Another Thorpedo

LIDIA THORPE’S BOMBSHELL

Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe says she’ll reveal more today after her accusation Liberal Senator David Van harassed and sexually assaulted her. She withdrew the claim yesterday because she was told to comply with “parliamentary standing orders” but that didn’t stop The Australian ($) from calling it an “extraordinary backdown”. Van vehemently denied the allegation and got the lawyers in immediately. It came when he was chastising Labor for its handling of Brittany Higgins’ sexual assault allegation. Of this line of Liberal thinking, the SMH ($) reports Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was like, so, “Labor is to blame for what is a serious sexual assault allegation by a Liberal staffer, about another Liberal staffer, and a Liberal minister’s office, metres away from the Liberal prime minister’s office” — that’s your argument? It comes as The Australian ($) reveals Higgins claimed up to 40 years’ worth of economic loss amid the destruction of her political career in receiving her $2.5 million in compensation.

If Van’s name is ringing a bell, it’s because the Liberal was accused of barking and growling at Jacqui Lambie when she was speaking to the Senate in 2021 — Van apologised for interrupting her but denied making animal noises, Guardian Australia reports, though both the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young and Labor’s Penny Wong said someone did. Ironically it was the same day sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins released her report calling for an overhaul of Parliament’s toxic workplace culture. In her allegation against Van, Thorpe told the Senate a prime minister “had to remove him from his office”, but Scott Morrison’s spokesperson told Guardian Australia he had “no recollection” of “any involvement” in that.

SPECTATOR SPORT

Media titan Rupert Murdoch may be looking to buy Britain’s The Spectator, the world’s oldest weekly magazine still in print (dating back 195 years). Receivers have seized the holding company Press Holdings that owns it and The Telegraph, The Age ($) says, removing the Barclay family’s directors in the process amid debt disputes. It’s rumoured Murdoch bid on The Spectator just two years ago for A$93 million, though he may be going into a bidding war with hedge fund co-founder and Brexit supporter Paul Marshall, who is apparently eyeballing The Spectator too. So why the interest? It’s a conservative bible — indeed former Tory leader Boris Johnson edited it from 1999 to 2005, a pretty high-stakes print-to-web transitional time for media. It hasn’t had the same impact in Oz, however — it had an average circulation per issue of 10,665 in 2022, data showed.

But things aren’t all bad — one in five Australians pays for the news they read online, Crikey reports, and trust in media companies is up a bit even if consumption is down. The annual Digital News Report found 22% of us, up four percentage points from the year before, now subscribe to news, making Australia third in a list of 46 countries (Norway is home to the highest number of news subscribers). It’s not so cheery over at ABC, where a staff bloodletting is rumoured — managing director David Anderson is expected to announce up to 100 jobs will be made redundant before the restructure of the national broadcaster begins on July 1, Guardian Australia says. And in a final morsel of media news, journalist Lisa Wilkinson has lodged an official complaint with Seven Network over the Bruce Lehrmann interview, alleging the broadcast breached commercial television standards, Guardian Australia reports.

Correction: a previous version of the Worm cited data from the 2022 Digital News Report rather than the 2023 edition.

PWC LEARNS THE EASY WAY

PwC invested in a college while it was consulting to the federal government’s regulator of tertiary colleges, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), the ABC reports. The scandal-embroiled consultancy took a $5.5 million stake in the Top Education Group back in 2016-17 just hours after it began work on the contract — the regulator couldn’t find a record of PwC disclosing any conflicts of interest. A TEQSA spokesman said PwC didn’t work on regulatory decisions, however. The broadcaster adds that eight senior partners of PwC personally invested another $2.5 million in the company a year later, but: “The ABC is not suggesting unlawful conduct by PwC.” (One might wonder if that line would serve as a get-out-of-jail-free card in a defamation trial?) It comes as the NSW government will ban PwC from working on its tax projects, Guardian Australia adds.

Speaking of alleged conflicts of interest — police officers accused of domestic violence are investigated by colleagues and often get to keep their weapons, according to a new report the SMH ($) FOI’d. About 100 NSW police of almost every rank have been charged with hundreds of domestic violence-related offences since 2015, including “aggravated sexual assault, rape, stalking, breaching apprehended domestic violence orders, destroying property and recording intimate images without consent”, the paper says, including nine this year (to May). The report also found police investigated only 222 of the 470 complaints made about officers’ conduct in relation to domestic violence cases, the ABC adds.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

The 666 bus to Hell is no more. Well, Hel, to be precise — it’s a small town on the Baltic Coast in Poland, a very popular jaunt for wide-eyed tourists carrying bumbags and beach towels looking to soak in the very best that the rather cold seaside offers. But the Christians were not happy, not happy at all, as The Guardian tells it. A conservative Catholic website, Fronda.pl, has been campaigning for the devilish bus route number to change since 2018, arguing primly that it was hardly an “innocent joke” but rather clearly stemming from “malicious inspiration”. Of course, the site assured its avid readers, the 666 to Hel is not a public transport route to the luxury beach home of Satan himself — too much sun, sand and surf, one assumes, and not enough fire, screaming, and politicians.

