Your noon Briefing: Husar staffers ‘talked to Bill Shorten’s office for months’
Welcome to your noon digest of what’s been making news and what to watch for.
Hello readers. Here is your noon roundup of today’s top stories and a long read for lunchtime.
Shorten holds line on Husar
Bill Shorten maintains he did not learn of staff bullying and intimidation allegations against Emma Husar until his office was contacted by the media, despite a former staff member of the embattled NSW Labor MP saying complainants have been speaking to the Labor leader’s office “for months”.
Mr Shorten’s claim that he was not aware of the allegations against Ms Husar until shortly before they were published by BuzzFeed News on July 18, contradicts a claim from single mother of three Angela Hadchiti, who claims she received “insensitive and brutal” treatment during six months working in Ms Husar’s office, and alleges that her ex-boss was involved in “bizarre events” that led to the sudden month-long disappearance of her daughter.
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NAB ‘might have broken law’
Royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne has raised the prospect that National Australia Bank may have committed a crime by taking money from superannuation customers to which it was not entitled. Mr Hayne today asked NAB’s former superannuation executive Nicole Smith: “Did you think, yourself, that taking money to which there was no entitlement raised a question of the criminal law?” Ms Smith responded: “No, I didn’t.” However, she said NAB was still being investigated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission over a scandal in which it charged fees to customers who received little or no service.
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Dan ups degree of difficulty
The Victorian government has thrown a last minute spanner in the works, significantly upping the degree of difficulty for energy and environment minister Josh Frydenberg to get the National Energy Guarantee passed into law, writes Peter Van Onselen. D-Day is Friday. No one hurdle is insurmountable but collectively the list of distractions and barriers may be too much for Frydenberg’s hard work to pay off.
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Burqa wearers ‘like bank robbers’
Boris Johnson has sparked outrage after saying women who wear burqas look like “letter boxes” and bank robbers. Britain Prime Minister Theresa May has joined calls for her former Foreign Secretary to apologise for the remarks, made in a newspaper column earlier this week.
Mr Johnson, who left Mrs May’s government last month in a dispute over Brexit, disparaged burka wearers in a column that, ironically, defended their right to wear the full face veil. He said he opposed banning burqas and other face covering garments but felt it was “absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes.”
“These were offensive comments but clever politics. Boris knew the effect and the impact that this kind of dog-whistle politics would have.”
Sayeeda Warsi, Conservative member of the House of Lords
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The long read: Start of Great War’s end
100 years ago, the military might of Germany took a crushing blow on the Western Front, writes Aaron Pegram.
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Comment of the day
“For someone who wants to be PM, Bill Shorten seems to know very little about what’s going on around him. Perhaps he could do with some new advisers — either that or he’s taking great inspiration from Sgt Schultz.”
John, in response to ‘Shorten accepted upgrades at hotel under a human-rights cloud’.
China’s great wall of silence
China deliberately concealed information about the coronavirus, and now it is fighting an inquiry. So what is Beijing hiding?
Your noon Briefing
Your 2-minute digest of the day’s top stories.