Department of the House of Representatives Media Release
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Hon Milton Dick MP, has issued the writ for the election of a Member of the House of Representatives, for the electoral division of Cook in New South Wales.
The dates in connection with the by-election will be as follows:
Issue of writ: Monday, 11 March 2024
Close of rolls: Monday, 18 March 2024
Close of nominations: Thursday, 21 March 2024
Declaration of nominations: Friday, 22 March 2024
Date of polling: Saturday, 13 April 2024
Return of writ: On or before Wednesday, 19 June 2024
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“The government of the United States doesn’t want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war. It wants peace, but what’s happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? Palestine? What’s happening? What’s happened over the last hundred years in Latin America and in the world?” – Hugo Chavez
I am trying to be optimistic. The nature of Americans is to buy into the notion that anything is possible in our country. We are convinced the only two kinds of people in this nation are millionaires and those who will very soon be millionaires. There is little accommodation for failure. If you live in the United States you are expected to buy into the calculus that X amount of effort will always produce Y amount of results, which is, obviously, utter nonsense. Failure, however, is always your fault, not a flaw in the land of the free and the articulations of capitalism. You are expected to pull yourself up by your bootstraps even if you were born into a family that cannot afford boots.
This delusion that anybody and everybody can make it here is often central to the conflicts at the heart of our body politic. The successful, hurrying down that smooth, shining road toward a great horizon of affluence, do not wish to look into the ditch and see the losers struggling to climb back up onto the roadbed. They are there of their own accord. Why should we afford them a hand up when they might become reliant on assistance? America’s unresolved moral dilemma revolves around how much to help, and that unanswered question has almost always informed our politics and created the great divide between our two major political parties. How much government is too much government?
There is one Republican consultant who is famously quoted as saying his party will not be happy until government is “shrunk to the size that can be drowned in a bathtub.” The anti-Washington infection that has spread across the land began in earnest with Ronald Reagan, who once said, “The scariest words in the English language were, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” He quickly set out to make his hoary aphorism into a reality by blowing up the Air Traffic Controllers’ union to intimidate American labor and pretending that AIDS would go away if the feds would just ignore its increasing rate of fatality.
Trump made a similar assertion as the pandemic was spreading throughout the population when he said, “It’s going to disappear. It’s disappearing.” His proclamation, a barely subtle attempt to remove government from responsibility of managing the spread of the coronavirus, was made the day after he was released from being hospitalized for the disease. Spring weather, though, made him hopeful he would be shed of any responsibility for Washington’s involvement. “You know,” he said, “A lot of people think that (coronavirus) goes away in April with the heat, as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April.” Instead, millions subsequently died. What went away were family members, loved ones, children and grand parents, while Trump talked of horse tranquilizer cures.
Rank conservatism has, historically, offered nothing but suffering to Americans. There is, in fact, no such brand of politics functioning in this country. It might be considered conservative to cut corporate taxes and believe the falsehood that freed capital will then be invested back into jobs and economic expansion, but that never happens. Nobody gets trickled down on. Investors are paid fat dividend checks and corporate boards buy back stocks at premiums to regain control of their companies from small shareholders. Hoarding capital and cutting taxes to giant businesses does little more than generate huge national debts for the government, and nobody does that better than “conservatives.” Trump and his massive tax cuts for business created a$7.2 trillion dollar increase in the federal deficit in the four years he was in office, a figure that presently accounts for 30 percent of the total national public indebtedness. Conservative George W. Bush cut corporate taxes just as he launched a war that would eventually cost a few trillion and left President Obama an historically high deficit, which the Democratic President cut in half before leaving office.
Conservatives do not act conservatively in this country. What they really want is a form of anarchy, an expression of the attitude that government’s only role is to pave roads, protect the border, and then get the hell out of the way. We are supposed to rely on our own “rugged independence” to succeed, a concept whose notional value is utterly worthless. Nobody really makes it on their own. Wealthy business magnates like to claim they built their companies without government assistance but that obfuscates the investment of tax dollars in the infrastructure and common carrier laws that made delivery possible for their products, whether digital or physical. Governments built the roads and harbors and airports, keeps them safe and operational, and provides regulations to offer some assurance consumers will not be buying unsafe drugs or food or fly in airplanes that have not met safety standards. When those rules fail, and an aircraft falls from the sky or masses become addicted to opioids, the causes tend to be corporations cutting corners to increase profits and serve the capitalism that has made America an economic engine for much of the world.
Argumentation over how much government, and its optimal role, is central to the division of the American electorate. We have split into camps that can no longer seem to compromise or find a middle ground that is best for our country. Progressive thinkers believe in government as the organizing principle of any society and that it gives life to a culture and an economy by creating an environment of opportunity. The conservative belief is that the larger the government the less freedom is offered the individual. Their primary assertion is proved false by their own politics, which have taken away reproductive and even voting rights while banning certain books their standards claim ought not be available, and forcing their Christian religion into public institutions like schools and government. Conservatism explicitly is a resistance to change and the implications of that are we would have no equal rights for minorities or women or regulations to protect our air and water or even minimum wage laws.
If ruination comes to America, therefore, it will be driving a tank loaded with ballistic missiles of explosive partisan grievance. The symptoms of our potential collapse are already clear and manifest. The most recent former president just spent a day at his resort consorting with Viktor Orban, the dictator and authoritarian leader of Hungary. While his formal title is prime minister, Orban has made himself the source of all policy and government actions, discriminatory and unfair to millions who disagree. Undoubtedly, Trump sidled up close seeking pointers on how to run the U.S. into an even more diminished democracy. “He’s the boss, and that’s it,” Trump said.
Little Men Seeking Bigness
Trump has no formal authority as a former president but has managed to put his country into a precarious situation with his egotistical obstinance. After years of complaining by conservatives about a crisis at the border, Democrats and Republicans collaborated to create the strongest reforms in a half century. The Senate easily achieved passage of the measure and there is a wide majority for the same result in the House. Trump, however, realizes that if the problem is solved in a bipartisan agreement, he will be robbed of his lead issue. Consequently, he has told House Speaker Mike Johnson, a man who claims god told him he was to play the role of Moses in America, to not bring the legislation to a vote on the house floor, and Johnson has complied. Partisanship by the sycophantic constituency of Trump’s GOP has ground America to a halt.
We are also failing to keep our geopolitical promises. Speaker Moses, also at the behest of the non-president Trump, has blocked a funding measure that would re-arm Ukraine in its defense of the Russian invasion. The congressional stasis has NATO countries wondering about the reliability of the American commitment to the protection of Europe. While the house speaker seeks flattery from the putative dictator Trump, Ukraine is dying under assault with a constantly diminishing ability to respond militarily because of a lack of U.S. armaments. We continue, meanwhile, to become victims of our own military adventurism. The same funding legislation to help Ukraine would also continue the flow of weapons to Israel as it fights Hamas and razes Gaza. The IDF has averaged 100 deaths of children each day of the war, with a total dead of well over 30,000, and President Biden has yet to demand a cease fire from the Israelis. Instead, he has ordered the U.S. military to build a peer to deliver food and medicine to Palestinians suffering under the Israeli assault and he has set the plan in motion even as he continues to supply Israel with bombs, artillery, tanks, and jet fighters. The absurdity of the contradiction appears to escape most voters, and, apparently, the president.
Biden, however, does not lie like the sociopath Trump, and his party. After the president had defied critics and dark expectations of failure with his State of the Union Speech, the GOP’s response to his list of accomplishments came from an Alabama U.S. Senator. Even in 2024, Republicans thought it was a good idea to put an accomplished woman in her kitchen, wearing a diamond-encrusted cross, referring to getting dinner on the table, and whispering about the horrors of a Biden presidency. One of the stories she told, however, was a complete fabrication about drug cartels that had sex trafficked a woman in the “Del Rio Sector,” Border Patrol parlance for a stretch of the Rio Grande that is identified by that city’s name. Britt described the woman being raped and tortured and declared that this was not even acceptable in a Third World Country. “Enough is enough, Mr. President,” she said into the camera, addressing Biden. What she did not say is that the woman was not assaulted in the U.S. but was in Mexico and the crimes committed against her were back during the administration of George W. Bush. Lying used to put an end to a politician’s career but to lie and deny has become a widely accepted tactic in the age of Trump.
Lies work, of course, and their abundance has proliferated after the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court, which gave corporations the right to invest almost without restraint in politics. Most candidates are doomed when they are opposed by big business donors and the victims are usually progressive thinkers who expect a functioning government. What the electorate wants tends to have very little to do with what is desired by the corporatists and the political action committees they front. AIPAC, the American-Israeli Political Action Committee, as a single example, has committed to spending $100 million dollars to defeat congressional candidates who do not unilaterally support Israel and the genocide it is committing in Gaza. Israel’s disproportionate response to the October 7th Hamas attack is costing Mr. Biden support on the left, particularly in the swing states of Michigan and Minnesota, which may help lead to the restoration of Trump.
