A price on their heads

HOME AND AWAY

Hong Kong police have offered a A$191,800 bounty for Australian-born, Melbourne lawyer Kevin Yam over alleged foreign collusion under national security laws, the ABC reports, an accusation that has left the Australian government “deeply disappointed”, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong says. Yam is one of several pro-democracy figures on the wanted list, HK police said, along with Adelaide-based former HK politician Ted Hui and people living in Britain, Canada and the US. A national security cop, Steve Li, claimed the group had tried to “destroy Hong Kong” and “intimidate officials” by supposedly advocating for sanctions against the government, but Yam isn’t worried about the warrant, pointing out that Australia has “suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong”. Hui was similarly unmoved, calling it “ridiculous and hilarious”. Still, The Australian ($) describes the warrant as an “unprecedented application of the Beijing-authored national security law” that could mean confrontation in our shaky relationship with Beijing.

Meanwhile, Australia’s former “gold standard” quarantine accommodation in Howard Springs has been signed over to Defence Force personnel, the NT News ($) reports. The 3500-bed facility was closed nearly a year ago, but a new cohort of 1300 residents from more than 10 nations will move in this month. Assistant Defence Minister Matt Thistlethwaite says it’s perfect for them, being just 10km to Robertson Barracks and just over 20km to Larrakeyah Barracks and RAAF base Darwin. The federal government will pitch in $50 million a year for five years for the space. And finally, Indonesian President Joko Widodo is in town! Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is expected to announce a relaxing of visa rules for Indonesians who want to travel here, the SMH ($) reports — it costs them $140, with a long application, a medical exam and proof of income required just for a tourist visa. Sheesh.

I KNOW WHAT I NO

Pauline Hanson has a 2000-word anti-Voice essay and she’s not afraid to use it. The One Nation leader told Guardian Australia she’ll send it to voters if she’s frozen out of the official referendum pamphlet for the No side — and with Nationals Leader David Littleproud slamming her contribution, it may happen. Hanson’s essay alleges that the Voice — an advisory body — would “effectively undo the great achievement of the 1967 referendum“, when 90% of us voted to count Indigenous peoples as part of our population and give the Commonwealth the power to make laws for them. Both the Yes and the No sides have two weeks to give their blurbs to the AEC so both sides of the Voice debate can be posted to every home in Australia.

To someone else without a voice, and whistleblower Bernard Collaery had to get government approval so his barrister Bret Walker SC could look at the evidence against him, Guardian Australia reports. He also needed permission to speak to his lawyers (it had to be in rooms the Commonwealth chose), move documents around the country (carried by a lawyer, so costly as hell, or else fork out $1000 on a courier), and make drafts (they had to be on Commonwealth laptop computers at pre-approved locations). This is all according to a submission to the inquiry that says the whistleblower was at a “profound” disadvantage because of the secrecy restrictions. Meanwhile the Pope has met Stella Assange, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s wife, AP News reports. Pope Francis sent a letter to Julian in March 2021, and Stella says he understands Julian is “suffering and is concerned”.

HE HAS THE NACC

National Anti-Corruption commissioner Paul Brereton has warned he will name and shame anyone who makes inappropriate or unfounded referrals to the watchdog in an effort to weaponise it via publicity. He added that he mostly cares about current matters, not historical ones — The Australian ($) says it might be related to Coalition politicians looking at referring Labor ministers over their links to unions, and at Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus over the government’s secret payment to Brittany Higgins — Liberal MP Linda Reynolds has confirmed she’ll be reporting it because she wants the basis of the settlement to be public. Dismal. Yesterday was day one for the NACC — Crikey reports that by 5pm on Sunday it had received 44 website reports and five phone calls that it’d be following up on, Brereton confirmed.

Speaking of — Reynolds says Dreyfus denying her legal assistance funding left her prejudiced, the SMH ($) reports. She asked Dreyfus if the government would pay for a barrister in the ACT’s Lehrmann inquiry — she was given taxpayer dollars to respond to two subpoenas and hire a solicitor to keep an eye on the proceedings, but not a barrister. Reynolds reckons Dreyfus shouldn’t have picked and chosen, though one may wonder whether the nation’s first law officer should’ve — or even could’ve — written her a blank legal cheque. Dreyfus said Reynold’s requests were dealt with using rulebook — he previously pointed out that parts of the probe may relate to her actions outside her former ministerial duties, which may or may not relate to the ACT’s top prosecutor accusing her of trying to coach the defence via a text message to Bruce Lehrmann’s barrister.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

In 1923, a renowned agricultural professor named Hidesaburo Ueno asked a student if he knew where he could get an Atika puppy. Atikas are one of Japan’s oldest and most popular breeds, and were designated as a national icon in 1931 for their calm, intelligent, brave, and obedient nature. A small pup born that year turned up at his home shortly after, but Ueno and his wife Yae feared he had not made the journey. They tenderly cared for the little pup, which they named Hachi (eight in Japanese) and ko (an honorific his students suggested) for six months until he was right as rain. As Ueno would ready himself to walk to the train station in the mornings, Hachiko would mill about, until the pair, with Ueno’s other two dogs, would stroll together through the streets of Tokyo to the station. As the train carriage doors opened after a long day’s work, Hachiko would be sitting there in the evening light, waiting to walk his Ueno home.

