NOT PLAYING 'FARE

The Morrison government will bring a “take it or leave it” approach in Parliament today when it seeks to replace the current $150 fortnightly coronavirus supplement with a permanent $50 bump to the fortnightly JobSeeker rate, The Sydney Morning Herald reports, with a senior Liberal source labelling the new rate the “bare minimum” to win Coalition party room support and supposedly satisfy public demand for action.

The new, roughly $600-a-fortnight JobSeeker rate has been condemned as inadequate by Labor, Greens, business, union and welfare leaders.

Additionally, Guardian Australia reports that the Council of Small Business Australia, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, and the Australian Council of Social Service have all slammed the government’s proposed hotline to dob in unemployed people who refuse jobs, with ACTU president Michele O’Neil pointing out the new power imbalance could lead to women accepting jobs they feel unsafe in.

The Australian ($), which is much more generous in its coverage of the “­largest year-on-year increase to the dole since 1986” [due to it not rising in real terms at all since 1997], also reports that more than half a million workers came off JobKeeper in January compared with December, outstripping Treasury’s forecasts by more than 200,000.

PS: For a masterclass in repeating your talking points no matter how many times you’re asked a completely separate question, do check out Anne Ruston avoid telling 7.30’s Leigh Sales why the weekly JobSeeker rate comes in at around a day’s travel allowance.

ZUCKED IN

Facebook will reverse its ban on Australian news content in coming days after securing changes to the Morrison government’s mandatory news media bargaining code, with the ABC explaining that amendments now consider final offer arbitration — which would allow an independent mediator to pick a proposed deal from either a platform or publisher where a dispute arises, a clause both Google and Facebook strongly oppose — as “a last resort where commercial deals cannot be reached by requiring mediation, in good faith, to occur prior to arbitration for no longer than two months”.

As Crikey’s Bernard Keane notes, amendments also allow the digital giants to differentiate in their treatment of news publishers and the code only applies to content made available “intentionally”; while it is not yet clear what counts as intentional, Facebook’s vice president for global news partnerships Campbell Brown emphasised in a statement the company will retain the ability to decide if (and, presumably, how) news appears on Facebook so that they “won’t automatically be subject to a forced negotiation”.

PS: Yesterday, Seven West Media announced it had signed a letter of intent to provide news content to Facebook, and is due to release more details after the deal is executed sometime across the next 60 days.

NAZI ATTACK IN PERTH

According to news.com.au, West Australian police are hunting a man with a swastika painted on his head after he allegedly attacked a 40-year-old Indigenous woman with a makeshift flamethrower in the southeast Perth suburb of Gosnells on Saturday night.

The man reportedly yelled racial abuse at the woman and her teenage daughter near Corfield Shopping Centre before attempting to burn her with a can of deodorant and a lighter. The woman sustained minor injuries.

MALAYSIA DEPORTS MYANMAR MIGRANTS

According to AP, Malaysia’s immigration authorities have deported 1086 Myanmar migrants, despite a court order to halt their repatriation amid Myanmar’s ongoing military coup was issued following an appeal by Amnesty International and Asylum Access Malaysia.

The news comes after Vice-Chief of the Australian Defence Force David Johnston personally urged Myanmar’s Vice-Senior General Soe Win to restore democracy and free detained Australian academic Sean Turnell, the ABC reports.