TRUMP GUILTY
Donald Trump is now officially a convicted felon, becoming the first former US president in history to earn the title. A Manhattan jury has found Trump guilty of falsifying business records to cover up a payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels, reports Politico. The unanimous verdict from the 12-person jury ends a six-week trial in which prosecutors accused Trump of orchestrating an illegal conspiracy to influence the 2016 presidential election. Trump was convicted on all 34 felony counts brought by prosecutors, with sentencing set for July 11. He faces a maximum sentence of 1⅓ to four years in prison, explains The Washington Post. Taking his age and his lack of a prior criminal record into account, he could serve a shorter sentence or no term of incarceration at all.
A reminder for those down the back: although he’ll now carry a criminal record, Trump can still run for president, reports The Washington Post, but he may not be allowed to cast his own vote in the upcoming election, speculates Politico. Meanwhile, the verdict is not expected to move the dial on voter sentiment: Trump currently has a small lead over President Joe Biden in many swing-state polls — a lead that held steady throughout the trial. The New Republic sums it up with the headline “Why Trump’s historic conviction is so unsatisfying”, arguing that the 2024 Republican presidential nominee’s conviction “feels deflating, even a little disappointing. All of the investigations, grand juries, and indictments have culminated in this? A slap on the wrist?”
DOWN TO THE WICK
Nine will try to get back some of former news boss Darren Wick’s $1 million “golden handshake” as frustrations at the broadcaster boil over, the SMH reports. The payout, reported to be made up of 30 years of entitlements, has been called a “slap in the face” by one Nine journalist, with others at the network reportedly denied pay rises due to “financial difficulties in the media market”. After a marathon three hour meeting, Nine Entertainment chairman Peter Costello and the board backed the company’s chief executive Mike Sneesby, reports the AFR, despite The Australian‘s story prior to the meeting quoting insiders’ theories that Sneesby was a “dead man walking”, citing Nine newspapers’ own coverage of him. “No newspaper is going to carve up their own boss like that unless they know he’s going out the door soon.” Might make for some awkward times in the newsroom ahead…
Meanwhile, new proposals to boost police powers in relation to domestic violence are a knee-jerk reaction, according to family violence experts speaking to The Age. The powers would give police the ability to extend family violence intervention orders with the goal of reducing the need for victims to come to court to apply for extensions. However, experts warn that this could exacerbate the issue of women being misidentified as the perpetrator of the violence. Antoinette Braybrook, from Aboriginal-led family violence legal service Djirra, warned that 20% of First Nations women are misidentified as perpetrators and are having their children removed at twice the rate of non-Aboriginal women. It comes as Samantha Murphy’s mobile phone has been found in a dam in Buninyong, south of Ballarat, news.com.au reports — though a retired senior detective warned the outlet that it could have been put there by Murphy’s killer to send police in the wrong direction.
UNCONSTITUTIONAL?
New laws made by Labor to counter the High Court’s release of non-citizens from immigration detention are potentially unconstitutional, Guardian Australia reports. The laws, introduced by Immigration Minister Andrew Giles, create criminal punishments for breaches of visa conditions. They also, as a default, impose electronic monitoring (via ankle bracelets) and curfews on all those released — amendments fought for by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Lawyers for a stateless Eritrean man have argued that electronic monitoring is a “substantial interference with bodily integrity and privacy”. Giles remains under intense scrutiny for “direction 99”, with some of it coming from across the ditch — New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters has urged Australia not to reconsider deporting Kiwi citizens with “little or no connection to New Zealand” The Australian reports.
Meanwhile, millennials are leading an exodus of people from cities to regional areas, SBS reports. Sick of expensive rents and mortgages, dirty air and long commutes, two-thirds of all people who moved to a regional area in the 12 months to March came from Sydney. Though it looks like people aren’t moving very far — most people are moving within 150km of a major city. Queensland Premier Steven Miles says surging populations on the Gold Coast are putting strain on housing, hospital and traffic systems in the area, according to the ABC.
SAY WHAT?
It was a News Corp pile-on, but I wouldn’t agree … that we’re cowering, we’re not cowering to News Corp.
David Anderson
The ABC’s managing director responded to allegations from Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young that the broadcaster had caved to excessive criticism of Laura Tingle from News Corp.
