Labor MPs plead for Gaza Palestinians

CRIMES AND PUNISHMENT

Early Childhood Education Minister Anne Aly and Industry Minister Ed Husic say Palestinians in Gaza are receiving collective punishment from Israel while it hunts Hamas, the SMH ($) reports. Collective punishment is a war crime per Common Article 33 of the Geneva Convention and Additional Protocol II. Husic said that October 7, when 1,300 Israelis were killed by Hamas, was called “Israel’s 9/11” in terms of devastation, and now the number of Palestinians killed (3,478) exceeds the deaths of 9/11. “We don’t see any public landmarks in Australia that are being lit up in red, black, white and green,” he said. It comes as 16 Labor MPs in NSW have broken ranks with Premier Chris Minns, the SMH ($) says, by signing a letter that both condemns Hamas’ “inhumane” atrocities and calls for Israel to comply with international humanitarian law. Minns and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have both “given unwavering support to Israel”, the paper says — and so did the UK’s Rishi Sunak overnight, the ABC adds.

Meanwhile the Albanese government is fast-tracking a national racism strategy, Multicultural Affairs Minister Andrew Giles told Guardian Australia, because of a “renewed sense of urgency” amid the Hamas-Israel conflict. A draft was due in 2024. The strategy has been designed with the Australian Human Rights Commission but Giles says he’s also speaking to the Jewish and Palestinian communities. Racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have been on the rise for a while, but “There have been at least two neo-Nazi incidents on the streets of Melbourne in recent times, and that lends a sense of urgency,” he says. One final thing: the ABC has a great forensic story about the evidence surrounding the deadly Gaza hospital blast, in which 471 died while sheltering around the facility.

ASSANGE: NO PLEAS, NO DIPLOMACY

The Albanese government is not pushing the US government to ditch its prosecution of Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange but rather plans to wait until after his US extradition to act, according to documents former senator Rex Patrick FOI’d for Michael West Media. He requested all docs related to Assange from June 2022 to September 2023 from the Attorney-General’s Department. It returned just five. Patrick says they reveal a position “not to engage on the Assange case until after he has been extradited to the United States, put to trial, convicted, sentenced and has exhausted all appeal rights”. Then we might step in to get him to serve his sentence here.

Meanwhile whistleblower David McBride has asked Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus to use his so-called extraordinary powers to help him, Guardian Australia reports, before he heads to court in the ACT next month over allegedly leaking documents to the ABC for its “Afghan Files” series. The former military lawyer says the public doesn’t want him prosecuted, but Dreyfus has said before that he can’t get involved — the powers are used only in “very unusual and exceptional circumstances”. And besides, he’d have to strong-arm the Commonwealth director of public prosecutions to do so.

WRONG SIDE OF THE LAWYERS

Veteran television presenter Lisa Wilkinson is suing 10 Network because it refused to pay $723,000 for her lawyers, Gillis Delaney Lawyers partner Anthony Jefferies and barrister Sue Chrysanthou, The New Daily reports. Wilkinson is being sued for defamation by former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann because of a 2021 interview on The Project with his former colleague Brittany Higgins. Wilkinson used her own silks but says the network should pay because she’s an employee — at first, she said, it wouldn’t pay, then it said it would pay after the case wraps up. It’s a lot of dosh, a spokesperson said: it needs to be “justified through due process”.

From those with a microphone to the voiceless. Queensland public servants have been offered five days’ special paid leave for psychological distress if they are grieving the failed Voice to Parliament referendum, The Courier-Mail ($) reports. Almost 70% of the Sunshine State voted No. In SA, Adelaide Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith is in strife for ordering the Aboriginal flag be flown at half-mast after the Voice referendum defeat, The Advertiser ($) says. Opposition member Sam Telfer asked Local Government Minister Geoff Brock if it was allowed, to which he basically responded no — not without a council resolution, anyway.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

Chickens are roaming through a WA school, and tardy kids are suddenly out the front door every darn morning to get to class. WA Today reports the 50 students at remote mining town Fairbridge’s Kalgoorlie campus just weren’t coping. It’s a school that helps down-on-their-luck kids get back into learning, but it can be tough: regional children can suffer mental health issues and have little professional support. Then one of the students had an idea — chicken therapy. Hey, it worked for me, the kid figured, so they brought their chickens Penny and Maggie into the playground. Hmm, teacher Jayde McKenzie said, let’s give it a try it for a few days. School attendance is now at 86% — which is extremely high for at-risk youth, the paper says.

“The kids just fell in love,” McKenzie says, adding she was blown away by “how quickly many re-engaged at school”. The WA Association for Mental Health was so impressed by the results it gave Fairbridge a $900 grant for a coop. Kids are fine to leave classrooms at any time to work inside the coop (with support staff nearby) or just sit down with the chickens to decompress. Penny and Maggie are very empathetic, McKenzie says, almost like a therapy dog. Often they will just nest in a kid’s lap “and listen while they talk to them”, with no judgment (except, I presume, if they were talking about a good chicken burger). It’s more like issues that a kid might not want to tell an adult, McKenzie says, adding that she encourages Australia’s teachers to think about Fairbridge’s clucky approach.

