TRY AND UNDERSTAND IT
Here’s a list of words Liberal MP Julian Leeser has been called for quitting the frontbench over the party’s opposition to the Voice to Parliament that he worked on for a decade: “confused”, one-half of two possible “useful idiots”, “incoherent”, (Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian ($)) “a quitter, a wrecker and a hypocrite” (Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun), “never the right person” for his portfolios, and “clear as mud” about his position (Peta Credlin in The Australian ($)). Yep, conservative commentators are livid, but Leeser seems wholly undeterred. Speaking to Guardian Australia, the former shadow Indigenous Affairs minister says his party’s proposal for symbolic Indigenous recognition in the constitution is “not enough”. Most of the laws and programs for Indigenous folks are run at the state and territory level, and most of the challenges are at the local level, Leeser says — that’s why we need the local and regional voices. Leeser adds that the Coalition may have agreed to the Voice proposal if “we’d followed the Calma-Langton roadmap“.
Meanwhile Liberal moderate Simon Birmingham is urging Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to embrace Leeser’s model for a Voice, The Australian ($) reports, which was rejected by the Liberal frontbench. Indeed the paper says a growing number of Liberal MPs would get behind Leeser’s model, which would still see a Voice enshrined in the Constitution, and give Parliament the power to legislate everything about the body. Confused? Bring in the lawyers. The NSW Bar Association’s president Gabrielle Bashir says the professional body of lawyers who regulate the legal profession “unanimously supports the proposed wording” of the Albanese government’s model as sound and appropriate, as she writes in the SMH. It will not “dictate ‘executive’ decisions but should lead to improvements in practical solutions by informing government early and from the ground up”, Bashir says, adding that the chances of legal challenges to the Voice were “low risk”.
GREEN BOOTLEGS AND HARM
How hard is it to cancel your subscriptions sometimes? Recently I tried to cancel my Washington Post subscription and, with no online cancellation system, a call centre worker offered me five different discounted models on the phone before finally accepting defeat and closing my account. Well, ACCC head Gina Cass-Gottlieb wants to prohibit difficult unsubscription practices from Aussie businesses. It’s known as “forced continuity” or “subscription trapping”, Guardian Australia says, and can also include having to click through multiple pages on a website (often with the ‘cancel’ button moving each time). The paper says cancelling your Amazon Prime is another example — Australians have to go through four steps, compared to two in Europe. It can cause “significant harm” to consumers, the watchdog says.
Speaking of — should chemists have the power to treat painful UTIs? The doctors’ lobby has launched a campaign slamming the plan to give pharmacists more prescribing powers, the SMH reports, including for the contraceptive pill. The Australian Medical Association reckons it’ll “threaten your safety, fragment your care, and undermine Australia’s world-class health system” but Health Minister Mark Butler says our strained health system and GP shortage calls for the red tape and turf wars to stop. Meanwhile, Australians are mostly medicating with illicit cannabis instead of prescribed stuff, research from the University of Sydney has found. It found 62.4% of people were using the illegal stuff, while 13.3% used prescribed cannabis (the rest used both).
BACK TO SCHOOL
The Morrison government doubling the price of law, business and humanities degrees degrees and lowering the price of teaching, nursing, maths and language did not get more kids into STEM. The former cost as much as $15,152 a year, while the latter cost about $4124 a year. But students know what they want to study, the Australian National University’s vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt told Guardian Australia. Scholarships would’ve been far more effective, and the Albanese government should scrap the changes.
Meanwhile Skills Minister Brendan O’Connor has announced he’ll launch new programs to tackle the “very high proportion of adults unable to read, write or be digitally literate,” The Age reports. About 3 million Aussies will be targeted in the new assessment by workforce agency Jobs and Skills Australia, after an OECD analysis found one in five workers had low literacy or numeracy skills. It comes as the value of assets at Queensland’s eight top grammar schools has surged to almost $1 billion, The Brisbane Times reports. Brisbane Grammar got $53 million in “tuition, boarding, confirmation and enrolment fees from families”, plus $12 million in state and federal funding last year, the paper says, while public school Brisbane State High got $2.8 million from “fees, charges and parent contributions” and almost $40 million in state and federal funding in 2021.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
A frankly gorgeous little boy from Northern Ireland named Dáithí Mac Gabhann has been presented with a top award by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for the six-year-old (and his family’s) tireless work on organ transplants. It’s personal stuff for Dáithí, who has spent most of his young life waiting for a heart, as ABC tells it — he was born with a syndrome that prevents his ticker from working properly. But kids needing a heart transplant have to wait twice as long as an adult, because the size of it needs to be just right. Enter Dáithí’s Law — which flipped the organ transplant system in Northern Ireland to opt-out, rather than opt-in. See, about 90% of NI supports organ donation according to government polling, but the onus on the individual meant only half (53%) of people had actually registered to be a donor.
Dáithí is still waiting for his new heart, but he’s a survivor. He underwent some cardiac surgery in February, and when he sat up in bed afterwards, holding up a teeny fist to the camera and smiling for his fans, it was the relief felt around the UK. When Sunak presented Dáithí with the Point of Light award for his “bravery and determination” in campaigning for the law change, Dáithí’s dad said he was positively bursting with pride for the “kind and compassionate person” his boy had become. This isn’t the first award for little Dáithí either — he was also given the Freedom of Belfast award, with esteemed former recipients including the late Queen Elizabeth II and Bill Clinton. Dáithí’s Law brings NI in line with England, Scotland and Wales, as well as Switzerland, Austria, Finland, and Italy — but Australia still has an opt-in model. Folks, if you want to be a donor alongside 7.5 million of your fellow Aussies already on the register, you can sign up here.
