Opposition Leader Peter Dutton (Image: AAP/Lukas Coch)
Labor didn't understand why a census question on sexuality was so important to LGBTIQA+ people. Peter Dutton understood it perfectly well.
While Labor rightly copped a battering last week for its census question debacle, Peter Dutton got away without being interrogated at all about why, precisely, he thought a question on sexual orientation would be a bad idea.
“I think the set of questions that we’ve got at the moment, the long-term way in which we’ve collected this data, has stood us well as a country,” he said on Thursday, when Labor’s position was still no change to the questions for the 2026 census. “If you’ve got the woke agenda, which I think is at odds with the vast majority of Australians, then the prime minister should argue that case. But I think we’re pretty happy with the settings that we’ve got in place at the moment.”
“If you’ve got the woke agenda.” Dutton says this like it’s a particularly nasty virus. Is it a “woke agenda” to identify people’s sexuality? The Nazis used a pink triangle to identify purported LGBTIQA+ people, and while the term “woke” is so malleable as to apply to almost anything, woke Nazis are surely a step too far.
It’s also not merely a “woke agenda” but one “at odds with the vast majority of Australians”. Does that mean the vast majority of Australians would oppose a voluntary question on sexual preference? Either way, Dutton seems to think a question about sexual preference is not merely illegitimate and without merit, but also something for which only a minority of the “woke” would advocate.
The opposition leader could have said the government has no business prying into people’s sexuality, even on a voluntary basis. He could have said the census is already large enough and further expansion isn’t justified. Instead, he labelled it “woke”. Why?
Clearly he wants to paint Labor as the creatures of a minority of LGBTIQA+ people, while he represents the “vast majority” of ordinary (read: heterosexual) Australians.
This peculiar Othering of LGBTIQA+ people passed without notice amid the furore caused by the government’s stuff-up. What also passed unexplored was the argument from LGBTIQA+ groups that not having a census question was not merely a broken election promise by Labor, which it was, but also one that made them, in the words of one representative, feel “invisible and demeaned“.
That seemed to sum up a widespread feeling among the LGBTIQA+ community that a census question not merely generates valuable data for policymakers, but its absence also showed they were once again being deliberately ignored by the census being “straightwashed”.
It’s not for an old hetero male to question or pass judgment on such a feeling, of course, but that view seems to hand a lot of entirely undeserved power to governments. LGBTIQA+ people exist without and before any government legitimisation or recognition, delivered via a census question or in any other way. Moreover, it relies on a very benign view of governments that, until relatively recently, actively persecuted and discriminated against LGBTIQA+ Australians.
Would people have the same view if an explicitly homophobic government were in power, or one that relied on the support of homophobic politicians?
Regardless of that, Labor clearly didn’t think of what its decision meant in terms of the importance of representation and identity, whereas Peter Dutton, instinctively, understood it as being entirely about those things.
The exploitation of grievance, which is such an important mechanism for Dutton’s political personality, treats representation and symbolism as every bit as important as actual real-world policy outcomes. Both are zero-sum games: any enhancement in representation for a minority group must automatically be at the cost of the — white, heterosexual — majority.
LGBTIQA+ people have already taken so much from the rest of us, now they want to ruin the census: this seems to be Dutton’s position. That’s why he immediately described it as a woke agenda out of touch with ordinary Australians. In the same way that the Indigenous Voice to Parliament was unfair to white Australians (where’s their Voice to Parliament?), or that immigrants will prevent people from being able to see the doctor, white grievance and victimhood are never far away.
Labor has no counter to this beyond labelling Dutton divisive, which is water off a duck’s back. Labor’s agenda, hardly a woke one, is to govern well enough that voters aren’t tempted to lash out at whatever targets Dutton puts in front of them — migrants, refugees, Muslims, LGBTIQA+ people.
But in concentrating on that, the government risks failing to understand the importance of symbols and representation, as well as good policy. Dutton, with a tremendous sense for the opportunities of division, understands such things at an instinctive level.
Bernard Keane is Crikey's political editor. Before that he was Crikey's Canberra press gallery correspondent, covering politics, national security and economics.
The Muslim Votes Matter campaign launch (Image: SBS World News)
Muslim community leaders have launched their campaign — and they have Labor-held seats in their sights for 2025.
For long-term observers of Muslim community politics, there was much that was familiar about the launch of the Muslim Votes Matter campaign at Broadmeadows Town Hall on Sunday afternoon.
There were the tables set out with platters of mezze and jugs of juice and soft drinks, the observance of the asr prayer, the familiar faces of veteran community leaders, the impassioned calls for unity. Also familiar during the lead-up to the event were the dog-whistling responses from LNP politicians, with Peter Dutton having described the potential election of Muslim candidates in western Sydney as a “disaster”. For his part, Anthony Albanese claimed that religious political parties (Muslim Votes Matter stresses that it is an advocacy group rather than a party) would undermine social cohesion.
