PALESTINIANS KILLED
Israeli forces have killed more than 50 Palestinian protesters, and wounded over 2200, as Gaza residents rallied against yesterday’s opening of the relocated US embassy in Jerusalem.
The ABC reports that rallies against the Jerusalem embassy, announced by Donald Trump in December and officially opened last night with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have been held since March but escalated last night as tens of thousands protested at locations across the region. According to Gaza’s ministry of health, Israeli snipers have killed dozens of protesters over the last six weeks but, with dozens now dead including a a 14-year-old boy, today marks the deadliest day in Gaza since the 2014 war.
With no reports of injured Israelis since riots began, a United Nations anti-discrimination committee has since condemned Israel for using “disproportionate force”.
SUICIDAL TEEN FORCED BACK TO NAURU
An Iranian refugee and her 17-year-old son, at risk of suicide, have been forcibly returned to Nauru against psychiatric advice.
The Guardian reports that Fatemah and her son, known by the alias “Hamid”, had been in Taiwan for two months, after Hamid’s suicidal ideation resulted in them being transferred from the Australian-run camp on Nauru. Despite psychiatric reports saying Hamid’s mental illness was caused and exacerbated by his five years in detention, and experts warning against his return, Australian Border Force officials took the pair from their Taipei accommodation, removed their phones, placed them in two separate vans with four guards each, and chartered them back to Nauru.
ESCAPEE ATHLETES RESURFACE
Nineteen African athletes have reached Sydney to seek asylum after disappearing from the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in April.
The Daily Telegraph ($) reports that visas for some of the athletes, who hail from Cameroon, Uganda, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Rwanda, expire at midnight tonight. Immigration lawyers have confirmed that some have also sought legal advice on how to seek asylum in Australia, although approval for bridging visas would require the athletes lodge applications before tonight’s deadline.
THEY REALLY SAID THAT?
I think Australians need to be for Australians, Americans need to be for Americans, and whether it’s Russia in a secret way interfering with our election and producing more than 3500 ads to try to confuse our electorate, to try to damage me, or the Chinese looking to try to influence policy, we should say no.
Hillary Clinton
The would-be leader of a nation whose No. 1 foreign policy strategy for the past 60 years has centred on meddling in other countries’ elections, warns against meddling in elections.
CRIKEY QUICKIE: THE BEST OF YESTERDAY
“The deselection of Malcolm Turnbull’s Assistant Minister for Social Services and Disability Services Jane Prentice in her Queensland seat of Ryan is — rightly — being seen through the prism of the LNP’s, and the federal Coalition’s, problems with women. But it also has resonance for the broader disaffection currently felt by voters for mainstream politics.”
“Imagine being in an Australian newsroom last Friday. News breaks of several bodies discovered at an idyllic rural property in WA. Editors throwing away the playbook for the day, journalists jumping in company cars and on flights to a town outside Margaret River. Most would know no one in the town, have very little context for the crimes and are told only what the police are willing to reveal. They also face pressure to capture the biggest mass shooting in Australia since the Port Arthur Massacre.”
“East Timor is in for another change of government, less than nine months after the last elections. Xanana Gusmao’s Alliance for Change and Progress (AMP) appears to have secured 35 seats in the 65-seat legislature, ousting the minority Fretilin government which was forced to the poll after having its budget blocked last year.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Gas boom fuels Australia’s third straight year of rising emissions
Elderly residents ‘starving and tied down’, aged care abuse inquiry hears ($)
Federal assistance coming for people affected by Hobart floods
Silicon Valley to Fortitude Valley: Queensland start-ups pitch ideas eight miles high
Mayo by-election: Georgina Downer wins Liberal preselection ($)
Fears of $400 million-a-year power price gouge triggers probe
Coalition’s Kelly O’Dwyer puts up her own $50k to fund female MPs ($)
Directors ‘buzzing’ as gender war looms for boards ($)
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Sydney
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ACOSS will host representatives from across Australia’s civil society and community services sector for a people-centred perspective on the federal budget. Speakers will include The Monthly‘s contributing editor Paddy Manning, Grattan Institute budget policy & institutional reform program director Danielle Wood, NACCHO deputy CEO Dawn Casey, Australian Conservation Foundation CEO Kelly O’Shanassy, The Age economics editor Peter Martin and ACOSS CEO Cassandra Goldie.
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Day one of the three-day CeBIT Australia technology expo, set to showcase international leading technologies such as driverless vehicles, robots, smart software, AI, smart buildings.
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Community group Solar Citizens will hold a “Keep Solar FiT” demonstration in front of NSW Parliament House calling on the state government to mandate a fair price for the solar feed-in tariff.
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Day one of ANROWS’ 2nd National Research Conference on Violence against Women and their Children, set to run for three days across the theme “Acting on Evidence”. The conference program also reflects the six national outcomes of The National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2010–2022.
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“Save Our Sirius” chair Shaun Carter and Sirius architect Tao Gofers will give an update on what’s happening with the government’s controversial sale of the Sirius building.
