In ABC News

There's a freaking pandemic going on!

In short:

The government will introduce laws to restrict protesters in Victoria, following a series of anti-Semitic incidents across the state.

Face coverings, certain flags and attachment devices will be banned at protests.

The government will also introduce legislation which would establish protest-free zones around places of worship.

There's a place of worship on practically every block in the CBD!

Premier Jacinta Allan said recent discussions with Victoria's Jewish community in the wake of the recent suspected terror attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue had informed the move.

[…]

"There are too many who want to qualify anti-Semitism or make excuses for it, and I want to make it absolutely clear that I never will."

Yes, well, it really wouldn't do have a precise definition of anti-Semitism, would it? Best to just define it as "anything I don't like". That's appropriately respectful of Jewish people. This is just disgraceful and obviously targeted at the weekly pro-Palestinian rally in Melbourne.

To paraphrase Judi Bari, I hope the Victorian Police catch whoever was responsible for the synagogue fire. And sack them.

A new study was released in recent days that should have been newsworthy, but it escaped the media's attention in Australia.

It showed Australian police are world leaders at arresting climate and environmental protesters.

According to the study, more than 20 per cent of all climate and environment protests in Australia involve arrests, which is more than three times the global average (6.3 per cent).

Australia's arrest rate was the highest of 14 countries in the global study.

It's higher than policing efforts in the United Kingdom (17.2 per cent), Norway (14.5 per cent), and the United States (10 per cent).

The research makes it clear that Australia's political leaders have joined the "rapid escalation" of efforts to criminalise and repress climate and environmental protest, while sovereign states globally fail to meet their international agreements and emissions targets.

[…]

When you read the Bristol University study alongside the special rapporteur's position paper and the EDO paper, you get a pretty good sense of how the clampdown on climate and environmental activism actually works, and why it's occurring.

Collectively, the reports discuss an issue that links political donations and pressure from fossil fuel companies, governments writing new laws and harsher penalties for climate and environmental activists, federal and state policing agencies being put to work to enforce the new laws, and legal systems and courts being used to bed them down.

And hanging over the entire political problem is the question of the "pricing mechanism" and the role it plays in a society like ours.

When you look at this issue dispassionately, you'll see that we're witnessing a nasty global battle over the attempt to have the negative externalities of fossil fuels properly reflected in the market prices of the products of fossil fuel companies.

Some high-octane anger fuel in this excellent piece:

COVID patients began raising the alarm that they weren't getting better, scientists are still racing to unravel the mystery of why a significant minority of people develop debilitating chronic symptoms while others seem to recover just fine. But if the plight of adults with long COVID remains poorly understood, the millions of children who have it worldwide are practically invisible, their suffering — and the formative years they're losing to this disease — obscured by the myths that COVID is "harmless" for kids and the pandemic is "over".

In Australia, the lack of awareness is biting in shocking ways. Too many children with long COVID are being dismissed by doctors who say there's nothing they can do to help — or worse, that their pain and fatigue is "all in their head". They're being pushed out of school by teachers who don't understand why they can't come to class or run around with their peers. Their parents have been gaslighted and blamed, too, not just by medical professionals but their closest friends and family. And experts are concerned that all this ignorance and apathy — and the unwillingness of governments to do more to curb COVID transmission — is exposing a generation of children to the same chronic illness and disability, with potentially devastating consequences.

A small Victorian milk company says supermarket giant Coles has removed its products from 65 Victorian stores in retribution for refusing to give the supermarket a bigger profit margin.

From next month, Gippsland Jersey milk will only be stocked in about 16 Victorian Coles supermarkets, leaving the business with two weeks to find a new home for thousands of litres of milk.

Sallie Jones, who started the company with dairy farmer Steve Ronalds in 2016, said the decision came as a shock.

"We've gone from being awarded Australia's best milk to then being removed off the majority of Coles shelves, which is super disappointing," she said.

The controversial virtual manager service invites real estate agents who have signed up for membership to enter the details of tenants they wish to keep tabs on.

In the future, when a tenant applies for another property and the other real estate agent searches for their details in TICA's main database, the original property manager receives a notification that includes the name and contact details of the agent who conducted the search.

