A personal view of Australian and International Politics
Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
A koala has been rescued from a snake in Brisbane.
A Brisbane wildlife rescuer has saved a baby koala from the deadly grip of a python after coming across the pair while out for a bushwalk.
Nell was walking her dog in Whites Hill Reserve at Camp Hill, when she heard a commotion, about 15 metres off the footpath.
"I heard a lot of birds, so I ran over and that's when I saw the joey look me dead in the eyes panicked and the mum was scratching at a python as she tried to get it off her baby."
"She was really distressed," she said.
That's when Nell jumped into action and scooped up the joey, before she started to unravel the snake.
"I didn't know if the baby was breathing or had broken ribs or anything in that moment, I just picked it up and started unravelling," Nell said.
The koala and the cub embraced after the rescue. (Supplied: @behappy.golucky)
"It all happened so quickly … and all of a sudden I've got the snake in one hand and then the joey clutching onto my left shoulder crying."
The rescuer said a man walking nearby stopped to offer his help but was not thrilled when she tried to hand over the snake.
She said she asked him to hold the snake, but he very quickly said no and offered to hold her dog instead.
Nell said she put the snake into a small tree while she checked the freed joey for injuries before reuniting it with mum who had stayed close by throughout the ordeal.
"I made sure its limbs were moving correctly and that it was breathing ok … then I walked up to the tree that its mum was in and it went straight up to her."
Nell was walking with her dog Pluto when they saw the koala in the snake's clutches. (Supplied: @behappy.golucky)
"I then walked with the snake wrapped around my arm until I felt it was far enough that it wasn't going to come back and do the same thing," she said.
Nell said the python was about a metre-and-a-half in length and believes it would have killed the baby koala but not been able to swallow it.
"I came back about an hour or two later and saw the mum and her baby cuddling and they looked so happy."
"That was the best feeling in the world … the snake was fine and can find a smaller meal somewhere else."
Nell said she wanted to post the video to create more awareness about the endangered species and the challenges they face.
Donald Trump has begun reshuffling his staff after the midterms. (Reuters: Evelyn Hockstein)
Donald Trump has announced that his chief of staff Susie Wiles will be replaced by her hardline deputy Stephen Miller on Monday.
The US president made the announcement on Friday, local time, in a social media post.
Mr Trump thanked Ms Wiles for doing an "outstanding job" and said she would move to a different role in his "political operation".
In reality, the switch sidelines one of his most senior staff members, whom he said as recently as last month had "zero chance" of replacing.
"I want to thank her for her service as chief of staff," Mr Trump's post read. "She has done a great job!"
Later, Mr Trump told reporters at the White House he "wanted to make a change".
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles will leave the chief of staff role. (Reuters: Evelyn Hockstein)
It has been widely speculated on Capitol Hill that Mr Trump would reshuffle his administration after his Republican Party's disastrous performance at this week's midterm elections.
The GOP lost control of both the House and Senate in what has been described as an emphatic rebuke of Mr Trump's second term so far.
In March, Ms Wiles announced she would be taking time away from her role after being diagnosed with breast cancer.
Conservative voices, including former MAGA heavyweight Steve Bannon, have previously called for Ms Wiles to resign, although more moderate Republicans view her as a stabilising force in the White House.
Analysts have told the ABC they believe Mr Trump's administration lost its way after Ms Wiles's health battle began.
"Serving President Trump in the White House has been the honour of a lifetime," Ms Wiles said in a social media post on Friday, local time.
"I'm so proud to have been a part of what we've accomplished together from securing our border and cutting taxes to strengthening our economy and putting America First."
Mr Miller is best known as the architect of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.
The 41-year-old has long helped shape immigration policy in the GOP.
He was Mr Trump's chief immigration advisor during the president's first term.
Before that, Mr Miller worked for Senator Jeff Sessions, who was renowned as one of the chamber's loudest and most uncompromising voices on the subject.
Most recently, Mr Miller has driven the push for mass deportations, pressing ICE leadership to raise arrest numbers and publicly telling officers they would have "federal immunity in the conduct of your duties".
