ALBO’S POST-HOLIDAY RESHUFFLE
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is back from his Queensland holiday today and could be straight into sorting a cabinet reshuffle with The Sydney Morning Herald reporting senior ministers Linda Burney and Brendan O’Connor could quit the government in the next few days.
The minister for Indigenous Australians and the minister for skills and training are widely expected to announce their retirement from politics at the next election, and if they move to the backbench immediately it would leave two vacancies for Labor’s Left faction to fill, the paper says.
The Australian says Burney’s replacement is tipped to be NT Senator Malarndirri McCarthy and that it is likely former ACTU boss Ged Kearney will replace O’Connor. The broadsheet also says the reshuffle would present an opportunity to move under-pressure Immigration Minister Andrew Giles out of the portfolio but most likely in a sideways move, rather than an official demotion.
According to The Age, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was (unsurprisingly) keen to keep the focus on the embattled Giles: “What on earth are you doing when you can’t sack a minister like Andrew Giles? So instead of a parachute to a soft landing for Andrew Giles, into another portfolio where hopefully he can display some competence, the prime minister’s test on this reshuffle is whether he sacks Andrew Giles,” he said.
As he mulls his reshuffle, the prime minister will be acutely aware that the June inflation figures are set to be released next week with a Reserve Bank meeting following next month. Deloitte has said an interest rate increase by the central bank at this time would erase the benefit of real wage rises and the government’s tax cuts, The Australian reports.
Like all of us, Albanese clearly couldn’t stay off social media while on holiday and last night was posting on X to congratulate Jess Fox and Eddie Ockenden on being named Australia’s flag bearers at the Paris Olympics, as the games officially got underway on Wednesday.
The men’s Rugby Sevens side kicked off Australia’s Olympics with two wins against Samoa and Kenya. Next up is Argentina — though if they lose they could face either hosts France or Fiji in the quarter-finals.
In the first soccer match of the Olympics, Morocco’s match against Argentina was suspended for almost two hours due to crowd trouble after Argentina appeared to have scored a dramatic equaliser 16 minutes into injury time. The BBC says while the match was halted it was revealed VAR had actually ruled out the goal, leaving the sides to play out the end of the match in an empty stadium as Morocco tied up the win.
NETANYAHU PROTESTS
Thousands of people have gathered outside the US Capitol building in Washington to protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, The New York Times reports. Police said demonstrators had been arrested inside the building as protesters called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
While some Democrats stayed away from the address, others staged protests. According to The Washington Post, Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib held up a placard that read “war criminal” every time there was applause for Netanyahu. The other side of the placard read “guilty of genocide”.
During his address, Netanyahu called on America and Israel to “stand together” and vowed to press on with the war in Gaza until “total victory”, the Associated Press said. He also described those protesting as “useful idiots”.
Gaza’s Health Ministry has said more than 39,000 Palestinians have died during Israel’s nine-month war against Hamas. The war began with an assault by Hamas militants on southern Israel on October 7 that killed 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages.
Following his appearance before Congress, Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris (who was not present during his address) on Thursday and then meet with Donald Trump on Friday, AP reports.
Biden is set to deliver an address of his own in the next few hours in his first public remarks since dramatically ditching his attempt at reelection and instead endorsing Harris.
Meanwhile, billionaire Elon Musk has denied claims he plans to donate $45 million a month to Trump’s election efforts, The Hill reports.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
A runaway tortoise called Solomon enjoyed a train ride home last week after his bid for freedom was thwarted.
The adventurous reptile was spotted crawling along the train tracks between Ascot and Bagshot in southern England around 6pm on Friday, according to The Independent.
Solomon was rescued by engineers who managed to move him to safety, the BBC said. He was later placed on a train back to where he came from.
South Western Railway said in a statement: “He [Solomon] has been retrieved and is now on his way home.”
“Its owner collected it from the station later that evening, and, as far as we are aware, (the tortoise) was unharmed.”
Four trains were delayed before services returned to normal later that evening.
Say What?
They ate your choccies!
