WEAK AS WATER
Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe says it is an “absolute disgrace” that Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has cut a deal with Thorpe’s alleged perpetrator, Senator David Van. Van denied Thorpe’s allegation of sexual assault but quit the Liberals anyway after others came forward with allegations, including former Liberal senator Amanda Stoker. He’s since become a “kingmaker”, as The Australian ($) puts it, in the IR reforms and the new Murray-Darling Basin Plan (the ABC delves into more). Negotiate with me, Thorpe says, “a sovereign, progressive senator rather than a conservative crossbencher under sexual harassment investigation who not even his previous party wants to deal with anymore”. Labor MP Bill Shorten shrugged, saying the government has to work with “the people that the people give us”, a sentiment Plibersek’s spokesperson echoed.
Speaking of Shorten — he’s urging Australians to log into MyGov and update bank details with Medicare because there is $234 million in unclaimed benefits the government wants to return to us before Chrissy, 7News reports. That’s about $240 a person, no small slice of pie. And have no fear, the OECD says, the Reserve Bank won’t be raising rates again. The AFR ($) reports progress on lowering inflation is likely to see the central bank put down the “blunt tool” once and for all (13 rises later…). While we’re scrounging for change and struggling to pay the bills, Australia’s 40 biggest tax dodgers have been tabled by Michael West Media. Topping the list is Exxonmobil Australia, which made $98 billion and paid no tax, according to the site. Charming.
ALL IN A DAY’S WORK
A mining company allegedly accessed its employee’s personal emails but the privacy watchdog says it can’t do anything because it was on a work laptop, Guardian Australia reports. Shayano Madzikanda was suspended by Mecrus and told to hand in his laptop, but he had saved passwords for online banking and personal emails — he complained to the Australian information commissioner but it wouldn’t investigate. How did Madzikanda know? He’d been emailing competitors and working on personal projects, and the only way Mecrus would know that, he alleged, would be by accessing his iCloud and reading his emails. The lesson? Wipe your computer before you part with it.
To other issues of law and order and WA’s Cook Labor government will close Unit 18 at Casuarina — a high-security adult prison where a tranche of mostly Indigenous kids are held — and replace it with a standalone high-security therapeutic youth detention centre. The West ($) reports the government will put $1 million towards a plan for the new joint, but it doesn’t have an opening date yet. Perhaps much-loved former premier Mark McGowan’s most shameful legacy was his unwavering hardline stance on kids in prison, something his successor Roger Cook vowed to change. Not that there are votes in not going hard on criminals, as we’ve seen this past fortnight — Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s approval rate has declined amid the High Court decision on stateless former offenders, as The Conversation explains. This comes as Cook gave a moving apology yesterday to the Indigenous folks (mostly their descendants) who were robbed of their salary from 1936 to 1972, The New Daily reports, after a $180 million successful class action. “Life is made up of moments and it was a very special moment,” barrister and Waanyi and Kalkadoon man Joshua Creamer said.
A LOSING BATTLE
We may be giving up our sovereign capability to the US in our AUKUS legislation, a former Pentagon official who wrote much of America’s defence procurement laws told the ABC, in return for “nothing” except the US stealing and controlling our technology faster. Bill Greenwalt, who is an expert in weapons export regulations, was speaking ahead of Defence Minister Richard Marles putting forward updates to our Defence Trade Controls Amendment Bill 2023 today (which is linked to our $368 billion friendship bracelet with the UK and US). Greenwalt also said the legislation would probably stop us from tech collaboration with pals Japan, Korea, France, Germany and other NATO countries not in AUKUS, and The Australian ($) reports it’ll restrict the use of foreign workers in the military tech industry because they’ll require an exemption. Workers from Five Eyes as well as Japan and many European countries won’t need one, however.
