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After speaking about Australia’s relationship with India and the voice referendum, Anthony Albanese spoke about the death of Tina Turner on FM radio this morning.

He told Sydney radio 101.7 WSFM

I’m so sad to hear of the passing of Tina Turner. She, she was a legend who overcame domestic violence and trauma. She provided a soundtrack to our lives. I think here in Australia ‘Simply the Best’ was such a soundtrack for those who loved rugby league as well. She had so many good songs, though that would be my pick but ‘Proud Mary’ was fantastic, ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’, she had so many great hits. She was a great dancer of course as well and appeared in one of the Mad Max movies, Beyond Thunderdome.

If the parliament doesn’t pause for a one minute Nutbush, what even are we doing here.

Tony Burke is still working to close the loophole that allows people on labour force contracts to be paid less than other workers.

The ‘same job, same pay’ legislation would close the loophole that allows companies to negotiate lower pay rates with labour hire firms.

BHP has claimed the changes could cost the company more than $1bn and risk jobs. Burke said the legislation had not been written yet so he doesn’t know how the mining giant could put a figure on anything.

As AAP reports:

Mr Burke said the government is also looking at criminalising wage theft and implementing minimum standards in the gig economy as part of its next tranche of industrial relations reforms.

“If you steal from the till it’s a criminal offence, if the employee steals from you, it’s not,” he said.

“That loophole needs to be closed.”

The house sitting has got under way, but it seems like the opposition frontbench was a little busy this morning – they didn’t make it in for when the bells rang, so the whip Bert Van Manem had to sit in Peter Dutton’s chair for five minutes until someone more senior came along.

Australia needs to ‘think of new ways of meeting food demand’ in face of climate crisis, says Ed Husic

Ed Husic spent the morning talking food demand with ABC News Breakfast, as the CSIRO and other boffins try to work on ways to create crops which will better handle the impacts of climate change, not just domestically, but globally.

I think there is a concern that we [expect] that the good times will keep rolling on.

And the reality is, we do need to think of new ways of meeting food demand. And I see it.

… I see some great examples out on the road when I visit. Out in western Sydney, where I come from, there is a terrific firm that is turning wheat into meat. Not literally meat, but they’re value-adding wheat.

And through their processing, they can give it the taste and texture of lamb and chicken. Complementary proteins will be really important as the world’s population grows.

It can be stored well, transported easily; it’s tasty, but it meets that need for protein. So, again, those type of Australian firms that can meet our needs, and globally, really important.

And the other challenge too is, we waste a lot of food, you know – nearly 8 million tonnes in Australia, of which 70% is still edible. And you think of the impact that has not just in terms of production, and at a time where people need food, but there’s also a climate impact on that as well in terms of the processing or the growth of those food inputs. And that’s something we need to think about too.

‘We’ve made terrible mistakes as a nation’ but voice debate is a chance to change course, says Watts

Watts said he saw the context of the referendum legislation and the referendum itself through the history that people like his ancestor had created.

We’ve made terrible mistakes as a nation when it comes to our First Nations Australians. But our greatest strength as a nation is our ability, as a democracy and an open society, to recognise these mistakes and to change course— to do things differently today, so that our country is greater tomorrow than it was yesterday. This debate is one of those opportunities.

It’s a moment that will shape the arc of our nation’s history. It’s a moment that will define the kind of country that we are in for generations to come. It’s a moment that future generations will look back on as a moment when our parliament and our people chose a different future for our country. It’s a moment in which our actions will be judged by our descendants.

I encourage those opposite to reflect on this—to see the bigger picture, beyond the short-term day-to-day of politics, the short-term dynamics of a party room or personal career prospects. Take this moment to be a good ancestor.

Watts: Indigenous ‘voices were not heard’ in a parliament which allowed ‘large-scale extrajudicial killings’

Watts went on to say he was grappling with his ancestor’s legacy.

He was a member of the Queensland parliament’s inquiry into the actions of the Queensland native police in 1861.

There were no Aboriginal or Strait Islander peoples invited to give evidence to this inquiry, neither native police troopers nor members of the broader community.

Their voices were not heard in that parliament. No one questioned the existence of a government-controlled paramilitary force engaged in large-scale extrajudicial killings.

