Saturday 30 September 2017

Trump is a puppet of the rich. He made that clear this week


Our president is the puppet of his rich business friends. You don’t need a special counsel to find the evidence. Twice this week, when given the choice between his wealthy buddies and the working Americans he claims to care about, Trump has taken the gold-plated path.
Take his big tax cut, the biggest ever in history (or so he says). When asked by the super-friendly Pete Hegseth (from the aptly named Fox & Friends) about who his tax cuts were intended to help, our populist hero jumped right in.
“Really, the working people. We say the working people, middle class, the people that really haven’t been treated right, Pete, and they haven’t been treated right, really, for a long time. They have not been treated right,” he began very earnestly.
Then he switched gears. “Also, it’s going to be for businesses where they’re going to employ jobs, where they’re going to bring in jobs.”
Let’s set aside about the whole idea of employing jobs. Let’s even pass over the royal “we” when we say the working people. Along with cutting his own taxes, Trump is also cutting his own grammar.
But the businesses, people. Our great negotiator-in-chief was tipping his hand, so the fearsome interrogator known as Hegseth went in for the kill, asking if any of the tax brackets were non-negotiable.
“Yes,” said Trump proudly, “the 20% is non-negotiable. I wanted to do it at 15%. This is for business. I wanted to do it at 15%. If you look at China, China is at 15%... In fact, I was going to start at 15 and maybe negotiate it up to 20. But the numbers really work at 20, so we’re putting it in at 20, but we’re not going to negotiate.”
This is a particularly sad moment for the handful of people who still believe Donald J Trump knows how to negotiate; notably his blood relatives and paid help. He may have put his name to The Art of the Deal, but Trump knows less about negotiations than he knows about African geography.
It’s also a sad moment for all those working people who really haven’t been treated right for a long time, and who may have believed that Trump was looking out for them. Because when pushed very gently into naming his priority tax rate, the populist rebel forgot all about them.
This thinking is obvious in the proposed tax cuts themselves. Somehow Trump believes he can sell a tax hike for the lowest earners – from 10% to 12%– as a tax cut.
This is apparently because he is promising to increase the standard tax-free deduction, but he is also declining to tell us what income levels apply to each tax bracket. As any self-respecting populist should know, if you’re explaining deductions and brackets, you’re losing.
Meanwhile, those at the top will see their tax rate go down from 39.6% to 35%. Because they haven’t been treated right for a really long time either. Obviously.
This follows a pattern by our presidential puppet. Faced with the humanitarian disaster in Puerto Rico, where around 1.5 million Americans are struggling to survive without drinking water, Trump somehow managed to side with the shipping industry.
For several days, he resisted calls to lift the Jones Act restrictions on foreign-flagged ships bringing desperately needed supplies from the mainland to the stricken US territory. Why not relax those rules, as he did when helping Houston and Florida after their recent hurricane disasters?
“Well, we’re thinking about that but we have a lot of shippers and a lot of people who work in the shipping industry that don’t want the Jones Act lifted,” he told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Wednesday.
After thinking some more, Trump reversed himself on Thursday, more than a week after Puerto Rico lost its power grid and struggled to secure anything like adequate fuel supplies.
It is phenomenally hard to understand the thinking of a commander-in-chief who places the interests of shippers over his own citizens in dire need. Then again, it’s hard to understand someone who tries to shoo away the problems of helping Puerto Rico by saying this to reporters on Tuesday:
“It’s very tough because it’s an island,” he explained helpfully. “In Texas, we can ship the trucks right out there. And you know, we’ve gotten A-pluses on Texas and on Florida, and we will also on Puerto Rico. But the difference is, this is an island sitting in the middle of an ocean. And it’s a big ocean. It’s a very big ocean.”
We can only look forward to the conversations between the president and his national security officials when they explain how far away North Korea is. There are also some very big oceans between Washington and Seoul, but somehow our military forces manage to cross them.
Trump’s worldview is not shaped by a burning desire to help working people or even understand them. It’s shaped by his desire to help his business friends. So when Fox’s friendly Hegseth asked him why he was talking so much about the NFL players’ protests, Trump could only respond with what he knows best.
“Well, I have so many friends that are owners,” he explained with what passes for honesty. “And they’re in a box. I mean I’ve spoken to a couple of them. They say, we’re in a situation where we have to do something… I think they’re afraid of their players. You want to know the truth? And I think it’s disgraceful. And they’ve got to be tough and they’ve got to be smart, because you look at the ratings.”
Never mind that the ratings have gone up since the protests took hold. And never mind about the underlying reasons for the protests: police brutality and racial injustice. What really matters is the plight of the poor, scared owners. Because they haven’t been treated right for a really long time.
  • Richard Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist

Fixing NBN requires tougher rules and stronger watchdog, parliamentary report finds

Updated about 6 hours ago

A federal parliamentary report has called for an overhaul of how NBN Co is policed, citing regular concerns about the performance of the National Broadband Network and compensation for customers.

Key points:

  • The report warns a tougher approach is needed to ensure NBN Co meets minimum performance standards
  • Some Coalition members including committee chairwoman Sussan Ley were angered by the findings
  • NBN Co says it is already changing the way it operates to help customers

The Joint Standing Committee report was released today, warning a tougher approach was needed to ensure NBN Co met minimum performance standards.
It recommended new regulations be introduced, so the company would bound to "service connection and fault repair timeframes," achieve "minimum network performance and reliability" and provide "compensation" for customers when such benchmarks are not met.
The report also calls for the industry watchdog, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, to be able to compel NBN Co to resolve internet problems when it is responsible for the outage.

Customers frustrated by lack of policing

Alex Gershenzon was looking forward to being connected to high-speed broadband, but the switch over to the NBN forced the Melbourne resident to struggle for three months without any connection.
"We've had no internet, no home phone and no real prospects of anything being connected," he said.
Dr Gershenzon complained to his service provider, but the company could not do anything more than ask NBN Co to investigate.
He also went to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, but this did not resolve the matter.
"It appears NBN has absolutely no-one to answer to," Dr Gershenzon said.
"My impression is they're just trying to tick off the boxes and connect as many people at whatever cost they can. And allocate no resources to problem resolution and customer support."
Shortly after the ABC raised the matter with NBN Co, Dr Gershenzon's internet was fixed.
"NBN identified an IT issue preventing Mr Gershenzon from connecting to a retail service over the NBN network," an NBN Co statement said.

Calls for tougher policing of NBN

The new report comes after members of the committee, which is stacked in favour of Labor and the crossbench, spent 12 months touring the country and listening to customer complaints.
"The evidence that we've been getting from businesses, from households, is the rollout is not going well," committee member and Labor MP Stephen Jones said.
"There are problems with the initial installation, problems with unreliability in the network and massive problems about how you get your problems fixed."
"Get more teeth into the ombudsman and process so that when something does go wrong you know you've got a tough cop there who is going to help sort those problems out."
The report has been well received by internet advocates.
"It's important the Government listens to the committee and updates the codes to ensure the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman has the power to act to protect the consumers," Mark Gregory from RMIT said.

Stricter rules will mean higher cost

The report has angered some Coalition members, including the committee chairwoman Sussan Ley, who handed down her own dissenting report.
"Labor's report calls for more bodies, more regulation and of course, Labor being Labor, more cost," Ms Ley said.
Ms Ley's dissenting report emphasises the need to meet a rollout deadline, as well as emphasising the importance federal agencies have in keeping retail service providers in check.
"The reason for [many] complaints often is nothing to do with NBN and everything to do with retail service providers who are overpromising underdelivering," Ms Ley said.
NBN Co said it welcomed the report, and added it was already changing the way it operated to help customers.
"We need to maintain the balance of getting broadband to people as quickly as possible, while minimising these problems," a spokesman said.
"No large-scale construction project has ever been problem-free."

Elon Musk: Tesla reaches halfway point of construction on 'world's biggest' battery


Updated about 6 hours ago

Tesla boss Elon Musk has held a party in South Australia's mid-north to mark the halfway point of construction of the world's most powerful lithium ion battery.

