FOLLOWING THE LEADERS
Former prime minister Scott Morrison said he wants to be like Julia Gillard after politics, the SMH reports, because she’s widely respected for her post-PM conduct. Erm, one might say she’s widely respected for her leadership achievements — her iconic gender equality speech, Gonski, NDIS, the NBN, and the valiant attempt at a carbon price — as well as her more recent charitable achievements with Beyond Blue, the Wellcome Trust and the Global Partnership for Education, but whatever. Morrison will give his last speech at noon today before his political retirement (and there may be some dancing in the streets this afternoon), saying we should connect with Judeo-Christian values, The Australian ($) says. His parting thoughts: Peter Dutton is doing a fab job as Liberal leader (in December Dutton was voted the country’s least trusted politician) while former (and possibly next) US president Donald Trump poses no threat to our national interest.
Meanwhile, Trump was in awe of Russian President Vladimir Putin exactly like a kid is in awe of the heroic football team captain, former PM Malcolm Turnbull recalled from his leadership days to ABC‘s Q+A. It’s downright “creepy,” Turnbull continued, not to mention a threat to Australia’s security considering Trump and his Republican allies are “sympathetic” to Putin and don’t care about democracy. The former PM continued Trump could force Ukraine to surrender or pull out of NATO (which he may well do, as CNN says) adding we’d be dealing with three autocracies if he wins the November US election (plus China and Russia). Turnbull also described himself as a “friend of Israel” and said Hamas wanted Israel to kill Gazan civilians. But he posed two rhetorical questions: is the Palestinian death toll (now 29,606) so high that Israel’s claim to protect human life is bogus, and is Israel losing so much public support that they’re doing what Hamas wanted?
THE SPACE BETWEEN
Mardi Gras has asked NSW Police not to march in Saturday’s parade, ABC reports, after a cop was charged with the alleged murders of a Sydney couple. The board said “the community needs space” to grieve the loss of the pair, who would have attended the festival. NSW Police said they were disappointed. NSW Premier Chris Minns pointed out that some in the force would have experienced discrimination themselves and that he hoped they’d be able to “represent their community as well as NSW Police”. It comes as deputy commissioner David Hudson said alleged murderer Beau Lamarre-Condon had been approved to keep his gun away from the police station, the SMH said, though wouldn’t say whether it was kept at his home. The force has asked Victoria’s commissioner to review NSW’s gun policies.
To another battle for equality and a female miner makes $38,562 less than a male one, new Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) data reveals. It looked at the pay gap in every company with more than 100 employees (there are 5,000 of them) and found 61.6% paid men more, 30.1% paid both genders almost the same (within 5% anyway) and 8.3% paid women more. So how is it calculated? It lines up men’s and women’s salaries at a company from lowest to highest and picks out the middle value — the median. So it’s not measuring men against women doing the same job — that’s been the law for over 50 years. Airlines were particularly disparate — Alliance Airlines: 50.2%, Jetstar: 43.7%, Virgin Australia: 41.7%, Cathay Pacific: 39.5% and Qantas: 37%, as Guardian Australia lists. “At brewer Lion, maker of XXXX, Tooheys and Four Pillars gin, the median base pay gender gap is just 1.4%” the ABC adds. Private Media, parent company of Crikey, was not assessed.
NOT WELL
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers please note that this article mentions deceased persons.
Former deputy PM and Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce has a sleeping disorder known as comorbid sleep apnoea and insomnia (COMISA), an expert will tell him on a new show called Australia’s Sleep Revolution with Dr Michael Mosley. And people with that combo die earlier, the expert will tell him per news.com.au. The result came after they measured his blood pressure both before and after 10 sitting days of Parliament (it goes from high to dangerously high) and monitored his sleep. The three other politicians involved in the program are Senator Jacqui Lambie and Labor MPs Mike Freelander and Josh Wilson. It comes after Joyce bowed to pressure and took leave from Parliament after being filmed having fallen off a plant box in Canberra and swearing into his phone.
