After the devastating earthquake in Afghanistan yesterday, which has left at least 800 people dead, AAP reports another tragedy in Sudan:

More than 1000 people have been killed in a landslide that destroyed a village in the Marra Mountains area of western Sudan, leaving only one survivor.

The landslide took place on August 31 following heavy rains, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army reported.

The group, led by Abdelwahid Nour, added that the deadly disaster underscored the urgent need for attention to communities in the affected area.

The landslide comes as West Africa has experienced record flooding, displacing hundreds of thousands across the region.

Trump is behaving like “an emperor”, enabled by insufficient checks and balances on the power of the Oval Office.

On this episode of After America, Professor Elizabeth Saunders from Columbia University joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the extreme volatility of this administration’s foreign policy and how Trump is breaking down the guardrails of American democracy.

Last week saw big news on fossil fuel subsidies, with Fortescue Metals and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) calling for reform to the Fuel Tax Credit Scheme (FTCS) and co-publishing a report.

The FTCS is Australia’s biggest fossil fuel subsidy, costing the public $11 billion per year. It is a refund of fuel tax paid on diesel in certain industries, particularly mining.

Wait!? A mining company complaining about subsidies to mining? Well yes, because Fortescue sees Australia as having an advantage in switching the mining industry to electrified, renewable energy-based equipment, and subsidised diesel makes this harder.

We highlighted last week that lots of names associated with the report and the ATSE are Very Important People, and also not the kind of people who would usually campaign against diesel subsidies. Fellows of the ATSE that caught our eye glancing at their website last week include Labor and Coalition politicians, corporate executives and industry lobbyists.

Some more ATSE Fellows that caught our eye since last week:

• Sam Walsh, former Rio Tinto CEO.
• Marius Kloppers, former BHP CEO.
• Vanessa Guthrie, former Chair of Minerals Council of Australia
• David Knox, former Santos CEO.
• Vanessa Torres, Chief Operating Officer at South32, formerly at BHP and Minerals Council.
• Andrew Liveris, chemicals and fossil fuel executive, advisor to Morrison Government’s ‘gas-led recovery’.
• Ian Plimer, climate-sceptic geologist, executive of oil and gas company Senex.
• Hugh Morgan, mining executive and Howard-era Auspol villain.

It’s important to note that these Fellows did not contribute to the ATSE report, probably haven’t read it and may not agree with it.

What is significant is that an academy that counts senior mining industry figures among its fellows has taken a strong position on reforming fuel tax credits. Such an organisation cannot easily be dismissed.

Just a reminder that it is the US that is making China’s desire of becoming a superpower – and the dominant power in the region – very easy.

This gets left out of some of the claims made by Coalition senators who want to warn of the ‘China threat’ in attempts to maintain relevance.

Over on the ABC, Mark Butler has been asked whether he would be potentially open to a national regulatory system for IVF clinics. He answers:

I definitely am. I’m very keen to look at proposals to take over regulation from the industry itself. I think self-regulation isn’t working, and I don’t think it’s inspiring the confidence that parents need. But also because of the nature of IVF, it really cropped up in state children’s hospitals. We’ve got eight different systems of regulation around the country, and I think there’s a very strong argument to consider a single national scheme of regulation that obviously regulates the operators themselves, some of which have come under a spotlight for very good reason over recent months, but also things like sperm donor laws which have been the subject of more recent stories.

The question comes following more stories like this, from the ABC.

Bob Carr has released a statement on why he will be attending the 80th anniversary of China’s victory over Japan, in Beijing – and also takes aim at people who criticised China for welcoming Putin, but who didn’t complain when Trump ‘rolled out the red carpet for him’.

He is using a photo of John Howard looking adoringly as his profile photo and his first piece is about how ‘Donald Trump is awesome, actually, but also he is being played by Putin, and also the world is a little dangerous with America going mask off rogue but surely that is not the fault of Trump, who despite looking up to fascist dictators, probably won’t go down that route himself, surely?’

Like most conservatives, I was elated when Donald Trump returned to the US presidency. I thought he’d been a pretty good president the first time round, at least until the pandemic struck; and that, second time, he’d be more thoughtful and more considered having learnt from experience.

In fact, Trump 2.0 has been Trump unleashed. I still think it’s better to have Donald Trump than Kamala Harris as “leader of the free world”; but, if anything, this Trump presidency is even more transactional and unpredictable than the first.

I’m not saying he’d emulate them (and even if he wanted to, the American system is proof against it) but Donald Trump does seem genuinely fascinated by dictators who can murder their opponents, invade their enemies, and stay in office forever. He wants to exercise power, usually for good ends – like building a wall, “drill, baby, drill”, ending woke, declaring there are only two genders, making government more efficient, restoring America’s industrial base, and getting allies to do more for their own defence – but he’s not bothering with the usual courtesies about shared values, common interests, historical ties, and how America has no better friend than, well, pick a country…

Debate started on the government’s Nauru resettlement plan for denied asylum seekers and people who have had their visas cancelled. The issue started with the NZYQ cohort – a group of people placed in indefinite detention because their visa had been cancelled and they could not be returned to their home countries.

