PREPARING FOR THE ELECTION
The release of next year’s parliamentary sitting calendar yesterday has added to the endless speculation over when the next federal election will be held, with the Australian Financial Review leading overnight on the prime minister “clearing the decks” for the vote in 2025.
The AFR says the budget being moved from its traditional date in May to March 25 allows Anthony Albanese, if he chooses to go full-term with a May election, to launch a campaign off the back of a budget full of appealing promises. Alternatively, the paper says the new end-of-March budget date could allow the government to call an election in mid-March for a polling day of April 12, ahead of Easter and Anzac Day holidays, and avoid having to have a budget — which the AFR notes could be appealing given a deficit is forecast for the next decade.
The ABC highlights the Albanese government also surprised the Coalition on Thursday by announcing a parliamentary inquiry into nuclear power. The broadcaster said the government hopes the inquiry will “expose shortcomings in the opposition’s plans” as Coalition leader Peter Dutton continues to come under pressure to outline the costs of his flagship nuclear power policy.
The AFR notes the committee tasked with the inquiry will have a government majority and must report by April 30 at the latest but also “may choose to table an interim report at any time”. The paper says such timing could be handy with the election looming.
The ABC claims opposition sources are “delighted by Labor’s move” to provide a public platform for the nuclear debate, while also acknowledging the potential risks. A government member told the AFR: “If they’re [the Coalition] not going to release the detail, we’ll do it for them.”
The issue set to dominate the upcoming election, whenever it happens, is cost of living, and Guardian Australia reports lenders have started lowering their mortgage rates based on the expectation the Reserve Bank of Australia will cut interest rates. The site quotes Canstar in revealing seven lenders cut their fixed loan rates by an average of 0.3% over the past week, with four cutting variable rates.
When and if that interest rate cut comes from the RBA remains a very fluid debate though, with Guardian Australia acknowledging market predictions of a cut clashes somewhat with what the central bank has actually said, which is that underlying inflation is still too high and there will be no cut in the “near term”.
SOCIAL MEDIA HARM
Talking of mixed messages, Guardian Australia also notes Communications Minister Michelle Rowland is set to tell the social media summit happening in Sydney this week (see yesterday’s Worm) that platforms could escape the government’s planned age ban if they can demonstrate a “low risk of harm to children”.
The site says Rowland will tell the conference the Albanese government is considering an “exemption framework to accommodate access for social media services that demonstrate a low risk of harm to children. The aim is to create positive incentives for digital platforms to develop age-appropriate versions of their apps”.
The minister will say the proposed reforms are “about protecting young people, not punishing or isolating them or their parents”. Last month the prime minister announced a ban on children using social media would be in place before the next federal election (there’s a theme emerging here).
The Australian is keen to highlight “Aussie lobster back on Chinese menu” after Albanese and Chinese Premier Li Qiang announced that Beijing is set to lift import restrictions on Australian rock lobsters in what the AFR calls “a major foreign policy victory for Anthony Albanese”. The Associated Press said the lobster ban was the last of a series of trade barriers that Beijing has agreed to lift since Albanese was elected in 2022. The newswire notes the restrictions once cost Australian exporters more than $20 billion a year.
Albanese is quoted by The Australian as saying after the bilateral meeting with the Chinese premier on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Laos: “With our patient, calibrated and deliberate approach, we’ve restored Australian trade with our largest export market.” The paper notes following the end of the lobster ban, only a few beef abattoirs ”remain on the blacklist”.
The Sydney Morning Herald highlights former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott sitting down with former British prime minister Liz Truss at the launch of the latter’s book in Sydney last night. The SMH reports Abbott introduced Truss as “someone who didn’t have long enough in the top job”, saying, “I can empathise.” Truss famously resigned after 45 days in office.
Abbott is reported to have said he agrees with Truss that the West is under threat from numerous sources, including “the various mind viruses which are doing so much damage, whether it’s the woke mind virus, the net zero mind virus, whether it’s the appeasement of our external enemies mind virus, all of which are doing so much damage”.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
The winner of Fat Bear Week has been chosen after viewers of the live cameras in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve picked their favourite brown bear.
128 Grazer, who also won the title last year, was named the 2024 champion after defeating the last remaining bear in the competition, 32 Chunk.
The Associated Press said the competition started with 12 bears and viewers cast votes on which bear they believe “best exemplifies winter preparedness by the fat they have accumulated over the summer feeding on the sockeye salmon that return to Brooks River”.