Folks, it’s been an extraordinarily hard week. Many have been grieving the Voice to Parliament referendum result, and nearly all of us have watched the Hamas-Israel conflict with a profound sense of sadness. It’s hard not to ache. I hope you take some time this weekend to do something that makes you feel a spark of joy — a swim in the ocean, a cuppa with a friend, lying in the park in the sunshine, or hugging a chicken. We must look after ourselves so we can take the world on again on Monday morning. Until then, wishing you a restful weekend.

SAY WHAT?

If Liberal politicians poked their head out of Parliament House, they would see first-hand the amazing harm reduction work already under way in the ACT. My advice to holidaymakers seeking to avoid unsociable elements when visiting Canberra is to avoid federal sitting weeks.

Michael Pettersson

The ACT Labor backbencher, who barracked for drug decriminalisation, responded to Senator Michaelia Cash’s fearmongering that drug tourists would head down the Hume Highway “hoping to experience the ACT’s party lifestyle” by saying running into federal politicians would be way worse.

CRIKEY RECAP

‘Completely unsound’: Experts skewer Indigenous Voice vote claim

KATE ATKINSON

“The claim that referendum results from electorates with high Indigenous populations show Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples voted against the Voice is false. Experts told AAP FactCheck that results at the electorate level are not an indication of how Indigenous peoples voted.

“While electorates with large Indigenous populations voted No to the Voice, Indigenous voters are still in the minority in these areas. Individual polling booths in locations with very high Indigenous populations provide better insight, but also can’t be used to infer how Indigenous peoples voted across the nation. False — the claim is inaccurate.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Israel’s war on Gaza: Is the West Bank under increased attack too? (Al Jazeera)

Ukraine war: Kyiv troop build-up reported across Dnipro river (BBC)

[UK PM Rishi] Sunak to push ahead with delayed ban on gay and trans conversion practices (The Guardian)

Trump attorney Sidney Powell pleads guilty in Georgia election subversion case (CNN)

Canadian sentenced for message suggesting Anne Frank’s diary was not authentic (CBC)

Jordan suspends bid for US House speaker, backs McHenry (Reuters)

Spain’s far-right Vox wants to freeze citizenship for Muslims (euronews)

THE COMMENTARIAT

The reckoning for decades of Israeli occupation is upon us — Antony Loewenstein (Crikey) ($): “As a Jew, I’ve long been disgusted with the proudly Jewish supremacist program on display in the Jewish state, backed by too many in the mainstream Jewish community in Australia and beyond. When I lived in East Jerusalem between 2016 and 2020 with my partner who worked for an international NGO, every day I saw the humiliation meted out by Israeli police to random Palestinians. I witnessed extremist Jewish settlers in Hebron openly calling for genocide against Arabs. The daily mechanics of the occupation involve myriad ways that Palestinians are treated like second-class citizens.

“In the past week, the unrelenting Israeli response arrived with predictably brute force. A friend in Gaza, Haneen, told me that Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of civilian homes and infrastructure had lasted for days but ‘felt like three years’. War crimes are being committed on a daily basis and yet the Western powers are endorsing it. Israel’s much-vaunted surveillance and intelligence apparatus was found gravely wanting despite claiming to have every inch of Gaza under constant watch. For the past decades, Israel has deployed an extensive array of drones, Palestinian spies (many times they’re blackmailed by Israel to pass along intelligence), so-called ‘smart walls’ and sophisticated listening devices. And yet Hamas was still able to mount a deadly attack.”

In Poland, we’ve gone from semi-dictatorship to democracy in days. Isn’t that great? — Witold Szabłowski (The Guardian): “At some point, Brussels grew tired of Poland’s democratic backsliding and decided to make €36 billion in EU COVID recovery support, earmarked for Poland, conditional on Warsaw’s observance of the rule of law. [The Law and Justice party] tried to convince voters that the EU was aggressively trying to meddle in our internal politics. For many observers it was obvious that in the long term this was tantamount to the beginnings of Polexit: if not quitting the EU, at least wrecking it from inside, something Putin would have been very happy about.

“Expect a big U-turn. Donald Tusk, the leader of the opposition Civic Coalition, the ex-president of the European Council, will want a strong Poland in the EU. Unblocking the COVID recovery funds is one of his main goals for the next four years. So we will not join you, dear Brits, outside the tent, after all. A few days ago, we lived in semi-dictatorship. Today we are a vibrant democracy that knew how and when to protect itself from the populists and Putin’s puppets. Isn’t that great? And the greatest thing, the one I am most proud of, is the turnout. It was 74.38%, an absolute record for Poland. This proves how important Poland is to Poles. How much we care. And how much we believe in democracy. Well done, dear Poles!”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• NSW Minister for Water, Housing, Homelessness, Mental Health, Youth and North Coast (phew!) Rose Jackson will speak about improving western Sydney in an event held by CEDA.

Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)

• Griffith Law School’s Olivera Simic will talk about her new book, Lola’s War: Rape Without Punishment, at Avid Reader bookshop.