SENATOR V BRITTANY HIGGINS
Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds has threatened to sue her former staffer Brittany Higgins for defamation over an Instagram post containing her complaints against Reynolds, Guardian Australia says via Higgins’ tweet. Higgins alleged she was raped in Reynold’s office in 2019, a court case that didn’t proceed out of concern for her mental health. But the pair have been at odds since — last year, a red-faced Reynolds apologised for calling Higgins a “lying cow” and she’s also attempting to sue Higgins’ fiancé, David Sharaz, over a tweet or two — though is struggling to actually find him to issue the writ, as the ABC reports. The Instagram story in question was about Reynolds’ public intention to refer Higgins’ payout to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) — one might note the post is pretty carefully worded. Higgins says she’s considering her legal options. (Reynolds also felt defamed by Tanya Plibersek and threatened to sue her for defamation too.)
To another Coalition senator now and an insider has described an LNP preselection battle as “between Gerard Rennick and anyone but Gerard Rennick”, The Courier-Mail reports. The rogue senator attracted internal ire for taking part in a blockade in the Senate against the Morrison government’s vaccine mandates, putting his position in the winnable third spot on the party’s Senate ticket in jeopardy. He also called then-prime minister Scott Morrison “pathetic” for comments about George Christensen, Guardian Australia adds. Liberal Paul Scarr and National Susan McDonald are shoo-ins for one and two. And finally, Morrison’s successor, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, will tell the Institute of Public Affairs that we should embrace nuclear because it’ll reduce our reliance on China, which has a monopoly on solar panels and EV components. He says our submarines are “essentially floating [small modular reactors]”, a highly dubious claim that will no doubt frustrate our nuclear community.
ROBODEBT TO SOCIETY
A bombshell 9000-page report into the robodebt scheme will be released today and will come down hard on former government ministers and senior public servants, news.com.au ($) reports. There’ll also be a secret “sealed section” containing referrals (possibly to the cops, or watchdog the National Anti-Corruption Commission), though it won’t be made public to protect “civil action and criminal prosecution”. Former PM Scott Morrison, who has been gallivanting around Italy, is on the way home for the report’s release — Guardian Australia has a quick explainer this morning to jog your memory on his involvement in the saga, but quickly: the Department of Social Services warned in 2014 that robodebt was probably unlawful; Morrison, who was social services minister, swore he never received that memo. Why not, you may wonder? The senior counsel assisting the commission, Justin Greggery KC, suggested Morrison continually touting himself as a “welfare cop” (in at least eight interviews during that time, Guardian Australia says) might’ve made staff think robodebt — which was also the most lucrative of the nine schemes put forward — was exactly what Morrison wanted. He rebuffed that.
Speaking of pollies in hot water, the prime minister’s office reportedly told Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil to delete a tweet that called Donald Trump Jr a “sore loser” and a “big baby” while adding his father, former president Donald Trump, had “lost an election fair and square”, according to The Australian ($). It was over TruJu’s postponed speaking tour, which O’Neil said had disappointing ticket sales, not visa issues. Ouch! But pundits are pointing out if Trump wins next year’s US election, we might need to be mates with him again thanks to our $368 billion AUKUS friendship bracelet.
ABBOTT TONES DOWN INDIGENOUS TRAUMA
Former PM Tony Abbott says giving Indigenous people a say about laws that affect them will be “damaging in the long term”, claiming they had already received “generosity of spirit” and “generosity of funding”. Abbott, who is advising the Advance Australia lobby group, also claimed the Voice to Parliament would “entrench race into the constitution”. The ABC dryly points out that our constitution already refers to race in Section 51(xxvi) which allows Parliament to make laws for people of any race “for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws”. Abbott added that he couldn’t see why First Nations folks should get a Voice when other groups were doing it tough too, even though Indigenous people in Australia are the most incarcerated people on earth, as The Conversation delved into. It comes as Nine apologised for a dismal anti-Voice ad that showed a cartoon of Indigenous man Thomas Mayo seemingly dancing for a cash handout, the AFR ($) reports. As Crikey’s parent company’s CEO Will Hayward tweeted: “Nine refused to run our ad calling out Murdoch, but accepted this.”
