Prime Minister Scott Morrison on day 32 of the election campaign (Image: AAP/Mick Tsikas)
Scott Morrison (Image: AAP/Mick Tsikas)

SECOND IN COMMAND

Former prime minister Scott Morrison secretly swore himself in as an additional resources minister in December 2021, news.com.au reports, and went on to thwart a controversial NSW gas project to drill off the coast of Newcastle and Sydney. Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce confirmed that then resources minister Keith Pitt was shocked by the move, which occurred around the time blue-ribbon seats came under threat from teal independents. Joyce said he thought Morrison’s move was lousy, saying: “If you don’t like cabinet ministers, there’s a simple solution: you sack them.” It comes as a new book revealed Morrison also secretly swore himself into the portfolios of then health minister Greg Hunt and then finance minister Mathias Cormann during the pandemic too, as The Australian ($) reports.

Speaking of territorial Liberals, NSW Transport Minister David Elliott has dug the claws into colleague and Treasurer Matt Kean, blaming him for the Sydney rail chaos coming this week. Elliott said it would be hard for the union to “believe me after I had the rug pulled out from under my feet last time, but that’s what you get when you send a boy in to do a man’s job”. It comes after Kean and Employee Relations Minister Damien Tudehope said the state government would not be making costly changes to a new fleet of trains despite union demands. Rail workers are refusing to staff the trains because of safety fears. But “a Liberal source” told the paper Elliott just wants to look like a hero by giving the union what they want, thus avoiding commuter chaos.

[free_worm]

WEEKEND OF GUN VIOLENCE

Two women — Lametta Fadlallah, a mother aged 48, and Amneh al-Hazouri, aged 39, have been shot dead in Sydney in what police called an “organised murder”, “unprecedented” and “appalling”, the SMH reports. NSW Police’s Danny Doherty said it was a targeted shooting of Fadlallah — The Australian ($) reports she was the former partner of Helal Safi, a Sydney crime figure killed last year. Doherty said the “unwritten rule” of not attacking family and women was broken for the first time, showing just how low organised crime has sunk.

And a man is in custody after he allegedly fired five shots near the check-in at Canberra Airport, leaving several bullet holes in terminal windows, Guardian Australia reports. No one was injured, but the airport was locked down and partially evacuated. Some witnesses said security guards were yelling for people to run. It didn’t seem to be a targeted attack, the police said, and he wasn’t an airport employee — but no other details about the alleged gunman were given.

FUEL FOR THOUGHT

Petrol now costs the average Australian $100.39 a week, according to the Australian Automobile Association’s latest Transport Affordability Index, released yesterday. Cripes. When you factor in car loan repayments, tolls, insurance and servicing, as well as public transport, our overall weekly transport costs are $412.21 in capital cities and $342.98 in the regions. It’s the first time we’ve passed the $100 mark for petrol since the index began in 2016, and the fuel excise cut doesn’t seem to have made much of a dent considering the average petrol cost for motorists is up five bucks in three months, the Brisbane Times reports.

The 22.1-cent discount on the fuel excise expires on September 28, and the government has said it can’t afford to extend it, despite MPs including Nationals Darren Chester and David Gillespie, Liberal Bridget Archer and independent Dai Le calling for it. Now one of Australia’s leading economists has joined the chorus too, pointing out oil is still so expensive — about US$90-$100 a barrel, the NT News reports. That’s down from March’s figure of about $110 a barrel when the Morrison government temporarily slashed the fuel excise, but everyone figured it would’ve plummeted much further by now. Sydney is Australia’s most expensive capital city for transport costs, averaging $486.18 a week, compared with Melbourne ($461.01) and Brisbane ($454.52).

