1. One for the workers!

The cricket players won, according to Alan Border and every sports journalist I’ve heard comment. But the sport may have won too. Here’s a photo via the AFR, with a comment from AAP, “One got the cream, the other a shit sandwich”:

So they are all going to be good mates now!

Jack Anderson, Professor of Sports Law, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, gives a learned analysis. Trust is the major casualty.

The AFR says that women go from an average of $79,000 to $179,000 now and $210,000 in 2022.

Cricket Australia and the players group will each contribute $25 million to a grass-roots investment fund to improve junior facilities and training programs over five years.

Must share this comment from Joe Aston at the AFR:

For CA to now claim the deal bitterly clinched (in principle) this week was a mutual compromise – a faithful meeting in the middle – is not to put lipstick on a pig, but on its puckered arse.

And:

There’s an Eric Clapton song we bet Alistair Nicholson and Greg Combet can’t stop humming:

Lay Down Sally…

I’ve been trying all night long just to talk to you…

2. Turnbull’s disgraceful cave-in over refugees

You can read the full transcipt of the conversation between Turnbull and Trump, where Turnbull’s opening gambit is that Trump doesn’t need to take any refugees. Or you can cut to the chase at The Conversation with Five quotes from the Turnbull-Trump call show the folly of Australia’s refugee policy:

Turnbull: ‘You can decide to take them or to not take them after vetting. You can decide to take 1,000 or 100. It is entirely up to you.’

Turnbull’s comments highlight a key fault with the US deal.

Throughout the call, Turnbull reiterates that the only obligation on the US under this deal is to consider taking refugees. Trump asks:

Suppose I vet them closely and I do not take any?

Turnbull responds:

That is the point I have been trying to make.

The article goes on to point out that Turnbull calls them ‘economic refugees” when in fact the UNHCR has found 80% of them fleeing persecution. The article calls it “either wilful ignorance or blatant deceitfulness by Turnbull”.

Complete disregard for human rights.

Yet Chris Uhlmann on ABC TV painted it as an honourable victory for Turnbull.

Back in February Tess Lawrence said she’d heard that Trump would take some of them, but but once they were in the air they’d be refouled, that is returned to whence they came.

Surely not even Trump would do that.

3. “We have a government that’s ideologically opposed to human rights”

That was Gillian Triggs, going out the door, talking to Fran Kelly. You can link to the video on Facebook there.

Triggs thinks we are going backwards on all fronts – women, the homeless, indigenous peoples and refugees. She forgot to mention same-sex marriage and a government that actively harasses people on welfare, and denigrates them from time to time.

She said the Tony Abbott campaigned prior to his election on a platform of getting rid of the Human Rights Commission. She believes that the HRC is necessary because, unlike comparable countries, we do not have a bill of rights to provide a judicial check on legislators.

Fran Kelly later told Insiders that Triggs went OTT.

Seems lip-service and hypocrisy are to be preferred to plain speaking.

The HRC handled 20,000 queries last year, most it seems from our egalitarian workplace.

4. Ordinary Australians are extraordinary

The ABC has been having fun with a statistical analysis of ABS Census data identifying ‘ordinary’ Australians. Seems you are deemed ‘ordinary’ if you tick all the boxes for the following:

You speak only English at home
You were born in Australia
Your parents were born in Australia
You’re Christian
Your family has English ancestry
You’re in a registered marriage
You live with your spouse and two children
Your home is a free-standing, three-bedroom house, which you own with a mortgage
You have two cars
Your family income is $2,000–$2,999 a week (or $104,000–$129,999 a year)

I think if you make more than six out of 10 you are extraordinary.

They are suggesting that the suburb with the most ‘ordinary’ people is the most ordinary suburb. In the case of Brisbane it’s Mt Gravatt with eight such people out of over 3000. A place called Baking Board is deemed the most ordinary place in Australia because it has the highest percentage of such people, with just three out of 97.

I need to tell you about Baking Board, because it’s extraordinary. It’s a bit over 10 minutes drive from Chinchilla, a town of about 5,500 people, about 290km NW of Brisbane, so there is pretty much nothing at Baking Board. Not much at Chinchilla either as Dalby is an hour down the road, and Toowoomba about two hours, where you can get most of what you need.

Except that:

• Baking Board is not far from the Kogan Creek power station, one of the most modern and efficient coal-fired power stations in Australia
• Nearby we have the Linc Energy contamination disaster, where they now have a 314-square-kilometre “excavation caution zone” due to fears about possible hydrogen explosions. Some fools set fire to an underground coal seam as a clever way of generating energy.
• Baking Board is in the middle of coal seam gas fields. In fact a giant dump is to be excavated there to store millions of tonnes saline waste laced with other chemicals, an unfortunate by-product of the CSG industry.
• If perchance that muck becomes mobilised, Baking Board is in the headwaters of the Murray-Darling system.

That’s all very ordinary, as they say, and if it were in any way typical we’d be in deep do-dos.

5. Political soapies continue

Phillip Coorey today in the AFR says the Turnbull government is on course to become a quivering blob by Christmas. There will be a Liberal Party meeting on Monday to try to stabilise the same-sex marriage thing, using a secret ballot. Best guess, because Barnaby isn’t there and he won’t change his mind, they vote to bring on a postal vote. That will fail in parliament and it may be impossible to avoid a free vote.

Turnbull can’t be the centrist leader, whatever that means, because of his deal, with the Nationals, and lacks the political skills to manage the situation. Yet there is no realistic alternative. Those whom want the same-sex situation done with to clear the air are ensuring that it remains front and centre, and get very angry when told to pipe down.

Meanwhile Essential Report has the LNP pulling back one point on Labor TPP, by virtue of ON taking one point off Labor.

More interesting are the other question asked of voters.

The most important issues in voters’ minds are Improving our health system (42%), Housing affordability (36%), Reducing unemployment (32%), National security and terrorism (32%), Tax avoidance by big companies (26%), Protecting workers wages and conditions (22%).

Oddly power prices are not on the radar, nor is same-sex marriage*.

The next question polled finds four-year fixed terms are supported 58-24.

Then 52% of people think economic inequality in Australia is increasing, 26% think it’s staying the same, and 12% think it’s actually decreasing.

Then they go on to ask about tax reform.

* Update: Seems the issues are given by the pollster because it’s used as a tracking poll over time, so that’s why some topical issues were not on the list.