October 21 – 27, 2023
News
Comment
Comment
Claire G. Coleman
Australia’s refusal to listen
“I cried myself to sleep, eventually, in an uncomfortable bed in an Airbnb about 4am on Saturday morning. It was not fear or anxiety; it was not concern or panic about the referendum to come, fear of an uncomfortable result; it was not a reaction to the horrific abuse myself and other Indigenous people were receiving during the referendum.”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
Profile
Artist Rainbow Chan
In her latest work, performer and artist Rainbow Chan collaborates with her mother to reimagine Weitou bridal laments.
The Influence
Director Nigel Jamieson on Kathakali classical dance
When he travelled in India as a young man, director Nigel Jamieson encountered Kathakali classical dance and drama – an experience that has informed his entire career.
Fiction
Not the next day, not a month later
“The red bike sat on the median strip with a placard tacked to it. Police aware, it read. The bike was a Kawasaki and Astor had owned one just like it years ago. The night he crashed it, Astor was on his way to a friend’s, a girl he’d known for years, and he’d been too busy thinking about the one day he’d kissed her, the one time they nearly made it through sex without him crying, and then he came off hard, except the bike skidded down an embankment, made a soft landing somehow.”
Books
Life
Puzzles
Quotes
Politics
“Get in your Tesla, off you go. Drive across the Hay Plain, out to Alice Springs.”
The Liberal senator offers advice to the teal electorates that voted “Yes”. Just in case there was any doubt this whole thing was about petty culture wars and not the lives of the most vulnerable.
Business
“Apparently such a position made me a racist and, in some instances, a Nazi.”
The transport executive expresses her contempt for the “Yes” campaign. It helps to remember her husband left Rio Tinto after the company blew up Juukan Gorge, destroying the earliest record of human life in the country.
Appointments
“I note that was frequently done by the former government.”
The trade minister defends the appointment of a former colleague to a consul-general posting. If the only bar he’s clearing is the record of the past government, he might as well grease up now and slither along the ground.
America
“Republicans eat their young, they really do.”
The former president likens himself to a baby animal devoured by its parents. In fairness, it looks as if they started with his hair but coughed it back up.
Media
“This is nuts ... it’s completely sick. I shouldn’t be saying any of these things.”
The political correspondent criticises the ABC’s approach to “balance”. If one person says it’s raining and another says it’s not, it’s a journalist’s job to look out the window and note that Peter Dutton’s a racist.
Landmarks
“A truck backed into the pole about two or three weeks ago and weakened it.”
The retired farmer describes how the large concrete potato he built in north-west Tasmania, known as Kenny the Kennebec, came to be knocked over in the wind. His son Jeremy, the premier, has promised they will rebuild.
ISRAEL–HAMAS WAR
