To work or not to work on January 26

WORKING THROUGH THE PAIN

Hundreds of thousands of workers at Woolworths, Telstra, Network Ten, Deloitte and PwC will be given the opportunity to work on Australia Day instead of taking the public holiday, the SMH reports, as more people reject celebrating what some refer to as “Invasion Day”. It comes as federal Minister for the Public Service Katy Gallagher confirmed government workers would be permitted to save the public holiday for another day, Guardian Australia reports, overturning a ban that former prime minister Scott Morrison put in place in the dying days of his government. That sort of thing is between staff and employers, not the government, Gallagher said.

Another Morrison-era policy that citizenship ceremonies could take place only on January 26 was scrapped by the Albanese government in December. WA’s Cambridge and Vincent are among several councils around the country that will shift the date of their citizenship ceremonies to within three days either side of Australia Day as per the new rules, as Perth Now reports. Predictably, some are already freaking out. Liberal National Party member for Bowman in Queensland Henry Pike told 2GB he is hard at work on a proposal to enshrine Australia Day into Commonwealth legislation. Pike says the flag and Anzac Day are “protected” but “Australia’s national day can be changed at the whim of the government of the day”.

[free_worm]

THE TONY AWARDS

Former PM Tony Abbott should fill the vacancy created by the death of NSW senator Jim Molan, says former Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger. He told The Australian ($) there is “no better candidate than former prime minister Tony Abbott”, calling him “arguably the most successful opposition leader during my lifetime”. He certainly didn’t win the popularity stakes as PM, that’s for sure — indeed The Conversation published an analysis in 2016 headlined “Why was Tony Abbott so unpopular?”, and the AFR called him the “PM who never gave up his opposition leader job” in a 2015 column. But is being formidable in opposition and ultimately falling short in the leadership job worth celebrating? In his 2012 Quarterly Essay, “Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott”, journalist David Marr put it into context with his searing analysis: “What he is about is destroying a government. Looking like a prime minister in waiting is a second-order consideration.”

Abbott certainly made headlines after cardinal George Pell’s death on Tuesday last week, as news.com.au reports. The former PM penned a remarkably warm statement that described the child sexual abuse charges against Pell as a “modern form of crucifixion; reputationally at least a kind of living death”, continuing that “dealing so equably with a monstrous allegation, he strikes me as a saint for our times”. As Crikey’s Maeve McGregor, a lawyer, writes: “The High Court’s acquittal never delivered a sharp rebuke to the notion the man was a paedophile,” noting allegations of the ’60s to the ’90s never went before the jury either. “In reality, the court found Pell innocent of nothing,” McGregor wrote. It comes as a child abuse superannuation loophole has been closed by the government thanks to campaigning from former Australian of the Year Grace Tame and other survivors. Abusers used to be able to hide their assets in super, ABC explains.

THE STATE OF THINGS

NSW Labor has vowed to create a new koala park stretching from Kempsey to Coffs Harbour if elected, Guardian Australia reports. Opposition Leader Chris Minns will announce the plan today, which would protect 300,000 hectares — home to a fifth of the state’s koalas — from logging. If it sounds familiar, it might be because this is the third election Labor is taking the policy to. Koalas were officially declared endangered last February, and a parliamentary inquiry found they’ll be extinct by 2050 unless we take urgent action. Meanwhile another NSW project is coming to a close — the longest continuous underground motorway in Australia opens tomorrow, the SMH reports. It’s the 7.5km sector of the WestConnex motorway, which connects the M4 at Haberfield and the M8 at St Peters. Sydney drivers will skip no fewer than 52 sets of traffic lights by taking the tunnel, which opens at 3am on Friday.

Celebrating the project, Premier Dominic Perrottet boasted that it was on budget and two months ahead of schedule. The besieged premier needs all the good press he can get amid his Nazi costume scandal — outgoing Liberal minister Rob Stokes described him as “the underdog” heading into the March election in an interview with Sky News yesterday, but added that Perrottet fights best when “his back’s against the wall”. Might I suggest the premier turn his attention to flood aid? The Australian ($) reports this morning that just a fifth of the $1.6 billion promised to flood-ravaged communities in the Northern Rivers region of NSW has been paid out by the Perrottet government so far, new data reveals.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

It was a nondescript spring evening and a pensive Elias Visontay was driving home from the movies. Suddenly, a P-plater car full of brazen whippersnappers high on the fumes of life and their own undeserved youth screeched to a halt next to the Guardian Australia writer and frisbee’d a slice of Kraft cheese right onto his hood. One was filming the prank; all of them were killing themselves with laughter. After they sped off, Visontay continued on his way home, but when he got there, he didn’t remove the cheese. “Some part of me felt like it was letting the hoodlums win,” he explains. The rain would wash it away soon, he reasoned with himself, along with his underlying disquietude about the whole debacle. But weeks passed, and the cheese remained on his car.

The dairy product took on a new appearance, a fossilised quality, like some sort of artefact of the stupidity of the TikTok-prank generation. When friends asked, he patiently explained what had happened and that he would find it “cowardly” to remove it. “Most nodded their heads and changed the subject,” he says. His dad, in particular, was seething about Visontay’s stubbornness, but by then the journalist had developed a twisted curiosity about the cheese’s longevity. When it degraded to the point of splintering, Visontay felt his point was made and began to remove the cheese. But each part he pried off took a bright blue paint spot with it. When a mechanic told him the bonnet couldn’t be touched up and would need to be stripped, repainted and heat-treated for a sizeable cost, Visontay realised his defeat. The lesson? Listen to your parents, he says wisely. And peel the cheese off your car while you still can.

