LOSERS … AND WINNERS
Then treasurer Josh Frydenberg dobbed to then prime minister Scott Morrison that their colleagues were urging him to challenge Morrison for the leadership, according to the SMH. It was November last year, and Coalition MPs were having premonitions of losing the federal election in six months. But Frydenberg — despite being pretty popular inside the cabinet room and with the Liberal-minded public (including big donors) — told Morrison the pair could stick together and turn it all around. Nice guys do finish last, it seems, as Frydenberg’s party not only lost the election but, embarrassingly, he lost his seat to teal powerhouse Monique Ryan. Then opposition leader Anthony Albanese didn’t give a Frydenberg challenge a second thought, saying, according to the paper: “He didn’t have the guts to challenge.” Then defence minister and another potential challenger Peter Dutton was like, they share pyjamas at the Lodge, there’s no chance Josh will go for it. It was Peter Costello all over again — Costello famously declined to challenge John Howard in 2007 amid the Kevin07 groundswell. Morrison became the first PM since Howard to serve a full term.
Speaking of Albo — he met with US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh on Sunday to talk AUKUS before the latter’s much-anticipated first meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping at the G20 meeting, Guardian Australia reports. (Biden would’ve been in good spirits — the Democrats will retain power in the Senate, CNN reports, after Nevada stayed blue in the midterms.) Albanese ended up meeting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang instead — still a big moment for our diplomacy, as it’s the first time an Australian leader has met a Chinese leader in three years. Albanese says we’re definitely still getting nuclear submarines while also stressing we are committed to global nuclear non-proliferation, which feels like a John Clarke bit, but anyway. Albanese also confronted Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about the “enormous human toll” of Ukraine’s invasion, which one would imagine the steely Russian was quite unmoved by. (Hillary Clinton once described him as a “jerk”, as The Telegraph ($) reports.) Albo will head to Bali today for the G20 and a Bintang.
NAME YOUR POISON
Farmers up north have accused the Queensland government of a big cover-up of toxic chemicals leaking from one of Australia’s worst environmental disasters, The Australian ($) reports. It’s been 18 months since we discovered dangerously high levels of cyanide and the highly carcinogenic chemical benzene near farmland in Toowoomba — byproducts of a since-closed Linc Energy underground coal gasification site, the paper says. In the US, Unilever has just recalled a bunch of dry shampoos for containing benzene, as the FDA says — that includes brands such as Dove, Bed Head, and TRESemmé. Anyway, the contaminants in the ground were kept secret from farmers and off the land contamination register — the paper says it could be a breach of state “duty to notify” obligations. Environment Minister Meaghan Scanlon said there wasn’t enough toxicity to meet the threshold of public disclosure, but The Oz ($) saw a Department of Science paper that said the benzene was 25 times the maximum drinking level. Cripes.
To some happier environmental news and the enormous slosh of water flowing into the Coorong, lower lakes and Murray-Darling mouth are washing the salty build-up from the millennium drought, Guardian Australia reports. It’s giving plants, fish (including the southern pygmy perch) and birds a much-needed “reset”, one expert said, but it’s probably going too far to say every La Niña cloud has a silver lining. There’s another slew of intense rainfall hitting NSW and Victoria today, impacting as far as southern Queensland and Tasmania, the Bureau of Meteorology said. The towns of Bathurst, Molong, Dubbo, Wellington, Narromine, Condobolin and Forbes, as well as the rivers Edward, Darling, Lachlan, Murrumbidgee, Murray and Macquarie are all on flood watch, Guardian Australia adds. It came as 80,000 homes lost power on Saturday in South Australia amid what one expert compared with a “mini cylone”, The New Daily reports. And Alice Springs also copped one of its biggest storms at the weekend, the NT News adds.
INCARCERATION NATION
ABC has published gutwrenching footage of three WA prison guards pinning down a 14-year-old Indigenous boy in a practical “hogtie” — the teen was part of a group of children moved to the adult maximum security Casuarina prison. The boy in the video says he felt “helpless” being told to “relax” — “How are you supposed to relax when you’ve got like four or five blokes on top of you?” he told Four Corners. The West ($) spoke to other boys in that cohort — one claimed a guard dislocated his shoulder while restraining him, and it took more than a day for him to get medical attention. Former Children’s Court president Denis Reynolds, former inspectors of custodial services Neil Morgan and Richard Harding, ex-police commissioner Karl O’Callaghan and the Telethon Kids Institute have slammed the management of children in custody, the paper adds. But Corrective Services Minister Bill Johnston reckons removing the cohort from the juvenile detention centre Banksia Hill has seen an 85% decrease in incidents.
