Toxic cost of Labor’s WA obsession just keeps growing

The Albanese government is governing in the West Australian interest, not the national interest. And that means giving control of policy to some of the worst corporate actors in the country.

What do you call pork-barrelling when it involves an entire state? The Albanese government isn’t going to forget that not merely did Western Australia deliver it majority government but that West Australians were unique in 2022 in swinging hard to Labor.

So, what West Australians want, they get. That starts with the rotten GST deal that the Morrison government put in place to nullify the impacts of Western Australia’s energy and mineral wealth on its share of GST revenue. Far from reining in the special treatment afforded to the west, Anthony Albanese extended the deal off to late in the decade. The cost, calculated by Saul Eslake, who has waged a lone war against the rort, will total nearly $40 billion over 11 years in make-up payments to the rest of the states and territories, and is likely to be closer to $50 billion if the price of iron ore remains above US$60 a tonne. Persistent talk of a weak Chinese economy has so far only pushed the price to just under US$100.

While not as spectacular as the GST blow-out, the government’s refusal to make any more than cosmetic, bring-forward changes to the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (to which the big fossil fuel companies were asked to give their permission) is costing taxpayers billions a year in foregone revenue that is going to local and multinational fossil fuel giants — revenue that will never be recovered given it is derived from a finite resource.

Labor’s enthusiasm for gas exports and for the fakery of carbon capture, which extends to taxpayers funding what is normally private sector-funded resource mapping, is more broad than WA, but neatly dovetails with the government’s desire to remain on good terms with not just resources companies but also the media they control in Perth via Kerry Stokes.

To this end, Albanese yesterday signalled he was willing to gut another Labor election commitment, to establish an independent regulator. Environment Protection Australia (EPA) would “be a tough cop on the beat. It will transform our system of environmental approvals. It will be transparent and independent. It will make environmental assessments, decide project approvals and the conditions attached to them, and it will make sure that those conditions are being followed on the ground.”

Now, the prime minister tells The West Australian that an independent EPA would have no approval role. So much for an election commitment.

To understand the reason, look no further than the way the Cook government in Western Australia backflipped on Indigenous cultural heritage laws last year.

The WA government is a rotten plaything of mining and energy interests, operating as the policy arm, and private militia, of big miners and fossil fuel companies. By dedicating itself so determinedly to satisfying every demand emanating from the state, the Albanese government offers a national version of the WA disease, at huge expense to the taxpayer.

The only issue that is not up for debate is Labor’s changes to industrial relations laws, which have, unsurprisingly, prompted extensive complaints from mining companies. But in its union donors, Labor has a far more important constituency to please than mining companies on IR. Besides, it will be aware that it’s pro forma for mining companies — whose ranks include some major wage thieves — to claim any industrial relations changes will destroy mining, end investment, collapse the economy etc.

But on other issues, Labor’s precarious electoral state serves to massively magnify the malignant political influence of the resources sector and the media it controls. A government that is happy to curb the export revenue generated by foreign students can’t even bring itself to tax properly the export revenue earnt by fossil fuel giants from West Australian offshore gas projects, let alone curb those exports to reduce Australia’s disproportionate contribution to the climate crisis.

On issues like climate, and the environment, and taxation, Labor is governing in the West Australian interest, not the national interest. And it’s giving control of policy to some of the most toxic corporate actors in the country.

Is Labor putting WA interests ahead of the rest of the nation? 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

ADF spent $60m on recruit advertising. Defence is quiet about whether it’s worked

The ADF has spent a lot on recruitment advertising. But Defence can't really say if the millions in taxpayer money have achieved results.

Reports by the Australian National Audit Office make for dry reading at the best of times, but recently they have delivered serious blows to the Defence Department’s credibility. 

In June, the ANAO released a report on the management of Australian Defence Force recruitment advertising campaigns, flagging failures to properly account for and report on the effectiveness of recruitment campaign spending.

In the 2022-23 financial year, the ADF spent $60.2 million on advertising, amounting to 33.6% of all government advertising expenses. By comparison, Finance reported $40.8 million was spent on COVID-19 vaccination advertising and $9.4 million on the Stop It At The Start anti-domestic violence campaign advertising in the same period. 

While the ANAO report generally approved of Defence’s compliance with government content and procedural requirements, successful management is not indicative of effective use of taxpayer funds — that is, whether the ADF’s campaigns increased recruitment rates.

The report’s recommendations require Defence to report to Finance specific spending figures for individual campaigns and to conduct a final evaluation report for all advertising campaigns that respond to clear campaign objectives and evaluation plans.

Defence recruitment numbers have been well below target since 2016-17, according to data in the report. The gap of around 500 personnel was steady until 2019-20, but then worsened to an approximate 2,000-person recruitment shortage by 2022-23.

According to Defence, “Desires for new ways of working (particularly as a result of COVID-19), a very tight job market, and 50-year-low rates of unemployment” are contributing factors to the shortage. These factors may be mitigated, at least in part, via the effective use of the $60.2 million. Nevertheless, Defence intends to increase its workforce by 23%, to 75,000, by 2042-43. It is unclear if this increase is based on statistical projections. 

Following Defence providing individual campaign costs to the ANAO in April, the Live a Story Worth Telling campaign came in with the largest price tag of the three audited campaigns at more than $10 million, which included research, production and media placement costs.

In contrast with the Take a Closer Look and Where it All Begins campaigns, which aimed at Defence-wide recruitment, Live a Story Worth Telling focuses solely on Navy recruitment. It was launched on March 19, 2023, five days after the Albanese government announced the SSN-AUKUS deal to add a fleet of conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines to Australia’s defence arsenal. 

