Kokkinakis out in the Open

THE LONG MATCH GOODNIGHT

There may be some tired eyes this morning after Scot Andy Murray and Aussie Thanasi Kokkinakis’s marathon five-hour-45-minute match wrapped up at 4.05am with victor Murray advancing to the third round, The Age reports. It was the second-longest match in Australian Open history, falling just short of Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal’s record of five hours and 53 minutes in 2012, as Australian Open writes. It was a nail-biting battle between Kokkinakis and Murray, as Guardian Australia writes, with Kokk giving “perhaps the best performance of his life”. But Murray, ever the innovator, came back from the brink of defeat with a two-set deficit in his second five-set match. The final score between the pair was 4-6, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (5), 6-3, 7-5, the paper adds. Two Australians are through to the third round today — wildcard Alexei Popyrin, who beat US player Taylor Fritz in a major upset, and Alex de Minaur, who beat Frenchman Adrian Mannarino, as SMH reports.

Hey, speaking of Djokovic — the Serbian lost his cool last night at an umpire during the fourth set of his second-round win over French qualifier Enzo Couacaud, 7News reports. Djokovic was irate that a member of the crowd who was “drunk out of his mind” had been “provoking” him the entire night. The camera showed four blokes dressed as Wally from kids book Where’s Wally? — one of the guys blew a kiss in response, but they were kicked out at the next changeover. The nine-time champion remains a polarising figure in Oz, that’s for sure — it was just 12 months ago that Djokovic was held in immigration detention and ultimately kicked out of Australia for providing a medical certificate in lieu of a COVID vaccination certificate. We’ve scrapped the vaccination rule for incoming travellers, but not everyone has. Djokovic will miss two US tournaments because he’s still not vaccinated, Forbes reports, which remains a strict condition of entry to the US.

[free_worm]

INDIGENOUS TIMES

Three people will face court today charged with the murder of Indigenous teen Cassius Turvey, Guardian Australia reports. The trio — two men aged 27 and 24, and a woman aged 20 — join Jack Steven James Brearley, 21, who was also charged with Turvey’s murder. The 15-year-old was walking with friends on October 13 when he was attacked with instruments including what police say was a shopping trolley handle.

Staying in WA and an Aboriginal community leader and 2022 Greens candidate for Pearce has been detained in Japan and it’s not clear why, the ABC reports. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is seeking information about Donna Nelson’s situation after her family said they have not spoken to her in weeks. Our embassy in Japan says it has confirmed she’s OK, but couldn’t say more owing to privacy constraints. WA Premier Mark McGowan said he didn’t know any more than that. The Derbarl Yerrigan Health Service, of which Nelson is chair, confirmed it wasn’t a work trip.

Meanwhile former Indigenous Advisory Council chair Warren Mundine has called a $10 discount for Indigenous spectators at the Australian Open “patronising”, The National Indigenous Times reports. Mundine says he’s met plenty of Indigenous folks who pay full price thanks to their “secret business stuff that is actually working”. It’s an age-old conundrum — do initiatives like this just make people feel worse about themselves, or do they help level the playing field? Tennis Australia chief executive Craig Tiley told 3AW that the mob pricing was meant to make the Open more accessible, though added it was a honour system as there was no vetting process.

TREATY THEM RIGHT

The UN could put Australia on a human rights blacklist alongside South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo because we keep missing deadlines to implement an anti-torture treaty, the ABC reports. The Turnbull government ratified the UN’s Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT) in 2017 but we still haven’t created watchdogs to keep an eye on our prisons, youth justice facilities, police cells and mental health institutions. And boy, have people suffered in the meantime, Guardian Australia writes. Advocates have pointed to the “abuse in youth detention centres, the over-representation of First Nations people in the criminal justice system and deaths in custody, and the use of practices such as solitary confinement in prisons”. Indeed one advocate told the broadcaster we’re talking about scrutiny of “the use of spit hoods and restraint devices, [and] restraint chairs”.

