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REFERENDUM A ‘WASTE OF MONEY’

The Voice to Parliament referendum is a “waste of money”, Greens Senator and DjabWurrung Gunnai Gunditjmara woman Lidia Thorpe says. She reckons it would be better to divert that money into Indigenous communities, The Age reports, and pointed out a potentially cheaper alternative: “You don’t need a referendum to have a treaty.” Her stance prompted Greens Leader Adam Bandt to assure his party still wants to explore it with Labor, though it won’t be any time soon, it seems — this week Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he wouldn’t put the option of a referendum before Parliament until June 2023 at the earliest. Thorpe continued that we don’t even know what the Voice will look like or what the referendum question will be, which isn’t exactly true: Albo revealed perhaps an early version of it in June — “Do you support an alteration to the constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice?” — as Guardian Australia reports.

Meanwhile, large corporations should be forced to report on the size of their Indigenous workforce, according to Minderoo Foundation executive and Wilman-Nyoongar woman Shelley Cable. Incidentally, Labor promised during the election campaign to work with the country’s largest 200 companies on making their Indigenous workforce public — check it out here (search First Nations Employment Reporting). A recent Minderoo survey of 42 big companies showed there was a 2.2% Indigenous workforce, well short of the 3.3% in our overall population. Cable is part of a project that aims to get 300,000 more Indigenous people into work in the next 18 years, as The West ($) tells it — she says it’s a no-brainer to tap into the existing pool of workers amid our worker and skills shortage, and particularly our Indigenous population.

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NICK AND TUCK

Doctors who don’t have specialist training can keep offering facelifts, tummy tucks, breast implants and Kim Kardashian-style Brazilian butt lifts for the next two to three years, the SMH reports. The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) is working on new accreditation standards, but it’s surgery as usual until then. The medical regulator will release a sweeping external report into the cosmetic surgery industry today. It will reportedly promise an enforcement unit for surgery and a social media “crackdown”, the paper says. But the president of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons told the ABC the review and recommendations would not protect consumers from harm. A former president went further, telling the broadcaster the report was “underwhelming and profoundly disappointing”.

Surgeons have described the limbo period as “reckless” and “irresponsible”. “Many cosmetic surgeons have only completed a general medical degree and a short weekend course,” the paper reports, which honestly sounds like the basis of a gripping Hollywood horror flick. It comes after an inquiry found consumers have to take a punt on a surgeon based on their ads and marketing materials, The New Daily reports. The inquiry was sparked by a slew of media reports from Nine newspapers and ABC’s Four Corners that showed gruesome disfigurements and other complications. Indeed AHPRA said it received 313 reports of something going wrong last year. Yikes. Yet it’s big business — a $1.4 billion industry.

OFF-TRACK

Don’t want my final pay offer? Then see you in court, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has told rail unions, as SMH reports. Perrottet gave 13,000 rail workers the extraordinary ultimatum yesterday after more commuter chaos on Sydney buses and trains yesterday amid industrial action. The premier was fuming — he said they’ve had 58 meetings with the Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) over the new pay agreement, and enough is enough, as Guardian Australia reports. “I will not have our city grind to a halt,” Perrottet said. So Transport Minister David Elliott will go in with a final offer today. What happens next? Well, the unions might reject it and proceed with industrial action slated until September 10, and if they do the premier will tear up the existing enterprise agreement, abandon changes to the intercity rail fleet, and go before the Fair Work Commission. Or they’ll concede.

Unions NSW described the premier’s words as “shocking”, the SMH continues, and said every union and public sector worker in the state will be closely watching this fight. And that’s a lot of people — the NSW public sector is the largest workforce in Australia, and the state’s largest employer, accounting for one in six NSW workers. The stoush began in 2011 when the NSW government introduced a wage cap of 2.5%, meaning salaries of folks like nurses, teachers and transport staff could see only a yearly wage increase of that amount. This financial year the cap was lifted to 3%, but a report from Impact Economics and Policy found it has meant public sector workers in NSW have missed out on more than $7200 a year, news.com.au explains. What’s the alternative to a wage cap? The workplace tribunal, critics say. NSW Industrial Relations Commission did a great job on it until the cap was imposed, according to union the Public Service Association of NSW.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

