Harris has stalled. Will today’s debate with Trump change that?

Harris and Trump are running neck and neck. And today might be the Democratic nominee's only chance to regain momentum.

With just two months to go until the US elections, Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris has failed to seal the deal. Everyone knows it, and no-one on the progressive side of things wants to admit it. Late this morning, Australian time, she will go up against Donald Trump in their first and possibly only presidential debate. Will this change the momentum, or create some?

It is going to need to. Harris is a distinguished politician, a compelling speaker at times, a woman of colour with a hero story that connects to many millions. Her opponent is a shambling incoherent convicted felon who has already lost one election. 

They are running neck and neck, and the shambling felon is winning in the electoral college. 

The failure of Harris and the Democrats to crush Trump is just beginning to dawn on people. It is all the more bewildering to them, since there was such a rush of enthusiasm and energy when Joe Biden was finally detached from the nomination. But that was merely great relief, masquerading as a movement. 

With Biden in place, the polls made clear that the Democrats would be eviscerated in a Trumpslide. There would be collateral damage in the House and Senate; all would be lost. Harris’ elevation immediately corrected those polls, bringing half a dozen states back into play. 

Then, nothing. Everything locked. The polls are as they were as soon as the changeover occurred. The Democrats had a mixed strategy with Biden: a bit of incumbency, a bit of record, and a bit of being the old white guy who wasn’t mad. 

Then it was clear Biden was going lollygaga, and Trump looked like the least worse option to a bunch of people. These people have now gone back to Harris, or have simply decided they won’t have to vote now. But their shift has not been sufficient to give Harris a solid majority.

She will have also lost a tranche of voters Biden knew he was holding on to. This was one reason, aside from drive, desperation, that he wanted to stay in the race: to keep those voters, Democrats and independents, who want an old white guy in power, especially one with a labour heritage. 

It appears Harris hasn’t gained that final tranche of “independent independents”, those genuinely swinging voters who are persuaded by programs, etc. Since Harris doesn’t really have one, but has no real incumbency factor either, she is caught between two sides.

This is showing up in the polls. The trouble for the Democrats is these days the election runs on a knife edge. Biden won the 2020 election with 306 electoral college votes to Trump’s 232. But that’s a zero-sum game, which is only 36 points above the 270 needed to win. 

Facing a candidate like Trump, the Democrats getting to 270 is made difficult because of the swing of two big states to Republicans in the past decade or so. Ohio and Florida have 47 electoral college points between them. They used to be up for grabs; now Trump is running 5-8 points ahead in both.

Ohio has been hit hardest of any state by deindustrialisation. It’s a state of mid-size and small cities, many of which were dependent on one large subsector — Buttfuzz, OH, with two factories making steering wheel covers for every US-made car — which are now gone beyond gone, hollowing out the entire community. The anger, despair and disconnection from anything like politics or power is palpable.

Florida is a southern state that looked like a northern one for a while. Its south was its north, with a liberal culture shaped by northern retirees, Brooklyn on Key West, freebooters on the forgotten coast, and Jimmy Buffett fans who think Margaritaville is a member of the UN. That coalition is now yielding to deep South Republicans in the state’s north, Christians and a vast Cuban-American community.

In 2020, the Democrats took Arizona and Georgia for the first time. That was 27 of their 36-vote margin. These are now running at evens, more or less. The election will be around Trump trying to win those back, and get one of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and maybe Nevada. Or Pennsylvania and Georgia. Or Pennsylvania and Michigan for a draw. And a couple of other combos.

The trouble is, there are almost no swing states left. Iowa, Colorado, and New Hampshire were up for grabs regularly, recently. One can’t see any of those being battlegrounds. Nor one-offs like North Carolina and Indiana. Ohio and Florida, gone.

The republic was founded on the electoral college system to give small and distant states equal sway. Instead, it has, in the presidential race, de facto disenfranchised tens of millions of voters. Who cares if you’re a California Republican or an Oklahoma Democrat?

This new division is based on what is the rock-solid division in Western societies now, between the college-educated — and those who live in cities dominated by them, and their economic production — and those outside of it. In interests, ideologies and attitudes, it now supersedes old industrial class division and struggle and is a new form of class struggle. 

Were class, in the old sense, to be the dominant factor, Harris would be killing it, cruising to 400 electoral college votes. But the white and Black working- and middle-class want to stop the flood of immigration, and the Democrats do not. These voters want a trade war with China and a revival of a national economic plan. They are not particularly concerned if that involves lower business taxes, smaller government — which barely serves them in any case — and privatisation boondoggles. 

Should Kamala Harris lose in November, with an overall majority but an electoral college loss, maybe, maybe, finally, progressives, the political class, the media class, the whatever, will get it through their thick skulls that the old progressive-working/middle-class alliance is dead, gone, over. These classes have to be listened to, a conscious alliance has to be made, progressive interests have to be ceded to the groups that still have the numbers.

But it will be an expensive lesson to learn, for America and the world.

Okay! Let’s see if Harris can turn this round in two hours!

More taxpayer money handed to Zomi Frankcom’s killers as Land Forces protests begin

Defence continues to give taxpayer money to Elbit Systems, the Israeli company whose drone was used to murder aid worker Zomi Frankcom.

