That sinking feeling

SUBMARINE DOUBTS SURFACE

Debate has continued among current and former Labor members around the party’s whole-hearted embrace of the Morrison commitment to the AUKUS pact. As reported in The West Australian ($), Fremantle MP Josh Wilson became the first sitting Labor MP to raise concerns about the deal, most specifically around what plans have been made for dealing with the radioactive waste. Well, he’s the first to put his name to those concerns at least: the West goes on to say that three of his Labor colleagues also raised questions about the $368 billion deal during a closed-door meeting of federal MPs on Tuesday.

The old guard has also weighed in. Former senator Kim Carr said there were serious questions ($) about whether the deal represented value for money: “And I am deeply concerned about a revival of a forward defence policy, given our performance in Vietnam, so there are several levels on which we should question this plan more closely. Given it’s 20 years since Iraq, you can hardly say our security agencies should not be questioned when they provide their assessments.”

Former foreign affairs minister and NSW premier Bob Carr also expressed concern about the way the AUKUS agreement could take Australia into a conflict alongside the US, and fellow former foreign affairs minister Gareth Evans has written a piece for Guardian Australia (see below: The Commentariat) setting out what he sees as the “three key questions” the government must answer regarding AUKUS.

All this comes amid the rough and tumble of a sitting fortnight with the government trying to pass several pieces of legislation through a Parliament that veers between sceptical and hostile. Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is leading negotiations with Greens Leader Adam Bandt over the government’s contentious safeguard mechanism and has attempted to put pressure on the Greens ($) by arguing new projections showed Australia will fall short of the government’s 43% emissions reduction target by 2030 if the mechanism isn’t adopted.

Both sides are latching on to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — that warns Australia and other developed nations must achieve net-zero emissions years ahead of schedule — to argue for the urgency of adopting their climate change policy.

The Greens are also opposed to AUKUS, and the teal independents are raising questions about nuclear proliferation and how the deal will be funded ($). But in a plus for the government, Guardian Australia reports that the Coalition may be considering a backflip and offering support to Labor’s referendum machinery changes.

[free_worm]

POLL POSITION

Dominic Perrottet and Chris Minns will have their final debate ($) before New South Wales goes to the polls on Saturday to elect one of them premier. The Daily Telegraph and Sky News will hold a “People’s forum” today, with questions for the pair furnished by the 100 undecided voters in attendance. The event will be held in the seat of Penrith, held by the Liberals on a margin of 0.6%.

Minns provided headline writers with plenty of material ($) by having to ditch his EV campaign bus in favour of a “gas guzzler” after it broke down — “Minns low on power”? “Minns abandons EV commitment”? “Minns laughed it off: I forgot to charge it last night and as a result it broke down.”

Meanwhile, Perrottet has denied ($) he called Health Minister Brad Hazzard to receive a faster ambulance response for his sick wife. Perrottet was interrogated on Sky over a call he made to Hazzard and ambulance commissioner Dr Dominic Morgan after which an ambulance was sent to his house. Perrottet insisted he wasn’t looking for special treatment.

CHEAT SHEET

Patrick Willmott is the last of the group of five defendants to have been found guilty in the NSW Supreme Court after they were accused of causing a loss to the Commonwealth of more than $105 million in what the ABC is calling the “biggest tax fraud in Australian history”. Along with Willmott, siblings Adam and Lauren Cranston, lawyer Dev Menon and ex-professional snowboarder Jason Onley were all found guilty of conspiring to cause a loss to the Commonwealth and conspiring to deal with the proceeds of crime valued at over $1 million, and all are now behind bars. The Cranstons are the children of the former taxation deputy commissioner Michael Cranston. (There is no suggestion he had any knowledge of any wrongdoing.)

