COVID cuts Australians’ life expectancy

TIME OF OUR LIVES

Australians’ life expectancy has fallen for the first time since the 1990s, 7News reports, and no, it’s not from the stress of that nine-hour Optus blackout for 10 million of us. It’s down by just 0.1 years, however — a boy born today will live 81.2 years and a girl will live to 85.3 – and we’re still second in the world for male life expectancy, and sixth for the gals. It’s because the number of deaths in 2022 increased by 20,000, half due to COVID-19. Back to Optus a moment, and the telco faces potential big fines, compensation claims and even the loss of government contracts after yesterday’s outage, The Australian ($) reports. So what caused it? We don’t know yet but it wasn’t a hack, CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said. South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas was irate, saying his government is considering leaving Optus for good. Incredibly, as the AFR ($) reported, the entire board of Optus’ parent company Singtel is in Australia, just like they were for the massive hack last year.

To someone else whose job may or may not be at risk: former senator Eric Abetz is trying to oust Liberal MP Bridget Archer and Senator Richard Colbeck, sources told Guardian Australia. You remember Abetz, right? The guy who said same-sex marriage could see people marrying the Sydney Harbour Bridge, as Buzzfeed reported. Archer is known for crossing the floor — some 28 times, Guardian Australia says — which irritates the right wing of her party no end. Nine newspapers reckon Tasmanian MP Gavin Pearce told colleagues he’d withhold his nomination for Braddon to force the party to block her from Bass, but he refused to confirm it.

COURT SIGHTS

Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds, her former staffer Brittany Higgins and Higgins’ partner David Sharaz are headed to the WA Supreme Court today for mediation over their defamation case, The Age reports. It was on Supreme Court Justice Marcus Solomon’s orders, who noted the “human cost” of a trial, as the paper put it. Reynolds brought the case against Sharaz over five social media posts, and then she sued Higgins over two other social media posts. Reynolds’ lawyer has subpoenaed journalists Lisa Wilkinson and Samantha Maiden, and both sides are undecided about whether they’ll have a jury. Depending on today and tomorrow, it may not come to that.

Meanwhile NSW police sniffer dogs are wrong 75% of the time, Guardian Australia reports, with 70,913 general and strip searches turning up no drugs in the last 10 years. The dog unit has cost $46 million during that time and about $4.95 million a year nowadays, while each dog needs between six and 10 officers when they go to music festivals (most dogs are used on drug detection, the paper says). Meanwhile we sent 100 officers to the Solomon Islands yesterday to be security at the Pacific Games, Reuters via MSN reports. We’re trying to stay in the country’s good books amid its growing ties with Beijing. Across the sea and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese arrived in the Cook Islands for a Pacific Islands Forum, but ABC’s David Speers says it might not be such smooth sailing. Pacific leaders are urgently calling for stronger action in the face of climate change that could quite literally swallow up their landmasses, as I write for Crikey. Albanese acknowledged Tuvalu is the most at risk, The Australian ($) reports, and said he was elected on a climate change platform.

HOME STRETCH

Western Australia’s Cook Labor government is offering Airbnb owners $10,000 to list their homes for rent instead, The West ($) reports. It’s all part of a bid to ease the housing crisis — which also includes a new register that short-stay operators have to list themselves on by 2025, so the government knows the number and location of Airbnbs. It comes as more and more of us are moving into sharehouses, Guardian Australia reports. Flatmates.com.au saw an 11.2% rise in members during October — that’s 15.6% higher than this time last year. The most vacant rooms are in Surry Hills, Bondi Beach (and Bondi Junction) and Melbourne CBD. It’s much the same in Brisbane, The Courier-Mail ($) reports, where homebuyers would need a combined income of $155,489 to buy an average home, but they’d only have one single suburb within 12 kilometres of the CBD where they could buy.

From home to work now, and some 831 companies paid no tax in 2021-22, the ABC reports, but it hasn’t named a single one in its story for some reason and the report isn’t live on the Australian Tax Office’s site yet (as of 5am AEDT). It doesn’t mean the companies are dodgy necessarily — it can be due to an accounting loss or claiming tax offsets that reduced their bill to zero — but still. Interestingly, 2022 was the first time the mining sector paid more tax than all other sectors combined, and more than the “total tax from all sectors in each of the first three years of … reporting”, ATO deputy commissioner Rebecca Saint said. In addition, the revenue from the petroleum resource rent tax in 2021-22 was $2 billion, the ATO report said, which seems crazy high considering the “broken” tax hadn’t collected a dollar from LNG projects, according to the budget, as the ABC reports.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

At cinemas in cities across the world, gaggles of giddy girls came together dressed as their favourite Taylor Swift era to see the pop icon’s Eras Tour flick during its opening week. A middle-aged Canadian dad, Jordan Kawchuk, figured he’d better get to his local spot on Vancouver Island to get a seat, but he was first, and the dubious teenager at the box office suggested he take a walk. Strolling the streets, Kawchuk thought about his teenage daughters, Lily and Willa, about 460km away. He was a bit sheepish about being an hour early, but he’d promised his girls he’d see the movie at the exact time as them. He couldn’t miss it. Kawchuk returned at a more dignified time and sat alone in the old cinema, noticing the smells: “Popcorn, plumbing and motel mornings.” The cinema quickly filled up — mostly girls and women with a couple of reluctant dads trailing behind, and the movie began.