Meanwhile Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton have both grilled China’s International Department head Liu Jianchao about why Australian navy divers were injured by a Chinese destroyer beaming out sonar and ignoring the ship’s communications (Dutton said it was lucky no-one died). Liu pontificated that Australia needs to show “great prudence” near China, the ABC reports, but the divers were in international waters. Speaking of diplomatic relations — Australia’s energy networks could become vulnerable to “hostile actors” if we don’t act on climate change, Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen will warn today, as Guardian Australia reports. Aside from national security, countries who go under — literally — amid sea rises will look to Australia to take them in.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
The blue creature speaks with a guttural, gravelly voice, has wild, bulging eyes and a black-as-night abyss of a mouth. His insatiable appetite is never quelled by the sustenance he shoves in using his flailing arms and fur-coloured hands, the cookies mashed to smithereens. Yes. I speak of the Cookie Monster, in all his monstrous glory. Even the most blank-eyed child can see the choc-chip cookies the beloved Sesame Street character eats are being pulverised by a throatless mouth and raining down either side of him. You may have wondered: what the hell is in those cookies? Or maybe not — admittedly I can’t say I’ve ever wondered about it, but one reader wrote into The New York Times needing to know. Reporter Sopan Deb scoffed loftily at the email and went about his newsgathering day spanning the pressing issues of war, famine, and scientific discovery.
But the question stayed in his mind, an insidiously repetitious feeling not unlike a cacophony of choc chips hitting one’s forearms. “Me want answers,” Deb realised. It turns out the cookies are made from a lightly baked mixture of pancake mix, puffed rice, wheat, barley and instant coffee (it’s better for them to be soft so they crumble, otherwise they hurt the hand of Mr Monster’s puppeteer David Rudman). Astonishingly, however, the choc chips are not chocolate at all, but rather glue gobs. The cookies (sans glue) are technically edible but more like a “dog treat”, Lara MacLean said — she’s a puppet wrangler and invented the recipe in 2000 and is still baking batches of them for each episode today. Incidentally, actor Adam Sandler actually ate one on screen once, despite being instructed not to. He got “caught up in the moment”, Rudman said. They who can refuse the lure of a homemade cookie/dog treat cast the first stone!
Hoping your treats are far more delightful today.
SAY WHAT?
One of the great things I really admire and appreciate about my fortnightly interviews with you is that you played the game. If I had something I wanted to tell the Australian people about you let me do it, although you elicited detail along the way.
John Howard
Not exactly the sort of accolade a journalist tasked with impartially holding power to account might want to hear, though the former PM added that 3AW Mornings host Neil Mitchell didn’t let him get away with “Liberal Party propaganda” either. These are our choices?
CRIKEY RECAP
“A senior Nine staff journalist has resigned and readers are angrily cancelling their newspaper subscriptions as Sydney Morning Herald and Age editors defend a decision to ban staff who signed a letter about Australian media’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict from covering the war …
“While saying that going on a junket ‘years ago’ wouldn’t affect a journalist’s coverage, editors singled out two journalists in the newsroom for having gone on trips — one supported by a movie studio and the other by environmental advocacy group Greenpeace — and whether they would need to disclose this. In both cases, these journalists, who declined to comment to Crikey, had disclosed the relationship as part of their coverage.”
“If we want to lower the number of defamation cases faced by Australian media companies, maybe it’s less that we need defamation reform and more that we need more cases to run. Could anything give a potential complainant more reason to pause before calling their lawyer than the recent experience of Bruce Lehrmann? …
“As part of his claim that his reputation has been destroyed, he’s been forced to concede in court that he has lied to his employer (over his whereabouts in early April), to the police (about the presence of alcohol in his office) and to an oddly credulous Liam Bartlett on Channel 7’s Spotlight (about his reason for lying to Fiona Brown, chief of staff of then-defence minister Linda Reynolds). He also admitted that he has been relying on that network to pay his rent for the past year. Separate but related is whatever this is …”
“This gradual shift is making the pro-Israel lobby increasingly extreme, even hysterical. For several weeks it was sufficient to show simple indifference to Palestinian suffering using the distancing of high-tech death, a spurious moral argument about the ‘inadvertent’ killing of civilians, and a very basic racism involved in the support of a nation founded as a European movement vs a brown-skinned Asian-African people.
