GOD SAVE THE KING
Queen Elizabeth II died peacefully overnight, aged 96. She was under medical supervision at Balmoral Castle in the Scottish Highlands; her four children and grandson Prince William rushed to be by her side. In a statement, Buckingham Palace told the BBC: “The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon. The King and the Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow.” Her son is now known as King Charles III, and his wife, Camilla, as the Queen Consort. King Charles is the oldest person to become king in history, at age 73, the UK broadcaster says.
So ends the second Elizabethan era, and the reign of the UK’s longest-serving monarch — Queen Elizabeth was head of state for 70 years (seven years longer than Queen Victoria, the BBC adds) in 14 Commonwealth countries including Australia, Canada, Jamaica and New Zealand. She ascended to the throne in 1952, aged 25, after the death of her father, King George VI — incredibly, during her reign she appointed no fewer than 15 prime ministers in the UK, with the first — Winston Churchill, born in 1874, and the last, Liz Truss, born a century later in 1975. So what happens now? There’ll be a state funeral in about 10 days, and the national anthem, bank notes, coins, stamps, mail boxes and passports will all change, The Australian ($) reports. The ABC has a good explainer delving into more.
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(CONFLICT OF) INTEREST RATES
Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) governor Philip Lowe has admitted he made a mistake with his predictions about our cash rate late last year, the SMH reports. He said the RBA had made a “very large forecast miss” by saying the rate would not increase until 2024 — in the past five months, the central bank lifted it from 0.1% to 2.35% in an effort to curb ballooning inflation (it’s 6.1% at the moment, and expected to hit 7.75% at the end of the year). Lowe anticipates two more rises, Guardian Australia reports, but said they would be smaller. He will not walk — “I can assure you I have no plans to resign” — continuing that the economy is in a stronger position even though “it’s going to be difficult for the next year”.
To another guy who refuses to resign: former prime minister Scott Morrison’s participation in The Australian reporters Simon Benson’s and Geoff Chambers’ book Plagued saw the revelation of his five secret ministries, but the book may contain a national security leak too, Guardian Australia reports. Labor MP Peter Khalil, the chair of the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security, says the book contains supposed comments from Morrison to the national security committee cabinet: “Don’t doubt China’s capacity and will to exploit COVID-19,” and “We need multiple points of pushback on [China’s] increasing aggression.” Yikes. It comes as Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus is in hot water over whether he breached Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s ministerial standards, Guardian Australia reports. Dreyfus’ self-managed superannuation fund holds shares in a fund that is a major shareholder of another fund that is in litigation financing and legal risk — Dreyfus is Australia’s first law officer, and the opposition called it a conflict of interest.
INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS
Queensland will restore the original First Nations names of a range of places as part of state’s truth-telling and treaty process, The Australian ($) reports, including Fraser Island (to become K’gari), Black Gin Creek near Longreach, and Blackfellows Creek near Cairns. There’s discussion about renaming the Jardine River on Cape York too. But some will not change, says co-chair of the Treaty Advancement Committee and Ghungalu man Mick Gooda: it’s important to keep some names as a reminder of history’s wrongs. It comes as a petition asking Brisbane council to fly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags on Story Bridge is building hundreds of signatures (it already flies the Australian and Queensland flags), ABC reports. The petition was launched after a motion to the chambers was shelved — Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner says it’d be really expensive — costing several million dollars — because the bridge is a heritage structure, but he has been encouraged to see it as “a simple but important step towards reconciliation” by councillor Kara Cook.
In the NT now and a billion-dollar uranium mine rehab program could see radioactive waste reintegrated into Kakadu National Park by 2026, according to the NT News. The mining laws, passed yesterday, will force those rehabilitating Ranger Mine to make sure the land can be reincorporated — Resources and Northern Australia Minister Madeleine King says it’s a good thing in that it’ll “transition back to underlying Aboriginal land tenure”, while Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney said she looked forward to negotiating on a new land agreement with the Mirarr traditional owners. They’ve been able to access the site but haven’t been able to fish or hunt there because of contamination fears. “The impacts of the uranium mine on the immediate environment [are] unknown,” the paper adds.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
We totally overthink kindness, clinical psychologist Tara Cousineau says. People can have this sense of awkwardness about it, like it’ll be perceived as kind of weird or having an expectation of reciprocity. But the power of random acts of kindness for everyone involved is hugely underestimated. Take this recent study, where one group was given a cupcake to keep, and another group was told to give the cupcake away to a third group. The people in the last group — the ones who received the cupcake as a gift — were the happiest of the whole bunch, even though two groups ended up with a cupcake. When a group was asked to guess how good the receivers would feel, they totally undershot it too.
