SAS force in Afghanistan
(Image: AAP/Australian Department of Defence, Corporal Raymond Vance)

SAS VETERAN CHARGED WITH WAR CRIME

Former trooper Oliver Schulz has become the first Australian serviceman or veteran to be charged with a war crime under Australian law after he was arrested by the Australian Federal Police in Jindabyne in the NSW Snowy Mountains yesterday. It is the first of what is expected to be a number of war crimes cases relating to the Afghanistan war to be brought in coming months and follows an investigation from the office of the special investigator, set up to examine alleged war crimes identified in a 2020 ­report by NSW Supreme Court judge Paul Brereton for the inspector-general of the Australian ­Defence Force.

Schulz has been charged under the federal criminal code with one count of “war crime — murder”. “It will be alleged he murdered an Afghan man while deployed to Afghanistan with the Australian Defence Force,” the AFP said.

The Australian ($) reports on nerves among senior officers who fear those accused of war crimes will point to “chain-of-command deficiencies, such as policies that allowed special forces soldiers to repeatedly redeploy to Afghanistan despite concerns over their mental health” by way of defence. “Individuals who were commanding the soldier, right up the chain of command for as high as the defence team can justify, should reasonably expect to get called into court,” one source told the paper. “That will be an uncomfortable place for commanders who find themselves in that position.”

The ABC — which aired in March 2020 shocking allegations about the conduct of Australian special forces in Afghanistan — reports that Schultz’s arrest is “unprecedented” and “marks a historic shift in the response to suspected military wrongdoing, both in Australia and among Western allies, who have avoided holding war crimes trials in civilian courts”.

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BRINGING THE HOUSE DOWN

The Albanese government is potentially facing rough week in Parliament, with The Australian ($) predicting Labor’s $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund is facing defeat in the Senate. The Greens, the Jacqui Lambie Network and independent Senator David Pocock are threatening to block the plan unless Labor increases its social housing targets and puts more money directly into affordable housing projects.

The Oz says Housing Minister Julie Collins is expected to negotiate amendments with key crossbenchers this week after the release of a Senate inquiry report into the fund on Wednesday. The government has eight sitting days this fortnight to get four big pieces of legislation through Parliament — including the contentious “safeguard mechanism”, which aims to set a legally binding target of a 43% cut to Australia’s emissions by 2030. The Greens have consistently argued the mechanism needs to completely rule out any new coal and gas projects.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher told RN Breakfast yesterday that negotiations with the Greens are continuing: “We’ve been clear that we want this legislation through, it’s critical to meeting our 43% reductions target. It’s the policy that exists now about making that more effective and the Greens obviously want, you know, some other additional commitments.” Gallagher said the negotiations would be likely to continue through the week and possibly into next, indulging in a drive-by at the expense of the Liberals, who (albeit reluctantly, in the case of some moderates) oppose the policy altogether. “This is one of the realities when the opposition become so obstructionist that they deal themselves out of any negotiations,” Gallagher said.

And if that weren’t enough, the government is fighting against the opposition’s push ($) to create a parliamentary committee to scrutinise the implementation of the AUKUS deal, and is further seeking to pass its national reconstruction fund and the Voice referendum machinery ($).

ON THE EDGE OF THEIR SEATS

Western Australian lawyer Ben Dawkins has officially taken the upper house seat vacated by departing Labor veteran Alannah MacTiernan, with The West Australian ($) reporting on calls from senior ministers for the Labor Party state executive to expel him over criminal charges. He has already been suspended from the party after pleading guilty to 42 counts of breaching a family violence restraining order (VRO) in relation to email exchanges with his estranged wife last year. He has since sought to have his guilty pleas set aside, and the matter will return to court today.

Dawkins said there were no allegations against him of threats or violence. The terms of the VRO specify what he can discuss with his estranged wife (financial matters and those pertaining to their children). “If you’re going to sit there and make moral judgments about someone who’s had a disagreement with their wife about possession of the marital home after a 20-year marriage then you do so at your own risk,” he said ($). “You have a blue with the missus over the house and the kids — that shouldn’t be a criminal offence in any jurisdiction.”

He had previously told reporters that his original guilty plea was a “plea of convenience”. “I’m innocent of everything and guilty of nothing,” he said at the time. Commerce Minister Sue Ellery and Transport Minister Rita Saffioti have both voiced support for expelling Dawkins.

For her part MacTiernan leaves having served nearly all of the past 35 years in local, federal and (primarily) state politics. In that time, she’s been mayor of Vincent, represented the seat of Perth at federal level, and worked under three WA Labor premiers. But mainly we in the Crikey bunker will remember her for that time she chomped on a raw potato in Albany, thus eating one of the few edible things that, in its raw form, is less appetising than an onion.

Across the aisle, and the Nullarbor, Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming has vowed to fight moves to expel her from the parliamentary Liberal Party after her involvement in an anti-trans-rights rally attended by neo-Nazis.

SAY WHAT?

This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.

António Guterres

We suppose he had to lighten things up *somehow*. The UN secretary-general uses the Oscar favourite to illustrate the central point of the final part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth assessment report, which could best be described as a sobering read: the IPCC has issued a “final warning” on the immediate and serious action that has to be taken to keep global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

CRIKEY RECAP

A who’s who in the Lehrmann text messages

Mar 20, 2023

“Former Liberal Party ‘dirt unit’ strategist John Macgowan is among the three friends Bruce Lehrmann was in regular contact with on the day Brittany Higgins’ explosive rape allegations surfaced two years ago, he has confirmed to Crikey.