"Stephen gets it, he'll do a great job," Mr Trump said.
Data centres and AI are already becoming politically fraught topics in Australia. (ABC News: Norman Hermant)
It's hard to imagine that someone was a bigger loser than the Republican Party in yesterday's US midterm "blue wave".
But somehow, things went even worse for the data centre industry.
When data centres were on the ballot, they overwhelmingly lost. There were about 41 different proposals put to voters in ten states, and all but one are on track for a loss for data centres.
An upset in the Texas governor's race saw Democrat Gina Hinojosa sail to victory. This puts Hinojosa, who has called for a ban on data centre construction, in charge of a state that currently has the biggest pipeline for data centre construction. If the ban is carried out, this will likely put a big dent in national construction.
Less directly but perhaps more consequentially, it's also cemented data centres as a politically toxic issue.
Five per cent of all political ads on TV mentioned data centres, and the majority of them were negative. It was an even bigger proportion in states that have become hot spots for data centre construction — the topic was covered in as many as 14 per cent of all political ads in Wisconsin.
An exit poll of voters conducted by NBC News found that three-quarters of voters oppose the construction of data centres in their community. More than 50 per cent of them said it was a crucial issue or major issue in their vote.
The Raging Grannies protest data centres and power hikes in North Carolina, US. (ABC News: Bec Symons)
Admittedly, data centres weren't the biggest issue overall. Corruption, cost of living, immigration and the Iran War all rated higher. But to keep things in perspective, data centres were not a political issue just two years ago.
I mean this literally: I couldn't find an exit poll that even asked voters about data centres. Nor can I remember a time that a technology issue was so front and centre for voters. (It feels a bit like a cursed monkey's paw somewhere just put one, shrivelled finger down for those who were hoping more people would pay attention to AI.)
By the end of the 2026 midterm elections, data centres had become a bipartisan issue with candidates from both major parties opposing their construction.
(As always, US President Donald Trump was iconoclastic in his increasingly lonely but still vocal support for data centres and his rebranded "super intelligence".)
There will be a lot of ink spilled on what voters were actually rejecting in this data centre repudiation.
Was this motivated by environmental concerns? NIMBYism? The industry's significant contribution to inflation? Is the opposition to data centres a proxy for opposition to AI — obviously intrinsically intertwined as its physical manifest — or the impact of big tech itself?
More broadly, was this white collar voters experiencing a new type of economic anxiety because they fear their roles could be automated using data centres?
It's obviously some combination of the above, but the proportions will matter a lot.
What does this mean for Australia?
One group keenly watching this result is Australia's political class.
It's not surprising that people who walk the halls of parliament are political sickos like many of us, but they're also certainly taking note of the data centre issue with an eye to what it means for us, here.
We should heed a note of caution against trying to directly transplant the midterm results to our political environment.
Australia is not America in a lot of ways, including when it comes to data centres. We've definitely seen an explosion in construction and proposals for a new generation of bigger, hungrier data centres, but the scale of our build out pales in comparison to our American friends.
The combined capacity of Australia's existing 163 data centres is about 1.6 gigawatts, according to Data Centres Australia. America has about 30 times that, at around 50 gigawatts of capacity, by one estimate.
Our biggest data centre, AirTrunk's MEL1 in western Melbourne, is ten times smaller than the known capacity of Elon Musk's monstrous Colossus 2 (which was reportedly powered for a while by gas turbines without environmental permits, thanks in part to the laxer rules in the land of the free — another difference between our contexts).
Nor is the opposition to data centres here quite at the level of the American backlash. Recent polling found that 44 per cent of Australians would oppose a data centre built near them — not a great number for the industry, but not quite like the 76 per cent of Americans in exit polls.
Another major difference? Australia has a bipartisan consensus from the two major parties on data centres, but in the opposite direction.
