COVID back under the microscope

PANDEMIC PROBE

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is set to announce a year-long inquiry into our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the SMH ($) reports, though it won’t be a royal commission. Here’s what we know: The “deep” inquiry, as Health Minister Mark Butler described it, will be led by medical and economic experts, and have the power to call witnesses — perhaps pre-empting this, former PM Scott Morrison told the AFR ($) he’d cooperate but only if the inquiry looked at state and federal leaders. The paper notes Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews were all leaders during the pandemic, the latter of whom presided over the world’s longest lockdown. It comes as “highly mutated” COVID variant BA.2.86 — known as Pirola — has been detected in Australia, the ABC reports. Yikes.

Speaking of Morrison — he’s flying to Taiwan in early October for the Yushan Forum, where The Australian ($) notes former PM Tony Abbott called China a “bully” and urged “solidarity with Taiwan” two years ago. Morrison said his trip would be an “interesting contrast” to Albanese’s trip to Beijing, as AFR ($) reports, which he said could look like a “backdown by Australia”. Not sure anyone should be taking diplomatic advice from you, Morrison, considering you decimated our relationship with both China and France in less than four years. Meanwhile Morrison has written to his constituents that the High Court “will be left to sort out the mess” if the constitution is changed, the St George & Sutherland Shire Leader reports. Cook residents were irate — one wrote back saying, “Your own lack of integrity and abuse of power were exposed post-election,” and accused him of using the same devious tactics now. AAP Factcheck found the Voice does not give the power to challenge laws in the High Court.

WHOA BABY!

The Liberal candidate for the WA seat of Rockingham Peter Hudson — who is 21 — urged a voter to ask his female Labor opponent Magenta Marshall whether she’d resign from Parliament if she got pregnant, The West ($) reports. The byelection was triggered by former premier Mark McGowan’s resignation — Labor MP Kate Doust used parliamentary privilege to disclose the Facebook message which read “This question can’t come from me but I think it’s an important one to ask” because it means “1+ years off the job… meaning we’d be without an MP until she’s finished having babies”. Doust called him a “man-child” who used “misogyny as a political weapon”. Hudson apologised for “offence caused”.

Meanwhile the Country Fire Authority is urging the gals to come forward as volunteers as we face the worst bushfire crisis since Black Summer, the Herald Sun ($) reports. Women, migrants, students and people moving to the regions are among those targeted by the recruitment drive as new data showed the number of Victoria’s Country Fire Authority volunteers had fallen to 28,785. That’s down from 38,335 in 2014-13. It comes as Queensland’s channel country is facing extreme fire danger on Thursday, the ABC reports, and the Northern Territory’s north Barkly region faces the same on Friday. The broadcaster’s explainer on the fire alert season is a must-read. As is Crikey’s Julia Bergin on the stark comparison of Indigenous and non-Indigenous fire management on Barkly’s fires — one side of the highway is a blanket burn, the other a patchwork.

CRYING SHAME

The crisis and suicide helpline for Indigenous people has received a record 3,500 calls in six weeks, the SMH ($) reports, with many callers experiencing racism amid the Voice to Parliament debate. 13YARN received 639 in the past week and experienced a 108% increase in people reporting abuse or trauma. Counsellors are struggling to carry the load, the hotline’s Aunty Marj Anderson said, and described herself as disappointed Australia couldn’t be a more “grown-up country” in being respectful and dealing with the facts instead of “scaremongering”. Here are several dismal examples — former PM Tony Abbott says Yes campaigner Noel Pearson is “bullying” No campaigners such as Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Abbott urged us to vote for the package deal of Voice, treaties, and “rewriting Australia’s history as a story of shame”, Sky News Australia reports. Folks, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has already confirmed there will be no treaties, and it’s not clear who would be rewriting our history, as children already learn about colonisation, the Stolen Generations, Indigenous lore and more in several school subjects including English, art, history and religion.

Meanwhile, former One Nation candidate Kerry White — who is on the board of Nyunggai Warren Mundine’s No lobby group and who said “the Stolen Generations is a mistruth” at a rally in June — says the Voice would force white people to pay to live in Australia, The Age ($) reports. There is no factual basis for this statement — just her saying: “I know the way that these people work.” Meanwhile, AFL personality Sam Newman has urged people to boo or “slow hand clap” during Welcome to Country acknowledgements at sports matches, news.com.au reports. Shameful. It comes as the AEC is struggling to get such disinformation and aggression off X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Guardian Australia reports. One read “You pack of dogs will have your day” — an apparent threat to AEC staff — while another claimed Voice enrolment fraud was rampant. X did nothing.

For anyone seeking help, call 13 YARN on 13 9276, Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Writer Anna Sublet listens to the cacophony of birds chorusing into the morning air. The magpie high in the gumtree, the tiny wrens flitting in the tea-tree, and the “lift and lilt of the currawongs carolling”, as she writes for Guardian Australia. The bird, which could be mistaken for a magpie at a quick glance, isn’t exactly a shoo-in for the paper’s 2023 Bird of the Year competition next week — too murderous. The criminal currawong has been known to pilfer the egg-laden nests of other birds, but is it simply misunderstood? Sublet says the currawong is also known as the adoptive parent of channel-billed cuckoo chicks — the flighty birds will lay their eggs in the currawong’s nest and fly off, never to be seen again. The currawong will raise the chicks as if they were its own.