“Sources have also told Crikey that another of the friends named in the series of text messages sent and received by Lehrmann on February 15 2021 — as published by the Federal Court last Friday — is Malcolm Turnbull’s nephew Harry Hughes, a former Liberal staffer who is also the grandson of prominent barrister and former Australian attorney-general Tom Hughes KC.

“According to the messages, Lehrmann told Macgowan in the hours following Higgins’ interview with journalist Lisa Wilkinson on The Project that he ‘needs bags’ and would like to ‘get lit’.”

Anti-trans rally speakers are falsely claiming neo-Nazi supporters were undercover police, trans activists

Mar 20, 2023

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“Anti-trans activists have tried to deny the presence of neo-Nazis at their rally on Saturday by spreading unfounded and false claims they were left-wing activists or undercover police, despite the far-right group’s own message of support.

“In the aftermath of the Melbourne appearance of Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull Let Women Speak tour, the UK-based anti-trans campaigner live-streamed a “post-event chat” where she sipped champagne with Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming, failed Liberal candidate for Warringah Katherine Deves and anti-trans campaigner and host of TERF Talk Down Under Angie Jones.

“During the broadcast, Keen-Minshull repeatedly claimed that a group of men who gave Nazi salutes, chanted ‘white power’, shouted slurs at the LGBTQIA+ protesters, and included public neo-Nazi figures might not have been neo-Nazis.”

How did Australia’s conservative movement lose its way?

Mar 20, 2023

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“The defeat of the Fraser government 40 years ago this month was a watershed moment in the history of Australian conservatism. In considering the state of the Liberal Party and the broader intellectual right in 2023, it pays to look back to the 1980s for comparisons.

“Firstly, consider the parallels. When Bob Hawke brought Labor to power, seven and a half years after the trauma of the Whitlam Dismissal, conservatives were deeply demoralised. They held office in just two states: Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Coalition in Queensland and Robin Gray’s Liberals in Tasmania. Importantly, Malcolm Fraser had been a significant disappointment. But rather than mourn his defeat, most conservatives lamented his lack of achievement in office.

“Conservatives were similarly demoralised when Anthony Albanese won last year’s federal election, eight and a half years after another generational Labor trauma: the failed Rudd and Gillard governments. Again, conservatives were left in charge of only two states — Dominic Perrottet’s Coalition in NSW and Jeremy Rockliff’s Liberals in Tasmania. And for differing reasons, the governments of Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison had failed to live up to expectations.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Israeli minister condemned for claiming ‘no such thing’ as a Palestinian people (The Guardian)

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch gets engaged to Ann-Lesley Smith after six months of dating (The West Australian) ($)

Federal ministers, premiers and independent MPs use burner phones as TikTok ban nears (The Australian) ($)

Senate to pass Voice referendum machinery bill (The Australian Financial Review) ($)

Amritpal Singh: Punjab police step up search for Sikh separatist preacher (BBC)

Adelaide now has 14th least affordable housing market in the world (The Advertiser) ($)

Nepal wants a aacred necklace returned. But a major museum still keeps It on Display. (Pro Publica)

‘Total Aryan victory’: Nazis the only ones happy after Parliament protest (The Age) ($)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Our last climate chance: act now on ‘everything, everywhere, all at once’ — Nick O’Malley (The Age) ($): “None of this is equivocal. This report is the work of thousands of scientists over half a decade of study and analysis. Its wording was painstakingly negotiated by representatives of nearly all the world’s governments before its approval and publication.

“It is the most thorough assessment of climate science the world will see during the last decade in which we still have time to act to arrest the worst impacts of climate change. And this is another key point made by the report and its authors — there is still time to act.”

Campaign dismay will sink Labor landslide — Troy Bramston (The Australian) ($): “While the polls, betting markets and pundits are predicting a Labor victory at the NSW election on Saturday, there is deep fear within party ranks that the contest is perilously close, and many expect only the narrowest of wins or a minority Chris Minns-led government when it should be a landslide.

“There is dismay about Labor’s campaigning and a feeling that the party should be running away with this election given the many scandals that have plagued the Coalition, the revolving-door premiership and its longevity in office. There has never been a Liberal-Nationals government in NSW in power for this long.”

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Nationwide

  • The United Nations’ top climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will release its latest global report on efforts to right climate change.

Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)

  • There will be a series of national events for the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War at Parliament House.

  • The Australian Information Security Association (AISA) will host the 2023 Australian Cyber Conference, with speakers including Cyber Security Minister Clare O’Neil, former PM John Howard, former UK national security director Sally Walker.

  • Dr Kerry Schott, chair of the Carbon Market Institute, will address the National Press Club on the emissions safeguard mechanism and Australia’s path to net zero.

Eora country (also known as Sydney)

  • The Australian Domestic Gas Outlook conference to be held in Sydney. Speakers include federal Resources Minister Madeleine King and WA Mines Minister Bill Johnston.

  • The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) is holding a public inquiry as part of an investigation it is conducting concerning the conduct of employees of Inner West Council, Transport for NSW and others (Operation Hector).

  • The NSW government reponse into the review of the audit office of NSW 2022 will be presented.

Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)

Waibene (also known as Thursday Island)