Meanwhile, Abbott’s former finance minister is in the headlines too — Mathias Cormann told The Australian ($) the Reserve Bank was right to hit pause on interest rates this month to look at the damage it’s doing to people. Cormann, who is now head of the OECD, noted cash rate rises hurt Australians more than they hurt people in other countries because a lot more of us are on variable mortgage rates — the paper lists the US rate as 5.25%; Canada’s as 4.75%; UK as 5%; France, Germany and Italy as 4; and Japan’s as -0.1% — yes, while everyone else has been raising rates, Japan remains steadfast in its belief making money more expensive right now would set everyone back, as The New York Times ($) reported. Anyway, Cormann also noted Australia’s corporate tax was above the average of the 38 OECD countries, which can make us less competitive and less attractive for international investment.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
More than 5800 people have done the nutbush in Queensland’s Birdsville Big Red Bash, setting a rather dorky new world record for Australia. We absolutely smashed the previous record of 4084, with the mass of people linedancing in the Simpson Desert to the tune from the late Tina Turner. Her death in May may have been the reason for the groundswell of people, festival operations manager Steve Donovan told SBS, adding that the Nutbush is just a “classic Australian tradition”. And we have to live with that. He added that it was the song’s 50th anniversary too. So why has this tune about a small US town where Turner grew up permeated our lives so much?! There’s barely a school disco or family reunion that goes by without the tell-tale opening notes seeing young and old knock elbows on the dancefloor.
It’s made even more mysterious by the fact Turner did not choreograph the moves. So who did? It was actually (probably) the NSW Education Department, said Jon Stratton from the University of South Australia’s school of creative industries, as part of linedancing class for students. The moves seem to take inspiration from the madison, another linedance. Then again, Stratton concedes, it may have just been some bloke who couldn’t remember how the madison went and improvised, like some sort of “good day / g’day” slang equivalent of the dance world. The world record attempt raised a stack of cash for the Royal Flying Doctor Service too — at $15 for each participant, that’s about $87,000. The power of the boogie.
Hoping your Friday includes a little dance, and that you have a restful weekend.
SAY WHAT?
Geez, Donald Trump Jr is a bit of sore loser. His dad lost an election fair and square — but he says it was stolen. Now he’s trying to blame the Australian government for his poor ticket sales and cancelled tour.
Clare O’Neil
The home affairs minister later deleted the tweets, which went on to call Trump Jr a “big baby who isn’t very popular”. Liberal Senator James Paterson sniffed that O’Neil should focus on her portfolio, tweeting Donald Trump could be part of AUKUS in 18 months if he’s reelected.
CRIKEY RECAP
“In his new role, Speers will have a ‘bigger’ presence across the ABC’s federal political coverage, joining 7.30 chief political correspondent Laura Tingle in a more pronounced role throughout the week. The expanded presence will not come with changes to official duties, Crikey understands ….
“The ABC’s Parliament House bureau, according to a change proposal seen by Crikey, was previously operating in an ‘outdated, top-heavy structure’ too focused on linear television, recommending Probyn and a television editor be ousted in favour of three new digital and social content creation roles.”
“Taking the long view, this appeal to the sanctity of the presumption of innocence is a variation of the vaunted rule of law complaints deployed under Morrison. Framed as a kind of moral vanity, those arguments invited the nation to believe any non-judicial inquiry into potential wrongdoing, or resignation in the face of an historic rape allegation, would infringe the rule of law.
“In reality, such arguments were always a rhetorical sleight of hand designed to obfuscate transparency and deflect accountability, giving way — almost ironically — to a situation in which government bends the rule of law to its will. Such deceptions as they operate here are little more than a desire to cast doubt on and undermine both the integrity and existence of anti-corruption bodies.”