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

A man has won a 22-year battle after being overcharged the equivalent of 35 cents for a train ticket in 1999, the BBC reports. It all began when lawyer Tungnath Chaturvedi was travelling through Mathura Cantonment railway station in Uttar Pradesh, in India’s north. He bought two tickets costing the equivalent of 62 cents each but the clerk gave him the wrong change. He quickly pointed it out, but the clerk refused to refund him. He could not believe the clerk was so brazenly short-changing him. So he filed a case against the railway and the booking clerk in a consumer court. The railway tried to get the case dismissed, saying it should be heard in the railway tribunal — so Chaturvedi used a 2021 Supreme Court ruling to get it to proceed. But the consumer court is very busy — it can take years to get your grievance heard, and Chaturvedi said judges kept going on vacation.

In the end, Chaturvedi fronted up to more than 100 hearings in connection to the case. “But you can’t put a price on the energy and time I’ve lost fighting this case,” he said. His family was like, let it go already, it’s such a tiny amount, who cares? But Chaturvedi would not, nay, could not let it go. It’s not about the money, he said. It’s a matter of justice, a fight against corruption! And it was worth it, he added, after he won. The court ordered the railway to pay him $264 in damages, plus the 35 cents at 12% inflation from 1999 to 2022. It showed no one can “get away with wrongdoings if people are prepared to question them about it”, Chaturvedi said. “One doesn’t need to give up even when the fight looks tough.”

Wishing you the courage to stand up for what’s right today, too.

SAY WHAT?

Though his life-changing injuries are severe, his usual feisty and defiant sense of humour remains intact.

Zafar Rushdie

Salman Rushdie’s son said his father is still in a critical condition but is off the ventilator and able to speak after the frenzied stabbing attack at the weekend. Rushdie has lived for three decades with death threats and a US$3 million bounty on his head after the publication of his fictional book The Satanic Verses. On Sunday Iran’s state-run newspaper, Iran Daily, praised the attack as an “implementation of divine decree”.

CRIKEY RECAP

Peter Dutton leads a Liberal Party stranded on the wrong side of history — and must face up to it

Aug 12, 2022

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“In other areas, too, Morrison was caught out by changes in the historical tide of government. Decarbonisation demands serious government involvement in the economy via an activist energy policy. The NDIS and aged care demanded effective government supervision of the delivery of the care services it funded. Workforce challenges loomed across the economy. On major issues, the economy needed active, competent government; Morrison’s mindset was that none of it was his problem. Dutton has begun in opposition the same way. He looks like Her Majesty’s Loyal Sulker, dealing himself completely out of the climate debate and rejecting participation in the jobs summit.

“Both, he reckoned, were ‘stunts’ — understandable from a man whose primary experience of government was of stunt after stunt after stunt. Politics has passed Dutton by: the central debates in public policy are no longer big government versus small, but who can manage big government best to deliver for the country. He remains locked in a mindset that sees active, engaged governing as unnatural and unfortunate — no wonder he can only see “stunts” in anything Labor now does.”

Bakers blight: why we need to resist surveillance culture

Aug 12, 2022

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“The story popped up at the start of the week: the cakes-and-goodies chain Bakers Delight might be putting up signs in its stores warning its customers against sexually harassing the staff … The episode is, in microcosm, a demonstration of how culture and life are made these days. We’ll now get a notice on the wall reminding us not to sexually harass people, just in case we forget not to do that. It will join all the notices warning that staff don’t have to put up with aggression etc, signs that began in high-stress places like hospitals, and which are now ubiquitous. The Bakers Delight initiative suggests they may be joined by a whole series more.

” … What’s the social-psychological effect of this relentless piling on? It can’t be nothing. The obvious is cultural de-internalisation: the notion of public space ceasing to be a neutral one where the continent behaviour of the citizen is assumed, and immoral or criminal behaviour is the exception. Instead it becomes a place of probation, where your capacity to be a citizen — i.e. to relate to each other in a controlled fashion — is under suspicion. The most basic structural point would be that such a notice puts one in a position of surveillance of oneself.”

 

Homeowner or renter? Your answer could reveal how you vote

Aug 12, 2022

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“The housing divide might seem strange given Labor dropped its controversial negative gearing and capital gains tax policies. But the relationship between homeownership and voting preference ‘goes back at least to the 1990s’, according to Ratcliff, encompassing multiple party platforms. My guess is that those without assets are far more focused on their income from work, and thus are attracted to Labor, which emphasises jobs and wage growth.