Key points:

  • Elon Musk made the announcement from a marquee overlooking the battery array in Jamestown
  • SA Premier Jay Weatherill said the event was a celebration of how far the state has come, one year on from the statewide blackout
  • The SA Government has set an operating deadline of December 1 for the battery

A grid connection agreement for the 100-megawatt battery array was signed by transmission company Electranet on Friday afternoon, sparking the start of a 100-day deadline for Tesla to complete construction of the battery or build it for free.
Mr Musk addressed invited guests including politicians, local landowners and Tesla customers in a marquee overlooking the battery array which is under construction in Jamestown alongside French company Neoen's Hornsdale wind farm.
"To have that [construction] done in two months … you can't remodel your kitchen in that period of time," Mr Musk joked as he took to the stage.
"This serves as a great example to the rest of the world of what can be done."

Also in attendance was South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill, who noted it was one year ago from Thursday since South Australia's statewide blackout.
"That was not a good day," Mr Weatherill said.
"Tonight we are here celebrating the progress that's been made.
"There were lots of people that were making jokes about South Australia and making fun of our leadership in renewable energy. Well today they're laughing out of the other side of their face."
Tesla said the event was powered entirely by Powerpack batteries, the same systems being used in the South Australian array.

Mr Musk told the audience that Australia could be powered by 1,890 square kilometres of solar panels — roughly a tenth the area of Sydney — backed up by seven square kilometres of batteries.
"It's not just talk. It's reality," he said.
"That is what the future will look like and the faster we get there, the better."

Ability to power 30,000 homes

Tesla will operate the battery on behalf of Neoen, in a deal subsidised by up to $50 million by South Australian taxpayers.
Under the arrangement, the South Australian Government will have the right to use the battery to help prevent load-shedding blackouts, and to provide new competition in the provision of stability services to the grid.

Tesla claims its array, manufactured at the company's new Gigafactory in Nevada, will be able to power about 30,000 homes.
It will store up to 129 MWh of electricity, meaning at full power it will last for a little over an hour.
Construction of the battery was announced in July, in response to an expression of interest process run by the South Australian Government.
The Government has set an operating deadline of December 1 for the battery along with 250 megawatts of temporary diesel generators, to help address expected shortfalls across the summer period.

Controversial work-for-the-dole scheme taking a toll on young Indigenous people

Extract from ABC News

By political reporter Dan Conifer in Santa Teresa
Posted 59 minutes ago

Eighteen-year-old Mel Inkamala is strolling around the Santa Teresa community garden with his left hand tucked inside a grey vest.
He is holding a cordless phone, occasionally bringing it to his ear, checking he is still on hold.
"Just waiting … I'm on participation," he says, referring to Centrelink's hotline for people breached under the Community Development Programme (CDP).

The young Aboriginal man has missed a CDP work-for-the-dole activity, which means he is being fined a day's welfare payment.
CDP participants must do 25 hours of tasks each week, which is up to three-times longer than other welfare recipients.

For a person on Newstart, which is generally less than $300 a week, penalties are about $50 per breach.
Mel puts the call on loudspeaker.
A quick glance at the phone's display shows that generic, classical on-hold music has been playing for almost 50 minutes.
"Just missed one day … and fixing that up again," he says.
Someone in a Centrelink call centre picks up after a few more minutes.
But wait times can be much longer.
Media player: "Space" to play, "M" to mute, "left" and "right" to seek.

Kathrine O'Donoghue works for a Central Australian CDP service provider and says people are too often "waiting on the phone for sometimes three or four hours".
Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion admits there is a problem.
"I have heard of those reports and I understand that they're valid. That has been for some time," he said.
"While the numbers are low, Centrelink is doing their best to deal with that matter."

The most Catholic place in Australia


Santa Teresa is a former Catholic mission, and its religious history lives on.
After one hour's drive from Alice Springs, a huge cross on the ridge above the community comes into view.
At the end of the town's main street is a diminutive church glowing white under a cloudless sky.