Australia does not deport people to countries where they could face torture or death. But Nauru hasn’t signed up to the same conventions, so can, if it decides, to deport people it has ‘accepted’ in Australia’s re-settlement deal (for which it will receive up to $400m, according to the SMH). The visas were cancelled because they may have committed a crime, or be accused of a crime (and not convicted) or were judged not to be of good character, or suspected of a crime, or never granted. Unlike Australians, who when they commit crimes, and have served any custodial sentence, are free to resume life in the community, there is another standard for visa holders, who often find themselves deported at the end of their sentence. If Australia couldn’t deport people, it locked them up in detention with no end date. The high court found that to be unconstitutional and ordered the government (Labor) to release them. The Coalition – which helped create the problem – then turned that into a ‘government releasing “hardened criminals” into the community’ scare campaign, which Sussan Ley amplified by telling women in Frankston to send a message to the government in byelection. That scare campaign was amplified by the media, with some journalists STILL saying its a problem because people are uncomfortable living with people like this in the community, as if it is only migrants who ever commit crimes. (And we wonder where the far right is getting the grist for its mill)

The government is now trying to move the problem on, by extending the resettlement deal with Nauru and is creating law to allow them to do it.

Kate Chaney spoke on the bill in parliament yesterday and said:

I understand the government’s concern. The NZYQ decision has left us with a group of people in the community who have serious criminal histories, and the government needs tools to deal with them quickly. I support the intention to manage that group in a way that protects the community, but there are serious question marks about whether this bill is the best way to do that. It retrospectively validates an unknown number of decisions that were based on an incorrect interpretation of the law. It also provides that procedural fairness doesn’t apply at key steps in the removal process, without a proper assessment of whether this is appropriate, and it applies to a much broader group than the up to 300 individuals commonly described as the NZYQ cohort. It could also apply to many who have not committed any criminal offence and who may not have finished exercising their review rights.

Some estimates suggest the practical reach could extend to around 80,000 people—well beyond what the public has been led to believe.
The fundamental problem is that parliament does not currently have a clear understanding of the true impact of this bill. We do not know how many people this bill could affect or in which circumstances. For that reason, I do not believe this bill should be rushed through the chamber. That’s why I’m moving this motion to refer the bill to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights for detailed scrutiny. Before parliament passes a law relating to the application of procedural fairness for large classes of people, we should understand exactly who will be affected, how the powers will operate in practice, and what safeguards are needed to avoid serious error.

That then leads to this questioning and…sigh.

Q: So Tony Burke says that he’ll release the permanent number for migration. I don’t know why that would be held back. Why would that be held back?

Mark Butler:

Well, that that number is a decision of government. It’s made as a decision of government and reported in the usual way. But obviously it’s impacted by the number of people leaving as well. So the key figure is the net figure that the, the, the difference between the number of people who come in as skilled migrants, usually family reunions, the humanitarian intake minus the number of people who leave.

Q: Isn’t the key figure, the number of people who are coming here?

Butler: Well, no, it’s the it’s the number of people coming in, minus the number of people leaving, because the number of people leaving are obviously leaving houses, leaving apartments, leaving bedrooms, creating less pressure.

Q: How many are leaving?

Butler:

Well, we’re back down to a more ordinary level of people leaving the system. I mean, the big, the big…

Q: This is a bit like an episode of frontline.

Butler:

The big, the big traffic though is actually international students. They’re the big numbers. They come in, then they leave.

Q: You can understand this is not your portfolio. But I think in government it’s pretty hot in the news right now and knowing the numbers would be good. And also I think that you are empowering extremist views by by doing and saying nothing about it and not doing anything about it. (I’m sorry, what? Doing nothing about what? What does this mean – that by giving in to the extremist delusions, than the government disempowers extremists? Do people like Karl Stefanovic ever look at themselves in the mirror and think ‘hmmm, maybe I do need to read more before opening my mouth?!)

Butler:

No, we’ve got that figure down, I think, off the top of my head by about 40% from the peak that we saw after Covid. The peak was unsurprising given the number of people who had left gone back home, particularly those international students who are a big part of our university sector. They did come back, but we’re getting those numbers back down to a more ordinary level of immigration. We’re a big immigration country, have been really forever.

Q: So more cuts to come

Butler:

Well, I think we’re still getting that that number down. It started to come down substantially over the last few years since we’ve been in government. But we recognise that that we need to do this to relieve some pressure. But Karl, I also know that as I talk to hospital operators, aged care operators, people wanting to build new houses, they are desperately short of labor. Our unemployment rate is is just a bit over 4%. Our participation rate is as high as it’s ever been, so we don’t have a lot of unused labor here in Australia. This this is a balance. As a government, we need to to strike quite responsibly.

A reminder that immigrants are people and valuable for their personhood – not just because of the work they do, or the food they make. It tends to get lost in this debate, because of conversations like this.

Mark Butler has walked down the press gallery hallway from the Seven studio to the Nine studio, where he is being asked what the migration number is.

He doesn’t know, as it is not his portfolio, but says:

Well, the overseas migration figure is published regularly by Treasury. It’s been coming down substantially since it peaked. Unsurprisingly, after Covid, there was an influx of people back in the number last year. 

As I recall, it was still lower than the migration predictions that the former government had made before Covid.

So we’re getting back down to more normal levels, and it’s really a balance between making sure that we’ve got the workforce we need. I know as the minister responsible for our health system, our aged care system, our disability care system, also construction industry, all of those sectors of the economy are desperate for workers at a time of very low unemployment, while also managing some of the constraints I know your viewers worry about on housing, on infrastructure, on transport as well, and we’re working really hard to get that balance right.

Q: So the target was 185. What’s the actual number?

Butler:

…It’s substantially less than 500,000. I mean, there was there was a big spike after Covid as people returned from overseas, particularly international students who who’d left and gone back home during that once in a century pandemic.

But we’re through that spike. We’re starting to see the rate come down to more normal levels. But as I said, you know, I think there is a real tension between recognising that there are real pressures on our housing system and other parts of the economy, while also, I know, intimately recognising we’re really struggling to get the workers we need to deliver the hospital services, the aged care services and build the houses.