Taking care of business… visas

RACE TO THE BOTTOM

A visa that allowed foreigners to live in Australia if they spent $5 million here has been axed, The Australian ($) reports, mostly affecting Chinese migrants who made up 90% of the cohort. Under the visa subclass, people could get Australian citizenship if they spent 40 days a year in Australia, The Australian ($) says, and were not required to learn or speak English. It comes after the paper reported foreign criminals have used it to get citizenship. Indeed the entire Business Innovation and Investment Program has been quietly shut down as the government focuses instead on skilled workers. It’s a good idea, the Grattan Institute found — about $125 billion over the next 30 years worth of good because it found skilled workers retire 20 years after migrants in the business program.

Meanwhile The Australian ($) is digging through broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf’s social media, unearthing a joke the Lebanese-Australian made about Asian mothers: “As Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan’s Academy Awards win is being celebrated by Asians around the globe, just as many Asian mums’ reactions’ be like: ‘just one award each? Why not 3? Next year get three. Don’t be lazy’.” Most people found it funny, considering Lebanon is in West Asia. The paper notes one person commented that the Tiger mum trope can be damaging, with it pointedly adding that Lattouf is alleging ABC discriminates based on race. Lattouf told the Oz’s media reporters they ought to read her book How to Lose Friends and Influence White People — “particularly the chapter outlining how tabloid newspapers lean on racism as part of their business model”. Ouch.

BLACKING OUT

The Victorian opposition has withdrawn its support for a Treaty in the state because of “secrecy”, the National Indigenous Times reports. Nationals leader Peter Walsh — who is also the Coalition’s Indigenous affairs spokesman — said “issues around the Traditional Owner Settlement Act” needed resolving (it allows for out-of-court settlement of Native Title). Sky News Australia continues that Walsh also wanted a review into the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act but Labor ignored him — you know, the act Walsh was accused of spreading misinformation about last September? Abandoning Treaty is quite the 180 from 2022, when Walsh said the Coalition wanted to advance the Treaty process in Victoria to support “self-determination and reconciliation”. Walsh said “things have changed” — yeah, the failed Voice to Parliament emboldening conservative oppositions such as the one in Queensland to ditch Indigenous progress.

Meanwhile federal Coalition Indigenous Affairs spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says proud Australians are “sick of being shamed”, The Daily Mail reports, after Woolworths stopped selling Australia Day merch… because no-one buys it. Fellow No campaigner Nyunggai Warren Mundine went on to call Australia “probably the most successful multi-everything country in the world”… even though two in five non-white Australians told a 2022 survey they regularly cop racism at work. Meanwhile The Australian ($) is coming for preschools, with a story headlined “‘Indoctrination’: Childcare kids told land stolen from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people” reporting that more than 7,000 do an Acknowledgement of Country that says the land belonged to Indigenous peoples. Yawn. Next.

HOT TO TROT

Woodside and Esso will supply gas to Australia’s south-east coast until 2033 under a deal announced last night, Guardian Australia reports, which will plug “reliability gaps” from 2025 that the Australian Energy Market Operator had warned about. It also excuses both fossil-fuel giants from the $12-a-gigajoule price cap when selling in Australia, per our gas code. Woodside and Esso will deliver a total of 260 petajoules, with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission watching closely to ensure they do. It seems the prime minister’s office framed this filthy fossil-fuel news in the warm embrace of a cost-of-living media release because Guardian Australia and Nine newspapers both wrote it up that way.

Continuing thusly, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is planning a cost-of-living package before the May budget, the AFR ($) reports, which could include energy bill relief, rent assistance and/or childcare subsidies (as the Australian Bureau of Statistics suggested last year). The Age ($) continues that MPs will meet on Wednesday to brainstorm ideas that won’t send inflation climbing — that’s because we typically spend cost-of-living relief dosh, which causes prices to climb. On Friday the International Monetary Fund advised that the government should stop spending to deter the Reserve Bank from raising interest rates again. In any case, nothing can happen until Parliament resumes on February 6.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

This month some 10,000 Austrians walked to their front door, collected their mail and tore open an envelope to reveal a plea from an heiress to help her spend precisely $41.6 million. Marlene Engelhorn is looking for a Guter Rat — that’s a rather humorous translation of the words “good council” — of 50 lay people from the 10,000 cohort to reflect Austria’s gender, age and income demographics. She’s pretty well known in the country — a descendant of the man who founded one of the world’s largest chemical companies BASF, Engelhorn has been working hard to reform tax policies so money can be more evenly spread around. She’s already vowed to donate 90% of her wealth before she dies, but this latest move is putting her money where her mouth is.

