Over Xi’s plan for China

XI AND DO

China’s President Xi Jinping has given his defence force the power to protect its interests abroad, The Global Times reports, in what could be the legal basis for the Chinese military going into other countries. The order outlines China’s “military operations other than war”, as news.com.au reports, and the US has had a similar program since 1993, the SMH adds — but Taiwan is particularly worried about the wording because it sounds a bit like Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. One analyst told ABC it’s a good way to do more grey zone activities (harmful acts that aren’t that of war). But the state-owned Global Times tweeted that it just allows troops to carry out missions like disaster relief, humanitarian aid, escort, and peacekeeping. Hmm.

It comes just days after China’s defence minister warned the nation would “not hesitate to fight”, “fight at all costs”, and “fight to the very end” if anyone tries to secede Taiwan, BBC reports. China says Taiwan is theirs, but Taiwan has long considered itself a sovereign nation (not under the authority of anyone, including China). Last month, US president Joe Biden said China was “flirting with danger” by flying warplanes so close to Taiwan, and for the second time this year Biden promised the US would defend Taiwan if China attacked it. Would we join our biggest ally in defending Taiwan? It’s “inconceivable” that we wouldn’t, then defence minister Peter Dutton said, though he later clarified we’d make the call in the moment, as Guardian Australia reports. But importantly, newly minted Defence Minister Richard Marles pointed out to Al Jazeera that we do not support (and have never supported) Taiwanese independence either. Basically, we don’t want to see any action taken from either China or Taiwan. Everyone be cool.

[free_worm]

NOT SHOWING RESTRAINT

Victorian hospitals handcuffed patients to beds 56% more in 2020-2021 than the year prior, The Age reports, even though the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System called for the practice to be banned. It’s the grim finding of a new report from the Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council, which says Victorian hospitals are among Australia’s worst for restraint and seclusion — above the national average. Also this morning, two-thirds of people in NSW who needed an ambulance waited more than 15 minutes for one, the SMH reports, making it the longest wait time on record. From January to March, there were 50,000 more triple-0 calls than the same time last year as hospitals melted down amid pandemic pressures.

Meanwhile, half of all aged care residents are not fully boosted with the COVID-19 fourth shot, Guardian Australia reports, even though there are 646 outbreaks in aged care facilities across the country. It’s down 48 from the week before, so it’s heading in the right direction, but Health Minister Mark Butler says the booster rollout is going way too slow. And yet masks are no longer needed in airports, according to the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee — they’ve advised states can drop the mandate from this Friday, news.com.au reports. It means travellers won’t have to wear masks in airports, The New Daily says, though you’ll still need one on your flight.

A COAL FEW WORLD

WA’s coal-fired power plants will shut by 2029, The New Daily reports. Premier Mark McGowan said rooftop solar and other renewables are cheaper and work better — if his state did nothing, energy bills would be $1200 more expensive by 2030. The closure of the Collie and Muja power plants will reduce government emissions by 80%. Also this morning the AFR reports that the NSW government thought about buying Eraring power station last year — Australia’s largest coal-burning station, which supplies a fifth of NSW’s energy. The government ended up saying no, because it wanted to leave room for other investments in energy, so Origin Energy decided to announce the early closure of the plant in 2025. It would cost an eye-watering $10 million a month to operate from mid-2025.

