John Setka CFMEU ABCC

CFMEU boss John Setka

NOT HAPPY, JOHN

News that Victorian state prosecutors have dropped landmark blackmail charges against construction union boss John Setka and deputy Shaun Reardon has, unsurprisingly, riled Coalition MPs.

According to The Age, Workplace Minister Craig Laundy believes the decision to withdraw charges over the CFMEU’s boycott of concrete company Boral will only embolden the “movement’s most renegade bunch of lawbreakers”. Meanwhile, Labor is enjoying what workplace spokesman Brendan O’Connor calls “an absolute humiliation for the Trade Union Royal Commission and … the Turnbull government”. However, as the AFR ($) reports, Labor leader Bill Shorten has vowed to “not protect” unlawful union action, despite Setka citing that as key to the CFMEU’s workplace successes. Setka has today challenged Shorten to loosen strike laws ($).

MAKE FRIENDS MEET

The Coalition government has effectively extended an olive branch to President Xi Jinping, with a speech from Trade Minister Steve Ciobo in Shanghai ending a suspension diplomatic relations initiated by Australian ministers.

The Australian ($) reports Ciobo has called for China and Australia to “bring our boats together and help each other to find a way to the other shore of the ocean”. And his trip to Shanghai, the first for an Australian minister this year, informally breaks a diplomatic freeze initiated by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop in February. In related news, The Age today reports that one of Australia’s biggest exporters, Treasury Wine Estates, is among several companies whose products are being singled out and subsequently stalled by new Chinese verification processes.

FIVE FOUND

Five of the dozens of missing Commonwealth Games athletes are seeking asylum in Canberra, having successfully been granted the necessary bridging visas required after their competition visas expired Tuesday night.

The Age reports that, of the possibly more than 24 international athletes and coaches who escaped from the Gold Coast in April, five have engaged a registered ACT migration agent who notes that Australia has legal obligations not to refoul individuals at risk of persecution and that the athletes have made claims for asylum “which fall within the eligibility criteria for Australia to grant them protection”.

[free_worm]

THEY REALLY SAID THAT?

Lest we forget. [It’s not too late to say sorry, David Morrison]

Miranda Devine

The Daily Telegraph columnist, in tweeting a hit piece on former army chief David Morrison, re-appropriates the Anzac Day phrase — an act for which Yassmin Abdel-Magied suffered a 12,000-word News Corp holy war.

CRIKEY QUICKIE: THE BEST OF YESTERDAY

The art of the political interview: the interrogators reveal their handCharlie Lewis

“On April 22 this year, Financial Services Minister Kelly O’Dwyer sat down with Barrie Cassidy on ABC’s Insiders. After years of damning reports about banking practices and calls from both their left and right, her government had bowed and established a royal commission. It was roughly a week into the second round of public hearings, which were revealing scandals that shocked even seasoned financial journalists. What Cassidy wanted — as, one would assume, did a sizeable portion of his audience — was the admission that the government should have, at the very least, put the commission in place earlier.”

Nationals reject science to keep sheep slaughter afloatBernard Keane

“The government has rejected evidence of the animal welfare impacts of live sheep exports to the Middle East in warmer months in favour of an “independent” report by a former consultant to one of the worst violators of current rules — and despite admitting the Department of Agriculture lied to it.”

This is apartheid, plain and simpleGuy Rundle

“The recent massacre of Gazan Palestinians by Israeli security forces marks a new stage in the region’s history: the point at which the Israeli government has gone from being in the Likud/’revisionist’ heritage, to being an Irgun government.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Five-year wait on major NT roads funding “better for business”: Deputy Prime Minister ($)

Victoria’s new offshore oil and gas releases a ‘complete mockery’ of ban

Luke Lazarus speaks out following Four Corners report into Kings Cross rape case

Bomber Thompson linked to NTFL coach job ($)

Snowy 2.0 declares wind and solar power ‘clearly cheaper’ than coal ($)

Greens candidate Major “Moogy” Sumner to contest Mayo by-election ($)

Labor MP Leon Bignell protests minister’s rules by delivering 60 ‘donuts of defiance’ to CFS crews ($)

‘I’m Aussie’: Man with disability to be deported to Canada after racking up criminal record

Australian magpies can understand other bird calls, study finds

New Zealand ‘people’s’ budget sees Ardern put billions more into health and education

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Canberra

  • Malcolm Turnbull is set to receive the final report of Philip Ruddock‘s religious freedom review, which came out of last year’s marriage equality debate.

  • Joint Invictus Games and Lockheed Martin event at Australian War Memorial.

Perth

  • Final public hearing for the inquiry into end of life choices, with speakers expected from the Australian Medical Association and Department of Health Chief Medical Officer. The parliamentary committee will have had 81 public hearing sessions by today.

  • Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will be in Fremantle.

Brisbane

  • Day one of Australia’s first international cake show, a three-day event featuring hundreds of cakes including a giant wedding cake and a life sized Alice in Wonderland cake installation.

Hobart

  • Cancer Council Tasmania will open the Southern Cancer Support Centre in Hobart, only the second in Australia after the Northern Cancer Support Centre launched in Launceston.

Melbourne

  • Ahead of International Clinical Trails day this Sunday, breast cancer trial participants and researchers will speak at a Sheraton Hotel event.

  • Day one of the three-day GABS Melbourne beer festival.

  • 3MBS Fine Music Melbourne will launch it’s annual ten-day Radiothon event, ‘In Full Flight’. From today until May 27th, the community station will feature special live-to-air performances, interviews and daily prize draws as it invites classical music lovers and listeners to become active subscribers.

  • Malvern Valley Primary School will reveal results from its Myki-style Active Travel program this morning, with students walking to school and having breakfast.

Gold Coast

  • Queensland Resources Council chief Ian Macfarlane will address the Gas Energy Australia National Forum, now on day two of two, ahead of a morning media conference.

  • A flash mob will be held on Surfers Paradise to celebrate the 2018 revival of Gold Coast Fashion Week.

Bendigo, Victoria

  • The world’s largest carved gemstone-quality jade jewel Budha will come to rest in Bendigo at the Great Stupa after a 10-year world tour of 120 cities.

Aukland, New Zealand

  • New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to make a post-budget address to Trans-Tasman Business Circle.

  • Activist group “Auckland Action Against Poverty” to protest outside Prime Minister Ardern’s electoral office over the government’s lack of removal of sanctions for beneficiaries, an election promise.

THE COMMENTARIAT

Belt up and hit the road to better China relations — Harold Mitchell (SMH): “The truth is that the 19th century belonged to Europe and our great ties with those nations, especially Great Britain, helped us establish ourselves in the modern world. The 20th century was driven by the force of the North American economy and it became the American century. But the 21st century belongs to Asia and the wider non-Asian community needs to understand that this is not a new phenomenon. By the middle of this century, Asia will hold 50 per cent of the world’s wealth.”

Only the support of the people can save the ABC now — Emma Dawson (The Guardian): “But the biggest danger to the ABC is the government’s agenda to reduce its digital services, and it’s here where the ABC – and, in this case, SBS as well – face a truly existential threat. The so-called ‘competitive neutrality inquiry’ into the national broadcasters, currently underway, has ostensibly been launched to satisfy Pauline Hanson’s demands for an inquiry into the ABC in return for her support for last year’s appalling package of media “reforms”, which will reduce diversity and local content across the commercial broadcast media.”

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