EVACUATIONS AND FLOOD WARNINGS
The Warragamba Dam — Sydney’s main water source — began spilling over at 3am, and more than 20 Sydney suburbs have been evacuated as the east coast low drenches the region, ABC reports. Hundreds of kilometres of NSW’s coast, from Newcastle to Moruya Heads, have received severe weather and flood warnings. So far 12 people are dead, as well as an unknown number of animals. Premier Dominic Perrottet says “saving human life is our number one focus”. Meanwhile in northern NSW, The Australian ($) reports, thousands of homes are underwater in Ballina and at least 17 areas have been declared a natural disaster zone.
Also this morning, four Sikh volunteers have driven a mammoth 34 hours to provide warm vegetarian meals for NSW flood victims, SBS reports. The group navigated blocked bridges and flooded highways to make it to Woolgoolga then onto Lismore, providing soya curry and rice cooked with Indian herbs and “spiced to perfection”, one of the volunteers says. Once they’re set up they will call more volunteers up from Melbourne to help.
In more positive news, the United Nations is about to greenlight a plan to create the world’s first global plastic pollution treaty, The New Daily reports, describing it as the most important green deal since the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Reuters continues that a draft resolution stated that the plastic treaty would be legally binding and address the “full lifecycle of plastic”, which could cover production and packaging design, as well as waste.
HUMAN TOLL OF RUSSIAN INVASION
More than 2000 Ukrainian civilians have died since Russia invaded seven days ago. A Russian negotiator said a ceasefire is on the agenda in talks between Ukraine and Russia. Overnight Russia took control of the nuclear power plant site at Zaporizhzhia, in Ukraine’s south-east. The mayor of the Ukrainian city of Kherson is denying Russian claims it has taken the city — if Russian military has gained control of it, it’s the first big city to have fallen. China and India have abstained from a UN vote demanding Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine, but 141 countries voted in favour. UK PM Boris Johnson has called what we have seen from Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s regime a “war crime“. These are the major developments overnight in the bloody conflict.
Back home, Australia will tap into its 1.7 million barrel oil reserve in the US to keep petrol prices manageable — but Energy Minister Angus Taylor didn’t reveal how much, the AFR says. Our reserve is enough to fuel the country for just 1.5 days. Defence Minister Peter Dutton has warned the “carnage” is going to get worse in Ukraine, and it’s “only China, really, now that can stop Putin”, The Australian ($) reports. Meanwhile experts are warning Australians to be on high alert for cyber attacks, the ABC reports, as the Russian state targets Ukraine. We could be affected by “spill-over”, such as in the 2017 NotPetya malware attack, or Russian nationalists or crime groups like Conti could just decide to turn their attention worldwide.
AGED CARES
One in five aged care staff say they will quit next year, according to a nursing union survey, saying they feel “hopelessness”, “abandonment”, and “demoralised”. Guardian Australia reports that half of all respondents say they’ll actually leave the sector in the next five years. About 269 defence personnel have been deployed into aged care facilities, but it’s well short of the 1700 that the Coalition promised a month ago. The nurses union are this morning urging Labor Leader Anthony Albanese to ensure all aged care homes have a registered nurse on site at all times, the SMH continues, which was a recommendation from the Aged Care Royal Commission. The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation is a powerful body, made up of some 310,000 members — making it Australia’s largest union. The union is also calling for the entry-level wage for aged care nurses to increase from $25.79 to $34.24 — the same as hospital nurses.
Backing the nurses seems like a good election move for Albo — so why hasn’t he said anything? AFR’s Craig Emerson says Labor are purposely keeping their cards close, after 2019’s election loss where the party released more than 240 policies. Emerson says it’s infuriating for many who wish to smear Labor using tried-and-true scare campaigns about “death tax”, “housing tax”, “retirees’ tax” and “carbon tax”. Plus, he continues, times are tough — keeping it simple with signature policies helps people feel less uncertain or fearful. Time will tell whether avoiding policy clutter ahead of the election is a tactic that works, I guess.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
The Moon is about to get pummelled with 3000kg of space junk, which will smash a crater big enough to fit a bus or two. It’ll smash into the far side of the Moon on Friday at some 9300km/h. So where did this mysterious space junk come from? Well, asteroid tracker Bill Gray thought it was from a SpaceX Falcon rocket, which shed its upper stage in the 2015 launch of a deep-space climate observatory for NASA. But then Gray was like, actually looking at the markings on it, it’s probably from China’s 2014 rocket which went to the moon and back for samples.
We don’t need to worry about tsunamis or anything like that though. Mostly scientists are just wishing it was landing on the lit-up side so we could watch the spectacular impact. It’s pretty remarkable it’s hitting the Moon at all — the fact that the orbits line up in what is essentially a super-massive, nearly totally empty space is a bit of a fluke — check it out. Asteroids and meteors, plus human-made bits and bobs, do occasionally hit the Moon though. It appears so pockmarked because, well, first of all it has no atmosphere to protect itself, and second, it has no weather to erode the impact marks off its surface. Someone get the Moon a good retinoid cream.
