Former prime minister Tony Abbott (Image: AAP/Mick Tsikas)
Right-wing figures are pushing for a federal takeover of the NSW Liberals — with the goal of sending a moderate party far to the right.
The right-wing rump of the Liberal Party, backed by the Murdoch press, is liking what it sees in NSW — the chance to take over a division characterised by sensible, centrist liberalism, and purge the influence of moderates.
The occasion, of course, is the truly spectacular bungle by the party’s head office to do basic paperwork to nominate Liberal candidates for local council elections, a bungle now being investigated by former Howard and Abbott-era federal director Brian Loughnane.
Since the shifting of planning powers from councils to planning panels, local government in Sydney has become even more an example of Wilde’s unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable than it used to be, but is still plagued by corruption and cronyism. Of course, that a large number of Sydney councils should be towed out to sea and sunk to make nice artificial reefs doesn’t alter how bad the bungle was — especially after state president and former minister Don Harwin declared that the party would be taking legal action against the NSW Electoral Commission — presumably for daring to have deadlines for things like elections — only to back down after, erm, getting legal advice.
Nice work, Don. Don’t give up your day job. Oh… wait.
This lurching from the incompetent to the shambolic has right-wingers correctly sharpening their knives for Harwin: Tony Abbott — whose political genius extends to winning the prime ministership in a landslide, getting sacked by his own MPs after less than two years, and losing his own once-safe seat — has demanded Harwin follow state director Richard Shields out the door, and wants a federal takeover of the NSW division. News Corp is right behind him, with veteran Coalition loyalist Dennis Shanahan also demanding a federal takeover, failing tabloid The Daily Telegraph calling for Harwin’s head, and The Australianrushing to defend Shields.
The narrative from the right — Peta Credlin has pushed it — is that the NSW division has been a basket case that cost Tony Abbott victory in 2010 (when the only thing that got Abbott close enough to contemplate offering his “arse” for the prime ministership was Kevin Rudd’s demolition job on the Gillard campaign) and helped cause the defeat of Scott Morrison in 2022. “We already know the review of the 2022 election found that the NSW branch ‘was not in an acceptable position to contest the election in some seats’,” Shanahan offered in The Australian, going on to quote extensively from the 2022 election review by Loughnane and Jane Hume (another political genius) on the shortcomings of the NSW branch.
Curiously absent from Shanahan’s account is any mention of the role played by Morrison himself and his apparatchik Alex Hawke in the pre-2022 preselection disaster in NSW. In addition to interfering in preselections in NSW — leading to Concetta Fierravanti-Wells savaging Morrison and accusing him of corrupting the NSW division — Morrison famously installed the disastrous Katherine Deves in Warringah in an effort to transform the 2022 election into an anti-trans culture war. But based on Shanahan’s account, you could be forgiven for thinking Morrison floated above the NSW division like some sort of benign deity in the run-up to 2022.
It’s not merely that Shanahan and News Corp are rewriting history. It’s that Deves — who was backed in multipleop-eds by The Australian and lauded by Abbott — is exactly the kind of candidate the right of the party wants to see, someone fresh from the trenches of the culture wars, ready to fight the good fight in conflicts over social issues imported directly from the US.
In fact if you want to see what Abbott and his coterie, and News Corp, would like to transform the NSW division into, just look over the border at the Victorian Liberals, a party loaded with right-wing religious zealots and culture warriors who are happier savaging and suing moderate colleagues than appealing to the Victorian electorate.
The Victorian Liberals are thus utterly unelectable. And the result is that Victoria has ended up with the highest-taxing, least competent and most corrupt government in the country. That’s what veering sharply to the right does in Australian electorates — removes the pressure of accountability and electoral competition from bad governments.
To do the same in NSW would be a crime. The Minns government has already proven itself to be barely competent, its few worthwhile policies — the quality of its deficit spending is much better than its Queensland counterpart — outweighed by the venality of its obeisance to the gambling and fossil fuel industries. Despite Mark Speakman failing to set the world on fire, and bitter stoushes with the Nats, the Coalition is within striking distance of making Minns a one-termer. A right-wing takeover would satisfy the thirst for revenge of right-wingers like Abbott against decades of defeats at the hands of moderates — and send NSW careening down the path of Victoria. Voters deserve much, much better.
What would a federal takeover of the NSW Liberals mean for the party, and the state? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Bernard Keane is Crikey's political editor. Before that he was Crikey's Canberra press gallery correspondent, covering politics, national security and economics.
