Australian visas for Gazans cancelled mid-air

NO PLACE [IS] HOME

Two Gazan women told the SMH they couldn’t board a connecting flight to Australia with their kids because their visas seemed to have been cancelled while they were midair. One had been given the subclass 600 visitor visa (allowing temporary entry to Australia for up to 12 months) last year and had travelled to Egypt for the first of two flights here. She was told she couldn’t board the second one, but her kids could go ahead alone. They’re younger than 13, the paper notes, so the family flew back to Cairo. It comes as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was accused of “killing children” in a Darwin cafe by a group with a Palestinian flag, the NT News reports. “You’re committing genocide!”, alleged another. In February, the ABC reported the government’s $917 million contract for Israeli arms firm Elbit Systems, which Crikey noted is “heavily involved in Israel’s suppression of Palestinians and its maintenance of apartheid”.

Meanwhile, every Queenslander nearing or in homelessness will be found crisis accommodation in hotels or aged care facilities, Premier Steven Miles has reiterated, as The Courier-Mail reports. But he urged people not to wait until they’re on the streets to seek help because it’s much easier for service providers to “keep a roof over your head” than find one. To make good on the promise, the state government has purchased or leased 500 rooms, though about 200 need work before they can be used. Meanwhile, WA’s “highest-paid fat cat” John Langoulant got a $308,880 rental allowance from the taxpayer for his London home last year, The West ($) reports, which is almost $6,000 a week. The agent-general for WA in the UK makes $840,000 a year, twice the premier’s salary.

COVER YOUR MOUTH

The Albanese government wants to make election lies illegal, the SMH reports, via “truth in advertising laws” that would be enforced by a new unit inside the Australian Electoral Commission. That’s according to Labor sources, who say it would be based on South Australia’s scheme (between this, the big battery and its own Voice to Parliament, sometimes you do gotta hand it to SA). Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is going after gang violence videos on social media, The Age reports, preparing to announce a proposed Commonwealth offence to stop youth “posting and boasting” street crime. His predecessor Scott Morrison’s government is also in the headlines for giving a company $100 million in PPE contracts during the pandemic, even though it sold “air fryers, robot vacuum cleaners, bedding and massage guns”, Guardian Australia says.

To another person who claims her mouth has been covered now and men’s rights advocate Bettina Arndt has been uninvited from a University of Sydney panel that was to discuss former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann’s case, The Australian ($) reports. An organiser from the Conservative Club told her on Tuesday without giving a reason, and the paper says the event was retitled “Lawfare in Australia … a critical examination of Australia’s legal system and its weaponis­ation”. Arndt said “the woke Young Liberals” prevented her from speaking alongside Rule of Law Institute vice president Chris Merritt and journalist Andrew Urban. The Young Liberals are woke now? Life sure comes at you fast.

MINE THE GAP

There’s still going to be a surplus, Treasurer Jim Chalmers says, as the ABC reports, but declining iron ore prices and a softening labour market will make it lower than one might have expected. Iron ore is 20% cheaper ($94 a tonne) than the same time leading into last year’s budget because of steel demand in China. For context — the government gets an extra half a million dollars for every $10 a tonne above the forecast. Also, 14.2 million Australians were working in December, which is half a million more than Treasury expected. The next budget is handed down on May 14, Guardian Australia adds, and it will target slow economic growth, cost of living and global uncertainty. We won’t have the $100 billion in revenue upgrades that we had for the first two Labor budgets, however. We won’t even have the $69 billion we expected in the mid-year budget update, Chalmers said.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will announce $840 million so we can build the country’s first combined rare earth mine and refinery in the NT, The Australian ($) reports, as well as $550 million for a lithium mine in WA. Of note: Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, owns a 10% stake in the first — Arafura Rare Earths — and a 19.9% stake in the latter — Liontown Resources. She’s now worth $50.48 billion, the Oz ($) says. One in six Australian children live in poverty, UNICEF found last year. Anyway — Albanese will say the aforementioned $1.1 billion injection would create about 200 jobs during construction and more than 125 ongoing full-time jobs. Finally, 26 miners have been rescued in the Ballarat Gold Mine after a rockfall, though one is in hospital in a serious condition, the ABC reports, while emergency services worked overnight to free the last trapped person.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Bringing you some breaking monolith news folks: a perfect ten-foot monolith has appeared in Wales and nobody knows why. Welsh man Craig Muir was talking a leisurely stroll through what he jauntily described as “horrific” weather to a place called Hay Bluff when he spotted the gleaming silver structure shining amid the rugged terrain, as he tells The New York Times. That definitely wasn’t there before, he thought to himself. It was somehow “perfectly levelled and steady” in the ground despite the wild wind blowing him around, he added to the BBC. What’s weirder is there were no tracks around the structure, except for footprints. Had several people carried the monolith there? And why?

