MENACING ALFRED APPROACHES
Tropical Cyclone Alfred remains the focus of all publications this morning as the storm edges ever closer to making landfall.
The situation is changing all the time, but in an update at 4am AEST the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) said the Cyclone was expected to cross the coast “late Friday evening or early Saturday, most likely close to Moreton Bay between Noosa and Coolangatta”.
The update said dangerous flash flooding and destructive winds were predicted, with gusts of up to 155km/h forecast.
The Nine papers, like most other publications, are running live blogs at the top of their sites this morning as Queensland and northern New South Wales brace for the incoming cyclone, which could make landfall some 24 hours later than initially predicted.
The Sydney Morning Herald says Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia have cancelled flights to and from Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Ballina for Friday and Saturday. The Age has said the cyclone could be downgraded in severity to a category 1 storm, but added meteorologists are warning the delayed landfall “could prolong severe weather conditions and remain a major threat to communities”.
Guardian Australia says millions of people in Queensland have “hunkered down” and people in parts of northern New South Wales have been ordered to evacuate their homes. NSW SES acting chief superintendent, Stuart Fisher, is quoted as saying: “The weather is deteriorating rapidly for us. Whilst it may look like the rivers aren’t flooding, there is high concern that they will start to flood overnight and continue tomorrow. We’ve taken that decision to … ask you to leave early. Do not underestimate this storm.”
The Courier Mail says more than 16,000 Gold Coast homes lost power on Thursday night ahead of Cyclone Alfred making landfall, with high winds already recorded along the coastline. The paper adds that Australian Defence Force personnel are on standby with high-clearance vehicles and two helicopters to help with search and rescue. The ABC also reports thousands of homes and businesses in NSW were without power on Thursday.
In Brisbane, schools, public transport and shops are closed but sandbag depots were reopened on Thursday, Guardian Australia adds. The Associated Press reports Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed 660 schools in southern Queensland and 280 schools in northern New South Wales were closed yesterday. “My message to people, whether they be in south-east Queensland or northern New South Wales, is we are there to support you. We have your back,” the PM said.
“At the worst of times we always see the best of Australian character. I said yesterday that there were no political parties in this process and there are no borders. Tropical Cyclone Alfred certainly does not recognise any borders and nor should the government’s response,” he added.
Queensland and NSW Premiers David Crisafulli and Chris Minns have also continued to warn people to take the storm seriously. “It’s going to be late but linger even longer. Unfortunately that means the window for destruction in our community — heavy rains, winds, powerful surf — is longer than we would have otherwise liked,” Minns said, while Crisafulli declared: “There are waves, there is wind, there is rainfall and there will be flooding. But none of those challenges are insurmountable.”
Guardian Australia reports Greens, Liberal and union volunteers were working alongside each other in Brisbane ahead of Alfred’s arrival. The report goes on to say “around 20 Greens volunteers, including Brisbane MP Stephen Bates, worked alongside three union members and the single Liberal volunteer to fill thousands of sandbags for pickup early on Thursday afternoon”.
Griffith MP Max Chandler-Mather has declared: “We’ve completely suspended the campaign and redirected every resource we have to helping.”
WA TO THE POLLS
As the east coast braces for Alfred, Western Australia is preparing to go to the polls.
The result of tomorrow’s election has long been declared a foregone conclusion, with Premier Roger Cook widely expected to return to power with his Labor government. But hey look, plenty of unexpected things can still happen and, as the ABC puts it in its analysis, “even with the election result as close to certain as you can get, politics is never a straightforward game”.
The AAP reckons Liberal leader Libby Mettam has “fought tooth and nail in an unwinnable state election”. The newswire goes on to say “her reward may be betrayal if her party fails to significantly erode Labor’s 53 of 59 seat stranglehold on Western Australia’s lower house”.
Political analyst and Notre Dame University executive dean Martin Drum is quoted as saying if the Liberals end up with, say, just 10 seats “the knives will be out pretty soon”. Experts have predicted a comfortable win for Labor, but its lower house majority is expected to shrink and it may lose control of the upper house.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had planned on being in WA for the result (and potentially using it as a handy springboard for calling that other election), but that has been cancelled due to the cyclone. Instead, he has stationed himself in Canberra to coordinate the response to Alfred (reminder: this storm system at one point was supposed to be called Anthony until BoM wisely changed it).
Guardian Australia follows The Australian Financial Review’s scoop earlier in the week — that Opposition Leader Peter Dutton attended a fundraiser in Sydney on Tuesday rather than stay in Queensland — with a report saying two Liberal fundraisers featuring Dutton, at the Melbourne headquarters of Macquarie Bank and a lunch hosted by the Pharmacy Guild, have been cancelled.
