PUBLIC HOUSING CLASS ACTION
A class action lawsuit has been lodged against the Housing Authority and the state of Western Australia on behalf of public housing residents in WA’s remote Indigenous communities, the ABC reports. Residents of up to 3,000 dwellings are accusing the state government of allowing public houses to fall into an unlivable condition, with some saying that repair or alternative housing has not been provided in some cases for more than two years.
Sixty-five-year-old Anne Lenard’s roof was ripped off by a storm in 2022 and she has been forced to live in the kitchen of a local “homemaker building”. “A homemaker building is where we cook tucker if there is a party for our children … it’s supposed to be [a community building], not a place where you’re sleeping,” she told ABC’s 7.30. “I sleep in the kitchen and my little girl has the storeroom.”
A similar class action in the Northern Territory late last year found that the government there was liable for distress caused by a failure to repair public housing.
Meanwhile in the commercial housing market, the AAP reports it’s not just boomers benefitting from the housing boom, with Gen X and older millennials among those making record profits from selling properties. The median profit for a sold house is now $395,000 across the combined capitals, according to property website Domain, with 96% of all properties now turning a profit.
In response to the housing crisis, independent Senator Fatima Payman is going after negative gearing, according to The West Australian. Payman, who never publicly criticised the practice before joining the crossbench, told the Senate yesterday that negative gearing is the “tax system’s way of handing out massive freebies to people who are already doing pretty well”.
“Meanwhile, young Australians are stuck renting, watching house prices skyrocket, wondering if they’ll ever be able to afford their own home.” The West points out that Payman recently purchased her own investment property, though she says she has no plans to negatively gear the one-bedroom unit.
RFK OUT OF THE RACE
In news that will shock almost no-one, “presidential candidate” Robert F. Kennedy Jr is expected to drop out of the race by the end of this week, CNN reports. The nephew of JFK made headlines earlier this month when, in a bizarre attempt to appear relatable, he admitted to picking up a recently run-over bear off the road to eat while on a falconing trip before dumping it in New York’s Central Park after a luxury steakhouse dinner… y’know, just regular guy stuff.
It comes as Kennedy’s running mate Nicole Shanahan told a podcast on Tuesday that the pair were considering abandoning their campaign in order to help the election of Donald Trump, The Guardian reports. The US ABC says sources have claimed the deal is yet to be finalised, but that RFK is interested in doing so quickly to blunt the momentum of the Democrats following the rise of Kamala Harris.
NBC is reporting that Trump is “working hard” to secure the endorsement of RFK, but JD Vance warned that the former Democrat shouldn’t expect a cabinet position in exchange for his endorsement: “I think you shouldn’t ever trade important jobs in the government for an endorsement. Whether it’s illegal or not, it’s certainly unethical.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic National Convention is in full swing, with Tim Walz set to formally accept the party’s vice presidential nomination in a speech tonight, Chicago time. Also on the bill at the DNC are former president Bill Clinton, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. At the time of writing, The Guardian reports Stevie Wonder is currently sound-checking “Higher Ground” (in reference to Michelle Obama?), confirming what everyone already knew re: all the coolest musicians not being Republicans…
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
Journalism is facing a lot of threats these days, with declining ad revenues, lagging print sales, malevolent tech giants and vapid social media sludge all vying to undermine the great work done by reporters and investigators across the world.
At times like these, it’s important to take stock of what we truly value: the power held to account, the brave stories of human resilience and fear overcome, the terrifying and tragic tales that inspire true belief and change.
Anyway, here are 276 photos of baby zoo animals. Oh look, a pangolin!
Say What?
An idiot — a king without claim — will seize a throne, and there will be war in the land.
Ancient Babylonian tablet
A set of four 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablets have finally been deciphered at the British Museum — it turns out they detail more than 60 omens predicted by ancient astronomers in Babylon, including: “Famine. Plague. Drought. Assassinations. War.” This one is particularly ominous…
CRIKEY RECAP
So farewell then, Joe Biden, signing off from politics at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Scranton Joe’s speech was nothing spectacular and the 46th president was low on energy. There were a couple of stumbles and tangles, but nothing like the big fade-on he suffered during his first and only 2024 debate with The Donald.
