Dan Andrews gets down and grubby

SORRY NOT SORRY

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews says he will not apologise after he called Liberal MP Cindy McLeish a “half-wit grub” and then withdrew it in Parliament, Guardian Australia reports. It was during a heated debate about the four recommendations of the anti-corruption watchdog’s Operation Clara report — McLeish said Northcote Labor MP Kat Theophanous should abstain from voting because her dad, a former Labor minister, secretly lobbied for a developer to get donations to her 2018 election campaign, as the ABC explains. But the report made no adverse findings against her. Andrews derided McLeish in Theophanous’ defence but then withdrew the insult. McLeish called for him to say sorry, saying women shouldn’t have to put up with that in the workplace, but Andrews refused.

The pair have beef from way back — in 2016 McLeish claimed she’d heard allegations, supposedly from two anonymous people, that Andrews said Liberal MP Donna Bauer wouldn’t be an election threat because she’d be “shitting in a bag”, an apparent reference to her bowel cancer. Andrews strenuously denied the “defamatory, disgusting and wrong” allegation, as Yahoo reports, saying that he’d just lost his dad to cancer, and several colleagues said it sounded nothing like him. Moving right along — Victorian politicians just got a pay rise after the Victorian Independent Remuneration Tribunal released its annual determination. Backbenchers will make a cool $198,839, while Andrews’ pay will rise by $16,272 to $481,190, including up to $60,000 in expenses, the Herald Sun ($) reports. He remains Australia’s highest-paid premier.

MAKE IT A DOUBLE

The Albanese government is seeking advice from the solicitor-general regarding its housing bill stalemate, Guardian Australia reports, which could lead to a double dissolution. Here’s what’s happened: a $10 billion future fund bill was passed by the Labor-heavy House of Reps, but the Greens and Coalition in the Senate voted to delay it until October 16. “Maybe later” means “no”, Deputy Senate Leader Don Farrell reckons — and Labor has asked Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue whether he agrees. If the bill passes the House of Representatives after three months and is rejected by the Senate again, the government has the option of using this to trigger a full house and Senate election. The Greens are holding out for a freeze or caps on rent rises, but Treasurer Jim Chalmers says they’re just trying to be popular on TikTok. A double dissolution might not be so bad for the Greens —  they could have a punt at winning back now-independent Lidia Thorpe’s former Green seat.

Hey, speaking of — Thorpe is voting No in the Voice to Parliament debate, the ABC reports, and wants to write the No case in the referendum pamphlet. That’s despite her comments just last month that she can’t support an opposing side that looks “more like a white supremacy campaign”. Yesterday Thorpe said her negotiations with the government had broken down — she wanted Labor to implement all the recommendations from the 1991 report by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and the 1997 Bringing Them Home report into the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care. Meanwhile, Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney says the Voice won’t give advice on changing the date of Australia Day, The Australian ($) reports, though constitutional law expert George Williams said hypothetically the advisory group could. Burney stressed yesterday that the Voice “will not run programs, it will not deliver funding and it will not have the power of veto”.

This section has been amended to clarify the possible pathway to a double dissolution.

LEADING THE CHARGE

ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold allegedly thought about sidestepping police to charge Bruce Lehrmann himself during the investigation into the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins, the SMH ($) reports. That’s according to the Victims of Crime commissioner Heidi Yates’ written statement, the paper says, which was published earlier this month. Yates reckons ACT’s top prosecutor allegedly told her he didn’t know why the matter wasn’t progressing, adding: “I could consider using my ex-officio powers to lay a charge if the police don’t.” Former NSW DPP Nicholas Cowdery KC said it would be exceedingly rare for that to happen, and Drumgold’s lawyer during the inquiry told the paper no comment. It came as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the leaking of Brittany Higgins’ text messages is probably “not legal”, Guardian Australia reports, and had led to “regrettable coverage” that could discourage victims from coming forward. Folks, a second statement from Crikey’s editor, Gina Rushton, and editor-in-chief, Sophie Black, on this matter.

To other investigation news, and corporate regulator Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has been accused by the Coalition, Labor and the Greens of obstructing parliamentary investigations, the SMH ($) reports. The tripartisan attack came as Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg said ASIC had made it impossible for the Senate to look into law enforcement issues as part of its year-long inquiry — ASIC hid behind 13 public interest immunity claims amid 100 questions, saying handing over material could damage its methods or the reputation of people of interest. But an upper house economics references committee made up of MPs from across the floor found that unfathomable, and argued the Senate should force ASIC to cough up documents about its closed inquiries.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Hippocrates once wrote: “Life is short, the art long.” Except, one presumes, when the artwork is a banana taped to a wall. And it happens more than you’d think — at least twice, that we know about, thus the basis of a high-stakes copyright case recently hit the federal courts in the US, as ArtNet reports. Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan produced his latest sculpture, Comedian, by duct-taping a banana to a wall. It was eaten two separate times — once for some artist’s edgy performance art piece, but another time a Korean art student was just hungry. Who can resist forbidden fruit? Anyway, it sold for $120,000 to Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019, immediately capturing the attention of social media. It was quite literally perishable fruit, after all.

