IN THE NEWS
Anthony Albanese switches to election footing with blitz of three campaign battlegrounds (Guardian Australia) — Inevitably we start 2025 as we finished 2024, with everyone talking about the election. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is apparently signalling “the unofficial start of the campaign” with the PM travelling to electorates across Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia this week, Guardian Australia reports. Albanese says the federal election (due by May this year) is a choice between “building Australia’s future” under Labor or “taking Australia backwards” under the Coalition. Guardian Australia also flags that the latest monthly inflation figures are due on Wednesday.
Ukraine launches new attack in Kursk region of western Russia (Reuters) — Ukraine has launched a new attack in the western Russian region of Kursk, Moscow said on Sunday. Reuters reports Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, posted on Telegram that there was “good news” from Kursk, adding: “Russia is getting what it deserves.”
Hamas releases video of Israeli hostage Liri Albag as ceasefire talks resume (BBC) — Talks between Israel and Hamas on a ceasefire and hostage release deal are resuming in Qatar. The BBC reports Hamas has posted footage of 19-year-old Liri Albag, while the Gaza health ministry claimed 88 people were killed on Sunday by Israeli bombardment.
“A day of love”: How Trump inverted the violent history of Jan 6 (The New York Times) ($) — Ahead of the anniversary of the January 6 US Capitol attack, and as Donald Trump once again prepares to take the oath of office, The New York Times looks at how the president-elect and his allies spent four years reinventing what happened that day.
The Golden Globes are Sunday night. Here are five things to look for and how to watch them (The Associated Press) — The Golden Globes are taking place in the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California from 12pm AEDT today. The event will be hosted by comedian Nikki Glaser as the awards season swings into gear (for those of you back in the office today, procrastinate with the best red carpet photo galleries at W magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair and Go Fug Yourself.)
WHAT I’M READING
Over here in the UK, reams of column inches have been devoted to the meddling of Elon Musk in British politics. Rob Picheta’s piece for CNN, “Britain wants to get close to Trump. Will Elon Musk stand in the way?”, stands out for its insight into just how baffled Labour MPs are about Musk’s motives.
The world’s richest man generated plenty of headlines in the UK on Sunday after posting on his social media platform X that Nigel Farage should be replaced as leader of the Reform Party. Farage suggested it was because of disagreement over Musk’s support for far-right activist Tommy Robinson.
In his CNN piece, Picheta documents Musk’s posts about Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and takes a look at how the government is trying to manage its relationship with the billionaire who has the ear of Donald Trump.
“But privately, some Labour MPs are asking themselves an obvious question: why us? Unlike in Germany, there is no impending parliamentary election through which Musk can exert his influence. An election is not due to be held in Britain for more than four years, and Labour’s government is relatively unpopular but, in parliamentary terms at least, rock solid.
“And for Starmer, Musk can’t be entirely ignored. The prime minister has so far resisted taking Musk’s bait — the billionaire has accused him of failing to act against grooming gangs while director of public prosecutions — but MPs will eventually want to see him take a stronger stand, to protect his ministers from torrents of online abuse.”
Meanwhile, in this utterly absorbing essay for The Wall Street Journal, Rachel Wolfe takes a deep look at the phenomenon of American 30-somethings bypassing the traditional milestones of adulthood, with economists saying what was once called a lag is now starting to look more like a permanent state of arrested development.
“Growing up with less pressure to follow the same narrow route to adulthood imposed on their parents and grandparents — a career, spouse, house and kids all by age 35 — has raised the bar for what these milestones look like, if they choose to hit them at all,” Wolfe writes in “What happens when a whole generation never grows up?”
“Stymied by this mix of high expectations and challenging economic circumstances, many 30-somethings sound disoriented and unsure about what it means to be a successful adult now.”
And if you can bear to tear yourself away from holiday binge-watching, may I suggest reading this Will Tavlin essay for n+1 on the rise and rise of Netflix and the film industry it decimated along the way. “Casual viewing: Why Netflix looks like that” attempts to lift the lid on the streamer’s business model, explain why its viewing figures are irrelevant, and spell out why all its films look exactly the same.
“Over the past decade, Netflix, which first emerged as a destroyer of video stores, has developed a powerful business model to conquer television, only to unleash its strange and destructive power on the cinema. In doing so, it has brought Hollywood to the brink of irrelevance. Because Netflix doesn’t just survive when no-one is watching — it thrives.”
