COURTING OPINION
Former Seven producer Taylor Auerbach said in an email to his then boss Mark Llewellyn that the $10,315 spent on massages on the company’s corporate card “had nothing to do with work”, according to The Australian ($). But Auerbach’s sworn affidavit said the massages were “for the benefit” of former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann, whom Seven was trying to court for an interview. The paper says the email “makes it abundantly clear” that Llewellyn did not greenlight the massage charges. It doesn’t say how it obtained the email. (Guardian Australia’s Amanda Meade makes sense of the whole legal saga in a great explainer this morning.) It comes as David Sharaz referred to former prime minister Scott Morrison as a “c**t” who was “about to be f***ed over” in text messages to Higgins, revealed in last-minute evidence, the Herald Sun reports.
Meanwhile the pair and Higgins’ former boss Linda Reynolds are probably going to trial in July in the senator’s defamation case, The West Australian ($) reports, after no mention of further mediation. And Higgins’ social media post last month before the failed peace talks — in which she stated, “I will not stay silent so you can stay comfortable” — will be added. Reynolds’ silk Martin Bennett said he plans to call up to 20 witnesses — including doctors — to speak, including to share “different recollections” to those of Higgins who said she felt isolated, ostracised and suicidal in Perth after her rape allegation was levelled against Lehrmann (he has always denied it and the charge was dropped following fear for Higgins’ health). Reynolds had to mortgage a property to pay for the case in her bid to “vindicate her reputation”, Bennett said, as The New Daily reports.
COPPING IT
NSW Police briefed journalists about the alleged involvement of a five-year-old in a break-and-enter and car theft in Bourke, Guardian Australia reports, before cops had laid charges or even spoken to the alleged offenders. The paper says the kid’s age was based on a bystander’s estimation, and The Daily Telegraph ran with it, calling the kid a “kindergarten crim” (page 9). Blergh. The SMH actually quoted a cop saying “we had a five-year-old child … breaking into a property and stealing a car”, even though the police’s media department wouldn’t confirm the age. The state’s peak Indigenous legal body has called for an investigation. Speaking of police — a NSW organised crime squad cop was accused of slapping the backside of a woman in a Gold Coast casino while working on the arrest of high-profile businessman Eddie Hayson, The Courier-Mail reports.
To another form of enforcement now and The Age reports X (formerly Twitter) will file a legal challenge against the office of the eSafety Commissioner after it ordered the social media site to delete a post attacking NSW health organisation ACON’s director of community health, trans rights activist Teddy Cook. Anti-trans commentators were posting about a super weird article in the Daily Mail that suggested he was “too smutty” to be involved in a World Health Organization panel. Here are some headlines in the Daily Mail this morning: “Rebel Wilson reveals who took her virginity aged 35” and “Tammy Hembrow’s racy bikini pic sparks [Brazilian butt lift] rumours”. What’s that saying about those in glass houses…
MORE POWER TO YOU
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will probably extend the up-to-$650 energy price relief measure for 1 million small businesses and five million families in the May budget, Guardian Australia reports. The $1.5 billion Energy Bill Relief fund, which was introduced after power prices soared amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “helped fight inflation” and took the pressure off, he’ll say. The PM will also spruik rooftop solar, saying the fact that nearly one in three businesses use it was a “great start”, The Age continues, commending them for leading the way as “innovators”. As for Peter Dutton saying business leaders should loudly criticise the government? Albo said that was just the opposition leader trying to “drag you into his politics of negativity and conflict”.
Meanwhile franchise businesses are operating like cartels in agreeing to not hire each other’s employees, Assistant Minister for Competition Andrew Leigh says, and the practice is illegal in the UK, US and EU. Guardian Australia reports the no-poach agreements and the non-compete clauses (which stop people from joining their workplace’s competitors) could be stopping us from pay rises to the tune of $5,700 or more. It affects everyone, Leigh will say, from breakdancing instructors to disability support workers and boilermakers. It comes as Dutton accused Coles and Woolies of stamping out competition by holding on to undeveloped land near their stores, the AFR reports, as shadow treasurer Angus Taylor and Nationals leader David Littleproud work together on a plan to break up the duopoly if they are found to abuse their market power.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Many are reeling after the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) pulled an April Fools’ joke on Monday. Such gags should be “funny and not hurt people”, upset-sounding A-League Women commentator Georgia Rajic tweeted. It all began when the ABS tweeted a fetching limited-edition line of merchandise it dubbed the “capsule collection”. Trendy neutral-coloured gear including bucket hats, off-white caps, canvas totes and socks were stitched with forest-green phrases. Some read “stat hat”, others read “ABS stats”, and every single item positively “slapped”, as the youth say. And then there was the mug reading “live, graph, love” and a hoodie that quipped “another day, another correlay”. Perfection.
But clicking the hyperlink just took you to the homepage of the ABS, and the joke sunk in for many who were already grasping their credit card in one hand. “Give me the mug or else,” ABC’s chief stats guy Casey Briggs replied to the tweet in what was a rather threatening tone for a math nerd. Another user alleged: “Not having a valid link to that hoodie contravenes the Geneva Convention”. In total there were more than 150 replies to the gag, some even featuring the violent-as-they-come water-gun emoji, trying to bully the ABS social team into making the line a reality. When Crikey approached the bureau to ask whether it could happen, head of social media Heather Lansdowne said: “It looks like we now have a solid statistical basis for just how much people are eager to wear our stats on their sleeves.” Indeed.