For the 350-strong cohort of mostly middle-aged, middle-class Muslims, yesterday’s launch was in many regards a well-practiced routine. But if the seasoned campaigners were going over familiar territory, they were also exploring new ground, as the organisers of Muslim Votes Matter embark on a campaign of education and engagement in the lead-up to the next federal election.
The impetus, of course, was the federal government’s failure to stand with Palestine during the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Australian surgeon Dr Bushra Othman provided an emotional account of her recent experiences working in Gaza’s collapsing healthcare system, while GP Umber Rind cited her Afghan cameleer and Badimiya Yamitji Aboriginal heritage in her description of the similarities between Israeli and Australian colonialism.
The ultimate decision to launch the campaign is also a response to the changing political landscape. Dwindling support for the major political parties in favour of the Greens and teal independents has created what campaigners consider a genuine moment of opportunity. Former Islamic Council of Victoria executive director Nail Aykan stated that a hung Parliament would be the best possible outcome for the Muslim community, empowering independents whose values aligned with “ours” — particularly in regard to Palestine.
The theme of the evening was the line from Aykan: “There is no such thing as a safe seat”. And there is certainly no such thing as a rusted-on ALP voter, with some speakers and attendees describing themselves as former party loyalists who had left in frustration after finding themselves unable to bring about change from within. There were frequent references to Senator Fatima Payman, derided by Labor Party leadership as a rat for voting with her conscience and eventually leaving the party over Gaza.
If Muslim Votes Matter has given up on the idea of change from within the major parties, it is extremely upbeat about its capacity to reshape the political landscape. The UK recently saw the election of five independent candidates (including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn) who aligned themselves in solidarity with Palestine. Recorded messages of support from the organisers of the UK Muslim Vote campaign were played at the Australian launch event, and their tactics were cited as an illustration of what could be achieved here.
Muslim Votes Matter has issued scorecards on Gaza for MPs in 32 marginal electorates with large Muslim populations. These electorates are nearly all held by the ALP, with Blaxland (Jason Clare) and Watson (Tony Burke) at the top of the list. Non-Labor electorates on its radar include Banks (currently held by Liberal David Coleman), Mitchell (currently held by Liberal Alex Hawke) and Fowler (currently held by independent Dai Le). The scorecards are based only on comments made in Parliament rather than in the community, a measure contested by some of the targeted MPs, who say that it ignores support they have provided outside Parliament.
The horrorscape of Gaza loomed large over the gathering in Broadmeadows, yet the mood was upbeat and optimistic. The CEO of Muslim Women Australia Maha Abdo described the launch as a development which she and other leaders had dreamt of for many years. The community was finally ready to flex its political muscle, not just in regard to Gaza but over a range of political issues ranging from gambling advertising to alcohol regulation to domestic violence. (However, “family values”, aka LGBTQIA+ rights, were low on the agenda. The organisers emphasised the need to prioritise issues where their intervention was likely to be effective, and rolling back LGBTQIA+ rights was not among them.)
Last night’s launch was only the beginning, the organisers stressed. They are yet to determine which candidates they will support at the next election. And the movement has its sights set on the very long term. One day, they claimed, we would tell our grandchildren that we were present on this historic evening.
That, of course, remains to be seen. But ALP parliamentarians in marginal electorates are right to feel concerned.
Should Labor be doing more on Gaza? 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.
Shakira Hussein is a writer and academic in multiculturalism and Muslim studies at the National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies, University of Melbourne.
The arrest of Telegram's CEO, and Brazil's ban of X, are more about tech companies flaunting their unchecked power than they are about freedom of speech.
The past few weeks have been a wake-up call for social media companies who thought they were free to ignore the laws of the countries they operated in.
Late last month, Pavel Durov was arrested and charged in France for offences relating to his social media and messaging platform Telegram. He faces charges relating to allowing crimes to happen on the platform and refusing to hand over documents to law enforcement that he was legally required to. For those not familiar, the messaging and social media app has 900 million users and is popular with people ranging from crank conspiracy theorists to Russian generals to European leaders.
Then, over the weekend, X, formerly Twitter, was taken offline in Brazil after a Supreme Court judge ordered that it be blocked. Judge Alexandre de Moraes made the decision after X owner Elon Musk failed to appoint a legal representative for the company amid an ongoing case over the platform refusing to comply with an order to ban accounts accused of spreading disinformation.