Criticism of the $368 billion AUKUS agreement — the cost of which will be borne by Australian taxpayers — has been largely two-pronged.

On one side, leading critic Paul Keating argues it is a geopolitical strategic mistake to ally ourselves with the US’ anti-China agenda. Second, critics such as the Centre for Strategic Studies believe AUKUS will be ineffective compared to its cost because nuclear submarines will be limited in a likely conflict scenario, such as a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and because Australia lacks the workforce and laws to efficiently operate nuclear submarines.

On this front, it does not appear the $60.2 million is making headway to improve Defence’s workforce capability. 

In response to the ANAO’s third recommendation that Defence better report on the outcomes of campaigns, two explanations were offered. First, that Defence was unaware of the requirement to provide final reports and evaluations on individual campaign effectiveness. Later, that final reports have not been provided because two of the three audited campaigns are still “in the market”. Indeed, if you switched the telly over to Channel 9 to watch the Olympics, between events you likely saw a Navy recruitment advert promising a lifetime of adventure, friendship and fulfilment. 

Advertising trade mag AdNews reported in July 2023 that the ADF was opening applications for a new creative account, currently the largest in Australia at a value of $10 million. Submissions closed in March, and an outcome is yet to be announced on AusTender. Defence did not comment when asked if a decision had been made.

Whichever way it goes, one ad agency is set to win a lucrative contract. Will it be worth our buck?   

Up in arms: Inside the eight-year battle against Melbourne University’s weapons company links

Long before the war in Gaza inspired months of campus protests, anti-war faculty members and students were urging the University of Melbourne to sever links to weapons manufacturers, only to meet steadfast resistance.

When pro-Palestine student protesters at the University of Melbourne packed up camp on May 22, ending their occupation of the South Lawn and Arts West building after weeks of escalating actions, they claimed a partial victory in their campaign demanding the university disclose and divest links to weapons manufacturers involved in the Israel-Hamas war.

In a deal brokered to end the protests, the university promised new disclosures of its research ties, and in June published “transparency declarations” revealing it currently had projects worth $43 million in funding from the Australian and United States defence departments, plus at least $7.1 million from defence-related companies. 

Many students and staff weren’t satisfied with the level of detail, or the framing of the declarations “as a sign of good faith and conscience”, as one protest organiser put it, but expressed hope it signalled a shift.

But new insights into an eight-year campaign by anti-war activists on the campus — including academics, students and professional staff — indicates a steadfast determination at the highest levels to maintain links to companies involved in weapons development, and signals substantial resistance to the second part of the protest agenda: divestment.

An investigation by The Citizen, exploring meeting notes and the recollections of key players in that campaign, including some senior academics, indicated that their repeated objections to the university’s association with weapons companies have been deflected or dismissed.

In May 2023, University of Melbourne leaders invited about 50 senior academics and professional staff to an internal discussion titled “defence-related research at Melbourne: opportunities, risks and consequences”.

The meeting occurred five months before Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people, seizing around 250 hostages and igniting the war in Gaza, where the ongoing Israeli bombardment has killed more than 40,000 people.

Vice-chancellor Professor Duncan Maskell and then deputy vice-chancellor of research, now assistant vice-chancellor, Professor James McCluskey, were there. Also present were academics who had worked on research projects connected to Australian or US defence departments or weapons companies, and others who have spent years objecting to any involvement in weapons development. 

Some senior academics who attended the internal meeting told The Citizen that the university insisted they were not to speak about the event publicly. They say they are speaking about it now, on condition of anonymity, because they’re unhappy and frustrated at the lack of action out of the forum. 

One academic said they left the meeting with no sense that the university was going to act. They also questioned why a company like Lockheed Martin, the US aerospace and defence behemoth, would seek a relationship with the University of Melbourne, arguing the company’s ambition was to improve its reputation through association with highly regarded universities. 

Lockheed Martin Australia, which along with other weapons manufacturers Boeing and BAE Systems has ties to the university, did not respond to questions from The Citizen about this claim.

The 2023 forum came after at least seven meetings since 2017 with university council members, executives, students and academics members of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW), according to documentation kept by the association. 

Association members repeatedly raised concerns about Lockheed Martin’s involvement in nuclear weapons and the development of lethal autonomous weapons (or LAWs). The MAPW is a peace and disarmament lobby whose members include faculty and students, and is the Australian affiliate of the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

Its campaign began in August 2016, shortly after a university press release announcing a collaboration with Lockheed Martin ignited a firestorm among staff and students.

The university “welcomed the arrival of … Lockheed Martin’s new STELaRLab (Science, Technology, Engineering Leadership & Research Laboratory) to Melbourne, to be located in the heart of the university’s engineering and science innovation precinct,” it read.

“The $13 million centre is a collaboration between Lockheed Martin, the Defence Science Institute and the university. It will open for an initial three years in existing university premises by December of this year, before moving to a more permanent location as part of the university’s planned Carlton Connect Innovation Precinct.”

In The Age, the student union condemned the partnership as “unethical”, while staff members with the MAPW protested at the university’s open day.

By September 2017, association members were in a room with then vice-chancellor of research McCluskey and pro vice-chancellor of research collaboration and partnerships Professor Mark Hargreaves. 

According to contemporaneous notes by MAPW members, and the recollections of Dr Margaret Beavis OAM, a former general practitioner and vice president of the association, McCluskey said some of what was announced in the press release was untrue and that it had misquoted him. He suggested that the wording was influenced by the Defence Science Institute, a state and federal government-backed organisation that aims to build defence research networks and collaborations, according to Beavis and the meeting notes. 