It has become rationalization to suggest Americans have confronted greater challenges and triumphed in glory but that ignores our long history of adventurism with meddlesome wars and overseas political manipulations and assassinations. The scions of the Bush family are largely responsible for the tensions and the fire and warfare burning across the Mideast today even though public memory is short and understanding of the lies that launched their invasions is minimal. We also ignore the inescapable fact that our involvement in Central America’s politics and economies has much to do with the sea of immigrants now presenting themselves at our gates, and that the problem with drug cartels is a consequence of our national appetite for their narcotics. Accepting responsibility is not a part of who we have become in this country. Our disfunction will lead to our end, if not corrected. The party out of power refuses to cooperate with the party in power and fires accusations of blame for every crisis. When the public finally listens, there is a new party in the majority and the displaced officeholders have no reason to cooperate with those who lied them out of office. Little in the way of governance is achieved.
James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. His newest book will be released mid- 2023. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.
He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).
His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.
Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”
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By unashamed believer in Love, guest columnist Tess Lawrence
The romance between the Navalnys, Alexey and Yulia is destined for historical and cinematic heroic grandeur, now that Vladimir Putin’s nemesis has been put to death by murder most foul.
For sure, in due course, there will be a film, a popera, a musical, a docudrama series, and merch. I bags a tee shirt.
There should be scholarships, and awards in his honour and I daresay, hundreds of babies will be named for him.
Navalny murder, Novichokolat or poison in boxer shorts?
Whether his murder was precipitated by a variant of Novichokolat cookies or no, or poison placedin his boxer shorts, may not be known for some time.
I am transfixed with what I saw inthis particular photoof this most extraordinary couple.
Perhaps I saw too much. Perhaps I saw not enough. Regardless it is a photo worth a thousand and one words.
I see Love. Joy. Two Hearts beating as one, visions of dismembered children momentarily leave me
Most of all I see deep love and joy; two hearts beating as one as their eyes lock in sensual embrace.
For a moment, it cleansed my driven journalist’s mind and lacerated soul of visions that often haunt and taunt me; visions of dead, dying and dismembered children of our beleaguered world at the behest of the bloodied hands of adults doing the bidding killing in the sullied names of their fallacious gods.
Navalny’s cause held threat of unhappy ending for family
Given the cruel interplay between kismet, Alexey and Yulia, the sacrifices and trauma endured by the Navalny family whose father willingly placed himself on the frontline of a cause that always held threat of an unhappy personal ending, given Putin’s cowardly penchantfor murderinghis political rivals and critics.
How can a man so cowardly, so paranoid, the archetypal bully so fearful of certain other men, afraid even of his own invisible shadow, whose politics manifest in sadism, sadomasochism and sadomachismo in equal measure, become the brutal and tyrannical ‘dicktator’ of the largest land mass country in the world?
Putin has turned Russia into a Pariah nation
Despite his power. Despite his obscene wealth, secret opulent palaces (exposed by Navalny), global holdings held by proxies and assets, all stolen from his own people, despite his iron Rule by Fear manifesto and Hitleresque encroaches into Crimea and Ukraine with forces dragooned from prisons and civvie street as well as mandated conscripts, Putin has managed to turn Russia into a pariah nation.
Surrounding himself with acolytes, sycophants and sickos and those supplicants fearful for their own lives and families should Putin catch even a whisper of dissent from them, Putin’s realm is already a catalogue of war mongering and joyless lost years.
His self-love and self-gratification speaks loud and his absence from so many political fora, sanctions notwithstanding reflects his personal insecurities and inability to confront his peers.
Putin’s joyless realm has fashioned Russia into a gulag
At times, it seems as if Putin has fashioned Russia into a gulag of sorts. Somehow, I feel the ghosts ofStalinandBerialurking in Putin’s dystopian universe.
They never left the Lubyanka building.
Alexey Navalny unnerved Putin
Alexey Navalny’s growing presence and following clearly unnerved Putin.
Putin knows how to handle a man in uniform, but he cannot fathom a man, an Opposition Leader, who dresses in cool clothes, who’s a cool dude with a steadfast family and supporters, with a jocular irrepressible prankster sense of humour, evenwhilst in his IK-3 prisoncell in the notorious ‘Polar Wolf,’ in Russia’s Yamalo-Nenets region, high above the Arctic Circle.
Navalny could take the Kremlin not by bullet but the ballot
Navalny was a leader who could persuade followers with his vision for a Russia without Putin, without taking the Kremlin by the bullet but rather, by the ballot box.
Remember how the vain glorious Putin thought by taking his clothes off, baring his torso on horseback or whatever, he would impress the world.
For a while it was as if Putin tried to emulate the spectacular and handsome Russian borne film star Yul Brynner.
For a while, Putin ludicrously tried to emulate Yul Brynner
He of the flaring nostrils and impressive physique who bared his chest inThe King and Iwas to tragicallydie youngof lung cancer in 1985, but not before he recorded a profoundly movinganti-smoking commercialto be played after the five-pack a day actor’s death.
Such things I am thinking as I contemplate the photo of Alexey and Yulia. It is so far removed from the bleakness of the malevolent Putin. He would have seen this photo of the lovers.
Russian official says Putin obsessed with Alexey Navalny, Yulia and family
A former Russian official who still has contacts on the periphery of Putin’s inner circle tells me that Putin is obsessed with all things Navalny, including Yulia and the children Dasha and Zakhar and remains constantly informedon everything and anything to do with all things Navalny.
Tess… Putin was “in love” with Alexey
“Tess, it was like he was in love with Alexey.” Putin is shown file upon file about Navalny, with endless photos and clandestine imagestaken by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) and others.
I’m rather in love with Alexey and Yulia myself, I told my friend. To me they represent Russia far more than Putin ever will.
“ … Alexey Navalny is Vladimir Putin’s Taylor Swift… spends more time on Navalny than… Ukraine War…”
“You can say that Alexey Navalny is Vladimir Putin’s Taylor Swift… he spends more time on Navalny than he does the Ukraine War. It is a joke.”
I’m told that Putin took a prurient interest in the conjugal visits Yulia was occasionally allowed when Alexey was in a prison in Pokrov.
Pokrov locals joke Putin perved on cctv Alexey and Yulia’s conjugal visits
Locals joked about how the loving couple werecaptured onnon-secret secret cameras, for every second (pro forma), and that copies were sent to the Kremlin for Tsar Putin’s pleasure.
Putin taken with Yulia’s beauty and grace
He is said to be taken with Yulia’s beauty, elegance and grace and jealous of the obvious love and affection that she and Alexey unashamedly display in public, regardless of whom is watching.
Somehow, with their arms locked around each other, they seem utterly absorbed in a world of their own making; in a time suspended from the shackles of measurement in minutes or seconds. There is just the now; just the moment. The rest of us do not exist.
Star crossed lovers Yulia and Alexey and their date with destiny – In all the Vodka joints in all the towns in all the world…
Am a believer in romantic love. I think it wondrous that in all the vodka joints in all the towns in all the world, Yulia and Alexey’s fell into each other’s arms. The star-crossed lovers had a date with destiny, and they have surely kept it, at great cost to themselves but one hopes, for the greater good, small consolation that may be.
Yulia, Alexey’s Muse. Theirs a marriage of equals
Theirs appears to be a great and abiding love. By all accounts, Yulia was Alexey’s Muse and they were equal partners in a marriage that was also a political tour de force that remains determined to free Russia from the megalomanic, despotic and malignant regime of the psychopathic dicktator President Putin.
Comparatively little has been written about the critical role Yulia played in saving her husband’s life after that first poisoning in 2020. It was Yulia who fought tooth and nail, including writing directly to Putin, to evacuate a then dying Alexey from Russia to Germany.
Yulia’s decisive role in keeping her husband alive after first murder attempt
In her compelling and revelatory2021 article for Vanity Fair, Russian born American journalist Julia Ioffe dug deep behind the lurid scene of the Navalny assassination attempt.
Ioffe’s forceful prose consigned Yulia Navalnaya’s rightful place in history, not only in relation to Russia but to the world. Navalnaya was no mere adjunct not Alexey Navalny, but she was his equal in every way. Unquestionably, her courageous and resolute intervention saved her husband’s life.