[…]

When virtual manager launched in 2010 it was met with backlash from tenants' advocates, who described it as "a gross invasion of privacy". At the same time, a TICA spokesperson said its main purpose was to monitor the movement of tenants while they are still renting the property, so landlords could guard against "the dreaded midnight skip".

In the 14 years since, little information has been published about how the secretive service — which is only available for an additional fee to TICA's "gold members" — operates.

"There's just something incredibly creepy and invasive about the fact that a property manager can put a little alert in the system, and seven years later [in this case] know that you're trying to apply for a property and basically go and put a spanner in the works and make it so you can't get a home," Mr Dignam said. 

This is from a few years ago, and fits with first-hand experience.

The class action comes as Coles faces legal action from the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) over alleged underpayment of its managers. The FWO puts the underpayment at more than $100 million between 2017 and 2020.

In a statement made after filing proceedings in the Federal Court last week, the FWO alleges one worker was underpaid $471,647 during the period.

Beneath those hard numbers are the personal stories of almost 8,000 Coles managers like Ms Macdonald, for whom the allegations represent not only underpayment but years of stress and anxiety while working for the supermarket giant.

[…] Adero Law principal Rory Markham, who is running the class action against Coles, says the company has vastly underestimated the underpayments.

"When you're paid a flat salary, as in the case of Coles managers, there's no allowance for overtime or excessive hours," he says.

He says information from the roughly 2,200 salaried staff who have signed up for the class action show they were working an average of 55 to 65 hours a week — well above their typical contracted roster of 40 hours.

Andrew Dunlop runs cattle on his property in southern New South Wales and has spent his career working in the red meat industry, including 15 years in Japan.

Last month, he returned to Japan to find Australian cubed beef for sale at $18.35 a kilogram, around $2 to $4 a kilo cheaper than in major Australian supermarkets.

[…]

Mr Dunlop says it's another sign of concentrated supermarket power and increased profit margins from supermarkets.

"The Japanese retail industry is not concentrated like it is here," he said.

"Any individual retailer in Japan probably has at most a 10 per cent share of the market, although there will be some regional differences."

John Gunthorpe, chair of the Australian Cattle Industry Council, said Australian meat was well trimmed and presented without much fat or sinew.

"The prices and the quality of presentation of the meat are far better than anything that we get here in Australia," he said.

Pressed on whether it was a fair comparison to the beef in Australian supermarkets, Mr Gunthorpe said it was.

"It's beef off the same farms," he said.

"The real concern is the level of profit that Coles and Woolies are making in the domestic market relative to the profit that's being made by the Japanese in Tokyo."

• In short: The proposal includes prescribing standards to ceiling insulation, draught proofing, hot water systems, cooling and heating. 
• An academic says the rental standards would improve quality of life for renters and improve environmental sustainability.
• What's next? Victoria is consulting on the new minimum standards until July 1. 

In "you can't fight geometry" news:

• In short: A NSW parliamentary inquiry into the Rozelle Interchange heard from a number of experts on Friday.
• One expert warned the creation of two new motorways will compound traffic issues across Sydney. 
  What's next? The parliamentary committee is due to report its findings in June.
• A former senior transport official has warned Sydney's Western Harbour Tunnel and Warringah Freeway projects will be a "bloody disaster" for traffic.

Civil engineer Les Wielinga, a former CEO at the now-defunct Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA), made the fiery comments at a NSW parliamentary inquiry into the bungled Rozelle Interchange.

The Western Harbour Tunnel, which is under construction, will allow drivers travelling between the inner west and the North Shore to bypass the CBD.

Entries and exits to the tunnel will lie at the Ernest Street interchange in Cammeray and near the Falcon Street interchange at North Sydney.

"It's going to be a bloody disaster," Mr Wielinga told the upper house committee on Friday.

• In short: A former ADF chief says the federal government either doesn't understand or is hiding from the public the risk of climate change to national security.
• Admiral Chris Barrie says mass migration, food insecurity and other climate risks must be addressed by government and defence.
• What's next? The group of former defence and intelligence officials have called for a secret climate security report to be made known for public debate.