The Department of Defence continues to funnel taxpayer money to Elbit Systems, the company that manufactured the drone used by Israeli forces to murder Aussie aid worker Zomi Frankcom and six others in Gaza in April.

Last week, Defence handed a $38,000 contract to Elbit Systems of Australia, a subsidiary of Elbit Systems (the Australian arm doesn’t even have its own separate website), a company with a long history of human rights scandals via its provision of weapons both to the Israel Defense Forces and autocratic regimes elsewhere. Like most Defence procurements, this one — for “Security Equipment Installation Services” — was a limited tender, meaning Elbit faced little or no competition.

The latest contract, along with a contract handed by Defence to Elbit just a week after Frankcom’s murder, is on top of a massive $900 million contract for Elbit that the Albanese government has desperately sought to pretend it has nothing to do with.

The news comes as the Land Forces 2024 defence expo, sponsored by Defence and the Victorian government, gets underway in Melbourne in the face of what are expected to be huge protests. Present at the expo will be Australian sponsor NIOA Systems, which provides sniper rifles to the IDF used in a string of apparent war crimes by IDF snipers, with an NIOA executive to speak to the expo on “Planning for an Australian Multi Rocket Motor and Warhead Manufacturing Capability.”

Do you support the protesters targeting the Land Forces expo? 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.

From Islamophobia to inflation: How xenophobia went legit

Once upon a time the border control debate focused on Muslim refugees. But now voters are simply worried about the overall number of people coming in.

This article is an instalment in a new series, “Peter Dutton is racist”, on Dutton’s history of racism and the role racism has played on both sides of politics since the 1970s.

While John Howard is denounced by progressives for his demonisation of refugees and exploitation of border security issues in the wake of 9/11, the fact is he also ran a huge immigration intake. The Howard government inherited a migration program of below 100,000 permanent arrivals a year in 1996; in 2007 nearly 200,000 people permanently arrived. Across the life of the Howard government, nearly 1.48 million people permanently settled in Australia — more than 900,000 of them after 9/11.

There was little opposition at the time, apart from Bob Carr (or Malthus of Maroubra, as early Crikey dubbed him) who declared Sydney was “full”. Some environmental groups called for substantially lower migration to curb the destruction of the environment for housing.

Howard’s supporters argued that not only was there no contradiction between being tough on border control and high immigration, but that voters’ comfort with his tough border security enabled him to let more people in. Howard, they argued, was a safe pair of hands on borders, determined to keep at bay refugees portrayed as queue-jumpers — economic migrants willing to endanger their own children, who were merged into the amorphous security threat allegedly posed by Muslims after 9/11. These were not the kind of people we wanted coming here. He could thus be trusted to determine how many migrants entered Australia.

If it ever applied, that logic no longer works politically: discontent with neoliberalism and the open borders and economic precarity that come in its wake has not merely fueled tribalism and xenophobia but pushed awareness of the costs of high migration up the political agenda. High migration is now just another example of an economic system that delivers for corporations but imposes the costs on working families. It stops ordinary Australians — half of whom have a parent born overseas — from accessing housing, services or social amenity. At the same time, they face lower wages and higher inflation as a result of high immigration.

Angst over migration thus stopped being about who could prevent refugees from arriving, and became about the total number of people coming in. Carr, it turned out, was simply ahead of everyone else.

This fusing of anti-migrant sentiment with economic uncertainty has turned what was primarily a cultural and security issue — Middle Eastern refugees were a threat to be kept out — into an economic issue, and thus undermined the Coalition’s political ownership of border security and migration. There were hints of this when Julia Gillard promised to curtail 457 visas in 2013 and forced Tony Abbott to defend them — a position that doubtless pleased the business community but may not have gone down so well in western Sydney, where Gillard was campaigning.

The current Labor government, after clamping down on abuses of foreign student visas, is happy to damage one of our key exports by capping foreign student numbers; Peter Dutton has promised to go even further — although his actual policy is only tinkering at the margins, and so vague that one of his shadow ministers stumbled badly on the issue.

For Pauline Hanson, who has devoted a career to milking hatred of migrants for every dollar she can get, the migration debate has shifted right into her lap: her line that high migration “benefits governments and big business but it’s not helping the Australian people” now sums up the positions of the major parties.

The only party of high migration now is the Greens, who went to the 2022 election with a commitment to remove impediments to maritime arrivals of asylum seekers and a promise to expand Australia’s humanitarian visa scheme to 100,000, including 40,000 refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine. Ironically, the Greens’ policies — including a royal commission into Operation Sovereign Borders — would go much of the way to creating an open-door migration system favoured by big business (there’s a tradition of big business neoliberals being supportive of Australia being much more generous to refugees).

The Coalition would love to shift the migration debate away from overall numbers — where any commitments to reduce them incurs the wrath of the business lobby — back to its cultural and security strengths. That’s why Dutton has been blunt about a blanket ban on Palestinian refugees even after he was effectively rebuked by the head of ASIO on the issue, and why the Coalition used the indefinite detention issue to hype the threat of rapist ex-refugees. But while housing markets remain tight in major cities, it’s hard to see the economic dimension of anti-migrant hostility vanishing. It’s hard to worry about the threat of refugees when you or your kids can’t find somewhere affordable to live.

