BE-GILING
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s senior adviser Zack Drury has been photographed with conservative US presidential candidate Nikki Haley wearing an “I pick Nikki” badge, The Australian ($) reports. Both Drury and Jesse Northfield, who is Immigration Minister Andrew Giles‘ chief of staff, were snapped together with Haley at her rally in Iowa City. So what do we know about Haley? She’s anti-abortion, anti-trans rights, anti-UN Human Rights Council and anti-Trump’s impeachment. Labor sources told the Oz the staffer pair were on leave at the time, and the pic has since been deleted from social media. It comes as Albanese said Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong’s trip to the Middle East was “not about an opportunity for a photo op”,xx The Age reports, after facing criticism from the right about not visiting the site of October 7’s massacre.
Back to Giles a moment, and one of the stateless detainees freed from immigration detention is suing the immigration minister for “aggravated” and “compensatory” damages, Guardian Australia reports. Known as DVU18, the Kurdish man was released following a November High Court decision that found the government couldn’t indefinitely hold former offenders who had completed their sentence but had no place to be deported to. Respectfully, no shit. The paper says the case, which will also challenge the ankle bracelet and curfew conditions, could prove an important precedent for the approximately 150 people released.
SAY AI DO?
The Attorney-General’s Department is using AI platforms like ChatGPT, The West ($) reports. Liberal Senator Jane Hume told the paper nearly half of the 75 departments and agencies that responded to her question either allowed AI or didn’t ban it — the Australian National Audit Office, for instance, says it doesn’t use it for official biz but staff can access it on their work laptops. AgriFutures Australia, which funds research and development, uses it for social media posts and for writing speeches, while the Clean Energy Finance Corporation uses it as an “alternate search engine”. Hume wants a consistent approach.
To another accusation of inconsistency now and SA Premier Peter Malinauskas says his state’s Voice to Parliament is “fundamentally different” to the federal body put forward during the failed referendum, Sky News Australia reports, after his state proved a majority No voter in the national poll. Mali says the controversy was mostly related to enshrining the Voice in the constitution, not the creation of an advisory body — and SA’s Voice exists outside of the founding document. The SA premier is also in the news for his support of the stage three tax cuts amid rumours Labor rank-and-file party members want them scrapped, The Advertiser says. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reaffirmed last night the reforms would go ahead — they’ll replace the 37c tax bracket applied to incomes between $120,000 and $180,000 with a 30c tax rate from $45,000 to $200,000.
HEALTH / COSTS
At least 20 people who died at music festivals wouldn’t have if we introduced widespread pill-testing, a new report via the Brisbane Times says, because the MDMA in their system was above the overdose limit. If they’d known how deadly it was, Monash Uni’s Jennifer Schumann concluded, they’d likely never have taken the pill or cap. Meanwhile we’ll need a million new GP visits a year for 450,000 Australians seeking nicotine vapes, according to the Department of Health. But the SMH reports “low bulk-billing rates, high gap fees and regional health deserts” could see people stick to the black market instead, which would torpedo Health Minister Mark Butler’s world-first vape reforms. The report also pointed out a cost barrier: refillable vapes will cost up to $150 from pharmacies, whereas the now-banned single-use ones cost as little as $20.
To other price news now and the consumer watchdog may sue “a big supermarket chain”, as the AFR rather cryptically puts it. ACCC chair Gina Cass–Gottlieb said a “was, now” tactic (where a shop puts up the price briefly before slapping a discount price tag over the top) has been the source of complaints. TikTok users have also been filming inconsistencies between the discount tag’s “prior” price and the price below it. It comes as Queensland Premier Steven Miles will meet with supermarket executives today after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said there was a discrepancy between what the farmer gets paid and what we pay at the till. Yesterday The Courier-Mail reported the cost of our groceries had doubled in three years. Dismal.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
You’ve got to see the rat hole, a deadly serious Hayley Hudson told her friend Windslow Dumaine when he told her he was visiting Chicago. Not the Bean at Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Riverwalk or Wrigley Field — the rat hole is the tourist attraction in the rather chilly city. The artist was mystified by the instruction but dutifully jotted down the residential address and made his way to the spot in question. When he arrived at the nondescript tree-lined street, he burst into laughter. It really was a rat hole, no two ways about it — a rat-shaped indent in the concrete sidewalk on West Roscoe Street, an apparent belly-flop complete with the outline of four paws and a tail. It was “viscerally silly,” he told The Washington Post ($) (yes, they reported on this).
What is it about the rat hole that just feels so joyful? Dumaine says it’s a perfect example of visual storytelling. Looking at it, you know exactly what went down, extending “across language barriers” and even time — “You could show this to someone 500 years ago, they would know exactly what happened,” he said. So when did the rat hole become so? Locals say it was actually probably a squirrel that temporarily fell into the fresh cement from a tree that has since been cut down. It makes it funnier, one neighbour said, that passersby will stop and look around, wondering how the rat hole came to be. But the symbolism is rich for gritty Chicagoans — all of us, really. “That rat fell in that cement, brushed himself off and went to work,” Dumaine said.
