HASTE MISPLACED
Labor capitulating on mandatory minimum sentences to ram bridging visa changes through is “deeply disturbing”, former senator Kim Carr told Guardian Australia. Labor doesn’t even agree with mandatory sentencing (where a judge has to hand down a fixed sentence length or more for a crime) — the party’s national platform states it “undermines the independence of the judiciary, leads to unjust outcomes and is often discriminatory in practice”. The bridging visa changes enforce a 10pm-6am curfew and ankle bracelets on stateless people released after their sentence (Labor wanted it on a case-by-case basis but gave it away). Here’s what else Opposition Leader Peter Dutton wrangled, as the SMH ($) lists: a 150-metre ban from approaching childcare centres if their crime involved a “minor or vulnerable person”; a ban on working with children; a ban on an offender contacting the victim of a sexual assault; notice to the government about who lives in their homes, about any interstate/overseas travel, and if they receive $10,000 or more a month.
If they breach their conditions, they get a year in jail. Each day of the breach is a single offence, so it seems jail time would stack up very quickly… It’s completely discriminatory, the Australian Lawyers Alliance Greg Barns said, noting many of these people were “refugees who have already suffered years of indefinite detention”. University of Canberra’s Kim Rubenstein called it “punitive” unless there were plans to roll out the conditions for recently released Australian citizens… which so far there isn’t. It was acting PM Richard Marles who bowed to the many Duttonesque amendments, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is in San Fran for APEC, but The Australian ($) says he was across of the negotiations.
RING OUT THE OLD
Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin is considering quitting, sources have told the AFR ($), because she was at the helm during last year’s cyber breach and last week’s 14-hour nationwide outage. She’ll face a two-hour Senate grilling today over the telco’s handling of the digital blackout, Guardian Australia reports. Optus said it happened because the routing info was changed during a software upgrade by an “international peering network” — which turned out to be its own parent company, Singtel. But Singtel was not having it, retorting in a statement that the update was 20 minutes long and Optus’ router was fine. “The upgrade was not the root cause,” it said. Yikes.
To another rather, erm, controversial leader, and former PM Scott Morrison is on the comeback trail, The New Daily reports. The mere sentence sends a shiver down one’s spine, does it not? The paper points out he’s been rather quiet for 18 months until about two weeks ago — first the infamous Israel trip with apparent bestie former UK PM BoJo, next squawking about the exemptions to the Sydney Airport curfew, as the AFR ($) reports, and then on to the alleged delay for Canberra’s Indigenous cultural precinct’s design as the SMH ($) writes. He’s been all over Sky News Australia — which loves to make time for the opposition to complain freely and often spuriously without being challenged — speaking wistfully of regrets that he “let down” former home affairs minister Karen Andrews by swearing himself into her portfolio without so much as a call. The New Daily’s James Robertson notes Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has two vacant frontbench spots to fill.
HUNGRY FOR THE PLANET
A former Liberal government adviser is starving himself to force Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to act on climate. Gregory Andrews was Australia’s high commissioner to West Africa, our first threatened species commissioner and deputy chief climate negotiator to the United Nations — but he is now into the third week of his hunger strike on the lawns of Parliament House. He has lost eight kilograms already, telling the SMH ($) he doesn’t “want to die” but is a bit worried about his “dodgy” heart. He is demanding no more public funding for fossil fuels, a phase-out of coal and gas exports, new environment laws, a native forest logging ban, and the release of our climate risk assessment. It comes as a NSW volunteer firefighter is dead, the ABC reports, after being struck by a falling tree while battling a 21,200-hectare-and-growing fire in Walgett, the RFS confirmed. Commissioner Rob Rogers said the man’s “ultimate sacrifice” is a reminder to us all about the danger these people face trying to keep us safe.
It comes as NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles has divested from Woodside, the NT News ($) reports, though she argued there was no conflict of interest. Meanwhile, either match the $30 billion investment from Brookfield or get out of the way, seven green groups have told AustralianSuper, as the AFR ($) reports. The super giant now has a 16.5% stake in Origin Energy, which has threatened Brookfield’s $20 billion buyout. AusSuper reckons that price is way too cheap, even though Brookfield offered $30 billion as a sweetener to build 14 gigawatts of clean energy generation by 2033 through Origin. An AusSuper spokesperson said it would vote against the offer because of “strategic energy transition platforms” — in other words, Brookfield said, it wants to keep cashing in on high energy prices and run our coal plants for longer.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
The gaggle of excited Year 1 kids was jostling in the school hallway, toting comparatively oversized hand luggage and even the odd neck pillow. They were headed to “Mexico” as part of an educational mock trip their teacher, Ms White, organised, to take place in her own classroom in Dallas, Texas. She’d taken individual photos to create a fake passport for each of the pint-sized kids, then rearranged the room with rows of seats like an aeroplane. Once the giggling kids had boarded in front of a drawing of a South West Airlines logo, White pressed play on a TV screen at the front of the classroom showing a plane take off. “Apple juice, anyone?” stewardess White asked each child, handing out drinks on their flight. After a bumpy landing, the kids touched down, filing into a line to get a bright passport stamp from border officer White at customs.
The idea came to White after she had chatted to a bunch of the kids about something they’d really love to do, CNN reports. Fly, several kids had responded wistfully. She filmed the entire day for a TikTok that quickly went viral, also catching the eye of floored management at the real South West Airlines. Next minute, the whole classroom was at the nearest airline hangar to tour a real-life stationary aeroplane, waving “goodbye” at family as they climbed the stairs of the plane. On board, a female pilot chatted to the awe-struck kids about how she flies for a job as they built their own tiny model planes and snacked happily. As for White, she and the school’s principal received a free round-trip ticket to anywhere in the world — including Mexico — and the airline also donated $10,000 in cash to the school.
