The Saturday Paper | Rallies draw Voice dissent, Adani accused of giant con, influencers dobbed in to ACCC

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27 January, 2023

Max Opray

is Schwartz Media's emails editor.

1

Rallies draw Voice dissent

Tens of thousands of people attended Invasion Day rallies across the nation yesterday, where they heard from Indigenous speakers critical of plans for a Voice to Parliament, including Greens senator Lidia Thorpe.

What we know:

Thorpe told

the Melbourne rally that Indigenous Australians deserved “real power and action”, declaring that Voice supporters “want to put the colonial constitution on top of the oldest constitution on the planet — our constitution comes from the soil” (

Nine

);

Thorpe said

First Nations peoples instead had an “opportunity to have a treaty ... that could put 10 independent Black seats in the parliament today”;

It comes amid

revelations that Thorpe put her name to the establishment of an inquiry into Indigenous bodies pushed by Coalition opponents of the Voice, before being forced to withdraw by the Greens leader, Adam Bandt (

The Guardian

);

Leading activist Professor Gary Foley,

who co-founded Canberra’s Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972, told the crowd the Voice was the “latest of a long line of cosmetic bullshit measures” (

The Age

);

However,

a group of First Nations' grandmothers at the Invasion Day rally in Alice Springs told the crowd they supported the Voice, calling on policy-makers to “get out of our way and ask us what we want” (

ABC

);

The direction

taken by rally organisers attracted criticism from other Indigenous leaders, with Noel Pearson warning that if this year’s referendum on the Voice to Parliament failed, reconciliation would die with it (

SMH

);

Opponents of the Voice

at the protests fear that it will cede Indigenous sovereignty, but a host of constitutional experts reject the idea (

The Guardian

);

Legal expert and Kurin Minang woman Dr Hannah McGlade

said calls for a treaty before a Voice “makes no sense at all” because a national treaty requires a national voice to negotiate it (

The Politics

).

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2

Adani accused of giant con

The company behind the Carmichael coalmine in Queensland has been accused of the “largest con in corporate history”.

What we know:

Activist investment firm Hindenburg

released a report accusing the Adani Group of “brazen” stock manipulation and accounting fraud worth $US218bn (

Time

);

Billionaire owner Gautam Adani

slipped from being the world’s third richest man to the fourth, as the revelations saw the stock market wipe $919m from his personal net worth;

The report

names several family members — like Adani’s brothers, Rajesh and Vinod Adani, as well as associates of the Adani Group — for their involvement in major bribery and tax evasion cases;

Adani’s Australian subsidiaries

were allegedly involved in “shuffling losses into private entities to boost reported earnings and surreptitiously moving money to prop up entities in the group” (

The Age

);

Hindenburg undertakes

extensive research into a listed company, then places share trading bets that its stocks will plummet, before releasing the damaging information (

Economic Times

);

Adani Group said

in a statement that the report was a “malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations” (

The Guardian

).

MREC 1

3

Influencers dobbed in to ACCC

Australia’s consumer watchdog is investigating more than 100 social media influencers after receiving tip-offs that they might not be disclosing sponsored content.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission

(ACCC) received more than 150 tip-offs after its call-out on Facebook last week (

The Guardian

).

Most were

about influencers in beauty, lifestyle, parenting and fashion who had allegedly failed to disclose their affiliation with the product or company they were promoting.

“The number

of tip-offs reflects the community concern about the ever-increasing number of manipulative marketing techniques on social media, designed to exploit or pressure consumers into purchasing goods or services,” ACCC’s chair, Gina Cass-Gottlieb, said.

The ACCC

is looking at influencers on a range of platforms – including Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook and Twitch.

Influencers posting

misleading reviews that fail to disclose a relationship could be in breach of the Australian consumer law, which can carry penalties of up to $2.5m for individuals.

4

700 caught in penalty rate stunt

Staff at a major hospitality group claim they were terminated and then rehired by a different entity right before Australia Day to avoid payment of holiday penalty rates.

Mantle Group

sacked hundreds of casuals across 15 venues on Monday before immediately rehiring them with a different entity (

news.com.au

).

Around 700 people

are believed to have been impacted, with Mantle Group Hospitality running venues including Babylon Rooftop, the Pig ‘n’ Whistle chain in Brisbane, and Squire’s Landing in Sydney.

Mantle Group

got the deal approved by arguing it would apply to a cafe that did not open on nights, weekends or public holidays (

AFR

$).

It comes less

than two weeks after a law firm secured a victory against Mantle Group at the Fair Work Commission for underpaying staff, including not paying penalty rates to workers.

MREC 2

5

World Heritage sites in danger

UNESCO has announced additions to its List of World Heritage In Danger, citing threats to sites in Yemen, Lebanon and Ukraine.

The landmarks

now considered in danger are the Ancient Kingdom of Saba, in Yemen, the Rachid Karameh International Fair of Tripoli, in Lebanon, and the Historic Center of the Port City of Odesa, in Ukraine (

CNN

).

The decision

was made in an extraordinary session of the World Heritage Committee in Paris, amid concerns about the threat of ongoing conflicts in Yemen and Ukraine in particular.

The Rachid Karami International Fair

in Tripoli, a boomerang-shaped building designed in 1962 by the architect Oscar Niemeyer, was listed due to its “alarming state of conservation, the lack of financial resources for its maintenance, and the latent risk of development proposals that could affect the integrity of the complex”.

In Yemen,

the under-threat site includes seven archaeological sites that show the architectural, aesthetic and technological achievements of the Kingdom of Saba from the 1st millennium BCE to the arrival of Islam around 630 CE.

Alice Springs: The crisis that shouldn’t have happened

A crime wave in Alice Springs grew into a national crisis this week, with politicians jumping on planes in a last-ditch effort to listen to a community whose concerns have fallen on deaf ears. But how did the crime rate in Alice Springs become an issue for Anthony Albanese? And how could the situation have deteriorated so far? Today, columnist for The Saturday Paper Chris Wallace on how giving communities a voice could force politicians to face complex challenges.

Listen

MREC 3

Long live the Russians.

If you thought Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic had some controversial opinions, his father Srdjan might have him covered, after being caught on camera with a group of Vladimir Putin supporters at the Australian Open (

7News

).

Postscript: Patterns of Extraction

A new series of aerial images from photographer Edward Burtynsky reveals sites of displacement, erasure, and extraction — all, at first glance, sublime — across five African countries. From the breathtaking expanse of the Sishen iron ore mine to the controlled might of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a story of reshaped and redefined landscapes emerges (

Emergence

).

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Ian McEwan’s ‘Lessons’

The English master novelist’s latest describes a boy’s sexual awakening with his piano teacher, and its lasting impact on his life.

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The Saturday Paper

Banksia Hill and WA’s youth justice crisis

A New Year’s Eve riot at Western Australia’s Banksia Hill youth detention centre was the culmination of an escalating crisis in which vulnerable children are denied the basic rights of education, recreation and restorative justice.

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The case for returning crown land

It’s been more than 30 years since the high court acknowledged that terra nullius was a lie, that this country was not empty, that Indigenous Australians had an ongoing claim to the land beneath our feet. But still today large swathes of Australia are held as what’s called “crown land”. What is it? And what do the assumptions about crown land say about the attitude to land ownership in modern Australia?

Listen now

The Saturday Paper

The communal garden

From a Melbourne backyard to community cultivation in Manila’s slums, the garden offers autonomy, human connection and a firmer footing in a turbulent world.

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