To a very different type of sickness now and Northern Territory Police’s most elite unit had a “c**n of the year” award for members who “exhibited the most c**n-like behaviour,” former police officer Zachary Rolfe told the inquest into the death of Indigenous teenager Kumanjayi Walker, who he shot and killed while trying to arrest. Absolutely dismal. The Australian ($) reports the inquest is unearthing the seedy culture of the Top End’s police, including messages and radio transmissions between police officers that used deeply offensive slurs about Indigenous peoples. Rolfe said he’d been racist too, but said it was “accepted” in the NT Police and had rubbed off on him. To something more positive now and women receiving support through an Indigenous-led maternity care model are three times less likely to have their newborns removed by child protection services, The National Indigenous Times reports. We can make great change through holistic services, one expert said.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Nur Hidayah Mohamad was in her early twenties when she faced the last goodbye with her father. He had kidney disease and was nearly at the end when he dug into his old wallet and placed the equivalent of a $16 note into her shaky hands. Looking down at the note tearfully, she grabbed a nearby pen and scribbled “last money from dad” in Malaysian — the words “duit last ayah bagi” as ABC reports. She tucked the note into her own wallet intending to treasure the priceless memento forever. But some months later, Hidayah realised the note was all the money she had left. She said a silent little prayer that it would return to her one day as she spent the note.
Four years later, a person named Azfarul Zainol withdrew some cash from an ATM when he spotted something odd in the wad. Reading the words, Zainol was touched and promptly tucked the note into his wallet in much the same way Hidayah had. It had to mean something to someone, he figured, so he posted a photo to his Facebook wondering about the “original owner”. Next minute the post had been shared some 12,000 times, and confusingly, he had four separate messages from people claiming to be the writer. One of them was Hidayah, and Zainol could feel the painful truth in her message (though he checked her social media posts to make sure her story checked out anyway). The pair met up soon after and he handed Hidayah the note, the token of her father’s last act of care safe in her hands again.
Hoping social media is a force for good today.
SAY WHAT?
I do know how to do projects. I do know the science. And I do know the economics. These misinformed, unscientific, uneconomic, plucked-out-of-thin-air bulldust of nuclear policies of politicians masquerading as leaders helps no-one.
Andrew Forrest
The Fortescue billionaire says only bad things can happen if we believe nuclear energy to be “our fairy godmother” in the climate change era as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Coalition figures spruik.
CRIKEY RECAP
“But Keating was not then, and isn’t now, an all-knowing oracle, as he is sometimes deified by the press gallery. His boundless confidence empowered him not only to overcome the forces of complacency on much-needed changes but also to blow past legitimate reservations on less noble quests, such as privatisation, enterprise bargaining and an inadequate recession response, which his Labor descendants have since begun undoing.
“Nine’s Peter Hartcher worries Keating is only now souring his legacy, but his record was in fact always mixed. This would be a matter for historians, if Keating did not bob up so frequently in public debate, and if his prescriptions had changed with the times. But they haven’t. He is still pushing the same barrows he was in the 1990s, for better and worse. He is not a prophet; he is a fossil.”
“Only 21 federal politicians out of 277 have not declared any gifts from Qantas. A further two have declared interests in Qantas but no lounge membership. Liberal Senator David Fawcett — who is a lounge member but has chosen not to declare it — reported getting an upgrade from economy to premium economy on a flight from Perth to London last July.
“The other, Labor Senator Tony Sheldon — a prominent critic of the airline and its leadership under ex-CEO Alan Joyce — bought Qantas shares last September. That was the same month Joyce announced he would bring forward his retirement after being grilled in the Senate about Qantas’ record profits, customer dissatisfaction and alleged anti-competitive behaviour.”
