Stan Grant says neither Trump or Harris are answer to ‘existential crisis of America’
Mostafa Rachwani
Journalist and academic Stan Grant has taken shots at “political elites” in the United States, as well as coverage of the US election, in a speech made at a social cohesion conference in western Sydney.
The former host of ABC’s Q+A told attendees that neither Donald Trump or Kamala Harris were the answer to the “existential crisis of America” and then made reference to Robin Hood:
The American political elites have turned their backs on poor Americans. They are bought and paid for by lobbyists. They pass laws that put more money into rich people’s hands. Healthcare is a scandal. Machines are making people redundant. Big pharma has people hooked on drugs.
If we think that Harris or Trump are going to be the answer to the existential crisis of America, then we need to know that the Sheriff of Nottingham has taken up residence in Washington DC, and the good cops have left town. Robin Hood is nowhere to be seen.
He said coverage of the election had been “abominable” in that “every lie” and “every hatred” has been “amplified.” He said the media has only been interested in the outrage and star power of the campaigns, and less so the people “holding that broken country together”.
I barely watched much of the news coverage because it has been abominable.
Every lie is amplified, every hatred is broadcast. And I’m just not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about the entire picture. If we reduce the American election to just an idea of who may be more decent or who has bad manners, but better manners, we’re missing the point.
The point is that we are talking about a nation where human beings are expendable and the media doesn’t tell us that story because they’re too interested in the latest entertainment, the latest pop star, the latest movie star, the latest business person, the latest Trump outrage, the latest inane comment from Kamala Harris, and never speak to the people who were doing the back-breaking, dirty, gut-busting work of holding that broken country together while politicians have absolutely exploited them.
Key events
Dutton says the PM should refer himself to the Integrity Commission over the flight upgrades.
It is clear he has breached the standards of the ministerial code of conduct in the Gillard code of conduct when he was Transport Minister.
Dutton has attacked the PM on the Qantas upgrades and the lack of competitive air fares in Australia.
He has been asked about his own access to a private jet and relationship with a billionaire Gina Rinehart.
I have been very transparent, declared all of that, which is why [Albanese] knows about it and I was not the transport minister. picking up the phone to Alan Joyce, the CEO of Australia’s biggest airline, to ask for free up-rates for me and my family and then refusing to detail it in an honest way.
Peter Dutton is talking in Queensland. he has accused the PM of being ‘focused on himself’:
This government talks a lot and Anthony Albanese promised a lot before the election but doesn’t do anything except for himself and unfortunately, Australians are missing out. And the Prime Minister is focused only on himself and what he can get from the system.
He says the Treasurer has handed down “inflationary” budgets:
When we were in government during the COVID period, Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese proposed spending more money, so if their argument was inflation was a problem, their argument at the time was to fuel it further, and this is something that Australians understand.
Rafqa Touma
Thanks for tuning into the blog today. Handing over now to Cait Kelly, who will roll your live news updates this afternoon.
Sarah Basford Canales
The independent ACT senator, David Pocock, has urged the Albanese government to place targeted sanctions on officials within the Israeli government and its armed forces after it banned the UN’s Palestinian aid body from entering Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.
Overnight, Israel’s parliament voted to ban the UN relief and works agency (UNRWA) from its territory within 90 days.
The aid body provides food, water and medicine for the more than 1.9 million displaced Palestinians, who face severe shortages in the Gaza strip.
Pocock said he held concerns about the potential “humanitarian apocalypse” in Gaza and called for targeted sanctions against Israeli government and defence force officials “responsible for war crimes against the people of Gaza and the West Bank”.
“This is one of the only levers available to us,” Pocock said.
In July, Australia imposed financial sanctions and travel bans on seven Israelis and a youth group for their involvement in violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.
The move came after the UN’s international court of justice ordered Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories “as rapidly as possible” and make full reparations for its “internationally wrongful acts” in an advisory opinion that declares the occupation violates international law.
In a press conference earlier, Pocock said the federal government’s failure to do more amounted to a “real failure of moral courage”.
At some point, countries like Australia, [must] say ‘that’s not good enough’, and we can actually make a small stand as a middle power.
Read more about the Knesset’s decision here:
Mark Butler says trust difficult to restore after Covid pandemic
The health minister, Mark Butler, says it “is going to be a long hard road to get trust to the level it was before the pandemic”.
He points to mis- and disinformation in health as something that is “not going to be easy to battle”:
It’s easily lost, it’s hard to build it back up, I think is the insight. The establishment of an independent authoritative body that is seen as distant from government, that is able to provide fearless advice to the community and to governments, which I think will have a reporting function to parliament, that will be transparent, I think is a critical central ingredient in rebuilding that trust.
But I – I think – as all of you know, you know, the pandemic did fuel a lot of misinformation and disinformation which – which particularly was fertile in health, and that is not going to be easy to battle, frankly. So we need to build the structures, we need to give the community confidence that, in the future, decisions will be taken at an appropriate time on the basis of real data, Australian data, not overseas data, which the report makes clear we had to use because we had no data of our own, even though UK and US data was telling a very different picture to a population like Australia’s that had different vaccination status. We use our own data and we use evidence-based approaches that … balance risks and benefits, takes the proportionate approach and thinks about non-health impacts as well as the direct health impacts.
‘Billions and billions of dollars were wasted’ during Covid crisis, Jim Chalmers says
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, also addressed press on the Covid inquiry report.
“Big decisions were taken and big mistakes were made,” he said. “Those mistakes were costly and they were inflationary.
