Matter of life and Blak deaths

ABC PAYS THE PRICE

Opposition Indigenous affairs spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has slammed the ABC after federal politics reporter Dana Morse referred to an “ongoing genocide” of Indigenous peoples on Insiders, The Australian ($) reports. Morse said January 26 protests are “about the invasion, they are protesting about the genocide of Aboriginal people that is ongoing today”, but Price has retorted that there is “no genocide being perpetrated today” and that ABC should rein in “activist employees”. Morse may have been hyperbolically referring to the fact Indigenous deaths in custody are at their highest in the 15 years that records have been kept, as Guardian Australia reports, when eight of the 22 people who died in custody in 2021-22 were First Nations peoples. (Indeed, an Indigenous child with a disability was kept in solitary for more than 500 hours in Queensland, the paper adds — dismal.) Also, there is an 8.6-year difference in life expectancy for Indigenous men (2015-17 figures), and a 7.8-year difference for Indigenous women, as the Close The Gap report tells us.

Meanwhile we’re likely about to see the first official return of Indigenous cultural items from continental Europe to Australia, the SMH ($) reports. Indigenous cultural artefacts such as shields, woven bags and necklaces could be returned from the Ethnological Museum in Berlin this year when we strike a rumoured landmark deal with the German government. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is going to Berlin next month to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Speaking of Indigenous art — APY Arts Centre Collective has been booted from the industry body in charge of ethical standards, the Indigenous Art Code (IartC). The reason why was not given — but The Australian ($) has been following a story about whether white staff painted sections of Indigenous paintings that saw the National Gallery of Australia pull the brakes on an APY art exhibition.

HUNG OUT TO DRY

Former NSW treasurer Matt Kean has slammed the corruption watchdog for “unacceptable, unexplained and repeated delays” that followed the “public political lynching” which spelled the end of former premier Gladys Berejiklian’s political life. Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) will hand down its findings into her relationship with former Wagga MP Daryl Maguire on Thursday, as Guardian Australia reports, and Kean called for reform to ensure only final findings are made public. Cast your mind back to 2021 and you may remember the messy drama of Berejiklian’s days of evidence at ICAC that ultimately led her to her resignation. Maguire is also in the news this week having been charged for giving false and misleading evidence to ICAC, but during a different investigation from the one above — it was about councillor corruption in planning proposals, as the ABC reports.

Meanwhile Berejiklian’s former deputy premier, the Nationals’ John Barilaro, has to pay $10,000 over a push-and-shove with a cameraman, the SMH ($) reports. Freelancer Matthew Costello filmed Barilaro leaving dinner in the northern beaches during the height of his NY trade job scandal, and says his Sony camera was “irreparably damaged” in the scuffle. Costello launched a civil case that sided with him in making Barilaro liable for the equipment and legal costs, though the judge conceded, “One person’s doing a job and one person is trying to have some free time. I acknowledge the frustration on both sides,” as the ABC reports. Speaking of a costly hot-headed moment… a Queensland woman has been ordered to pay $280,000 in damages and interest for a Facebook post that falsely implied her neighbour may be a paedophile, The Courier-Mail ($) reports. Step away from the tech…

TAIL THAT WAGNERS THE DOG

A furious President Vladimir Putin has addressed Russia overnight saying “any blackmail attempts” are “doomed to failure”, as The New York Times ($) reports. He says the Wagner mercenary group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin “wanted Russians to fight each other” and dreamed of “taking revenge” for their failures at the frontline, though he didn’t refer to Prigozhin by name, a purposely vague tactic Putin also uses when talking about jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Prigozhin broke his silence to say his group was not planning to “overthrow the government in the country” in an 11-minute, stream-of-consciousness voice memo. Blink twice if Putin got to you, Prigozhin! The Russian president continued that the Wagner uprising was “resolutely rejected by the society”, a war-mongering dictator’s way of saying “everyone loves me”.

Meanwhile, most people in the Kremlin dislike him — or at least his invasion of Ukraine, a former Russian diplomat who defected from his post at the United Nations in 2022 named Boris Bondarev told ABC’s 7.30. Bondarev said most people in all government structures are deeply unhappy about the war, and the Wagner revolt came as a surprise after two decades of Putin telling his “army, his generals, his subordinates, his civil servants” that they should do as they are told. “Prigozhin has a lot of reasons to be very much concerned about his life,” Bondarev, who is exiled in Switzerland now with tight security, said. Prigozhin has agreed to leave Russia for Belarus — Putin seemed to imply Wagner fighters who rejected mandatory military service may be able to as well.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

New Zealand man Paul Duffy was scrolling Facebook when he noticed a post looking for someone to break into a safe. A woman had been renovating her Patumahoe home when she discovered a rotary combination lock built into the concrete floor beneath some old carpet. Duffy smiled as he read people’s suggestions, including the inelegant solution of a jackhammer, and began a message to her. He was a professional safe-cracker, he explained, and had been for nearly 40 years, travelling all over the world to crack as many as 300 safes a year. It’s an oddly secret-adjacent job for better or worse, he told Stuff, filled with the sort of experiences that quickly teach one to avert their gaze respectfully as the safe’s door creaks open to reveal the mysterious contents.

