wage stagnation monetary policy
(Image: Getty)

MONEY FOR JAM (AND RENT)

If you earn the average wage ($73,000) you’ll get double the tax relief — more than $1,500 — under Labor’s changes to the stage three tax cuts that leave 84% of us with more money in our pockets. Guardian Australia reports that if you make $100,000, you’ll get an extra $800, bringing your total tax cut to $2,100. A household income of $130,000 will get a combined tax cut of $2,600, which is more than double what it was getting under the Coalition-era policy ($1,000). If you earn $40,000, you’ll get a tax cut of more than $650, up from nothing, nada, bupkis. The Australian ($), looking out for the Aussie battler, points out that those making more than $200,000 will lose half their $9,075 tax cut, leaving them with about $4,657. Oh, the horror. But there are 12 winners for every loser, the SMH ($) points out, or 11 million people in total who get a tax cut. News.com.au graphs how much you’ll get.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will acknowledge the broken election promise not to touch the cuts when he announces the tweaks today, but will say sometimes you’ve got to do what’s right. Here’s how, as the AFR ($) explains: forget the flat 30% tax rate for $45,000 to $200,000 — we’re keeping the 37% tax rate for salaries over $135,000, while those on $190,000 will pay 45% (that rate used to start at $200,000). Those making up to $45,000 will pay only 16% in tax, down from 19%, meaning every single taxpayer gets a cut. The paper sniffs that low- and middle-income earners had already benefited from stages one and two in the past six years. Mhm, and last year the price of groceries went up 7.5%, power bills went up 25%, and rent went up 13%. Any reader who’s lived on the breadline knows every 10 bucks counts.

MAKING A RACQUET

There may be some tired eyes today after former world No. 2, Germany’s Alex Zverev, knocked dual grand slam champion, Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz, out of the Australian Open early this morning, The Age ($) reports. It marks the first time the German has beaten a top-five opponent in a grand slam. Zverev will face stiff competition in third seed Daniil Medvedev on Friday (he beat Pole Hubert Hurkacz) — Medvedev won five of their six matches last year, the Herald Sun notes. The other pair in the semis are 10-time champion Serbia’s Novak Djokovic and dark horse Italy’s Jannik Sinner.

Meanwhile Mother Nature has excluded the Open’s home state of Victoria from an impending heat wave — every mainland state and territory bar it will be under severe heat warnings, with Queensland and South Australia’s border forecast to hit 50 degrees. News.com.au reports Sydney will hit 35 degrees on Thursday and Friday, and 40 degrees in the western suburbs — but a humid air mass will make it feel up to 10 degrees hotter. It’ll be just 23 degrees in Melbourne, however. It comes as a quarter of a million Queenslanders are bracing for Tropical Cyclone Kirrily, The Courier-Mail ($) reports, including Townsville, Mackay, Bowen, the Whitsunday Islands and extending inland to Charters Towers. It’s a category one right now, the Bureau of Meteorology said, but some said Cyclone Jasper preparations meant they were ready.

STARRING ROLES

Former WA Liberal premier Colin Barnett has backed Perth Lord Mayor Basil Zempilas who is expected to announce a tilt at Liberal leadership this weekend, WA Today ($) reports. Zempilas, a Seven Network personality, has also met with the Liberal Party’s most senior federal MP, Senator Michaelia Cash, several times at a bakery. A smoking bun indeed. Barnett said Zempilas would improve the party’s chances at the 2025 election. It wouldn’t be hard to — the ABC’s election oracle Antony Green called the 2021 state election when 0.7% of the votes were counted, and Mark McGowan’s Labor went on to win a record 53 out of 59 seats in the Assembly.

