Labor’s mines are costing the earth

TRIPLE WHAMMY

Federal Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek has approved three coal projects in less than two months, Greens Leader Adam Bandt tweeted — they are a mine, an extension to a mine and an exploratory licence. Greens environment spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young has again urged the Albanese government to introduce a climate trigger — something PM Anthony Albanese tabled way back in 2005, declaring, “It is time to act. It is time for procrastination to end,” as I reported for Crikey. Fast-forward to 2023 and Australia has no trigger, we’re drastically under-reporting methane pollution, as the SMH ($) reports, and the world just experienced its hottest day ever recorded, Al Jazeera adds. Plibersek is also seeking to extend the Murray-Darling Basin Plan past the 2024 deadline, The Australian ($) reports, so she can return 450 gigalitres of environmental water per Labor’s election promise. She’s asked the Murray-Darling Basin Authority chair Angus Houston whether it’s feasible it could happen by next year. As of August last year, just 2.5GL of water had been delivered.

Meanwhile, if you drive an EV in Victoria you may have been mistakenly slogged with an extra 0.000000000000003 cents a kilometre, The Age ($) reports. The highly contested road user charge increased on Saturday from 2.6 cents to 2.8 cents a kilometre, but an accounting error saw the minuscule 3 added. VicRoads said drivers weren’t overcharged, but should it even exist? The High Court will decide soon, after two EV drivers (backed by the Albanese government) took the state government (backed by every other state) to court over it. And a study found fuel-efficiency standards could save us up to $10,000 over the life of our cars, slash the price of EVs by 2.8% a year, and cut 31 million tonnes of emissions by 2035, The New Daily reports. Fuel-efficiency standards force car makers to keep their emissions under a limit, which makes them create more EV models. Oz and Russia are the only developed nations without the standard, making us a dumping ground for petrol cars.

VOICE FROM THE HEART

Health, education, jobs and housing — these are the four things the Voice to Parliament will give advice on, Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney will say today. The Australian ($) reports she’ll add that the Voice will be undistracted by three-year election cycles but rather will be planning for generations to come. She’ll ask: how we can reduce Indigenous suicide rates; how we can get more Indigenous kids into classrooms; how can Indigenous folks live longer; how can we protect 65,000 years of culture and language — the oldest living culture in the world. If we don’t get the Voice into the constitution, it’ll be binned by future governments, Burney will say. No doubt. Voting yes is an “act of patriotism”, she’ll also declare, as Guardian Australia reports.

It comes as director Warwick Thornton has described Australia as a “spoilt, single child, who’s only learnt the word ‘no’ and one day needs to learn the word ‘yes’,” on ABC’s 7.30. He’s doing press for his film The New Boy, which explores Indigenous spirituality and Christianity and stars Cate Blanchett. She said Australia has a chance to evolve into “a really modern democracy like New Zealand, like Canada” by embracing our “unique history, shared history” in voting yes. Meanwhile Bret Walker and Sue Chrysanthou reckon that section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which bans offence on a racial basis, is unconstitutional. It comes as the pair defends One Nation Leader Senator Pauline Hanson against Greens Deputy Leader Mehreen Faruqi’s legal action after Hanson told her to “piss off back to Pakistan”. Here’s a question: who’s bankrolling Hanson? Walker and Chrysanthou charge “thousands of dollars an hour” and it’s highly doubtful Hanson’s knitwear fundraising raised that much.

POLL RAINS ON PALASZCZUK’S REIGN

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is going to lose next year’s state election, if you believe the polls, that is. It would mean the mainland’s Labor-held state government wall would crack, not to mention spell the end of Palaszczuk’s eight-year reign. The AFR ($) reports voters aren’t happy with her handling of the cost-of-living crisis, crime and health — the party’s primary vote dropped to 34%, compared with the Liberal-National vote of 40%. Support for the Greens was up two points to 11%, though. Amazingly, half of those polled said last month’s state budget — which delivered a record $12 billion surplus — would make no difference to their cost of living. Palaszczuk also made the news after Sir Bob Geldof said she was hypocritical for boasting about her green Olympics amid the state’s mining boom, the Daily Mail adds.

Meanwhile, more than 1000 nurses and midwives in Queensland who were stood down because they refused to get the COVID vaccine are having their cases reviewed. State Health Minister Shannon Fentiman told The Courier-Mail ($) her department was looking into it because of the healthcare workforce shortage — it could mean “time-limited exemptions, return to work options and alternative duties”. Union president Marg Gilbert said a lot of lives could be saved if the cohort was back at work. Both WA and Tasmania scrapped the vaccine requirements, the paper adds. Still, it wasn’t a silver bullet — WA’s Carnarvon is struggling to vaccinate kids some 16 months after the town’s maternity services stopped because there were no midwives and obstetricians, The West ($) reports.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

A nervous first-time author named Shawn Warner sat at a table piled up with his novel, waiting to greet fans. It was something of a lifetime aspiration for Warner, who looks a little like Santa, after writing his first story at the age of just four. But life got in the way — first a “nightmare” high school experience, then a tough career as a social worker and later engineer, raising two children along the way and attending to the myriad other things that whisk us through the years. When he kissed his kids goodbye for university, the Texas man finally sat himself down at the computer, cracked his knuckles, and began to weave a world together. A young adult murder mystery called Leigh Howard and the Ghosts of Simmons-Pierce Manor eventuated — “It’s about a teenage girl who teams up with a ghost with multiple personalities to solve the mystery of her parents’ murder,” he explained.

