A STILLED, SMALL VOICE
The Voice was never a modest ask, Wiradjuri man Stan Grant says. It was “monumental”. But consultants and lawyers “shushed” it to make it “small enough to fit in politics”, he continues as Guardian Australia reports. The result? It became so inoffensive that people found it easy to vote No, Grant told ANU’s Crawford Leadership Forum. “Our conscience is our problem,” he added, not the constitution. He also referred to a “devastatingly convincing … victorious politician” — probably Coalition Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price — who dismissed generational trauma as “mere contrivance”, with Grant saying she had no tolerance for history, nor understanding that pain can be “negated by progress”, as The Age ($) continues. But the work does not end for the “weary leaders” who will continue to chip away at Indigenous suffering “with what tools they have”. It is not enough, he says, to heal history. “Evil has happened here … People beheaded, flour poisoned, frontier raiding parties.”
Meanwhile the “blue shirts” — guards from government-funded security company Territory Protective Services (TPS) — have been filmed dragging an elderly woman in the Northern Territory, the ABC reports. It says the guards don’t have extra powers beyond being a security presence — they can only “detect a problem”, as Darwin’s Lord Mayor Kon Vatskalis says. But Ngarinman man Nathias Young says they give Indigenous folks a hard time in Darwin, swearing and pushing them around, and even banning him from the CBD. Guards don’t have the legal right to move people on, NT Criminal Lawyers Association’s Clancy Dane says. This comes as a backbencher with just over a year’s experience is the NT’s new police minister, the NT News ($) reports. Brent Potter was elected in August, and the police union is worried, but Chief Minister Natasha Fyles says he’s up for it. Potter has cut his teeth by objecting to a recreational vehicle park proposal and calling on Darwin City Council to crack down on (though not issue fines to) rough sleepers.
IS THIS SEAT TAKEN?
The NSW Liberals want to abolish Warringah, the seat held by former PM Tony Abbott for decades before it was won by independent Zali Steggall, the SMH ($) reports. It should be combined with the neighbouring seat of North Sydney won by independent Kylea Tink from Liberal Trent Zimmerman — one of several Liberal opinions about the AEC’s redrawing of Sydney’s seats to reduce the House of Representatives by one seat before the next election. The Liberals also want to scrap Blaxland — Education Minister Jason Clare’s western Sydney seat — and combine it with Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke’s seat of Watson. The state director says their suggestions are fair because they’re traditional seats for both parties. As if. If the Voice to Parliament result is anything to go by, as the AFR ($) reports, neither teal seat is likely to flip back to Liberal soon.
Meanwhile Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will not do deals with minor parties, The Courier-Mail ($) reports, even though it seems both Labor and the LNP will fall short of a majority next October. She did give $1.3 billlion to Katter’s Australia Party’s much talked about CopperString energy project, however — the government bought the development rights from the nephew of federal MP Bob Katter so we can get about $500 billion in critical minerals dug up from northern Queensland. In Victoria now, and Treasurer Tim Pallas has offered to waive fees for doctors who are in financial dire straits, the Herald Sun ($) reports, because of the government’s retrospective payroll tax extension. Basically general practices pay payroll tax for receptionist and nurses, as the ABC explains, but not for doctors because they’re not employees — rather, your GP is probably leasing a room. There are fears a new tax will make them pay anyway — though Pallas stressed nothing had changed yet.
ALL IN A DAY’S WORK
Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke says the government will scrap the ban on employers misrepresenting permanent employment as casual, The Australian ($) says, to make sure companies aren’t fined for “mistakes”. It’s in a bid to win both industry and Senate crossbench support for Labor’s proposed casual employment and labour hire laws, with the development following chats with the hospitality industry. The tweak will mean it is technically possible for a person to work consistent hours each week and still meet the definition of a casual employee, the paper explains.
Meanwhile the White House is impressed with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s work, an official told the SMH ($). Our alliance is undergoing a “renaissance”, the Indo-Pacific co-ordinator Kurt Campbell said (it would want to be, considering the largest wealth transfer in history is about to go down, as Bob Carr once put it). But the Americans were impressed by our friendship, which gave them “enormous confidence and a boost going into these meetings with Wang Yi” — that’s China’s Minister for Foreign Affairs. It comes as Australia has become the biggest source of loans in the Pacific, Guardian Australia reports, and the region’s “dominant infrastructure financier”. That’s according to the latest Lowy Institute Pacific Aid Map, which found we’d put some $780 million into new projects.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
A three-year-old named William Buck was hovering on the sand of a Wellington, New Zealand, beach, wondering when all his friends were going to show up for his birthday bash. “Where is everyone?” the wide-eyed pre-schooler asked his parents eagerly. Steven and Bridget assured the tot that everyone was coming soon, but turned away so William wouldn’t see the pair wiping their teary eyes. Sure, they’d got some last-minute calls or texts from apologetic families, but surely at least one of William’s friends was going to make it. After all, he was just old enough to understand it was his special day, the one day of the year when people celebrate William. After an hour, his determined dad whipped out his phone and searched the local community group on Facebook.
