News update for Wed 28 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: Sydney records hottest August day in seven years amid high fire danger from warm, windy weather - The Guardian
Killing the news - Democracy Sausage with Mark Kenny
Crikey’s Eric Beecher and academic Denis Muller join us on Democracy Sausage to ask how media should operate when the lines between news, opinion and political campaigning have blurred. What impact have media moguls throughout history had on our politics and democracy? How can business models and governance structures be adjusted to ensure the Australian public is served by good journalism? And how does truth compete with exaggeration in the realm of public discourse? On this episode of Democracy Sausage, Eric Beecher and Dr Denis Muller join Professor Mark Kenny to discuss how to revive the news.
Listen to The Democracy Sausage Podcast
Also >
Where to now for regional news media? - Double Take Podcast
How The West (Seven West Media) leads Australia over the edge - The Last Place on Earth
Australian conservatives claim babies are sometimes ‘born alive’ after an abortion. What’s the truth? - The Guardian
Some religious groups and conservative politicians in Australia have claimed babies are being “born alive” after abortions and left to die alone.
But experts warn “born alive” campaigns are riddled with misinformation, use misleading statistics and could threaten women’s access to abortions.
So what’s really going on?
A proposed federal bill to supposedly protect those born alive went to a parliamentary inquiry, which found there was no basis for it. A motion in the federal Senate last week to note that babies were born alive after abortions was defeated.
The government will cap new international students at 270,000 in 2025. But this number may not be reached - The Conversation
After months of speculation, the federal government has announced what the cap will be for international students in Australia.
In 2025, the number of international students starting a course will be set at 270,000. This includes both higher education and vocational education courses.
This still requires parliamentary approval. The Senate needs to pass legislation to allow the government to set enforceable enrolment caps.
The government has jumped ahead of its legal authority here because the process of recruiting and enrolling international students for next year is already well underway. Education providers need to know how many students they can take.
Also read > The true scale of Australia's international student industry — in four charts - The ABC
Michael Pascoe: Crisis, what (housing) crisis? Dutton to scrap 30,000 homes - Michael West Media
If there was any doubt the Liberal Party has nothing but disdain for social and affordable housing, it was removed in the fine print of Peter Dutton’s Tuesday promise of tax cuts for the better paid.
How does Peter Dutton propose to pay for tax cuts for his “aspirational” voters? In part, it’s by scrapping the only major effort to increase the stock of social and affordable housing since the GFC. And this with the nation suffering a desperate shortage of shelter for people priced out of the private rental market.
Read more from Michael Pascoe for Michael West Media
‘Demeaning’: Rainbow Labor Speaks Out After Govt Abandons LGBT Census Qs - The Star Observer
Convenors of Rainbow Labor NSW came together to share their thoughts in an exclusive comment to Star Observer:
“Rainbow Labor shares the disappointment of so many in our community and calls on the Federal Government to reconsider this decision.”
“Currently, we don’t know how many currently we don’t know how many LGBTIQ+ people and communities there are in this country or where they are located because the last census did not count our community in rendering our community invisible. That impacts decisions around how critical services for our community are planned and delivered.”
“Rainbow Labor NSW calls on the Federal Government to honour its commitment to include LGBTIQ+ Australians in the 2026 national Census.”
Read more in The Star Observer
Also read > ‘Impossible’ to make policy for LGBTQ+ community without extra census questions, crossbenchers say - The Guardian
Today’s cartoon by Glen Le Lievre
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here
‘We need help way earlier’: Report details ‘egregious breaches’ of children’s rights - The Justice Map
The National Children’s Commissioner has hit out at “egregious breaches” of the human rights of children in Australia’s criminal justice system, and called for major reforms and a complete rethink in the approach to these policies.
In the ‘Help Way Earlier’ report, National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds investigated how Australia can fix child justice to improve safety and wellbeing and made recommendations for a national approach to reforms of child justice and related systems.
Read more from Denham Sadler for The Justice Map
Inquiry raises deep concerns over Labor’s $1.5 billion cash splash for new NT gas hub - Pearls and Irritations
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 export hub on the peninsula.
