HITTING THE GAS
The fuel excise will be slashed for at least six months, reports AFR, as we launch headfirst into budget week. In announcing the measure last night, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg proclaimed it’ll be the first time since the Howard era that the excise has been cut (geez, Howard is coming up a fair bit ($) during this pre-election cycle). Anyway, the idea is to make petrol more affordable at the pump amid the rising cost of living — New Zealand cut its by 25 cents earlier this month, Reuters reports, and people are saving about $17 when they fill up a 60L tank. Back home Frydenberg hasn’t said yet how much we’ll cut it by, but The Australian ($) predicts between 10c and 20c a litre. But even a 5c cut will cost us an eye-watering $1 billion in a budget already strained to the max, AFR warns.
The government’s budget will also include funding for 22 new and existing road and rail projects. Interestingly, it looks like the government will abandon plans to extend the low- and middle-income tax offset to 2022-23, as 7 News reports — that was a rebate of up to $1080 if you earn less than $126,000. It’s expected that the cost-of-living payments (thought to be about $250) for the low- and middle-income earners will be extended, however, to pensioners and welfare recipients, ABC reports.
Speaking of Frydenberg — the SMH reports this morning that “unpopular” Prime Minister Scott Morrison will avoid the Liberals’ most marginal Sydney seats during the election campaign. He’ll leave them to the “more popular” treasurer, the paper reckons, particularly within Dave Sharma‘s fight to hold on to lofty Wentworth. Sharma can’t count on a former PM’s support in the affluent community either — Malcolm Turnbull, who held the seat for 14 years, told the paper he’ll probably go overseas.
SOME CHOICE WORDS
Prime Minister Scott Morrison, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, and the former federal president of the party Chris McDiven will decide who goes into important NSW seats as the federal executive of the Liberal Party take over all remaining contested preselections in NSW, Guardian Australia reports. It’s the latest development in the torrid factional infighting that will see three branch votes abandoned this week — the trio will now put candidates forward for winnable electorates like Warringah, Hughes, Parramatta, Eden-Monaro and Greenway, as well as ones they probably won’t win — like Grayndler (held by Anthony Albanese), Fowler (being contested by immigration spokesperson Kristina Keneally), Newcastle, and McMahon. The grassroots party members were livid Morrison, Perrottet and McDiven were brought in, The New Daily reports, seeing it as an affront to the democratic vote process.
Speaking of messy drama — The Australian’s ($) Sharri Markson is back at it with her acid-green quill this morning, reporting that senior Labor figures warned late senator Kimberley Kitching that Senator Penny Wong wanted to boot her from the party’s tactics committee some 18 months before she was kicked out. It came after Kitching was accused of leaking to former defence minister Linda Reynolds about the Brittany Higgins case. Markson adds that Kitching, while in lockdown, was also told the Senate tactics meeting couldn’t be held over video calls (even though the House of Reps were doing so for theirs), another insight to her feelings of in-party ostracisation.
GAS EFFECT
Traditional owners are battling to stop a massive gas project in the Northern Territory, The New Daily reports. A legal campaign has been launched by litigants from the Tiwi Islands and Larrakia Country to stop two South Korean banks financing the undersea and overland pipeline planned to deliver gas from the Timor Sea to a Darwin shipping terminal. They’re hoping it’ll stop Australia’s second-largest independent gas producer borrowing about $1 billion for the Barossa offshore development. Scientists have continually warned that, to stop warming from reaching 2 degrees, we must not enter into any new fossil fuel projects moving forward.
It comes as south-east Queensland is bracing for even more wild and possibly dangerous weather with severe thunderstorms and flood warnings from the Sunshine Coast down to the Gold Coast, the Brisbane Times reports. Today and tomorrow more than 100 millimetres might fall in isolated areas over three to six hours, the Bureau of Meteorology has warned. Northern NSW is also preparing for the worst — the northern rivers and mid-north coast regions are in the firing line for flash floods amid already saturated catchments and continuing recovery efforts from the last flood disaster, Guardian Australia continues.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
It’s one of life’s pleasures to cozy up under a soft blanket with a cup of hot tea to watch hardcore survivalists desperately try to stay alive in extreme locations. Reality TV show Alone is just that — an epic solo challenge to withstand the elements and the animals with half a million dollars in prize money at the finish line. But what if the prize wasn’t money, but rather your very own gold mine? That’s what YouTuber Matty Clarke is imagining anyway — he’s documenting his life off the grid from the remote Yukon Territory in Canada (quite close to the Alaskan border). He says he is not a trespasser, but a simple guardian, a steward of the land, living alone in the wilderness with only his wits (and his thousands of YouTube fans). In a video, he says, “Can I just show up with all this stuff and end up having a goldmine? I think so.”
Well — the Yukon government doesn’t. It’s a barely populated region and mostly frozen, but the government says people can’t just show up to a clearing in the forest and build homes or pursue mining careers without permits. The government reckons Clarke’s mining claim was erroneous, and anyway, no one’s actually seen him doing any mining since he started squatting in the region. Clarke’s second YouTube season is called Alone in the Yukon — though, as The Guardian points out, his cabin is less than a kilometre from three other squatters, including Simon Tourigny. Tourigny writes — a little smugly — that they “simply took responsibility for our own lives” and are “literally living the dream of millions”. At least it’s good entertainment.