New research shows we could release a third of our prisoners with minimal risk to the community, Guardian Australia reports. The Institute of Public Affairs study found 42% of prisoners have not committed a violent or sexual offence — and if our incarcerations keep at this pace, we’ll have 300 prisoners for every 100,000 adults by 2030. That would mean Australia would be in the top five most incarcerated countries in the OECD, a dismal fact. Reducing our prison population by a third (14,000 people a year) would also save us $1.25 billion a year, the study notes.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
The new museum in Perth, Scotland, needed a name, and management thought, hey, let’s get the public to choose one! It’ll be really fun, they figured, and great promotion for the museum. “We wanted to hear from the people of Perth and Kinross, from people old and young, from all corners,” the museum declared. And staff pulled out all the stops, as The Guardian reports. They produced and promoted information packs to the local schools about a name; they printed leaflets and had people approach pedestrians near the site to chat about options; they ran a far-reaching online campaign to target anyone in the area who might have a strong thought or two. Some 450 ideas were suggested — and the whittled-down options put to the public for the final nail-biting vote included colourful options like the Sparkling Museum of Perth, and the Victoria Drummond Museum.
After the landslide of votes was counted by the excited museum staff, the new museum in Perth will be called… Perth Museum. It was a thumping victory, with a whopping 60% of people voting for the bereft moniker. The museum was a bit sheepish. The name “encapsulates the stories and history of the building”, it declared without a lick of irony. Perhaps the people of Perth recalled the Boaty McBoatface debacle, a name the mischievous public overwhelmingly voted for in a similar campaign for a $354 million polar research ship (the name didn’t stick). Then there’s Greenpeace, which put it to the public in 2007 to name a humpback whale in the South Pacific. The winning option, much to the bafflement of scientists, was Mr Splashy Pants, commanding no fewer than 78% of the vote. Ah well, they figured — the public has spoken, and he was so named. The noise about the whale’s name actually led to the Japanese government calling off its whaling expeditions, according to a TED Talk, so maybe all publicity is good publicity after all.
Hoping you have some fun with it today, folks.
SAY WHAT?
I do NOT support any move to get the Greens elected. Doing so is MORE dangerous than having the ALP elected (as problematic as they can be) and if the Greens ever hold the balance of power we are all screwed.
Ian Quick
The Victorian Liberals’ governing body member posted a lengthy rant at the weekend begging his party to not preference the Greens over Dan Andrews’ Labor candidates at the November 26 poll, saying those god-damn hippies gaining power would be a nightmare scenario. For the Coalition, that is.
CRIKEY RECAP
Peter Dutton among high-profile figures impersonated by verified Twitter accounts
“Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is among the public figures impersonated on Twitter since the Elon Musk regime controversially opened up the platform’s verification program to anyone who pays … Despite having ‘parody’ in the account’s bio, just one follower — this reporter — and a joining date of November 2022, the account had seemingly fooled some Twitter users who responded as if they were tweeting at the real Dutton.
“Dutton was just one of many high-profile figures who had fake verified Twitter accounts set up for them in the past 24 hours. Tweets purporting to be from LeBron James announcing a trade request, Donald Trump criticising Musk, video game character Mario giving the middle finger, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly promising customers free insulin, and fossil fuel giant BP went viral on the platform.”
Poverty doesn’t last even one news cycle in Australia’s Gilded Age
“In Australia today, wealth is shared just as unequally. The richest 10% of households hold almost half of all wealth (46%), while the majority of Australians (60%) possess only 17%. Almost 15% of Australians live below the poverty line after taking housing costs into account — that is 3.3 million people in poverty, more than 750,000 being children.