He could’ve gone with a friend, of course, but truthfully he didn’t have many. He was new to the area, and besides, he didn’t feel that alone. Sitting there, he felt an invisible string from his seat all the way to his daughters in Kelowna, on the mainland. “It felt like a meaningful and creative way to bond with my two girls from afar,” he writes for the CBC. They’ve lived a ferry and half a day’s drive for a decade but he hears them more than he sees them. He has this ritual, see, since they were tots, where he sits down after supper and phones them, basking in their weird and wonderful stories. Being a long-distance dad, it’s important to him to have a relationship with them that is “fully realised, effervescent and alive”, he says. So what’s three hours in a sugary-sweet cinema really, particularly when he got to hear all about Lily and Willa’s favourite songs and costumes on the phone afterwards. “It was one marvellous call,” he said.

Hoping you show someone you love them today.

SAY WHAT?

We’re very, very sorry that it happened. But I don’t think it’s something unusual in the grand scheme of things when you’re operating a critical infrastructure.

Kelly Bayer Rosmarin

The Optus CEO said 10 million people losing internet and phone use for nine hours yesterday, causing chaos for emergency services, hospitals, transport, was hardly the biggest outage we’ve ever seen, nor that unusual. The opposition communications spokesman David Coleman, on the other hand, called it “catastrophic”.

CRIKEY RECAP

Women and girls should not have to see murder as their lot for living alongside men and boys

MICHAEL BRADLEY

“What I find interesting is the degree of incuriosity required for a person in Collier’s position to sadly shake his head and dismiss this as one of those mysteries of life, not ours to wonder why. Bear in mind what Thijssen actually did: he acquired a murder weapon, went to where his victim Lilie James was, followed her into a bathroom, attacked her with a hammer with such violence that she couldn’t immediately be identified, then walked to his car and drove away.

“His subsequent suicide only underlined the moral depravity and cowardice of his choices. For choices they were, consciously considered and made. It’s true that he wasn’t a monster, because monsters don’t exist. Nevertheless, what he chose to do, and then carried out, would at any time in human history have been considered exceptional and intolerable.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Abortion rights advocates, Democrats score wins in US elections (Reuters)

France’s Marine Le Pen calls on her supporters to march against anti-Semitism (Euronews)

Greenpeace calls for Canadian forestry giant to lose its eco certification (CBC)

Spanish minister: Israel must end ‘genocide’ of Palestinians in Gaza (Al Jazeera)

Man crushed to death by robot in South Korea (BBC)

Ivanka Trump’s testimony in New York civil fraud trial (CNN)

THE COMMENTARIAT

We can’t turn blind eye to extremist, anti-Semitic hate at home – Zaina Cheema (The Australian) ($): “My partner is Jewish, and in my professional life I consult both Muslim and Jewish patients almost daily. Growing up a devout Muslim, I spent years attending mosques and Islamic community centres across Sydney. I studied sharia law, memorised the Qur’an, performed the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and wore a hijab from the age of 12 to 29. I recently travelled to Israel, a country I once denounced as a colonial apartheid state. At university I joined student marches chanting ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’. I recall during one of those marches we arrived at the Israeli embassy. People were shouting ‘shame’. I felt a knot in my stomach — something about the energy of the crowd had grown hateful.

“But it’s only now, since the October 7 attacks, that I understand what that intuitive gut feeling meant: there is an additional malevolence in today’s anti-Semitism. It comes in the form of hatred towards Israel … Since October 7 there has been a deafening silence across much of Australia’s Muslim community. Only a few have condemned Hamas. In my view this highlights the dangerous rise of political and radical Islam. The Lebanese Muslim Association and patrons of the Lakemba mosque in south-western Sydney — some of the most influential Muslim organisations in this country — have not condemned Hamas. We must ask why.”

Bill Hayden was the leader Labor needed, but Australia never got – Niki Savva (The SMH) ($): “Until he died, it’s fair to say millions of Australians would not have known it was Bill Hayden who introduced universal healthcare in 1975, back when the doctors’ union was capable of destroying governments. Nor would they have known that in 1974 he introduced a new pension designed to lift single mothers out of poverty. It came too late to save a government beset by scandals, but as treasurer, he gave the Whitlam government economic credibility by producing a budget responsible enough for his Liberal successor to implement. Without Hayden, Bob Hawke might never have made it as prime minister. Hayden’s hard work and self-sacrifice made it possible for Hawke to win, then to run the most successful Labor government in Australia’s history.“

Hayden was a shining example of the good that a government, or even one individual, can do. He deserved every accolade and then some, heaped on him and his loving family since his death. More could have been said about his wicked sense of humour, or his mischievous streak, but the really important stuff was there. Especially the many lessons for today’s politicians from Hayden, not the least of which is not to waste your time in a position of privilege, either in government or opposition; to put the greater good above personal ambition; to have the courage of your convictions; to not allow yourself to be broken by adversity. Hayden’s friend John Dawkins, who takes great offence when anyone refers to Hayden as humble — just because he didn’t brag about his considerable achievements — described him as the ‘brains, the backbone and the conscience’ of the Labor Party.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)

• Author Richard Flanagan will talk about his new book, Question 7, at the Wheeler Centre.

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Former journalist Philip Micallef will talk about his new book, Noddy, at Glee Books.

• Gunai artist Kirli Saunders will talk about her new book of poetry and art, Returning, at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.

Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)

• Author and journalist Julia Baird will talk about her new book, Bright Shining, at Avid Reader bookshop.