News update for Fri 5 July 2024
Your trusted guide to the top independent news and views of the day...
Welcome to your TrueNorth news update where every weekday afternoon we share curated articles from Australia’s independent news media sector.
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Scroll down for today’s news and views…
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See TrueNorth’s Democracy Quiz - scroll down for this week’s question and test your #auspol knowledge.
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Rebel with a cause: inside the moment Fatima Payman quit the Labor party - The Guardian
At 1.57pm – just three minutes before the Australian parliament’s final question time before the winter recess – journalists’ phones pinged with a hotly anticipated media alert.
“Please be advised that at 2:05pm today I will be making a statement at Mural Hall. See you there,” said the text message.
It was signed: “Senator Fatima Payman.”
Tim Dunlop: From pledge to purge - The Future of Everything
While Senator Payman’s actions may not, on the surface, be the most important issue in the world, they do speak to something that is at the heart of our current political situation: the shift within electorates away from the major parties, specifically, from the LNP and the Labor Party.
As one Labor insider said to me this morning when I asked him about what is happening, “this is what happens when a major party of the industrial era atrophies: it is inevitable that people at the edge will break off.”
Read more from Tim Dunlop for The Future of Everything
Also read >
How Fatima Payman leveraged Gaza anger to deliver stinging rebuke to Labor - Karen Middleton for The Guardian
‘Fuelling Islamophobia from the top’: Dutton’s penchant for fear and division knows no bounds - Women’s Agenda
No room for nuance as Payman defies the collective and is rewarded with Labor smears - Bernard Keane for Crikey (paywall)
Fatima Payman walked a path familiar to many of us – work within a system or disrupt it from the outside - The Guardian
Did that really happen? 14 years of chaotic Tory government - The Guardian
Come with me to another country, far, far away, where things are a little bit different. In this fantastical land, young people can live and work in any country in Europe. You can swim in a river without catching Weil’s disease, or see your doctor.
Things aren’t perfect in this country, but 40,000 people rely on food banks instead of 3.1 million. People live half a year longer. Five-year-olds are taller.
Reader, you’ll never guess what. That country is Britain! Or it was until 2010, when a parade of five Conservative prime ministers, seven chancellors and eight home secretaries (two of whom were Suella Braverman) climbed behind the wheel of Britain’s temperamental but mostly reliable family hatchback, and drove it into a hedge.
A new bill is proposing a human right to housing. How would this work? - The Conversation
There’s a new bill before federal parliament calling for housing to be considered a fundamental human right.
The bill, introduced last week by independent federal parliamentarians Kylea Tink and David Pocock, would require the government to create a ten year National Housing and Homelessness Plan.
One part of the bill states housing should be considered a fundamental human right for all Australians. Here’s how this would work.
The internet sleuths fighting fake research - 7am Podcast
Smut Clyde spends several hours every day, scouring online science journals for suspicious-looking research. He’s part of a growing team of online ‘science sleuths’, combating the rising number of fake research papers being published. These papers are typically generated, with the help of AI, by ‘paper mills’: a cottage industry relying on overworked and desperate researchers to fuel their profit. Today, 7am producer and journalist Cheyne Anderson on how this epidemic of fraudulent research is infecting the scientific record and the self-appointed ‘sleuths’ who are fighting it. Socials:
Today’s cartoon by Cathy Wilcox for The SMH/Age
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here
Bruce Wolpe: Will Biden step aside? - The Saturday Paper
As Democrats wrestle with the question of whether Joe Biden should stay on as their presidential candidate, their chances of winning look remote whether he does or not.
Last Monday, Samantha Mostyn was sworn in as Australia’s 28th governor-general. Given what has been unfolding this week in the United Kingdom, France and the United States, it was nice for a change to see an advanced democracy work without upheaval.
In days before the Canberra ceremony, it seemed clear US President Joe Biden would conclude he should step aside from his re-election campaign. The first presidential debate with Republican nominee Donald Trump had been a disaster.
Read more from Bruce Wolpe for The Saturday Paper
Jo Dyer: The catastrophic state of the United States - The Shot
With Julian Assange now safely back on Australian soil, let us acknowledge that the fact he was sequestered inside for 4387 days, including 1901 days in solitary confinement in Britain’s highest security prison for the crime of publishing truthful information, is shocking. The United States, the world’s self-proclaimed bastion of free speech, pursued Assange relentlessly from the moment he revealed details of the war crimes they’d committed, of their cavalier attitude to skyrocketing civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their enthusiastic commitment to spying on allies. They wanted revenge and were determined to ensure no one would embarrass them thus again.
Read more from Jo Dyer for The Shot
Also read >
This Fourth of July, it’s hard to feel optimistic about the US. But I have hope - Margaret Sullivan for The Guardian
Ben Raue: A history of two-party-preferred - The Tally Room Podcast
Ben is joined by Murray Goot to discuss the two-party-preferred vote: the history of the metric, how it is used today, how it influences how we think about our party system, and whether it still works in the more complex party system we have today.
Listen to Ben Raue on The Tally Room Podcast
How Australia can contribute to world peace - Pearls and Irritations
Without ANZUS Australia would no longer feel the need to follow its great and powerful friend into wars which have nothing to do with this country. Most importantly, Australia would no longer have to sacrifice young Australians in wars which have little or nothing to do with this nation.
Read more in Pearls and Irritations
David Hardaker: What makes a journalist? - The Politics
How did you feel about the sight of white-maned Julian Assange striding across the Canberra airport tarmac with fist held high last week, defiant as ever after more than a decade behind embassy and prison walls?
You don’t have to like Assange or what he stands for to know that this was a high impact moment.
Assange’s return triggered the same old question about the Wikileaks founder: Is he really a journalist? If the answer is yes, he is deserving of the respect we extend to others in the media business who have suffered for their art. If the answer is no, he is more a criminal than a noble seeker of the truth.
Read more from David Hardaker for The Politics
Lips are sealed on Australians fighting with the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza: FOIs - Michael West Media
What is the legal position of the estimated 1,000 Australians fighting for the Israel Defense Forces amid allegations of IDF genocide in Gaza and International Court of Justice proceedings? Michael West reports on the progress (or not) of Freedom of Information requests.
What is the legal position of Australians fighting for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in Gaza amid claims of widespread breaches of international law in a conflict which has taken the lives of 40,000 people, more than half of them women and children?
Read more from Michael West Media
This week’s Democracy Quiz question…
Q. There has been intense speculation about WA Senator Fatima Payman’s political future since she crossed the floor to vote in support of a Greens motion to recognise a Palestinian state more than a week ago. She held a media conference yesterday afternoon to announce that:?
1. She had resigned from the Labor Party and would be joining the Greens
3. She had resigned from the Senate and would be leaving politics altogether
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Tory Maguire defends Nine CEO’s trip to Greece as reporters seethe over job cuts - The Guardian
No, we shouldn’t ban kids under 16 from social media — we don’t have the proof it will fix anything - Crikey (paywall)
Dutton and Trump: A dangerous duo - Independent Australia
Why is Amazon building a ‘top secret’ $2 billion cloud for Australia’s military intelligence? - The Conversation
Would you work a six day week? - The Daily Aus Podcast
Labor faces Senate probe into offshore wind, as Nationals push for nuclear-fuelled hydrogen cars - Renew Economy
Meet the French Rupert Murdoch who dragged a nation to the far right - Crikey (paywall)
Gas shortfalls for eastern states worse than predicted just months ago, ACCC warns - The Guardian
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here
Share your views on Australia’s media landscape through TrueNorth’s short survey
You’re up to date for Friday the 5th July. See you tomorrow!
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here