Shorten tested in backroom fights
“Faction leaders are trying to strike a balance in favour of, as one MP puts it, ‘discipline with a bit of dissonance’.”
Ahead of Labor’s national conference, factional splits are appearing over major policies, including the approval of the Adani coalmine, refugee intake, free trade and Newstart.
News
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Lawyer X: “Say nice things at my eulogy and enjoy the Royal Commission”
“It’s a very, very black day for the Victorian bar. ”
In the wake of this week’s High Court ruling, details emerge of Victoria Police’s unprecedented use of a top criminal lawyer as an informant during Melbourne’s gangland wars.
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Amid a chaotic final sitting week of parliament, conservative Coalition MPs are furious at the prime minister for what they perceive as his betrayal over religious freedoms in schools.
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“Overwhelmingly, for the last decade, the businesses have known more about what’s going on than the regulator, so it was very hard for the regulator to push back and say ‘no’.”
Unwise decisions made when privatising our electricity grids, permitting companies to spend excessively on the networks’ ‘poles and wires’ and pass on the cost to consumers, are the driving force behind our exorbitant power bills.
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Queensland’s flawed bill of rights draft
Advocacy organisations and academics argue Queensland’s proposed bill of rights will enshrine procedural unfairness in court for survivors and victims of crime.
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Theresa May suffers defeats on Brexit. Trump backs down when facing Xi Jinping at G20. Trump’s former lawyer pleads guilty. Philippine journalist charged with tax fraud.
Opinion
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Hannah McGlade
Raising black women’s voices
“Black women know the Australian state was built on such violence and that the instruments of law, the police and courts, can never really be trusted to protect black women’s bodies. We know that the Australian legal system’s tolerance of sexual violence towards Indigenous women is deeply seated in Australian history. ”
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Paul Bongiorno
Morrison and the Kelly outbreak
“The prime minister denied the intervention was in light of Craig Kelly’s implied threats, made to several media outlets, to similarly quit the Liberals if he was disendorsed. It is the most logical explanation, although some in the party suspect Morrison is far more sympathetic to Kelly’s climate change scepticism and social conservatism than he lets on.”
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The long arm of the mining industry is everywhere, sticking its shadowy fingers into as many pork pies as it can find. The Saltbush Club is the latest conspiracy-theory entrant into the climate wars. Among its directors are legacy mining men Hugh Morgan of Western Mining and Jerry Ellis, previously on mahogany row at BHP and a former grand fromage at the Minerals Council of Australia. Old favourite Ian Plimer is also a member of the club, which recently received a rousing endorsement in the Pied Piper outlets of similarly aged media gnome Lord Moloch.
Letters & Editorial
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Editorial
Abbott’s tour of himself
Amid the chaos that was parliament’s final sitting day for the year, Tony Abbott got to his feet and cleared his throat. “Back when prime minister,” he said, introducing himself with a descriptor as unnecessary as it was telling of what was to come, “I used to observe that to live in Australia is to have won the lottery of life – and that’s true, unless you happen to be one of those whose ancestors have been here for tens of thousands of years.”
Culture
The Native Cats’ music for Tasmania
As The Native Cats, Julian Teakle and Chloe Alison Escott make poetic and unusually stripped-back music that riffs on gender and sexuality by way of a James M. Cain pulp novel. “Life after transitioning is the closest that you ever get to time travel, in a way,” Escott says. “You try to be somebody that you wish was there in the past. You see people who remind you of yourself at a certain time, so you think, ‘What’s the thing that I can say or do for this person?’”
What starts as a dance film to rival Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz switches to giallo horror as the diverse cast of Gaspar Noé’s Climax descend into a lysergic hell.
Indigenous fire educator Victor Steffensen
“‘Sorry about the tools, eh,’ says Victor Steffensen as I climb into the dusty cab of his LandCruiser. Steffensen reverses into the main street of Kuranda in Far North Queensland. He waves to a group of men who are chatting in the deep shade of a Moreton Bay fig tree. ‘Kuranda mob,’ he says, his friends’ kids, grown up. He drives slowly. Town feels sleepy, quiet, already hot at 10am. Groups of tourists flock together, looking dazed. The heat is unusually dry for this time of year, and it’s unusually hot. The next couple of days, maximum temperatures hit the low 40s. Queensland catches fire; firefighters battle 110 fires across the state.”
Life
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Making the case for restoring confidence in the quality of Australian design by stipulating that for major projects, half of all design tenders or competition entrants be local.
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Honoured roller: Brendan Dowler, 50, wheelchair basketball coach
Wollongong Roller Hawks coach Brendan Dowler on winning gold and silver at the Paralympic Games.
Books
The Quiz
1. Which 2011 French film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director? (Bonus point for naming the Best Actor winner.)
2. In reference to colour printing, what does the 'C' stand for in CMYK?
3. What word beginning with 'l' refers to the words of an opera or other extended musical composition?
4. A computer flaw predicted to cause problems when dealing with dates beyond December 31, 1999 was known by what alphanumeric abbreviation?
5. Unagi is the Japanese word for which food?
6. Serendib (or Serendip) is an old Arabic name for which island nation?
7. The name of what genus of redwood coniferous tree ends in four vowels?
8. Which former radio personality heads the political party known as the Justice Party?
9. What vehicle topped new car sales in Australia in 2017?
10. American actor Donald Glover performs music under what stage name?
Quotes
SCHOOLS
“Take, for example, the situation of … a conservative Catholic school and you’ve got a child who wants to run a gay club within the school.”
The Liberal senator cites the prospect of children starting a gay club at school as grounds for discriminating against queer students. It’s not a “gay club”, Amanda – it’s called a “debating society”.
REFUGEES
“We’re going to make it as cumbersome and expensive as possible.”
The Danish People’s Party immigration spokesperson describes the remote island where his country will hold rejected asylum seekers, which currently houses the crematory for a laboratory researching contagious animal diseases. And people say Australia doesn’t do enough to export its inventions.
UNDERSTATEMENT
“Labor has chosen to allow terrorists and paedophiles to continue their evil work in order to engage in point scoring.”
The minister for defence castigates the Opposition for holding up his party’s encryption bill. The other evil work is done by those hackers who like porn tweets from your account, but that’s a different matter.
CAREER
“I say to women, if you want to go further up the ladder, what you should be doing is working through lunches, working later.”
The billionaire mining magnate offers sage career advice to help young women compete with male peers in the business world. Sad desk lunches are, of course, the key to corporate success, though inheriting $75 million from your parents doesn’t hurt.
IRONY
“It’s really disappointing what Malcolm Turnbull has done. He’s destroying his own legacy by his own hands.”
The former deputy prime minister laments the former prime minister announcing support for the national energy guarantee. Joyce is, of course, a world expert in clumsy self-sabotage.
CRIME
“I can surely be more sensitive to people’s personal space, even in the midst of my planetary enthusiasm.”
The astrophysicist responds to various accounts of unwanted touching and one accusation of rape. He says in one case he was looking for Pluto in a woman’s tattoo and in another he was offering a “special handshake”.
