The Nationals’ announcement that it will oppose the Indigenous Voice is all about pathetic internal Coalition politics and a whole lot more
It is possible the National Party’s sudden announcement that it will oppose the Indigenous Voice is primarily about pathetic internal Coalition politics, as the ABC’s David Speers has reported.
But there is a deeper, darker reason the Nationals were always going to oppose the Voice: The inability of much of their country base to come to terms with their heritage, with their families’ pasts, with the source of their wealth.
The psychology of denial runs very deep. Odds are there are National Party Boomer elders whose grandparents were involved in “dispersal” – the euphemism for genocide in Queensland and throughout Northern Australia. If not grandparents, then certainly great-grandparents.
Those forebears had to inculcate values in their children that justified massacres, theft and dispossession. Who wants to be proud of what they’ve built when it has been built on murder?
Just days after proudly announcing he would be giving away his wealth for the benefit of society, the world’s fourth richest man Jeff Bezos was astonished to learn that millions of other people are already contributing their money to worthy causes via an age-old mechanism known as ‘the taxation system’.
At least nine senior Liberal Party members wrote to Opposition Leader Matthew Guy and other party leaders weeks ago to sound the alarm about the political risks of candidate Renee Heath’s controversial religious views, but were dismissed or received no response.
Is this the case here in Australia? Is this what the LNP want and expects of Education?
Education is a fundamental human right and the bedrock of sustainable development: it contributes to all three dimensions of sustainable development – social, economic, and environment – and underpins governance, and security of the individual. The interconnected dividends that result from investments in equitable quality education are immeasurable – generating greater economic returns and growth for individuals and societies creating a lasting impact on public health, decent work and gender equality, and leading to safer and more resilient and stable societies.
How can this be better than Solar, Wind and Hydro?
The vast potential of geothermal energy generation for heating has so far been under-utilised in Germany, but a new exploration process launched by the economy and climate ministry (BMWK) aims to better exploit the renewable energy source underground. The ministry said it will consult policymakers, industry groups and other stakeholders in potential geothermal energy generation regions to unlock the energy source that can “improve heating supply year-round”.
Murdoch is never in trouble because news isn’t his business. Good bad or ugly as long as the attention is on him he’s ahead and a winner. The issue really is “fake product” is being delivered and sold as news and information. If commercial advertisers did the same as Murdoch they’d be jailed like Australia’s Peter Foster has time and time again.
Murdoch’s conservative media outlets seem to have launched a coordinated effort to nudge Trump off the stage. It is not going well.
With the Victorian election only weeks away, “embattled” Premier Dan Andrews is under intense scrutiny from sections of the media about [checks notes] some veranda steps and a 10-year-old car crash he wasn’t involved in.
But could there be worse to come? Crikey satirist Tom Red has the inside skinny on the growing list of the premier’s past indiscretions.
Owen Bowcott on Italian investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi’s new book documenting attempts to demonise and destroy Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and her seven-year battle to access government information.
The rich get told , They Pledge in Public. Then do Sweet FA.
Leaders from poor countries criticised wealthy governments and oil companies for driving global warming, using their speeches at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt to demand that they pay up for damages being inflicting on their economies.
Angus Taylor comes out swinging like a see-saw at the press club. His “abstract” economy is “resilient” and doing well. However, the majority of people and small businesses that make it up aren’t. Good Onya Angus! Isn’t Labor saying that and acting on it when the LNP weren’t? It’s why you’re in opposition now and no longer a do-nothing government.
The economy is about people – and people are struggling to keep up with the cost of living.
That’s the key message shadow treasurer Angus Taylor wanted to get across in his first major speech since the Albanese government’s first budget.
Mr Taylor said the overarching economy was in a relatively good position but businesses were struggling to find workers, waterlogged roads were deteriorating and power bills were hurting hip pockets.
“The Australian economy is fundamentally resilient,” he told the National Press Club on Wednesday.
Thirty-two per cent of Australian public companies paid no tax in 2020-21, according to ATO data, although the tax office said most have legitimate reasons for not doing so.
Albanese is not talking. However, he’s certainly signalling that we aren’t a Pacific Nation any longer nor are we an independent one. First Nation Peoples have been invaded and colonised once and this seems a second coming of the white man.
While others are saying “don’t worry” this isn’t a message for China to take as a threat as we are so far away. B52s are slow and could be tracked and dealt with easily in mid-air. If this was the case why deploy them here at all? Alaska, Hawaii, Philippines are much closer? B52s, Nuclear Subs that America no longer wants to be sold to Australia? Tracking Stations we certainly are looking like an American base. Shhh! Where are those warheads to be stored?