So why the heck are we dragging our feet? NSW, Victoria and Queensland are still bickering about the cost — they want federal funding, even though Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and the ACT have all steamed ahead in creating the bodies to monitor places of detention. Change the Record’s Cheryl Axleby told the Human Rights Law Centre that at least 17 Indigenous people died in custody last year, and the Albanese government must force the states to take OPCAT obligations — and our deadlines — seriously. It comes as the inquest into Indigenous man Bernard Hector’s death in custody is unfolding in the Top End, the NT News reports. Dismally, fellow prisoners were the only ones to notice Hector’s mental health red flags, the coroner heard.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

The rising popularity of board games in adulthood is a scourge we must stamp out, SMH’s Kishor Napier-Raman says, or at least start leaving him out of. Board game nights are nearly always suggested by “The Guy Who is Good at Board Games”, he writes for the paper, who spends a painstaking hour explaining the complex and convoluted rules of questionable pursuits such as “slaying a mythical beast, making sushi, or cosplaying as colonisers in a foreign land”. But it’s never enough of an explanation, and befuddling stretches of time are spent with chipper fellow players repeatedly assuring you “the game gets better” as you quickly sober up amid your intense concentration. Sometimes it does get better, sometimes it doesn’t — the question, he asks, is why do we put ourselves through it? “Must social gatherings be organised around activities designed to distract wayward children?” he asks.

It might seem like a petty gripe, but Napier-Raman continues that the whole idea of a board game night is at odds with the precious spontaneity of a social gathering that we went without for so long during the pandemic’s lockdowns and restrictions. Who brings a rule book to a group hang, he wonders, declaring it a sort of “hyper-capitalist puritan logic” that we should engage in competitive tasks during our leisure time after a long week spent grinding in our 9 to 5. Plus, by the time you’ve got a tentative handle on the self-contradictory parameters of the game, an elated The Guy Who is Good at Board Games has already had a thumping victory, everyone else is feeling confusingly dejected, and the wine supply is suddenly frighteningly low. “There is no shame in resisting this,” the journalist assures us. “No matter how many nerds accuse you of hating ‘fun’.”

Hoping you stand proud and tall on the hill you choose to die on too — and have a restful weekend.

SAY WHAT?

It is essential we create better rules in tennis regarding the weather (light and wind) and starting times or cutoff times for matches. Murray and Kokkinakis will finish around 4am. Crazy — no other sport does this.

Martina Navratilova

After the nearly six-hour Australian Open match between Andy Murray and Thanasi Kokkinakis wrapped up at 4.05am today, 18-time grand slam champion Navratilova tweeted that tennis desperately needs a rethink of the rules to better protect players’ health.

CRIKEY RECAP

Superannuation doesn’t need reform — it needs replacing

Robert Lechte

Jan 19, 2023

188

“But even if all inequality magically vanished overnight, super would still be a badly designed system. Even relatively well-off retirees worry about depleting their savings. This forces people to overwork to build up a huge hoard of savings, likely to be more than they need, and then underspend in retirement in case they live longer than expected.

“A good retirement system should pool money in order to pool risk, giving you a stable income no matter how long you live. Again, super’s individual design precludes this. Accordingly, the recent Retirement Income Review found typical retirees were overwhelmingly failing to spend their savings, and dying with savings mostly intact. That money then gets inherited, increasing multi-generational inequality even further.”

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Nick Adam’s MAGA transformation doesn’t surprise his ex-Sydney council colleagues

Cam Wilson and Anton Nilsson

Jan 19, 2023

6

“As one of the few Liberals on the council, Adams was typically on the losing side of its decisions. Drury said this dynamic meant Adams rarely contributed much to debate or even turned up to many council meetings. Instead, he said, Adams spent his time on populist causes. Adams’ ‘fatwa against pigeons’ was a plan to kill all of the pigeons in Ashfield to combat bird flu. (Rerceretnam noted it was unlikely to do much as birds do not typically pay much attention to council jurisdictions.)

“Other ill-fated Adams proposals included banning leaf blowers operating before his typical wake-up time of 10am, DNA-testing dog poo to catch owners who weren’t cleaning up after their pets, overturning a decision to take down a picture of the queen from council chambers, and trying to ban Germaine Greer from the area.”