“There are a few reasons for Egypt’s opposition. The first is that Egypt does not want to be seen to be facilitating ethnic cleansing through the permanent resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza. In October, a leaked document from Israel’s Intelligence Ministry included recommendations to forcibly transfer Gaza’s population of 2.2 million out of the territory and into tent cities in Egypt’s Sinai Desert.
“Government ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir have also both openly advocated the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza to make way for their replacement by Israeli settlers. Further, in January, a conference in Israel calling for this very plan was attended by 11 members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet and 15 additional members of Parliament.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
US airman dies after setting himself on fire outside Israeli embassy (Al Jazeera)
Alexei Navalny was about to be freed in prisoner swap, says colleague (BBC)
South Korea records record number of Russians seeking asylum (CNN)
Macron hosts summit to show West has means to defeat Putin in Ukraine (The Guardian)
Republican Party leader Ronna McDaniel to step down after pressure from Trump (Reuters)
The [Canadian] Liberals are set to unveil an online harms bill today. Here’s what you need to know (CBC)
Palestinian prime minister submits government’s resignation, a move that could open door to reforms (euronews)
Hungary’s Parliament approves Sweden’s NATO bid after stalling (The New York Times) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
A faultline has opened in Keir Starmer’s pragmatic politics — and this time none of the usual fixes will work — Nesrine Malik (The Guardian): “Its ostensibly successful face-saving amendment to the SNP’s ceasefire motion — and its apparent pressure on the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, to upturn parliamentary convention — brought about a crisis in the Commons, and has done little to appease angry voters. The resulting waves of claim and toxic counterclaim are still building: Lee Anderson’s outburst of anti-Muslim rhetoric has led to him being stripped of the Tory whip. No matter how much analysis says otherwise, particularly the sort that treats Westminster as a self-contained theatre of political gamesmanship, Labour’s victory was a pyrrhic one. It was secured in the Commons but lost outside its walls, highlighting an inescapable limitation in the party’s very coding.
“Whatever motion Labour ended up ramming through, it came too late. The party’s first position on Gaza, refusing to condemn breaches of international law (or even call them that), and refusing to call for a ceasefire, has made too strong an impression for it to be erased by any new modifications. It was a position that fed into something bigger: into pre-existing reservations and dwindling faith in the party. For those the party was trying to bring round, the manner in which it prevailed will only act to reinforce its most suspect qualities — calculating, pedantic, authoritarian. Ready to drag Parliament into the mire so it could pursue its manic drive to keep control of a party narrative that now exists only in the leadership’s heads.”
Families once fled my ‘struggletown’ suburb. Then the gentrifiers arrived — Claire Heaney (The Age): “Richmond feels like a big country town as you spot familiar faces at the bowlo, walking to the ’G to barrack for the Tiges or shopping at the Gleadell Street Market each Saturday. When there is a big game at the MCG, the suburb comes alive. Living in Richmond when the Tigers won the 2017 and 2019 premierships is up there in my all-time favourite moments. Two of my children went to schools beyond their home suburb and in the early years said they wished they lived out in the greener parts of Melbourne, where their friends had swimming pools and huge rumpus rooms to host sleepovers and parties … There’s no way I could afford to buy here now. Richmond’s median house price is $1,377,500 and the unit price $590,000. I fear young families may be missing out on the experience of raising a family in Richmond.
“It’s beginning to feel like there are more ‘fur babies’ than the human variety. While people shift out once kids arrive or feel that they have outgrown the suburb, there can be huge benefits in staying. Kids can walk to school, to sport training or part-time jobs, encouraging their independence and helping us avoid many hours stuck in traffic. Richmond continues to evolve as we enter a new cycle where many of our older friends give up the inner-city lifestyle and move out. The thought of leaving has crossed my mind, but the convenience of being so close to the city, medical services, shopping, recreation, trams and trains and varied food offerings makes it as hard to give up, as are the friendships forged over decades.”
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WHAT’S ON TODAY
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)