CLAIM TO DEFAME
Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds is threatening to sue Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek for defamation after a Seven Network interview on Monday morning. Plibersek alleged, “The central point here is that a young woman made an allegation that she had been sexually assaulted in her workplace and that it had been inappropriately investigated, even covered up by her employers,” the final few words of which Reynolds took umbrage with. “Collectively your comments are plainly defamatory of my client, including but not limited to express references to my client as being responsible for the ‘cover-up’ of a crime,” the prim concerns notice that The Australian ($) just happened to get hold of reads. Plibersek can “make amends” by issuing a signed apology, retracting her comments, paying Reynolds’ legal costs and an “appropriate sum to compensate my client for the damage caused by the publication”, all within 28 days. Plibersek told the paper all legal options were “on the table”.
Meanwhile journalist Lisa Wilkinson’s lawyers have asked the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to investigate whether the leaking of a five-hour pre-interview between Brittany Higgins and her qualifies as an alleged contempt of court, the ABC reports. Documents given to the Federal Court as part of Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case against the Ten Network say the interview was obtained on a USB during a police search of The Project office in June 2022. It popped up in coverage from The Daily Mail, The Australian and 7News. Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said allegations that material gathered for a criminal trial was misused “may constitute a contempt of court”. It comes as a five-year AFP inquiry into disgraced soldier Ben Roberts-Smith’s alleged involvement in the execution of three Afghan prisoners has collapsed because investigators may have unwittingly used tainted evidence, the SMH ($) reports.
WEALTHY, HEALTHY, WISE?
The Queensland government has posted its highest budget surplus: some $12 billion, Brisbane Times ($) reports, though it’ll return to deficit next financial year. Why the boon? One word: coal. Coal royalties will see $15.2 billion pour into the government’s coffers this year, the paper says, which is about $10 billion more than predicted. The Sunshine State is also collecting from transfer duties on property sales — folks are cashing in on the big COVID migration north, it seems. Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick says he’ll use the eyewatering surplus to slash household power bills and put $19 billion into state-owned clean energy projects, the AFR ($) reports.
And the South Australian government will report a $249 million deficit today, The Advertiser ($) reports, some $500 million less than the Labor government’s debut budget in June which saw a $233 million surplus. But we won’t be in the red for long, Treasurer Stephen Mullighan told the paper, with a forecast surplus next financial year. So why the result? COVID. Mullighan says the government poured an extra $470 million into health as emergency departments swelled amid general practitioner (GP) shortages and COVID-positive patients. Meanwhile, Guardian Australia reports “many, many” doctors are advertising themselves as specialist general physicians even though they don’t have the training required by law. A general physician is different from a GP and other specialists because they’re equipped to treat the entire range of a person’s medical problems. One told the paper she’s seen loads of patients who have “wasted their time and money on people who weren’t actually general physicians”.
TRUMP OUT BUT NOT DOWN
Overnight former US president Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 federal charges arising from his alleged mishandling of classified national security documents taken from the White House. Trump has also faced criminal charges over alleged hush money during the 2016 election campaign, but these charges are “drastically more serious and present the possibility of several years in prison if Trump is ultimately convicted”, CNN adds. Indeed each of 31 of the counts carried a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, The Guardian notes. Prosecutors allege Trump conspired with aide Walt Nauta to hide classified documents from a federal grand jury at Mar-a-Lago — Nauta also pleaded not guilty this morning.
Trump left court just after 5.30am AEDT with no conditions or travel restrictions, although he is not allowed to talk to possible witnesses or Nauta in the case. Interestingly, the judge overseeing the trial is Aileen Cannon, as the ABC delves into — she was Trump’s pick for the Federal District Court in southern Florida back in 2020, and last year permitted Trump’s request for a third party to look at the documents before the FBI got their hands on them. “Most legal experts believed there was no legal basis for such a request,” the broadcaster notes. It was overturned. Buckle up: this could well drag on beyond the 2024 election.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
“I want to hold your foo-oo-oot,” the robot trained to mimic The Beatles trills. I kid, but it’s not far from the latest insane news on artificial intelligence, folks — Paul McCartney has told BBC that a new and final Beatles song will be released this year after he used AI to “extricate” John Lennon’s voice from an old demo. He didn’t reveal the name of the track, but it’s probably a 1978 Lennon composition called “Now and Then”, The Guardian muses. The tune was on one of the tapes Lennon labelled “For John” before his untimely death in 1980 — two other songs on them, “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love”, have already been released. “Now and Then” channels the warm devotion that Lennon favoured in his songwriting in the late ’70s as he settled into domestic bliss with wife Yoko Ono (even though McCartney’s marriage-and-babies style was the subject of Lennon’s occasional ire).
The idea to use AI to revive Lennon’s voice occurred to McCartney when Peter Jackson’s eight-hour documentary, Get Back, isolated each of the Beatles’ voices within their discography. It meant that McCartney could effectively “duet” Lennon at Glastonbury Festival, and it seemed to the ageing rocker an incredible way to wrap The Beatles’ catalogue once and for all. “We had John’s voice and a piano and [we] could separate them with AI. They tell the machine: ‘That’s the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar,’ ” McCartney explained. “Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do.” Interestingly, it’s not the first time the surviving band members have revisited “Now and Then”. The trio spent an afternoon “messing with it” in 1995, their producer said, until the late George Harrison declared the result “fucking rubbish” and abandoned it. Until now (maybe). McCartney said he’s still a little freaked out about AI, but it is undeniably exciting: “We’ll just have to see where that leads.”