Supporters of Durov and Musk have argued that these examples represent attacks on free speech. And there’s no doubt that these disputes relate to domestic laws concerning the regulation of speech. But what’s really happened is that both Telegram and X have flown past the “fuck around” stage and landed squarely in the “find out” part of pretending a country’s laws and rules don’t apply to them while they operate there.
In both cases, these platforms have prided themselves on their light moderation. This has allowed scams, crimes and viral bullshit to run rife. Whether it’s purely ideological or partly motivated by the fact that turning a blind eye reduces the significant cost of moderation, the end result is the same.
Musk and Durov are well within their rights to decide to run social media platforms how they like. However, that does not mean they are immune to the consequences of their actions. X and Durov have both been ensnared due to their refusal to comply with their legal obligations. According to the preliminary charges, Telegram has not assisted law enforcement with fighting problems like the child sexual abuse material that’s abundant on the platform. Similarly, a court ordered X to ban seven accounts accused of spreading disinformation following Brazil’s January 2023 capital uprising, but Musk has refused to comply.
Assuming that both Durov and Musk are champions of free speech — and thereby deciding any attempts to force them to comply with local laws is anti-free speech — buys into a simplistic and misleading narrative that benefits exceedingly wealthy men hoping to defy the expectations of democratic nations that they don’t agree with.
Telegram is notorious for routinely ignoring requests for information from regulators and law enforcement agencies. This is not simply an issue of free speech. The company claims to act on child sexual abuse but does not take part in any transparency measures that would prove this, or cooperate with any of the international technology programs that most other social media companies (even X) take part in. Some of France’s charges relate to the proliferation of this content on the Telegram platform. Child sexual abuse material may technically be a form of speech, but even the most ardent advocate would be loathe to explicitly defend it.
Similarly, Musk’s behaviour shows that his commitment to free speech is typically limited to his own self-interest. X has complied with government censorship before in countries like India, and refuses to say a bad word about China. Why? Well, the fact that Musk also owns companies like Tesla that depend or hope to capitalise on these countries may be relevant. He also notoriously uses non-disclosure agreements.
Even if we were to debate this on the grounds of free speech, it’s not clear this would be favourable to these two tech barons. It’s easy to get caught up in the online discourse about free speech, but much of it revolves around America’s extremely limited restrictions on speech. The reality is the majority of Australians want to see the internet more regulated. The vast majority sided with Australian regulators over Elon Musk in another internet stoush. Being a free speech absolutist is an extreme position, even if it might not feel that way when you spend time in online spaces where these issues are debated. It’s worth mentioning, too, that at least some of the charges for Durov are related to providing encryption services. The details of these remain to be seen but these unprecedented charges may in fact be a genuine attack on free speech.
But really, this debate is not about that — or at least, not primarily. This is about two companies who pick and choose when to champion free speech, and when to ignore it, or choose to twist its definition to mean something else altogether. As Musk accuses the Brazilian judge of being an evil dictator, consider this comparison: the legal systems of two democratic nations versus two tech oligarchs, elected by no-one, flaunting the rules of the countries they choose to operate in. Who do you think is exerting unchecked and extreme power over the way we are allowed to talk?
Do you agree with Musk and Pavel’s positions on free speech? How much oversight should governments have of platforms like Telegram and X? 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.
Cam Wilson is Crikey’s associate editor. He previously worked as a reporter at the ABC, BuzzFeed, Business Insider and Gizmodo. He primarily covers internet culture and tech in Australia.
Fatman Scoop on the Project in 2023 (Image: The Project/YouTube)
Normal people will remember Fatman Scoop for his contributions to some of the century's best party music. But we in the bunker are not normal.
Musician Fatman Scoop has died at the age of 53 after collapsing on stage during a show in Connecticut.
The tributes that have followed describe him as a rapper, but that’s not exactly right. There was no wordplay, no storytelling, and his stuff only rhymed insofar as he repeated himself a lot. Scoop was pure hype man, a return to the role of the MC in hip hop’s block party origins.
This made Scoop, born Isaac Freeman III, a fairly old school figure — even in his heyday. And as mainstream hip hop continues to slow and warp under the influence of trap, his ebullient, disco-sampling shout-a-longs seem to belong to a different universe.
His window-rattling rasp, utilised as pure rhythm (“Oh! Oh! Oh!” “Can I get a what what?”) is imprinted on the brains of the generation that came of age in the early days of the 21st century, super-charging some of the best party music those years produced: Missy Elliott’s “Lose Control“, Mariah Carey’s “It’s Like That“, and, most of all, his collaboration with Crooklyn Clan, “Be Faithful“, three and a half minutes as irresistible and ecstatic anything in all of pop. That’s his legacy for normal people.
