CENSUS SEXUALITY ROW
The decision by the Albanese government not to include gender identity and sexuality in the next census continues to attract criticism, with the ABC saying six Labor MPs have now called on the government to reverse its decision. As flagged in yesterday’s Worm, LGBTQIA+ advocates have reacted angrily to the announcement. Expressing her disappointment, Assistant Health Minister Ged Kearney told the ABC: “The census not only informs policy and service delivery but paints a picture of modern Australia in all its beauty and diversity. For too long LGBTQIA+ people have felt excluded from this picture.”
The ABC says Labor backbenchers Josh Burns, Alicia Payne, Michelle Ananda-Rajah, Jerome Laxale and Peter Khalil have all declared their opposition to the government’s decision.
Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles and Treasurer Jim Chalmers tried this week to explain the decision as being made to avoid a “divisive debate”, but The Sydney Morning Herald reports several government sources have claimed they are confused by the explanation. The ABC says one senior shadow frontbencher claims to have been “flabbergasted” by the government’s decision, saying: “I think they’re jumping at their own shadow.”
While the government was trying to downplay the row yesterday (Chalmers was keen to point out the census isn’t until 2026), the head of Australia’s biggest bank was in Canberra hitting out at what he dubbed “insidious populism” regarding the recent criticism of big business.
The AFR reports Matt Comyn was responding to developments such as the Greens’ pledge this week to extract $514 billion from major corporations and Labor’s push to limit credit card fees. Guardian Australia quoted him as telling the House of Representatives standing committee on economics: “Over and over, businesses in Australia are being represented in this false dichotomy that for a company to earn any sort of income or profit it is therefore inferred often or directly related … on a daily basis as somehow being unjustly extracted from consumers.” Comyn claimed “fact-free rhetoric” was “eroding trust in institutions”.
The Australian highlighted Comyn and Westpac chief executive Peter King also made the case for broader tax reform and warned governments had become too reliant on income tax. The AAP reports NAB chief executive Andrew Irvine and head of ANZ Shayne Elliott will front the committee today. Irvine is up first, at 9.15 am.
HARRIS’ HIGH-STAKES MOMENT
CNN is heavily promoting its sitdown chat with US Vice President Kamala Harris, which is due to air in the coming hours. The broadcaster says it’s the first unscripted interview Harris has given since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee (after a certain 81-year-old president was asked by his party to move along quickly please). Harris will appear alongside her VP pick Tim Walz during the interview.
With just 67 days until the US election and the breakneck speed with which she became the Democrat nominee, every interview and speech Harris gives is now being declared absolutely crucial to her presidential chances. The New York Times describes the CNN interview as “a high-stakes moment, and a chance to define their campaign”.
Elsewhere in the US election madness, The Washington Post reports the US Army has defended a staff member at Arlington National Cemetery involved in a brief altercation with members of Donald Trump’s team on Thursday. The army said the female employee was “abruptly pushed aside” when trying to warn Trump staff against photography and filming as partisan activity is prohibited at the cemetery. Trump’s running mate JD Vance wrote on X: “This entire scandal is so fake.”
Speaking of Vance, The Financial Times reports the 40-year-old has called on tech billionaire Peter Thiel to “get off the sidelines” and help bankroll the Republicans’ White House bid. Thiel sponsored Vance’s Senate bid two years ago and in an interview with the FT, the Republican vice presidential candidate declared: “He’s obviously been exhausted by politics a little bit — but he’s going to be really exhausted by politics if we lose and if Kamala Harris is president. He is fundamentally a conservative guy, and I think that he needs to get off the sidelines and support the ticket.”
The New York Times reports Vance was heckled by several people during his address to the International Association of Fire Fighters in Boston earlier. Responding, Vance told the crowd: “Once upon a time I was not a Trump guy either. Trust me, the president never lets me forget it.”
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
A letter from a donor bemoaning fake columns being erected in a new wing of a museum has been discovered… inside one of the columns.
Lord Sainsbury funded the Sainsbury Wing of London’s National Gallery in 1990 and was unhappy at the decision by American architect Robert Venturi to put two non-structural columns in the foyer, the BBC reports.
To express his dissatisfaction, Lord Sainsbury, a former chair of the UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s, had a letter hidden in one of the columns. The letter was discovered last year during renovations, something Lord Sainsbury would have been thrilled about.