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Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester James Nazroo will deliver a free CEPAR-UNSW public lecture on “Inequality in later life: The impact on health and wellbeing”.
Hobart
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Results are expected for the new Tasmanian Legislative Council seat of Prosser following the May 5 vote.
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Scientists from the University of Tasmania and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre will begin cutting a 300-metre-long Antarctic ice core, collected from a remote site in east Antarctica, to investigate the region’s climate.
Melbourne
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The Public Accounts and Estimates Committee will hold public hearings with all ministers and the Parliament’s presiding officers into the Victorian budget.
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Winslow Constructors will launching their “Big Blue” campaign, which aims to raise awareness of mental illness in the construction industry and includes a massive excavator that has been painted a bold blue as a centrepiece and signifier of the connection with charity Beyondblue. Roads Minister Luke Donnellan, Beyondblue’s Jenny Clarke and former AFL player and mental health ambassador Danny Frawley will attend.
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Human rights lawyer Julian Burnside’s film on global refugee policy, Border Politics, will make its screen debut at the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival. The festival finishes its Melbourne run this Thursday, before moving to Launceston and then Canberra throughout the month.
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Melbourne City Councillors will vote on a new councillor code of conduct at a special meeting tonight. The proposed changes were prompted by a sexual harassment investigation into former lord mayor Robert Doyle.
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Public hearing of the parliamentary economics committee on new credit reporting and protection laws.
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The Melbourne Mining Club will host Image Resources, Nagambie Resources and Renascor Resources for its Cutting Edge Series.
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The Climate Council will launch its latest report, which shows almost half of Australia’s major companies are making the switch to renewables.
Canberra
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The Productivity Commission deliver the federal government a report on the redistribution of GST revenue to the states.
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Federal Assistant Minister for Children and Families Dr David Gillespie will launch National Families Week, which is set to feature more than 100,000 Australians across hundreds of local events throughout this week, at Parliament House.
Adelaide
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Community groups will protest outside the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association’s conference to reject oil exploration in the Great Australian Bight. Speakers will include Alexandrina Mayor Keith Parkes, Kokatha First Nations elder Sue Haseldine, lobster fisherman Kyri Toumazos and tourism operator Elise Lavers, as well as Kangaroo Island Mayor Peter Clements who will also address the Statoil Annual General Meeting in Norway.
Bendigo, Victoria
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Crossing supervisor Julie Hemming and local students will encourage children and parents to support this year’s Walk Safely to School Day.
Auckland, New Zealand
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The city will host the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards ceremony.
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Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni will make an announcement on the “Growing Up in New Zealand” longitudinal study, which is tracking more than 6800 from before birth until they are young adults.
THE COMMENTARIAT
Australia’s stolen wages: one woman’s quest for compensation — Melissa Tyler and Leanne Cutcher (The Conversation): “Bigali Hanlon is a Yindjibarndi woman born in 1940 at Mulga Downs in Western Australia. At the age of six, she was taken from her mother and sent to live in a church-run hostel for ‘fair-skinned’ indigenous children. She lived there until she was 13, when she went into indentured domestic service. As in many other cases, wages were paid – but never to Bigali.”
The problem with the ‘good bloke’ narrative — Clementine Ford (Sydney Morning Herald/Daily Life): “The local community at Margaret River is understandably in shock after one of its residents, Peter Miles, allegedly murdered his wife, daughter and four grandchildren in the early hours of Friday morning. While Cynda Miles was a well known figure in the town, and her daughter and grandchildren were well liked, reports published after the massacre seem to indicate that less was known about Miles. Despite this, the narrative of the ‘Good Bloke Under Pressure’ has risen up in the wake of the homicide. As is typical in cases like this, ‘mental health’ is being blamed.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
“With no reports of injured Israelis since riots began, a United Nations anti-discrimination committee has since condemned Israel for using “disproportionate force”.”
I’ve never liked this line of argument. It suggests that killing is some kind of quid pro quo, if you kill some of mine I can kill some of yours. Screw THAT. It also seems to say that if Israel let some of its people get hurt, it would be A-OK to fire back indiscriminately. Screw that too. Finally, it also seems to say that if Israel is successful at protecting its people, it can’t fire back when there is actually a legitimate lethal threat, which does happen (can’t pretend there are no Palestinian bombers and shooters). And screw that too.
Disproportionate force depends entirely on whether it was necessary to kill to protect Israeli people from harm and to protect Israeli territory from invasion. You’d think this is not true with unarmed protesters hell bent on committing martyrdom-by-Israeli-soldiers. It might be true with isolated armed Hamas dudes.
“Melbourne City Councillors will vote on a new councillor code of conduct at a special meeting tonight. The proposed changes were prompted by a sexual harassment investigation into former lord mayor Robert Doyle.”
Because Doyle and harassers like Doyle only do what they do because there isn’t a sufficiently clear code of conduct in place to say “don’t harass women!”. Do me a lemon. I hate this kind of empty gesture, and I bet so do the staff who have to sit through training on the bleeding obvious because the dude on ten times their salary couldn’t keep his hands to himself.