NSW Liberals party affairs manager Wilson Chessell (Image: LinkedIn/Private Media)
Some people in the party's inner sanctum were 'upset' they didn't get to test their challenge in court.
Going to court over the NSW Liberal Party’s nomination blunder would be too costly and disruptive for the campaigning candidates, party heavyweights were told on Tuesday night via an email leaked to Crikey.
Lawyers who looked at the case on behalf of the Liberals also believed the outcome would be far from certain, according to the email to the party’s state executive committee written by acting state director Wilson Chessell.
“As you will recall, the state president wrote to you last week that the party would explore all options to rectify the issues regarding nominations for the local government elections on 14 September 2024,” Chessell wrote in the email.
“Subsequently, we sought urgent legal advice from Dr James Renwick SC and Brendan Lim. This advice was received this afternoon.
“After considering that advice, I have concluded that it would be inadvisable for the party to commence proceedings in the Supreme Court of NSW.”
Renwick is a silk with 12 Wentworth Selborne Chambers, and Lim is a barrister with Eleven Wentworth. Both are based in Sydney and have experience representing the Australian Electoral Commission in court. Neither could be reached for comment by Crikey.
According to Chessell’s email, the reasons for abandoning the plans to take the NSW Electoral Commission to court were the uncertainty of the outcome, the possible cost to the NSW Liberal division, and the possible effect on the Liberal local government campaign.
Still, Chessell repeated a claim that the failure to nominate many of the party’s candidates was because of an “error” by the commission.
Liberal sources — speaking freely on the condition of anonymity as Liberals are barred from speaking publicly about internal matters — told Crikey the projected cost of the court action hadn’t been shared with the state executive.
“The executive hasn’t been briefed, and there’s frustration about that,” one person said.
“People were a bit upset. I think they want us to go to court and test it out, but it’s just too expensive.”
There has been speculation about other lawsuits stemming from the nomination failure: some candidates who didn’t get nominated are considering a class action suit over lost application fees and other costs associated with preparing their campaigns, the Australian Associated Press reported.
One would-be candidate who spoke to Crikey said “all options were on the table”, but added the most important thing would be to support the people who did get nominated.
Other sources said the party hoped to turn a page and focus on the campaign ahead.
There has also been speculation by party members that Richard Shields, the former state director who was blamed for the failure, may take action of his own. Sources told Crikey he arrived at an emergency state executive meeting last Thursday with a lawyer by his side and took all questions on notice.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, “The Liberal Party’s legal advice conceded that Shields might sue the party for unfair dismissal, but he would in effect be suing the holding group that sits above the party, Bunori Pty Ltd”.
Anton Nilsson is Crikey's federal political reporter. He previously covered NSW Parliament for NCA NewsWire, and before that, worked for Sweden's Expressen newspaper as well as other publications in Sweden, Australia and the United States.
Joe Biden at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago (Image: Gordon Annabelle/CNP/ABACA)
The left don't really see Kamala Harris as one of them. But she's close enough that they'll get behind her if it means beating Donald Trump.
So farewell then, Joe Biden, signing off from politics at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Scranton Joe’s speech was nothing spectacular and the 46th president was low on energy. There were a couple of stumbles and tangles, but nothing like the big fade-on he suffered during his first and only 2024 debate with The Donald.
His speech — a testament to his half-century career as a right-wing Democrat who ended up on the centre-left by forces of events, a man who did much good and fought for unions and women’s safety, who got the US out of Afghanistan while being a shameless advocate of the Delaware insurance, credit card, and chemical industry complexes — was rapturously received. Chiefly because its low energy confirmed to everyone there that the party was right to shove him out the window and move on to Kamala: he rallied at points, but had he managed to give a barn-burner, there would have been more than a touch of buyer’s remorse over the selection of Harris.
Also speaking on the convention’s first night was Hillary Clinton, passing on the torch, etc, but also hurried out early so that the memory of 2016 would not linger and Harris and Tim Walz could take centre stage. No sight of Bill, an ancient memory now of pre-9/11 America. Jimmy Carter was also missing, for the obvious reason that if he appeared on stage, the convention might nominate him by acclaim.
But the nominating is all done and over with, despite some grumbling that, in the absence of a real primary process, a contested convention should have been the go. No-one put that up with even the slightest hope it would be honoured. President Biden, in stepping out of the race, simply transferred his pledged delegates to Harris.
