TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT
An ABC TV crew filmed a protest outside Woodside Energy boss Meg O’Neill’s lavish beachside mansion in Perth where at least three people allegedly “invaded her property”, The Australian ($) reports. Two men, 34 and 31, and a woman, 19 were charged. The Oz, which wouldn’t dare miss an opportunity to slam the broadcaster, says the ABC was “under pressure” to explain why staff were there filming — presumably pressure from The Australian itself, which appears to have accused the ABC of “collusion” with protesters, something a spokesperson called false. Disrupt Burrup Hub tweeted that the protest was “peaceful”, but O’Neill proclaimed it should be condemned by anyone who believes “people should be safe to go about their business at home and at work”. One might counter to the American-born CEO, who may make up to $12.5 million this year from fossil fuels, that climate change is also making people unsafe at home and at work — particularly considering heatwaves are the single biggest natural killer in Australia, and July was the hottest month ever recorded, the BBC reports.
Meanwhile, billionaire Andrew Forrest has warned UK PM Rishi Sunak he’ll pull his major investments out of the UK if it starts “steering itself over a cliff backing fossil fuels”, The Guardian reports. Sunak has been copping it after he announced 100 oil and gas drilling licences would be granted for the North Sea — Forrest says he has to invest where leadership isn’t on a “clickbait cycle”. To another billionaire now and mining matriarch Gina Rinehart’s messy family drama continues after a 40-year-old letter shows Lang Hancock and Peter Wright wanted to share billions in royalties from their iron ore discoveries, The Age ($) reports. The Wright family wants some of the dosh, as does the family of fellow prospector Don Rhodes, from the lucrative Hope Downs tenement.
FROM THE COCKPIT
Dozens of Qantas staff have contributed to a sexist online chat forum where they described women as running “their breeding program”, “spawning offspring” to get flexible work and accusing the new female CEO Vanessa Hudson of being a diversity pick, the Herald Sun ($) reports. Qantas chief pilot Dick Tobiano was pissed, saying aviation has historically had a women problem that evidently lingers, adding he hopes female pilots would not be deterred by the forum. Only 7% of Qantas pilots are women and 15% at QantasLink, though it’s better than the 5% worldwide. Dismal.
Speaking of diversity, Equality Australia has taken the charity watchdog, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC), to court over its refusal to categorise it as a public benevolent institution (PBI) — being a PBI allows people to make tax-deductible donations, as The New Daily explains. But the ACNC found Equality Australia wants to change laws and government policies that affect the LGBTQIA+ community, and it didn’t fit with PBI requirements to be assisting people suffering poverty, sickness, destitution, helplessness, misfortune or distress. That’s despite Beyond Blue finding LGBTQIA+ people face up to twice as much abuse or violence than their heterosexual counterparts, while the trans community faces barriers “gaining employment, maintaining employment, rejection from family, physical violence [and] verbal abuse”, as an expert tells the ABC.
TREATY TALKS
The Albanese government will pursue a treaty with Indigenous peoples if draft changes to Labor’s election platform are ratified at the party’s national conference later this month, The Age ($) reports. If it’s greenlit, it’d allow the government to pursue a treaty process before the next election — though it doesn’t have to. Labor sources say the wording, “Labor will take steps to implement all three elements of the Uluru Statement from the Heart in this term of government,” is intentionally ambiguous. It comes after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton attacked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for saying in interviews two weeks ago the Voice isn’t about treaty while also committing to implement the Uluru Statement in full.
But Dutton has no memory of being briefed by the AFP about Nauru contractor Mozammil Bhojani who was charged with bribery one month after he signed a contract with the Defence Department. The latest revelation from a Nine newspapers’ series is that the AFP also looked into Queensland company Canstruct amid allegations of “corporate wrongdoing, bribery or the misuse of Commonwealth funds” within its $1.82 billion Nauru offshore processing contract, though the AFP wouldn’t confirm it. The paper is careful to say it’s not accusing Canstruct of anything, only saying the AFP launched a “secret probe”. Meanwhile, Solomon Islands newspaper the Solomon Star was paid by Beijing for positive coverage, the ABC reports. At least one front-page story was supplied by a group with investors linked to China’s police and military, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project found. Editors at the struggling Solomon Star also wrote up a proposal to China’s embassy in Honiara asking for about A$206,300 for printing and broadcast equipment.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
It was just another long day for Radha MP, a sanitation worker in the southern Indian state of Kerala, when she heard the lottery jackpot had ballooned to 100 million rupees (A$1.8 million) in honour of the Indian annual summer monsoon season. It was hard to miss — people were positively buzzing about it, chattering about what they’d do with the prize money and how to increase their chances. Tickets were about $5, but Radha didn’t have it — that’s how much she makes a day while collecting household garbage and building public toilets, as The New York Times ($) tells it. It’s dirty work, but a real warmth and closeness had formed between her and fellow female workers at the local recycling program.