Unidentified person on Logan Martin’s Instagram video
Martin, the reigning Olympic BMX champion, uploaded a number of videos to social media after he had gear stolen from his team’s van in Belgium, the ABC reports. He wrote on Instagram: “Luckily, most of our stuff was in our room and we managed to recover a lot of it, too. I lost my wallet, backpack and a few other things but overall it didn’t end up being too bad. It’s unfortunate when people feel the need to do things like this.” According to the AAP the thieves “devoured his stash of chocolate bars, leaving the wrappers with the discarded equipment”.
CRIKEY RECAP
The problem is what she’s done for the past four years. The vice presidency is a notoriously unattractive job, unless you’re Dick Cheney and your job is to babysit the president. Just think of how many vice presidents have failed to use the office as a springboard to the top gig without Death helping them out — Nixon and Biden only made it after spells out of office; Gore (admittedly robbed by Bush and the Supreme Court), Humphrey and Mondale never made it; only H.W. Bush managed it in recent decades, and he ended up a one-termer.
But Harris has been an especially unmemorable incumbent. Charged with being Biden’s lead on border and immigration issues, she failed to do anything to staunch what is the single defining issue of Trump and the MAGA Republicans — a seething obsession with “invasion” by migrants. She failed to halt the Republican assault on voting rights. She has been a strong voice on abortion rights and the right-wing/Supreme Court assault on women, but that’s been primarily rhetorical.
The right to peaceful protest is a cornerstone of a democratic society, which Australia claims to be. Protest is a tool through which we can collectively demand action and accountability from our politicians. It is a catalyst for social and political change.
Peaceful protest is not the problem, but a symptom. The problem is that the health of our planet hangs in the balance while those entrusted with legislative power prioritise short-term political gain over the long-term well-being of the planet and future generations.
It’s always worth keeping a close eye on what a government does while your attention is drawn elsewhere. With the avalanche of takes and coverage loosed from the mountainside by the withdrawal of Joe Biden and the anointment of Kamala Harris, a Labor government that came to power promising to “end the climate wars” (which they have, in a way) and fix environmental laws probably couldn’t have picked a better time to approve more offshore gas exploration and 10 permits for thoroughly discredited carbon capture and storage schemes.
At the Nine papers, caught up with Harris, the CFMEU scandal and the looming Olympics, the news barely made a ripple. There’s a page 9 piece in today’s Australian Financial Review, sympathetically describing the move as “consistent with [the government’s] policy position that gas will be needed for several more decades to firm renewables during the energy transition, and enable manufacturing to continue”. Meanwhile, at the time of writing, a story about the approvals sits 27th on the ABC homepage.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
North Korean trash balloon lands on South Korea’s presidential compound (Al-Jazeera)
Meta takes down thousands of Facebook, Instagram accounts running sextortion scams from Nigeria (ABC News)
Plane crash at Nepal’s Kathmandu airport kills 18; captain survives (Reuters)
World breaks hottest day record twice in a week (BBC)
US reality show contestant kills and eats protected bird in New Zealand (CNN)
Caught repeatedly whipping a horse, top British rider is out of the Olympics (The New York Times) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
For most young Australians, the dream of owning a home has moved into the realm of fantasy — Rebecca Huntley (Guardian Australia): There’s no time to waste. Our covenant as a society to leave the next generation with better fortunes than what we inherited has failed in the nation’s housing market.
Instead, younger Australians face an awful trifecta.
They are paying a premium for the roof they currently have over their head. The exorbitant costs they face today mean they are constrained in saving for tomorrow. And they risk becoming a generation lacking the lifelong benefit of home ownership.
Attacking Kamala Harris for not having kids will backfire — Jessica Grose (The New York Times): This argument is also appallingly dismissive to so many adults who dote on the children in their lives and devote time, money and care to helping them grow, regardless of whether they are related by blood. It’s even more hurtful to people who really want to have children but are unable to.
This is, also, not a new tactic for the right. As a way of clinging to the tagline that the G.O.P. is the pro-family party — despite working, during the Biden years, to defeat federal legislation that included paid family leave and affordable high-quality child care — some Republicans are content to paint the Democratic Party as the party of “childless cat ladies.”
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