May 27 – June 2, 2023

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw.

News

An elderly woman with short grey hair.
US President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the Quad meeting during the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan.
A child sits on a pile of logs, watching a group of protestors holding a sign that reads ‘Logging is criminal in a climate emergency”.
A police officer in uniform outside a courthouse.
Anthony Albanese and Narendra Modi at a rally at Sydney’s Olympic Park on Tuesday.

Comment

Letters, Cartoon & Editorial

Cartoon

ReadCartoon image, links to full cartoon page

Editorial
Base costs

The department says you cannot split the numbers. The cost of suffering on Nauru is not divisible by the refugees held there. “I think as we’ve given evidence before, the costs for maintaining the facility are not attributable to the number of individuals,” Stephanie Foster, an associate secretary in the Department of Home Affairs, told estimates this week.

Letters

Big penalties

Both Rick Morton’s “Exclusive: Robo-debt findings delayed to allow NACC referrals” (May 20-26) and Denham Sadler’s “Torture sights” (May 20-26) catalogue reprehensible failures by government …

Superior managers

Outsourcing public services to the private sector became central to the playbook of bureaucracies after “new public management” theories took hold of Australian public services in the 1990s (Martin …

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Culture

A woman rests her head on a man's shoulder. They're both wearing coats.

The Influence

Shelley Lasica

Accomplished choreographer Shelley Lasica’s fascination with temporality has been nourished by the Nicolas Roeg film Bad Timing, with its loops, missed communications and lost possibilities.

Fiction

Platinum Reserve

“I keep thinking about it. There’s one guard, Cody, who lived here till his mum took him in when her pokies thing got sorted. He knows what it’s like, lets a few things go. One day, when the other guards were off dealing with a meltdown, he let Toby run on the grass for a few seconds. Toby still talks about it. I reckon for a quiet game, Cody would hide us in a cupboard, sneak us out late in the second quarter, when the ushers care less about where anyone’s sitting. The idea makes me think of when we were kids, how they’d let you into the cricket free during the last hour – till then, we’d peek through the chain-link fence and cheer when we saw the ball rolling on the sliver of grass between the stands. It was like seeing how the whole world works after being gummed up in the pages of a book written by some dumb-arse who had never gone to school. ”

Books

Image for article: Personal Score: Sport, culture, identity

Ellen van Neerven
Personal Score: Sport, culture, identity

Book cover: a cup of tea with two young adult faces emerging in the steam.

Will Kostakis
We Could Be Something

Book cover: sketch of a person dressed in a suit looking through a pair of binoculars. A bird sits on their hat.

Libby Robin
What Birdo is That? A Field Guide to Bird-people

Life

Image for article: Pumpkin, ricotta and sage gratin

Food

Pumpkin, ricotta and sage gratin

Children sitting on tree branches.

Education

John Marsden’s school of life

Award-winning children’s author John Marsden says overprotective parenting is ‘passive abuse’, and his schools in rural Victoria seek to educate kids through a sense of empowerment.

A moth vine growing wild in a garden.

Gardening

The moth vine encroaches

The moth vine casts its shadow over the garden, from which the author manages to salvage a benediction.

Sport

Quitting time for Damien Hardwick

The media sideshow that followed Damien Hardwick’s resignation as Richmond coach this week was yet another demonstration of the obsessive scrutiny and lack of perspective that dogs the AFL.

Damien Hardwick interviewed at a press conference.

Puzzles

Quotes

Power

“The government’s proposed changes to our constitution will change this permanently, creating different rights ... over others based solely on race.”

Scott MorrisonThe former prime minister warns the Voice will take away power on the basis of race. Which is actually a pretty good description of his preselection battle in Cook.

Media

“We used to laugh together.”

Erin MolanThe radio host laments falling out with Anthony Albanese over a column she wrote. At the risk of defamation proceedings, maybe she should try saying his surname in a funny accent.

America

“This guy is all hat and no cattle.”

Rick WilsonThe Republican strategist criticises Ron DeSantis after the Florida governor announced he would seek the Republican nomination. The real dig was that he lacked Donald Trump’s “natural verbal and political grace”.

Diplomacy

“Prime Minister Modi is certainly popular, not with everyone.”

Anthony AlbaneseThe prime minister reflects on his meeting with Indian counterpart Narendra Modi. “Not everyone” presumably includes the 220 million Indian Muslims Modi has systematically oppressed since coming to power.

Inquests

“I have concluded that Melissa Caddick is deceased.”

Elizabeth RyanThe New South Wales deputy state coroner gives her findings into the disappearance of Melissa Caddick. The conwoman stole $23 million from friends and family and so far has returned only her foot.

Deaths

“Tina Turner was raw. She was powerful. She was unstoppable.”

Barack ObamaThe former United States president mourns the death of singer Tina Turner. She was 83.

ISRAEL–HAMAS WAR