Marcia Langton: Indigenous peoples have little in common with Palestinians

‘A SHARED HUMANITY’

The nearly half of Gazans who voted Hamas into government caused their Israeli siege conditions and, because Iran armed Hamas, their own fate as “human shields”, Indigenous leader Professor Marcia Langton writes for The Australian ($). Langton preceded the statement with an argument that the slogan “not all Palestinians are Hamas” denies that Palestinians are being used as “human shields”. Al Jazeera published a good story yesterday that unpacks the term, noting both Israel and Hamas have been accused of using “human shields”. Langton rejected Blak Sovereignty’s claim that Indigenous peoples in this country “feel solidarity with Palestinians”, saying there is “very little comparable in our respective situations, other than our humanity”.

This comes as a Sydney jumping castle business told Jewish school Masada College it would not take a “Zionist booking” because it didn’t want “blood money”. The company, Western Sydney Jump, posted on Instagram that it was about Zionists, not the wider Jewish community, news.com.au reports, alongside a photo of two women allegedly associated with Masada College — one’s jumper read “Zioness”. NSW Premier Chris Minns called it “outrageous” and condemned it, The Daily Telegraph ($) reports, while Bradfield MP Paul Fletcher said “racism” had no place in Australia. Meanwhile UN human rights official Francesca Albanese says Israel’s response to October 7’s massacre “cannot be called self-defence” under Article 51 of the UN charter, Sky News Australia reports, because Israel occupies Palestine (Sky wrote 451, but it’s a typo). It’s a long-established principle under international law, the international lawyer said.

HEAD IN THE SAND

Meanwhile in Western Australia, Shell and ExxonMobil-backed US fossil fuel titan Chevron is burying just a third of the carbon pollution it promised to, WA Today ($) reports. Chevron boasted it would build the world’s largest carbon capture and storage system but just 34% of the 5 million tonnes of CO2 it captured in the 12 months to June is underground. We need carbon capture to work, Resources Minister Madeleine King said last month, otherwise we’ll never make net zero. Or we could just, say, phase out all coal and gas, considering we live in the sunniest and one of the windiest places on earth, and our per capita coal emissions are still, right now, the highest in the G20, not to mention the emissions we pretend we don’t cause by sending coal offshore. But the budget surplus!!!!!

Another idea, Virgin Australia’s chief sustainability officer Christian Bennett says, is that airlines should be allowed to buy greener fuel for other airlines overseas and get credit for their own emissions reduction, Guardian Australia reports. Australia doesn’t make sustainable aviation fuel, so airlines have to import it to meet the safeguard mechanism rules (a 4.9% reduction each year). But it costs 2.5 times more than normal fuel. So what if we worked out a deal with the US, he suggests, considering we all live in the same warming world? Staying overseas as PwC Cyprus helped Russians avoid being sanctioned as the war broke out in Ukraine, the AFR ($) reports, with leaked documents showing the movement of shares and funds out of their own name. One of Russia’s richest steel and mining billionaires, Alexey Mordashov, is under criminal investigation after PwC moved $1.4 billion the day after he was slapped with European Union sanctions.

NO PAIN, NO GAIN

There’ll be no more broad cost-of-living relief announced, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said via the AFR ($), because we can’t spend budget surplus (last year it was $22 billion) or we’ll drive up inflation. Our mid-year update is due in the coming weeks. Treasury predicted a budget deficit this financial year to the tune of $13.9 billion, but experts say that’s way off because iron ore and metallurgical coal prices are still super high, while our population growth is stimulating the economy more broadly. (Incidentally, The Age ($) has an interesting story that delves into whether migration is pushing inflation up.) Personal and company tax is strong too, another told the paper. Plus the Department of Finance says we were already $6 billion ahead of forecast as of September 2023, thanks to revenue.

Meanwhile, there are only 1,771 more public housing dwellings since 2018 in Victoria, while a staggering 19,686 families have joined the waitlist. The Herald Sun reports 4,914 houses have been built since, but decommissioned, demolished and handed-back homes decreased the net number. It means the state is well behind a $5.3 billion promise to build 12,000 houses by 2024. “Wait times for homes have increased to 18.1 months, while for those fleeing domestic violence the wait has almost tripled from 8.8 to 23.6 months,” the paper says. It comes as 41% of us are pessimistic about Australia’s future, the SMH ($) reports, nearly double what it was three years ago. That’s according to new research from The Scanlon Foundation that found social cohesion is at its lowest level since the study began in 2007.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

The Tasmanian morning’s light is in its warm infancy, scores of brash birds are squalling merrily, and the tea leaves are waiting their turn to relax into the mug-bath of one slumbering Amber Harris. But it was the sound of someone breaking into her car that roused her from her sleep at precisely 6.20am yesterday. She leapt to the bedroom window, heart pumping, only to see “Neil looking up right at me”. Hmm, she thought, locating her phone and searching for her boss’s number. It may sound like a rather dog-ate-my-homework sort of excuse to be late for work but: there is a voluptuous elephant seal weighing around 600kg snoozing luxuriously right in front of my car right now, and I suppose you could say I’m parked in.