But in May 1925, Ueno suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and shut his eyes for the last time. He was 53. At his wake, Hachiko crawled under his master’s coffin and refused to budge, though eventually he was rehomed with Ueno’s gardener. Even so, every morning Hachiko would pitter-patter out the door, down the street and sit stoically at the train station, as if escorting Ueno’s ghost to work. In the evening, Hachiko would make the trip a second time — rain, hail or shine — to sit at that ticket gate, peering “at each passenger as if he were looking for someone”, says Professor Mayumi Itoh. Hachiko was regarded as a nuisance until a local newspaper wrote about his trips — suddenly food donations poured in, poetry was written, and a statue was erected in the loyal pooch’s honour. His death in 1935 made the front pages of many newspapers in Japan, and his statue still stands outside Shibuya station today, waiting patiently for Ueno to return forever. Happy 100th birthday, Hachiko.

Hoping something moves you today.

SAY WHAT?

The [UK] prime minister agrees with Ben Stokes. He said he simply wouldn’t want to win a game in the manner Australia did.

Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson

The UK PM also accused Australia of breaking the spirit of cricket amid the controversial Jonny Bairstow stumping, even though Bairstow had done the same thing just two days before when trying to get Australia’s Marnus Labuschagne out.

CRIKEY RECAP

An unfinished political obituary for Stuart Robert, a flat circle

MAEVE MCGREGOR

“Some months later, he again made a splash for having curiously decided to base his ministerial office in Melbourne, with one of his two senior advisers living in Adelaide and the other based in Brisbane. It’s unclear whether the guiding rationale for this decision was ever truly disclosed, though why should we expect it to be: God presumably gives exalted people a reprieve on such matters.

“All told, however, it would be a distortion of historical truth to suppose the sum of Robert’s political career was consumed only by self-interest and avarice. Ideologically, and with precision, he too played his part in an earnestly destructive government that left in its wake a country decidedly less equal, less kind, more divided, crueller, deader and more corrupt.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Israel attacks Jenin in biggest West Bank incursion in 20 years (The Guardian)

Pope condemns Qur’an burning in Sweden and calls for respect (Al Jazeera)

Wall St ends slightly higher in shortened session, Tesla jumps (Reuters)

‘Erode Vox’s supporters’: could Spain’s new far-right party split the movement? (euronews)

France riots ease as mayors hold anti-violence rally (BBC)

South Korean firefighters touch down in Ottawa [Canada] as wildfires continue to rage (CBC)

THE COMMENTARIAT

If we vote Yes, are we helping reconciliation? That’s affirmative — Josh Bornstein (The Age) ($): “The No campaign is undoubtedly propagating Trumpist misinformation designed to scare voters, but it is also garnering crucial support by using the same strategies that have most recently destroyed affirmative action measures in American colleges and universities. Unless those imported strategies are directly confronted and repudiated, it is likely the Voice referendum will fail. Last Thursday, the increasingly conservative US Supreme Court overruled long-standing precedent by ruling in a 6-3 majority decision that affirmative action measures designed to reduce racial inequality by ensuring that more students from minority racial backgrounds were admitted to universities were unconstitutional…

“The court’s recent ruling requires universities to treat students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds equally in a country in which admissions to the tertiary education system are characterised by profound inequality of access and outcome … The reality is that the No campaign encourages Australians to lie to themselves; to deny reality. To pretend that the disturbing inequalities currently suffered by Australia’s Indigenous population — in life expectancy, health, education, income and rates of incarceration — don’t exist. To deny some of the most disturbing parts of our history. To pretend that Aboriginal Australians were not treated as non-citizens for many decades, were not deprived of the vote, were not separated from their families and were not subjected to massacres and violence.”

Biden is taking aim at Trump’s biggest strength — Ezra Klein (The New York Times) ($): “Joe Biden just offered a window into what a Biden-Trump rematch might look like. Well, part of it, at least. The wildness of Donald Trump’s political style often obscures — at least to his critics — the more banal dimensions of his appeal. The strongest of Trump’s arguments, and the one Biden has the most to fear from in 2024, is economic. In 2016, Trump ran as a businessman savant who would wield his mastery of the deal in service of the American people. ’My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy,’ Trump said. ’I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States.”

“Trump said that elites had sold you out. They traded your job to China. They let your bridges and roads and buildings crumble. They respected the work they did — work that happens behind a computer screen, work that needs fancy degrees, work that happens in offices rather than factories and cities rather than towns — and dismissed the work you did. They got rich and you got nothing. Exit polls found that Trump won large majorities among those who thought the economy was ‘fair’ or ‘poor’. Trump did not, during his presidency, turn that critique into an agenda. There were islands of action — trade policy foremost among them — but the order of the day was incoherence.”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)

• Yes23 advocates Jade Ritchie, Selwyn Button and Thomas Mayo will speak about the Voice to Parliament and what it means at a breakfast at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre.

Kaurna Country (also known as Adelaide)

• ABC’s Professor Christopher Daniels will speak about wildlife conservation in the city in a talk held at Hetzel Lecture Theatre.