Leying her cards on the table

ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY

“The time to sook and moan is done,” Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley — who The Australian says is “mooted as a future Liberal leadership candidate” (by whom, we ask?) — writes in a sweeping op-ed for The Australian ($) which The Australian ($) then reported on for some reason. Ley declares proudly — and at times erroneously — that the Liberal Party represents “Townsville”, “Toorak” (even though Labor holds this seat after the Liberals lost it last election), “Bondi” (independent Allegra Spender’s electorate) “Balgowlah” (independent Zali Steggall’s) “Bunbury”, “Broome”, “Weipa”, and “Wentworth” (again, this is Spender’s electorate). She dunked on her party too, saying the reason the Liberals won in 2013 under Tony Abbott was because there was no “sniping from inside the tent”, they had “really good” candidates in place, and “we weren’t beating our chests trying to out-right-wing or out-left-wing each other”. Following these barbs, Ley spoke of unity. Well, unity might’ve been a bit easier before you criticised your own team in the public arena, but anyway…

Ley is also in the news for accusing Labor of a “Big Australia” immigration policy within a housing crisis, which Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil rebuffed. O’Neil’s just launched a migration overhaul: from July, immigrant workers have to earn $70,000, up from $53,900, to get the temporary skilled migrant visa, the SMH explains. Also, temporary migrants will be able to move between jobs which will empower them to leave tricky situations (employer sponsorship prohibited this), and student visa rules will be tightened to ensure people aren’t enrolling in “low-value” courses just to work here, Guardian Australia adds. The review also says we should have a parent visa lottery, because some parents are waiting up to 40 years to join their kids here. Wowza.

NATURE’S CALLS

Councils in SA should change their bylaws to allow transgender, intersex and gender-diverse people to use the toilet that corresponds with their gender, a parliamentary committee of Labor, Liberal and SA-Best MPs has recommended, as The Advertiser ($) reports. Also, it said, the age limit on kids going into toilets with a parent of the opposite gender should be ditched — like if a mum went into the women’s loo with her son. Incredibly, a few years back Tea Tree Gully banned kids over five (!) from doing so — that’s kindergarten kids, folks. In Adelaide, the age limit is eight. It means if you have two kids whose ages fall either side of that limit, you either have to leave one loitering outside alone or send one in alone, quite the Sophie’s Choice for parents, particularly if one child lives with a disability.

To other dismal news about protecting kids. The Anglican Church has decided former governor-general Peter Hollingworth will not be defrocked, Guardian Australia reports, despite it finding he had committed misconduct by allowing John Elliot and Donald Shearman to remain in the church knowing they had sexually assaulted children. The review also found Hollingworth had made “unsatisfactory and insensitive” comments about survivor Beth Heinrich in an episode of Australian Story that appeared to blame her, though he says that was not his intention. She was incorrectly named “Beth Shearman” in the review, the paper notes, which is the surname of her abuser.

GOING FOR BROKE

Using a credit card to gamble online will be banned soon, the Albanese government has announced via the ABC. No date yet — it’s got to speak to industry groups and stakeholders — but the legislation will be introduced later this year. Lotteries will be exempt from the ban because they are “low-risk” gambling (not to mention a source of revenue for the government, but anyway). It comes as Ladbrokes and Neds have been slogged a fine for taking 78 bets after the LIV golf tournament in Bangkok had already begun, Guardian Australia reports. It’s $13,200, which is a drop in the sea, but it’s the maximum fine the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) could dish out. The bets are banned because they’re too high-pressure for problem gamblers.

