MEAN GREEN MACHINE
Australian food is cultivated with at least 70 pesticides that have been banned in the EU and, in some cases, the US, Guardian Australia reports, because they’re dangerous to human health or else cause environmental havoc. “Globally, Australia is one of the heavier users of pesticides in food production,” the paper adds. Among them is the “highly poisonous chemical” paraquat, which has been linked to Parkinson’s — check out the list here. Yikes. How do we know this? The proposed trade deal between Australia and the UK has thrown light on all the chemicals we use to create our food that wouldn’t fly elsewhere. UK environmental campaigners are fuming — they say our “fresh food” reputation on the world stage means we fly under the radar for safe use, and back on home soil our own environmental groups are calling on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to greenlight an investigation into our chemical regulation in agriculture. It could reach a sympathetic ear — it comes as Albanese’s chief adviser on agriculture policy Skye Laris has campaigned against live exports and condemned animal farming, ABC adds.
Speaking of green (alleged) toxicity, Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe’s former chief of staff David Mejia-Canales says he was “scared” and in “shock” by Thorpe’s “truly awful” outburst in a meeting with two Indigenous leaders last year, according to the SMH. Mejia-Canales wrote an email to the pair, Marcus Stewart and Aunty Geraldine Atkinson, describing Thorpe’s behaviour as “appalling” and expressing regret he did not end the meeting sooner. All four declined to comment so it’s not quite clear what went down — the paper obtained the email. Atkinson has said she saw the parliamentary nurse after an alleged tirade of abuse from Thorpe, although Thorpe said at the time it was a “robust discussion”.
[free_worm]
COMMISSIONING CHANGE
Any person who tries to influence a public official or politician — including union officials, developers, donors and lobbyists — will be a potential target of Labor’s proposed federal ICAC model. But the AFR says pork barrelling will be on the table only if it was found to be “serious or systemic corruption”. Labor’s anti-corruption commission will have a pretty broad remit and will allow public hearings too — though Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus waved away any suggestion that the teal independents (who campaigned on a platform of integrity) and the Greens influenced it. He’ll present the details to caucus today. Speaking of the independents, Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel delivered a rousing speech about media diversity to Parliament yesterday ahead of a possible inquiry — check it out here, courtesy of Crikey.
Meanwhile, the royal commission into robodebt begins in Brisbane today. ABC has a great explainer delving into what we can expect and how we got here — the unlawful debt recovery scheme targeted 433,000 vulnerable Australians to the tune of $2 billion in payments. The commission will get to the bottom of the debacle, which was linked to several deaths, and hopefully ensure the victims are heard. Meanwhile, NDIS Minister Bill Shorten says we might add ADHD to the NDIS, The Age reports. It affects one in 20 kids, and Shorten says he’s looking into expanding the eligibility to loop in the neurodivergent among us too. It came just weeks after comedian and author Em Rusciano (who, along with her own diagnosis, has a daughter with ADHD) told the National Press Club that “ADHD needs to be included in the NDIS as a primary disability” because without “proper government recognition” it’s so hard to get testing and therapy.
COURT IN THE ACT
The United Nations has found the Australian government violated its human rights obligations through climate inaction, the SMH reports, after a history-making legal case ruled in the favour of eight Torres Strait Islanders. This is the first time residents of a low-lying island have brought action against a nation state. Island inhabitants the world over are acutely vulnerable to rising sea levels caused by the world’s sluggish climate action — one of the claimants said the Zenadh Kes community was already “struggling” and “suffering” after flooding from tides destroyed family graves. The UN has asked our government to pay compensation.
