HIDDENS FEES AND ALBO’S HOUSE
Another day, another announcement by the federal government as it continues to try and get the news agenda focussed on what it wants to sell (a task that remains easier said than done, especially when some are out there buying fancy new homes during a cost of living crisis…).
Following yesterday’s announcement about banning debit card surcharges comes a range of legislative measures aimed at trying to stop businesses from ripping people off, AAP reports. The newswire says the practices in the government’s sights include “drip pricing” tactics that add hidden fees, plus “dynamic pricing”, which impacts a product’s cost during a transaction.
Other practices that would be banned include subscription “traps” which make it difficult to cancel a contract or claim customers have a limited time to buy a product.
Guardian Australia says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers will today announce plans to ban unfair trading practices under Australian consumer law. The site quotes a statement from the pair declaring: “From concert tickets to hotel rooms to gym memberships, Australians are fed up with businesses using tricky tactics that make it difficult to end subscriptions or add hidden fees to purchases.”
The PM is also quoted as saying: “Hidden fees and traps are putting even more pressure on the cost of living and it needs to stop.”
Talking of the prime minister and the cost of living crisis… the revelation by 2GB presenter Ben Fordham that Albanese and his fiancé have purchased a $4.3 million property on the NSW Central Coast got plenty of coverage on Tuesday and continued to feature very high up on many homepages overnight.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s latest coverage of the house purchase claims Labor MPs are “baffled” at the decision to buy the property ahead of an election expected to be fought on issues such as cost of living and housing affordability. The paper quotes four Labor MPs who expressed frustration with the decision.
“I can’t think of a greater act of self-sabotage in my life. I am gobsmacked. If you’re a Labor MP up against a Green at the next election, good luck,” one Labor MP is quoted by the paper as saying. “Some people [within Labor] were aware and tried to stop it. My instinct is this is fucking terrible.”
The property is said to be near the family of Albanese’s fiancee Jodie Haydon. Two MPs claimed the prime minister should have delayed buying the house until after the federal election and his upcoming wedding.
The Australian jumped on Opposition Leader Peter Dutton claiming Albanese and Haydon were “obviously planning for the next stage of life post-politics”, to which the PM countered he was “planning to be in my current job for a very long period of time”.
On a day when property portfolios and wealth continue to be debated, the AFR and others point out the Australian National University has asked staff to forgo their pay rise this year. The paper says the request is part of what the university says are attempts to cut $250 million in costs in response to the drop in foreign student revenue. Guardian Australia quotes National Tertiary Education Union branch manager Millan Pintos-Lopez as saying: “It feels like we’re in an episode of Fawlty Towers. I think there’s just a sense of complete mismanagement and delusion from the chancellery.”
AI THREAT
The Age this morning is highlighting the fact Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic will today make over 250 submissions to the government’s proposals paper on introducing mandatory AI guardrails public. The paper reports Husic is claiming the federal government has received overwhelming support to rein in the use of AI in high-risk settings, but there are divisions regarding what approach to take.
The paper says Husic “is appearing on stage alongside flying cars and robots at SXSW in Sydney” today, kicking off Australia’s “AI month”. At the event, he is expected to encourage executives to be proactive in implementing AI, regardless of where the government’s regulation ends up.
“We know AI can play a huge role in making the world a better place, but it’s crucial that Australian businesses are equipped to develop and use the technology safely and responsibly,” he will say.
Capital Brief’s coverage of SXSW earlier this week included the rather eye-catching news that the Australian Electoral Commission has warned it lacks the capability to combat the threat of deepfakes and AI.
Meanwhile, the Nine newspapers are highlighting the Coalition’s pledge to use taxpayer funds to expand the role of gas in the electricity grid.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports how all fossil fuels are excluded from accessing public funds through the government’s Capacity Investment Scheme, which underwrites renewables projects. Yesterday, the opposition declared gas would be “here to stay” and pledged to open the scheme to new and existing gas power plants, the paper said.
Finally, the AAP reminds us Queensland Premier Steven Miles and Liberal National Party leader David Crisafulli will once against face off in the second leadership debate in Brisbane tonight.
The debate comes near the halfway mark of the election campaign with the state election taking place on October 26.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
Archaeologists have discovered 50 “exceptionally well-preserved” Viking age skeletons in a village in Denmark, Associated Press reports.
Michael Borre Lundø, who led the six-month dig on the outskirts of Aasum, told the news agency: “This is such an exciting find because we found these skeletons that are so very, very well preserved. Normally, we would be lucky to find a few teeth in the graves, but here we have entire skeletons.”
The archaeologist said he thought the site was potentially a farming community and it was thought the Vikings uncovered at Aasum were unlikely to be warriors.
The site, five kilometres from Denmark’s third-largest city Odense, was first discovered last year during a survey for power line renovation work.
“This opens a whole new toolbox for scientific discovery,” Borre Lundø said, “Hopefully we can make a DNA analysis on all the skeletons and see if they are related to each other and even where they come from.”