And they’re not the only ones: Australian operator Crown Resorts has been fined $30 million after being caught signing uncleared bank cheques (adding up to a whopping $1.5 billion) and illegally allowing people to gamble, The Australian ($) says. Here’s how it worked: gamblers could deposit cheques made out to themselves before the cheque had cleared, a practice that saw “undocumented” subversion of the rules around cheques at casinos, the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission said. Crown is on probation at the moment anyway, the paper says, until it proved it’s worthy of a casino licence.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

During the pandemic, Zoom parties were momentarily all the craze until we realised how awkward it is to have an unstructured video call with several other people’s floating heads. But the bird world is embracing the technology. Parrots who make video calls to other parrots are way happier, a study The Guardian reports on has found. After chatting with their feathered friends, the colourful squawkers preen, sing, and play — compare that with isolated, bored parrots who rock, pace or even pluck their own feathers. See parrots usually live in flocks in the wild, the study says, and with 20 million parrots in homes in the US, there’s no reason why we can’t connect them again.

OK, so it’s not like a parrot can peruse a tablet with its pea-brain head, right? So researchers trained the 18 birds to ring a bell when they were (assumingly) feeling chatty. They were promptly presented with a screen — how regal — and then would touch the photo of another bird they wanted to call. The birds made some 147 calls to each other during the six-week study. Researchers were astounded that they really seemed to know they were interacting with a real bird on the other side because they started mirroring each other’s behaviour, something humans actually do as well when we are engaged with another person. It was quite sweet watching them video chat, one researcher said: “Some would sing, some would play around and go upside down, others would want to show another bird their toys.”

Hoping you spend some time with a good friend today, and have a restful weekend.

SAY WHAT?

The time to sook and moan is done. Our party is locking in behind Peter Dutton because Australians are relying on us to get opposition right. Because this is a bad Labor government — and it is going to get worse.

Sussan Ley

• Patched up our relationship with China and France;
• Signed the global methane pledge;
• Launched a campaign to get our First Nations peoples into our constitution;
• Raised our climate emission pledge by 60%;
• Strengthened bargaining in major industrial relation reform;
• Created — at long last — a national corruption watchdog;
• Overhauled our immigration system to get a smoother entry for New Zealanders and skilled workers;
• Slashed the price of 300 medicines;
• Halted legal proceedings against Bernard Collaery.

CRIKEY RECAP

Is the Liberal Party really that divided?

CAROLYN HOLBROOK and JAMES WALTER

“More recent Liberal divisions over policy offer further grounds for comparison. The republic issue, championed by Labor prime minister Paul Keating in the 1990s, looked likely to cause division within the Liberal Party. While Howard was a dyed-in-the-wool monarchist, his shadow cabinet included well-known republicans Peter Costello, Robert Hill, Richard Alston and Peter Reith.

“During the 1996 election campaign, Howard undertook to hold a constitutional convention on the republic if he won the prime ministership. If that convention reached a consensus about a model, Howard would take it to referendum, which is what happened in 1999. Recognising the differing views within his party, the prime minister allowed Liberal parliamentarians a free vote on the republic, but was pleased when the referendum, against which he campaigned enthusiastically, failed.”

Anti-trans freedom movement protesters storm local council meeting

JULIA BERGIN

“The anti-trans protests, led by a group called ‘Voice for Kids’, stalled the start of Wednesday’s council meeting and temporarily suspended proceedings once they kicked off. According to the group’s website, its remit is to ‘send a clear message to Monash councillors that drag queen shows are not appropriate for children’.

“The group appears to be spearheaded by prominent anti-lockdown advocate Monica Smit, also at the helm of the group Reignite Democracy Australia that has spruiked conspiracy theories relating to vaccines, lockdowns, 5G, and extreme weather events. Taking to Twitter, Smit denied any association with Voice for Kids other than helping to ‘create a basic website’. The Reignite Democracy Australia and Voice for Kids websites share a designer (Coral Designs), while a domain search shows both are registered to Smit.”

The inside story of Murdoch v Crikey: how it began

MICHAEL BRADLEY

“Objectively, it’s fair to say that the imputations Murdoch’s lawyers chose were at the outer edge of the range of possible meanings one might claim Keane’s article inferred. This is a not-uncommon tactic in the Australian defamation context, or at least had been in the years before the new public interest defence came into existence. The tactical benefit was that, if you alleged defamatory imputations that could not possibly be proved as true, then you deprived a media publisher of their most potent (and often only available) defence: truth.

