Australia

A report into soaring grocery prices, rising energy bills and steep airfares will be released on Wednesday (7 February) amid expectations its findings and recommendations will cause a headache for some of the country's biggest and most powerful companies.

It comes amid a cost of living crisis that has intensified an already-growing distrust of supermarkets, airlines and energy companies.

Yang can still appeal his sentence through the Chinese legal system, which effectively provides him with certain levels of protection until his appeals have been exhausted. "However, criminal appeals in China are rarely successful," writes Donald Rothwell, Professor of International Law at the Australian National University.

Yang’s ill-health would also not provide any additional legal grounds for his release. Diplomatically, though, this would be a basis for Australia to continue to advocate for his release on humanitarian grounds.

However, unlike the high-profile case of two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were also accused of espionage and detained by China from 2018–21, Australia has no bargaining chip to secure Yang’s release.

Kovrig and Spavor had been arrested shortly after Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese national, was detained in Canada on a US arrest warrant. The two men were released hours after Meng was also released from Canadian custody.

I know it's a little old. Thought it was more relevant given the recent confected outage over Labor and election promises.

Did the ABC bow to pressure from an Israel lobby group by taking freelance journalist Antoinette Lattouf off air?

Pro-democracy writer Yang Hengjun has been detained in China since January 2019.

More honest than everything else reported this week on the issue.

cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/6545941

There are two large closures coming up in Kosciuszko to allow for shooting to occur (animal control). If anyone's planning on a trip down there in the next few months this might affect you.

The first big one is the area south of Alpine Way, all the way down to the edge of the park at the Victorian border. This is planned to be closed for basically all of March (4th-28th). This map shows the area in question.

The second and even larger closure is the majority of the area north of the Snowy Mountains Hwy, and this is planned to be closed for literally half the year - 4th April to 4th of October. If you want to do the run through Long Plain and Broken Cart trail (makes nice day trip from Canberra) better think about doing it soon or you'll be waiting a while. This map shows the area for this closure.

Counter-terrorism police encouraged an autistic 13-year-old boy in his fixation on Islamic State in an undercover operation after his parents sought help from the authorities.

The boy, given the pseudonym Thomas Carrick, was later charged with terror offences after an undercover officer “fed his fixation” and “doomed” the rehabilitation efforts Thomas and his parents had engaged in, a Victorian children’s court magistrate found.

Edited footage of protesters chanting "gas the Jews" at the rally outside the Sydney Opera House in October was shared on social media, but NSW Police said an extensive investigation found no evidence of it happening.

In calendar news, Australia Day is officially changing date after this year and will no longer be celebrated on January 26th. With a new date of January 20th chosen instead in order to celebrate the day that Scott Morrison announced his departure from politics.

The day was reportedly chosen for the holiday as it was clearly the day that Australia has most come together to celebrate, like what Australia Day claims to be.

Link to Statement from FriendlyJordies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRqUVh29LGQ

Link to video last month about the arrest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8AN5kPtnm4

Link to archived "Coronation": https://archive.org/details/youtube-QGpWvYscSpE

China reached out to PNG in September, offering to assist its police force with training, equipment, and surveillance technology, according to PNG Foreign Minister Justin Tkachenko. The talks continued last week.

Amid jostling between Washington and Beijing for influence in the Pacific, the biggest Pacific Islands nation, Papua New Guinea (PNG), has previously said Australia and the United States are its security partners, while China is an important economic partner.

PNG would assess if the Chinese offer duplicated security and policing assistance already being offered by Australia and the United States, Tkachenko said.

"It is still in the early stages of negotiation with our commissioner of police and our minister of internal security," he said.

"They have offered it to us, but we have not accepted it at this point in time."

After Nine blamed an 'automation' error in Photoshop for producing an edited image of Georgie Purcell, I set out to find out what the software would do to other politicians.

The disgraced police officer son of former senator and NSW premier Kristina Keneally has avoided jail time for fabricating evidence that put an innocent man behind bars.

Concessions for superannuation cost the federal budget almost $50bn a year while rental deductions, much of them for negative gearing, have jumped by more than half in three years, the annual Treasury summary of tax expenditures shows.

The ranking of revenue foregone in 2023-24, released on Wednesday, was headed by many of the usual groups, finding for example that shielding taxpayers’ main residence from capital gains taxes, saved them a combined $47.5bn for the year, up about a third from 2018-19.

Topping the list was concessions for super contributions, which cost the budget $28.55bn, up almost 23% from the previous year. Exemptions for earnings from super was ranked fifth largest at $20.05bn, down about 7% on the previous year.

Benefits for both types of super exemptions were skewed to higher income earners. In 2020–21, 90% of the contributions benefit went to people with above median income, and 30% went to people in the top tenth of taxable income earners.

The national broadcaster will be represented by Seyfarth Shaw, which has a decades-long reputation of anti-union practices in the US, to act in the Fair Work Commission matter involving journalist Antoinette Lattouf.

Not sure if this counts as politics or not; let me know.

One major brick in the toilet tank of the rental market is apparently investors just 'parking their money' in properties and leaving them vacant longterm, with an eye to selling them later at an inflated price - with rental income being not worth the hassle.

Some people have suggested a tax on vacant properties to give more incentive to rent them out.

Good idea, but I say we go one better.

1. Put a hefty tax on all properties that aren't owner-occupied.
2. Give a rebate for renting them out, proportional to the percentage above or below the average rental for comparable properties.

If you charge above-average rent, you get a small rebate.

If you charge average rent, you get a medium rebate.

If you charge below-average rent, you get a large rebate. This could even exceed 100%, using the funding from the other categories.

People chasing the large rebate will drive the average down over time, ate viola, we have a race to the bottom and the consumers reap the benefits.

There's probably a dozen reasons why this wouldn't work, but I like it anyway.