Good morning, folks. Let’s get cracking.

1. Yet another company has been found out rorting Australian asylum seeker contracts for millions of dollars in profit, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. Multinational Applus Wokman won a $121 million contract to resettle asylum seekers. It then paid local workers just $8 an hour to do the work but charged Australian taxpayers as if they were being paid $75, in an act likened to “stealing” from both countries. A quick reminder, we spent $1 million per head to lock people up there rather than resettle them here. One of many reasons costs on Manus Island blew out to over $1 million per head to effectively house people in tents or worse.

2. A former employee has proposed a new reason why Bill Gates kept Jeffrey Epstein in his orbit. The ex-staff claimed to the Daily Beast that Gates thought Epstein’s connections could help him get a Nobel Peace Prize — the thing “Bill wants more than anything else in the world”. Personally, I would think hanging out with a convicted sex offender would hurt your chances, but hey, I’ve never won one.

3. Speaking of Epstein connections, the two guards on duty the night the former financier died admitted to falsifying records and struck a deal with federal prosecutors to avoid jail time. Having been accused of failing to check on Epstein every half-hour as they were supposed to, the admission will likely only fuel the many Epstein conspiracies.

4. Indonesia is planning on creating five new travel hubs like Bali as it looks to recover post-pandemic. With 80% of the nation’s economy tied to tourism, Indonesia is spending almost $US300 million to create more go-to destinations as well as a travel bubble with neighbours in the region.

5. Almost a year since the Black Lives Matter movement led to calls to “support Blak business”, we took a look at what has actually changed for Indigenous-owned enterprises in Australia. The findings were mixed, but encouragingly, some progress does appear to have been made.

6. The Federal Budget may have left climate action for dead, but Australians haven’t forgotten. On Friday, nationwide protests took place, more than 18 months since the last ones mobilised hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, from school kids to business folk. Big names from Atlassian and Canva to Future Super joined the fray and explained why more needs to be done amid “a complete absence of political leadership on the matter”.

7. Australian influencers providing unlicensed and unmoderated financial advice online have been given the green light by the Morrison government. Financial Services Minister Jane Hume has said they’re no different to cabbies giving stock tips, but experts disagree. Given their ability to move markets and personally profit, there are calls for the government to do more than place this one in the ‘too hard’ basket.

8. The federal government is looking to produce the mRNA vaccine locally as it continues to bumble its way through the vaccine rollout. The announcement comes at the same time that reports say Australia has millions of unused doses of other vaccines just sitting around, having failed to run an effective public health and messaging campaign around the vaccine.

9. Boris Johnson’s former advisor Dominic Cummings is expected to testify that the British PM skipped key coronavirus meetings to write a book to fund his divorce. Amid persistent criticism of the government’s handling of the pandemic, BoJo was writing a book about Shakespeare, aides say. Oh, and the public are dealing with it in the most British way possible.

10. In another bid to monetise the platform, Twitter is rolling out a new ‘Ticketed Spaces’ feature to a limited group of users, which will allow creators to charge for exclusive access to their content. The social media platform will take a 20% cut of any revenue generated, of course.

BONUS ITEM

Australians could have an even tougher time getting into North Korea after Kim Jong Un banned mullets, nose piercings, and skinny jeans. The fashions now denote “anti-socialist behavior”. God forbid he ever catches a glimpse of Newtown.

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