Chapter 1: What are the latest headlines in Australian politics?
A listener production.
Hi, it's Helen Smith here with you. Welcome to the afternoon edition of The Briefing. Coming up on our deep dive, we look into the enhanced games. The event happened in Las Vegas today and it's been dubbed the Steroid Olympics, where athletes take performance-enhancing drugs in an attempt to break world records. The games are backed by billionaires with life-changing prize money up the grabs.
But they've created a lot of controversy within the sporting world, putting in question what kind of drugs these athletes are taking and how safe it really is. But first, let's check the afternoon headlines this Monday, the 25th of May. Starting with the latest on the federal budget, legislation to implement the government's budget plans will be introduced into Parliament on Thursday.
PM Anthony Albanese says Treasury is still talking to the start-up and business sectors with finer details to come.
Chapter 2: Why are Steggall and Spender exploring a new political party?
We will have a second tranche of legislation which will deal with the implementation of details. That's the normal way that tax policy has been implemented for a long period of time.
Meanwhile, the PM says Australia is not running on fumes with our fuel supply now looking secure into July. Anthony Albanese says there's now 43 days of petrol, 38 days of diesel and 31 days of jet fuel with more shipments locked in.
Staying with Australian politics, The Independent's Sally Stegall and Allegra Spender held a press conference today to urge the Labor government to reconsider its changes to the capital gains tax discount.
Labor's proposed changes are designed to help younger Australians enter the property market, but would also increase taxation on shares and other investment assets, including those who sell a business. But the big story in Canberra today was the talk of a new political party.
Chapter 3: What is the focus of the Royal Commission hearings on antisemitism?
We heard about this this morning in the morning briefing with Chris and Sash. So while the two women were trying to talk about capital gains tax, all of the questions for them had to do with their potential new party. Here's what Stegall had to say about why she's exploring a new party.
What we're seeing evolve is a growth of one nation and people frustrated with the major party's and a real change in the Australian political landscape. And I think it is beholden on me, myself, you know, as a community independent, to take responsibility and look at what are the options and how do we evolve and build more consensus to enable more communities to benefit from choice.
Chapter 4: What happened during the recent outbreak of diphtheria in the Northern Territory?
There has to be an alternative choice from the major parties and One Nation.
Among those supporting the new party is Malcolm Turnbull, the former Liberal Prime Minister, and he actually spoke with the briefing, and that interview will be in your feed tomorrow morning.
Chapter 5: What were the outcomes of the recent flotilla activism in Israel?
The Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion has returned to hearing from witnesses with Australia's spy boss, Mike Burgess, taking the stand today. We learnt that within the first 30 seconds of the start of the shooting of the Bondi terror attack targeting Jewish Australians, 11 people had been shot and 10 of them fatally.
The next block of hearings is focused on the circumstances around the terror attack and what was known about the two shooters. Burgess was asked about whether changes in ASIO's priorities led threats to go unchecked. Here's what he had to say.
At no time do I believe we had any serious inquiries that was left uninquired or investigated.
Chapter 6: What are the Enhanced Games and why are they controversial?
In terms of counter-terrorism? In terms of counter-terrorism. So yes, we were pivoting resources across because that's where the leads took us and where we were required to put effort. But of course, at the same time, we're always making sure that we're not leaving serious threats uninquired or uninvestigated.
Burgess will also return to the commission in closed hearings so that the national security secrets can be discussed. A second person with diphtheria has died in the Northern Territory as health authorities keep working through a rare outbreak. The man, aged in his early 60s, died at the Alice Springs Hospital yesterday with the ABC reporting he had existing heart issues.
More Australian activists have returned home after being detained in Israel for their participation in a naval flotilla that was trying to reach Gaza. The activists held a conference at the airport earlier today detailing some of the conditions they faced.
I was dragged into a darkened container ship on a prison boat. I was sexually assaulted. I was beaten. And that was just the beginning of four days of absolute hell.
Meanwhile, the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, has given a speech in which he denounced brutal acts against detainees in Israel and called out a handful of people who think that detainees, those under interrogation or suspects, have no human rights at all.