In what critics are calling a “dangerous escalation,” the United States is reportedly preparing to deploy up to six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to northern Australia, where they would be close enough to strike China.
On the one hand are the mainstream corporate social media, which, for all their faults, have in fact deplatformed people like Donald Trump. And on the other hand, we have alt-right social media, which fosters bigotry.
The result is we miss out on innovations in platform governance that both go beyond the corporate model and actually do a very good job at marginalizing hate speech and undermining surveillance capitalism.
Here comes the Trump playbook “rigged”. Can Bolsarno afford to be sued by the voting machine companies?
Brazil’s defeated president Jair Bolsonaro has not yet conceded after his stunning election loss, with the country bracing for another ‘Trump-style dispute over the results. Mr Bolsonaro, a right-wing radical, has not publicly spoken or reacted since losing to leftist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (known widely as Lula) by 2 million votes.
we’re getting a world where we’re being hammered harder and harder with propaganda encouraging us to accept global conflict as an unavoidable reality, where politicians who voice even the mildest support for diplomacy are shouted down and demonized until they bow to the gods of war, where nuclear brinkmanship is framed as safety and de-escalation is branded as reckless endangerment.
Next Thursday the Sydney Liberal Party faithful are being invited to pay $880 a seat for lunch and to listen to a budget reply by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and shadow treasurer Angus Taylor.
As a value proposition, it will need to be extremely fine food and wine as the opposition has no budget reply.
Oh, there will be words said, as there will be on Thursday night when Mr Dutton delivers his official speech in Parliament. But it is guaranteed to fit Macbeth’s view of life, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.
I’ve been covering federal budgets closely for four decades of my near half-century in journalism. None of the preceding 39 has so quickly and comprehensively destroyed the previous government.
Quite simply, there is nobody on the opposition benches with the required credibility to be able to offer a meaningful critique…….
Australia’s TV media companies have told the National Anti-Corruption Commission committee that they should be exempt from being investigated for corruption by the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC). I captured it on video, as per below, and it is amazing how brazen the media companies are thinking they can publicly demand to be above the law.
The radical right, and in particular, Murdoch’s News Corp, are laundering the dirty ideas of the people deploying fascistic politics to make them seem normal “conservative” thought.
On current polling, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews looks set for an even bigger win on November 26 than his monster 2018 victory. The most recent Morgan poll has Victorian Labor leading the Coalition by 20 points in two-party-preferred (2PP) terms, though that poll also shows a substantially higher independents vote.
This isn’t a new phenomenon in Australia Murdoch’s News Corp owns 66% of the print news in Australia and the majority of the rest is corporately owned. It’s why we need the ABC and more independents because they stand between us and the plundering of our Democracy. By independent I mean news and information not supported by advertising or lobby groups but by subscription only.
This has rapidly become the standard business model for American newspapering. Today, more than half of all daily papers in America are in the grip of just 10 of these money syndicates. That’s why our “local” papers are dying. It’s not a failure of journalism. It’s a plunder of journalism by absentee corporate owners.
Lachlan still doesn’t have his big boy pants. However, he’s allowed to sue and advocate for and against free speech one at the same time.
“Rupert Murdoch has come out of hibernation,” Enders said. “COVID was a period of hibernation, and his then wife [Jerry Hall] exercised a degree of control over his movements, which became the cause of the divorce. He is 10 times more directly engaged with the business than he was during the COVID years. Talking to Robert Thomson, there’s no question that this is all Rupert Murdoch, and that he’s very actively engaged in this process. The transaction is definitely going to be happening.”
However, a report by Human Rights Watch found that most of the cases they documented “where Ukrainians from the Mariupol and Kharkiv areas were transported to Russia amount to forcible transfers”.
The report described the practice as a “serious violation of the laws of war amounting to a war crime and a potential crime against humanity”.
The Institute for the Study of War has stated that Russia “continues to conduct massive, forced deportations of Ukrainians that likely amount to a deliberate ethnic cleansing campaign”.
Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have had to escape the war via Russia. Neighbouring Estonia has become a sanctuary for those unwilling to stay on enemy soil.
Just as the British East India Company effectively ran Britain and its empire, so the US military and business complex, along with its elite supporters particularly in the media supports Western hegemony. No US president, and certainly no Australian prime minister or Leader of the Opposition is prepared to challenge the US Imperium.
A person from Mars who reads and listens to Australian media would conclude that we are an island parked off New York or London. The ABC is no exception. It has a Planet America program as if we are a state of the US!
Western media including our own shows no interest in peace in Ukraine. Most political colonies have come to an end. But a colonial mind set continues in the media. That media mind set in turn promotes a ‘colonisation of the mind’. It accepts the Washington consensus.
