LIVING COSTS WHAT NOW?!
More than 4.7 million Australians will get more money thanks to the biggest indexation rise in 30 years, the Herald-Sun ($) reports. JobSeeker will increase by $25.70 to $677.20 a fortnight (which, it must be pointed out, is still extremely difficult to live on), and the parenting payment single will rise $35.20 to $927.40 a fortnight. Pensioners will get $20 extra a week ($987.60 to $1026.50 a fortnight for singles, or $38.90) whereas couples will get an extra $58.80 a fortnight ($1547.60 per couple). But the fuel excise will return to its normal level after being halved for six months, seeing the price of petrol increased by 25 cents a litre, the AFR continues. Treasurer Jim Chalmers has asked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to keep a very close eye on petrol prices though to discourage price gouging.
It comes as the Reserve Bank will probably lift our cash rate to 2.35% — it’s a full 200 points higher than the election, the paper points out. Yikes. Mortgage holders will be biting their nails — but it may be the last of its kind for a while, an economist told The New Daily, as the central bank could just watch how the market responds for a while. The Greens have called for an interest rate freeze, but another economist told Guardian Australia it could make prices at the supermarket even higher while hurting savers and renters — the whole idea of raising interest rates is to curb inflation by encouraging us to save more and spend less. Things are tough out there though — the national rental vacancy rate is at a record low of 0.9%, the SMH reports, and many Aussies are struggling to find a place as strong demand and scant rentals are seeing competition (and price!) surge.
WE NO LIKE
The Coalition has never been more unpopular, The Australian ($) says. The latest Newspoll shows support for the Liberal and National parties is at a historic low of 31%, down five points since the May election. The last time numbers like this were seen was after the crazy-successful Kevin07 campaign saw Kevin Rudd become PM. It’s increasingly seeming like a matter of when, not if, the opposition will dump leader Peter Dutton — he is extremely unpopular according to The Australian’s poll, holding just 22% of the vote as preferred PM. Conversely, folks are pretty happy with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese so far — his high approval rating is 61%, the paper says. Newspoll spoke to 1505 voters.
Meanwhile, the NSW Coalition has accused the Albanese government of attempting to influence the Fair Work Commission after Transport Minister David Elliott claimed a letter Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke sent to the tribunal could be “improper influence” and may have breached the Fair Work Act. The SMH reports that the Libs say the letter, which flagged a reform that would limit an employer’s ability to tear up enterprise agreements, “sent a clear message” to the unions to keep up the strikes. Hmm. It comes as the future of Australian work will be the top of the agenda this sitting week. Burke will start chatting to business groups and unions about multi-employer bargaining (unions negotiating for workers across several employers at once), ABC reports. The opposition has flat out rejected the concept, saying it gives the unions too much power and could lead to industry-wide strikes. But Treasurer Jim Chalmers waved that away, retorting that it’ll give us much-needed wage growth.
BACK TO WORK
The hotly anticipated climate change bill will finally hit the Senate for debate (you might recall it already passed the lower house). Already key crossbencher David Pocock has slammed the bill for lacking scientific credibility, the Brisbane Times reports, but says the low target is better than nothing. The Greens say it will support the 43% target (and the government needs ’em to get it across the line) but the party says it’ll bring climate trigger legislation to the table too. Basically the trigger would compel Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to reject any new coal and gas projects that emit more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon. It might sound heavy-handed but it must be pointed out that the Greens are being consistent with the consensus of the world’s best and brightest climate brains in the IPCC report, as The Guardian reports.
