News update for Mon 2 Sept 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…
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here
NACC boss misled Dreyfus over Robodebt - The Klaxon
The head of the National Anti-Corruption Commission Paul Brereton made misleading statements to Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus over his management of conflicts of interest regarding the Robodebt referrals.
A three-page official letter from the NACC Commissioner to the Attorney General, released by the NACC to The Klaxon, reveals that Brereton told Dreyfus he would “recuse” himself from decision-making in the matter.
In the letter Brereton tells Dreyfus — twice — that he told his senior NACC colleagues in a meeting on July 3 last year that should a matter affecting someone with whom he has had, or has, a close association come before the Commission, he would “recuse myself from decision making” and “allocate the matter to a Deputy Commissioner”.
In all, Brereton uses the word “recuse” four times in the letter.
John Hewson: The real power of independents - The Saturday Paper
I was concerned in the run-up to the last federal election that the mainstream media was either playing down or ignoring the potency of the community-based independent movements. Now, I am seeing a renewed effort to predict the end of the independents as a force in our electoral processes when, to my mind, the independents are an irreversible improvement in our process of government.
This is becoming a pertinent issue, with the growing expectation that the outcome of the next election, to be held by the end of May, is a hung parliament.
Read more from John Hewson in The Saturday Paper (paywall)
High-end secrecy and money-laundering is dragging the property market higher - Michael West Media
A rise in secrecy by property owners can only exacerbate the housing crisis. Michael West checks out how secrecy, money-laundering and tax breaks have shot housing affordability.
The Nine Entertainment titles are known more for their goggle-eyed adulation of upmarket property than their analysis but the AFR broke ranks over the weekend and published a commendable investigation into the rise in secrecy surrounding wealthy property buyers.
Australian TV is soon to be dominated by right-wing moguls - Crikey
Right-wing moguls might by the only people left willing to invest in the dying industry. It makes the role of the ABC ever more important.
The 2024 reporting season has demonstrated that two of Australia’s three major commercial free-to-air TV networks — Seven West Media and Ten — are now friendless, broke and without any buyer interest. The third, Nine, is eking out lower profits, but like Seven and Ten is cutting costs and jobs.
Worse for Seven and Ten, their owners do not want to rescue and recapitalise them. Indeed, year after year, Kerry Stokes continues to write down the value of his dominant minority stake in Seven — a now wholly disgraced and discredited outfit with a share price of just 16 cents, down from a height of 70 cents in 2022.
Read more in Crikey (paywall)
Also read > Bonus Watch: Which media executives took home the fattest bonuses? - Crikey
Alan Kohler: Where is Australia’s real prosperity going to come from now? - The New Daily
The boom in immigration and the shift in the economy from goods to services has made the normal aggregate data that the ABS measures meaningless.
Economists and policymakers use it to assess the economy, and say that everything is fine. A data point that matters most, it seems to me, is per capita household disposable income adjusted for inflation, and on that score everything is not fine at all, far from it.
Read more from Alan Kohler for The New Daily
The census backlash and backflip - The Daily Aus
The Federal Government has changed its stance on including questions about sexual orientation, gender identity, and variations in sex characteristics in the next census. It follows mounting pressure from LGBTQ+ advocates and several Government MPs. In today’s deep dive, we’ll take you through the census controversy, the backlash and the backflip.
Listen to The Daily Aus Podcast
Also read >
The government seems stuck in a game of piggy in the middle, with the Greens and Coalition throwing the ball - Laura Tingle for The ABC
Sense and Census Abilities - Rick Morton for his Nervous Laughter substack
Why is a LGBTIQA+ census question a ‘woke agenda’? - Crikey (paywall)
The Monday essay: The struggle to define the government’s vision and direction - New Politics
Newspoll remains tied at 50–50, but Albanese’s net approval slumps - The Conversation
Today’s cartoon by Megan Herbert 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
‘It’s time to give up on normal’: what winter’s weird weather means for the warm months ahead - The Conversation
Heavy winds struck south-east Australia over the weekend as a series of cold fronts moved across the continent. It followed a high fire danger in Sydney and other parts of New South Wales last week, and a fire in south-west Sydney that threatened homes.
