George Christensen (Image: AAP/Mick Tsikas)

Crypto Christensen Crikey’s favourite maverick MP George Christensen has many well-known special interests — travelling to the Philippines, spruiking Ivermectin, and most recently threatening the government’s agenda over vaccine mandates. But another lesser-known special interest was disclosed this week: his love of cryptocurrency.

Christensen updated his register of interests on Monday to say he had opened up two crypto accounts — one with the platform CoinJar and another with MetaMask. Given the whole point of cryptocurrency is to make transactions less traceable, we wonder what the point of disclosing the accounts is. But then again, it is nice to see George following the conventions of Parliament.

Advance Australia where? Right-wing lobby group Advance Australia has rebranded itself as “ADVANCE”, updating its website with “a bold new look” that reflects who the lobby group is “today and into the future”. Crikey can’t help but note the fact that the lobby group which champions patriotism over all other things has managed to remove the word “Australia” from its name.

But don’t despair, ADVANCE is still committed to putting “everyday Australians upfront” — the everyday Australians that want to grow nuclear power capabilities, dismantle the ABC and prevent the education system from “brainwashing” our kids. Real everyday stuff. 

Sit this one out, champ Strange to see Peter “no ticker, no start” Costello piping up on the subject of interest rates to Alan Kohler on the ABC’s 7.30 last night. Costello was treasurer in a government that boasted that interest rates would always be lower under the Coalition — before the Reserve Bank (RBA) proceeded to demonstrate him wrong not once, not twice, but six times between 2005 and 2007, as the Howard government’s spending spiralled out of control.

Costello reckons the RBA is being irresponsible in saying “it could hold the three-year rate at 0.1% out to 2024”, despite the fact that the RBA has in fact said it will lift rates only when inflation is sustainably within its target band, driven by wages growth. It doesn’t expect those conditions to be met until 2024.

Costello’s comments seem to put him at odds with Scott Morrison, who is now trying to claim he will keep interest rates at their current levels with his continuing “downward pressure on interest rates”. But Costello, we would submit, shouldn’t be offering any opinions about housing affordability. Australia’s worst housing affordability in recent decades was in early 2008 in the aftermath of his reckless fiscal profligacy that drove interest rates up. It’s currently nearly 20% below the levels reached due to Costello’s stewardship of the nation’s finances…

Myth busting We really do hate to do this, but it seems inner-city leftie types might be barking up the wrong wharf in the current controversy over worker conditions and pay at Newtown bookshop Better Read than Dead. A Sydney literary institution and a small business with just over a dozen staff, the shop is facing industrial action from employees in the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union, who are seeking an enterprise bargaining agreement. Better Read co-owner Terry Greer told The Sydney Morning Herald he not reneged on any agreement as has been claimed, and said the full story would be aired at the Fair Work Commission, with the first mention set down for this Thursday.

But a rumour doing the rounds is the juicy bit: that the shop’s silent partner, businessman Patrick Corrigan, is allegedly the brother of Chris Corrigan, the man who took on the Maritime Union of Australia and delivered dogs and balaclavas to the wharves. In other words the bookshop is the next frontier in union busting. But to let a fact get in the way of the yarn, while Patrick Corrigan is (or was as of 2014) a co-director of the shop, he is not Chris’ brother. So good people of Newtown rest assured: no balaclavas are coming to King Street just yet.