The Citizen asked McCluskey for a response to the claims. He directed all inquiries to the university’s media department, which has not responded directly to the claims about his remarks. (A copy of the university’s response is available here.) The institute also did not respond to questions.

On August 10, 2017, a year after the initial press release, the university updated the announcement on its website, changing the details of the STELaRLab location to “proximal to the university’s engineering and innovation precinct”, and the $13 million collaboration to “an initial investment” by Lockheed Martin. McCluskey’s quotes were altered and shortened slightly, with his reference to the Melbourne Connect “new innovation district” removed.

Last year, in the early stages of the Gaza solidarity student protests, the reportedly inflated claims around the Lockheed Martin relationship came back to haunt the university as the pro-Palestine campus protests flared and the campaign for divestment and disclosure of weapons interests gained public attention. Lockheed Martin supplies planes and weapons to Israel.

In December 2023, the university issued another press release seeking to clarify the partnership, stating that it had only received $3.5 million from Lockheed Martin for PhDs, and that the $13 million figure referred to Lockheed’s own investment in the STELaRLab.

---

The university’s response to anti-war staff and student activists over the years has been to consistently downplay and deflect concerns, according to the vice president of the MAPW and University of Melbourne tutor Dr Margaret Beavis.

In summary, as she recalls it, the university line was that Lockheed Martin were “such nice people to deal with”. MAPW notes from a meeting with university leadership in August 2018 record that the university said that it only dealt with the company’s Australian subsidiary.

The university also argued, according to the notes, that the US company had not been implicated in corruption since the 1970s — when the so-called Lockheed bribery scandal erupted, with a US court-ordered report revealing a program of questionable foreign payments of up to US$38 million — and that “they had been told all about the ethical training that all key employees have to do these days”.

But internationally, the company has been scrutinised over controversial activities more recently. In 2015, a Lockheed Martin subsidiary paid the US Department of Justice US$4.7 million to settle charges that it had illegally used taxpayer funds to pay a lobbyist for assistance in winning an extension for a US$2.4 billion-a-year contract to run a nuclear weapons laboratory. That year the company also paid US$2 million to settle allegations that it overcharged the US government for fuel it used to manufacture aircraft for the US Air Force.

The University of Melbourne did not respond to questions from The Citizen about the claims made in the meeting notes.

The meeting notes claim that McCluskey said in the 2017 meeting that the university was not at that time involved in weapons research with Lockheed Martin. It was, he said, working on sensor technology and autonomous vehicles research, and that it was not yet determined what research would be pursued in the future.

Beavis said she argued that sensor systems were an integral part of the lethal autonomous weapons systems that Lockheed Martin was developing, and that there were already international efforts to ban LAWs.

These kinds of weapons, sometimes described as “killer robots”, generally include any weapons or systems that can independently search and engage targets with little or no human intervention.

This goes to the issue of so-called dual-use research of concern, which the World Health Organization defines as “research that is intended to provide a clear benefit, but which could easily be misapplied to do harm”. In a weapons context, it refers to goods and technologies which have both civilian and military applications.

University of New South Wales Scientia Professor Toby Walsh, an international leader in artificial intelligence research, told The Citizen that “there’s very little you can do in AI [research] that … doesn’t potentially have the possibility of some military application at some point”.

In its press release announcing the Lockheed Martin partnership, the university said that it expected to focus on research areas such as “hypersonics, robotics, artificial intelligence, sensors and communications”. 

At a university event last week, vice-chancellor’s fellow Jon Faine, moderating the first of a series of public forums on “critical issues in our time”, responded to an audience question about university links to weapons research saying it would be the focus of a discussion planned for early next year. 

“[T]he university says, ‘we don’t do any specific weapons work, we do dual purpose research’,” Faine said. “For example, yes there’s people in engineering doing work on drones, drones are used in a military application but they’re also used to save people’s lives in surf life saving and bushfires, and we don’t distinguish between those different uses.”

Would you like to disclose any additional information about the university’s research ties? Send a secure email to jameswcosta@proton.me.

This story is co-published with The Citizen, a publication of the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne.

Should universities take money from weapons manufacturers? 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.

We might not love Qantas, Jetstar or Virgin, but the market made them like this

As new entrants to the market emerge only to inevitably fade away, it's clear Australia's domestic market appears only able to support two carriers.

It’s been a busy year for Australian aviation. Two domestic airlines, Rex and Bonza, fell into administration. And though the government gave a resounding “NO!” to Qatar Airway’s application for more flights, it opened its arms to Turkish Airlines with an extensive offer that allows the airline to sell flights to carry passengers between two foreign countries.

Meanwhile the long-awaited aviation white paper has kicked the can down the road on consumer protections, leaving Australians without the sort of rights that Europeans have enjoyed for 20 years. Australia currently has significantly higher rates of flight cancellations than the United States and lower on-time performance than even the low-cost airlines in Southeast Asia. Compensation for cancellations and delays is left to the individual airline to decide. This is unlike regulation in Europe, the US and Canada, where airlines must meet service standards, and where compensation for significant delays, cancellations and denied boardings is legislated. 

Australian consumer law is not designed to deal with the requirements of passengers left standing in an airport. Qantas recently argued that you are buying a bundle of conditions, not a ticket, for a specific flight. But if you don’t turn up to travel on the day and time on the ticket, you may well forfeit part or all the fare.

Before its demise, Bonza announced it was cancelling its Darwin to Gold Coast services mere days before the flights were scheduled, leaving their passengers with few and expensive alternatives. Under European and North American law, passengers could not have been left stranded like this.