One steps up, one steps down — former Qantas boss Alan Joyce has resigned as chair of the Sydney Theatre Company a month after it hit the headlines about actors wearing Palestinian scarves, known as keffiyehs. Three board members resigned at the mere sight of the black and white scarf — news.com.au notes one was Alex Schuman, the brother of Wentworth MP Allegra Spender. Joyce said the chair role needed someone with more time. This comes as a dual Australian-Israeli Jewish man says he was yelled at for complaining about a Jetstar staff member wearing a “Palestinian Lives Matter” badge, Sky News Australia reports. “He was upset by the pin as he took it to mean ‘only Palestinian lives matter, or that Palestinian lives matter more than Israeli lives’,” Sky writes. The number of dead Palestinians exceeded 25,105 this week, according to its health ministry per AP.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

New Zealander Colin Thorne was stretching at home in the early morning light while thinking about the 5km parkrun he was about to do. It was a great route, one he’d done many times, starting at the svelte Te Matau a Pohe bridge in Whangarei. Not a bad way for me to spend my birthday, he mused, as he double-knotted his laces carefully and headed out. On arrival Thorne was blown away by an absolute rock star welcome: the mayor, the health minister and no fewer than 400 fellow parkrunners were there in his honour — some wearing shirts emblazoned with his name — and presented him with a birthday banner. “I felt pretty humbled when I got down there with all the fuss they made,” he told the NZ Herald. Well, turning 100 is no small feat.

Thorne, a former dairy farmer, didn’t start running until he was 64, but has since completed 175 parkruns, not to mention 50 marathons and 102 half marathons (with a knee replacement in there too). Running feels good, he said — keeps “the old bones moving” and all that. His fastest time, at age 69, was three hours and 18 minutes. He has amassed fans all over the world over the past 30 years, but none more proud than his wife, Betty. In 2021, during the 70th year of their marriage, the loved-up couple embraced for the last time before she departed this world. It was tough, but these days “life is good” for Thorne — even if he does walk the parkrun. His advice to others is a little movement is better than nothing — even if it’s just 10 minutes a day: “You’re never too old to start. So just slow down and take one day at a time.”

Hope tomorrow is a day of reflection, respect and gratitude. Your Worm will be back with you on Monday morning.

SAY WHAT?

Your Liberal partners have vowed to undo any [stage three tax cut] changes that Labor makes if you get elected at the next election. Which will mean, you would be removing the additional tax cut for everybody — that they’re about to receive — who’s earning under $150,000. Are you really going to go to the next election with a tax increase for everybody that’s on under $150,000?

Waleed Aly

The Project host was speaking to Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie, who dodged the question before referring broadly to a “lower taxing environment” under the Coalition — which had more than a whiff of “alternative facts” about it.

CRIKEY RECAP

Scott Morrison, an inflection point between old and new forms of rotten politics

BERNARD KEANE

Scott Morrison (Images: AAP/Private Media)

“Crikey was among the first to point out Morrison’s apparently obsessive need to lie, in 2021. We’d intended to do so in early 2020, but the pandemic arrived and we thought it was hardly in the public interest to call into doubt the veracity of the man leading the nation at a time of major global crisis (though the intervening period yielded a treasure trove of Morrison whoppers).

“We were also the first to explore in detail Morrison’s commonalities with Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. All three came from backgrounds unrelated to policy content or public governance — Trump and Johnson from TV, Morrison from marketing. All three proved incompetent. All three routinely lied, even about things they didn’t need to lie about.”

Child-rearing to retina-searing: Scott Morrison’s greatest hits

CHARLIE LEWIS

“September 2018: Very early in his tenure as PM, Morrison tweeted: ‘QT was fire. Good work team’. This was accompanied by a video of his MPs (except Julia Banks, for reasons that would later become clear) raising their hands in unison, looped so that it synced up with the call and response chorus of early 2000s banger ‘Be Faithful’ by Fatman Scoop — ‘If you got a 20 dollar bill put your hands up, if you got a 50 dollar bill put your hands up’.

“Unfortunately for Morrison, like many songs encouraging one to throw their hands up, it doesn’t stop there. The song goes on to inquire: ‘Who fuckin’ tonight?’ Morrison swiftly deleted the post and apologised.”

