ISRAEL STEPS UP OFFENSIVE
Israel has told residents in more than 20 towns in southern Lebanon to evacuate their homes immediately, signalling a widening of its ground operation against Hezbollah, Reuters reports. The newswire says the warning takes the number of towns in Lebanon presented with evacuation calls to 70, including the provincial capital Nabatieh.
The ABC highlights that Nabatieh and the other communities north of the Litani River that have been told to evacuate represent the northern edge of a UN-declared buffer zone established after the 2006 war. Reuters says Israel struck Hezbollah targets in a suburb of Beirut on Thursday, while the Iran-backed militant group said it had launched rockets at Haifa Bay in northern Israel.
As the situation continues to escalate, Lebanese authorities have said Israeli attacks have displaced more than 1.2 million people in the country, and nearly 2,000 people have been killed in the past year, most of them in the past two weeks. Israel says its aim is to allow tens of thousands of its citizens displaced from the north of the country by bombardments against Hezbollah to return home.
The Guardian says the World Health Organization has revealed 28 healthcare workers have been killed in Lebanon in the last 24 hours as concerns grow over getting medical supplies to the wounded. Capital Brief points out the rise in oil prices overnight after US President Joe Biden said he was “discussing” possible Israeli strikes on Iranian oil sites in response to Tuesday’s missile attack. His full quote was: “We’re in discussion of that. I think… I think that would be a little… anyway.”
As Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong continues to call on Australians to leave Lebanon, with 500 seats available on two flights this Saturday, state and federal police commissioners will make a joint statement later today urging those planning on attending pro-Palestinian events to be peaceful, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
The paper says a planned protest in Sydney on Sunday and a vigil to mark the first anniversary of the Israel-Gaza war on Monday will go ahead following yesterday’s Supreme Court hearing over the events. Protests in Melbourne will also go ahead as planned. The joint police statement will apparently also emphasise the laws against displaying terror banners and, according to federal and Victorian sources, is being issued as the police chiefs “wanted to reinforce public confidence in their management of heated demonstrations”, the SMH reports.
CRISAFULLI GIVES HIMSELF ONE TERM
The AAP has a rather eye-catching headline this morning in its write-up of the Queensland leaders’ debate last night: “Leaders agree that Crisafulli should ‘sack himself’”.
In the first of three televised debates, LNP leader David Crisafulli said if he won the October 26 election and became premier, he would step down after one term if he failed to drive down crime. “I’m serious about it, and I’m not giving myself any wriggle room. It’s victim numbers,” Guardian Australia quotes him as saying. AAP said current Premier Steven Miles told Crisafulli during the debate: “You’ve got $16 billion of unfunded commitments. You should sack yourself.”
The newswire highlights Labor accusing the LNP of running a scare campaign on youth crime and Crisafulli saying he offered “hope” and change to Queenslanders after nine years of Labor government. The Australian says its latest Newspoll puts the LNP 10 points clear of Labor in two-party-preferred terms.
Meanwhile, The Age reports Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart asked the National Gallery of Australia to “permanently dispose” of two portraits of her by Archibald Prize-winning artist Vincent Namatjira.
Documents released under freedom of information laws reportedly show the mining billionaire appealing directly to the gallery’s chair Ryan Stokes to take down the “so-called” portraits. The Nine papers say the FOI revealed the numerous emails from Rinehart’s supporters, which failed to convince the gallery to remove the paintings. The gallery stated it “presented works of art to the Australian public to inspire people to explore, experience and learn about art”.
Talking of the Nine newspapers (and eye-catching headlines), this one in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday probably warrants a mention. The piece, titled “Cameron once ate 18 democracy sausages in one day. Now he’s won an election”, highlights the last of the results in the NSW council elections. The Cameron in question is Cameron Last, the 20-year-old Liberal candidate for Ryde Council. The paper points out Last was dubbed “Sausage Boy” at the 2019 federal election when, aged 14, he “embarked on a mission to taste the democracy sausages at 18 different polling booths across the seat of Bennelong”.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
A livestream has been set up in a tree in New South Wales in the hope of providing audiences with an insight into the life of eastern Australia’s largest gliding possums, while also raising awareness of the endangered species, Guardian Australia reports.
The hollow cam has been placed 16 metres above the ground in a tree in Tallaganda Forest by Australian National University ecologist Dr Ana Gracanin. “Most Australians don’t know that the species even exists, so we are getting a world-first exclusive into the secret life of greater gliders,” she said.
Guardian Australia notes that through habitat destruction, which has included land clearing, bushfires, and logging, greater glider populations have declined by 80% in some areas in recent years.
