RED-FACED
Hundreds of millions of plastic bags dropped at Coles and Woolies for recycling have been secretly stockpiled in warehouses, The Age reports. Melbourne-based REDcycle claims to collect up to 5 million plastic bags, pet food bags, ice cream wrappers, bubble wrap and frozen food packaging a day from 2000 supermarkets across Australia in the country’s largest plastic recycling roundup — but it has collapsed. Woolies apologised to customers yesterday, and Coles wouldn’t say when it found out REDcycle wasn’t recycling. So why did this happen? The pandemic. REDcycle told the paper three companies that recycle the plastic for it aren’t doing so anymore.
Speaking of the pandemic, we’re about to start a new COVID wave in Australia because of the Omicron variant known as XBB, chief medical officer Professor Paul Kelly says. XBB originated in Singapore, news.com.au reports, and is supposedly resistant to vaccines — it’s been found in NSW, Victoria and WA so far. Kelly says to be alert, not afraid, adding that it might burn out quickly like other variants. It comes as just 31.1% of eligible Australians (over 30 unless you’re immunocompromised) are vaccinated with the fourth jab, The West ($) reports. It’s a bit of a problem — many people had their booster more than five months ago, which means the efficacy is waning. Interestingly, as ABC reports, just 69.2% of us got a third dose, while only 24.4% of Australians got a fourth. And there’s more to come — the Herald Sun reckons that ATAGI will “almost certainly” advise fifth doses in January.
BLUE + GREEN = TEAL
The Victorian Liberals are getting desperate. The Australian ($) reports they’re discussing preferencing the Greens over Labor in key seats such as Richmond (held on a 5.9% Labor swing) and Northcote (1.7%) in an effort to nab some lower house seats and upend the Labor majority. But some Labor folks are reportedly talking about striking a deal with the Libs against a common emerging enemy: those blasted teals. Teals are running in Kew (4.5% Liberal swing) and Hawthorn (0.4% Labor), but Labor might not want to upset them, considering it might need to negotiate with them if it loses its majority. Meanwhile, South Australian Liberal Senator Alex Antic — who this Worm editor notes is aptly named — has accused the ABC of grooming kids, Sky News reports. Antic used Senate estimates to harangue ABC boss David Anderson about an episode of Play School Story Time read by well-known drag queen Courtney Act. Anderson was like, get a grip — the episode is about a girl choosing to wear a suit instead of a dress.
To another Liberal now and a former federal defence minister and deputy leader of the Liberals, Peter Reith, has died aged 72. Reith was the member for Flinders nearly continuously from 1982 until 2001, and served under Malcolm Fraser, Andrew Peacock, John Hewson, Alexander Downer and John Howard, Guardian Australia reports. Reith had Alzheimer’s disease, his family said, and died peacefully yesterday afternoon. He was not without controversy — Reith was a key figure in the 1998 waterfront dispute where a stevedoring business sacked its entire union workforce and hired a non-union one — and the Howard government backed the decision. A Senate committee also found Reith “deliberately deceived the nation” by claiming children were thrown overboard in the 2001 scandal, as the ABC reports, and not correcting the record when it became apparent they weren’t. Howard remembered Reith as a “dear friend” and a “great political colleague”, as The Oz ($) reports, while Opposition Leader Peter Dutton called him a “stalwart” for the Liberal Party.
TOO MUCH INFORMATION
The Andrews government sent Victorians’ COVID contact-tracing data to our crime authority in the hope a data mining platform could get to the bottom of mystery cases, Guardian Australia reports. The platform is called Palantir and was founded by one of former US president Donald Trump’s biggest donors, a tech billionaire named Peter Thiel. The Health Department experimented with Palantir, which was installed on the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s server, but ultimately built something in-house instead. A health spokesperson told the paper the data used was de-identified, but an expert said that’s an oxymoron — she argued it’s easy to re-identify it using the data. Besides, as another pointed out, Victorians didn’t agree to it.
