Robodebt haunts Stuart Robert in Fadden

UP TO HIS EARS IN DEBT

Former Liberal MP Stuart Robert destroyed lives with robodebt, Labor’s damning new campaign has declared, as it fights to snatch Fadden in Saturday’s byelection. Robert, who was government services minister from May 2019 to March 2021, has a pretty hefty 10.6% hold on the safe Queensland seat, as Guardian Australia reports. But Labor has spent $30,000 on a digital campaign that urges voters to flip the blue ribbon seat red via its candidate, Letitia Del Fabbro. That’s peanuts compared with the Liberal-National Party spending “six figures” on digital, billboards and TV ads, however. It comes as some of the half-million robodebt victims mull civil action for compensation after the damning royal commission findings, the ABC reports. The last class action didn’t include any compo for distress or suffering.

Meanwhile Treasurer Jim Chalmers says the $20 billion budget surplus did not come at the expense of helping people, The Australian ($) reports. He says the budget surplus, which was nearly five times the original figure of $4.2 billion, “is in addition to, not instead of, cost-of-living relief”, as the AFR ($) reports. And yet our JobSeeker rate ($693 a fortnight for a single) remains nowhere near the poverty line, and nor does the pension ($971.50 a fortnight), as Guardian Australia explains. Still, we did see a couple of bumps to welfare: an energy bill discount, and cheaper medicines in the budget. Chalmers says he was very conscious of not creating more inflation with cost-of-living measures, and it seems it worked — according to Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe, anyway, who backed Labor’s claim the measures were deflationary.

CAUGHT AND HELD

Some 115 people were unlawfully held in immigration detention for a total of 2946 days between 2018 and 2022, The Age ($) reports, thanks to Home Affairs Department errors. The paper FOI’d documents that showed two Australian citizens were held in detention — one for three weeks, the other for four days — because they were wrongly logged as “non-citizen visa holders”. Cripes. Staff were required to do extra training after that one. In another case, a visa holder was unlawfully detained for no fewer than six years and five months (!) after “a legal error” in his visa application was missed, the paper adds. The department said errors happened in fewer than 1% of cases, but one might counter that’s 1% too many.

Meanwhile a WA Supreme Court judge says the holding of three kids in solitary confinement was illegal, WA Today ($) reports. Three children were held in their cells at Banksia Hill Detention Centre and at Unit 18 for days or months on end — one for 12 days, another 22 days and a third for 133 days. Dismal. Justice Paul Tottle said it causes “immeasurable and lasting damage to an already psychologically vulnerable group” and was the product of staff shortages, crappy infrastructure and lack of training over behavioural issues. Finally, the price of cocaine in Australia “could skyrocket”, The Advertiser ($) reports, because an Australian crime syndicate called “The Commission” has released a fixed price list for cocaine to every major dealer in the country to keep everyone’s profits high. Cripes. “Prices of wholesale cocaine have plummeted, crashing from a high of $400,000 per kg before COVID to as low as $160,000 per kg in recent weeks due to a glut of importations,” it reports. OK then.

FOREIGN EXCHANGE

At the NATO summit in Lithuania a grinning Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pulled out a printed photo of England wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow’s stumping, The Guardian reports, causing UK PM Rishi Sunak to crack up. But he retorted that he hadn’t brought his sandpaper with him — a reference to the ball-tampering scandal of 2018 — but had brought a photo of England’s Mark Wood and Chris Woakes celebrating at Headingley. The British government said both bringing pictures was coincidental. A little politician humour for you there. Things weren’t so chummy in Brussels, where Trade Minister Don Farrell has warned we’d walk away from European Union trade talks if we don’t cut a deal by the end of the year. The SMH ($) explains we want producers of items such as champagne, parmesan and feta to be able to sell under those names — the EU wants to protect them as region-specific. And the EU wants less red tape when it comes to our crucial minerals.

Meanwhile Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong is “concerned” about reports Chinese President Xi Jinping and Solomon Islands PM Manasseh Sogavare have announced a police cooperation deal in Beijing, The New Daily reports. It was Sogavare’s first trip to Beijing since the archipelago nation signed a security pact in 2022 that made several countries (including us and the US) nervous. Wong said the countries should publish the agreement immediately so we know where we stand on regional security, Reuters adds. It was one of nine deals signed by Sogavare, who switched diplomatic ties from Taiwan to Beijing when he came to power in 2019. Speaking of China — TikTok’s Australian director of public policy, Ella Woods–Joyce, raised eyebrows at a parliamentary inquiry for saying she didn’t know where the formal headquarters of the Chinese-owned app were, the ABC reports. Liberal Senator James Paterson was pissed, accusing her of “obfuscation”.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Robert Moore wanted one thing for his 100th birthday — to pat as many dogs as possible. When the US man told his daughter Alison about his wishes, she wasn’t surprised. He just “love, love, loves dogs”, Alison told The Washington Post ($). It’s gotta be easier than rounding up a whole lot of party-going friends of his, many of whom are in the grave or have well and truly left their party days behind them. So Alison sat down and opened Nextdoor, a neighbourhood networking site, and Facebook. She typed an earnest post explaining her elderly dad would be sitting outside her home at a table beneath a birthday banner, with treats for humans (choc chip bikkies) and treats for dogs (dry bones) on a table. If anyone had a dog in need of a pat that day, she said, they were very welcome to come on down.