Trimmed pay packets for the CEO and directors at Qantas followed the airline selling seats on cancelled flights, but preceded another Qantas billion-dollar-plus profit announcement. Still to come this year is a new owner for the Rex regional business, the appointment of the airport slot coordinator, and maybe another new market entrant in Koala Air. 

It is difficult to see how Koala’s plans “to carve out a unique niche” can be delivered. Low-cost Tiger, regional operator Bonza, capital city flyer Rex and business-class Ozjet have all failed. The incumbents are entrenched, and the Australian market is arguably too small for a new entrant to develop sufficient scale.

Access to the airport at commercially attractive times is essential for a new entrant to compete. The current slot management regime follows a worldwide practice designed for airlines to retain their access to an airport from one year to the next, provided they are used at least 80% of the time. Access to Sydney is further limited by an arbitrary hourly flow rate below the capacity of the airport’s runways. Airlines need only use these “grandfathered” slots 80% of the time to retain them. 

The core East Coast routes between Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane are very valuable. Flights take an hour on near-identical narrow-body jets. The cost per seat is very similar for Qantas, Virgin, Jetstar or any new entrant. Qantas and Virgin compete with large loyalty programs, alliance partners and airport lounges that new entrants lack. New entrants with limited flight frequency compete with Jetstar on price but without Jetstar’s scale.

In the 30 years since state-owned Qantas and Australian Airlines were merged and privatised, the market has been allowed to shape Australian aviation under light-handed regulation. Virgin Blue took the place of the failed Ansett; Qantas turned the collapsed Impulse into Jetstar. Bain Capital revived the Virgin business after the COVID-19 pandemic, and Virgin has carried more than 100,000 passengers stranded by the collapse of Rex’s jet operation.

We may not love Qantas, Jetstar or Virgin, but the airlines we have are shaped by the market they fly in. Australia does not sit in a prime geographic position on global air routes, but the market has repeatedly demonstrated that investors will support at least two domestic jet operators. 

Some large markets from Australia are only served by foreign airlines. While Qantas and Virgin choose not to fly those routes, customer demand attracts foreign carriers. Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Qatar and Turkish Airlines leverage their comparative geographic advantage to build globally connected hubs that aggregate connecting passengers. Their home airports are capable of handling more than 100 million passengers each year. The fifth terminal under construction at Singapore Changi Airport will add capacity for an additional 50 million passengers annually. 

Australian airports and airlines are located too far south and east to compete. Australia’s privatised airports need only grow fast enough to serve Australian demand. The domestic market, while valuable, appears only able to support two carriers.

With the distances between cities in Australia, air travel is essential. High-speed rail is extremely costly to build and run, and for most major Australian city pairs it is economically and operationally impractical. Australian travellers will benefit most if investment and focus are directed to better customer protections, sustainable fuel production, increased openness of international markets, and better use of scarce airport slots.

How everything became about the Greens blocking the CPRS in 2009

Labor reminded the Greens yesterday of the party's rejection of the carbon pollution reduction scheme in 2009. It wasn't the first time.

Continuing with its admirable commitment to bipartisanship in the exact ways its voters don’t want, Labor is seeking the opposition’s support for its watered-down, industry-approved version of the Environmental Protection Agency. And it’s not just the Coalition on Labor’s mind, apparently.

“If the Greens party doesn’t support the government’s EPA laws, this could be their carbon pollution reduction scheme mistake mark two,” Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said yesterday.

If you are among the huge chunk of voters for whom the CPRS barely rates as a distant political memory, worry not, Labor is always here to remind you (as are we). The CPRS — an emissions trading scheme for anthropogenic greenhouse gases — was widely regarded as an inadequate policy and friendless in all directions. After it was voted down in the Senate in 2009, including by the Greens, Labor replaced it with a more effective scheme.

That hasn’t stopped Labor from dedicating an exhausting amount of time on the subject in the nearly 15 years since. Here’s the story about how, as far as Labor is concerned, everything ever is about the Greens’ decision to vote against the CPRS.

January 2010

Labor’s attacks on the Greens started within two months of the CPRS bill’s defeat. MPs in the Victorian government conducted a mass mail-out aimed at inner-city voters that accused the Greens of siding with climate-change deniers.

“The Greens voted with Tony Abbott and the climate-change deniers to stop our nation taking this historic first step of putting a price on carbon pollution,” pamphlets sent out by Martin Foley, then member for Albert Park, told Victorians ahead of that year’s November state election.

June 2012

In terms that probably set some kind of record for understatement, then climate change minister Greg Combet told the Australian Financial Review, “I think there would be more than just myself in the Labor Party that bears some residual anger at the Greens voting with Tony Abbott to defeat the CPRS.”

“I would like to see more pragmatism . . . but that’s politics, they decided to do that.”

2018

After a few years of quiet, Whitlam’s Children, Shaun Crowe’s book on the relationship between the parties, gave senior Labor figures another opportunity to sheet many of Australia’s ills back to the CPRS. Combet was joined by Penny Wong, Lisa Singh and Wayne Swan lamenting the “political bastardry” of the act.

“If the Greens had voted for the CPRS legislation when Tony Abbott became leader of the Liberal Party in 2009, a carbon price would have been introduced and by today would have been embedded in the
Australian economy,” Wong told Crowe. “Instead the Greens voted with Tony Abbott.”

2019

December 2019, which marked a decade since the vote, kicked this bitter reminiscence up a notch. Perhaps to dull the pain emanating from Labor’s recent achievements in losing “unlosable” elections, a campaign emerged to convince everyone that the lack of energy policy in Australia (and most things) was the Greens’ fault.

New Labor leader Anthony Albanese, then shadow foreign affairs minister Penny Wong and a frontbencher Pat Conroy all brought it up within the same month. It’s barely ceased since.

