News update for Thur 22 Aug 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: ABC managing director David Anderson resigns a year into second term in role - The Guardian
Angela Priestley: Any hint of limiting reproductive rights won’t help win back seats lost to women - Women’s Agenda
Opposition leader Peter Dutton wants to win back the six seats the Liberal party lost to independent women at the past two Federal Elections.
He’s planning to ramp up fundraising efforts, bring remaining preselections forward and likely position deputy leader Sussan Ley to support, given she’s already visited six seats held by teals 31 times since 2022, according to today’s report in The Australian.
With a ninth visit to the seat of Curtin in Perth planned next month, Ley has told The Australian these independents including Zali Steggall, Dr Monique Ryan, Kate Cheney, Kylea Tink, Zoe Daniel, Allegra Spender and Sophie Scamps were “betraying” their once conservative electorates.
Any hint of Liberal party members supporting any kind of motion or statements seeking control of women’s bodies or their healthcare is not going to bode well for a party desperately trying to improve its standing with women.
Read more from Angela Priestley for Women’s Agenda
Elon Musk’s secret plan to buy Trump the presidency - 7am Podcast
In 2022, Elon Musk said Donald Trump was “too old” to be president, and Donald Trump called Musk a “bullshit artist”. In the relatively short time since, Elon Musk has endorsed the former president and offered him some free publicity by interviewing Trump on his website X. It’s now been revealed that Elon Musk has also been working behind the scenes to fundraise for Trump’ presidential campaign for months, raising millions of dollars while going to great lengths to keep his involvement secret. Today, Wall Street Journal reporter and author of The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power Dana Mattioli, on the political transformation of Elon Musk and what she uncovered about his secret plans to return Trump to the White House.
Greg Jericho: The horror, the horror: banks are having to compete for our business by offering better rates - The Guardian
Don’t buy the banks’ sob story. They are annoyed Australians are becoming more savvy at shopping around for better deals for their home loans.
Banks, I know you will be sad to hear, are apparently doing it tough. So tough that they are starting to cut term deposit rates because they think the Reserve Bank will cut the cash rate soon and they want to get in first so they can increase their profits.
Kicking the banks is pretty much a national pastime of Australians and, to be honest, fair enough. There’s a reason there was a royal commission into the misconduct in the banking, superannuation and financial services industry, and it wasn’t because a whole lot of lawyers had nothing better to do with their time.
Banks and other financial institutions were playing their customers for mugs.
Read more from Greg Jericho for The Guardian
'Gas Trojan horse': Coalition nuclear push slammed as fossil wedge aimed at renewables - Pearls and Irritations
The chair of Australia’s largest group of clean energy investors has described the federal Coalition’s push for nuclear power as a “gas Trojan horse,” and a political wedge intended to douse investment in renewables and prolong the use of fossil fuels.
John Martin, CEO of renewables developer Windlab and chair of the Clean Energy Investor Group, on Monday named wedge politics as one of the biggest issues holding back the shift to renewables in Australia, describing the current industry status quo as “really, really challenging”.
“Australia is the land of wedges,” Martin told the 2024 Clean Energy Investor Conference in Melbourne.
“When I think of the whole nuclear debate, I don’t see that as really about nuclear. It’s a gas Trojan horse,” Martin told the conference.
Read more in Pearls and Irritations
Inquiry raises deep concerns over Labor’s $1.5 billion cash splash for new NT gas hub - The Conversation
A Senate inquiry has failed to reach agreement on whether the federal government should spend A$1.5 billion on a major industrial hub in Darwin – spending critics say amounts to a huge fossil fuel subsidy.
The project, known as the Middle Arm Industrial Precinct, involves developing a manufacturing and minerals hub on a peninsula at Darwin Harbour. The project would span about 1,500 hectares and include, among other infrastructure, the third liquified natural gas (LNG) export hub on the peninsula.
Traditional owners say the hub would damage Sea Country and cultural heritage. Other submissions to the inquiry raised concerns about threats to human health and wildlife, and the implications of expanding the gas industry in the midst of a climate crisis.
The spies operating in Australia’s Indian diaspora community - The Saturday Paper
The guessing game began on March 17, 2021. That was the day on which the head of ASIO, Mike Burgess, revealed that a year earlier his intelligence agency had uncovered “a nest of spies from a particular foreign intelligence service” and quietly had them removed from Australia.
He provided just enough detail to make the point that this was an “acutely serious” matter. They had, he said, developed “targeted relationships with current and former politicians, a foreign embassy and a state police service”. The same spies had sought information on “security protocols at a major airport” and had “successfully cultivated and recruited an Australian government security clearance holder who had access to sensitive details of defence technology”.
Read more from Mike Seccombe for The Saturday Paper
Today’s cartoon by First Dog on the Moon for The Guardian
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here
Should politicians be fined for bad behaviour? - The Daily Aus
Federal politicians found to have sexually harassed, assaulted, or bullied staff could be fined up to 5% of their salary under new draft laws. Legislation tabled in Parliament this week comes nearly three years after a 2021 workplace review, which detailed “a lack of clear standards of conduct, limited accountability and power imbalances” for those within the so-called “Canberra bubble”. In today’s deep dive, we’ll tell you all about the Government’s new proposal, and what it means for those who work in Parliament House.