“If you have found this note you must be engaged in demolishing one of the false columns that have been placed in the foyer of the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery,” the letter declared. “I believe that the false columns are a mistake of the architect and that we would live to regret our accepting this detail of his design.”
The letter also included this wonderful flourish: “Let it be known that one of the donors of this building is absolutely delighted that your generation has decided to dispense with the unnecessary columns.”
Say What?
There’s a distinct lack of shame in society at the moment.
Cate Blanchett
While promoting her new Apple TV+ series Disclaimer at the Venice Film Festival, the Australian actor was asked about the ways in which society shames women (her character is publicly shamed in the show), Guardian Australian reports. Blanchett declared there was a lack of shame but a lot of “shaming”.
CRIKEY RECAP
Why did Philip Ruddock, a Liberal Party elder and former Howard government minister with 43 years of experience in federal Parliament, get rolled by his party over his position as Hornsby mayor in Sydney?
Crikey can reveal that, according to the mayor himself, the area’s federal Liberal MP Julian Leeser took an active part in undermining Ruddock.
According to some local Liberals, Ruddock’s preselection loss was the culmination of an intraparty “game of thrones” with links to both a local debate over land development and Leeser’s campaigning for the Yes side in the Voice to Parliament referendum campaign.
Other Liberals said it was simply time for Ruddock, 81, to make way for a new generation — even going so far as to pull the “Joe Biden” card, hinting Ruddock is too old.
Adam Bandt’s proposal for what he bluntly calls a “Big Corporation Tax” on profits above “a reasonable rate of return” for companies with turnovers above $100 million would, he insists, “not take a cent from the pockets of Australians who rely upon returns from their investments, like pensioners or the 17 million Australians with superannuation balances.”
How he’ll achieve that without a magic pudding has yet to be explained. Companies that are earning “super profits”, however defined, normally pay those profits back to investors — a list that now includes every Australian worker via the superannuation system. Reduce those profits by increasing tax, and the dividends paid back to investors, including our big super funds, fall. The government gets more tax revenue, but everyone with a super account misses out on those extra dividends and the compound interest on them between now and retirement.
The art of cropping can do more than fix the composition or energy of a picture. Take the following image from The Weekend Australian‘s coverage of the shellacking the Country Liberal Party handed out to Labor in the Northern Territory elections. A tipster sent it in, saying they’d “screenshotted [it] before the Oz inevitably takes it down. Check the shirt.” And yes, unless the party has renamed itself to better express its commitment to putting 10-year-olds in jail, that’s an unfortunate angle.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Millions told to evacuate as typhoon batters Japan (BBC)
UK PM Starmer supports tougher outdoor smoking rules to ease pressure on health service (Reuters)
Brazil Supreme Court threatens to ban X (The Wall Street Journal) ($)
The plot to attack Taylor Swift’s Vienna shows was intended to kill thousands, a CIA official says (Associated Press)
Sun, sea and a biblical stench: Thousands of dead fish plague popular tourist port (NBC News)
Anger in China after women lock crying toddler in plane toilet to ‘educate’ her (The Guardian)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Why Tim Walz would be the perfect coach for Team Albo — Nick Bryant (The Sydney Morning Herald): As we approach the next federal election, will this find an echo in Australia? After all, in the space of three weeks the Democrats have come up with the kind of clear messaging that the Albanese government has struggled to articulate in near on three years. Will Peter Dutton be tagged with a single buzzword? “Nasty” maybe, rather than “weird”. Is there scope for Walz-ing Matilda?
In posing these questions, I realise this country doesn’t go in for flowery rhetoric or arias of Australian exceptionalism. The preference is for prose rather than poetry. Budget night, not some Canberra facsimile of the State of the Union address, is the set-piece parliamentary event of the calendar. Bean counting rather than lyricism.
For all that, Australian politicians almost appear to have given up on scripting a grand national narrative. Storytelling has given way to sloganeering. Small-target campaigning has become the enemy of big-picture thinking.
Labor should invest in demonising Bandt as well as Dutton — Phillip Coorey (AFR): Not all his policy proposals are batty, but his super tax solutions are not only dodgy in terms of their revenue estimates, they would risk crippling the economy and people’s life savings, all to fund a bottomless pit of free stuff.
It’s the sort of stuff that scares mainstream voters.
With a hung Parliament likely and Dutton starting to peddle a scare campaign about a Labor-Greens government, Labor might want to invest a bit more effort in demonising Bandt as well.
