Blow-by-blow accounts

DOLLARS AND SENSE

Our energy bills will surge by 50% in the next two years (about 20% in 2023 and 30% the year after), the SMH reports, but the government won’t be helping us pay them. Treasurer Jim Chalmers says any cash assistance would bolster inflation, and the best thing we can do is “exercise restraint”. Austerity aside, last night’s budget revealed an audacious plan to build a million new homes from 2024-2029, with superannuation funds to bankroll the joint state-federal housing accord. What else? The ABC was given $83.7 million to reverse Coalition cuts, and the Indigenous Voice referendum $75 million. There’s nearly $25 billion in climate change-related spending through until 2030 too, the SMH adds. But there’s no doubt the budget was overall a bit grim. Our pay will go backwards until 2024-25 as inflation is poised to hit 7.75% in December (our wages grew only 2.6% in the June quarter), ABC reports, and rents are forecast to climb further in the next two years (they’ve grown 10% in the past 12 months alone), The Australian ($) reports.

There were also some weird and wonderful things in Labor’s first budget in nine years, as Crikey delves into. For one, $12 million for beagle puppies. They’ll “sleep in their government-owned kennels, poop on government-owned floors, lick their government-appointed handlers right on the mouth and one day grow up to sniff bags in Australia’s airports”, Jason Murphy writes. Seaweed farming will get some big bucks (feeding cattle seaweed is a great way to reduce their burps and farts, thus lowering methane emissions, as The Guardian reports), and everything from Ukraine is now duty free (bring on the pickles!). That’s it folks, until yet another budget in May.

[free_worm]

ATTACK AND DEFENCE

The Medibank cyber attack is shaping up to be a lot worse than the Optus one, the ABC reports. Yesterday the private health insurer admitted the breach may have affected all 3.9 million customers, and an unknown number of previous ones. Names, addresses, dates of birth, Medicare numbers, phone numbers and medical claims data — including information about diagnosis, procedures and location of medical services — were all exposed, Guardian Australia says. Cyber Security Minister Clare O’Neil told Parliament yesterday the damage was “potentially irreparable”. One UNSW student pointed out that international students in the LGBTIQA+ community were particularly worried about medical support, surgeries or medication being exposed back home. So how did this happen? It seems like hackers stole the login data of someone high up at Medibank, then sold it on a Russian cybercriminal forum to another hacker.

Meanwhile, a Russian billionaire who says he is not an oligarch is fighting for his rights in the Federal Court, The Age reports. Alexander Abramov was sanctioned and stopped from entering Australia under former foreign affairs minister Marise Payne, but the co-founder of the world’s largest steel manufacturer says he doesn’t have any sway over Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Australian government was like, you’re worth $6.4 billion and a report suggested your steel helped build Russian tanks. You’re sanctioned. The case continues. Overnight Russia has accused Ukraine of planting a “dirty bomb” — a device that has radioactive material as well as conventional explosives, the BBC reports, declaring it would be an act of nuclear terrorism if the country did. But the US, France and the UK say they are “transparently false allegations”. The Guardian reckons the desperate tactic shows just how bad the war is going for Russia.

DROPPING THE BALL

Basketball legend Andrew Gaze is the latest to condemn mining billionaire Gina Rinehart for pulling her $15 million funding from Netball Australia instead of just saying she doesn’t agree that sterilising Indigenous peoples was a good idea. News.com.au reports Gaze says he’s not blaming Rinehart for her dad’s offensive ’80s comments, but why not publicly disassociate herself from them? Meanwhile, Origin Energy’s boss Frank Calabria says he welcomes activist athletes and there is no chance it’ll pull funding from Netball Australia, Brisbane Times reports. He says he’s “OK with people voicing their views” and it didn’t make him “shy away from the way we think about sponsorships”, adding that he champions an environment where people are “listened to and respected”.