The AFR yesterday speculated Albanese was contemplating a longer federal election campaign “that would enable him to cancel plans for an April 12 poll, but still avoid handing down another federal budget”.
“I’m focused not on votes, I’m focused on lives, I’m focused on Australians,” Albanese told Sky News yesterday. Reminder: the PM has until 6pm Monday if he wants to call the election for April 12.
In world news (it is worth saying it’s now impossible to write a quick summary of world events, but I’ll try my best), US President Donald Trump in the last couple of hours has said he’s suspended the tariffs he literally just placed on Mexico. Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump said: “After speaking with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, I have agreed that Mexico will not be required to pay tariffs on anything that falls under the USMCA Agreement.”
The 78-year-old said he made the decision “as an accommodation, and out of respect for, President Sheinbaum”. The Mexican president, for her part, wrote on X: “We had an excellent and respectful call in which we agreed that our work and collaboration have yielded unprecedented results, within the framework of respect for our sovereignties.” She also said the agreement was until April 2, when Trump has said he will impose reciprocal tariffs on all countries.
Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he had a “colourful” phone call with Trump on Thursday and warned the trade war between the two countries will continue “for the foreseeable future”, CBC News reports.
Those steel and aluminium tariffs, which the Albanese government is still trying to get out of, are apparently coming into effect next week by the way, but honestly who knows anymore. Yesterday, Trump said he was going to spare carmakers from a new 25% import tax imposed on Canada and Mexico.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has told a summit in Brussels he wants peace “but not at the price of giving up Ukraine”, the BBC reports. Earlier he also thanked Europe for its unwavering support, saying: “During all this period, and last week, you stayed with us … these are not just words, we feel it”. This clip of him meeting European leaders is quite the contrast to that Oval Office meeting.
The Guardian reports European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was blunt in her assessment of the situation in Ukraine on Thursday, saying: “Europe faces a clear and present danger, and therefore Europe has to be able to protect itself, to defend itself, as we have to put Ukraine in a position to protect itself and to push for a lasting and just peace.” At the summit she presented leaders with a €800 billion plan to increase European defence spending, calling it “a watershed moment for Europe” and also for Ukraine.
The BBC also reports UK officials have claimed about 20 countries are interested in joining a “coalition of the willing” to help Ukraine. They are said to be “largely from Europe and the Commonwealth”.
In another grim update, Reuters says the Trump administration “is planning to revoke temporary legal status for some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled the conflict with Russia … potentially putting them on a fast-track to deportation”.
Lastly, The Guardian reports Hamas has accused Trump of “seeking to undermine the shaky pause in hostilities in Gaza with his latest intervention in the region”.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
It’s been an awful week for global diplomatic relations, so you’d think I’d want to steer well clear of the topic for the oasis of calm which is the Lighter Note.
Well, no. But also, yes.
You see, Ontario photographer Mervyn Sequeira has captured an incredible series of pictures of a Canada goose fending off a bald eagle on a frozen lake. Now in a different timeline, that would just be it — some neat wildlife pictures. But as we know, we’re all now living in the Upside Down and even dramatic pictures of birds can take on multiple meanings.
As The Guardian puts it: “At a time when Canada’s sovereignty has come under unprecedented threat from Donald Trump’s US, the battle between the two birds closely associated with each country has emerged as the latest symbol of tensions between the two countries.”
For his part, Sequeira isn’t so sure about equating Canada’s defiance against Trump’s tariffs and other threats with his wildlife snaps. Still, he did give some pretty handy quotes to help feed the reporting, including: “Nature has its way of taking out the weak and the not so well and the injured. The eagle likely thought it would be able to take it out quite easily. But, it wasn’t.”
Say What?
I assure all your listeners and I assure you that our focus has been on the disaster. I hope his has been as well, because we all need all shoulders to the wheel.
Jim Chalmers
The treasurer told radio station 4BC “now’s not the time for politics” when asked about Opposition Leader Peter Dutton attending a Sydney fundraiser this week.
CRIKEY RECAP
A phone call between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and ambassador-turned-lobbyist Joe Hockey just weeks before Trump’s win. A meeting between Richard Marles and BHP chief Mike Henry. A calendar entry called “Michelle Rowland” at the communication minister’s former workplace in Bill Shorten’s diary — but curiously redacted by Rowland’s office.
These are just a handful of the hundreds of never-before-published meetings and events that happen behind closed doors every day between Australia’s most powerful people.