The Albanese government’s teen social media ban is technology denialism that delays real action

When it comes to the well-being of children, the Albanese government is ignoring its commitment to 'science' and 'evidence-based solutions' in favour of cowing to loud voices and political expediency.

When it comes to some topics, the prime minister is happy to be guided by experts.

“I’m happy to engage in a debate about facts … because the facts and the science tells us that it simply doesn’t stack up,” said Anthony Albanese at a press conference announcing Matt Kean as the new chair of the Climate Change authority.

On climate change, the Albanese government says it will “follow the science”. (Whether that’s true is another matter). Or that it will pursue “evidence-based” solutions, which it has also promised for other issues like gender-based violence or closing the gap. The government has leaned into this point of difference with the previous government, painting its predecessor as climate denialists and dinosaurs.

So why does this commitment to expertise and knowledge end when it comes to children and social media?

This week, Albanese said that his government will legislate a minimum age on social media, although he has not committed to an age nor a method. Not to be outdone, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton pledged to do the same thing within the first 100 days of his government. This comes following a campaign by News Corp and Nova’s Michael “Wippa” Wipfli to restrict children under 16 from using social media, as well several state premiers promising to do the same. 

This is all in the name of protecting children from nasty things online. The prime minister — sounding a lot like his predecessor, it must be said — is talking about about how kids should be on the “footy fields or netball courts” and not online, as if to suggest that talking to someone over social media isn’t a “real” experience.

You’d think, given the bipartisan and mainstream media support for it, that this policy would be effective. That it would have support from experts. And from the people it impacts and those who represent them. That it was “evidence-based” and “follows the science”.

You might assume that, but it’s not the case.

As previously covered, the vast majority of academics who research teen use of social media and the internet do not support a full ban for children. While they acknowledge there are real dangers, they also point to potential benefits. Groups representing young Australians, too, say a ban could make it harder for young people to access mental health support or to express themselves. Anti-youth bullying organisation PROJECT ROCKIT co-founder Lucy Thomas called the ban a “distraction” from real issues affecting children’s safety. 

Earlier this year, the government’s own eSafety commissioner not-so-subtly made the case against the ban — with a rather pointed plea to make sure policy was “being informed by robust and rigorous research”. A group of teens brought together for the eSafety commissioner’s youth council also made a case against the ban, saying that “social media is a tool to exercise these rights and it is important to remember that social media is neither good nor bad — but rather the intention and execution in using this tool defines its impact.” Now, as happened to the members of the government’s climate change youth advisory group, their opinions have been disregarded.

There is clearly a desire to do something about teens’ well-being. Parents are concerned about their children, and there are things we can do to improve the internet for our children (and maybe even for the rest of us). Coming up with sophisticated solutions is possible, even if it isn’t as easy as a ban. 

Instead, we have a government that is cowing to vibes and vested interests (News Corp and other Australian media companies have campaigned heavily on the social irresponsibility of tech companies during the fight over the news media bargaining code). 

We’ve got a prime minister throwing under the bus the LGBTQIA+ teens, the people with disabilities, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, the young men, who all see real benefits from using social media according to his own government. He is playing into parents’ worst fears rather than trying to have a nuanced discussion about this topic. What’s worse is that this discussion distracts from real efforts to help children. 

In that way, it’s not that different to the fight over climate change. Replace “social media ban” with “gas-led recovery”. Instead of telling kids not to worry about climate change, it’s telling them to log off as if that will solve all their problems. It’s ignoring experts in favour of a politically expedient approach.

Simply put, the Albanese government is embracing technology denialism in order to appear like it’s helping our children, while stalling on reforms that might actually make a difference.

Do you back a ban on social media for young people? Or are there better solutions? 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.

Digital ID, facial analysis and AI profiling to be considered in teen social media ban trial

The federal government has committed to banning teens from social media — but hasn't figured out how or from what age.

Digital ID requirements, artificial intelligence profiling and vocal analysis are all on the table as part of the federal government’s search for ways to ban teens from using social media.

Late on Tuesday, the federal government announced that it would seek to pass legislation that would give it the power to ban teenagers from social media and other digital platforms. 

It will introduce a bill before the end of this Parliament, although it hasn’t committed to a specific age limit yet. 

As part of this proposal, the government has started the process of trialling technologies that make it possible to verify or estimate a user’s age online.

The tender details for this $6.5 million trial, first announced in this year’s federal budget, provide insight into the government’s options.

The federal government’s tender draws a distinction between technologies for age verification, which it defines as using “identification attributes or other confirmed sources of information”, and age assurance, which can include “methods with lower accuracy and data collection requirements … [to] estimate or assure that a user is of a particular age”. 

Whoever runs the trial will be tasked with testing both technologies. For the higher bar of age verification, the trial will need to prove whether someone is older than 18 using technologies like a token system — where a user verifies their age with a third-party service using things like government identification, including Australia’s new Digital ID system, or directly using credit cards.  

Age assurance technologies will be tested on whether they’re able to “determine a user being between 13-16 years of age”. Suggested methods included biometric age verification like facial scans and voice analysis, getting verified parental consent, offering parental controls, and using AI or other algorithmic techniques to guess a user’s age based on their online habits.

These technologies may be used together or in isolation, depending on the service a user is seeking to access and the level of risk associated with it, the tender says. For example, facial scanning could be used to estimate someone’s age to use Facebook but not to buy a weapon online. 