The party’s left don’t see Harris — a former big-city prosecutor who has thrown a lot of poor people of all colours in prison, for very long periods, for very minor crimes — as one of them. But she’s close enough to avoid a political blackmail run, and there’s no-one to do it. The optics of Bernie taking another tilt would be ridiculous, progressive figurehead Gavin Newsom is a Harris ally and too much like her in his politics, and the last representative of the schlub white left, Tim Walz, is now inside the tent.
Harris has made good on whatever deal has been made, with a series of economic left offers that might also be vote-winners, such as a rather Australian-style first-home-buyers grant of US$25,000. This is doable from the presidency, or so I am informed, but only by way of being even more inflationary and self-defeating than such schemes usually are. So it is symbolic politics, but symbolic by being practical and material and addressing issues of class.
That the convention is being held in Chicago, the scene of the great left rebellion of 1968, is a measure of how confident the party centre was that there would be no dissent. The convention of 1968 was jammed up too (though there was an actual ballot in that era), with Lyndon B Johnson pulling out after the upstart anti-Vietnam War campaign of Eugene McCarthy let him know he would be shellacked from the left, and then lose to the right.
His vice president, Hubert Humphrey, the towering figure in the Minnesotan tradition of which Tim Walz is the current representative, was loathed by the left for his support of the war (and by LBJ, and possibly by Mrs Humphrey as well), and the huge protests were violently put down by Democrat Mayor Richard Daley’s thuggish police force. The event had unintended consequences. Nixon may have won the election — narrowly — but the Vietnam War was on the road to being unacceptable. “The Vietnam war was won in the streets of Chicago”, General Giap is said, perhaps apocryphally, to have said — a quote to remember whenever pounding the pavement seems both futile and vexing.
There is a brutal genocidal war going on now, as in 1968. But this time the US is merely backing it, not fighting it on the ground, so the intra-party left has not joined with the extra-party left in the small-scale protests. The Democrats are about eight parties, not one, and the internal unity looks like a party fusion, but it is really more like the French response to Marine Le Pen’s challenge, a popular front against the hard right. Or in the personage of the increasingly erratic Donald Trump, the gonzo yippie crazy right.
Trump’s increasingly free-form raves can be seen as the end-point of the long political arc or ark — and what a long strange trip it has been — that began with the Merry Pranksters and the yippies in the 1960s, which, for all their antinomianism, still drew on the promise of America for their legitimacy; the notion that if you didn’t consent, you could raise hell, and forming actual parties and traditions was a fetish and a pain in the ass. Trump’s third presidential outing, his longest and most jazz-inflected performance of “Dark Star” to date, is still viable in the polls — it is neck and neck in the swing state, decimals of points in it — because he represents to some that energy and promise. The Harris-Walz Democrats’ promise to progressives, who now form the ruling elite, is the imposition of order.
In 1968, the yippies elevated a pig — Pigasus — and nominated it for president. In 2008, the nascent Tea Party was formed around “Porculus” protest, at Obama’s new deficit (and not Bush’s old one), in which a pig (often a tofu one) was spit roast before idiots marched around Dunkin’ Donuts car parks in tricorn hats muttering, “Who Is John Galt?”
The current convention is a riposte to that spirit, an affirmation by the establishment left that “nothing ever happens” or should be allowed to. It expresses the mainstream progressive left’s fondest hope in our era: that politics should be replaced by administration. Nothing ever happens but something sometimes does. In any case, on exhibition now are two ideas of what politics and government should be, and we’ll see how they go up against each other in the months to come.
The bacon is bringing it all back home.
Are the left right to embrace Kamala Harris? Can she beat Donald Trump? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Guy Rundle is correspondent-at-large for Crikey. He is also an associate editor at Arena Quarterly and contributes to a variety of publications in Australia and the United Kingdom.
A glut of experience has left Nine as the company executes redundancies that will see the loss of about 85 staff.
Culture editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age Osman Faruqi and former Private Sydney columnist Andrew Hornery have headlined the departures at Nine Publishing this week, as the company completes the process of executing major redundancies foreshadowed earlier this year.
There were a raft of other departures from across the Nine mastheads, including senior Australian Financial Review correspondents Aaron Patrick, Ben Potter and Michael Pelly, as well as the Herald’s chief sports scribe Andrew Webster, senior reporter Helen Pitt, North American correspondent Farrah Tomazin, books editor Jason Steger, Indigenous Affairs editor Jack Latimore and cartoonist John Shakespeare.
Guardian Australia reports the departures also include senior writer at The Age Royce Millar, social affairs editor Jewel Topsfield and music writer Martin Boulton, with deputy news director Angus Livingston resigning despite being among those rejected for a voluntary redundancy.
