AN INSIDER’S OUTSIDE VIEW OF AUSTRALIAN POLITICS AND ECONOMICS.
The Lucky Country is an insider’s outside view of Australia’s most important political and economic debates. Hosted by The Australia Institute’s Chief Economist Richard Denniss, The Lucky Country is a weekly podcast from Schwartz Media which applies common sense to complex issues.
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This week
How seniors became our most fierce lobby
Organised, connected and efficient, older voters have campaigned hard for concessions from the government and won time and again. In the end, the election was not a referendum on wages, as Bill Shorten predicted. Nor was it the climate change election, as progressives hoped and science demanded. Instead, it became a generational contest between the aged and the rest.
Coalition divided on First Nations voice
While Ken Wyatt tries to find a model for recognition that will appease his party, a grassroots movement is hoping to win public support for a voice to parliament.
The broken private health insurance system
While a new report claims Australia’s private health system is in a ‘death spiral’, the crisis actually began with the introduction of Medicare in 1984.
As the NSW deputy state coroner examines the MDMA-linked deaths of six young music festival-goers, security precautions, pill testing and overdose procedures come under scrutiny.
Novelist and playwright Peter Polites
In his second novel, The Pillars, Peter Polites uses Australia’s fixation on home ownership to explore the intersection of race, class and sexuality – as well as a growing conservatism within the queer community. “If you look at the generic images coming out of the queer community, there is a very specific aesthetic going on that’s obviously tied to race and class … You can be a total slut monster but still operate within a hegemonic discursive framework. There’s nothing radical about reinforcing dominant discourse. To me, that’s the opposite of sexual liberation.”
Stopping coercive control and family violence
Many of the most dangerous coercive controllers use physical violence sparingly, or not at all. Their system of fear and control requires only the believable threat of violence – to the victim or her loved ones. Savvy perpetrators know to avoid physical violence because while “incidents” of domestic violence are a crime, the system of coercive control is not.
The Robbins Island wind farm debate
The Australian moved in for the kill last week. Back-to-back front pages, on Monday and Tuesday, after I sounded the alarm about the impact on endangered birds if the Robbins Island wind farm in Tasmania’s north-west goes ahead. Backed up by the usual cronies at Sky News, the boilover raised a question about the impending extinction of measured public debate.
Scott Morrison faces Trump test
Remember this quiet week. It is the origin moment of the biggest test of national character Australia has faced in 50 years. Some may have sensed it, others deduced it. But before 2020 arrives, anyone with contemporary historical perspective will know, understand and have had to take a position on the United States and its president. The choices are appeasement or action, with little scope to hover in between.
No dessert has entered the Australian public consciousness more aggressively than the towering croquembouche. George Calombaris called it one of the hardest challenges ever put to MasterChef contestants. Built on little more than air and sleight of hand, it foiled many an aspiring chef and seems to have inspired the Melbourne business operations of the celebrity chef’s sprawling restaurant empire.
Boris Johnson feels bite of Brexit trade unease
Boris Johnson aligns with Trump over leaks. Tribal killings in PNG. Staying shtum on China abuses. India aborts moon mission.
Gadfly: Reinventing their spiel
“Cry Freedom” echoes through the wide, brown land as reptiles and hacks try to throw off the shackles of oppression. Some of them have been, or still are, Moloch employees whose newspapers cheered on the slate of overwrought post-September 11 national security laws that bit by bit tightened the noose around the reporting of politically sensitive matters that had received the green elephant stamp of “top secret”.
Although Stanisław Lem’s classic novel Solaris provides rich source material for a stage adaptation, there’s a disappointing banality to Malthouse Theatre’s production.
Mark Ronson’s Late Night Feelings
On his new album, Late Night Feelings, Mark Ronson has put his mega-hit ‘Uptown Funk’ behind him, choosing instead to make a pop album with surprising emotional depth.
On stage and at home with South Sudanese pop star, and refugee, Gordon Koang Duoth.
The Johannine Library and Mafra Palace
A journey to see the majestic libraries of Coimbra, Portugal, may make the visitor wonder at the hand of fate.
The fans and freedom of speech
While sporting bodies vow to embrace diversity and uphold a policy of maximal inclusion, the fans cheering from the sidelines may have very different priorities.
