Bribery and corruption

GRACE AND FAVOUR

The Morrison government paid millions of taxpayer dollars for Nauru processing to a businessman convicted of corruption, Guardian Australia reports. His name is Mozammil Gulamabbas Bhojani and he paid $120,000 in bribes to two people, including a Nauru MP — but the paper says the government leased Bhojani’s Budapest Hotel for accommodation for offshore processing at the same time and for years after. Bhojani, together with his brother, controlled companies in Australia, Nauru, India and the UAE, and the AFP started looking into him in 2015, ultimately charging him in 2020 for foreign bribery related to phosphate mining contracts. Former home affairs minister Peter Dutton had “jurisdiction over both the AFP and the Department of Home Affairs during the period of the AFP investigation into Bhojani, his being charged, and convicted”, the paper notes.

Meanwhile, far-right men’s rights group the Men’s Rights Agency (MRA) said Dutton had set up a meeting between it and then-legal affairs spokesperson Michaelia Cash before she voted against a family law reform package aimed at reducing conflict between separated parents, as The Australian ($) reports, but then the words disappeared mysteriously from the MRA website. Check out the cached version here, courtesy of The New Daily’s sleuthing. Labor Senator Linda White asked Cash about it yesterday, but she declined to answer. The Oz says the MRA has been known to “arrange for private investigators to hunt down men’s partners who were hiding in women’s refuges” in the past.

DEATH BY TASER

Cooma woman Clare Nowland, 95, died in hospital last night, one week after a NSW Police officer tasered her as she used her walker to slowly approach him with a steak knife. It came just hours after the cop, Kristian White, 33, was charged for “recklessly causing grievous bodily harm, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and common assault”, The Advertiser ($) lists. He’s suspended with full pay, the ABC adds. Police commissioner Karen Webb said the whole thing had been “traumatic for everyone in the police force” (just imagine what the great-grandmother’s family and friends are going through then) and stressed it was one of 2 million calls for assistance a year. She also added, before Nowland’s death, that the charges could be upgraded depending on “what happens”. The New York Times ($) picked up the story overnight.

To other police news now and the Australian Federal Police has launched a criminal investigation into former PwC exec Peter-John Collins after he shared confidential information about our tax laws with partners, the ABC reports. He signed three confidentiality agreements in 2013, 2016 and 2018, the broadcaster notes. Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the “PwC experience has been deeply, deeply troubling” and confirmed a government crackdown. It could mean the consulting giant is banned from lucrative government contracts. (Coincidentally, it comes as the federal government teamed up with the Coalition to block a teal bid for better transparency on road and rail projects, the SMH reports.) In NSW, the AFR ($) reports Finance Minister Courtney Housso said her state was already working on introducing “severe penalties” in the “millions of dollars” for businesses that leak sensitive info.

RADIO SILENCE

Radio host Erin Molan says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ghosted her after she wrote a column that was headlined “Trust me Albo it’s over, I’m breaking up with you”, Perth Now reports. Reader, I wish I was joking. She sent the PM a video message (?!) and never heard back, despite a “series of pleas” including a text that reads: “I feel like a stalker.” Albo hasn’t replied. Molan reckons they used to call and text each other, and says it shows how hard it is to write columns without offending people. “It’s hard to come up with bloody ideas to write about,” she said. “Half the time you are making stuff up.” May I humbly suggest to you Molan, journalist to journalist, that you avoid doing that? What a world.

To another bust-up now and independent Senator Lidia Thorpe has walked out on a parliamentary hearing after Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy called her an “absolute disgrace” to “your own people”, The Age ($) reports. Yikes. Thorpe was asking about “Black money” being spent on cops while youth organisations in the Top End needed funding — there was $14.2 million earmarked for community safety initiatives but it went to police, as The Australian ($) explains. McCarthy responded that Labor had given $25 million for youth services, and besides, she said, First Nations folks are on the police force. Thorpe and McCarthy repeatedly yelled “Shame on you!” until things settled down a bit and both withdrew their remarks.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Do you ever wonder where kissing came from? It was long thought to be a practice that dates back some 3500 years ago to ancient India, The Washington Post ($) reports, but a newer study suggested smooching was carved into clay tablets from Mesopotamia about 1000 years before. But then they found a gorgeous carving called Ain Sakhri Lovers in a cave system near Bethlehem (assuming this is two people embracing, not an upside-down scrotum) which was some 11,000 years old. Wowza. Sheril Kirshenbaum wrote a whole book about the science of kissing, and says it may go all the way back to the dawn of humankind — after all, our closest relatives in the animal kingdom — like bonobos — snog each other in their own monkey way (it gets more erotic than that, but it’s too early to go into it.)