Hoping you keep your wits about you today.
SAY WHAT?
I think the activities and the murders that are occurring are what’s causing tension, not people telling the truth about it.
Larissa Waters
The Greens senator was responding to accusations that the minor party is damaging Australia’s social cohesion by speaking up about Israel’s war in Gaza. The death toll surpassed 32,000 Palestinians this week, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, many of whom were children.
CRIKEY RECAP
“The murder leaves Anthony Albanese’s carefully calculated attempt to remain in Israel’s camp while expressing concern about the deaths of Palestinian civilians — now at nearly 33,000 — in tatters.
“Labor seems to have settled on ‘unacceptable’ as its words of choice about what it describes as the ‘targeting’ of aid workers; Albanese used it repeatedly on ABC’s 7.30 last night and again this morning, and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong also used it. The prime minister said this morning he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of his ‘anger and concern’ and that ‘Australians were outraged’.”
“Meanwhile, the world’s most addled man, Donald Trump Jr, increasingly resembling an AI generation of himself using out-of-date technology, argued trans people need no special recognition because they’re already allowed to straight-up murder people without consequence in the loony leftocracy of Biden’s America.
“He said on his podcast that trans people can ‘murder someone and have a journal and nothing’s ever gonna come from it’. Just to add the chaos, Monday was April Fools’ Day, resulting in the day’s press briefing beginning, I kid you not, like this…”
“If you want to see some of the purest efforts at political PR, the concentrated form that usually ends up being diluted even by the most biased media, the Dropped Speech is for you. The Dropped Speech is when a politician’s office hands a copy of a speech to be given the following day to a journalist so that it will be reported in that day’s morning media.
“There’s a trade-off involved — the journalist gets a speech, but will never write it up critically or devote too much analysis to it. Instead, it will simply be reported almost verbatim, delivering the key messages the politician wants to hit.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
NATO agrees to work on long-term military support for Ukraine (Al Jazeera)
South Africa parliament speaker resigns over corruption probe (BBC)
Trudeau announces $15 billion more for apartment construction loans (CBC)
‘The machine did it coldly’: Israel used AI to identify 37,000 Hamas targets (The Guardian)
Taiwan’s strongest earthquake in 25 years kills 9 people, 50 missing (Reuters)
Zelensky lowers draft age [to 25] to shore up Ukraine’s depleted army (The New York Times) ($)
Powell still sees room for the fed to cut [US] rates this year (The Wall Street Journal) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Black life, black solidarity, and late stage settler colonialism — Eugenia Flynn (IndigenousX): “In thinking through the relationship between settler colonialism in Israel and Australia, I have sought to term what is happening here in Australia as ‘late stage settler colonialism’ (noting that others such as Yorta Yorta and Gunai woman Holly Charles seek to use similar terminology, e.g. ‘end stage settler colonialism’, in their soon to be published research); akin but separate to the ideas that the term ‘late capitalism’ infers about modern global societies. If what is happening in Gaza now is the brutality of the early or mid stages of settler colonialism, then what we are witness to in Australia is the same thread of colonial genocide, evolved over 236 years to become sly in nature and less visible to those outside the bounds of its violence.
“There are so many threads connecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here and Palestinian people overseas. The theft of land, the moving in of settlers to replace the people who already live there, the acts of genocide, the establishment of a state that violently unfolds its own authority and self-appointed sovereignty over the top of who and what already exists. In contemporary Australia the evidence of late stage settler colonialism is found in the high rates of Aboriginal deaths in custody, suicides, prison rates, and early preventable deaths due to ill health. It is also found in the low rates and levels of education and employment – all statistics of deficit blamed on Blackfellas rather than on the racist and violent systems that continue to perpetuate our genocide.”
Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation trial has exposed many lessons in its path — Samantha Maiden (The Herald Sun): “Brittany Higgins called out the leaking of ‘private’ contents from her phone for months, taking to social media and other forums to warn of ‘the dangerous precedent to tolerate a victim’s private data to be weaponised in this manner without any recourse’. But for nearly a year her complaints fell on deaf ears. As the flood of leaks hit the news headlines in the wake of Channel 7’s Spotlight program, few questioned where they came from. Now that question is centre stage in the Federal Court, where Justice Michael Lee is set to interrogate untested claims that the source was the man she accused of raping her, Bruce Lehrmann – an accusation he denies.
“…Under cross-examination, Mr Lehrmann has previously told the Federal Court that he did not give Channel 7 ‘all information, documents, film, video, photographs, items and assistance reasonably requested’ as his contract required but only gave Spotlight an interview. Ms Higgins’ messages had been provided in a brief to Mr Lehrmann and his legal team during the criminal trial, and were also available to the police, the DPP and the Sofronoff Inquiry. But an extraordinary legal whodunit emerged in the wake of the leak of a six-hour tape of Ten’s Lisa Wilkinson, Ms Higgins, her partner David Sharaz and Ten’s The Project executive producer Angus Llewllyn giving their ‘unplugged’ views on high-profile figures.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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NSW MPs Donna Davis, Jihad Dib, Anoulack Chanthivong and Charishma Kaliyanda will talk about the future of Western Sydney at Novotel Parramatta.
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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Author Bri Lee will talk about her new book, The Work, at Verity Lane Market.