From Ioffe’s article, some powerful excerpts:
… At the hospital in Omsk, Navalnaya would encounter a wall of doctors who seemed more scared of their civilian superiors than they were of losing their patient. They were reinforced – or kept in line – by a small battalion of plainclothes federal security officers, all intent on keeping her from seeing her husband. To enter his room, she would need to present a marriage certificate, they said, and secure verbal consent from Navalny, who was still unconscious and on life support. She would stare them down, out-argue them, and bend their will to hers, all while a gathering swarm of journalists trained their cameras and microphones and smartphones on her. She would finally break through to see him, his body sprouting tubes and cords like vines, writhing in near-constant seizures. (She wouldn’t know until days later that this was the result of a military-grade nerve agent in the Novichok family.) She would have to fight with doctors and hospital administrators to see the results of her husband’s lab work, to give impromptu press conferences on the hospital steps, to sneak around the city to find the German doctors who had arrived with a private medevac plane and whom the authorities had barred her from seeing. She would have to demand, over and over, that the Omsk hospital release her husband and allow him to be loaded onto the plane and taken to Berlin, the only way, everyone knew, of possibly saving his life…
… For two days, Russia and the world waited nervously to see if Navalny, the only halfway plausible alternative to Vladimir Putin, lived or died. Instead, they saw Navalnaya. This pretty blond woman in a black leather jacket who had always appeared silently at her husband’s side was suddenly alone on the world stage, doing battle with the entire repressive machinery of the Russian state to pull her husband from the jaws of death. What people saw astounded them. “Russia is still a sexist country,” says economist Sergei Guriev, a friend and onetime adviser to Navalny. “People think that a woman is not an independent person, especially if she doesn’t work. Therefore, they didn’t understand that Yulia is an independent person. And then they understood. They saw Yulia fight the machine and win. I think for many people it was eye-opening.”
…The next day, with the plane from Germany already on the ground in Omsk, Navalnaya issued a public letter to Putin. “I am officially addressing you,” she wrote, “with a demand for permission to transport Alexey Anatolievich Navalny to the Federal Republic of Germany.” Within hours, she was boarding the plane alongside her husband, invisible on a gurney that was part cocoon, part coffin. Her formulation – a demand rather than a plea – was not lost on the Russian opposition. Even at her most desperate and vulnerable, she approached Putin, the man trying to kill her husband, not as a fearful supplicant but as a defiant equal.
In the following months, as Navalnaya and her husband documented his resurrection and recovery on social media, they became the measure of decency and nobility for millions of Russians…
Alexey a Lazarus of sorts – thanks to his love, Yulia
If Yulia had not been the tour de force she is, Alexey Navalny would not have ultimately been brought back from the brink of death. Still, he was a Lazarus of sorts because of her- and because she was able to get into Russia and somehow take control.
Yulia learns of Alexey’s death
Yulia was in Germanyattendingthe Munich Security Conference 2024 when, along with the rest of us, she first learned of her husband’s murder.
She came out on centre stage, just after US Vice President Kamala Harris spoke and delivered an electrifying speech, addressing Vladimir Putin as much as the world and Navalny’s supporters.
A Message from Yulia Navalnaya:
The prison authorities issued thisstatement in Russianconfirming Navalny’s death:
УФСИН России по Ямало-Ненецкому автономному округу сообщает
16.02.2024
16.02.2024 года в исправительной колонии №3 осужденный Навальный А.А. после прогулки почувствовал себя плохо, практически сразу потеряв сознание.
Незамедлительно прибыли медицинские работники учреждения, была вызвана бригада скорой медицинской помощи.
Проведены все необходимые реанимационные мероприятия, которые положительных результатов не дали. Врачи скорой медицинской помощи констатировали смерть осужденного.
Причины смерти устанавливаются.
(English translation) THE FEDERAL PENITENTIARY SERVICE OF RUSSIA IN THE YAMALO-NENETS AUTONOMOUS OKRUG REPORTS
16.02.2024
On 16.02.2024, in correctional colony No. 3, convict A.A. Navalny felt ill after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness.
The medical staff of the institution immediately arrived, and an ambulance team was called.
All the necessary resuscitation measures were carried out, which did not give positive results. Ambulance doctors pronounced the convict dead.
The cause of death is being established.
Yulia vows to sip from the poisoned chalice of opposition leadership
Since her Munich speech, Navalnaya has made it clear she will not give up Navalny’s fight; that she will also sip from what some feel is a poisoned chalice.
She and Alexey knew such a day could come and they surely would have prepared for it.
When Alexey Navalny went back to Russia after Putin’s first attempt to assassinate him failed, he too was taking the fight – not flight – to Putin. Navalny was pissing in Putin’s face.
Navalny’s return to his homeland was a public humiliation for Putin and confirmed Alexey Navalny had no respect for, or fear of Putin. Even if the world didn’t always know where Navalny was or what was happening to him, the international spotlight was firmly trained on Navalny and his predicament.
Navalny had what Putin didn’t – respect
Navalny had what Putin wanted; something that had never been freely given. Respect. Respect on the international stage too.
It was not only a courageous decision, but it was also a show of solidarity with like-minded fellow Russians within – and without Russia and its great diaspora thatincludesAustralia.
Navalny became a growing symbol of a glimpse of Russia without Putin. He had an indefatigable sense of humour, sarcasm and satire that was always present in his journalism, documentaries, podcasts and interviews.
I sent the ‘love photo’ to a few dear ones and wrote of how powerful a photo it was. How sexually charged it was, with the power of love, of secrets between lovers and how it made the viewer (me) feel almost a voyeur; even though we are all invited to view them through the collective peephole of social media.
The photo: luscious carnality in Alexeys’ eyes as he looks at his beloved Yulia
There is a luscious carnality in Alexey’s eyes that goes beyond lust to an even lustier place. Swoon. His lips are slightly parted, and his eyes burn with love. Even from here I can feel his breath upon my face.
Yulia’s lips are not parted. But her profile exudes both knowing and shared intimacy between the two, and she displays an elegant and steely queenly resolve that has already manifested into a leading role of Keeper of the Flame.
I ponder upon what Sister Wendywould have madeof this picture, given her daring and courageous proclivity to describe fleshly attributes in artworks, as she saw fit.
Alexey Navalny more powerful in death than life
Alexey Navalny may yet prove to be more powerful in death than he was in life insofar as Putin and his henchmen are concerned.
The photo first appeared, I understand in Navalny’s Instagram account, posted on St Valentine’s Day.
Navalnys make it clear they fight for all political prisoners, not just Alexey
Yulia has made it clear that she holds Vladimir Putin responsible for Alexey’s awful death. The couple has made it clear their cause and their concern is not only for themselves but for all political prisoners, Russian or otherwise.
If you think such talk of Love is a bit twee or Mills and Hoonish, then go for it. You may be right.
Navalnys campaign pivots on jou and optimism, hope and faith, greater good
The thing is, that closer scrutiny of the Nalvalny Opposition campaign
reveals it pivots on joy and optimism, hope and faith in the greater good. And Love.
On his Valentine’s Day post featuring the ‘Love Photo’ Alexey wrote to Yulia… I feel you near me every second, and I love you more and more…
Two days later, Alexey Navalny was dead.
Their social media accounts are full of embraces and kisses.
Navalny’s Chief of Staff, Leonid Volkov is quoted as saying “Putin is fear. Navalny is Love. That’s why we will win” Volkovannouncedon Twitter/X.
Their campaign rhetoric is far from the phallic war mongering machismo of Putin and his political siblings around the world; the so-called iron men who rule by instilling fear; who do not realise you cannot enforce respect. It has to be earned and freely given.
Putin must now be aware he killed the wrong person. That is, if he wanted to annihilate the Opposition. Instead, in Alexey’s wake, he has inadvertently paved the way for someone else who may yet prove to be an even more formidable foe than Navalny.
Yulia Navalnaya is already deemed a contender for Russia’s first female President. She certainly has the credentials, the capacity and street cred amongst younger Russian supporters and yes, there is dissent and disagreement within the Opposition and also about Navalny’s leadership that has yet to be overcome.
Today, Yulia and the Anti-Corruption Foundation announced the lanch of a large scale election campaign under the slogan ‘ The Noon Against Putin ‘ with the aim of showing many Russians are really against the dictatorship.
From the Press Release:
On March 17, election day, the “Russia without Putin” campaign will not end. The name of the campaign makes it clear that it will only end when the main goal has been achieved.
Alexei Navalny has become a symbol of the fight against Putin. We will do everything we can not only to avenge Putin’s power for this despicable murder, but also to unite all the free people of Russia under Alexei’s name. To liberate our country, end the war and bring all those responsible to justice.
Putin beware. Yulia’s coming for you.
Putin better watch out.
She is coming for him.
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A new report reveals a growing crisis of women and children fleeing domestic and family violence into homelessness prompting calls for an urgent funding package to provide pathways to safe housing.
Homelessness Australia’sHomelessness and domestic and family violence: State of Response Report for International Women’s Day analyses Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data to find 45 per cent of women and girls seeking homelessness assistance do so due to family and domestic violence.
It finds that over the last decade:
the number of women and children sleeping rough or in a car at the end of homelessness support more than doubled, from 1,041 to 2,428
the number of women and children couch surfing at the end of support more than doubled from 3,465 to 7,214.
