News update for Mon 9 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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TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here
‘Urgency and directness’: Inside Labor’s courting of the teal independents - The Saturday Paper
As the likelihood of minority government increases, Labor is actively cultivating relations with the teal independents.
Politics was changed in the 47th parliament in a way the major parties are still grappling with.
With a hung parliament widely tipped for the next federal poll, both major parties are wrestling with how to deal with the teals.
Labor in particular has worked to cultivate relations, given frequent cabinet-level briefings and contact with ministers.
“I have as much access to ministers as anybody in the back bench of the government,” independent MP Kylea Tink tells The Saturday Paper.
Read more in The Saturday Paper (paywall)
The NACC’s refusal to consider Robodebt - Pearls and Irritations
Before the last election in 2022, the Labor opposition promised to establish an integrity commission that would have a broad jurisdiction and strong investigative powers including the capacity to hold public hearings when it was in the public interest to do so.
This had been widely supported in the community, including by an open letter sent to the then Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, in December 2018, signed by 34 judges (including myself). Three former chief justices of the High Court (Sir Anthony Mason, Sir Gerard Brennan and Murray Gleeson AC) had also expressed their support for commissions being entitled to hold public hearings.
Read more from former Supreme Court Judge, Stephen Charles, for Pearls and Irritations
Questions over NACC Robodebt “investigation” - The Klaxon
The sole person responsible for policing internal corruption at the National Anti-Corruption Commission is refusing to say whether an actual “investigation” has begun into the Robodebt referrals scandal.
Thursday marked twelve weeks since NACC Inspector Gail Furness SC — after receiving almost 900 complaints — announced action over the NACC’s refusal to investigate six public officials referred to it by the Robodebt Royal Commission.
Despite revelations the NACC’s entire “final decision” to not investigate the Robodebt referrals is just two pages long, Furness has provided no updates – and won’t say whether or not she has launched an “investigation”.
Or even if she has made a decision to.
Read more from Anthony Klan for The Klaxon
Also >
Has Albanese’s NACC been a failure? - 7am Podcast
Company linked to Angus Taylor offered ‘generous’ offset calculation after illegal land clearing, FoI letters reveal - The Guardian
Despite all the doom and gloom on Australia’s economy, could the worst be behind us - The Guardian
In a week dominated by headlines declaring the “weakest growth in decades” (excluding Covid) with an economy being “smashed” by the Reserve Bank, it might seem Australia teeters on the edge on an abyss.
For some households and businesses, the challenge of paying stratospheric housing costs amid 13-year-high interest rates will alas be overwhelming.
For the bulk of the population, though, there is an option of optimism. It might not be a Panglossian “best of possible times” but the worst may already be behind us (provided large, lurking problems remain at bay).
Read more from Peter Hannam for The Guardian
The Climate Crisis and Eucalyptus Collapse - Lyrebird Dreaming
As I pedal across Australia on my #eBike4Australia journey, I’m constantly reminded of the beauty and fragility of our natural landscapes. But some sights are harder to take in than others. As I rode through Ouyen the other day, I was confronted with a heartbreaking scene: towering eucalyptus trees, their trunks skeletal and bare, standing dead across the landscape. Beneath them, smaller shrubs and plants were still alive, but the giants were dead.
This is what climate change looks like in real-time.
Read more from Gregory Andrews for Lyrebird Dreaming
Also read >
Nuclear won’t cut it: CCA says Australia must go all in on renewables to meet climate targets - Pearls and Irritations
For Australia to meet emissions reduction targets, we don’t need nuclear energy - Pearls and Irritations
Like running Hazelwood for 106 years: Labor says Dutton’s nuke plan will be akin to a carbon bomb - Renew Economy
Why would anyone join a youth advisory group on climate change? - Crikey (paywall)
Government rationale for student visa caps revealed - Independent Australia
SINCE THE DAY Education Minister Jason Clare announced he would introduce legislation to enable student caps, I have struggled to work out the rationale. The recent announcement of the student caps level now makes that clear.
The primary objective of the international education area of the Department of Education (Australian Education International or AEI) is to grow the industry, and maximise export and tuition revenue and the number of people employed by the industry. This is plastered all over the AEI website.
So why would the Minister for Education want to introduce such a controversial and obviously poor policy instrument that appeared to be designed to limit the size of the industry his department is committed to growing?
Read more from Abul Rizvi for Independent Australia
Also read > Dutton’s plan to ban people from Gaza was illegal… and predictable - Abul Rizvi for Crikey (paywall)
Today’s cartoon by Matt Golding
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here
Murdoch to Musk: how global media power has shifted from the moguls to the big tech bros - The Conversation
Until recently, Elon Musk was just a wildly successful electric car tycoon and space pioneer. Sure, he was erratic and outspoken, but his global influence was contained and seemingly under control.
But add the ownership of just one media platform, in the form of Twitter – now X – and the maverick has become a mogul, and the baton of the world’s biggest media bully has passed to a new player.