Prosecutors alleged ($) the group used the legitimate company Plutus Payroll to collect wages from employers before funds that should have gone to the ATO as GST and PAYG tax was siphoned off. The trial began last April and the jurors heard from more than 30 witnesses, saw dozens of exhibits, and were played hours of secret recordings. Also jailed in connection with Plutus Payroll was Sydney lawyer Sevag Chalabian, who was given a 12-year jail term, with seven and a half years non-parole, for laundering $24 million. Chalabian was jailed last June, but it wasn’t made public until the other sentences were announced.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Minions — those tube-shaped, goggle-sporting, gibberish-spouting stars of more movies than you might expect — have spawned memes of a weapons-grade blandness, completely bonkers theories about the sexualisation of children, and international gangs of marauding teens in formal wear. And somehow, the latest self-generating minions trend is the weirdest of the lot.

For a little over three months, the ABC reports, someone has been anonymously installing minion artworks in Warrak, a 70-person hamlet in western Victoria, just outside Ararat. The sculptures, made of gas bottles and scrap metal, veer between practically useful (letterboxes, plant pots) and out-and-out street art, and are related to the people whose properties they adorn.

No one knows who is installing these winsome pieces like some kind of beneficent Banksy, but there are several prime suspects and a trail of Patterson-Gimlin film style evidence. “There were some stills from a CCTV camera of two people putting one in, but one was dressed as Santa, so no one could recognise who it was. That’s the only time we’ve seen anyone do it,” Shane Goninon, Warrak’s sole business owner, told Aunty. “They’re concreted in, very solid. It happens really quickly. Obviously someone drills a hole, pours it in and away they go.”

Gwen Pilgrim, who has been living with cancer, was particularly delighted when hers arrived: “I just leaned on the gates — I couldn’t believe it. I just had a smile from ear to ear because I’ve been waiting for one for a while.”

SAY WHAT?

The AUKUS agreement, arrived at with some characteristically questionable secrecy by the former government, and some strange ministerial arrangements, is not a sports team of which we have all suddenly become life members.

Josh Wilson

Labor’s member for Fremantle hasn’t gone quite as hard against his own side as some have recently, but he has concerns ($) and says Australians must be able to have “a rigorous and challenging conversation” about security matters.

CRIKEY RECAP

An Indigenous sovereign citizen group will establish ‘diplomatic relations’ with Russia

Cam Wilson

Mar 20, 2023

25

“Members of an obscure Indigenous sovereign citizen group have met with Russian officials in Australia, claiming they discussed establishing ‘diplomatic relations’ and giving support to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“On Saturday, Bruce ‘Buddy’ Shillingsworth, of the United Sovereign Nations of Terra Australis group, met with Russian consul-general Igor Arzhaev and other Russian diplomats at the consulate in Sydney. The Facebook page for the Russian consulate in Sydney posted a photograph of the meeting. The photo’s caption was translated by Facebook from Russian into English: ‘March 18, the consul-general of Russia in Sydney IN Arzhaev met with representatives of the Indigenous people of Australia. The event was held in a friendly and welcoming atmosphere.’ “

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Turnbull and Burrow succeed Rudd in News Corp royal commission campaign

John Buckley

Mar 21, 2023

2

“Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and labour movement veteran Sharan Burrow have been tapped to lead the campaign for a News Corp royal commission, after former PM Kevin Rudd vacated the role this week to take up his post as ambassador to the US. The appointments were announced in a Nine newspapers op-ed on Tuesday and signal growing bipartisan support for a royal commission into media concentration in Australia, as News Corp executives move to put out fires on multiple fronts.

“Turnbull said the case for a royal commission has been ‘considerably strengthened’ by the revelations made in the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought against the media behemoth by voting machine maker Dominion, which has accused the Murdoch-controlled Fox News channel of spreading election conspiracy theories it knew to be wrong.”

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The proto-Nazis in Victoria deserve our wrath — but the law is a blunt tool

Michael Bradley

Mar 21, 2023

61

“The criminal law is the bluntest instrument a state or territory government has for enforcing acceptable social norms. Because its consequences are dire for anyone caught on the wrong side of whichever line it draws, we should always step with extreme care. Too often, governments don’t.

“The announcement by Victoria’s Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes that her government will legislate to ban the Nazi salute followed quickly on the heels of the small group of black-clad fuckwits who paraded outside Victoria’s Parliament House at the weekend, adding their support to the current hatred-du-jour, transphobia.