And in the past year alone, the number of women and children sleeping rough or in a car after receiving homelessness support increased by 23%.
The report notes that lack of access to safe housing prevents many women from escaping violence and pushes women back to violent homes. The last Personal Safety Survey revealed that more than 20,000 women experiencing violence wanted to leave but were unable to because of a lack of money or financial support, and more than 13,000 women said lack of money or having nowhere to go was the reason they returned to violence.
Homelessness Australia proposes the Federal Government deliver a suite of measures to address the problem in the imminent National Housing and Homelessness Agreement, including increasing homelessness support, investing more in Safe at Home programs, increasing Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) and delivering more social housing.
Kate Colvin, CEO of Homelessness Australia, said: “Thousands of Australian women are faced with an impossible choice – return to a violent home or confront homelessness. This is not a decision anyone should be forced to make, yet it’s happening more and more.
“Pathways to safe housing are the missing piece in the Government’s response to family violence, but can be addressed in the soon to be released five-year National Housing and Homelessness Agreement.
“This International Women’s Day it would be refreshing to see real action to fix a desperate, parlous situation that puts the lives and safety of too many women and girls at risk.
“Australia is a wealthy, sophisticated nation. We can and must do better.”
Jocelyn Bignold OAM, CEO of McAuley Community Services for Women said: “Every day we work with women who have suffered trauma in a violent relationship who then suffer more when they become trapped in homelessness. With the right early intervention supports many women would never become homeless and could safely remain in their home.”
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New research by Plan International Australia, released as the world marks International Women’s Day has revealed that awareness of how gender inequality manifests in some of the most devastating ways in Australia – and in more vulnerable contexts overseas – is alarmingly low.
Almost half of Australians (47%) surveyed in Plan International Australia’sGender Compass research said they do not believe that physical and non-physical violence against women is extremely common.
Violence against women is a serious and widespread problem in Australia – with two in five Australian women having experienced violence firsthand since the age of 15. On average, one woman is killed a week in Australia by a former or current partner, according to Our Watch.
And despite women being the most over represented group when it comes to homelessness – only 45% of Australians surveyed in the Gender Compass believe this to be true.
Only 2 in 10 (21%) of Australians are aware that medical research in Australia has studied men’s health more than women’s.
Almost six in 10 Australians think we have, in fact, already achieved gender equality in Australia.
These new statistics are being released today in a second installment of Plan International Australia’s groundbreaking Gender Compass research: a first of its kind study revealing what ordinary Australians really think about gender equality.
The UN theme for this year’s IWD is “Count Her In: Invest in Women. Accelerate Progress” – with the day set aside in this year’s UN calendar to “examine the pathways to greater economic inclusion for women and girls everywhere.”
However, when it comes to how inequality plays out in the workplace and politics, the Gender Compass findings on gender equality awareness revealed that:
Almost four in 10 (37%) Australians aren’t aware that there is a gender pay gap in Australia.
More than a third of people (34%) were not aware that senior positions in business/industry in Australia are dominated by men
Around the same amount (34%) do not believe that women do the bulk of unpaid labour in households.
Close to half of Australians (48%) do not agree that women are typically underrepresented in politics.
“Our Gender Compass findings highlight the importance of moments like International Women’s Day in continuing to drive critical awareness and action towards gender equality. We need to have conversations about gender equality with Australians in a way that they can understand to make a difference. The impacts and negative effects of gender inequality are invisible to too many Australians,” said Plan International Australia CEO Susanne Legena.
With the Australian Government today releasing the country’s first ever strategy for gender equality, alongside its second annual Status of Women Report Card, now is a critical time to accelerate progress on gender quality.
As one of Australia’s leading humanitarian and girls’ rights organisations, Plan International Australia works to build a world where we are all equal. Together with research, civil society and philanthropic partners, Plan International Australia developed Gender Compass to reveal the prevailing views on gender equality, who holds them, and what drives them. The hope is that this will lead to more targeted and effective communications and advocacy efforts by individuals and organisations working to advance gender equality everywhere – particularly in more vulnerable countries overseas, where progress on gender equality is even more fractured.
Aseel, a 22-year-old Palestinian young woman that Plan International supports said that on International Women’s Day, she is calling for a future where every young person was safe, where women and children were not the target of wars and conflict, and where all children, and especially girls, have access to an equal education.
“The right to an education is sacred. No schools should ever be bombed, no teacher should ever be the target of attacks. No war should make children miss a whole school year, or go hungry and cold,” she said.
“The world is getting hotter, conflicts are erupting at a rate we haven’t witnessed in generations and extreme poverty is on the rise – and the risks of gender-based violence are only heightened during crises like these,” added Ms Legena.
“In Sudan, UN estimates state 4.2 million girls and women are at risk of gender-based violence with that expected to increase to 6.9 million this year. Right now in Gaza, women and girls are being killed and injured in unprecedented and unspeakable ways. The death toll in Gaza has now surpassed 30,000 people in five months – more than 70 per cent of them women and children. Two years on since conflict escalated in Ukraine, gender-based violence has sky-rocketed. In Haiti, which has just declared a state of emergency, a new Plan International study found increased incidents of rape and child early and forced marriage amongst adolescent girls.
“For girls around the world, who were already disproportionately affected by these issues and held back because of their gender, there is so much at stake. The fear of physical, sexual, and emotional violence is inescapable. We cannot look away,” she said.
“Current projections indicate that the next five generations of girls and women will never see gender equality. Everyone should be alarmed by this. We need to do better. This International Women’s Day, we want to see a future where girls can live without fear of violence and discrimination. We must come together to beat the clock on gender inequality, until we are all equal in this world.”
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The Construction Forestry Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) has called for the federal government to expand build-to-rent-to-buy schemes.
The Greens’ housing policy, released yesterday, calls for the government to build 360,000 homes over five years that would be available to rent and buy at discounted rates.
CFMEU National Secretary Zach Smith said the Federal Labor Government was already involved in building houses to rent and buy in the ACT.
“The federal government building houses to rent and buy isn’t a pie-in-the-sky dream, it’s already happening in Canberra,” Mr Smith, who is also the union’s ACT secretary, said.
“Federal Labor should look at the ACT scheme and expand it so we can give more Australians access to the right to affordable home ownership.
“Just because you’re a low-income worker doesn’t mean you should be stuck in a never-ending cycle of renting and locked out of home ownership forever.
“Housing is a fundamental human right that our society is failing to provide. Build to rent or buy schemes are just one piece of the complex housing puzzle Australia must solve.
“We need a massive increase in the nation’s public housing and affordable housing stock.
“The CFMEU’s plan to tax the outrageous profits of just a tiny portion of corporate giants will raise the $511 billion we need to build almost one million homes over the next two decades.”
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With one-quarter of Gaza’s population being one step away from famine and more than a dozen children dying from malnutrition in the north of the enclave, ActionAid is warning that an already extremely strained humanitarian system will face total collapse amidst the apparent looming offensive of Rafah.A senior UN aid official warned a quarter of the population faced severe levels of food insecurity and that one in six children under the age of two in the north were suffering from acute malnutrition.
Over the last week, aid distributions across Gaza have come under attack, claiming lives while further endangering aid operations. As a result of the growing attacks on paramedics in Gaza, thePalestinian Red Crescent Societyannounced last week that it was suspending its medical missions across the Strip. On top of this, UNRWA, the largest aid agency in Gaza, is facing an uncertain future after seeing its budget severely slashed as many large donors, including the Australian government have withdrawn their financial support.
“This is a dire humanitarian crisis with children dying of starvation and women giving birth in the most inhumane conditions due to so little aid and medical supplies being permitted to enter Gaza. The situation will only get worse unless the Australian government and other donor nations urgently reinstate funding to UNRWA and ensure Israeli forces stop blocking aid from reaching people in urgent need of assistance. We cannot stand by and allow people to starve to death,” said Michelle Higelin, Executive Director of ActionAid Australia.
As western nations begin air drops of aid into Gaza, Amjad Al-Shawa of the Palestinian NGOs Network in Gaza, explained why it will not be enough to reliably meet the needs of Gazans. His explanation comes as a14-truck aid convoywas turned away by Israeli forces yesterday in northern Gaza, the first attempted delivery in two weeks by the World Food Programme.
“The air drop [of humanitarian aid] is not enough at all in such conditions; there is a need for land transportation of aid.
“Every day we’re in [dire] need of 4,000 truckloads in order to cover the basic needs of these people.
“It’s very important to work urgently to stop this war on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and to open all the crossings to let in all the required aid to reach all people.
“This is an urgent request from the people who are in Gaza, in the north and the south, who [are] still in the shelters, from the children, from the babies, and from women.”
The catastrophic humanitarian situation in northern Gaza, which has largely been cut off from aid since the start of the conflict, is rapidly deteriorating. In recent days, theMinistry of Health in Gazareported that 15 children had died of malnutrition and dehydration at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, with six other infants who are suffering from acute malnutrition at risk of dying.