While a Nine spokesperson confirmed in a statement that 85 redundancies were taken from the newsrooms, print operations and audience and commercial growth divisions as part of the now-concluded process, other sources at the company have told Crikey that the number of employees applying for voluntary redundancy was significantly higher.
One source estimated the number of applications to be in excess of 150, which would represent a significant proportion of the entire publishing division. In July, 500 staff from across the highly-unionised mastheads went on strike for five days after pay negotiations with management broke down. Part of the industrial action involved requests from union leaders for a reduction in the redundancy headcount, which was put forward by Nine management despite the profitability of the publishing division.
Nine’s spokesperson declined to comment on the number of applications made for voluntary redundancy, but confirmed that in addition to the 85 redundancies, a number of staff had also resigned from the publishing division.
“As foreshadowed in June, we have been working with our people in reshaping the publishing business to ensure a sustainable future in response to the challenging advertising market and collapse of the Meta deal,” the spokesperson said.
“We will be providing support for all employees transitioning from the business. Every one of these people depart with our gratitude and appreciation for their contributions to Nine’s world-class mastheads.”
Hornery told Crikey he was “very happy” with his decision to leave, saying he had “a couple of irons in the fire” for the future.
“No-one gets into journalism to become rich, so when there’s a big offer of money, it’d be silly to not jump at it,” he said.
“The business is changing and it would be silly to not try and change with it — the Herald is a wonderful, enduring journalistic beacon in our society and it’s been a privilege to be part of it for such a long time.”
Hornery named former editors John Lyons and Peter Fray as his favourites he’d worked under in almost three decades with The Sydney Morning Herald. Eighteen of those years were spent penning the Private Sydney column about Sydney’s social scene.
After receiving questions from Crikey, Hornery posted about his decision on his personal Instagram account.
Shakespeare, meanwhile, told Crikey he was leaving a “dream job” to “salvage the super a little bit”.
“Ironically it’s been my happiest time there under editor Bevan Shields, who I’ve loved working with ever since he was a Canberra correspondent,” he said.
Faruqi departs Nine after two and a half years in the role, having previously worked as head of audio at Schwartz Media and as an editor at the ABC.
Correction: A previous version of this article quoted a Nine statement to the effect that none of the 85 redundancies were forced and all were voluntary. Nine has since amended its statement to clarify that there were in fact a number of involuntary redundancies.
A promotional image of the 'crime intelligence' platform from Auror's website (Image: Auror)
The information commissioner has launched a full investigation into Auror following a Crikey report into its use by the Australian Federal Police.
Retail surveillance company Auror is under investigation by Australia’s privacy watchdog following a Crikey report into the Australian Federal Police’s (AFP) use of its software.
The Australian Information Commissioner launched an investigation into the New Zealand-based company on February 2 this year, as first reported by regulatory and privacy publication MLex.
Auror sells itself as helping “connect people and organisations with timely intel to proactively reduce the impacts of crime in retail stores” by pulling together facial recognition scans, license plate scanners, self-checkout AI and other data from retailers that they can share with other retailers and police.
These emails showed that staff were using it to collect information from retailers not reported to police, and put police information into Auror’s systems.
After Crikey approached police about its use, the AFP suspended its use of the technology. The Office of the Information Commissioner launched “preliminary inquiries” into the AFP’s use of the technology soon afterwards.
A spokesperson for the OAIC told Crikey it has opened a probe into the company itself, after being satisfied that the AFP’s use of the technology did not warrant an investigation.
Police use of the self-described “crime intelligence platform” adopted by as many as 40% of Australian retailers has elicited concerns from privacy experts over the sharing of information between retailers and with law enforcement without necessarily being tied to a crime.
This disclosure came in response to a question during budget estimates asked by Greens Senator David Shoebridge on May 29.
“The reason I’m asking is that many of the privacy investigations undertaken by your office — and I know you’ve only recently come in — have taken years to come to a conclusion,” Shoebridge said to privacy commissioner Carly Kind at the time.
“That is of incredible frustration to the public, to myself and I assume to other elected representatives — the length of time these investigations are taking.”
An Auror spokesperson confirmed the investigation in an emailed statement.
“We are pleased to be supporting OAIC inquiries into better understanding our work,” they told Crikey.
