COMMONWEALTH HEADS MEETING/QUEEN’S ‘HAIRS’
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is spending yet more time with King Charles III and Queen Camilla today as the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) kicks off in Samoa.
The AAP writes the environment, ocean health and economic development will be key discussion points at the event but says the meeting is more of a “talkfest” of networking rather than anything representing concrete policies.
Pacific expert Meg Keen is quoted by the newswire as saying Pacific nations will be looking to use the meeting to “draw attention to the existential threat of rising sea levels”.
“That’s not trivial, there’s 56 countries — about a third of the world’s population — there are not only leaders, there are key decision makers and, of course, there’s media.”
Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on his way to the summit he wants to “look forward” rather than have “very long endless discussions about reparations on the past”, The Guardian reports.
The site says Starmer, facing pressure to discuss slavery reparations with Commonwealth countries, told reporters travelling with him that the nations were “facing real challenges on things like climate in the here and now. That’s where I’m going to put my focus, rather than what will end up being very, very long, endless discussions about reparations on the past”.
The BBC highlights all of the candidates to become the next head of the 56-nation organisation have called for reparations for countries that were affected by slavery.
Starmer added on Wednesday: “Slavery is abhorrent… there’s no question about that. But I think from my point of view and taking the approach I’ve just taken, I’d rather roll up my sleeves and work with them on the current future-facing challenges than spend a lot of time on the past.”
With Albanese joining leaders like Starmer in Samoa, the recent royal visit continues to generate considerable news coverage back home — namely Lidia Thorpe’s protest in front of King Charles.
The likes of the ABC and The Age featured atop their sites overnight the response to Thorpe saying on Wednesday she had pledged allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II’s “hairs” rather than her “heirs” when she was sworn into Parliament in 2022. Asked on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing if she had renounced her sworn parliamentary affirmation to bear true allegiance to the monarch in her remarks aimed at King Charles on Monday, she replied: “I swore allegiance to the queen’s hairs”.
She added: “If you listen close enough, it wasn’t her ‘heirs’, it was her ‘hairs’ that I was giving my allegiance to, and now that, y’know, they are no longer here, I don’t know where that stands. I’m not giving up my job, I’m not resigning.”
The Age highlights opposition Senate leader Simon Birmingham subsequently released a statement saying Thorpe’s claim called into question her eligibility to participate in Senate proceedings. “The Coalition will explore options and consider legal opinions as to the implications of Senator Thorpe’s admission,” he said.
SPOTLIGHT ON ABORTION LAWS
Elsewhere in the Nine newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald claims Labor will use recent comments by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price about abortion in a “last-minute advertising blitz” attacking the LNP ahead of the Queensland election on Saturday.
Earlier this week the Northern Territory senator attracted considerable attention when the SMH reported she had called for abortion to be on the national agenda and declared pregnancies ended after the first trimester are immoral. The paper highlights Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley and Senator Jane Hume attempted to distance the Coalition from the remarks yesterday, with Hume telling Sky News: “It has been an issue raised by fringe parties in a state election. It is not an issue for federal politics. What I can assure you, and assure your viewers, and assure all voters, is that a Dutton-led Coalition government has no plans, no policy and no interest in unwinding women’s reproductive rights.”
The issue has featured prominently in the Queensland election with the ABC reporting a “growing concern” inside the Coalition that it could derail Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafulli’s chances of winning, despite the LNP remaining significantly ahead in recent polling. The broadcaster also highlighted “one of the Coalition’s staunchest anti-abortion advocates” Matt Canavan rejecting calls for the issue to become a federal election fight.
Crisafulli has been under sustained pressure during the election campaign after claiming there would be no changes to abortion laws in the state but not explaining how he would guarantee it. Katter’s Australian Party said at the start of the month it would introduce a private member’s bill in the next term of Queensland Parliament to repeal abortion laws.
