OUT OF THE BLUE AND GREEN
The teal uprising in the federal election was mostly brought about by former Labor and Greens supporters, rather than voters defecting from the Liberals, according to a new Australian National University study. Of those who voted teal, 31% had voted Labor in 2019, 24% for the Greens and just 18% for the Coalition, the ABC reports. (23% voted other.) This year’s teal result was a tactical thing, the study said, aimed at unseating the Liberals — cast your mind back to 2019 and you might remember GetUp waging a similar campaign to unseat (successfully) Tony Abbott in Warringah, and (unsuccessfully) Peter Dutton in Dickson, as Guardian Australia reported at the time. The study also found Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was the most popular leader since the record high of Kevin07 fever — Albanese was more popular at the election than Adam Bandt, Barnaby Joyce and Scott Morrison. Indeed Morrison was the least popular leader in the study’s long history.
And it seems Albo is still riding that popularity wave — the latest Newspoll showed the PM’s approval rating hit a record high of 62%, compared with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s 36%. Voters in the survey were satisfied Albanese had done what he had promised to do, The Australian ($) reports, including ramming through the controversial industrial relations laws and the national anti-corruption body in Parliament’s final sitting weeks. Interestingly, support for minor parties and independents has fallen to the lowest level since the May election. It comes as the Greens plan to introduce a bill to drop the voting age to 16, the Brisbane Times reports. Giving teenagers the right to vote is a top priority for the Greens in 2023, the party’s youth spokesman, Stephen Bates, said.
[free_worm]
MONEY FOR (BREAD AND) JAM
About a million young people, students and carers will get the largest increase in their social welfare payments since 1998, the SMH reports, as youth allowance, Austudy and carer allowance payments rise by 6.1% on January 1 thanks to indexation. (This happens automatically — the government didn’t proactively increase it.) Inflation reached 7.3% in the 12 months to September, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, thanks to skyrocketing house prices, gas bills and furniture costs.
Speaking of — Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is trying to win over premiers Annastacia Palaszczuk and Dominic Perrottet on a coal price cap, The Australian ($) says, with the PM’s office asking state governments to recall their parliaments, the SMH adds. In return, the Queensland and NSW leaders want compensation for their generators and producers, thought to be “in the billions”, a source told the paper. NSW Treasurer and Energy Minister Matt Kean was like, why are you involving us? “Our legal advice is [the federal government does] have the powers to cap coal prices if they want to go down that path,” Kean told Sky News. It comes as federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers will be pleased about a big lump of lucrative coal for Christmas — our federal budget will be fleetingly balanced, according to the AFR, as iron ore, coal and natural gas prices are tipped to add $58 billion in tax revenue over the next four years.
BRITTANY HIGGINS SUES LIBS
Former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins will sue former Liberal ministers Linda Reynolds and Michaelia Cash as well as the Commonwealth, reportedly for about $3 million in compensation, the SMH says. The paper says lawyers have “set out an intention to sue for sexual harassment, sex discrimination, disability discrimination, negligence and victimisation” in documents sent to the ministers, while the dollar figure came from “sources”. Reynolds said she found out in March about a civil claim against her — on Friday the suits told her that it would go ahead this month. The SMH adds that “Higgins’ lawyer Noor Blumer threatened to seek an injunction to stop the Herald publishing the story”. Yikes. Both former ministers have a Morrison-era indemnity against any such claims so they wouldn’t be personally liable.
