Wilkinson comments come at a Price

WORD OF MOUTH

The Project host Lisa Wilkinson’s comments about opposition spokesperson for Indigenous Australians Jacinta Nampijinpa Price are being used by the No campaign for the Voice to Parliament, Guardian Australia reports. A beseeching Price sent an email out as leader of the Fair Australia campaign requesting donations to “an urgent $130,000 No campaign fund”, conspiratorially calling Wilkinson one of many “elitists” who are trying to “ruin our country”. It’s in relation to the leaked pre-interview between Wilkinson and Brittany Higgins — Ten’s lawyers say its publication was unauthorised and allegedly a contempt of court. Price isn’t the only one raising funds — former prime minister John Howard emailed Liberal Party supporters this week trying to get dosh for the No side because making its argument is going to be “a challenge”. It’s almost as if…

Meanwhile an indignant The Australian ($) reports Yes campaigner Thomas Mayo called Howard a “bastard” at a May Day rally in Port Kembla last month. The disrespect, well I never etc. It also reports that unnamed No campaign strategists have found old posts supposedly from Mayo in an online forum that calls itself a “successor ­organisation of the Communist Party of Australia”. To far more important news and the legislation approving the constitutional amendment should the referendum get up is expected to sail through the Parliament today as the last week before winter break gets under way, The Conversation reports, with the Senate vote to complete the parliamentary process for the referendum. It kicks off at 10am, the SMH ($) adds.

Worm readers, I’d be remiss without acknowledging the following: a statement regarding Crikey removing an opinion piece by Guy Rundle

CANDID CAMERAS

“SAS to wear big brother cameras into battle”, or so The Australian ($) headlined its story about Defence Force chief Angus Campbell requiring soldiers to wear body cameras by the end of the year, something the Brereton inquiry recommended. The paper says it will both “expose misconduct and rebut false claims against them”, though it’ll only be an “interim capability” for the special forces program — a Defence spokesperson wouldn’t say whether Special Air Service and 2nd Commando Regiment troops will wear them. Body cameras aren’t without precedent — we’ve all seen Zero Dark Thirty — but an unnamed veteran SAS officer said the cameras could undermine split-second decisions. When it comes to the battlefield, “there aren’t really any nice rules that apply”, they added, which is a frankly astounding thing to purportedly hear from a former SAS soldier after Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith was found to have probably committed war crimes.

Meanwhile a former Defence reservist and political candidate sacked in 2013 for anti-gay social media posts, Bernard Gaynor, tried to get the cops to ban Gender Queer, an award-winning memoir about gender and sexuality. That’s according to internal government documents the Brisbane Times ($) FOI’d — it shows the federal Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications created an internal timeline of the issue. Apparently, Gaynor — a somewhat serendipitous surname — complained about “multiple ‘pornographic’ titles available in the Logan Library” a departmental staffer noted. One might humbly suggest he get a hobby. The police were “reluctant to get involved”, the documents read. So what is this book? Check our excerpts here — it’s aimed at older teens and young adults, but became one of the most banned books in the US because of conservative pushback about its nudity.

I’VE GOT MAIL

An anonymous “Upset Unionist” has been dishing the dirt on SA Labor, The Advertiser ($) reports, including spats between Premier Peter Malinauskas and MPs over issues including LIV Golf, and schedules of caucus seminars. The SA Liberals strenuously deny it, but the government believes the identity of the mole is a 20-year-old trainee Liberal staffer who accidentally ended up on an email send list of Labor MLCs. An investigation has found he got three emails while on there — he didn’t tell his boss, MLC Laura Henderson, but did tell his office manager. Interestingly, the trainee said he did “not forward any emails to any persons”, Legislative Council president Terry Stephens found.

To the Victorian Liberals now and the high-stakes Warrandyte byelection is heating up with the Liberal preselection of former pastor Nicole Werner, The Age ($) reports. It’s a blue ribbon seat but the Victorian Coalition is desperately unpopular against Dan Andrews’ Labor Party, with just 23% of the public vote according to The Age’s ($) survey last week. The seat was vacated after Warrandyte MP Ryan Smith announced he was quitting over a “growing negative tone of politics”. Werner was up against former Institute of Public Affairs boss John Roskam — the paper notes after he was knocked out, some members left early. And in NSW, former Liberal premier Dominic Perrottet’s $15 billion sovereign wealth fund should be paused, Treasurer Daniel Mookhey via the AFR ($) says, because it’s saddling the state with too much debt in this high-interest era.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Erin Niimi Longhurst was carrying some milk home from a corner shop in Tokyo in 2018 when her phone buzzed. “Emergency earthquake warning,” it alerted her, “prepare for strong shaking.” Longhurst promptly jumped into a bush, but it was a false alarm. Back in her Honolulu home just eight days later, however, Longhurst was working on some car paperwork with her mum when her phone buzzed again. “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii,” the message read. “This is not a drill,” as she writes for The Guardian. It couldn’t be another false alarm, she thought, noticing she was suddenly acutely aware of her scalp — each tiny hair sprouting from her follicles. Dazed, she asked her mother what they should do in their final moments. Mum responded that she wanted to file her paperwork at the local road authority.

