Seven isn’t a suitable TV licence holder. Time to shut it down

The Seven Network no longer meets even the basic requirements of the Broadcasting Services Act. It should be shut down.

If you thought Nine’s television arm was a toxic workplace riddled with sexual harassment and bullying and the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to silence victims of powerful male predators, Four Corners‘ Louise Milligan had a surprise for you yesterday: the Seven Network is a flaming bin fire where multiple predators and bullies have treated staff — usually women — with contempt, and done so while protected by the use of NDAs.

To repeat a point made in relation to Nine, either you’re in the journalism business, or you use NDAs to silence victims of harassment, assault and bullying. You can’t do both.

Admittedly, it’s long been clear that Seven was no longer a credible journalistic outlet: its embrace of rapists and war criminals and its platforming of neo-Nazis and racists obliterated whatever small dribbles of public interest journalism leaked out by accident from its operations. Its primary output, journalistically speaking, has been to try to undermine the journalism of other outlets. But its documented use of NDAs to gag staff, and especially female victims of what is clearly a misogynistic culture of harassment and bullying, seals the deal: Seven has nothing to do with credible journalism.

Any remaining journalists working at Seven have a pretty simple choice: they can demand that the network release all its victims of harassment and bullying from NDAs, or they can give up the idea they’re in journalism. If Seven is, as it claims, serious about fixing its culture, it will immediately, voluntarily, release victims from their NDAs.

Anything else raises a real question about whether Seven should continue to hold commercial television broadcasting licences. Many people continue to labour under the illusion there’s some sort of “fit and proper” test for television licence holders. Under the Broadcasting Services Act, which has regulated broadcasting since the early 1990s, there’s no such test. There are plenty of requirements for television licence holders, but the only relevant one is that licensees are subject to the condition that “the licensee will remain a suitable licensee”.

This is a (deliberately) vague and low hurdle, intended to prevent the broadcasting regulator from undertaking investigations into whether licence holders were “fit and proper”, as the old Broadcasting Tribunal had done with Kerry Packer and Alan Bond (Packer was, Bond wasn’t, until the Federal Court and the High Court ruled Bond could own companies that owned licences and his not being fit and proper didn’t matter).

But even with such a low hurdle, the question is not so much whether the companies owning Seven are “suitable” as whether there’s any way in which they could plausibly be argued not to be unsuitable. A network that employs war criminals, lavishes spending on rapists, platforms racists, protects bullies and intimidates their victims is — if words are to have any meaning — “suitable” for nothing, and certainly not to hold a licence that grants access to publicly owned spectrum.

And that’s a key issue: unlike a newspaper, or an online media company, Seven operates using spectrum that is owned by Australian government and thus taxpayers. It only exists because it is allowed to use a publicly owned asset. Even with such a minimalist requirement as “suitable”, Seven shouldn’t be allowed to use a public asset as part of operations that undermine public interest journalism, immiserate its own staff and reward rapists and war criminals.

Who would be inconvenienced or harmed by Seven being shut down? Its remaining staff, certainly. Investors, to a degree, although Seven West Media’s share price is just 16 cents. But there’d be fewer media industry workplaces for predators and harassers. And there’d be no impact on journalism.

Is Seven fit to hold a TV licence? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.

‘Meat suits’, Freemasons and suicide pacts: The chain reaction that set off the Wieambilla killers

At the Wieambilla inquest, a forensic clinical psychology traced the shadows of the Trains to find out how a tragedy like this could have been prevented.

ASIO, Jesuits, Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad, Freemasons, the pharmaceutical industry, arms manufacturer Raytheon, Learjets, military-created bioweapons, COVID-19 vaccinations, chemtrails, children being removed from their families, and humans being turned into non-humans wearing meat suits: these were the subjects of conspiracy theories, delusions and preoccupations held by the Wieambilla shooters listed in a single sentence by a forensic clinical psychologist appearing at the Wieambilla coronial inquest, which is aiming to outline how the attack happened and how it could have been prevented.

Dr Andrew Aboud did not have a chance to interview Gareth, Stacey and Nathaniel Train prior to the December 12, 2022 attack which left them, and three others, dead. Instead, he studied an enormous amount of material including text messages, emails, diary entries, letters, witness statements and more to understand what was going on inside their heads.

“What I have is all the information around them that was provided by other parties or other sources, so [the Trains] end up being these shadows that I have been trying to analyse and understand in terms of everything that they were,” he said. 

His expert opinion is that the Trains were showing symptoms of a rare shared psychotic disorder. In Aboud’s view, Gareth Train suffered from a delusional disorder, with religious and persecutory delusions, that was eventually shared with Stacey and Nathaniel. 

By the time four police officers jumped the gate at the Wieambilla property, the Trains completely believed that a day of religious salvation was nigh — Aboud was able to narrow it down to a date roughly around April 2023 — and that approaching intruders were devils and demons who were a threat to their souls.

The inquest heard about an endless number of paranoid, fringe, radical beliefs that spurred the Trains into action. Gareth shot at planes he believed were surveilling them. He was in contact with QAnon-esque Australian conspiracy figure Riccardo Bosi and sovereign citizen Mike Holt. The Trains refused to get vaccinated for fear it was a scheme by the government to control its citizens. Nathaniel broke through the state border during COVID lockdowns for similar reasons. The pandemic, and the response to it, was a “trigger” for the series of events that left six dead, two injured and many more scarred, the inquest heard.

The way that Aboud spoke about these beliefs was that they were not the cause of the shooting in and of themselves. It wasn’t the Trains’ belief in conspiracy theories in the weeks, months and years leading up to the attack that spurred them into violence, but what was behind those beliefs — specifically, their delusions. Coming from a psychiatry perspective, Aboud had more to say about how the trio’s personalities and relationships developed and interacted over the decades prior.

According to Aboud, Gareth Train had a paranoid personality disorder for much of his adult life and may have suffered a mild brain injury prior to birth. This graduated into a full-blown delusional disorder around the time he moved to the Wieambilla property in the mid-2010s. He was a troubled child and long had a sense of inadequacy that played out in various ways: interests in bodybuilding, guns, military strategy, conspiracy theories and a desire to dominate others. The inquest heard he had suggested suicide pacts in previous romantic relationships. 

In contrast, both Nathaniel and Stacey Train were described as intelligent, impressive and normal. It was their intense, intimate relationships with Gareth that was the precipitating factor for their involvement in the shooting.

Aboud brought up three different claims of child sexual abuse made by the Trains (the reporting of the details of which are restricted by a court non-publication order). He cautioned that none of them may have actually occurred, but said that the Trains’ belief in the claims strengthened the unusual bond between the trio.

New details were shared about how Stacey began her relationship with Gareth while she was married to Nathaniel. Aboud said people in the family were “concerned” about the time Gareth was spending with Stacey after he was invited to live with the married couple and their young children, after which she began an intimate relationship with Gareth. The couple would divorce, with Gareth marrying Stacey shortly after. Nathaniel was at first upset but subsequently lived with his ex-wife and brother. 