Listen to The Daily Aus Podcast
Also read >
‘Unlike any workplace I’ve ever been in’: The push to punish MPs for bad behaviour - The SMH/Age
Teals call on Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese to rein in 'toxic' parliamentary behaviour - SBS
Abuse under parliamentary privilege will be outside new commission’s remit. Is that a bad thing? - Bernard Keane for Crikey (paywall)
Fact checking the myths on Dutton's Palestinian visa ban - Independent Australia
Australians have been subjected to a torrent of myth-making after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, in full Donald Trump mode, declared he wouldn’t allow any visas to be granted to Palestinians fleeing the war in Gaza.
In the scramble to justify Dutton’s thought bubble, his colleagues David Littleproud, Dan Tehan and James Paterson have been quick to offer all sorts of justifications for Dutton’s position. The Murdoch press has turbo-charged the myth-making with alarming enthusiasm.
Many of them have started backing out from Dutton’s total ban idea to offering “expert” advice on how visa and security checking could be done better.
Read more from Abul Rizvi for Independent Australia
Also read > Abul Rizvi accuses Coalition of misusing his words on Gaza visas and calls national security claims ‘rubbish’ - The Guardian
When is a treaty not a treaty? The Marles and Prabowo Canberra love-in - Michael West Media
With much fanfare but little interest, Australia and Indonesia announced their latest “Framework for Security Cooperation” in Canberra yesterday. What does it mean?
There’s a seething and brutal guerrilla war underway in the Indonesian provinces closest to Australia. Thousands have been killed, but little is known because foreign journalists and UN inspectors are banned.
At first, it was arrows against AK-47s, but the independence-seeking rebels are now better armed and more lethal.
A just-concluded security deal with Jakarta allows Canberra to offer mediation, let observers in and help secure the human rights we uphold in other conflicts.
Read more in Michael West Media
Australia was just handed a report card on how it's tackling gendered violence - The ABC
It was a packed house at the National Press Club on Wednesday for the inaugural address by Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner Micaela Cronin.
The commissioner handed her report card to the government to see how on-track the country is to meet the points of the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children, and included suggestions for fine-tuning the elements that need to work better.
It was probably unsurprising that Ms Cronin was talking to a room almost entirely of women at the National Press Club, but in her speech, it seemed as if she was trying to reach the ears of a different demographic.
She said the National Plan uses the word "men" 129 times and, in contrast, the word "women" 543 times — "four times more than we talk about men".
Palestine has been recognised by more than 140 nations – but not yet Australia. So, what exactly defines a ‘state’? - The Conversation
Is Palestine a state? This long-standing unresolved question has gained considerable diplomatic, legal and political traction this year as Israel’s war in Gaza has ground on with no end in sight.
This week, Muslim leaders pressed again for Australia to recognise Palestinian statehood. They said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had told them it would be a first-term priority for Labor.
In late May, the Greens also introduced a motion on Palestinian statehood in parliament, but it failed.
Rachel Withers: Zali Steggall stands by telling Dutton to ‘stop being racist’, yet is no Green on Gaza - Crikey
The Warringah MP has been praised for calling out the Coalition’s racism. But she’s far from a “Green in Gucci” when it comes to Gaza.
“For too long, we’ve been bullied into not calling out divisive and racist policy out of fear,” Zali Steggall tells me, a week after she demanded Peter Dutton “stop being racist” during a debate over his calls for a ban on Palestinians refugees fleeing Gaza. Just like during the Voice referendum, Labor, while critical of the opposition leader, has yet again been dancing around the term this week, calling him everything from “divisive” to “nasty”.
“The unwillingness to call a spade a spade allows it to continue to fester,” Steggall says. “I think that is incredibly dangerous.”
Read more from Rachel Withers for Crikey (paywall)
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Quick Links…
Wealth of nations: how Australia’s prosperity is being funnelled to the ultra-rich - Follow The Money Podcast
Labor left warrior Graham Perrett to retire after almost 20 years in federal parliament - The Guardian
Seasons of Sums - The Money Café with Alan Kohler and Stephen Mayne
Militant, independent unions can tame the concrete jungle of the building industry - Pearls and Irritations
Independent review warns Tasmania’s economy in trouble - The Mandarin
The sad prediction from Australia’s 64th annual television awards night - The New Daily
Social support payment systems may be reviewed as DV commissioner warns they are being ‘weaponised’ against women - The Guardian
Exclusive: The West appoints first female editor after shock Four Corners revelations about Seven - The Last Place on Earth
NT election: promises for Indigenous people buckle under history’s weight - The Conversation
Should artists have the right to freedom of political expression? - ABC listen
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 22nd of August. See you tomorrow!
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here