News update for Tue 6 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: Reserve bank leaves interest rates unchanged in reprieve for Australian mortgage holders - The Guardian
Find some courage’: David Pocock on Labor’s flawed gambling laws - 7am Podcast
They’re hard to miss: the number of gambling ads flooding our screens and devices everyday. They’ve become such an inescapable part of sport that a parliamentary inquiry was formed, which looked at the impacts the ads have on the community. In the final months of her life, Labor MP Peta Murphy was the chair of that inquiry – and after hearing from the gambling industry, dependent sporting codes and families impacted by gambling addiction – her position was unequivocal: all ads for online gambling should be banned. It’s been more than 14 months since the government received her recommendations and yet the proliferation of gambling ads has continued unabated. Now, the government could be set to water down a ban, in favour of caps on the number of ads per hour.
Zoe Daniel: The majority of voters want gambling advertising gone. It’s time for Albanese to heed their calls - The Guardian
Parliamentary committees on contentious issues rarely reach unanimous conclusions.
But such was the skill with which the late Peta Murphy chaired the House of Representatives social policy and legal affairs committee and so compelling was the evidence presented to it that the 31 recommendations of its report, aptly titled “You win some, you lose more”, were accepted by every member.
So why does the government appear to be walking away from such unanimous and urgent recommendations?
Read more from Zoe Daniel for The Guardian
Stephen Mayne: How shrinking legacy media became captives of the gambling industry - Crikey
The biggest political obstacle to banning gambling ads is the perceived power of the two remaining Australian media oligarchs: Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Stokes.
Peter Dutton’s modest proposal to further restrict gambling advertising on television during live sporting broadcasts was perhaps the most interesting policy thought bubble of his debut budget reply speech last year.
But it’s been crickets from Dutton and his Coalition colleagues ever since. Until the weekend, that is, when Labor’s mooted set of half-baked regulatory changes were leaked to the Nine papers. Dutton joined the pile-on on the Albanese government, which has seemingly baulked at embracing the popular proposal to implement a tobacco-style advertising ban on an industry that takes $25 billion from Australians each year.
Read more from Stephen Mayne for Crikey (paywall)
Also read >
Labor criticised for meetings with betting companies ahead of decision on gambling ads - The Guardian
The government is under pressure to ban gambling ads. History shows half-measures don’t work - The Conversation
A government copout? You betcha. But the ad industry would be wise to clean up its act on gambling anyhow - Tim Burrowes for Unmade
The gambling ad ban isn’t about gambling. It’s about the future of the media - Bernard Keane for Crikey (paywall)
What the media earns from gambling — and what it costs the rest of us - Crikey (paywall)
Jack Waterford: Slogans masquerading as policies - the Dutton playbook? - Pearls and Irritations
I don’t expect that Donald Trump, presidential candidate, or Trump, elected president, gives a toss whether Anthony Albanese or Peter Dutton is prime minister of Australia after the next Australian election.
That’s assuming that he even knows the names of the major candidates or the parties they represent. Even the name of Scott Morrison has probably dropped off his radar, and, as for Malcolm Trumbull, if he even brings that name to mind again, it will be only with a curse.
Donald Trump has made his first speech on-stage at the Republican National Convention since an attempt on his life to accept the party’s nomination for president, and recounted the assassination first hand.
Read more from Jack Waterford for Pearls and Irritations
Who’s Minding Musk? - Nobody, and that’s a problem - Dan Rather
Imagine having the ability to instantly lob information, true or not, to millions of people across the globe. Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly known as Twitter), has that ability. One would hope that with that power would come responsibility. In a perfect world, the owners of social media companies would be fair-minded and objective. Alas.
For all the talk of social media reform after 2016 and the Facebook fiasco when misinformation ran rampant across that platform, it now appears that Musk has decided not only to support the Republican candidate for president but to personally help spread misinformation about voting and the election.
Read more from Dan Rather for his Steady Substack
ASIO has now declared the terrorist threat to Australia is ‘probable’. What does this mean? - The Conversation
In Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s announcement, he said “probable does not mean inevitable, and it does not mean there is intelligence about an imminent threat or danger.”
Instead, the elevated threat level is largely because more Australians are “embracing extremist ideologies”, indicating an increased risk of ideological terrorism and politically motivated violence.
How does ASIO decide what the threat level should be? And what do these decisions mean for the public?
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
Amanda Meade: Rupert, Lachlan and me: inside the Murdochs’ ‘medieval fiefdom’ - The Guardian
When is a jumbo jet crashing in the Indian Ocean and killing 100 passengers not a front page story?
When you’re editing a Rupert Murdoch newspaper and News Corp owns half an airline.