The trial will evaluate these technologies on the basis of accuracy, ease of use, reliability, data security, freedom from biases, human rights and privacy protections. 

The deadline to apply to run this trial is at the beginning of October, with the successful applicant required to be able to start from October 28. The trial and subsequent report is due by the end of the 2024/25 financial year — before the latest date that this government could hold an election but after the predicted election date in May.

Do you support a ban on teens using social media? Are you worried about how it might be enforced? 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.

Angus Taylor goes ‘nuts’ as NSW Liberals defy Peter Dutton in internal meeting

'Angus was ropable' about the defeat, one source said. 

Peter Dutton is seizing control of the Liberal Party’s NSW division, but local power players aren’t letting go without a fight. 

At a meeting of the NSW state executive last night called to deal with Dutton’s ongoing federal intervention, a motion supported by Dutton’s federal team was defeated, and Crikey’s sources said Dutton’s representative on the committee, shadow treasurer Angus Taylor, “went nuts” with irritation while making his arguments. 

Dutton originally wanted a three-person committee to take charge, after the NSW divisions’ failure last month to nominate dozens of council candidates for this Saturday’s local elections. 

Dutton’s troika would have consisted of former Victorian state treasurer Alan Stockdale, former Howard government minister and Victorian Senator Richard Alston, and ex-NSW minister Rob Stokes (Stokes, it appears, had not been properly consulted before being nominated and was noted last night as being “unavailable to serve”).

Moderates and centre-right factional players on the state executive instead managed to pass a motion to nominate four people to the takeover committee: Alston, Stockdale, and two former NSW Liberal MPs in Peta Seaton, who served in the NSW Parliament, and Fiona Scott, who served in the federal parliament.

Taylor suggested an amendment that would have excluded Scott and kept the committee as a trio, but was voted down.

“Angus was ropable” about the defeat, one source said. 

Another source, close to Taylor, said that description was inaccurate. The man himself declined to comment. 

The winning motion was moved by NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman, and the sacked state party president Don Harwin did not oppose it, according to The Daily Telegraph.

One of Crikey’s sources, who like all other Liberals are bound by party rules which prevent them from speaking on the record about internal affairs, said: “It’s quite a big deal for Don Harwin to go against the wishes of the federal leader”. 

“The view is that the NSW state executive is trying to muddle or water down the federal intervention,” the person added. “Scott’s inclusion was essential to get the [centre-right factional leader Alex] Hawke members of the state executive on board.” 

Another state executive source said the two NSW women were needed to balance out the “two elderly men from Victoria, the worst Liberal division in Australia”. 

According to the motion that passed, the state executive will “irrevocably delegate … all of its powers” to the four-person committee, “for a period of 10 months”. It also named Chris Stone as state director, a job he previously held for eight years until 2023.

But Dutton will have to rubber-stamp the motion before it takes effect. Crikey is told the party’s federal executive will meet on Friday to deal with it, and Dutton could still override the state executive’s decision. 

A state executive source said they hoped the feds would allow the decision to stand. 

“They should just accept it and move on, and try to build a relationship with NSW, rather than saying ‘It’s our way or the highway’, which is Angus Taylor’s way of dealing with everything,” the person said. 

A spokesperson for Dutton did not respond to a request for comment from Crikey.

‘Didn’t care enough’: Here’s what the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide found

The Department of Veterans’ Affairs appears to be taking this royal commission seriously. The same cannot be said for the defence force.

This article mentions suicide and sexual assault.

After three years of investigations, the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide has delivered its final report with 122 recommendations. The commission has carried much hope for veterans and their families — now we wait to see action.

The veteran sector, including families, had lobbied for this inquiry for over a decade. For a long time, the call fell on deaf ears. The Ex-Service Organisation Round Table even rejected the idea, saying veteran suicide was roughly the same as the national average.

The royal commission has addressed this question of poor data. Over the course of the inquiry, the certified numbers of people who died by suicide rose from around 300 to around 1,700. This was because a forensic focus was applied to the statistics.

These do not include deaths that may be suicide but have not been recorded as such, like single car accidents, for example. Ex-serving veteran suicide is 26% higher than the national average for men and 107% higher for women.

What are the key findings?

The royal commission began its investigations thinking of veteran suicide as an individual mental health issue. Deployment trauma was expected to be a key influence.

It ended its investigations recognising that culture and systems had an overwhelming part to play. For example, there have been around 60 inquiries into military systems and culture over five decades and around 750 recommendations. Few have been met.

Commissioner Nick Kaldas explained:

When there’s been dozens of inquiries, hundreds of recommendations, and no-one’s gone back to check whether they’ve acquitted the intent of the recommendations, I’d say that’s a failure of leadership.

The government tabled the seven-volume report in Parliament on Monday. Speaking to media shortly before, Kaldas said:

What is clear from some of the horrible stories that we’ve heard is that many people simply turned a blind eye, over many years and felt that it was too hard, or they simply didn’t care enough to tackle the problems.

The commissioners point out that the veterans most at risk of suicide are those who haven’t deployed (gone overseas to fight). Why are service personnel who haven’t been deployed taking their lives?