But we are not normal people. And so when we think of Fatman Scoop, we think of former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison’s first days in the Lodge. Because, like Frank Sinatra and Macklemore before him, Fatman Scoop’s story contains an explicable detour into Australian politics.
In September 2018, Morrison — or, let’s be honest, one of the younger members of his media team — felt that “Be Faithful” was the best way to express how much he’d enjoyed question time that week, tweeting of a video of his MPs (except Julia Banks, obviously) raising their hands in unison, looped so it synced with Fatman’s demand: “If you got a 100-dollar bill, get your hands up / You got a 50-dollar bill, get your hands up”.
Of course, anyone who’d paid attention to the history of songs that ask all the single ladies in the house to make noise would know there might be some slightly less family-friendly sentiments coming. And so the Morrison government had its avoidable embarrassment, with Morrison deleting the post and apologising for sharing a song that asks “Who fuckin’ tonight?” over and over. Scoop, for his part, said he was “humbled” to see his music used this way.
Amazingly, that wasn’t the end of it. Scoop, it turns out, was bipartisan in his love of Australian PMs. In August 2022, Scoop cropped up on breakfast radio show Stav, Abby and Matt to demand the newly elected Anthony Albanese join him on stage, having heard from The Project that the PM DJs.
He repeated the demand that November on another breakfast radio show. “Ah, Fatman again,” the Australian prime minister said, like a Bond villain generated by hallucinating AI.
Scoop: “Sir, I love you. I respect you. But I need you to DJ with me, sir … This is not a threat, sir, but if you do not do this, I’m getting my Australian citizenship and I’m running against you.”
Albanese: “I hate to give you the big tip, but I think I can possibly stop that happening.”
Scoop’s legacy thus includes bringing about a situation where the prime minister says, “You can slide into my DMs anytime, Fatman.” Vale.
Charlie Lewis pens Crikey's Tips and Murmurs column and also writes on industrial relations, politics and culture. He previously worked across government and unions and was a researcher on RN's Daily Planet. He currently co-hosts Spin Cycle on Triple R radio.
Jeff Howard, Mike Sneesby and Robert Thomson (Image: Private Media)
It's been a bloody year for the Australian media industry. But who's eating well among the carnage?
The past year has been a brutal one for the Australian media industry. Job cuts have been made all over the country (Crikey has been tracking them here), with more than 400 roles slashed in the past few months at Seven West, Nine Entertainment and News Corp alone. And the industry is set for even more pain as the money from publishing deals with tech giants Meta and Google dries up.
Despite the cuts, however, some of us are eating well. And by us, we mean those in the C-suites. Today Crikey rounds up the profits and executive pay at the biggest media companies in the country so you can see how much corporate executives are making relative to the performance of their companies (or the job cuts they’ve made).
Nine
When Nine Entertainment released its most recent fiscal results, the headline was that CEO Mike Sneesby lost almost 80% of his bonus as the company’s profits fell amid a challenging advertising market. Sneesby was recently under fire over a lavish trip to the Paris Olympics while his staff back home endured the wrath of redundancies and battled for a new pay deal.
Group profits at Nine were down 22% after tax in the 2023-24 financial year, while Sneesby took home $2.1 million. That’s down on the $2.7 million he took home in 2022-23 — a year the company saw a loss of 25% after tax. His latest pay package represents an additional $600,000 on top of his $1.5 million base salary.
It comes after 85 redundancies, mostly voluntary, in Nine’s publishing division last week. The division reported a drop in earnings, although the company’s fiscal report noted it had “outperformed, primarily due to strong subscription performance”.
News Corp
News Corp saw a number of jobs go as revenues in Australia fell 7% compared to FY23. More than 100 people lost their jobs in the most recent round of redundancies, including high-profile editors such as news.com.au’s Lisa Muxworthy, as the company undertook a $65 million restructure.
The company has been hit by the soft advertising market, but is relatively well protected thanks to its subscription assets such as Kayo and its newspapers.
Despite the difficulties at News, global CEO Robert Thomson has been eating very well, taking home $41.53 million last year. That makes him the second-highest-paid CEO on the ASX200 on a realised-pay basis in FY23, per ASCI’s ASX200 CEO pay report. As is relatively common in the United States, a large majority of this consisted of performance-tied pay, with Thomson’s fixed pay sitting at $5.17 million.
Seven
Seven West is also staring down redundancies, with up to 150 jobs set to go. CEO Jeff Howard told a parliamentary inquiry earlier this year that the loss of funding from Meta and Google in publishing deals would force Seven to cut jobs.
Howard has only been in his position for a few months, taking over from James Warburton. Warburton took home $2.77 million in 2022-23, which consisted of $1.47 million in additional compensation on top of his $1.3 million base salary. His total compensation was down almost 40% from the previous year.
