Abbott wanted zero women: Bishop

HEARD NOT SEEN

Former deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop says former prime minister Tony Abbott didn’t want any women in his 2013 cabinet and included her as the sole female among 19 other men only because her rank required it, Guardian Australia reports. She challenged him about it in a “ferocious discussion” with the team after he won the election, though didn’t go public with her disdain out of fear of a cabinet “rift”. She did say, however, that she wished the media was more outraged by the sausage fest (my paraphrasing). Bishop also said Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce and crossbencher Bob Katter get away with saying things that a female parliamentarian wouldn’t. It was a pretty frank chat from Bishop, who declined to take part in ABC’s Nemesis, on a podcast with Future Women’s Helen McCabe.

Meanwhile, Giggle founder Sall Grover told Sky News Australia she is balding from the stress of a court case brought by transgender woman Roxanne Tickle who was barred from the female-only app on the basis of her gender identity. Grover, who is awaiting the Federal Court verdict, said she’ll appeal in the High Court if she loses because “there’s not a man on this planet who is actually a woman”. Not only is being trans a recognised medical and legal identity in Australia and elsewhere, but evidence suggests it dates back centuries — the Hijra people have been recognised as a third gender since about 400 BC in South Asia, the ABC reports, while i femminielli date back to at least the 1500s in Italy. But the University of Melbourne found three-quarters of trans people live with depression, and the entire group have an increased risk of suicide, as a direct result of ongoing discrimination.

HERE AND ABROAD

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles have written a letter to Israeli leadership saying they were “alarmed” by comments that the death of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom (and six others) was an “accident” that can “happen in a war”, Sky News Australia reports. It shows the Israeli government has not appreciated the “gravity” of it, the letter continues. It comes as former air chief marshal Mark Binskin will review the probe into the drone attack in what the SMH describes as a “muscular” move. But there’s no guarantee we’ll get all the info from Israel. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Binskin’s appointment was important because we haven’t received a good enough reason for the death — Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said it was just to please pro-Palestine MPs (and, one would think, the Australian community in mourning).

Meanwhile, former Japanese ambassador Shingo Yamagami writes for The Australian ($) that Albanese cares more about China than the Quad (Australia, US, Japan and India), and it would “gladden hearts in Xi Jinping’s Beijing”. It’s good that we’re on better terms with Beijing, Yamagami writes, but the optics of shaking hands with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi while “guns are pointed at your head” in the South China Sea are a bit off. Yamagami also said “several Australians in politics and government” told him to stay quiet about China during his tenure, which ended a year ago. It comes as the US released a joint statement with Defence Minister Richard Marles overnight in which it confirmed reports in the Financial Times that we’re looking into inviting Japan into AUKUS, specifically Pillar II, which is hypersonics, AI and autonomous systems, quantum computing, advanced cyber capabilities and electronic warfare.

HOT COFFERS

Bridget McKenzie’s office wanted to more than triple funding for the “sports rorts” program, Guardian Australia reports, to give “priorities for target and marginal” seats after speaking to MPs and other senators. It’s the result of a three-year (!) freedom of information battle that resulted in the release of the talking points document. It details McKenzie’s pitch to then prime minister Scott Morrison to get funding increased from $29.7 million to $100 million because the former “cannot fulfil key priorities”. The doc is written in the first person, but the paper notes McKenzie has always “denied that she saw the talking points before her meeting with Morrison on November 28, 2018” and this doesn’t prove otherwise.

Meanwhile, the Queensland LNP raised five times as much money as Labor after Steven Miles ascended to the post of premier following Annastacia Palaszczuk’s resignation — some $1,625,053 in less than five months, The Australian ($) says. The Sunshine State heads to the polls in October. It comes as a group of former prime ministers, business, union and military leaders and former diplomats have written to Treasurer Jim Chalmers to urge him to send $9 billion in Russian assets frozen by Australia to Ukraine, as the SMH reports. The money could half-rebuild Ukraine’s entire education infrastructure, and it wouldn’t cost the taxpayer a dime, signatories including John Howard said. We actually don’t have the legal framework to seize or apply for forfeiture of frozen assets, but Ukraine’s Ambassador to Australia Vasyl Myroshnychenko said the world is trying to do so.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Briton Russ Cook slowed his pace as he came to the end of his run. He was in the seaside city of Ras Angela, where new shades of blue were seemingly bursting onto the spectrum in front of his very eyes, from the turquoise ocean to the North African sky. It was quite the stark contrast to Cook’s burnt orange beard, ponytail and creamy skin, blotched a little by the exertion. Phew, the 27-year-old said, “I’m a little bit tired”. People all around him were losing their minds. There were cameras, there were reporters, there were fans, and there were phones. Cook had just become the first person to run the length of Africa, The Guardian reports, a 16,000-kilometre journey that took him just under a year after he set off from South Africa last April.