Inside, the building's walls are adorned with paintings of Aboriginal biblical figures.
Last year's Census says the town's population of about 600 people is 84 per cent Catholic, making it possibly the most Catholic place in Australia.
Divine intervention or prayer time, however, should not be needed to deal with Centrelink.
That's because Santa Teresa has a Centrelink office.

The grandly-named Australian Government Business Complex is a small, beige demountable with a tin roof.
There is a misplaced shopping trolley sitting in the dead grass out the front.
It is one minute's walk (including sidestepping a local dog) from the local CDP provider, CatholicCareNT.
But Centrelink's shopfronts do not deal with CDP penalties.

Instead, Mel Inkamala and others are phoning the agency "every day basically," says CatholicCareNT's Dylan McKinley.
"If they miss one day, there's still that obligation that they need to talk to Centrelink," Mr McKinley said.
Between about 15,000 and 20,000 people nationally are required to work for welfare payments under CDP.
In two years, at least 300,000 fines have been imposed, mostly on Aboriginal people.

The Men's shed making a difference

In Santa Teresa, participants can choose between five different activities.
One involves tending to the community garden. Another is cooking as part of the Terrific Tucker program.
And on the outskirts of town, beyond its 100 or so houses, an old power station has been converted into a men's shed.

"This would be one of our better attended activities, and it's about 70 per cent attendance," Mr McKinley said.
"They can work at their own pace, and they can develop their own projects that they want to do."
Some of those here are barely beyond their teens. Others wear silver beards on weathered faces.
Near the front gate, a few of the men are carving into used car tyres, turning the rubber into leaves for palm tree sculptures.
At the back of the building, Donovan Huddleston is quietly working alone under a shade cloth.

He is applying the last coats of lacquer to second-hand wooden pallets that he is transforming into a bench.
"It's the first one, first one I did," he says. "It came out nice."
He has been on work-for-the-dole for three years and enjoys the men's shed.
"[It's] alright … [I] talk to the fellas … they help you out … Yeah, it's pretty good here."

Not all activities are built equal


The remote work-for-the-dole scheme covers three quarters of Australia's landmass.
Of the dozens of activities undertaken, not all are popular or worthwhile.
Last year, the ABC revealed one involved teaching "women about personal grooming and hygiene", while another is "Plastic Fantastic 3D printing training".
Not wanting to endure hours of low-value tasks, or navigate Centrelink's labyrinthine systems, some people are dropping off Centrelink altogether.
Mr McKinley says those withdrawing frequently are young people.

"Often it puts pressure on the family … mum and dad would be expected to provide.
"[The parents] might just be getting a Centrelink payment as well, so then that's a portion of their money that has to go to help support the person who's not getting paid."

This observation is supported by another CDP provider, Alice Spring's Tangentyere Council Aboriginal Corporation.
Its submission to the Senate inquiry cites Government research showing 47 per cent of Aboriginal people in very remote areas are unemployed and not on Centrelink.
"There's a component of that figure who are maybe young adults who aren't receiving income support," Tangentyere's Michael Klerck said.
Asked about the issue, Senator Scullion says "there's no evidence to demonstrate that".
"I've looked into every single allegation … from people are going hungry … that the amount of money [spent at] each store has depressed," he said.
"All of the ones that have been provided to me we've investigated, and there's no basis to them."
Two independent investigations are underway into the scheme.
The Senate committee and Australian National Audit Office will no doubt propose a raft of reforms.

Until changes are adopted, Mel Inkamala and thousands of other Aboriginal people will keep getting fined, and will be kept on hold, waiting for a better system. 

