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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Mike Hohnen

Afternoon Update: Latham criticised for alleged photos of female colleagues; unemployment up; and the road to Idiocracy

Mark Latham
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, says former One Nation MP Mark Latham’s (pictured) alleged remarks about female MPs in messages to his then partner are ‘troubling’. Photograph: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Welcome, readers, to Afternoon Update.

The New South Wales housing minister, Rose Jackson, has labelled the independent MP Mark Latham a “pig” after allegations he took covert photographs of female colleagues in the upper house and shared them.

The messages, reportedly sent to his former partner Nathalie Matthews and published in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday, allegedly included disparaging comments about the female politicians’ appearance.

In one message, the former One Nation MP allegedly made comments about the Liberal MP Eleni Petinos, saying she “looks pregnant”. “I pinched her bum lightly and she smiled!! Change of heart!!”

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, labelled Latham’s allegedly disparaging remarks “troubling”, and claimed he would be sacked in any other workplace, while Jackson said: “Mark Latham is a pig.”

Top news

In pictures

The political climate isn’t helping, reckons cartoonist Fiona Katauskas.

What they said …

***

“Is [crime here] getting worse, or is it the Australians coming here getting worse?”

Misbehaving Aussies have long marred the Indonesian island, but an influx of expats and digital nomads has given rise to a thriving criminal underbelly. Paul Werner, owner of PaD Bar and Grill in Kuta, who has lived and raised a family in Bali over the past 10 years, says there has been a change since Covid, with a flood of money coming into the island.

In numbers

The rise added pressure on the Reserve Bank to cut interest rates and surprised markets, which had been expecting unemployment to remain steady at 4.1% for the sixth consecutive month. Just 2,000 extra people found work, while the number of unemployed Australians rose by 33,600.

Before bed read

Self-serving policy is not the worst of the OpenAI blueprint. It is the fact that this massive corporation purports to set our future agenda at all. As we race headlong into our glorious AI-powered future, a long-forgotten flick from the noughties is gaining cult status by posing a simple question: Are we on the road to Idiocracy?

Daily word game

Today’s starter word is: LINE. You have five goes to get the longest word including the starter word. Play Wordiply.

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