JUSTICE AND JUST-NOT-NICE
Former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann will speak about the justice system at a $100-a-ticket event organised by men’s rights advocate Bettina Arndt called Restoring the Presumption of Innocence, the SMH reports. Reporter Kate McClymont said it is being hosted by Australians for Science and Freedom, which describes itself as concerned about the government response to the pandemic, and it’ll take place in the same month as Lehrmann’s committal hearing for an alleged sexual assault in Toowoomba (he’s pleading not guilty). McClymont also notes Arndt, who has an Order of Australia, once described his one-time accuser Brittany Higgins as “a lying, scheming bimbo who destroyed a man’s life to save her career”. That rape charge against Lehrmann, who maintains his innocence, was dropped amid fear for Higgins’ health. Also in the news this morning — former Seven producer Taylor Auerbach claimed Lehrmann commended him for not sitting “with the rest of the feminazis in the press pack”, Guardian Australia reports.
Back to the pandemic for a moment and WorkSafe has accepted 130 COVID-19 vaccine-related claims from Victorian workers, the Herald Sun reports, paying out $6.8 million. Reactions like severe fever, blood clots, allergic reactions, seizures, and strokes are all covered by legislation. However, the ABC reports COVID vaccines saved about 20 million lives in the first year of the pandemic, and The New York Times adds that 900,000 Americans would have lived if the US had Australia’s lower death rate. Elsewhere, the SMH reports sexual abusers, rapists and paedophiles with intellectual disabilities and/or mental illness are receiving funding from the NDIS to live under supervision in the community after they’ve served their sentence. The government responded that every Australian can access support systems from the government, and it can mean the difference between them reoffending or not.
UNFAIR POINT
Almost half (45%) of the kids in care in NSW are Indigenous, Guardian Australia reports, even though they make up just 4% of the state’s youth. The government will review a child protection tool called “structured decision making” that screens kids, where caseworkers ask questions to gauge a child’s risk of harm. Queensland ditched it in 2022 when researchers found it was biased against First Nations kids because any prior involvement with the child protection system was a risk factor, even if it wasn’t mistreatment-related. Staying in the public sector and The Age reports the Victorian government’s plan to bin a panel that oversees the state’s official records could see the state watchdog or the ombudsman lose access to evidence, critics say. The Public Record Office Victoria is in charge of 100 kilometres of hard copy records and 600,000 digital records dating all the way back to 1836, and the panel scrutinises it.
Meanwhile, NSW preschool teachers want equal pay to public school teachers, and they’re going in to bat using new rules in the Fair Work Act that allow employees in an industry to reach the same enterprise agreement as others, no matter their employer. The SMH reports there’s a $35,000 pay gap between the most experienced teachers and their counterparts in community preschools (they’re run by not-for-profit providers). “A graduate public school teacher now earns about $17,000 more than a preschool teacher, who starts on about $67,000 a year,” the paper notes. It comes as a rising number of folks aren’t reporting their income to the tax office at all, as part of a sovereign citizen offshoot called “financial sovereignty” that spruiks pseudo law causing big penalties, the ABC reports.
DRUNK ON POWER
Coles, Woolworths, ALDI, and Metcash could be fined up to $10 million for anti-competitive behaviour under a new grocery code of conduct that would replace the voluntary one, Guardian Australia says. It’s per a report ordered by the government that also found smaller suppliers don’t complain about dodgy big four grocer behaviour out of fear of the consequences like their products being moved to a worse shelf or a worse place in the store. But AFR notes the report does not agree that watchdog the ACCC should be able to break up the Woolworth-Coles duopoly’s market power like the Greens, Coalition, and former ACCC chair Allan Fels all want, because that could see “greater market concentration” if one chain simply sold to another.
Meanwhile, the Business Council of Australia (BCA) says jobs “aren’t safe” amid the government’s incoming merger reform plans. BCA boss Bran Black wrote in The Australian ($) that large business employs almost one in three workers and businesses making less than 5% had “significantly worse employment outcomes” — so stop coming at us (BHP, Rio Tinto, Qantas, Woolworths, Coles, Woodside, Santos, etc) with anti-business-policy. Stay tuned for Treasurer Jim Chalmers’s speech on Wednesday. Meanwhile, did you know wine brands Wynns, Pepperjack, Lindemans, Rawson’s Retreat, Sterling Vineyards, 19 Crimes, and Squealing Pig are all owned by the same business, Treasury Wine Estate? They’re considering de-merging them because drinkers are ditching the $10-$15 per bottle price range, AFR says.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
Caiden MacGibbon is a six-year-old who owns no fewer than a hundred birds. It means the neighbours of his West Auckland family home live day in and day out with the chaotic cacophony of overlapping bird songs, but no-one complains. In fact, no-one minds a bit. That’s because the sweet, chubby-cheeked child has DIPG, an incurable and aggressive brain tumour. But you’d never know it, seeing him sitting on the living room floor cracking up with one of his favourite feathered friends — a hand-raised baby Bourke. Stuff’s Amberleigh Jack watched on as the little bird took flight around the room before landing on Caiden’s smiling head. His dad Karl says all of the birds are so at peace in the company of his awe-struck son. Almost as if they know somehow.
