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Good morning!
It’s international self-care day. Ask for extra chocolate on your cappuccino and less work from your boss today.
(A short intro? For a newsletter editor, that’s self-care 101.)
I’ve got 10 seconds
Quote of the day
“[Peter Dutton] was saying f**k you and f**k this… It was because I did an interview with [the ABC] and I hadn’t said nuclear would bring down the price of power, because it won’t, it just won’t go up as much.”
Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce in an interview with The Australian, revealing then-Liberal leader Peter Dutton was angry with him following an interview with the ABC. He revealed Dutton had asked him to leave politics ahead of the May federal election.
Stat of the day
1,773
The number of marriages held on 24/02/24, making it the most popular date to have a wedding last year, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
TDA reader’s comment of the week
“Who can afford a divorce in this economy?”
A comment left on TDA’s post about new wedding stats in Australia (like the one above!) The new data from the ABS also showed that Australians had more marriages and less divorces in 2024.
I’ve got 30 seconds
Some headlines from this morning:
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have clashed during the first question time of the new Parliament. Ley directed her first question as Coalition leader at Albanese, asking the PM about what she called his “failing” housing policies. The Government has set a target to build 1.2 million homes by 2029, but senior Labor officials have admitted the deadline is ambitious. Ley also grilled the PM over Labor’s plans to tax Australians with more than $3 million in superannuation. Albanese responded by criticising the Coalition for voting against the Government’s tax cuts during Labor’s last term. Earlier on Wednesday, the Government introduced its long-awaited HECS and childcare reform legislation.
Italy’s parental leave laws will be expanded to give more same-sex parents access to paid entitlements. The country’s constitutional court ruled that non-biological mothers in same-sex unions should be entitled to paternity leave, because the role is equal to the role of a father. The landmark decision, handed down on Monday, means Italy’s 10-day paternity leave entitlement will no longer be exclusively available to fathers. The same court handed down a ruling in May, allowing two women to register as a child’s parents on a birth certificate. Italian politician and LGBTQ+ activist Alessandro Zan welcomed the ruling, and said: “Justice reminds the government of a simple principle: love is family, and every boy and girl is entitled to the care and protection of both parents, without discrimination”.
Recommendation of the day
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I’ve got 1 minute
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee has banned transgender women from participating in women’s sport
The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) will bar transgender women from competing in women's sports.
The USOPC oversees the national governing bodies for various sports. These bodies nominate athletes to compete at the Olympics and Paralympics.
It follows an executive order to this effect from President Donald Trump earlier this year. Executive orders are the President’s main way of implementing legal changes without Congressional approval.
The move also comes amid global restrictions on trans female athletes and those with differences in sex characteristics (intersex people).
Context
In 2022, openly transgender student Lia Thomas competed at the national college swimming championships. Thomas, who was representing the University of Pennsylvania, tied for fifth in the women’s 200-yard final with another student, Riley Gaines.
Thomas also won the women’s 500-yard freestyle, becoming the first trans female athlete to win a national title.
Over the following years, Gaines has mounted a campaign against Thomas and other trans female athletes in the college and school system, including a lawsuit under Title IX. This is the law governing sex discrimination in publicly-funded colleges.
Thomas’ college settled the lawsuit earlier this month, wiping her achievements from their official records and banning trans women from women’s events.
Global sporting bodies including World Aquatics and World Athletics have since barred almost all trans women from competing in women’s events.
What happened?
This week, the USOPC updated its athlete safety policy to include a new clause detailing a commitment to comply with an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports”.
The order, signed by Trump in early February, has the effect of requiring sporting bodies to provide women with “single-sex sports and single-sex locker rooms”. A fact sheet attached to the order calls on the International Olympic Committee to “preserve single-sex sports, a necessity for safety and fairness”.
In its policy update, the USOPC said its goal was to “ensure that women have a fair and safe competition environment” consistent with the two documents. The revised athlete safety policy does not itself include the word “transgender”, but instead references compliance with Trump’s order and the amateur sport legislation.
Next steps
A memo from USOPC President Gene Sykes and CEO Sarah Hirshland said: "As a federally chartered organization, we have an obligation to comply with federal expectations”. The USOPC does not receive Government funding, however.
