August 2 – 8, 2025
News
Comment
Comment
Polly Hemming
Climate target malpractice
“As the Albanese government prepares to announce Australia’s 2035 climate target, pressure is mounting to show greater ambition. A cut in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 75 per cent below 2005 levels would broadly align with the science – and strengthen Australia’s bid to host the 2026 United Nations climate conference.”
Comment
Paul Bongiorno
Albanese steps up pressure on Israel
“In calmer times Anthony Albanese could be well satisfied with the way the first sitting fortnight of the 48th parliament played out. Key election promises such as student debt relief and cheaper medicines are now realities and there was indisputable evidence that inflation has been tamed. Overshadowing it all, however, was the crisis in Gaza.”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
Film
Together’s unconscious coupling
Michael Shanks’s supernatural relationship drama Together is less body horror than an angsty study of co-dependency.
Film
David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds
David Cronenberg’s new film – his most personal – brings grief and a surprising touch of metaphysics to his complex exploration of body horror.
Fiction
Urn
“She didn’t know whose ashes they were. She didn’t know if she should feel sad or what, but she’d tell herself to sing. And sometimes play the piano keys. Behind her, a bay window gave onto the district. The sun rose over the houses and the lush, pretty gardened streets and the people there and their unthinkable lives while she sat, singing. She sang to the urn on the bookshelf in the morning as the light gushed through the window and glinted in three-starred spots on the dull metal of the urn. The urn. The ashes she didn’t know.”
Books
Life
Puzzles
Quotes
Theatre
“That was like a Liberal Party preselection.”
The Liberal senator during interval at the opening night of Bell Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. She was almost right, except there were several women on stage.
Diplomacy
“I’ll not be meeting with the president. I’ll be busy getting a haircut or washing my hair…”
The Scottish National Party politician confirms he will not meet with Donald Trump during the United States president’s official visit. To be clear, Flynn is as bald as an egg.
Celebrity
“We knew that Portia couldn’t live without her horses.”
The former talk show host explains why she and her wife, Portia de Rossi, moved to a £20 million mansion in the Cotswolds. It had nothing to do with everyone in America hating her.
Media
“When you have this one hardcore line in the sand that everybody had been talking about forever, and then they’re trying to gaslight you on that…”
The podcaster expresses his disappointment over Donald Trump’s handling of the Epstein files. He thought the president was going to act ethically.
Animals
“You can have tens of thousands of cuttlefish all within a pretty small area.”
The marine biologist expresses concerns that South Australia’s algal bloom could affect a mass breeding event for giant cuttlefish. The yearly spawning is known, disgustingly, as cuttlefest.
Court
“It’s another world in the state of Queensland.”
The lawyer representing Bruce Lehrmann on two counts of rape complains after police recorded phone calls from his former lawyers and a legal receptionist. The judge dismissed the complaint.