To a decidedly different legal stoush now — Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has given up on trying to get an appeal for his failed defamation case, The Age reports. Cast your mind back and you may remember refugee advocate Shane Bazzi’s six-word tweet accusing Dutton of being a “rape apologist”. Initially the judge found in Dutton’s favour, but upon appeal in May, the Full Court sided with Bazzi. Dutton filed a discontinuance on Friday — the court finalised it yesterday. Meanwhile, it seems Optus is facing the wrath of its customers — law firm Slater and Gordon is looking into a massive class action over the data breach that saw almost 3 million customers lose a chunk of personal data.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
The nerds at NASA are going to smash a spacecraft into an asteroid hurtling through space this morning. It’s going to happen about 11 million kilometres from where you’re sitting now — and you can watch a livestream from 8am. The recipient of our pummelling will be a 163-metre-wide asteroid called Dimorphos that is orbiting a larger, 780-metre-wide asteroid. Fans of the ’90s disaster flick Deep Impact may be particularly thrilled by this, though thankfully it’s not in an effort to thwart an extinction-level event — we’re just testing out whether we could redirect an asteroid if it was on a collision course with earth (this one isn’t). It’s called a double asteroid redirection test, or DART (an apt acronym). We launched the 540 kilogram spacecraft in November 2021, and it’s been powering through the galaxy ever since. The boffins theorise that we only need to change the asteroid’s speed slightly to change its path — similarly, if a killer asteroid was hurtling towards earth we might not need to pulverise it completely, as Hollywood would have us believe (though in 2014, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said Deep Impact actually has “really good science” baked into the plot).
Anyway, we’re testing this theory by causing a head-on space crash at some 20,000km/h. It won’t be one guy and a joystick controlling the trajectory (how cool would that be?) — NASA says software will determine the point of impact. There will be a nail-biting moment in the last 50 minutes, however, when the software will need to differentiate between the larger asteroid and Dimorphos, as BBC writes. Assuming all goes well, the livestream will cut off when the spacecraft hits, but luckily a mini satellite released from the spacecraft a few days ago will record the whole shebang from 50km away. Success will be measured by whether Dimorphos’ orbit (about 12 hours at the moment) is shortened by 10 minutes. But the chances are slim that we’ll actually need to do this in future — scientists reckon we’ve identified 95% of all monster asteroids that could cause a global calamity. The other 5%, however…
Hoping you live today like it’s our last. Even though it isn’t. Probably.
SAY WHAT?
Last week, we saw the biggest increase in the pension in more than a decade.
Richard Marles
The acting prime minister made the comment when asked what Labor was doing to lower the cost of living. Hmm, not quite — the indexation adjustment takes place twice a year and is automatic. The reason it was larger this year was because of high inflation.
CRIKEY RECAP
‘It’s a horrible, horrible place’: ABC goof reveals David Speers’ true inner thoughts
“Thanks to a goof somewhere in the ABC, this week’s Insiders featured a little more must-see footage than usual. Regular viewers would have seen Liberal Senator Jane Hume, last seen on the election trail conjuring George Bush’s rhetorical gifts, announce with admirable candour that the Liberal Party was not really into this whole ‘policy-making’ lark.
“When asked by host David Speers about where the Coalition now stands on the fuel excise policy it put in place, she said: ‘We don’t have policies. We are in opposition, not in government.’ But the real candour came from Speers himself, captured on a hot mic in uncut footage seemingly uploaded accidentally by the ABC.”
It’s too late to undo the Optus hack. How do we stop the next one?
“The listing included a sample of users’ data. Crikey was able to verify the data of at least one Optus customer listed. This user’s data is not found in the data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned, suggesting that it has not been previously released in other breaches. Other researchers and outlets have also been able to confirm data with other customers.
“Taken together, this suggests that Optusdata has been able to access Optus customer data — although this does not substantiate the account’s claim about the scale of the leak. Optus has not confirmed that Optusdata’s database is real. The company said it has been advised by the Australian Federal Police to not offer further comment. The account told Crikey that they had not yet heard from Optus. They said they would delete the information if the ransom was paid …”
Why was Dan Andrews a no-show at the Grand Final?
