Karen Middleton A strategic defence update highlights ‘coercive tactics’ that skirt the threshold of armed conflict but justify a huge weapons build-up by Australia.

Rick Morton Of the thousands of young people with disabilities living in aged-care facilities, only a few hundred have been moved into the community since the NDIS rollout began in 2013.

Royce Kurmelovs When the COVIDSafe contact tracing app launched, tech-savvy experts went looking for flaws. It didn’t take long to find them.

Peter Craven For actor Toby Schmitz, there’s nothing like the exhilaration of being on stage, but for the past week he’s replicated some of that feeling in a series of live-streamed performances of Will Eno’s Thom Pain. He speaks about playing Hamlet, the vitality of theatre and keeping his ‘art spark’ alight in the Covid-19 lockdown. “The audience is the final director that teaches you things you would never have thought of. You know, if one person moves their leg it may mean nothing, but if four people do, then you’ve lost them somehow.”

Open letter What Cook represents, his continuing legacy in First Nations peoples’ dispossession and social injustice, perpetuates suffering. Public spaces such as Hyde Park should be welcoming to all. For this reason, and those further outlined below, the statue of Cook should no longer be displayed in the park, but conserved in a public museum.

Paul Bongiorno Unfailingly, since World War II, the voters in the New South Wales seat of Eden-Monaro have picked the mood of the nation at every federal election. Well, almost every election – 2016 and 2019 were the exceptions. Today those of the seat’s 114,000 registered electors who haven’t voted pre-poll will play the part of political weathervane, if not their more traditional role of bellwether.

Richard Ackland Where’s Kathy Jackson when you need her during a pandemic? It’s a cry Gadfly hears frequently as he gallivants around a boarded-up nation, so it’s timely to present a handy updated guide to events. Kathy was the national secretary of the Health Services Union of Australia, the outfit that represents a massive number of people who work in and around hospitals and nursing homes. As far back as August 2015, the Federal Court found Jackson had misappropriated union funds and ordered her to repay $1.4 million. Regrettably, she had been declared bankrupt two months earlier.

The facts of the case are unfathomable, when you lay them out: the real prospect a journalist could be charged for reporting on credible allegations of war crimes committed by Australian troops. But this is where things now stand, with the Australian Federal Police sending a brief of evidence to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, detailing a case against ABC journalist Dan Oakes for his reporting on the “Afghan Files”.

Margaret Simons Submissions to the ACCC’s inquiry into water trading in the Murray–Darling Basin reveal significant concerns about the possibility of market manipulation.

Jonathan Pearlman Beijing imposes security law on Hong Kong. Donald Trump queried on Russian bounty plot against US troops. Fiji wants billionaires to visit  ‘Bula bubble ’. Advertisers boycott Facebook over hate speech and content inciting violence.

Andy Butler Focusing on the perspectives of First Nations artists from Australia and around the world, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, NIRIN, invites audiences to fight for greater justice and equality. It’s a triumph.

Alice Bishop I still have the dog my mother loved. See that lavender heeler, roan, smiling and straining in the rear-view. See her chasing after my mother, at least a kilometre from home. See that dog flatten herself out as she stretches to reach metal – low and fast and long. See my mother as she tries not to see it, any of it, from the driver’s seat of my older sister’s off-white Commodore. My mother, maybe she’s wearing vanilla oil, a second-hand silk shirt and her favourite cheap Priceline foundation, Crème Caramel. The V8 my mother left in once held my sister in Coles car parks at the edge of town: cheap whiskey, a boy called Bundy, petrol-station condoms. Now it’s being pushed into sixth by my mother’s butter-soft suede loafer, somewhere.

Annie Smithers

Joe Gorman For Jenna McCormick, a defection from AFLW to soccer was all about wearing the national colours. Now, as Australia and New Zealand win the right to host the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023, the green and gold icing is really on the cake.

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