Lehrmann threatens to sue ACT’s DPP

LEHRMANN SUES, AGAIN

Former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann is reportedly set to sue the ACT Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions for compensation, according to The Australian ($). He said he would if the Sofronoff inquiry report, delivered to the ACT government yesterday, found chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold acted with “malice or against his duties as DPP and as an officer of the court”, and the paper reckons “at least two of the potential findings against Mr Drumgold” in the report were grounds for dismissal, though it hasn’t been made public yet. Lehrmann is already suing the ABC, Ten Network and journalist Lisa Wilkinson for defamation over reports about Brittany Higgins’ allegation he raped her at Parliament House. Lehrmann denies it — a first trial was thwarted by juror misconduct and a second was aborted because of fears for Higgins’ health.

To another high-profile defamation case and Seven West Media boss Kerry Stokes and commercial director Bruce McWilliam have been told to hand over more than 8600 emails to disgraced soldier Ben-Roberts Smith’s legal team, Guardian Australia reports. The cost of the failed defamation trial against Nine newspapers, a massive own goal considering the judge found he was probably a war criminal, is believed to be up to $35 million — Stokes was bankrolling it, and Nine’s lawyers say Seven was involved with the defamation proceedings to the point that it’s liable for costs. Stokes’ silk Neil Young said that’s too many emails — the judge said too bad. To other media news and AI is writing 3000 articles for News Corp Australia a week (!) on topics such as weather, fuel prices and traffic conditions, Guardian Australia reports. Many of the stories have data journalism editor Peter Judd’s name on them, executive chair Michael Miller said.

MARK MY WORDS

Social anthropologist Associate Professor Peter Sutton says his comments to an ABC documentary about Bruce Pascoe’s landmark book Dark Emu were cut from the final version, calling it a “biased set-up”, The Australian ($) reports. The Dark Emu Story will delve into the debate swirling around the book which questions Indigenous hunter-gathering. Sutton says the doco made him and his colleague Keryn Walshe look like “racists” — they co-wrote Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate which criticised Pascoe’s book. Sutton slammed fellow academic Professor Marcia Langton personally for trying to “hijack a debate about the pre-colonial economies” and “turn it into a personal battle in the great race war”, but she called his response indicative of his “breathtaking arrogance”.

Meanwhile Australian of the Year Local Hero Amar Singh will target culturally diverse communities on a two-month tour of Australia to spruik a Yes vote for the Voice referendum, the Herald Sun reports. “This is about encouraging multicultural Australians and recent arrivals to take part in a very democratic process,” he says. It comes as the Yes campaign has spent approximately $180,000 more on Facebook ads than the No campaign since January 1, Guardian Australia found. But is it value for money? One expert said it should stop targeting progressive areas of Sydney and Melbourne. The No side is mostly ignoring NSW and Victoria in its ad spend, purportedly because there’s no point trying to convince the woke states, I suppose.

REEF RELIEF

You can keep your World Heritage status for the Great Barrier Reef — for now, anyway, UNESCO said, via an SMH ($) report. The Albanese government must show progress on protecting the reef next year, it warned, but it acknowledged Australia had lifted its emissions reduction target under the new-ish Labor government and promised $200 million more over 10 years for the reef’s health. Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek was stoked, saying it showed her government was “acting on climate change”. Meanwhile former senator Rex Patrick says Plibersek has no chance of reaching the Murray-Darling Basin Plan’s restoration goal, as Michael West Media reports, but extending it sucks too. In 2010 the Murray Darling Basin Authority said we need to return 3900 billion litres a year to the over-extracted body of water but big irrigation went nuts and “political arms were twisted”, Patrick says, so the target became 2750 billion litres. But as of March, we’ve returned 2100 billion litres a year, The Conversation says, and we have 12 months — June 2024 — to do the rest.

Meanwhile the Greens have told Labor “double or nothing” on its minuscule tax on big gas and oil, the AFR ($) reports, but Labor will probably say no. A crossbench proposal from the minor party, as well as independent senators David Pocock, Jacqui Lambie and Tammy Tyrrell, will suggest an extra $2.6 billion should be raised from the petroleum resource rent tax (Labor’s budget policy was $2.4 billion over four years). How? Make the deductible cap 80% not 90%, they say. But Treasurer Jim Chalmers doesn’t want to get WA offside, considering how the state helped deliver the last election result, and Chevron’s Gorgon and Wheatstone mega projects are in WA. It’s not a prettier picture overseas — UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is set to announce hundreds of new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, The New Daily reports, and $38 billion for carbon capture. Sunak says he’s determined to end energy reliance on President Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Young and old stared down at the bear enclosure in joyful awe as the inky black beasts meandered around lazily. They were Malaysian sun bears, so not native to the Hangzhou Zoo, but seemed comfortable enough in the rocky surroundings of eastern China. A little… too comfortable. When one of the bears stood up on its hind legs, as straight as a grown man would, the eyebrows of onlookers shot up. There’s anthropomorphism and then there’s distinctly human behaviour. So someone flipped a smartphone out and photographed the oddly well-postured bear, as the BBC reports. Folks, the internet promptly interneted. That is a full-blown person in a bear suit, pundits said. His fur is sagging around his bum like a costume, and his hips are thrown forward like a dad surveying the freshly cut lawn.

