SPOILS OF WAR
“Fight for yourselves,” Opposition Leader Peter Dutton will tell some of the country’s most powerful, most polluting and most political-donating companies today, The Australian ($) reports. He’ll tell leaders from Woodside, Shell, BP and Santos, among others, to “speak up frankly and more avidly” to “the Australian public, just outlining the facts” (giving him the benefit of the doubt here that he means the literal definition of facts, not the Kellyanne Conway “alternative facts” definition). Dutton struck an uncharacteristically empathetic tone for the billion-dollar companies, saying: “I know it can be difficult. I understand why, particularly in an age of social media, where companies have absented themselves from the public debate.”
Meanwhile, in extremely related news, global warming is set to sail past the key 1.5C limit for the first time, the World Meteorological Organisation warned overnight. There’s a 66% chance it’ll happen in the next four years, the BBC says. Here’s what will happen, courtesy of NPR: coral reefs such as the Great Barrier Reef, which is the size of Germany, will almost completely die. Storms such as Hurricane Ida, which killed more than 50 people in the US, will become common. The ice melt will raise sea levels by up to a metre in the next 70 years, which will see millions of people living in coastal cities facing displacement. But every tenth of a degree below 1.5C we can manage to keep the global temps works to unpick these risks.
THE LATE, GREAT BROTHER STUIE
Outgoing Liberal MP Stuart Robert is a truant and the principal found out. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese slammed Robert for not bothering to turn up to three sitting days, as the ABC reports, even though Robert is still on the public dime. The electorate of Fadden deserves better, Albanese said, calling attendance a “basic duty”. The PM gave Scott Morrison a rare compliment for turning up despite whispers he’s about to bail on politics. Albanese added that Robert was yet to formally resign so a date for the byelection can’t be set.
Albanese was also irate about a journalist using rhetoric from the Coalition “scare campaign” yesterday, The Geelong Advertiser ($) reports. ABC Radio Brisbane asked him whether he was telling Australian citizens the federal government had no concerns they would feel the effect of more than a million migrants coming into Australia “in any adverse way”. He struck back, saying more than a million people were waiting for visas when he took the reins from the Coalition. From immigration to asylum now, and Labor has been slammed overnight by the United Nations’ torture watchdog, the SMH ($) reports, because the average stint in detention for asylum seekers and immigrants is more than two years (780 days). UN special rapporteur on torture Alice Edwards said we were outliers, along with the UK, by not setting a time limit, and pointed out it was the 1992 Labor government that introduced this indefinite detention. Six months is the deadline in most countries, she said — but more than three could be classified as psychological torture.
AI DON’T KNOW ABOUT THIS…
We need better AI technology to help defend Australia, Defence Minister Richard Marles says. He said being at the “cutting edge of technology” was the second part of the AUKUS agreement after the nuclear submarines, listing artificial intelligence, hypersonic missiles and other advanced defence capabilities, according to The Advertiser ($). Marles said we have no time to waste, and can’t be “afraid to fail fast, learn, and adapt”. Interesting timing considering the ChatGPT chief Sam Altman has told US Congress that the company was “anxious” about AI, which could cause “significant harm to the world”, and urged a regulator to step in, as AP News reports. Speaking of freaky technology, check out the ABC’s interactive story that shows just how much a data breach compromises your identity.
It comes as Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has warned Australia’s plan to limit targeted ads could push free platforms towards subscription fees, Guardian Australia reports. It dates back to a February report from the Attorney-General’s Department that said we should get better control of our personal information. Among the reforms was the power to opt out of targeted ads — like you know when you buy a new hammer or broom or other long-term item and ads for other hammers and brooms follow you around the internet for a week? But Meta said online personalisation (like presenting you cracking Crikey stories in your Facebook feed, this Worm writer humbly suggests) may be caught up in the definition of a targeted ad.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Bernadine Swale spent just 23 days in her own bed last year. She’s a professional pet-sitter, travelling the world to look after all manner of animals in destinations like London, New York, Athens, Botswana, Tokyo and in New Zealand, as The Guardian reports, where she once took a miniature schnauzer out for dinner. But she’s no gen Z hyper-edited travel blogger. Swale is a 68-year-old former pharmacist who realised one day that there was absolutely no reason why she couldn’t adventure just like the splashy young ’uns on our screens. It all began after Swale, then 57, was divorced after 36 years of marriage. She was despondent, not only about the end of the relationship but about what it meant to lose a companion at that age. Travel, she figured, was off the cards. “The standard, cookie-cutter way you have to be in your 60s is man and woman, and you travel together,” she says. A few years later, there was a lightbulb moment: “Actually, no.”
Swale always wanted to travel, but “life gets busy just raising your kids as best you can, giving them a stable base,” she says. After the kids had grown and her marriage had folded, it took one more relationship with a guy for Swale to realise she didn’t need a man. “That’s not what brings me the most joy in life,” she says. So she figured she’d try pet-sitting for a year. At the first job, she sat in her car for 10 minutes, trying to work up the courage to go in. But after a breezy stay and easygoing pet, she went all in — she sold the house, got rid of everything and bought a loft that she figured she’d rent on Airbnb while she was away. It’s not been without its quirks: on a pet-sitting job in Botswana a baby rhinoceros walked into the house, for Pete’s sake. Next stop: Florida, for a cat and three geckos. “The world is my home,” she says.
Wishing you a little wanderlust today.
SAY WHAT?
