Watchdog’s bite muzzled for now

FEDERAL ICAC BILL SHELVED

A federal ICAC might not happen this year after all. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowed it would be passed by the end of the year and operating by mid-2023, but the 15-day suspension of Parliament has meant Labor’s anti-corruption commission bill, due to be sent to a joint committee on Wednesday, is shelved for now. Parliament won’t be back until after the national day of mourning on September 22, Guardian Australia explains, but then there are school holidays and Albanese’s trip to Japan for Shinzo Abe’s funeral. We’ll be making up those lost sitting days, the PM said, but we haven’t seen the schedule for new sittings yet. The watchdog might not have a smooth path to legislation anyway, considering several of the new crossbenchers got there on a platform of improved transparency. For example, independent Wentworth MP Allegra Spender wants the commissioner to be completely independent, not a captain’s pick from the PM.

Speaking of scrutiny — since Labor came to power in May, COVID deaths in aged care have risen by 36%, the SMH reports. It’s a grim statistic, and one the federal government should be held to account for, according to Centre Alliance party MP Rebekha Sharkie. She said the Coalition’s aged care minister was grilled daily over deaths in aged care, The New Daily reports, and argued Labor’s Aged Care Minister Anika Wells wasn’t receiving the same. At the moment, 278 aged care centres are battling COVID outbreaks; 1243 residents and 381 staff have COVID. This year, 3000 people have died with COVID in aged care centres.

[free_worm]

BALANCING THE BUDGET

Some $30 billion in regional funding that then Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce squeezed out of the Liberals in return for his support for net zero emissions could be cut in the next budget. Treasurer Jim Chalmers is taking a red pen to a bunch of pledges made in March’s budget under the former government, the SMH reports, though none had begun construction as the Coalition launched headfirst into election season. Incredibly, the paper says, three-quarters of the infrastructure projects promised in the 2019 election and budget haven’t begun either — some $16.9 billion. So far, Labor has vowed to kill off a $500 million regionalisation fund, and a spokeswoman for Infrastructure Minister Catherine King said cuts to the $2 billion accelerator program and the $7.1 billion energy security plan were on the table.

It comes as the Labor government will axe a golden ticket visa scheme that has allowed people to “buy your way into the country”, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said. It’s called the significant investor visa, The Australian ($) explains, and requires a $5 million investment in Australia in return for permanent residency. No one in 10 years has been rejected after applying for the visa — even though it’s supposed to exclude criminals or those with suspicious wealth. O’Neil spoke at the weekend to the SMH about how our immigration system is “totally broken” — she said all the rules we use to decide who comes in don’t work, and we’re losing a “global war for talent” because it “takes too long, it’s too expensive” to come here. “And even if you make it here, you probably can’t stay. We need to rethink that.”

FIT FOR A KING

Queen Elizabeth’s hearse made its way down the Royal Mile in Edinburgh overnight with hundreds lining the streets to watch the procession. The coffin now sits at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, according to the official Twitter account, where it will stay until tomorrow afternoon. There’ll be a service at St Giles’ Cathedral, then the queen will be transported to London. Yesterday King Charles III was officially declared our sovereign (another formality). On Thursday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, his partner Jodie Haydon, acting high commissioner Lynette Wood and Governor-General David Hurley will all go to London to meet the king and visit the queen’s coffin ahead of next Monday’s state funeral. September 22 will be a public holiday for a national day of mourning to coincide with the memorial service of the queen, ABC reports.