After Gareth started having delusions — described by Aboud as intense, all-consuming beliefs that are experienced by the sufferer — the more time that he spent with the other two, the more they shared his delusions. This meant that even as Stacey and Nathaniel continued to work and function, these deeply held beliefs lurked below the surface and would emerge especially when in contact with Gareth. The isolation of a remote property removed any other moderating perspective. By the beginning of 2022, all three were in a full shared psychosis, according to Aboud. 

The Trains believed in Christianity, but not in the way Gareth and Nathaniel’s father, pastor Ron Train, had taught them. They feared vaccines, government surveillance and police corruption, but believed these forces were specifically persecuting them as part of a spiritual war. These ideas and beliefs were being fit into delusional thinking, reinforced by their bizarre relationships. When asked if he believed the trio had committed a terrorist attack, Aboud demurred but said he could see no political aim. 

Aboud’s testimony identified the enormous amount of death, hurt and suffering that has stemmed from December 12, 2022 as a result of the chain reaction set off by a single individual with an untreated psychological disorder. The forensic clinical psychologist suggested the way to stop the next Wieambilla required significant changes to public policy. 

“The public sector mental health service in this state and in this country is doing an absolutely sterling job to the best of its ability under very difficult circumstances and with some very challenging patients … in order to be given the best opportunity to succeed, there needs to be some real thought put into whether mental health should become a priority.”

You don’t have to be a Sinophile to know Keating’s right about AUKUS

The ex-PM is the only person offering a convincing explanation of AUKUS. And it's a damning one.

This deal is getting worse all the time.

Courtesy of the latest details of the AUKUS agreement tabled yesterday in Parliament, we now know that the moment it becomes inconvenient for the Americans or the Brits, there’ll be no submarines for Australia:

Cooperation under the agreement is to be carried out in such a manner as to not adversely affect the ability of the United States and the United Kingdom to meet their respective military requirements and to not degrade their respective naval nuclear propulsion programs.

Those programs, as even ardent defenders of the program admit, are already pretty degraded. The Americans have shifted from building two Virginia-class boats a year to one this year, and delayed the construction of the next generation of nuclear submarines by five years to 2040. The new generation Dreadnought-class boats under construction in the UK have suffered serious delays and astonishing cost blowouts.

Somehow, with around $10 billion of Australian cash, both programs will come good, to the point they can build boats for the US and UK, and for Australia, and help Australia build its own. It’s normal for defence policy to double as heavy manufacturing policy, and Australia has a rich history of wasting billions making things here that we could have bought far cheaper from other countries. Where AUKUS is unusual is that Australia will be using its defence policy as heavy manufacturing policy for the US and UK as well.

All this for a program that we still don’t have a strategic rationale for, either from the government or from spruikers for AUKUS like Ross Babbage, whose flimsy pamphlet defending the program Crikey dissected a fortnight ago. Indeed, the most coherent explanation for the strategic rationale for AUKUS has come from Paul Keating.

On Friday, Keating issued an extended rejoinder to the prime minister’s dismissal of Keating’s observations about AUKUS, our relationship with China and our integration within the US military. Keating agreed that things had changed since he was prime minister, but “the relevant issue is that our geography has not changed. And geography is the primary factor in geo-strategic settings. The fact is, the Albanese government is returning to the Anglosphere to garner Australia’s security.”

This leads to a central theme in Keating’s public life, perhaps the theme — one that drove his foreign policy as prime minister: “the Albanese government is doing the very thing that all my life, I had trenchantly opposed, and in the postwar years, Labor had opposed. And that is, finding our security from Asia rather than our security in Asia.”

Relying on the Brits, who failed us in WWII and who withdrew from this part of the world in the postwar years, is a bad idea (another favourite Keating theme). But, “the Albanese government’s principal Anglosphere partner is, of course, the United States. And reliance by the government on the United States is now taking the form, rather than simply building nuclear submarines, of facilitating expansive military base-building by the United States on Australian soil with ever-rising US troop movements through Australian bases.”

What Keating calls the transformation of Australia into “a continental extension of American power akin to that which it enjoys in Hawaii, Alaska and more limitedly in places like Guam … the national administrator of what would be broadly viewed in Asia as a US protectorate” actually began under Julia Gillard and the Obama administration, but has accelerated dramatically under Albanese and Richard Marles, Labor’s gormless defence minister. Last year, Marles enthusiastically announced that US officers would be integrated into Australia’s Defence Intelligence Organisation — which perfectly fits Keating’s description of Australia as a mere extension of American power.

AUKUS similarly locks Australia into the role of administering the projection of US power into the western Pacific via US boats, US-built boats and Australian boats built with US assistance.

This is the only coherent explanation of the rationale for AUKUS beyond the mere assertion that nuclear submarines are better than diesel-electric submarines. And it’s a damning one for anyone with any regard for Australian sovereignty. You don’t have to share Keating’s benign view of the vile Beijing regime to get that Labor under Albanese has returned to a Menzian foreign and defence policy that strategically locates Australia not in the Asia-Pacific but as an “Atlantic supplicant”. And that’s a supplicant to powers that will struggle to meet their own naval construction needs, let alone ours.

Is Australia at risk of becoming little more than a US protectorate? Are there any upsides to the AUKUS deal? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.

The Labor government would be a very different beast if this factional war went the other way

Anyone dipping into the latest Labor factional drama could be forgiven for thinking they were watching an episode of Aircrash Investigations.

Watching Labor internal politics is like being in the aviation industry. If you’re embedded full time, doing nothing else, you can keep up, and know what’s going to land ahead of time. If you just dip in now and again, it’s more like Air Crash Investigation: you follow the circle of bodies inwards until you find the blast zone.

This thought is occasioned by the story dropping on the weekend that Mem Suleyman, state secretary of the Victorian branch of the Transport Workers Union, has been suspended from his position and is under investigation after the union leadership received accusations of “harassing behaviour” by Suleyman. 

Oh noes! This keeps on happening! I guess it just shows the integrity of the labour movement that they will be punctilious in reporting this sort of stuff! I mean first there was John Setka, pinged for harassing tweets, and later, his whole state union subject to a massive investigation. Adem Somyurek was accused by a female staffer of bullying behaviour, and lost his ministry in the Andrews government, before being expelled for branch stacking. Diana Asmar of the HWU is under investigation for possible personal misuse of union funds. And now Suleyman! What are the odds?

Odds on, actually. Let’s try that again. John Setka and the CFMEU (industrial Left faction) have been pinged. Diana Asmar and the HWU (ex-close factional associates of Bill Shorten and the AWU faction, the “Shorts” side of the Right) have suddenly been thrown into the deep. Somyurek, ex-SDA and founder of the “Mods” faction, was knocked off his Vespa, scattering that upstart faction.

So someone dropped the state head of the Transport Workers Union in it. The TWU is the centre of the subfaction the “Cons”, originally named thus after its Bonnie Prince Charlie leader Stephen Conroy, who went from the Senate to shilling for the gambling industry to being tied up with the armaments industry through ASPI, the weapons and death industry lobby group posing as a foreign affairs think tank. 