Dr Mohammed Salha, director of Al-Awda, ActionAid’s partner in northern Gaza, explained how a sharp increase in malnutrition has led to an increase in death among children and cases of stillborn babies.
“Many cases were recorded in government hospitals of children who died due to malnutrition.
“We are a hospital specialised in women’s services and childbirth. There are many operations that have been performed, like caesarean sections to remove fetuses, [which] died due to malnutrition among women. More than 95% of women [who] come to the hospital and undergo the necessary medical examinations [are suffering] from anemia.”
Al-Awda Hospital – the only hospital with maternity services in northern Gaza – was supplied two days ago with fuel by the World Health Organisation, enough to last for two weeks only but crucially without a fresh supply of vital, lifesaving medicines.
Suhaila, a displaced mother sheltering with eight others in Gaza, spoke about how her two-year-old son is suffering from diarrhea amidst intense food shortages.
“We really need the basic necessities; it is difficult to get fresh drinking water. My son goes on several trips to fill only one gallon [with water]. We fill one gallon with fresh drinking water and another with water for cleaning. But it is a long way to get water, and it is also tiring. Sometimes my kids fall asleep without water because we couldn’t get any.”
“My youngest boy is two and a half years old. He is suffering from diarrhea and stomach flu. He needs several changes of clothes, and nappies. Nappies are really expensive. We cannot afford [them] at times.
“We need food supplies; we need food to feed our children. Aid does not come frequently. Sometimes we are able to get food, other times we [can’t]. We need food, medication, fresh water, and we really need clothes. It is freezing cold at night in our tent. None of us have extra clothes.”
Since aid convoys started entering Gaza at the end of October, around 70% of all humanitarian assistance has crossed the border with Egypt into Rafah. It is also where many aid agencies are headquartered meaning that any ground offensive will spell complete catastrophe for over two million people in Gaza.
Buthaina, Director of Wefaq, ActionAid Palestine’s partner in Gaza, said: “All the aid that crosses into the Gaza Strip from the Rafah crossing in the south through the Egyptian crossing does not meet [people’s] needs. There are groups that suffer [a lot of] difficultly, such as newly born children, as there are no diapers or milk, the price of a box of diapers has become 200 shekels [£43.88].’
“Most families here depend on tinned food, and this has caused many problems. We need hot meals, such as vegetable [dishes], to be provided to families to meet their basic needs. Also, medication is not available for most patients, especially cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, and dialysis patients.
“The needs of women, children and people in general are [very high]. The capabilities that reach the Gaza Strip are very small and hardly meet these increasing needs.”
Riham Jafari, Advocacy and Communications Coordinator at ActionAid Palestine said: “With the IPC potentially announcing next week that pockets of Gaza are facing famine, an already overwhelmed aid system will be unable to respond while many more continue to face extreme hunger. The lives of thousands more babies, children, and pregnant women depend on urgent action being taken right now to prevent famine.
“We are calling for Israel to open reliable and safe entry points for aid to flow at scale into Gaza, with no denials, delays or barriers. But what millions in Gaza need more than anything right now is an end to this brutal war and an immediate and permanent ceasefire. If people in Gaza don’t die from the bombs, they will likely die from starvation. This is not a reality anyone should face; we are urging the international community to act now to end this senseless cycle of violence and suffering.
About ActionAid
ActionAidis a global women’s rights organisation working with more than 41 million people living in over 70 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world, in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity, and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to advance gender equality and end poverty and injustice.
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The Royal Australian College of GPs (RACGP) is calling on government to boost the National Disability Insurance Scheme in the bush.
It comes following the College’s submission to theinquiryinto NDIS participant experience in rural, regional, and remote Australia.
RACGP President Dr Nicole Higgins said that no communities should be left behind.
“No person with a disability, irrespective of where they live, should miss out on the care and support they need,” she said.
“The NDIS is a game changer full of opportunities, but people with a disability in the bush are being left behind. We have the solutions to significantly improve the NDIS outside of major cities.
“The Medicare rebate system makes our job helping patients looking to access the NDIS near impossible, and that must change. A GP’s time is sorely limited, and we aren’t remunerated for the time spent writing lengthy reports to support NDIS applications when patients aren’t present.
“This is particularly challenging outside of our cities, as rural GPs work within a varied scope due to limited local health services and play such a versatile role meeting the diverse needs of their community. So, for them, there is an even higher administrative and financial burden. Also, Medicare doesn’t adequately recognise the work we do coordinating multidisciplinary care teams and we’re not supported to liaise with NDIS service providers.
“So, the Government must reform Medicare or explore alternative solutions to help GPs help patients on the NDIS, something that is especially important in the bush. This includes providing adequate remuneration for GPs so that we’re paid for time spent preparing reports and other paperwork. We also recommend expanding the list of disability-related health supports funded by the NDIS to include some general practice supports not covered by Medicare.
“The entire rural and remote health system must be operating efficiently to get patients proper NDIS care and support. Right now, that just isn’t happening. Patients in the bush tell me about long wait times and having to travel gruelling distances, at their own expense, to access specialist care and other services. Inferior telecommunications infrastructure is holding back the potential of telehealth consults. There also just aren’t enough workers or available services, with one rural GP telling me about patients stuck on waitlists for two years just to seek appropriate evidence to submit their NDIS paperwork. Imagine the toll this is taking on patients just trying to get the right kind of support to make their lives that much easier.”
RACGP Vice President and Rural Chair, Associate Professor Michael Clements, said that the Government must repair a two-tiered NDIS.
“The Government must urgently plug holes in NDIS service provision in the bush,” he said.
“Right now, we have a two-tiered NDIS – one for people in major cities, another for people living everywhere else. Rural GPs tell me about concerns regarding the quality of supports in rural and remote communities due to limited resources and an often under-skilled workforce. This is not to criticise workers doing their best in a challenging situation, it’s a system-wide issue. These same GPs also warn about a lack of transparency in understanding what services have been provided to patients by their support teams.
“So, the Government should make fixing the NDIS workforce in the bush a priority, including minimum checks and training requirements. Let’s not stop there, the Government should recruit advocacy-specific workers who understand the needs of rural communities and can fight for people in these communities. We also need annual reporting to be implemented for each NDIS participant so that GPs are kept in the loop.
“Let’s also make the NDIS as inclusive as possible. GPs have spoken to me about the need for further investment in culturally informed and appropriate care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people accessing the NDIS and concerted efforts made to recruit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to become NDIS support workers.”
The RACGP Vice President said that GPs should be spending more time helping patients and less time on paperwork.
“I call on the Government to give time-poor GPs a break when it comes to red tape,” he said.
“The paperwork is cumbersome and inefficiently designed, we shouldn’t have to be experts in using the right type of phrasing to obtain approvals and the NDIS forms don’t integrate with our common Clinical Information Systems. This is a waste of time and energy, particularly for busy GPs in the bush, that could be spent helping patients with a disability.
“The NDIS is changing the lives of people across Australia, and I don’t want anyone, regardless of where they live, to be left behind. Let’s make this scheme even better and make sure that patients in the bush are always front of mind.”
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Cultures evolve, the lives we live today are different than the lives we used to live, very little remains of what used to be, but some people wish for the good old days, when we knew what was what… except of course that is illusionary.
So what is culture?
A quick Google search comes up with this definition from the Oxford Dictionary:
1. The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively. “20th century popular culture.”
2. The ideas, customs and social behaviour of a particular people or society. “African-Caribbean culture.”
Culture is not fixed, but constantly changes, evolves, as communities and society change, evolve.
Last weekend Sydney hosted the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras which started as a small group of protestors formed to contribute to the international gay celebrations in 1978. The protests continued and more and more people were arrested but by April 1979 the NSW parliament repealed the legislation which allowed the arrests. About 3,000 people marched in an incident free parade in 1979, the first officially sanctioned Mardi Gras.
In 1972 a gay academic, George Duncan was murdered, the crime was thought to have been committed by undercover police but sparked calls for reform leading to a 1975 Act in the Federal Parliament making homosexual acts between consenting adults legal.
It took more than a decade, but eventually all states followed the Federal lead.
Interestingly, the crime homosexual men were charged with was ‘buggery’. There was no law to prohibit lesbians engaging in consensual sex.
Forty-two years later a plebiscite was held which overwhelmingly determined than gay and lesbian couples could legally marry, affording those couples the legal security that marriage affords.
The gossip pages of the 1960s and into the 70s included the law courts reports in the daily newspapers. Divorces were subjected to open court hearings where a ‘matrimonial offence’ needed to be proved for a divorce to be granted. Matrimonial offences included domestic violence and adultery, so the salacious details of martial shenanigans were headlined in the daily press.
