Nine’s in the frame

BAD IMAGE

Nine Network has apologised after photoshopping an image of Victorian Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell to show her midriff and increase her breast size, The Age ($) reports. Nine Melbourne news director Hugh Nailon blamed the changes on automation while a staffer was resizing the image — wait one second, Adobe responded per Guardian Australia. “Any changes to this image would have required human intervention and approval.” Nine acknowledged a person had worked on the photo, but “no instructions had been given on the tone of the picture”. What in god’s name does that mean? The story has gone global overnight, picked up by the BBC, CBS News, The Independent, The Telegraph, and Stuff.

From the Animal Justice Party to live exports — and Labor MP Josh Wilson says a ship that has been at sea for 25 days carrying nearly 20,000 sheep and cattle is a “welfare crisis”, The West Australian ($) reports. The government ordered it to turn back amid conflict in the Red Sea and it’s been seeking a new route to Israel ever since — “One of the hottest and most unstable parts of the world,” Wilson says. Live exports are not just cruel, they’re worth little, he says, less than 1% of WA’s agricultural industry. Speaking of climbing temps — Melbourne’s mercury could hit 38 degrees on Sunday, news.com.au reports, after a month of no “hot” days (over 35 degrees), Guardian Australia adds.

DILL’S PICKLE

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says up to 89% of people in Coalition seats (including Forde, Longman, Page, Cowper and Braddon) will end up with more dough in their pocket under the changes to stage three tax reforms, Guardian Australia reports, putting Opposition Leader Peter Dutton in quite a sticky spot. Either he opposes Labor’s tax cut, effectively supporting higher taxes for his voters during a cost-of-living crisis, or he supports Labor in its “broken promise”. In any case, Labor doesn’t need the Coalition to pass the cuts — the Greens, David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie will wave them through in the upper house, the AFR ($) adds. Dutton called the taxes an attack on aspiration because of bracket creep — that’s when inflation pushes wages and salaries into higher tax brackets. Greg Jericho delves into it for Guardian Australia. To that end, independent MP Zoe Daniel suggests Labor legislates automatic indexation for tax brackets. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile documents that date back to 1978, and 14 that discuss the Iraq War, have been found in the prime minister’s department, the SMH ($) reports. They were discovered when Albanese ordered a review of how 78 cabinet documents created in 2003 by John Howard’s government were not given to the National Archives. An inquiry found the Morrison government didn’t deliberately conceal the docs, which were due to be released on January 1 (20 years later), but rather were “forgotten” by staff during the pandemic. To another international conflict, and Senator Lidia Thorpe has accused the government of being “complicit” in genocide, Sky News Australia reports, for suspending funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza. Nine UNRWA staff were sacked amid Israel’s allegations they were involved in Hamas’ October 7 attack.

ORDER IN THE COURTS

A court is considering throwing out Adani’s case against environment activist Ben Pennings, Guardian Australia reports, which alleged he “engaged in intimidation, conspiracy, and that he induced employees to breach their contracts”. Adani brought the case in 2020 but has since ditched a claim purporting that Pennings accessed confidential info. What’s left is “embarrassing”, “incredibly weak” and “highly problematic”, Pennings’ lawyer says. The paper notes the conspiracy claim alleges the involvement of “unknown conspirators”.

This comes as a judge urged Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds, former staffer Brittany Higgins and her fiancé David Sharaz to settle their defamation suit, The Australian ($) says. Justice Marcus Solomon pointed to the “human cost of this litigation” which will turn into a trial in July if a mediation in March is unsuccessful. The paper adds that Reynolds is waiting on “advice from French counsel” about her threat to freeze Higgins’ assets in her new home in France. Meanwhile, a Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) scientist was fired after he was found secretly working in the US, Seven reports, after the BOM tracked his IP address. He took his former employer to Fair Work, but the commission sided with the BOM.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

A hiker was trudging along the narrow track of the Lanipo Trail enjoying the lush Hawaiian foliage coating peaks that seemed to go on forever. The 10.9km trail, which is quite close to Honolulu, is not for the faint of heart — hikers often emerge with muddy bums thanks to the repetitive incline-decline. Looking out at the misty emerald landscape, the hiker noticed a dog barking urgently at the edge of a steep slope, as CNN reports. Weird, they thought. Pulling out their phone, they dialled the Honolulu Fire Department. There’s this random dog that’s making a holy racket, they told the operator, and I think it needs help.