“We understand Andrews watched the game at home and sent some local constituents in his place. It put one tipster in mind of the time then NSW premier Neville Wran reportedly turned up to the Sydney Cricket Ground in the late ’70s and one of the notorious ‘green coats’ who used to man everything at the SCG (apparently a classic case of a uniform giving the wearer a disproportionate sense of power) refused to let Wran’s car into the members’ area.
“Wran ended up in the public stands, and was greeted with the yell ‘Don’t piss on the premier!’ when using the facilities. The SCG Trust was apparently mortified and had Wran back the next year to do an honorary kick-off. It appears Andrews suffered no such indignity this year.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
At least 15 dead, 24 wounded in Russia school shooting (Al Jazeera)
Edward Snowden is granted Russian citizenship (The New York Times)
Cuba votes to legalise same-sex marriage (BBC)
Hurricane Ian could be ‘something that we haven’t seen in our lifetime’, [Florida] forecaster says (CNN)
Pound comes under new pressure after Bank of England fails to raise rates (The Guardian)
Earthquake: 4.7 magnitude quake hits west coast region [of New Zealand] overnight (NZ Herald)
Canada brings its pandemic border rules to an end (CBC)
Man who organised queen’s funeral sentenced in private for driving offence due to ‘national security’ (The Guardian)
THE COMMENTARIAT
What will its first far-right leader since WWII mean for Italy? — Sofia Ammassari and Duncan McDonnell (The Conversation): “Within the overall success of the right, there are winners and losers. [Giorgia Meloni] is obviously the former, and [Matteo Salvini] is the latter. Salvini is the politician who, having revitalised his party between 2013 and 2019, has now overseen a huge fall in its support from over 35% in the polls in July 2019 to under 10% today. Only the lack of an obvious successor may save Salvini from losing his party’s leadership.
“For the main party on the left, the Democratic Party, it’s yet another bad day. Having dropped to under 20% in the 2018 general election, they look unlikely to do much better than that this time. Their failure to find a campaign narrative beyond “stop the far right” and to create a broader coalition underlined the strategic ineptitude that has long undermined the Italian left. Another ‘first’ of this election is the turnout, which has slipped below two-thirds for the first time in Italian postwar history, declining from 73% in 2018 to 64% in 2022. This speaks to the image of a country in which large swathes of the population, especially in the south, are disillusioned with decades of politicians who have promised the earth and delivered little.”
Avoiding the recession we don’t have to have — Craig Emerson (the AFR): “Australia need not follow the US into recession. In important respects, Australia’s economic circumstances are different from those of the US. They warrant a less aggressive approach to monetary policy than that being pursued by the US Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is now conceding the US might be heading into recession. If so, America will have plenty of company without us – Britain is already there, while the eurozone is heading that way and Chinese growth is the slowest since the beginning of the reform era 44 years ago. The World Bank is now warning of a global recession.
“On September 16, Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe told a House of Representatives economics committee meeting that the board would consider a further increase in the cash rate at its October meeting, while also indicating that the pace of cash rate increases might slow. But since then, the Federal Reserve has increased its benchmark rate by a further 0.75 percentage points, with its chairman, Jerome Powell, warning that the prospects of avoiding a US recession are diminishing. The median outlook for the Fed funds rate for end-2023 among its open market committee members is 4.5%.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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Minister for Sport Anika Wells, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury Andrew Leigh, and independents David Pocock, Allegra Spender, Zoe Daniel, Sophie Scamps and Monique Ryan will partake in the Australian Sports Foundation Pollie Relay Dash at Federation Mall.
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Former Australian of the Year Grace Tame will launch her memoir, The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner, at City Recital Hall.
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Shadow spokesman for the Treasury Angus Taylor will discuss the Liberal Party’s economic agenda at a breakfast held by the Centre for Independent Studies.
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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Author Sophie Cunningham will chat about her new book, This Devastating Fever, in an event held by the Wheeler Centre.
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