THE BENCHMARK
Michaelia Cash is reportedly likely to be named shadow attorney-general today, and NT Country Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is expected to become opposition assistant spokesperson for Indigenous Australians. It’s supposedly the inside scoop on Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s new frontbench, which’ll be revealed today, sources told the SMH ($). It would be a return to form for Cash, who held the role in the Morrison ministry for 12 months, but it may be a less-than-welcome change for Price, who many thought would be elevated to the party’s Indigenous Australians portfolio vacated by Julian Leeser. If not Price then who? Maybe Dutton himself — the paper called him a frontrunner — or health and sport spokesperson Anne Ruston. You may remember Ruston telling a questioner on Q+A last April that she didn’t believe the Coalition had “a history of racism” — though a Worm reader may reflect on the children overboard affair or, more recently, a dozen Coalition senators voting that it was “OK to be white”, but anyway…
Meanwhile Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says Dutton’s claim that Albanese knew about abused children returning to live with their abusers was false, the ABC reports. Albanese says Dutton had never raised any claim with him. He added that the solicitor-general’s advice on the Voice to Parliament wording would be made public soon. Hey, speaking of the Voice, an interesting aside from the SMH this morning. You know the strip club where independent Senator Lidia Thorpe was filmed trading 3am barbs about her views on Indigenous issues with a group of guys at the weekend? The club — which has since banned Thorpe for life — is owned by Maxine Fensom, who ran for the seat of Melbourne in 2002. She directed her 254 votes to up-and-comer Green Richard Di Natale, the paper says, who wrangled the seat from Labor and eventually became leader of the Greens. When Di Natale resigned in 2020, the party handed his Senate seat to… yep, Thorpe. Small world.
A PICTURE OF HEALTH
Long COVID is no worse than a long flu, according to Queensland Health, a finding that is sure to infuriate long COVID sufferers in Australia. The study, which is yet to be peer-reviewed or publicly released, followed 2200 people with COVID and 950 with the flu, Guardian Australia reports. In both cases it found about a fifth (21% and 23% respectively) had ongoing symptoms, and about one in 20 (4%) had “limitations” on their everyday life. Meanwhile, Queensland ambos spent 12,744 hours waiting at emergency departments in January, The Courier-Mail ($) reports, with patients waiting more than 30 minutes to be taken into the hospital. Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said Queensland “has the busiest ambulance service in the country”, adding it’s the only mainland state to offer it free.
To Victorian health matters now and community health funding is on the chopping block in the Andrews government’s budget, which a Labor MP said one can expect “to be bad”. Guardian Australia said 45 community health services (mostly vaping- and obesity-focused) have been told to brace for cuts of up to 15%. Meanwhile, the National Mental Health Commission’s CEO Christine Morgan has stepped aside amid a government investigation into allegations of bullying and dysfunction, the SMH ($) reports. Health Minister Mark Butler confirmed it yesterday, after The Saturday Paper ($) reported the agency had fired a quarter of its workforce. Cripes. He said the independent investigation would be led by Professor Deb Picone, a former chief executive of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care.
Correction: This segment previously referred to Deb Picone as the current chief executive of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. She retired as CEO in September 2022. The article has been updated to reflect this.
SICK AT HEART
The National Disability Insurance Scheme has “lost its way”, NDIS Minister Bill Shorten will say today, and needs a “reboot”. The AFR ($) reports he’ll say unethical service providers are using those living with a disability as “cash cows” — there are 38 fraud investigations underway from a special taskforce scrutinising $300 million in payments. The disability scheme has blown out from its forecast cost of $25 billion to $35.5 billion this financial year — indeed Treasurer Jim Chalmers says the NDIS, which helps more than half a million people, was the second-fastest-growing demand on the strained budget.
Meanwhile AFL legend Gary Ablett Sr is suing the AFL, Geelong and Hawthorn football clubs for a breach of duty and negligence, The Age ($) reports. The 61-year-old, who played from 1982 to 1996, has brain damage, which his lawyer Michel Margalit says is a “result of physical trauma caused by concussion”. Ablett can’t work but was denied any further financial assistance from the AFL Players’ Association, Margalit says. It comes just weeks after US epidemiologist Adam Finkel called the AFL’s position on the dangers of head knocks as “unbelievably callous”, the Herald Sun ($) reports. The sporting body says some players would face “some level of neurodegeneration because of their sports-related concussions”, but the numbers would be “low”.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
On the 500th day she’d spent alone deep in a 70-metre-deep cave, Beatriz Flamini was dozing pleasantly when she was shaken from her reverie. Her team had come to let her know it was time for her to leave her experiment and head back up into the light. “Already?” she grumbled. She hadn’t finished reading her latest book. Flamini is an extreme sportswoman, as The Guardian tells it, and had decided to bunk down in a cave outside Granada for about 18 months to see how her body dealt with solitude and deprivation. Pretty well, as it turned out. As Flamini ascended to the surface, she was somewhat surprised to be met with an eager media scrum bursting with questions. Did she track the time? (Not after day 65.) Did she talk to herself? (Yes, but never out loud. The quiet of the cave seemed to remind her it “wasn’t my house”.) What did she do? (Read 60 books, wrote, drew, knitted, cooked, worked out…)
The key, Flamini told the baffled group, was to calmly pass the time intentionally enjoying her own company. If she became anxious or frightened, she figured she’d make a mistake and the experiment could be kaput. It’s not that it was easy, she says. She would’ve killed for some roast chicken and potatoes, and one time a swarm of flies ploughed in to lay their larvae, which was gross. “It’s true that there were some difficult moments, but there were also some very beautiful moments,” she says. During a lull in the press conference, one timid reporter piped up to inquire as to the, erm, toilet situation down there. No-nonsense Flamini promptly said, without a lick of self-consciousness, that she left her waste at a collection point “every five poos”. Everyone clapped. “I left my offerings there, as if to the gods, and the gods left me food,” she says. Pretty good trade.