Just last month, the chairs of the parliament's joint inquiry into AI — Labor's Jo Briskey and the Liberal's deputy chair Jonathon Duniam — took the unusual step of sending a letter mid-way through the inquiry's investigation to give an "early indicator" of what they'd found.
Shadow Home Affairs Minister Jonno Duniam and Labor MP Jo Briskey are co-chairs the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
It outlined several things that would be required to get the top AI companies doing their "training" here — a goal that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has also explicitly stated is an objective of his government.
Translation: Australia wants AI companies to build big data centres here.
Could there be a silver lining for America's data centre blues?
Now, the Australian politicians, staffers and those in the data centre industry who I spoke to about the midterms aren't completely terrified by the result.
They're very aware of the existing political stigma around data centres. Many of them expect that this result, even though it's in a different context, will embolden anti-data centre organisers, who are already fresh off a few wins in the last few weeks.
But there is a sense that it's possible to avoid this kind of response if we can thread the needle of attracting AI investment — again, this means building data centres — if we do it on, in their words, "our terms".
This is the motivation behind the government's proposed new rules for data centres that are expected to be released by the end of the year.
There are proposals for data centres in many places across Australia. This artist's impression shows one proposed for near Wagga Wagga, NSW. (Supplied: CDC Data Centres )
There is one other interesting downstream impact of a cooling data centre industry in the US.
With an American data centre slowdown, the computing crunch on major AI companies who are already fighting amongst themselves for resources will get even worse. This means there's even more pressure to look outside of the US. And guess which country is high up on many of the top AI companies' wish lists?
Australia is in a small group of dream destinations for major AI companies, and our leverage just grew. This could mean we can negotiate more from a tech industry increasingly desperate for a new place to call home: more money, stricter rules, a greater say over how they run — it's all on the table.
That must be an enticing thought for politicians already banking on extract concessions from these companies to piggyback our own AI industry and to jump-start our economy.
But there's probably another question itching at the back of their minds: Is this febrile feeling by the electorate towards data centres a cautionary tale that we can avoid? Or if our government's goal to lure major AI companies down here comes true, is it our political destiny?
New research shows there is more diversity to SA's bandicoots than first thought. (Supplied: You Li)
In short:
A national study into bandicoots has uncovered new knowledge, which researchers say could have some big implications for the marsupials in South Australia.
While there was previously believed to be only one bandicoot species in the state, research has revealed there were once three.
What's next?
The southern brown bandicoot is already classified as an endangered species, which could mean a "conservation reassessment" for a new subspecies.
A study has uncovered a new subspecies of bandicoot in Australia, with researchers raising concerns for the declining marsupials.
Scientists long believed all bandicoots in South Australia were southern brown bandicoots.
However, according to a new study published in the Australian Journal of Taxonomy, the southern brown bandicoot is found only in the state's south-east.
Bandicoots in the Mount Lofty Ranges, Fleurieu Peninsula and on Kangaroo Island instead are related to quendas, a bandicoot species found in Western Australia, but due to their geographical isolation are now considered their own subspecies.
Researchers made the discoveries while digging through archives across the country.
They catalogued specimens across Australia, using skeletons and written records to gain a clearer picture of bandicoot species and populations.
The SA Museum's Steven Cooper said it was a "remarkable achievement" by his colleague from the Western Australian Museum, Kenny Travouillon.
Researchers discovered minute differences in bandicoot anatomies. (Supplied: Michael Lee, South Australian Museum)
"[He made] detailed comparisons of the body structure, size, skull morphology, and teeth, any possible characteristic, any measure of the different characters as well," Professor Cooper said.
"It all then got aligned with the genetics data.
"We had thousands of genes sequenced, pretty well covering all the different bandicoot species."
Important animal under threat
The southern brown bandicoot is already classified as an endangered species.
Professor Cooper said it could mean a "conservation reassessment" for the new subspecies of quenda.
Bandicoots require thick vegetation for burrowing. (Supplied: You Li)
The animals require thick ground vegetation for their habitat. Land clearing, as well as pests such as foxes and cats, have reduced the population.
