China's pressing issue

FREE PRESS? FLEE, PRESS.

According to the ABC, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian has accused detained Australian journalist Cheng Lei of “endangering China’s national security”, a serious but nebulous allegation over an apparent investigation of Cheng’s that, according to University of Technology Sydney associate professor and former detainee Feng Chongyi, essentially “means they haven’t decided which direction they want to go and what kind of accusation or charge they want to lay later.”

The allegations were announced on the same day Australian correspondents Bill Birtles and Mike Smith were pulled out of China, after a five-day diplomatic standoff in which Birtles reports being primarily questioned over Cheng’s national security investigation.

PS: Both Birtles and Smith have since published recollections at the ABC and AFR ($) respectively from their experience being woken up after midnight by China’s intelligence, security and secret police agencies.

AGED CARES

New analysis of the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission’s accreditation process shows the federal regulator passed several Victorian homes just months before they experienced a wave of COVID-19 cases and deaths. The report from The Age also includes a full list of deaths and overall cases in the state’s aged care homes.

The news comes amidst the ongoing inquiry into the hotel quarantine program, where Nine reports photos were revealed of overseas travellers appearing to breach quarantine about three weeks after the program began.

Elsewhere, The Australian ($) reports that, as Victoria upgrades contact tracing with a new digital system, Dan Andrews will embed five new public health and contact tracing teams in suburban Melbourne and send health officials to Sydney to “double and triple check” whether further changes can be adopted from NSW.

Finally, amidst debate over the state’s lockdown plan, researchers who worked on the modelling confirmed to The Age that they were not asked to consider those contact tracing upgrades nor the inevitable improvement in tracing as overall case numbers fall.

PS: As the aged care sector gears up for a lobby campaign led by John Howard’s former media adviser, note that, according to The Age, a study by international consulting firm BDO submitted to the royal commission shows income has risen faster in for-profit companies than its expenses over the past 10 years, but there is a weak relationship between the level of revenue and quality of care.

ASSANGE WARNED AFTER BEING HEARD AT HIS HEARING

Finally, in the latest from another Australian political prisoner, Nine reports that Julian Assange has been warned after (inaudibly) interrupting defence witness and founder of non-profit rights organisation, Reprieve, Clive Stafford Smith.

A US lawyer, Stafford Smith told the extradition trial that not only has WikiLeaks helped expose alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, but, as The Australian ($) reports, that leaked documents from the Joint Prioritised Effects List of assassination targets proved Australia was involved in the US assassination program against 669 ­targets in Pakistan and ­Afghanistan.

As The Sydney Morning Herald reports, former foreign affairs minister Bob Carr has also alleged that the Morrison government would set a precedent that allows any Australian living abroad to be extradited to other countries if it allows the US to take Assange.