Friday 29 September 2017

Principal ‘amused’ by Bernardi's dress day outrage as school raises $275,000

Paul Luke proud of Craigburn primary students after conservative senator criticises fundraiser as ‘gender morphing’

Craigburn primary school principal Paul Luke with One Girl chief executive Morgan Koegel at the school on Friday. Students wore dresses to school to raise money for education for girls in Africa.
Craigburn primary principal Paul Luke with One Girl chief executive Morgan Koegel at the school on Friday. Students wore dresses to school to raise money for education for girls in Africa. Photograph: James Hall/AAP


The principal of the school whose charity fundraiser was criticised as “gender morphing” by Cory Bernadi says he was “amused” by the controversy as students wore dresses or casual clothes on Friday to mark the event.
Year 5 students at Craigburn primary school in South Australia initiated the “do it in a dress” fundraiser and had hoped to raise $900 from gold coin donations on the last day of the school term for the One Girl charity, which helps provide education for girls in Africa.
But the students raised more than $275,000 after Bernardi’s criticism of the event made it a global story.
On Friday the chief executive of Melbourne-based One Girl, Morgan Koegel, flew to Adelaide to thank the students and explain where their donations will go.
The charity helps provide education for girls in Sierra Leone and Uganda, and Koegel said the school’s fundraising would support scholarships for more than 900 students.
Koegel said since Bernardi’s tweet, there had been an influx in other schools and universities signing up to raise money for the charity.
“We’ve had hundreds of schools take part over the years but since all of this happened there’s been a big increase ... we’ve definitely had more schools and universities sign on since that time,” she said.
“We didn’t even have the chance to become concerned initially because by the time I’d seen [Bernadi’s] tweet the donations had already flown in, there wasn’t even an opportunity to see it as a negative before it turned into feeling grateful, humbled and proud of the students and the Australian community.”


Stoked to be speaking with Craigburn Primary about the impact that their fundraising has had! @onegirlorg
The principal of Craigburn primary school, Paul Luke, wore a dress on the day. He said he was proud of the students and “amused” by the controversy that had enveloped the fundraiser.
“Not in a derogatory sense, but just understanding the world we live in now where any communication is only a push of a button [and] everyone has a voice,” he said.
He said the school had tried to stay clear of the controversy.
“Certainly from the students’ point of view they’ve been pretty shielded from what’s been happening on social media,” he said. “What they have been doing on a daily basis is looking at the online metre of donations ticking over and how many kids that translated into.”


How cool is Will from Craigburn Primary School! Do It In A Dress today for a great cause, with a touch of Crows @theTiser
SenatorLast week Bernardi last week said the school’s timing of the fundraiser was poor.
“In the hypersensitive time where we’ve got same-sex marriage debate, we’ve got people concerned about gender ideological training in schools, I think this is entirely inappropriate,” he said.
But the campaign has run annually for six years, with a growing number of schools taking part. It has nothing to do with the marriage equality debate or gender identity, and is based on the school dress being a symbol of empowerment in developing countries.
Koegel said the fundraising always took place between August and October.
“We’re Australian-based but all of our work is in Africa; we’ve never before been asked to weigh in on Australian politics.”
Luke said the students had chosen the One Girl charity after learning about education around the world.
Craigburn Primary broken the record for One Girl charity by raising the most money from one event @abcnewsAdelaide
“They’d been finding out kids not experiencing schooling as they are [and] realising that some kids, particularly girls in some parts of Africa, don’t go to school at all,” he said.
“We certainly weren’t encouraging them to wear dresses ... they were obviously able to just wear their casual clothes, and the students understood it was a symbolic thing.” 

The global war on journalism

Podcast from ABC Late Night Live


To what extent has the global war on terrorism eroded many of the rights expected in western democratic nations? Peter Greste, arrested in 2013 in Egypt while working for Al Jazeera as a journalist, argues that what happened to him was an extreme and egregious example of what’s happening all over the world. Following the attack on the Twin Towers, he argues that the obsession with terrorism is chipping away at one of the fundamental elements that’s made our democracies working and peaceable. 

