Comment

Thirty years ago this week, something extraordinary happened. In two judgements issued on the same day by the High Court, a central democratic principle – the implied freedom of political communication – was explicitly recognised for the first time. 

Eddie Betts says there should be an investigation at every club in the AFL. “This could happen at any football club,” he says. “And I think that every football club should do a review like this. Every football club should come out and do an external review, contact the Indigenous players and past Indigenous players, and see how that footy club was.”

The most significant failure of global leadership by governments in recent times is the failure to act decisively and as a matter of urgency on climate change. Surely we have moved beyond the ignorant and irresponsible mumbling of the climate deniers with mounting evidence from across the world of the effects of climate change. The unprecedented heatwave in Europe. The unprecedented drought in China. The megadrought in the United States. Greenland’s collapsing icecap. Near-famine in several parts of Africa.

It’s seven hours’ flying time from London to New York, but there is a huge chasm between the pageantry of a past empire on one side of the Atlantic and the 77th meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on the other. Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong’s grim words belied the bright sunshine of her midweek news conference in the UN Plaza’s rose garden. ‘War in Europe,’ she said, ‘has cast a shadow over this meeting.’

Two weeks ago, on the day Queen Elizabeth II died, Steve Bannon surrendered himself to authorities. In the Solomon Islands, an election was delayed. In France, President Emmanuel Macron was embarrassed when people did not attend his unity conference. Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, a public administrator was suspected of killing a reporter who was investigating him over a hostile work environment.

The text messages weren’t allowed to be read at the trial where Zachary Rolfe was found not guilty of murdering Kumanjayi Walker. They were deemed prejudicial. On Monday, Rolfe’s lawyers argued again that they should not be heard at the inquest into Walker’s death. They argued that the coroner should not consider whether systemic racism was a factor in the killing.

As the government moves towards its first budget in October, uncertainties about our economic outlook are mounting. That’s partly because it is increasingly difficult to read the world economy, and there’s a growing belief that our interest rates must be getting close to a peak with the Reserve Bank of Australia’s increases. It’s also unclear just how long the impact of those moves will take to flow through.

Australia’s most ardent monarchist prime minister – not Tony Abbott or John Howard but Robert Menzies – would have been very impressed with the response of our avowed republican leader, Anthony Albanese, to the passing of our borrowed head of state, Queen Elizabeth II.

National cabinet met virtually this week with the chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, in attendance. Kelly was absent from the previous meeting, on August 31, which cut mandated Covid-19 isolation from seven to five days – a decision not supported by expert health advice. National cabinet’s decision that day, made without the benefit of documentation including the CMO’s views, was noted as unusual by journalists at the time.

The successful jobs and skills summit clearly established the significance to our future of improving our national productivity, yet it didn’t attempt to fill in the detail of how to achieve this. The government needs to adopt a clear objective to improve productivity – perhaps a simple target such as doubling the national rate of productivity growth by 2030, or even earlier.