Labor elders launch Labor Friends of Israel group

MAKING FRIENDS

Former federal Labor MP Michael Kelly and former NSW treasurer Eric Roozendaal have launched Labor Friends of Israel to take on “support for Hamas among ‘progressives’ ”, The Australian ($) reports, though it’s not clear who, if any, notable progressives have publicly supported the terrorist outfit. In what feels vaguely defamatory, the paper has hyperlinked the quoted words above to a story about Labor ministers Ed Husic and Anne Aly alleging 2.3 million Gazans were being collectively punished by Israel (and it refers to the pair again further down in the story) — which is not the same as supporting Hamas, but anyway. The group will also back pro-Israel Labor candidates and build “friendship and understanding with the Jewish community”.

Meanwhile cricketer Usman Khawaja has been charged (in cricket land, not legally) for wearing a plain black armband in support of Palestinians in Gaza without seeking permission, The Courier-Mail ($) reports. “Personal messages” require prior approval from Cricket Australia and the ICC, the statement said, but this is a “first offence” and he’ll only get a reprimand. It comes as Nine newspaper readers condemned the ABC for sacking Antoinette Lattouf over her views on the Israel-Gaza conflict — one accused the broadcaster of “a very jaundiced concept of ‘democracy’ ” and another called it “Big Brother” considering her views were shared outside of work. It comes as Communications Minister Michelle Rowland told chair Ita Buttrose it was “unfortunate” that the prime minister did not approve managing director David Anderson appointment’s in 2019 as required by the cabinet handbook. Buttrose countered the rules didn’t apply then, The Age ($) reports, and besides, ABC needed its independence in the matter.

ABANDON SHIP

Defence Minister Richard Marles confirmed Australia is sending 11 personnel, not a warship, to the Red Sea amid a compromised trade route by Houthi rebels. Opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie said Marles “has his head under the doona”, Sky News Australia reports, and pointed out Australia is the fifth-largest user of shipping in the world, so needs those trade routes open. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton went harder, tweeting: “It takes a lot of effort with a special blend of weakness and incompetence for our prime minister to turn his back on our closest ally, a decision that could only be welcomed by Hamas (a listed terrorist organisation).” Cripes, that feels like an extraordinarily long bow. But Marles countered that we’ve tripled our personnel and the US is happy, which is the most important thing — taking the awks out of AUKUS and all that…

Speaking of nuclear-powered things — it’s actually the most expensive source of new energy for Australia, the CSIRO and energy market regulator said, and solar and onshore wind projects remain the cheapest. And that’s even counting the cost of keeping the power grid reliable as we transition, the ABC adds. It’s per the new GenCost report, which drew its conclusions from a binned nuclear energy project in the US. Meanwhile Guardian Australia has fact-checked mining billionaire Gina Rinehart’s claim that renewable energy could use one-third of Australia’s prime agricultural land — bogus, as you might have predicted. That’s per findings from the Australia Institute, the Clean Energy Council and projections by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). Where did the claim come from? Right-wing think tank the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA). It claimed our energy demand would grow to 15,459 terawatt hours by 2050 — that’s 30 (!) times what both the AEMO and Net Zero report forecast. The Australia Institute called the IPA’s conclusion “ridiculous”.

THE TOK WAS TIKKING

TikTok wrote to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) twice — initially during the Voice to Parliament referendum and then again in October — urging it to sign up. That’s according to docs Guardian Australia FOI’d that showed TikTok reasoned the AEC already was on X (formerly known as Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. It would “help support the provision of authoritative information to our community of more than 8.5 million Australians”, the TikTok note said. But the AEC told the paper it decided not to create an account after TikTok was banned on government devices, even though TikTok argued that a bid to combat misinformation would be the exception to the rule.

Meanwhile Advance Australia was so emboldened by the failed referendum vote it’s planning to use its 300,000 supporters to topple Anthony Albanese, the teal independents and the Greens, The Australian ($) reports. Some 15% of Labor voters said they’d ditch the party after the result, a poll found, though it was 26% in the 2022 election’s key battleground of WA. Speaking of WA, at least two houses have been burnt to the ground 30km east of Perth after four major fires burned in 24 hours, the ABC reports. A victim who lost everything commended firefighters for containing the blazes in “such a short period of time in 39-degree heat with this wind”. Emergency services “are amazing, they really are”, he said.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Some years back, The Guardian’s Dale Berning Sawa found herself swaying in random places — the supermarket, waiting for a pedestrian light, or wherever one might stand. It was something she’d been doing constantly with her new baby Tsubamé, with whom she was besotted, but with a good night’s rest pocked with feeding and settling the tot, the bone-deep tiredness was getting to her. And Tsubamé wasn’t eating well. Sawa didn’t get it — she’d had these boobs her whole life. “If they had one job, surely this has to be it,” she remembers asking her mum, who lived a country away in France. “An answer will come,” her mum replied. One day, it did. The mother of a friend, a woman named Hazel, contacted Sawa to ask a favour. She was doing a short course and looking for a place to stay for a few months. Sure, Sawa had shrugged.