“Our nation’s wealth is being used to camouflage the modern adaptation of the poorhouse; people unable to support themselves struggling to survive, only this time without any guarantee of shelter. A struggle often framed in terms of economic burden, not human suffering … As with America at the time, yellow journalism has flourished in Australia — the insipid, captured, fourth estate that elevates sensationalism above science …”
The air is a little thick o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave
“If it gains even 51 seats in the Senate, it will be able to hold up confirmations of administration appointments at multiple levels, and leave the Biden administration with some serious gaps. In both chambers it will begin investigations… of COVID, of Hunter Biden, of the election, of Hunter Biden, of Russiagate, of Hunter Biden, etc. It’s going to be a messy two years, starting with a refusal to raise the debt ceiling, and possibly ending with another government shutdown.
“Through all that, Joe Biden will be on track to run again, and all that can stop him will be actual dementia rather than mild wooliness, or, you know, death. The Democrat establishment simply lacks the ability to sack its own, which is why it has become a gerontocracy. Furthermore, there’s a good argument for him running. If people are living to 90 these days, absolutely routinely, an octogenarian doesn’t seem a problem.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Explosion in Turkey’s Istanbul kills six, injures 53 (Al Jazeera)
A pair of vintage military aircraft collided at a Texas air show (CNN)
Italy’s PM Meloni sues Gomorrah writer in libel drama over refugee rescue (The Guardian)
[UK Chancellor] Jeremy Hunt: everyone will have to pay more tax (BBC)
Democrats keep control of US Senate, crush Republican ‘red wave’ hopes (Reuters)
Bahrain holds election without opposition candidates (The Guardian)
Slovenia election: voters likely to return first female president in Sunday ballot (EuroNews)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Democrats just held the Senate. Here’s what we do next — Elizabeth Warren (The New York Times): “If Republicans take the House, their majority will be stacked with election deniers who have embraced one overriding goal: the restoration of Donald Trump as president in 2024. They believe economic chaos weakens President Biden, so they are itching to use their leverage to hurt working families. This is the same strategy Republicans used after the 2010 midterms when they set off a debt-ceiling crisis, then demanded family-crushing austerity.
“Democrats should fight back by making this lame-duck session of Congress the most productive in decades. We can start by lifting the debt ceiling now to block Republicans from taking our economy hostage next year. Democrats must then continue delivering for families. Where we can pursue legislative action, we should fight aggressively. When Republicans try to obstruct such action and the president can act by executive authority, he must. Most of all, the Democrats should be aggressive in putting Republicans on the defensive, pressing hard on why they are blocking much-needed initiatives to help Americans.”
I’ve spent my life looking for a cure to mental illness, then I made a discovery — Anna Spargo-Ryan (The Age): “I know we don’t start sentences with ‘during lockdown’ any more, but during lockdown, thanks to everything moving online, I did things I hadn’t done for years. I went to friends’ book launches and birthday drinks. I watched bands I never thought I’d see again. I followed along as strangers showed me how to bake bread. My computer was a glorious maze of opportunities to be part of something.
“Being supported to participate revealed this true thing: it’s not the anxiety that stops us from being the best version of ourselves. Actually, it’s society that tells us to wish for someone else, instead of understanding and supporting the anxious person who already exists. When I went to the doctor that first time, and all the other times since, I didn’t need a cure. I needed structures to include me and compassion to support my place in the world. Every day I have a moment, however brief, when I rage against my brain. Just be normal! I holler as I try to reattach my limbs to my body. There’s no question my life would be easier if I wasn’t in constant battle with a hilarious and invisible monster who’s been stalking me since childhood.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles will give the 2022 Sydney Institute Annual Dinner Lecture at The Star.
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NSW Minister for Emergency Services and Resilience and Minister for Flood Recovery Steph Cooke, Blacktown Deputy Lord Mayor Julie Griffiths, and Liverpool Mayor Ned Mannoun are among the speakers at a panel discussion about resilience in the face of climate change, in an event held by CEDA.
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Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury Andrew Leigh will give the Warren Hogan Lecture on “Economic Dynamism: A Global Perspective” at the University of Sydney.
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Hip-hop pioneer Hau Lātūkefu will chat about his new book, King: Life, Death & Hip Hop, at The Vanguard.
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The X Factor 2013 winner Dami Im will launch her new book, Dreamer, at the Darlinghurst Theatre Company.
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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Alyawarre woman Pat Anderson and Cobble Cobble woman Megan Davis will accept the Sydney Peace Prize for the Uluru Statement from the Heart, with music from John Wayne Parsons, at Melbourne Town Hall.
Yuggera Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Author Heather Rose will chat about her memoir, Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here, at Avid Reader bookshop.