So Radha collected some spare change from each of 10 colleagues and bought a single ticket. Not only was it a statistical long shot, but it was also a cultural one — half the women were from social classes shunned by society, including the Dalit community. But Radha, who had recently lost big in a financial scam and was buried in debt, figured why not us? She decided to wait for her friends before checking their ticket the morning after the numbers were released. The group could not believe their eyes: a perfect numerical match. They’d won $1.8 million, and there were tears all around. K Binduhad had lost her husband to kidney failure after they couldn’t afford a transplant, as the BBC continues — now she had the money to educate their 15-year-old daughter. Cherumannil Baby had her home washed away in 2018 floods — now she could, at long last, rebuild. “Luck was never on my side,” she said. Until now.
Hoping you take a chance on something today.
SAY WHAT?
Blinken confirms that after making ourselves a nuclear target and committing to the largest ever transfer of wealth overseas to subsidise their shipyards, the US will not drop proceedings against Assange — for exposing US war crimes. The sort we are prosecuting in Afghanistan.
Bob Carr
The former foreign affairs minister and former NSW premier put it plainly after the US secretary of state indicated there was no hope of the US dropping the charges against Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who remains in a UK prison.
CRIKEY RECAP
“Morrison’s self-portrayal as an innocent gulled by bureaucrats falls away entirely on the charge that he misled the royal commission about his belief that income averaging was part of the way DSS had always operated. [Catherine] Holmes forensically details Morrison’s evidence and shows there is simply no way that Morrison could plausibly claim to have believed that when he approved the NPP in 2015.
“Morrison admitted to the royal commission that he was never told in writing there was a longstanding practice of income averaging, saying ‘It would have come up in verbal briefings’ — except he couldn’t say who told him. He began claiming he’d been told verbally only during his evidence to the commission, not in his formal statement beforehand.”
“Consider the Albanese government’s signature climate policy, which permits fossil fuel projects to continue and expand under the guise of climate progress through the scam of carbon credits — a ploy described by experts as ‘environmental and taxpayer fraud’ and possibly illegal. Consider too his government’s underreporting of annual greenhouse gas pollution; its refusal to purge from the Climate Change Authority all those with links to the fossil-fuel industry …
“its multibillion-dollar investment in discredited, fossil-fuel appeasing technology, such as carbon capture storage; and how it’s employed green language to rebadge the highly contentious and irresponsible fossil-fuel projects, such as the Middle Arm gas development in Darwin harbour, as ‘sustainable development’. Now turn your mind to Albanese’s international greenwashing, his unconcealed vassalage to the gas sector …”
“Meanwhile, at a Pacific Islands Forum in Papua New Guinea in 2015, then-PM and gaffe-a-tron 3000 Tony Abbott was heard commenting on meetings running behind schedule. In answer, then-immigration minister Peter Dutton undermined the future humanising profiles he was to receive by joking about our allies’ likely inundation at the hands of the climate change we’ve done so much to accelerate: ‘Time doesn’t mean anything when you’re about to have water lapping at your door.’
“The prime minister has a chuckle, only for the merriment to immediately drain out of the conversation after Scott Morrison, at the time social services minister, said: ‘There’s a boom up there.’ Whatever embarrassment they undoubtedly feel, perhaps those above will console themselves with the knowledge that it could have been much worse. There was of course Donald Trump bragging of his ability to sexually assault women …”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Shooting at Swedish consulate in Turkey’s Izmir injures one (Al Jazeera)
Phoenix just endured the hottest month for any US city as historic heat streak comes to an end (CNN)
Drone hits tower housing Russian ministries for second time in three days (Reuters)
Trouble brewing: Rishi Sunak heckled on pint-pulling photo op (The Guardian)
Auckland CBD shootings: gunman Matu Reid’s family say they’re ‘sorry and scared’ (NZ Herald)
This EU country [Hungary] is now the only one without a single female minister (euronews)
THE COMMENTARIAT
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WHAT’S ON TODAY
Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Journalist Chris Masters will talk about his new book, Flawed Hero: Truth, Lies and War Crimes, at Avid Reader bookshop.
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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Australian Industry Group’s Innes Willox will address the National Press Club.
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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Nyungga Black Group’s Nyunggai Warren Mundine will speak about Indigenous policy during the Menzies era at the Robert Menzies Institute.
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Writers André Dao, Keshe Chow, Kate Mildenhall and Francesca Rendle–Short talk about the personal and professional influence of writing support at the Wheeler Centre.
