STAY OF EXECUTION
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will not be immediately extradited to the US in a ruling that threw him a lifeline yesterday, CNN reports. Judges asked the US to give several assurances before April 16, namely that he would not face the death penalty and that he’d be treated with the same First Amendment rights (freedom of expression) as any US citizen. If the US doesn’t offer these, Assange can appeal his extradition order in May and the judges said the former journalist has a “real prospect of success” on three of the nine grounds of his appeal — CNN lists them as: “that his extradition is incompatible with freedom of expression; that, if extradited, Assange might be prejudiced at trial due to his nationality; and that, if extradited, he would not enjoy adequate death penalty protection”.
But the US can effectively stop the appeal if it does offer those assurances, The Conversation explains. And it probably will, professor of international law at ANU Donald Rothwell told Al Jazeera, who said they did not appear to be “contentious”. Assange’s wife Stella called it “astounding” that the UK court invited “political intervention from the United States”. It comes as the US was reportedly looking into a plea deal, The Wall Street Journal ($) reported citing unnamed sources, where Assange would plead guilty to the lesser charge of mishandling classified information without travelling to the US. But his Washington-based lawyer told Crikey it was a long shot considering his team had not heard from the Department of Justice, which has “as much determination as ever” about Assange’s 18 charges.
UNSEEN COSTS
A Centrelink debit system called Centrepay allegedly allowed energy company AGL to receive $700,000 from 575 vulnerable Australians, Guardian Australia reports. Centrepay gives about 15,000 businesses access to a person’s welfare payments before they are deposited into their bank accounts. The industry regulator is suing AGL for receiving money from people it allegedly knew were no longer customers — one welfare recipient, it was alleged, had $6,800 taken. Some 281 people also paid lodging fees to the Esther Foundation using Centrepay, the paper continues, where “exorcisms” were just one of the Perth-based gay conversion centre’s “coercive and extreme” religious practices, per a WA parliamentary inquiry. Victims said they were given no choice but to sign up to Centrepay at Esther, but also called out a failed “duty of care” on the part of Centrelink.
To another of our biggest carbon emitters — and former Labor leader Kim Beazley is urging Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek to knock back Woodside’s LNG plant extension, Guardian Australia reports. It wants the North West Shelf liquified natural gas (LNG) processing facility to stay open til 2070, even though it’ll probably spew 4.3 billion tonnes of CO2 into the air. Folks, it will be “several times greater than the combined savings expected from all climate policies introduced by the Albanese government from now until 2030” — that’s according to a letter signed by Beazley, as well as former WA Labor premiers Carmen Lawrence and Peter Dowding, and ex-ALP national president Barry Jones, as The Australian ($) continues. Not only that, it could threaten the Murujuga landscape, where a million ancient petroglyphs make it the biggest and oldest art gallery on Earth. Plibersek has used her ministerial powers to block proposed projects twice (Port of Hastings, Woolworths), the paper says.
LAW AND A TALL ORDER
Writer Peter FitzSimons wants former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann to pay for his costs to procure documents in the defamation case against Network 10 and his wife, journalist Lisa Wilkinson, the SMH reports. Lehrmann subpoenaed documents about Brittany Higgins’ $325,000 book deal with Random House, which FitzSimons helped negotiate. The court will decide at the same time as Justice Michael Lee makes the call about proceedings costs more generally, the paper notes. Meanwhile, the ABC has amended a fact-check about businessman Dick Smith and apologised after he threatened to sue, Sky News Australia reports. The ABC said it presumed Smith was only talking about electricity when he said no country had been able to run entirely on renewables — the team pointed out Nepal had — but Smith said he meant the whole energy mix.
Meanwhile, Queensland Premier Steven Miles has accused social media giants of profiting from crime in his state, The Courier-Mail reports, while NSW counterpart Chris Minns said kids were “guinea pigs” for “the forces of big technology, Facebook, TikTok or Instagram”. Both want federal government intervention. Minns is also in the news this morning for a two-strike law that’ll see illicit drug users caught with a small amount on them avoid time in court. The penalty, The Daily Telegraph says, will instead be a one-hour phone session with a health professional from St Vincent’s Hospital. If they refuse, it becomes a $400 fine. One Nation MP Tania Mihailuk accused Minns of watering down drug laws — Minns responded that she didn’t oppose or even speak about the bill when it was debated in Parliament.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
In 2018, Mickey Barreto had had it with Manhattan’s housing crisis. So he paid the equivalent of around $300 to check into the historic New Yorker Hotel, Room 2565, for the night. It was about 20 square metres, offering a decent view, a maroon-and-gold carpet and a 42-inch telly. He didn’t depart for the next five years. He had invoked the little-known Rent Stabilisation Act 1969 which required hotels to put aside a small number of hotel rooms to be rented for less than about $135 a week. Barreto told The New York Times (via the SMH) he’d pored over a 295-page spreadsheet and spotted the New Yorker Hotel on the list, so he went to the front desk and politely requested a six-month lease at that price. Dream on, management said, so Barreto responded: see you in court. But he didn’t — a hotel representative never showed, and the judge ruled in Barreto’s favour.
He was thrilled. Not only could he stay in the hotel for an unlimited amount of time, the judge hadn’t required him to pay a dime. But something else caught his eye. The judge had — unwittingly or not — given Barreto “final judgement of possession”. So Barreto and his partner visited the Department of Finance, where real estate possession is recorded, and asked to put the room in his name. Impossible, the clerk said — it’s not a single dwelling. The entire building, however… Barreto tried to file the paperwork to claim the New Yorker Hotel six times to no avail. Incredibly, it worked the seventh time. He tried to bill the restaurant for rent, and the hotel for some $22 million in profits, but it didn’t work. A judge later threw out his ownership claim, and he was arrested on 24 counts including fraud. He’s awaiting his day in court. Still, one lawyer told the paper, “This takes the cake for the city’s record department not paying attention”.