Cam Wilson is Crikey’s associate editor. He previously worked as a reporter at the ABC, BuzzFeed, Business Insider and Gizmodo. He primarily covers internet culture and tech in Australia.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton (Image: AAP/Lukas Coch)
Plus praise for Max Kaiser’s assessment of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and one reader predicts Kamala Harris will be 'the most consequential person of the 21st Century'.
Suzie McKenzie writes: For the likes of Dutton to use the Palestinian people’s plight as a political cudgel and divisive tactic is beyond crass, and downright subversive to all we should hold near and dear.
I am a dual citizen born in the US, and I watch both US and Australian politics very closely. Dutton is a Trump-like, extreme-right wannabe. He would bring to Australian shores divisive and damaging us-vs-them politics, where “them” is anybody not white and Christian. I abhor the very thought of this ideology taking root in Australia any more than it already has.
As if Pauline Hanson wasn’t enough of a blemish to suffer, Dutton threatens to be a bulbous boil of poisonous divisiveness, purely for his own benefit.
This is not about national security. It is about political one-upmanship masquerading as a national security risk. It is about a non-existent threat purportedly coming from sick, starving and scared humans.
Judy Hardy-Holden writes: Thank you, Dr. Max Kaiser, for your thoughtful, gracious article. Surely we must all know that there are Jews who do not support the horrible destruction wrought by the political and military elite of Israel.
A dead child is a dead child. A bombed school or hospital is a bombed school or hospital. The colour, culture and country of anyone killed by an invader is irrelevant. The pain, anguish and suffering of those who are left is a human response.
We all belong to humanity, but some of us refuse to acknowledge what a precious gift that is.
Sandra Schmidt writes: I concur with everything Max Kaiser wrote. There have been many songs and music produced in memory of massacres and wars throughout history.
As someone from the UK, it makes me uncomfortable and ashamed for the massacres and genocide attempt which occurred with First Peoples here in Australia. But we can’t erase this from history, we can only acknowledge it and restore what was taken.
This is a shameful part of Israel’s history which we need to acknowledge for what it is: a genocide of the Palestinian people.
Shame on Australia, Peter Dutton and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. We too are complicit in the erasure of these already oppressed people at the hands of Israel.
Steve Brennan writes: Although there is always the novelty factor at play with a new, and in this case female, presidential candidate, I think the jubilation is not going to burst. In presidential races, in America especially, the people vote for candidates. The policies come second.
What I am seeing clearly is that Americans are hurting badly and they view Kamala Harris as a fresh wind talking about the things they are feeling. This is only going to grow in strength, especially as Trump becomes more enraged and incoherent.
The other very important factor is that a growing number of Republicans are throwing their support behind Harris. This has much to do with Trump’s Republican agenda of extremism, fascism and Project 2025 — clearly a manifesto of how he would rule America. Decent Republicans don’t want a bar of this insanity.
I think a very real possibility is that the Trump campaign will implode, unable to adjust to the growing force of the Democrats led by Harris.
My prediction is she will win a very close election and go on to be possibly the most consequential person of the 21st Century.
Catherine Rossiter writes: By rights, Peter Dutton should be anathema to most of the population (and his team is less than inspiring). Yet he is gaining ground on the government. Sadly, I think Anthony Albanese is becoming a shrinking PM.
Where are the headland speeches? Where are the bold policies? Where is the sense that this government has identified the key challenges and is prepared to take strong measures to address them? I am thinking about the cost of living and housing, but also about a changing climate, fixing our totally distorted and under-funded education system, gambling reform and taxation reform.
Tim Walz is right. Being tentative and uninspiring because you are scared you won’t win is almost guaranteed to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This article was written by a selection of Crikey readers. Letters may have been edited for length and clarity. If you’re pleased, peed off or piqued, get it off your chest by writing to letters@crikey.com.au.
Criminal responsibility allows for interventions that divert children from re-offending — a process that must also be available to kids as young as 10.
There is a lot of debate about raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14, and Michael Bradley’s article on the topic goes down the common path of confusing intervention with custodial sentences. Indeed locking up children as young as 10 should be avoided, and except in very rare cases, it is. But criminal responsibility means something else; it allows for intervention, and in the case of youth crime, helps to prevent re-offending.
Managing young offenders is an ethical minefield, and the South Australian system seems to make an effort to be humane with the goal of prevention rather than punishment. I worked in crime statistics for 23 years and monitored the implementation of this approach — on the whole it does seem to be working.
In South Australia, intervention initially involves a police caution. The child and their family members have the offence dealt with by a trained police sergeant, who explains to the young offender why what they did was wrong and why it would be a very bad idea for it to happen again.
