News update for Thur 19 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
BREAKING NEWS: United Nations General Assembly votes to demand Israel end Palestinian occupation, Australia abstains - Pearls and Irritations
Michael Pascoe: Housing politics hypocrisy challenge: Bragg, O’Neil, Chandler-Mather or Hume? - Michael West Media
Hypocrisy, thy name is politics. Sanctimonious lies, spin and obfuscation are already thick upon the ground in Parliament, with a field too crowded to select a Hypocrite of the Week. Still, Michael Pascoe is judging the midweek title.
According to the Gallup World Poll, housing is the issue that concerns Australians most – more than healthcare, more than the environment, more than education. And that means all sides of politics are fighting to be seen as the most concerned about that concern.
In the process, none escapes the charge of hypocrisy. As the Pope has advised American voters, it’s a matter of selecting the lesser evil.
With housing policy established as key electioneering battleground, two Labor housing policies before the Senate inevitably mean trench warfare, the LNP and Greens coalescing to block the bills, Labor in high dudgeon and wanting to make the most of the theatre.
Read more from Michael Pascoe for Michael West Media
Nicki Hutley: The severity of Australia’s housing affordability crisis is obvious - this is how politicians could fix it - The Guardian
The problems in housing affordability have been building for decades, the clear result of policy failures across all levels of government that have now brought us to what can reasonably be described as a crisis point.
The severity of the problem is obvious. For example, the Demographia Group, which reports annually on house prices in eight advanced economies, found that house prices in Australia’s five largest cities have risen from about three times average income in 1987, to seven times just prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, to 10 times in 2024.
Read more from Nicki Hutley for The Guardian
Also >
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Adam Bandt on why the Greens are playing hardball on housing - The Conversation
The super profits behind selling Australian homes - The Guardian’s Full Story Podcast
Coalition plan to give first home buyers access to super would benefit ‘those who already own housing’ - The Guardian
Why did Albo get fact-checked on X? He’s mad his housing agenda is stalling - Crikey (paywall)
The pointy end of the housing crisis - The Last Place on Earth
Australia desperately needs a strong federal environmental protection agency. Our chances aren’t looking good - The Conversation
When Labor came to power federally after almost a decade in opposition, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek pledged to turn around Australia’s worsening environmental woes, from extinctions to land clearing to climate change.
While the government has made progress on climate action, protecting biodiversity hasn’t got out of the starting blocks.
In the latest example of inaction, proposed laws to create an independent environmental regulator, Environmental Protection Australia, appear stalled in the Senate. Labor needs the backing of the Coalition or the Greens to push the reform through. At the time of writing, no deals looked likely.
This is a real problem.
Why voters are deserting traditional parties - Pearls and Irritations
The changes to, and challenges confronting, representative government as we know it have been canvassed by a number of journalists, most recently Niki Savva in the Nine Entertainment newspapers. Like others, Savva correctly identifies the “drift” away from major parties and the “repudiation” of politics as we know it.
But, like others, Savva gets it wrong, by confusing the symptoms of change — “much like the desertion of audiences to social media or streaming services” — with its causes. Savva is correct to say these changes are real and not transitory, and that they have “profound implications for . . . how we are governed”.
In the short term, the legacy parties retain external form while being increasingly bereft of traditional content. The Left is less “progressive” in any meaningful sense and the Right is increasingly throwing up demagogues, in the US, Italy, Hungary, Poland, France, Germany and so on, with disturbing echoes in Australia.
As early industrial societies could not foretell late industrial democracy, so too the political vessels of the future will reflect the stresses and challenges that are only just making themselves plain. Rather than comment on the superficially obvious, that voters are deserting traditional parties, the fundamental reorientation of political society is to where Savva and her colleagues should address their future attention.
Read more in Pearls and Irritations
Rachel Withers: Helen Haines knows people are disappointed with the NACC. She wants them to be patient - Crikey
Helen Haines knows a thing or two about patience.
The independent MP, who succeeded Cathy McGowan as the “Voices for Indi” candidate in 2019, spent much of her first term advocating for a federal integrity commission, putting forward a widely praised model which the Coalition ignored.
The fight continued once Labor came to power, with Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus proposing a far weaker model than Haines’, even as the government commended her for her leadership. She fought “tooth and nail” to strengthen Labor’s bill, especially when it came to public hearings, and spent hours moving amendments, which the major parties teamed
Read more from Rachel Withers for Crikey (paywall)
Don’t believe the hype; these aged care reforms are little more than a money grab - Croakey
Don’t believe the hyperbolic headlines; the Federal Government’s aged care reforms are a money grab by the aged care sector and the Government, with just “a few token” efforts to address safety and quality concerns, according to policy analyst Charles Maskell-Knight.
On Thursday, 12 September Minister for Aged Care Anika Wells introduced the long awaited and much delayed Aged Care Bill 2024 into Parliament.
