KEATING VS AUKUS
Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating has lashed out at the current government, once again criticising the endlessly debated AUKUS defence pact. Appearing on the ABC’s 7.30 program last night, Keating called the Albanese government a “sellout”, declaring: “In defence and foreign policy, this is not a Labor government. This is a party which has adopted the defence and foreign policies of the Morrison Liberal government.” Joining AUKUS makes Australia a target for aggression, Keating argued, due to the implicit opposition to China’s growing influence in the Asia-Pacific region. Discussing China’s designs on Taiwan, the 80-year-old said the island was “Chinese real estate”, adding: “Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest”.
Guardian Australia quotes numerous eye-catching parts of the interview, including: “What AUKUS is about in the American mind is turning [Australia into suckers], locking us up for 40 years with American bases all around … not Australian bases. So AUKUS is really about, in American terms, the military control of Australia. I mean, what’s happened … is likely to turn Australia into the 51st state of the United States.” Plus: “If we didn’t have an aggressive ally like the United States — aggressive to others in the region — there’d be nobody attacking Australia. We are better left alone than we are being ‘protected’ by an aggressive power like the United States. Australia is capable of defending itself.”
The Daily Telegraph was also keen to highlight Keating, declaring: “This government has sold out to the United States. They’ve fallen for the dinner on the White House lawn. The prime minister gets the dinners on the White House lawn … [and] these turkeys all fall for it.”
As Anthony Albanese and his cabinet do their best to try and ignore the criticism of their prized alliance, another rift that won’t go away is the endless fallout from the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) interest rate decision and inflation update earlier this week. The Australian says Albanese is “widening the split” between the government and the central bank, quoting economists as saying the prime minister is wrong in asserting the RBA had not blamed government spending for higher inflation forecasts. Among those quoted was Judo Bank chief economic adviser Warren Hogan who said he was “not sure how it was not clear” that government spending had had an impact. “The RBA numbers speak for themselves,” he added.
On Thursday, RBA governor Michele Bullock once again said inflation was “still too high”. The AAP reports Bullock told the Rotary Club of Armidale the bank’s board remained “vigilant” to upside inflation risks and “will not hesitate to raise rates if it needs to”. On Tuesday she surprised many by revealing a rate hike had been considered and warned Australians not to expect a cut, from its current 4.35% level, in the next six months.
CHILDCARE PAY RISE IMPACT
As my colleague Bernard Keane wrote on Thursday: “The government’s commitment to spend $3.6 billion funding a two-stage 15% pay rise for Australia’s 220,000 childcare workers is a huge economic story.” The ABC has led overnight on the much-welcomed announcement by quoting a former RBA assistant governor who claims the bank may not look too favourably on the new money promised. Luci Ellis, now Westpac’s economic spokesperson, told the broadcaster: “Higher wages does mean more spending from more people, so that does mean at the margin the Reserve Bank will be thinking, ‘well, that’s a bit more demand from consumers,’ even though they’re only a small subset of consumers.” Albanese denied the wage push was inflationary, saying: “If we didn’t do something about the wages of childcare workers and aged care workers, then we wouldn’t have a workforce.”
The AAP quotes Australian Childcare Alliance secretary Paul Mondo as saying the hefty pay bump was a “momentous step” in the direction of luring workers back to the under-staffed sector. “It’s a really significant commitment, and we think that absolutely it is enough to change the narrative,” he said. Mundo also said he’d been involved in early childhood education for more than 20 years, and the past few years had been the most difficult ever in terms of staff recruitment.
As the fallout over former Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce’s controversial payout rumbles on (The Sydney Morning Herald’s analysis yesterday was titled “How the Napoleon of aviation lost the Qantas pay battle”), the ABC reports the airline is redirecting its Perth-to-London route through Singapore as fears of air strikes in the Middle East intensify.
Elsewhere in international news, Donald Trump has held a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago residence in which he said he is willing to debate his Democratic rival Kamala Harris three times in September on different networks, Reuters reports. The former president said he wanted to hold debates on September 4 on Fox, September 10 on NBC and September 25 on ABC — though it looks like those dates might be fluid, as Harris has just agreed to debate the former president on September 10 on ABC.
The New York Times’ live blog of Trump’s press conference was littered with endless fact-checking, with “false” or “this is exaggerated” labels peppering the attempted coverage of what the 78-year-old said. The BBC reports Trump made a “number of dubious and sometimes just plain false statements”.
Harris and her running mate Tim Walz have been holding numerous rallies this week, although the Democratic and Republican tickets had to cancel some events on Thursday due to tropical storm Debby bringing heavy rain and dangerous flooding.
Finally, 84-year-old Nancy Pelosi is still out there taking no prisoners. In a new interview with The New Yorker she delivered quite the quote when pushed on her role in forcing President Joe Biden to drop out of the race: “I’ve never been that impressed with his political operation,” she admitted. “They won the White House. Bravo. But my concern was: this ain’t happening, and we have to make a decision for this to happen.” While out promoting her new book, The Associated Press also quotes her as saying of Trump’s reelection ambitions: “My goal in life was that man would never step in the White House again.”
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
While it’s perfectly obvious to everyone that it should be a former Australian prime minister given the incredible resemblance (my colleague Charlie Lewis has more on the phenomenon here), the bosses at Saturday Night Live are still searching for someone to play recently anointed Democrat VP candidate Tim Walz on the iconic show.
The LA Times revealed comedian Steve Martin turned down the opportunity after producer Lorne Michaels rang him up to offer the gig on Wednesday.