The 2028 Summer Olympics will be hosted in Los Angeles, with Trump previously calling for transgender athletes to be excluded from the event. The IOC currently delegates the responsibility to set individual participation policies to the federations of individual sports.
I’ve got 2 minutes
The Govt has introduced a bill to cut funding to childcare centres that don’t meet safety standards
Childcare centres could lose federal funding if they don’t meet safety standards, under a new bill tabled in Parliament on Wednesday.
Federal subsidies currently cover around 70% of their operating costs.
Last month, a Melbourne childcare worker was charged with more than 70 offences, including sexual abuse and producing child abuse material.
In a speech to Parliament, Education Minister Jason Clare said state and federal governments had not done enough to keep childcare centres safe in the past.
Melbourne centre
A 26-year-old childcare worker was arrested in Melbourne on 12 May.
In June, Victoria Police announced he had been charged with 70 offences, including child rape and producing child abuse material.
Health authorities have advised the families of around 2,000 children to test them for infectious diseases.
Police are still identifying centres where Brown worked.
Federal funding
The Government spent $16 billion on childcare subsidies in the 2024/25 financial year.
The cost is expected to grow from 2026, when three days of subsidised childcare will be expanded to any family earning less than $530,000 a year.
The subsidy is paid to the childcare centres, not families. Education Minister Jason Clare said funding is “the big weapon” for the Federal Government to use in its crackdown.
Legislation
The Government has now tabled a bill that would cut off the childcare subsidy to a centre if it doesn’t “provide high quality and safe care”.
If a centre is cut off, then it wouldn’t be able to offer government assistance to families sending their children to the centres.
Federal officers will also be able to undertake “spot checks” on centres to inspect quality and safety standards. The checks would be random and without advanced notice.
In a speech to Parliament, Clare said the new rules are designed to restore trust with the “more than a million mums and dads” who rely on childcare.
He didn’t specify when he expected the legislation to pass Parliament or come into effect.
Clare flagged further reforms that he will discuss with the states and territories in August, such as introducing a national register of early childcare educators.
Working with children checks (WWCC) will also be discussed. Brown had a valid WWCC at the time of his arrest.
Opposition
The Coalition first received a copy of the bill on Tuesday night.
“We need to look at this closely,” Opposition Leader Sussan Ley told the ABC on Wednesday morning.
While promising to work “constructively” with the Government on the bill, she said it would not be “rammed through the Parliament”.
Ley also said tighter regulations were needed to properly address “the enormous distress of so many parents” following reports of sexual abuse at childcare centres.
Reporting by Harry Sekulich.
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Give me some good news
An animal shelter in Kerr County, Texas, is working to reunite hundreds of pets with their owners, after flooding devastated the region earlier this month.
Kerrville Pets Alive, a not-for-profit organisation, estimates its rescue, adoption, transport and vet services have assisted some 350 cats and dogs in 19 days. KPA said it has returned 25 pets to their families so far, and is continuing efforts to help reunite pets and owners. As more animals continue “to show up,” the shelter acknowledged the vital support of KPA’s community volunteers and veterinary specialists.
Want more good news? Sign up to our weekly Good Newsletter here - we promise it’ll make your week better!
Reporting by Emma Gillespie.
TDA titbit
A British man has been found guilty of trying to supply Russian spies with British intelligence.
The catch? The Russian spies were in fact undercover British police.
Howard Phillips, 64, wanted to pass on personal information about former UK defence secretary Sir Grant Shapps to two agents called Sasha and Dima.
According to the BBC, Phillips “wanted to be like James Bond”.
Photographic evidence shows Phillips leaving the agents a USB on a bike in central London, containing what he believed to be information "invaluable" to Russia.
The man was arrested by the undercover officers a week later in 2024. He is yet to be sentenced.
Reporting by Rosa Bowden.
Want more from The Daily Aus? Listen to our podcast!
A group of world leaders spoke out this week against the Israeli Government’s aid distribution model in Gaza, including IDF soldiers killing Palestinians trying to get food and supplies.
It comes almost two years into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and repeated limitation of aid, following Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023.
In today’s episode, we’ll explain what we know about the Israeli army’s killing of Palestinians accessing aid from United Nations staff on the ground in Gaza, and the global response.
TDA asks