Australia was not the only jurisdiction to have a ‘fault’ based divorce system, it was common throughout the world. The Irish actor Richard Harris was accused of adultery with a named person in 1969. He pleaded innocent to that charge, claiming he had not been adulterous with the named lady, but reputedly offered the court a list, several pages long of people he had engaged with adulterously.
Christian Nationalist in the USA want to return to a fault-based divorce where adultery or domestic violence needs to be proven before a divorce cab be granted.
Literature which featured adultery or other acts of questionable morality were banned up to the 1970s, including Ulysses by James Joyce, Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D H Lawrence and Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint.
Movies too have been in the censor’s sights since as early as 1912 where the concern was about the effects of such films on female audiences. Included were All Quiet on the Western Front, and films about bush ranging. The Blonde Captive from 1931 was banned being seen as prejudicial to Aboriginal Australians. Many films depicting sexual violence and child sexual abuse continue to be banned, but the creation of an R rating made many previously banned films available since the 1990s.
The music played on radio has for years been subjected to censor oversight. The song ‘Greased Lightening’ had the line ‘it ain’t no shit’ cut from radio airplay, but from the same film the Italian curse ‘fongool’ (tamest translation is Fuck You, a less tame translation refers to an annal version of Fuck You) from Look at me I’m Sandra Dee was somehow not as offensive. Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl was changed from Brown Skinned Girl. Loretta Lynn’s 1975 song The Pill was condemned for daring to discuss birth control. John Lennon’s Imagine was hated by religious groups for daring to imagine there is no heaven, The Stones’ Satisfaction was far too sexual for tender ears to hear, but 40 years after its initial release was OK to perform at the SuperBowl half time show in 2006 to rapturous applause. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is a drug anthem isn’t it?, so air play was banned on the BBC.
Abortions in the 1960s were illegal but available, the criminal sanctions which, dependent on the state or territory included life imprisonment. While abortionwas common, before 1969:
“Women who had means could attend a skilled abortionist; otherwise they went to someone less skilled or tried to abort themselves.
The alternative was for the single young ladies to be sent away for a few months and return, without the child. A childless couple in our church had adopted a child born illegitimately. In fact the birth certificate was stamped with the designation “ILLEGITIMATE”. There were special places for such births to occur in, one was a place called NGALA, others were majestic looking buildings set in manicured gardens, monasteries, where the unfortunate young ladies were cared for until the birthing, and sent home, as though nothing had happened, the child taken away to be sent to an adopting couple.
Despite numerous attempts at decriminalising abortion, it was not until 1998 that abortion could be legally performed in Western Australia, the first jurisdiction to allow it, but with restrictions. In September 2023 abortion was fully decriminalised for terminations up to 23 weeks’ gestation and after 23 weeks with the agreement of the patient’s primary practitioner and another practitioner.
Abortion is now legal in all states and territories, but that right was hard fought and as seen in the debate in the West Australian Parliament in 2023, very much a contested right.
Aboriginal recognition and rights, women’s rights including equal pay for equal work are targets to wind back the clock. even as recently demonstrated in the preselection for the replacement candidate in the seat of Cook. In nomination for a safe seat, women are overlooked. A woman needs to work harder to win her seat and work harder to retain it.
Across the spectrum we can define as culture, in my lifetime we have seen many changes, I have listed some, but it seems that there are many seeking political power who would like to wind back the clock a few decades or more. This is particularly apparent in the Liberal Party where far-right candidates are endorsed, candidates who will use their religion, their faith as a political weapon, with an agenda to reverse the freedoms and rights which have been won in my short lifetime.
I do believe that if a candidate is a Christian and sees that their commitment to their faith is to promote their values as policy, they should do so through a distinctly Christian political party. Their alternative, when confronted by legislation which they cannot support because of their faith but is legislation which their electorate supports, is to do what the then Premier of Western Australia did when it came to voting on the 1998 abortion bill which had the numbers to get up, he abstained. He could not in good conscious vote for the bill which was against his religious belief but could not be seen to be opposed to his electorate’s will. In some ways it was a bit of a cop out, but he found himself between a rock and a hard place and chose to absent himself at the time of the vote.
The new government in New Zealand seems to be actively winding back the clock, discriminating against the Maori population on matters of language and health provision and further for the wider population in repealing the laws which outlaw tobacco sales. Other rights will be threatened to in that case promote white supremacy. The acrimony of the Voice debate and subsequent defeat of the referendum indicates that the fear of recognising First Nations peoples and giving them a Constitutionally enshrined voice to Parliament is a bridge too far. Constantly the race card was thrown in that debate, not so much publicly but in private conversations there was repeated reference to their unsuitability to know how to be a good citizen. (I cannot quote the words but will stay on the polite see of criticism.)
The last bill Prime Minister Morrison brought before the house before the last election was a religious discrimination bill to protect Christians from discrimination where there is no religious discrimination except that which is perceived by the self-righteous, to allow them the right to vilify those who do not uphold the standards they find hard to uphold.
A recent discussion regarding the fear of sharing the female toilet with a trans person was interesting. The complainant was very vocal until asked how many trans people she knew. The number was none, so the fear was totally concocted, made up. as so many of the fears that are promoted to wind the clock back.
Culture evolves, it changes over time, but that change can go forward or backward, no gains made can be considered permanent, we need to be constantly vigilant to ensure that the rights we have in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are not threatened. These include civil and political rights, the right to life, liberty, free speech and privacy. It also includes economic, social and cultural rights. In other words, to be who we are, to believe what we believe, to not be vilified for who we may be, but to not vilify those we disagree with. The rights and freedoms we have, need to be the rights and freedoms we accord to others.
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Climate advocacy organisation Solutions for Climate Australia today called on the Federal Liberal and National Parties to release policies that would reduce climate pollution this decade, not talk up unproven nuclear reactors.
‘We are deeply concerned that the Federal Coalition parties are promoting nuclear reactors and other dangerous distractions that cannot reduce climate pollution this decade. We don’t need expensive, far-off possibilities that would produce radioactive waste if they were ever built. Australia urgently needs clean renewable energy to reduce global warming,’ said Director of Solutions for Climate, Dr. Barry Traill.
‘Australians are also facing a cost-of-living crisis, with energy bills leaving families unable to cool their homes in rising heat. Electricity produced by nuclear reactors is the most expensive, while electricity from wind and solar is the cheapest*. We can address the twin crises of cost of living and climate change with transformative investments in renewable energy.
‘The Federal Coalition proposal for nuclear reactors is a delay tactic. They have declared they plan to keep burning coal and gas until an unknown time in the future when nuclear reactors may come online. But international examples show huge delays and cost blow outs on large reactors. To give just one example – the latest British large-scale nuclear reactor is £17 billion over budget and now six years beyond its planned finish date. If it’s ever completed it will be the most expensive power station in the world.
‘Viable small-scale modular nuclear reactors – which Mr. Dutton is now selling as the climate solution – literally don’t exist. Anywhere in the world. There are a few prototypes in Russia and in China. But attempts to make them commercially in the United States keep failing because of their huge cost.
‘To say small modular nuclear reactors offer a solution to replacing polluting coal and gas power stations is like saying that flying cars are a solution to congested roads. That governments can now stop fixing roads, because a flying car salesperson has a plan for a cheap model…. sometime in the 2040s.
‘We have just been through another summer of extreme weather, with Australians killed and communities scarred and damaged by fires, heatwaves, floods and storms. Many people and communities already hit hard by inequality – especially rural communities, Indigenous communities and lower income suburbs – are now experiencing terrible risks and real losses because of climate change.
‘We cannot understand why Federal Coalition leaders now regularly attack solar and wind energy projects. This campaigning by Federal Coalition leaders is in contrast to most of their state Liberal and National Party colleagues, who are largely supporting renewable powered industries.
‘Australia has vast advantages over other countries with our solar and wind resources. This will provide and support the industry and jobs we need.
‘The Liberal-National Coalition lost the last federal election in large part because of weak policies on climate and renewable energy. They will repeat this loss at the next election if their climate policy continues to be set by denialists who push distractions such as nuclear reactors.
‘For a safe future for our children and their children, we call on Mr. Dutton and Mr. Littleproud to change course: To publicly acknowledge the science that climate change is occurring. To reject nuclear reactors and other distractions. To instead develop policies that rapidly reduce climate emissions by replacing coal and gas, with cheap, clean, renewable energy so our world-leading industries can prosper and our households can thrive,’ finished Dr. Traill.
Oxfam warns that over six million people from farming families in Zambia are facing acute food shortages and malnutrition until next growing season, which is twelve months away, due to a severe drought, exacerbated by climate change and El Nino, which has caused massive crop failures for half of the nation’s “planted area.”
The drought has forced the Zambian government to declare a national disaster and emergency. President Hakainde Hichilema said last week Thursday that the country had gone without rain for five weeks at a time when farmers needed it the most. The drought had hit 84 of the country’s 116 districts, affecting more than a million farming households.
