STOKING THE FIRE
Media mogul Kerry Stokes really feels for Ben Roberts-Smith, even though yesterday a judge found it was substantially true that he was a war criminal, a murderer and a bully, as the Nine Newspapers reported. Stokes bankrolled the failed defamation case — the former soldier is the general manager of Seven Network in Queensland for some reason. The Advertiser ($) reports Stokes said the judgment “does not accord with the man I know”, adding: “I know this will be particularly hard for Ben, who has always maintained his innocence.” Dismal.
So what happens now? Roberts-Smith offered his Victoria Cross as collateral if he lost, as Guardian Australia reported, but it’s hard to imagine that sympathetic Stokes would collect, even if he is faced with a $25 million (or more) legal bill. As for whether Roberts-Smith will be stripped of the VC, one historian told The Australian ($) it wasn’t without precedent for someone convicted of a crime — but importantly, the ex-soldier wasn’t convicted of anything yesterday. The Oz ($) says investigators from the AFP and the Office of Special Investigations are “currently assessing evidence”, however.
To another defamation case now and former Liberal Party candidate Katherine Deves failed to get a discrimination suit thrown out of court because the claim was incompetent, Guardian Australia reports. She’s one of several legal representatives backing Giggle for Girls, a women-only app that blocked a transgender woman, Roxanne Tickle, from the platform. Yesterday a judge ordered Giggle to pay Tickle’s legal costs for an earlier hearing and allowed extra time for the case.
NO HOTHEADS, PLEASE
In Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s “biggest moment on the world stage” yet, according to the SMH ($), he’ll reportedly warn Singapore’s Shangri-La Dialogue that the Indo-Pacific needs to work together to ensure Beijing and Washington don’t come to blows in their jostling strategic competition, The Australian ($) says. But things are already kind of tense: China’s Defence Minister General Li Shangfu knocked back a meeting with his US counterpart Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin this week, as Al Jazeera reports. Albanese will also reportedly urge countries to “assert their own sovereignty, and will point to his government’s investments in both diplomatic relationships and military capabilities”, the paper adds, while assuring everyone AUKUS submarines will not encourage nuclear weapons uptake.
It comes as Papua New Guinea has pulled the brakes on a proposed bilateral security treaty with Australia because of worries the wording puts the nation’s sovereignty in jeopardy, the ABC reports. PNG Prime Minister James Marape apologised to Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles this week over the delay, explaining his parliamentarians and ministers had to agree too, but said he was committed to progress. Under the deal, we would explore joint exercises, share info on threats, and have a legally binding “framework for security cooperation”. It comes after PNG signed a controversial security pact with the US — Foreign Policy has a cracking story delving into it this morning, if you’re interested.
OPPORTUNITY KNOX
CSIRO deputy chair David Knox was overpaid by $200,000 over three years, the ABC reports, but the organisation doesn’t know why, and nor is it asking Knox for it back. Greens Senator David Shoebridge asked its chief executive, Larry Marshall, about it yesterday — he said they’d only realised the situation on April 18. Knox is also chair of Snowy Hydro, the broadcaster notes, and was paid $249,404 in that capacity for the 2021-22 financial year. Meanwhile at the Bureau of Meteorology, it’s going to be an unusually warm and dry winter, news.com.au ($) reports, as El Niño (probably) moves in alongside a positive Indian Ocean dipole. “This May has been one of Australia’s driest on record,” the BOM said.
It comes as Curtin University students can take a new “climate emergency” degree to be qualified to take on climate change, waste generation, pollution and biodiversity loss, WA Today ($) reports. “I mourn the people we could protect if only we could set our priorities straight,” student Chase Hayes told the paper. Indeed. And Western Sydney University has been crowned the world’s best institution for sustainability, The New Daily reports, with the University of Manchester in second spot and Canada’s Queen’s University in third. The University of Tasmania finished first in climate action, the Times’ higher education’s impact rankings declared.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Actor Tom Hanks had one thing to say to the 2023 class of shining-faced Harvard graduates: thank your waiter for your meal. If we don’t, he asked, who will? If we don’t pick up the garbage that missed the bin, who will? If we don’t make sure our neighbour’s voice counts, who will? It’s a tough moment to be entering the adult world — a possible recession, soaring home costs, a lingering pandemic, an indexed HECS debt, and a looming climate crisis. But “in the small spaces in which we all stand” we can find our humanity, our kindness, as The Guardian transcribed. Oprah agreed. She spoke to the Tennessee State University’s class of 2023 to tell them the secret to a wildly fulfilling life: “Making a difference in somebody else’s.” Everyone wants to make a big splash in life, to become successful and rich before the first line shows up on your face. But Oprah will “tell you where you start”.
“You start by being good to at least one other person, every single day,” she told students. “Just start there. That’s how you begin to change the world.” She’s not saying it will always be easy to choose kindness over greed, fear or apathy. It hasn’t been for her. But the way she gets through every challenge has never changed: “What is the next right move? You don’t have to know all the right moves. You just need to know the next one.” All well and good from a billionaire, you might think. A more frank outgoing Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin gets it — inequality is climbing, and social mobility is getting harder. Fewer people are receiving the same freedoms. Still, her steely message is the same: we must reach out our hand to those who need it. It’s a “battle of values”, she told New York University. “And we all must take a side in that battle. There is no middle ground.”
Hoping you spot the opportunity for a good deed today, and have a restful weekend.
SAY WHAT?
I guess the important point to make here is going to university makes you money.
Jason Clare
The education minister was scraping the bottom of the barrel when asked about student loans indexing 7.1% yesterday for more than 3 million Australians. Labor ignored repeated calls from the Greens to freeze the indexation.