There was nothing for it — the department quickly deployed no fewer than 17 responders, some on foot and some in aircraft, to rescue the pooch. One of the crew rappelled down and strapped it into a harness to be lifted to safety, probably assuming the dog’s desperate eyes were a reflection of being lost. That’s when the rescuer noticed something else further down the slope — is that a bag? When the ground team located the dog’s registered address, they were alarmed to see no-one was home, and a car registered to the dog’s owner was parked at the trailhead. Putting two and two together, they realised owner must have fallen. They found the 35-year-old woman in some thick foliage and airlifted her to safety. As Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk once said: “Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.”

Hoping you can hear clearly today.

SAY WHAT?

As someone who grew up in the Jackass pranking era, this was never a thing. Pranksters always showed a modicum of respect shown to others, just not themselves.

Alice Coster

The Herald Sun columnist wrote an indignant column about a child who poured milk on strangers on a boat in the Yarra, sniffing that back in her day things were different. Que? Jackass’ Johnny Knoxville once used an air horn on golfers enjoying a quiet day on the green, and trolled well-meaning strangers with a child “smoking” while he was dressed as the kid’s grandpa.

CRIKEY RECAP

New Nine boss once defended a man’s sexual relationship with a minor

DAANYAL SAEED

“Since McIlveen’s appointment, an article has resurfaced that he wrote for The Daily Telegraph in 2004 while he was a federal political reporter at The Australian, in which he defends a relationship between a 33-year-old man and his then-girlfriend, a seven-month-pregnant 15-year-old girl …

“McIlveen went on to note how ‘the idea of a teenage girl falling pregnant to a man more than twice her age is deeply shocking to some people’, but said ‘[the girl’s father] was comfortable with the man his daughter had chosen and that should be more than enough’, going on to describe the ‘real advantages’ of children born to young parents.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

‘We are obliged to end the war’: A new Russian unit fights for Ukraine (Al Jazeera)

US threatens to reimpose sanctions on Venezuelan oil sector (BBC)

Undercover Israeli troops dressed as medical staff kill three militants in West Bank hospital raid, officials say (CNN)

Members of Russian anti-war rock band face deportation from Thailand (The Guardian)

Pakistan court jails ex-PM Imran Khan for 10 years ahead of election (Reuters)

Elon Musk says Neuralink has ‘successfully’ implanted a brain chip into human (euronews)

Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce and a MAGA meltdown (The New York Times) ($)

THE COMMENTARIAT

‘Complete nonsense’: Anthony Albanese all at sea in the South Pacific — Greg Sheridan (The Australian) ($): “It is a key aim of Australian policy to restrict China’s security role in the South Pacific, avoid the nightmare scenario of Beijing one day securing a naval base there, prevent it dominating telcos or cyber companies, while welcoming Chinese development aid provided it follows the rules of good government and transparency. Australia still does not know the full text of the security agreement between Beijing and the Solomon Islands. The Solomon Islands will hold national elections in April. Well-informed ­observers think Chinese money could play a significant role in those elections.

“East Timor late last year upgraded diplomatic relations with Beijing. A joint statement ­between China’s President Xi Jinping and East Timor’s Xanana Gusmao talked of enhancing military cooperation Australia has stumped up another $30m to help with Timorese policing. In Fiji, the Albanese government ran into some blind good luck when an anti-China Sitiveni Rabuka just pipped the more pro-China Frank Bainimarama in an election, and reversed much of Fiji’s growing intimacy with Beijing. One other thing. The Albanese government claimed that if the referendum on the Voice to Parliament was lost this would damage us greatly in the South Pacific, and to some extent in South-East Asia. Nothing remotely of this sort has occurred.”

If it walks like an insurrection and talks like an insurrection… — Jamelle Bouie (The New York Times) ($): “I’ve argued, relying on evidence drawn from an amicus brief to the Colorado Supreme Court, that the former president’s actions make him an insurrectionist by any reasonable definition of the term and certainly as it was envisioned by the drafters of the 14th Amendment, who experienced insurrection first hand. If that isn’t persuasive, consider the evidence marshalled by the legal scholars Akhil Reed Amar and Vikram David Amar in a more recent amicus brief. They argue that top of mind for the drafters of the 14th Amendment were the actions of John B. Floyd, the secretary of war during the secession crisis of November 1860 to March 1861.

“During the crucial weeks after the election of Abraham Lincoln, as pro-slavery radicals organised secession conventions throughout the South, Floyd, ‘an unapologetic Virginia slaveholder’, Amar and Amar write, used his authority to, in the words of Ulysses S. Grant, distribute ‘the cannon and small arms from Northern arsenals throughout the South so as to be on hand when treason wanted them’. When it became clear that President James Buchanan would not surrender Fort Sumter to South Carolina, in late December, Floyd resigned to join the Confederacy.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)

• Teal MP Allegra Spender and The Australia Institute’s Richard Denniss will talk about the stage three tax cuts changes at the National Press Club. Watch it online here.