When artist Joe Morford came across Cattelan’s viral work, he could not believe what he was seeing. In 2001, Morford had created Banana and Orange, a sculpture where he avant-gardely duct-tapped the eponymous fruit to two pieces of green cardboard. Crucially, he copyrighted his fibre-rich artwork in 2020, and even US District Judge Robert N Scola Jr couldn’t deny the works were “substantially similar”. But not enough to satisfy copyright law, Scola found in a ruling that’s no fewer than 18 pages (!) long, because there was no evidence Cattelan had even seen Morford’s work — nor that Banana and Orange “enjoyed any particular or meaningful level of popularity”. It seems the judge found the fruity copyright case was no more than comparing apples with oranges.

Wishing you a fruitful morning ahead.

SAY WHAT?

You start with a policy the government has no intention of implementing, you campaign hard against it and, at the end, the government doesn’t implement it. It is a complete victory. So I say to those who are funding these ads, and they are out there on social media as well, they are there on the news websites as well, and I say with this campaign: ‘Go hard.’

Tony Burke

The workplace relations minister says billboards targeting his IR reforms that claim an inexperienced labour-hire worker would have to be paid the same as an experienced, full-time veteran are brazenly wrong, so “Come at me!”

CRIKEY RECAP

Unions and political donations reform: the exemption that proves the rule

BERNARD KEANE

“What is surprising is that the Coalition abandoned its two-decades-long insistence that the current Howard-era indexed disclosure threshold — this year more than $15,000 — is perfect. While still peddling the myth that lower disclosure thresholds automatically lead to union thugs toting baseball bats visiting every small business donor and observing that it’s a nice place and it’d be a shame if anything happened to it, the Coalition’s dissenting report suggests halving the threshold to $8000, a timid but welcome foray into greater transparency.

“Coalition members are also suggesting monthly rather than real-time disclosure, another unexpected outbreak of common sense. It might even be workable if coupled with the former NSW Liberal government’s requirement that once an election campaign commences donations must be disclosed in real-time. There’s plenty of dross elsewhere in the dissenting report …”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Hunter Biden to plead guilty to tax crimes, reaches deal on gun charge (Reuters)

Estonia passes law to allow same-sex marriage (Al Jazeera)

Racism and rape fantasies: the PR headache facing Finland’s new right-wing government (euronews)

France to shut down climate protest group citing public safety risks (The Guardian)

[Former Canadian PM] Brian Mulroney defends Trudeau, says Parliament Hill gripped by ‘trash, rumours, gossip’ (CBC)

Beijing plans new military training facility in Cuba (The Wall Street Journal) ($)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Look at the difference in the Origin fans. No wonder NSW usually lose — Lizzy Hoo (Brisbane Times) ($): “In Brisbane’s business district, it would be odd not to wear a Maroons scarf in the office or have a supporters shirt subtly peeking out underneath a business shirt; that is of course unless you’ve chucked a state-sanctioned sickie because we won. Again. I never witnessed this same passion in Sydney. Most of my colleagues weren’t bothered by the game. I’d see the occasional Blues jersey boarding a peak-hour train — a little peek into NSW Origin culture I reported back to my Queensland comrades from enemy territory. ‘They don’t care about it here, it’s so weird. No wonder they lose.’

“Where’s your passion, New South Wales? A picture of Gladys holding a can of Coke in a weird room shared to Twitter — is that it? OK, OK, I admit you might simply have better things on. Maybe you’re out enjoying everything we lack up north, such as your famous Opera House, your fancy restaurants and your cosmopolitan nightlife. Perhaps there are other events in your calendar other than yelling profanities at a TV. Although I’m sure in the regions, there is more hype. But in Queensland, downtown or distant, the hype is real and sometimes better than the actual game.”

The government can’t explain how net zero will change your life, so I will — Ross Gittins (The SMH) ($): “As I see it, the basic strategy is simple: switch the production of electricity from coal and gas to renewables and batteries, and use clean electricity to replace the use of oil and gas. The beauty of this great reliance on electricity is that, though it will mean much disruption of particular industries, it doesn’t involve much disruption to the way we run our households. Much of the heavy lifting with the major industrial emitters will be done by Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen’s recent reforms to the safeguard mechanism, aimed at achieving the promised 43% reduction in emissions by 2030.

“Much of the progress in eliminating our use of oil will come from shifting to electric vehicles. Make sure your next car is electric, and you’ve got that box ticked with minimal disruption to your life. It’s the various governments’ job to get the price of EVs down to something more reasonable and ensure sufficient charging points. Which brings us to the elimination of natural gas, the subject of Wood’s Grattan report earlier this week. It would suit the blatant self-interest of the gas industry for gas to be seen as the ‘transition fuel’: we move electricity production from coal to gas and later to renewables. But 2050 — and even worse climate change — isn’t that far away, and we don’t have time for a leisurely transition.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)

• Wellness expert Ros Ben-Moshe will talk about her new book, The Laughter Effect: How to Build Joy, Resilience and Positivity in Your Life, at Avid Reader bookshop.

Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)

• Tibetan President Penpa Tsering will address the National Press Club.

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Former Gillard-era chief of staff Bruce Wolpe will chat to journalist Margot Saville about his new book, Trump’s Australia, at the The Royal Oak.