Grazer’s victory this year came after two of her cubs slipped on a waterfall and one of them was killed by Chunk, AP added. The BBC also said the beginning of the contest had been delayed after a female bear was killed by a male bear on the live cameras.
CNN reports the final of the competition saw Grazer more than double her male rival’s vote count, with 71,248 votes to 30,468. The news site added Grazer’s surviving cub, named 128’s Spring Cub, was also a contender in this year’s Fat Bear Junior contest but lost out to a bear called 909Jr.
Say What?
For her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.
The Nobel Assembly
South Korean author Han Kang was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.
CRIKEY RECAP
Trump now looks certain to lose the nationwide popular vote. But he may still win the electoral college, bringing it home in Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania, the election turning on a few thousand votes. There remains voter suppression of the marginalised through voter ID, across numerous swing states, and removal of voting rights for ex-felons, including minor drug convictions.
In Georgia, the entire state voting apparatus has been taken over by Trumpists, and they control numerous counties and state offices elsewhere. They have introduced a flurry of laws to complicate, halt or render impossible the full count of a state vote. The widespread and unspoken determination that they will, if necessary, stop a vote going Harris’ way reflect the system coming to destroy itself. It’s not a single vagrant metaphor but two elements coming together in a, hmm, “perfect storm”. Interesting idea, how come no-one’s thought of that before?
The dual system can be put most simply this way. The US was founded on a revolution that aspired to legitimise itself based on ideas of the rights of a universal human individual, lacking, in principle, any other affiliations and coming together with others through contractual agreement to surrender some autonomy to a central authority established by a revolutionary process.
Another former PM who hasn’t been camera or microphone shy since his eviction from the lodge is Malcolm Turnbull — but this is a new one, even for him.
Turnbull sharing a stage with adult film star Stormy Daniels, former UK prime minister Boris Johnson, Succession star Brian Cox and B-list royalty Caitlyn Jenner might sound like the world’s worst improv troupe has really lost control of a topical sketch, but its actually the panel the UK network Channel 4 has put together for its US election night coverage. We don’t have much to add to this, except to say well played, Channel 4. We 100% want to watch your coverage more than anyone else’s.
Jim McBryde writes: I can’t express my dismay at how ineffective and damaging to the environment Tanya Plibersek has been. Allowing new gas fields at Beetaloo Basin and the expansion of coal mines just beggars belief, along with actually giving public money to support some of these projects.
I don’t think Labor learned anything from the past election and the teal wave coming through. It doesn’t deserve to win the next federal election, but as usual I can’t vote Liberal either — they would be worse for the environment. Yet again the young people of this country get screwed and their future will be further damaged due to inaction and harmful action in yet another wasted federal Parliament and election cycle.
I think a hung Parliament might be the only way we get some real action on climate change and protecting the environment.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
As Hurricane Milton moves away from Florida, millions are without power and at least 7 are dead (The Washington Post)
Greens staffers on ‘toxic, bullying’ culture in their own words (The Sydney Morning Herald) ($)
Richard Marles ‘very sad events have got to where they have’ after chief of staff alleges she was ‘effectively sacked’ (Guardian Australia)
Wildlife numbers fall by 73% in 50 years, global stocktake finds (BBC)
Ethel Kennedy: Kennedy family matriarch dies, aged 96 (Sky News)
THE COMMENTARIAT
On the climate crisis, housing and more, politicians avoid clarity because it demands action — Greg Jericho (Guardian Australia): After spending any time analysing policy you quickly realise that politicians expend a supreme level of effort to avoid doing the obvious, and instead they do complex things that neither solve a problem nor appease their opponents.
For politicians, the problem with clarity is that it demands action. Complexity provides safety because action can more easily be avoided. And so the obvious and clear are painted as “extreme”, while the complex is regarded as “mature”.
For example, rather than reduce emissions or prevent commercial activity and expansion in areas where native species are under threat, the government has hosted a “Global Nature Positive Summit”. Apparently helping to “build consensus on the economic settings needed to increase investment in nature” is better than doing what scientists say is needed.
Eyes darting, mouths open: You just had to look at his ministers’ faces to see how far Albanese had fouled — Brett Worthington (ABC): Under pressure and reverting to his worst instincts, Anthony Albanese used Tourette syndrome as an insult levelled at shadow treasurer Angus Taylor.
The looks on Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Early Childhood Education Minister Anne Aly’s faces said it all.
Close inspection of the footage shows Marles’s eyes dart as his mouth slightly opens.
Aly was less convincing at hiding her surprise. Her mouth opened widely as she quickly turned her head, before then biting down on her upper lip and slightly shaking her head.