Kangaroo Island Landscape Board biodiversity unit team leader Karleah Berris said bandicoots across the state had been left with small, isolated populations at risk of further decline.
"Bandicoots are ecosystem engineers. They do a lot of digging for their food, mostly insects. Think fungi, underground roots and tubers. It involves a lot of digging,"
Dr Berris said.
"That soil turnover is actually incredibly important in our ecosystems, so it's a species we want to keep around in the state."
The study also uncovered a third, newly discovered species called the little brown bandicoot (Isoodon microtis).
It was once unique to the Eyre Peninsula but is now believed to be extinct.
Green Adelaide conservationist Jack Casley-Smith said it highlighted why local conservation mattered.
"Describing a new species … that went extinct around a century ago is sobering but serves as an important reminder of the rapid changes that have occurred to our environment since European settlement," he said.
"It also highlights how gaps in historical data has led to issues with shifting baselines in understanding the state of the environment."
A beloved marsupial
In addition to their importance to the ecosystem, bandicoots have drawn a lot of interest from people wanting to give them their best chance at survival.
Bandicoots have become well-known locally. (Supplied: Michael Lee, South Australian Museum)
Dr Berris said bandicoots had become a tangible example of an animal that could be protected.
"People have grown up with them in their backyards in the hills, seen them on the roads at night on Kangaroo Island," Dr Berris said.
"They're a species that you grow up with seeing around and they're quite elusive.
"They are quite difficult to see, and I think people really connect with that idea that this is our last bandicoot species naturally left in the state and we really need to protect them if we want to keep them around."
Darline Graham was beaten in this week's midterm elections despite having president's support. (Reuters: Sam Wolfe)
In late July, US President Donald Trump lionised Republican Senator Lindsey Graham's life in a touching eulogy at the National Cathedral in Washington DC, describing him as a "fixture of American politics" and a "force to be reckoned with".
"He was a man who gave America the full measure of his good and mighty heart, until that heart itself just gave out," the president said.
His death was sudden, unexpected, and created a problem for Republicans.
President Trump made a captain's call: he wanted Darline Graham, Lindsey's younger sister, to not only temporarily fill her brother's seat in South Carolina but run for election in November's midterms.
"I asked Darline, for the Good of our Nation, to run for the US Senate," the president wrote on Truth Social.
"I hope Darline does this, in that there would be nobody better to honour the legacy of her beloved brother, Lindsey.
"RUN, DARLINE, RUN!"
Senator Lindsey Graham died earlier this year. (Reuters: Kenny Holston/The New York Times/Pool)
With the backing of the president, and her brother's legacy, she seemed a frontrunner to win.
But, like so many Republicans discovered on Tuesday, support from the president did not provide the same boost as it once did.
Ms Graham lost, with a state Mr Trump won by double digits just two years ago turning blue for the first time in decades.
"As you all know this has been a very difficult few months, I lost my dear brother Lindsey and one of South Carolina's greatest leaders in July," a tired and dejected Ms Graham told supporters on Tuesday night.
"I would trade this all a thousand times over to have my brother back but God had a different plan."
The midterm election results were devastating for Donald Trump's Republican Party. (Reuters: Umit Bektas)
Ms Graham's defeat revealed a problem across the board in this week's midterms.
Analysts have identified Mr Trump's insistence on choosing unqualified candidates, including a grieving sister, who had never run for public office, as being among the reasons the Republicans got thumped.
In Texas, Mr Trump endorsed scandal-prone state attorney-general Ken Paxton over veteran senator John Cornyn.
Mr Paxton lost badly, and for the first time in almost four decades the state sent a Democratic Senator to Washington DC.
In Iowa and North Carolina, Republican senators who stood up to Mr Trump were threatened by the president's allies. Both men decided to retire. The vacancies they left were vulnerabilities, and the Democrats flipped both states.
Lindsey Graham initially opposed Mr Trump and was one of the president's most vocal critics during the GOP primaries in 2016.
Less than a year later, however, the late senator got on board with the MAGA movement and became a vocal defender of the president's agenda.