When Sublet hears the characteristic chorus of a currawong, she’s taken back to another place and time. The soapy smell of disinfectant, the clipped clicking of machines, and the sense of foreboding as radiotherapy targeted the cells of her breast and chest wall. She remembers asking the doctor to hear something soothing, something that would lift her through the fear. The songs of birds, in all their soaring, swooping and diving glory, were a fitting choice. As Sublet held her breath against continual blasts of energy, she focused all of her attention on the sounds of the currawong. Now when she hears those distinct onomatopoeic notes she feels the lilt and lift of the bird deep inside. She sends the currawong a message of gratitude for “the capacity you’ve given me to land my own existence”.

Hoping you hear the songs around you today.

SAY WHAT?

Anyone speaking at or attending the rally should be aware it has zero support from the No campaign, and is really an effort to recruit people for an agenda with no public support — namely Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — unless you want your participation to be claimed as an endorsement for wacky and extreme causes you don’t support …

James Paterson

The opposition spokesman on home affairs says anti-Voice rallies promoted by a pro-Kremlin activist Simeon Boikov — aka “the Aussie Cossack” — and featuring federal Senator Ralph Babet and former MP Craig Kelly are a “shameless attempt” to push “extreme causes”.

CRIKEY RECAP

What Tim Gurner’s headburp tells us about politics today

GUY RUNDLE

“Developers like Gurner need to believe archaic pre-Keynesian notions about value — that it is sweated out of workers, but emerges as brilliant ideas from the enormous bonces of capitalists — to keep any sense that they are doing something other than moving flows of capital around.

“That’s really why there’s all that monkey glands, life extension, barefoot marathon nonsense. Building contractors used to carry revolvers in the old days. Tim and his ilk are never without their keep cups of seagrass kombucha to fight cell oxidation. The Promethean ‘grandeur’ of the old robber baron capitalists is gone. Now we’re just filling in the gaps. No wonder it’s all float tanks and dolphin communing.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

India’s lower house votes to reserve a third of seats for women (Al Jazeera)

Azerbaijan halts Karabakh offensive after ceasefire deal with Armenian separatists (BBC)

Properties evacuated, six choppers to battle raging scrub fire near Twizel, Canterbury (NZ Herald)

Fed leaves interest rates unchanged, sees tighter policy through 2024 (Reuters)

[Canada’s Victoria] is using Airbnb tax funds to build affordable rentals for hospitality workers (CBC)

Ex-Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson claims Rudy Giuliani groped her on January 6 (The Guardian)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Public statement from Rev Dr Djiniyini Gondarra OAM on Treaty and the Voice — Djiniyini Gondarra (IndigenousX): “Since the referendum in 1967 when balanda (non-Indigenous) voted for my people to become citizens of a country we already belong to, you have stripped our leaders of their dignity and authority, and you have made us subject to devastating laws and policies that you have forced upon us. For decades, these laws and policies have deprived my people of their basic human rights, access to their land and waters and their God-given freedom. And now you are forcing upon us a tokenistic solution to the chaos you have created using the same system that has held us hostage from the very beginning. If my people vote Yes in your upcoming referendum, it is only because we are grasping for some kind of hope, but it is a false hope.

“Albanese has said many times that the ‘Voice’ will only serve as an advisory body which ‘may or may not’ affect decisions, that it will have no veto power and that it will not lead to Treaty with the Crown. So I ask, what is all of this referendum actually for? Is it to make balanda feel good? Is it to distract us from the prize that many Elders have been fighting for most of our lives, Treaty? You cannot cherrypick who you consult with and then say it is what all Indigenous people wanted. Most people in remote communities have no idea what this ‘Voice’ is about. The result of this referendum will only reflect what the majority non-Indigenous population of Australia think is right for us. In my 78 years living and working in both worlds, I have witnessed the Australian government continuously hand-pick Indigenous people that behave like the Master Slave, mirroring what the government says, while they ignore the voices of clan leaders and community members …”

Sunak’s net zero U-turn is so toxic that it’s united Green MPs and car manufacturers against him — Caroline Lucas (The Guardian): “It’s quite a moment when a Green Party MP finds herself on the same side of an argument as the chair of Ford UK — but here we are. Claims reported by the BBC yesterday evening that Rishi Sunak is planning to weaken some of the government’s key climate commitments have managed to unite businesses, the energy sector, car manufacturers, environmental groups and the general public against him. His leaked program appears not to be a couple of minor delays here and there but instead a coordinated, calculated and catastrophic roll-back. According to the leak, energy efficiency targets for private rented homes will be dropped; the ban on new petrol and diesel cars will be pushed back to 2035; the phasing out of gas boilers will be delayed; plans for taxes to discourage flying ditched; recycling schemes cancelled.

“The leak from the BBC was big enough news for the prime minister to make a highly unusual late-evening statement, anticipating — and seeking to defend himself from — an almighty backlash. Several lines from this proclamation are enough to make you rub your eyes in disbelief. ‘Our political system rewards short-term decision-making that is holding our country back,’ is one such line. For years now, the environment has been a priority — right up until it’s not. David Cameron was hugging huskies for years, until he decided to slash solar panel subsidies and impose a de facto ban onshore wind because of an ill-perceived lack of popularity … ‘Real change’, as Sunak’s statement puts it, is always thwarted in favour of appeasing a handful of right-wing Tory backbenchers.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)

• Economist Wal Walker will talk about his new book, The Squatters’ Grab, at Avid Reader bookshop.

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Author Samuel J. Fell will talk about his new book, Full Coverage: A History of Rock Journalism in Australia, at Glee Books.

Kaurna Country (also known as Adelaide)

• Uluru Dialogue co-chairs Pat Anderson and Megan Davis will talk about the Voice to Parliament and the process that led to it — the regional dialogues and the National Constitutional Convention at Uluru in 2017 — at Adelaide Pavilion.