My ancestor joined with committee members in recommending that the native police continue its operations in Queensland, which it did for nearly 40 years afterwards.

On the tabling of the report, Watts told the parliament that: ‘The natives must be taught to feel the mastery of the whites. The natives, knowing no law, nor entertaining any fears but those of the carbine’ – that’s a gun – ‘there were no other means of ruling them,’ and that, ‘the means must be resorted to’.

In supporting native police, he saw himself as choosing the lesser of two evils, telling the parliament from ‘direct experience’ that ‘leaving the settlers to defend themselves tended much more to the destruction of the blacks than the maintenance of a native force. Before this was established, the settlers had to arm themselves to the teeth, and such men, seeing their children killed before them, could not be expected to refrain from using them indiscriminately.’

MP Tim Watts speaks of ancestor John Watts’ ‘legacy’ of harm to Indigenous Australians

[Warning – this post contains descriptions of some of the violence settlers inflicted upon Indigenous people]

The Labor MP for Gellibrand, Tim Watts, used his speech on the voice referendum legislation last night to reckon with the actions of his ancestor John Watts, who he described as “one of the first squatters on the Darling Downs [in Queensland] and later a member of the first Queensland parliament”.

Watts spoke of the role John Watts played in the death, destruction and violence of the local Indigenous population.

In the decades following the arrival of my ancestor, disease, violence and forced resettlement literally decimated the local Indigenous population.

This alone is a disturbing legacy to grapple with. Regrettably though, it was John Watts’ legacy and his actions as a parliamentarian that caused even greater harm to Indigenous peoples of south-east Queensland.

And it was here that the failure to recognise and to listen to Indigenous Australians was even more disastrous.

The parliament set up paramilitary forces in Queensland which Watts described as:

Historian Jonathan Richards described the operations of the Queensland native police in the following terms: ‘When an attack of any form was made on settlers, the native police responded by tracking Aboriginal people to their camps. Once they had been located, the troopers surrounded the camp, firing their rifles into the sleeping people at dawn. The bodies were usually burnt to cover up the killings.’

Historians’ estimates of the number of Indigenous Australians killed by the Queensland native police range widely, from 10,000 up to 60,000 people, but it was clear that there were many thousands of murders and rapes committed by this state-sanctioned organisation.

Historian Henry Reynolds has called it ‘the most violent organisation in Australian history’. The Queensland native police operated under the direct control of the executive council – the governor, the colonial secretary and other senior ministers. And my ancestor, John Watts, as a member of parliament and minister, was thoroughly aware of its activities.

‘I have no doubt we can move on’, says Malarndirri McCarthy after ‘intense’ exchange with Lidia Thorpe in estimates

There is a lot of commentary over this exchange, but it pays to remember that these are two Indigenous women who care very much about their community and we have seen plenty of senators have exchanges where tempers have flared over the years that don’t necessarily get put under the same microscope.

Labor senator Malarndirri McCarthy was asked about it on the Nine network this morning and said:

Estimates is an incredibly intense at times. There was certainly a lot of passion there. But I have no doubt we can move on.

ADF appoints Maj Gen Natasha Fox as first chief of personnel

The ADF now have a chief of personnel.

It was one of the recommendations of the defence strategic review (remember that?) and Maj Gen Natasha Fox, AM, CSC, has been appointed to the new role.

The government statement says:

As recommended by the DSR, ADF personnel management should be centralised into a single integrated system incorporating the five domains, headed by a Chief of Personnel reporting directly to the Chief of the Defence Force.

As Chief of Personnel, Major General Fox will take on this responsibility with the distinct aim of increasing the effectiveness, efficiency and cohesiveness of personnel management to achieve a more integrated ADF.

Genuinely sad news today:

PM returns to FM radio show after a number of pleas from host

In embarrassing news for all involved, the prime minister is going on an FM radio show after the host lamented in other media that he was no longer returning her text messages after she wrote a political column which was critical of him.

Her public plea included the lines “Half the time you are making stuff up” (in regards to how difficult she found writing a fortnightly column) and “we invested so much in him when he was nothing to make sure we get access to him when he was something”.

So, of course, the PM is now going on the show. Because no one in this business has any shame. Good times, normal country.

Canberra flights suspended due to ‘airspace closure’

Daniel Hurst

Good morning