BEST OLYMPICS EVER
Previous Worms have given varying degrees of coverage to the Olympic Games, but this morning Australia’s progress warrants absolute top billing with four more gold medals overnight taking the country’s tally to a record 18, making Paris its greatest Olympics ever.
On an incredible Day 12, the four golds (so far) have come from skateboarder Keegan Palmer, who defended his title in the men’s park event, Matt Wearn who also defended his title in the men’s dinghy, the men’s pursuit team who were victorious in a pulsating final against Great Britain in the velodrome, and, not long ago, Nina Kennedy who won the women’s pole vault.
Palmer told Channel Nine after winning gold: “Dude, I can’t even believe it, bro, I literally, like, I’m speechless.” The Guardian quotes Wearn as saying: “It hasn’t really sunk in. I thought I’d break down pretty quickly but it’s just pure excitement. It’s something no one’s done before, going back to back in the ILCA [dinghy] — or the laser as it was before. That was a massive goal and I’ve made it happen so it’s pretty special.”
Elsewhere, the BBC reports Australian hockey player Tom Craig has apologised after being released from custody in Paris following his arrest for allegedly trying to buy cocaine. The broadcaster quotes Craig as saying: “I’d firstly like to apologise for what has occurred in the last 24 hours. I made a terrible mistake. I take full responsibility for my actions. My actions are my own and in no way reflect the values of my family, my teammates, my friends, my sport, and the Australian Olympic team. I’ve embarrassed you all. I’m truly sorry.” He was released with a warning and did not receive a fine.
REEF MAY NEVER RECOVER
Yesterday’s Worm featured a rather heavy Lighter Note about the extent of glaciers melting in the Swiss Alps. Unfortunately, the theme of troubling climate change continues this morning with the news researchers have revealed sea surface temperatures in waters around the Great Barrier Reef reached their warmest levels in more than 400 years this year.
The ABC reports the study, published in Nature, warned the reef “is being pushed closer to a tipping point from which it may not recover”. The AAP explains the research involved drilling the cores of coral to identify geochemical changes and reconstructing past sea-surface temperatures. After finding unprecedented temperatures in the Coral Sea between January and March this year, the study concluded that “without rapid action, the reef’s demise is likely”.
Yesterday, members of the Australian Institute of Marine Science wrote in The Conversation about the reef experiencing its fifth mass coral bleaching event since 2016. They also revealed coral cover has “increased slightly in all three regions, reaching regional high points in two of them”. That fact was jumped upon by some, with Andrew Bolt’s column in the Herald Sun headlined: “Great Barrier Reef comeback exposes global warming lies”. However, the AAP points out this morning the increased cover stemmed from a reprieve between 2018 and 2022 that allowed coral to recover “but breaks from heat and extreme weather are likely to shorten and the recent bleaching was among the most serious and widespread ever, experts say”.
Talking of short reprieves, the Albanese government will be happy to see the AFR and others leading this morning with the news it will fund a 15%, $3.6 billion pay rise for childcare workers over the next two years.
Guardian Australia reports the pay increase will be dependent on childcare centres agreeing to limit fee increases and will involve a 10% rise from December and another 5% from December next year. The ABC says the rise will also apply to workers in outside school hours services. The Australian calculates daycare staff will receive an extra $10,000 a year and in return for the “retention grants” to fund the staff pay increases, the centres will have to sign funding agreements limiting fee increases to 4.4% over the next 12 months. The paper reports Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will say in Sydney later today: “This brings together the priorities that drive our government: real help with the cost of living, fair wages for workers, investing in the future and economic equality for women.”
Talking of the cost of living, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian are both dedicating space to Treasurer Jim Chalmers rejecting suggestions government spending is adding to inflation and forcing the Reserve Bank (RBA) to consider an interest rate hike. Both point to RBA assistant governor Sarah Hunter telling the Senate select committee on cost of living yesterday that “we just think the economy is running a little bit hotter than we saw previously”.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
A vet has saved a herd of Wagyu calves from drowning after they escaped in the middle of the night and found themselves trapped on sea rocks.
The Guardian reports the 40 animals broke out of Bodrugan Barton farm in Cornwall, England, and became stranded at Colona beach last week. ITV News said it was thought the clever cows pulled a pin on their gate to get out. Later that night people on a boat in the area were reportedly trying to get to sleep but were kept awake by “distressed mooing” and raised the alarm. The farmer Robin Kendall, his partner Polly Dugmore, who’s a vet, and his father Tim, then set about trying to rescue them.
“By the time we got there, there was probably 30 metres of water between me on the beach and the calves,” Tim Kendall told The Times. It was Polly who then came to the rescue, donning her wetsuit and swimming the calves to shore.
The Guardian reported Robin used a boat to tow some of the animals onto the beach while Tim and the coastguard shone powerful torches on the scene.
“It was dark, so we couldn’t see a thing. Polly was there in her wetsuit and she swam them off the rock to me. After one and a half to two hours we managed to get the last one off. By the time we got to the last three, the water was up to their necks,” Tim told The Times.
