Cut above the rest

THE RICH GET RICHER

The richest 1% of Australians will get as much money from the stage three tax cuts as the poorest 65% combined (!), Guardian Australia reports, some $14 billion for each cohort, according to parliamentary budget office analysis. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stood by the tax changes yesterday, but Greens Leader Adam Bandt said the Coalition-era tax cuts were only going to make things worse for inequality. The analysis showed men would get two-thirds of the cuts that come into force in 2024-25 — by the numbers, $160.6 billion to men and $82.9 billion to women. So what are the stage three tax cuts? Basically they’ll remove the 37 cents-in-the-dollar tax bracket, lower the 32.5 cent bracket to 30 cents, and raise the top tax bracket to start at $200,000 (compared with $180,000 now). If you make $50,000 a year you’ll save $2.40 a week. But if you make $200,000, you’ll save 73 times more — some $174 a week, Guardian Australia reported earlier this year.

Despite the policy’s Coalition origin, not everyone agrees it should go ahead. Liberal MP Russell Broadbent has broken ranks with his party in saying the tax cuts should be binned, the ABC reports, and the money diverted into struggling government services like social housing and defence. Broadbent said COVID has changed everything, and “people like me don’t need tax cuts”, the SMH continues. Several independents and minor parties agree — at the weekend, the paper reported nine of the 19 crossbench MPs and senators favoured scrapping or at least putting the tax cuts on hold. They’ll cost our strained budget $243 billion over 10 years, the ABC added.

[free_worm]

RED SHIRT, RED FACE

Has Victorian Labor breached its own red shirts era policy? Depends on who you believe. The Age says it was told Victorian Labor assistant secretary Nicola Castleman met government MPs and some electorate officers at Parliament House during the first parliamentary sitting week of this month to talk Labor’s reelection strategy. It’s a “potential breach of laws introduced three years ago”, the paper says, with intel coming from a “well-informed source” who didn’t put their name to their claim. In 2019, the government banned electorate staff (who are paid by the taxpayer) from campaigning after the 2014 red shirts affair, as Crikey reports, though they can still do party political work. The government told the paper no staff were at the meeting in question.

Meanwhile Victorian Liberals have rolled out former prime minister Tony Abbott in their election campaign, The New Daily reports. He popped up at a fundraiser on Saturday night and assured the trailing Libs they could turn it around. Look at the 2010 federal election, Abbott reportedly said, when he forced Julia Gillard’s Labor into a minority government (but remained in opposition, one must point out. Wouldn’t Scott Morrison’s shock win over Bill Shorten have been a better example?). Anyway, the Victorian Coalition needs 18 seats to win — but Victorian Liberal MPs are facing independent challengers in blue-ribbon seats like Kew, Sandringham and Hawthorn. Abbott claimed a vote for a teal is a vote for Labor.

WIND OF CHANGE

Climate 200-backed independent Kylea Tink has shares in two fossil fuel companies — Viva Energy and Beach Energy — according to her declaration of interests, the SMH reports. She told the paper she bought them for “shareholder activism” reasons — to influence the companies from within. She said she donated her dividends to renewable energy campaigns or emissions offsetting. Meanwhile, the AFR reports global energy titan Equinor has joined forces with Australian renewable energy company OceanEx to create big offshore wind projects in NSW. The zero-emission source is touted to supply Victoria with a fifth of all its energy by 2030, and climate-friendly wind generation makes good business sense too, considering the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) says two-thirds of our coal power will be gone by 2030. That’s some big (lucrative) shoes to fill.