It’s 1967 and the Monkees are at the pinnacle of their fame — the band had no fewer than four No. 1 albums that year, a record that still hasn’t been broken. Throngs of screaming teenagers turned out for their tour to hear hits like “I’m a Believer” and “Last Train to Clarksville” from the boys considered America’s response to the Beatles. But somewhere in the crowds was another person: an FBI informant. The J Edgar Hoover-era FBI was furious that the band was spreading anti-war and pro-racism-protesting sentiments, as Rolling Stone tells it. “During the concert, subliminal messages were depicted on the screen which, in the opinion of [informant’s name redacted] constituted ‘left-wing intervention of a political nature,’” reads an actual document in the Monkees FBI file. It goes on to say images of racial riots and anti-US messages on Vietnam flashed, constituting an “unfavourable response[s] from the audience” (cheers, no doubt). We know this because a seven-page, partly redacted preview of the file was released about a decade ago.

Now, the only living member of the Monkees, Micky Dolenz, 77, is suing the actual FBI — no joke — to get the entire file on his band. He tried to FOI it and the FBI was dragging the chain, so he was like, fine — we’ll litigate. His legal representation, Mark S Zaid, has a formidable resumé — he represented a whistleblower in the 2019 Ukraine scandal (remember when Donald Trump heaped all that pressure on Volodymyr Zelenskyy to look into his then challenger Joe Biden? It led to Trump’s first of two impeachments). But Zaid admits he’s, like, a really big fan too. His babysitter gave him all the Monkees albums in 1975, and he went on to see the band live no fewer than eight times. So what will they find at the end of this? It’s a mystery, Zaid says, but they’re going to find out. The FBI was known for keeping creepy tabs on counterculture, and it’s time to find out just how deep the rabbit hole went. “Theoretically, anything could be in those files though. We have no idea what records even exist. It could be almost nothing. But we’ll see soon enough.”

Wishing you the guts to take on the Man, whatever that looks like for you.

Worm readers, Crikey has launched a GoFundMe to help raise funds for our defence against billionaire Fox chairman Lachlan Murdoch’s defamation suit. It has already raised $438,082 (as of 6.30am) and we are so chuffed. If you’d like to donate, click here — and if you have already, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

SAY WHAT?

I backed them in every step of the way; they’ve shat on me from a great height.

David Elliott

They’ve whatnow? The transport minister said the NSW government feels crapped on by the rail union amid pay-related strikes causing commuter chaos. The splat — I mean spat — sounds like a pretty crappy situation all ’round, with commuters likely to get the shit end of the stick.

CRIKEY RECAP

Australia’s richest exploit ‘taxpayer-funded inheritance scheme’ with 32 SMSFs worth $100m+

Cam Wilson

Aug 31, 2022

29

“The wealth of Australia’s top self-managed super funds (SMSFs) continues to grow. There were 32 funds worth more than $100 million in 2020, up from 27 in 2019, new documents reveal. Information about the top 100 largest SMSFs in the 2019-20 financial years has been released by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) in response to a Crikey freedom of information request. The data reveals how Australia’s richest people are taking advantage of the favourable superannuation tax concessions.

“Australia’s largest SMSF had $401 million in the 2020 financial year compared with $544 million the year before — each fund is identified only by its position in the top 100, meaning that the top fund may not be the same one as the year before. The next two largest had $371 million and $273 million in 2020, respectively. The smallest had $53 million, up from $52 million the year before.”

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Albanese’s ahead of the game as the media fail to learn the rules

Christopher Warren

Aug 31, 2022

8

“Shocked, all of Australia’s big opinionistas leaned in, took a big bite and chewed it over: ‘Labor must focus on voters, not hounding Morrison,’ declaimed the AFR’s Phil Coorey … But Albanese isn’t playing by new rules. He’s playing by Tony Abbott’s rules, the ones he set with much less justifiable inquiries into the Rudd-Gillard governments with royal commissions into the pink batts and then trade unions (which functioned as a continued persecution of Gillard‘s 1990s legal work.)

“Although our humanities-trained media prefer politics as (preferably dark) arts, sometimes a bit of science can help explain our two-party political systems. Game theory, with its abstruse mathematics, claims to explain what’s going on as it identifies best possible (or least worst) outcomes in strategic competition.”