CRIKEY RECAP
“At the 2022 federal election, just shy of one-third of voters gave their first preference to a candidate not from a major party, leading to a record-breaking 16-member lower house crossbench (the bench has since grown to 18, three more than sit in the Nationals partyroom). The Senate crossbench has since risen to 19, the largest since group tickets were abolished, with independents David Pocock, Ralph Babet and Tammy Tyrrell all getting up without the help of murky preference flows (and with David Van joining as an independent following his expulsions from the Liberal partyroom).
The 2022 election was not an aberration: that disenchanted third continues to make itself known, with new modelling from RedBridge and Accent showing around 20 seats in play for minors and independents (the Nationals’ NSW seat of Cowper is predicted to go indie, although Dai Le’s Fowler may return to Labor).”
“In The Australian, outrage was quickly diverted to ‘partisan rot’ at the ABC, misrepresented as an ‘attack on Australia‘ and active campaigning against Peter Dutton, amplified through the opposition frontbench commentary.
To the surprise of no-one, ABC management stumbled, then fell to the occasion. Fresh off last year’s staff revolt over the public broadcaster’s failure to defend Indigenous journalists during the Voice campaign, ABC leadership rewarded News Corp with a mealy-mouthed sniff that Tingle’s ‘conversational’ comments ‘would not have met the ABC’s editorial standards’. News Corp’s pile-on was more than just another skirmish in the Murdochs’ long-running war on the ABC. Policing the tone about migration — and migrants — with an ‘it’s not racism’ deniability is central to the strategy for winning next year’s election.”
So what has Morrison done to set himself up for success? His LinkedIn lists three jobs: author, non-executive vice chairman of American Global Strategies, and board member at ‘various companies’. As an author, he’s already published his first work: the religious memoir Plans For Your Good. The book was aimed at the $1.175 billion US Christian book market, but in Australia, it’s reportedly sold very few copies so far.
At American Global Strategies, Morrison is working with two former Donald Trump staffers to ‘help clients navigate a highly dynamic geopolitical landscape that presents risks and opportunities’, in the ex-PM’s own words.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
How Republicans in key Senate races are flip-flopping on abortion (The New York Times) ($)
Pressure grows on Biden to let US weapons strike Russia (BBC)
Slovenian government recognises Palestinian state pending Parliament approval (euronews)
ANC below majority mark in early leads (Al Jazeera)
Heatwave kills 8 in Bihar, 2 in Madhya Pradesh as temperature continues to rise (The Times Of India)
THE COMMENTARIAT
When you force people into a ‘safe zone’ then bomb it, ‘whoops’ doesn’t quite cut it — Waleed Aly (The Age): “’This happens in war.’ That phrase reveals a little more than intended. Israel tends to offer this as a defence; as a way of categorising such events as sad, yet ultimately unavoidable. These things are not done, they just happen. And war does not happen without them.
There is a sense in which that is true: modern warfare inevitably claims awful numbers of civilian lives. But to stop there is misleading because it masks the choices made along the way — the warnings that are ignored, the risks (and therefore the anticipated consequences) deemed acceptable from the start …
If some horror is so obviously predictable, even inevitable, is it really, truly, in the fullest sense, a mistake when it happens? Between the deliberate and the accidental, there is the foreseeable. That is not a place of exoneration or excuse; it’s a place of liability, of guilt. And in the case of catastrophe in Rafah, we’re talking about something not merely foreseeable, but foreseen. Forewarned.”
Government’s pursuit of a hate speech law could take it down another cul-de-sac — Michelle Grattan (The Conversation): “The proposed law would cover speech that incites hatred in relation to sex, sexuality, gender, race, and religion. The government claims it would strengthen existing Commonwealth laws. We already have provisions that prohibit urging violence against groups and members of groups — in section 80.2A and 80.2B of the Criminal Code. New offences would be created.
The opposition says it will wait for the details before it declares its position. However, Dutton — who a few months ago said the government should investigate whether stronger laws were needed — was cautious about the issue at this week’s Coalition parties meeting. There would be resistance to the move within the opposition. There are several threshold questions about the pursuit of federal hate speech legislation. Is it necessary? Is it desirable? How practical is it? Is it worth the potentially divisive debate it will bring?”
