HOME AMONG THE GLUMTREES
House prices in Australia have fallen 8% from their pandemic peak, according to the Reserve Bank — a hefty tumble that is far behind New Zealand’s 16% drop as interest rates cool the housing market. But houses in Sydney’s Mona Vale, Vaucluse, Centennial Park and Melbourne’s Kew East and Ascot Vale are copping it the worst — they’ve all tumbled in value by around 23%, Guardian Australia reports. CoreLogic research director Tim Lawless put it rather delicately when he said mortgage stress isn’t necessarily up in those suburbs, however — basically, the rich are fine. Not so for the rest of us. ABC spoke to a young mum named Anwen Handmar with muscular dystrophy, who bought a house near Perth a couple of years ago. She’s thinking of selling and moving into disability accommodation because interest rates have boosted her mortgage repayments to $17,000 this year. Cripes.
There’s actually going to be a record number of people unable to make their home repayments this year, according to Westpac chief executive Peter King, who pointed the finger at the “blunt tool” of interest rates (10 hikes in 11 months), the Daily Mail reports. Indeed in the past 12 months, distressed listings in NSW surged by 68% according to research from SQM. But it’s hardly a prettier picture in the renting world. The number of rental properties for under $400 a week halved last year, The West ($) continues, and Perth now has the fewest rental vacancies in the whole country. After a Sydney landlord tried to hike the rent on every tenant in the building by up to 70%, the renters had had enough. They’re taking their fight to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal, the SMH reports, which any renter can do in the face of unreasonable hikes.
THE VOICE OF REASON
The National Gallery of Australia is investigating whether white assistants painted on Indigenous artworks in the forthcoming exhibition Ngura Pulka: Epic Country — including works by artist Yaritji Young, The Australian ($) reports. The paper says five artists and six studio staffers alleged they’d seen white staff interfere with artworks, and that reporters had seen a video purportedly showing studio manager Rosie Palmer painting on Young’s canvas. The APY Art Centre Collective says Palmer was just doing a background wash. The gallery is getting an independent review to work out how far a possible “hand of assistance” goes.
Meanwhile we can expect more Liberals to break ranks over the party’s rejection of the Voice to Parliament like Bridget Archer and Ken Wyatt (who quit), Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek says via Sky News (technically only frontbenchers in the party are bound by the official position, which opposes the advisory body). Federal president of the Young Liberals Dimitry Chugg-Palmer agrees with Plibersek, saying there are “plenty of Liberals” that will support the referendum. He told Q+A he really wants to support the Voice, ABC reports, calling the opportunity for Indigenous folks to have a say on issues that affect them a “fundamentally Liberal principle”. But he wants more detail.
PEERING OVER DEFENCE
The work culture of the Australian Army’s special forces will be scrutinised after the damning Brereton inquiry into alleged war crimes, Guardian Australia reports. According to an oversight report, troops didn’t get enough time between deployments, and they need help to “disentangle their experiences of trauma and moral injury”, the paper says, whatever that means. Meanwhile, the AFR reports the Defence Department is trying to find billions of dollars in its budget to buy new weapons. Program managers have been told to trim 10 to 15% from “sustainment” (fancy word for servicing and maintenance) budgets across the ADF — the paper says sources told them it’ll mean ships, planes and vehicles could take way longer to get repaired.
It comes as our biggest banks and financial companies prepare for war games exercises to see how well they can cop a cyberattack, The Age reports. A three-hour exercise involving people from the Reserve Bank, Australian Securities and Investments Commission, Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and Australian Federal Police took place last month, and the banks are next. Then aviation, and then other critical infrastructure networks. The Optus, Medibank and Latitude Financial hacks were bad, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said, but imagine how catastrophic a breach to systems that prop up our water supply, hospitals or electricity grid would be. O’Neil says the government is preparing for it all.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Folks, your annoying friend who just holidayed in Europe and now pronounces “tagliatelle” like the bloke from the Dolmio ad may be vindicated by this. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wants to make saying “bru-shetta” instead of “bru-sketta” a punishable offence, because it “demeans and mortifies” the Italian language. A controversial new bill, which gained the backing of the PM, was put forward that would see a committee scrutinise the “correct use of the Italian language and its pronunciation” as CNN reports. English has us by a chokehold and it’s high time it stopped, Italian politician and the bill’s architect Fabio Rampelli declared. Quite frankly, “Anglomania has repercussions for society as a whole,” the draft bill continues. But it’s not just dodgy pronunciation the Italians are hot-headed about — the legislation says English acronyms like CEO should not be used, and Italian should be the language used by the public service when dealing with non-Italian-speaking foreigners too.
An interesting aside about Italian, folks. While the modern French language is the descendent of medieval Parisian and Spanish a form of Madrileño, Italy maintained a cacophony of local languages well past the Middle Ages (perhaps owing to the fact that the country wasn’t unified until 1861). It meant a merchant in Venice could barely understand a florist in Florence, so a bunch of academics got together in the 16th century and decided a controversial, centuries-old Florentine text contained what should be Italy’s official language. You might’ve guessed it — poet Dante Alighieri’s 1321 Divine Comedy. Alighieri had found Latin elitist, so he wrote it channelling Florentine street talk, using triple rhyme to get a cascading rhythm going. And the academics’ plan worked! All of Italy, from grouchy garbage men to top politicians, adopted Dantean, the language of a poet, and speak a modern version of it today.
Hoping you can find the words.
SAY WHAT?
The Statement from the Heart is a statement from the heart. Our people laid their soul bare to you and made themselves vulnerable in extending the hand to this nation and asking you to recognise us and to give us a voice. This country has criminalised our children, they are highly incarcerated, we are even locking up 10-year-olds … And yet what you decide is going to determine our future.