Meanwhile, eastern Australia from Tasmania to Queensland is in the grips of an electricity shortage. The Australian Energy Market Operator warned there could be blackouts in Victoria on Wednesday, Guardian Australia reports, but cancelled the alert. So what’s going on? Victoria’s energy minister said power companies were engaging in “strange behaviour” in sitting on reserves of electricity — could they be gaming the system? The Australian Energy Regulator suspected so, The Australian ($) reports, accusing generators of withholding power to manipulate pricing in what the paper called an “unprecedented” step. The regulator told them they’ve got to keep the capacity in the market, even though wholesale prices are exxy.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Denmark and Canada have decided to make peace in a 50-year conflict over a bottle of whisky, BBC reports. It started in 1973 in the icy Nares Strait — it’s this 35km stretch of water near Canada, but it’s Denmark’s territory. One day Denmark told Canada, OK, let’s draw a border here to make things official, and we’ll take outlier Hans Island too, just to keep things neat. The word “island” is doing some heavy lifting here — Hans Island is little more than about a 1.2-square-kilometre chunk of rock, with no inhabitants. But Canada was like, no way — we’re exactly 18km from Hans Island, and we want it. So in 1984, Canada sent troops to the rock with a maple leaf flag and a bottle of Canadian whisky, which they were instructed to bury.

Denmark was like, oh — now it’s on, and an actual government minister set off for Hans Island. He jammed the Danish flag down instead, and for good measure, dug up the whisky to replace it with a nice bottle of Danish schnapps. He wrote a note that read “Welcome to Danish Island”, and seeing the matter as settled, departed. In the 49 years since, dozens of Canadians and Danes have partaken in the good-natured squabble, travelling to the rocky island to leave their own flags and notices. Finally, in 2018, Canada and Denmark decided to settle things, each appointing officials to a portly joint working group to work out who owns Hans Island. It took the officials four years to determine that… they’ll go halves.

It’s great to be back with you after my four-day break, and I’m hoping your day ahead is as straightforward as the joint working group’s four-year project.

SAY WHAT?

Mistakes were made in our approach to Wilson and I apologise for them … the inclusion of a deadline was an error as it appeared to be an ultimatum.

Bevan Shields

The Sydney Morning Herald editor accepts that giving Rebel Wilson two days to respond about whether she’s in a same-sex relationship might’ve seemed like the paper was wedging her, but perhaps the more pertinent ultimatum was his gossip reporter Andrew Hornery telling Wilson’s rep “I have enough detail to publish” in his request for confirmation. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Wilson revealed the relationship herself on Instagram in the days that followed.

CRIKEY RECAP

Australia’s mainstream media is stumbling from crisis to crisis

Bernard Keane

Jun 14, 2022

49

“The country’s largest media company, the Peter Costello-chaired Nine (as a political party masquerading as a media company, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp shouldn’t be included) faces serious questions about its leadership. Last night, ABC’s Media Watch showed the awful misjudgment of Nine journalists in signing up to promote gambling corporation Sportsbet — a misjudgment waved away by Age executive editor Tory Maguire as ‘a bit of a mixup’ …

“Meanwhile at Seven, Kerry Stokes continues to fund the defamation case of Ben Roberts-Smith — a Seven executive, no less — against Nine, as part of Stokes’ apparent enthusiasm for backing any ADF personnel accused of war crimes. Again, leadership and judgment.”

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Sydney Morning Herald editor tells staff he wouldn’t have ‘outed’ Rebel Wilson if she didn’t respond to the paper’s request

Cam Wilson

Jun 14, 2022

24

“In a copy of the message seen by Crikey, [Bevan] Shields gave new details about the process of contacting Wilson’s representatives to confirm her same-sex relationship, a decision that led to international backlash over whether the paper was threatening to out the Australian movie star.

“Shields, who started as editor in January, told SMH staff that Andrew Hornery had told him of his intention to contact Wilson’s representatives. He also claimed that, in a detail that went beyond his initial public response to the saga, he would not have published the piece had Wilson not responded to SMH’s request.”

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Australia at the reform crossroads: NSW charges ahead — but who’ll back it?

Bernard Keane

Jun 14, 2022

37

“Childcare has hitherto been a Commonwealth area. Kean’s investment marks a historic entry into the sector and complements Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s plan to further expand childcare subsidies. In fact, expanding the workforce if anything is crucial if the Commonwealth’s funding increases aren’t simply to push more demand into a system with a fixed supply of carers.