The defence force is a hierarchical institution with a command and control culture. The rank system is legitimised through the military justice system. Commanders have complete control over their subordinates.

This maybe useful in conflict, but it’s exploited negatively in everyday service. The costs of service can be as great as the costs of war.

Today I tabled the final report of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veterans Suicide, titled, ‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ chance to save veterans lives. pic.twitter.com/HLtIjHTePL

— Richard Marles (@RichardMarlesMP) September 9, 2024

Physical and sexual violence was a common experience among the nearly 6,000 submissions.

Our research, some of which was commissioned by the inquiry, also developed the term “administrative violence”. This is when a commander mercilessly harasses or violates a subordinate.

Being made to paint rocks or sweep away rain, losing leave applications, prohibiting career progression and blocking courses of deployments are common strategies that strip the victim of purpose, identity and belonging.

Identity, purpose and belonging are central to an institution built around camaraderie and service. This is the mateship mythology of the ANZAC tradition.

In our research interviews, those who’d had bad experiences in the force all stated how much they loved their careers, the force, their mates and the job. The merciless bullying by a commander or peers leading to their termination was irreconcilable for them. The betrayal was painful.

Transitioning to civilian life is also a key issue. If a veteran is not supported, they also lose a sense of identity, purpose and belonging.

Many veterans transition successfully, but those who don’t can find themselves homeless, incarcerated or feeling suicidal. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs’ systems can and do exacerbate this, sometimes making it difficult for veterans to receive the support they need. Some, like Private Jesse Bird, have died trying to seek help.

What are the recommendations?

The report outlines 122 recommendations. It will take time to fully analyse them, but some important points stand out.

It comes as no surprise that a key recommendation of the commission is to establish a mechanism of independent scrutiny. The commissioners recommend the new body should monitor and continually report back publicly about progress on tackling the high rates of suicide among military personnel.

A similar recommendation was made by 44 senators in the 2005 inquiry. It was rejected and vetoed by the then prime minister, minister for defence and chief of defence.

Other recommendations have identified many of the factors that contribute to veteran suicide.

There is strong focus on building a respectful workforce, identifying and addressing sexual assault, supporting victims and holding perpetrators to account. One recommendation suggests the government undertake independent research to find out the prevalence of sexual violence within the force.

This addresses much of the negative tribal, hierarchical and command and control factors underpinning the issue.

The quality of leadership is also addressed. The commissioners recommend commanders are assessed on their performance at achieving better cultural, health and well-being outcomes. They suggest strengthening the processes for deciding who gets leadership positions.

They also recommend reforming accountability checks on the force, including the role of the inspector-general. The commissioners say this role should be done by someone who’s never served in the force to help ensure independent oversight.

The commissioners recommend the Department of Veterans’ Affairs improves veteran transition and well-being by better assessing ex-service men and women, reducing wait times and bureaucracy.

The recommendations go much further, but these are of particular note because they address the closed, tribal and hierarchical character of defence force culture and systems. Importantly, there is a strong focus on education, research and information sharing to broaden our understanding over time.

Can defence be fixed?

The Department of Veterans’ Affairs appears to be taking this royal commission seriously.

The same cannot be said for the defence force.

Kaldas took the extraordinary step of speaking at the National Press Club in May. He highlighted the chief of defence and his organisation’s obstruction of access to important documents. Kaldas said:

I think there’s been systemic issues such as relying on parliamentary privilege for reports that have been tabled in Parliament, therefore making it impossible for us to rely on or use those reports.

Many inquiries and investigations have concluded the Australian Defence Force is incapable of cultural reform.

Today the @roycommDVSRC released its Final Report. The death by suicide of any ADF member is a tragedy. We have heard where Defence has let people down. We will learn and we will do better.

— Admiral David Johnston (@CDF_Aust) September 9, 2024

This was recognised in the 2005 Senate inquiry into the Effectiveness of Australian Military Justice system. The force acknowledged this too in 2012 in the Beyond Compliance report written by the then Major General Craig Orme.

But the force has dragged its feet, or obstructed access to information in this royal commission.

Despite the resistance, there is cause for hope. The commissioners said:

We have come across many, many really motivated, excellent people, both within the ADF and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, who have tried their best within the system.

It’s clear the royal commission has made the case for defence force cultural reform inarguable. With the force’s recruitment and retention at an all time lows, the case for change could not be stronger.

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The Defence all-hours Support Line – 1800 628 036 – is a confidential telephone and online service for ADF members and their families. Open Arms – 1800 011 046 – provides 24-hour free and confidential counselling and support for current and former ADF members and their families.

For anyone seeking help, Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue is on 1300 22 4636. To speak to a First Nations crisis supporter, call 13 YARN (13 9276). In an emergency, call 000.

This piece was first published in The Conversation.

Murdoch to Musk: How global media power has shifted from the moguls to the big tech bros

Are we better off with tech bros who assert their influence brazenly, or old-style media moguls who exert influence under the cover of journalism?

Until recently, Elon Musk was just a wildly successful electric car tycoon and space pioneer. Sure, he was erratic and outspoken, but his global influence was contained and seemingly under control.

But add the ownership of just one media platform, in the form of Twitter — now X — and the maverick has become a mogul, and the baton of the world’s biggest media bully has passed to a new player.