Hoping you read the fine print today.
SAY WHAT?
You can’t just say that and walk away! You haven’t explained anything! You could’ve just put out a press release saying that.
Kate McClymont
Could there be anything more chilling than pissing off perhaps the country’s best investigative reporter when you’re trying to hose down your own scandal? She made the comments as Sky News Australia journalist Taylor Auerbach ran away from a press conference called about allegations he paid $1,000 on Seven’s company card for massages to convince Bruce Lehrmann to give an interview. Lehrmann denies the massages happened.
CRIKEY RECAP
“The curse of anyone committed to transparency and integrity in politics is that partisans will cheer you on in opposition and turn and denounce you once their side is in power. And there are no fairer weather friends of integrity than supporters of Victorian Labor.
“Champions of accountability and sunlight at a federal level when the Coalition was in power in Canberra, Daniel Andrews fans regarded scrutiny of his government as only motivated by partisanship or ideology and an affront to the high standards of public conduct he and his team always displayed.”
“But in 2024, our journalism tutorial rooms are filled with young hopefuls who scoff at the idea they should not bring their whole selves to a story. They are often encouraged in this view by younger academics, some of whom did not receive the same newsroom indoctrination as me …
“As a result, you can expect new journalism graduates to bring to their storytelling youthful idealism, support for diversity and intersectionality. They know the value of their unique perspectives to news-telling. They argue, and to some extent they are right, that a reporter can bring much more to a story by acknowledging their association with it …”
Who is Taylor Auerbach, the ex-Seven staffer at the centre of the Bruce Lehrmann Thai masseuse saga?
“Auerbach fronted the media yesterday near his Elizabeth Bay home in a bizarre press conference that lasted less than two minutes. Also present were bemused onlookers, including Gold Walkley-winning journalist Jenny Brockie, who was out for a walk and stopped to inquire about what was happening.
“Visibly shaking and holding heavily annotated notes, Auerbach disputed Lehrmann’s denial and that he had lost his job at Seven over the incident … Auerbach then made a swift departure, with journalists chasing after him. “
READ ALL ABOUT IT
What’s next for Senegal under likely President Bassirou Diomaye Faye? (Al Jazeera)
Moscow attack: Debunking the false claims (BBC)
Ron DeSantis signs Florida social media ban for children into law (The Guardian)
Canada’s need to improve productivity has reached emergency level, says Bank of Canada official (CBC)
Baltimore bridge collapse sends vehicles tumbling into water (Reuters)
‘We didn’t want to see what Putin is up to,’ admits German Vice Chancellor (euronews)
Israeli hostage says she was sexually assaulted and tortured in Gaza (The New York Times) ($)
Truth social stock price surges on first day of trading, increasing Trump’s fortune
(The Wall Street Journal) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Instagram’s latest change could make my generation the most ignorant ever — Daniel Cash (The SMH): “Instagram has made a significant change recently. If you happen to be one of the app’s 1.4 billion users, and if you care about the future of liberal society, you should know about it. On February 9, the social media platform announced via a blog post it would no longer ‘proactively recommend content about politics’. That is, its algorithm will no longer suggest political content produced by accounts that you do not follow through the explore, reels, in-feed recommendations and suggested users functions. The first, and most obvious, issue with this change is that political content is wide-ranging. As Instagram noted, it is ‘potentially related to things like laws, elections, or social topics’.
“That means, then, no more BBC posts about international elections, no more New York Times reels popping up with commentators discussing foreign disasters. It also means no content from media outlets or individual creators addressing local issues like state housing policies or supermarket price gouging — unless you already follow these accounts. This change has largely flown under the radar, but it poses a serious threat — particularly to my generation. Millions of people now get much of their news from social media, but none more so than Gen Z, often from Instagram. Researchers from Western Sydney University found in 2020 that Instagram is the most popular source of news for teenagers, with 49% accessing current affairs this way.”
The Supreme Court got it wrong: Abortion is not settled law — Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw (The New York Times): “In the next month, the justices will hear arguments in two high-stakes cases that may shape the future of access to medication abortion and to lifesaving care for pregnancy emergencies. These cases make clear that Dobbs did not settle the question of abortion in America — instead, it generated a new slate of questions. One of those questions involves the interaction of existing legal rules with the concept of fetal personhood — the view, held by many in the anti-abortion movement, that a fetus is a person entitled to the same rights and protections as any other person.
“The first case, scheduled for argument on Tuesday, F.D.A. v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, is a challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s protocols for approving and regulating mifepristone, one of the two drugs used for medication abortions. An anti-abortion physicians’ group argues that the F.D.A. acted unlawfully when it relaxed existing restrictions on the use and distribution of mifepristone in 2016 and 2021. In 2016, the agency implemented changes that allowed the use of mifepristone up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, rather than seven; reduced the number of required in-person visits for dispensing the drug from three to one; and allowed the drug to be prescribed by individuals like nurse practitioners. In 2021, it eliminated the in-person visit requirement, clearing the way for the drug to be dispensed by mail.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Author Gail Jones will speak about her new novel, One Another, at Glee Books.
Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Writer Lech Blaine will speak about his new Quarterly Essay, Bad Cop: Peter Dutton’s Strongman Politics, at The Loft.
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar will speak about gender justice at the National Press Club.