“Pumping billions into more childcare capacity will be popular. But Perrottet and Kean also want to tackle the much harder dumping of stamp duty, following the ACT, which is halfway through a 20-year transition to a land tax. The NSW government is moving ahead with the plan flagged earlier, in which buyers can opt to pay an annual land tax rather than stamp duty when buying. If they do, the land tax remains with the house in perpetuity.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

For its next zero COVID chapter, China turns to mass testing (The New York Times)

How will the Prophet remarks row affect India-GCC ties? (Al Jazeera)

Coinbase to lay off 18% of staff as cryptocurrencies continue to struggle (The Wall Street Journal) ($)

Alexei Navalny has gone missing from Russian prison, say allies (The Guardian)

Reserve Bank governor predicts 7% inflation by year’s end, warns of further rate hikes (SBS)

Monkeypox to get an [as yet undecided] new name, says WHO (BBC)

More than 100 Republican primary winners support Trump’s baseless election claim (The Guardian)

French burkini ban challenged by [French city] Grenoble in top court (BBC)

Officer who displayed Nazi insignia will receive $1.5 million to resign (The New York Times)

THE COMMENTARIAT

The RBA should have realised the party was over — Dimitri Burshtein (The Australian) ($): “It was bound to end in tears. A generation of central bankers, unscarred by prior inflation experiences, seemingly ignoring modern history and imbued with spreadsheet-driven epistemic immodesty, have led us to a new inflation crunch. Global sharemarkets, which are forward looking, are sending increasingly concerning signs that Australia and much of the world is entering into a period of economic turbulence. COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war may be contributing factors but are not the drivers. Much like in the 1970s, inflation markers were present well before various geostrategic shocks.

“Inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods and services. When this happens, demand outstrips supply, causing prices to rise. Loose monetary policy by central banks not only facilitates too much money in an economy but it absolves governments from recognising the true costs of poor public policy choices. Much is said about the economic lethargy of centrally planned economies. Yet right in the heart of most market economies, central banks continue to tinker with the price of money — an activity that flows through the global economic bloodstream. The US Federal Reserve records the period 1965 to 1982 as the Great Inflation. During this period historians noted ‘the greatest failure of American macro-economic policy in the post-war period’. Such policies included unprecedented peacetime wage and price controls.”

Human-like programs abuse our empathy – even Google engineers aren’t immune — Emily M Bender (The Guardian): “The Google engineer Blake Lemoine wasn’t speaking for the company officially when he claimed that Google’s chatbot LaMDA was sentient, but Lemoine’s misconception shows the risks of designing systems in ways that convince humans they see real, independent intelligence in a program. If we believe that text-generating machines are sentient, what actions might we take based on the text they generate? It led Lemoine to leak secret transcripts from the program, resulting in his current suspension from the organisation.

“Google is decidedly leaning in to that kind of design, as seen in Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai’s demo of that same chatbot at Google I/O in May 2021, where he prompted LaMDA to speak in the voice of Pluto and share some fun facts about the ex-planet. As Google plans to make this a core consumer-facing technology, the fact that one of its own engineers was fooled highlights the need for these systems to be transparent … The problem is that we can’t help ourselves. It may seem as if, when we comprehend other people’s speech, we are simply decoding messages. In fact, our ability to understand other people’s communicative acts is fundamentally about imagining their point of view and then inferring what they intend to communicate from the words they have used.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon–Brookes, NSW Treasurer and Energy Minister Matt Kean, Fortescue Metals Group’s Elizabeth Gaines, Oz Minerals’ Rebecca McGrath, and BHP’s Fiona Wild are among the speakers at The Australian Financial Review’s ESG Summit.

• Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue’s Lucy Turnbull, and NSW Treasurer Matt Kean are among the speakers at the Ignite GWS Summit.

Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)

• Google’s Stefanee Lovett, ACT Government’s Antony Stinziani, and the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment’s Alicia Lillington are among the speakers at D&I: How Mentoring Plays a Key Role in Career and Business Growth.