What we can gauge from watching Musk’s stewardship of X is that he’s unlike former media moguls, making him potentially even more dangerous. He operates under his own rules, often beyond the reach of regulators. He has demonstrated he has no regard for those who try to rein him in.

Under the old regime, press barons, from William Randolph Hearst to Rupert Murdoch, at least pretended they were committed to truth-telling journalism. Never mind that they were simultaneously deploying intimidation and bullying to achieve their commercial and political ends.

Musk has no need, or desire, for such pretence because he’s not required to cloak anything he says in even a wafer-thin veil of journalism. Instead, his driving rationale is free speech, which is often code for don’t dare get in my way.

This means we are in new territory, but it doesn’t mean what went before it is irrelevant.

A big bucket of the proverbial

If you want a comprehensive, up-to-date primer on the behaviour of media moguls over the past century-plus, Eric Beecher has just provided it in his book The Men Who Killed the News.

Alongside accounts of people like Hearst in the United States and Lord Northcliffe in the United Kingdom, Beecher quotes the notorious example of what happened to John Major, the UK prime minister between 1990 and 1997, who baulked at following Murdoch’s resistance to strengthening ties with the European Union.

In a conversation between Major and Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of Murdoch’s best-selling English tabloid newspaper, The Sun, the prime minister was bluntly told: “Well, John, let me put it this way. I’ve got a large bucket of shit lying on my desk and tomorrow morning I’m going to pour it all over your head.”

MacKenzie might have thought he was speaking truth to power, but in reality he was doing Murdoch’s bidding, and actually using his master’s voice, as Beecher confirms by recounting an anecdote from early in Murdoch’s career in Australia.

In the 1960s, when Murdoch owned The Sunday Times in Perth, he met Lang Hancock (father of Gina Rinehart) to discuss potentially buying some mineral prospects together in Western Australia. The state government was opposed to the planned deal.

Beecher cites Hancock’s biographer, Robert Duffield, who claimed Murdoch asked the mining magnate, “If I can get a certain politician to negotiate, will you sell me a piece of the cake?” Hancock said yes. Later that night, Murdoch called again to say the deal had been done. How, asked an incredulous Hancock. Murdoch replied: “Simple […] I told him: look you can have a headline a day or a bucket of shit every day. What’s it to be?”

Between Murdoch in the 1960s and MacKenzie in the 1990s came Mario Puzo’s The Godfather with Don Corleone, aided by Luca Brasi holding a gun to a rival’s head, saying “either his brains or his signature would be on the contract”.

Changing the rules of the game

Media moguls use metaphorical bullets. Those relatively few people who do resist them, like Major, get the proverbial poured over their government. Headlines in The Sun following the Conservatives’ win in the 1992 election included: “Pigmy PM”, “Not up to the job” and “1,001 reasons why you are such a plonker John”.

If media moguls since Hearst and Northcliffe have tap-danced between producing journalism and pursuing their commercial and political aims, they have at least done the former, and some of it has been very good.

The leaders of the social media behemoths, by contrast, don’t claim any fourth estate role. If anything, they seem to hold journalism with tongs as far from their face as possible.

They do possess enormous wealth though. Apple, Microsoft, Google and Meta, formerly known as Facebook, are in the top 10 companies globally by market capitalisation. By comparison, News Corporation’s market capitalisation now ranks at 1,173 in the world.

Regulating the online environment may be difficult, as Australia discovered this year when it tried, and failed, to stop X from hosting footage of the Wakeley Church stabbing attacks. But limiting transnational media platforms can be done, according to Robert Reich, a former secretary of Labor in Bill Clinton’s government.

Despite some early wins through Australia’s news media bargaining code, big tech companies habitually resist regulation. They have used their substantial influence to stymie it wherever and whenever nation-states have sought to introduce it.

Meta’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has been known to go rogue, as he demonstrated in February 2021 when he protested against the bargaining code by unilaterally closing Facebook sites that carried news. Generally, though, his strategy has been to deploy standard public relations and lobbying methods.

But his rival Musk uses his social media platform, X, like a wrecking ball.

Musk is just about the first thing the average X user sees in their feed, whether they want to or not. He gives everyone the benefit of his thoughts, not to mention his thought bubbles. He proclaims himself a free-speech absolutist, but most of his pronouncements lean hard to the right, providing little space for alternative views.

Kamala wants to destroy your right to free speech under The Constitution https://t.co/oJN5T8nPLn

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 5, 2024

Some of his tweets have been inflammatory, such as him linking to an article promoting a conspiracy theory about the savage attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of the former US speaker Nancy Pelosi, or his tweet that “Civil war is inevitable” following riots that erupted recently in the UK.

As the BBC reported, the riots occurred after the fatal stabbing of three girls in Southport. “The subsequent unrest in towns and cities across England and in parts of Northern Ireland has been fuelled by misinformation online, the far-right and anti-immigration sentiment.”

The effects of mass migration and open borders is what’s going on. https://t.co/wwItp7DSMP

— Ashley St. Clair (@stclairashley) August 4, 2024

Nor does Musk bother with niceties when people disagree with him. Late last year, advertisers considered boycotting X because they believed some of Musk’s posts were antisemitic. He told them during a live interview to “Go fuck yourself”.