If this does not work, the Youth Court can hold a family conference. The child, family members and the victim sit around a table, facilitated by a youth justice coordinator, so the victim can explain the consequences of what the offender has done. If the victim and youth justice coordinator are satisfied with the young offender’s response, that is the end of the process. Sometimes the child agrees to an obligation, such as helping to repair any damage.
It’s only when this fails that cases advance to the Youth Court to be heard by a judge. Even then, the penalty is more likely to be a bond, or for older children community service. Only in the rarest cases, usually when there is a very likely threat to the community, is a custodial sentence imposed and almost never on a child as young as 10.
The entire process focuses on diversion and education, with the desired result of preventing any re-offending.
A few years ago in South Australia, a 13-year-old boy stole a car and ran through a red light, killing a mother and her baby. If the age of criminal responsibility was raised to 14, this boy would not have been spoken to and could have re-offended the very next night. Instead, the family conference process worked and that child has not re-offended. In another case where a 12-year-old set fire to several houses, the police caution was enough of a deterrent.
There has to be a mechanism for intervening when a serious crime occurs, even when the offender is so young. There are consequences to doing nothing.
Maire Mannik is the former manager of crime and justice statistics at the South Australia Office of Crime Statistics, and was the first female head of an IT branch in the SA public service.
Esso/Exxon Mobil's Kingfish A platform in Bass Strait (Image: Esso/Exxon Mobil)
The ongoing shitshow of redundant offshore rigs continues, with environmental groups singling out the 'failures' of the government's regulator.
A coalition of environmental groups has taken aim at the regulator of offshore decommissioning in a joint statement launched this morning in Canberra.
The Wilderness Society, the Australian Marine Conservation Society, Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Friends of the Earth Melbourne, the Environment Centre Northern Territory and the Conservation Council Western Australia have issued a “statement of concern” lamenting the “failure” of the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) to properly ensure companies such as Santos and Woodside clean up after their offshore extraction.
Crikey has written a lot about the potential coming crisis around redundant offshore rigs, the Northern Endeavour in particular. The statement of concern adds a further four case studies to illustrate the potential disasters trailing the thousands of decaying rigs off Australia’s shores. The case studies include Esso/Exxon Mobil projects in the Bass Strait between Victoria and Tasmania — some of which the company is attempting to abandon there — and Woodside’s (now removed) sinking oil rig off the Ningaloo reef in Western Australia.
The group places much of the blame at the door of regulator NOPSEMA, saying it has systemically failed to force companies to clean up the extensive infrastructure left in the ocean after oil and gas projects, including wells, pipelines, anchors, chains, rigs, towers, cabling and floating platforms. It notes that between 2012 — when the agency became responsible for environmental management regulation — and the Northern Endeavour disaster in 2020, NOPSEMA had failed to issue any clean-up notices until late 2020. The first approved clean-up environment plan wasn’t in place until 2022.
Clean-up delays have environmental implications, with the unarrested decay of these rigs having become a serious danger to workforces and the environment. Esso/Exxon Mobil’s Bass Strait project, for example, had two pipeline leaks earlier this year, in which chemicals and gas condensate leaked into the ocean.
“The oil and gas industry’s neglect in properly decommissioning offshore infrastructure is an environmental disaster in the making,” head of climate and energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific Joe Rafalowicz said in an accompanying statement. “Our statement calls on the government to strengthen the power of regulators to hold these companies accountable.”
Of course, a decent regulator is all the more urgent given Labor keeps approving more offshore exploration.
Clarification: A previous version of this piece listed the Woodside oil rig off the Ningaloo reef among the “thousands of offshore rigs nearing the end of their lives”. It has now been updated to clarify that this oil rig has been removed.
Charlie Lewis pens Crikey's Tips and Murmurs column and also writes on industrial relations, politics and culture. He previously worked across government and unions and was a researcher on RN's Daily Planet. He currently co-hosts Spin Cycle on Triple R radio.
NSW Liberal president Don Harwin (Image: AAP/Bianca De Marchi)
NSW Liberal candidates who failed to be nominated for local council elections are considering a class action against the party, and the Obamas hit the ground running at the DNC.
WOULD-BE NSW LIB COUNCILLORS COULD SUE
The NSW Liberals have announced that upon reflection they will not be taking legal action against the state’s electoral commission after missing the deadline to nominate over 100 candidates for September’s local government elections. The Sydney Morning Herald quotes the party as saying it had received advice from senior counsel and “having given consideration to that advice the division will not be taking any legal proceedings”.