Which would explain why U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the U.S. goal in Ukraine is actually to “weaken” Russia, and also why the empire appears to have actively torpedoed a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia in the early days of the conflict. This proxy war has no exit strategy. And that is entirely by design.
Assange supporters formed human chains around Parliament in London and the Justice Dept. in D.C. on Saturday to support press freedom. CN broadcast the events live. Watch the replays here. London event from CN Live!, Cathy Vogan reporting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALzBrWoNZAU Washington
Just how many major players in the Fossil Fuel Industry will be stung for their tactics in trying to maintain their false relevance?
Ensuring claims are truthful will be an enforcement priority for the ACCC this year, and an enduring one, Cass-Gottlieb said, adding international estimates from consumer protection groups put the level of false environmental claims at 40%.
Putin calls Ukraine “terrorists” and his a “Special OP”. Call it a war and you’re jailed.
An explosion on the Kerch bridge that connects the Russian-occupied Ukrainian peninsula Crimea with Russia has caused a massive blow to Putin’s attack on Ukraine. The bridge, which was opened by Putin in 2018, is crucial for the transportation of both Russian military supplies as well as daily necessities for Crimea itself.
There’s more dark money being poured into state Supreme Court races. Last week, we found out that the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) is spending $2 million on these races, with dark money funding. That started a trend, because a new ultra-conservative PAC is jumping in with a plan to spend $22.5 million on judicial races in seven states.
One of those states is Kentucky where it plans to spend $1.6 million through Fair Courts American-Kentucky, a PAC under the umbrella of another arm money group, Restoration of America. It’s got an arm called Fair Courts America, that will be running the campaign to install rightwing state supreme courts. The Courier Journal accessed the group’s 12-page plan for its story Friday. (That file appears to have been removed as of this writing. Maybe they didn’t like the sunlight suddenly exposing them.)
AFL club Essendon has moved quickly to restore confidence after its disastrous 1-day appointment of ex NAB boss Andrew Thorburn, confirming it had asked former Hillsong boss Brian Houston to oversee the organisation until a permanent new CEO can be found.
America seems incapable of disproving Trump’s declaration that “there’s good on both sides ” made immediately after Charlottesville where the murder and assault were committed in plain sight by a white supremacists who were absolutely and clearly wrong. The storming of the Capitol on Jan 6th seems too difficult given the majority were white male ultra-right and far from moderate protesters after blood. No such leeway or time would have been spent if they had been black that’s for certain.
Everyone in public life — including leading Democrats, Joe Biden, and Republican leaders, including Mitch McConnell — must condemn Trump’s invitations to violence and bigotry. And they must also demand that Trump be held criminally accountable for his attempted coup, his instigation of the assault on the Capitol, and his theft of top-secret government documents.
The Commonwealth Bank, while publicly claiming to be an ethical bank, privately tells its perennial victims to go away, rendering them invisible, writes Dr Evan Jones.
Ok, I think that it’s time that we had a new acknowledgment of country… Something along the lines of: “I begin today by acknowledging the racists past and present and apologise for those who seem to think that the booing during the Welcome To Country was ‘understandable’ while ignoring the Nazi salutes from the same section of the crowd. I pay my lack of respect to the traditional rapists of our land and to racists past and present as well as emerging racists who should have been taught better by the elders who seem to think that they are above reproach and that nothing matters as long as you make money.”
How quick is a day in politics and media? There was Andrew Bolt bragging about the influence he had with the powers to be in Australia. His “besties” were Tony Abbott and the Dutchman John Roskam head of the IPA. He even got his son James a “mini-me” job with the think tank podcasting among other things.
But like puffing on a Dandelion, all that good fortune, or some might call arse-licking, has blown away. So much for being Murdoch’s top “influencer”. A legend in his own lunchtime Bolt is a squeak in a world of talking heads. Lachlan is suing “Crikey” for its public opinion. Just a sentence that Bolt once insisted was everybody’s “free speech” right. His boss obviously doesn’t agree. In America, there wouldn’t even be a case to answer, but Bolt’s boss a historic loser here thinks otherwise. Bolt now has turned to the “right of free silence”. He knows on which side his bread is buttered.
There was a time, not so long ago, when corporate Australia lined up…
“Twenty or 30 years ago,” says John Roskam, whose 17-year tenure as executive director ended a couple of months ago, “we had dozens of ASX 100 companies supporting the IPA. Now, there’s not one.
“Not one,” he repeats, for emphasis. “Not one of the ASX 100 companies supports the IPA.”