“Conversely, those who own assets — especially multiple — have a vested interest in booming asset markets and low capital taxation, on which the Coalition holds an entrenched electoral advantage. The Greens also appeal to many renters. Academic Ben Spies-Butcher, who also presented at the seminar, found that in the election the Greens gained the support of 18.9% of private renters — 35.6% of those renting from or living with family — but only 13.6% of mortgagees and 8.7% of outright owners.”

 

READ ALL ABOUT IT

41 killed in Egyptian church fire, including many children (Al Jazeera)

Salman Rushdie, badly wounded, is off ventilator and starting to recover (The New York Times)

Saudi Aramco profits soar by 90% as energy prices rise (The Guardian)

ANZ believes [NZ] Reserve Bank may plot track to 4.5% official cash rate on Wednesday (Stuff)

Palestinian gunman wounds eight in Jerusalem attack (BBC)

William Ruto edges ahead in Kenya’s presidential race (Al Jazeera)

Man fatally shoots self after crashing car into barricade near US Capitol building (CNN)

Vanuatu, one of the most climate-vulnerable countries, launches ambitious climate plan (The Guardian)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Choosing High Court justices a matter of good judgment — George Brandis (The Age): “Above all, avoid frustrated politicians. Since public confidence in judges depends upon acceptance of their impartiality as the arbiters of disputes — and the disputes which reach the High Court are the most vexed and politically consequential of all — the worst type of judge is someone who regards the bench as a substitute for the Parliament; as a safe space from which to prosecute political causes and enjoy, vicariously, the political career they never had.

“Of course, the members of the High Court have their own political views: [The Honourable Justice Pat Keane], for instance, in the days when I knew him at the Queensland bar, left nobody in any doubt he was a proud Labor man. Yet it would be impossible to discern political partiality in any of his judgments; in fact, he has been one of the most orthodox, conservative interpreters of the xonstitution. If legal eminence is the only criterion, a judge’s politics should not matter; but if judges are appointed for their political affiliations or ideological sympathies, we are on the slippery slope to America, where public confidence in the Supreme Court has evaporated in partisan frenzy.”

How Salman Rushdie has been a scapegoat for complex historical differences — Vijay Mishra (The Conversation): “The most serious was the suggestion that Muhammad didn’t solely edit the message of Angel Gibreel (Gabriel) — that Satan himself had a hand in occasionally distorting that message. These, of course, are presented as hallucinatory recollections by the novel’s seemingly deranged character, Gibreel Farishta. But because of a common belief in the shared identity of author and narrator, the author is deemed to be responsible for a character’s words and actions. And so the author stood condemned.

“Blasphemy against Muhammad is an unpardonable crime in Islam: a kind of divine sanctity surrounds the prophet of Islam. The latter is captured in the well-known Farsi saying, “Ba khuda diwana basho; ba muhammad hoshiyar” (“Take liberties with Allah as you wish; but be careful with Muhammad”). Since the fatwa, the spectre of death has followed Rushdie — and he knew it, even when the Iranian government ostensibly withdrew its support for the fatwa. (But without the important step of conceding that a fatwa by a qualified scholar of Islam — which Khomeini was — could be revoked.) Rushdie himself had not taken the occasional threats to his life seriously. He had lived more freely in recent years, often dispensing with security guards for protection.”

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Kaurna Country (also known as Adelaide)

Stoney Creek Nation Country (also known as Launceston)

  • The 2022 Australian of the Year Dylan Alcott and Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff will speak at the 2022 Tasmanian Tourism Conference, at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, Launceston.

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

  • Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury Andrew Leigh will host a forum about building community alongside Australian charities, at Glebe Town Hall.

Yuggera Country (also known as Brisbane)

  • Writer Siang Lu will discuss his novel, The Whitewash, at Avid Reader bookshop. You can also catch this one online.