LEAK DETECTOR
American officials monitored pro-Julian Assange protests in our capital cities to watch for “anti-US sentiment” after WikiLeaks released 250,000 files in 2010, according to formerly classified documents from the US State Department. Guardian Australia reports the embassy reported back that the Australian WikiLeaks founder was receiving “increasing sympathy, particularly on the left”. It scoffed that our media coverage of the WikiLeaks publication was “sensationalist”, however, and drowned out “reasonable” observers such as the Lowy Institute’s Michael Fullilove, who was mentioned for his summation that the leak was “fascinating” but “reckless”. It’s taken Italian investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi eight long years to get this State Department report — she sued the US because it ignored her for two years. Still, she says, Australia is the worst place in the world to file a freedom of information (FOI) request.
This comes as Assange’s possible final appeal to stop his extradition from the UK to the US will be held in London’s High Court on 20-21 February. He’s wanted on 18 counts, Reuters reminds us, including spying. Two judges will look at the decision to refuse Assange permission to appeal. To other Australian whistleblowers now, and as few as four people are working the triple-zero switchboard across Victoria, the Herald Sun ($) reports, with the paper seeing delays of up to a minute and seven seconds (the target is five seconds). Workers say they’re chronically understaffed, undertrained and underpaid (the base salary is just $48,000) and they’ve launched industrial action. Triple Zero Victoria denied it, saying 95.8% of calls were answered within 30 seconds and staff had increased by a quarter in three years.
SECURITY BLANKET
The Albanese government wants to give the Home Affairs minister power over energy, transport and communications in the case of a cyberattack, Guardian Australia reports, including the ability to give entities “a direction to address issues onsite or suspend operation”. It would also allow the minister — in this case Clare O’Neil — to order companies to share customer data with banks to stop fraud, which would usually be a breach of privacy legislation. She could also force companies to pay for things such as replacement passports in a breach. The draft changes to the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act stem from November’s cybersecurity strategy’s recommendations.
Meanwhile Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says our future will be “defined” by how we approach the Asia-Pacific, the SMH ($) reports, adding we’re seeking security in Asia, not from it. He was at the Lowy Institute last night where he spoke of being confident in the region while also “patient” and “calibrated” in our relations with Beijing. The world is more economically connected than ever, Albanese said, but also “more politically fragmented”. This comes as the government was set to formally decline a US request to send a warship to the Red Sea, The Australian ($) reports, an important global trade route under attack from Houthi rebels in Yemen. (It’s sending the price of freight and oil soaring, the AFR ($) adds.) We’re sending personnel to the Combined Maritime Forces headquarters in Bahrain instead.
OFF THE RAILS
The Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator has revoked the accreditations of rail safety workers in NSW, Victoria and South Australia who have allegedly been using faked training logbooks, The Age ($) reports. The watchdog accused a cohort of staff with qualifications from Skilled Rail Services (also known as Programmed Rail) or certification from Centre for Excellence in Rail Training of not having completed their prac. It’s reportedly a “small” number. It comes as two Queensland passenger trains 30 minutes apart were seconds away from hitting an excavator in 2020, a chilling pic in The Courier-Mail ($) shows, causing the operator to leap off and cling to a fence not once but twice. Cripes. It’s the finding of an Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigation, which looked into a spate of near misses.
This comes as Queensland’s new Transport Minister, Bart Mellish, has been told the plan to build 900,000 homes for 2.2 million people in south-east Queensland doesn’t include any change to public transport, the Brisbane Times ($) reports. But research shows the average bus traveller is on the bus a fifth less than before the pandemic, and the average train traveller takes a quarter less. Interestingly, Philip Laird writes for The Conversation, trains could save the planet. They move just 16.7% of our domestic non-bulk freight — consumer goods, essentially — compared with trucks taking 80%. But trains use a third of the diesel a truck would to transport the same weight, and they used to be the primary mover until the 1960s. We should upgrade the Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane rail corridor to add Wentworth (Macarthur to Mittagong), Centennial (Goulburn to Yass) and Hoare (Yass to Cootamundra) sections, he said.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
More than a dozen rather soggy people were standing on the roof of the Lion’s Den pub in far north Queensland. Muddy flood waters were rushing below them, Cyclone Jasper was pouring down above, and every miserable person was thinking the same thing: what happens now? Suddenly someone spotted a tinnie powering through the water towards the group. In it, Gavin Dear could hardly believe what he was hearing. He’d caught wind that people were stranded on the roof of the pub but there were calls for help that seemed to be coming from the surrounding trees too. As he approached, he saw people clinging to branches — some clinging to life.
There was room in the tinnie for only one person at a time, and Dear, his son and son’s partner G quickly set about pulling the first guy in. After dropping him to safety, they powered back to the pub, approaching another guy who was shaking uncontrollably — maybe hypothermia, Dear feared. After a “biblical” near miss with a floating shipping container, the magnitude of the crisis washed over him. How were they going to save all these people? Suddenly the air was filled with the distinct metronomic sound of a chopper. “This fella is the real hero of the story. His name is Magoo,” Dear told the ABC. With just two seats, Magoo made no fewer than 16 trips to save each of the 16 people on and near the Lion’s Den roof, where no other chopper pilot would fly. “He rescued every one of those people,” Dear said.
Hoping you feel a little brave today.
SAY WHAT?
Until this trial, I hadn’t come across this many references to feelings since reading Dolly magazine at the age of 13. But here it was from grown women, one a journalist.