2020

Conroy, then junior spokesperson on climate change, responded to the Greens having the temerity to link the bushfires currently ravaging the country to climate change by calling the party the “biggest betrayers of the climate”.

“Their decision to team up with Tony Abbott to vote down the CPRS was the biggest error in the Australian climate policy debate,” he said.

2021

In March 2021, environment spokesperson Chris Bowen told the Labor conference that Labor was the only party that could “seize the opportunities” of a low-emissions future:

Not the Coalition to our right, which doesn’t even accept the science of climate change. And not the Greens party to our left, which started the climate wars when it sunk the CPRS, and doesn’t care at all about the workers and communities whose livelihoods are at stake.

2023

Now in power, Labor took the initiative, stopped making excuses and… brought up 2009 more regularly than ever.

In February, Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones said that “making demands that can’t be met simply is not going to help anybody who is committed to reducing carbon emissions in this country”.

In case anyone didn’t know what he was referring to, he added, “What we don’t want to see is a return to 2009 when the Greens ganged up with the then Coalition parties to scuttle the carbon reduction pollution scheme and put climate policy back a decade.”

Chris Bowen repeated the line of attack several times on Sky News.

So, point made, right? Except, by November, Labor decided it hadn’t been sufficiently clear, with Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek warning the Greens, “Whatever you do, don’t relive the carbon pollution reduction scheme disaster, because we know how that story ended. When you teamed up with Tony Abbott to kill Labor’s climate policy, because it ‘wasn’t enough’.”

Oh, no way, the Greens voted with the Coalition on the CPRS in 2009? I’d forgotten about that.

Is Labor justified in reminding the Greens about the CPRS? 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.

A tech YouTuber kept promoting this AI company without disclosing he’s an adviser

Matt Wolfe, who has 637,000 followers on YouTube, had made several videos that referred to Australian AI company Leonardo in glowing terms.

When tech giant Canva announced its purchase of one of Australia’s best known AI startups, Leonardo, artificial intelligence YouTuber and influencer Matt Wolfe excitedly shared the news.

“As someone who’s been an advisor for Leonardo for the past year, this is super exciting news!” he posted on X, formerly Twitter. 

As someone who's been an advisor for Leonardo for the past year, this is super exciting news!

Leonardo is joining Canva! https://t.co/gZQUUtgtlh

— Matt Wolfe (@mreflow) July 30, 2024

It was the first time that Phil Sim, founder of Australian media trade publication Influencing, had seen the California-based technology content creator disclose his relationship with the generative AI company that was reportedly purchased for US$250 million (A$370 million). As it turns out, Wolfe had also mentioned it once in a June video, but otherwise had not flagged his adviser status during the dozens of other times he had mentioned the company in the previous year.

Wolfe, who has 637,000 subscribers on his tech YouTube channel, had made at least five videos mentioning Leonardo, typically in quite glowing terms. The videos have garnered nearly 1 million views between them.

Got a tip about this story? You can anonymously contact Cam Wilson here.

One video dedicated to Leonardo, titled “Use This Midjourney Alternative For Free”, opens with a testimonial from Wolfe about how it has become his “go-to AI art generation platform.”

“When it comes to really colourful and beautiful artistic images I actually think there’s a better platform to play around with and it’s a platform that you can play around with for free … You can sign up for free,” he says. 

Another video, “What Image Generator Should YOU Be Using??”, assessed Leonardo’s image generation abilities against seven competitors — and scored it higher than all the others.

During the same period, Wolfe has also mentioned the company in at least 14 X posts to his 85,000 followers, and three times in his newsletter.

A spokesperson for Leonardo confirmed that Wolfe is an adviser. “Note that he is not a part of our affiliate program and isn’t engaged on a pay-per-lead or any similar type of affiliate-style arrangement,” they said in an email. They did not immediately respond to further questions about whether his role involved advising on promotion or whether he was required to promote the company on his various platforms.

Wolfe did not respond to multiple requests for comment. His LinkedIn says that prior to launching his AI-focused YouTube channel and podcast, he was the founder of a blockchain-related marketing company and, before that, another online marketing company. 

Sim said he thought the lack of disclosure was interesting. “There’s a very good reason that journalists disclose that they own shares in any company they report on, and with independent creators like Wolfe becoming an ever-increasingly significant part of the media landscape, I feel strongly they should carry those same responsibilities,” he wrote.

Leonardo is a Sydney-based AI company that earlier this year launched Australia’s first major foundation model to power its products. It will continue to operate as a separate company after the Canva acquisition.

Should online content creators adhere to the same disclosure standards as mainstream journalists? 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.

The certain death of local news is dragging democracy down

In most of regional Australia, local news has vanished from the community narrative. And local democracy is being gutted as a result.

Right now, we’re getting a preview of what a world without newspapers — democracy’s traditional fourth estate — might look like. Local elections in NSW are taking place largely in a local news media vacuum, as the traditional regional chains owned by News Corp and Australian Community Media (ACM) shut up shop.

Not that long ago, there were 11 long-established daily newspapers serving each of the largest cities in regional NSW (that is, outside the Sydney-Newcastle-Wollongong metro area), buttressed with a string of tri-, bi- and weekly papers in the smaller towns. 

Now, there are just three daily newspapers, while most of the papers on a lesser frequency have been shuttered and rolled into a single corporate digital offering, like News Corp’s Daily Telegraph.

Last week, ACM announced it would stop printing another eight of the weekly mastheads it bought out of the Nine-Fairfax merger in 2019: The Inverell Times, the Moree Champion, the Tenterfield Star, the Glen Innes Examiner and Country Leader (all in New England and north-west of NSW) along with the Dungog Chronicle and Gloucester Advocate between the Hunter Valley and the Barrington Coast and the Milton-Ulladulla Times on the south coast.