Last month Erin Alexander was feeling down about a personal loss. When she went to grab a coffee, she noticed the barista was struggling with a broken-down machine — so Alexander told her to hang in there with a kind smile. Next minute, Alexander’s takeaway drink was handed over with a note scrawled on it: “Erin, your soul is golden.” She doesn’t even really know what it means, she tells The New York Times, but it really touched her. When Jennifer Oldham set up a Facebook group to promote acts of kindness, she was blown away by the result. Some purchased groceries and baby formula out of the blue, others donated school supplies. One person gave hydrangeas to strangers. “No small act goes unnoticed,” Oldham said. “It will help your own heart, maybe even more than the recipients.”
Hoping you do something kind today too — for yourself, or others, or both.
SAY WHAT?
I am not Scott Morrison here. I don’t run every single ministry. I have ministers to do their jobs.
Dominic Perrottet
The Liberal NSW premier made the comments in budget estimates after a Greens MP asked why he handballed her question to the NSW minister for innovation and better regulation. It’s no secret Perrottet and Morrison didn’t get on: Morrison hurled an F-bomb at Perrottet in a meeting last August, and Perrottet retorted that the PM had “poor form” in that “ill-disciplined outburst”, as Niki Savva put it. Morrison promptly apologised.
CRIKEY RECAP
So what now for the governor-general, battered and bruised by Morrison’s secrets?
“The actions of the governor-general and his office may not be illegal, but they are a bad look. On another level, the foundation saga also represents yet another chapter in the former Coalition government’s assaults on the integrity of government institutions. The Coalition destroyed the independence of the AAT by stacking it with political mates. It routinely appointed political friends to boards and agencies.
“When it came to the governor-general, the Coalition used the Order of Australia awards relentlessly to stack the awards body and to reward its political friends with honours, rubber-stamped by the G-G. Ultimately Scott Morrison believed it was totally acceptable to use the G-G’s office to give himself more and more power, not even bothering to front up to the governor-general in person, so disdainful did he become.”
Glitz, glam and gossip from the press gallery’s Midwinter Ball
“Bob Katter — who arrived without his wide-brimmed hat — asked if Crikey was ‘the TikTok app’. Liberal staffers said they’d enjoyed Crikey’s Cam Wilson’s political landlords piece, comparing where ministers had ranked. We got no closer to finding out which staffer was behind Sussan Ley’s abominable “It won’t be easy under Kermit the Froganese” social media video …
“Albanese was seated with Senate president Sue Lines, Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia Vasyl Myroshnychenko and his wife Liana, while Woodside executives were stationed with Labor’s Julian Hill and Tracey Roberts, the Liberal Nationals’ Susan McDonald and the Nationals’ Keith Pitt. Independent Dai Le didn’t make an appearance — apparently, one viral photo in a statement dress was all she needed.”
RIP, progressive Labor: it’s time to build the left by joining the Greens — or something else
“So as your correspondent may have suggested once or 50 times recently, Labor has crossed over — and some (well, many) of its supporters from the left are finding it hard to deal with. This is manifesting in a series of not particularly effective attacks on Labor’s determination to be a party of total capital, which work on the false presumption that there are left allies within Labor to join the attack. There’s more than a touch of melancholia to some of these encounters, the inability to end a mourning process and let a dead attachment go.