Hey, speaking of Plibersek, she’s been urged to save the Gouldian finches from an NT defence development, Guardian Australia reports. The gorgeous rainbow-coloured bird has been spotted in bushland marked for clearing. Conservationists say the species “against the odds, is clawing its way back from the brink” of extinction. But it’s not just our avian friends at risk from climate change. Nurses, midwives, psychologists, the Australian Medical Association and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) have released an urgent letter this morning saying climate change-related deaths (like from heat and flooding) are heaping more pressure on top of the already strangled health system in Australia, The Standard reports. More than 40 organisations say they’re seeing the fatalities play out in real time and urged the federal government to act.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
“Science is cool this way,” a neuroscientist told Helen Santoro recently. “Surprises often mean cool discoveries.” In this case, Santoro made speaking, reading and writing her professional passions, even though the relevant chunk of her brain is missing, as she writes for The New York Times. It’s the left side, right above the ear — the temporal lobe, considered “the centre of language production and comprehension”. When Santoro was born, her parents were told she’d never speak and would require around-the-clock care. But Santoro blew science away — her development was typical, and she went on to excel in academics and sport at school. Scientists were mystified — they ran tests on her for years, searching for abnormalities while Santoro dozed off to the melodic whirls in the scanner. At 15, a neurologist named Ruth Nass told her she couldn’t be in their studies anymore — her brain was just too different from others without temporal lobes. Eh, she said. Santoro was a teenager — she was preoccupied with way more important stuff, like crushes and cross-country training.
Two years later, Santoro’s curiosity started to grow. Why was she so unaffected by her hole in the head? She wrote to Nass, asking whether she’d consider taking her as an intern. Nass agreed, though perhaps somewhat begrudgingly. “You were the worst participant because you were perfectly fine!” Nass told her. “You threw off all of my data.” Years later, Santoro’s interest evolved into a degree in neuroscience. She still takes place in research projects, but it wasn’t until she read an article about another woman just like her — perfectly average, apart from the fact that she was missing her whole temporal lobe — that Santoro felt finally seen. Some boffins now suggest language is not confined to one area of the brain as we thought — rather woven like fine thread throughout the entire thing. Others say it shows just how flexible our brains can be — even if we are missing crucial brain regions on our biological maps, sometimes we just reroute ourselves and get on with it.
Hope this serves as a reminder that you, too, can go another way if you need to.
SAY WHAT?
Climate change is already killing Australians.
Fiona Armstrong
The Climate and Health Alliance founder heads up one of more than 40 health and medical organisations urging the Albanese government to take swift action to reduce heat and flooding deaths. The open letter lays out grim statistics — 478 people likely indirectly died as a result of Black Summer’s bushfires, and 23 died in the floods this year. More than 3000 died between 1991 and 2018 because of climate-change-worsened heat.
CRIKEY RECAP
‘A pretty disturbing picture’: why we need to talk about young, right-wing men
“It’s hard to get reliable data on Tate’s audience because many of his videos were uploaded from an opaque network of fan accounts. But he recently described his fans as predominantly young. Jordan Peterson, a similar (though somewhat less crass) reactionary ‘guru’, initially described his online audience as ‘80% male’ and skewing young, though he now claims it has diversified.
“Young people tend to be more left-leaning than older generations. But there is evidently a cohort of young men who are receptive to right-wing — and specifically anti-feminist — commentary. Research suggests this online ‘manosphere’ thrives on social isolation, which has risen significantly among young men. Content creators like Tate seek to convert it into resentment of others, especially women. But how big is this ‘angry young men’ cohort? And do its views just manifest online, or does it translate to the ballot box?”
A trans software engineer is trying to take Kiwi Farms offline with new Australian internet powers
“A software engineer is trying to take offline the far-right hate website Kiwi Farms using new Australian internet powers, thanks to the online forum’s little-known connections to the country. Liz Fong-Jones, who is trans, is a former Google engineer who has been targeted and trolled by Kiwi Farms users in the past.
“The nearly decade-old US website is notorious for hosting hate content — including the Christchurch mass killer’s footage and other terrorist manifestos — and coordinating harassment, stalking and revealing private information about people (known as ‘doxxing’). Kiwi Farms members have relentlessly bullied people who’ve expressed suicidal ideation, often picking on marginalised groups. Multiple suicides have been linked to the forum.”
‘Us versus them’: Australia’s freedom movement wants a parallel Christian society
“The event’s vibe was equal parts formal ball, ‘get rich quick’ seminar and sermon. When I walked into the venue 15 minutes before the speeches began, the large room was filled with people chattering. INXS played softly over the speakers. Some people posed in front of a photo wall emblazoned with ‘FREEDOM SUMMIT DOWN UNDER 2022’ and Reignite Democracy Australia’s logo. There was a faint whiff of body odour.