His speech — a testament to his half-century career as a right-wing Democrat who ended up on the centre-left by forces of events, a man who did much good and fought for unions and women’s safety, who got the US out of Afghanistan while being a shameless advocate of the Delaware insurance, credit card, and chemical industry complexes — was rapturously received. Chiefly because its low energy confirmed to everyone there that the party was right to shove him out the window and move on to Kamala: he rallied at points, but had he managed to give a barn-burner, there would have been more than a touch of buyer’s remorse over the selection of Harris.
This lurching from the incompetent to the shambolic has right-wingers correctly sharpening their knives for [Don] Harwin: Tony Abbott — whose political genius extends to winning the prime ministership in a landslide, getting sacked by his own MPs after less than two years, and losing his own once-safe seat — has demanded Harwin follow state director Richard Shields out the door, and wants a federal takeover of the NSW division. News Corp is right behind him, with veteran Coalition loyalist Dennis Shanahan also demanding a federal takeover, failing tabloid The Daily Telegraph calling for Harwin’s head, and The Australian rushing to defend Shields.
The narrative from the right — Peta Credlin has pushed it — is that the NSW division has been a basket case that cost Tony Abbott victory in 2010 (when the only thing that got Abbott close enough to contemplate offering his “arse” for the prime ministership was Kevin Rudd’s demolition job on the Gillard campaign) and helped cause the defeat of Scott Morrison in 2022. “We already know the review of the 2022 election found that the NSW branch ‘was not in an acceptable position to contest the election in some seats’,” Shanahan offered in The Australian, going on to quote extensively from the 2022 election review by [Brian] Loughnane and Jane Hume (another political genius) on the shortcomings of the NSW branch.
There is a lot of debate about raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14, and Michael Bradley’s article on the topic goes down the common path of confusing intervention with custodial sentences. Indeed locking up children as young as 10 should be avoided, and except in very rare cases, it is. But criminal responsibility means something else; it allows for intervention, and in the case of youth crime, helps to prevent re-offending.
Managing young offenders is an ethical minefield, and the South Australian system seems to make an effort to be humane with the goal of prevention rather than punishment. I worked in crime statistics for 23 years and monitored the implementation of this approach — on the whole it does seem to be working.
In South Australia, intervention initially involves a police caution. The child and their family members have the offence dealt with by a trained police sergeant, who explains to the young offender why what they did was wrong and why it would be a very bad idea for it to happen again.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Ukraine targets Moscow in ‘one of largest ever’ drone attacks (Al Jazeera)
On Harris’ price-gouging ban, allies and foes may have the wrong idea (The New York Times) ($)
Biden speaks with Netanyahu on Gaza ceasefire talks (Reuters)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Behind the political arguments, there’s been some rare cooperation in Parliament this week — David Speers (ABC): You wouldn’t know it watching question time, but there are signs this week of Parliament functioning as a parliament should. For all the arguments and name-calling when the cameras are rolling, behind the scenes there’s been some actual negotiation and cooperation. On Monday legislation was passed to send in administrators to clean up the CFMEU. Yesterday a bill was passed to crack down on the sharing of deepfake pornography…
And then there are the two big structural reforms — to aged care and the NDIS — both aimed at putting the budget on a “more sustainable footing” and preventing costs continuing to balloon. Both effectively involve more user pays.
Bipartisanship is rare. Bipartisanship on slugging some voters more is even rarer. A scare campaign about forcing the elderly to pay more would be easy to run. It would also be devastating politically. If, as expected, an agreement is struck, it will show both sides accept the need for reform, and both sides accept it can only be done with a partisan truce.
New watchdog won’t stop bad behaviour in Parliament — Michelle Grattan (The Conversation): The teals are right in condemning how politicians behave, especially in the Parliament but also in their wider public discourse. It’s hard to assess whether this has become worse — it probably has varied over time. But the coarsening of the public debate generally in the social media age probably encourages MPs into more routinely verbally abusive behaviour.
Many members of the public are shocked when they see question time from the visitors’ gallery. The extraordinary thing is the MPs know the public hate this, but they apparently don’t care. Especially, but not only, those in opposition behave in a way that would appal them if it were their children doing it.