Ezra Banda, Director at Keepers Zambia Foundation, a partner organisation that works with Oxfam, says this crisis is coming at the time when the country is still recovering from the worst cholera outbreak that has claimed more than 700 lives, on top of another dry spell and last year’s flooding.
“Urgent support in form of food and clean water is what people need the most now,” said Banda. “Many have no food left because they did not harvest enough last year, and this El Nino-induced weather phenomenon has killed the slightest hope they had to feed themselves”.
He added that water shortages that are likely to ensue because of low rainfall this year could spark yet another cholera outbreak.
Mainza Muchindu, a smallholder farmer from Lusaka, Zambia, told Oxfam: “I have a family of ten people and I depend on farming to support them. I support my children’s education through agriculture and my little children need food the most, for their nutrition. With this crop failure, I am really in trouble.”
Standing by his drying maize crop, he said: “I don’t know what else to do because I invested all my money into this two-hectare maize crop and as you can see there is nothing that will come from here. I don’t know where else I will get food from. I can only hope that there will be food relief from the government, otherwise we are facing a big problem.”
Oxfam in Southern Africa Programme Director, Machinda Marongwe, says it is times like when climate financing is most needed, to build up practical and accessible solutions for vulnerable smallholder farmers like Mainza. However, commitment by rich countries remains an unfulfilled one.
“As long as rich countries don’t lower their carbon emissions, we know that climate shocks will be frequent and more severe. Smallholder farmers need to be insulated from this and must be adequately supported to transform their agriculture so that they can still grow food for their families amidst this climate change reality.
“Sadly, they are not getting support to solve problems they didn’t cause, none is coming their way because rich nations are offering nothing but lip service. Countries like Zambia and many others in Southern Africa need this climate financing to help them build up the resilience of their smallholder farmers, because that is wearing out.”
Yvonne Chibiya, Oxfam in Zambia Country Representative, says Oxfam and partners are doing further assessments in the targeted districts to inform the humanitarian response. Oxfam urgently needs 6 million Euros to provide 600,000 people with cash transfers and clean water, help with winter cropping, and improving local sanitation and hygiene services to prevent a resurgence of cholera outbreak.
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Testing of illicit drugs bought online found 35% were not what they said they were, highlighting the urgent need for more local drug testing facilities in Australia to prevent harm and overdose.
The RMIT-led study analysed 103 illicit drug samples sourced from the now-defunct dark web forum Test4Pay in collaboration with the Australian National University, UNSW Sydney and Canadian testing facility Get Your Drugs Tested.
While 65% of samples contained only the advertised substance, the study found 14% of samples had a mixture of the advertised substance with other psychoactive or potentially harmful chemicals.
Meanwhile, 21% of samples did not contain any of the advertised substances.
MDMA, methamphetamines and heroin sourced were consistently found to only contain the advertised substance.
Products sold as ketamine, 2C-B and alprazolam were most likely to be completely substituted with other substances or new synthetic drugs, which increased the risk of unwanted side effects, potential overdose or death.
Of the 19 cocaine samples tested, only four were pure cocaine while 13 contained other substances and two samples did not contain any cocaine at all.
Lead researcher and RMIT Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, Dr Monica Barratt, said the results were concerning as drugs sold through cryptomarkets – online vendors on the dark web – were believed to be less likely to be mixed or substituted with other substances.
“Cryptomarkets allow anonymous buyers to review purchases, which theoretically means vendors who sell inferior products are more likely to receive bad reviews, thereby rewarding vendors selling superior products,” said Barratt, from RMIT’s Social Equity Research Centre.
“But despite this perception of accountability and quality, our findings show prohibited drugs purchased from cryptomarkets are still not safe from adulteration and substitution.”
“These apps are a lot more convenient and easier to use than the dark web, but they lack many of the security features and review capacities of darknet markets,” she said.
Barratt said Australia’s policies on tackling darknet markets focused on using law enforcement to ‘disrupt’ operations.
“These takedowns are used to create a sense of general deterrence through announcing arrests and interruptions to markets,” she said.
“However, we know through research on darknet market takedown operations that this ecosystem is quick to adapt to removal of markets.
“These days, vendors have accounts across many markets, in case one goes down, their clients can find them on other markets. This mitigates against the disruption of a takedown.”
Australia’s approach to drug regulation
With Australians finding new ways to source illicit drugs, Barratt said it was more urgent than ever to launch more drug checking services.
Currently, CanTEST is the only drug checking service available in Australia, with Queensland due to launch its own services this year and Victoria considering following suit.
“Drug checking is a precautionary and pragmatic response to the health risks of unpredictable drug markets, often detecting hazardous substances before they flood the local market,” she said.
While drug checking services have been operating around the world for over 50 years, Barratt said Australia remained resistant to expanding the harm reduction service.
“Australia’s resistance to opening more drug checking facilities stems from an assumption that drug checking ‘green lights’ drug use,” Barratt said.
“Drug checking services never tell consumers that their drugs are ‘safe’ as no drug use can be 100% safe.
“What the service can do is explain the known risks of specific drugs, in a credible and non judgemental way, enabling people who use drugs to adjust their behaviour to reduce risk.”
A2022 systemic review of pill testing found people who found unexpected substances in their drugs were more likely to discard them and adjust their use.
“If we can prevent overdoses from happening in the first place, then we can not only reduce harm for consumers and avoid the pain felt by bereaved family members, but also ease the pressures on our emergency health system,” Barratt said.
“Adulteration and substitution of drugs purchased in Australia from cryptomarkets: An analysis of Test4Pay” was published in the Drug and Alcohol Review (DOI: 10.1111/dar.13825)
Monica J. Barratt, Matthew Ball, Gabriel T. W. Wong and Angus Quinton are co-authors.
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THE CLIMATE COUNCIL is sounding the alarm on a severebleaching event unfoldingacross the Great Barrier Reef, with new vision showing the damage that stretches more than 1100 kilometres from Lizard Island to the Keppel Islands.
The Reef, a cherished global icon and home to diverse marine life and a cornerstone of Australian natural heritage, faces repeated and escalating threats from climate pollution, caused by the burning of coal, oil, and gas, including more frequent and severe marine heatwaves.
Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie said: “Relentless pollution from coal, oil and gas is Australia’s number one environmental problem and it’s literally cooking the Reef. Our environmental protection laws are outdated and in desperate need of an overhaul to prevent new reef-destroying gas and coal projects.
“At least five coal and gas projects have been waved through under our outdated law by the Federal Government since it was elected, and more than 20 other highly polluting proposals are sitting on the Environment Minister’s desk right now. These projects will keep being waved through without stronger laws, endangering our Reef, all marine life and the livelihoods of Queenslanders who depend on a healthy, vibrant reef.
“Australians expect our national environment law will protect the precious natural environments like the Great Barrier Reef, and the numerous communities that depend upon it – not destroy them. Unless this law is fixed to make climate pollution a core consideration, the Great Barrier Reef will continue to deteriorate before our children’s eyes.”
Climate Councillor Professor Lesley Hughes said: “As ocean temperatures continue to increase, our precious Great Barrier Reef is in grave danger. The composition and diversity of our once mighty Reef has already been changed after repeated marine heatwaves and mass bleaching events driven by the relentless burning of coal, oil and gas. Our focus must be on limiting further harm as much as possible.
“Australians understand the Reef is irreplaceable. Many Queensland workers and communities rely directly on it for their livelihoods, and every one of us depends on a healthy ocean. Scientists and tour operators are being brought to tears by what they’re observing.
“The Reef can be restored, but it needs at least a decade to recover from a severe bleaching event, and the only way to ensure that can happen is to rapidly reduce climate pollution from coal, oil and gas. The only way to safeguard the Great Barrier Reef as well as everyone and everything that depends on it is to cut climate pollution at the source.”
Dr Dean Miller, Climate Council Fellow and reef expert said: “We’re seeing the most vulnerable corals to heat stress start bleaching along the length of the Great Barrier Reef, which is alarming.
“It’s not just about how many corals are bleaching, but that the ones most at risk are suffering. This stress is affecting corals of all sizes, from the largest ones that have survived past bleaching events to the smallest, youngest corals.
“If the heat stress continues, we’ll see more widespread bleaching affecting a higher diversity of coral species, which is a major concern for the reef’s health and ultimately its resilience.”
For a closer look at the impacts of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef, explore our collection of recently recorded footage.
Anyone who knows the Texas and Mexico border in any manner even approaching familiarity, would have laughed in D. Trump’s face during his news conference at Eagle Pass. Technically, there was nothing news worthy about his appearance on the banks of the Rio Grande and he did not answer questions. Instead, he did what he always does, which was to stand in front of a microphone, ramble and lie, prolifically, while what passes for media duly recorded his words and dispatched them outbound to distort America’s perceptions and ruin any hopes for true understanding of La Frontera. I cannot recall a time when I saw a reporter call out Trump’s or Abbott’s lies that serve their politics.