So what next? Crikey writes that our coins will change from 2023 to show the face of King Charles, but no plans have been made to change notes or passports yet. Despite the Albanese government having an assistant minister for a republic, Guardian Australia reports Albanese says now is not the time to talk about it. One thing worth continuing the chatter about is climate change, the PM says. It remains to be seen the scope of advocacy Charles will take as monarch — but he has long been an outspoken environmentalist. In 2008, Charles had a 1970 Aston Martin converted to run on bioethanol made from wine and cheese — no joke. Last year he said he “totally understood” the anger of climate protesters, The Australian ($) reports, saying “nobody would listen, and they see their future being totally destroyed”.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

When Shoji Morimoto tells his tax agent what he does for a living, it must feel like a scene straight out of Seinfeld. Morimoto does nothing, and he charges $102 an hour for it. He’s a sort of rent-your-own-companion — people book time with him just to hang out and shoot the breeze. Once he was hired to play on a see-saw at a park. Another time he stood on a train platform and quasi-emotionally waved goodbye to a person departing on the train. He describes the job as mostly eating, drinking and answering “simple questions with simple answers”. Morimoto is very careful about what sort of nothing he will do, however. For instance, he will not move a fridge. Too physical, he says. He will not travel to Cambodia. Too disruptive, one presumes. And nothing sexual, he says. Goes without explaining.

Morimoto’s job might sound frivolous, the sort of thing that could only exist in this age of convenience, but there can be more to nothing than that. A 27-year-old woman named Aruna Chida really wanted to wear a sari out, but she was nervous about it. So she hired Morimoto to accompany her. She doesn’t need to impress him with stimulating conversation, she explains. She can just relax. So how did Morimoto get into it? He worked in publishing and said he often found himself in trouble for doing nothing. So he figured, why not play to one’s strengths? So far he’s been booked more than 4000 times. Huh. It turns out nothing isn’t really nothing if someone is being helped in some small way, I guess. Morimoto says no — I am missing the point. “It’s fine to really not do anything,” he says. “People do not have to be useful in any specific way.”

Hoping your Monday includes a little bit of time to do nothing.

SAY WHAT?

I think dealing with the challenge of climate change shouldn’t be seen as a political issue. It should be seen as an issue that is about humanity and about our very quality of life and survival as a world … I think engagement in issues is very different from engagement in party political matters.

Anthony Albanese

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton argued long-term environmentalist King Charles III should be an “impartial person” when it comes to climate change, but the PM asked why should he be? Climate change disaster is a “big threat”, and Charles has known that for a “long period of time”.

CRIKEY RECAP

With the death of Queen Elizabeth comes the death of a republican dream

Guy Rundle

Sep 09, 2022

174

“Too late here? Too soon. Our rather ad hoc republican movement was just getting itself together, in the time of the Albanese government, to hustle the question of a republic back onto centre stage. But it can’t be done now as a ‘when the queen dies…’ plebiscite, which would have been the best shot at getting a ‘yes’ vote. King Charles III will rapidly naturalise himself as an inevitable monarch, unless he is really, really stupid, and the notion of a break will recede into the haze.

“Any move towards Australian republicanism will have to work on the pure fact of monarchy as its object against. Since Australian republicanism has no social base whatsoever, being, from its ’90s revival, a shy creature of the elites, it will most likely get nowhere. The Albanese government, I would guess, is not going to give the Coalition a culture war they rebuild around.”

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Team PizzaExpress is deeply saddened by Queen Elizabeth’s death

Charlie Lewis

Sep 09, 2022

5

“One does not have to harbour any fondness for her or any royal family member to recognise a simply remarkable life; it would be so merely by its length, merely by the worlds it connects — she was born four years after the Soviet Union was established, and she dies more than 30 years after it collapsed, just one of the many unfathomable historical markers her time on earth easily swallows.

“There will be time enough for all this to be unravelled, but for now, I can’t be the only one thinking “what does PizzaExpress make of this?” Behold the staggering number of brands that, very appropriately, are speaking up at this sad time …”

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James Packer to Crikey: I should have driven Sportsbet’s multibillion-dollar rise

Stephen Mayne

Sep 09, 2022

5

“Packer is pretty punchy when it comes to media coverage, bemoaning the fact that we journalists ‘all miss the woods for the trees’ and that ‘no one ever mentions’ Crown was awarded the employer of the year award three times by the federal government. There you go, James, we mentioned it!

