POWER UP
Sure, we’ll support vehicle emission standards (which cap manufacturer emissions and make EVs cheaper), Greens leader Adam Bandt told Labor, as long as you scrap your protections for offshore gas developments. Guardian Australia reports the Senate hostage situation relates to Resources Minister Madeleine King tacking on a provision to a worker safety bill that basically safeguards offshore gas approvals even if the rules change in future. Bandt said it’ll allow fossil fuel giants like Santos to “bypass environmental protections and First Nations voices”. Meanwhile, the government may need to discount EVs as much as $31,000 below a petrol-powered car to meet the fuel emissions goal in the next six years (61% reduction on new cars by 2030), the Australian Automobile Association via the SMH says. EVs accounted for 7% of 2023’s car sales.
It comes as the Coalition’s nuclear energy plan is trying to lure communities by offering possible “subsidised electricity prices for local industries, upgraded community infrastructure, and transition packages for workers to higher-paid jobs”, The Australian ($) reports. Former head of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) Adi Paterson called nuclear the “rational choice” for energy. Meanwhile, it’s private sector investment in renewables that is holding them back, a new Clean Energy Council report via Guardian Australia found, because last year backing for new solar farms fell by more than a third while there was no investment in new windfarms (compared to the six financed in 2022). But it’s not all bad news — 27 large batteries were being built at the end of 2023, up from 19 in 2022. Plus, last year renewable energy supplied a record 39.4% of Australia’s electricity (13.4% wind, 11.2% rooftop solar, 7% solar farms, and 6.5% hydro). Cool.
CASH ON ARRIVAL
More than one in four (28.5%) of homes purchased in NSW, Victoria and Queensland last year were paid for in cash (that is, no mortgage in sight), the ABC reports, often by older, retired and “asset-rich” Australians. In Surfers Paradise it meant $1.4 billion in money exchanged hands, Property Exchange Australia data found. Cripes. An expert said a growing number of the landed gentry are simply unaffected by the cash rate. Meanwhile, mining billionaire Clive Palmer is mulling a High Court challenge so he can keep spending millions on election ads, The Age reports, as Labor firms up donation cap legislation slated for post-election. Palmer said “Labor wants to silence the diversity of ideas in this country” — by limiting the 0.0001%’s impact on our democratic process, one might wonder?
Meanwhile, Beijing could be about to scrap wine tariffs that have practically blocked Australia’s wine industry since 2020, ABC reports, after China’s government said they weren’t needed anymore. Up to 220% tariffs were introduced after then prime minister Scott Morrison called for an international probe into the origins of COVID-19, as The New York Times reported, which saw our sales to China fall 97% in a year. Beijing also blocked our coal, barley, cotton and lobsters. Speaking of dodgy Coalition moves — Queensland Greens leader Jonathan Sriranganathan has put an open call out for lawyers to help him sue the Liberal-National Party after it produced scratchies featuring his face over and over, the Brisbane Times reports. Sriranganathan’s face is alongside phrases like “higher taxes, a 30km/h speed limit, higher pet registration costs, cancelled Metro projects, and traffic chaos”. He quipped that 90% were bare-faced lies and the other 10% were also lies, but added he was genuinely a little worried about his personal safety and wanted to sue for defamation.
SHE SAID / HE SAID
Former Howard-era minister and former speaker Bronwyn Bishop has apologised for the second time in four months for comments she made on Sky News Australia, the SMH reports, this time over her accusing independent MP Sophie Scamps of being “part and parcel of an anti-Semitic movement”. Bishop said Scamps calling for Australia’s UN Relief and Works Agency funding to resume did not make her an anti-Semite and apologised for the “offence, distress and harm”. Gaza’s children are starving to death, as BBC reports. In November, Bishop also said sorry for saying the ABC was practically aligning itself with the Nazi policy in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict because Nazis were against the establishment of Israel. The ABC lodged a formal complaint about it, not least because Sky’s Sharri Markson let Bishop say it unchallenged.
Speaking of fiery words — “shut up and let me have a go,” Katter’s Australian Party MP Bob Katter yelled at Nationals Senator Ross Cadell when urging him to look at Coles and Woolworths’ grocery duopoly rather than play politics while standing outside the Senate select committee inquiry into the matter. Katter said he’d be making a formal complaint, the ABC reports. To other inequality news now and the Commonwealth will double its funding to public schools in the NT to $748 million, Guardian Australia reports, which is combined with the territory’s $350 million contribution. The $1 billion total investment means all public schools in the NT will reach 100% of the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) by 2029 (it’s at 80% now, compared to 97% of the territory’s private schools). Countrywide only ACT’s public schools are funded at the SRS level, the paper notes.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Flabbergasted doctors crowded around the X-rays of Australia’s two-time world champion surfer Tyler Wright, collectively lost for words. How is she getting enough oxygen to live, one awe-struck specialist wondered out loud, let alone compete at the highest level of sport? She must be almost suffocating from those nasal cavities, another added, and her airways are far too narrow. It hadn’t stopped the 29-year-old however — Wright made her first-ever World Surf League quarter-final this year in the often horrifyingly tall waves of Portugal, and has been eyeing the gold at this year’s Olympics. Her specialists sat down with her and gave it to her straight: We have no idea how you do what you do.
