NOTHING CAN SAVE THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL’S PET PROJECT
The Albanese government has reportedly withdrawn an $18 million grant to a leadership foundation that Governor-General David Hurley personally lobbied the Morrison government for, Guardian Australia reports. The late-night decision to reverse the Australian Future Leaders Foundation’s funding comes after the grant was awarded before the foundation was even open and without a competitive tender. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese played it down, saying the government is looking at everything in the budget to try to save money, but his decision came after the Greens and the Jacqui Lambie Network both moved to disallow it in the Senate, as did independent Monique Ryan in the lower house. “There is insufficient evidence supporting this peculiar grant,” she wrote.
Michael West Media says the G-G (and Scott Morrison) should resign — the foundation had “no website, a clear purpose, an operation, even a phone number”, the eponymous journalist writes. It stinks of a conflict of interest too, he argues, as Hurley signed off on Morrison’s move to become another finance minister in addition to Simon Birmingham. But Hurley vigorously denies wrongdoing and distanced himself from the foundation’s boss (though Ronni Salt’s Twitter thread suggests otherwise). Even so, “The system relies on the real and the perceived political independence of the governor-general,” Michael West concludes. “Otherwise, what is the point?”
GIVING VOICE TO POWER
Today the government will announce the working group for the referendum about an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, the ABC reports. Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney will reportedly confirm it. So what do we know? It’ll be made up of 20 Indigenous leaders, including Pat Anderson, Marcia Langton, Tom Calma, Pat Turner, Ken Wyatt and June Oscar, the broadcaster says. Burney will co-chair with Patrick Dodson, and the group will work on the “timing, question and information” about the Voice.
Crucially, Burney will say the government cannot lead the referendum, that it’ll be down to “grassroots”, Guardian Australia continues. Most Aussies support a Voice but no one is quite sure what it’ll look like — ideally this working group will change that. There’ll also be a second “engagement” group made up of people from land councils, local government and service organisations, who’ll pound the pavement. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was oppositional yesterday, saying he has no idea “what it means for the mining sector”. Guardian Australia points out the Voice proposal does not include a “veto right”, as Dutton claimed — it’s an advisory body without final decision-making powers. How many times do you think some version of that latter line will be repeated before the referendum?
THE POLITICIANS ON THE BUS GO ROUND AND ROUND
It’s going to take 17 years longer than previously thought to electrify all 8000 buses in NSW, the SMH reports. Premier Dominic Perrottet thought they’d have it done by 2035 but Transport for NSW said it would actually be 2047. About two years ago, former transport minister Andrew Constance announced it would be done by 2030 (about 100 of them are electric so far). The confusion was compounded when Infrastructure, Cities and Active Transport Minister Rob Stokes told budget estimates on Tuesday that the government’s goal was net zero across the bus fleet in greater Sydney by 2035. My head hurts.
Meanwhile Queensland is thinking about boosting its 50% renewable by 2030 target, The Australian ($) reports. We should know for sure when the Palaszczuk government’s 10-year strategy is released in the next few weeks — it’ll show how high climate action sits on the Labor government’s priorities. At the moment the Sunshine State is powered 80% by fossil fuels, and only 20% by renewables (I’m sure you didn’t miss the irony of that sentence). It comes after a Green uprising in the state, ABC reports, following Brisbane’s Stephen Bates’ win over Liberal incumbent Trevor Evans in May.