Instead, the AAP reports some of the candidates whose nominations were not submitted last week are considering suing the party over the debacle. Lawyer and former Waverley mayor George Newhouse said: “The candidates have lost their application fees and the chance of earning their councillor fees for four years. Many of the people we have spoken to have made donations and paid for campaign materials.” On Tuesday, before the party’s statement, Newhouse suggested any class action could depend on the NSW Liberals’ own potential legal action. The Australian reports former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott has called for the exit of NSW Liberal president Don Harwin, saying his position was “untenable”.
In federal politics, the ABC highlights new laws are set to be introduced by the Labor government today under which MPs could be fined up to 5% of their salary, kicked off powerful parliamentary committees, and even suspended from Parliament for bad behaviour. The Sydney Morning Herald says the long-delayed Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission will have the power to investigate allegations of breaches of parliamentary standards. Minister for Women Katy Gallagher is hoping to have the scheme in place from October if cross-party support is achieved.
The ABC writes the government has committed $3.8 million in initial funding for the commission. The Age quotes Gallagher as saying: “We’ve been working hard to put the systems in place so that people can raise workplace complaints, and when complaints are substantiated, that both staff and parliamentarians are held to account for their behaviour.”
On that theme, Guardian Australia reports teal MPs have spoken out against recent behaviour during question time, especially that of opposition MPs. “It’s been a disappointment to witness the often unnecessarily aggressive behaviour by Coalition members in the chamber, including shouting over the top of people who are speaking rather than respectful debate,” Mackellar MP Sophie Scamp said.
Analysis of figures from the speaker’s office suggests there have been 198 ejections during the 47th Parliament as of yesterday: 161 from the Coalition, 36 from Labor and one from the Greens.
Elsewhere, the AAP highlights Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence commissioner Micaela Cronin will today release the first annual report tracking the progress of the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032 at an address to the National Press Club. It will then be tabled in Parliament.
Also in the news, the ABC points out potential embarrassment for Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek at an upcoming international summit as the government’s plans to overhaul the nation’s environmental laws have been delayed yet again. The broadcaster states Labor is struggling to secure support for its “Nature Positive” laws. The Global Nature Positive Summit is happening in Sydney in October.
Despite the sluggishness, The Australian and AAP have confirmed the country’s biggest solar farm has been approved. The SunCable Australia-Asia PowerLink is set to have enough power for three million homes following its development in the Northern Territory.
OBAMAS HEADLINE DNC
The second day of the Democratic National Convention is taking place in Chicago, with former US president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama the star attractions following outgoing President Joe Biden’s farewell speech on Monday evening. The Washington Post reports a source familiar with the Obamas’ speeches claims Barack’s will “affirm why Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are precisely the leaders the country needs right now,” while Michelle’s “will lay out how Kamala Harris is ready to lead our country forward and turn the page on fear and division”.
The New York Times says it is Obama’s job at the convention to “separate Harris from the Biden years, while making the case that she was central enough to the Biden administration to slip seamlessly into the job”. Reuters quotes Obama advisor Eric Schultz as saying: “president Obama believes this is an all-hands-on-deck moment” and that the 63-year-old would join the Harris election campaign in the coming weeks, especially in the battleground states.
The Hill reports Harris travelled to Milwaukee earlier for a rally in the swing state of Wisconsin and is set to return to Chicago in the evening. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, is among the speakers at the convention on Tuesday.
Earlier, Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling revealed 13 protest-related arrests were made on Monday, The New York Times highlighted. The Washington Post picked up on Snelling revealing at least 3,500 people had gathered in the city’s Union Park on Monday, with protests expected outside the convention for the rest of the week.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
Licking icy poles in science lessons should be in the national curriculum in England, scientists have said.
The Royal Society of Chemistry, Institute of Physics, Royal Society of Biology and Association for Science Education have come up with a series of suggestions for reforming the primary school curriculum in a bid to reduce inequalities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education, The Guardian reports.
The Press Association said the scientists believed the new curriculum should offer “essential experiences” to help children to relate to scientific concepts. The list of experiences includes playing musical instruments, planting vegetables and eating icy poles.
Aylin Ozkan, a teacher and education policy specialist at the Royal Society of Chemistry, is quoted by PA as saying: “One of the recommendations for chemistry is that by the age of 11, all children should start to understand how temperature works and how heating and cooling can change things. What better prop is there for a teacher to help explain this than an ice lolly?