Read more for Pearls and Irritations
What Labor’s loss in the NT means for Australian politics - The Guardian’s Full Story Podcast
The Northern Territory election delivered an unmitigated disaster for Labor over the weekend, with the Country Liberal party sweeping to power on a promise to be tough on crime. Tamsin Rose speaks to Guardian Australia political editor Karen Middleton and Queensland state correspondent Ben Smee on how politicians from all sides are reading the results.
Listen to The Guardian’s Full Story Podcast
Richard Denniss: Labor’s NT election loss to have federal implications - The New Daily
Labor’s devastating loss on the weekend’s NT election not only has significant implications for the federal government, the Albanese government played a significant role in the shape of NT Labor’s defeat. Let’s start with the federal implications.
The NT election provides more evidence that the long-term decline in the primary vote of the major parties means that there is no such thing as a ‘safe seat’ anymore.
Read more from Richard Denniss for The New Daily
Also read > NT election result may point to the end for Labor - Pearls and Irritations
Bernard Keane: Labor needs to succeed where the Coalition failed on CFMEU - Crikey
The CFMEU has faced repeated allegations of misconduct that have vanished when subjected to scrutiny. Will this time be any different?
Neither the Albanese government nor the ACTU will be overly upset at being publicly reviled by the CFMEU’s ousted executives, with terms like “Albonazi”, “sellout” and “traitor” being bandied around. Being attacked by a union associated with thuggery, bikies, corruption and domestic violence — despite the efforts of some commentators to downplay those — won’t keep Labor MPs awake at night. Moreover, they’ll undermine Peter Dutton’s claims that Labor is soft on the CFMEU. He’s not the one being compared to Hitler on protest placards. Indeed, with CFMEU leaders vowing the “absolute destruction” of the ALP, presumably it’s a Dutton prime ministership they want after the next election.
Read more from Bernard Keane for Crikey (paywall)
It wasn’t just race and politics that motivated Voice to Parliament ‘no’ voters. Here’s what we found when we dug deeper - The Conversation
The outcome of the referendum has been chalked up to deepening political polarisation, Australian’s entrenched racial prejudice and the rise of populism.
In short, opposition to the Voice to Parliament has been characterised as a conservative populist backlash with racist undertones. In the wake of a 60/40 “no” vote majority, this message only serves to deepen the post-referendum divide.
However, new research indicates the story is a little more complex. Findings show it was fundamentally the esteem of authority, the desire for an ordered society, and perceptions of justice and fairness that dictated how people engaged with this emotionally charged political issue, and ultimately how they voted.
Tim Dunlop: A theory of Joy in politics - Or: why joy is the flipside of weird - The Future of Everything
The community independents had not only turned the Liberal heartland, they had reset the political zeitgeist from negative to positive. They carved out a huge space in which people were reengaging with the political process on the promise of addressing the neglect of the previous nine years of the LNP, and Labor could’ve ridden that wave to natural-party-of-government status.
To put it another way, Scott Morrison and the Liberal Party he was trying to build in his own image was weird and the independents and Greens showed—as have Harris and Walz—that the flipside of weird is joy and that you can win seats by giving people a hopeful alternative. The joy of participation and engagement mobilised people in a way that set the scene for a politics that reflected the diversity of the country and primed it for regeneration.
Read more from Tim Dunlop for The Future of Everything
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Jess Hill on how to stop domestic violence - 7am Podcast
Stand by for interest rate cuts: the US is about to start, so expect Australia to follow - The Conversation
What do Woolworths and Big W’s starkly different results tell us about Australia’s competition problems? - The Guardian
Government faces likely High Court challenge to its CFMEU legislation - The Conversation
Dutton wrong with ‘unprecedented’ visa claim - Crikey (paywall)
The RBA is making confusion about inflation and the cost of living even worse - The Guardian
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here
Share your views on Australia’s media landscape through TrueNorth’s short survey
You’re up to date for Wednesday the 28th 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