Why is the faction still called the Cons? Because inside Labor, Richard Marles is now the leader of the faction, so the name now stands for “Contradiction in Terms”. Conroy remains the “puppetmaster” (though in Labor, that name is reserved for Andrew Giles, not because he has any power, but because his hands are so freakishly large).

Anthony Albanese is prime minister because the Cons broke away from the Shorts and allied with the “National” (i.e. NSW Left faction) against the “rabble right” (Shorts, Mods, SDA) and also against the Victorian Socialist Left. Without the Cons, Albo would be what Shorten is now, minister for theodolites, sadness and the town of Kettering, Tasmania.

So this sudden outbreak of integrity in the Labor/labour movement is less to do with resolute conscience than with clearing the decks for seats and alliances ahead of the upcoming election. How far does this go back? Well, really, most likely the sudden pinging of Suleyman is the latest salvo in the most recent round of such warfare, which has begun not after the exposé on Setka and the CFMEU, but with it. 

Doubtless, journalists Nick McKenzie, Ben Schneiders and others worked hard putting together the CFMEU story (and any day now we’ll have something stronger in the story than that some CFMEU officials were also members of motorcycle clubs), but the obvious suspicion is that a lot of material suddenly “came to light” not for reasons of public integrity, but as a result of factional positioning by those doing the dropping.

But wait, it’s more complicated than that. What seems likely is that all of these pings were from within the organisations and factions the pingees were leading. Setka and his team were targeted from within the CFMEU, because Setka was taking the union in a more independent direction, inside or outside Labor, as is the United Firefighters under Peter Marshall.

This occurred after three breakups. The Centre Unity-Industrial Left superfaction that Somyurek was trying to put together (or was the frontman for) collapsed. That superfaction, had they been able to cement it, and then draw the SDA in, would have controlled Labor absolutely. 

After it came apart, the Industrial Left collapsed, after Luba Grigorovitch left the leadership of the Rail and Tram Union. 

Grigorovitch took the state seat of Kororoit (formerly held by Marlene Kairouz, Somyurek’s loyal lieutenant in the Mod Squad) and also married private equity boss Ben Gray (son of Liberal ex-premier of Tasmania Robin Gray). 

Luba was (lightly) pinged herself last week, with a drop to The Australian that she had been on a rented superyacht with husband Ben while she was posting photos of herself at the Alton slurry vats, giving ducks CPR in the Kororoit wetlands, etc.

The third collapse was that of the marriage of John Setka and Emma Walters, of which the two parties were from the CFMEU’s independent “Croatian” grouping (um, Setka) with Walters, ex-Slater and Gordon hotshot, being a longtime part of power networks at the centre of Labor. Doubtless the demise of their relationship is due to personal factors alone. But it does coincide with this strategic split within the heart of the CFMEU. As does Labor’s war on the CFMEU.

So, the conclusion one can draw from this is that all these drops and stories are not merely factional war, nor subfactional war, but positioning wars within the subfactions. Setka and co were pinged from within. And Asmar has been pinged from within the loose crowd of broken toys that form the remains of the Shorts. 

Now it is almost certain that Suleyman — whatever the truth or not of the accusations against him — is being pinged by elements within the TWU in alliance with elements outside of it. Those in the TWU allying with those outside it are possibly not happy with its current factional arrangements. On the one hand that’s a little speculative. On the other hand, I’m sure I’m right. So, debate continues. 

Why does this matter, I hear a few readers ask, desperate for the old Whitlam spirit, or the unity of the Hawke-Keating Years (© Troy Bramston). Well, first to shatter your illusions about what this party is now. Labor is no more the party of Whitlam than Whitlam’s party was the socialist/Catholic White Australia party of the 1920s.

Labor now is a machine for the representation of capital, plugged into high finance through industry superannuation funds and the wider capital-science nexus. From Gillard to now, it has given us a capital-friendly arbitration body and made strikes illegal. Now it is going to permanently gut a union that developed militant tactics to represent its members, precisely because genuine worker representation had been made virtually illegal, by Labor.

Around that, Labor has delivered us US troops on Australian soil, the surrender of military independence to US command structures, and the commitment to a trillion dollar (oh sorry, just $350 billion, never to blow out) weapons commitment which drains any capacity for social development or lessening inequality for a generation. And $50,000 arts degrees, so anyone without a bank of Mum and Dad must choose between educating themselves to understand society and getting a house.

This is all, in its particular form, because of the factional array, and the position of the Right within government. If the factions were in a different relation, Labor would be different. Hardly socialist, but something more of us could give some form of substantial support to. Labor’s Left used to draw its policy inspiration from Sweden. Now it has a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome*.

Well, we’ll see what drops, in the manner of planes burrowing into the earth and scattering bodies. It might be a fun and illuminating few weeks. Just not for Mem Suleyman.

*yes, i know that’s a myth. But alliteration, mmmm.

‘Lost in the product’: How the gambling industry creates problem gamblers

The gambling industry has been perfecting ways to manipulate and disorient you for decades. Online gambling is just an easily accessible extension of that.

This article is an instalment in a new series, Punted, on the government’s failure to reform gambling advertising.

There are different schools of thought about how to perfect casino design in ways that will disorient and mesmerise people into staying longer and spending more.

Initially the seminal thinker was Bill Friedman, a former gambling addict who put his first-hand expertise and 20 years of research into Designing Casinos to Dominate the Competition, first published in 2000, which set the template for many years. The rules his book outlines make for a depressing read: no clocks or windows so people lose track of time; no décor but the machines to monopolise attention; labyrinth-like corridors to disorient gamblers as soon as they arrive.

“You have to suck them in right away,” he told The New Yorker in 2012. “And then, once you get them, you have to make it hard to leave.” 

Then there was interior designer Roger Thomas, whose designs shifted to a kind of ersatz opulence, an “adult playground” whose sense of refuge from reality acted as a palliative for the inevitable gambling losses.

Both approaches raked in hundreds of millions of dollars. And that’s before you get to how the games themselves are designed.

Now, with the ubiquity of online gambling, everyone has a potential casino or bookmaker in their pocket.

“The mechanism of addiction is the same, whether it’s poker machines or online gambling,” Associate Professor at the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University Charles Livingstone told Crikey.

“The online bookies have developed characteristics in their products which are extremely similar to gambling that’s not online — for example what we call the event frequency is now so high in online gambling that it is approaching that of slot machines and pokies.”

Research has consistently found that games with higher event frequencies are attractive to problem gamblers and are more likely to lead to negative gambling outcomes, such as difficulty quitting the game and higher losses.

Livingstone said that online sports betting — allowing multiple bets on multiple games happening at the same time as well as events within single games — means gamblers “can now set up a whole host of events that you can bet on, which you bet on with enormous frequency”.

“So you’ve achieved this high event frequency, which engages people in what we call high immersion,” he said. “People that are highly immersed in the game tend to lose what’s called executive function, that is, they get lost in the product. And once they’re lost in the product, it’s very difficult for them to find their way out of it.”

Which is all the more worrying when considering the explosion of gambling advertising in recent years — and the Australian Labor Party’s apparent reluctance to ban it.