So how did she choose the 10,000? Randomly from a database whether they were a citizen or not — though they had to be over 16, presumably to stop skate parks and cat cafés popping up on every corner. The 50 Guter Rats (I’m choosing this as their nickname) will be paid nearly $2,000 a week for four months to work out how to spend the dosh, The New York Times ($) says, while their hotels, meals and travel will be paid for too. Cripes. There are just a few rules: Engelhorn said they can’t give it to people or groups deemed “unconstitutional, hostile or inhumane” (waxing salons and hot wings shops are out then) and it can’t be given to anyone in the group or their mates (Australian pollies could never).

Hoping you can spare a couple of dollars for those less fortunate, today and always.

SAY WHAT?

I’ll let you know when I go bad. I really think I’ll be able to tell you. I feel my mind is stronger now than it was 25 years ago. Is that possible?

Donald Trump

The former US president appeared to confuse his Republican fellow hopeful nominee Nikki Haley with the former Democrat speaker Nancy Pelosi, causing Haley to question whether Trump was “mentally fit”. He retorted that he’d “aced” a cognitive test.

CRIKEY RECAP

AI is producing ‘fake’ Indigenous art trained on real artists’ work without permission

CAM WILSON

“Both Adobe and Shutterstock run popular stock image websites where people can buy AI-generated images for a variety of commercial purposes. On each of them, there are dozens of fake Indigenous art-style images for sale (that have been marked on the platform as AI-generated) …

“Adobe allows people to upload AI images for sale and earn money every time they’re purchased. The company requires sellers to only submit images for which they own the intellectual property, but it’s not clear how this is policed. Shutterstock sells images generated by users using the company’s on-site AI model trained on their images and as a result does not have this problem.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Russia says at least 25 killed in blast at Donetsk market (Al Jazeera)

Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos Jr takes [government] helicopter to Coldplay concert
(BBC)

Novak Djokovic drops just three games and equals Roger Federer record as he reaches Australian Open quarterfinals (CNN)

Gaza death toll from Israeli strikes 25,000, health officials say (Reuters)

Reopening [NZ] oil and gas exploration ‘could be Treaty breach’ (Stuff)

Why this [Indonesian] presidential frontrunner is stirring fears of the ‘death of democracy’ (The New York Times) ($)

More than 100,000 protest across Germany over far-right AfD’s mass deportation meetings (The Guardian)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Antoinette Lattouf sacking shows how the ABC has been damaged by successive Coalition governments — Denis Muller (The Conversation): “[ABC managing director David] Anderson has also said the decision to sack her was not influenced by external pressure, although he did not directly refer to the Lawyers for Israel campaign. ABC staff are not convinced and want greater transparency around the complaints process. Nor has there been an explanation from the ABC about why the posting by Lattouf of the Human Rights Watch report was regarded as a sackable offence when the ABC had itself twice run stories about it.

“What does it say about the state of mind inside the management of the ABC that it was thought reasonable to issue a generalised blanket instruction to a presenter to not post anything “controversial” on social media? It suggests one panicked by the prospect that somebody somewhere might take offence at something somebody at the ABC might post on a controversial matter. It suggests a state of mind induced by two decades of cumulative intimidation, hostility, board-stacking and financial punishment inflicted on the ABC by successive Liberal-National federal governments. Of course, the history of the ABC is littered with rows between itself and governments of all stripes, but these were generally episodic and focused on a single cause. What was seen between 1996 and 2022, except for the period 2007-13 when Labor was in office, was not episodic. It was systematic, sustained and ideological. The consequences are now being laid bare.”

Ignorance the basis for poisonous prejudice — Nyunggai Warren Mundine (The Australian) ($): “October 7 wasn’t only an attack on Israel. It was also an attack on the civilised world. All reasonable people, including Israel’s government and military, are concerned about the impact of this battle on Gazan civilians. History indicates it’s impossible to avoid civilian casualties when fighting monstrous regimes with no regard for human life. An estimated 600,000 German civilians (including 76,000 children) died in Allied bombings during World War II. No-one really knows how many civilians died in the defeat of ISIS.

“Up to 11,000 civilians, 10 times the official estimate, are believed killed in the battle for Mosul alone, but it’s hard to know how many were buried under the 8 million tonnes of rubble. That’s just one city. We don’t know the true number of Gazan civilian casualties because the figures are provided by Hamas, prolific liars who don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. We do know casualties would be massively reduced if Hamas didn’t conduct itself from schools and hospitals or use Gazans as human shields. We also know Israeli military action could be ended if Hamas returns the hostages and delivers up the October 7 attackers to face justice. But only Hamas has this within its power.”

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WHAT’S ON TODAY

Whadjuk Noongar Country (also known as Perth)

• Artist Sophie Zadeh hosts a drawing and clay workshop about emotions and facial expressions at Midland Junction Arts Centre.