This year, Seven West Media saw group earnings before tax down 33% on last year, but Howard still took home $1.25 million, with no short-term cash incentives paid out. His base salary this financial year was $747,918.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris (Image: AAP/AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
After a glitzy convention in Chicago, American voters are shifting their attention to Harris' position on concrete policies.
When Vice President Kamala Harris capped off the Democratic National Convention with a speech some commenters lauded as “the speech that Democrats craved,” she paved a middle road as much for independents and Republicans disaffected with Donald Trump as for Democrats.
Yet after the glamour of the stage-managed convention, focus has shifted to what Harris’ “big tent” approach means in terms of policy. Voters are expecting the presidential nominee to soon stake out clearer positions on some of America’s most pressing issues, including inflation, immigration and healthcare access and affordability.
The vice president’s previous reluctance to clarify her priorities is important, partly because her policy positions have shifted since she announced her candidacy for the 2020 Democratic primary election.
Medicare
At the DNC, speakers emphasised the Biden administration’s efforts to lower the price of insulin, but this change only applies to those currently eligible for Medicare. (In 2023, more than 25 million Americans did not have health insurance.)
In 2019, Harris announced her support of Medicare for All, a proposed extension of the government healthcare program that currently only insures people aged 65 or older. However, Harris’ team recently stated that she no longer supports the plan, instead touting Biden-era accomplishments such as expanding access to private insurance plans that serve Obamacare patients and negotiating Medicare drug prices.
Gun violence
Four years ago, Harris’s 2020 DNC speech took aim at “structural racism”, noting how the pandemic disproportionately affected marginalised communities and making reference to the Black Lives Matter protests that had spread throughout the US in the months following by police officer Derek Chauvin.
One policy area the Harris campaign has emphasised a clear position on is reproductive rights.
In her DNC speech, Harris vowed to sign a federal law protecting access to “reproductive freedom”, including abortion care. Abortion access has been greatly restricted across the US since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022.
Fourteen states have near-total bans on abortion; another four states restrict abortion access after six weeks of pregnancy. These laws affect more than 25 million women of reproductive age. More than half of Black women of reproductive age live in states that limit abortion access.
The issue will be a pressing one in November, and not just for the presidential race. Voters in 10 states will have the opportunity to weigh in directly on initiatives and referendums affecting abortion access. In swing states, including Florida, Arizona and Nevada, voters will decide whether to protect or extend the right to terminate a pregnancy.
Across the US, “abortion storytellers” are travelling from city to city, meeting with voters to talk about their own decisions to terminate pregnancies — often in cases where a woman or her fetus faced a devastating diagnosis — bringing public faces to a long-stigmatised issue.
The Harris campaign made these voicescentral at the DNC, and they linked the broader theme of reproductive freedom to include access to assisted reproductive technology, including IVF treatments. Prominent politicians, such as Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth, spoke of their struggles with infertility and the decision to pursue IVF to build their families.
Cost of living
The Harris campaign has also staked a clear policy position on the cost of living crisis.
In the days following the DNC, Harris’s campaign released an advertisement promising government grants to first-time home buyers and tens of billions of dollars to fund incentives for local governments to allow the development of multi-family housing.
It’s unclear the extent to which these policies, if enacted, would ease the pinch of inflation felt by households in the short term, as many families struggle to make ends meet.
Immigration reform
Efforts by both Republicans and Democrats have failed to produce comprehensive immigration reform over the past four decades.
The last major legislative achievement on this issue was the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, signed into law by then president Ronald Reagan, which offered amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants while also increasing enforcement efforts.
Efforts since then have mostly failed and resulted in piecemeal changes.
As the Democratic nominee for president, Harris has made lofty promises to restore joy and optimism to a polarised American people. Whether voters are persuaded by her claims — and whether they will drive turnout, especially among the Democratic base — is the major test she faces in November.
Kathryn Schumaker is a Senior Lecturer in American Studies at the United States Studies Centre. She holds a PhD in US history from the University of Chicago and a BA in American Studies from Northwestern University. Her work explores the intersections of race and gender in American law.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris (Images: AAP/Private Media)
Donald Trump gets more erratic, while Kamala Harris gets more centrist.
“Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently…” So said a post, featuring photos of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and her 2016 predecessor Hillary Clinton, on social media site Truth Social.
The post was reshared by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, and was an apparent reference to a common right-wing insinuation that Harris’s one-time relationship with former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown was key to progressing her career, and a nod to the affair between Bill Clinton and then White House intern Monica Lewinsky in the 1990s.
