July 16 – 22, 2022 | The Saturday Paper

News

JERRY CANNED! New details in Murdoch divorce

Paddy Manning The reason for Rupert Murdoch’s divorce from Jerry Hall is a disagreement over how her adult children would be looked after.

News

Reframing the Australia–China relationship

Mike Seccombe The Labor government needs to rethink relations with China as the country vies with the US for dominance in the Pacific.

News

Labor set to shake up the High Court

Kieran Pender With two new appointments to the High Court pending, a controversial case over the constitutional status of Indigenous Australians, and a federal judicial conduct commission in the wings, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has a packed legal agenda.

News

The case against prescribed burning to fight bushfires

Karen Middleton Scientists hope the belated listing of fires as a threat to forest species can stop the destructive use of hazard-reduction burning.

News

Albanese offers no relief for jobseekers

Rick Morton The Labor government has left in place ‘mutual obligations’, as new tender documents show the punitive system channels billions of dollars into private companies.

World

Sri Lankan president flees to Maldives

Jonathan Pearlman Putin to meet Turkey and Iran leaders to build support. Foot-and-mouth disease still spreading in Indonesia. Dark underside of Uber origin story.

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Opinion

Rebecca Huntley
Like Covid, populism isn’t over

“Boris Johnson has joined Donald Trump and Scott Morrison on the list of leaders who have lost office in the past two years. We can say with some confidence they were all a particular kind of Covid-19 fatality: their inability to manage the pandemic – both in terms of appearing to manage it as well as actually managing it – was the main reason the three of them went from victorious to vanquished in one election cycle.”

Opinion

Paul Bongiorno
What’s behind Tony Abbott’s return to the spotlight?

“No one did more to shape the direction of Australian politics in the past decade than Tony Abbott. His ruthless and determined resistance to effective action on climate change was reprehensibly short-sighted but was the template for four election campaigns.”

Opinion

John Hewson
The obstacles to Australia becoming a green superpower

“The concept of Australia becoming a renewable energy superpower should be a no-brainer. A clean-energy revolution is under way that will drive societies around the globe to a low-carbon existence. This will rival in significance the Industrial Revolution, which was driven by fossil fuels – coal-fired power, and petrol and diesel engines.”

Letters, Cartoon & Editorial

Cartoon

Read

Editorial
Mutually assured corruption

What is most curious about John Barilaro is the honesty of his politics. Not in the conventional sense of integrity or commitment to the people he represents, but in the way that the truth sometimes bubbles up out of him. Accused of pork-barrelling, he says: yes, of course, that’s how we get elected.

Letters

No fairytales

Peter Dutton, history cannot be rewritten to suit your warped sense of what should be taught in the national history curriculum (Rick Morton, “ ‘Pushing bullshit’: Leaked docs reveal Dutton’s …

Going backwards

There can be no more glaring example of the Coalition’s primitive, half-baked world view than its persistent denial and misrepresentation of the need to act more urgently on climate change. Except that this …

Culture

Profile

Burlesque performer and director Moira Finucane

Anna Snoekstra Burlesque performer and director Moira Finucane on creating delight as a political act.

Games

The Quarry

Jini Maxwell The interactive game The Quarry pulls on horror tropes to create an enjoyable social experience.

Visual Art

documenta fifteen

Laura Phillips This year, documenta fifteen throws tradition out the window to foreground a vision of collective art-making.

Television

Irma Vep

Anthony Carew Olivier Assayas’s series Irma Vep – a remake of a movie about a remake – is a deliciously witty take on contemporary screen culture.

The Influence

Paul Selwyn Norton

Kate Holden For Paul Selwyn Norton, seeing Trisha Brown’s Set and Reset as a teenager opened up a new world of dance.

Fiction

Foundling

“The tree is an acacia, though the boy will never know it. He pulls himself through the winter evening, across the still river and into Bundey’s Paddock. Chasing a hornet, or a butterfly. Kicking a stick along the grass. It is the movement he notices first, in the shadows cast by that tree. A white cloth bag shifting. A cat? Or a wild possum? The boy thinks about calling to his brother, but he is braver than that. He is brave enough to lose the hornet to the cooling air and go towards the rags.”

Anna Spargo-Ryan

Books

Hans Fallada (translated by Alexandra Roesch)
Lilly and Her Slave

Sean Williams
Uncanny Angles

Image for article: What the Fuck Is This

Celeste Mountjoy
What the Fuck Is This

Life

Food

Grilled octopus

David Moyle

Food

How native foods are transforming Australian cuisine

Andy Hazel Long overlooked outside Indigenous communities, the native food industry is poised to transform what is considered Australian cuisine.

Life

Bernard Collaery’s divine intervener

Amy Fallon The energy behind the campaign to support whistleblower Bernard Collaery was a remarkable 76-year-old nun, Susan Connelly.

Sport

Nick Kyrgios and a lesson in public outrage

Martin McKenzie-Murray When it comes to dividing the public, Nick Kyrgios is second to none among sports stars. But while he happily trades on his renowned recalcitrance, it is both his friend and his enemy in equal measure.

Puzzles

The Cryptic

$link to this week\'s crossword$

Crossword No. 408

The Quiz

1. Which special administrative region on the south coast of China is known as “the Las Vegas of the East”?

2. True or false: singer Freddie Mercury was born in India?

3. Starting with ‘a’, what branch of physics deals with the science of sound?

4. Name the author of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegans Wake and Ulysses.

5. What is the highest number of runs scored in a single over of Test cricket: (a) 28; (b) 32; or (c) 35? (Bonus point for naming the bowler against whom they were recently scored.)

6. What type of show is Crufts?

7. What is the first film in 2022 to have taken more than $1 billion in global box office earnings?

8. “Kia ora” is a greeting in what language?

9. Mount Ararat, which is, according to many biblical references, the resting place of Noah’s Ark, is in which modern-day country?

10. What is the nickname for the economic policies set out for Japan in 2012 when prime minister Shinzo Abe came to power for a second time?

Click through for answers.

Quotes

Reinvention

“I will help you get out of your comfort zone and be the best version of yourself.”

Alfreda ScheuerThe recently retired CIA officer, who oversaw torture and rendition programs under George W. Bush, reinvents herself as a beauty adviser and life coach. Her advice is to drink at least four litres of water a day, with your head at a 10-degree incline.

Coups

“I disagree with that, as somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat, not here, but you know, other places. It takes a lot of work.”

John BoltonThe former White House national security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations admits on national television to having organised foreign coups. There’s very little for which this man won’t take credit.

Oversights

“Due to an administrative oversight these particular disclosures by me to the senate were delayed.”

Linda ReynoldsThe former Defence minister explains why she was six months late in declaring that she was a shareholder in a defence company to which she awarded government contracts. If only the illegal robo-debt scheme was as understanding.

Censorship

“The system is silencing everybody.”

Gerry HarveyThe retail mogul complains about ‘cancel culture’ and the suppression of speech in a 23-minute interview on one of Melbourne’s highest-rating radio shows. You can’t pay for that sort of audacity, except the previous government did to the tune of about $22 million in JobKeeper.

Business

“We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”

Bret TaylorThe chair of the Twitter board indicates he intends to force Elon Musk to complete the takeover from which he dramatically withdrew this week. Musk is beginning to wish the contract had a character limit.

Innovation

“People are going to hear crab whiskey, and I’d venture to say three-quarters of them are going to go, ‘No, absolutely not.’ ”

Will RobinsonA New Hampshire distillery finds a novel way to help curb the locally invasive green crab population. Apparently the Crab Trapper is a “thinking, sipping” drink.

July 16 – 22, 2022

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