‘LITTLE JUSTICE’ FOR INDIGENOUS WOMEN, CHILDREN
The recommendations made in the final report from the Senate inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women and children have been criticised for not going far enough. Yesterday, the landmark report said there had been “little, if any, justice” for many Indigenous women and children who had been murdered or disappeared, Guardian Australia said.
In response, Greens Senator Dorinda Cox, who introduced the motion for the inquiry and was a member of the committee, said: “These recommendations are weak and are not the bold and courageous action First Nations communities and stakeholders called for when they entrusted us with their courageous stories and shared the pain and the trauma they live with every day,” the AAP reports. Guardian Australia quoted her as saying she was “gutted” by the report as it does not do enough to address the “absolute crisis levels of violence” families and advocates spoke of.
The ABC says the recommendations, which followed two years of public hearings, include a widespread overhaul of police practices, a culturally appropriate and nationally significant way to recognise and remember the First Nations women and children who have been murdered or disappeared, a First Nations commissioner-type role on family violence, and an audit of the Attorney-General’s Department regarding its commitments to First Nations women and children.
National Justice Project chief executive George Newhouse says Parliament “needs to put some teeth into the report and its recommendations”, the AAP added, while Cox told the Senate on Thursday it was a “glaring omission” not to include a recommendation about improving data collection about missing and murdered Indigenous women and children.
Meanwhile, Guardian Australia led overnight with independent MP Zali Steggall’s criticism of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s claim people fleeing Gaza shouldn’t get a visa due to security fears.
In the House of Representatives yesterday, Steggall told the Coalition: “These are families that you are seeking to paint that somehow they’re all terrorists,” the ABC recalls. Guardian Australia says she told Dutton to “stop being racist” before withdrawing the comment. In response, Dutton accused her of being a Greens MP and holding “extreme views”.
Speaking to Guardian Australia later, Steggall doubled down, saying: “To raise an inference that we are to fear anyone coming here, seeking refuge from Gaza, any Palestinians, that there’s an inference they are all terrorists, or they are all linked with Hamas. Now that is, that is a racist inference. If [Dutton] is going to advocate for a policy that comes under the definition of racism, then that inference is there.”
CNN reports more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war on Hamas following the group’s October 7 attack.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN CANBERRA?
There’s a fair amount going on in Canberra today, including (as flagged in yesterday’s Worm), the annual Australia-New Zealand Leaders Meeting, which will see topics such as defence partnerships, deportations and migration discussed when Prime Ministers Anthony Albanese and Chris Luxon meet, the AAP reports. Ahead of raising issues such as the 501 deportees, Luxon declared: “Because we’ve got trust and friendship, we can actually talk about those things and have differences of opinion.”
As the blame game over inflation and interest rates shows no sign of slowing down, the Reserve Bank of Australia governor Michele Bullock and her colleagues are set to face the House of Representatives economics committee this morning. The RBA’s website states Bullock, deputy governor Andrew Hauser, assistant governor (economic) Sarah Hunter, assistant governor (financial markets) Christopher Kent, and assistant governor (financial system) Brad Jones, will all appear from 9:30am AEST. As Phillip Coorey recalls in the AFR (see the Commentariat below), Bullock has received significant attention for the RBA’s recent rates decision and predictions, as well as her comments about the state of the economy and what was causing higher inflation.
Also facing questions in Canberra today will be representatives from Google, Microsoft and Amazon. The big tech spokespeople will appear before the fifth public hearing of the Adopting Artificial Intelligence inquiry. The AAP reports they are due to be questioned about the risks and benefits of adopting AI tools in Australia. The newswire states a representative for Meta will also appear, although they are not currently listed on the public hearings schedule. The Attorney-General’s Department and Department of Industry, Science and Resources are also due to appear. The parliamentary committee is expected to release its findings in September.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
There’s nothing worse than being kept awake by inconsiderate neighbours or loud traffic noises outside your home. Or maybe there is.
Residents in San Francisco have recently been kept awake throughout the night by taxis endlessly honking loudly. Russell Pofsky told The New York Times the honking was happening “like every four seconds and continues and continues”. The other day it started around 5am, he said, causing Pofsky to lie awake feeling “in disbelief of what is actually happening”.
The main issue facing the residents was not the noise though, it was the fact they had no one to tell to be quiet because none of the the taxis actually had a driver. At the end of last month, driverless car company Waymo rented the parking lot for its autonomous vehicles to park in when not making trips or charging, the NYT said. Unfortunately for the residents who lived nearby, the cars were installed with an update that made them beep their horns whenever another car reversed close to them, Sky News said.
Resident Sophia Tung, who set up a livestream of the cars moving around and honking at each other, told The New York Times most of the noise tended to happen around 2am when the driverless cars left and 4:30am when they returned. “I assume that’s sort of like a peak downtime but, you know, it also happens to be my peak sleep time,” she quipped.
Waymo eventually popped up in Tung’s livestream to say the honking problem had been fixed, with the BBC, which has footage of the cars in action, quoting the company as claiming the fix to the vehicles “should keep the noise down for our neighbours moving forward”.
Say What?
I didn’t realise that would also open the door to so much hate, which has frankly been pretty devastating.