In a considerably inarticulate attempt to increase the phobias being pushed by his party and by the angry little man serving as the governor of Texas, Trump explained that jails and prisons in the African Congo are being emptied of killers and various types of criminals and they are flooding across the border into Texas. No, they are not, but no one called him out on this most fantastical of his lies, either, during that photo op. Instead, the head of the Texas National Guard, a man who is expected not to make political appearances in a uniform, stood in the rear and affirmatively nodded his head at every outrageous claim that slipped between the dead, dry lips of America’s most legendary liar. Suelzer continued to smile, smirk, and nod as Trump made up numbers regarding how many miles of border wall had been built during his administration. We must at least give the pathetic soul credit for not claiming Mexico paid for the construction, as he had promised. Someone, though, had probably told him the Congo was over near Arizona.
Maj. Gen. Thomas Suelzer, who has led the Texas Military Department for the past two years, was violating both rules and norms about a service member participating in political endeavors while in uniform. U.S. history and tradition have long made it standard that political behavior that appears to represent the military violates the apolitical stance that must be exhibited by the armed forces. Suelzer was appointed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, which makes it unsurprising that he might be used in an unconventional fashion to promote a political point of view regarding the border. His metronomic nodding in approval as Trump prevaricated, however, was an indication of his personal beliefs, and they have no business being exhibited during his service. National Guard officials are looking into Suelzer’s decision to appear with the former president but I would expect nothing to come of their likely pro forma investigation.
Abbott remains unabashed about using state resources to promote his political agenda, and nothing is more important to him than the border. His focus has little, if anything, to do with solving the immigration problem. Instead, he has created a multi-billion dollar issues platform to raise his political profile, and Texas taxpayers are funding the entire operation. Abbott brags consistently about the work being done on the border by Texas Guardsmen and women but there is nothing in evidence that proves the concertina wire and razor buoys in the river and young men with guns have done anything to stop, or even reduce, the flow of people. He bragged earlier in the week that his project was having results because migrants had started crossing in greater numbers in Arizona. This is not solving a problem, it’s relocating it, much the way border pressure in the 80s prompted drug cartels to move their product through Florida and up the East Coast of the U.S. and away from Texas and the Southwest.
Abbott spent the day smiling like a fanboy of Trump’s as they paraded through what has come to look like a cheap set for B-grade prison breakout film. When Trump later told a network TV interviewer that Abbott was on the short list for vice president, the governor insisted he wanted to remain in Texas. Why wouldn’t he? The man can waste billions in tax dollars, screw up everything from school funding to Child Protective Services, and he still wins elections. He is pleased with himself and his border battlements even though word has gotten around south of the Rio Grande that Abbott is providing free airplane and bus rides to the North, if you can just get across. Instead of stopping immigrants, his policies are only seducing them to keep coming. After stepping off a plane or bus north of the Mason-Dixon Line, an immigrant can melt away into the population and never return for any scheduled court dates or follow up processing.
Abbott does not want the immigration problem solved any more than does his hero Trump. When it goes away, so does their notoriety and the cameras. There is no more dangerous place to be in all the land than between Donald Trump and a TV camera. Instead of working with Democrats and moderate Republicans to approve a measure that experts consider the strongest set of immigration regulations ever passed, Trump has urged his party to not let the legislation get through the U.S. House. The Speaker, a man who claims his god speaks to him often and is guiding his decisions, is paying more attention to the disembodied voice of Trump, who has told Speaker Moses to kill the bill. If the border situation were to improve from the passage of bipartisan legislation, what would the crumbling GOP have to whine about? President Biden, who was in Brownsville the same day Trump was with Abbott in Eagle Pass, offered to work with the Republican to get the new law passed, which is about as likely as the two sitting down for drinks and dinner. Abbott, meanwhile, tweeted or Xed or whatever it is now, that the death of the Georgia student by an illegal immigrant meant that Biden had blood on his hands. Abbott has kept his hands clean from blood by never even mentioning the names of the Guard soldiers who died while serving in his Operation Lone Star or the74 people who diedon this side of the Rio Grande as a result of high-speed chases precipitated by his pet project, including a 7-year-old bystander.
While Abbott was strutting his wheels in Eagle Pass, an exercise that had no purpose other than stroking the pitiful ego of the former president, Texas was afire. The Smokehouse Creek Fire, the largest wildfire in the state’s history, was racing across the Panhandle and burning a million acres and Abbott was too busy to deal with it because he was tied up holding Trump’s hand. The flames, whipped by winds, tore across the famed Turkey Track Ranch, northeast of Borger. The 80,000 acre property was recently on the market for $200 million dollars and appears to have lost much of its grasslands and several buildings. The Turkey Track is also the site of a bit of Texas history as the location of the two Battles of Adobe Walls, where Kit Carson concluded the Indian wars against the Comanche.
After six days had passed and the fire was still out of control, Abbott decided to finally express an interest. He put on his newest and starchiest disaster shirt, bearing his name and title over the pocket, and flew to Borger to hold one of his lecture series, which mistakenly gets referred to as a news conference. While reporting on damage and commending the bravery of firefighters, Abbott, almost unbelievably, used a line that he first uttered during his only appearance at the mass shooting in a Uvalde school. “It could have been a lot worse,” he said. Actually, it could have been much better if the thousands of Texas National Guard soldiers stationed on the border were redeployed to fight the fires and undertake a task that helps Texans and saves people instead of wasting their own lives as political pawns of a cravenly ambitious governor.
Abbott made it clear to Trump and his sycophants that he planned to run for reelection as governor of Texas. Maybe he arrived at that decision flying back to Austin from Eagle Pass, a town literally being ruined by his policies. The flight path would have taken Abbott directly over Uvalde, a sad spot that he has not returned to since the day of the mass slaughter of children attending school. Everywhere he goes, tragedy and failure are oversized come-alongs. His ability to ignore Uvalde, though, and avoid political consequences, may have offered some inspiration to guide his reelection decision. I have a bit of political experience on my airframe and I think I can provide him a tagline for his next campaign: “Greg Abbott for Governor: It could have been a lot worse.”
James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. His newest book will be released mid- 2023. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.
He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).
His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.
Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”
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As the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) -Australia Special Summit commences this week in Melbourne, Oxfam is calling for the Australian government and other world leaders attending to ramp up ambition to tackle the climate crisis in the region, beginning with an urgent phase out of Australia’s massive coal and gas exports, and an increase in climate finance flows to support the energy transition in the region.
Southeast Asia’s energy demand has increased by an average of 3% a year over the past two decades, and is projected to double by 2050. Australia is a substantial supplier of the region’s resource needs – almost $31 billion in exports, excluding crude petroleum in 2022 – and is expected to remain a long-term energy security partner for Southeast Asia.
Countries in the region have long been calling for countries like Australia to support ASEAN countries to respond to climate impacts and transition their economies away from fossil fuels. ASEAN member countries are some of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, with floods, droughts and storms wreaking havoc across the region and leaving women, Indigenous communities and vulnerable groups displaced and devastated. However, Australia continues to export coal and gas to the region and deliver climate finance well below its fair share.
As the world’s third largest exporter of coal and gas, Australia bears high responsibility for accelerating the climate crisis. Australia and its fossil fuel exports are amplifying carbon emissions, and keeping ASEAN countries locked into dangerous, fossil fuel-dependent futures, instead of leading Just Energy Transition efforts both here and in the region.
Oxfam Australia Chief Executive Lyn Morgain said nations such as Australia needed to step up and play their part to respond to the climate crisis.
“Those who have contributed least to the crisis are the most at threat – women, youth, Indigenous peoples, our neighbours in the region. This is not fair. It’s time to change this by putting fairness at the centre of our climate change response.
“The path ahead will be challenging, but it is an imperative choice. The negative impacts of staying invested in coal and gas exports will be much higher. It is time for Australia to redirect its trajectory, become a renewable energy leader and a long-term Just Energy Transition partner for ASEAN, rather than a peddler of outdated and dangerous energy sources,” she said.
Oxfam is calling for Australia to stop all new fossil fuel projects immediately. They are also asking the Australian government to:
Commit to an urgent phase out of Australia’s massive coal and gas exports to ASEAN and transition to become a leader in sustainable renewable energy.
Stop subsidising fossil fuels and redirect these resources for climate action including adaptation and support for a Just Energy Transition in Australia and ASEAN.
Provide new and additional climate finance to support climate-vulnerable ASEAN countries respond to the impacts of climate change and accelerate the energy transition process.
Increase transparency on climate risk assessment of all engagements and projects with ASEAN.
Promote the inclusion of civil society organisations that represent the rights, interests and voices of women, youth, Indigenous and vulnerable communities in the collaboration with ASEAN.
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