Caiden always loved birds, mum Jasmine says, describing how spellbound he was after a duck had babies on their property. Remarkably, she remembers, the mother duck didn’t mind a bit when Caiden played with the ducklings. Bird Barn is, without a doubt, his favourite shop — Jasmine said they once went every day for two weeks straight when he wistfully told his mum he’d love to own one someday. Why not today, she asked Karl, and the parents launched Caiden’s Bird Haven in a nearby garage to sell hand-raised birds as well as homemade toys and swings. Karl says the time he spends with his son turning lumps of wood into beautiful bird accessories is invaluable. They’re skills he might’ve taught Caiden as an adult, but “you know you’re going to miss out on a lot”. Still, as long as he’s happy right now, Karl says, “we’re good”.
Hoping you stop to listen to the bird songs today.
SAY WHAT?
The ‘gender card’ is nothing but a grievance narrative, constructed by the activist media and a disgruntled political class. We need the best person for the job regardless of race, gender or sexuality.
Alex Antic
Perhaps the most perplexing part of the “merit” argument is that its logic suggests men are the best of us the overwhelming majority of the time, considering just a third (31%) of Liberal and LNP parliamentarians are women.
CRIKEY RECAP
“A truly liberal party would elevate competition as its primary goal in its economic management and set about reintroducing it across the many Australian industries that are characterised by oligopolies and abuse of market power. While that would go against the Liberals’ history of acting as the puppets of their big business donors, it would provide some substance to being a party of workers, and reduce one of the key causes of diminishing living standards for Australians.
“There’s another way in which Dutton can help make the Liberals more like a party of workers. It’s also long-term, like enabling greater competition. Currently the Liberals don’t resemble the Australian workforce in any way, shape or form.”
“A temperature rise of just two degrees will have catastrophic effects on the planet and human life. Heatwaves and extreme weather events will increase significantly. More than half the world’s population will be affected by water scarcity. Food production will decline markedly, especially in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and Central and South America. The distribution and incidence of tropical diseases such as malaria and dengue fever will increase significantly.
“The impacts on the non-human world will be even more drastic. Extinction rates will soar. Collapses in insect populations will accelerate, severely disrupting ecosystems and food production. Coral reefs will all but disappear.”
“In 2014 I was one of three Al Jazeera journalists convicted of terrorism offences in Egypt, so Israel’s argument is familiar. Back then, we were covering the unfolding political crisis that flowed from the Arab Spring uprising. We had fulfilled our professional responsibilities by talking to all parties of the conflict, and that included the group that had formed the last government, the Muslim Brotherhood.
“Like all decent reporters, we had their contact details, and while we were careful not to broadcast incitements to violence, we also had a duty to present their stories, political arguments and perspectives as fairly and critically as the Egyptian government’s. In other words, it was not propaganda. It was good journalism.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Israel ‘pulls out troops’ from southern Gaza as attacks enter seventh month (Al Jazeera)
‘Worst floods in decades’ hit Kazakhstan and Russia (BBC)
Health Ministry looking at slashing roles in tobacco regulation following Smokefree U-turn (NZ Herald)
Biden could be left off general election ballot in Ohio, Republican official warns (The Guardian)
Double delight at Hong Kong Sevens as both New Zealand teams win titles (Stuff)
Musk challenges Brazil’s order to block certain X accounts (Reuters)
Peter Pellegrini to become next Slovakian president (euronews)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Compulsory grocery code strikes right balance — Craig Emerson (The AFR): “Smaller suppliers might be earning insufficient returns to warrant new investment in innovation and equipment that would enable them to offer better-quality products at lower prices. Some might describe this as desirable creative destruction, after economist Joseph Schumpeter, but that refers to the emergence of disruptive, new, productivity-raising technologies that remove poor adopters from the market. When the supermarket industry tends towards monopsony — where a small number have market buying power over their suppliers, the destruction of those suppliers is not creative.
“Of course, this doesn’t mean that every supplier, regardless of how inefficient it might be, deserves a living; they need to compete with each other and with new market entrants to improve their efficiency, innovate and lower their prices. Yet, they have no hope of doing so if their margins are so low that the best they can hope for is white-knuckled survival. While there is an economic case for government intervention to counter monopsony power in the supermarket industry, the only customised policy instrument at present is a voluntary code of conduct that contains no penalties for breaches, leaving the watchdog chained to the back porch. Since 2021, only six disputes have been initiated by suppliers and none has resulted in the awarding of compensation.”
Israel is making the same mistake America made in Iraq — David French (The New York Times): “In fact, that was the central failure of the first phase of the Iraq war. Our forces — much like the Israeli military — proved remarkably lethal and effective in urban combat. But we were ineffective in maintaining civil society or the rule of law. Iraqis’ hunger and thirst didn’t make the news as much as the Gazan plight does today. They did experience anarchy, though, and that anarchy almost cost America the war. We went for the quick win, and we ended up embroiled in one of our longest conflicts. Even worse, that anarchy might well have represented our most consequential violation of the laws of war during the entire conflict.
“While mistaken strikes, tragic accidents and scandals like the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib marred the American military effort, our combat operations as a whole were precise and targeted and often exceeded the requirements of the law of armed conflict. Our initial occupation, however, was a disaster, and that disaster didn’t just lay the groundwork for the years of war that followed; it also represented a failure to uphold our legal obligations to the people who were temporarily under our jurisdiction and control. The American military turned the tide during the surge by adopting a fundamentally different approach.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)
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ABC’s Louise Milligan will speak about her new book, Pheasants Nest, at Avid Reader.
Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)
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European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson will speak at the National Press Club.
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