It comes as Higgins made her first public comments since Bruce Lehrmann’s second trial for her alleged rape was cancelled and the charge was dropped. Higgins said she didn’t understand the “asymmetrical criminal justice system” before now, saying she had to surrender her “telephones, passwords, messages, photos” and “data”, and claimed Lehrmann did not have to do the same, labelling him “not [held] publicly accountable”. Lehrmann’s team declined to comment on Higgins’ statement, The Australian ($) reports, while he is reportedly mulling his own legal action, according to Guardian Australia.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
They say every person has a book in them. What they don’t say is whether that book should come out. Last November, The Guardian’s Tim Jonze joined half a million people on an audacious quest to write a book in a month. It’s called, fittingly, National Novel Writing Month, and it involves writing precisely 1667 words a day. It wasn’t easy, Jonze says — long nights, ignoring his children, and even jotting words down during a medical procedure. But he completed the challenge and placed his manuscript gingerly on his shelf, already wincing at the memory (and the carpal tunnel). He had never once read it in the year since — and he was dreading what he would find when he picked it up again. However, upon reading it cover to cover recently, Jonze says his book was not as bad as he imagined. “It is much, much worse,” he reports gravely.
He was hoping he would’ve started out strong, but no. The early chapters were dismal — “characters you’d cross the street to avoid”, he says. “A character in a car kills the engine. Then they kill the lights. Then the engine again. At this point I could kill the author.” But, he says, it did get a little bit better. Even the sex scenes, “written hastily and shamefully, with my mother-in-law in the same room”, were alright — no worse than others he’s read from published authors, anyway. The main thing he learnt from completing the National Novel Writing Month? That he will “never let anyone read it again, including myself”. But it also made Jonze realise that he could write another book in future, if he was struck by a good idea (and had longer than a month). It’s affirming to realise we’re capable of something that felt beyond us, no matter what we end up with.
Wishing you a spring in your step this lovely Monday morning.
SAY WHAT?
16- and 17-year-olds can drive cars, work, enlist in the Australian Defence Force, and serve their communities, yet they have no say in the composition of their own government.
Stephen Bates
The Greens’ youth spokesman says getting kids the vote will be a top priority for the party in 2023, arguing student protests show that teens 16 and older deserve to have their voices heard. It wouldn’t hurt the Greens’ voter turnouts either, one would think.
CRIKEY RECAP
New details revealed in Taronga Zoo lion escape as investigation drags on
“Taronga Zoo did not wait for an assessment from government officials before reopening its grounds to the public following the escape of a pride of lions from their enclosure in early November, a move an animal rights MP has called ‘outrageous’. New details of the lion escape were revealed earlier [last] week in previously unreported preliminary findings …
“Crikey can also reveal that investigation is taking longer than expected. The Animal Justice Party’s Emma Hurst, who sought information from the DPI in NSW Parliament, told Crikey she had more questions she wanted answered.”
White paper and ‘Good, good, good’: how China’s protesters are evading Beijing’s censorship on social media
“The country’s top social media platforms, WeChat, an all-in-one app with messaging and semi-public posting options, and Weibo, a microblogging website, are tightly controlled by the government and posts can be pulled down in a matter of seconds.
“But in the precious window of time before posts get deleted, activists and other users are rushing to download and screenshot them for recirculation, creating a viable way of circumventing censors, at least temporarily.”
Who will drink from the poisoned Vic Lib leadership chalice?
“Following a less than optimal election result, Victorian Liberal Leader Matthew Guy has fallen on his sword for the second time, a feat few in politics ever achieve. His exit, pursued by a bear, leaves what’s left of his party with the unenviable task of finding a new leader.
