UK parliament secures three month Brexit extension

BREXTENSION

The EU has agreed to grant a three-month Brexit extension until January 31 2020, with UK parliament now debating whether to review the Brexit deal or head to an early election.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the current parliament has “run its course” and this morning tabled a bill for a December 12 election, though it failed to reach the required majority of votes. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is hinting that Labour might back an early poll, but needs a definite statement about no deal being off the table. Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson is backing an early election, arguing that this provides the best chance of stopping Brexit.

ASSANGE CALLS FOR HELP

Julian Assange’s UK legal team has asked the Australian government for diplomatic assistance, amid growing fears for his physical and mental health, Nine reports.

Barrister Greg Barns, an adviser to the Australian Assange campaign, told the papers that Assange’s lawyers have requested consular assistance in dealing with their client’s inhumane conditions in Belmarsh prison, following an inquiry from DFAT. The WikiLeaks founder, who is fighting US extradition attempts to face charges of spying and computer hacking, has been held at Belmarsh since his April 11 arrest at the Ecuadorian embassy.

LABOR’S VISION

Labor leader Anthony Albanese will use his first major speech as leader to recast the party as a “job creator” and reframe climate policy as “all about jobs”. In a CEDA address in Perth today, Albanese will call for a target of 50% renewable energy by 2030, saying the shift to clean energy will unlock jobs and export opportunities. He will also throw his support behind the mining industry, appealing to the party’s once-traditional blue-collar worker base. 

New Labor senator and former TWU secretary Tony Sheldon is labelling proposals for a “corporatised” head office as “antithetical” to ALP values, while old Labor senator Kim Carr has hit back at right-wing MPs pushing for the party to embrace the centre, arguing “we were right to go left” ($).

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THEY REALLY SAID THAT?

I am not a violent person but, if that had happened to me, I would have reacted with violence.

Larry King

The veteran American newsman says he would “react with violence” if police raided his home to identify a source, saying Australian journalism is at “a dangerous crossroads”.

READ ALL ABOUT IT

‘The blow is comprehensive’: Hong Kong officially enters recession

‘Let private health funds cover all GP bills’ ($)

Barnaby Joyce fails to back Nats leader Michael McCormack ($)

Driver accused over bodies  in truck remains in custody after first court appearance

Swan hits out at Facebook, News Corp news partnership

‘Ground-breaking reform’: Ombudsman lauds NSW’s Aboriginal affairs strategy

Water researcher says government policies have made the drought worse

Sex abuse compo scheme failing victims, State government says

Anthony Pratt: Company of Australia’s richest man pays virtually no tax

Baghdadi raid: Doubts over Trump’s dramatic account

Report: Workers would lose hundreds of dollars a year if pushed to non-union deals

Angus Taylor: Labor questions minister’s explanation to parliament over false figures

Drought: Some councils with fewer than 350 residents given $2.5m funding

CRIKEY QUICKIE: THE BEST OF YESTERDAY

Doctored documents and the dangers of access journalism

Christopher Warren

Oct 28, 2019

25

“As Stone warned about access journalism decades ago, ‘You can’t just sit on their lap and ask them to feed you secrets — then they’ll just give you a lot of crap’. The Tele brought out the ‘he said-she said’ defence. In response to The Guardian’s exposure of the letter, a Tele spokesperson said: ‘The letter was newsworthy in its own right and we approached Ms Moore for comment. She disputed figures quoted in Mr Taylor’s letter. The Daily Telegraph accurately reported her response.’ Oh well, job done then. This defence is not a substitute for working out the truth. Indeed, in the absence of fact-checking, it’s just more words filling space.”

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Businesses pay a hefty price for silly sexism

Amber Schultz

Oct 28, 2019

3

“It’s not the first time businesses have paid the price for sexist practices. A UK pub was slammed for banning female singers because the manager said women can’t sing rock songs (sorry, Joan Jett).

Lawyers in the US can now be fined for sexist language in the courtroom, after one too many patronising utterances of ‘honey’ and ‘darling’ by professional counterparts. British companies that use sexist tropes in their advertising, like women struggling to park a car or men refusing to do housework, are also facing fines. And, as usual, Australia has kept it classy, with a Darwin pub banned from hosting its weekly ‘Tits Out Tuesday’ night, on the grounds that audience participation isn’t allowed under its adult entertainment licence.”