This was just one of the lessons Eric Beecher says he learned after he became editor in chief of the Herald and Weekly Times, including the now defunct Melbourne Herald, in 1987. He joined after a stint as editor of the Sydney Morning Herald.
Then aged 36, Beecher says he was berated by News’ managing director, Ken Cowley for making an independent editorial decision.
Read more from Amanda Meade in The Guardian
Rick Morton: “It’s like being in a financially abusive relationship”: Navigating Australia's employment services - The Saturday Paper
As one man tries to find work, he has been failed in multiple and complicating ways, with the government outsourcing his case to an employment services company owned out of Florida by a group of men who made their fortune in turbo ovens.
While the federal government has made some lukewarm gestures at reform of the employment services system, the likelihood of substantial change to a system a quarter of a century old is uncertain. This latest iteration was set in place by the Coalition, but outsourced job agencies have ruled through successive governments since the Howard era.
There have been some concessions that the model simply does not work.
Read more from Rick Morton for The Saturday Paper (paywall)
Anthony Klan: Corrupt Berejiklian’s $5.5m taxpayer waste - The Klaxon
The $5.5 million gun club project at the heart of Gladys Berejiklian’s serious corruption has been a giant waste for taxpayers with not one of its “forecast” major events materialising in its six years of operations, investigations reveal.
The monster 1000-person “function centre” at the Australian Clay Targets Association in Wagga Wagga, five hours drive west of Sydney, was supposed to bring a boon of interstate and international visitors.
Costing taxpayers $5.5m it was supposed to create “up to 91 full-time equivalent jobs” and deliver over $2m a year to the Wagga Wagga economy.
Read more from Anthony Klan for The Klaxon
“Disgraceful:” Bowen demands answers as social media giants remove EV and nuclear articles - Renew Economy
Federal energy and climate minister Chris Bowen has demanded answers from social media giants, and Facebook owner Meta in particular, after a series of articles supportive of electric vehicles and critical of the federal Coalition’s nuclear policy were removed from their platforms.
Last month, Renew Economy published an analysis on the soaring cost of nuclear power by leading economist John Quiggin. We attempted to post it in our feed on social media but Facebook removed it without explanation.
Other posts critical of the Coalition’s nuclear claims have also been removed, and readers report that their attempts to post the articles on their Facebook feeds had also failed.
Also read >
Free speech fears after Aussie group SUSPENDED by Elon Musk's X - Yahoo
Australian Conservation Foundation’s X account suspended after apparent ‘report bombing’ - The Guardian
ICC to rule if the Australian Government is complicit in Israel’s genocide - Michael West Media
Is Anthony Albanese’s government guilty of aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide in Gaza? If the ICC finds him guilty, Australia’s PM could face criminal proceedings.
The evidence of complicity by Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and senior parliamentarians has been accepted into the ongoing International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into the Situation in the State of Palestine.
The ‘Article 15 Communication’ submitted by Birchgrove Legal in March this year named Prime Minister Albanese as an accessory to genocide, making him the first leader of a Western nation to be referred to the ICC under the Rome Statute.
Read more in Michael West Media
Angela Priestley: Misogyny, racism and Australia’s freshly raised terror threat - Women’s Agenda
Misinformation was at the heart of the violence that broke out across England over the weekend resulting in hundreds of arrests, fuelled by what Home Secretary Yvette Copper described as social media platforms putting “rocket boosters” under content.
The content concerned the identity of the 17-year-old charged with murdering three girls in Southport last week, with posts going vial that pushed the false narrative that the attacker was Muslim and had recently arrived in the UK as a migrant after crossing the Channel.
Axel Ruakubana has been charged with three counts of murder and 10 counts of attempted murder. He was born in Cardiff and is not Muslim or a migrant.
Elsewhere and in very different circumstances, misinformation was fuelling a different firestorm following a preliminary women’s under 66kg boxing match at the Paris Olympics, with inaccurate claims emerging that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif was transgender and that her opponent, Italian Angela Carini, had to face off against a man.
Read more from Angela Priestley for Women’s Agenda
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Quick Links…
Antarctic heat, wild Australian winter: what’s happening to the weather and what it means for the rest of the year - The Conversation
Regional Australia has higher rates of self-harm than the cities. We need to address the problem - The Guardian
Falsehoods, social media and disinformation fuel racist riots in England after the stabbing death of three young children - ABC’s Media Watch
Is Australia stuck with an airline duopoly? - The Guardian’s Full Story Podcast
Dr Victoria Fielding: Blaming the Left for Trump is victim blaming - Independent Australia
Misinformation, abuse and injustice: breaking down the Olympic boxing firestorm - 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 Tuesday the 6th 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