“The consequences of the economic policies developed through the pandemic also continue to be felt right across our economy even today.”
Chalmers quotes the report in saying “there was excessive fiscal and monetary policy stimulus provided throughout 2021 and 2022, especially in the construction sector, combined with supply-side disruptions this contributed to inflationary pressures coming out of the pandemic”.
He continued:
The modelling cited in the report says that the extended policy support which didn’t always move in line with the health advice meant that peak inflation was at least two percentage points higher than it could have been.
On the design of the economic response, we saw some very good ideas badly implemented and poorly targeted. Labor called for and supported programs like jobkeeper but we were very, very clear at the time that the support should have been rolled out faster and that it should have been better targeted because, if it was better targeted, we could have provided more assistance to those who genuinely needed it by wasting less on the businesses in particular who didn’t need jobkeeper and we know subsequently that billions and billions of dollars were wasted.
On the home builders’ program, the report makes it clear that overheated the industry and contributed to inflation in the post-pandemic era with many Australians experiencing the consequences of this now through higher inflation and through lack of access to housing.
It’s also particularly critical of the early release of superannuation, which was not an appropriate policy response and shouldn’t be deployed again. They see the existing hardship provisions as sufficient for these kinds of events.
It also concludes that the slow vaccine rollout had economic consequences as well. It delayed the reopening of our economy by months at great cost to the economy.
Here’s more on the newly announced Centre for Disease Control.
The health minister, Mark Butler, told the media a short while ago:
The first priority of the CDC will be to establish a comprehensive joined-up data and surveillance system in partnership with states and territories, but to have a single comprehensive real-time data and surveillance system and for our surveillance capability to be world-leading including our use of wastewater surveillance, which we know has been so important. The CDC will be also responsible for providing independent evidence-based advice about particularly a pandemic response, but more generally our responses to communicable diseases. It will also be responsible for engagement with regional and international partners.
It will also obviously be responsible for leading pandemic planning and testing or stress-testing of our ability to respond to a pandemic in partnership with relevant departments, including my own, the Department of Health, and the National Emergency Management Authority.
Federal government announces $251m funding for Centre for Disease Control
Mark Butler has announced $251m to establish a Centre for Disease Control.
He told the media:
The government is investing $251m over the forward estimates as well as funding ongoing to establish an independent authoritative Centre for Disease Control to commence from 1 January 2026.
Legislation will be introduced into the parliament next year to set out its independence and functions, he said. It will be based out of Canberra, and its functions will “closely reflect” recommendations from the Covid inquiry report.
Butler talked through the report’s recommendations a short while ago:
There are 26 recommended actions for the national government, 19 of them are recommended to be prioritised over the next 12 to 18 months. Seven in the longer-term. Cabinet considered this report yesterday and appointed PM&C to lead a cross-government taskforce to work through those recommendations and come back to the cabinet. I think, without doubt, though, the most important recommendation from this report is the establishment of a centre for disease control – a CDC. As you know, Australia at the beginning of this pandemic was pretty much the only OECD nation without a central authoritative centre for disease control and it was an election promise from Anthony Albanese, made in one of his budget reply speeches to close that gap and to establish a CDC here in Australia.
Australia now ‘arguably worse-placed’ to deal with a pandemic than in 2020
The health minister, Mark Butler, says the Covid inquiry report concludes that, for a range of reasons, “we are arguably worse-placed as a country to deal with a pandemic than we were in early 2020”.
He told the media:
There has been really significant scarring on our healthcare systems and the health workforce, a workforce that is exhausted by the demands of a once-in-a-century pandemic that’s gone on for years. The APS has lost – the Australian Public Service – has lost key personnel who learnt a lot through that pandemic but have moved on from their positions, often through exhaustion. As I’m sure the treasurer will talk about, governments are in much more significant debt than they were before the pandemic. But crucially, crucially, this report says that a number of the points I have already made about the lack of real-time evidence-based policy and the lack of transparency has driven a large decline in trust … which the panel members say, and these are their words – which many of the measures taken during Covid-19 are unlikely to be accepted by the population again.
Health minister says Covid report criticises pace of vaccine rollout as well as aged care and communication failures
Health minister Mark Butler told press the Covid-19 inquiry report identified the “slowness of our vaccine rollout,” “failures in aged care,” and “stark inequity” between different community groups “particularly different groups from culturally linguistically diverse backgrounds but also temporary visa holders”.
He also said the report “points to a lack of transparency around the rationale and the evidence behind decisions that were taken by governments that had such a profound impact on the lives of Australians and the freedom of Australians”.
Covid inquiry finds Australia’s pandemic plans ‘grossly inadequate’
The Covid-19 inquiry report found Australia’s pandemic plans were “grossly inadequate for the scale of the challenge that Covid-19 presented to us”, the health minister, Mark Butler, has told the media:
The first lesson from this report is that like most countries, frankly, our pandemic plans were grossly inadequate for the scale of the challenge that Covid-19 presented to us. The report makes clear, for example, that our plans, such as they were, included no plan that would deal with the closure of the international border, which was such a central part of our response. No plan to deal with quarantine, which was also incredibly important. No plan to deal with the workforce demands of a pandemic that went on for as long as it did. And, as a result, to use the words of the report, our response to the pandemic was not as effective as it could have been.
As a result of the lack of plans, leaders, particularly, were placed in the invidious position, to use the words of the report, of building the plane while it was flying. The disease surveillance systems were frankly simply not up to the task. The report talks about the use of paper systems, the use of facsimile machines.