Meanwhile The Australian ($) is joining the Coalition’s chorus for nuclear energy in Oz — it reports a small-scale reactor company told the paper it could power 700,000 homes as soon as 2027, some two-thirds of outgoing Liddell coal-fired power station’s supply. US correspondent Adam Creighton claims that nuclear is becoming “a more attractive option” and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is under “more pressure” to reconsider nuclear. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has spruiked nuclear in recent weeks (if you can call that pressure) but as Adam Morton writes for Guardian Australia, his party just spent a decade in office — why not talk about this then? There was a 2019 inquiry, Morton continues, but then PM Scott Morrison said our nuclear ban wouldn’t change without Labor’s support. And Labor has long ruled nuclear out on economic grounds — as one expert told the ABC, nuclear power stations can cost $20 billion and take up to 10 years to construct. Plus, Australia is one of the sunniest and windiest countries on earth, the Climate Council adds, with enough renewable energy to power our country 500 times over. Perhaps it would be better to play the (extremely good) hand we’ve been dealt.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Bridie Jabour has had a serious realisation: she is sillier now. The opinion editor for Guardian Australia says the silliness sneaked up on her amid all the bigger changes that befell a lot of us during the pandemic, like moving out of the cities, buying dogs, and joining the Great Resignation. As 2021 wrapped up, Jabour was coming down from giving birth to her second child during the disruption of consecutive lockdowns — with her three-year-old child in tow. A breakdown might’ve taken place, she adds, if she had actually had the time to break down. But this year, things calmed down a bit. She swam in the ocean and got some sleep. That’s when she noticed the silliness. She got no fewer than three tattoos in six months, one being the rather romantic gesture of her husband’s name. Her spur-of-the-moment act even inspired two others to do the same — “Well, similar,” Jabour writes. “Instead of Matty Q they got their own partner’s name, even though Matty Q would’ve been infinitely funnier.”

Sitting in her longtime hairdresser’s chair one day, she declared it was time for a fringe. Her stylist was thrown — but Jabour was like, who cares? Hair grows! The silliness, it seems, was infectious — several of her friends started throwing themed birthday parties, like The X-Files, or young, rich and tasteless. The woman at the costume shop said it wasn’t just them either — “It’s been like Halloween every weekend for months.” Jabour adds that neither she, nor those around her, take COVID for granted. Things are bad, and they have been for a while. But she’s given herself permission to “let more joy in”. Sometimes you’ve got to dance through the rain, get a spontaneous ode of love etched into your skin, and scream your lungs out howling the lyrics of a bad cover band. It can be a balm for all of us, and let’s face it — two and half years into the pandemic, we’ve earnt the right to be a bit silly sometimes. As the saying goes, “laughter is the best medicine” (but get vaccinated anyway).

Hoping you embrace the silly today, whatever that looks like for you.

Worm readers, Crikey has launched a GoFundMe to help raise funds for our defence against billionaire Fox chairman Lachlan Murdoch’s defamation suit. It has already raised $384,228 (as of 6am) and we are so chuffed. If you’d like to donate, click here — and if you have already, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

SAY WHAT?

The Andrews government is probably one of the worst governments Australia has ever had.

Tony Abbott

It’s just seven days after Australia’s second highest-ranking law officer found Scott Morrison had “fundamentally undermined” government principles by secretly swearing himself into five portfolios, something Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called an “unprecedented trashing of our democracy”, the cherry on top of a long list of well-documented lies and falsehoods, but the former PM says the Andrews government is a contender for worst ever.

CRIKEY RECAP

How Rumble became the world’s most popular video app

Cam Wilson

Aug 29, 2022

13

“When Andrew Tate was booted from Instagram, YouTube and TikTok earlier this month, the internet celebrity announced that Rumble would be the new digital home for his content. Not long after, the alt-tech video platform went to number one on the Apple and Google app stores.

“Tate is the latest online personality whose controversial statements and acts have tested what tech companies will allow on their platforms. Like Alex Jones or Milo Yiannopoulos before him, Tate’s conduct — in this case, hate speech — led to him being deplatformed. Rumble welcomed him with open arms.”

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Ousting ScoMo wasn’t Fran Bailey’s only good idea

Charlie Lewis

Aug 29, 2022

3

“Then she supported the idea of draping a big shade cloth over the Great Barrier Reef — a suggestion, along with cool water sprays, from a time when our desperation to halt coral bleaching produced a lot of ideas that could be mistaken for plans for a nice beer garden.

“We also enjoy the detail of then opposition environment minister Anthony Albanese criticising the Coalition’s ‘absurd’ approach to climate change, something that hits a little differently now as the government he leads has recently backed several new fossil fuel projects. And finally, Bailey wanted to turn showrunner — pitching a soap opera to replenish the flagging number of Japanese tourists to Australia …”

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Crikey Defence Fund: who has donated so far and why

Charlie Lewis

Aug 29, 2022

9

“‘Lachlan Murdoch owns boats that are worth more than Crikey. This is a bullying hypocritical lawsuit brought by a man who isn’t even named in the article and whose media outlets, especially Fox News, have done more to undermine American democracy than any other. Fox’s contribution to the events and context of the January 6 attempted coup are matters of the highest possible public interest and not just to Americans. Those events shook the world and it has to be said that Australians today are far more sanguine about the endurance of American democracy than many, if not most, Americans.” — Malcolm Turnbull.