Hey, speaking of the Greens — Labor’s climate change bill is expected to sail through the Senate today and become legislation. But Leader Adam Bandt will tell a conference his party’s demands for the reformed safeguard mechanism include “that new coal and gas mines are ‘addressed’, that pollution goes ‘up and not down’ and the scheme has ‘integrity’ without allowing [coal and gas] companies too much leeway through offsets”, as The Australian ($) lists. The Greens sure made a splash at Canberra’s biggest party yesterday — Bandt’s wife, Claudia Perkins, wore a white gown graffitied with “coal kills” and “gas kills”, and Sarah Hanson-Young wore one emblazoned with “end gas and coal”, strong statements considering Woodside and Shell sponsored the night, as SMH reports. The paper, which pointed out the homage to US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2021 Met Gala dress, rather snarkily called it “proof that Australia’s left and right are united in their stunning lack of originality”. It’s almost as if they’re politicians running the country, not the Hollywood fash-pack.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
The chess world is in absolute uproar after world chess champion Magnus Carlsen, 31, stood up and walked out midway through a US tournament after he was spectacularly beaten by relative newcomer and past cheater Hans Niemann, 19. After Carlsen withdrew — for the first time in his career, mind you — he posted a cryptic tweet with a video of football manager Jose Mourinho saying: “I prefer not to speak. If I speak I am in big trouble … and I don’t want to be in big trouble.” But Niemann, who is lowly ranked, is adamant he did not cheat against the top chess grandmaster, as Vice tells it. Niemann even went so far as to volunteer to play chess in the nude, starkers, naked as the day he was born, to prove he’s no cheat — anymore.
Carlsen’s defeat caused absolute chaos, not least because he had played 53 classical matches in a row without a loss. “It must be embarrassing for the world champion to lose to an idiot like me,” Niemann said in an interview shortly after the victory. “I feel bad for him.” Incredible stuff. Punters unleashed a storm of debate after the match, dissecting it blow by blow, trying to determine any foul play (so far, nothing). So how does one cheat in chess? Outside advice, obviously, but also vibration-based buttons in one’s shoe connected to software hidden on your body playing the same game in real-time (it is 2022, after all). One thing’s for sure, the director-general of the International Chess Federation said Carlsen was not being a sore loser: “He must have had a compelling reason, or at least he believes he has it.” What it is, we may never know.
Hoping you surprise yourself with a win — big or small — today, too.
SAY WHAT?
Other than that, please don’t lecture me! The Europeans, you were the ones who polluted the whole world with coal, with oil and everything that you can imagine.
Jose Ramos-Horta
At the National Press Club in Canberra the president of Timor-Leste defended his demands over a gas pipeline — in which China could be invited to invest — by pointing out (correctly) that we leased out the port of Darwin for 100 years to Chinese-owned Landbridge Group in 2015. He also basically told us to mind our business when it comes to climate action.
CRIKEY RECAP
Qantas engineers speak up as Jetstar customers languish overseas
“Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce has run the company like private equity, stripping assets (he has sold the company’s catering division and a slew of buildings), outsourcing key functions and offshoring others. He has also waged a 14-year war against the company’s staff, especially its ‘blue-collar’ division of ground staff, engineers and pilots, slashing pay and conditions under a program that was supercharged under the cover of COVID when 2000 baggage handlers were illegally sacked in a case now before the High Court.
“Six of Jetstar’s 787 Dreamliners which ply its offshore holiday routes are out of service; two are being repaired in Singapore and Seattle due to maintenance work being offshore and limited capacity in Australia. Engineering sources say that the lightning-affected plane may have to be written off, removing almost 10% of the cut-price airline’s international capacity. The aircraft shortage at Jetstar is so bad that Qantas planes are being diverted to carry the low-cost carrier’s passengers.”
Goodbye Basia Bonkowski, gen X nation’s secret girlfriend
“She was the pure possibility that there were wonderful things out there, waiting for you. When decades later, as a TV producer, I called her to see about a panel show appearance, and she answered her own phone, I really simply lost it and had to call back. It was a category error, like being put in touch with the Girl from Ipanema. Which I guess, in the empyrean of pop culture, is simply grace.
“She had a good career after that, as presenter and producer, wrote two books of life memoir, took the married name of Rendall, and died from a return of the lymphoma she’d first got at 17, and which had propelled her to be something more than the drama teacher she had trained to be, and whose manner she never entirely discarded, and how strange life is, that out of such awful symmetries come the thousand small things that make it all worthwhile.”
Crikey’s Landlord List: how many politicians own multiple homes?
“Housing is one of the biggest issues facing Australians right now, and politicians say they’re listening. Home ownership has been in decline for decades, and has fallen significantly for groups such as younger households and those on lower incomes. Solutions offered by the parties have focused on figuring out ways to help people pour more money into the housing market rather than addressing what’s making housing more expensive.