Hazel was finding her own way as a mother, albeit at the other end. She’d had the first of four kids at 24, and had never left South Africa — until now. When she arrived, the first thing she told Sawa was to put her baby in a cardboard box. You’ll have two free hands, and with some blankets and cushions, Tsubamé will be safe. It was a simple concept, but it allowed Sawa to unfurl. The pair fell into easy cohabitation — trading cups of tea and musings about motherhood. “Mostly,” Sawa writes, “we didn’t try to fix each other.” On Christmas Day, Hazel, Sawa, her partner Hiraki and Tsubamé shared a humble feast of mince pies and savoury pancakes. “Thanks for including me,” Hazel had emailed Sawa from upstairs later on. “It really meant a lot.” Sawa often thinks back to that time — recalling the balm of Hazel’s “quiet, loving presence”. A makeshift mum for a new one.

My dear reader, this is the last edition of the Worm for 2023 — I’ll be back in your inbox on Monday, January 15. A warm thank you for your readership and support this year.

Hoping you can be there for the ones in need, and that you have a restful silly season.

SAY WHAT?

The ‘right to switch off’ means that your boss can’t contact you about anything outside of working hours. But what if the entire company is about to crash?

Matthew Lynn

Not our problem, babe. And soon it could be illegal to do what the British financial columnist seems to advocate anyway — Greens Senator Barbara Pocock is advocating for a “right to disconnect” amendment to the Fair Work Act that would give workers the legal right to ignore calls, emails and texts when they’re out of hours, unless they’re being paid for overtime.

CRIKEY RECAP

Crikey’s Arsehat of the Year for 2023 is…

CHARLIE LEWIS

“And, of course, the stoking of white grievance — the aggressive assertion that nothing that happened during the European colonisation of this continent could possibly continue to impact its material reality, and thus it was an affront to seek redress (see ‘special treatment’) for a group whose disadvantages could only be of their own making.

“Feeding each other like a decaying tape loop, these tactics and their animating logic inevitably combined to produce vile, racist rhetoric. Once you accept the above argument, statements from Johns, Kerryn White and others were just the sun-bleached litter floating on a pollution-choked river’s oily surface. Which is why, we suspect, this cohort won so easily against such worthy candidates as Ben Roberts-Smith and Alan Joyce (who came in second).”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

UN says up to 300,000 Sudanese fled their homes after a notorious group seized their safe haven (ABC)

China’s Xi Jinping hails Russia cooperation as record trade beats $200 billion target
(CNN)

China bans export of rare earth processing tech over national security (Reuters)

More than 15 killed in mass shooting in downtown Prague (euronews)

Trudeau says allies ‘increasingly concerned’ about Israel’s tactics eroding its international support (CBC)

Pakistan uses artificial rain in attempt to cut pollution levels (The Guardian)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Why Albanese is right to be wary of US warship request — Peter Leahy (The Australian) ($): “After days of conjecture and delay, it seems likely the Albanese government is set to decline a US operational-level request to send a warship to the Red Sea — if it hasn’t already. But the fact is this request should have been knocked back, fast and firm. By not promptly and politely denying the request, Australia missed a golden opportunity to express our sovereign identity and assert our own priority interests. It’s important to understand this was not a formal request from the US government or President Joe Biden himself; rather, a routine operational request from a US-sponsored multinational naval partnership.

“Those who fear that by saying no we might somehow threaten broad-based US support to Australia and the development of AUKUS should take a deep breath. If rejecting a request such as this threatens our relationship, then it’s not a real partnership. Indeed, those clamouring for us to send a ship might note Anthony Albanese’s words from his Lowy speech on Tuesday. In it he referred to prime minister John Curtin’s wartime decision to recall Australian forces from the Middle East in December 1941, arguing it was the first clear expression of Australia setting its own strategy and foreign policy with a focus on Asia and the Pacific.”

The year millennials aged out of the internet — Max Read (The New York Times) ($): “Zoomer internet is, at least on the surface, quite different than ours. The celebrities are unrecognizable (Kai Cenat???); the slang is impenetrable (gyatt???); the formats are new (GRWM???). Austerely tasteful overhead shots of meticulously arranged food posted on Instagram have been replaced with garishly lit minute-long videos of elaborate restaurant meals posted on TikTok. Glibly chatty blog posts about the news have been replaced with videos of recording sessions for podcasts. No wonder millennials feel so alienated — the language and terrain of the internet are now entirely foreign.

“And yet zoomers — and the adolescents in generation Alpha nipping at their generational heels — still seem to be having plenty of fun online. Even if I find it all inscrutable and a bit irritating, the creative expression and exuberant sociality that made the internet so ‘fun’ to me a decade ago are booming among 20-somethings on TikTok, Instagram, Discord, Twitch and even X. ‘Skibidi Toilet’, ‘Fanum tax’, ‘the rizzler’: I won’t debase myself by pretending to know what these memes are, or what their appeal is, but I know that zoomers seem to love them. Or, at any rate, I can verify that they love using them to confuse and alienate middle-aged millennials like myself.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)

• Authors including Ellen van Neerven, Mirandi Riwoe and Kris Kneen will talk about their new books at Avid Reader bookshop.

Kaurna Country (also known as Adelaide)

• Bolly Vibes will host Adelaide’s “biggest Bollywood Christmas party” at Red Square.