Janet Albrechtsen
The Australian columnist criticised The Project’s Lisa Wilkinson with a stab at the veteran journalist’s career as the “former editor of Dolly and Cleo, former Beauty and the Beast panellist”, and “morning show host”. Because women’s work can never be serious. Or something.
CRIKEY RECAP
“Sky News has been the key vector. Within a month of Labor’s election last year, the phrase was already on high rotation in interviews and commentary and on chyrons and hashtags. It’s not clear who was the first to release the nickname into the wild: maybe it was Paul Fletcher in a mid-June interview with Sky’s Laura Jayes; maybe it was a contemporaneous commentary from Sky’s Sean Hannity equivalent, Paul Murray.
“It’s illustrative of the key role Sky News plays in Australia’s right-wing media ecosystem. Its key audience isn’t those hundreds — maybe a few thousand — who watch it live on the declining Foxtel platform, or its free-to-air broadcast in regional Australia. It’s the millions exposed to it through YouTube and Facebook.”
“Do these two groups represent the general view of all ultra-Orthodox Jews? Not at all. But their cogent theological argument against Zionism is a problem for the Zionist movement in making a religious claim for its dispossession of Palestinians and continued violence against them. Zionist lobbies have a flip reaction to the large number of atheist or secular anti-Zionist Jews who are playing an increasingly prominent part in the pro-Palestine protests.
“Such Jews are described as ‘renegades’. These accusations restate the arguments made by anti-Semites against Jews themselves in the 20th century: that they were rootless cosmopolitans and disloyal. It’s a measure of the degree to which Zionism has taken on the intolerant and monolithic features of the political movements that oppressed Jews.”
“Our observation when the one-time Liberal troublemaker quit parliamentary politics — and during the truly spectacular failure of his far-right splinter party Australian Conservatives — was that he was somehow less than the sum of his parts. Despite his reputation as a guy who eschewed the dog-whistle for a foghorn, who would roll up his sleeves and say the vile thing others would only hint at, he was always being crowded out.
“Wanna use your parliamentary position to argue Halal certification funds terrorism? Or be sickened at the thought of an anti-bullying program aimed at protecting LGBTQIA+ kids? Join the clubs, buddy. Unfazed by allegations of war crimes against other people, or unconvinced by the whole “science” lark, whether climate or medical? So are the vast majority of your colleagues.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Who is Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas ‘mastermind’ in Gaza? (Al Jazeera)
Iceland volcano: Pollution warning for capital after eruption (BBC)
European Court to rule over Roman Abramovich’s inclusion on EU’s sanctions list (CNN)
Palestinian casualties in Gaza near 20,000 with nearly 2m people displaced (The Guardian)
Canada lays out plan to phase out sales of gas-powered cars, trucks by 2035 (CBC)
Mini-budget: [NZ] Finance Minister Nicola Willis faces biggest test yet of her political career (Stuff)
Tougher French immigration deal threatens Macron’s Parliament majority (Reuters)
Brussels calls on Serbia to probe electoral fraud reports (euronews)
THE COMMENTARIAT
I was a corporate greenwasher. Sorry for making you think metal straws would fix climate change — Wendy Syfret (The SMH) ($): “A tree-planting initiative from a bank that financed the fossil-fuel industry, perhaps. Or a recycled-product launch from a beauty line that tests on animals. Travel guides promoting luxury eco resorts that failed to mention the carbon impact of flying, or household swaps that suggested refillable cleaning products, but didn’t bring up energy providers. And many, many features that assured readers that buying ‘sustainable’ fashion liberated them from the question of why they needed so much stuff in the first place.
“My sins weren’t committed to purposely mislead. I wrote these articles because unlike true and detailed climate reporting, they paid well and were widely read. My work was also successful because I understood the appeal of this content. Beneath all the easy fixes was a promise that we can have it all. It was nice to think this problem is solvable; that we can make a difference without it requiring too much work. This wasn’t the creative life I pictured when I set out to become a writer. But it was a line of work I excelled at. Deep down, I don’t know if I am a talented journalist, but I do know I’m a great greenwasher. I can skim an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, Greta Thunberg op-ed, fashion editorial and Pinterest round-up to spit out 600 words that can convince anyone that buying natural deodorant is an act of resistance.”
Why are doctors still telling women with endometriosis to become pregnant? — Gina Rushton (The Age) ($): “When you have endometriosis, tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows beyond it — into the lining of the pelvic cavity, on the fallopian tubes and ovaries and even on to neighbouring organs such as the bladder. This build-up of abnormal tissue outside the uterus can cause inflammation, scarring and debilitating symptoms including severe pain, often during menstruation. While not having a menstrual cycle (which happens in pregnancy) can ease some pain for some people, anyone with a uterus will tell you there are plenty of ways to dodge a period for a few months without creating an entire human.
“For many people, myself included, the pain can occur regardless of whether you’re menstruating. I have been known to silently bargain with a higher being to trade my pain for other burdens, but even on the days when I can’t walk I wouldn’t have promised parenthood. The European Society for Human Reproduction Embryology (ESHRE) guidelines for management of endometriosis state that patients should not be advised to become pregnant with the sole purpose of treating endometriosis, as pregnancy does not always lead to improvement of symptoms or reduction of disease progression. So why are Australian doctors still telling women to do so, when this advice is not only medically irresponsible, but reinforces a set of sinister and sexist myths?”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Author Richard Glover will talk about his new book, Best Wishes, at Penrith City Library.
