WOMAN PROBLEM
A complaint against NSW Liberal MP Taylor Martin, who was booted from the party over allegations he called former federal MP Lucy Wicks a “pig” and a “dumb slut”, has been referred to police. The SMH reports the party’s investigation found he engaged in “abusive conduct” towards Wicks before and after they broke up in 2019, including allegations of yelling and tirades, using “degrading, abusive and misogynistic language”, and making “vile accusations”. The investigation alleged Martin falsely claimed one of Wicks’ staffers had tried to blackmail him, though the paper notes it hasn’t been proven in a court of law. Martin, who became the youngest person in the NSW Liberal government in 2017 when he was 28, will now sit on the crossbench, leaving the Coalition with 14 seats to Labor’s 15.
It comes as a man has been charged with murder and violating a restraining order after a woman’s body was found at a home in Forbes in NSW’s central west, Sky News Australia reports. The woman, mother of a six-year-old boy, reportedly worked in childcare. Three women have been killed in Ballarat this year, Sky notes, and five were killed in Bondi Junction. Meanwhile, comedian Arj Barker asked a woman and her baby to leave his show, but her media interview afterwards “backfired”, according to news.com.au, as her baby was wriggling and babbling the entire time. But why can’t a baby go to a comedy show, mum Trish Faranda reasoned, considering people heckle and cough all the time. Barker said the show was 15+. To finish on something a bit more positive now and Katherine Bennell-Pegg is the first person to graduate from astronaut training at the European Space Agency under the Australian flag, The Advertiser reports.
MIKE DROP
Former home affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo, who broke the public service code 14 times, says he made mistakes but didn’t have to be sacked. He told ABC’s 7.30 that he accepted that gaining influence and personal advantage through communication with the PM or others “crosses a line” but suggested he could’ve been censured or reprimanded instead, The Australian ($) reports. Crikey’s Bernard Keane opined last year that Pezzullo “demonstrably hates scrutiny and accountability”, citing his alleged attempt to silence former senator Rex Patrick over the latter’s criticism of Home Affairs and Pezzullo’s power grab to stifle press freedom. Anyway, Pezzullo said there’s a 10% chance of a war with China, which would be “significant and indeed catastrophic”, particularly in terms of cyber and cognitive warfare on hospitals or the electricity grid.
Speaking of Defence — opposition home affairs and cyber security spokesman James Paterson says we need to solve the staff shortage at the ADF (we’re 4,400 people short) by improving flexibility, pay and conditions. He notes personnel are sometimes required to uproot their whole family for postings, causing career disruption for partners and difficulties for kids, The Australian ($) reports. Paterson also criticised Labor’s $50 billion for Defence over the next decade because it will only see a few billion extra in the next four years, and the days of a 10-year warning period for war are gone. It comes as sunny Cairns could play an important role in deterring China’s influence in the Pacific, The Daily Telegraph says — the French Navy and US Coast Guard docked at the city’s naval base this year for operations and training.
PRIVATE LIVES
Billionaire Elon Musk has tweeted at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with a meme that says X (Twitter) is the path to truth while apps like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok are the path to censorship. It comes after Albanese called it “extraordinary” that X refused to remove footage that contained “gratuitous or offensive violence” after the Sydney bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was allegedly stabbed on a live stream. X did remove it for Australian viewers, but people worldwide (or those using a VPN) could still see it — so the eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant got a two-day legal injunction to force X to hide the footage for two days, the ABC adds. The matter heads back to court tomorrow.
Meanwhile, 400 people who requested a refund from the Pandemonium Rocks music festival after seven of the 13 acts pulled out have had their data breached, 7News reports. They were told to fill in a refund request form but the admin tab was left on, meaning anyone could click the results to see a list of names, bank details, phone numbers and email addresses. Deep Purple, Placebo, Dead Kennedys and Palaye Royale were among the bands that pulled out. To another bungle now and Services Australia overpaid $8 million in pension payments, The Daily Telegraph reports, with the paper deriding it as “embarrassing”. Personally I’d say there are worse things than pensioners getting extra money right now…
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
The bags were packed full, the house keys handed in, the passports checked and double-checked. Jason Whatnall and his partner Nick were waiting to board their flight in Melbourne, Google searching things like: Wales weather in April, moving to Wales tips, and caring for dog after a plane trip. On the tarmac below, a shaking Jack Russell cross named Milo lept through the grasp of a dog handler and disappeared. When the couple heard their dog hadn’t made the plane, they were distraught, taking to social media to appeal to people around Tullamarine to help. They did — a specialist animal rescuer drove around the industrial estate playing a recording of Jason’s voice through a speaker, while businesses put out bowls of puppy food to keep him fed.
Seventeen long days passed, and despite multiple sightings of the furry Houdini, he kept evading every recapture attempt. Then an animal rescue volunteer spotted him near a shipping container, as the ABC tells it, and staked Milo out for 39 long hours before successfully nabbing the little dog. Whipping out their phone, the volunteer video-called Jason. We’ve got Milo, they said, and he’s boarding a plane very soon. The couple were beside themselves. When the crate arrived at their door in the UK, all that could be heard were the frantic squeaks of a loyal loving pooch. He promptly lept straight into a tearful Nick’s arms as if to say: I’ll never do it again, I swear. The trio spent their first day back together playing and hanging out — which only ended when Milo promptly fell asleep.