“True, they looked like a particularly poorly rehearsed dance troupe as they marched for the cameras, arms outstretched at various angles in their pathetic attempt at a Heil Hitler. But Nazis are never laughable, and these men are — make no mistake — proto-Nazis. Their spectacle, though small, was almost as intolerable as some police officers’ evident enthusiasm for protecting them from the far larger crowd of trans activists.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Moira Deeming suffers blow in fight against expulsion from Liberals’ partyroom (The Age)

Greens to decide $10b housing fund after Lambie indicates support (The Australian Financial Review)

Japanese MPs condemn child abductions, call on Australia to pressure Tokyo (The Age)

US urges Xi to press Putin over ‘war crimes’ in Ukraine (BBC)

Reserve Bank signals rates pause amid productivity warning (The Australian)

‘I felt like an animal’: father ‘humiliated’ after being dragged from Jetstar flight (WAToday)

Greta Thunberg, climate activists greenlighted to sue Sweden (Al Jazeera)

Stormy, Trump and more: the names to know in historic hush-money case (The Washington Post)

THE COMMENTARIAT

How we can fight violent extremism after far-right rally — Daniel Aghion (The Age) ($): “It is easy to mock a small group who are so far from rational thought that they think their deluded message is welcome in Victoria. But that downplays both the intent and effect of their attendance on Saturday. The odious contention of these neo-Nazis was that the anti-transgender protesters, stirred up by an overseas speaker, were not doing a good enough job of denying transgender rights.

“They intended to create a literal ‘wall’, a bastion between the transgender counter-demonstrators and Parliament House. The symbolism was clear. The transgender community is not wanted, not to be tolerated, and is to be denied access to the instruments of society. With their words and their acts, these Blackshirts say ‘you’, the transgender community, are not part of ‘us’, the Victorian community.”

The three big questions Australia’s leaders must answer about the Aukus deal — Gareth Evans (Guardian Australia): “Love Paul Keating or loathe him, admire or abhor his invective, he has raised questions about the AUKUS deal which are hugely important for Australia’s future and demand much more compelling answers than we have so far received from government ministers past or present. The big three for me are whether, for all the hype, the submarines we are buying are really fit for purpose; whether an Australian flag on them really means we retain full sovereign agency in their use; and if it does not, whether that loss of agency is a price worth paying for the US security insurance we think we might be buying.

“On any read of Australia’s defence needs — focusing on potential adversaries’ capability, not presumed intent — a very strong submarine fleet is a crucial component, along with air, missile and cyberpower. And there is no question as to the greater capability of nuclear-powered submarines when it comes to speed of movement, time on distant station and probably — though this is contested — detectability. They are a hugely effective asset.”

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Nationwide

• A new report by ACOSS and UNSW looks at the depth of poverty in Australia and which groups are most at risk.

• Australian Bureau of Statistics to release estimates of people experiencing homelessness in 2021 from census data.

Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)

• Australian Pork Ltd to appear at a federal Parliament committee inquiry hearing into food security in Australia.

• University of Canberra vice-chancellor Paddy Nixon to appear at a committee hearing on Australia’s international education and tourism sectors.

• Samoan leader Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa to hold talks with Anthony Albanese.

• Department of Employment and Workplace Regulation, and Jobs and Skills Australia to appear at a committee hearing on perceptions and status of vocational education and training.

• Amnesty International and its supporters will take part in an action for detained human rights defender Chow Hang-tung at the Chinese embassy in Canberra.

• Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic will address the National Press Club on “Believing in science and acting on science: revitalising science frameworks in Australia”.

• Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts to speak at a parliamentary committee hearing on co-investment in multi-carrier regional mobile infrastructure.

Eora country (also known as Sydney)

• NSW Bushfires coronial inquiry into the deaths of three US airmen continues.

• Sky News chief anchor Kieran Gilbert to host a one-hour forum with NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and NSW Labor Leader Chris Minns, with 100 undecided voters, ahead of Saturday’s state election.

Bwgcolman (also known as Great Palm Island)

• The Queensland Parliament’s Community Support and Services Committee will hold public forums on the Path to Treaty bill.