Speaking of a possible unwanted ID — University of Sydney student Freya Leach reckons the law school used her first name on purpose in an assignment question to shame her, the SMH reports. The question is a murder scenario where a character named “Freya” kills someone in a hit-and-run, before having unprotected sex as a HIV-positive person and dying after being pushed from a window. Cripes. The law school says it’s a coincidence, pointing out the name Freya has been used in previous years — but Leach says it’s because she’s on the “University of Sydney Conservative Club executive and am involved in the NSW Liberal Party”, and was recently called a “parasite” after asking members of the Socialist Alternative who Zoom-bombed an online class to leave.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Some wintry nights, Rod Keogh lies staring at his ceiling with a faint smile on his face as haunting vocalisations weave their way through the darkness. Other times it’s more like listening to car doors bang shut all night. In the turquoise beach just outside his door in South Australia’s remote Fowlers Bay, a jumble of baby whales learn crucial survival skills each year from their mums, like breaching, slapping fins and feeding, before they head south. Keogh and wife Simone have lived in the isolated spot since 2008 — the pair, who had figured it was time for a sea change, were inspecting a double-storey home just near the sand when they spotted a whale playing in the beach waters through one of the windows. “We bought it pretty much the same day,” Keogh tells ABC.
Fowlers Bay is actually the largest nursery for southern right whales in Australia, and the couple has run whale-watching tours in winter ever since. And there’s plenty to see. Like new human mums, whale mums like to get together to trade baby-wrangling secrets and support each other. “Basically the boys are cruising the coast looking for partners and the mums are looking for mothers’ groups,” whale expert Claire Charlton said (someone get these whales a copy of The Female Eunuch). It wasn’t always so peaceful — in the 1800s, hunting nearly wiped out the local population, and Keogh has become somewhat of an unofficial guardian as the numbers recover a little more each year. “There’s not many people that know those whales so intimately as what Rod does,” Charlton continues. “The whales feel safe there.” But Keogh says he doesn’t really know how he ended up there. He just has this sense that it’s vital to share the importance of whales, not only for our ecosystem but for our own personal sense of wonder and awe. “When you got a gift like this,” he says, “you’ve got to give it to others.”
Hoping something moves you today in some small way.
Ed note: in yesterday’s Worm we reported that Australia was reopening 100 coalmines. This should have read that India was reopening 100 coalmines.
SAY WHAT?
[We’re] behaving like a football team that won a premiership a couple of years ago. And now we’re not turning up to training. We’ve got another season to play yet. And if people don’t turn up for training, then we all know which way it’s going to go.
Andrew Miller
The Australian Medical Association’s WA spokesman and past president tried to give it to us in a language we could understand — go get your third vaccination, folks. Only two-thirds of eligible Australians have so far, and there’s a new COVID wave on the way, according to CMO Professor Paul Kelly.
CRIKEY RECAP
While Australia burned, Google took fossil fuel money to spread misinformation about climate change
“A think tank funded by fossil-fuel companies used Google advertisements to target people searching for information about Australia’s bushfires during bushfire season, with messages casting doubts on the link between climate change and natural disasters, a new report has found.
“The messages were part of more than $400,000 in ads bought by a group denying climate change, despite Google’s policy prohibiting climate misinformation in advertising … [International non-profit Centre for Countering Digital Hate] concluded that half the US$23.7 million spent on Google search ads was targeted at people searching for environmental sustainability terms such as ‘net zero’.”
Exclusive! Dirty Dan’s dastardly deeds that News Corp’s not yet nailed
“With the Victorian election only weeks away, ’embattled’ Premier Dan Andrews is under intense scrutiny from sections of the media about [checks notes] some veranda steps and a 10-year-old car crash he wasn’t involved in. But could there be worse to come? Crikey satirist Tom Red has the inside skinny on the growing list of the premier’s past indiscretions.
“In September 2006, Andrews was let into merging traffic at the corner of City Road and Power Street in Southbank by a well-meaning motorist, Rhys Cooker. However, after taking full advantage of Cooker’s civility, the premier apparently failed to give the ‘thank you’ wave. Cooker claims the snub left him feeling dirty, despondent and worthless.”
Morrison’s a hypocrite on secrecy, but attacks on him undermine transparency
“Morrison’s many critics were cock-a-hoop on platforms like Twitter. The fact that this related to Morrison’s absurd vanity project with News Corp staffers Simon Benson and Geoff Chambers made it all the more enjoyable. The fact that that vanity project had blown up in his face, with the power of a New Year’s Eve fireworks display, over the revelation of his many secret ministries, was even better.