“The crowd seemed unremarkable from a glance. While skewing older, there were people of different ages, genders and races. Only a few people stood out for wearing freedom movement attire — ‘I have an immune system’ one T-shirt read — but most people were dressed inconspicuously, save for the handful of people wearing tinfoil hats. One attendee donned an outfit riffing on the classic Australian character ‘Conspiracy Dundee’.”
THE COMMENTARIAT
Damning review dumped on footy finals Saturday — Damon Johnston (The Australian) ($): “The IGEM report, which the Andrews government has been sitting on for at least three weeks, is one of the most significant reviews of frontline emergency services conducted in years. All governments ‘take out the trash’ at a time — usually a Friday afternoon — calculated to offer the best chance of limiting fallout from a political problem. It’s a cynical but effective strategy. But the decision to release such an important review on a Saturday takes this disgraceful tactic to new depths. Compounding the disgrace was the absence of the premier from its release. Instead, Emergency Services Minister Jaclyn Symes was pushed out the front door to face the heat.
“Mr Andrews often sells himself as being above political games. But Saturday’s appalling episode was political gamesmanship of the worst kind. One of the most important jobs of any state government is to ensure high standard emergency health services, but the Andrews government has failed Victorians on this front. When confronted with the evidence of its own failure, it’s now clear the government’s first instinct wasn’t to brief the public on what went wrong and how they would fix it. No, this government was focused on saving its own skin by dumping the report on a Saturday, a day when many Victorians were only interested in one event: Geelong v Collingwood at the MCG.”
Under Liz Truss, we’ll be careering into petrolhead politics while the world burns — John Harris (The Guardian): “What a strange, heady, anxious summer that was. For all the talk by many journalists and politicians about the cost of living crisis as something that will decisively arrive in the autumn, it is already here. At the same time, the landscape of this small corner of northern Europe is parched and straw-coloured, while those terrifying images of flooding in Pakistan have illustrated the climate emergency’s even more nightmarish flipside. The pandemic, it turns out, was merely one more crisis on the way to something completely convulsive: payback for our fragile dependence on fossil fuels, and a way of living that is no longer sustainable. With perfect timing, next weekend will see the return to London’s streets of Extinction Rebellion, whose protests will trigger the usual sneers from climate deniers while hammering home 2022’s awful sense of urgency.
“Meanwhile, as if the immediate future is being decided by a TV scriptwriter who specialises in the bleakest comedy, Liz Truss is seemingly about to move into Downing Street after two months of surreal and largely pointless debate in which the climate crisis has barely figured. She and Rishi Sunak may have paid lip service to the government’s nominal target of achieving net zero by 2050 — but whatever their other differences, they have largely spoken with one voice on climate policy: the cursory, slightly bored tone of people who think of it as an optional extra.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Voting on Chile’s proposed constitution: what you need to know (Al Jazeera)
Russia’s unfounded claims of secret US bioweapons linger on and on (The New York Times)
Liz Truss pledges energy plan in a week if she becomes PM (BBC)
Saudi Arabia is betting $1 trillion it can become the next tourist hotspot (The Wall Street Journal) ($)
Hamas executes five Palestinians in Gaza, two for Israel ties (Al Jazeera)
US ambassador to Russia leaves Moscow, will retire (CNN)
Germany announces €65bn package to curb soaring energy costs (BBC)
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Kaurna Country (also known as Adelaide)
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The Royal Adelaide Show kicked off on Saturday and continues with six more days of music, entertainment, arts and events across the city.
Muwinina Country (also known as Hobart)
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Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff and Minister for Science and Technology Madeleine Ogilvie will be at a networking event held in the Premier’s Reception Room at the Executive Building, Murray Street.
Yuggera Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Sexual offences prosecutor Katrina Marson will chat about Legitimate Sexpectations: The Power of Sex-Ed at Avid Reader bookshop. You can also catch this one online.