He is a fan favourite among locals who decided to christen him Neil — he even has his own Instagram page where the photographic boy can be seen snoozing on a range of things, including several traffic cones. But the independent elephant seal is not exactly known for following the instructions of humans instead of getting his beauty sleep. Harris called into ABC Hobart to share the beguiling reason she’d be late, saying he was still taking a “nice nap” and that she had “no idea what to do with a seal on the front lawn”. A marine expert later told her to just leave him, as Guardian Australia reports. No-one likes to be woken up suddenly, after all. You’re telling me, Harris might’ve thought!

Hoping you feel rested today, folks.

SAY WHAT?

Our broken political system penalises anyone who dares to stand up to the big corporations, and genuinely fight for everyday Queenslanders. Politicians consistently show nothing but contempt for everyday people, so why should we respect them and their rules?

Amy MacMahon

The Greens MP has been suspended from Queensland Parliament — the first time in a decade that this has happened — because she tried, without a message to the governor, to introduce three bills to tax big miners, banks and landlords with empty homes to provide cost-of-living relief to Queenslanders.

CRIKEY RECAP

International law does not allow Israel to kill or harm children and bomb hospitals

MICHAEL BRADLEY

“Even if, for example, Al Shifa Hospital is, as alleged, sitting atop a major Hamas command centre and it can be fairly concluded that Article 19 applies to strip it of the protection of Article 18, that’s not the end of the matter.  Article 18 prohibits attacks on hospitals entirely, meaning that when Article 19 applies, that absolute prohibition falls away.

“That is not the same as authorisation for such attacks. The convention nowhere conveys such an authorisation. The other articles still apply; the wounded and sick, infirm and expectant mothers, are still required to be protected. Even if Israel is not prevented from bombing Al Shifa Hospital by Article 18, because of Hamas’ actions, that doesn’t mean it becomes lawful for it to do so.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Hezbollah’s strategic calculation: Israel, Gaza and the domestic equation (Al Jazeera)

US inflation eases as lower gas prices offset rent rise (BBC)

Ex-Trump lawyer says ‘boss’ was not going to leave White House (The Guardian)

‘We are in a crisis’: 1 in 10 Torontonians now rely on a food bank, new report finds (CBC)

US and China on cusp of deal to crack down on fentanyl (CNN)

Palestinians dig mass grave inside Israeli-encircled Gaza hospital (Reuters)

Finland says Russia is ‘helping’ migrants make their way over the eastern border
(Euronews)

World Rugby concedes All Blacks’ disallowed try in Rugby World Cup final should have stood (Stuff)

THE COMMENTARIAT

No voice of reason in BBC’s bungled hit job on referendum — Nick Cater (The Australian) ($): “If the BBC really wanted to understand last month’s Voice referendum result, it would’ve been a good idea to talk to Australians who voted No. That appears not to have crossed the minds of the producers of the BBC World Service podcast The Inquiry, who instead assembled a panel of experts whose sympathies lay with the Yes case. This was not the BBC’s finest half-hour. It began with a cartoonish history of Australian settlement with the assistance of John Maynard, emeritus professor of Indigenous education and research at the University of Newcastle.

‘”Aboriginal people had first been driven to the brink of extinction by colonial settlement before suffering “more than a century and a half of discrimination and exploitation … herded on to worthless areas of land … given inadequate housing, clothing, inadequate diet, which has impacted on to Aboriginal health right up to today”. But things began to look up in 2008 when the presenter told us ‘prime minister Paul Rudd (not a misprint) made a formal apology to the country’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’. The referendum proposal was a chance to take reconciliation to the next level. Still, it had been inexplicably knocked back in what host David Baker described as ‘yet another setback in the Indigenous fight to be heard’.”

We could make most Australians richer and still save billions — it’s not too late to fix the Stage 3 tax cuts — Peter Martin (The Conversation): “The very expensive stage three tax cuts (costing $20 billion in their first year, and $313 billion over 10 years) were meant to come to the rescue. They begin next July. Speaking notes prepared for Treasurer Jim Chalmers and released under freedom of information laws say they will provide relief to low- and middle-earners and kick in at $45,000. But someone on that income will get no relief. That person will lose an offset of $1,275 in return for a tax cut of zero. Someone on a higher wage of $50,000 will lose $1,500 in order to gain $125, and someone earning the typical full-time wage of $85,000 will have to lose $1,500 to gain just $1,000.

“That’s right, a typical full-time worker will get relief of $1,000 from the stage three tax cuts in return for losing the axed tax offset of $1,500. Much higher earners will do much, much better. An Australian earning twice as much as is typical — $190,000 — will get $7,500. An Australian earning a bit more than that again — $200,000 — will get $9,000. Handing $9,000 to a high earner but only $1,000 to an ordinary full-time earner is an indulgence that might have seemed okay when it looked as if ordinary earners were doing alright, or wouldn’t notice. But it’s about to happen, and it’s about to cost $20 billion in its first year.”

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WHAT’S ON TODAY

Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)

• Author Eleanor Elliott Thomas will talk about her debut book, The Opposite of Success, at The Wheeler Centre.

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Former Myanmar prisoner Sean Turnell will talk about his new book, An Unlikely Prisoner, at the Lowy Institute.

Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)

• Author Christos Tsiolkas will talk about his new book, The In-Between, at Avid Reader bookshop.