Hoping you can be like the rat, today and always.
SAY WHAT?
No amount of fairy bread buns can redeem Woolworths for its un-Australian decision or its thinly disguised disparagement of a country almost every migrant regards with undiluted affection.
Nick Cater
Spare a thought for conservative opinion writers across the country who have to somehow shove nuanced and poignant conversations about race and identity every January into embarrassingly small scandals — this year, a simple supply and demand decision made by a grocer about some cheap merchandise.
CRIKEY RECAP
“We also learn that ‘the couple’s stipend of $416,000 a month from the Danish government will increase substantially’, which is nice to hear. To her credit, Magnay doesn’t go along with the many outlets that insist on referring to her as ‘our Mary’ (the new queen renounced her Australian citizenship decades ago).
“Meanwhile, over at the ABC, check out this truly unforgivable bit of clickbait: ‘Denmark’s King Frederik wanted a low-key ascension. But one thing he saw brought him to tears’. Spoiler: it was the crowds. Literally the crowds gathered to celebrate his ascension to the throne.”
“If unions are worried about employers using migrants to undercut local wages — a legitimate concern, given how unscrupulous employers have exploited visa schemes in other industries like farming — the government should consider raising the $135,000 threshold for tradies, instead of carving them out altogether.
“Even better, it could expand public builds alongside tradie admissions to ensure industry expansion. Absent this, the government’s modest moderation of inflows may be justifiable for now. But pressure is already mounting from the right to curtail migration in increasingly drastic and outright racist ways.”
“The report looked at the climate policy engagement of the 70 largest companies in Australia and the 25 most influential lobby groups … only one in 10 were supportive of initiatives to reduce emissions when engaging in consultations on bills and government strategies.
“Some examples in the report included Glencore, which fought the government’s proposed design of the safeguard mechanism; Origin Energy, which opposed mandatory national energy efficiency targets in the National Energy Performance Strategy; and the Minerals Council of Australia, which opposed introducing a climate trigger in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Russia dismisses Davos discussion on Ukrainian president’s peace plan (Al Jazeera)
Yemen: US shoots down missile from Houthi-run area fired towards warship (BBC)
Brutal arctic blast expands its reach as the South deals with deadly snow and ice (CNN)
Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favour of China (The Guardian)
German economy dodges recession despite shrinking 0.3% in 2023 (Reuters)
Almost 40% of jobs around the world will be impacted by AI, IMF chief says (euronews)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Anthony Albanese’s military response to the Red Sea crisis is too late, too slow, too little — Cameron Stewart (The Australian) ($): “Firstly, Australia rejected the US Navy request in December to send a warship — an asset which would have been hugely useful right now — to the Red Sea to help protect shipping from the Houthis. Instead, the government promised in December to “triple” the number of ADF personnel at the Combined Maritime Force headquarters in Bahrain from five to 16. But now it turns out that none of these promised extra military personnel who were supposed to help the CMF beef up maritime security in the Red Sea have even departed Australia.
“In other words, the government has responded in slow motion to this fast-moving crisis, which now has erupted into open warfare between US warships and Houthi terrorists. The extra ADF Red Sea personnel will arrive, belatedly, by the end of this month. Yet when they do land they won’t be able to play any role in assisting current or future strikes against Houthis in Yemen. Why? Because the 39-nation CMF cannot conduct offensive operations without the agreement of all its members, which would never happen. That is why the US and the UK conducted the strikes independent of the CMF. So our extra military forces that will be deployed to the CMF to assist in the Red Sea crisis won’t be able to do anything at the pointy end to tackle the Houthis in Yemen.”
The Post Office scandal is a rare moment of catharsis. Now, we must channel that rage — Julian Baggini (The Guardian): “Perhaps the most questionable feature of our collective response to the Post Office scandal is the key assumption that the villains are safely different from us. The more disturbing truth is that this scandal is not the doing of a different breed of human being. Hundreds of workers must have been complicit: managers, auditors, IT team members and many others in the Post Office, government and Fujitsu went along with the persecution of branch managers without even raising concerns.
“For many, the purpose of the ongoing inquiry is to identify who is to blame and to hold them to account. A more pressing question — one that really needs to be addressed — is what made ordinary people complicit in such an outrage? If we have already demonised those we see as the bad actors, maybe we don’t even ask that question. And that has repercussions. If we don’t answer it, the same kind of complicity could occur again. There has been something cathartic about this collective show of anger. We are right to be outraged and to demand justice for the branch managers. But it is not always as easy as this to side with the angels.”
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WHAT’S ON TODAY
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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Diamond Way Buddhism Melbourne is hosting a free introductory Buddhist talk and group meditation in Malvern.