It followed the closure of the weekly Blayney Chronicle and Oberon Review in the state’s central west the week before and the end of the daily printing run for the Central Western Daily (in Orange), the Western Advocate (Bathurst) and the Daily Liberal (Dubbo). The three long-term dailies will print once a week. (The remaining dailies in the larger centres of Albury-Wodonga and Wagga Wagga will survive for the time being.)

The closures mark a quick death for the Macquarie Publications network built up from 1949 by two generations of the Dubbo-based Armati media dynasty. The papers were sold to Rural Press in 1995, merged into Fairfax in 2007 and sold on to ACM after Nine merged with Fairfax. 

The latest owners are keen to point the blame elsewhere — at Meta for ending payments under the news media bargaining code and at Labor for not renewing the Morrison government’s shakedown of big tech on behalf of old media.

The closures come with the usual pabulum about “a strategic shift towards its growing digital subscriptions business” where less, apparently, is going to be more: “the news teams of the long-standing titles will continue to keep their communities strong, informed and connected with local coverage online across the week and a bigger, better newspaper for weekend reading.”

Nice, if true. But almost certainly bullshit, given there is simply no successful corporate model of digital paywalls on regional media that operates at the scale necessary to meet the needs and wants of regional news audiences. 

When News Corp stopped printing most of its regional daily papers in Queensland and northern NSW under the cover of the pandemic back in 2020, it made the same promises of deep investments in journalism with resourced local digital offerings. 

By the following March, that offering had been already discounted, with the local sites rolled in behind the pay-wall of the Telegraph and Courier-Mail, puffed out with the quick news hits of crime, natural disasters and development announceables. Staff in regional Australia have been further diminished as the company restructures its news collection into national teams, desperately cutting staff to keep costs beneath its dwindling revenues.

According to News Corp’s official reports to its US regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the total subscriptions of the metropolitan print and regional digital offering wrapped up in NSW’s Daily Telegraph is just 144,000 — down about 5% in just the past year. 

It’s a decline that continues to lure the company’s news framing into the clickbait of moral panic that tears at communities — as we’ve seen the focus on crime do in the Northern Territory. 

As it shifts its daily papers to digital, ACM is about to crash into the big question mark that hangs over News Corp’s boasted news subscription figures which aggregate print and digital numbers: what are people actually buying? Are they aging nostalgics who want the paper? Or are they forward-looking news consumers? And what happens to those traditionalists when the paper vanishes?

There’s some good news: low-scale independent papers are being tentatively published in some towns to fill the gap left by the corporate chains. (They’re tracked by the Australian News Data Project of the Public Interest Journalism Initiative.) The new voices are bringing a different, more community-based news sense to old media’s perspective of just repeating the news that institutions give them. 

The strongest examples — and the most enduring — are in northern NSW, where, as Stephen Wyatt writes in his recent book Rainforest Warriors, the new voices emerged from the community-driven environmental protests of the 1970s and 1980s.

But in most of regional Australia, local news has vanished from the community narrative. And local democracy is being gutted as a result.

Have you felt the impact of regional paper closures? 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.

‘Serious deficiencies’: Victoria Police, health services face criticism in coroner’s inquest into trans deaths

'How do we hold people accountable and make people listen?'

This article mentions suicide and contains material some readers may find upsetting.

Victorian Coroner Ingrid Giles last week handed down her findings in the inquest into the suicide of young transgender woman Bridget Flack and four other suicides by members of the trans and gender-diverse (TGD) communities between 2020 and 2021. The report was damning of both Victoria’s public health system and Victoria Police.

On December 1, 2020, Flack was registered as a missing person after she was last seen by a friend on Lygon St in Carlton, Melbourne. Her disappearance sparked extensive searches coordinated predominantly by community amid dense bushland along the Yarra Bend in Melbourne’s northeast.  

Flack’s body was found on December 11 in Willsmere-Chandler Park in Kew by two community members. Her death was later ruled as a suicide by police.

Victoria Police found itself facing fierce community backlash for its sluggish search efforts. In handing down her findings, Giles substantiated these concerns, highlighting “serious deficiencies” in Victoria Police’s response.

“I find that the issues in the Victoria Police missing persons investigation for Bridget, that have been identified in hindsight, prevailed at an organisational rather than at an individual level,” Giles ruled, adding that “police failed to appreciate the actual risk of suicide that Bridget presented”.

Flack’s sister Angela Pucci Love says that “there is vindication in knowing that what we were asking for and what we should have been provided was not unreasonable”.

“Even though the coroner said she didn’t believe Bridget was discriminated against by Victoria Police because of her gender identity — they did not accurately assess the risk,” Pucci Love told Crikey.

In December 2021 Victoria Police undertook an internal review, generating a list of findings and recommendations specific to the search for Flack. It was revealed it took more than six hours for the missing person’s report to be uploaded into the police system, while search efforts were further hindered by an initial request to access Flack’s phone triangulation data being denied.

Giles wrote in her findings, “I consider the decision not to approve triangulation of Bridget’s phone until it was too late to obtain any data from it, to be a significant lost opportunity to locate Bridget with precision and in a timely manner.”

Victoria Police has placed some of the blame on outdated IT systems. Giles noted that despite the internal review, so far not one of its recommendations has been implemented. Giles went on to say it was “troubling that no recommendations have been implemented several years on due to what is ostensibly an IT issue”.

Giles also found Victoria Police “failed to consider the safety and well-being of the community members searching for Bridget, many of whom were LGBTIQA+” and that “police left a vulnerable community to search for one of their own, in the knowledge that Bridget might be found deceased”.