“He’s also annoyed that the newspapers controlled by Nine’s managing director of publishing, former Joe Hockey staffer James Chessell, have still not properly covered the Flower Drum dinner he shared with Peter Costello and then victorian gaming minister Michael O’Brien on February 13, 2011. While O’Brien has publicly declared that Costello, who he once worked for as a staffer, had never lobbied him on anything when serving in the Victorian Parliament, Packer suggests that journalists should directly ask O’Brien precisely what the three of them discussed over dinner that night.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Greece coastguard fires on ‘suspicious’ Turkish cargo ship (Al Jazeera)

Queen Elizabeth II’s cortege arrives to huge crowds in Edinburgh (BBC)

Massive 7.6 earthquake rocks Papua New Guinea (CNN)

Oil prices slump as recession fears grow (The Wall Street Journal) ($)

Te Reo Māori: from banned, to ‘official’, to a ‘taonga’ and beyond (Stuff)

Parties in Sweden election ‘completely even’ as far right surges (Al Jazeera)

Kharkiv offensive: Ukrainian army says it has tripled retaken area (BBC)

Energy crisis to cast Eiffel Tower into early darkness (The Guardian)

THE COMMENTARIAT

The queen has left her mark around the world. But not all see it as something to be celebrated — Matt Fitzpatrick (The Conversation): “But it was also on the question of South Africa’s apartheid regime that the queen showed a rare moment of dissent with one of [her] prime ministers, refusing to accept quietly Margaret Thatcher’s decision not to join other countries in placing economic sanctions on the regime. Elsewhere, Iraq’s complicated history with the United Kingdom, which stretches back to the 1920s, has also been noted in local reports. More recently, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed during the war that Britain began alongside the United States, Australia and other nations in 2003.

“In Malaysia, the role of the British in massacres and mass resettlement programs during the bloody Malayan Emergency (1948-60) and the period of decolonisation is also still clearly remembered. Not only did this conflict rumble on during the early years of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, all attempts at an inquiry into events in Malaya have been stymied by British governments. The queen may have ‘charmed’ some in Ireland with her commemoration of those who fought the British there. But few will have forgotten the role of the British army in Northern Ireland, including the now infamous ‘Bloody Sunday’ Massacre of 1972, nor the queen’s statement on behalf of Boris Johnson’s government rejecting its victims’ demands for justice.”

Living through 17% interest rates scarred Boomers deeply — Margot Saville (The Age): “We didn’t eat out, go away on holidays or even think about starting a family. Like a sword of Damocles, the mortgage loomed over us, changing every aspect of our behaviour. Several of my friends sold up their properties and went back to live with their parents. Others took on a flatmate or a weekend job, hoping that extra $100 a week would stop the bank from foreclosing. Occasionally, we took food to friends’ houses and shared cheap bottles of wine, celebrating the fact that we still had a roof over our heads. We clung on to those properties by our fingernails.

“Twenty years ago, I received a modest inheritance from my aunt. This windfall sent my head spinning with money-making ideas, which I took to an investment expert. His advice was very clear: put the money on the mortgage. The family home was our biggest tax shelter and we should treat it like our most valuable financial asset, he said, followed by superannuation … Being a boomer means that not only can I annoy people by offering unsolicited and unwelcome advice, I can now indulge in the ultimate middle-aged activity: attempting to cheat death.”

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WHAT’S ON TODAY

Online

• Psychologist Kelly Windle, Fisher Leadership’s Adam Kyriacou, Melbourne Sports Centres’ Kate Roffey, and academic Sean Gallagher will speak on a panel about hiring opportunities in the intergenerational workforce.

Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)

• Journalists Andrew Quilty and Tracey Curro will discuss the former’s new book, August in Kabul: America’s last days in Afghanistan, at the Shrine of Remembrance.

Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)

• University of Technology Sydney’s Ramona Vijeyarasa and the Global Institute of Women’s Leadership’s Elise Stephenson will discuss the former’s new book, The Woman President: Leadership, Law and Legacy for Women Based on Experiences from South and Southeast Asia, in a talk held at ANU.