The Guardian quoted Polly as adding: “I managed one or two at a time to swim them to shore by just sort of swimming behind them and acting like a bit of a rudder and just kept turning them so that they were heading towards the rocks.”
The Times said the calves are worth around £15,000 (A$30,000) each.
Say What?
I can’t wait to debate the guy… that is if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.
Tim Walz
The Minnesota governor and now Democratic vice presidential candidate appeared at a rally in Pennsylvania with Kamala Harris shortly after she confirmed him as her running mate on Tuesday. During his speech he referenced their Republican opponents, Donald Trump and JD Vance, and to sustained cheers and laughter, The Guardian reported, made a nod to those fake rumours about Vance and his couch…
CRIKEY RECAP
Still, at least I remembered to reference the “lush, matey world” McLachlan inhabits, with its common cast of personalities and its heady swirl of betting, sport, entertainment, media, masculinity and crony capitalism. For it’s that disarming blurring of interests that is busily debauching something we love, our games and recreations, by mixing them with something about which we would otherwise be properly wary, the gambling industrial complex.
Sometimes this is overt, as when the National Rugby League launches its season in Las Vegas. But most of the time, modern gambling presents like it is hardly gambling at all — it positions, rather, as an adjunct to watching and enjoying, seeding the notion that maybe a little punt will enliven the experience, deepen our involvement, express our affinity.
This is not gambling on sport; this is gambling in sport, aiming to be indivisible from it. Why, it is almost as though we are participating by proxy. What better way to show how much we care, how invested we are? We hear that admonition to “gamble responsibility” but know it’s not for us. We’re grown-ups, aren’t we? We know sport, don’t we? What red-blooded Aussie bloke does not? Besides, it’s an Australian birthright, eh? Dad would have bet on two flies on a wall. How much would he have enjoyed a same-game multi offering a range of flies on a host of walls?
When it leaked that new ABC chair Kim Williams had knocked a few heads around about the news choices on ABC online, I was like that one guy in that meme, you know suddenly looking interested, before getting buggy-eyed then going red — yes you do know it, Marjorie, for godssake I sent it to you oh now you’ve missed the turnoff to Benalla great going.
When Williams said that Radio National would remain a keystone of the ABC my eyes went buggy, and when he mentioned BBC Radio Four they all went red, and then my brain started sending out light rays I KNOW IT’S A DIFFERENT MEME WOULD YOU CHECK THE MAP!?
Could it really be that someone is going to kick some heads in the bowels of Aunty, as it were? Please please let it be so, and not just more words. Our beloved Aunty really needs this. She’s in as bad a state as ever.
To be consistent on the treatment of government impacts on CPI, the RBA — perhaps working with the Australian Bureau of Statistics — should use a measure of inflation that strips out the impact of self-reinforcing public sector indexation rises — or includes measures designed to reduce CPI. At the moment the RBA happily sees one but “looks through” the other.
But then that would require some deeper thinking about what has really driven inflation in Australia over the last two years. How much of it was the usual neoliberal suspects that the RBA has been blaming: households spending too much and lazy workers getting pay rises — and how much of it is due to factors beyond the control of consumers, no matter how many times the RBA lifts rates.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, the cliché goes. At some point, the RBA might wonder, if inflation hasn’t come down despite it repeatedly lifting interest rates, whether it should keep doing the same thing over and over.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Three Taylor Swift shows cancelled after Vienna police foil planned attack (The Guardian)
New Zealand leader defends the removal of Māori phrases from an official invitation (Associated Press)
UK riots live: Counter-protesters outnumber far-right as police deployed for 100 rallies across country (The Independent)
State of emergency declared as Ukraine launches raid into Russia (BBC)
Two dead and several trapped after hotel collapses in Germany (CNN)
No limits to love: Alice Finot joins growing list of athletes getting engaged at Paris Olympics (euronews)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Where are the brave inciters of Britain’s race riots? From Tommy to Elon, they’re far, far away — Marina Hyde (The Guardian): Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, Laurence Fox: you don’t have to have taken a divorce well to be currently leading from behind on UK thuggery and race riots. But let’s be honest: it helps! Think of this gaggle of would-be civil warfluencers as a loose collective, on which we’ll slap the working title Fathers4Injustice.
Barely a day goes by without the shitposter’s shitposter, Elon Musk, informing the world that in the UK, “civil war is inevitable”. Sorry, but he doesn’t even go here? Surely a better use of the X proprietor’s time would be persuading various of his 12 children to even talk to him, instead of continuing with his sadsack experiment in paying $44 billion to act like the world’s disinformer-in-chief.
US vice presidential pick Tim Walz was once my high school teacher — Kayley Lyons (The Sydney Morning Herald): As governor of Minnesota, Walz championed a law providing free breakfasts and lunches to students, understanding the fundamental role of education and nourishment in a child’s life.
During his visit to Australia last November, he highlighted the shared challenge of affordable housing between our nations, using a simple yet profound litmus test: whether a public school teacher could afford a house.
And 20 years on from my days in his classroom, I can see that he continues to captivate audiences, even if they are substantially bigger. His teaching experience has honed his ability to engage with the disconnected and disaffected, a crucial skill in today’s polarised political climate.
