MORRISON CONSIDERS FOLLOWING TRUMP ON JERUSALEM
Prime Minister Scott Morrison will consider a controversial recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a decision that would follow Donald Trump’s move earlier in the year and risk further alienating Palestine.
According to both The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian ($), Morrison will also announce support today for two key US and Israeli policies: a review of Australia’s support for Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, and a vote against Palestine’s leadership of a United Nations voting bloc of developing nations.
Shifting the Australian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a possibility echoed yesterday by Wentworth candidate Dave Sharma, would make Australia just the second major country to follow Trump’s decision. It would also follow a similar move earlier in the year where the US and Australia cast the only two votes against a UN investigation into the March-May Gaza killings.
LIBERALS CALL FOR #KIDSOFFNAURU
A group of Liberal backbenchers have reportedly plead with Prime Minister Scott Morrison to evacuate 85 refugee children and their parents from Nauru.
The Herald Sun ($) reports that Russell Broadbent, Craig Laundy and Julia Banks spoke to Morrison last month and believe the situation on Nauru has hit a “tipping point”, after multiple accounts of child suicide attempts. They say the Coalition has an opportunity to offer a compassionate evacuation on the back of a groundswell of calls from groups such as UNHCR, Médecins Sans Frontières, the Australian Medical Association, MSF and the International Committee for the Red Cross.
POWER PURCHASE AGREEMENTS ENTER THE ARENA
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency has announced support for the country’s first online marketplace for power purchase agreements, a model that builds on American success stories and would help businesses and local councils source cheaper renewable energy sources direct.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that ARENA will provide $500,000, to be matched by $300,000 in funds from the NSW and Victorian governments, to the Business Renewables Centre. The announcement coincides with a new Climate Council study of state and territory shares of renewable energy, which currently puts Tasmania, ACT and South Australia well above both Victoria and NSW.
[free_worm]
THEY REALLY SAID THAT?
[We] acknowledge:
- The deplorable rise of anti-white racism and attacks on Western civilisation; and
- It is okay to be white.
28 Australian senators
A One Nation motion with roots in online white supremacist movements gets voted down by just 31-28 in the Australian senate.
CRIKEY QUICKIE: THE BEST OF YESTERDAY
“Whether you buy The Australian‘s narrative of a Liberal resurgence under Morrison (although Peter van Onselen essentially called it bullshit) or Fairfax’s narrative that the government has actually gone backwards since even the smoking-ruins aftermath of a pointless leadership spill, it is clear Scott Morrison is a different leader than Turnbull.”
“‘Break up with a bird’, ‘spin a yarn’, ‘cry like a man’, ‘play golf naked’, ‘survive in the wild’, ‘hijack a rum truck’. The inside cover of Nick ‘Honey Badger’ Cummins’ new book is best read while imagining him hollering the words at you from the other side of a country pub, likely with a lukewarm schooner of Toohey’s New Iron Jack in hand.”
“The ABC is caught managing a relationship with a Liberal government that never seems to have moved on from Howard adviser Grahame Morris’ analysis (“our enemies talking to our friends”). That’s why the federal government puts so much effort into complaining about the ABC; it’s signalling to its base.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Government ‘did not ask’ for crucial documents in ABC investigation
Push to increase and expand GST
ALP looks at right to strike for industry-wide pay claims ($)
WA’s federal MPs bill taxpayers $19.1m in travel and office expenses
Queensland police scale back strawberry probe to one full-time detective
Research maps real risk of major tsunami in Sydney
Labor puts the heat on Coalition over teacher discrimination
Tourism Minister David Ridgway forgets to declare $1.1m family home in pecuniary interests register ($)
Grand Mufti challenges gay teachers’ rights to work in Islamic schools ($)
‘It’ll change back’: Trump says climate change not a hoax, but denies lasting impact
THE COMMENTARIAT
Morrison plays smart hand on Iran and Israel ($) — Greg Sheridan (The Australian): “All the moves that Scott Morrison will announce today on Israel, Iran and the Middle East are good, bold, measured and responsible. Australia should seldom if ever take refuge in abstaining from anti-Israel resolutions at the UN. If we think the resolution is bad, as they mostly are, then we should have the courage of our convictions to vote no rather than taking refuge in the coward’s castle of abstention.”
Viral letter to PM shows the people are united — Dr Sara Townend (The Sydney Morning Herald): “The Prime Minister’s rejection of the Australian Medical Association’s call for the transfer of the asylum seeker and refugee children and their families off Nauru has been swift but it hasn’t deterred us. Now, just over two weeks later, more than 5600 doctors and medical students from around the country say they agree.”
Australians care about animals – but we don’t buy ethical meat — Amelia Cornish and Paul McGreevy (The Conversation): “Australians clearly care about animal welfare: our research has found 92% shoppers in Sydney considered animal welfare to be important. However, when we look at the distribution of market share of so-called high-welfare foods in Australia, we get a varied picture. Aussie shoppers seem to care far more about free-range eggs than the living conditions of pigs, cows and broilers (meat poultry).”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Canberra
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CEO of the Australian Council of Social Service Dr Cassandra Goldie will launch the new ACOSS/UNSW “Poverty in Australia 2018” report at the National Press Club.
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National president of the Planning Institute Australia Brendan Nelson will launch the National Settlement Strategy, a strategic planning framework.
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Rural Australians for Refugees, Ngunnawal people, mayors and more will hold a country-led rally at Parliament House calling for refugee children to be released from Nauru.
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Author Robyn Williams will speak on her new memoir Turmoil: Letters from the brink, in-conversation with journalist Alex Sloan for an ANU/Canberra Times event.
Sydney
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Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex will begin their Australian tour in Sydney.