“The concept of Bridget’s disappearance bringing up suicidal contagion within the LGBTQIA+ community was brought up [by the coroner’s inquiry],” Pucci Love said in relation to the four other suicides.

“What has been established is that the search for Bridget became so public and that I only went to the media because of the deficiencies of Victoria Police,” Pucci Love said.

“Had they taken the necessary steps to find Bridget, there wouldn’t have been the necessity to get so many people involved and create potential risk of suicidal contagion.”

Giles also called on the federal government to restrict the sale of a dangerous chemical that was linked to three of the five suicides investigated as part of the inquest.

Victorian public health services also came under fire. Flack was on a waiting list to access in-patient services at the time she went missing, but had also reported a negative experience after being admitted to a public hospital mental health service in 2013.

As Pucci Love explained, “the reason why Bridget wouldn’t access public mental health support is because she had been in the public mental health system before and had felt ridiculed and physically unsafe presenting as a transgender woman”.

Giles called for widespread change within the delivery of health services for trans and gender-diverse patients, stating that “[the] inquest has established a clear need to devise and implement a statewide framework for the provision of culturally appropriate care to TGD people in public hospitals and health services”.

“This is critical to ensuring that mainstream services are genuinely accessible for TGD people, including those presenting in crisis.”

Giles also recommended changes regarding how senior next of kin are identified.

“There’s a lot to digest,” Pucci Love concluded. “How do we hold people accountable and make people listen? A lot of time, emotion and money has been put into this inquest for a reason because it’s a matter of public health and it is an urgent and crucial matter that needs to be addressed.” 

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.

Federal Liberals gaffe NSW takeover

The federal Liberal Party has stumbled at the first hurdle of its takeover of the party's NSW division, and John Howard has criticised Jim Chalmers' comments about interest rates and the RBA.

DUTTON WANTS NSW LIBS ‘OLD, WHITE AND RIGHT’

The federal Liberal Party’s takeover of the embattled NSW division took an embarrassing turn on Tuesday evening when one of the three men announced as making up the committee to oversee the state party’s affairs immediately backed out.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports the NSW Liberals will be forced into a federal takeover for 10 months from September 12, with the proposed administration committee involving former Victorian senator Richard Alston, ex-Victorian treasurer Alan Stockdale and former NSW minister Rob Stokes. But things got a tad awkward last night when Stokes revealed he was not asked about the appointment and could not accept it due to other commitments. The SMH quotes him as saying: “I am always happy to help but I did not anticipate this appointment and I am not in a position to accept it.”

One NSW Liberal MP, speaking anonymously to AAP, described the initial inclusion of Stokes as a “massive surprise”. The ABC also flagged that NSW Liberal Party leader Mark Speakman was not happy with the make-up of the committee the federal executive requested, declaring: “The proposed appointees have significant experience, but I would welcome the inclusion of an experienced female in this crucial role.”

The SMH highlights the federal takeover is set to “cause huge unrest” in the party’s moderate faction. The paper quotes one senior moderate Liberal as initially saying: “The NSW Liberal Party will now be run by two Victorians, with Rob Stokes added for window dressing. The message Peter Dutton has sent to the NSW Liberals [is] that he wants the party run by a committee that is old, white and right.”

Elsewhere last night, ASIO chief Mike Burgess was interviewed on ABC’s 7.30 program, in which he sought to clarify his comments on the vetting process for people fleeing Gaza. Burgess said his original comments, in which he suggested rhetorical support for Hamas might not exclude people from entering Australia, were misrepresented, declaring: “I’ve watched with interest over the last couple of weeks how people have chosen to distort what I said. I said that if you support a Palestinian homeland that may not discount you [from entering Australia] because that by itself is not a problem. But I also said if you have a violent extremist ideology, or you provide material or financial support to a terrorist organisation, that will be a problem.”

The federal opposition had seized on Burgess’ initial remarks, calling for a temporary ban on Palestinians seeking Australian visas. Today the AAP quotes Nasser Mashni of the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network, who said the visa debate had been reduced to “cheap politics”. “It’s an indictment upon this country that it has chosen to demonise these people, rather than offer them the care and compassion that has been so rightly afforded to other people fleeing conflict zones,” he said.

CHALMERS VS RBA

The Australian led overnight with an op-ed written by former prime minister John Howard in which he criticises Jim Chalmers for his comments about high interest rates “smashing the economy” amid accusations the treasurer has been trying to place the blame on the Reserve Bank of Australia. Howard writes “Chalmers’ clumsy attempt to shift blame for the painful consequences of high interest rates has badly backfired.”

The piece comes ahead of the release of the June quarter gross domestic product figures at 11.30am AEST today. (The data will be published here.)

Guardian Australia highlights how the different banks predict the economy will have grown in the quarter, with ANZ suggesting just 0.1%, Westpac and NAB tipping 0.3% and Commonwealth Bank saying 0.4%. Those predictions would equate to annual growth of between 0.8% and 1.1%.

The site says the RBA had modelled for 0.9% growth and any change from that will undoubtedly see plenty of pressure for either rate cuts sooner or push any reduction into next year and keep the option of another hike in play. The Australian Financial Review points out figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday showed state and federal government spending was likely the main driver of growth in June.

Ahead of the data being released, Chalmers spoke to the paper to defend his recent comments about the economy and claim his job was to tell people what was going on. “I don’t see it as a shot at anyone, I see it as a reflection of reality,” the treasurer said. “My job is to tell it like it is, to acknowledge the economy is slowing considerably and what we are doing about it.”