Hoping your hard work pays off today too.
SAY WHAT?
Now that he is committed to the No case, he has to succeed. If the referendum gets up, it will literally get up over Peter Dutton’s dead political body, he will be finished.
Chris Kenny
It appears what we’re hearing from the Sky News Australia commentator, in not so many words, is: if you do not want a Prime Minister Peter Dutton, consider voting yes in the referendum for the Voice to Parliament.
CRIKEY RECAP
The smouldering ruins of the Twitter Files
“This wasn’t the end of the public indignities endured by Taibbi and other journos who worked on the files. After Substack, the newsletter platform that many high-profile journalists (including Taibbi) rely on to share their work and make a living, introduced a ‘notes’ feature that operates similarly to Twitter, Musk decided to essentially choke the service out.
“Substack users could no longer embed tweets in their Substack posts, and Twitter users found they could no longer retweet, like, ‘pin’ or engage with posts that contained links to Substack articles, or posts by Substack’s official Twitter account. Taibbi announced he was leaving Twitter in protest, and Musk, ever gracious, shared and then deleted personal texts he’d exchanged with Taibbi.”
The Advertiser ends ‘boycott’ of covering Adelaide Fringe Festival… to slam it
“We are happy to say this so-called boycott has lifted; the paper has run an interview with 20-year Fringe veteran Akmal Saleh… announcing that he would never work with the festival again after ‘noise and music bleeding from an adjacent tent venue ruined his show’ and his complaints apparently went unheeded. It’s one of 11 pieces about this year’s festival on the ‘Tiser website since the start of February, among which the number of stories concerning a “putrid” toilet situation equal anything that could be called a review.
“The possibility that this sudden drop in reviews (subsequently replaced with mostly negative news coverage) had anything at all to do with the fact that the festival chose not to purchase advertising in the paper, as it had in previous seasons, was roundly rejected by the paper.”
Dutton’s ‘No’ will force the media to find its Voice
“The opposition leader seems to have figured there’s still enough life in the old, white, settler vision of Australia to get him through to at least a respectable loss at the next election. Maybe. But for big media, it’s a touch more existential. They’ll be recognising that their future depends on pivoting to a newer, younger, more diverse, better educated, post-Mabo Australia. And their greatest threat in reaching that audience? Being caught out being ambivalent over the Voice.
“Dutton’s pre-Easter decision to lock his parliamentary leadership in with him on HMAS Old Australia saw the nation’s institutions spend the long weekend edging sideways step by step, frantically looking around for the lifeboats before it’s too late.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Italy declares state of emergency over ‘migration congestion’ (Al Jazeera)
Greek [member of the European Parliament] Eva Kaili released from prison and put under house arrest (EuroNews)
Exclusive: Leaked US intel document claims Serbia agreed to arm Ukraine (Reuters)
Meth, cannabis detected in the air in downtown Auckland (Stuff)
Six things we learned from Elon Musk interview (BBC)
Bank of Canada holds interest rate steady as it forecasts inflation to slow to 3% this year (CBC)
World Bank staff were told to give special treatment to son of Trump official (The Guardian)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Jacinta Price is the warrior Dutton needs — Peta Credin (The Australian) ($): “Plainly, there’s no one better than Senator Jacinta Price to take on this vital job. She’s no bureaucratic observer of Indigenous affairs — she has lived and breathed the reality of it her entire life. And if there’s one sure way to show we don’t need a separate Indigenous Voice, it’s to have the strongest Indigenous voice in the Coalition as its main advocate on this issue. Right now, Dutton is hesitating because Price, as the Coalition’s only Country Liberal MP, sits in the Nationals partyroom by convention, and not with the Liberals. And promoting an extra Nat would give the junior Coalition partner 26% of the shadow ministry spots, as opposed to the 24% they currently hold, which is their exact proportion in the joint partyroom under the Coalition agreement.
“If Price were to join the Libs, which she originally wanted to do, that would disturb, perhaps even blow up, the Coalition relationship. If the Nationals leader were to replace one of his existing frontbenchers with Price, that could upset the numbers inside his own party. So having been involved in plenty of internal debates about reshuffles, and who gets what and why, I can understand the pressures on Dutton — but sometimes you’ve just got to do what’s right.”
Listen to Suella Braverman and realise: this show of diversity in our cabinet is not progress — Sayeeda Warsi (The Guardian): “Whether by incompetence or design, Suella Braverman finds herself, yet again, on the frontline of the culture wars. This time, for making sweeping statements branding British-Pakistani men, without nuance or caveats, as child sex abusers who ‘hold cultural values totally at odds with British values’. Braverman’s own ethnic origin has shielded her from criticism for too long. Many people within the Conservative party have been hesitant to call out what has been staring members in the face.
They struggle to hold an ethnic minority MP to account in the same way they would a white parliamentarian. This needs to change. If we are going to start to have honest conversations, let’s start by saying this — black and brown people can be racist too. As a Conservative parliamentarian, it’s painfully disappointing to see these comments being made under the most diverse cabinet in history … Braverman is a trained barrister. If somebody who is trained to be an advocate cannot communicate on serious issues in a thoughtful, reasonable, evidence-based way, that’s an issue of incompetence.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr, US Space Force’s Kristen Clark, Australian Ambassador for Gender Equality Stephanie Copus-Campbell, First Nations space PhD candidate Caroline Craven, and Australian National University’s Brian Schmidt will all chat about gender equality in space on a panel held at ANU.
Kaurna Country (also known as Adelaide)
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Stretton Health Equity’s Fran Baum, University of Lancaster’s Jennie Popay, The University of Adelaide’s Megan Warin and more will chat about intersectionality in social science and public health research in a seminar held at UOA.
