GO YOUR OWN WAY
We’ll support the Voice to Parliament, the Greens confirmed, just hours after its First Nations spokeswoman Lidia Thorpe defected to the crossbench over it, Guardian Australia reports. Thorpe (and her supporters) argue a national treaty is more pressing than an advisory body, the new crossbencher explaining it was the “movement I was raised in — my elders marched for treaty”. Thorpe also holds concerns that First Nations sovereignty would be ceded in the Voice legislation, as The Australian ($) continues. But Greens Leader Adam Bandt said he’d received “guarantees on sovereignty and funding to progress treaty and truth” from the government. As an aside, Thorpe’s move to the crossbench puts her in a rather powerful position to determine the legislative agenda of the country. She has five and a half years before she’s up for reelection, as The Conversation explains, and with the Greens and Labor together holding 38 of the 76 seats in the Senate, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese needed to win over only one crossbencher to pass legislation. Now it’s two.
Meanwhile, alcohol bans will be reintroduced in parts of central Australia, the leader of the NT has announced, while booze restrictions at Alice Springs shops will be extended for three months. NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles says the new dry zones would apply to communities unless they provided her government with an alcohol management plan, The Australian ($) reports. But the plan would need to be agreed to by 60% of locals and greenlit by the NT director of liquor licensing. Fyles stressed that this is not the return of the federal government’s Stronger Futures legislation (that booze ban was lifted in July). Importantly, she said, this latest scheme puts the power back into the hands of the local people and her territory government.
[free_worm]
WELL-BEING
Tinder and Grindr should share user information with the government, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner said, if that person is abusing or harassing others. Head of the federal regulator for online safety Julie Inman Grant told Guardian Australia her office could issue legal notices to online dating sites to force them to ’fess up about how they handle violence and threats. Inman Grant said new data from the regulator showed nearly a third of us had been sworn at online and/or been sent unwanted online content (like pornography or violent material). Plus a quarter of us has had our personal info misused (including photos shared without our consent). And it’s on the rise: threats of violence online is up 30% compared with 2019, the data showed.
Speaking of governmental concerns about well-being — students in South Australia and Victoria get the least funding in the country, according to the Productivity Commission’s latest report. On average, a student in Victoria is allocated $17,174 but when you look at private v public, it’s a rather different story. “Victoria’s public schools received $20,047 per student in government funding in 2020-21, while non-government schools attracted $12,087 per student,” The Age ($) reports. Meanwhile, kids in public schools in WA actually received less funding (-1.8%) in 2021 than they did 10 years ago, WA Today ($) says, making it the only state where funding declined. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare called it a “damning” report and vowed to reform funding.
FAULT LINES
More than 4300 people are dead after the strongest earthquakes in 84 years rattled Turkey and Syria in the middle of the night, ABC reports. The first, a 7.8 magnitude, was followed by a 7.7 shortly afterwards — they were so strong that tremors were felt as far away as Cairo and Lebanon. Experts say the world has not seen a quake so strong since a tremor in the remote South Atlantic Ocean in August 2021, as Reuters writes. The earthquake triggered a tsunami alert for southern Italy that was later lifted. Nearly 900 buildings have been destroyed in Turkey, including a hospital in Iskenderun. The search-and-rescue effort has been hindered by freezing weather, which has shut down major airports. So why did this happen? The BBC explains that Turkey and Syria have a fault line running beneath them where the Arabian and Anatolian plates meet. Sometimes the pressure will make one move suddenly, and the surface above moves with it. The largest earthquake — a 9.5 — was measured in Chile in 1960.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden’s decision to shoot down a Chinese balloon has increased the risk of Australia going to war, Rex Patrick writes for Michael West Media. The US said the balloon was gathering intelligence but China says it was just a weather balloon. Patrick writes that the US’ somewhat heavy-handed decision could give Beijing licence to treat an Australian submarine close to their territorial waters the very same way: “The stakes just got greater for our officers and sailors.”
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
In 2021, Croatian-born convicted cannabis grower Darko “Dougie” Desic strolled into a Sydney police station and said: “I believe you’ve been looking for me.” Desic had been on the run for 29 years, though it was more like hiding in plain sight. He’d built a quiet life on Sydney’s northern beaches as a well-loved local handyman. Rewind to the early ’90s and Desic had been locked up for just under four years for possessing and growing weed. Sitting in Grafton jail with just a year and a half to go, Desic was biting his nails watching the grainy footage of then Yugoslavia’s brutal civil war. Surely he would be deported after his sentence was served, peace-loving Desic worried, and then almost certainly conscripted into the Yugoslav army. So Desic pinched a hacksaw and a bolt cutter, sawing at the bars when the rain was heavy enough to drown out the sound. He fell two storeys, but he was free.
Desic’s been in Avalon ever since, working as the local Mr Fix It (always paid in cash), playing guitar, meditating and fixing discarded computers, the SMH ($) continues. He told only one friend about his past, but he lived with it almost daily: doctors were out of the question, as was driving or even going to the pub for a drink. He even pulled his own rotting teeth with pliers because he couldn’t get a Medicare card. Desic decided to hand himself in when he fell on hard times during the pandemic and couldn’t get government support. The judge considered all the facts and was like, OK — serve the remaining 19 months on your sentence, and I’m adding two more months for breaking out of jail. Following a strong community campaign in Avalon, yesterday the recently freed Desic was granted permission to stay in Australia. He even gets his very own Medicare card. Desic was stoked to return to his neighbourhood and touched by the groundswell of support, his lawyer said: “It’s given a lot of us renewed hope in the Australia we knew and grew up in.”
Hoping you feel hopeful about the world today too.
SAY WHAT?