So the zoo took to social media, adopting the bear’s voice, to say: I swear I’m a real bear, just a very petite one! “When it comes to bears, the first thing that comes to mind is a huge figure and amazing power … But not all bears are behemoths and danger personified,” they wrote. To be fair, sun bears are kinda weeny — about the size of a large dog, standing at most 1.3 metres. Compare that with their grizzly bear cousins who can be up to 2.8 metres tall. Journalists have been invited to see the sun bear today to decide for themselves whether it’s man or beast. Some social media users still weren’t convinced, so the zoo pointed out it’s about 40 degrees at the moment — no-one is going to last in a suit. We’ve all seen Ace Ventura, after all.

Hoping you know what’s what today.

SAY WHAT?

I played no role and had no responsibility in the operation nor administration of the robodebt scheme.

Scott Morrison

The former PM did what he does best — shirk responsibility — this time for the unlawful robodebt scheme, though the robodebt royal commissioner found Morrison, as well as former ministers Alan Tudge, Stuart Robert and Christian Porter were all at fault.

CRIKEY RECAP

MPs loll in comfort as Qantas logs record profits and planes fly like wounded ’roos

MICHAEL SAINSBURY

“Those expecting some relief from the Albanese government in the shape of more competition in the airline sector (that it claims it wants) and/or the delivery of proper customer guarantees and compensation that consumer groups are seeking (such as those long available in the EU and now on their way in the US thanks to a rare bipartisan bill passed by Congress last week) have been bitterly disappointed.

“Instead, it appears to be doing its best to protect Qantas’ dominant market position, in thrall to its lobbying. In a bewildering move, in the past week Canberra has rejected Qatar Airways’ bid to add an extra 21 flights into Australia, and a bid by well-regarded Turkish Airlines to begin its first flights to Australia is also under a cloud. Transport Minister Catherine King, who has all but ignored the sector since taking up the role after last year’s election, has struggled to explain the Qatar decision …”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

West African central bank cancels Niger $51m bond issuance due to sanctions (Al Jazeera)

Islamic State says it carried out Pakistan suicide bombing that killed 54 (The Guardian)

Poland warns Russia is using Wagner troops to destabilise the region (euronews)

A desperate push to save Florida’s coral: get it out of the sea (The New York Times)

Georgia judge rejects Trump’s efforts to toss evidence in Fulton County probe and disqualify district attorney (CNN)

Snowstorm hits South Island as strong gales blow in Auckland and other areas (NZ Herald)

Crews watching wind as fire continues threatening Osoyoos, British Columbia (CBC)

THE COMMENTARIAT

The two people who blew up Jim Chalmers’ housing strategy — Karen Maley (The AFR) ($): “Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ strategy for solving the country’s housing crisis is now in tatters, thanks to the combined efforts of the Greens federal housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather, and Victorian Premier Dan Andrews. Chandler-Mather has spearheaded the Greens’ opposition to the Albanese government’s $10 billion housing  fund, which is earmarked to build 20,000 social housing properties and a further 10,000 affordable houses for frontline workers in its first five years of operation.

“Although the Albanese government has offered several sweeteners, including an immediate one-off injection of $2 billion into public housing, the Greens are refusing to pass the housing Australia future fund legislation unless the Albanese government coordinates with the states to impose a two-year national rent freeze. The housing fund was supposed to be up and running by now, but the legislation has been stalled in the Senate. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has now signalled he intends to reintroduce the legislation this week, creating a trigger for a possible double-dissolution election if it is again rejected. But the housing affordability fund was only the first leg of Chalmers’ housing strategy.”

The kindness of acquaintances is important when recovering from a mental health crisis — Eleanor de Jong (The Guardian): “But our heavy reliance on the nuclear family means there’s an overlooked source of support that is chronically undervalued: the periphery. The periphery are one or two or even three steps removed from the patient and may only have the barest idea of the turmoil they are in. But it is this — their distance and representation of normality — that makes them such powerful support people. During one of my first crises, when I was in and out of inpatient care, regaining ‘normality’ seemed impossible.

“The ward psychologist suggested I contact one of my old English professors and ask to sit in on a class, for the mere sake of routine and distraction. I shuffled to his office and without eye contact mumbled that I was unwell, newly manic-depressive, and could I sit in on a class please? He immediately agreed, and I joined a crime fiction class. It helped enormously, giving me something to do during the days (read the course curriculum) and a taste of the ordinary, sitting in the lecture theatre surrounded by students my age, using my mind for something other than chaos.”

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WHAT’S ON TODAY

Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)

• Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles will address the National Press Club.