Associate Professor Shalini Arunogiri, acting director of addiction treatment at research organisation Turning Point, told Crikey the current levels of gambling advertising across commercial television and social media were “unprecedented”.

“There’s not a generation before that has had this exposure to this level of marketing,” she said.

Arunogiri said the saturation of gambling advertising experienced by young people was of particular concern; Turning Point’s submission to the parliamentary inquiry into online gambling harm cited research that found “three quarters of children aged 8 to 16 are able to name at least one sports betting brand … and 75% of children perceive sports betting as a normal part of sport”.

“It’s not just adults being exposed to this, but we know that young people and adolescents are really exposed to gambling related advertising, both on social media as well as around watching sports,” she said. “And so that normalisation is really problematic.”

And the risks around losing executive function — the ability to think through a decision and not act impulsively — are even higher for young people.

“We know that [early adolescence] is a really vulnerable period for kids — the ability to actually resist these impulses is still developing at that age,” Arunogiri said. “And we know from longer-term studies that childhood experiences of gambling are likely to lead to much higher rates of gambling-related harm when people grow up.”

Anyone affected by problem gambling can get immediate assistance by calling the National Gambling Helpline on 1800 858 858 for free, professional and confidential support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Vilification of international students hides the real problem in universities

Cutting international student numbers or jacking up their application fees will not do anything for the students and staff stuck between management policy and government underfunding.

International students have emerged, yet again, as the punching bag distracting from systemic problems homegrown here in Australia.

Australia’s Education Minister Jason Clare and then Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil have put international students in the crosshairs, with caps on student numbers, the doubling of non-refundable application fees, and measures stopping tourists from switching to student visas. 

In the field of housing policy, Ben Eltham has rightly noted the “current shortage of affordable housing took a generation to develop and has many contributing factors”, including conservative tax reform, and public housing policy.

Commodified education is no different. 

National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) leaders told The Guardian the pursuit of international student fees was fuelling a “culture of revenue, profit and competition”. 

But Australia’s tertiary education woes do not originate from foreign students, but from economic rationalism, decades of decay, underfunding and poor management.

It is not just that public funding for tertiary education was down to 0.65% of GDP by 2018 from 1.5% fifty years ago.

The introduction of corporate management structures, which sees an inflated class of highly paid bureaucrats, increasingly distant from staff and students on the ground, predates the supercharging of international education, which doubled from 2001 to 2020.

Management practices are key to the commodification of tertiary education — for all students and staff. 

Sydney University, one of the “sandstones”, shows what teaching intensification looks like. Since 2001, when the department changed its measurements of student numbers, student load has increased by 96%, while equivalent teaching hours are up just 21%. Figure 1 shows that the amount of students has increased from 31 to 50 students per teaching hour in the latest available figures.

Over these years almost half of this teaching (44%) has been performed by casual academics. While complaints rage about university laxity on the use of artificial intelligence, casual tutors such as myself receive zero hours’ pay for plagiarism work (academic honesty) and zero hours’ pay for student consultations.

For all the focus on international students, giving teachers the class time and small class sizes that would make it possible to spend time supporting all our students has barely rated a mention.

International students aren’t to blame for the falling standards in our classrooms. Anyone teaching in higher education knows that domestic students, as well as international ones, are struggling. Pandemic lockdowns hit the hardest for high schoolers who are now coming through university, with significant drops in literacy and numeracy recorded across the world after disruptions to face-to-face teaching. 

Pitiful raises to Youth Allowance haven’t scratched the surface of poverty for students living on $639 a fortnight. The sky-rising cost of living means working-class students are increasingly forced to work alongside their studies, with 74% of bachelor’s degree students working part- or full-time in May 2023, up 15% over 10 years (Figure 2).

Students have less time to spend on their studies, while teachers are spread thin with less time to deliver education to more students.

With tutors like myself racing through marking at 4,500 words an hour and arts degrees set to tip over $50,000, it is no wonder some students perceive their degree as a commodity. It is this more than anything that feeds a gamified approach to education and sub-par essays, whether written by artificial intelligence or not.

The processes squeezing students and staff are precisely those feeding the eye-watering salaries of Australian university vice-chancellors, the bloated operating margins across the country and, to return to the scapegoating of migrants for housing supply, the university sector’s multi-billion dollar real estate portfolio.

In all the talk of international student fees, for and against, any internationalist vision where it is conceivable Australian, Chinese, Indian and other overseas students might mutually gain from studying alongside one another in an increasingly chaotic, polarised and geopolitically charged world, is lost entirely.

Cutting international student numbers or jacking up their application fees will not do anything for the students and staff stuck between management policy and government underfunding.

Nothing short of an overhaul of tertiary education governance, restoring public funding and paying students a living wage, can hope to make education and research the goal, rather than a coincidental byproduct, of Australian universities.

As long as the focus remains on international student policy, no matter how many layers of sympathy for the students or anger at the executives are applied, the realities of commodified education will remain untouched.

Disclosure: Sophie Cotton is a member of the National Tertiary Education Union and an NTEU branch committee member at the University of Sydney.

AI Steph Catley introduces herself as… Catby. For Matilda fans, this doesn’t cut it

Is it okay for a national sporting body to ask a star player such as the Matildas' Steph Catley to consent to an AI voice clone?

As fans reacted to the Matildas’ loss to the United States and their unexpectedly early exit from the Olympics, an unusual question emerged: how would AI Steph Catley explain this to the kids? 

With the Matildas scheduled to kick-off at the inconvenient time of 3 am AEST when many of their young fans would be asleep, Football Australia and marketing agency Ogilvy had a creative solution: release a podcast featuring captain Steph Catley retelling Matildas matches as children’s stories, aimed at five- to 12-year-olds. 

However, though Football Australia said Dream Team episodes would be “narrated with Catley’s own voice”, it soon explained that this was possible “via the magic of AI”.

Putting the issues with conflating technology and magic aside, the result is about what you would expect: it sounds like Steph Catley, but without ever feeling like you’re really listening to Steph Catley. Perhaps this is fine for the children it’s aimed at, provided they ignore the AI voice introducing itself as Steph Catby. Crikey contacted Football Australia and Ogilvy for comment but neither responded.

Amid concerns about the gendered harms of non-consensual deepfakes and cost-cutting measures like using AI voice clones instead of voice actors, the decision to use AI to simulate Catley’s voice seemed unusual. During last year’s SAG-AFTRA strike, many deemed the proposal from major studios to scan background actors for AI replication as a plot ripped from an episode of Black Mirror. 

Catley appears to have consented to the creation of her AI voice clone, but is it okay for a national sporting body to ask a star player to do so? Crikey contacted Catley’s management for comment but they did not respond.

Kathryn Gill, co-chief executive of Professional Footballers Australia, told Crikey there is potential to use AI to connect the Matildas and Socceroos with fans if it can be done ethically and responsibly. 

“However, the fundamental principle is that workers and athletes should have control over both their likeness and the way that AI will be used in their work,” says Gill. “When we consider the creation of content that uses AI to clone a player’s attributes, there needs to be incredibly strict safeguards around that, to ensure responsible use.”

There is no specific protection for an individual’s likeness in Australia, but a combination of existing regulation including copyright, consumer and contract law may apply.