“While Australia struggles with a cost of living crisis, as housing and childcare services slip from the grasp of normal people, support services are maxed out and supermarkets brace for increased shoplifting of basic food items, the AFR snorted the headline ‘Why CEOs should be paid more’ into the back of its throat and hocked it into readers’ faces.
“Perhaps feeling that the bandaid was off, that same day the paper also announced it was launching ‘Australia’s first prestige watch fair’. Finally, a chance for people who somehow unaccountably sleep at night to spend the equivalent of a house deposit on something that tells you what time it is, and a chance to remind Australia that the Fin not only has a watch editor, but his name is Bani McSpedden and he’s of the view that such an event was not just necessary, but overdue.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Kenya delays reopening border with Somalia: all the details (Al Jazeera)
Inside the subsea cable firm secretly helping America take on China (Reuters)
Greta Thunberg charged for disobeying police order after blocking oil tankers in Sweden (euronews)
OceanGate suspends all exploration and commercial operations following Titan submersible implosion (CNN)
Can ‘good cop’ Janet Yellen help fix US-China relations? (BBC)
Meta’s new Twitter rival app Threads gets 30m sign-ups within hours of launch (Stuff)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Why are so many climate records breaking all at once? — Kimberley Reid (The Conversation): “In the past few weeks, climate records have shattered across the globe. July 4 was the hottest global average day on record, breaking the new record set the previous day. Average sea surface temperatures have been the highest ever recorded and Antarctic sea ice extent the lowest on record. Also on July 4, the World Meteorological Organization declared El Niño had begun, ‘setting the stage for a likely surge in global temperatures and disruptive weather and climate patterns’. So what’s going on with the climate, and why are we seeing all these records tumbling at once?
“Against the backdrop of global warming, El Niño conditions have an additive effect, pushing temperatures to record highs. This has combined with a reduction in aerosols, which are small particles that can deflect incoming solar radiation. So these two factors are most likely to blame for the record-breaking heat, in the atmosphere and in the oceans. The extreme warming we are witnessing is in large part due to the El Niño now occurring, which comes on top of the warming trend caused by humans emitting greenhouse gases. El Niño is declared when the sea surface temperature in large parts of the tropical Pacific Ocean warms significantly.”
We don’t want ‘equity’, acknowledge our sovereignty — Phillip Mills (IndigenousX): “Equity places us at a further remove from our own sovereign disposition, like its predecessors of self determination and self management, which are all forward steps going backward into a neo-colonial imperialist state. Equity acts to transpose our sovereignty by reducing us to the lowest common denominator to regulate our measure of existence, absolutely skewed towards our extermination. We thrived for 40,000 years as the oldest living culture on the planet, and to be reduced to a life expectancy benchmark via 250 years of colonisation, standardised by fallible racist thresholds, is by definition sheer insanity. With terra nullius dead the balance of power does change unlike what we are being led to believe.
“Any system that discounts us into extinction with perfect score tags on our body bags, replacing our life worth with a monetary value on our sickness cannot be of benefit to us. And it hasn’t been, according to the continued reporting against the Closing the Gap targets, whether they are refreshed or reframed. This is the mediocrity of Indigenous affairs policy, but is also reflective of the business as usual approach of expatriates whose presence is predicated on our passing. Equity offers more for expatriates than it does for us. It provides a non-threatening form of redemption that absolves them of the sins of settler colonialism, validating the status quo. It is we who carry the scars, who weep at grave sites while they continue to reap the benefits.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
-
Writer Zeynab Gamieldien will talk about her book, The Scope of Permissibility, at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
-
ANU’s Kate Henne, Michelle Jasper and Katrina Sluis, with Rutgers University’s Matthew Stone and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Wesley Taylor, will discuss AI and how it will affect design and justice at a talk at the ANU’s Australian Centre on China in the World.
