SECRET GLADYS BUSINESS
Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian will probably appeal the NSW ICAC’s finding that she repeatedly betrayed public trust and obscured the dealings of former Wagga MP and then-boyfriend Daryl Maguire, The Australian ($) reports. Berejiklian said the two volumes of the report were “currently being examined by my legal team”, while sources told the paper an appeal was her plan. If you’re wondering how we got here, Kate McClymont has delved into the saga this morning for the SMH ($). Berejiklian’s rather extraordinary statement yesterday said “Nothing in this report demonstrates” that she didn’t work her “hardest in the public interest”… presumably apart from the fact the corruption watchdog plainly stated she had engaged in “serious corrupt conduct by breaching public trust”, as Crikey reports. And the Oz notes Berejiklian would’ve known this finding for months because her legal team was given the opportunity to respond. Even so, ICAC ultimately didn’t find Berejiklian should be charged (so she probably won’t be), although it will ask the NSW director of public prosecutions to size up criminal charges for Maguire.
Speaking of (possible) crime and punishment — kids are being locked in jail cells for up to 22 hours and 48 minutes hours a day in SA because of staffing shortages, Guardian Australia reports. Guardian and youth detention inspector Shona Reid said it was leading kids to harm themselves at the Kurlana Tapa Youth Justice Centre — the Department of Human Services actually, really, legitimately told the paper the figure was “erroneously linked with their mental health, when in reality a young person’s mental health relates to a varying number of features, including their history of trauma”. Give me strength.
GAMBLING THE FUTURE
National Party MPs Barnaby Joyce and Keith Pitt say we shouldn’t ban online gambling ads because it’s a “legitimate industry”, Guardian Australia reports. They’re the first MPs to oppose the parliamentary inquiry plan — Opposition Leader Peter Dutton hasn’t confirmed his stance on the three-year phase-out. The ever gaffe-prone Joyce reasoned to the newspaper that without ads you wouldn’t “have any commercial TV stations left or The Guardian for that matter”. Guardian Australia rather dryly points out in the next line that it had already banned gambling ads. Joyce continued that next they’ll come for our “fast foods, then sugary drinks”, and then suggested that journalists would lose their jobs without Coca-Cola ads. Umm… Anyway, Pitt says he’s pro-regulation, just not a ban outright.
Meanwhile, restricting international students’ work hours ahead of the government’s 90% cost rebate is ringing alarm bells in the childcare industry, The Age ($) reports. Australian Childcare Alliance president Paul Mondo said there were almost 7400 job vacancies in the sector last month, but from July 1 students can work only 48 hours a fortnight. And when capacity is strained from workforce issues, prices rise, Grattan Institute chief executive Danielle Wood warned. From care to health, and Australians are probably skipping genetic screening tests because it’d affect their life insurance coverage, the ABC reports. The tests can detect cancer and heart disease — such as detecting the BRCA1 gene that saw Angelina Jolie get her double mastectomy, as she wrote for The New York Times ($) a decade back. Insurers can legally ask for the results of someone’s tests, though guidelines recommend they don’t for policies up to $500,000. Advocates say we should change the Disability Discrimination Act to stamp the practice out completely.
DAN’S TOUR DE FORCE
Victorian taxpayers paid $82,716 for Premier Daniel Andrews’ four-day trip to China to “promote closer education, trade and tourism ties”, the ABC reports. The March jaunt saw $61,813 spent on airfares and $14,933 on accommodation, plus $5968 on “other expenses”. Two staff went with him on the trip that was announced only the day before he left, but the press was left out. It was Andrews’ seventh trip to China as premier (since 2014), as The Australian ($) adds, and the first by an Australian leader since the COVID-19 pandemic, which is pretty remarkable. By the way, you didn’t dream it: Melbourne shook through a magnitude 4.6 earthquake last night, the ABC reports. It hit Rawson at 1.30am, at a depth of three kilometres.
Meanwhile an Australian warship and surveillance aircraft have been conducting war games with Japan in the contested South China Sea, the ABC reports, under the watchful eye of the Chinese military. The Australian Defence Force didn’t publicise the exercises, but did confirm to the broadcaster that HMAS Anzac knocked around with Japan’s JS Izumo and JS Samidare, with our RAAF P-8A Poseidon overhead. Sources reportedly added that China’s People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) was in “the vicinity”. It comes as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says you should “turn your phone off every night for five minutes” to keep cyber criminals off your device, news.com.au ($) reports. He made the remark when announcing the RAAF’s commander Darren Goldie as our new cybersecurity boss. The reboot forces applications to close, booting any dodgy actors out in the process.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
An Australian skater girl has landed a 720 — that’s two full rotations in the air — in front of legend Tony Hawk, setting a world record in the process. Arisa Trew is a 13-year-old from the Gold Coast, who became the first female skater to land the badass trick in a competition at Hawk’s Vert Alert in Utah. You gotta watch it — with a hot pink helmet and chequered socks topped off with her yellow leopard print deck, Trew effortlessly ascends the half-pipe and twists her way into the history books. It was actually the first time Trew had landed the trick, and was made even more special by the fact that Hawk invented it back in 1985.