Nevertheless, the 666 bus clearly gave credence to the “horror of soul death” because it undermined the concept of an afterlife, or so the site said. Fine, management at the bus company conceded, a twinkle in its eye, and announced via social media: “We’re turning the last 6 upside down!” Yes, Worm reader, the new route is a rather saucy 669 (surely no accident either) though the company added it may restore the 666 some time. (It’s not the first time the Polish have had a sense of humour about transport, after all. There’s a tram loop in Wrocław numbered the zero.) Pundits love the 666 bus to Hel — one Facebook commenter speculated that many tourists chose the bus over the speedier train just to say they took it. Indeed, The Guardian adds, Hel is so popular now that tourists have complained it’s overcrowded. It seems hell truly is other people.

Hoping you can spot the light side of life today.

If you’re feeling chatty, feel free to drop into my inbox — tell me what you love or loathe about the Worm, or anything — eelsworthy@crikey.com.au

SAY WHAT?

I got a lot of invitations to a lot of things, some I was able to go to and others I weren’t. I didn’t attend that one. The invitation was declined.

Katy Gallagher

The finance minister said she did not attend Brittany Higgins’ fiance David Sharaz’s first wedding in 2018. Gallagher said the relationship was professional, and that she was “not responsible for how people describe their relationship with me” when asked why Sharaz described her as an “old friend”.

CRIKEY RECAP

Political games and the exemplary punishment of Brittany Higgins

BERNARD KEANE

“Buried within the most recent attacks, based on the leaking of texts to politicians and staff, is the insistence that there was something fundamentally illegitimate about Higgins and Sharaz attempting to generate political interest in her efforts to obtain justice and expose the toxic culture of Parliament House. Real rape victims, the suggestion appears to be, simply let the criminal justice system do its job, rather than trying to engage politicians, especially opposition politicians.

“As every woman in Australia knows, just letting the criminal justice system do its job with alleged rapists virtually guarantees the rapist will walk free. Even with a greater willingness of women to report sexual assault, and a greater willingness of police forces and prosecutors to take the crime seriously, the conviction rate remains a source of national shame, with estimates varying between 3% and 12% of cases. It seems the last place that sexual assault victims will get justice from is the justice system.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Qld breaks down gender barriers as birth certificate changes made easier (Brisbane Times)

Belarus starts taking delivery of Russian nuclear weapons (Reuters)

MEPs endorse blanket ban on live facial recognition in public spaces (euronews)

US confirms top diplomat Blinken’s long-anticipated China visit (Al Jazeera)

North Korea: residents tell BBC of neighbours starving to death (BBC)

At least 78 drown as refugee boat sinks off Greece (The Guardian)

Cost of fighting BC [Canada] wildfires this year tops $100m — well before peak fire season (CBC)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Mystique, minimalism and cataclysm: Cormac McCarthy’s fiction was a dark counter-narrative to American optimism — Paul Giles (The Conversation): “McCarthy was never an easy writer, and his oblique, multi-dimensional novels have become less fashionable in a Facebook era that prefers the attractions of personal stories and the allure of authenticity. McCarthy’s art, by contrast, was shaped by the minimalism and stylistic impersonality of classic modernist writers such as Ernest Hemingway, along with the more abstract forms of post-humanism that he discussed with his scientific friends at the interdisciplinary Santa Fe institute, where he spent many of his later working years. He gave few interviews and was averse to the kind of self-publicity that has now become the norm in the world of literary marketing.

“He did however retain, albeit on a more modest level, some of the mystique surrounding the charismatic or reclusive male author that was a familiar trope in 20th-century American literature, from Hemingway through to JD Salinger and Thomas Pynchon. McCarthy was also sometimes critiqued for his more limited representations of female characters, and in this way, along with many others, he could be seen as a traditional American Western writer. It would, though, be wrong to categorise McCarthy’s achievement too narrowly. Though generally regarded as pessimistic, McCarthy’s texts also explore in intellectually innovative ways interconnections and tensions between white Protestant and Hispanic Catholic cultures in America. They also trace crossovers between humans and animals, social systems and the environment and, perhaps most significantly, rationality and its failures or ontological limitations.”

It may be hot, but most British homes don’t need air-con. Switch it off — Hannah Fearn (The Guardian): “At what cost? This week National Grid readied another coal-fired power station to cope with the extra demand placed on the energy networks by offices and homes switching on air-conditioning units. Greenpeace UK shared its outrage at this request: ‘We’re using MORE coal to cool down the effects of the coal we’re using. It makes no sense.’ And I agree. Many climate-controlled buildings with artificial ventilation systems, such as hospitals or laboratories or large office and retail complexes, rely on air-conditioning to keep them at a stable temperature all year round. This is essential to ensure staff are protected from high temperatures in the workplace, and for those who are vulnerable in a heatwave, such as people with certain medical conditions or disabilities.

“But given these are always running, keeping temperatures at a consistent pace through hot weather and — more often in the UK — cold too, it’s unlikely they are responsible for this sudden spike in demand. The more likely culprit is increasing numbers of small units inside homes that are suddenly cranked up in warm weather. In other words, the completely unnecessary ones. Just as wood burners are being phased out by law as we start to fully understand the damage they do to climate and also lung health, we now need to consider a ban on some air-conditioning units — particularly when used at the mildest of warm temperatures. And until then it’s up to us not to buy them. When it’s 26C outside, the average British home simply doesn’t need air-conditioning. It might feel nicer, but making you a little more comfortable isn’t the government’s job.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)

• Author Emily O’Grady will talk about her debut book, Feast, at Avid Reader bookshop.

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Author Jordana Silverstein will speak about her new book, Cruel Care, at Glee Books.

• Poet Ali Whitelock will speak about her new collection, A Brief Letter to the Sea About a Couple of Things, at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.