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How Extinction Rebellion captures the media 

James Norman

Oct 28, 2019

2

“Ultimately, none of the negative coverage really mattered. XR had not only disrupted traffic, but also seriously disrupted business as usual in the media. Our social media and video teams had been countering the negative coverage directly to our own supporters — and it appeared to have worked. By Thursday (day four) we had a significant turning point: The Age carried out a readers’ poll of more than 160,000 readers that found 85% of the public supported XR. We had succeeded in becoming the biggest story of the week, which means we succeeded in alerting millions of Australians to the urgency of climate emergency. XR’s membership has since sky-rocketed and early media analysis shows we had in excess of 19,000 media mentions — the type of mass coverage advertising boffins can only dream of.”

THE COMMENTARIAT

They should have called the tax ‘rebate’ something more exciting – Angela Jackson (The Age/Sydney Morning Herald): “A study by economists from Chicago and Harvard Universities found that people perceive tax bonuses as gains, and tax rebates as returning previous losses. This makes sense, with a tax bonus implying something extra whereas a tax rebate implies a return of something earned. So it all comes down to the framing of the two, almost identical tax refunds, which has changed how we viewed this extra cash in our bank accounts. A tax bonus is a gain. A tax refund is a returned loss. We put the 2009 tax bonus into the mental account that we were more likely to spend. But the 2019 tax refund went into the mental account we were more likely to save. In layman’s terms, while Wayne Swan provided all the drinks, Josh Frydenberg asked you to BYO to his party.”

Third best super? Shed these chimps and we might be champ ($) – Adam Creighton (The Australian): “It would have been a surprise to Normie, a 72-year-old Aborigine in a remote Cape York community, that our superannuation system was considered world class. Attending an Australian Sec­urities & Investments Commission indigenous outreach event in far north Queensland a few years back, he’d been unable to access his $30,000 in super, despite having the right to since he was 60. If compelling low-income workers with poor financial literacy to choose from 40,000-plus superannuation plans is poor policy, forcing indigenous Australians in remote communities to forgo some of their meagre earnings to build a paltry share portfolio is atrocious. Many won’t be able to draw on it, given life expectancy in some communities is barely above the age when they can access super. Yet the burden of superannuation on low socio-economic workers isn’t part of the annual comparison by investment adviser Mercer of retirement income systems, which for 11 years has ­oddly ranked Australia’s among the world’s best.”

The aged care sector is dying for urgent action – Paul Bongiorno (The New Daily): “There is a universal view across the sector that waiting for those findings to be handed down before responding to what has already been uncovered would be a gross dereliction of government duty. Just one example makes this point. Last year 16,000 elderly Australians died while waiting for their approved home care package. Another 120,000 older Australians are yet to receive home care, with wait times now more than two years for the higher levels of need. Last month, the PM told Parliament it’s the government’s “top priority” to increase the number of in-home aged care places. But there is a catch. Mr Morrison said the “only way you can do that … is by ensuring you maintain a strong budget … and that’s what our government is doing”. Translation: Nothing is more important than delivering the promised budget surplus.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Melbourne

• Roy Morgan’s “State of the Nation Wealth Report” will be presented in an informative explanation of where wealth really resides in our country, what form it takes and where our wealth vulnerabilities lie.

• The 2019 Australian Public Sector Anti-Corruption Conference will hear from keynote speakers including Justice Jennifer Coate, former Judge of the Family Court of Australia, and Dr Laode M Syarif, Commissioner of Corruption Eradication Commission of the Republic of Indonesia.

• More than 7000 attendees from around the globe will to take part in the three-day International Mining and Resources Conference.

Sydney

• A coronial inquest will be held into the 2017 Sir Ivan fire that consumed 55,372 hectares of land, destroyed 36 houses, and 130 outbuildings.

Adelaide

• The Adelaide Festival of Arts will launch its 2020 program.

Brisbane

• Well-known Extinction Rebellion activist Emma Jade Dorge will appear in court, charged with breaching her bail conditions by entering the city and blocking traffic.

Cairns, Queensland

• The Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia will resume its inquiry into the Opportunities and Challenges of the Engagement of Traditional Owners in the Economic Development of Northern Australia.