“Whether that was the plan or not, Crikey like any publisher faced an immediate and urgent concern: the threat of litigation by an infinitely funded complainant who was apparently sincerely upset. Crikey’s first move was one of mitigation, buying it time to properly consider its position; it took the article down. Doing so does not undo the defamation, but it does reduce the harm (if there is any).”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Jerry Springer, raucous talk show host, dead at 79 (Reuters)

Erdogan thanks Putin for his help on Turkish nuclear plant (Al Jazeera)

Far-right party joins formal talks to form Finland’s next government (euronews)

Iran seizes oil tanker ‘trying to flee’ in Gulf waters (Al Jazeera)

Russia denies Evan Gershkovich consular visit (BBC)

Hugh Grant claims The Sun burgled his flat to obtain private information (The Guardian)

Snapchat’s new AI chatbot is already raising alarms among teens and parents (CNN)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Albanese runs a highly controlled government using gossamer threads — Michelle Grattan (The Conversation): “The Albanese government operates on the principle of maximum visibility, but that is accompanied by considerable secrecy. A bevy of ministers is sent out daily to blitz the news and talk cycles. But what we don’t know is as significant as what we get to see and hear. If we go back to the Hawke government, for example, the cabinet process was much more transparent, the policy arguments among ministers more exposed. Some of this was due to leaks, but there was also a greater willingness to talk about the internal debates.

“Mostly — albeit not entirely — Albanese has been able to keep behind closed doors what divisions there are. This holds despite the exposure of some battling around Treasurer Jim Chalmers and budgeting. News conferences can be telling contests between a prime minister and journalists. Albanese has one interesting tactic for avoiding being thrown onto the back foot. ‘You get one question’ is his mantra. That stops a journalist following up an answer in which the PM has dodged. While sometimes fellow reporters will home in, often the ‘one question’ approach allows for escape. Scott Morrison was a control freak and the crassness of his style meant things often ran out of control. Albanese runs a highly controlled government, but uses gossamer threads, so the control becomes near invisible.”

Is the weird UberPool experience worth saving $3? — Abbir Dib (The SMH) ($): “If you’re not familiar with UberPool the app beckons you with ‘up to 30%’ off the fare if others can share your ride. Those passengers are riding in (arguably) the same direction as you. Uber introduced the option in Australia in 2018. After a bumpy start (given the plague) it returned in May 2022. Uber refuses to share statistics on how many people use the service in Australia, but a New York Times article in 2016 found UberPool accounted for more than half the Uber trips taken in ‘many cities’.

“I can’t say UberPool is affordable compared to public transport, but after a few pints a little discount looks appealing. Should I pay $22 to get home like a king, with a personal chauffeur and a direct route? Or $19 with the potential of being within arm’s reach of a stranger and discovering where Bellfield is … It has the same energy as sharing an elevator, except for 10 minutes. Sometimes longer. Uber says the pool option shouldn’t take more than 5-10 minutes than an UberX. I can say with absolute certainty this is not the case … But I do wonder if there are too many variables conducive to a bad experience. Once I was riding home from the city and a couple of raucous men joined from a pub. I was too tired to mediate the two-person rule for my driver, and he gave up too. The passenger next to me made his last bid for a warm body in his bed that night.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)

• The premiers and chief ministers will get together with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for a national cabinet to discuss COVID, energy, housing and more.

• Queensland Poetry Festival founder B R Dionysius is launching his new collection, Critical State, at Avid Reader bookshop.

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Executive coach Ella Zhang will talk about her book, Upgrade, and how you can reach your full potential, in a talk at Chatswood Library.

Kaurna Country (also known as Adelaide)

• Adelaide Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith will speak at a business luncheon held by the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce at the InterContinental Adelaide.