These days, it is clear the brand is badly damaged.
Is this the beginning of the end for Trump's MAGA movement?
Ben Williams thinks the midterms should spell the end of the MAGA movement. (Supplied: Ben Williams)
Texas Young Republican Ben Williams hopes so.
"I think we should leave Trump far, far behind," the 26-year-old policy analyst for the Austin Young Republicans told the ABC.
"Leave behind his tariffs, leave behind his geopolitics, leave behind his rhetoric. We need people who are much less divisive."
As the party engages in soul-searching and finger-pointing over its drubbing by the Democrats, Mr Williams said it should reflect not just on its poor candidate selection, but on its failure to listen to young conservatives' concerns.
But Mr Williams said their voices had been ignored and their complaints had been ridiculed by Mr Trump and other party leaders.
"They screwed over the Republican base, they screwed over young men, young people in general, and this is what happens when they do that."
A stand-out moment in the blame game came when Vice-President JD Vance used X to say the Iran war was responsible for Republicans' poor fortunes.
His lengthy post has been fuelling talk about how hard Mr Vance will now try to distance himself from Mr Trump ahead of a possible run for president in 2028.
"This long post waskind of throwing Donald Trump under the bus," North Carolina State University (NC State) political scientist Steven Greene said.
JD Vance is commonly touted as the Republican Party's next presidential candidate. (Reuters: Eduardo Munoz)
Mr Williams described Mr Vance's post, which also named inflation and Israel as factors, as "excellent".
But he had more praise for outgoing Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who used a press conference to flay Republicans' midterms strategy for focusing on poor priorities, such as transgenderism, and ignoring the concerns motivating voters.
"I think he's probably going to run for president," Mr Williams said of Mr DeSantis, "and I'm certainly going to back him."
Mr DeSantis ran against Mr Trump for the nomination in 2024, but dropped out after the Iowa caucuses, when it was clear his chances of winning were extremely low.
Ron DeSantis ran for the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nomination, which was won by Donald Trump. (AP: Mark Schiefelbein)
Mr Vance is widely seen as the favoured 2028 nominee, though Mr Trump said "maybe he won't run" when asked about the likelihood on Wednesday. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is also considered a contender.
But some analysts say the election result shows the Trump brand is so damaged that members of the current administration like Mr Vance and Mr Rubio would be risky choices.
For that reason, Mr DeSantis could be the party's smartest option, Professor Greene said. (At his press conference, Mr DeSantis said he would "cross that bridge when we come to it" when asked if he was considering a 2028 run.)
Steven Greene says Ron DeSantis could be the Republican Party's most viable choice for its 2028 candidate for president. (ABC News: Brad Ryan)
"From my perspective, if the Republicans have any sense, they will nominate a governor," Professor Greene said, adding that Utah's moderate Republican Governor Spencer Cox could also be a viable alternative.
"Far and away, the most viable future for the Republican Party right now has to come out of the states and not out of Washington DC. It has to come from somebody not closely associated with the Trump administration."
Two years out, though, not all experts agree. Fellow NC State political scientist Andrew Taylor said he saw Mr Rubio as a favourite to win the nomination.
"I suspect he's sort of positioned well enough between lanes," he told a post-midterms forum he co-hosted with Professor Greene. But he added it was too early to make a confident prediction.
Texas senator Ted Cruz, who has also hinted at a 2028 presidential run, posted his own lengthy analysis on Wednesday, local time.
He said too many Republicans had dismissed voters' genuine cost-of-living concerns.
"Understandably, people were pissed off, and elected Republicans didn’t do enough to address their very real pain," he wrote.
The president has continued to blame the midterms result on his absence from the ballot, despite polls that show many voters cast ballots to express dissatisfaction with his performance.
While Mr Trump continues to enjoy support in much of the US, and his endorsement still carries huge influence among the party's MAGA faithful, this weeks results show it can also backfire.
Analysts point out JD Vance distancing himself from the president since the midterm results came in could be evidence of that.