“This is breaking down in Western societies, from the simple bludgeoning of mass violence, but also due to the changed composition of Western societies and their multicultural character. The Israel lobby has been somewhat blindsided by this.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Israel-Hamas truce: How much aid has entered Gaza? (Al Jazeera)
US military aircraft with six aboard crashes off Japan island (BBC)
Jezebel to be brought ‘back to life’ after being acquired by Paste magazine (CNN)
Indian gov’t official directed Sikh separatist’s assassination plot in US, DOJ says (Reuters)
[Canadian] government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act (CBC)
Slovenia begins refunding thousands of COVID fines (euronews)
Reports say Pope Francis is evicting US cardinal from his Vatican home (The New York Times) ($)
Luxon’s 100-day plan — the 49 actions to ‘get things done’ (NZ Herald)
THE COMMENTARIAT
An end to the GST guarantee would be disastrous — Tim Pallas (The AFR) ($): “If it didn’t exist, Victoria would be $1.4 billion worse off this financial year. The cost to NSW would be $1.7 billion. Nationally, the 12-month figure is a whopping $4.9 billion. To put it in real-world terms, that’s enough to employ more than 30,000 nurses or teachers for a year. If state and territory governments are forced to make significant cuts, this will have a real and detrimental impact on the health and education services they can provide the community. For these reasons, all state and territory treasurers — Labor and Liberal — are seeking a continuation of the no worse off guarantee past financial year 2027 to provide fairness in the GST distribution model. If not, the Commonwealth will be awash with funds and every state and territory government — and their citizens — will suffer.
“Analysis for the board of treasurers — representing every state and territory — shows the Commonwealth has enjoyed a massive annual windfall of more than $20 billion from corporate tax receipts from large iron ore mining companies. That means the same circumstance that drove Western Australia’s GST share so low — exploding revenue from mining royalties — is also lining the coffers of the federal government. It means, in effect, that for every $1 the Commonwealth is being asked to pay for the ongoing maintenance of the no worse off guarantee, it has already made about $4 from corporate tax windfall gains.”
Journos’ letter spells end to ‘impartial’ reporting — Janet Albrechtsen (The Australian) ($): “Why do senior, high-profile ABC journalists need reminding that if they wouldn’t say it on RN Breakfast or 7.30, respectively, best they not say it on social media? No wonder some junior journalists follow their poor lead. The ABC’s descent into campaign journalism has accelerated in recent years. Its #MeToo campaigns on flagship programs looked much more like an attempt to get rid of the Morrison government than an impartial look at deep social and cultural problems. And that was outdone by the ABC’s single-minded advocacy of the Voice. Day after day after day, listeners were left in no doubt about the political views of high-profile ABC journalists on the matter.
“Impartiality at the ABC may be at rock bottom today, but it has been a long and public downfall from grace. The big problem at the ABC has been the staff run the place, meaning management and the board are irrelevant. I recall my early days on the board when journalists would fawn over me — touching me at functions to see if I was warm-blooded, while flattering me. But then if they can’t duchess you into submission they ignore you. I decided being ignored was the lesser of two evils. I repeat this memory for the purpose only of reminding those slow on the uptake about poor quality journalism at Aunty, that the place has been run by staff for a long, long time. The departures of the professional ones — Tom Switzer is the latest to go — means we can see even more clearly that the zealots, young and old, left at the ABC have no clue what it means to be devil’s advocate.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade deputy secretary Vangelis Vitalis will speak at Dentons Sydney.
Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Author Clementine Ford will talk about her book, I Don’t: The Case Against Marriage, at Avid Reader bookshop.