If you want to continue surfing, they told her, we really need to fit a maxillary palatal expander in your head — it’s a device that will widen your upper jaw and allow much more airflow. Go for it, Wright responded. Next minute there were seven screws in her noggin, variably measuring between nine millimetres and 17 millimetres. The pro surfer says it’s been life-changing. “It’s the sanest I’ve ever felt”, she told The Guardian, describing how she wakes up every single day feeling “great”. Now comes the adjustment period, however. After 13 years, she’s training a whole new breathing system and it does “do her head in” occasionally (mind the pun). Still, it’s worth it to sleep properly for the first time ever, Wright adds.
Hoping you breathe easy today.
SAY WHAT?
It wasn’t an exclusively male environment. There were female teachers, librarians, admin staff, mothers in the tuck shop. To be rude, much less sexist, towards any of these would have been unthinkable and would have earned draconian punishment.
Greg Sheridan
A school going co-ed would be little more than “the dreary, dull, lifeless, joyless, ‘small-S’ Stalinist bureaucratic conformity that progressive ideology routinely attempts to impose”, The Australian ($) columnist pontificated, adding the help was female at his school and he turned out alright. Right?
CRIKEY RECAP
“Angus Deaton is the economic doyen from central casting. The bow-tie-wearing econometrician was born in Scotland, did a PhD at Cambridge and has been at Princeton for the last 40 years. He’s currently the Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus. He won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2015. And he’s just dropped an almighty bucket of shit on his entire profession.
“Where Deaton published it is almost as interesting as the contents: at the International Monetary Fund, that institution once seen as the standard-bearer of neoliberal orthodoxy, but which has in recent years developed a curiosity about the real-world impacts of the hardline policies it once imposed upon or prescribed to countries.”
“People are undeniably vulnerable to cancellation and de-platforming, and it is noticeably taking place in almost every corner of the business. But despite what our conservative media would have you believe, the only people being deplatformed, shunned, and threatened are the pro-Palestinian voices defying an industry that’s proud of its carefully curated indifference.
“The ‘doxxed’ WhatsApp group that Conway was an active member of functioned in part to root out these pro-Palestinian voices from the industry. Artists like Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk, the editors of Overland, have spent months fending off a vicious and virulently defamatory campaign to get them fired over their politics. The poet Omar Sakr says he had lost work prior to the State Library pulling his contract …”
“In a survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, around 68% of Ukrainians feel positive about the participation of LGBTQIA+ people in defending the country from Russian aggression, with less than 10% viewing this as a negative development.
“Another survey by the institute shows major improvements in the support for legal equality for LGBTQIA+ people in recent years. In August 2022, just over half (54%) of Ukrainians expressed support for equal rights, with this figure growing to 72% in November 2023. According to Kasian, before the full-scale invasion many LGBTQIA+ people wouldn’t be open about their sexuality at work.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
UK Conservatives’ top donor Frank Hester spoke of hating ‘all Black women’ (Al Jazeera)
Israel-Gaza war: David Cameron says BBC report into Nasser hospital raid ‘very disturbing’ (BBC)
China scrambles to prevent another big property developer going bust (CNN)
US to send new weapons package worth $300 million for Ukraine (Reuters)
Brussels recommends opening EU membership talks with Bosnia and Herzegovina (euronews)
Jimmy Kimmel says Oscars producers tried to stop him reading out Trump’s post (The Guardian)
Andrew Tate can be extradited to Britain after Romanian trial, court rules (The New York Times) ($)
[US] inflation picks up to 3.2%, slightly hotter than expected (The Wall Street Journal) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Kate’s photo shows why editing is so tricky in the time of AI — Tim Biggs (The SMH): “Despite app stores being filled with software that claim to be able to detect fake photos, the technology to scan an image to determine definitively if and how it had been edited, doctored or generated does not yet exist. Some apps and programs that generate or edit images attach special metadata that helps prevent them from being passed off as unedited, but others do not, while many technological analysis methods are highly specialised and can be thrown off by sophisticated fakers …
“It’s also interesting that this whole saga kicked off because news wires refused to distribute the image, after realising it had been edited. News outlets, of course, have had no issues running certain images in the past that they knew had been touched up, and that surely includes photos of the royals that have been issued for publicity. But today’s technology makes that fraught, especially when there are too many unanswered questions. [Swinburne University of Technology’s James] Berrett said a way forward for the near term could simply involve platforms and individuals being upfront when posting images, informing viewers of how the picture was created and edited.”
The Human Rights Commission has gone AWOL — Julian Leeser (The Australian) ($): “As a Liberal and as a parliamentarian, I believe my responsibility is to defend the freedom of all. That’s why I have always been a strong supporter of laws that protect against hate, and it’s why I support institutions that protect people from such prejudice and malice. In this country, the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has a vital job in protecting people from prejudice and hatred. Traditionally, it speaks for communities that are overlooked or dealing with prejudice and discrimination in many forms. It does some good work settling private disputes.
“However, in recent months I have become troubled by the absolute silence of the AHRC in relation to the wave of anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions that has occurred across Australia. Frankly, the AHRC has gone AWOL. It is not for lack of resources. The AHRC is a big institution with about 200 staff and it is projected to cost taxpayers $43 million this year. In its annual report in 2022-23, the commission boasted that its achievements included 29 major reports, publications and resources; 28 projects attracting strategic partnerships; nine major events; 237 speeches and presentations; 87 web news items; 235 media interviews; and 16 opinion pieces … Do you know how many speeches, opinion pieces, publications, strategic partnerships and media interviews have been written or given by the AHRC specifically condemning anti-Semitism since the October 7 terror attack in Israel? It’s zero.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr will give the 2024 ACT State of the Territory at Hotel Realm.
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Greece’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis will speak at the National Press Club.