Speaking of fossil fuel giants — the Morrison government is being sued by Asset Energy over its decision to deny the extension of a permit to explore for gas off the NSW coastline, the SMH reports. Court documents revealed the government knew it might get a legal challenge and be forced to pay damages but did it anyway — mostly to win over conservative voters in the region. The PEP-11 gas field was going to be just 50 kilometres off NSW’s beaches — adorned by some of the country’s most expensive homes. Former prime minister Scott Morrison — who we later learnt had secretly sworn himself into the resources portfolio, as AFR reports — was at odds with then resources minister Keith Pitt over it, even though National Offshore Petroleum Titles Administrator (NOPTA) said the permit was fine. Morrison rebuffed it anyway, and Asset reckons that was biased and unfair. The court will hear more next March. Speaking of unpopular Liberal leaders — WA’s David Honey’s approval rating is just 9% more than a year and a half into the gig, The West ($) reports. It’s a full 10 points lower than Liza Harvey’s before she resigned as party leader. Premier Mark McGowan is as popular as ever — some 70% of people in the People’s Voice Survey love him. But he’s done better. Around the start of the pandemic (mid-2020) it was 91%, the paper adds.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Picture this: you’re mentally preparing to spend 40 days and 40 nights in the security line at the airport, but you breeze through without so much as taking your shoes off. Huh, you think. You’ve grabbed a quick takeaway coffee from a dodgy airport cafe and it doesn’t even faintly taste like burnt pot-plant soil. Alright then, you smile. You walk down to your gate and your plane starts boarding right on time. Wow, you marvel. Squinting at your ticket, and then up at the rows of identical seats, your heart plummets down to your butt. You’re sitting in the middle seat. You know, slotted in between the window seat and the aisle seat? Virgin Australia recently did a social media poll that found just 0.6% of us actually like that seat. With no view over the clouds and no easy bathroom access, all you can do to pass the time is passively aggressively fight over the shared armrests with your neighbours.

So Virgin Australia figured it’d sweeten the deal, as CNN reports. It’s announced a middle-seat lottery — folks who sit there will go into the running to win a smorgasbord of prizes worth $230,000. It could be a full-day helicopter pub crawl in Darwin (including return flights), or a two-day getaway to Cairns (including a bungee jump). If you’re flying in the next week, a Caribbean cruise is on offer. Is it just a cheap marketing ploy to make us like airlines again after a horror year of travel full of lost luggage, cancelled flights and endless hours spent trying to cash in travel vouchers? Oh my, yes. The lottery has been lukewarmly received on social media, though the whole Ruby Princess debacle is still clearly on people’s minds. One guy replied on social media that he would be ensuring he sits in “window or aisle to guarantee that I don’t have to go on a cruise”. Corporations aren’t our friends — but at least we can finally have one over that smug aisle-seat bastard discussing firing someone on the phone and the starry-eyed hipster snapping 65,000 near-identical photos of the aeroplane wing.

Hoping the smiles come easily today, folks.

SAY WHAT?

The Liberals have the biggest deficits in history … [They’re] shrieking like a mob of political bin chickens, scratching around for relevance.

Stephen Jones

Get a hold of yourself you lot, the assistant treasurer declared in question time yesterday ahead of the budget papers, much to the audible chuckles of Labor MPs behind him.

CRIKEY RECAP

QAnon-spiced ReAwaken America rally takes Trump-crazy to new levels

Guy Rundle

Oct 25, 2022

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“There must be about 2000 people here in this vast complex, a cavernous conference space with a grey-on-a-grey auditorium, really a huge garage and a hall of booths and hucksters all in a sports complex called Spooky Nook, with halls like this, and soccer courts, and squash, a games arcade, and a sad closed food court, Halloween fake cobweb over its shuttered metal grille.

“In the hall, on the main stage, a mess of flags and banners, and the drum kit and guitars of the band, ready for later, the speakers don’t stop. Miss Illinois warning about the tunnels. 5G experts. The ‘Loose Change’ guy, arguing that the transgender movement is a transhuman one. They come on, they come off, Clay keeps ’em moving, prancing around in his black, tight, narrow-pants suit, vibing off the huge energy.”

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Key budget takeouts: this year’s big winners and losers

Amber Schultz

Oct 25, 2022

“It’s a bread-and-butter budget with no huge surprises — and nothing too dramatic announced. But that doesn’t mean some people didn’t do better than others. The government is clearly hoping the pandemic is over, with COVID support funding scaled back and set to run out this year. But there’s good news for those prepping for things other than infectious disease, with the disaster-relief payment set to get a boost.

“Here are some of the major winners and losers … The ABC will … get $32 million over four years to expand regional transmission in the Pacific. Ukraine is also still top of mind for Australia, with $213.3 million from 2021 to 2026 for military assistance, humanitarian visas and help settling Ukrainians in Australia.”