“This may continue for some time. But it would be better if it could be got through quickly and a new strategy formed. That’s easier said than done. Labor is the only progressive party capable of government, and for a long time progressives’ relationship with it has had a mild sleight-of-hand quality: they get in on a mainstream platform, and our program, semi-acceptable to a larger group, comes in with it.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
European summer brought record heat, solar power to the continent (Al Jazeera)
Bannon surrenders to face New York indictment in wall case (The New York Times)
Ukraine war: US approves $2.6bn in aid for Ukraine and allies (BBC)
Liz Truss to freeze energy bills at £2500 a year average, funded by borrowing (The Guardian)
Fugitive suspect in Saskatchewan stabbing rampage is dead (CBC)
Lean on [Democratic Unionist party] to restore power sharing, Sinn Féin tells new NI secretary (The Guardian)
[US] mortgage rates hit 5.89%, highest level since 2008 (The Wall Street Journal) ($)
Elijah Wood and original Lord of the Rings cast shut down racist critics of Rings of Power (CNN)
THE COMMENTARIAT
First Nations youth are wary of an institution not designed by or for us – a Voice to Parliament can change that — Kishaya Delaney (Guardian Australia): “The world of politics can be a scary place. Some of us — young, female, or First Nations — are wary of the power of an institution that was not designed by us, or for us. But the 2022 federal election felt different. Anthony Albanese’s victory speech on the night of the election recognised the work of First Nations people immediately, saying: ‘I commit to the Uluru statement from the heart in full.’ As a proud Wiradjuri woman, I watched on in tears. While I may be youthfully naive when it comes to election promises, the shift in respect for our First Nations people was powerful and undeniable.
“I know this sentiment was shared among my brothers and sisters within the Uluru Youth Dialogue; and among the Senior Uluru Dialogue — those who guide us and hold the mandate and authority of the Uluru statement. In the weeks since the election, the collective sigh of relief has continued. To see the Uluru statement respected, applauded and elevated has kept me on the brink of tears. This is a sign of what’s to come. The public acceptance of the Uluru statement will embed a sense of belonging among First Nations people as we move towards a referendum.”
What Antarctica’s disintegration asks of us — Elizabeth Rush (The New York Times): “When I read about the collapse of Antarctica’s great glaciers, I feel I am being encouraged to jump to a conclusion: that no matter what we do now, what lies ahead is bound to be worse than what came before. This kind of thinking not only undermines our ability to imagine a climate-changed world that is more equitable than the one we currently live in; it also turns Antarctica into a passive symbol of the coming apocalypse. But what if we were to see Antarctica as a harbinger of transformation rather than doom? As an actor in its own right? This is why I applied to the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers program and deployed to Thwaites in 2019. I wanted to wrap my mind around something it struggled to grasp: Antarctica has the power to rewrite all our maps.
“The longer we worked in the big uncharted bay right in front of Thwaites, the more we realised how rare the placid weather that first day was — how rare and how lucky. Had we not been able to chart the ice shelf’s edge, the scientists might not have been able to accomplish their most ambitious goal: to send a submarine underneath Thwaites. In addition to mapping the seabed beneath the ice, this autonomous sub gathered information about the temperature and speed of the water flowing there. Like a primary care physician taking an ailing patient’s vitals, the aim was largely diagnostic … Put another way: At the cold nadir of the planet, one of the world’s largest glaciers is stepping farther outside the script we imagined for it, likely defying even our most detailed projections of what is to come.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Journalist Melissa Roberts and author Trevor Watson will chat about their new book, Through Her Eyes: Australia’s Women Correspondents from Hiroshima to Ukraine, at Glee Books.
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President of Timor-Leste José Ramos-Horta will speak at the Lowy Institute about Timor-Leste’s future and its relations with the region.
Yuggera Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Writer Katharine Pollock will chat about her new book, Her Fidelity, at Avid Reader bookshop. You can also catch this one online.
Mparntwe Country (also known as Alice Springs)
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Desert Song Festival kicks off today, a 10-day celebration of artists, musicians, choirs and audiences celebrating the musical traditions of Central Australia, with this year’s theme of “Our Climate, Our Planet, Our Future”.
Here’s a few pointers to troll QEII lovers:
– She didn’t rule over the UK during WWII. She became Queen in 1952, 7 years after WWII ended. When WWII broke out she was only 13 years old. Her “duties” with vehicles and ambulances were mostly tinkering and posing for the cameras of a highly managed media operation.
– She oversaw the brutal response to the Cyprus Emergency (1955-59) in order to maintain British Empire rule.
– Did your favourite coloniser died?
– She was Supreme Governor of the Anglican Church (Church of England) while child abuse was being committed. Later being responsible for compensating victims. The victims didn’t get paid.
– They say she paid her way by bringing in tourists to the UK. Actually, tourists only ever see the buildings, palaces, ceremonies and guards of the British Crown. These institutions are all tax payer funded. Elizabeth was only rarely glimpsed at special events.
– She was “charitable” they claim. She stuck the Crown on lots of letterheads while others did all the work. So What? And a tradition that will continue regardless.
– Free Julian Assange.