Rachael Gunn
The Olympic breaker and academic (also known as Raygun) posted a video on Instagram on Thursday in which she responded to the backlash to her performance at the Paris games. The 36-year-old said she “did take it [the competition] very seriously” and was honoured to have been part of the Australian Olympic team. With regards to “the allegations and misinformation floating around” about her selection, Gunn asked people to refer to the recent statement from the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) chief executive Matt Carroll who defended her selection, the BBC reports. In Crikey Recap below we look at some of those conspiracy theories floating around the internet.
CRIKEY RECAP
For politicians like Dutton, whose primary selling point is his “strength” (in contrast to the “weak” Anthony Albanese), a calmer, less inflamed civic life is a disaster; peaceful resolutions of conflicts are a body blow. The political temperature must always be high, there must always be a crisis, one with the highest stakes possible, and we must always be threatened, preferably existentially so. They prosper in environments of hostility, anger and terror. They benefit from heightened risks to national security, and from terror attacks, because they believe such conditions suit their political business model — just as those conditions benefit the business models of media companies that make money from inciting grievance, fear and anger in their readerships, and, of course, benefit extremists and terror groups.
Just ask Benjamin Netanyahu — the Israeli prime minister helped fund and legitimise Hamas in order to prevent a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian conflict because his political business model relies on perpetual conflict to keep him in power and out of jail for corruption. Here, Dutton hopes for higher and higher levels of anger, conflict and alienation, and lower and lower levels of national security. At least there’s nothing hypocritical or dishonest about Dutton. There’s a very good reason why the phrase “social cohesion” barely ever passes his lips: it’s anathema to him.
The Liberal Party blame game is in full swing after the “absolute disaster” on Wednesday when the party’s NSW division failed to hand in the nomination paperwork by deadline for several council election contests.
State director Richard Shields is being blamed for the stuff-up and it doesn’t look like he will be long in the job, with NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman declaring on Thursday morning he told Peter Dutton and other senior party members the state director has to go.
Crikey understands some within the party are questioning whether it’s fair Shields should get all the blame; he had apparently delegated responsibility for the council nominations while he focused on byelections for state parliament and preparations for the coming federal election. Others would like to shift responsibility to the state executive members for delaying the process by playing “factional games” and creating a situation no administrator could have helped.
As we noted earlier this week, Olympic breaker and academic Rachael Gunn (or Raygun) is like some sort of top rocking polymorph, twisting and coiling into whatever shape the viewer imposed on her. So it was probably inevitable, after being the personification of courage and cringe, coloniser and beneficiary of the woke mind disease, that she would end up where every overexposed figure does — the subject of a conspiracy theory.
A tweet argues that the Australian Breaking Association was “FOUNDED by Raygun and her husband. Who advised [WorldDance Sport Federation] to partner with this org? Rachael Gunn. Starting to see it? The Australian Breaking Association (AusBreak) runs a competition every year that only has 10-15 women show up, and obviously Rachael ‘wins’ this and her husband becomes the team coach”. Notes swiftly attached pointed out that none of this is true: Neither Gunn nor her husband are founders of the Australian Breaking Association and are not involved in its leadership, something a Google search could quickly reveal.
But that didn’t stop the tweet from getting three million views (we’re amazed Elon Musk didn’t say the news was “very concerning if true”, or something) and forming the basis for a change.org campaign asking Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to “Hold Raygun Rachel Gunn & Anna Mears Accountable for Unethical Conduct Olympic Selection”. At the time of writing, it has nearly 40,000 of the 50,000 signatures it is seeking.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Five arrests made in death of actor Matthew Perry, California police say (The Guardian)
Ukraine sets up military office inside Russia (BBC)
Sweden confirms first case of mpox strain outside Africa (Al Jazeera)
He still thought he could win: Inside Biden’s decision to drop out (The New York Times) ($)
Fresh Gaza peace talks begin — with Iran saying they ‘will only hold back if ceasefire agreed’ (Sky News)
See why AI detection tools can fail to catch election deepfakes (The Washington Post) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Treasurer might have created a monster with RBA reforms — Phillip Coorey (Australian Financial Review): But the move to eight RBA board meetings a year to deliberate on rates, each followed by the governor giving a press conference, went ahead — and arguably has backfired, in that it has not only elevated the status of Bullock, but enabled her to directly challenge the government’s views.
This has been amplified by her excellence as a communicator. Whereas everyone bar the pointy heads needed a translator when Lowe spoke, Bullock speaks directly to Beryl Stringbag.
This was on full display last week when the bank left rates on hold, ruled out a decrease before Christmas, warned the economy was still too hot, and that it would not hesitate to raise rates again if need be.
Chalmers and Albanese subtly took issue with the assessment that the economy was too hot and that this was being fuelled by state and federal government spending — only to be chastened for doing so.
Liberals’ spectacular council failure could not have been more disastrous — Alexandra Smith (The Sydney Morning Herald): The catastrophic administrative bungle that has plunged the NSW Liberals into chaos will have long-lasting impacts for a party that needs to regroup after a state election loss and win two looming byelections. It will also cause huge reputational damage ahead of the federal election.
The spectacular failure to meet a long-standing deadline to submit candidate nominations could not have been any more disastrous for the Liberals. The northern beaches, once its blue-ribbon heartland, is the worst hit, with not a single Liberal candidate nominated for the local government elections on September 14.
Instead, the party will likely surrender all power in that area to the Your Northern Beaches group, which has become a powerful force under the leadership of popular mayor Michael Regan, who is now the MP for Wakehurst.
