February 29 – March 6, 2020 | The Saturday Paper

News

Doctors crippled by religious backlash

“Dr Jane Goddard is the only doctor in Wagga who would talk on the record for this piece. She says many doctors ‘fear the outrage of conservative reactionaries, some of whom are fairly senior in the medical system here’. ”

Justine Landis-Hanley Exclusive: Women seeking to terminate pregnancies in Wagga are being forced to go elsewhere as doctors bow to pressure from pro-life colleagues.

News

$500m fund was directed to key Liberals

“The half-billion-dollar fund has drawn ire from key state governments who say they were not consulted about the projects, some of which cannot be built as promised.”

Karen Middleton Established ahead of the 2019 election, the fund pledged to upgrade commuter car parks. Forty-three of its 46 projects were in key Liberal marginal seats.

News

Queensland’s domestic violence struggle

Bri Lee Despite the Queensland government’s huge financial commitment to the battle against family violence, the brutal murders of Hannah Clarke and her three children at the hands of her abusive husband highlight how far there is to go.

News

Julian Assange’s extradition hearing

Rick Morton As Julian Assange’s fight against extradition to the United States finally came to court this week, allegations arose that he was bugged at the Ecuadorian embassy.

News

Political warfare over climate action

Mike Seccombe While Labor’s commitment to a 2050 emissions target reinvigorated well-practised attacks from the Coalition, the cost of inaction is only becoming clearer.

World

Global response to COVID-19

Jonathan Pearlman Financial markets have suffered heavy falls and major events have been cancelled in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, while scientists continue the search for a vaccine.

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Opinion

Richard Denniss
The inequality of the superannuation system

“A part-time cleaner earning $18,000 a year will receive zero tax concessions for their compulsory superannuation contribution; meanwhile, a chief executive of a big bank can get tens of thousands of dollars every year in taxpayer support for their “retirement nest egg”. This is the strange world of Australia’s retirement income system: a world in which those who need the most get the least.”

Opinion

Paul Bongiorno
Scott Morrison’s quest for immunity

“There’s an old saying in politics, ‘Never waste a good crisis.’ And it’s crystal clear Scott Morrison isn’t wasting any moment where he can be seen responding to the threat coronavirus – or COVID-19, as it’s now known – is posing to Australia and the world. It stands in stark contrast with his derelict early response to the bushfire emergency.”

Diary

Gadfly
Merritt bastes decision

Richard Ackland When palaeoconservatives get tangled in issues of race inevitably their pants catch on fire. So it was with the High Court decision in Love, Thoms v The Commonwealth – when a majority of the judges stopped Benito Dutton deporting a couple of Aboriginal men who had done time for criminal offences in Australia.

Letters, Cartoon & Editorial

Cartoon

Read

Editorial
Six years of making sense

It is six years since The Saturday Paper printed its first edition. At the time we said our task was to make sense of Australia. The great joy of this task is that it is never done. That is also its occasional frustration.

Letters

Racism fed by fear of virus

Bravo to Mike Seccombe (“COVID-19: Racism, economics and the aftermath”, February 22-28) for his timely revelation of the race-based abandonment of Chinese–Australian business incited by …

Holden’s goodbye

“Car trouble” (Royce Kurmelovs, February 22-28) left me thinking what might have been in the new age of hydrogen, batteries and that other source of power. If General Motors had read yesterday’s …

Culture

Profile

Bhenji Ra goes vogue

Tony Magnusson Community has always been important to dancer and artist Bhenji Ra, who found solidarity in New York’s ballroom culture. In the wake of this summer’s devastating bushfires, she turned her focus back home, to the NSW south coast community that supported her to pursue her dreams. “It was the most incredible New Year’s Eve I’ve had. I’d never felt so intimate with my family. We were all there together – except for my older sister, who lives in Los Angeles – and with our community as well.”

Visual Art

Agatha Gothe-Snape: The Outcome Is Certain

Anador Walsh The Outcome Is Certain, the first exhibition to survey Agatha Gothe-Snape’s career, emphasises the performance strategies and collaborations that underpin this artist’s work.

Poem

Maxine Beneba Clarke
something sure

sit down here now baby,

stop that fidgeting

listen big,

and understand

mama’s gotta school you

’bout something sure

’fore you grow into a man

Music

Grimes’ Miss Anthropocene

Isabella Trimboli Despite its hypnotic melodies, complex dynamics and cohesive sound, Grimes’ album Miss Anthropocene falls short of its aim to revitalise our engagement with the climate crisis.

Books

Anna Goldsworthy
Melting Moments

Alison Evans
Euphoria Kids

Image for article: The Lost Pianos of Siberia

Sophy Roberts
The Lost Pianos of Siberia

Life

Food

Chocolate fondants

Annie Smithers

Health

Support after a stillbirth

Cat Rodie The government recently announced that parents dealing with a stillbirth or infant death will be entitled to 12 months of unpaid parental leave. But advocates say there is more we can do for bereaved families.

Sport

Sexual abuse and the National Redress Scheme

Tracey Holmes With more and more revelations of sexual predators lurking unchallenged within sporting bodies and in the wake of the royal commission, what progress is being made towards signing on to the National Redress Scheme?

Puzzles

The Cryptic

$link to this week\'s crossword$

Crossword No. 290

The Quiz

1. Sanna Marin is the prime minister of which Scandinavian nation? (Bonus point for naming her age.)

2. What is Shakespeare’s shortest play?

3. How many days are in a leap year?

4. Who wrote the 1963 Miles Franklin Award-winning novel, Careful, He Might Hear You?

5. In 1856 James Alexander Holden opened a business in Adelaide manufacturing what?

6. Which English soccer club has been banned from the Champions League for two years?

7. Which homonyms mean both an elevated habitation and uncanny?

8. Which 72-year-old singer recently told fans he had been diagnosed with “walking pneumonia” after suspending a concert in Auckland?

9. What colour is a chestnut horse?

10. In 1999 which television crime series, starring Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni, premiered on NBC?

Click through for answers.

Quotes

DIVIDES

“[It’s] definitely a regional facility.”

Jilly GibsonThe North Sydney mayor defends North Sydney Olympic Pool winning a $10 million grant earmarked for regional and rural sporting facilities. Anyone who lives south of the Harbour Bridge would agree with her.

OPTIMISM

“The biggest misconception is that I’m boring.”

Amy KlobucharThe Democratic hopeful responds incorrectly to a debate question. The biggest misconception about the Minnesota senator is actually that she can’t name the president of Mexico. Because she definitely can.

CIRCUMLOCUTION

“We’ve brought the budget back to surplus, next year.”

Josh Frydenberg The treasurer defies time, grammar and all available evidence to assure the Australian public that the economy is fine.

ME TOO

“He took it like a man.”

Donna Rotunno Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer describes her client’s response to his guilty verdict. “But I’m innocent” was the former movie mogul’s verbatim response, which he repeated three times.

ESCAPE

“They operated as a modern relationship and I’m fine with that.”

Greg HuntThe federal Health minister offers his blessing for the marriage between three baboons who escaped a Sydney hospital this week. Polygamy is still easier to accept than climate science, it seems.

APLOMB

“It’s a training centre. People get to be prepared for future jobs.”

Wang Xining The Chinese diplomat is asked about the camps where it’s estimated one million Uygurs are detained by the Chinese government. This transcript appears to have forgotten the scare quotes.

February 29 – March 6, 2020

The Saturday Paper

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