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Labor embraces a world of bigger government

Bernard Keane

Oct 25, 2022

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“Labor has no such qualms about big government. The post-pandemic world — of interventionist governments, big deficits, onshoring and re-engaged public policy — suits it perfectly. The Coalition went to the election at odds with its own fiscal record, promising the old standards of lower taxes and fiscal discipline. Labor realised voters wanted government that was both more active and more competent and effective. On May 21, the Coalition showed up with a neoliberal knife, to find Labor had an interventionist gun.

“The budget as a whole encapsulates that conflict — one that the Coalition currently appears to want to perpetuate, presumably in the hope of being blown away in 2025 as well. The government of Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers is active, engaged and big — and it wants to assure voters it is competent. Their ambition is to be big and solid.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Former US military pilot who worked in China arrested in Australia, faces extradition (Reuters)

Italy’s Meloni commits to EU, rejects fascism in speech to MPs (Al Jazeera)

Democrats, on defence in blue states, brace for a red wave in the House (The New York Times)

Europe’s gas prices fall below €100 MWh for the first time since mid-June (EuroNews)

Even Queen Elizabeth wasn’t as wealthy as the new British prime minister and his wife (CNN)

Russian court upholds Brittney Griner’s nine-year sentence (Al Jazeera)

Adidas cuts ties with rapper Kanye West over anti-Semitism (BBC)

Virtually all children on earth will face more frequent heatwaves by 2050 (The Guardian)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Research in Australia’s universities should be driven by curiosity, not commerce — Brian Schmidt (Guardian Australia): “A prosperous Australia needs a highly educated population; it needs ground-breaking research and an ecosystem where government, industry and academia work together to propel people and ideas towards a common societal good. A starting point is allowing every Australian student access to the education they want. While our HECS/HELP system provides broad access to university, the support for students from moderate or disadvantaged backgrounds is so low that most students have no choice but to go to the university closest to home, not the one that best caters for their skills and interests.

“Many students need to work long hours to make ends meet, sacrificing the time they need to get the most out of their courses. We will not get equitable outcomes until we update the way we support students while they study. Evidence shows students actually know what study programs are best for them. Rather than trying to force them to study certain subjects through a Byzantine fee structure, we must allow them to select subjects based on their interests by making course fees uniform. If the government wants to incentivise particular courses, then it should provide scholarships that help students pay their living costs while they study in these areas.”

Why am I still single? Judd Apatow and his man-child army are to blame — Genevieve Novak (The SMH): “Other generations were fed love stories through the eternal genius of Nora Ephron, who wrote for the female gaze in a way that combined relatable cynicism with just enough hope to convince you to believe in a happy ending. They swooned over romantic leads who ran independent bookshops and sang in wedding bands. They lusted after Richard Gere and Hugh Grant. What did we get? Seth Rogen and his army of schlubby housemates, who may have been loveable, but who also reeked of weed and arrested development.

“These films — characterised by the skewed imbalance of a fun-loving man in a permanent adolescence versus the uptight woman who just wants him to grow up — informed a new age of relationship dynamics and advice as to where to set our expectations. The characters invariably compromise in the third act: he moves an inch by getting a job and a haircut. She moves a mile by becoming a girlfriend-mother hybrid who is, apparently, turned on by the 30 hours a week he spends gaming. When leading men are showing up to first dates at chic bars in cargo shorts, what hope is there for the woman who spent 40 minutes wrestling herself into three layers of shapewear and contouring her collarbones? Move over, shirtless Matthew McConaughey: there’s a new kind of man in town.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)

• Honorary fellow in history at the University of Melbourne Tony Ward will give a talk about the significance of social trust, held at the RHSV Gallery Downstairs. You can also catch this online.

Yuggera Country (also known as Brisbane)

• Poet and environmentalist Georgina Woods will discuss her new book, The Tide Will Take It, at Avid Reader bookshop.

Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)

• Treasurer Jim Chalmers will address the National Press Club with a post-budget speech.

• United States Studies Centre’s Peter Dean, The New York Times’ Jane Coaston, and CNN’s and The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein will speak about the US midterms and what they mean for Australia, in a talk at the Hyatt Hotel in Canberra.

• European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs chair David McAllister will give the Konrad Adenauer Lecture and discuss Indio-Pacific relations, also at the Hyatt Hotel in Canberra.