But sitting there waiting at that table near the toiletries aisle at Walmart, the sea of fans just didn’t come. One guy, known by his TikTok username Red, couldn’t help but feel for the older man, dressed formidably in a yellow, collared shirt and suit jacket, looking so “defeated”. So he told Warner he’d buy two copies of the book, as news.com.au tells it, and give one to someone on his TikTok. It’ll hopefully get you “a little bit of love”, to which Warner replied: “OK, I won’t say no.” Overnight, book sales started skyrocketing, launching Warner’s book headlong into top 10 on the Amazon bestsellers list as the video clocked more than 6 million views. Warner was so touched, saying he could barely fathom the “love and the kindness” pouring in. As a kid, he says he was told he’d never make it as a writer. How very wrong they were.

Hoping you spot the opportunity for a good deed today.

SAY WHAT?

Now can we imagine a world, in Australia, where women didn’t have the right to vote, where their voices weren’t heard? No we can’t. So I’m hoping in another 120 years’ time we’ll look back on this moment and say: ‘Can you believe we almost missed that opportunity?’

Cate Blanchett

The Oscar-winning actor is backing the Yes23 campaign on the Voice to Parliament, saying it was exactly the same atmosphere of fear before the women’s suffrage after which society was supposedly going to collapse.

CRIKEY RECAP

Max Chandler-Mather, publicity hound with a nose for the kill, is winning on housing

BEN ELTHAM

“Why is the government so grumpy? The relatively noble aims of its policy help explain some of its anger at what it sees as Greens’ grandstanding. The policy’s $10 billion fund is meant to stimulate affordable housing, even if it is in a few years. While the Greens point to market failure, the policy is planned to deliver social housing through not-for-profits such as housing associations. It will also support emergency housing for victims of family violence, and housing repair and maintenance for remote First Nations communities.

“Chandler-Mather also seems to get under Labor’s skin. He has an undoubted talent for publicity. Something about his fresh face and glib media presentation — scarcely unusual traits for an up-and-coming politician — make him a particular target for Labor criticism.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

World registers hottest day ever recorded on Monday (Al Jazeera)

Syrian regime organised feared ghost militias, war crimes researchers say (Reuters)

‘Social emergency’: why is Spain’s suicide rate at a record high? (euronews)

Cocaine reportedly found in White House as Secret Service opens investigation (The Guardian)

How Indigenous-owned record labels are changing the music industry in Canada (CBC)

US looks to restrict China’s access to cloud computing to protect advanced technology (The Wall Street Journal)

THE COMMENTARIAT

No one can stop Rupert Murdoch. That’s increasingly a problem. — William D Cohan (The New York Times) ($): “The drama we’re watching play out at the Fox Corporation is an extreme example of how companies with a controlling shareholder can suffer — the stock is down almost 18% in the past five years — but it isn’t the only one. To a lesser degree, I see problems occurring at companies such as Comcast (controlled by the Roberts family) and Paramount Global (controlled by Shari Redstone), among others. When dual classes of stock are involved, a family’s voting power often far outstrips its economic ownership, leading to financially foolish, and even bizarre, behaviour.

“There’s a reason that a century ago the idea of professional management was introduced into American corporations. A professional manager creates a sense of distance between shareholders and management, which is held accountable to a board of directors, chosen to represent the shareholders. Professional managers are paid to look at problems objectively, accounting for what will theoretically be best for all stakeholders, including shareholders, creditors, vendors and employees. It may not be a perfect system, but the pas de deux between a professional manager and a board of directors has proved to be a durable way to create lasting wealth.”

Anthony Albanese should reconsider rapprochement with China — Greg Sheridan (The Australian) ($): “Some Chinese national security laws explicitly apply to non-Chinese citizens and residents. They are extraterritorial in nature. They must also be seen in tandem with another new foreign relations law Beijing has recently enacted, which gives it the explicit authority to act against entities that behave in ways ‘detrimental to China’s interests’. This law, like the national security law, is vague, sweeping and intimidatory. These developments should cause the Albanese government to reconsider the path of rapprochement it is undertaking with Beijing. For all the supposed new calmness in the relationship, Beijing still holds several Australians in its prisons on trumped-up political charges, it still enacts a range of trade boycotts against Australia and, as these actions make clear, it still attempts to intimidate and interfere with our politics.

“While it’s sensible for the Albanese government to pursue a ­stable relationship with Beijing, while not compromising our national interests or values, it should not make a close relationship in itself an object of our foreign policy. Because in the end, Beijing wants to compromise and diminish key Australian national interests. There is a dangerous political dynamic setting up now, because of the interaction of four factors. The Albanese government is seeking a stable relationship with Beijing. The Chinese government believes it played a role in ­getting ethnic Chinese Australians to vote against the Morrison government. The left of the Labor Party is stridently opposed to AUKUS, the Quad and many elements of our alliance with the US. And the Albanese government is subject to repeated, foolish ­attacks by Paul Keating.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Kaurna Country (also known as Adelaide)

• SA Treasurer Stephen Mullighan will speak about the state budget and provide an economic update for South Australia at the Adelaide Convention Centre.

Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)

• Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney will address the National Press Club.

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Author Pascal Adolphe will talk about his new book, Gaston Saves the World, at Gleebooks.