Hoping you never give up on your loved ones.
SAY WHAT?
Mate, you just gave $50 billion to the Defence industry, you can afford to help struggling students.
Mehreen Faruqi
The Greens senator was responding to Treasurer Jim Chalmers saying the government would help students “if we can afford to”, even though the country is spending billions on our AUKUS friendship bracelet and HECS is due to index by up to 4.8% this year.
CRIKEY RECAP
“The party now sees itself as the manager of an imposed elite formula — on global alliance, on economy, on social form — and actively works to discourage debate about different possible pathways to the future. This is easily rolled over to a wider notion of social control of discourse.
“That is a mistake. And Labor’s method — eliding the discourse–violence division — is a potential disaster. Progressives, who devised it and made it central to Labor’s (and the Greens’) policy, intended it to make vicious speech more visible as to its harm and consequences.”
“The Nightly’s claim that it has stood up for mainstream, working-class conservatism will be one that takes time to play out. Some of its early front pages have included labelling US President Joe Biden a ‘grumpy old man’, brewing ‘grounds for concern’ over a ‘China-linked cafe’ in Canberra, and the ‘BIG problems with new green laws’.
“Other front pages have included a portrait of an actor from the early 2000s named Holly Valance, captioned ‘Let them eat woke’. The Nightly lauded the one-time Neighbours star as a ‘lightning rod’ after she declared she would never return to Australia (having married UK billionaire Nick Candy) owing to it having ‘really gone big on woke stuff’.”
“Why should the video of the attack on Bishop Emmanuel be taken down? It wasn’t posted by the perpetrator with the goal of glorifying or incentivising his heinous act — content that is illegal under post-Christchurch laws — but resulted from the routine livestreaming of a religious service.
“The perpetrator may have targeted an event for its public profile, but that’s what terrorists always do, hoping for maximum coverage. That doesn’t mean we ban the broadcast of footage that has innate news value but which might also publicise the act of terrorism. And this has innate news value.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Israel gave no evidence UNRWA staff linked to ‘terrorism’: Colonna report (Al Jazeera)
Two men charged with spying for China under Official Secrets Act (BBC)
Modi’s Muslim remarks spark ‘hate speech’ accusations as India’s mammoth election deepens divides (CNN)
New Zealand’s low productivity: What does that mean and how can it be remedied? (NZ Herald)
Huw Edwards has resigned from BBC, broadcaster says (The Guardian)
On first day of Trump hush money trial, prosecutors say he corrupted 2016 election (Reuters)
EU countries agree to slap new sanctions on Iran to curtail drone and missile production (euronews)
Biden weighs giving legal status to immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens (The Wall Street Journal) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
X marks the spot where free speech comes at a cost — Lydia Khalil (The SMH): “Musk crying ‘free speech’ is a useful distraction. The debate around who is allowed on digital platforms and what they are allowed to say or do obscures the larger issue. Many of the threats digital technologies present to democracies stem not only from what they can do and the type of content and information that is allowed to circulate, but the economic logic behind the companies that own these technologies. The business model behind many social media companies and digital platforms is driven by the attention economy, where highly polarising and arousing content is often prioritised because it drives revenue to the digital platforms hosting that content.
“Digital technologies have also commodified the public. By providing ‘free’ services, users have become sources of data and content that these companies can then monetise. Big tech’s business models rely on this collection of our personal information and its monetisation, what Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff famously termed ‘surveillance capitalism’. Silicon Valley tech companies are now some of the biggest in the world and operate on the scale of billions of users. But they also operate under a patchwork of government oversight and incoherent regulation across multiple jurisdictions, which has done little to impact their monopolistic positions and outsized economic power, let alone protect users.”
My twin babies didn’t survive their premature birth — and I’m left to wonder why
Sara Mussa (Guardian Australia): “Not all women demand care in the same way but that does not mean they do not deserve it. I believe I should have been better assessed. The comments compounded the trauma we had already experienced. Unfortunately, this is not just my experience and occurs too frequently, in particular for women of colour. In a system that boxes women in, you feel like you can never win. If you are overly vocal you are the crazy black woman. If you are quiet, you are the passive, subservient woman. So here I am. Not a flower picker or a bulldozer but a perceptive person who respects health workers’ professional judgment, and I feel that I was let down.
“During my recovery I came to learn of a very difficult fact, that my experience could have been worse, it could have been fatal for me. Research shows that women of colour are more likely to die giving birth, with Indigenous women being three times as likely as non-Indigenous women in Australia, while immigrant women from sub-Saharan Africa in Australia, Canada and Denmark are twice as likely to die. In these devastating maternal health disparities, there’s a common theme — systemic racism. A UN report of women in the Americas, including maternal health, revealed that systemic racism and sexism in medical systems are the main reasons black women and women of colour are more likely to experience serious complications or even death.”
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WHAT’S ON TODAY
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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Rugby league’s Wally Lewis will speak to the National Press Club.