But it wasn’t without its obstacles. In Angola, he faced the end of a pistol from some irate robbers, while in the Republic of Congo, a bunch of guys toting machetes temporarily held him. And his body screamed in protest — the run was the equivalent of 376 marathons, after all. About two-thirds of the way through, he heeded a doctor’s advice in Nigeria to get some scans. There was no bone damage, so Cook figured he’d better “stop mincing about like a little weasel” and pound the pavement again. Cook, who is known as the “Hardest Geezer”, raised an incredible $1.16 million for charity along the way from loyal fans and admirers who religiously followed his trip. But he hardly thinks of himself as anything special. “I’m a totally normal bloke, so if I can do this, hopefully people can apply this to their own lives in whichever way they choose,” he said.

Hoping this moves you today.

SAY WHAT?

This contradiction in their actions, where they claim to be burdened by the sale of ANZAC biscuit tins but can afford significant political donations to the Yes campaign, is hard to ignore.

Vikki Campion

The Daily Telegraph columnist and wife of Barnaby Joyce said it was “disheartening” that Woolies donated $1.56 million to the Yes campaign for the Voice to Parliament. Woolworths has raised nearly $13 million for the ANZAC Appeal and Poppy Appeal in the last 10 years.

CRIKEY RECAP

Who is Mark Llewellyn, the veteran journo and mysterious ‘bald head’ in the Bruce Lehrmann saga?

DAANYAL SAEED

“Llewellyn began his journalism career in radio in the early 1980s at the ABC, working on AM, PM and The World Today. He would join high-profile host Mike Carlton’s program in 1987, before joining Nine in 1988. He would serve on A Current Affair before joining 60 Minutes in 1995, moving to Seven in 1996. He returned to Nine in 1999, moving up the ranks and eventually being appointed head of news and current affairs.

“He left Nine for Seven in 2006 after his salary was slashed almost in half from $750,000 to $400,000, sparking a court battle that drew in this humble publication. In the course of proceedings, Llewellyn submitted an affidavit, which was first published in Crikey, that claimed Nine bigwig Eddie McGuire wanted to “bone” (i.e. fire) then Today host Jessica Rowe.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Nicaragua to ICJ: End Germany’s support of Israeli ‘genocide’ in Gaza (Al Jazeera)

Trump says abortion laws should be decided by US states (Reuters)

Hong Kong makes largest-ever gold smuggling bust (BBC)

Ukraine ‘will lose the war’ if US fails to approve aid, says Zelenskyy (CNN)

Embattled TV news broadcaster Newshub set to receive a lifeline — Media Insider (NZ Herald)

Canada pledges billions in new defence spending, but doesn’t reach NATO’s 2% commitment (CBC)

Vatican document casts gender change and fluidity as threat to human dignity (The New York Times) ($)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Qantas loyalty revamp the right flight path to healing customer ‘pain point’ — Elizabeth Knight (The SMH): “At its heart, this loyalty strategy is pretty simple — it is effectively discounting points airfares and improving availability by introducing a third loyalty product with 20 million seats on offer. The Points Plus Pay scheme had enough available seats but at various times had been charging north of one million points and up to two million points for a seat on some long-haul flights at the pointy end of the plane. And even those rare customers with a lazy couple of million points were loath to use them because they represented such poor value. In premium cabins, a Classic Plus redemption is worth 1.5 cents a point compared with the 0.6 cents offered by the Points Plus Pay product.

“The new scheme will allow customers to get the same seat for roughly half the number of points. It will be available across all cabins, domestic and international, but it especially hits the sweet spot for international business class passengers — the cohort that was particularly outraged by the price of points using the Points Plus Pay scheme. The Classic Plus fares will move around in line with the price of normal airfares. In a general sense, the Classic Plus will be more expensive than the original Classic scheme (with five million seats) but with 20 million seats on offer, they will be easier to find. The gamble for Hudson is that effectively lowering the price of this product will reduce Qantas Loyalty’s revenue and profit, at least in the short term.”

The Tory party has lost the plot — and could be bad news for Labour — John Harris (The Guardian): “In the context of the Tories’ apparently inevitable defeat, the state of the UK’s political right might prompt a very understandable burst of schadenfreude. But no one should laugh: the Conservatives’ seemingly unstoppable lurching to the right is actually a grave cause for concern, for a few key reasons. One is to do with the basic functioning of our systems of power, and the fact that governments need to be held to account. Effective opposition, in other words, is a very important job, which an unhinged rabble will not be able to carry out.

“But an even bigger cause for alarm centres on a possibility too easily written off. British politics now moves at a breakneck pace: less than five years ago, let us not forget, the party now apparently on its last legs won an 80-seat Commons majority. The state of politics in many of our neighbouring countries speaks for itself. The Tories’ immediate future, therefore, may not be quite the comical sideshow some people assume. Even in the event of a Labour landslide, the likely survivors will include Braverman, Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch, with the latter styling herself as a more level-headed kind of Conservative, but she supported Brexit in 2016 and has a long record of culture-war posturing.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Author Graeme Simsion and the University of Melbourne’s Anne Buist will speak about their new book, The Glass House, at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.

Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)

• Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, Treasury and Employment Andrew Leigh will speak at the Danks “Leaders in Science” Seminar at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.