” ‘Thank you for your tremendous support over the years Lachlan but I’m afraid Crikey will come after me next. Crikey, please accept this donation as a quid pro quo. I also have some (declassified) documents which you may be interested in.’ — Donald Trump.”

 

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Proxy war between East and West in Serbia, President Vucic says (Al Jazeera)

Artemis: NASA calls off new moon rocket launch (BBC)

Before and after photos show severity of Pakistan flooding (CBC)

[NZ] Parliament protest ‘judge’ under review by health provider employer (NZ Herald)

Last member of Indigenous tribe dies in Brazil after resisting contact for decades (CNN)

Major sea-level rise caused by melting of Greenland ice cap is ‘now inevitable’ (The Guardian)

French tax officials use AI to spot 20,000 undeclared pools (The Guardian)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Emergency powers, secret ministries avoid scrutiny of Parliament — George Williams (The Australian) ($): “The consequences of disobeying the health minister are severe. A person who refuses a direction, perhaps that they remain in their home or undergo a medical procedure, can be jailed for up to five years or fined $66,000. No def­ences are provided for conscientious objection or on religious grounds. The pandemic demonstrates how much impact these directions can have. Public health orders can impose government directions that contradict a person’s bodily autonomy. They also can have life or death implications. One example is the health minister’s decision in April last year that Australians be prevented from returning home if they had been in India in the previous 14 days. This stranded 9000 citizens who faced the choice of navigating the pandemic in India with COVID-19 rampant or returning to Australia and the possibility of a five-year jail term.

“The fact these powers are so extensive and concentrated in a single individual, without the possibility of effective parliamentary oversight, does not sit well with how Australian democracy should operate. Morrison was right to be concerned. He also was right to take action but chose the wrong means of doing so. Morrison should not have been appointed as a second health minister in secret. This exacerbated the problem because extreme powers could now be exercised by a second person unknown to Parliament and the community. Having a second person in the portfolio also opened up the prospect of confusion and legal uncertainty, which is highly undesirable in an emergency. In the event of conflicting orders, it is not clear which health minister should have been obeyed.”

Plibersek has power to stop mega-projects of coal and gas — Tim Flannery (The SMH): “Ignoring impacts of greenhouse gas emissions leaves the door open for dozens of new fossil fuel projects to get the go-ahead in Australia, at a time when the science could not be more clear: the world must get to net-zero emissions as fast as possible, and there can be no new coal and gas projects if we are going to keep global warming within the safe limits of well below two degrees. New coal and gas projects do not stack up environmentally and it takes a lot of mental gymnastics (and ignoring evidence) to claim they do. We can and must turn this around now. The Environment Council of Central Queensland has lodged an application for Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to reconsider 19 fossil fuel projects assessed by her predecessors, including mega-projects such as the Narrabri underground coalmine and Woodside’s North West Shelf Extension.

“Science is on their side. It’s why I have joined almost 100 other leading Australian scientists to back this legal intervention and urge Minister Plibersek to consider the wider environmental impact of burning coal and gas. This is the only responsible and evidence-based way forward. There is so much riding on this decision. The case could halt the progress of a number of existing coal and gas projects and possibly put a stop to future ones. Given that we need to be using every tool in the box to fix climate change, this would be like having a limitless Bunnings voucher. Minister Plibersek must heed the advice of the country’s leading scientists. She holds the power to turn around a decade of serious environmental decline and climate inaction.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Online

• Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth, University of Sydney’s Terry Carney, University of Queensland’s Paul Henman, Centre for Women’s Economic Safety’s Rebecca Glenn, Immigration Advice and Rights Centre’s Ann Emmanuel, National Council of Single Mothers and their Children’s Terese Edwards are among the speakers at the Economic Justice Australia Annual Conference 2022, held online.

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Author and philosopher AC Grayling will talk about how we can have courage and take action in a time of climate catastrophes, grave social injustice and senseless violence, in a talk held at UNSW’S Roundhouse.

Whadjuk Noongar Country (also known as Perth)

• Historian and researcher Janet Baldwin will discuss her book, Telescopes, Timekeeping and Teabag Jigglers: The Oral History of Perth Observatory, at The Old Observatory.

• Arose’s Leanne Cunnold, CSIRO’s Rebecca Wheadon, and Curtin University’s Renae Sayers will speak on a panel about outer space, held by CEDA.