It was another disqualifying moment beneath the dignity of anyone running for office, as was the Access Hollywood tape in 2016 in which Trump boasted of getting away with sexual assault, before it became a conclusive indicator of Trump’s impunity with his base.
The major difference with Trump sharing the above post is that today there is no flurry of Republicans distancing themselves from the former president, beyond some mild talk of “frustration“.
Reaching across the aisle
This makes it all the funnier that Harris has used her first major network interview as the Democratic nominee to say that if she wins, she’s appointing a Republican to serve in her cabinet. She told CNN journalist Dana Bash that she had spent her career “inviting diversity of opinion”.
“I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences. And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my cabinet who was a Republican.”
Presumably she does not want that diversity of opinion to include a belief that Trump is waging a secret war against a network of Satanist pedophiles in the elite circles of government, business and the media, a belief that Trump has more and more explicitly encouraged. That said, if she interprets Republican loosely enough, she could take her pick from the more than 200 former Republican presidential nominee staffers who have endorsed her.
The graveyard of ambition
Exhibit 8 trillion in the “this would be a campaign defining controversy for anyone else” has been the alleged fracas between Trump staff and workers at Arlington Cemetery, America’s biggest military graveyard. It was first reported on Tuesday that Trump staffers allegedly pushed and verbally attacked a cemetery official who had tried to stop them from taking photos and videos in Section 60, where soldiers killed in recent conflicts are interred.
Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung said “there was no physical altercation as described,” classily adding, without providing evidence, that “an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony”. In a rare public statement on a political matter, the US Army has defended the employee who they say was “abruptly pushed aside” for trying to enforce the cemetery’s rules.
Harris, who had initially remained quiet — not that it stopped JD Vance, Trump’s vice presidential candidate, from telling her to “go to hell” — posted that Trump had “disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt”.
For his part, JD Vance proved his common touch by managing to make ordering donuts so chilly and awkward that the moment threatened to shatter like the T1000 drenched in liquid nitrogen, and got regularly booed by the “haters” at the known woke hive of the International Association of Fire Fighters in Boston.
Polls
Meanwhile, a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Thursday has Harris widening her lead over Trump, now ahead 45% to 41%. So Trump’s campaign is in chaos, and he looks increasingly erratic, desperate and unelectable compared to the relatively smooth consensus building of an opponent stretching their lead over him in polls. Just like in 2016.
Charlie Lewis pens Crikey's Tips and Murmurs column and also writes on industrial relations, politics and culture. He previously worked across government and unions and was a researcher on RN's Daily Planet. He currently co-hosts Spin Cycle on Triple R radio.
Right-wing moguls might by the only people left willing to invest in the dying industry. It makes the role of the ABC ever more important.
The 2024 reporting season has demonstrated that two of Australia’s three major commercial free-to-air TV networks — Seven West Media and Ten — are now friendless, broke and without any buyer interest. The third, Nine, is eking out lower profits, but like Seven and Ten is cutting costs and jobs.
Worse for Seven and Ten, their owners do not want to rescue and recapitalise them. Indeed, year after year, Kerry Stokes continues to write down the value of his dominant minority stake in Seven — a now wholly disgraced and discredited outfit with a share price of just 16 cents, down from a height of 70 cents in 2022.
Right-wing billionaire Stokes controls Seven through a dominant minority shareholding of 40% held by his main company, Seven Group Holdings. Everyone knows about the hold the Murdoch family has over News Corp, which owns the dominant pay-TV broadcasters and contributes to free-to-air programming via its far-right Sky News platform.
Nine Entertainment has a mogul — Bermuda-based Australian tax exile, Bruce Gordon — on its books through a stake of almost 20% in shares and financial derivatives. Gordon, in his nineties like Rupert Murdoch, doesn’t exercise a strong role at the company, but he controls the country’s biggest regional television network, WIN.
Ten — the financials of which we don’t know but that can’t be any stronger than Nine’s or Seven’s — is controlled by US media player Paramount Global, which has troubles of its own. Earlier this month it wrote down the value of its cable TV networks by US$6 billion (A$8.8 billion).
Paramount looks set to be acquired by a company called Skydance Media, which is controlled by David Ellison, the son of US tech mogul Larry Ellison, reportedly the world’s fifth richest person. According to US media reports, Larry has invested US$6 billion in his son’s deal for Paramount.
If, as seems inevitable, the Skydance deal succeeds, moguls will control or have large chunks of all four major free-to-air and pay TV broadcasters; three of them will be controlled by right-wing billionaires, and two of them by people who have supported Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine US democracy. What chance is there of unbiased coverage from outlets controlled by Coalition and Trump supporters in the lead-up to this year’s US presidential election or next year’s federal election?