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No, this isn’t a photograph of Dominic Perrottet wearing a Nazi costume

Cam Wilson

Jan 19, 2023

1

“One image has circulated on social media of an old photograph showing a man wearing glasses in a Nazi uniform which some purport to depict the future NSW premier. Crikey can confirm this is not a photograph of a young Perrottet. It is, remarkably, an altered image of another conservative politician who suggested that he donned full Nazi regimentals for a costume party.

“A reverse image search shows that a version of the image without glasses has been online at least since April 2022 when the UK-based Jewish News first published a photograph of the chair of the Enfield Southgate branch of the Conservative Party, Colin Davis, wearing a Nazi uniform in a residential backyard. It’s not clear when the photograph was altered to add glasses.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

[Former Russian leader] Medvedev warns of nuclear war if Russia defeated in Ukraine (Al Jazeera)

Fox chief Rupert Murdoch to be deposed in $1.6 billion Dominion defamation case (Reuters)

France hit by strikes over plan to raise retirement age to 64 (The Guardian)

Jacinda Ardern’s prime ministership, explained in six charts (Stuff)

Trump mistook rape accuser E Jean Carroll for ex-wife, deposition shows (The Guardian)

Alec Baldwin to be charged [with involuntary manslaughter] over deadly shooting on Rust film set (BBC)

1 year later, iconic Churchill photo stolen from Ottawa hotel still eludes police (CBC)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Jacinda Ardern reminds us that kindness and strength are not mutually exclusive — Anthony Albanese (The SMH): “It was not Jacinda’s destiny to be prime minister in easy times. It fell to her to steer her nation through the many challenges of the first global pandemic in a century. Through her early and decisive action, lives were saved and the economy was kept on track. She also had to act as both comfort and strength in times of tragedy, which is when the world came to know her grace and her grit. Her response to the atrocity perpetrated in Christchurch is emblematic of the leader I so admired. I will always carry in my mind that image of Jacinda in a headscarf, offering the embrace of a nation to a community stricken by grief and fear.

“When that community was brought so terribly low, she reached high and brought people together. Sadly, as we have seen only too clearly, that is not the instinct of every leader across the world, but it has emphatically been Jacinda’s every step of the way. Jacinda Ardern has been the very embodiment of the common ground on which nations find their greatest cohesion and strength. But Jacinda’s gift and her extraordinary qualities as a leader stemmed from more than knowing the right gesture at the right moment, or finding the right words in the right tone. She matched all this with action, with a determined pursuit of justice and with gun reforms to keep New Zealanders safe.”

Rolling back reform: Jacinda Ardern’s long-term economic policy was disastrous — Oliver Hartwich (The Australian): “Under Ardern, the basic pillars of New Zealand’s post-1984 settlement have been demolished. In contrast to her predecessors, Ardern was much more comfortable with increasing state spending, including the structural part of it, even when it worsened long-term projections of New Zealand’s public debt. For many years, Treasury has warned that current spending trends will not be sustainable beyond a couple of decades, but Ardern has proceeded in this direction. On monetary policy, Ardern revised decades-old inflation-targeting tradition. Instead, the Reserve Bank received new targets for employment and even house prices.

“Her government also indemnified the RBNZ against losses related to its quantitative easing activities, which are approaching $10 billion. New Zealand’s labour market was previously highly flexible, but Ardern introduced so-called fair pay agreements. These ‘agreements’ are compulsory industry-wide awards, despite their positive-sounding names. They will strengthen the unions and are likely to reduce employment. The sixth Labour government will also introduce social unemployment insurance at the same time that it reregulates the labour market. This European-style social security system will supplement the welfare state. The program will be funded by new labour taxes making staying out of the labour market more attractive for those losing their jobs.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• NSW Treasurer Matt Kean will speak at the Young Liberal convention, where a new federal president and federal vice-president will be chosen, at Sofitel Sydney.

• Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg will speak at a launch of new book Empowering Teachers and Democratising Schooling, at UTS. You can also catch this one online.