Former senators argue citizenship ignorance should not save MPs

Larissa Waters and Scott Ludlam rebut arguments in high court submissions from Barnaby Joyce, Fiona Nash, Nick Xenophon and Matt Canavan

Greens Senator Larissa Waters announces her resignation in July after discovering her dual citizenship.
Greens Senator Larissa Waters announces her resignation in July after discovering her dual citizenship. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP


Larissa Waters and Scott Ludlam, the Greens senators who resigned after becoming aware of their citizenship conflicts have argued “ignorance or wilful blindness” should not be used as an excuse to save parliamentarians in potential breach of the constitution.
In a marked departure from the arguments of Barnaby Joyce, Fiona Nash and Matt Canavan, as well as the attorney general, George Brandis, on behalf of the commonwealth, Waters and Ludlam argue in a joint submission that they were right to resign when they became aware of their dual citizenship status.
The government MPs and Nick Xenophon all agreed with Brandis’s argument in their submissions to the court that they were ignorant of their citizenship issues, despite their parents’ heritage, and therefore should not be found ineligible for parliament as they did not acquire or retain the status voluntarily.
However Waters, who was included in Brandis’s submission as deserving of being excused for the potential breach, and Ludlam argued that ignorance of “foreign citizenship status, is not supported by the text, context, history or purpose of s 44 or of the constitution itself”.
They accused the parliamentarians before the court of “ignorance or wilful blindness” of their dual citizenship status, saying these were not an excuse from the constraints of the constitution.
“In complying with obligations under the constitution, negligence should never produce a more favourable result than diligence,” they argued.
The Greens submitted it was reasonable to enquire into one’s status as a dual citizen when put “on notice by reason of the person’s foreign place of birth or the foreign citizenship status of that person’s parents or grandparents”.
The fact that a parliamentarian is a citizen by descent rather than birth should be no excuse, they submitted, as both are barred by section 44.
The Greens said the government’s test was more subjective and uncertain because it “largely depends upon subjective knowledge of a particular person at a particular time” about whether they were a dual citizen.
Waters and Ludlam said the purpose of section 44 was to bar people with “foreign loyalties and obligations” and it was a “real possibility” that a foreign power could call upon a citizen’s duty “even if it had never done so in the past and even if the person concerned was hitherto unaware of the citizenship”.
The Greens submission stands in contrast to the submissions of the three government MPs and that of Xenophon, who all argued variations of ignorance of dual citizenship should not be punished by the court, by being seen as a breach.
Canavan argued he was retrospectively made a citizen by descent when he was a child, a fact he only discovered after his mother said she may have inadvertently applied for Italian citizenship for him, with her own application, when he was 25.
“He never took any steps to register as an Italian citizen, or even to try to ‘apply’ to become one,” his submission reads. “In fact, it did not occur to him that he might be an Italian citizen until the evening of 18 July 2017, after a conversation with his mother.
“When the Italian consulate (possibly erroneously) confirmed on 24 July 2017 that he was an Italian citizen, within a matter of days he took steps to renounce that citizenship.
“He never exercised any of the rights, or discharged any of the responsibilities, of an Italian citizen.
“He has never even been to Italy. It follows that on the proper construction of s 44(i), Senator Canavan is not disqualified from being chosen as a senator.”
Joyce also argued he was completely unaware he could hold dual citizenship, as he had thought his father was only ever a citizen of Australia and had no reason to check before nominating for parliament.
“He thus had no doubts concerning his eligibility to stand as a candidate for election to the commonwealth parliament.
“Merely reading the nomination form and the candidates’ handbook would not have put a reasonable person in Mr Joyce’s position, with his state of knowledge, on notice of any circumstance that would or should have prompted further inquiry.”
Nash’s counsel argued that while her sisters and father had been born in the UK, she had been told by her parents that she was Australian as she was born in Sydney and she would need to apply for British citizenship, if she wished it and “had no awareness of the fact that she was also a British citizen”.
Xenophon, who was found to be a British overseas citizen, said he took steps to renounce any Greek or Cypriot citizenship because of his heritage, but said it “never crossed his mind” that he could hold a form of British citizenship.
Roberts submission was not published on the high court website at the time of publication.
The high court will hear verbal arguments on 10, 11 and 12 October.