Hoping something changes your world today.
SAY WHAT?
ONE OF THE SADDEST DAYS IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE!!!
Donald Trump
One might bring to mind a rather long list of sadder days in US history than the former president facing 37 federal charges, the bulk of which each carry up to 10 years’ jail. He pleaded not guilty.
CRIKEY RECAP
“The players will carry their burn scars forward, aware or not that they’ve been singed. The media will relearn the important lesson that there’s no scandal like a sex scandal, and no sex scandal like a political one. If it bleeds, it leads. What we don’t see, when the story is one of personal trauma, is that the bleeding is arterial.
“We don’t see that each front page, each leak, each speculation, judgment, analysis and picking over of the entrails, each and every word inflicts new wounds or breaks open old ones. Under all this is a person who, believe her or not, is suffering. I was asked recently by a journalist, one who cares, what lessons I think there are in this debacle.”
“A week in, few prominent Australians appear to have joined. The biggest names so far include former MP turned blogger and conservative activist George Christensen and freedom movement citizen journalist Real Rukshan. A search for user names featuring ‘Aussie’ or ‘Australian’ reveals dozens of small accounts, many of which include references to QAnon and other conspiracies.
“This seeming lack of interest from Australians reflects a broader malaise for the platform. Financial documents revealed that Truth Social had just 5 million users after a year of use, with downloads of the app plummeting after a hot launch. Meanwhile, Twitter has shifted to the right under Elon Musk, negating much of the appeal of Truth Social.”
“Instead of one overarching needs-based sector-blind model of school funding, as recommended by the Gonski review all those years ago, this toxic legacy ensured the country was left with a series of blighted needs-blind, sector-based ‘political settlements’ specific to each state and territory government.
“In the result, private and independent schools in all states and territories but for the Northern Territory have since habitually received well over 100% of their needs-based funding from federal and state governments. Public schools, by contrast, continue to average between 80-90% of their requisite funding, despite catering for the most disadvantaged children. As things stand, none of this appears set to change.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Cormac McCarthy, celebrated US novelist, dies aged 89 (The Guardian)
Erdoğan demands international recognition of northern Cyprus (euronews)
Trump supporters gather outside Florida court where he faces charges (Reuters)
Turkmenistan moves towards plugging massive methane leaks (The Guardian)
Here’s how much hotter than normal this June has been (The New York Times) ($)
Migrant death toll nearly 3800 for Middle East, North Africa: UN (Al Jazeera)
[US] inflation eased to 4% in May, still well above fed target (The Wall Street Journal) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Why Ukraine’s counteroffensive is the toughest military path to victory — Mick Ryan (The Age) ($): “First, understand that in military operations first reports are almost always wrong. In combat, people experience tunnel vision and often misunderstand what they are experiencing. Most participants in warfare have a limited view of what is actually occurring. For this reason, initial reports are always listened to but treated with caution until additional verification is available. There have been many initial reports about success or failure in this offensive. We should remain wary of these in the short term and not rush to judgment about the overall success or otherwise of the Ukrainian offensives.
“Second, it is impossible to assess the progress of a war, or even a single battle, from a picture or video. While amazing technologies bring us a deluge of images from the war, they are poor tools for assessing the operational or strategic situation at any given time. A single photo on social media is like viewing the war through a very narrow straw. One photo over the weekend, showing multiple Ukrainian armoured vehicles damaged and stationary, was used as evidence for a multitude of different assessments. It was just a snapshot of a single Ukrainian company at a single place and time. When observing the war at a distance, time is required to assemble many different data sets from varying sources to ascertain the direction of the conflict.”
Paranoid Beijing is still refusing to grant visas to Australian journalists — Will Glasgow (The Australian) ($): “Here is just a brief selection of the questions China’s authorities want answered as they consider whether or not to let you into their Leninist one-party state: your home address, your occupation, your birthdate; your parents’ home address, their occupations, their birthdates; your children’s home address, their occupations, their birthdays; whether any of the said relatives, or other close relatives, live in China; the flight you will arrive on, the flight you will depart on; each location, down to county level, you intend to visit in China, and the dates you intend to do so; whether you have a serious mental disorder or infectious disease; whether you have ever served in the military; whether you have ‘any special skills in the field of firearms, explosives, nuclear devices, biological or chemical products’; whether you have ever been a member of ‘any paramilitary organisations, civilian armed units, guerrilla forces or rebellion organisations’, and — how China in 2023 is this? — if you have ever ‘belonged to, contributed to, or worked for any professional social or charitable organisations’.
“Sources familiar with the matter tell me it wasn’t my answers to any of those questions that scotched my application. The hold-up is systemic. Beijing remains unwilling to let Australian journalists into the country — even on short-term visas. Our applications for long-term visas, some first requested in 2020, continue to gather dust. ‘It’s very difficult to apply for a journalist visa right now,’ a source in the Chinese government told me. I don’t blame the Chinese government for distrusting us. It makes perfect sense that a supremely illiberal organisation is threatened by the liberal journalist tradition. The party doesn’t allow Chinese journalists to do their work freely — why would it make an exception for foreign journalists?”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Author Anne Vines will chat about her new book, The Ship Wife, at Glee Books.
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The Australian columnist Gerard Henderson will discuss whether the ABC is in crisis, at an event at The Sydney Institute.
Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Author Pip Finkemeyer will chat about her new book, Sad Girl Novel, at Avid Reader bookshop.
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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Australian Medical Association president Stephen Robson will address the National Press Club.