Kim Williams will be a quite different ABC chair, and is no Murdoch stooge

BERNARD KEANE

“Let’s dispose of the Murdoch thing straightaway. Kim Williams worked for Rupert Murdoch for more than a decade, but the idea that he’s some sort of sinister News Corp plant installed at the ABC (by, erm, Labor) is the kind of conspiracy theory only the left Twitterati could sustain.

“Williams has worked at senior levels in film, broadcasting and the arts for several decades apart from his spell at News Corp — including under former chair David Hill at the ABC, a relationship that ended in tears. The fact that Lachlan Murdoch is now running the show at News Corp is all the more reason to assume that Williams will be rigorously independent as ABC chair. Williams always seemed a poor fit at News Corp.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Donald Trump wins New Hampshire primary in faceoff with Nikki Haley (Global News)

Nose wheel falls off Boeing 757 passenger jet awaiting take-off (The Guardian)

No change on interest rate as Bank of Canada sticks to 5% (CBC)

Microsoft hits $3 trillion market value (Reuters)

‘No survivors’: Russia accuses Kyiv of downing military plane with 65 Ukrainian POWs aboard (euronews)

Orban says he will push Hungary’s Parliament to accept Sweden in NATO (The New York Times) ($)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Pride and nationalism in the colony — Bizzi Lavelle (IndigenousX): “To be honest, Australian pride’s not even that interesting anyway, and a little confusing at times. For starters, is the colour palette green and gold or blue white and red? Our national free-to-air stations are living 15-20 years in the past with gladiator reboots and attempts at an Australian The Office. Genuine question, what do you have to be proud for? The pride of Australia is rooted in its bloodied history. Violence seen in every corner of the nation from its national sporting codes, music, politics and day-to-day life. The foundation of this nation was genocide, colonisation, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that’s what the national pride stands on today.

“You weren’t simply just born here; the colonial patriarchal systems that this country was founded on affords you the very privilege to flippantly decide that ‘luck’ is the only reason you shouldn’t have national pride. White pride and Australian pride are typically used to incite violence. Opposingly, Blak pride is the love and joy felt during NAIDOC, it’s smoking ceremonies at every gathering, lingo, the murals for footy players in Redfern, Blak women wearing weaved earrings, the glitz and glamor of Miss First Nations Brooke Blurton on The Bachelorette, ‘Who your mob? Oh do you know this person/last name?’, it’s knowing how all your Aunties have their teas. It’s love and defiance and a message to our Ancestors and Elders that we’re thankful they fought hard for us.”

New year’s resolutions already broken? Try these rules to live by instead — Kathy Lette (The Age): “First off, stop buying vitamins you never take and only discover again when they are three years out of date. Just eat a bit more fruit and veg. Wine is from a grape, so that definitely counts as one of your five-a-day, right? Stop curling your eyelashes with that weird medieval contraption that nearly takes your eye out every time. If you’re still having to bat your lashes to get noticed by a bloke, you need to work on your bons mots. Stop freezing leftovers; you are never going to eat them. All you’re doing is momentarily alleviating your guilt gland about food waste. Those frozen morsels will just reproach you every time you reach for an ice cube for your gin and tonic.

“Stop hoarding clothes in the hope that one day you’ll be thin enough to fit into them again. This is never going to happen. Shove them into a bag and take them straight to the charity store. Embrace the elasticated trouser. You know you want to. Throw out all those single socks, too. Nobody knows what happens to missing socks. It’s one of life’s great mysteries, like the Bermuda Triangle, the female orgasm and the continuing career success of Donald J. Trump. You are never, ever going to find the missing sock to make a pair. Wise advice? Sock-ratic, to be precise. Give up on friendships that don’t spark joy. Tippex those names off your birthday invitation list. You are allowed to make new friends and discard the old; it’s just another form of recycling.”

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