Gill says that “without consideration for the ongoing ownership and usage of that data”, we are opening the door to issues around “privacy, intellectual property, and the potential for manipulation, and reputational risk”.

Depending on how much attention they paid to the Dream Team announcement, a listener may not have realised it used AI. The original posts announcing the podcast — on Facebook, Instagram and X — described the stories as “narrated by Steph Catley”, with readers having to click through to Football Australia’s website to discover it was using AI to mimic Catley’s voice.

The descriptions on Spotify and Apple Podcasts were more transparent, adding that it “used special Al technology, so it sounds just like Steph Catley is narrating the story”.

The X post for the first episode didn’t mention the use of AI, but the second episode’s post did, which received negative replies, including a fan asking why weren’t players, including former or injured players, used instead of AI. The post for the final episode, which also mentioned the use of AI, had its comments restricted.

The Dream Team podcast hasn’t been alone in finding a use for AI within the fan-athlete dynamic this Olympics. But as new technologies promise greater connection with less effort required, people are pushing back on the premise that AI is just as good as the real deal. 

In the US, Google released an Olympic-themed advertisement for its generative-AI Gemini, featuring a father asking for help to write a fan letter from his young daughter to her idol, athlete Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. It was pulled following backlash that Google had missed the point of these kinds of letters — actual human connection.

Meta blames ‘error’ for stopping users from posting Australian news to Instagram and Threads

After users speculated that the issue could be linked to a looming fight with Australian media companies, Meta confirmed that it was an 'error'.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has called on Meta to rule out that it was testing a feature to block Australian news content on its platforms, after Meta blamed an “error” for the issue.

On Monday morning, Threads users posted that attempts to share Australian news articles resulted in them being shown a prompt that said the “post failed to upload”.

“Interesting … I can’t post links to any Australian news articles/websites here on Threads — I tried 3 diff. media orgs, all failed to load, both App & desktop versions,” posted user @emergencybk.

Crikey was able to replicate this error when attempting to post articles published by Crikey and the ABC. The error did not occur when posting a link to an Australian non-news website like Gumtree, or an international news website like CNN.

A similar error occurs when users try to link to Australian news publications on their Instagram Story, using the link function.

Crikey was able to post Australian news links to both a personal Facebook profile and a page.

Users speculated that the error could be related to the looming fight over the news media bargaining code after Meta refused to renew its previous partnerships with Australian news companies.

When asked earlier this year during a Senate inquiry if Meta would consider banning news on its services like it briefly did in 2021, the company’s regional policy director Mia Garlick said “all options are on the table”.

When Meta banned news in Australia in 2021 and in Canada in 2023, the company made public statements about its decision. No such statement has been made this week, suggesting the errors seen by users are unlikely to be the result of an intentional move.

A Meta spokesperson told Crikey that the issue was caused by an “error” and that it had been resolved.

Yesterday afternoon, Hanson-Young wrote to the company asking them to explain how the glitch had occurred, if it was related to the company testing its ability to block Australian news content, and to guarantee that Australian news would remain on its platforms.

“This apparent ban on Australian news media content is deeply concerning given the ongoing debate in Australia over Meta’s refusal to pay for the public interest journalism you profit from, and your company’s track record of blocking news content in Australia for political purposes,” she wrote in a letter seen by Crikey.

How Rupert Murdoch helped create a monster — the era of Trumpism — and then lost control of it

Murdoch helped valorise Donald Trump and normalise his fraudulent claims. When he tried to discard him, Trump' reputation only grew stronger.

You can’t help but feel sorry for Rupert Murdoch.

In Mary Shelley’s famous novel, Dr Frankenstein created a monster that took on a life of its own and which he could no longer control. Murdoch has outdone Frankenstein and created two monsters over which he has now lost control. They have left him floundering and threaten to inflict great damage on US democracy.

Murdoch’s first monster is the Fox News audience, which, after long cultivation into the Fox News fantasy land, refuses to believe any news that does not fit its prejudices. Fox, as a result, feels compelled to reinforce its delusions rather than report accurately.

Murdoch’s second monster grew out of the first: a Donald Trump-dominated Republican Party. Murdoch wanted to make Trump a “non-person”, but the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month showed Trump now dominates the party like no-one else in living memory.

‘Red meat’ to conservatives

When Fox News began in 1996, the chief executive for its first 20 years, Roger Ailes, said:

Rupert Murdoch and I and, by the way, the vast majority of the American people believe that most of the news tilts to the left.

But Fox News was never just a mainstream news service with a somewhat more conservative centre of gravity. From the beginning, it was more of a propaganda machine, and this became increasingly pronounced over the years. More and more, its prime-time offerings consisted of commentary rather than news programs, designed to feed “red meat” to the Republican base.

News that didn’t fit increasingly didn’t appear. So, when the Iraq War began, there was noisy flag-waving, but as it became militarily messier, the network gave it much less attention, although there were always efforts to find a positive gloss.

During Barack Obama’s first presidential term, Fox News acted as a recruiting and publicity vehicle for the far-right, populist Tea Party. It gave oxygen to Trump’s baseless claim that Obama was not born in the United States, and therefore was not eligible to be president. Fox News host Glenn Beck asserted Obama was a racist with a deep-seated hatred for white people.

During the COVID pandemic, it often denied the severity of the virus, and gave publicity to anti-vaxxer views and quack cures.

And after Trump’s election defeat in 2020, many Fox News viewers were ready to believe his claims of electoral fraud. Overwhelmingly, however, the key players at Fox News and in the Murdoch stable believed the election was fair.

Fox News’s chief political correspondent Bret Baier saw “no evidence of fraud. None”. Murdoch’s New York Post urged Trump to accept the result. In an editorial, the tabloid said his “baseless” stolen election rhetoric “undermines faith in democracy and faith in the nation”.

A new threat and new strategy

Very soon, a sense of crisis overcame Fox News. Its prime-time ratings had fallen, and by some measures, CNN was now ahead. What most spooked the network’s management, however, was that two small news operations, Newsmax and One America News Network (OAN), which were even more right wing than Fox, were being publicly praised by Trump and had picked up viewers.

Fox’s sense of crisis led it on a fateful path. It may have been a panicky overreaction.

A post-election decline in viewership — especially among those of the losing party — is not unusual. After Obama’s victory, for example, Fox quickly regained ground, becoming the strongest opposition voice against the new administration. Moreover, even though Newsmax had picked up viewers, its total audience was still minuscule compared to Fox’s, and neither it nor OAN had anything like the resources needed to compete effectively with Fox.

Six days after the election, on November 9, 2020, Fox News executives nonetheless committed the network to push “narratives that would entice their audience back”. In the double-talk of Fox News management, they resolved to “respect” their audience, by which they meant reinforce their delusions.

This resulted in a mammoth turnaround. Within two weeks, Fox News had questioned the election result 774 times, according to Media Matters for America.

