News update for Tue 16 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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TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here
All eyes on Labor as alleged corruption envelops CFMEU. Here are the government’s options - The Conversation
The Nine newspapers and 60 Minutes exposé of alleged links between criminal elements and the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) demands a strong response by the Victorian, NSW and federal Labor governments.
The revelations raise, yet again, the question of how construction industry unions should be regulated.
This issue has been the subject of many inquiries and royal commissions, most recently the Heydon Royal Commission on Trade Union Governance and Corruption.
Assassinations, insurrections and massacres: an American story - 7am Podcast
The attempted assassination of former US president Donald Trump shocked America. Prominent public figures from all sides of the political spectrum have spoken out and condemned the use of violence, with President Joe Biden saying “it’s not who we are as a nation”. But is that true? And does this response downplay just how pervasive political violence has been in US history? Today, journalist and author of The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself Nick Bryant on America’s long and sordid tradition of violence and dangerous rhetoric.
Also read >
Silence Enables the Autocrat; Talk about Policy Outcomes, not Personalities - Lucid
The Trump assassination attempt: An inevitable result of toxic polarisation? - Pearls and Irritations
Jack Waterford: Trump is the old man most likely to win the US election - Pearls and Irritations
For most of the past year, Joe Biden has been calming panickers in the inner circles of the Democrat Party, persuading them that the campaign was under control, that things were moving his way, not least because of Donald Trump’s criminal law problems. The big reveal at the first presidential debate showed an emperor without clothes, incoherent in his own attack, seemingly almost incapable of taking the battle to the enemy. It accentuated any impulse to feel that he’s already a dud and would be worse if re-elected.
There can be excuses and explanations and calls upon God or other higher powers to witness that one candidate or another is evil incarnate. But observers must contemplate what has always seemed obvious: that, as things stand, Trump is the old man most likely to win the election in early November.
Read more from Jack Waterford for Pearls and Irritations
Also >
Don Watson on democracy - ABC Radio
"America's Hitler": What Trump's New Running Mate J.D. Vance Once Called the Former President - Zeteo
As US media billionaires lean towards Trump, they’re facing some insider pushback - Crikey (paywall)
Guardian Essential poll: three-quarters of Australians believe MPs enter politics to serve own interests - The Guardian
Less than 40% of Australians are satisfied with how democracy is working in Australia and three-quarters believe politicians enter politics to serve their own interests, the latest Guardian Essential poll has found.
The percentage of Australians who are satisfied with Australia’s democracy – 37% – is an increase from the 32% of people who felt the same way when the question was last asked in March, but well short of the high of 47% recorded in May 2022.
More Australians than not were dissatisfied with how political debate and the federal parliament were working, the poll found, at a time when the government was pushing for the community to unite over a range of issues.
The poll of 1,122 Australians also found 75% of respondents believed politicians enter politics to serve their own interests, while 25% believed they do so to serve the public interest.
Two weeks at Holt Street - The Monthly
At the end of May, senior executives descended on the Sydney offices of News Corp. Has change come to the unchanging media company, and what does the future look like?
Read more from Jonathon Green in The Monthly
Today’s cartoon by Alan Moir
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here
Clare O’Neil warns of attacks on diversity amid ‘new strains of nationalism’ - Women’s Agenda
Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has issued a stern warning to Australia on the spread of populism, attacks on diversity and the decline of democracy globally.
O’Neil made the comments at a Museum of Australian Democracy event at Old Parliament House in Canberra on Monday night.
“We can’t let Australia become an island of democracy in a sea of autocracy,” she said, warning of new “strains” of nationals emerging globally.
“Many democratic countries are becoming less democratic. Like a virus, populists are replicating at an exponential rate.
Democracy might be under threat. Security bureaucrats are not - Crikey
Normally the cringeworthy desire for a local angle on a major international story is merely embarrassing for all concerned (“The Baltimore disaster shocked Sydney. Could we see a similar tragedy here?“). Combined with the instinctive desire of politicians, and many in the media, to always expand the security bureaucracy, however, it becomes something far less amusing.
The local angle on the Trump assassination attempt is indeed a breathless “could it happen here?” Rather like how, in the 1970s and 1980s, our media adored any mention of Australia by Americans, the question is asked in hope as much as fear; hope that we might get to emulate something the Americans are lucky enough to have — political violence as a ’70s TV show Christmas special shown in Australia the following September.
Read more from Bernard Keane for Crikey (paywall)
Also read > Australians are losing faith in democracy – most of us look at politics and recoil in horror or sullenly disengage - Peter Lewis for The Guardian
Nuclear too slow to replace coal, and baseload “simply can’t compete” with wind and solar, AEMO boss says - Renew Economy
The head of the Australian Energy Market Operator, Daniel Westerman, has rejected nuclear power as an option to replace Australia’s ageing coal fleet, saying it is too slow and expensive, and that baseload power sources in any case won’t be able to compete in a grid dominated by wind and solar.
The comments by Westerman at the Clean Energy Summit in Sydney on Tuesday, come as the federal Coalition intensifies its push for nuclear power, outlining plans to build nuclear facilities at seven current and former coal generation sites across the country.
Also read > Matt Kean tells clean energy industry to speak out against vested interests ‘undermining the transition’ - The Guardian
Australia’s big banks lent $3.6bn to fossil fuel expansion projects in 2023, report shows - The Guardian
Australia’s big four banks are in “complete violation” of commitments to the Paris climate accord by funding fossil fuel expansion even as their overall lending to the sector continues to ebb, according to a new report.
The climate activist group Market Forces said in the report that the banks lent the industry $3.6bn in 2023, bringing their total loans to more than $61bn since 2015. Last year, though, was first year in the past eight that banks avoided explicitly backing a new or expanded fossil fuel project.
Of the big four, ANZ has lent the most to the sector with its total exposure topping $20bn in early 2024. NAB was the largest lender in 2023 with $1.4bn advanced.
Also read >
Climate crisis is making days longer, study finds - The Guardian
Queensland climate protester fined $5,000 under laws last used during Bjelke-Petersen era - The Guardian
Black Hole: CFMEU, governments, BHP, black coal giants collude in $2.5B worker wage swindle - Michael West Media
The gangsters, bikies and union antics exposed by Nine’s investigation into the CFMEU are the tip of the corruption iceberg. Michael West investigates a $2.5B wage theft of mineworkers arising from collusion between governments, insurers, mining corporations, lobbyists and the CFMEU.
“The mates, the cronies, the bikies … a sinister shakedown is about to go boom. The fall-out will shake Canberra!” Thus spake the voiceover man for 60 Minutes.
And it has. Union boss John Setka has fallen on his sword, and the Victorian branch of the union has gone into administration in the wake of the weekend’s expose by investigative journalist Nick McKenzie, Nine newspapers and 60 Minutes.
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The string of lawsuits against Andrew Tate - The Daily Aus Podcast
Regional Australians are five times more likely to die in road accidents – so what are we doing about it? - Gabrielle Chan for The Guardian
“Battering ram of bad faith actors:” CEC says nuclear push causing confusion, delays and higher costs - Renew Economy
What it’s like being a human rights lawyer and founder as a woman of colour - Missing Perspectives
Laura Tingle's Canberra, Bruce Shapiro post Trump assassination attempt and French sub secrets - David Marr’s ABC Late Night Live
‘Unreasonable and unacceptable’: inquiry condemns traffic chaos created by Sydney’s $3.9bn Rozelle interchange - 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 Tuesday the 16th of 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