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Chapter 7: How do athletes benefit financially from participating in the Enhanced Games?
Herzog's role is ceremonial, so this speech is a notable political move. And an update on the Aussie burrito chain, Guzman & Gomez. We heard on Friday that the chain was immediately shutting down its American operations, but now it's facing a class action from its US workers, with a lawsuit saying that Guzman needed to give its workers 60 days' notice that it was shutting down.
Instead, the workers found out that they were losing their jobs through a post on an internal message board, which was quickly then deleted. Now it's time to get into our deep dive with Tom Decent, the chief sports writer for the Sydney Morning Herald on the Enhanced Games.
It's the comp that the World Anti-Doping Agency and International Olympic Committee have called utterly irresponsible and immoral. It's backed by billionaires and draws athletes from across the globe with huge prize money up for grabs, including $1.5 million that's in AU if you break a world record.
So why are these athletes choosing to juice up and what does that mean for the future of modern sporting events? Tom, you're at the Enhanced Games right now. There are weightlifting, swimming and running events. Tell us about the atmosphere on the ground.
Yeah, it's an interesting crowd. It's a lot of like influencers and very attractive people, to be honest. It's quite a different sporting event that I've usually been to normally sort of looking at a packed stadium with 60, 80,000 people watching a set sport. But here you've got three different sports and there's corporate areas and people mingling out the back.
And it's a very, very different crowd to one that you would be normally used to. But because there are so few people here and I haven't even sold all the seats as well. Mm. I've kind of just been giving out tickets to like influencers and people who are of note or in this movement as such. So it's nothing like I've ever seen before.
Yeah, watching the games, the events are very close to each other as well. You have the pool almost right next to the sprinting track. How has that changed the atmosphere as well?
Yeah, it's cool. Like I would love to see traditional sport do something like that. It would be amazing to have a swimming pool next to an athletics track and watch the genuine best athletes in the world compete. And, you know, they've got weightlifting there as well.
So in terms of like a spectator experience, it is great, but clearly you can't have too many fans because you just couldn't fit that all. It's sort of a big stadium and the viewing experience wouldn't be great. But in terms of like points for uniqueness, it's pretty cool.
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Chapter 8: What does the future hold for the Enhanced Games and traditional sports?
Effectively, these owners backed by billionaires believe that athletes should be paid more for a starting point. So their idea is that in the traditional sports like swimming and athletics, they need to be paid a bit more. And they also believe that a lot of athletes in traditional sport are cheating the system anyway, so why not just open the...
net up and let everyone basically take what you want. Now, it's not as medically unsupervised as some people might think. It is quite stringent. You can't take illegal drugs. They have to be FDA approved over here. So it is quite doctor heavy and probably not as cowboy as you would think, but clearly controversial.
Clearly, the truth will be in the future as to whether there is legs in this movement. But as a first go, it's an interesting story, right? Like people are talking about it.
What do the athletes get out of this?
I think financial driver is a primary motivator here for someone like James Magnuson, Australian guy. He wouldn't be doing this without the money and the money they're making out there today. Like some athletes who have basically been retired from sport for three, four, five years have come back on and just won $375,000 Australian dollars to winning a swimming race.
So there is significant financial motivation incentives for them, whether that continues in the future or not. But that's basically the reason they've got here. And then clearly, they're also believers now that some of these enhancements can improve their life.
And the other element of this whole story is that we're talking about the longevity space and the organizers are effectively trying to sell these drugs and supplements to the masses. So yeah, it's got people talking.
Yeah, you mentioned there before that the drugs, it's way more controlled, I guess, than people might think. But what type of drugs are these athletes taking? Like, do we know specifics?
Yeah, so like off the top of my head, the 36 who are completing this clinical trial at the moment, I think 91% are on testosterone. Most of them are on some kind of peptides. Human growth hormone is above 70%. I think there's about 40% of EPO, which is what famously Lance Armstrong was taking in cyclists during... years of doping. So there's a lot of it.
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