The severe weather rounds out a weird winter across Australia. The nation’s hottest ever winter temperature was recorded when Yampi Sound in Western Australia reached 41.6C on Tuesday. Elsewhere across Australia, winter temperatures have been way above average.
We can look to the positives: spring flowers are blooming early, and people have donned t-shirts and hit the beach. But there’s a frightening undercurrent to this weather.
Also read >
Environment: The climate crisis is a health crisis - Pearls and Irritations
South Australia runs on more than 100 pct net renewables in last week of winter - Renew Economy
Dutton's nuclear vision is distorted by ignorance (or worse) - Pearls and Irritations
Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan may well have minimal carbon emissions, but the distant time of arrival, and ignoring the well known drawbacks makes it a dud.
On the face of it, it is all whizzbang white heat of technology (albeit of 60 years ago) and no carbon emissions (never mind the other ones). The problem lies with the nature of the beast.
The energy produced is heat, resulting from nuclear fission (the splitting of atoms, from a critical mass of highly radioactive material, e.g., uranium 235). The process needs to be controlled or it goes off like Hiroshima, so it is a technical fear of some delicacy, given the cost of failure, as can be seen from Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Read more in Pearls and Irritations
Is this the end of the Jacqui Lambie Network? - 7am Podcast
It’s been almost a decade since Jacqui Lambie dramatically quit the Palmer United Party. Since then, she’s become a political force in Canberra and in her home state of Tasmania as the leader of the Jacqui Lambie Network. At the last federal election, Lambie’s longtime staffer Tammy Tyrrell won a senate spot – and at the last Tasmanian election, just a few months ago, the party won three seats.
But now, the JLN is imploding, after Tyrrell resigned and two of the three Tasmanian MPs were sacked. Today, senior reporter for The Saturday Paper Rick Morton on the allegations Lambie spied on her colleagues and why she hasn’t been able to hold the party together.
Abul Rizvi: Student cap hysteria overblown - Independent Australia
It is not clear that student caps, with the Government each year telling each provider how many new students they can have, is the best way to manage this. A better approach would be to use university entrance exam scores and/or tailored aptitude tests, such as those used by top universities in the USA, to determine who is recruited. The minimum score could be set by the Government to manage volumes. In addition, temporary graduate visas should only be available to students who have completed a high-quality qualification in an area of long-term skill need.
What is abundantly clear is that caps are a poor policy tool and the Government should go back to the drawing board on this.
Read more from Abul Rizvi for Independent Australia
Muslim groups to campaign on gambling and domestic violence in lead-up to Australian election - The Guardian
A political advocacy group seeking to mobilise Muslim Australians before the next election says it will elevate the community’s voice on non-faith issues including gambling and domestic violence, alongside Israel’s war in Gaza.
On Sunday afternoon Muslim Votes Matter, a new grassroots group, launched its national campaign in the lead-up to next year’s federal election at the Broadmeadows town hall, in the federal seat of Calwell, where it plans to back candidates.
The group is planning to campaign in 32 federal seats – the majority Labor-held – with a significant Muslim population.
Also read >
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Australians should be angry about Coles’ latest billion-dollar profit. But don’t blame the cost of living - John Quiggin
Is Labor pandering too much to the right, when it should be veering to the left? - New Politics Podcast
The Year That Made Me: Thomas Mayo, 2017 - ABC Listen
The NDIS is failing profoundly disabled people who are stuck in group homes. Here’s how to fix this - The Conversation
SA draft redistribution published - Ben Raue for The Tally Room
X’s Elon Musk and Telegram’s Pavel Durov are using the ‘free speech’ excuse to defend their tech autocrat status - Cam Wilson for Crikey (paywall)
Greens appeal to renters with regulator that could fine real estate agencies - The Guardian
Truth telling or economic development? To deliver for Indigenous people, the government must do both - The Conversation
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here
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You’re up to date for Monday the 2nd of September. See you tomorrow!
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here