Say What?
Of course, I am much better off as prime minister, I earn a good income. I understand I have been fortunate. I also know what it is like to struggle. My mum lived in the one public housing that she was born in for all of her 65 years.
Anthony Albanese
The prime minister responding to the inevitable questions following the revelation he has bought a house on the NSW Central Coast for a reported $4.3 million.
CRIKEY RECAP
A Fox Sports executive who secretly ran an abusive social media account attacking colleagues, rivals and peers in the industry has quietly left the company.
In August, a Crikey investigation revealed that Foxtel’s general manager of Fox Cricket Matthew Weiss was behind the @RealRagingBull social media account on X, formerly Twitter.
Over the better part of a decade, the account had abused current and former Foxtel colleagues, other members of the sports media, cricket players and other public figures.
Two former prime ministers met in Sydney last week, with Tony Abbott attempting to help Liz Truss’ book 10 Years to Save the West inch above the Ultimate Air Fryer Cookbook on the bestseller list by “launching” the tome a mere six months after its release.
So just what is threatening the West according to these colossal figures in the world of second-hand embarrassment? According to their agreed-upon thesis, the threats can be traced back to “the various mind viruses”, as Abbott put it. “Whether it’s the woke mind virus, the net zero mind virus, whether it’s the appeasement of our external enemies mind virus, all of which are doing so much damage.” This is a Rhodes scholar, talking like a punctuation-free YouTube comment, if that gives you any indication of the state of modern conservatism.
Given the sheer volume of threats Abbott and friends have told us Western civilisation is facing, we thought it might be useful to give a ranking, so that next time you’re warned of an imminent danger to everything we hold dear, you’ll know just how worried to be.
They would, after all, require every Australian social media user (not just the kids) to provide personal identification information either to the platform operators themselves, a government-run age verification portal, or a third-party verification service — with all the privacy and data security implications this inevitably produces. Meanwhile, the kids will simply move to some other site, most likely outside Australia, that the floppy tentacles of national cyberpolicy cannot reach.
As a past president of the International Association of Internet Researchers, I can confidently say Australian scholars are among the world leaders in this field, especially in the area of digital media use by children and young adults. My sense of the community’s views, borne out in this open letter, is that it is abundantly clear social media bans will solve nothing, and that more constructive and genuinely consultative approaches are needed.
It was a petty slap in the face of our world-leading, home-grown digital media expertise that representatives from this major national research institution weren’t even the opportunity to outline alternative and eminently more sensible proposals to delegates at the summit. Instead, taxpayer money was wasted on flying out professional manufacturers of concern from the United States, just because their narrative suited the predetermined policy outcomes.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
The US warns Israel that aid to Gaza must increase (The New York Times) ($)
Penny Wong forced to re-start speech multiple times as protesters criticise Gaza response (ABC)
Trump sways and bops to music for 39 minutes in bizarre town hall episode (The Washington Post)
Judge ‘did not authorise’ Lehrmann judgment book (The Sydney Morning Herald)
IMF says global public debt to top $100 trillion, growth may accelerate (Reuters)
Joker sequel on course for catastrophic $200m loss — reports (The Guardian)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Why couldn’t the PM just enjoy Kirribilli’s harbour views for another six months and then go property shopping? — Sarah Martin (Guardian Australia): Having been in Parliament for almost 30 years, and now on an income of $550,000, the “battler from Marrickville” trope rings hollow when you’re having to defend the timber-lined cathedral ceilings of your third property at Copacabana (of all places).
The Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, himself a property investor with undisclosed wealth held in trusts, said little about the purchase, indicating the decision was a “matter for the prime minister”.
But he doesn’t need to. In a political environment where most people are not paying attention to policy or the government’s daily grind, there is nothing like a real estate story — with pictures to boot — to get cut-through.
It’s just not the kind of cut-through the government needed.
The prime minister’s new beach house has just made his job — and his colleagues’ — much harder — Annabel Crabb (ABC): Which is that the prime minister’s decision to buy, jointly with his partner Jodie Heydon, a $4.3 million clifftop beach house, with ocean views so expansive that they would challenge the visual field of an owl, right in the middle of a national housing crisis, right before an election campaign at which the single most reverberant issue is the cost of maintaining just one home, is the most baffling strategic initiative since Scott Morrison said (I’m paraphrasing here) “Just spitballing, fellas… how bad would it be if we just didn’t tell people I’m in Hawaii?”
Not because the PM doesn’t have the right to do whatever he wants with his own money, or because he’s not entitled to happiness or a nice new life with his lovely fiancee, who is a successful woman and presumably brings a substantial contribution to the kitty. Ms Heydon, who should not be punished for falling in love with a person in public life, is allowed to live in a nice house too.
The cold truth is, nevertheless, that this purchase just made the prime minister’s professional life — and those of his colleagues — much, much harder.