With the election now days away, the SMH quotes a Queensland Labor campaign official as saying abortion had become the defining issue of the campaign and the party was working on social media graphics highlighting Price’s comments this week. The paper said the final week ad spend was costing several hundred thousand dollars.
Staying with the Queensland election, the AAP’s take this morning is that the “democracy sausage’s days may be numbered” with the news that over a million Queenslanders, more than a quarter of eligible voters, have already cast their votes.
Queensland University of Technology’s Adjunct Professor John Mickel told the newswire: “In [the central Brisbane seat of] McConnell … if you’re setting up a sausage sizzle there on Saturday, don’t bother — you will be losing money”, with about 35,000 voters in the electorate having already submitted their ballots.
Finally, as further details are awaited on the federal government’s pledge to introduce legislation imposing a minimum age for teenagers accessing social media before the next election, over in Norway the government is increasing its minimum age limit on social media from 13 to 15. The Guardian reports Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre declared politicians must help protect children from the “power of the algorithms”.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
In important sporting news, the winner of the men’s competition at the World Conker Championship has been cleared of cheating after a newspaper claimed he had been found with a metal conker in his pocket.
David Jakins was crowned the men’s champion at the tournament in Northamptonshire, England, on October 13. A day later The Telegraph declared the “World Conkers Championships has been embroiled in a cheating row after the men’s winner was found with a steel chestnut”.
The 82-year-old told the newspaper at the time: “I was found with the steel conker in my pocket, but I only carry [it] around with me for humour value and I did not use it during the event.”
Now the BBC reports a subsequent investigation has ruled Jakins “achieved his title fairly”. In a statement, the World Conker Championships said nothing “untoward” was seen by judges or umpires and Jakins was congratulated on his victory “after 47 years of play”.
Kelci Banschbach, 34, from Indianapolis, Indiana, was the overall winner of the event after winning the women’s title and then beating Jakins in the final.
Say What?
I notice my palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, vomit on my sweater already, mom’s spaghetti.
Barack Obama
Yup, the words of the former US president at a rally for Kamala Harris in Detroit on Tuesday. He had just been introduced by the rapper Eminem, I suppose.
CRIKEY RECAP
Peter Dutton, understandably, wants to wish the issue away, saying “I don’t think it’s a debate that is shifting votes one way or the other.” Except, if voters gain the impression Dutton would allow attempts to roll back support for women’s reproductive choice, it may very well start to shift votes away from him. At the very least, like Crisafulli, he’ll have to devote precious airtime to various holding positions on abortion that will placate the far right as well as normal, everyday Australians.
Unlike Crisafulli, however, Dutton’s problems are much more within his own ranks. Far-right backbenchers Matt Canavan and Alex Antic are furious anti-abortionists; Canavan and Antic joined with Palmer party buffoon Ralph Babet to run a scare campaign about “born alive” abortions and Canavan in the past has pushed to repeal legislation preventing anti-abortionists from harassing women using reproductive health clinics.
A number of Coalition senators voted in support of a Babet motion on the “born alive” lie, including several frontbenchers. Jacinta Nampijinpa Price was one of them. Price, whose profile lapsed after she was employed as one of the Indigenous faces of the No campaign last year, is perhaps looking for another issue to restore the glowing coverage from News Corp she grew used to in 2023, and is now part of the deceitful campaign against “late-term abortions”.
That campaign looks for all the world like exactly the kind of thing the right loves to rail against: a group of elites — former prime ministers (Tony Abbott never shuts up about controlling women’s reproductive rights), former deputy prime ministers like John Anderson, senators elected with tiny handfuls of votes, highly paid media personalities — deeply out of touch with mainstream Australia using lies to foist their own minority views on the electorate.
As with many of the things we learn about former US president Donald Trump from people who have worked with him, there was more than one element to find worrying. The confirmation came this week of a long-reported conversation between Trump and his then chief of staff John Kelly regarding Trump’s need for the “kind of generals Hitler had”.