Once he attended the Titirangi home of a woman in her 80s who was locked out of a safe she shared with her recently dead husband. After jimmying the lock, Duffy obliged her polite request and reached in to hand her the contents: spools of old celluloid film gathering dust in the back. Her comprehension turned to sheer delight, he said, as she looked at the pornography she and her husband had made together in their younger years. My stars. So how does Duffy crack a safe? His first move is trying to build a map of the safe’s locking mechanism, which can help him spot a weakness. If that doesn’t work, he drills a tiny 4mm hole in the safe door and pushes a pinhole camera inside to film the mechanism. It’s easily repaired, so no one would even need to know. Hypothetically, of course.

Hoping you feel useful today.

SAY WHAT?

Last night in my DC residence, the television turned on by itself and the screen showed someone’s laptop trying to connect to the TV.

Marjorie Taylor Greene

The far-right US congresswoman thinks she is being spied on through her TV, possibly by the US government, and that someone may soon try to kill her. She added, “Just for the record: I’m very happy” and not ill at all. She may want to Google Apple’s screen mirroring feature.

CRIKEY RECAP

Vale Simon Crean — a study in what happens to those who tell the truth

BERNARD KEANE

“The greater damage, however, was in Crean’s promotion of Mark Latham — who he had brought back to the frontbench — to shadow treasurer and his support for Latham to head off Beazley’s return following his resignation. Latham’s disastrous performance at the 2004 election, which delivered Howard a Senate majority, was one of Crean’s legacies.

“It was echoed in early 2013 when Crean — on a day supposedly devoted to Julia Gillard’s apology to the victims of forced adoption — suddenly announced he wanted Kevin Rudd to run for the Labor leadership against Gillard. Rudd duly declined, emphasising what a farce Labor had become amid incessant undermining of Gillard by Rudd supporters. But it’s for the Iraq disaster that Crean deserves to be remembered …”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Guatemalan presidential frontrunners set for run-off (Al Jazeera)

Russian mercenary leader says he did not aim to overthrow government (Reuters)

German far-right AfD [Alternative for Germany party] gains first elected official (euronews)

New Zealand PM sparks row after flying to China with backup plane (The Guardian)

Canada will soon end ‘inefficient’ fossil fuel subsidies. But what does that mean? (CBC)

New images show Chinese spy balloons over Asia (BBC)

THE COMMENTARIAT

The case against travel — Agnes Callard (The New Yorker) ($): “The single most important fact about tourism is this: we already know what we will be like when we return. A vacation is not like immigrating to a foreign country, or matriculating at a university, or starting a new job, or falling in love. We embark on those pursuits with the trepidation of one who enters a tunnel not knowing who she will be when she walks out. The traveller departs confident that she will come back with the same basic interests, political beliefs, and living arrangements. Travel is a boomerang. It drops you right where you started.

“If you think that this doesn’t apply to you — that your own travels are magical and profound, with effects that deepen your values, expand your horizons, render you a true citizen of the globe, and so on — note that this phenomenon can’t be assessed first-personally. Pessoa, Chesterton, Percy and Emerson were all aware that travellers tell themselves they’ve changed, but you can’t rely on introspection to detect a delusion. So cast your mind, instead, to any friends who are soon to set off on summer adventures. In what condition do you expect to find them when they return? They may speak of their travel as though it were transformative, a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience, but will you be able to notice a difference in their behaviour, their beliefs, their moral compass? Will there be any difference at all?”

Rent freezes and rent caps will only worsen, not solve Australia’s rental crisis — Ameeta Jain (The Conversation): “Battling families are further disadvantaged in the rental market because landlords would prefer to have their properties occupied by professionals with no children. Often it is easier for owners to charge under-the-table premiums to this cashed-up group prepared to pay to get a particular property. This increase in social segregation has been reported in Britain, where landlords choose renters from their preferred social and economic cohort. This increases the waiting times for ‘rent frozen’ properties, forcing desperate individuals — usually those already most disadvantaged — to rent illegally through the black market.

“This worsens the divide between the wealthy market-insiders and unemployed, migrant, young and other disadvantaged renters. The resulting lack of available rentals worsens worker shortages in some areas and can create pockets of increased violence and crime spawned by uncontrolled hidden black markets. While freezing rents would appear to be a simple method to increase rental housing affordability, the unintended consequences of any such move will have a long-term negative impact on the total availability of rental housing stock, reducing the quality of housing and increasing a black market in rental housing.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)

• Minister for International Development and the Pacific Pat Conroy, with Brisbane Broncos’ Amelia Kuk and David Mead, will talk about Australia and Papua New Guinea sports diplomacy at the University of Queensland.

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Writer Briohny Doyle will talk about her new book, Why We Are Here, at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.

Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)

• Harvard University’s Michèle Lamont will give the 2023 Agnes Heller Lecture entitled “Seeing Others: Recognition and Redefining Worth in our Divided World” at La Trobe University city campus.

• Former China correspondent for NPR and BBC Louisa Lim will talk about how is the world’s perception of China is being shaped by the Chinese government, at The Wheeler Centre.