WWF-Australia conservation scientist Dr Kita Ashman is hopeful the live stream can bring the plight of one of Australia’s “most adorable and poorly understood animals” to a global audience.
“We need people power to help save the world’s largest gliding marsupial and all our threatened species. That starts with stronger national environment laws that close loopholes and actually protect our unique species,” she said.
Say What?
Farewell my friends. My sister Kylie is posting this because I have left the building — Hopefully I’m looking down from a cloud.
Fiona MacDonald
A post on the TV host’s Instagram page, uploaded by her sister, on Thursday announced the death of Fiona MacDonald at the age of 67, three years after she was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, the ABC reports.
CRIKEY RECAP
With the conflict in the Middle East entering a new and even more dangerous phase, the accompanying culture wars about speech, flags and symbols will continue to intensify. Dutton’s assault on the University of Sydney’s leadership shows that universities are a target in the next federal election. Disliked by many on the right for their supposedly woke liberal tendencies, and decried on the left for their links to arms manufacturers and military research, universities are increasingly controversial in the community. Both major parties have sought to blame universities enrolling international students for the housing crisis.
Attempting to separate hate speech and racism from legitimate political protest puts universities in the position of arbitrating the speech claims of students and the community on one of the defining issues of our time. As Henderson and Dutton have clearly indicated, calls for a judicial inquiry into university antisemitism are inevitably also calls for stricter policing of anti-Israel and anti-war protest speech.
As we’ve seen in the US, the likely result is tighter restrictions on students and academics criticising Israel or protesting the war.
Indeed, the crackdown on and monitoring of protests across campuses here is now playing out. Ironically, this chilling effect is precisely what Coalition politicians warned about in 2018 when they called for greater protections for free speech on campus.
Rita Panahi’s Sky News Australia program last week amplified US election disinformation that has seen a torrent of threats and harassment aimed at a Pennsylvania couple who appeared in a Kamala Harris campaign ad.
By Tuesday night AEST, however, a recording of the broadcast had been made private, mentions of the segment on Panahi’s Twitter timeline had disappeared, and Panahi had made a correction on air — but not before more than a million people had watched the program on YouTube.
The incident raises questions about Sky News Australia’s role in the ecosystem of disinformation that has dogged US elections since Donald Trump’s rise in 2016.
Australia’s mining industry has launched a pro-nuclear influence campaign powered by the digital advertising firm credited for its role in Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson’s surprise election victories.
At the end of August, the Get Clear on Nuclear campaign kicked off with the creation of social media posts and advertisements run on platforms on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube; as well as its own website.
The campaign, which urges “Australia to rethink nuclear as part of our sustainable future”, is only identified on its website as being backed by the Mineral Councils of Australia at the bottom of its terms and conditions page.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Hurricane Helene is deadliest since Katrina with 600 still missing (The Times) ($)
Google Lens now lets you search with video (The Verge)
NASA switches off instrument on Voyager 2 spacecraft to save power (Associated Press)
UK to hand Chagos Islands to Mauritius after 50 years but will keep military base (BBC)
Pink Floyd agrees deal to sell music rights to Sony for $400m (The Financial Times) ($)
BBC cancels primetime Boris Johnson interview after journalist gaffe (Politico)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Albanese and Dutton may be able to talk privately about the Israel-Gaza war, but publicly they are on a political warpath — David Speers (ABC): Both Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton condemned Iran yesterday for firing a barrage of missiles into Israel.
They both believe there should be no celebration, or anti-Israel protest, to mark the anniversary of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack.
And both the prime minister and opposition leader agree the flag of Hezbollah, a listed terrorist organisation in Australia, should not be flown here.
But within those broad areas of agreement lies enormous difference over the degree of support for how Israel is defending itself, and an intensifying blame game over who’s endangering national security here in Australia.
If Albanese repeats his performance over negative gearing, he can kiss the election goodbye — Niki Savva (The Sydney Morning Herald): Albanese chose to follow his government’s usual practice of allowing either avoidable or easily fixable issues to run for days (sometimes for weeks or months) so they keep distracting from their own good news stories, which this time included a drop in inflation and another whopping surplus to make it two in a row.
The government’s management of the economy, under the stewardship of Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, has helped bring inflation down, kept employment up and increased prospects of an interest rate cut early next year. No mean feat given what the government inherited.
Maybe the prime minister was completely unaware of what Chalmers had commissioned from Treasury (which Chalmers eventually, excruciatingly, clearly admitted), but it should have been sorted by one conversation on the morning the story broke.