In the two weeks after the election was called for Biden, Fox News cast doubt on the results of the election at least 774 times https://t.co/3TbddQmdfQ https://t.co/NhK23Fndy2

— Media Matters (@mmfa) October 6, 2022

The fact this switch of strategy meant the network was deliberately promoting a falsehood seems not to have troubled any of them. Nor did the fact that they were, in the words of their sister publication, the Post, undermining faith in democracy and the nation. The key thing was that the audiences came back.

The truth comes out

Now focused on promoting claims of electoral fraud, the network’s primary targets soon included the two companies that provided electronic voting equipment for the election: Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic.

On the political battleground, there were rarely tangible consequences for running baseless stories. But Fox had wandered into a legal minefield. And it was not tiptoeing.

Trump’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, alleged the companies that had administered the voting machines had committed “the most massive and … egregious fraud the world has ever seen”. Lou Dobbs was perhaps the most outspoken of the Fox News presenters, calling it “an electoral 9/11” and a “cyber Pearl Harbour”.

Dominion sent 3,600 communications to Fox News denying the various accusations to no effect. Then it mounted a defamation legal action. The case went on for several months, and on the day the trial was about to begin, Fox settled. The result was a massive defamation payout: US$787.5 million (A$1.2 billion).

“Whether the Fox viewers will view Fox any less cordially… I rather doubt it.” Legendary First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams discusses the impact of the $787 million check Fox just cut to settle a record-breaking defamation lawsuit @abramsinstitute. pic.twitter.com/LP8NNyVadC

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) April 19, 2023

But it was not only the expense; it was the embarrassment. As part of the discovery process and the depositions required, Dominion gained access to thousands of internal Fox News documents, demonstrating the stark contrast between what the network’s personalities said in private and what went to air.

Murdoch, in his deposition, said he never believed any of the claims of computer fraud. The internal communications also showed how deeply he detested Trump. After the January 6, 2021, riots at the US Capitol, he wrote in an email that he aimed to make Trump a “non-person”.

Trump’s response to these revelations was swift and predictable. On his Truth Social platform, he wrote:

If Rupert Murdoch honestly believes that the Presidential Election of 2020, despite MASSIVE amounts of proof to the contrary, was not Rigged and Stollen [sic], then he and his group of MAGA [Make America Great Again] Hating Globalist RINOS [Republican in name only] should get out of the News Business as soon as possible, because they are aiding and abetting the DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA with FAKE NEWS.

Trump’s resurrection and Murdoch’s isolation

The schism between Trump and Murdoch was deep and bitter. Fox’s subsequent search for an alternative to Trump was most publicly visible in late 2022 and early 2023. In the 2022 US midterm elections, the Democrats did much better than expected, and Trump-endorsed candidates performed poorly. The shining exception for Republicans was the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.

Murdoch embraced him. Always subtle, a New York Post front page anointed him “DeFuture” and later had a caricature of Trump as Humpty Dumpty, headlined “Trumpty Dumpty”.

DeSantis was a determined cultural warrior, and no doubt Murdoch and others hoped he could represent “Trumpism” without the legal and personal baggage.

However, DeSantis proved to be Trumpism without a hint of charisma. Nor did DeSantis dare question Trump’s narrative of victimhood, endorsing his claims of a stolen election and that the legal cases against him were political witch hunts.

By late 2023, it was clear DeSantis was going to lose the Republican primaries to be the 2024 presidential nominee — and that Trump was going to win again. All business logic pointed towards the need for Fox News to make amends with Trump. And for Trump, political logic pointed towards the need for a détente with the biggest and most influential conservative media organisation.

The rapprochement began in January 2024. Fox staged a town hall event for Trump, the first time he had been live on the network for two years. It not only gave Trump a platform, but it was also timed to overshadow the other Republican presidential candidates having a debate on CNN.

DeSantis was angry, saying Trump has “got a Praetorian Guard of the conservative media, Fox News, the websites, all this stuff”.

DeSantis says Trump has "basically a Praetorian Guard of the conservative media — Fox News, the web sites, all the stuff — they just don't hold him accountable because they're worried about losing viewers." https://t.co/Bj2ESDEHfm

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 12, 2024

As a final act of obeisance, Murdoch attended the Republican National Convention. But it merely underlined his new marginality. Trump, himself, was polite: “I speak with Rupert Murdoch a lot. […] He’s 100% sharp, he’s sharp as a tack.”

Donald Trump Jr, now the self-proclaimed MAGA enforcer, was less polite. He claimed he had been blacklisted by Fox News, which Fox denied. Then he said:

There was a time where if you wanted to survive in the Republican Party you had to bend the knee to [Murdoch] or to others … I don’t think that’s the case anymore.

To annoy Murdoch further, one of the stars of the convention was Tucker Carlson, who was fired by Fox 15 months earlier. Carlson sat in Trump’s VIP box next to the ex-president, while Murdoch was some distance away in a separate box.

Moreover, Murdoch seemed to have zero influence over Trump’s vice presidential choice, and perhaps was even counterproductive. There were reports he had lobbied against the selection of JD Vance, while Donald Trump Jr and Carlson were both extremely proactive in pushing Vance.

Carlson reportedly advised Trump: “When your enemies are pushing a running mate at you”, referring to the Murdoch empire, “it’s a pretty good sign you should ignore them.”

The VP pick was a proxy fight between Rupert Murdoch and Tucker Carlson, and Carlson won, per the NY Times. https://t.co/fdbkBPGcz6 pic.twitter.com/q56VjKWqVk

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) July 17, 2024

What damage has been done?

All of this serves to underline Trump’s continued dominance. To advance in the Republican Party, it is necessary to pay homage to Trump and his fictions. Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, The Washington Post looked at nearly 700 Republican candidates for federal office and found that at least a third embraced Trump’s false election fraud claims.

Not only is the party subjected to his worldview, but there is also a new group of influential, pro-Trump, mega-donor billionaires, whose influence may be increasing, and whose views could, at best, be called eccentric.

Elon Musk, for example, seemed to promise he would give a pro-Trump political action committee US$45 million (A$68 million) a month, but in true Trumpian fashion, later seemed to backtrack. Musk also believes “the woke mind virus” is “one of the greatest threats to modern civilisation”.

Another tech billionaire, Peter Thiel, Vance’s principal backer, has said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

Indeed, he thinks “the 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”

This Republican Party is a very different beast from the one over which Murdoch exercised so much influence in recent decades. Indeed, Peter Wehner, who worked for three Republican presidents, says the party today under Trump is pretty much the opposite of its former self.

Murdoch has never given much hint of being someone who harbours regrets. But America’s political landscape today is one he would abhor: the legitimacy of the electoral system is under assault, conspiracy theories have more potency than in decades past, and the Republican Party is dominated by someone he detests and considers a danger to democracy.

Does he ever acknowledge how his own actions gave momentum to forces that now run against and threaten his own values? He might plead commercial necessity, but surely he knows the disservices to American democracy his media have done.

This was originally published in The Conversation.

Here’s what Crikey readers think the ABC is getting wrong. And a few things it’s getting right

If ABC chairman Kim Williams wants ideas to help lift the national broadcaster's standing, Crikey readers are more than happy to oblige.