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Actor John Jarratt is listed to appear in court for a case mention regarding a rape charge from the 1970s.
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Telstra will hold its AGM.
Melbourne
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The Victorian Multicultural Commission will launch its “Ambassadors for Multiculturalism” campaign with a panel event to include Multicultural Affairs Minister Robin Scott and five high profile Victorians.
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More than 150 emergency doctors, psychiatrists, consumers, clinicians and other stakeholders will attend the Mental Health in the Emergency Department Summit.
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Former Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith will speak in-conversation for the Fifth Estate with the Wheeler Centre’s Sally Warhaft.
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Members of African communities will speak on their experiences within the education system at Footscray event “Walking with African Communities”, to include an update on Department of Education and Training initiatives.
Adelaide
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The Australia Day Council will host a breakfast event with key stakeholders on homelessness and domestic violence.
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Research Director at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development Professor Miriam Jorgensen will present “American exceptionalism or Australian opportunity?: An examination of Indigenous nation building” for Flinders University’s 2018 Elliott Johnston Memorial Lecture.
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NBN Co will host a “Get Online” community event.
Brisbane
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Journalist Kay McGrath will host a “Women and Poverty” public forum at Parliament House, with guests speakers to include Minister for Employment and Small Business and Minister for Training and Skills Development Shannon Fentiman.
Hobart
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Scientists will sail from Hobart on the research ship Investigator to study ocean currents south of Tasmania and how they could impact global climate.
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Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation members working at the Royal Hobart Hospital will take to the street as part of weekly industrial action.
Ballarat, Victoria
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A service will be held at the Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Hellfire Pass and the completion of the Thai–Burma Railway.
Perth
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The Dementia Partnership Project will host the “We” in Dementia Community Services symposium.
Ironically, after yesterday’s piece about Morrison’s speed of reaction to crises which noted that these crises keep popping up, we have a prime example straight away. Morrison’s reaction is correct and with a commendable lack of dithering (one wonders if Turnbull would have found the gumption to challenge the Liberal right on this and wear the taunts of being an “SJW” that the Liberal right would have thrown at him, and one knows Abbott would have doubled down on it). However, it does not undo the fact that he was solving yet another crises created by his own party’s crap behaviour.
Don’t you fact check any articles or opinion pieces on Crikey?
Wrong fact no 1: Australia is not the second country to consider moving their embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. There are 5 others, that makes Australia number 7.
Wrong fact no 2: Trump did not make the decision to move the US embassy. It was decided 27 years ago, voted on unilaterally by Congress and the budget for doing so was in place. All Trump did, was not veto it, as all the presidents have.
Wrong fact no 3: The Palestinians are not a recognised state by the UN, therefore they have no right to head anything at the UN. They only have observer statice. Think about it.
Three false facts in the first paragraph. Crikey appears to have an agenda, especially when it comes to Middle East politics. Wonder why that is?
RJ is selectively fact-checking his post.
The opening of the U.S. Embassy building in Jerusalem coincided with – provoked? – the bloodiest day of the 2018 Gaza border protests, with more than 57 Palestinians murdered by the Zionists.
However, despite the move of the Embassy building to Jerusalem, President Trump postponed the move of the Embassy as an institution to Jerusalem because the Jerusalem Embassy Act requires the US Ambassador to have a permanent residence in Jerusalem, a condition not yet fulfilled.
As the new embassy building straddles the 1949–67 Armistice line in Jerusalem, it is located partially in West Jerusalem and partially in no man’s land. A senior United Nations official stated: “Under international law it is still occupied territory, because neither party has any right to occupy the area between the lines”.
Under the British Mandate of Palestine, the principal Allied Powers recognized the unique spiritual and religious interests in Jerusalem among the world’s three great monotheistic religions as “a sacred trust of civilization”, and stipulated that the existing rights and claims connected with it be safeguarded in perpetuity, under international guarantee.
UN Resolution 181(ii) of 1947 continued that policy.
The opening of the US embassy was on the 70th anniversary of Israel’s independence. The riots in Gaza coincided with that date. Hamas planned it that way.
The US embassy is in West Jerusalem and not anywhere near the armistice line. West Jerusalem is not disputed. The so-called occupied territories were ceded by Jordan in the peace treaty.
Trump chose not to veto a decision made by Congress 27 years ago.
Cite the international law. It doesn’t exist. Rhetoric doesn’t win you that argument.
The Arabs rejected the plan for Jerusalem to be an international city and Jordan invaded Jerusalem and expelled all the Jewish residents and burned all the synagogues.
The mandate for Palestine was abandoned by the British forcing Israel to declare independence.
Get your facts straight before making spurious claims.
Yes, the decisions discussed here are what have become trademark morrison decisions – someone or some group must be hurt, it must be the weakest, and it must drive further social and economic division.
Contrary to “The Australian’s” fantasy, the “backdoor” is a figment of the Right’s and the media’s imagination. Obviously the monotony of the current brutalities is proving tedious for the Right and the media, so they need to add some novelty.
Observe too the extraordinarily vicious obsession with barring people who have committed no crime but to flee oppression. Such blind hatred of such a harmless (and indeed small) group at least exemplifies the habitual viciousness that now permeates government and the ruling clique. It is also directed at the rest of us. Hence the plan to dump large numbers of immigrants in rural Australia with no jobs and no support, on pain of deportation if they relocate!
Brutalities of the concentration camps have for some years had no connection with the ostentatious “deterring” of asylum-seekers. Since we now extraordinarily render all refugees back to their persecutors, there is no need for anyone to be kept in the Nauru concentration camp, Manus having effectively been closed because it broke the law. But it has far too much political mileage for the hater traitor Right to cease continuing the nonsense. Sadism appeals. Its costs and failures we pay for.