What we can gauge from watching Musk’s stewardship of X is that he’s unlike former media moguls, making him potentially even more dangerous. He operates under his own rules, often beyond the reach of regulators. He has demonstrated he has no regard for those who try to rein him in.
Also read >
The perils of writing about Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch, successor to Rupert Murdoch's global media empire - Paddy Manning for ABC News
How do you make a series about Lachlan Murdoch when he won’t participate? We asked the ABC - Crikey
Introducing a new series: what’s the future of the Australian media? - The Conversation
Twitter ‘ceased to exist’ after Australia’s eSafety commissioner demanded answers about child sex abuse material, X’s lawyer argues - The Guardian
Laura Tingle: Is a lack of oxygen to blame for Australia's perplexing political debates about national security, the census and the economy? - The ABC
Politics starts to change as people start to concentrate on the last possible date for an election.
It is May 17 next year, to save you googling it — that's just on eight months away.
Among the things that change: journalists start focusing on opinion polls; they start reporting more on the opposition as an alternative government, and ask for some policy specifics; and prime ministers and their senior colleagues anxiously contemplate how the economy might be travelling on various Saturdays between now and the last possible election date.
It hasn't quite been playing out that way this parliamentary cycle, and certainly not in the past few weeks.
Read more from Laura Tingle for The ABC
Saving Tasmania’s Maugean Skate – a victim of extinction politics - Michael West Media
Estimates suggest that there are only 140 Maugean Skates left in the world. Despite this, it appears there’s something fishy going on as the Government avoids dealing with its extinction.
The skate, a stingray-like creature that only lives in Macquarie Harbour in Tasmania, is at high risk of extinction, so much so that the Government’s independent Threatened Species Scientific Committee (TSSC) is urgently considering whether the skate should be uplifted from ‘endangered’ to ‘critically endangered’ in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act listing.
Read more from Rex Patrick for Michael West Media
David Pocock calls for election ban on AI deepfakes with fake videos of Albanese and Dutton - The Guardian
David Pocock has raised the alarm on the risk posed to democracy by generative AI by using it to play a trick: fabricating a video of Anthony Albanese announcing a complete ban on gambling advertising.
The independent senator for Canberra posted two AI-generative videos to social media – of the prime minister and of the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, supporting a complete ban on advertising – to show how AI can be used to mimic and confuse.
“That video is fake, and there are currently no laws against making videos like that,” Pocock said.
Also read > Get a VPN and delete your cookies, Australia’s privacy laws are still lagging behind - Paul Karp for The Guardian
Alan Kohler: What Albanese and Chalmers should do next - The New Daily
It is, or should be, the solemn duty of a first-term government to take a program of reform to its first election as incumbent.
The only time an Australian government has lost after one term was Jim Scullin in 1931 and he moved into the newly-built Lodge two days before the Wall Street crash of 1929, so he was doomed from the start.
Aside from governing during a Depression, it’s very hard for a government to lose after one term, so it is the best, and possibly only, time to seek a mandate for difficult, unpopular reforms.
Read more from Alan Kohler for The New Daily
Also read > My family and I are homeless in Australia, trapped in a vicious cycle of seeking help where none is available - The Guardian
Bernard Keane: Peter Dutton is racist - Here's the proof - Crikey
Crikey’s series explores Dutton’s history of racism as well as the role racism has played on both sides of politics since the 1970s.
Race and racism have long played a role in Australian politics. Malcolm Fraser was attacked by Labor for extending humanitarian migration to South Vietnamese refugees. John Howard sought to weaponise Asian migration in the 1980s. In the wake of 9/11 and Tampa, the Howard government made a virtue of its tough line on asylum seekers and Australians of Muslim background, while Howard’s refusal to engage with Indigenous peoples came to characterise his prime ministership. The rise of the Islamic State once again saw Australia’s Muslim community targeted by Coalition politicians. The Gillard government made a virtue of its crackdown on temporary migrants.
But Peter Dutton stands out as the most plainly racist Australian political leader since the White Australia policy. Here's the proof below.
Read more from Bernard Keane for Crikey
Also read > Is Dutton racist? Doesn’t matter. Does he practise racism in public life? Yes, beyond doubt - Michael Bradley for Crikey (paywall)
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Australia helped bring peace to Timor-Leste – but that doesn’t absolve it of a long appeasement of Indonesia - The Guardian
The AUKUS fire sale fallout will haunt the Labor party into minority - Joel Jenkins
Australia’s construction industry needs more hands on deck – so why is it ignoring skilled migrant women? - The Conversation
Behind the gridlock on fair taxes, environment protection and housing - New Politics Podcast
Is America ready to elect a Black woman president? - Emma Shortis for The Guardian
Inaction on gambling reform is now political poison - The New Daily
Parents struggling to access childcare also facing financial stress in rural Australia, report finds - Women’s Agenda
What will it take for the world to care about Sudan? - The Guardian’s Full Story Podcast
Special treatment: Jim Chalmers covers for super fund lobby on property fees - Michael West Media
How Australians became the world’s biggest gamblers - The Guardian
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 9th 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