The elated young skater went on to win the women’s final and a cut of the $75,000 shared competition prize. Afterwards, Hawk — perhaps the most famous skateboarder in the world — posted to Instagram that Trew had “brought the house down”, while not-for-profit organisation Skate Like a Girl’s Kim Woozy told NPR that it shows what can happen when there’s the infrastructure, support and investment for girls to skate. “We’re nowhere near the limits,” Woozy added. So what next for Trew, who is now ranked 14th in the world in her division? She’s eyeing a spot on the Australian skateboarding team bound for the Paris 2024 Olympics. A Trew Aussie sporting legend is born.
Hoping you surprise yourself today too, and have a restful weekend.
SAY WHAT?
Yeah but I am the boss, even when you’re the premier.
Daryl Maguire
It was the cringe felt around the country when the former Wagga MP’s fragile masculinity was laid bare in a tapped phone conversation between him and the then most senior person in NSW politics, Gladys Berejiklian.
CRIKEY RECAP
“ICAC investigators began looking into Maguire in 2016 as part of an earlier investigation into a Sydney council. When they tapped his phone, they discovered he was in a secret relationship with Berejiklian, who was state treasurer before rising to become premier in 2017 …
“The ICAC will ask the NSW director of public prosecutions to look into whether charges should be laid against Maguire and a number of other people implicated in his alleged scheme. The ICAC said it would not seek the opinion of the DPP in regards to Berejiklian’s conduct, meaning it’s unlikely she’ll be charged over the findings.”
“No-one from this vantage point can accuse the right of a failure of imagination. On any view, these are large and unhinged claims, and ones savaged by the nation’s leading legal minds. They’re also disinformation distended, steeped in an unbounded vulgarity that casts a pall over the heart of the nation.
“But none of this matters. Truth and logic are irrelevant when your singular aim is to sow fear and division, and give licence to unchecked outrage. And with as little as four months out from the referendum, we now have confirmation such tactics are meeting their desired ends.”
“The tweet linked to a statement from then-NSW Liberal Party president Philip Ruddock who wrote that Berejiklian ‘always put the needs of the people of our state first’. While the tweet remains, the statement was removed from the NSW Liberal Party website some time after November 10 2022, according to the Internet Archive. The URL for the statement now leads to a message saying: ‘The page you were looking for wasn’t found.’
“Additionally, the Twitter accounts for both the Liberal Party of Australia and Liberal Party of NSW now have fewer tweets than they did last week. According to social media analytics website Social Blade, @LiberalAus and @LiberalNSW had 181 and nine fewer tweets respectively after last Thursday, suggesting tweets may have been deleted.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Canada and allies taking Iran to [International Court of Justice] over downed PS752 flight (Al Jazeera)
Virgin Galactic: Sir Richard Branson’s rocket plane enters commercial service (BBC)
WHO’s cancer research agency to say aspartame sweetener a possible carcinogen -sources (Reuters)
[UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s] plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda unlawful, appeal court rules (The Guardian)
Speculation grows over fate of Sergei Surovikin – Russia’s ‘General Armageddon’ (euronews)
Google set to remove news links in Canada over online news law (CBC)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Fighting racism needs to go beyond banning symbols and ‘bad words’ — Celeste Liddle (IndigenousX): “The federal government recently made overtures about banning the display of the hakenkreuz, except in educational and similar circumstances (I use the term hakenkreuz deliberately, in recognition that swastikas have had religious and cultural significance for a number of non-white groups, and this is the specific term for the Nazi version). The response was predictable. I saw politicians stating these symbols have ‘no place’ in a wonderful country such as Australia, some soft lefties saying this was ‘long overdue’, some right-wingers gnashing their teeth in disgust about ‘political correctness gone mad’, and the rest of us wondering what it will achieve in a country so intrinsically linked with its racist foundation.
“More than anything, this upswing of far right activity to the point where they believe they can again parade in front of Vic Parliament, throw a few salutes, flash their SS tattoos and lift some weights to show off their gigantic tanks of testosterone, should be surprising to no-one who takes the time to think for 10 minutes a day. Even if you don’t avidly read and watch the materials of those who document far right activity in this country like I do, this increase in Nazi groups has been documented several times in mainstream media. What tends to get missed in mainstream coverage though is that Australia, in all honesty, provides a safe space for these far right movements, and has done so for an incredibly long time.”
Gen Ys aren’t swinging conservative as they age. Who can blame them? — Waleed Aly (The Age) ($): “These younger voters are probably more sympathetic to social liberalism than its economic variety. But the trouble for conservative parties is that this is precisely the liberalism they are less inclined to offer. If conservatives are losing young voters on economics, they certainly won’t win them back with culture wars. Put simply, the Coalition (and its fellow travellers) tends to zig whenever younger voters are zagging. And when this happens repeatedly over a long time, we shouldn’t be surprised when voting conservative becomes unthinkable.
“It’s easy to see how the Greens — who older voters will simply deem radical — begin to look viable and even sensible to the younger cohort. The Greens now out-poll the Coalition among gen Z voters, not as a self-conscious act of resistance, but because that seems the more natural vote to cast. They address younger concerns directly, making economic policy and environmental responsibility the same task, rather than opposing forces. And not unhelpfully, the Greens have never been in government, so their policies can never have failed in the way parties of government must.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Poet Dan Hogan will chat about their new poetry book, Secret Third Thing, at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.
Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Former Democrat staffer Bruce Wolpe will talk about his new book, Trump’s Australia, at Avid Reader bookshop.