The first, and most obvious response is the cold sweat realisation that, once again, a man with such thin skin and such an explicit admiration for despots may once again be the commander-in-chief of the world’s biggest army.
The second is the childlike grasp of history it betrays. Kelly has confirmed the exchange in conversation with The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg:
[Kelly] told me that when Trump raised the subject of ‘German generals’, Kelly responded by asking, ‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’ He went on: ‘I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, Do you mean the Kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals? And he said, Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals. I explained to him that Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler.’ Kelly told me Trump was not acquainted with Rommel.
The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) last week released a report into “a former Home Affairs employee’s familial links to a contracted service provider”, Paladin. As detailed in part one of this investigation, despite the many questions the palaver raises, the NACC found no evidence of corruption.
In part two we are looking into yet deeper problems in the awarding of the Manus Island contract to Paladin, because the NACC’s decision to focus on one small question left other corruption allegations uninvestigated. These cast a shadow over the actions of Paladin and Home Affairs, but also over consulting firm KPMG and the NACC itself.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Five killed, 22 injured in terror attack on Turkish aerospace company (CNN)
Gisèle Pelicot tells mass rape trial ‘it’s not for us to have shame — it’s for them’ (The Guardian)
Starmer brushes off Labour volunteers helping Harris (BBC)
US says North Korean troops are in Russia to aid fight against Ukraine (The New York Times) ($)
Quarter of Americans fear civil war after election, Times poll shows (The Times) ($)
The 10 richest young Australians revealed (AFR)
THE COMMENTARIAT
If Australians knew the whole truth about Indigenous history, Lidia Thorpe’s royal outburst would not have been a shock — Celeste Liddle (Guardian Australia): It’s simple: the Crown remains the figurehead of British colonisation and Indigenous dispossession. As the current hat-wearer, Charles III is the representative of Australia’s subservience to the Commonwealth, and the original crime of the false terra nullius declaration to clear the way for this to occur. Challenging royal authority has a long and proud history in the Indigenous community, and perhaps if Australians engaged in actual truth-telling, such as what the Albanese government committed to when promising to implement the Uluru statement in full, hearing these truths would not come as such a shock.
For what it’s worth, I was informed by an older Aboriginal person about Thorpe’s actions. They had been watching the news footage live and rang to tell me immediately. There was no shame in their voice, just pride — pride that Thorpe had seized the opportunity, asked some questions so many Aboriginal people are still waiting, after two centuries, to get the answers to, and pride that the Auslan interpreter saw fit to continue relaying Thorpe’s message to the deaf community of Australia.
I share this pride, and if my social media today is any indication, so do so many other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, particularly those who have staged protests throughout the entirety of the royal visit that the media has barely seen fit to cover. If the country really does want this to change, perhaps it’s time they engaged with the points raised by Thorpe and worked to change them.
The most important financial summit of the year is taking place in Russia — Hamish McRae (The i Paper): So why has this been an idea whose time has come? There is a simple answer, which is that it has suited China to use the concept as a way to build a rival power bloc to the West, one which it can dominate in much the same way as the US has used the Washington-based institutions to cement its economic authority.
There is something in this, but it can’t be the whole explanation. Why should it have become so attractive to Middle Eastern and South-East Asian nations, or to Turkey?
The motives will vary from country to country, but I think the best overall driver will be a desire to even up one’s bets about the direction of the world economy. Both the EU and the US can be very difficult trading partners. Even Canada, a country with a close relationship with the US, has run into all sorts of trading spats, notably over dairy and timber products. As the UK has discovered, the EU did not make the Brexit negotiations easy. You could ask, why should it? But actually it was and is in both sides’ self-interest to have as harmonious a long-term relationship as possible.
So for a country that finds relationships with the US and EU difficult, it makes sense to try to open up other options. China and India can be tough partners too, in some ways tougher than Western nations, but given the faster growth of the BRICS it must make sense to see what deals are available.