Wishing you a calm Monday morning, folks.
SAY WHAT?
This is not the time to experiment with an untried, untested Labor leader, and this is certainly not the time to try the latest political fad, and that brings me to the so-called community independents.
Julie Bishop
The characteristically clipped former deputy Liberal leader said she had “escaped from the People’s Republic of Western Australia” to be at Liberal Dave Sharma’s campaign launch as he battles challenger businesswoman Allegra Spender. Bishop also called former independents Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor’s reign of power “a disaster”.
CRIKEY RECAP
Australia’s anti-vaccine movement is collapsing
“Reignite Democracy Australia has been begging for funding through platform DonorBox and through their app RDASocial, but neither of those show how much money it’s earning. It lists its cryptocurrency wallet’s address as one way of donating to it. The wallet has received a total of US$7.35.
“The group’s digital reach is shrinking, too. Once riding high with ballooning follower counts on platforms like Facebook and Telegram, Reignite Democracy Australia has been banned from the former and is seeing much less traction from the latter.”
How the sausage is made: what the ‘Mean Girls v Kitching’ saga says of Australian journalism
“The Morrison government has just stopped doing, well, pretty much anything. That’s a disaster for short-staffed media that have come to rely on federal politics to fill the ‘this matters’ content quota. Morrison knows this: he’s built his regular-as-clockwork announceables schedule around it.
“In the fortnight leading into the federal budget, we expect the news out of Canberra to be full of agenda-setting teasers and tips and tactical leaks about what is expected to be the centrepiece of the government’s election pitch. And what have we’ve got? A sometime submarine base. Um… maybe coal for Ukraine.”
Too big to close: casinos break the law with impunity, holding states captive
“Like Crown, Star will undergo the ritual of the re-regulatory moment. That’s the pattern, first created by Australia’s biggest banks, where large corporations exploit their political influence and size to break free of proper regulation, then engage in such egregious misconduct that governments are shamed into calling some extraordinary form of inquiry — usually a royal commission — to investigate them.
“That process leads to shame, board and management departures, promises of strong regulation and overhauls of regulators and… the companies emerge stronger than ever, with governments eventually finding pretexts to drop many of the promises of tougher regulation made during the political heat of the inquiry.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
‘Stronger together’: Myanmar, Russia parade military relationship (Al Jazeera)
In fiery speech, Biden condemns Putin and says he ‘cannot remain in power’ (The New York Times)
China: Shanghai to lock down for testing as COVID surges (Al Jazeera)
‘Expensive failure’: NZ’s cost per prisoner hits $150,000 a year (NZ Herald)
Questions abound as Trump raises — and hoards — huge sums of 2024 cash (The Guardian)
[NZ] Four deaths as 10,239 new community cases reported (Stuff)
Malta Prime Minister Robert Abela claims victory in general election (SBS)
Some residential school survivors say Pope, church owe more than an apology (CBC)
French urged to vote in presidential election as win for Macron ‘not guaranteed’ (The Guardian)
THE COMMENTARIAT
This is what it’s like to witness a nuclear explosion — Rod Buntzen (The New York Times): “In 1958, as a young scientist for the US Navy, I witnessed the detonation of an 8.9-megaton thermonuclear weapon as it sat on a barge in Eniwetok Atoll, in the Marshall Islands. I watched from across the lagoon at the beach on Parry Island, where my group prepared instrumentation to measure the atmospheric radiation. Sixty-three years later, what I saw remains etched in my mind, which is why I’m so alarmed that the use of nuclear weapons can be discussed so cavalierly in 2022.
“Although the potential horror of nuclear weapons remains frozen in films from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the public today has little understanding of the stakes of the Cold War and what might be expected now if the war in Ukraine intentionally or accidentally spins out of control. The test I witnessed, code-named Oak, was part of a larger series called Hardtack I, which included 35 nuclear detonations over several months in 1958.”
A $7 coffee? Let me consult my bank manager — Warwick McFadyen (The Age): “Some tremors come charging into your day like a freight train. Others are future shocks. You know they’re coming, but you can’t even leave the station. I’m sitting at my usual cafe. It’s early morning. I’m with the dog. I’m having a long black, thinking about coffee. The future shock has just left the depot. This is my coffee routine: said long black in the morning. Mid-morning, a cappuccino and, if I’m daring, a mid-afternoon long black or cappuccino.
“It used to be a worry-free activity, me alone with the beans and my thoughts. Not now. An unwelcome guest has sat down beside me, the bank manager/personal loan adviser/loan shark. Yes, I’d like a coffee, please. Do I have sufficient funds to cover the purchase? Let me consult my new friends. Welcome to the future, coming some time to a cafe near you: $7 for a cup of coffee. At my rate of consumption that’s $6000 a year.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Online
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Channel Seven will stream the 2022 Oscars on 7Plus from 11am AEDT.
Kaurna Country (also known as Adelaide)
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The City of Adelaide will host a youth forum for young people aged 12 to 24 to share their view on climate action.
Yuggera Country (also known as Brisbane)
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ABC Radio National’s Paul Barclay is in conversation with researchers Richard Hil and Kristen Lyons discussing their book, Transforming Universities in the Midst of Global Crisis: A University for the Common Good. Catch this one online too.
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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Nobel Prize winner Peter Doherty will discuss his new book, An Insider’s Plague Year, at the Wheeler Centre.