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF’S SUMMER MEDIA DIET
In my tabs: Currently catching up on all the long reads that I bookmarked across the year and didn’t get a chance to read to the end, including the horrific prose of *that* Vanity Fair piece on Cormac McCarthy’s “muse” by Vincenzo Barney. Some truly awful sentences (“When she blinks, her large blue eyes seem to tinkle in crystal delicacy”) — highly enjoyable.
On my bedside table: I initially gave up on The Bee Sting by Paul Murray about 150 pages in — it was just too depressing. But in the end the force of momentum and the sense of impending doom contained in this brick of a book got me — like Franzen’s The Corrections, it’s a grim and funny portrait of a dysfunctional family that despite it all are still bound by love. A bona fide page turner. Now immersed in Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. Oddly, one of the main character’s internal monologue reads like the voice of Yoda, but Rooney remains very good at writing about the messy awkwardness of love. Besides, the cover got me — it looks good with my beach towel.
In my ears: The cricket in the background at all times, nothing beats it as a sleep aide device. As for podcasts, I’m belatedly treating myself to Ghost Story. I like the idea of a serious journalist grappling with whether to cover his own remarkable ghost story even though it might make him sound insane. Also enjoying the extreme Englishness of it.
On my screen: Rewatching the Lord of the Rings trilogy with my kid. Twenty something (!?!?) years later it still stands up. Now bracing for the series return of Severance, although it’s not exactly the best viewing to inspire a return to the office…
On my plate: My one signature dish is a cracking pav. This recipe for blackberry pavlova with cardamom is actually very simple but looks incredibly impressive. Try the three tiered version for maximum brownie points.
Say What?
The monthly numbers can bounce around but anything with a two in front of it in this week’s data will show inflation is much less than half of what we inherited from the Liberals.
Jim Chalmers
The treasurer tries to set expectations on the inflation data due this week.
THE COMMENTARIAT
Sink or swim: Why victory is a huge leap for leaden Albanese and Dutton — Nick Bryant (The Sydney Morning Herald): For Albanese, Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris also offers cautionary lessons. First, that he cannot rely solely on demonising Dutton. Second, that the Liberal leader’s rightward lurch is not automatically disqualifying. Dutton is as much a product of Australia as Trump is of America. Across large swaths of the country, he is seen as more mainstream than Albanese.
My hunch has long been that the extended honeymoon Albanese enjoyed for the entirety of his first year in office fuelled a sense of hubris, and with it an inflated assessment of his political gifts. It encouraged him to believe he could win the Voice referendum without bipartisan support, emulate Bob Hawke as a beloved unifying leader and dominate Dutton.
An irony is that 2025 could bring to the fore what may be his true superpower: his skill as a negotiator, numbers man and builder of fragile parliamentary coalitions. As he demonstrated as leader of the House when Julia Gillard headed a minority government, Albanese is a better backroom deal-maker than front-of-house prime minister. In this age of angry anti-incumbency, will that be enough to save his beleaguered government?
January 6 was part of an attempted coup d’etat in America. Don’t let Trump and his allies tell you otherwise — Arwa Mahdawi (The Guardian): Other polls also show that, as the years go by, Republicans are less likely to believe January 6 participants were “mostly violent” and that Trump bears responsibility for the attack. A collective amnesia appears to have set in. Across large swathes of the US, a brazen coup d’etat seems to have been successfully recharacterised as a protest that just went a teeny bit awry.
To be clear: when I say “coup” I’m not talking solely about the events that unfurled on January 6. One of the key reasons, I suspect, that Trump’s insurrection attempt is not taken as seriously as it should be in some quarters is that still, there is too much focus on the riot itself, rather than the broader scheme that it was part of. And the riot, while violent, can easily be characterised as a haphazard, almost absurd, affair.
One of the poster boys of January 6, after all, was Jacob Chansley, AKA QAnon Shaman, who ran through the US Senate chamber sporting a horned headdress, face paint, and a bare chest. (After being arrested he also famously demanded an all-organic diet in prison.) It’s tempting to look at him and think: “bunch of weirdos who got out of control”, rather than “complex insurrection attempt”. But, again, the riot at the Capitol wasn’t the coup attempt: it was just one part (albeit the most dramatic part) of a broader campaign by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election via misinformation, intimidation and a number of complicated legal manoeuvres. Rather than being spontaneous chaos, January 6 was part of a calculated plan.