If you’re in the Scorching Bay Beach area on this sunny day, his post began, and would like to make a three-year-old’s day, come on down — our son would love some friends to play with. Soon after, there were squeals of delight when a local kindergartener — an older kid, no less — arrived, quickly followed by an elderly couple who brought a birthday gift for William — a big inflatable shark. “He absolutely loved it,” his dad told Stuff. A bunch of other locals turned up during the afternoon to party down with the little boy, making sand angels and wolfing down marshmallows. On the drive home, Steven and Bridget marvelled at the good in the world, before turning around to see little sand-covered, sun-soaked William fast asleep in his booster seat.
Hoping you reach out to those in need today.
SAY WHAT?
My dead Black and white ancestors lie restless in this land. We have laid the sod over them, sealed them in. I thought in me they may be able to speak, that those two sides of me might find a common voice. But we said no to that. My country has buried my ancestors for a second time.
Stan Grant
Whatever hope there may be for a different Australia, the Indigenous journalist added in a speech regarding the failed Voice to Parliament referendum, “I likely won’t live to see it.”
CRIKEY RECAP
“Appearances can be everything, as they say. So he seized the day looking prime ministerial and grave, though not impossibly grave, and responded in the only way this spectacle in political division knew best: by bringing a censure motion against the prime minister for needlessly dividing the country over the Voice.
“But it didn’t work — of course it didn’t. Though he never had the numbers, the sheer grandeur and discipline required of the moment proved too much for the shameless spiv. Through the cracks of Dutton’s very Dutton façade of sincerity oozed his usual blend of petty ruthlessness and unserious saltiness, betraying the pathetic ploy to casual observers for what it was.”
“Except, right-wing Western politicians and media benefited from not addressing underlying factors and conditions that generated terrorism. They benefited from having a continuing terrorism threat to exploit and hype, to extend state power, to attack progressive opponents as soft on terror, to rally voters behind the flag and the military.
“In turn, they provide terrorist groups with a constant source of new recruits through military actions directed solely at Muslims, and deny the legitimacy of the grief and anger that produces them. It’s exactly the same with Israel: there’s a direct alliance of interests between the right and fundamentalist terrorists.”
“A 22-year-old former public servant and Young Liberal who almost overnight became one of the nation’s most ‘successful’ political lobbyists has been dumped by almost all his clients amid an anti-corruption scandal.
“Dylan Whitelaw set up lobbying firm Macquarie Advisory Group late last year after working as a ‘senior adviser’ to former NSW planning minister Anthony Roberts, and within weeks disclosed a string of major property clients. Despite his firm having no telephone, website or office … “
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Ex-British intelligence officer jailed for 13 years for attack on NSA agent (Al Jazeera)
Dagestan: Mob storms Russian airport in search of Jews (BBC)
Iran arrests lawyer at funeral of girl who died after metro incident (The Guardian)
Married B.C. therapists face another lawsuit over actions in MDMA therapy trial (CBC)
Graphic pro-Israel ads make their way into children’s video games (Reuters)
FIFA gives ex-Spanish football federation president Rubiales 3-year ban (euronews)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Qantas’ defence to selling tickets on ghost flight fails the pub test dismally — Elizabeth Knight (The SMH) ($): “Qantas’ defence to the competition regulator’s claims that it sold tickets on cancelled flights will infuriate customers and upend their understanding of what they are actually buying when they book an airline ticket. According to Qantas, customers are not buying a particular flight to a particular destination at a particular time when they meticulously place all this information into the booking engine and press pay. Instead, Qantas maintains the customer is buying a ‘service’, which it defines as a bundle of contractual rights that obliges the airline to do its best to get consumers where they want to be on time.
“So what you are contracting to buy may result in a flight at a different time or on a different airline. Customers understandably believe that when they book and pay — for example, for a Qantas ticket to Los Angeles on March 10 — the airline is legally obliged to take them to that destination on that day. Apparently not, according to Qantas. Qantas did not deny accusations by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that the airline sold tickets on 8,000 cancelled flights, or that it failed to promptly inform customers their flights had been cancelled. Rather, Qantas says it was acting within the law to sell seats on these flights.”
Jews can never feel safe while hostile forces continue to hate — Alan Howe (The Australian) ($): “After the October 7 attacks, some of the world’s most famous buildings were bathed in the colours of Israel’s flag which was adopted 75 years ago last weekend. Strikingly illuminated were the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gates, the Empire State Building, the White House, London’s Guildhall and our own Opera House. At only one was there a riot: the Opera House. Clearly not everyone was surprised by this. Once it was known that pro-Palestinian groups would attend the Opera House to protest against its symbolic illumination, NSW Police warned Sydney’s Jews to stay away.
“But one turned up with an Israeli flag and he was the only person arrested that night. Ironically, pro-Palestinian protesters with Israeli flags were left alone. Of course, they set fire to these while chanting ‘f..k Israel’ and ‘f..k the Jews’. It is one thing to assume that witless students from Melbourne University chanting the Palestinian staple ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ might not be aware those words reflect a modern Middle-Eastern Final Solution: the genocide of the Jews who live west of the Jordan and east of the Mediterranean.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Online
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The Lowy Institute’s Alexandre Dayant, Jessica Collins, Maholopa (Maho) Laveil, and Roland Rajah will speak at the launch of the Lowy Institute Pacific Aid Map online.
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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Actor and human rights activist Nazanin Boniadi will give a keynote lecture on democracy and women’s rights at The Capitol.
Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Queensland’s Health Minister Shannon Fentiman will speak about state health priorities at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.
