Battle of the sexes

SELLING LIKE HOTCAKES

Author Yumi Stynes says journalists from the Daily Mail camped outside her house this week amid the conservative backlash to her book, Welcome to Sex, co-written by Dolly Doctor stalwart Melissa Kang, The Age ($) reports. Women’s Forum Australia’s Rachael Wong called it a “graphic sex guide for children” on 2GB, even though it covers topics such as dating, consent, premature ejaculation, the clitoris and orgasming — all fact-checked by experts, Stynes adds. Whether Wong also wants to ban under-18s from using Google is not clear. Anyway, the book topped Amazon’s bestseller list after it was pulled from Big W this week — the retailer also pulled announcements about the Uluru Statement from the Heart and the Voice to Parliament because of “feedback”, The Australian ($) reports.

Speaking of conservative whining — the Liberals have launched a candidate search in a bid to unseat Warringah independent MP Zali Steggall and win back the former blue-ribbon seat formerly held by former PM Tony Abbott, Guardian Australia reports. Failed 2022 candidate Katherine Deves’ name has been floated again — she was Scott Morrion’s captain’s pick and it was later revealed she called trans kids “surgically mutilated and sterilised”, as SBS reports. She later said she regretted apologising. It’s quite the lead time considering an election can’t be held until, at the very earliest, a year from now — but Opposition Leader Peter Dutton told everyone to get going, no doubt the Morrison-Hawke preselection drama fresh in his mind still, as the AFR ($) reports. An email went out to Liberal branch members about the search, saying they don’t even need to be Liberal, just Liberal-aligned. Hope this means championing small government and embracing entrepreneurialism and not attacking vulnerable kids, but it’s hard to say.

WELL-BEEN

Homeowners are finding it easier to repay mortgages, and mental health isn’t an issue… according to the Measuring What Matters report (which measures the nation’s well-being) to be released today. But it relies on 2020 data when the cash rate was at a record-low 0.1%, COVID was presumed to blow over soon, and inflation was 0.87%, The Australian ($) says. The report looks at 50 items across health, security, sustainability, cohesiveness and prosperity, as The Conversation explained, but a lot of the findings feel rather anachronistic. Our overall life satisfaction is “stable or little change” but it’s based on ABS data from 2020. Our mental health was found to be stable too, based on findings from 2005 to 2018. A spokesperson for Treasurer Jim Chalmers admitted there were data gaps and vowed to do better.

To another election promise and BP was the only big-emitting company that both publicly supported climate action and didn’t challenge Labor’s safeguard mechanism reforms, Michael West Media reports, with Origin, Woodside and Alinta, miners Rio Tinto, Fortescue, Glencore and Whitehaven Coal, and industrials BlueScope Steel and Adbr all pontificating about climate action and then lobbying the government behind closed doors to weaken the policy. And it worked — the government gave them three concessions in the crown jewel climate policy, including a price cap of $75 a tonne on carbon credits, allowing them to sell old carbon credits back to the government (as well as a slashed interest rate for borrowing carbon credits) and halving the minimum baseline decline rate to 1% a year for overseas exporters. The research came from InfluenceMap, a climate think tank.

DODGY BOSSES RAIDED

Businesses exploiting migrant workers with crap pay, dodgy conditions or no super will be targeted in a new crackdown from Australian Border Force, The Australian ($) reports. This month, more than 170 companies including farms, labour hire companies, restaurants, beauty salons and construction companies have been raided or inspected by ABF officials, with warning letters, fines totalling $300,000 and possible criminal charges resulting. Four companies so far have been banned from sponsoring migrants, and will also be named and shamed on a public register. It comes as unemployment in June remained at a five-decade low of 3.5%, with 32,600 jobs created. But it was far below the 49,100 new workers who hit the market, Daily Mail Australia reports. Meanwhile there is a record number of older folks in the workforce — ABS figures show around 45,000 more people aged 65 and older are working than at the same time a year ago, the ABC reports.

From the (relative) oldies to students, and those studying law, arts, commerce or economics have to keep paying $15,000 a year under a Morrison-era plan to raise the arts and slash fees for teaching, nursing and maths courses — even though Education Minister Jason Clare concedes it isn’t working. A report found it disproportionately affected Indigenous and female students, the Brisbane Times ($) reports, and caused universities to stop offering some courses because of the expense, damaging the humanities sector in the longer term. Clare says he has an “open mind” about what to do next, while higher education expert Professor Andrew Norton called it “very bad luck” for those students.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Worm reader, a question: what is the collective noun for penises? A whack of willies? A penile colony? In any case, a large number of “penis fish” have washed ashore on a beach in Argentina, causing a blush up and down the coast and beyond. Stiff-upper-lip marine biologists may sniff that they are actually known as urechis unicinctus or, more commonly, fat innkeeper sea worms (no idea why, and I don’t want to research it), a phallic, flesh-coloured species that measures a rather hefty 25cm (10 inches). They beached themselves en masse at Multillar, north of Rio Grande, far from their usual hangout place beneath the ocean floor, perhaps out of self-consciousness but more likely because of wild currents.