“Despite some well-intentioned talk about renewal, the most likely outcome will be another well-to-do, straight, white man with church ties offering more of the same. However, having hit rock bottom and with nothing to lose, the Victorian Liberals should cast their net much wider, argues Crikey satirist Tom Red.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Russia will not export oil subject to Western price cap, deputy prime minister says (Reuters)
Tigray forces in Ethiopia say 65% of fighters have left frontline (Al Jazeera)
Macron blasted for saying Moscow needs ‘security guarantees’ to end the war (EuroNews)
Trump calls for the termination of the Constitution in Truth Social post
(CNN)
Fears of deadly infection surge as China abandons zero-COVID policy (The Observer)
First Nation in western British Columbia making strides toward energy sovereignty (CBC)
Iran prosecutor general signals ‘morality police’ suspended (Al Jazeera)
Indonesia’s Mount Semeru volcano erupts as authorities raise alert level to high (SBS)
THE COMMENTARIAT
It’s our Voice — So let us speak — Kelly Menzel (IndigenousX): “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities have been systematically violated and silenced since the invasion and colonisation of Australia. In addition, our knowledges have been appropriated and misused. So, for a non-Indigenous person to wander in and express opinions, thoughts and ideas about our business — without expertise — from a significant media platform, further violates and silences our voices. It also appropriates our cause and redirects the light and attention on to them and further away from us and our opinions, thoughts and ideas about our sovereign business …
“When discussing matters that impact the nation now called Australia, it is imperative that those affected, such as First Nations peoples, are centred and privileged in the discussion. This means those who are non-Indigenous must remain respectfully silent unless invited into the conversation by us. Otherwise the risk is privileging whiteness and perpetuating racism and discrimination. There is also great harm in centring the wrong voices regarding the Voice to Parliament. This is not right-way. It de-platforms and derails the issue and potentially spreads detrimental misinformation. It directs attention away from critical discourse between mob and collectively silences us. It also recolonises us and perpetuates what WEH Stanner refers to as the ‘Great Australian Silence’.”
Hero, martyr, victim … but was Gough Whitlam a great man? ($) — George Brandis (The Age): “His martyr’s mantle became a shield against criticism of the shambles his government had become. Meanwhile Sir John Kerr was fated to be forever cast as the pantomime villain, caricatured in his top hat as the malign agent of a devious and unscrupulous establishment. Overwhelmingly, the academy, the arts community, much of the media and most of the commentariat signed on to this nonsense. It has been part of the left’s mythology ever since. One result was that almost every subsequent appraisal of Whitlam has been unreliable. Biographies have ranged from the merely admiring (Jenny Hocking) to the abjectly adoring (Graham Freudenberg), and every shade of hagiography in between …
“There is no doubt that Whitlam captured, and came to embody, the spirit of his time — so much so that many of the achievements of others were, in later years, lazily associated with him. It was Harold Holt, not Whitlam, who began the demolition of the White Australia policy; John Gorton, not Whitlam, who made the decision to end Australia’s military engagement in Vietnam; Gorton, not Whitlam, who established the Australia Council and introduced the tax breaks upon which the success of the Australian film industry was built. But so much was Whitlam the choice and master spirit of the age that those, and many other reforms, came to be attributed — erroneously — to him.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Online
- SEEK’s Matt Cowgill, Deloitte’s David Rumbens, and CEDA’s Cassandra Winzar are among the speakers in a webinar exploring the coming labour market conditions.
Yuggera Country (also known as Brisbane)
- Former senator and AFR columnist Amanda Stoker will be at the launch of a new book, White Elephant Stampede, held at the Norman Hotel.
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
- Leading China sociologist Ching Kwan Lee will speak about whether Hong Kong’s 2019 anti-extradition movement was a revolution of our times, at the Finkel Theatre, ANU.
Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)
- Writer Don Watson will speak about his new book, The Passion of Private White, held at The Wheeler Centre.
AEMO DATA
May 2022……………DECEMBER 2022
SA $ 312.30…………$80.22
VIC $ 233.64………..$73.82
TAS $ 217.19…….…$94.95
NSW $ 320.48……..$100.94
QLD $ 347.28………$103.26
OpenNem Data
27 Nov to 4 Dec
Solar R/T – $30.64
Solar Utility – $39.56
Gas – $112.18
Gas – $119.71
Coal – $99.16
MW Media
Fossil Fibs: how the gas lobby gets away with cooking the planet, rooking its customers
.
More supply means cheaper gas prices
This is a deadset ripper of a lie.
.