“Essential experiences like this promote learning on a personal level, so we believe they should be part of the curriculum. It’s a cheap solution, and will allow children the opportunity to develop their scientific confidence whatever their background — this is exactly what curriculum reform should be aiming to do.”
The UK government launched its curriculum and assessment review last month and it is set to be published next year.
Say What?
[There are] others who are feeling a little bit ripped off because supporting him over the years has come at the direct cost of supporting other athletes.
Katherine Bates
Yesterday we highlighted Australian cyclist Matthew Richardson’s decision to switch allegiances to Great Britain. Today comes the reaction. Bates, a Commonwealth Games gold medallist and Olympian, told the ABC Sport Daily podcast there would be “a lot of people this morning who just can’t believe it [Richardson’s decision]” and others who felt “let down because they were blindsided by it”.
Foxtel CEO Patrick Delany along with a reproduction of an email sent to all Foxtel staff (Images: Crikey)
Foxtel CEO Patrick Delany has gone into damage control over an image of him performing a Nazi salute, meeting with a Jewish community group and apologising in an all-staff email.
Jewish and diversity groups have criticised the former Fox Sports CEO’s gesture as “deeply concerning” and an example of “toxic workplace behaviours”.
On Sunday night, Delany sent an email to Foxtel staff apologising for the gesture, which he made in the mid-2010s, largely reiterating the statement he gave to Crikey in response to our initial exclusive reporting on the leaked image.
The current argument over Labor’s Future Made In Australia Bill has some high stakes — more than just Labor’s dream of returning to the glory days of Australian manufacturing, or its political strategy of posing as the party of making things here at the next election.
The fund — which the government says totals over $22 billion — could become the biggest pork-barrel in political history in the wrong hands, with only a fairly flimsy “National Interest Framework” to protect taxpayer interests.
The PsiQuantum deal, which saw $900 million committed to a US company by the federal and Queensland governments, amid extraordinary secrecy and no rationale or cost-benefit analysis, could be a glimpse of the future under the bill — complete with Labor-connected lobbyists smoothing the way for the deal.
“I’m not convinced that complete prohibition works,” Government Services Minister Bill Shorten told the ABC’s Q+A as justification for Labor’s all-but-confirmed decision to water down restrictions on gambling advertising, which were recommended by the party’s own inquiry.
Apart from displaying his lifelong talent for sincerely believing whatever it is his leader says at the time, Shorten appears to be in a shrinking minority of people who believe the government’s proposal is adequate.
Biden’s long goodbye — Karen Tumulty (The Washington Post): But having finally reached an obstacle he could not overcome — the toll that eight decades on Earth has taken on him — Biden might actually be able to deliver on a promise he made four years ago: to be the bridge to a new generation of leaders.
Biden’s legacy now hinges to a great degree on whether Harris wins in November.
If she does, he will go down as one of the most successful one-term presidents the nation has seen, a figure whose achievements will include expelling Trump from the Oval Office and, by his self-sacrifice, preventing him from returning to it.
But if the Democrats lose in November, much of the blame will fall on Biden for failing to recognise the peril of running for a second term at his age.
Putin is paralysed in crisis — again — Jamie Dettmer (Politico): However, another possible explanation is that Putin is once again demonstrating how he can become paralysed in a crisis, even disappearing from public view — a characteristic that’s previously drawn comparisons to Joseph Stalin, who retreated to his dacha and remained incommunicado when German forces blitzed their way into the Soviet Union in 1941.
The parallel was first drawn by Putin’s Muscovite critics during COVID-19. Holed up in his Novo-Ogaryovo estate on the outskirts of Moscow, Putin was largely absent as the capital city battled to curb the spread of the deadly virus, with Mark Galeotti, an analyst at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, noting his trait of letting “certain serious challenges become someone else’s problem.”
And this may well explain a pattern that’s emerged when man-made or natural disasters have struck on Putin’s watch. In 2000, he was vacationing at his residence in Sochi when the nuclear submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea. He eventually met with the relatives of the 118 victims as a media storm erupted over his absence — and the meeting did not go well. Then, in 2018, he was criticized for a sluggish response to a massive shopping mall blaze in the Siberian city of Kemerovo that left at least 64 dead, 41 of them children. After the disaster, he was accused by bereaved families of repeating the same mistake.
Rich James is Crikey'sWorm editor. He was previously news director at BuzzFeed Australia, executive news editor at the i paper, senior editor of EMEA at Storyful, and deputy news editor at Metro.