ON A LIGHTER NOTE…

A museum in France is inviting people to view its latest exhibition, Naturist Paradise, in the nude.

Marseille’s Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations is allowing visitors to come naked one evening a month to see the collection of 600 photographs, films, magazines, paintings, sculptures and other artworks from naturist communities, The Guardian reports. The exhibition is run in partnership with the French Naturist Federation.

The once-a-month naked evening does come with a couple of rules and suggestions though.

The Guardian said a museum spokesperson had called it “logical” for those booking tickets for the special evening to be in some form of undress, declaring: “Anyone wanting to visit fully dressed during those hours might be considered a little odd.”

Also, footwear — you have to wear shoes. The head of France’s FFN naturist organisation Eric Stefanut told AFP it was to protect visitors against the museum’s floor. The rule was simply to “avoid getting splinters”.

For the naked and fully-clothed alike, the exhibition runs until December.

Say What?

goodbye forever brat summer.

Charli XCX

And just like that it was over. The British musician has declared the all-conquering “brat summer” has now ended. Embraced by the internet and the likes of Kamala Harris, the cultural phenomenon that accompanied Charli XCX’s latest album will be missed by many, according to indy100, with numerous social media posts in denial or in mourning that brat summer has come to an end.

CRIKEY RECAP

Labor ignores climate change amid record-breaking weather. Bring on the minority government!

BERNARD KEANE

From the wider perspective of the pressing need for real, large-scale carbon abatement to avert what will, in human and economic terms, be permanent significant costs from a more extreme climate, the 2022 election was a missed trick. Labor’s ability to form a majority government without needing to rely on a crossbench with a serious commitment both to carbon abatement and reducing our fossil fuel exports has meant an expansion of those exports and taxpayer funding to enable further expansion into the future.

Only a minority government dependent upon climate-committed crossbenchers will deliver meaningful climate action in Australia. A majority government of either persuasion will simply mean more fossil fuel exports — which generate little in the way of tax revenue — and more taxpayer handouts to an industry that effectively charges us to make billions from a finite supply of fossil fuels.

From a climate perspective, the only good outcome from the 2025 election is both major parties falling short of 76 seats. Then we’ll see what records the winter of 2025 brings.

​​Keating’s vision for super is crumbling. Good

BENJAMIN CLARK

All of this tinkering is necessary because Keating’s overhyped superannuation reforms were full of holes from the outset. The least he can do now is get out of the way while his Labor successors tighten up the rules and impose limits.

Labor’s current reforms modestly backpedal from Keating’s flawed vision. Perhaps the elder statesman should consider retirement as the government — whose treasurer wrote his PhD on the man — charts a new course.

Albanese’s hot mic moment in Tonga lights up China’s WeChat groups, and they’re not happy

WANNING SUN

But it was the hot mic exchange between Albanese and Campbell that animated China’s WeChat groups and blogosphere: the video of their conversation has been doing the rounds in both China-based and Australia-based WeChat groups.

In China, public opinion of world affairs is increasingly being shaped by commentary in two arenas — one inhabited by international studies scholars and intellectual elites who write mainly in reputable journals, the other by bloggers whose populist writings tend to be the most widely posted and read online. Some of these bloggers, using a pen name, work for state media for their day jobs, while others are in some cases uncredentialed writers who have a small amount of knowledge but plenty of passion. To attract eyeballs, these writers tend to use more colourful, folksy language, and appeal to the lowest common denominator.

The most frequently reposted criticisms on China’s social media following the hot-mic incident seemed to come from Guancha (The Observer), a Shanghai-based commercial online media digest known for its nationalist bent. A Guancha reporter argued that the exchange between Albanese and Campbell was evidence that the United States intended to patrol the Pacific, and that Australia was willing to play second fiddle in this plan. However, rather than relying on official Chinese responses to the incident, the reporter pursued the argument by citing critical voices from Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Pregnant woman among 12 dead after boat carrying migrants capsizes in English Channel (BBC)

Russian strike kills more than 50 in Ukraine, Zelenskyy says (The New York Times) ($)

Ugandan Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei in hospital after alleged petrol attack by boyfriend, local reports say (Sky News)

How China extended its repression into an American city (The Washington Post)

John McCain’s son decries Trump appearance at Arlington as a ‘violation’ that turned cemetery into campaign backdrop (CNN)

Elle Macpherson refused to have chemotherapy after breast cancer diagnosis (The Guardian)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Jim Chalmers’ attack on RBA reeks of political expediency — John Howard (The Australian):  Dr Chalmers’ attack on the RBA a few days ago had a tone of desperation about it. They were the words of a treasurer who has lost his grip.

After all, Bullock was appointed governor only 11 months ago, and by the Albanese government on the recommendation of the treasurer. Her appointment was widely praised, enjoying the full support of opposition Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor. She was well qualified for the job and has demonstrated the wisdom of her appointment.

She does not deserve the Chalmers broadside. Since she has been in the chair, the level of inflation, as well as government spending and other pressures, has left Bullock and her colleagues no alternative other than that pursued in relation to interest rates.

Smash or be smashed: Chalmers gambles on a rift with RBA — David Crowe (The Sydney Morning Herald): Chalmers is not retreating from his remarks but he needs to be careful. Political leaders can suffer the consequences if they make too many assumptions about what a Reserve Bank governor should do. A previous governor, Glenn Stevens, stung John Howard by lifting rates a few weeks before the prime minister went to the 2007 federal election.

The hard-heads inside the federal government do not expect an interest rate cut this year, but some of them live in hope of a cut next year — just in time for an election due by May. Bullock and the Reserve Bank board have immense power to help or hinder Labor before polling day. One false move and someone might get smashed.