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Sussan Ley said Australia has no electric utes. Her government is to blame, says expert

Emma Elsworthy

Aug 31, 2022

5

“It could’ve saved Australians $5.9 billion in motoring costs, seen a much wider variety of electric vehicles (EV) in our short-supplied car market, and possibly left us with cheaper petrol, the Australia Institute’s Richie Merzian says. Yet Australia remains one of the only countries in the OECD without fuel efficiency standards, something Merzian — the climate and energy program director at the think tank — says has put our national security in jeopardy.

“‘The Coalition government might as well have an electric ute made out of metal with a plaque reading ‘I stopped these’,” Merzian told SmartCompany, ‘because they have gone out of their way to slow down the uptake of cleaner cars, not just electric cars, leaving Australians paying more to drive the same amount of distance as more efficient cars in other markets.’ “

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Iran delivers European ‘peace initiative’ on Ukraine to Russia (Al Jazeera)

Pain, fear, stigma: what people who survived monkeypox want you to know (The New York Times)

US asked British spy agency to stop Guardian publishing Snowden revelations (The Guardian)

South Africa’s Pistorius sues for right to parole hearing (Al Jazeera)

Russia shuts major gas pipeline to Europe — again (BBC)

South Korea considers survey on boyband BTS members’ military service (The Guardian)

US Justice Dept says Trump team may have moved classified papers amid probe (Reuters)

Māori ward question ‘like putting petrol on a fire’, New Plymouth councillor says (Stuff)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Yes, Shaq’s Voice support came from nowhere, but his star power thrusts our platform into the global civil rights arena — Hannah McGlade (The National Indigenous Times): “We can all agree on one thing: Shaq O’Neill as a Voice ambassador was a left field announcement from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister for Indigenous Affairs Linda Burney … This man is also loved by a great many Aboriginal youth for whom basketball has long been embraced … Ambassadors for Voice are sensible. Of course, those ambassadors should largely be Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people from this country, but to rule out international figures is parochial and short-sighted. Australia lags the world in terms of recognition of Indigenous rights and treatment of Indigenous peoples and racism is a global issue that Black Lives Matter so powerful highlighted.

“The outrage of senators Jacinta Price and Lidia Thorpe, and others, to the Shaq endorsement reflects their own opposition to the Voice and constitutional recognition of Indigenous rights. They will make complaints and generate opposition about anything the government does to progress the historic constitutional referendum, which is a great shame because their fight is not only ideological and misplaced, but also very damaging to Indigenous people’s rights to political voice and self-determination. That Aboriginal women from the opposite side of politics have become a driving force against progressive rights-based reform is especially saddening.”

The stage three tax cuts will be the ultimate test of the Albanese government’s desire for consensus — David Speers (ABC): “It was a prescient position, given the pandemic that would soon wreak havoc. Yet two years later, in mid-2021 — after those fiscal and economic conditions had indeed deteriorated sharply thanks to COVID — Labor locked in its promise to keep the stage three tax cuts. Debt was spiralling, but Labor argued the top-end tax breaks must proceed to provide ‘certainty and clarity to Australian working families’. Labor’s decision was, of course, driven by politics and not fiscal or economic conditions. It wanted an election focused on Scott Morrison, integrity, and pandemic mismanagement — not tax cuts and aspiration. Politically, this may well have been the right call at the time and may have helped Labor secure a majority government.

“Now Labor must weigh whether to stick with stage three or break a big promise. Right now, the official, nothing-to-see-here line from the prime minister and treasurer is that ‘our position that we took to the election hasn’t changed’. The policy is defended with as little enthusiasm as possible. Despite their enormous cost, Labor’s heart is quite obviously not in the stage three tax cuts in the same way it is for policies on climate change, an anti-corruption commission or an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. With nearly two years to go before the tax cuts are due to kick in, there’s a long way to go in this debate. If the Albanese government is genuinely willing to shift previous positions in response to genuine community consensus, the fate of this tax is still in play.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Kaurna Country (also known as Adelaide)

• SA Treasurer Stephen Mullighan will be at a business lunch at the InterContinental Hotel Adelaide in an event hosted by CEDA.

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• The Ukrainian ambassador to Australia Vasyl Myroshnychenko will participate in a Q&A event at Western Sydney University’s Parramatta City campus.

• Journalist Jane Caro and author Rae Cairns will chat with fellow author Pamela Hart about Caro’s book, The Mother, and Cairns’ new book, The Good Mother, at Glee Books.