Anne Pattel-Grey
The head of the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Divinity urged Q+A’s audience to see the Voice to Parliament as a moral and ethical issue, not a political issue. Almost half (49%) of all youth detainees are First Nations kids even though they make up just 5.8% of all kids between the ages of 10 and 17.
CRIKEY RECAP
Yays, nays and in-betweens: reactions to Dutton’s No on a Voice to Parliament
“Former Tony Abbott chief of staff Peta Credlin — still touring on the back of her one major success, like a political Lou Bega — criticised Dutton in The Australian for not going far enough … Also in the national broadsheet, Geoff Chambers looked at the politics of the matter, concluding that Dutton was staking his leadership on this call — a Yes vote would be the end of him.
“There was also a note on the concerns of unnamed Liberals MPs around the vagueness of the alternative Dutton put forward, itself an irony, given Dutton has spent six months searching in vain for the details of the Albanese government’s proposal. Chambers’ take, predictably, is one of many that looks at the decision almost entirely through the lens of party politics — see also David Crowe and Phil Coorey in the Nine papers.”
Dom is the dom! In NSW, Perrottet shows the Liberals how it’s done
“Perrottet’s approach — limits on gambling, government-funded nest eggs, stronger on climate change, moderate progressive on cultural/identity issues — shows the way to go. It repositions liberalism as decisively post-Thatcherite. The fusion of free market economics and rigidly asserted cultural traditionalism is dead, and toxic to the right.
“They need to recompose in an era when the great progressive cultural moment has decisively happened, and in which people expect the state to be actively, and in an enabling fashion, involved in the everyday life of commerce, planning, urban design etc … Once the social and cultural stuff was stabilised at a sensible middle, people would be free to reconsider the party on economic and personal interest questions.”
Dutton isn’t just ignoring First Nations peoples — he’s spitting in their faces
“What such local bodies could achieve that land councils and other community-based organisations have not isn’t explained. There’s no evidence base for the thought bubble, but more importantly — again — nobody’s asking for this, least of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
“The practical and legal objections to this idea, including that a legislated body can be as easily abolished as it is instituted, are of far less consequence than the fact it perpetuates one of the patterns of colonial behaviour that led us to where we are today: white people deciding what is good for Indigenous peoples without regard for their wishes or concerns.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Linesman stood down after apparent elbow on [Liverpool’s] Andy Robertson (Al Jazeera)
Tasman tornado: 50 homes damaged after ‘unreal’ tornado strikes near Nelson (NZ Herald)
How the latest leaked [government] documents are different from past breaches (The New York Times)
China says it has completed three-day military drills around Taiwan (EuroNews)
Macron sparks anger by saying Europe should not be ‘vassal’ in US-China clash (The Guardian)
Dalai Lama issues apology after video shows him asking child to ‘suck’ his tongue (Stuff)
Michael Lerner: Elf and Barton Fink actor dies at 81 (BBC)
THE COMMENTARIAT
I’ve just had a personal reminder how positive events can cause stress too. Thinking ‘I shouldn’t feel this way’ never helps — Ahona Guha (The Guardian): “When we think about stress, we often think of the difficult – a divorce, a work-life balance tipping towards work, a sick family member, moving house. These are the things we know and readily identify as stressful. We often ignore the stress caused by positive events, such as ticking off goals, planning holidays or weddings, having a baby, buying a house, or events such as book launches – things we want desperately. We are caught unawares when we feel flat after these events or get sick. I reliably become unwell after something emotionally intense and have now learned to schedule it into my diary and planning; my body responding to the coursing adrenaline of a book launch, and crash after, in the same manner as it would the adrenaline of something far less pleasant.
“Eustress is a difficult wave to surf. While distress brings thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations which are congruent with our expectations (ie that the event will be difficult and painful), the sensations eustress brings can catch us completely unaware and conflict with our imagined reality. Most of us who have done advanced postgraduate study have encountered this experience upon submission of a thesis or capstone project. When I submitted my doctoral thesis, I expected jubilation, excitement and celebration. While there were elements of all these things, I also experienced a deep weariness and sadness. I felt exhausted (understandable) and bereft without my thesis to focus on (less understandable, hadn’t this been the goal all along?).”
The superyachts of billionaires are starting to look a lot like theft — Joe Fassler (The New York Times): “Owning or operating a superyacht is probably the most harmful thing an individual can do to the climate. If we’re serious about avoiding climate chaos, we need to tax, or at the very least shame, these resource-hoarding behemoths out of existence. In fact, taking on the carbon aristocracy, and their most emissions-intensive modes of travel and leisure, may be the best chance we have to boost our collective ‘climate morale’ and increase our appetite for personal sacrifice — from individual behaviour changes to sweeping policy mandates. On an individual basis, the superrich pollute far more than the rest of us, and travel is one of the biggest parts of that footprint.
“Take, for instance, Rising Sun, the 454-foot, 82-room megaship owned by the DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen. According to a 2021 analysis in the journal Sustainability, the diesel fuel powering Mr Geffen’s boating habit spews an estimated 16,320 tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent gases into the atmosphere annually, almost 800 times what the average American generates in a year. And that’s just a single ship. Worldwide, more than 5500 private vessels clock in [at] about 100 feet or longer, the size at which a yacht becomes a superyacht. This fleet pollutes as much as entire nations: The 300 biggest boats alone emit 315,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year, based on their likely usage — about as much as Burundi’s more than 10 million inhabitants.”
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WHAT’S ON TODAY
Kulin Nation Country
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Channel Ten’s The Cheap Seats comedian Adam Rozenbachs is kicking off his shows at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, held at Coopers Inn 1.