The good old “supply and demand” malarky. We need more gas supply to get prices down, they say, their “independent experts” say,” “the latest modelling says”, “revealed exclusively” by the belt-it-out press release rewrite in Murdoch and Nine Entertainment media
.
Therefore, we need therefore to drill more, frack more, they say.
.
Production increased from 2014 750pj to 2,000pj in 2022
.
Gas production and supply rising steeply from eight years ago when they opened up the LNG export market in Australia.
.
That’s when the gas lobby conned governments into believing that drilling more gas would be a good thing for Australians because, you know, good old supply and demand; more supply will bring prices down.
.
It didn’t.
.
Precisely the opposite happened
.
Prices have shot through the roof, rising fourfold. Why is supply and demand not working?
Green eggs and ham – playing politics?
No doubt there are those in The Greens shell that can see advantage in giving 16 year-olds the vote – because it would boost the Greens vote.
But we don’t just hand over the keys to the car, tank or heavy machinery to those 16 year-olds being pointed to now, as “examples” – we ease them (sometimes for years; and any number of failed driving tests) into those positions of responsibility before we let them take over the running.
How many of us have made mistakes in our “formative” teen-age years, that we regret later? Show me a “responsible adolescent” and I’ll show you any number of less responsible…. Get out on the road and watch the gambling many of them take – on other drivers’ reactions : to their in-traffic manoeuvring.
What’s two years to absorb a bit more of life’s experiences and lessons?
Our politics isn’t in enough ‘bubble-bubble toil and flux’, we have to add more “What’s in this bottle?” to the mix?
…. “Lidia Thorpe”….
False and misleading analogies, the lot of them. Voting is not “taking over the running”. It just expressing your own view at the same time as everyone else does. And you only get to do it once every few years. If you are worried about irresponsible voters you should extend your concern across the entire spectrum of the Australian population, not just those under 18.
Letting 16 year olds join in would make a marginal difference to a process that will still result, as it always does, no matter how anyone votes, in the government getting in.
Then why not lower the age to 14 year olds? It’s their future too.
… If I’m “worried”? As I noted :- ‘Our politics isn’t in enough ‘bubble-bubble toil and flux’, we have to add more “What’s in this bottle?” to the mix?”?
“”Judge” George Brandis – ‘Expert’ – The Age (A Costello/Nein pamphlet)”?
…. Why not lecture us on the ins and outs of those communications between Man Haron Monis and your A-G Department….. Julie Bishop’s ‘version’ – to the Reps?
…. “Metadata”?
… “The lying rodent”?
… Your professional relationship with Justin Gleeson?
… A person’s “right to be a bigot” – to be able to speak (and incite) accordingly?
On something he knows for sure, based on first hand involvement?
In the case of Monis it has always been perplexing that there was no questioning as to why Howard, knowing Monis was a wanted criminal in another country, Howard refused to extradite Monis to face court for his crimes, and knowing he arrived under a false name still gave him citizenship
The piece by the resident ambulance-chaser has comments disabled (quelle bloody surprise) and therefore I refuse to even read it.
The madness of the extra judicial brigade here for the last two years bodes ill for the future – they’ll soon find a new cause célèbre, never mind debris and ruined people left in the wake.
OMG, three ‘wodges’ today with Comments are switched off on this article.
Looks like any comment about the H matter will, as with M, run into the ModBot.
Not exactly Sir Humphrey’s ‘Very courageous‘ is it?
Given the three articles all draw on the same topic it is bleeding obvious why the decision about comments is uniform across the three. You seem unaware that when Sir Humphrey describes a proposed course of action as ‘courageous’ he is using a polite euphemism for ‘recklessly stupid’. In this instance Sir Humphrey would be right. There is little that anyone could comment about these matters that would add to the enormous amount already said, here and elsewhere, but there is a very obvious risk that some comments would expose Crikey and/or the commenter to legal hazard. It’s not worth it.
Yeah, too busy-busy milking the Lachy tantrum