Hoping you believe in the magic of imagination today and have a restful weekend.
SAY WHAT?
Make no mistake, this is Prime Minister Albanese’s Tampa moment and history will condemn him for this, just as it condemned Mr Howard and Mr Beazley over 20 years ago. It is an utter disgrace, an abject craven capitulation by a party that has forgotten where it came from, and forgotten what it used to stand for.
Nick McKim
The Greens were astounded the government, headed up by Acting PM Richard Marles, rammed through a slew of strict conditions for stateless offenders who had completed their sentence. McKim referenced the diplomatic spat with Norway after John Howard refused to take 433 desperate asylum seekers who were on board the MV Tampa.
CRIKEY RECAP
“Anthony Albanese has accused Opposition Leader Peter Dutton of seeking to weaponise anti-Semitism, urging greater social cohesion as the Israel-Gaza conflict continues.
“Responding to a Coalition motion in Parliament yesterday which criticised the government’s response in dealing with the conflict, the prime minister hit back, saying he had been consistent in his views in calling for unity … Dutton said Albanese should not go to the APEC summit in San Francisco until he had assured Jewish Australians they would be protected.”
“Dutton’s demand is that the government embrace Israel’s cause as its own (remember he suggested we should provide military aid to Israel) and work with the Coalition and News Corp to delegitimise any pro-Palestinian sentiment as automatically anti-Semitic.
“Moreover — and it is Dutton who has made the connection, not anyone else, not even his own immigration spokesman Dan Tehan — it should have immediately legislated to keep detained people, many of them with serious criminal records, released as a result of the High Court’s NZYQ decision, regardless of the rule of law, regardless of no judicial reasoning being available.”
“On Wednesday, footage aired on Seven’s Sunrise program showed [Robbie] Williams walking past the Sydney Opera House wearing a T-shirt reading ‘Kennedy 2024’. The shirt matches the ‘Classic Kennedy T-Shirt’ sold on Kennedy’s presidential campaign website’s store.
“Williams, who’s set to begin his Australian tour tonight, has publicly flirted with conspiracy theories. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he entertained Pizzagate, a conspiracy theory precursor to QAnon that was built on the debunked belief that leaked emails from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign showed high-level Democrats talking about a Satanic paedophile ring active in the basement of a pizza store using code words.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Telecommunications cut off in Gaza after fuel runs out (Al Jazeera)
Russia loads missile with nuclear-capable glide vehicle into launch silo (Reuters)
Facebook, Instagram will allow political ads that claim the 2020 election was stolen (CNN)
Five things we learnt from the Biden-Xi meeting (BBC)
George Santos announces he won’t seek reelection following damning Ethics Committee report (CNN)
President Zelenskyy welcomes Britain’s new foreign secretary David Cameron to Kyiv (euronews)
THE COMMENTARIAT
A government in a big hurry gives opposition some wins on ex-detainees — Michelle Grattan (The Conversation): “There was a catch 22 in the powers the government previously had. If a person breached their visa obligations, they could be sent to immigration detention — but after the court judgment, that penalty was no longer available. This made legislation necessary, so people could be jailed. The government rushed the bill through the House of Representatives on Thursday morning in about an hour. The opposition was not allowed to move amendments. The Coalition prepared several amendments, substantially broadening the restrictions, to pursue in the Senate.
“But anxious to lower the temperature, speed the bill’s passage and get the issue off the table, acting Prime Minister Richard Marles approached Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Marles and other ministers met Dutton in Marles’ office, and the government agreed to all the opposition amendments. They included mandatory minimum sentencing for visa breaches — which is inconsistent with Labor’s platform. It’s understood Albanese was kept abreast of things. The legislation may be stopgap because without the court’s reasons, the government is working, to a degree, in the dark. More legislation could be needed next year.”
Mid-East war exposes myth of Israel lobby’s power, influence — Timothy Lynch (The Australian) ($): “The greatest check on the Israel Defense Forces’ war on Hamas is the wokest administration in US history, Joe Biden’s. His call for a ceasefire — ‘a pause’, joined by Australia’s Penny Wong — the effect of which would allow Hamas to regroup, does not suggest he is controlled by an Israel lobby. Indeed, more than 500 US government officials this week demanded Biden force a ceasefire on Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I argued in these pages last week that Australia’s colonisation by US identity politics has made us stupid. Students increasingly navigate a world divided by their teachers into oppressors (Israelis) and oppressed (Palestinians).
“Israel, the exclusive home of gender equality, LGBTQIA+ rights and pronoun preferences in the Middle East, has been incapable of countering this depressing pedagogical revolution. Where was an all-powerful Israel lobby, and its world-class universities, in this battle? Contra Mearsheimer and Walt’s bestseller, a Zionist/Israel/Jewish lobby has not bent the US public and polity to its will. It has not corrupted Congress or whispered in the president’s ear. Instead, the crimes of October 7 have been imbibed by Western elites as a legitimate resistance to Israeli ‘settler coloniser’ oppression. The more difficulty Israeli spokespeople have had trying to persuade our own ABC journalists of their just cause, the more apparent become the limits of any Israel lobby.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Paredarerme Country (also known as Triabunna, Tasmania)
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The Australia Institute’s Richard Denniss, Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre’s Andry Sculthorpe, and CSIRO Environment’s Jess Melbourne-Thomas are among the speakers at the Tasmanian Ocean Summit
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Author Catherine McNamara will talk about her new book, The Carnal Fugues, at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.
Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Avid Reader bookshop is hosting a Summer Reading Guide party, with drinks and nibbles on offer.