No wonder Roskam sounds dispirited. Big business created the IPA. It was set up in 1943 following the collapse of Australia’s major conservative political party, the United Australia Party, in opposition to the perceived “socialism” of the Curtin Labor government.
Its founders included the chairmen of BHP and Coles, as well as the head of the Herald and Weekly Times newspaper group, Keith Murdoch, father of Rupert, among many other business leaders.
The fact that corporate Australia now has largely abandoned the IPA – although the Murdochs, whose business is listed offshore, are still supporters, as is mining magnate Gina Rinehart, whose interests are held privately – may be the clearest indication of the declining influence of not just the IPA but right-wing think tanks in general.
“Many people, including myself as a Liberal Party member, are frustrated with the direction of the Liberal Party. The libertarian alternative through the LDP is becoming more and more attractive.”
Liz Truss’s government will not last a year, and the Conservative Party may then split, leading to an early election (due anyway by 2024). The Labour party is already seventeen points ahead in the polls, and its lead may even widen. It will be a wild ride, but the next British government will be led by Labour, which will rapidly reverse everything that Truss aspires to do.
Murdoch media intentionally act as agents for Putin. What would have happened had they done the same for Hitler?
Neoliberalism is a valueless marketing system of intended inequitable profiteering just like the Western Banking system is today. What may have once started as a service years ago has become corrupted. The $$ it’s sole interest fo minimal return. Both political parties in America and here support it, one less than the other maybe but neither is prepared to change it entirely. In fact, Australia had the ABC as a counterweight and the LNP set out to destroy it. Will the ALP save our ABC?
The Murdochs left Australia and the UK to wallow in America’s contradictions magnified by it’s lack of media mainstream diversity, corporate control and market regulation. Fox News today is an example of America at it’s worst and what could develop here. What would have happened had they had the power to do this during WW2 or the Cold War and advocated “for” Hitler and Russia back then? Would they have been able to abandon values for profit as easily as they are today?
Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s dubious allegation that the United States sabotaged a natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany as part of a sinister “escalation” of Russia’s war with Ukraine echoed the Kremlin’s own propagandists. Carlson’s report is now getting substantial attention from Russian state TV, which is promoting his theory — and his suggestion for how Russia could strike back at U.S. interests in light of the supposed attack.
“Wait a Minute, Succession Is Real!”: CNN’s Long-Awaited Murdoch Saga Is Finally Getting Its Network Debut (By Joe Pompeo and Vanity Fair)
Once slated for CNN…
I asked the duo what they think viewers will take away from Empire of Influence that they haven’t already seen or heard or read in the prolific canon of Murdochology. “It really braids the story of the family and the story of the empire into a single narrative,” said Mahler. “I also think it gives you a unique sense of the global sweep of the empire and its influence. There have been plenty of stories about phone hacking, the Murdochs’ influence in Australia and the UK, and of course Fox News. But to have them all stitched together into one big, sweeping narrative—you’re seeing how he accumulates power, and you’re watching him wield that power to accumulate more power. Seeing that gives it a different kind of force.”
Privatisation, corporatisation of, and debt creation in Australian tertiary institutes have accelerated cheating on a scale that has become the new norm. However, despite the cheating, and a degree there’s always been a far more influential alternative to success. Who you know is by far the easier path far easier than what you know or merit, and that has been clear. Its effect is an influence way before the entrance to a university. Simply take a statistical look around you. 50 k untenured, educated higher degree staff suffering short hours wage theft are employed to teach each new crop of suckers chasing a false promise. Simply ask taxi and uber drivers what they do for a living and don’t be surprised that they’re looking for a “real” job having got a degree and now doing an MBA. Meanwhile, Lachlan Murdoch, James Packer, and the Trumps having squandered billions sit at the top of the tree by no means self-made.
A PROBLEM LABELLED “industrial scale cheating” is presenting a mortal threat to universities with students now routinely commissioning a proliferating range of online services to do their assignments. Has it yet got bad enough to jeopardise learning and standards, the quality of research and ultimately knowledge itself?
While so many nations since the French Revolution have declared themselves Republics it seems strange that Australia needs to be cautioned. Yes, Australia is unique in as much as has it denied the existence of the Indigenous first peoples here as the owners of this land. They had no rights until just over 30 years ago. The colony denied them citizenship as did the Federation. It ignored any need for treaties or recognition like other colonies had. It’s a country that’s Constitution hasn’t even a Bill of Human Rights. Given it’s a nation so uniquely lacking what other nations take for granted why need we be so careful that consequences must be “considered before moving forward as a Republic?
While much has been discussed about electing an Australian president, more consideration is required before moving forward as a republic, writes Professor John Quiggin.
olddogthoughts 
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