It’s probably an art installation inspired by the futuristic flick 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of many found around the world in late 2020, but it seemed a bit extraterrestrial, as if it was “dropped down from space”. Muir, a stone mason by trade, also noted upon closer inspection that it was structurally “perfect”, resembling the monoliths of Egypt except that this was made of steel rather than stone. Running his seasoned hands over the edges, he marvelled that the maker had somehow not left a single weld mark on the “crisp” edges. “Very, very neat,” he admired. People have talked of a spooky experience approaching such monoliths, as if they’re imbued with a sort of otherworldly alien energy. But for a craftsman, the magic lies between those crisp lines.

Hoping you feel a sense of wonder about it all today.

SAY WHAT?

We are providing billions of dollars to the US, have given up an independent foreign policy and made Australia a parking lot for US weapons. In exchange, we get nothing.

David Shoebridge

The Greens senator said the “failure is almost too big to wrap your head around” adding AUKUS will reduce Australia to a “big target” with “empty pockets”.

CRIKEY RECAP

Clive Palmer renews push for Titanic II and a new social media network named ‘Ausface’

ANTON NILSSON

“Clive Palmer is nearly 70 and has more money than he’ll be able to spend in his lifetime. So why not fund a $1 billion cruise ship project, recreating the doomed ocean liner Titanic and allowing it to finally complete its famed maiden voyage from Southampton to New York? …

“Palmer got a fairly sizable press gaggle together: some 15 reporters showed up at the Sydney Opera House’s Yallamundi Rooms, including staff from News Corp and Guardian Australia. The microphones on the lectern revealed ABC News, Nine News, Channel 10 and Channel 7 were also there.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Not just the UNRWA report: Countless accounts of Israeli torture in Gaza (Al Jazeera)

House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app (The New York Times)

Victoire Ingabire: Rwandan opposition leader barred from election (BBC)

Putin says he’s ready to use nuclear weapons if Russian state at stake, but ‘there has never been such a need’ (CNN)

Health NZ staffer claims they were told to stop using ‘kia ora’ and ‘nga mihi’ in emails to patients (NZ Herald)

Judge in Georgia election case dismisses six charges against Trump and others (The Guardian)

African cocoa plants run out of beans as global chocolate crisis deepens (Reuters)

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz defends his refusal to send Ukraine Taurus missiles (euronews)

THE COMMENTARIAT

This plan is just another consequence of the failed leftist fantasy that traditional Aboriginal ways are best — Andrew Bolt (The Herald Sun): “Albanese promises to spend $4 billion over 10 years to build up to 270 houses a year for [Indigenous peoples], and claims this is critical to ‘getting kids to school and getting people educated, and getting people the opportunity of a good, well paying and secure job’. Wrong. The critical thing about these houses is where you actually build them. These [houses] will be built in exactly the wrong places — in remote communities, where there’s almost no work, no ‘good, well-paying jobs’, and no role models to show children what staying at school could lead to. This plan is just another consequence of the failed leftist fantasy that traditional Aboriginal ways are best.

“It’s one more example of politicians paying [Indigenous peoples] to live as museum exhibits out bush, although the statistics show that’s where [Indigenous peoples] are most likely to suffer terrible rates of unemployment, domestic violence, and children skipping schools. It’s in cities where Aboriginal living standards are highest, so these new bush houses will trap another generation in poverty. And look at the cost. Albanese’s $4 billion will help 10,000, claims the Northern Territory’s chief minister, who signed up to it. That’s $400,000 for every man, woman and child. Is there seriously no better way to spend all that money on them? The plan also works out to [build] those houses for almost $1.5 million each. That’s three times more than the price of building an average home, according to bureau of statistics data.”

Kate Middleton’s story is about so much more than Kate Middleton — Zeynep Tufekci (The New York Times): “In January, when it was announced that Catherine had undergone surgery and would have an unusually lengthy hospital stay and recovery, the British press seemed to take the matter at face value. It repeated Kensington Palace’s vague news releases even though something out of the ordinary was clearly going on. When a paparazzi agency snapped a grainy photo of her in a car being driven by her mother, neither the quality newspapers nor any of the unabashedly aggressive tabloids ran the photos — ‘out of respect,’ as one editor said in explaining his outlet’s decision, ‘for her privacy’ whilst she recovers. Compare that with the decision last month by Britain’s highest-paid circulation newspaper, The Daily Mail, to publish ‘exclusive’ paparazzi pictures of Meghan.

“A tiny figure, barely visible in the grainy image, she is described as ‘flashing a smile’. ‘Meghan Markle beams as she drives near her $14M Montecito home — hours before Prince Harry returned home after 24 hours in London to see cancer-stricken King Charles,’ the tabloid crowed, with the clear insinuation that she was materialistic and unmoved by her father-in-law’s health crisis as she lounged in California. The double standard goes back many years. Just a few months after the birth of Meghan and Harry’s first child — during which the couple was criticised for waiting a few days before releasing photos of their son and asking for more privacy — a columnist in The Sunday Times of London derided her as ‘trying to smash the royal family’s contract with the public: We pay, they pose’.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Love on the Spectrum’s Jodi Rodgers will speak about her new book, Unique, at Glee Books.

Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)

• Physician Sarah Sasson will talk about her new book, Tidelines, at Avid Reader bookshop.