Arguably television broadcasting is now reaching the stage where moguls are the only real source of investment, given the entire business model is dying at the hands of Google, Facebook and streaming services, locking broadcasters into permanent cycles of job cuts and diminishing audiences.
But as Stokes’ lack of interest in rescuing Seven shows, even moguls have their limits. It leaves the national broadcasters in an ever more crucial position as a source of independent public interest journalism, especially in regional areas — which makes the craven performance in recent years of the ABC’s news division, and its willingness to be cowed by the Coalition and News Corp, even more damaging.
Glenn Dyer is Crikey's business and media correspondent.
Bernard Keane
Bernard Keane is Crikey's political editor. Before that he was Crikey's Canberra press gallery correspondent, covering politics, national security and economics.
Anthony Albanese at the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum (Image: AAP/Lukas Coch)
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's approval rating continues to fall (though Peter Dutton's isn't doing much better), and the Greens plan to set up a renting regulator with the power to dish out fines to real estate agencies.
ALBANESE AND DUTTON RATINGS FALL
Another week, another less than ideal Newspoll for Anthony Albanese. The Australian reports the prime minister’s approval rating has dropped to its joint-lowest level since the May 2022 election. Labor and the Coalition remain locked in a 50-50 two-party-preferred contest, with a hung Parliament still the predicted outcome if the federal election were held today. The Coalition’s primary vote dropped one point to 38% and Labor’s stayed at 32%, the paper said.
The AAP writes the new survey showed disapproval for Albanese up four points to 54%, while his approval rating fell two points to 41%, resulting in a minus 13 rating — which just happens to be the same net satisfaction rating of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, whose overall rating also dropped.
The survey comes after a bruising few weeks for the prime minister and his government, with the weekend’s news dominated by the census debacle. The ABC reports Albanese said on Sunday the government had told the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to cancel testing on new census questions about sexuality, gender identity and intersex status because they “weren’t appropriate”. On Friday, the prime minister announced a new question on sexuality would be tested for the next census (due in 2026) in a U-turn from the government’s decision at the start of the week not to add it.
The ABC said it remains unclear what will happen to the questions on gender identity and variations of sexual characteristics that were also being considered. On Saturday, Albanese rejected the suggestion he was limiting the scope of data collection.
“No, there’s a range of other questions, including there’s already an identity question in the census. The ABS will work these things through, you’re talking about 2026 and it’s 2024,” The Sydney Morning Herald quoted him as saying. “My government’s priority has been working through cost of living measures, that’s been our focus, and we’ll work with the ABS on those issues.”
The opposition has unsurprisingly continued its attacks over the confusion, with Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg telling ABC’s Insiders yesterday: “I think the fact that the prime minister has tied himself in knots on this issue shows a great weakness in his own leadership.”
One knot Albanese won’t be tying just yet is his marriage to fiancee Jodie Haydon, with The Sydney Morning Herald reporting the couple plans to hold their wedding after the next election. Citing “senior government sources” the paper said the couple were keen to avoid the attention and would also struggle to find time in the PM’s schedule before the country goes to the polls.
ALL ABOUT HOUSING
Guardian Australia leads this morning on the latest policy announcement from the Greens, once again pushing for reform within the housing sector. The party has said it would create a National Renters Protection Authority (NRPA) to deal with tenancy disputes. The proposed authority would take on enforcing the national minimum standards previously suggested by the Greens and its staff would able to issue fines of up to $18,780 to real estate agencies that breached the rules, as well as on-the-spot fines of up to $3,756.
As well as getting into the census debate on Insiders, [opposition homeownership spokesman] Bragg was also asked on Sunday if the Coalition would dock GST distributions for states and territories that did not work hard enough to increase housing supply. While the opposition has not yet confirmed its supply policy, Bragg said punishments were “under consideration”, The West Australian reports. “We need to be creative and find a way to hit the states hard where it hurts, otherwise I fear we will drift into a situation where the housing problem will get worse before it gets better,” Bragg said.
The Western Australian said Albanese, who was visiting WA with his cabinet, replied: “Andrew Bragg has put Australians on notice that he’s coming after the GST and he’s coming after it hard. Now we know that WA is at risk … that means less funds for education and health and infrastructure. This is an example of how irresponsible the Coalition government are and how they don’t represent a credible alternative.”
Meanwhile, the AAP points out house prices have risen for a 19th consecutive month, with CoreLogic data revealing a national growth of 0.5% last month.
As the government continues to struggle to get its own housing policies through the Senate, the AFR reports there might be some movement on another of its reforms which seemed to be very slow-moving — the gambling advertising rules. The paper says a ban on gambling ads on player jerseys and sports grounds could be announced “within weeks”. It also claims the other proposals are set to be dragged out due to negotiations with the states.