On what a ‘better’ ABC might look like:

Roger Clifton writes: The ABC would very quickly sound modern by simply removing all regional British accents from the microphone. The ABC used to be the custodian of the educated Australian voice, but sometimes it echoes the world that our ancestors fled.

If our young people are to be introduced to the voices of their future, we should be hearing the accents of Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia.

Peter Le Mesurier writes: Good on you, Guy. Apart from a few bright spots recently, including Austin and Ladies in Black, the ABC’s drama programming is predictable and overly reliant on English police crime dramas. Where’s the twist? There never is one. 

The ABC should be nurturing a diversity of talent, talent that is prepared to tell it like it is, not just in drama and comedy — remember once there was Aunty Jack? — but also news. Why is John Lyons’ expertise in observing foreign societies buried mid-afternoon on the news channel when it could shine on 7.30, complementing domestic coverage? 

What’s the ABC been doing? Anything but nurture, exemplified by its campaign of intimidation of Antoinette Lattouf and any other presenters and journalists daring to depart, in fair narration of facts and alternative perspective, from a partisan editorial line and minimal original content set by board and management. 

Phil Burnham writes: I cheered when I read the comments from Kim Williams regarding the ABC online news. It is (was?) chockers with lifestyle fluff and pieces that are really promos for a TV show or some podcast. I recently looked at the app for an update on Israel’s invasion further into Gaza and saw an article on coping with unexpected visitors as the second or third story as I scrolled down.

Guy Rundle raises other areas, and I applaud him too. ABC TV has been a very mixed bag for the last decade or so. The only comedy gold in recent years has been Fisk. And current affairs have become overblown and almost melodramatic: Four Corners is almost a parody of its former self; Nemesis, with its excellent editing and no hyperbolic commentary, was the stand-out in this category.

Radio is another problem. Background Briefing on RN is more like a radio play at times, with too many sound effects and voice-overs. Not to mention that a good 30 minute story is dragged out over six 45 minute episodes. And who decides the hosts of local radio? I won’t denigrate individuals, but it seems that intellect and deep thinking are no longer fashionable. Keep it punchy, no more than two syllables per word, pat yourself on the back on how clever you are, and play lots of promos.

Margaret Callinan writes: If the ABC were to represent me, it would need and deserve to be shut down. Likewise if it were to become a clone of commercial radio, television and online offerings.

To my mind, the ABC has two main functions. First, through news and current affairs, the ABC should impartially inform us of what is going on in the world and offer appropriate opinions, commentary and analysis by experts in their field so that we can make sense of what is happening and act accordingly. That has to include what is happening in Australia’s major cities, smallest towns and everything in between.

We can’t be united as a nation if we’re unaware of what’s going on right across the country, what our differences are and where we have things in common. Lies and “alternative realities” should not be given oxygen. Ever.

Second, in the arts and entertainment spaces the ABC should do what commercial outlets won’t. Without entirely abandoning what could be termed “popular”, it should present things that challenge, that are new and experimental, it should make space for and encourage emerging talent. In other words, the ABC should take risks, not chase ratings per se.

For all of the above, proper government funding is a must, as is the absence of government interference. Full funding doesn’t mean every production should be a big budget item. There is great virtue in learning to produce quality programs on a shoestring. 

I would expect to catch glimpses of myself in the sort of ABC I describe. But I would hope to be challenged to grow by experiencing a broad range of offerings that represent all the differences that make up Australia.

Glen Davis writes: Aunty is full of fluff. I get my news now from Crikey, Pearls and Irritations, The Guardian and The Conversation. And I donate to help them prosper.

The ABC writes fair lifestyle stories, but no better than other sources. To fulfil the ABC’s charter, the hard news and analysis needs to get harder and newer.

I expect Chair Kim regrets the leak first published by The Sydney Morning Herald, but is serious about his policy comment. ABC must take a lead from Crikey and reduce the fluff to “on a lighter note”.

Labor defends partial gambling ad ban

Labor says it's helping free-to-air media survive by not backing a total gambling ad ban, and Fatima Payman is leading the charge of independent candidates in heartland Labor seats.

GAMBLING BAN ROW

Cabinet Minister Bill Shorten has all but confirmed the federal government will resist calls for a blanket ban on gambling ads, the ABC has said following his appearance on Q&A last night. During Monday’s show, Shorten said he was “not convinced that complete prohibition works”. The Albanese government has come under sustained pressure to initiate a total ban as it prepares to respond to the 2022 Senate inquiry into online gambling harm, chaired by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy, which recommended a total ban.

Shorten claimed last night commercial media operators were “under massive attack by Facebook” and needed the gambling revenue. “Some of you might say, ‘well, bugger them, just don’t worry, we don’t need free-to-air media’ … but free-to-air media is in diabolical trouble. That’s the discussion we’re not having,” he said.

Guardian Australia reports the Greens are going to try and amend an unrelated bill on television transmission to try and pass a total ban. The government’s current proposal instead involves “gambling ads being banned online, in children’s programming, during live sports broadcasts and an hour either side, but limited to two an hour in general TV programming”.

The AFR says the government will refer a decision on whether to ban gambling advertising on playing fields and player jerseys to another inquiry that will involve state and territory representatives. The paper also reports backbench Labor MPs, such as Mike Freelander, are becoming increasingly frustrated with the government’s position on the issue. Having already briefed gambling companies and media outlets, the final policy is expected to go to cabinet later this month, along with the full response to the parliamentary inquiry, the AFR added.

(Crikey’s new series on the government’s failure to reform gambling advertising, Punted, can be found here)

Shorten also used his Q&A appearance to further fuel the flames of the row over who is to blame for the high inflation and interest rates. The NDIS and government services minister said of the claims the government was to blame: “I see this pure doctrine from the Liberals and other conservative commentators who say it’s all the government’s fault about inflation. It is not.”

“If you keep rates up too long or suddenly withdraw a lot of government expenditure, you could push us into more diabolical recession-like circumstances.”

He then declared the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) was “not immune from criticism”.

“The RBA told investors and homeowners and mortgage holders three years ago, four years [ago], that interest rates will stay low for a long time. That led a lot of people into tough circumstances. I think there should have been more criticism of the RBA then and maybe we wouldn’t be quite where we are.”

The row over inflation and cost of living was unsurprisingly brought up in yesterday’s question time as Parliament returned from its winter break. Also discussed, to the discomfort of the government according to Guardian Australia, was the future of the Makarrata Commission after the prime minister ruled it out despite it being an election promise (see previous Worm). This morning the site leads with polling apparently showing voters endorse Anthony Albanese’s decision not to establish the commission. The latest Guardian Essential poll found just one-third of voters want a Treaty with First Nations peoples, a truth-telling commission or a legislated Indigenous Voice, the report said.

PAYMAN VS LABOR

Sky News led overnight with its interview with ex-Labor Senator Fatima Payman in which she claimed “every interaction, every event I went to, every speech I delivered was controlled, was reviewed”. The senator, who quit the party last month over its position on Palestinian statehood, added: “I don’t think the Labor Party was ready for me. It is great to have somebody who ticks the diversity box, but that diversity in appearance comes with diversity in thoughts and values and representation.”