“It’s hard not to notice that Parliament looks very different from the electorate when it comes to home ownership. In 2021, two-thirds of households were inhabited by their owners. In the 47th Parliament, there are 510 properties owned by 227 federal members of Parliament (MPs). That’s an average of 2.25 properties per MP. Multiple home ownership is overrepresented in federal Parliament; 144 MPs own more than one property. In fact, more MPs own three or more properties (84) than those who own one property or fewer (83).”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
How Pakistanis banded together to help flood victims (Al Jazeera)
Saudis warn Netflix for violating ‘Islamic values’ (BBC)
Boris Johnson accused of intelligence tipoff that led to British Sikh’s alleged torture in India (The Guardian)
Bannon to surrender to New York authorities to face sealed indictment (The New York Times)
EU plans to cap Russian gas price as Putin warns West of winter freeze (Reuters)
10 people killed in Sask. stabbing attacks identified by RCMP (CBC)
‘Public security issue’: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to restrict entry of Russian citizens (SBS)
Housekeeper to Israel’s defence minister jailed for offering to spy on his employer (The Guardian)
Fed on path for another 0.75-point interest-rate lift after Powell’s inflation pledge (The Wall Street Journal) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Best way to avoid war is to arm Taiwan — Alan Dupont (The Australian) ($): “Our Taiwan debate has been marred by two misperceptions and one fallacy. The first misperception is that war over Taiwan is improbable. This proposition is harder to sustain as Beijing continues to ratchet up pressure on Taipei. Flying drones over small islands controlled by Taiwan is the latest in a long line of Chinese provocations and another step on the ladder of escalation that significantly increases the risk of military conflict. Taipei has been remarkably restrained until now. But the administration of Tsai Ing-wen couldn’t allow the drones to fly uncontested over its territory without challenge.
“Its four-step response protocols have been measured: fire warning flares, report the incursion, expel the drone and shoot it down only as a last resort. Last week, Taiwan’s patience finally ran out. Its armed forces shot down an infringing Chinese drone over Kinmen island. Since the controversial visit to Taiwan early last month by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, China has ramped up military pressure to dangerous levels. The People’s Liberation Army has fired missiles over Taiwan, repeatedly penetrated the country’s air defence identification zone and carried out a dress rehearsal for an economic blockade of the island.”
Regular people like me belong in Australian politics – and treating our opponents as evil only drives us apart — Tammy Tyrell (Guardian Australia): “This is the strangest experience, being a senator. Calling myself one, even. Feels like I’m a kid playing dress-ups. Like there’s been a mistake. Any minute now someone’s going to come grab me and tell me I actually lost. I didn’t grow up writing and rewriting my first speech in my head. I grew up hanging out with my nanna French, swimming at Gunns Plains or Spellmans Bridge — wearing knitted clothes and collecting firewood for winter. I was an average student. I struggled with maths — still struggle with it. In high school, I was the chubby, geeky weird kid. I liked hanging out in the library, going through books about the world outside of Tassie.
“After school, I fell into the trap of bad perms, short skirts and high heels. I worked on a farm, going out to the paddock, collecting the hay bales and throwing them on to a truck. It’s not glamorous work, but a girl needs money. That Garfield orange Falcon wasn’t going to pay for itself. Mum passed away 23 years ago. Too young. All she wanted was time with the people she loved. She knew what it meant to struggle. I know it too. I hear politicians talk about it. The words that get used always sound foreign to me. Phrases like ‘putting bread on the table’. You don’t just work so you can put bread on the table. You work because it gives you something else.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen, and Greens Leader Adam Bandt will speak at CEDA’s State of the Nation event at Parliament House.
Yuggera Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Former Australian of the Year Grace Tame, Guardian Australia’s Amy Remeikis and Queensland’s human rights commissioner Scott McDougall will speak at the 2022 QCOSS Conference, which explores the power and politics in the care community.
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Author Sophie Cunningham will chat about her new book, This Devastating Fever, at Avid Reader bookshop. You can also catch this one online.
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe will give a speech to the Anika Foundation titled “Economic Outlook and Monetary Policy”.