Elsewhere, Guardian Australia highlights the closing arguments in the defamation case brought against Brittany Higgins by Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds are expected to be heard today.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
Last week we brought you the tale of the 4-year-old boy who accidentally knocked over and smashed a rare 3,500-year-old jar while visiting a museum in Israel.
Well, there’s been an update.
Young Ariel has gone back to Hecht Museum in Haifa to meet with the very forgiving staff who even gifted him a clay vase to take home, The Guardian reports.
The paper says experts are using 3D technology to restore the Bronze Age jar. The family has commented on how much Ariel’s older siblings enjoyed learning about how the museum was restoring the artefact when they returned to the scene of the accident.
As the broken pieces were from a complete jar, the repairs would be “fairly simple”, The Guardian quotes restoration expert Roee Shafir as saying, with the suggestion the jar could be back on display this week.
No doubt a relief for all involved.
Say What?
We’ve grown up together. Well, I’ve grown up with him, and we’ve played many times. I’m expecting an absolute battle.
Alex de Minaur
De Minaur, the 10th seed, said he was looking forward to his US Open fourth-round tie against fellow Australian Jordan Thompson on Monday.
Peter Dutton speaks to Anthony Albanese (Image: AAP/Lukas Coch)
But Labor wasn’t motivated by such complicated questions. It was merely worried what Dutton would do. It speaks of a timid government that second-guesses itself constantly, that governs with one eye on what its political opponents will make of its announcements. There’s governing from the centre and minimising political risks, and then there’s allowing your opponents to determine how you govern, and this was very much the latter. Dutton has Labor badly rattled.
A more confident government would have let the process run, accepted a new question and pointed out how weird it was that Dutton opposed it. But this certainly isn’t a confident government. If you don’t want to do things because they might be labelled “divisive”, you shouldn’t be in the business of politics. After all, prime minister, Labor did win the last election.
Foxtel is investigating the “alleged improper use” of multiple social media accounts after Crikey revealed that a company executive was behind a secret abusive burner X account.
After first declining to comment on the case, a Foxtel spokesperson said on Friday morning that the company had launched a probe.
“Foxtel has commenced an investigation into the alleged improper use of social media accounts,” they said in an emailed statement.
This investigation comes after Crikey contacted Foxtel and the company’s Fox Cricket general manager on Thursday with a new set of social media posts on X, formerly Twitter, from @RealRagingBull and @YeshowgoodWeiss, a public account under the name of Matthew Weiss.
Well, I thought the Victorian government reneging on its commitment to increase the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14 was the low point. But I didn’t reckon with just how far down the Coalition parties were prepared to go.
Enter the new Country Liberal Party government of the Northern Territory and incoming Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro, who has made the post-election promise to take the NT’s minimum age of criminal responsibility down to 10. Evidence-based this is decidedly not; the age was only increased from 10 to 12 in August 2023, and youth crime statistics have not seen a spike in that year.
The symbiotic relationship between the public’s fear of crime (universally overestimated), political opportunism/populism, and the media’s eternal love for blood-soaked reportage makes it impossible to determine cause and effect. We all have a responsibility to not irrationally overreact, but lawmakers carry this most seriously. In the Peter Dutton era, however, all bets are off.
Labor’s bizarre census backflip reveals great data about this weak government— Michael Koziol (The Sydney Morning Herald): It’s funny how it’s always LGBTQ issues that have to be sacrificed to maintain the peace. But taken together, these decisions tell us a lot about where Albanese and his government feel they sit in the national conversation. It tells us they are hyper-sensitive to any criticism that they are not singularly focused on the cost of living, and do not believe they can walk and chew gum at the same time. It tells us Labor is scared of Peter Dutton, and does not think it can win the argument for its own policies.
And it tells us this is a government that is fundamentally operating from a position of weakness rather than strength.
The election will be held before May. A government that’s frightened some people might object to a census question two years from now is a government that must be petrified of its own shadow.
Having been unwilling to proceed and prosecute the argument in favour of what they’d promised, the government opted to retreat instead to avoid a damaging debate, and generated exactly that.
They also gave Dutton twin victories. In response to the reversal of the reversal, Dutton said Australia had a “weak prime minister who doesn’t know what he believes in”.
Just to rub it in, he added that if the government wanted LGBTQ+ people counted in the census, he was “fine with that”. Divisive? Certainly not. At least not when acquiescence hurts the other mob more.
Rich James is Crikey'sWorm editor. He was previously news director at BuzzFeed Australia, executive news editor at the i paper, senior editor of EMEA at Storyful, and deputy news editor at Metro.
