Walz come tumbling down
When Donald Trump romped to victory earlier this month, one of the Democratic campaigners Crikey spoke to explained the lack of protest rallies in the following days thus: “Our side is the one that accepts election results, remember?”
This is certainly true of the institutional Democratic Party, but at an online call held yesterday between Kamala Harris, her VP nominee Tim Walz and their supporters, it was obviously not a unanimous position among party supporters. Harris’ address was nearly indistinguishable from the stump and concession speeches Crikey saw while we were in the US (is that a good sign?).
Meanwhile, in the chat box, the vast majority of people were begging Harris to ask for a “forensic audit” of the vote, alongside hashtags like #ELONCHEATED and #RECOUNT.
After the event wrapped up, the Democrats demonstrated their new clarity of purpose by sending out an invite to “NextGenE XYZ Virtual UnVoters 4 Women’s Rights Go Online To Vote”. “We are declaring this as the New Way Forward People’s Purple ShElection”, they inform us. Very cool! We think!
Happy Junior FriYAY y’all!
The relationship between public relations firms and journalists is strained at the best of times. So when PR firm Invigorate started spraying reporters with creepily cheery greetings like “Happy MonYAYYY!” ahead of pitches, newsrooms — famously filled with some of the world’s grumpiest people — around the country heaved a collective groan.
As one reporter from the ABC told us, “‘Junior FriYAY’ [aka, Thursday] sent me. Absolutely wild way to try and court a journalist to talk about whatever random shit they’re hawking.”
“I can’t tell if it’s a deliberate strategy to get people so irritated that they start a conversation, or if it’s genuinely someone who thinks people want to be told it’s Thursday like this, but it is wild.”
Our call-out to try and determine how widespread these pitches are prompted a flood of responses, with 7:30 host Sarah Ferguson also confirming she receives the same emails. Some reporters told Crikey they had wondered whether the pitches were generated by AI.
It turns out Invigorate has quite the backstory. It’s run by Tess Sanders-Lazarus, wife of NRL legend and former Palmer United Party senator Glenn Lazarus. She was briefly in the political spotlight after PUP accused her of withholding keys to the party’s Canberra office following Lazarus’ defection in 2015.
Sanders-Lazarus told Crikey (after shamelessly wishing us a “Happy TOOSYAYYY”), that the greetings were “designed to spread some cheer and to lift people”.
She confirmed Invigorate’s use of AI was “limited at this stage”, but that the firm did partner with an agency that provided remote workers for its workforce. She also happily provided a full list of the greetings used by the firm for each day of the week:
Happy Groundhog Day / Happy MonYAYYYY
Happy TOOSSSYAY
Happy HUMP day
Happy Junior FriYAYYYY
Happy FriYAYYYY
Sod our statues
During the week, a tipster pointed out that Ray Bramham Park’s “Lebanese Immigrant” statue — a “homage” to the local Lebanese community — in Preston, Victoria, had been stolen, the traditionally attired figure lopped off at the ankles:
“The act of stealing this statue is not merely an offence against a piece of art, but a violation of the
identity, history and culture of an entire community and an insult to the sacrifices of thousands of Lebanese who were compelled to emigrate,” the World Lebanese Cultural Union said in a statement.
“A thorough investigation is essential to identify the perpetrators, hold them accountable, and
restore this important symbol to its rightful place in the community.”
And yet, not a word in Australia’s media or from the political class: no ministers saying the vandals were “trashing our national heritage“, no commenters calling the defacing or removal of statues Stalinist, Maoist and Talibanesque. Which is a notable shift in tone, even if you believe the act has more to do with the raw value of the materials than the conflict in the Middle East.
Mettam? I hardly know ’em!
The Liberal Party of Western Australia continues to be a kind of Tardis of farce, containing caverns of dysfunction quite unimaginable when one looks at its size. The latest farrago concerns “Liberal polling” commissioned by an “unnamed businessman”, run exclusively in The West Australian this week. It predicted an “election wipeout” unless leader Libby Mettam stood down in favour of Basil Zempilas. There is so very much to unpack here.
The polling predicted a wipeout compared to what the Liberals currently have: three lower house MPs (an improvement on the two they had after the McGowan Mania of 2021). Second, an eagle-eyed WA politics watcher might note Zempilas is Perth’s lord mayor, not a state member of Parliament.
And let’s round it off by noting the sheer Perth-posterousness of this cluster of power and influence: mysteriously sourced polling favouring an unelected party leader, run unquestioningly in the state’s only daily newspaper, which in turn is owned by Zempilas’ employers at Seven West Media, a conflict of interest so brazen people have pretty much stopped commenting on it. Adding to the intrigue is the claim from shadow police minister Peter Collier, that a male federal Liberal candidate arranged for the “unnamed businessman” to do the polling in the first place.
Mettam stared the saga down yesterday, inviting her colleagues to move a motion of no confidence. No one did, and the sixth change of leadership for the party since 2017 was delayed.
Making the LinkedIn
Finally, we must offer our respect to LinkedIn. In the midst of a week where talk about social media has drifted into the impractical and the poorly evidenced, it has maintained a steadfast commitment to realism.
As noted by Crikey‘s Cam Wilson, LinkedIn has argued in its submission to the inquiry into a social media ban for under-16s that it should be exempt because it is far too boring to pose any kind of risk to anyone in that demographic, concluding: “LinkedIn simply does not have content interesting and appealing to minors.”