It was 11am on Robert’s 100th turn around the sun, and more than 200 doggies appeared — presumably on the horizon like some sort of mini doggo stampede. All shapes and sizes dutifully lined up, wagging their tails expectantly and sniffing each other’s bottoms courteously. Alison said she was shocked — she figured there’d be 20, 30 tops. But Robert, who’d spent 25 years working as the head of science and arts at the San José State University, evidently had a reputation that preceded him. He was so touched and overwhelmed by the turnout, patting endless dogs, cracking jokes with local kids, and laughing. Along with their dogs, people had brought cupcakes, birthday cards, flowers and posters. “Everyone just couldn’t stop smiling,” his granddaughter Caroline said. Except for Alison, who also cried a bit. “Strangers did this for my dad,” she said.

Hoping you believe in the good in the world today.

SAY WHAT?

We have to show, as well as tell, that we don’t need to choose between acting responsibly with the budget and governing with compassion.

Jim Chalmers

The treasurer’s aspirational speech in Melbourne on Tuesday was somewhat at odds with fellow speaker the Brotherhood of St Laurence’s Travers McLeod who told the crowd 3 million of us (one in eight) live in poverty, facing “impossible choices every day, between food, medicine or heating a home” despite Australia having the highest median wealth per person of any country.

CRIKEY RECAP

We’ve always had a voice — one to Parliament is not the answer

BENJAMIN ABBATANGELO

“The solicitor-general’s advice is clear: the proposed constitutional amendment does not impose any obligations upon the executive government to follow representations of the Voice, or to consult with the Voice prior to developing any policy or making any decision. More importantly, we have the right to self-government, just as we have successfully done for tens of thousands of years. As hard as it might be to fathom, it is we, not you, who are best placed to determine our futures.

“‘But it’ll be more powerful and permanent because it’s constitutionally enshrined’. Again, not exactly. As Richard Lancaster SC and others noted throughout the joint select committee on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice referendum, the proposed amendment doesn’t require Parliament to maintain the Voice.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

India hits online gaming with 28% tax (Al Jazeera)

Russian ex-submarine officer on Ukraine blacklist gunned down on morning run (Reuters)

BBC presenter sent abusive and menacing messages to second young person (BBC)

Racism and violence: Finland’s government plagued by new scandal on eve of Biden visit (euronews)

Watchdog probing claims that Nike Canada, gold company benefiting from forced Uyghur labour (CBC)

Paris to charge SUV drivers higher parking fees to tackle ‘auto-besity’ (The Guardian)

THE COMMENTARIAT

We can’t look the other way when our military fails — Linda Reynolds (The Australian) ($): “The hardest phone call I ever made as a minister was to Afghanistan’s ambassador to Australia, to say the Brereton report would contain credible allegations of systematic war crimes committed against his citizens by Australian special forces. The very people, who for nearly 20 years, the ADF had been fighting, and dying, to protect. What I shared with him were not fog-of-war incidents in the heat of battle, they were credible allegations of war crimes, of murder, and of sophisticated cover-ups. The ambassador was calm and dignified, which made the call even harder.

“Successive Australian governments had over-tasked our special rorces in Afghanistan long after other army units could and should have been deployed. By all accounts they were very willing to keep deploying. They did so with the clear understanding they would abide by the laws of war, no matter how many deployments they did. The overwhelming majority served with great distinction and honour, in circumstances few of us could even imagine. But over time, it is clear the behaviours of some deviated and even became normalised. This was a clear failure of command and leadership. For many years there were persistent rumours within defence of misconduct by our special rorces in Afghanistan, which ultimately, due to the great moral courage of special forces insiders, resulted in the Brereton Inquiry and report.”

If the BBC presenter story teaches us anything, it should be the pitfalls of rushing to judgment — Jane Martinson (The Guardian): “To recap, a story in The Sun on Friday night alleged that an unnamed BBC presenter had paid £35,000 to a young person for sexually explicit images sent from the age of 17. While their parents accused the presenter of fuelling a drug habit, on Monday the young person issued a statement through a lawyer saying there was ‘no truth’ to the ‘rubbish’ claims, and suggesting that the paper had ignored their denials …

“That does not seem to be a big enough mistake yet to justify The Sun — owned by a man who has made no secret of his dislike for a publicly funded rival — making the BBC the central problem in this story. Meanwhile, The Sun demands answers from the BBC but provides very few of its own, such as why it chose not to publish the young person’s denial. A newspaper columnist suggesting that a rush to judgment on a big story is the last thing anyone needs is hardly likely to prove popular, but the need for truth and accuracy in reporting has never been stronger. We may not like a powerful man paying another adult for explicit pictures, but if he has their consent, he is doing nothing illegal.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)

• The University of Queensland’s Gari Tudor-Smith and Felicity Meakins, Karungkarni Art’s Leah Leaman and Cecelia Edwards, and ecologist Gregory Crocetti and artist Briony Barr will speak about their new book, Tamarra — a Story of Termites on Gurindji Country at Avid Reader bookshop.

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Former Christian school teacher Steph Lentz will talk about her new book, In/Out: A Scandalous Story of Falling Into Love and Out of the Church at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.

Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)

• Writer Mark Brandi will talk about his new book, Southern Aurora, at the Wheeler Centre.

Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)

• Actor and producer Bryan Brown will address the National Press Club.