Longhurst paced instead. She pondered all the minutiae of decisions she’d made right up until a few second ago, decisions that had ultimately come to shape her. Again, however, the minutes stretched by — until it became obvious it was another brush with death. This time “I was forever changed,” Longhurst says. “That terrifying hour gave me time to reflect on the things I had been too scared to do and what I’d change given the same chance again.” So she stopped second-guessing herself and started taking risks, “resulting in a promotion, a transatlantic move and an impulsive summer romance with an old friend”. They’re getting married later this year. “Sometimes the universe sends you a message,” Longhurst says. It might start small, but if it’s ignored, it gets louder. “The thing that will end up killing you will never be the thing you spent all that time worrying about,” she says, “so stop putting everything off and just get started.”

Hoping you live today like it’s your last.

SAY WHAT?

The f—ing grifters. That’s the podcast we should have launched with them. I’ve got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try and help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories. The grifters …

Bill Simmons

A senior podcasting executive at Spotify has launched an extraordinary rant about Prince Harry and Meghan after their podcast deal was not renewed after one series. He has previously said Harry should be shot into the sun.

CRIKEY RECAP

Oops! News Corp campaign to destroy Higgins takes out Liberal senator

BERNARD KEANE

“It must smart something terrible — you put weeks of effort into a conspiracy theory-based campaign to destroy Brittany Higgins using illegally leaked text messages, only for all that labour to blow up the Liberals instead, with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton forced to suspend a Victorian senator from the party. Worse yet, a former Senate colleague of the man emerges to make similar accusations as those levelled by Lidia Thorpe.

“Today, even The Australian has had to report that several other people had concerns about the behaviour of David Van, who denies all of the allegations made about him. The awkward silence that greeted Thorpe’s accusations of harassment and assault by Van has, within 24 hours, given way to the headline ‘Open secret of a groping senator’. Presumably the angry columns about how Van has been denied justice and due process can wait for a later edition.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

‘Not settle, not blink’: Crikey boss on the face-off with Lachlan Murdoch (SMH)

Blinken, Qin hold ‘candid’ talks, US and China agree to meet again (Reuters)

EU exports of electric cars to UK put at risk by Brexit trade deal (The Guardian)

Yemenis embark on first direct flight to Saudi Arabia since 2016 (Al Jazeera)

Austrian police foil alleged Islamic State sympathisers’ plot to attack Vienna pride parade (euronews)

Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video (BBC)

Why the evidence suggests Russia blew up the Kakhovka Dam (The New York Times)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Why I said #MeToo about David Van — Amanda Stoker (The AFR) ($): “It was not appropriate conduct in a workplace. It was unprofessional and uninvited. I dealt with it as you would expect a woman in a senior leadership role to. I pulled him up on it immediately, laid down the law, and made it very clear that a repeat would not be tolerated — by me or anyone else. I didn’t run to the media, and I didn’t try to destroy a colleague. I immediately registered the issue with a senior colleague to ensure a record of the event and to ensure that any conduct which wasn’t in my line of sight could be detected and dealt with should it emerge. It was important to me that others were safe, especially staff.

“Senator Van apologised and said I could be confident he would not behave that way in future. I accepted that apology. And I got on with the job. After all, Queenslanders were counting on me to be focused on their interests. Senator Van is right to say we buried  the hatchet, and were able to work constructively following the incident. We did. He didn’t repeat the behaviour toward me. I’ve even interviewed him on my program this year. I’m a professional, and I don’t hold a grudge. Like you, I don’t know the full suite of information that was before Peter Dutton as he made the decision for Senator Van to be excluded from the partyroom, nor the process adopted to ensure there was natural justice. I am pleased, however, to see that the Coalition has a leader who takes misconduct of this kind seriously.”

Dutton says ‘No’ with an American accent — Nick Bryant (The Age) ($): “The Americanisation of Australian politics, of course, is nothing new. Debates are becoming more binary, polarised, emotions-based and reflexively contrarian. Federal politics has become more relentlessly oppositional. The demonisation of Australia’s inner-city elites is a reworking of the vilification of America’s bicoastal elites, whereby Marrickville or Fitzroy serve as Martha’s Vineyard. Now these kinds of tactics and tropes are being deployed by opponents of the Voice to Parliament. Moreover, polling suggests they may be working.

“When in April Peter Dutton first announced his party’s opposition to a Yes vote, he spoke repeatedly of a ‘Canberra Voice’, an echo of the anti-Washington rhetoric that has become standard fare on the American right — populist politics 101. When last month in Parliament he outlined his opposition in more detail, he again maligned the ‘Canberra Voice’, the ‘Canberra-based Voice’ and the ‘Canberra knows best’ approach of Anthony Albanese. His speech was replete with other US-style allusions. First he seemed to be trying to elevate ‘our forefathers’ who drafted the constitution into an Australian equivalent of America’s founding fathers: patriots acclaimed with blind reverence, and sometimes even vested with powers of clairvoyance.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Writer Christine Wallace will speak about her book, Political Lives – Australian Prime Ministers and their biographers, at The Sydney Institute.

Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)

• Treasurer Cameron Dick will speak about the Queensland budget in a speech at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.