Incredibly, the sea worms actually date back some 300 million years, and can live to the age of 25 if they’re not sucked down the gullet of larger fish, sharks, seagulls and otters, so to speak. Local fishermen were thrilled by the sight of a thousand penises because the fat innkeeper sea worms are excellent bait for amorous sea bass. Who among us can resist the lure of a really big one? But the sea worms also have medicinal properties in Asia — in South Korea, Japan and China, news.com.au says, they’re eaten raw or grilled with salt and sesame oil, having a sort of clam-like texture. They’ve even been spruiked for their aphrodisiac properties. My stars.

Hoping the smiles come easily today, folks, and you have a restful weekend.

SAY WHAT?

After 230 years of invading and illegally occupying our land, the best the colonial government can offer us is a token advisory body and assimilation into their constitution. It is an insult to our ancestors.

Lidia Thorpe

The independent senator wants the government to offer more than the Voice to advance Indigenous rights and rectify past wrongs. But Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney has warned Australians voting No in the referendum about acknowledging First Nations folks in the constitution may close the book on that forever.

CRIKEY RECAP

Here’s how to make American mega-trucks unwelcome Down Under

BENJAMIN CLARK

“The recent sales bump was partly fuelled by former prime minister Scott Morrison’s COVID-19 stimulus, which made asset purchase tax deductions for small-business operators much more generous. Many tradies were able to fully write off the cost of expensive new utes, pushing this line item into the top 10 tax expenditures on the books at the last federal budget. Men on higher incomes disproportionately benefited.

“Thankfully Labor let the program lapse on July 1. But remaining deductions should be scrutinised or capped to ensure taxpayers aren’t paying for unnecessary boys’ toys towing jetskis more often than building supplies. Nonetheless, the scale of investment in converting left-hand-drive American vehicles for Australian roads suggests car executives aren’t just relying on perpetually creative tax returns.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

EU pitches €20-billion plan in long-term military support for Ukraine (euronews)

‘We have no more room,’ NYC mayor Eric Adams warns migrants (BBC)

Iraq expels Sweden ambassador, embassy stormed over Qur’an burning (Al Jazeera)

Modi speaks out after video of sexual assault on women in Manipur emerges (The Guardian)

How Chile’s progressive new plan to mine lithium faces Indigenous hurdles (Reuters)

Workers hid as police hunted gunman through Auckland CBD construction site (Stuff)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Yes supporters to the Indigenous Voice to Parliament have raised some of the best reasons to vote No — Nyunggai Warren Mundine (The Australian) ($): “In his outburst [constitutional lawyer Greg] Craven even took the opportunity to have a shot at me because of my previous collaboration with an organisation called Uphold & Recognise, which now supports the Voice, saying, somewhat accusingly, that I have an ‘interesting history’ on this topic and suggesting I’ve changed my position. It’s no secret I published an essay six years ago for Uphold & Recognise, written before the Uluru Statement, advocating for a model of recognition that supports traditional owner groups having a say on their own languages, cultures, heritage, land and sea. And that’s a key reason I don’t support the Voice.

“Because a national, representative Indigenous body will undermine traditional owner rights to speak for their own countries. Craven may have read my essay but clearly doesn’t understand it. In any event, I don’t see how it’s relevant to his unretracted and damning criticism of the proposal in March. Craven claims in The Australian the Yes pamphlet is ‘so sincere and reasoned you want to slap it’. I needed to slap myself after reading the Yes campaign’s story of a magical wand called the Voice that will miraculously cure all the problems. It also features one of the great myths of the campaign, that 80% of Indigenous people support the Voice. This claim is based on two polls of only 300 and 738 people. The ABC has sent journalists to remote communities with larger populations than these survey pools to find almost everyone had never heard of the Voice or didn’t understand what it was.”

We see a great deal of the Albanese government, but we don’t know much about what goes on behind the scenes — Michelle Grattan (The Conversation): “Labor’s blanket factionalism, with its modus operandi, is part of a wider development — the extensive professionalisation of modern politics generally, and the priority it gives to control. This has been a creeping phenomenon. The government has an army of propagandists (titled ‘media advisers’) in ministerial officers to control and promote its messages, which are crystallised into comprehensive ‘talking points’ (or swot sheets) for frontbenchers and backbenchers. Ministers are deployed with military precision to occupy the daily media landscape. No trench is left without a soldier.

“The sheer volume of the government’s media presence (mainstream and social) disguises the large void in our current knowledge of what is happening behind the scenes. Once, the media had much more access to the public service to discuss policy (we’re talking about background information, not ‘leaks’). Governments shut this down, as far as they could, years ago. Ministerial offices jealously guard the flow of information; if public servants are called in to do any media briefing, it is strictly overseen. There is access to material through freedom of information, but this has its strict limits and needs reform. The media know very little about the internal dynamics of the Albanese cabinet. From Albanese’s point of view, this is a triumph. It is a product of a high degree of genuine unity, but it is also a mark of iron discipline.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)

• Libertarian MLC David Limbrick, the Victorian Young Liberals’ James Bennett-Hullin and former policy director at the Institute of Public Affairs Gideon Rozner will speak about how libertarians can win over conservatives, at The Aviary Hotel, Abbotsford.

• Student speechmakers will share words and wisdom at the 2023 Plain English Speaking Award state final at The Wheeler Centre.