We’re publishing Crikey’s Diary Dump to let you see them for yourself. The full index is here.
Crikey understands a new revised history of Australia is planned for publication later this year. The author: none other than former prime minister, Tony Abbott. The publisher: News Corp’s HarperCollins, natch. If that does turn out to be the case (HarperCollins didn’t reply to our inquiry about it), we have plenty of material on the public record about Abbott’s matchless understanding of Australian history.
In July 2014, talking about foreign investment, he noted that Australia “owes its existence to a form of foreign investment by the British government in the then unsettled or, um, scarcely settled, great south land”. Later that year, he restated his view that prior to 1788, the area now known as Sydney was “nothing but bush“. But a scholar like Abbott never stops learning, and by 2018, he’d clearly extended his reading to texts that contained at least a sentence or two about the well-established population that was already here. Effortlessly synthesising this, Abbott told 2GB host Ray Hadley that: “What happened on the 26th of January, 1788, was on balance, for everyone, Aboriginal people included, a good thing.”
We can’t wait to see what further insights Abbott has gleaned since.
Australia’s quasi-election campaign is well underway. But things are still somewhat muted in Nationals-held Cowper, a provincial seat on the NSW north coast, stretching from Port Macquarie to Coffs Harbour.
“ Aside from a few social media trolls, so far it’s all fairly quiet on the western front in Cowper, which is making me wonder,” says two-time independent candidate Caz Heise, considered one of the movement’s best chances at the upcoming poll.
The Nationals are likely distracted by a local state by-election, in which the Coalition partners are fighting over Port Macquarie. But Heise, a regional healthcare leader re-endorsed by Voices4Cowper last July, is certainly getting less attention than independent candidate for Wannon Alex Dyson, about whom the Libs have been distributing misleading flyers.
“There’s a real sense that I’m not a real threat,” says Heise, noting Cowper has almost always been held by the country party. “A sense that I’m there, and it’s annoying, but you know, people are going to vote the way they’ve always voted.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Top Trump allies hold secret talks with Zelenskyy’s Ukrainian opponents (POLITICO)
‘So lucky to be alive’: Aid worker describes escape from deadly Russian strike (BBC)
‘Cool head’: How Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum is handling Trump and tariffs (al-Jazeera)
‘Gotta do what you gotta do’: How hero passenger tackled teen with gun on Jetstar plane (The Sydney Morning Herald)
Fighter jet accidentally bombs village, injuring 15, during South Korea military drill (The Guardian)
New Zealand fires UK envoy for questioning Trump’s grasp of history (Sky News)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Anthony Albanese beset by disruptors, from Cyclone Alfred to Donald Trump — Michelle Grattan (The Conversation): The cyclone will be a passing disruptor. The disruption from the Trump administration will be with Australia (and the world) for the foreseeable future.
Next week Australia will know whether its intense lobbying for an exemption from the US tariffs on aluminium and steel has been effective. Those around the government are not optimistic.
More concerning than the immediate impact on Australia if we fail to win the exemption is the effect of US protectionism more generally.
Reserve Bank deputy governor Andrew Hauser confirmed this week that “from a macroeconomic perspective, Australia’s direct exposure to US tariffs levied on our exports is limited”.
“[But] Australia is heavily integrated into, and reliant on, the global economy more broadly — and particularly China. Hence the bigger macroeconomic risk for us would be if the imposition of US tariffs on third countries triggered a global trade war that impaired our trade and financial linkages more broadly. As Australia’s long history has shown, we thrive when trade, labour and assets flow freely in the global economy, but we suffer when countries turn inwards.”
Dutton’s plan to cull public servants isn’t just risky — it’s misguided — Shane Wright (The Age): But simply setting a numerical target, as Dutton has done, can be a recipe for disaster. Just look at Elon Musk’s efforts in the United States, where a cull of 350 staff at America’s National Nuclear Security Administration last month had to be reversed after the Department of Government Efficiency was told most of these people were responsible for keeping the country’s nuclear arsenal safe.
There are ways a Coalition government can reduce staff numbers in a way that protects services or improves them. Anyone who says otherwise obviously hasn’t seen the public service up close. But there’s a difference between a scalpel and a chainsaw.
The last government ended up throwing cash at the National Archives which, because of funding and staff cuts, was watching bits of Australian history literally turn to dust.
Whether a Coalition government can reduce the number of public servants without hitting service levels and hindering its own ability to make good decisions once more is yet to be seen, but Oscar Wilde was on to something when he warned about people who knew the cost of everything but the value of nothing.