Let’s not lose our humanity in the midst of all this — we don’t just communicate with words over a microphone or screen. We communicate with smell, touch, we get vibes from each other’s presence.
Bishop Charles Gauci
If you’re communicating with smell may we gently suggest a stronger antiperspirant and a spot of Old Spice? “Darwin’s TikTok bishop”, as The NT News ($) described him, warned we should not lose our humanity in the excitement of ChatGPT, the AI tool taking the world by storm.
CRIKEY RECAP
“Here in the Crikey bunker, we occasionally get praise from unexpected sources. We gratefully accepted, say, the support from former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd, neither of whom we have shied away from criticising, and Scott Morrison once said we were ‘absolutely incredible’. (At least we think that’s what he meant when he said we weren’t credible?)
“Still, this one did land as a bit of a surprise. In response to Dominic Kelly’s piece for us in March, ‘How did Australia’s conservative movement lose its way?’, Hancock Prospecting got in touch about the artwork, with a representative asking if it could ‘purchase a digital copy of the photo/cartoon’ to ‘put on the office wall’.”
“Dutton now wants direct action on Indigenous kids in Alice Springs, but his federal Coalition has been missing in action when it comes to curbing the ability of the NT Labor government to continue issuing online gambling licences, the latest being to Rich Lister Matthew Tripp and News Corp for their failing BETR joint venture.
“With no less than 30 bookmaking and betting exchange outfits licensed by the low-taxing NT Racing Commission, you’d think Dutton might call for a moratorium on new licences and a federal takeover of the licensing regime. He was all over Westpac in 2019 for its supposed ‘free pass for paedophiles’, leading the charge for the historic $1.3 billion money-laundering settlement with AUSTRAC.”
“What effect a mass expulsion would have on the Greens’ wider electoral chances remains to be seen. Their vote is reasonably solid, and probably highly pro-gender in the inner-city strongholds, with other supporters — the migrant groups that support federal Greens Leader Adam Bandt, for example — turning a blind eye to the shenanigans. Bandt and his office have remained resolutely separated from involvement in the stoush.
“However, it seems reasonable to say that the ‘teal’ space the Greens might once have seen as a place to expand, as inroads into working-class communities stalled, has now itself stalled. The party’s turnover has been substantial, especially during the pandemic, when Zoom meetings tended to favour the hyperdigital younger generation.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Global warming likely to breach 1.5C threshold for first time (Al Jazeera)
Russia says hypersonic missile scientists face ‘very serious’ treason accusations (Reuters)
North Carolina bans most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy (BBC)
[Canada’s] Alberta’s fight against wildfires could drag on all summer, official says (CBC)
Turkey slams Charlie Hebdo’s cover of electrocuted Erdogan in tub (Al Jazeera)
Harry and Meghan in ‘near catastrophic’ car chase — spokesperson (BBC)
Thousands evacuated as deadly floods sweep northern Italy (euronews)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Quad summit collapse is a win for Beijing — Cameron Stewart (The Australian) ($): “Joe Biden’s disappointing decision to abandon the Quad leaders’ summit in Sydney to deal with a political crisis at home is a clear diplomatic blow for Australia and for the region. It will be celebrated in Beijing because it robs Australia of a historic opportunity to send a clear message to China about the commitment of the key Indo-Pacific democracies to stand up to its military adventurism and economic coercion. Nothing would have underscored that joint commitment more than the sight of Biden standing alongside Anthony Albanese, India’s Narendra Modi and Japan’s Fumio Kishida in front of the Sydney Opera House.
“Instead, Biden triggered the collapse of the Quad summit by giving priority to sorting out the dysfunctional impasse between Republicans and Democrats in Washington over the US debt ceiling. The decision hands a propaganda victory to Beijing and deals a three-way setback for Australia. Firstly, it is a setback for the development of the Quad, a body which is vitally important for Australia. This grouping of the four great democracies of the region has gone from strength to strength since 2019, emerging as an ideal forum to strengthen cooperation in the face of China’s rise. The Quad is an idea whose time has come and it will recover from this, but the cancellation of the summit will lead some in Beijing to question whether Washington’s commitment to it is as iron-clad as was believed.”
PwC scandal shows consultants, like church officials, are best kept out of state affairs — Carl Rhodes (The Conversation): “The fundamental conflict that underlies the scandal is what makes it bigger than just PwC. In any area where governments make decisions affecting business profitability, there are incentives for vested interests to influence the process. There are, however, few areas where the government has so blatantly left its processes open to abuse as through its reliance on external consultants. Federal spending on consultancy-related contracts rose from $352 million to $888 million a year between 2012-13 and 2021-22, according to the Australian National Audit Office says. PwC’s share over the decade was more than $420 million.
“Reversing this trend, and separating corporate and public interests, is now as crucial as separating church and state. As the coronation of King Charles reminds us, the separation of church of and state is unfinished business in the political institutions inherited from Britain. Nonetheless, since the Enlightenment it has been broadly accepted that keeping church and state broadly distinct is necessary for good democracy. One of the reasons the church got powerful in the first place is that for hundreds of years it was the only institution more or less based on meritocracy. It was a source of advisers who could read, write and add up numbers — useful skills for any monarch.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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Melbourne Design Fair kicks off today, with commercial galleries, design agencies, craft and design organisations, and independent design studios showcasing design at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
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Head along to West Melbourne outdoor eatery Grazeland to see an exhibition called Perspectives of the Inner West by Bradmill Yarraville.
Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Author Kathy George will chat about her new novel, Estella, at Avid Reader bookshop.