Right now, in countries like Australia, the impact of climate policy is to make electricity less affordable and less reliable rather than perceptibly to cool the planet. We need more genuine science and less groupthink in this debate.
Tony Abbott
The former PM has joined the board of a UK climate-sceptic think tank. Its charitable status has come under scrutiny over its funding and claims it’s actually a lobbying organisation. In 2017, Abbott gave a speech for the foundation that suggested climate change was “probably doing good” and likened policies to combat it to “primitive people once killing goats to appease the volcano gods”.
CRIKEY RECAP
Premier, I went to an Opus Dei school and experienced shame’s silencing power
“I spent 13 years of my life at Tangara School, the subject of last week’s Four Corners episode on ABC. Along with other alumni, I have spent months working with the program in their investigation into Opus Dei schools in Sydney. So it was incredibly disheartening to hear NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet — who I once knew personally — state: ‘A complaint against the schools in that program had never been made to that independent authority or the education minister’s office.’
“Firstly, this is a misleading claim. A former student at Tangara School made contact with the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) multiple times, immediately after she left the school and as recently as 2022 when our group first approached Four Corners. In all instances, her concerns were dismissed and she was told that she would need to speak to the school itself.”
It’s not fiction: Ron DeSantis and the right’s culture war on kindness
“In the dying days of the Morrison government, former education minister Alan Tudge tried to whip it all up again in a local culture clash with attacks on the curriculum. In his first days as Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton pledged to Sky after dark that he’d make the national curriculum (‘the values argument’, he eye-rollingly called it) one of the big issues in the national Parliament …
“But what’s happening in Florida — and across much of the United States — is something new. Now it’s fiction that’s the target: great modern writers like Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, Sherman Alexie – even Australia’s own Anh Do. The right’s assault on fiction began in the 2021 Virginia state election when Republicans promoted a (conservative activist) mother complaining about her Year 12 son’s distress over Morrison’s Beloved.”
Adani crashes and burns, accused of ‘biggest con in corporate history’
“At first glance, it seems like good news — or at least a form of deeply satisfying karmic retribution — for a name that has come to epitomise the worst of the worst among climate activists, First Nations peoples, and many more when it comes to fossil fuel abuses in Australia.
“On the global stage, however, Adani has been working hard to scrub itself of the stench of a vast fortune built by mining, shipping and burning coal, pledging tens of billions of dollars to develop renewable energy. The multinational has vowed to invest a total of US$70 billion by 2030 across its green energy value chain, which — if it makes good on its promise — would make Adani the world’s largest renewable energy producer.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Major earthquakes kill 2300 people in Turkey and Syria (Al Jazeera)
India’s Adani crisis spills over into street protests as losses top $110b (Reuters)
Beyoncé makes history at a star-powered Grammy ceremony (The New York Times)
Investigate Bolsonaro for genocide, says Brazil’s [Environment Minister] Marina Silva (The Guardian)
Dell to cut 5% of workforce (The Wall Street Journal) ($)
Southwest and FedEx planes nearly collide at Texas airport (BBC)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Why business is losing faith in the government — Allegra Spender (The AFR) ($): “I welcome Jim Chalmers’ contribution to Australia’s economic debate with his essay in The Monthly. There are areas I agree, others I don’t. But borrowing from John F Kennedy, I challenge the treasurer to ask not just what business can do for the government, but to ask what you can do for business – and then actually deliver on it. Dr Chalmers’ essay talks about the government having a leadership role in defining priorities, challenges and missions. I agree with this and some of the priorities he identifies, such as climate action, increasing inclusion and opportunities for all, and measuring more than just money. But the role of government is more than leadership, it is about delivery.
“Although the treasurer focuses on market failures, businesses focus on the government failures of the past two decades and ask why the new government isn’t fully addressing those. Few businesspeople think that the government is on top of tax. The Henry review showed a burning need for genuine reform, but the Rudd, Gillard, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments have failed to deliver. Before Dr Chalmers remakes capitalism, the business would like to see him deliver tax reform. Tax reform is not merely fiddling with the stage three tax cuts but changing the tax mix to ensure its long-term sustainability, meeting the challenges of the Intergenerational Report, introducing a trusted resource tax framework, and ensuring the Australian people share in our economic success.”
Year two of the Ukraine war is going to get scary — Thomas L Friedman (The New York Times) ($): “Putin, it’s now clear, has decided to double down, mobilising in recent months possibly as many as 500,000 fresh soldiers for a new push on the war’s first anniversary. Mass matters in war — even if that mass contains a large number of mercenaries, convicts and untrained conscripts. Putin is basically saying to Biden: I can’t afford to lose this war and I will pay any price and bear any burden to ensure that I come away with a slice of Ukraine that can justify my losses. How about you, Joe? How about your European friends? Are you ready to pay any price and bear any burden to uphold your ‘liberal order’?
“This is going to get scary. And because we have had nearly a generation without a Great Power war, a lot of people have forgotten what made this long era of Great Power peace possible. While I argued in my 1999 book The Lexus and the Olive Tree that the massive explosion of global commerce, trade and connectivity played a major role in this unusually peaceful era, I also argued that ‘the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist — McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15.’ Somebody needs to keep the order and enforce the rules. That has been the United States, and I believe that role is going to be tested now more than any time since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Are we still up for it?”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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Esmerelda Bamblett, also known as Aunty Esme, Iwicomms’ David Jones, and Member of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria representing the Metropolitan Region Carolyn Briggs will speak about a treaty for Victoria at Monash University Clayton campus.
Yuggera Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Author Joanna Jenkins will talk about her new book, How to Kill a Client, at Avid Reader bookshop.
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