Hoping you know when to hold and know when to fold today.

SAY WHAT?

We are seeing companies go woke, go broke — it does not work in the long run. Most Australians support Australia Day.

Hollie Hughes

Dreams came true for conservative politicians everywhere the day someone learnt the words “woke” and “broke” rhyme. The Liberal senator seems to think Aussie companies — including PwC Australia, Woolworths and Canva (which is run by Australia’s youngest billionaires) — are on the way to financial ruin for offering staff the option of taking the Australia Day public holiday on another day.

CRIKEY RECAP

Rate hikes? Yawn. When’s the first cut?

Jason Murphy

Jan 18, 2023

4

“Australian house prices are expected to keep falling for the rest of the year. Major banks reckon another 5-10% could come off prices. That affects the Australian economy in two main ways. One is that fewer houses change hands, depressing the surprisingly large part of our economy devoted to real estate transactions. Conveyancers, lenders, agents: all lose work. That shrinks the economy …

“Another 10% off house prices will move prices back to early pandemic levels, albeit not as low as the pre-pandemic depths of 2018. Such a move could cause quite a dislocation in consumer confidence of homeowners — and in economic activity — and might well be the proximate cause of the RBA reversing course and starting to cut rates.”

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Anti-vaccine group that raised $500k for flood victims relaunches as founders face charges

Cam Wilson

Jan 18, 2023

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“Last year, Aussie Helping Hands was the subject of an investigation by the Queensland Office of Fair Trading after reportedly raising close to $500,000 for the purpose of helping Northern Rivers communities in NSW recover after flooding.

“The group was started by three people with links to the anti-vaccine conspiracy movement: David Oneeglio, Dorothy Greatorex (who also goes by the name Dotti Janssen) and Hayley Birtles-Eades. The organisation billed itself as an initiative created by ‘awakened Aussies’. Greatorex and Oneeglio said that bank accounts containing hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations were frozen as part of the investigation.”

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A poorly kept secret reveals our ludicrous laws around identifying alleged rapists

Michael Bradley

Jan 18, 2023

“The news broke early on January 11. Twitter was afire with reports that a ‘very prominent person’ was going to appear before the Magistrates Court in Toowoomba, Queensland, that morning charged with two counts of rape in October 2021.

“You didn’t have to look too hard to find out who he was, because the court had published his name in its daily court list. However, nobody could lawfully make the link, and the court soon removed his name from the published list — both cauterising the public leakage and inadvertently confirming the news for anyone who had already picked up the rumour.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Ukraine interior minister among dead in helicopter crash that ignites nursery (Al Jazeera)

Facebook and Instagram told to drop ‘discriminatory’ ban on nipples (EuroNews)

New Zealand’s biggest climate polluters, ranked (Stuff)

Wall Street’s biggest WFH advocate [Citigroup] is bringing underperforming staff back into the office (CNN)

Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest provider are worthless, analysis shows (The Guardian)

Microsoft to cut 10,000 jobs as spending slows (BBC)

THE COMMENTARIAT

From floods to fire? A climate scientist on the chances El Niño will hit Australia this year — Andrew King (The Conversation): “As we look further ahead, our confidence in what will happen next reduces. BOM’s outlook suggests El Niño conditions could arrive by late autumn, but other forecast models point to a lower chance of El Niño emerging at all. Forecasts of El Niño are challenging several months in advance, but particularly at this time of year when they have to overcome the ‘autumn predictability barrier’. In autumn, there is less variation in the Pacific Ocean’s temperature and it’s harder to forecast if an El Niño or La Niña will emerge by winter.

“We are by no means guaranteed a switch to El Niño, but there is a higher probability of an El Niño forming in the next few months than we’ve seen for several years. Australia is also affected by other natural climate drivers, such as the Indian Ocean dipole, which has a strong effect on winter weather. This climate driver is brought about by interactions between ocean currents and the atmosphere, and influences rainfall patterns around the Indian Ocean, including Australia.”

Can women in Britain ever trust the police again? Here’s what must happen first — Harriet Wistrich (The Guardian): “The early reports of rape and domestic abuse by [David] Carrick, where no further action was taken, illustrate the woeful inadequacies of policing of serial sexual offending by the Met, and the lack of safeguards to prevent police officers from using their powers to abuse women. It is notable that his career in the Met started in the early 2000s, when serial rapists John Worboys and Kirk Reid were offending with impunity while the police failed to investigate repeated reports against them.

“We now know that several women reported Carrick for extremely serious crimes, but no further action was taken against him. In fact he was repeatedly reported to the Met, but no red flags were raised, there was no attempt to investigate a pattern of offending and there was no suspension from duty. Instead he sailed through vetting and was even licensed to use firearms. That Carrick could have not only become a police officer, but remained a serving officer for so long while he perpetrated these horrific crimes against women is terrifying.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Author Lisa Chan will celebrate Lunar New Year with a rhyme time reading session of her book, Bowie’s School Trip, at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.

Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)

• Monash University’s Verity Trott’s will launch her book, Feminist Activism & Platform Politics, at The Chestnut Tree Bookshop.