Yesterday The Australian reported Ziad Basyouny, a 44-year-old doctor, will formally announce his decision to stand as an independent candidate in Tony Burke’s seat of Watson in Sydney today. Guardian Australia says he’s the first of several independents expected to challenge in federal Labor seats amid anger at the party’s stance on Israel’s war in Gaza. Basyouny told the site: “And that is the major issue here — he [Tony Burke] doesn’t represent our views [when he’s] in Canberra. The last year has shown us that Labor won’t listen to its constituents on things like Palestine, housing or the cost of living, and if you stand against the wind you’ll be punished.”

Elsewhere, the Guardian features the alarming finding that “not a single infant or toddler food product stocked in Australian supermarkets meets standards set by the World Health Organization (WHO)”. AAP says the study from the George Institute for Global Health found more than three-quarters of the 309 food products reviewed failed on overall nutritional requirements, usually due to too much sugar, and none met the WHO’s standards on prohibited claims, such as statements about being organic or free from colourings and flavours.

Looking ahead to today, AAP also flags former prime minister Scott Morrison is set to give evidence at Senator Linda Reynolds and Brittany Higgins’ high-profile defamation battle, and the June quarter wage price index from the Australian Bureau of Statistics is due out later.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE…

Scientists have declared horses are much smarter than previously thought. The Press Association reports on a study from Nottingham Trent University (NTU) which found the animals did better than expected in a “complex reward-based game”.

The BBC explained the study involved 20 horses who were rewarded for touching a piece of card with their nose. Then a “stop light” was introduced and the horses only received a treat when they touched the card when the light was off. The horses initially kept touching the card though, regardless of the light, but in the third and final stage of the research, the horses were subjected to a 10-second timeout if they touched the card with the light on. The animals reportedly quickly changed their behaviour and all 20 animals learned how to avoid the timeout.

Louise Evans, a PhD candidate based in NTU’s School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences, said: “We were expecting horses’ performance to improve when we introduced the timeout, but were surprised by how immediate and significant the improvement was.

“Animals usually need several repetitions of a task to gradually acquire new knowledge, whereas our horses immediately improved when we introduced a cost for errors. This suggests that the horses knew all along what the rules of the game were.”

The study has been published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science.

Say What?

This is unscripted with no limits on subject matter, so should be highly entertaining!

Elon Musk

The owner of social media platform X has been heavily promoting his live interview with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The event is due to happen at 8pm ET (10am AEST) today. Trump, who was banned from the site (then called Twitter) in 2021 and reinstated by Musk in 2022 but posted just once (his mugshot), has begun posting again in the shape of election ads. As Business Insider points out, the return to X by Trump has (so far) been unlike his previous usage when he would frequently post controversial and inflammatory comments, which he is instead still doing on his own social platform Truth Social.

CRIKEY RECAP

Howard urges Albanese: Pick a fight I always ducked when I was in office

BERNARD KEANE

This being the most risk-averse Labor government in history, the chances of it taking on the networks, at least without some impressively large form of compensation for them, look slim. Perhaps, in 10 years’ time, in that form of l’esprit de l’escalier that afflicts former politicians who find in retirement the courage that eluded them while in office, Prime Minister Albanese might be a signatory to an open letter calling for further gambling regulation.

But by then the free-to-airs will probably be dead, too, gone the way of the printed newspaper with the horse-racing form guide tucked in the middle.

Dutton’s never seen a division he didn’t think was worth stoking — but now he’s being sued for it

MICHAEL BRADLEY

In the midst of the Fatima Paymania that intoxicated federal Parliament last month, the contribution of one politician to Australia’s vaunted social cohesion stood out: Peter Dutton.

The context was the Labor Party’s existential panic that Payman’s exit from the party may be the trigger for a political insurgency in safe Labor seats with large Muslim populations.

Asked about this, Dutton warned that the next Parliament could “include the Greens, it’ll include Green-teals, it’ll include Muslim candidates from Western Sydney. It will be a disaster”.

Standard Dutton, who never saw a division he didn’t think was worth stoking.

But this time he is being sued for it. A group called the Alliance Against Islamophobia has launched a complaint with the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board, alleging that Dutton’s comments breached section 20C of the Anti-Discrimination Act, which makes unlawful a public act that incites hatred towards, serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of, a person or group of persons because of their race. In short, racial hate speech.

While Dutton will dismiss the claim as political theatre, it comes at an interesting time and does raise a significant legal and societal question.

The internet cannot decide what to make of our breakdancing Raygun

CRYSTAL ANDREWS

A new Australian meme was born over the weekend: Raygun, aka Rachael Gunn, the Olympic breakdancer who bombed so hard she sparked an avalanche of international discourse.

The 36-year-old b-girl and academic failed to score a single point in the first (and potentially last) breakdancing competition at the 2024 Paris Olympics, with an unconventional routine featuring kangaroo hops and floor-writhing in place of the sport’s usual tricks.

It was a deliberate choice, as Gunn admitted: “I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic and the power moves, so I wanted to move differently, be artistic and creative, because how many chances do you get in a lifetime to do that on an international stage?”

Was her performance creative, camp, cringe… or an act of colonisation? The internet is undecided.

Let’s run through the takes.

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Putin vows to ‘kick enemy out of Russia’ as Ukraine’s cross-border incursion expands to dozens of villages (CNN)

Hospitals evacuated as wildfires spread near Greek capital Athens (Sky News)

Two 12-year-olds plead guilty over UK riots (The Financial Times)

Trump falsely claims Harris campaign used AI to fake crowd in Detroit (CBS News)

Heat aggravated by carbon pollution killed 50,000 in Europe last year — study (The Guardian)

Illinois school worker Vera Liddell gets 9 years for $1.5 million chicken wing heist (The New York Post)

THE COMMENTARIAT

As an ex-Twitter boss, I have a way to grab Elon Musk’s attention. If he keeps stirring unrest, get an arrest warrant — Bruce Daisley (The Guardian): In my experience, that threat of personal sanction is much more effective on executives than the risk of corporate fines. Were Musk to continue stirring up unrest, an arrest warrant for him might produce fireworks from his fingertips, but as an international jet-setter it would have the effect of focusing his mind. It’s also worth remembering that the rules of what is permitted on X are created by one of Musk’s lesser-known advisers, a Yorkshire man called Nick Pickles, who leads X’s global affairs team.

Musk’s actions should be a wake-up call for Starmer’s government to quietly legislate to take back control of what we collectively agree is permissible on social media. Musk might force his angry tweets to the top of your timeline, but the will of a democratically elected government should mean more than the fury of a tech oligarch — even him.

The problem is not A.I. It’s the disbelief created by Trump – Zeynep Tufekci (The New York Times): It’s no accident that Trump has made it a habit to portray credible news organisations as untrustworthy liars, and many of his supporters seem to have internalised that message they were open to in the first place.

Once trust is lost and all credibility is questioned, the lie doesn’t have to be high quality. It doesn’t have to be supported by highly realistic fake AI. It doesn’t have to be so easily disprovable. To work, the lie just needs a willing purveyor and an eager audience. The AI, then, is but a fig leaf.