So why the urge to lock lips, suck face, and pash on? It’s a good way to size up genetic compatibility with your partner, but it also allows us to trade microbes to create more colourful gut flora. Also, it turns us on, which helps us continue the species — no small thing. Interestingly, however, we don’t know much about it, Kirshenbaum continued. “Here’s something that touches all of us,” Kirshenbaum said, “yet science has barely scratched the surface of it.” Science nerds are a bit squeamish about even calling it kissing — one study about Neanderthals doing so refers to it rather dryly as swapping spit. The BBC sets the scene: “He was a Neanderthal, and stark naked apart from a fur cape … He cleared his throat, looked her up and down, and — in an absurdly high-pitched, nasal voice — deployed his best chat-up line.” My stars.

Hoping you feel the love around you today.

SAY WHAT?

While keenly interested in the NRL’s opinion on hip-drop tackles and the six-again rule, I don’t think I’ll be referring to them for constitutional advice in making my decisions on this matter.

Scott Morrison

The former PM’s continual attempts to come across as a daggy dad continue beyond the grave. Morrison claimed the Voice — an advisory body with no powers to influence policy — would lead to confusion and uncertainty for everything from national defence to Centrelink. His claim flies in the face of the Commonwealth’s top legal adviser finding that the Voice would “enhance” our system of government.

CRIKEY RECAP

The ABC doesn’t need News Corp — News Corp needs the ABC

CHRISTOPHER WARREN

“News Corp has bullied the ABC into letting itself be used as the Delaware-based company’s major publicity channel. Unless you’re part of the declining grumpy old man demographic prepared to pay for the resentment hit hidden behind the News Corp paywall, your only regular exposure to the view from News Corp will be on the ABC through its television and radio talk programs.

“Deliberately disingenuous, News Corp also relies on policing both what the ABC reports and how it reports it, fighting against diverse viewpoints which would force us all to recognise just how extreme its point of view is. It was News Corp as content police that drove the fake hysteria against the (widely held) observations of Stan Grant over the hard politics of the Crown and colonisation.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Tina Turner: legendary rock’n’roll singer dies aged 83 (The Guardian)

Canada’s household debt is now highest in the G7 (BBC)

Exclusive: Russian hypersonic scientist accused of betraying secrets to China (Reuters)

Democracy deteriorating in Hungary under Viktor Orban, report says (euronews)

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis files to run for president in 2024 (CNN)

Four Filipinas sue diplomat employers in Switzerland for slavery (Al Jazeera)

THE COMMENTARIAT

The Andrews government in Victoria has surrendered to environmental activists over native forest harvesting — Joel Fitzgibbon (The Australian) ($): “Stopping native forestry in one state to import the product from another state is not a plan, it’s a pathway to more extreme bushfires, greater import dependence, and more deforestation and fauna extinction in developing countries. In a state hospital or state school crisis the Commonwealth wouldn’t leave the matter to the states, it would engage. With a decision of the Federal Court on an RFA challenge launched by activists in NSW pending, the federal government must also urgently engage with the states to secure the domestically produced hardwood supplies our economy needs.

“Australian and other investors are coming to realise the greater role forestry can play in addressing climate change and how much more we can do with carbon-storing-wood in the built environment. Meanwhile, some state governments seem intent on killing the sector and the jobs it creates. If we are serious about reviving our manufacturing sector, protecting jobs, addressing climate change, and building more housing with sustainable and renewable timber, we need to put more trees in the ground and accept that industry needs ongoing access to Australia’s native estate, managed sustainably to the strictest environmental standards.”

Albanese has not turned into the incredible shrinking prime minister (unlike his predecessors) — Niki Savva (The SMH) ($): “Dutton and the dominant conservative Liberals have sought refuge on the outer fringes of the right, struggling for relevance as mainstream opponents steal their clothes, their real estate and their supporters. This has left moderates like Simon Birmingham in an excruciating, untenable position, straddling a barbed wire fence, neither condemning nor defending their leader.  Albanese’s premeditated transition from left-wing bomb thrower to centre-road prime minister has been fascinating, infuriating and bemusing to watch, depending on where you reside on the spectrum. Along the way he has stayed largely true to himself …

“Albanese is much more even-tempered than Kevin Rudd, managing to land policies despite a difficult Senate. He has not turned into a robot like Julia Gillard did. Unlike Tony Abbott, he has not been so overwhelmed by the job that he outsourced it to his most senior staffer even less well-equipped than he was to handle it, thereby ensuring dismissal in near record time. Albanese has not been kept on a tight leash by factional enemies or friends as Malcolm Turnbull was, nor become a secretive control freak like Morrison whose last days in office were described as a ‘madhouse’ by one senior business leader.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)

• British restaurateur Asma Khan will chat about her career in food and media at an event at Monalto.

• Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas will speak about the state budget at a speech at the Grand Hyatt hotel.

Kaurna Country (also known as Adelaide)

• Department of the Premier and Cabinet’s Peter Worthington-Eyre will speak about First Nations folks using data to help close the gap in a talk at the University of Adelaide.