“I wanted to say no and, by the way, he wanted me to say no,” Martin said. “I said, ‘Lorne, I’m not an impressionist. You need someone who can really nail the guy.’ I was picked because I have gray hair and glasses.”
He added: “It’s not like you do it once and get applause and never do it again. Again, they need a real impressionist to do that. They’re gonna find somebody really, really good. I’d be struggling.”
The Guardian has had a crack at who could get the call, with a shortlist (seemingly more hopeful than based on any speculation) that includes Mark Proksch, Brian Doyle Murray, Michael McKean, Jim O’Heir and Bill Hader.
Meanwhile, Maya Rudolph is set to reprise her portrayal of Harris on the show, with Deadline reporting pre-production has been paused on her Apple TV+ comedy series Loot, which was scheduled to begin filming at the end of August.
The 50th season of SNL will begin on September 28.
Say What?
To be honest, I’ve just had a gutful.
David Speirs
South Australia’s outgoing Liberal leader explained his reasons for stepping down at his final press conference as leader on Thursday. Spiers became Liberal leader after Labor’s landslide victory in 2022, succeeding Steven Marshall. The ABC quotes him as saying yesterday: “I don’t have the energy to fight for a leadership that quite frankly in the current circumstances I just don’t want to pursue any more. I reflect, was I a bit early, was it too soon for me to lead the party, or was the party not simply ready for me to lead it?” The AAP said he had declared at the press conference he planned to “sail off into the sunset”, but actually plans to continue to serve as the member for Black and contest the March 2026 election. The ABC reports a partyroom meeting on Monday is set to determine his successor.
CRIKEY RECAP
Major party politicians have accepted at least 299 gifts, including tickets to sporting events and shows, from the gambling industry in the past five years, an analysis of Parliament’s interests registers reveals. Crikey and the transparency project Open Politics have collected all the declarations of those gifts on a special web page where anyone can have a look for themselves.
Forty-eight current federal politicians have declared gambling largesse since the May 2019 election. That’s 21% of all federal politicians.
MPs, senators and their families have enjoyed free entry and hospitality to AFL and NRL grand finals, the Melbourne Cup (in some cases, in the Birdcage, no less), NRL State of Origin, Ashes tests, Rugby Union internationals, and high-priced musicals such as Hamilton and Billy Elliott. Nearly one in three current Coalition MPs and senators, and one in five from Labor, have accepted gifts from the gambling industry.
The government’s commitment to spend $3.6 billion funding a two-stage 15% pay rise for Australia’s 220,000 childcare workers is a huge economic story — bigger than boondoggles like Future Made In Australia, despite the latter’s much bigger price tag.
Labor has already committed more than $10 billion to fund a multi-stage pay rise for aged care workers amounting to between 17-28%. The childcare pay rise is the next step in what is a massive investment in Australia’s vast health and caring sector, which has driven much of the employment growth of recent years.
But while the aged care pay rise was driven by both equity concerns about the poor remuneration in a feminised industry and the need to strengthen the aged care workforce to deliver better quality care for seniors, the childcare pay rise has another important economic dimension: lifting female workforce participation.
Progressive media mogul Piers Grove’s new venture has abruptly stopped publishing following a Crikey investigation, as one former employee says that the company has already missed deadlines for promised payments.
Last month, Crikey revealed that the serial media investor — involved in publications like The Betoota Advocate and The Daily Aus — owed staff at his recently launched company General Publishing tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid salaries, mere months after launching.
Since then, the company’s politics publication The Politics, which was purchased from Schwartz Media in late 2023 for a sum Crikey understands was $200,000, has not published anything, diverging from its usual daily publishing schedule.
General Publishing’s music vertical, Check Check, also ceased publishing towards the end of last month.
Two former contributors for The Politics told Crikey they had received emails from General Publishing telling them the publication was going on a “hiatus”. At least one email blamed Crikey’s investigation for “finishing [The Politics] off”.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Taylor Swift terror plot suspect ‘planned to kill as many people as possible’ (Sky News)
Trump says he’ll focus on issues. His allies are not holding their breath (The New York Times)
Russian chess champion ‘smeared poison on rival’s board’ (The Times) ($)
They went to space for eight days — and could be stuck until 2025 (BBC)
Police hunt for Puigdemont as pro-union MP takes Catalan presidency (The Guardian)
Iran mulls scrapping plans to take revenge on Israel in exchange for a Gaza ceasefire (CNN)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Some Labor voters ‘disappointed’ with the PM but there’s still time to steady the ship — Brett Worthington (ABC): Like the Democrats supporters, it’s not that these lifelong Labor voters are disappointed with what the government has delivered after its two years in power. But like President Joe Biden, they fear Albanese isn’t the messenger for the moment.
The fears among Democrat supporters of Donald Trump returning to the presidency are akin to how Labor voters see the prospect of Peter Dutton becoming prime minister.
Like him or loathe him, Dutton is an effective communicator who, like [Penny] Wong, says only what he wants and not a word more.
Dangerous schism emerging as Labor and RBA avoid inflation blame — Simon Benson (The Australian): This all might appear to be grist to the mill for the opposition. And it would be if the Coalition appeared to be paying attention.
The dilemma for Peter Dutton is that the Coalition deals itself out of the argument between the Reserve Bank and Labor, which Labor will win.
The absence of policy response to the cost of living crisis — crisis being the term Albanese first ascribed to the inflation problem — risks relegating the Coalition to irrelevancy.
Dutton may be content for the meantime to take potshots from the sidelines over an issue that is hurting not only Labor voters but also Liberal voters, but he has been unable to articulate a Coalition policy that would remedy the problem.