Hoping you enjoy hanging out with you today.
SAY WHAT?
The federal Liberal Party appears to have learnt very little since its election loss … What I see from the federal Liberal Party at the moment is that they seem determined to keep the country apart.
Peter Gutwein
The former Liberal premier in Tasmania, who was succeeded by Jeremy Rockliff last year, said the Liberals had governed in Tassie “from the centre” for almost a decade and Peter Dutton’s decision to openly oppose the Voice is something the party will “rue for some time now”.
CRIKEY RECAP
Alice Springs shows why the media struggles to fact-check moral panic
“The ABC seems to have the most to learn, trapped as it is by its eagerness to ‘both sides’ any issue whenever it fears party politics are involved. Insiders yesterday showed how easy it can be to wave through the repetition — and expansion — of ‘people say’ claims while nitpicking and gotcha-ing over the details of what sort of ‘Voice’ conservatives would — maybe, perhaps — agree to.
“Yet the information they — we — needed was sitting in front of them, with guest panellist and Age columnist Jack Latimore. While News Corp media have been urging on the panic, the Nine mastheads have been cautiously avoiding the trap. Latimore had written a major takedown of Dutton’s Alice Springs stance just the day before.”
‘Kochie lived a full and meaningful life’: fake celeb death ads use hacked accounts to promote crypto scam
“But despite not appearing on Sunrise last week, Koch is not dead. He tweeted last week that he is alive and was in Adelaide for the AFL’s Gather Round. The tweet claiming Koch’s death was, it appears, an advertisement that used a hacked account to coax users to sign up for a scam cryptocurrency service in return for a finder’s fee.
“Before being deleted Monday morning, @kimberly_ramrez’s tweet had been viewed more than 140,000 times. Crikey was able to contact the owner of the account, Kimberly Ramirez, who said that her Twitter account had been hacked.”
Relationship between prosecutors and police ‘beset by tension’, Lehrmann trial inquiry hears
“The inquiry’s chair, former Queensland judge Walter Sofronoff KC, will be left to deliberate whether the agencies involved — the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and ACT Police — failed to uphold their duties in handling the case.
“Longbottom told the inquiry that ‘from the early stages’ of the recommenced investigation, members of the DPP met to discuss the matter following Higgins’ interview with Lisa Wilkinson on Network Ten’s The Project.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Chinese engineer charged with blasphemy in Pakistan (Al Jazeera)
US Supreme Court turns away suit by Texas inmate held 27 years in solitary confinement (Reuters)
SpaceX scrubs launch of massive Starship rocket (CBC)
Black teen shot after ringing the wrong doorbell (BBC)
Governing body denies male powerlifter entry into women’s competition (Stuff)
Russian opposition activist Kara-Murza sentenced to 25 years in prison (EuroNews)
Photographer admits prize-winning image was AI-generated (The Guardian)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Gen Z are ‘lucky snowflakes’, apart from the fact we aren’t — Millie Muroi (SMH) ($): “Youth allowance — financial help for young people studying or looking for work — isn’t cutting it. The maximum fortnightly payment for an eligible young person who has to live away from their parents is $282 a week. Rent assistance bumps that up by $79, but even sharing an apartment becomes a stretch. A young person receiving the maximum $361 in weekly support payments, paying $310 in rent to share an average Sydney unit, is left with $51. That doesn’t even cover an average weekly grocery bill of $100 for a single person, let alone transport or insurance. Enter: the instant noodle diet.
“Those lucky enough to find work on top of full-time study can earn an extra $75 weekly before their allowance cuts back, and up to $558 before it goes to zero — barely enough to cover the median $550 unit rent across the capital cities. Fortunately, I work a full-time job that pays enough to cover a little more than the necessities. And if misfortune hits, I know my parents could step in. Now imagine living on $360 a week, without that privilege. Studying and working for the best chance of landing your dream job, worrying about stretching out your income and having no out button if things become too tough.”
Yes vote a first step to true equality of citizenship — Kim Rubenstein (The Australian) ($): “Inequality of citizenship was reported as the decisive reason behind the Liberal partyroom’s rejection of a Yes vote in this year’s referendum on the Voice. If this is true then it is based on a blatantly false premise. Having written the main citizenship law text in Australia, participated in parliamentary inquiries about citizenship, appeared before the High Court on major citizenship cases and advised both the Coalition and Labor on citizenship policy issues, I feel compelled to share how crucial a Yes vote is to ensuring equality of citizenship in Australia. The constitution as it stands is a central cause for the inequality of citizenship experienced by Indigenous Australians. At Federation, the ‘people of the Commonwealth’ for whom the constitution was formed, were not Australian citizens.
“Part of a broader commonwealth, the framers who marked out their new constitutional territory were British subjects, and determined to remain so, owing their allegiance to her majesty Queen Victoria and rejecting the creation of a federal power over citizenship. This was largely because a citizenship power would disable them from discriminating against non-white migrants …”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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National Disability Insurance Scheme and Government Services Minister Bill Shorten will address the National Press Club.
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Academics and social activists Michelle Arrow, Marie Coleman, Elizabeth Reid and Blair Williams will speak about their new book, Women and Whitlam. Revisiting the revolution, at the ANU.
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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Welsh future generations commissioner Sophie Howe will give the 2023 John Menadue Oration about wellbeing economies, at the Wheeler Centre.