Wishing you a little wonder and awe about it all today.
SAY WHAT?
This pathetic game of climate porn happens every time we get some natural disaster, wet or dry, fires or floods … We can’t afford this con any more. Not now the war in Ukraine has exposed the lethal danger of falling for green myths.
Andrew Bolt
The columnist showcased his superhuman mental gymnastics by somehow linking Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the east coast low and the larger issue of climate change. The brazen op-ed is just one of several examples lately of conservatives using the conflict as a platform for them to complain about trans rights ($), women’s rights, and low birth rates.
CRIKEY RECAP
I spent the day watching Russia Today — and now I’m questioning my grip on reality
“Almost every ad is entirely about how you can’t trust ‘corporate media’, mixed with a promise to tell you the truth. They are disorienting, assaulting to the senses and, in a way, surreally poetic, like phrases translated from English into several other languages and back again …
“RT America is every 24-hour news channel you’ve ever watched remembered in a fever dream. Uncanny and off and slightly cheaper, some parallel world where Miller and Shatner are still big stars. And, most eerily, a world where you can talk about Russian foreign policy… and barely ever mention Putin.”
Richard Colbeck is a national disgrace — and an affront to his own side of politics
“Indeed they’ve been telling us with their feet as they abandon the sector in droves for better-paid, lower-stress jobs. If Colbeck doesn’t believe workers or aged care unions that have called for pay rises for decades, he could ask the aged care providers whose interests the Coalition places above the needs of aged care residents and workers …
“Or he could read the aged care royal commission report — a document he claims to be implementing but doesn’t seem to have opened — which spells out why poor pay, lack of training and lack of a professional career structure make aged care such an uninviting place to work.”
Fact-checkers demolish Ukraine misinformation. Here’s 6 of the best
“One of the most difficult but crucial tasks of fact-checkers is to monitor politicians’ and leaders’ statements. In this conflict that’s mostly included pointing out false statements by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.
“A Ukrainian website called stopfake.org has been tracking the inaccuracies, including the post below where Russian media claimed ‘the civilian population of Ukraine is not in danger’. To factcheck this, stopfake.org published evidence that civilians had been killed, injured and displaced by Russian strikes.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Navalny urges Russians to protest daily against Ukraine invasion (Al Jazeera)
Hong Kong, buckling under COVID, leaves its most vulnerable in the cold (The New York Times)
European gas prices hit record high as Russia supply fears grow (Al Jazeera)
Plastic pollution: Green light for ‘historic’ treaty (BBC)
Apple, Exxon, Ford, others retreat from Russia; VW warns of disruption (The Wall Street Journal) ($)
Powell holds firm on rate rises despite Ukraine (AFR)
Clean-up begins for Parliament and Wellington after protesters evicted (Stuff)
Russia says its economy is taking ‘serious blows’ as isolation grows (CNN)
THE COMMENTARIAT
They are ‘civilised’ and ‘look like us’: the racist coverage of Ukraine — Moustafa Bayoumi (The Guardian): “The BBC interviewed a former deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine, who told the network: ‘It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair … being killed every day.’ Rather than question or challenge the comment, the BBC host flatly replied, ‘I understand and respect the emotion.’ On France’s BFM TV, journalist Phillipe Corbé stated this about Ukraine: ‘We’re not talking here about Syrians fleeing the bombing of the Syrian regime backed by Putin. We’re talking about Europeans leaving in cars that look like ours to save their lives.’
“In other words, not only do Ukrainians look like ‘us’; even their cars look like ‘our’ cars. And that trite observation is seriously being trotted out as a reason for why we should care about Ukrainians. There’s more, unfortunately. An ITV journalist reporting from Poland said: ‘Now the unthinkable has happened to them. And this is not a developing, third world nation. This is Europe!’ As if war is always and forever an ordinary routine limited to developing, third world nations. (By the way, there’s also been a hot war in Ukraine since 2014. Also, the first world war and second world war).”
We can prepare for extreme weather events like this — and we must — Andrew Gissing (The Age): “According to the latest climate science behind this week’s report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we will see worsening extreme weather events. This will only place greater pressures on insurance premiums, making insurance unaffordable for people in the highest-risk areas. This is likely to place greater need for government relief and recovery payments …
“Our governments spend 97% of such disaster money on recovery and only 3% on preparation and mitigation. This balance needs to change, and we can no longer look to the past alone to predict the future. We know mitigation measures can reduce insurance premiums. When a levee was built in Roma in Queensland following the 2011 floods, insurance premiums dropped by about half … Warning systems save lives and reduce damage. Risk Frontiers research shows that businesses could save up to 80% of losses with early warning.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
-
Melbourne Fashion Festival kicks off today, running until March 12, with runway shows, workshops, and loads of other events across the city.
-
Uncle Kutcha Edwards will perform a live music pop-up gig on the the forecourt of State Library Victoria as part of the Victorian Government On The Road Again initiative.
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
-
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims will give the annual enforcement and compliance update at an event held by CEDA.