He has welcomed Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, back onto X after Trump’s account was frozen over his comments surrounding the January 6, 2021, attack on the capitol. Since then both men have floated the idea of governing together if Trump wins a second term.

Is the world better off with tech bros like Musk who demand unlimited freedom and assert their influence brazenly, or old-style media moguls who spin fine-sounding rhetoric about freedom of the press and exert influence under the cover of journalism?

That’s a question for our times that we should probably begin grappling with.

This piece was first published in The Conversation.

Peter Dutton: The mining industry’s best friend

The opposition leader has his friendship bracelets at the ready for the Minerals Council of Australia, and set an alarm for 11am: it's presidential debate time.

DUTTON MINERS’ BFF

Peter Dutton’s planned remarks to the Minerals Council of Australia later today have led the news overnight, with the opposition leader set to declare he will be the best friend the mining sector “will ever have”.

The ABC reports Dutton will say he plans on “turbocharging” more than 420 mining and energy projects. Speaking at the council’s conference in Canberra this morning, the Coalition leader will also reference the industry’s concerns over the government’s industrial relations and environmental laws, the broadcaster said.

“Not since the days of imposing a carbon tax on your sector, or a mining tax on your sector, has a prime minister and a government been so out of touch with the need to keep our mining and resource sectors strong,” Dutton will say. “But today I give you this commitment: a Dutton Coalition government will be the best friend that the mining and resources sector in Australia will ever have.”

The AAP reports Dutton will also pledge to defund the Environmental Defenders Office and limit the ability for third parties to challenge decisions under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Dutton’s “unabashedly pro-resources pitch” will no doubt alarm conservation groups, the ABC says, especially given a significant portion of the potential fast-tracked plans include high-emissions gas and coal projects.

The Minerals Council of Australia conference will today also hear from Resources Minister Madeleine King. The Australian says she will tell mining bosses the opposite of what Dutton is claiming and that “no government in recent memory has put the resources industry at the centre of its policy-making in the way that the Albanese government has”. King will say while not all policies will be agreed on, the importance of the sector is a given and the government works on its best interests “every single day”. The ABC reports she will also say there is no time to lose in meeting allies’ growing demand for critical minerals.

Also leading the news agenda this morning is the government’s move to ban life insurance companies from discriminating against people based on genetic testing. Guardian Australia says Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones will announce later that life insurers will be prevented from using the results of predictive genetic testing in their underwriting assessments. The site said the move was part of plans to encourage greater use of predictive technology in preventative health. The ABC reports the announcement comes after a consultation earlier this year addressing genetic discrimination in life insurance, which resulted in 97% of the submissions supporting a total ban.

Not leading it, yet, but also on the agenda this morning is the Land Forces 2024 International Land Defence Exposition which opens at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre and is expected to attract thousands of protests. Guardian Australia previously reported it could be Victoria’s biggest protest in decades.

HARRIS AND TRUMP DEBATE

In world news, one story is set to dominate the next 24 hours: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s televised presidential debate. The ABC event at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center kicks off around 9pm ET (11am AEST) and will include the same rules as June’s infamous debate between Joe Biden and Trump — namely microphones will be muted when a candidate is not talking, they cannot ask each other questions and there will be no audience, The New York Times flags.

CNN reports part of Harris’ preparation has involved getting ready for potential insults and derogatory comments from the former president. Harris has apparently spoken extensively to Biden and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, both of whom debated Trump in the past. The broadcaster also reports Trump’s team has been telling the 78-year-old not to respond to any potentially “goading” remarks from Harris in the debate, given his reactive tendencies.

On that theme, Politico reports Harris is bringing two former Trump administration officials to the debate as her guests. Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci and former national security official Olivia Troye will be in Harris’ corner at the event in Philadelphia.

With no other presidential debates currently agreed to and the US election now only eight weeks away (early voting is set to begin within days), much is being made of how crucial the debate is for both sides. The New York Times calls it “one of the highest-stakes 90 minutes in American politics in generations”.

The paper has a handy list of what to watch out for in the debate and what each candidate needs to deliver and avoid.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE…

If you happened to be in Chongqing, south-west China, earlier this week you might have witnessed the rather unusual sight of local residents’ underwear being blown across the city, The Guardian reports.

An unexpected windstorm, with gusts of 76mph (122km/h), hit the Chinese city on Monday and caused the laundry of unprepared residents to lift off their balconies and fly into the air.

“I just went out and it suddenly started to rain heavily and underwear fell from the sky,” the paper quoted a resident as posting on Weibo. Another local said losing his underwear had initially caused him to “laugh like crazy” but had also now turned him into a “lifelong introvert”.

The Guardian said Chongqing and the surrounding region had been suffering a severe heatwave and authorities used cloud-seeding technology to try and break the weather. Rain followed, but so did the windstorm — although the authorities said, despite what the residents believed, the two were not linked.

Apparently, millions of people viewed hashtags such as “underwear crisis” on Weibo on Monday with tens of thousands of comments posted. The short-video app Douyin was also filled with videos of underwear “flying through the skies, landing in the street and snagging on trees”, The Guardian said.

Say What?

I called her and said, ‘Watch out … there’s a door coming’

Josh Waterson

The Broulee, NSW, resident called his daughter after seeing an object falling out of the sky towards South Broulee Beach, the ABC reported. Waterson said the object, which turned out to be the door of a small plane, landed about 50 metres from his daughter. The broadcaster said Eurobodalla Shire Council had claimed the pilot told airport staff “the door latch was not secured properly”.