CRIKEY RECAP
“The group has worked for tobacco manufacturers Philip Morris and British American Tobacco. In the UK that work was targeted at halting the introduction of plain packaging. In the United States the firm (registered as CTF Global LLC) represents the Reynolds Tobacco Company, now rebranded as RAI Services. C|T has lobbied on behalf of the alcohol industry in Australia and specifically the global Diageo group, which sells some of the world’s best-known spirit and beer brands.
“In 2019 it was revealed that the C|T group was behind a global campaign on behalf of the Glencore mining company. Codenamed ‘Project Caesar’ the multimillion-dollar, multiyear project was aimed at countering environmental activists and spreading a pro-coal message … The group’s US website proffers a glowing reference from a ‘major’ but unnamed US defence company.”
“For the rest, it shows the continuing collapse of any notion of a separation between the public sphere and the state, and one which people suspicious of the state on both sides seem eager to enforce. The whole process is obviously counterproductive to the political movements and traditions these people are part of, but they’re doing it anyway. By being an increasingly common last resort, it is breeding cynicism, wearing away any notion of actual politics and making state action the dominant form of social exchange, but they do it anyway …
“Round and round it all goes. The faster it goes, the more any form of critical and radical questioning politics will be wholly undermined by the hypocrisy of its elite representatives in pursuit of their individual redress. Eventually academics like Anderson will get a complaint based on student feels. Politicians will increasingly be pinged by a disgruntled ex-staffer, and the capacity to be political will be weakened with each further round.”
“While sport, big business, law and a slew of grassroots organisations have come out to stamp their name on a Yes ticket, the advertising industry and many of the consumer-facing brands they represent have kept relatively quiet. Ferry anticipates this will ramp up as the date of the referendum approaches. So what’s holding brands back? Yatu Widders Hunt, general manager at Indigenous communications consulting firm Cox Inall Ridgeway, puts it down to three things: nervousness about appearing partisan, concern about internally alienating staff, and a general sense in-house that it’s not their place to comment.
“In her dealings with big brands to assist with the development of First Nations engagement strategies and now a public stance on the Voice, Widders Hunt says her approach is to remind big business (many of which have existing commitments to First Nations peoples) that they’re obligated to practise what they preach, that it’s possible to show leadership at a business and CEO level while also being respectful of the fact that not everyone in an organisation will fall in line, and finally that the Uluru Statement from the Heart was a gift to the Australian people, not the Parliament.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Wall St rises on debt ceiling deal cheer, hopes of Fed pause (Reuters)
Croatian president Milanović compares ‘Slava Ukraini’ salute to ‘Sieg Heil’ (euronews)
‘Unprecedented’ start to wildfire season destroyed almost 3 million hectares of forest: Blair (CBC)
Andrew Tate BBC interview: Influencer challenged on misogyny and rape allegations (BBC)
Woman in Malta charged in court for having abortion (The Guardian)
Senegal opposition leader Ousmane Sonko sentenced to two years (Al Jazeera)
THE COMMENTARIAT
As the Ben Roberts-Smith case proves, it’s time for Australia to abandon our farcical Anzac myths — Paul Daley (The Guardian): “A federal court defamation case finding that Ben Roberts-Smith is, on the balance of probabilities, a cold-blooded battlefield murderer has done more than leave Australia’s most decorated living soldier in reputational tatters. It has, perhaps irrevocably, tarnished the carefully curated, revered legend of Anzac and its spurious myth of the white-hatted, egalitarian, hard-but-fair battlefield conduct of the celebrated Aussie Digger. The problem with myths, of course, is that they stand to be demythologised by unsavoury fact. It gets in the way.
“Myth, of course, also relies on belief. Often suspended. Belief is the bedrock of religious or other faiths. Faiths like Anzac. For Anzac is nothing if not Australia’s secular religion, one cherished and celebrated as core to our national identity by generations of political leaders, sporting identities and cultural influencers — historians, journalists, filmmakers, authors and visual artists. The finding against Roberts-Smith in his defamation case loss on Thursday lays bare, yet again, the flipside to the Anzac legend and brings into stark relief the perils of tying national celebration — and adulation — to the battlefield.”
What the PwC scandal tells us about a broken system, and how to fix it — David Crowe (The SMH) ($): “A single number confirms the weakness of the federal officials who discovered they were dudded by one of the world’s biggest consulting firms. It took five years — yes, five — for some of the most powerful people in Canberra to figure out how to sanction PwC for sharing secret Treasury information in ways that could have cost taxpayers $180 million a year. While the consulting firm raced to help big companies dodge new tax laws, the authorities struggled to expose and punish the deeds.
“The documents revealing this conduct started to arrive at the Australian Tax Office in late 2017. That is when officials began to see the internal PwC emails that dominated this week’s hearings in Canberra into what transpired. Only in late 2022, however, did the authorities make the firm and its key tax partner, Peter Collins, suffer any consequences. And they did so in such a gentle way that hardly anybody noticed.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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NDIA board chair Kurt Fearnley, NDIA CEO Rebecca Falkingham, and NDIS quality commissioner Tracy Mackey are among the speakers at the annual DSC NDIS conference at the International Convention Centre in Sydney.
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Myanmar peace advocate Aung Myo Min will be awarded the Gold Medal for Human Rights by the Sydney Peace Foundation and discuss democracy in Myanmar at an event at the University of Sydney.
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
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Storytellers Alice Atkinson, Will Kostakis, Alice Pung and more will speak about coming of age at the Wheeler Centre.