Brandis criticises Abbott's 'bizarre' call to ban Macklemore 'gay anthem' at NRL

Attorney general backs rapper’s decision to sing Same Love at grand final, saying ‘I thought Mr Abbott believed in freedom of speech’

Macklemore
Rapper Macklemore will sing Same Love at the NRL grand final. Tony Abbott complained the song will ‘politicise’ the game. Photograph: BG017/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

Australia’s attorney general, George Brandis, has defended American rapper Macklemore after the former prime minister Tony Abbott called for a performance of his hit song Same Love to be banned.
Abbott’s daughter, Frances, who has emerged as a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage, has encouraged the American rapper to “go harder” in the face of her father’s criticism.
Macklemore’s scheduled performance at Sunday’s NRL grand final, in the middle of the country’s same-sex marriage postal survey, has sparked outrage from no campaigners who oppose marriage equality.
On Wednesday, the former Prime Minister said the season-ending event should not be “politicised” by the pro-LGBT rights song, after the former rugby league player Tony Wall launched a petition on Change.org to stop its performance.
But his daughter, Frances, who this week appeared in a video backing same-sex marriage, has come out in support of the rapper, writing on social media site Instagram that “this is what we need right now”.
  Frances Abbott: 'marriage equality would make society a much better place' – video
“I still remember the first time I heard this song. I was sitting in my car, about to get out and go to work ... but stopped and listened. And that same day I went and bought the album and kept it in my car and listened to it over and over again.
“I can’t think of a better song for all the hundreds and thousands of people to listen to on Saturday. This is what we need right now.
“Go harder @macklemore.”
She also wrote “press play”, a reference to the song’s lyrics: “we press play, don’t press pause. Progress, march on.”
It came after Abbott’s senior colleague Brandis defended Mackelmore and labelled Abbot’s stance “bizarre” earlier on Thursday.

Footy fans shouldn't be subjected to a politicised grand final. Sport is sport! https://twitter.com/mirandadevine/status/912872970342645760 
“It is one of his most popular songs and for Mr Abbott and anyone else to say that it should be banned I think is a bizarre thing to say,” he told ABC TV. “I thought Mr Abbott believed in freedom of speech.”
Macklemore himself and the NRL also refused to back down. The rapper said he would “go harder” as a result of the criticism.
“I’m going to Australia to perform at kind of the Superbowl of their rugby league,” he told a US radio station.
“I’m getting a lot of tweets from angry old white dudes in Australia. I think there’s a petition today to ban me from playing it. It’s interesting times in Australia.”
In a statement, the NRL said fans “would not expect anything less” than a full-throated performance of Same Love.
“Macklemore was chosen as the grand final act because he is currently one of the top acts in the world,” a spokesman said.
“The response from fans has been overwhelmingly positive – many young people are coming to the grand final just to see him.
“Naturally he will be performing his number one hits on Sunday. The fans would not expect anything less.”
The rapper, who formerly performed as Professor Mack Lemore, won four Grammy awards in 2014 including best new artist and best rap album. His hit songs Thrift Shop and Same Love both topped the Aria charts between 2012 and 2013.
Last year’s grand final was watched by a peak of 4.2 million Australians, which broke records for metropolitan audiences, and drew a crowd of 83,625 attendees.
Wall, who started the petition to ban the song and who played 10 games for the Western Suburbs Magpies in 1995, asked the NRL to “reconsider its political position”.
“My family and many other loyal NRL fans, who are no voters, will not feel comfortable watching the grand final when the NRL is imposing such a bold political stance on its fans while the issue is currently being voted on by the Australian people.”
His petition also received support from the One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, and the Liberal senator Eric Abetz.
“Look I don’t even know who he is, Macklemore, anyway,” Hanson told Channel 7’s Sunrise program. “That’s how much important he is to me [but] the whole fact this is politicised is absolutely ridiculous.”
Abetz told ABC radio that the NRL and AFL, who also supported marriage equality, had “done themselves a gross disservice” by “trying to force a political agenda”.
Same Love, released in July 2012, references Macklemore’s uncle, John Haggerty, who is gay, and asks to end the culture of homophobia in rap music. It reached number one on the Aria charts for four weeks.

Mackelmore’s performance on Sunday will last 15 minutes and will also include the songs Glorious, Downtown (featuring Eric Nally) and will feature singer Mary Lambert for Same Love, according to an NRL spokesman.