting lending, which would have plunged the real-world UK economy into a major 2008-style crisis. Only the intervention of the Bank of England (BOE) prevented that.”
Shout ‘fascist’ long enough and a tired shrug of surrender may be the inevitable response
“So if Meloni’s party suspends democracy, throws thousands in prison and sends out death squads, one will agree that fascism has returned. Until then, it is best seen as a form of neo-reaction, which has had strong appeal on a range of economic, cultural and political grounds …
“People of right and left queued up to praise Mussolini as he got the country working, built new cities (and good God, I’m sorry, but his train stations are fantastic), drained malarial swamps, etc. That history is altered in memory because in 1938 he conformed fascism to Hitler’s Nazism, a movement genuinely outside the left-right political dialogue.”
Former Liberal arts minister and glass house inhabiter throws stone at Labor for lacklustre arts funding
“Paul Fletcher earlier this week [lamented] the ‘many months’ of inaction on the arts sector from Labor (as well as misspelling Tony Burke’s name). Which is kind of a great slam on a government that could reasonably argue it hasn’t really been in power for many months.
“Because if you go back any further than four months, you get into Fletcher’s stewardship of the sector, such as it was. Fletcher’s statement criticises the government for failing to release $20 million from the Coalition’s Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) fund, which was put in place in 2020 and designed to help the struggling sector get through the audience pandemic. In case you need reminding, that’s the same fund that critics argued left big chunks of the sector behind while giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to LEGO.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Finland to bar Russians after Putin’s mobilisation order (Al Jazeera)
Mexico named deadliest country for environmental activists (The New York Times)
Hurricane Ian’s rainfall was a 1-in-1000 year event for the hardest hit parts of Florida (CNN)
Uncertainty clouds fate of $40bn [Canadian] First Nations child welfare agreement (CBC)
[US] mortgage rates rise to 6.7%, highest since 2007 (The Wall Street Journal) ($)
Denmark’s 2022 World Cup kit will ‘protest’ against host nation Qatar (EuroNews)
Super cheap Far North house and land package comes with catch (NZ Herald)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Lidia Thorpe is a cyclone making landfall in the Greens — David Crowe (The SMH): “Both Bandt and Thorpe have maintained this week that the meeting simply involved a ‘robust discussion’, with the Greens leader stating he had ‘full confidence’ in the controversial senator. Nonetheless, the Greens have a problem, and they know it They will not talk about it and are doing their best to starve the story of oxygen, but one of their stars is being accused of conduct they would never tolerate from others. The party that is quick to shame others over claims of their moral failings now has to look in the mirror. It is a nightmare for Greens leader Adam Bandt after he took the party to its best result on record at this year’s election. Bandt would usually hold a press conference when Parliament is sitting, but he kept a low profile this week after this masthead’s political reporter, Lisa Visentin, revealed the admissions from Mejia-Canales. (Not surprisingly, he is no longer Thorpe’s chief of staff after calling her behaviour ‘truly awful’ in an email in June.)
“Bandt did not even respond to Aunty Geraldine when she complained to him in writing last year. Imagine the outrage at a Labor or Liberal leader who took the same approach. The Greens leader only sent a response on Wednesday, after two days of media coverage. By contrast, she received a swift response from Senate president Scott Ryan, a Liberal, last year. Thorpe is a cyclone making landfall in the Greens. She only joined the party in the weeks before seeking preselection for Victorian state politics and has a personal following that sets her apart from her colleagues. She is regarded by some as the least loyal of the party’s federal members and senators because she has not spent years working her way up through the party to reach a prized seat in the Senate. This makes her impossible to restrain.”
I was a Tory MP, but Truss and Kwarteng have convinced me to vote Labour — Nick Boles (The Guardian): “My brief career in politics taught me a few crucial lessons. Those who are full of certainty are usually wrong. The capacity to listen, to observe, to weigh up evidence and to change your mind are some of the most important qualities in a leader. Of all the different kinds of fool, the most dangerous kind is the clever fool. Of course leaders need a strong sense of direction. But it should be formed by principles and values, not economic theory. The policies they pursue should be inspired by those values but rooted in evidence about what actually works and what people want.
“In the past few days, the values of sterling and government bonds have registered the alarm felt by international investors about the UK’s prospects. But the British economy is resilient and there is a limit to how much permanent damage even these two headstrong ideologues will be able to do. In two years’ time, voters will be given a choice. By then I expect that there will be millions of former Conservative voters who will have tired of being lab rats in Truss’s and Kwarteng’s ideological experiments. They will look for leaders who are prudent, responsible and steady. Who don’t think they know everything. Who listen, and are in touch with people’s everyday concerns. I predict that they will conclude, as I have done, that it is the Labour Leader, Keir Starmer, and his shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, who best fit the bill.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
-
Independent Senator David Pocock will join Australian Conservation Foundation experts and volunteers for platypus spotting as part of the group’s inaugural Platy-Project.
Larrakia Country (also known as Darwin)
-
Protesters will gather to show solidarity with Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, who is alleged to have been beaten to death by morality police in Iran for not wearing a hijab correctly, in an event supported by the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network.
Yuggera Country (also known as Brisbane)
-
Broadcaster Jacinta Parsons will chat about her new book, A Question of Age: Women, ageing and the forever self, at Avid Reader bookshop. You can also catch this one online.
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
-
The Architectural Association Design Research Lab’s Theodore Spyropoulos will give a keynote public lecture at The Edge, Federation Square.