Her media release was headed ‘Once in a generation aged care reforms’, and said: “The Australian Government will deliver historic aged care reforms to ensure the viability and quality of aged care, and support growing numbers of older Australians choosing to retain their independence and remain in their homes as they age.”
‘Once in a generation’ is an adjectival phrase so overused it is usually vacuous – and so it is in this case.
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
‘They don’t want us here’: an asylum seeker’s shattered education dreams - 7am Podcast
As a child refugee in India, Harini dreamt of making it to Australia to study medicine and become a doctor. She arrived in Australia in 2013 when she was 10 years old, leaving behind her two siblings and mother. Harini did not realise her visa status made her different to her classmates until she received a university offer for a biomedical science degree that required her to pay international student fees of nearly $100,000. After attempting to self-fund her studies and falling a year behind in payments, the university disenrolled Harini in 2023 – four months before she was set to complete her degree.
I Made It 4,750km Across Australia: Outcomes And Thanks - Lyrebird Dreaming
I feel proud but also a bit nostalgic now that my #eBike4Australia trip has come to an end. On Saturday 14 September, five weeks and a day after I cycled off from Cottesloe, I rode in to Bondi Beach with Sydney cyclists who had joined me for the last leg. What started as a solo ride across Australia became an inspiring journey and movement for climate action and renewable energy. Almost 4,750 km of cycling across our continent not only brought me deep personal satisfaction and a unique connection to country, but also allowed me to engage with a huge cross-section of people, communities, and projects.
During my journey, I engaged in hundreds of face-to-face conversations with everyday Australians and reached close to 1 million people on social media about climate change and renewable energy.
Read more from Gregory Andrews for Lyrebird Dreaming
Also read > Australia is a mess. Cop31 is a chance to redefine ourselves from climate laggard to global leader - The Guardian
Australia’s failed jobs experiment - Inside Story
It could be mistaken for a script for the ABC’s Utopia — a report so scathing of a government service that it seems too bad to be true. The parliamentary inquiry into employment services found that more than 70 per cent of jobseekers receiving government benefits have had their payments suspended, often for trivial or non-existent breaches, by an automatic system reminiscent of robodebt. With the robodebt royal commission having found that welfare fraud is miniscule, this amounts to “using a nuclear bomb to kill a mosquito.”
As for the “jobs plan” signed by the unemployed before they receive government benefits, it is “frankly Orwellian,” says the report — no more than a list of excessive, often punitive compliance measures rather than a realistic path to employment. The so-called mutual obligations “are actually making people less employable.”
Fatima Payman singles out Rupert Murdoch as she decries mainstream media’s treatment of Muslim women - The Guardian
The independent senator Fatima Payman has accused mainstream media of reducing Muslim women to “stereotypes” and singled out Rupert Murdoch, alleging moguls like him cause “division” and “fearmongering”.
“Like many of you, I’ve faced challenges in navigating mainstream media as a Muslim woman in politics,” she said in a keynote speech on Sunday at the 10th anniversary of independent Muslim media outlet Amust in the south-west Sydney seat of Blaxland.
“Too often we are misrepresented or reduced to stereotypes,” the Western Australia senator said, pointing to Sky News headline: “‘Guidance from Allah’: Senator Payman brings religion back to politics”, and a News Corp headline “‘Exiled’ Labor senator’s donations to Barbie-hating Islamic TV studio revealed”.
Also read > Inside Australia’s media wars - David Hardaker for The Politics
Albo’s reckless and draconian misinformation legislation completely undermines itself - Crikey
The Albanese government’s misinformation legislation — a new draft of which was introduced in Parliament late last week — is one of the most extraordinary and draconian pieces of legislation proposed in Australia in the past few decades. It is so obviously misconceived, recklessly drafted and wilfully counterproductive that it undermines the entire argument against political misinformation.
The bill would grant the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) a vast regulatory authority over digital platforms such as Facebook and X, roughly similar to the sort of controls it imposes on broadcast television and radio.
On the surface, these new powers seem modest.
Read more in Crikey (paywall)
Also >
Albanese cements Australia’s status as the global village idiot - Bernard Keane for Crikey (paywall)
Why did Elon Musk call the Australian Government fascists? - The Daily Aus
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Not so secret military justice review at odds with suicide royal commission - Michael West Media
Albanese government forging ahead with social media age restrictions despite Meta’s new Instagram teen accounts - The Guardian
Will the exploding pager attack be the spark that ignites an Israel-Hezbollah war? - The Conversation
Gaza officials publish list of those killed in Israeli assault. The first 14 pages are babies - Pearls and Irritations
Australia must curb imports from occupied Palestinian territories due to ICJ ruling, UN legal expert says - The Guardian
Mining's big temper tantrum - Follow The Money Podcast
Two-thirds of new-build homes don’t have solar: Report calls for policy to plug holes in rooftop rollout - Renew Economy
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 Thursday the 19th 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