CRIKEY RECAP

Data breaches, leaks and fake IDs: Why teen social media bans could impact all ages

CHARLIE LEWIS

The government plans to introduce legislation to enforce a minimum age for access to social media, according to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. It’s all a little vague at this point — no age limit has been flagged and won’t be until a trial of “age-verification technology” has been completed.

The government getting access to yet more personal information? What could go wrong? Oh, that’s right, the following could go wrong:

Government data breaches, hacks and just plain screw-ups with personal data have peppered the past decade in Australia.

When everything and everyone is racist, the worst offenders hide in plain sight

BERNARD KEANE

An Indigenous Voice to Parliament was giving Indigenous peoples something white Australians didn’t have, and was thus racist, argued No supporters. In fact, any recognition at all of Indigenous peoples was racist, some argued. Any attempt to even discuss Indigenous disadvantage was racist — during the Voice campaign, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price argued that Indigenous peoples only got benefits from dispossession and colonisation, and there should be no separate policies for them.

The cheapening of the charge of racism isn’t confined to Indigenous issues. Tony Abbott and the Murdoch press accused Labor of racism in refusing to support Abbott’s now-forgotten free trade agreement with China (more recently, of course, Labor has been accused of being not Sinophobic enough). While he happily denounced Labor senator Sam Dastyari as “Shanghai Sam”, Scott Morrison accused Labor of racism in targeting Liberal MP Gladys Liu.

Nor is it confined to the right. While rightly keen to draw attention to institutional and systemic racism, the Greens have a tendency to find racism everywhere they look: AUKUS is imperialist, racist and colonialist. The British monarchy is racist. Parliament is racist. Inevitably, the Greens themselves are racist, according to former Green Lidia Thorpe (not to be confused with the time the Minerals Council claimed Bob Brown was xenophobic).

Why would anyone join a youth advisory group on climate change?

ANJALI SHARMA

Young people have been advocating for mechanisms that more efficiently incorporate their rights and needs into climate decision-making, arguing for substantive protection of these rights. Mechanisms like the Duty of Care bill, which would compel governments to consider the health and wellbeing of current and future generations in the face of climate change, or more broadly, calls to lower the voting age to 16 indirectly force a longer-term perspective.

But neither of these proposals have been embraced. Instead, both proposals have been deflected with the promise of hearing the voices of young people through existing youth advisory groups.

Rather than implementing a mechanism by which they would have to consider the needs and interests of young people, it seems the government prefers to give themselves a choice. They can take this advice, or they can do the polar opposite.

READ ALL ABOUT IT

France, Germany, UK sanction Iran for supplying missiles to Russia (Politico)

Elon Musk’s misleading election claims reach millions and alarm election officials (The Washington Post)

Ex-partner who killed Ugandan athlete dies from burns (BBC)

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs loses $100m default judgment over sexual assault allegation (The Guardian)

From BBQs to the CSIRO, King Charles and Queen Camilla’s Australian itinerary revealed (The Sydney Morning Herald) ($)

Ukraine fires deadly drone barrage at Russia, taking war closer to Moscow (The New York Times) ($)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Yes, PM, we should keep kids off the apps. But how, exactly? — David Crowe (The Age): There is not even an agreement on the best age to define as the legal limit. Albanese suggested 16 in a radio interview on Tuesday, in line with Dutton’s proposal in June. Malinauskas suggests 14. This simply confirms that the policy is a general proposal, not a blueprint for change.

All of this looks incredibly hard — and perhaps impossible. It will require more consultation, unity at national cabinet, a review in Parliament and, most likely, a bipartisan agreement.

Even so, the concerns about social media are real and the trends in mental health are deeply troubling. The moral response is to do something about it. Years ago, leaders could not figure out what to do, so they did too little. Years later, there is a justified concern that social networks can deepen social problems.

There is, finally, a commitment to act. The onus is on Albanese to prove to parents that his plan can work.

I feel deep sympathy for Kate and I’m glad she’s better. But this dance with the media devil won’t work — Marina Hyde (The Guardian): I wonder if we will come to look back on that supposed great virtue of our age — controlling the narrative — and see it for the cornered form of submission it so often is? I felt nothing but immense pity for the cancer-stricken Princess of Wales before the release of her intimate family video yesterday, and the sheer weirdness of the resulting enterprise has only magnified the pathos of her situation. Watching the three-minute film, shot by some ad man, I wondered who could possibly feel it was anything but sad that a recovering post-chemo mother should feel that this is her best option for keeping “well-wishers” at bay a little longer.

A lot of people could, it seems from the feverish coverage since it dropped — meaning that convention demands I couch the notion that the existence of the video is in any way weird as “my unpopular opinion”. In which case, allow me to chuck in another unpopular opinion: this sort of thing appeals precisely to the grownups who when Diana died demanded that the then Queen leave off comforting her grieving 12- and 15-year-old grandsons in Scotland to come back to London — in effect to look after them instead. The selfishness and self-importance of a certain stripe of loyal subject is at best demandingly prurient and at worst grotesque. We hear a lot about the male gaze. The royalist’s gaze could do with more unpicking.