“This is a whole sumptuous meal of schadenfreude. Trouble is… what exactly has Morrison done wrong? Sure, he misled his colleagues etc etc, but in revealing what he revealed to Benson and Chambers what did he do wrong? He broke no laws, as Dreyfus’ letter makes clear.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Pakistan journalist killed in Kenya was ‘targeted’, says official (Al Jazeera)
French cardinal’s admission renews scrutiny of church sexual abuse (The New York Times)
Europe has ‘warmest October on record’, EU earth program says (EuroNews)
Qatar World Cup ambassador says homosexuality is ‘damage in the mind’ (Reuters)
Pelosi speaks out following violent attack on husband (CNN)
Trudeau accuses China of ‘aggressive’ election interference (BBC)
NZ is ‘60% on the way to wage-price spiral creating hyperinflation’ (Stuff)
Leslie Phillips: Carry On and Harry Potter star dies aged 98 (BBC)
Norwegian princess quits royal duties to work with ‘shaman’ fiance (The Guardian)
THE COMMENTARIAT
No one forced Republicans to do any of these things — Jamelle Bouie (The New York Times): “And yet so much of the conversation about the modern Republican Party assumes the opposite: that Republican politicians are impossibly bound to the needs and desires of their coalition and unable to resist its demands. Many — too many — political observers speak as if Republican leaders and officials had no choice but to accept Donald Trump into the fold; no choice but to apologise for his every transgression; no choice but to humour his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election; and now, no choice but to embrace election-denying candidates around the country.
“But that’s nonsense. For all the pressures of the base, for all the fear of Trump and his gift for ridicule, for all the demands of the donor class, it is also true that at every turn Republicans in Washington and elsewhere have made an active and affirmative choice to embrace the worst elements of their party — and jettison the norms and values that make democracy work — for the sake of their narrow political and ideological objectives. Those objectives, for what it’s worth, are nothing new. To the extent that the Trump-era Republican Party has an agenda, it is what it has always been: to be a handmaiden to the total domination of capital, to facilitate the upward redistribution of wealth and to strengthen hierarchies of class and status.”
Are we finally done with body-shaming? Gen Z gives us a glimmer of hope — Genevieve Novak (the SMH): “Recall the supermarket checkout propaganda of the early ’00s: block letters spelling out an actress’ descent into oblivion for reaching a healthy BMI, the snark of a child actor who took dieting too far. Cellulite circled, crash diets publicised, frail bodies ridiculed, soft bodies gagged at. This was normal, accepted, encouraged. I don’t know when we decided enough was enough. Maybe the Kardashians showed up and disrupted a decade of extreme thinness. Maybe mainstream media finally got diverse enough to drown out the unforgiving uniformity of Eurocentric beauty ideals. Trends come and go, and women’s bodies are no exception. Academics draw lines between times of resource scarcity and the preference for fuller bodies versus times of plenty when thinner bodies denote access to healthy produce and an excess of time to spend at the gym.
“The state of the world is a guide to how you should be living. As low-rise jeans, micro-mini skirts and crop tops return to our glossy pages, I sense that time may be running out on curvier bodies, and the heroin-chic ideals are returning to the spotlight. Hemlines shorten, pants lower in the rise. The Hadids shrink. The Kardashians get sucked out what they just paid to have injected in. We praise Rebel Wilson for her weight loss and Twitter shames Magda Szubanski for talking about health. New folklore is that celebrities are taking diabetes drugs for quick and extreme weight loss. The cycle continues.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Online
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Crikey’s David Hardaker is among the experts who contributed to tonight’s episode of Under Investigation with Liz Hayes which delves into the alleged abuse of vulnerable women at the hands of the Esther Foundation. You can stream it online, and check out Hardaker’s award-winning coverage here.
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Better Read Than Dead is hosting a VIP night with 15% off all books after 5 and canapés and drinks on offer. You can join the VIP members online or on the night.
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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Pulitzer prize-winning author Andrew Sean Greer and writer Benjamin Law will chat about finding joy when we need it most, as part of the Wheeler Centre’s Spring Fling series and held at The Capitol.
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Grattan CEO Danielle Wood and policy specialists will chat about the Victorian election and the big issues, in an event at the State Library Conference Centre.
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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Sydney Peace Prize recipients Megan Davis and Pat Anderson will discuss the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the constitution at the National Press Club.
